Chapter 51 (Patreon)

93 AC. Driftmark

Dawn broke over Driftmark cold and clear. The sun had only just begun to rise over the sea, painting the walls of High Tide a pale rose, yet the inner courtyard of the castle was already crowded. Grooms held saddled horses by the bridle, guardsmen in polished armor bearing the seahorse on their breasts stood in several ranks by the gates, and the servants, having finished the last of the preparations, pressed themselves against the walls so as not to get in the way. The wind off the sea tugged at the banners on the towers and carried the smell of salt and seaweed, so familiar to anyone who had grown up on this island.

All the women and children of House Velaryon had come out to see their lords off to war. Only the very youngest were absent: Victor, Rhaella and Elia, who were just a few months old. They had been left in the nursery in the care of their wet nurses, since it was judged that the morning cold and the noise of the courtyard would do them no good. Corwyn and Aurane, however, who had already turned four, had refused point-blank to stay in bed, and now they stood beside their fathers, clutching their cloaks with both hands.

The boys were crying. They cried quietly, trying with all their might to hold back, as befitted sons of House Velaryon, but the tears still ran down their cheeks, and their noses had gone red from the cold and from sobbing. Daeron went down on one knee before his son and tried to wipe his face with the edge of his cloak, but Corwyn only pressed closer to him and buried his forehead in his father's shoulder.

"Come now, Corwyn, you're a big boy already," Daeron said gently, stroking his son's silver hair. "You and Aurane won't even have time to miss us before Uncle Veylor and I are home again. You'll see."

"We already miss you," Corwyn sobbed without raising his head, his voice muffled because he was speaking straight into his father's cloak.

Aurane, who stood nearby hugging Veylor's leg, nodded at once in full support of his cousin. The boys had been born almost at the same time, had grown up in the same rooms of High Tide, ate at the same table, played the same games and even preferred to sleep in the same bed whenever the grown-ups allowed it. They were growing up more like brothers than ordinary cousins, and if one of them cried, the other was sure to start crying with him.

Veylor crouched beside his son, lifted him under the arms and sat him on his knee so that the boy could see his face.

"We'll miss you too," Veylor said, trying to keep his voice steady, though it was plain that this farewell was harder for him than he wished to show. "Every day. But we'll come back as soon as we can, and we'll bring you gifts. A gift for each of you."

Aurane sniffled and looked at his father doubtfully, clearly trying to work out whether he was joking.

"What gifts?" he asked, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his doublet, which at any other time would certainly have earned him a rebuke from his mother.

"That will be a surprise," Daeron answered in his brother's stead, smiling at his nephew. "If we tell you now, it won't be any fun at all. But I promise you'll like them. And while we're away, you must obey your grandmother, your mothers and Aunt Viserra. Agreed?"

Corwyn finally raised his head, looked at his father with tear-filled eyes and gave an uncertain nod. Aurane, after a moment's thought, nodded as well.

A little way off, Corlys was saying goodbye to his wife. Viserra held herself calmly, but he knew her far too well not to notice how tightly her fingers gripped his hand and how intently she studied his face, as though trying to memorize every feature. Little Daemon clung shyly to her hip; he had only recently begun to walk and was still none too steady on his feet. The boy kept glancing at the guardsmen lined up by the gates, at the horses, and at the enormous black panther lazily stretched out on the stones at Corlys's feet, and just to be safe he did not let go of his mother's skirts.

Corlys embraced his wife, drawing her close, and then crouched down before his son. Daemon hesitated a little, but then let go of his mother's dress and took two unsteady steps toward his father, landing straight in his arms.

"You walk very well now," Corlys said with a smile, lifting his son and settling him on his arm. "By the time I come back, you'll probably be running all over the castle, and the nursemaids won't be able to keep up with you."

Daemon did not understand half of what was said, but he broke into a smile at the familiar warmth in his father's voice and grabbed the clasp of his cloak with his small hand. Viserra came closer and laid her hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Just come back," she said quietly, so that only he could hear. "I don't need islands, or victories, or gifts. I need you to come home whole."

"I will come back," Corlys answered just as quietly, looking into her eyes. "I promise you. And you look after Daemon and Victor, and don't let Mother worry too much. If she starts sleeping badly, keep her busy."

Viserra nodded and took their son from him. Corlys straightened and looked around the courtyard, then made his way toward his brothers, who still could not peel the boys off themselves. He stopped beside them, crossed his arms over his chest and put on an expression of deep offense.

