A Feast for Dragons

ransom, the captain decreed. They were neither
slaves nor slavers, but free Myrmen and seasoned sailors. Such men were worth
good coin. Sailing out of Myr, the
Dove
brought them no fresh
news of Meereen or Daenerys, only stale reports of Dothraki horsemen along the
Rhoyne, the Golden Company upon the march, and others things Victarion already
knew.
    “What do you see?” the captain asked his black priest that
night, as Moqorro stood before his nightfire. “What awaits us on the morrow?
More rain?” It smelled like rain to him.
    “Grey skies and strong winds,” Moqorro said. “No rain.
Behind come the tigers. Ahead awaits your dragon.”
    Your dragon
. Victarion liked the sound of
that. “Tell me something that I do not know, priest.”
    “The captain commands, and I obey,” said Moqorro. The crew
had taken to calling him the Black Flame, a name fastened on him by Steffar
Stammerer, who could not say “Moqorro.” By any name, the priest had powers.
“The coastline here runs west to east,” he told Victarion. “Where it turns
north, you will come on two more hares. Swift ones, with many legs.”
    And so it came to pass. This time the prey proved to be a
pair of galleys, long and sleek and fast. Ralf the Limper was the first to
sight them, but they soon outdistanced
Woe
and
Forlorn
Hope
, so Victarion sent
Iron Wing, Sparrowhawk
, and
Kraken’s
Kiss
to run them down. He had no swifter ships than those three. The
pursuit lasted the best part of the day, but in the end both galleys were
boarded and taken, after brief but brutal fights. They had been running empty,
Victarion learned, making for New Ghis to load supplies and weapons for the
Ghiscari legions encamped before Meereen … and to bring fresh
legionaries to the war, to replace all the men who’d died. “Men slain in
battle?” asked Victarion. The crews of the galleys denied it; the deaths were
from a bloody flux. The pale mare, they called it. And like the captain of the
Ghiscari
Dawn
, the captains of the galleys repeated the lie that Daenerys
Targaryen was dead.
    “Give her a kiss for me in whatever hell you find her,”
Victarion said. He called for his axe and took their heads off there and then.
Afterward he put their crews to death as well, saving only the slaves chained
to the oars. He broke their chains himself and told them they were now free men
and would have the privilege of rowing for the Iron Fleet, an honor that every
boy in the Iron Islands dreamed of growing up. “The dragon queen frees slaves
and so do I,” he proclaimed.
    The galleys he renamed
Ghost
and
Shade
.
“For I mean them to return and haunt these Yunkishmen,” he told the dusky woman
that night after he had taken his pleasure of her. They were close now, and
growing closer every day. “We will fall upon them like a thunderbolt,” he said,
as he squeezed the woman’s breast. He wondered if this was how his brother
Aeron felt when the Drowned God spoke to him. He could almost hear the god’s
voice welling up from the depths of the sea.
You shall serve me well, my
captain
, the waves seemed to say.
It was for this I made you
.
    But he would feed the red god too, Moqorro’s fire god. The
arm the priest had healed was hideous to look upon, pork crackling from elbow
to fingertips. Sometimes when Victarion closed his hand the skin would split
and smoke, yet the arm was stronger than it had ever been. “Two gods are with
me now,” he told the dusky woman. “No foe can stand before two gods.” Then he
rolled her on her back and took her once again.
    When the cliffs of Yaros appeared off their larboard bows, he
found his three lost ships waiting for him, just as Moqorro had promised.
Victarion gave the priest a golden torque as a reward.
    Now he had a choice to make: should he risk the straits, or
take the Iron Fleet around the island? The memory of Fair Isle still rankled in
the iron captain’s memory. Stannis Baratheon had descended on the Iron Fleet
from both north and south whilst they were trapped in the channel between the
island and the mainland, dealing Victarion his most crushing defeat. But
sailing around Yaros would cost him precious days. With Yunkai so near,
shipping in the straits was like to be heavy, but he did not expect to
encounter Yunkish warships until they were closer to Meereen.
    What would the Crow’s Eye do?
He brooded on
that for a time, then signaled to his captains. “We sail the straits.”
    Three more prizes were taken before