A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

mine own hand, am I still a kinslayer?
Victarion feared no man, but the Drowned God’s curse gave him pause.
If another strikes him down at my command, will his blood still stain my hands?
Aeron Damphair would know the answer, but the priest was somewhere back on the Iron Islands, still hoping to raise the ironborn against their new-crowned king.
Nute the Barber can shave a man with a thrown axe from twenty yards away. And none of Euron’s mongrels could stand against Wulfe One-Ear or Andrik the Unsmiling. Any of them could do it.
But what a man
can
do and what a man
will
do are two different things, he knew.
    â€œEuron’s blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God’s wroth upon us all,” Aeron had prophesied, back on Old Wyk. “We must stop him, brother. We are still of Balon’s blood, are we not?”
    â€œSo is he,” Victarion had said. “I like it no more than you, but Euron is the king. Your kingsmoot raised him up, and you put the driftwood crown upon his head yourself!”
    â€œI placed the crown upon his head,” said the priest, seaweed dripping in his hair, “and gladly will I wrest it off again and crown you in his stead. Only you are strong enough to fight him.”
    â€œThe Drowned God raised him up,” Victarion complained. “Let the Drowned God cast him down.”
    Aeron gave him a baleful look, the look that had been known to sour wells and make women barren. “It was not the god who spoke. Euron is known to keep wizards and foul sorcerers on that red ship of his. They sent some spell among us, so we could not hear the sea. The captains and the kings were drunk with all this talk of dragons.”
    â€œDrunk, and fearful of that horn. You heard the sound it made. It makes no matter. Euron is our king.”
    â€œNot mine,” the priest declared. “The Drowned God helps bold men, not those who cower below their decks when the storm is rising. If you will not bestir yourself to remove the Crow’s Eye from the Seastone Chair, I must take the task upon myself.”
    â€œHow? You have no ships, no swords.”
    â€œI have my voice,” the priest replied, “and the god is with me. Mine is the strength of the sea, a strength the Crow’s Eye cannot hope to withstand. The waves may break upon the mountain, yet still they come, wave upon wave, and in the end only pebbles remain where once the mountain stood. And soon even the pebbles are swept away, to be ground beneath the sea for all eternity.”
    â€œPebbles?” Victarion grumbled. “You are mad if you think to bring the Crow’s Eye down with talk of waves and pebbles.”
    â€œThe ironborn shall be waves,” the Damphair said. “Not the great and lordly, but the simple folk, tillers of the soil and fishers of the sea. The captains and the kings raised Euron up, but the common folk shall tear him down. I shall go to Great Wyk, to Harlaw, to Orkmont, to Pyke itself. In every town and village shall my words be heard.
No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!
” He shook his shaggy head and stalked back out into the night. When the sun came up the next day, Aeron Greyjoy had vanished from Old Wyk. Even his drowned men knew not where. They said the Crow’s Eye only laughed when he was told.
    But though the priest was gone, his dire warnings lingered. Victarion found himself remembering Baelor Blacktyde’s words as well.
“Balon was mad, Aeron is madder, and Euron is maddest of them all.”
The young lord had tried to sail home after the kingsmoot, refusing to accept Euron as his liege. But the Iron Fleet had closed the bay, the habit of obedience was rooted deep in Victarion Greyjoy, and Euron wore the driftwood crown.
Nightflyer
was seized, Lord Blacktyde delivered to the king in chains. Euron’s mutes and mongrels had cut him into seven parts, to feed the seven green land gods he worshiped.
    As a reward for his leal service, the new-crowned king had given Victarion the dusky woman, taken off some slaver bound for Lys. “I want none of your leavings,” he had told his brother scornfully, but when the Crow’s Eye said that the woman would be killed unless he took her, he had weakened. Her tongue had been torn out, but elsewise she was undamaged, and beautiful besides, with skin as brown as oiled teak. Yet sometimes when he looked at her, he found himself remembering the first woman his brother had