A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

drowning.
    â€œGet him!” one man shouted. “He’s alone!”
    â€œCOME!”
he roared back.
“Come kill me, if you can.”
    From all sides the rosey warriors converged, with grey steel in their hands and terror behind their eyes. Their fear was so ripe Victarion could taste it. Left and right he laid about, hewing off the first man’s arm at the elbow, cleaving through the shoulder of the second. The third buried his own axehead in the soft pine of Victarion’s shield. He slammed it into the fool’s face, knocked him off his feet, and slew him when he tried to rise again. As he was struggling to free his axe from the dead man’s rib cage, a spear jabbed him between the shoulder blades. It felt as though someone had slapped him on the back. Victarion spun and slammed his axe down onto the spearman’s head, feeling the impact in his arm as the steel went crunching through helm and hair and skull. The man swayed for half a heartbeat, till the iron captain wrenched the steel free and sent his corpse staggering loose-limbed across the deck, looking more drunk than dead.
    By then his ironborn had followed him down onto the deck of the broken longship. He heard Wulfe One-Ear let out a howl as he went to work, glimpsed Ragnor Pyke in his rusted mail, saw Nute the Barber send a throwing axe spinning through the air to catch a man in the chest. Victarion slew another man, and another. He would have killed a third, but Ragnor cut him down first. “Well struck,” Victarion bellowed at him.
    When he turned to find the next victim for his axe, he spied the other captain across the deck. His white surcoat was spotted with blood and gore, but Victarion could make out the arms upon his breast, the white rose within its red escutcheon. The man bore the same device upon his shield, on a white field with a red embattled border.
“You!”
the iron captain called across the carnage.
“You of the rose! Be you the lord of Southshield?”
    The other raised his visor to show a beardless face. “His son and heir. Ser Talbert Serry. And who are you, kraken?”
    â€œYour death.” Victarion bulled toward him.
    Serry leapt to meet him. His longsword was good castle-forged steel, and the young knight made it sing. His first cut was low, and Victarion deflected it off his axe. His second caught the iron captain on the helm before he got his shield up. Victarion answered with a sidearm blow of his axe. Serry’s shield got in the way. Wooden splinters flew, and the white rose split lengthwise with a sweet sharp
crack
. The young knight’s longsword hammered at his thigh, once, twice, thrice, screaming against the steel.
This boy is quick,
the iron captain realized. He smashed his shield in Serry’s face and sent him staggering back against the gunwale. Victarion raised his axe and put all his weight behind his cut, to open the boy from neck to groin, but Serry spun away. The axehead crashed through the rail, sending splinters flying, and lodged there when he tried to pull it free. The deck moved under his feet, and he stumbled to one knee.
    Ser Talbert cast away his broken shield and slashed down with his longsword. Victarion’s own shield had twisted half around when he stumbled. He caught Serry’s blade in an iron fist. Lobstered steel crunched, and a stab of pain made him grunt, yet Victarion held on. “I am quick as well, boy,” he said as he ripped the sword from the knight’s hand and flung it into the sea.
    Ser Talbert’s eyes went wide. “My sword . . .”
    Victarion caught the lad about the throat with a bloody fist. “Go and get it,” he said, forcing him backwards over the side into the bloodstained waters.
    That won him a respite to pull his axe loose. The white roses were falling back before the iron tide. Some tried to flee belowdecks, as others cried for quarter. Victarion could feel warm blood trickling down his fingers beneath the mail and leather and lobstered plate, but that was nothing. Around the mast a thick knot of foemen fought on, standing shoulder to shoulder in a ring.
These few are men, at least. They would sooner die than yield.
Victarion would grant some of them that wish. He beat his axe against his shield and charged them.
    The Drowned God had not shaped Victarion Greyjoy to fight with words at kingsmoots, nor struggle against furtive sneaking foes in endless bogs.
This
was why he had