"So that's how it is," Corlys said, looking down at his nephews. "You've been saying goodbye to your fathers for an age, and you don't even mean to say goodbye to your favorite uncle? And here I thought we were friends."

Corwyn and Aurane exchanged a glance and then, as if on command, let go of their fathers and rushed to Corlys, wrapping themselves around his legs from both sides. Corlys laughed, bent down and swept both boys up, one in each arm. Daeron and Veylor rose from their knees, and seeing their sons hug their brother around the neck, neither could hold back a smile.

"That's better," Corlys said, rocking his nephews gently. "Mind your grandmother and don't pick on your little sisters. And if you behave, I'll ask your fathers to bring you bigger gifts."

He set the boys down on the ground, and Thea and Elise immediately took them. The brothers' wives embraced their husbands once more. Thea lingered by Daeron a little longer, straightening his cloak and whispering something in his ear, while Elise, holding Veylor, could not keep back her tears, though she had kept herself together all morning. Veylor kissed his wife tenderly on the forehead and promised to write to her at every opportunity.

Lady Alice was the last to come to her sons. She looked at each of them in turn, and her face, usually so calm and composed, showed an anxiety she no longer tried to hide.

"I saw your father off to war, and I know how long the days drag on when you're waiting for news," she said softly, yet loud enough for all three of them to hear. "I will not ask you not to take risks, because I know that in war it cannot be helped. But I ask you to be careful and to come back to me unharmed. All three of you. Do you hear me?"

"We hear you, Mother," Corlys answered for them all, and bending down, he kissed his mother on the cheek. "We will come back. All three of us."

"We will come back," Daeron repeated, embracing his mother after his brother.

Veylor embraced her last and said nothing, only gripped her shoulders tighter than usual, but for Lady Alice that was enough.

The brothers went to their horses and mounted. Corlys cast a final glance at his family gathered by the steps, gave Viserra a short nod and urged his horse forward. Ares rose from the stones, stretched and loped silently alongside his horse. After the brothers, Ser Adam, Ser Duncan and Ser Arthur headed for the gates, and behind them rode more than a hundred guardsmen of House Velaryon. The heavy gates swung slowly open, and the company rode out of the castle onto the road leading down to the harbor.

The town was already awake. Fishwives were laying out fish and vegetables on their stalls, shopkeepers were opening their shutters, and fishermen back from the night's catch were hauling baskets of fish toward the market. Seeing the company descending the hill, people stopped and stepped back against the walls of the houses to clear the way. Many bowed as they recognized their lord and his brothers, some took off their caps, and children ran after the riders until their mothers chased them back into the yards.

The people of Spicetown were no fools. For the past week, Velaryon warships and cargo vessels had been putting into port one after another, and day and night they were loaded with casks of water and salt beef, sacks of grain, bundles of arrows, spears, and crates whose contents only a few knew. Everyone understood that their lord was preparing for something, and all sorts of rumors were going around the taverns, but no one imagined how serious it all was. And now, seeing so many armed men escorting Corlys and his brothers, the townsfolk began to exchange even more uneasy glances.

"This is no small thing," a fishmonger said quietly, watching the guardsmen ride past and wiping his hands on his greasy apron. "A hundred men-at-arms, if not more. And all three brothers at once. Nobody rides out like that for a pleasure trip."

"They say Lord Corlys means to go to the Stepstones," replied a sailor standing beside him, never taking his eyes off the riders. "My brother-in-law was loading provisions onto the Silver Wave, and he says he's never in his life seen so many water casks put aboard a single ship. But that's madness. The king was going to fight the pirates together with all the lords, and now he hasn't even got a fleet."

"The king may not," the fishmonger shrugged, following with his eyes the black panther running beside the lord's horse. "But our lord does."

The sailor made no answer to that and only looked thoughtfully toward the harbor, where the masts of the ships moored at the docks rose above the roofs of the warehouses.

The company descended to the harbor, where the Sea Snake was already waiting at the main dock. Corlys's flagship stood ready to sail: the sails prepared, the crew at their posts, and the captain waiting by the gangplank for his lord. Beside the Sea Snake, ten more warships rocked on the waves, their decks crowded with soldiers. The rest of the fleet was to meet them out on the open sea, so as not to draw undue attention in Spicetown. The ships for the Unsullied had been sent a few days earlier to the camp several miles from the town, and by now the warriors in their bronze helms were already aboard, awaiting the signal to sail.

