A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

the fish-ridden little castle lay the village
of Lordsport, its harbor aswarm with ships. When last he’d seen Lordsport, it
had been a smoking wasteland, the skeletons of burnt longships and smashed
galleys littering the stony shore like the bones of dead leviathans, the houses
no more than broken walls and cold ashes. After ten years, few traces of the
war remained. The smallfolk had built new hovels with the stones of the old,
and cut fresh sod for their roofs. A new inn had risen beside the landing,
twice the size of the old one, with a lower story of cut stone and two upper
stories of timber. The sept beyond had never been rebuilt, though; only a
seven-sided foundation remained where it had stood. Robert Baratheon’s fury had
soured the ironmen’s taste for the new gods, it would seem.
    Theon was more interested in ships than gods. Among the masts of countless
fishing boats, he spied a Tyroshi trading galley off-loading beside a lumbering
Ibbenese cog with her black-tarred hull. A great number of longships, fifty or
sixty at the

least, stood out to sea or lay beached on the pebbled shore to the north. Some
of the sails bore devices from the other islands; the blood moon of Wynch, Lord
Goodbrother’s banded black warhorn, Harlaw’s silver scythe. Theon searched for
his uncle Euron’s
Silence.
Of that lean and terrible red ship he saw
no sign, but his father’s
Great Kraken
was there, her bow ornamented
with a grey iron ram in the shape of its namesake.
    Had Lord Balon anticipated him and called the Greyjoy banners? His hand went
inside his cloak again, to the oilskin pouch. No one knew of his letter but
Robb Stark; they were no fools, to entrust their secrets to a bird. Still, Lord
Balon was no fool either. He might well have guessed why his son was coming
home at long last, and acted accordingly.
    The thought did not please him. His father’s war was long done, and lost. This
was Theon’s hour—his plan, his glory, and in time his crown.
Yet if
the longships are hosting . . .
    It might be only a caution, now that he thought on it. A defensive move, lest
the war spill out across the sea. Old men were cautious by nature. His father
was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His
uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the
Silence
did not
seem to be in port.
It’s all for the good,
Theon told himself.
This way, I shall be able to strike all the more quickly.
    As the
Myraham
made her way landward, Theon paced the deck
restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself
at quayside, but surely his father would have sent

someone to meet him. Sylas Sourmouth the steward, Lord Botley, perhaps even
Dagmer Cleftjaw. It would be good to look on Dagmer’s hideous old face again.
It was not as though they had no word of his arrival. Robb had sent ravens from
Riverrun, and when they’d found no longship at Seagard, Jason Mallister had
sent his own birds to Pyke, supposing that Robb’s were lost.
    Yet he saw no familiar faces, no honor guard waiting to escort him from
Lordsport to Pyke, only smallfolk going about their small business. Shorehands
rolled casks of wine off the Tyroshi trader, fisherfolk cried the day’s catch,
children ran and played. A priest in the seawater robes of the Drowned God was
leading a pair of horses along the pebbled shore, while above him a slattern
leaned out a window in the inn, calling out to some passing Ibbenese
sailors.
    A handful of Lordsport merchants had gathered to meet the ship. They shouted
questions as the
Myraham
was tying up. “We’re out of Oldtown,” the
captain called down, “bearing apples and oranges, wines from the Arbor,
feathers from the Summer Isles. I have pepper, woven leathers, a bolt of Myrish
lace, mirrors for milady, a pair of Oldtown woodharps sweet as any you ever
heard.” The gangplank descended with a creak and a thud. “And I’ve brought
your heir back to you.”
    The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that
they did not know who he was. It made him angry. He pressed a golden dragon
into the captain’s palm. “Have your men bring my things.” Without waiting for
a reply, he strode

down the gangplank. “Innkeeper,” he barked, “I require a horse.”
    â€œAs you say, m’lord,” the