A Feast for Dragons

Yaros dwindled off their
sterns. A fat galleas fell to the Vole and
Grief
, and a trading
galley to Manfryd Merlyn of
Kite
. Their holds were packed with
trade goods, wines and silks and spices, rare woods and rarer scents, but the
ships themselves were the true prize. Later that same day, a fishing ketch was
taken by
Seven Skulls
and
Thrall’s Bane
. She
was a small, slow, dingy thing, hardly worth the effort of boarding. Victarion
was displeased to hear that it had taken two of his own ships to bring the
fishermen to heel. Yet it was from their lips that he heard of the black
dragon’s return. “The silver queen is gone,” the ketch’s master told him. “She
flew away upon her dragon, beyond the Dothraki sea.”
    “Where is this Dothraki sea?” he demanded. “I will sail the
Iron Fleet across it and find the queen wherever she may be.”
    The fisherman laughed aloud. “That would be a sight worth
seeing. The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool.”
    He should not have said that. Victarion took him around the
throat with his burned hand and lifted him bodily into the air. Slamming him
back against the mast, he squeezed till the Yunkishman’s face turned as black
as the fingers digging into his flesh. The man kicked and writhed for a while,
trying fruitlessly to pry loose the captain’s grip. “No man calls Victarion
Greyjoy a fool and lives to boast of it.” When he opened his hand, the man’s
limp body flopped to the deck. Longwater Pyke and Tom Tidewood chucked it over
the rail, another offering to the Drowned God.
    “Your Drowned God is a demon,” the black priest Moqorro said
afterward. “He is no more than a thrall of the Other, the dark god whose name
must not be spoken.”
    “Take care, priest,” Victarion warned him. “There are godly
men aboard this ship who would tear out your tongue for speaking such
blasphemies. Your red god will have his due, I swear it. My word is iron. Ask
any of my men.”
    The black priest bowed his head. “There is no need. The Lord
of Light has shown me your worth, lord Captain. Every night in my fires I
glimpse the glory that awaits you.”
    Those words pleased Victarion Greyjoy mightily, as he told
the dusky woman that night. “My brother Balon was a great man,” he said, “but I
shall do what he could not. The Iron Islands shall be free again, and the Old
Way will return. Even Dagon could not do that.” Almost a hundred years had
passed since Dagon Greyjoy sat the Seastone Chair, but the ironborn still told
tales of his raids and battles. In Dagon’s day a weak king sat the Iron Throne,
his rheumy eyes fixed across the narrow sea where bastards and exiles plotted
rebellion. So forth from Pyke Lord Dagon sailed, to make the Sunset Sea his
own. “He bearded the lion in his den and tied the direwolf’s tail in knots, but
even Dagon could not defeat the dragons. But I shall make the dragon queen mine
own. She will share my bed and bear me many mighty sons.”
    That night the ships of the Iron Fleet numbered sixty.
    Strange sails grew more common north of Yaros. They were
very near to Yunkai, and the coast between the Yellow City and Meereen would be
teeming with merchantmen and supply ships coming and going, so Victarion took
the Iron Fleet out into the deeper waters, beyond the sight of land. Even there
they would encounter other vessels. “Let none escape to give warning to our
foes,” the iron captain commanded. None did.
    The sea was green and the sky was grey the morning
Grief
and
Warrior Wench
and Victarion’s own
Iron Victory
captured the slaver galley from Yunkai in the waters due north of the Yellow
City. In her holds were twenty perfumed boys and four score girls destined for
the pleasure houses of Lys. Her crew never thought to find peril so close to
their home waters, and the ironborn had little trouble taking her. She was
named the
Willing Maiden
.
    Victarion put the slavers to the sword, then sent his men
below to unchain the rowers. “You row for me now. Row hard, and you shall
prosper.” The girls he divided amongst his captains. “The Lyseni would have
made whores of you,” he told them, “but we have saved you. Now you need only
serve one man instead of many. Those who please their captains may be taken as
salt wives, an honorable station.” The perfumed boys he wrapped in chains and
threw into the sea. They were unnatural creatures, and the ship smelled better
once cleansed of their presence.
    For himself, Victarion claimed