Corlys dismounted and handed the reins to a servant who hurried up. The guardsmen began boarding the ships, and Ares, without waiting for an invitation, was the first to bound up the gangplank onto the deck of the Sea Snake, where he at once settled in the shade by the mast as though the spot were his by right. The sailors, long used to the panther, simply stepped aside to make way for him.

Half an hour later the Sea Snake left the harbor, and the other ships followed. Corlys stood at the stern and watched the shore recede until High Tide became a grey smudge atop the hill. Then he turned away and did not look back again.

After five hours at sea, sails appeared on the horizon. At first there were only a few, but with every minute there were more and more, until it became clear that dozens of ships were approaching from all directions. The Velaryon fleet was gathering on the open sea, and soon all its parts had joined into a single force of two hundred ships. The sailors on the decks of the nearby vessels hailed the flagship with cheers, and Corlys gave the order to set course for the Stepstones. The voyage would take five or six days, depending on the wind.

Throughout those days the brothers scarcely left Corlys's cabin. They gathered around the large table on which lay a detailed map of the Stepstones, drawn from the reports of Aguilar's men, and went over every possible turn of events again and again: what to do if the pirates learned of them too soon, how to act if a storm rose, and where to regroup if the fleet were scattered across the sea. On the evening of the fourth day, when it had already grown dark beyond the cabin windows and oil lamps burned on the table, Corlys decided to settle the division of their forces once and for all.

He leaned over the map and placed his finger on the largest of the islands in the northern part of the chain.

"Bloodstone," Corlys said, addressing his brothers. "The largest of the ten main islands of the Stepstones. This is where the Triarchy's main strength is concentrated, and this is where it is commanded by Craghas Drahar, whom the pirates call the Crabfeeder. I will lead my part of the host there myself. I'll take ten thousand Unsullied and eighty ships to wipe out the Triarchy's fleet in that quarter completely."

Veylor leaned forward and studied the island marked on the map.

"And the rest of the ships and men?" he asked, though his face showed he already knew the answer.

"You and Daeron will split the rest of the fleet and the Unsullied evenly," Corlys replied, moving his finger to two islands lying further south. "Daeron will take Torturer's Deep. Veylor, you'll have Grey Gallows. These three islands are the most important in the Stepstones. They hold the Triarchy's main forces, their chief anchorages and their storehouses. If we take these three islands, the rest will fall on their own, because without support they'll have nothing to lean on."

Daeron looked at the map for a long while, then slowly nodded to show that he understood.

"If everything goes the way you've planned, and Aguilar's men poison the pirates on land on the same day, we'll have a great advantage," Daeron said, tapping his finger against the edge of the table. "However many of them survive, with the fear and the deaths in their ranks, they won't be able to put up a proper fight on the islands. But the fleet is another matter entirely. The ships are always at sea, the crews eat and drink what they've taken aboard, and the poison won't reach them. We'll have to deal with the fleet the old way. With a sea battle."

"That won't be a problem," Corlys answered confidently, straightening up. "We have more ships, and they're better and more maneuverable than anything the Triarchy has. Our captains have drilled their formations for months, and our decks carry scorpions that shoot farther than any engine the pirates possess. As long as we don't let them close in and force a boarding action, they'll have nothing to answer us with."

"And if they still try to break through and ram us?" Veylor asked, looking questioningly at his elder brother. "Pirates are known for fighting like madmen when they have nothing to lose."

"Then keep your distance and don't let them get close," Corlys replied. "Our ships are faster, so use that. Spread out, turn your broadsides to them and strike from afar. Let them try to catch you until they run out of ships."

He bent over the map again, this time pointing to the mountains that covered most of each of the three islands.

"And one more thing," he went on, more seriously now, looking from one brother to the other. "Don't rush to land on the islands. First destroy the fleet, and only then begin the landing. If you leave even a few Triarchy ships at your back, they'll strike your boats just as the men are rowing for shore, and then we'll lose men where we shouldn't have. And be ready for it not to end with a single fight on land. These islands are riddled with tunnels and caves, and the pirates who survive will surely try to hide in them. Most likely we'll have to smoke them out one by one."

"The Unsullied will handle that better than anyone," Daeron remarked. "In the tunnels, discipline matters more than courage, and they have more discipline than any soldiers I know."

