A Feast for Dragons

the seven choicest girls. One
had red-gold hair and freckles on her teats. One shaved herself all over. One
was brown-haired and brown-eyed, shy as a mouse. One had the biggest breasts he
had ever seen. The fifth was a little thing, with straight black hair and
golden skin. Her eyes were the color of amber. The sixth was white as milk,
with golden rings through her nipples and her nether lips, the seventh black as
a squid’s ink. The slavers of Yunkai had trained them in the way of the seven
sighs, but that was not why Victarion wanted them. His dusky woman was enough
to satisfy his appetites until he could reach Meereen and claim his queen. No
man had need of candles when the sun awaited him.
    The galley he renamed the
Slaver’s Scream
.
With her, the ships of the Iron Fleet numbered one-and-sixty. “Every ship we
capture makes us stronger,” Victarion told his ironborn, “but from here it will
grow harder. On the morrow or the day after, we are like to meet with warships.
We are entering the home waters of Meereen, where the fleets of our foes await
us. We will meet with ships from all three Slaver Cities, ships from Tolos and
Elyria and New Ghis, even ships from Qarth.” He took care not to mention the
green galleys of Old Volantis that surely must be sailing up through the Gulf
of Grief even as he spoke. “These slavers are feeble things. You have seen how
they run before us, heard how they squeal when we put them to the sword. Every
man of you is worth twenty of them, for only we are made of iron. Remember this
when first we next spy some slaver’s sails. Give no quarter and expect none.
What need have we of quarter? We are the ironborn, and two gods look over us.
We will seize their ships, smash their hopes, and turn their bay to blood.”
    A great cry went up at his words. The captain answered with
a nod, grim-faced, then called for the seven girls he had claimed to be brought
on deck, the loveliest of all those found aboard the
Willing Maiden
.
He kissed them each upon the cheeks and told them of the honor that awaited
them, though they did not understand his words. Then he had them put aboard the
fishing ketch that they had captured, cut her loose, and had her set afire.
    “With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the
gods,” he proclaimed, as the warships of the Iron Fleet rowed past the burning
ketch. “Let these girls be reborn in light, undefiled by mortal lust, or let
them descend to the Drowned God’s watery halls, to feast and dance and laugh
until the seas dry up.”
    Near the end, before the smoking ketch was swallowed by the
sea, the cries of the seven sweetlings changed to joyous song, it seemed to
Victarion Greyjoy. A great wind came up then, a wind that filled their sails
and swept them north and east and north again, toward Meereen and its pyramids
of many-colored bricks.
On wings of song I fly to you, Daenerys
,
the iron captain thought.
    That night, for the first time, he brought forth the dragon
horn that the Crow’s Eye had found amongst the smoking wastes of great Valyria.
A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and
banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel.
Euron’s hellhorn
.
Victarion ran his hand along it. The horn was as warm and smooth as the dusky
woman’s thighs, and so shiny that he could see a twisted likeness of his own
features in its depths. Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands
that girded it. “Valyrian glyphs,” Moqorro called them.
    That much Victarion had known. “What do they say?”
    “Much and more.” The black priest pointed to one golden
band. “Here the horn is named. ‘I
am Dragonbinder,
’ it says.
Have you ever heard it sound?”
    “Once.” One of his brother’s mongrels had sounded the
hellhorn at the kingsmoot on Old Wyk. A monster of a man he had been, huge and
shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with
muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest. “The sound it
made … it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my
flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to
look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long
scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one.”
    “And the man who blew the horn, what of him?”
    “He died. There were blisters on his lips, after. His bird
was bleeding too.” The captain thumped his chest. “The hawk, just here. Every
feather