A Feast for Dragons

seen the hills and
valleys beneath them turn into a raging sea. Fair Velos with its palaces of
cedar and pink marble had vanished in a heartbeat. On the north end of the
island, the ancient brick walls and stepped pyramids of the slaver port Ghozai
had suffered the same fate.
    So many drowned men, the Drowned God will be strong
there
, Victarion had thought when he chose the island for the three
parts of his fleet to join up again. He was no priest, though. What if he had
gotten it backwards? Perhaps the Drowned God had destroyed the island in his
wroth. His brother Aeron might have known, but the Damphair was back on the
Iron Islands, preaching against the Crow’s Eye and his rule.
No godless
man may sit the Seastone Chair
. Yet the captains and kings had cried
for Euron at the kingsmoot, choosing him above Victarion and other godly men.
    The morning sun was shining off the water in ripples of
light too bright to look upon. Victarion’s head had begun to pound, though
whether from the sun, his hand, or the doubts that troubled him, he could not
say. He made his way below to his cabin, where the air was cool and dim. The
dusky woman knew what he wanted without his even asking. As he eased himself
into his chair, she took a soft damp cloth from the basin and laid it across his
brow. “Good,” he said. “Good. And now the hand.”
    The dusky woman made no reply. Euron had sliced her tongue
out before giving her to him. Victarion did not doubt that the Crow’s Eye had
bedded her as well. That was his brother’s way.
Euron’s gifts are poisoned
,
the captain had reminded himself the day the dusky woman came aboard.
I
want none of his leavings
. He had decided then that he would slit her
throat and toss her in the sea, a blood sacrifice to the Drowned God. Somehow,
though, he had never quite gotten around to it.
    They had come a long way since. Victarion could talk to the
dusky woman. She never attempted to talk back. “
Grief
is the
last,” he told her, as she eased his glove off. “The rest are lost or late or sunk.”
He grimaced as the woman slid the point of her knife beneath the soiled linen
wound about his shield hand. “Some will say I should not have split the fleet.
Fools. Nine-and-ninety ships we had … a cumbersome beast to shepherd
across the seas to the far end of the world. If I’d kept them together, the
faster ships would have been held hostage to the slowest. And where to find
provisions for so many mouths? No port wants so many warships in their waters.
The storms would have scattered us, in any case. Like leaves strewn across the
Summer Sea.”
    Instead he had broken the great fleet into squadrons, and
sent each by a different route to Slaver’s Bay. The swiftest ships he gave to
Red Ralf Stonehouse to sail the corsair’s road along the northern coast of Sothoryos.
The dead cities rotting on that fervid, sweltering shore were best avoided,
every seamen knew, but in the mud-and-blood towns of the Basilisks Isles,
teeming with escaped slaves, slavers, skinners, whores, hunters, brindled men,
and worse, there were always provisions to be had for men who were not afraid
to pay the iron price.
    The larger, heavier, slower ships made for Lys, to sell the
captives taken on the Shields, the women and children of Lord Hewett’s Town and
other islands, along with such men who decided they would sooner yield than
die. Victarion had only contempt for such weaklings. Even so, the selling left
a foul taste in his mouth. Taking a man as thrall or a woman as a salt wife,
that was right and proper, but men were not goats or fowl to be bought and sold
for gold. He was glad to leave the selling to Ralf the Limper, who would use
the coin to load his big ships with provisions for the long slow middle passage
east.
    His own ships crept along the shores of the Disputed Lands
to take on food and wine and fresh water at Volantis before swinging south
around Valyria. That was the most common way east, and the one most heavily
trafficked, with prizes for the taking and small islands where they could
shelter during storms, make repairs, and renew their stores if need be.
    “Four-and-fifty ships is too few,” he told the dusky woman,
“but I can wait no longer. The only way”—He grunted as she peeled the bandage
off, tearing a crust of scab as well. The flesh beneath was green and black
where the sword had sliced him.—“the only way to do this is to take the slavers
unawares, as once I did at