A Feast for Dragons

bottom.”
    “I will double whatever the Yunkishmen are paying you.”
    “And pay in gold upon the signing of our contract, yes?”
    “I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I
am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would
have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the
banks. I can show you papers.”
    “Ah. Papers. But we will be paid
double
.”
    “Twice as many papers,” said Pretty Meris.
    “The rest you’ll have in Dorne,” Quentyn insisted. “My
father is a man of honor. If I put my seal to an agreement, he will fulfill its
terms. You have my word on that.”
    The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over,
and set it down between them. “So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar
and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what
services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow
City? Defeat a Dothraki
khalasar
in the field? Escort you home
to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed
wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and
mine?”
    “I need you to help me steal a dragon.”
    Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in
a half-smile. Denzo D’han whistled.
    The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said,
“Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that
much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the
sense to promise
more.”
    “If you want me to triple—”
    “What I want,” said the Tattered Prince, “is Pentos.”
    ----

    THE GRIFFIN REBORN
    He sent the archers in first.
    Black Balaq commanded one thousand bows. In his youth, Jon
Connington had shared the disdain most knights had for bowmen, but he had grown
wiser in exile. In its own way, the arrow was as deadly as the sword, so for
the long voyage he had insisted that Homeless Harry Strickland break Balaq’s
command into ten companies of one hundred men and place each company upon a
different ship.
    Six of those ships had stayed together well enough to
deliver their passengers to the shores of Cape Wrath (the other four were
lagging but would turn up eventually, the Volantenes assured them, but Griff
thought it just as likely they were lost or had landed elsewhere), which left
the company with six hundred bows. For this, two hundred proved sufficient.
“They will try to send out ravens,” he told Black Balaq. “Watch the maester’s
tower. Here.” He pointed to the map he had drawn in the mud of their campsite.
“Bring down every bird that leaves the castle.”
    “This we do,” replied the Summer Islander.
    A third of Balaq’s men used crossbows, another third the
double-curved horn-and-sinew bows of the east. Better than these were the big yew
longbows borne by the archers of Westerosi blood, and best of all were the
great bows of goldenheart treasured by Black Balaq himself and his fifty Summer
Islanders. Only a dragonbone bow could outrange one made of goldenheart.
Whatever bow they carried, all of Balaq’s men were sharp-eyed, seasoned
veterans who had proved their worth in a hundred battles, raids, and
skirmishes. They proved it again at Griffin’s Roost.
    The castle rose from the shores of Cape Wrath, on a lofty
crag of dark red stone surrounded on three sides by the surging waters of
Shipbreaker Bay. Its only approach was defended by a gatehouse, behind which
lay the long bare ridge the Conningtons called the griffin’s throat. To force
the throat could be a bloody business, since the ridge exposed the attackers to
the spears, stones, and arrows of defenders in the two round towers that
flanked the castle’s main gates. And once they reached those gates, the men
inside could pour down boiling oil on their heads. Griff expected to lose a
hundred men, perhaps more.
    They lost four.
    The woods had been allowed to encroach on the field beyond
the gatehouse, so Franklyn Flowers was able to use the brush for concealment
and lead his men within twenty yards of the gates before emerging from the
trees with the ram they’d fashioned back at camp. The crash of wood on wood
brought two men to the battlements; Black Balaq’s archers took down both of
them before they could rub the sleep out of their eyes. The gate turned out to
be closed but not barred; it gave way at the second blow, and Ser Franklyn’s
men were halfway up