A Feast for Dragons

true of some Westerosi lords and their stewards and
bailiffs. Most of the Yunkai’i treated their chattels decently enough, so long
as they did their jobs and caused no trouble … and this old man in
his rusted collar, with his fierce loyalty to Lord Wobblecheeks, his owner, was
not at all atypical.
    “Ghazdor the Great-hearted?” Tyrion said, sweetly. “Our
master Yezzan has often spoken of his wits.” What Yezzan had actually said was
on the order of,
I have more wits in the left cheek of my arse than
Ghazdor and his brothers have between them
. He thought it prudent to
omit the actual words.
    Midday had come and gone before he and Penny reached the
well, where a scrawny one-legged slave was drawing water. He squinted at them
suspiciously. “Nurse always comes for Yezzan’s water, with four men and a mule
cart.” He dropped the bucket down the well once more. There was a soft
splash
.
The one-legged man let the bucket fill, then began to draw it upward. His arms
were sunburnt and peeling, scrawny to look at but all muscle.
    “The mule died,” said Tyrion. “So did Nurse, poor man. And
now Yezzan himself has mounted the pale mare, and six of his soldiers have the
shits. May I have two pails full?”
    “As you like.” That was the end of idle talk.
Is that
hoofbeats you hear?
The lie about the soldiers got old one-leg moving
much more quickly.
    They started back, each of the dwarfs carrying two brim-full
pails of sweet water and Ser Jorah with two pails in each hand. The day was
growing hotter, the air as thick and wet as damp wool, and the pails seemed to
grow heavier with every step.
A long walk on short legs
. Water
sloshed from his pails with every stride, splashing round his legs, whilst his
bells played a marching song.
Had I known it would come to this, Father,
I might have let you live
. Half a mile east, a dark plume of smoke was
rising where a tent had been set afire.
Burning last night’s dead
.
“This way,” Tyrion said, jerking his head to the right.
    Penny gave him a puzzled look. “That’s not how we came.”
    “We don’t want to breathe that smoke. It’s full of malign
humors.” It was not a lie.
Not entirely
.
    Penny was soon puffing, struggling with the weight of her
pails. “I need to rest.”
    “As you wish.” Tyrion set the pails of water on the ground,
grateful for the halt. His legs were cramping badly, so he found himself a
likely rock and sat on it to rub his thighs.
    “I could do that for you,” offered Penny.
    “I know where the knots are.” As fond as he had grown of the
girl, it still made him uncomfortable when she touched him. He turned to Ser
Jorah. “A few more beatings and you’ll be uglier than I am, Mormont. Tell me,
is there any fight left in you?”
    The big knight raised two blackened eyes and looked at him
as he might look at a bug. “Enough to crack your neck, Imp.”
    “Good.” Tyrion picked up his pails. “This way, then.”
    Penny wrinkled her brow. “No. It’s to the left.” She
pointed. “That’s the Harridan there.”
    “And that’s the Wicked Sister.” Tyrion nodded in the other
direction. “Trust me,” he said. “My way is quicker.” He set off, his bells
jingling. Penny would follow, he knew.
    Sometimes he envied the girl all her pretty little dreams.
She reminded him of Sansa Stark, the child bride he had wed and lost. Despite
the horrors Penny had suffered, she remained somehow trusting.
She
should know better. She is older than Sansa. And she’s a dwarf. She acts as if
she has forgotten that, as if she were highborn and fair to look upon, instead
of a slave in a grotesquerie
. At night Tyrion would oft hear her
praying.
A waste of words. If there are gods to listen, they are
monstrous gods who torment
us for their sport. Who else would
make a world like this, so full of bondage, blood, and pain? Who else would
shape us as they have?
Sometimes he wanted to slap her, shake her,
scream at her, anything to wake her from her dreams.
No one is going to
save us
, he wanted to scream at her.
The worst is yet to come
.
Yet somehow he could never say the words. Instead of giving her a good hard
crack across that ugly face of hers to knock the blinders from her eyes, he
would find himself squeezing her shoulder or giving her a hug.
Every
touch a lie. I have paid her so much false coin that she half thinks she’s rich
.
    He had even kept the truth of Daznak’s Pit from her.
    Lions. They were going to set lions on us
.
It