"That's exactly why they're needed there," Corlys agreed. "But still, don't send them into the tunnels blind. Let the assassins who are on the islands now show you the entrances and exits. Aguilar has already ordered them to meet you after the landing."

Veylor went on studying Grey Gallows for a while longer, running his finger along its shores as if memorizing every cove.

"How long do you think it will take?" he asked at last.

"The fleet, if all goes well, we'll deal with in a day," Corlys answered. "The islands will take longer. A week, perhaps two. But by the time Tyrosh, Lys and Myr realize what has happened and gather reinforcements, we'll already be waiting for them at the approaches to the Stepstones."

The brothers sat over the map for a long time afterward, discussing the details, until the lamps on the table began to gutter. Corlys was the first to push away his cup of cold tea and said it was time for everyone to sleep, because in two days none of them could afford to be tired.

93 AC. The Stepstones. Bloodstone

Jon sat on a rock at the edge of the camp, idly whittling a stick with his knife and gazing at the sea. To any onlooker he was no different from the hundreds of other pirates who filled Bloodstone: a filthy shirt, a worn leather jerkin, a knife at his belt, a weather-beaten face, and that particular insolent smirk he had practiced for a long time before it began to look natural. No one passing by paid him any heed, and that was exactly what he wanted.

He had been twelve when the Velaryons' men picked him up off the streets of King's Landing. He remembered that winter poorly; he remembered only that he had gone a very long time without eating, that he had slept in a ditch in Flea Bottom, and that at some point he had stopped feeling the cold. He had thought then that he was dying, and most likely he would have, had a stranger not bent over him, lifted him in his arms and carried him away. Then came a warm bed, hot stew, and long months in which he learned to stand on his own feet again. And after that, his training in the guild began. They taught him languages, letters and sums; they taught him to move without a sound, to hide, to listen and remember; they taught him to handle a knife, poisons and his own fears. They gave him a roof over his head and a purpose, and with it a brotherhood full of boys like himself, those who before the guild had had nothing but hunger and the street.

Jon understood that they had made a killer of him. After he finished his training, he had killed a good many men on orders, had spied, bribed and ferreted out secrets that were then sent on to Driftmark. But he regretted nothing. Had it not been for the Velaryons and the order, he would long since have been lying in some nameless pit beyond the city walls, and no one would even remember his name. The order had given him a second life, and he considered that he was earning it honestly.

There were many of the order's men in the Stepstones. For years they had served here as spies, gathering everything that might prove useful to House Velaryon: how many ships lay off each island, which captains were feuding with whom, where the plunder went and where the orders came from. Jon himself had been doing this on Bloodstone for a full year. In that time he had become one of them; he had learned to drink sour wine without wincing, to curse in three languages the way pirates curse, and to act as though he cared only for gold and drink. But today was no ordinary day. Today was the day they had all been sent here for.

The order had come three days ago. The handler of their cell on Bloodstone, an unremarkable grey-haired man who kept a shop selling rope and sailcloth on the island, had gathered them one at a time in his storeroom and explained to each his task. The assassins were to put poison into the pirates' water and food on one and the same day. The island's main stores of fresh water were kept in casks in a large cave at the foot of the mountain, the coolest place to be found anywhere in the Stepstones. Food for the camp was cooked from the common provisions, and others were to see to that. It would have been good to poison the wine as well, of course, but the pirates usually took it from captured merchant cargoes and poured it straight into their own skins, so there was no way to reach all of it at once. And so Jon's task was the water.

Another of them was Martyn, a red-haired lad from Gulltown, who for half a year now had served as overseer of the few slaves the pirates had not yet managed to sell. He had been charged with making sure that over the coming days the slaves were given only food and water gathered before the poisoning. Jon had heard that Martyn had hidden away several casks and sacks for them in advance, and he had no doubt the redhead would manage. He was the kind who always did everything on time.

There was one more thought that had given Jon no peace all these days. Craghas Drahar. The Crabfeeder lived in a great tent at the center of the camp, his food and wine were tasted by a man kept for the purpose, and guards stood at the entrance day and night. His food was also cooked separately. Poisoning him would be difficult. Not impossible, of course, at least not for a man with Jon's skills, but the cell's handler, as though reading his thoughts, had at once forbidden any of them to even think of it.

"None of you will risk yourselves for the sake of one man," the handler had said then, looking at Jon as if he knew in advance that he would want to object. "We have a clear task, and it does not include removing Craghas Drahar. If any of you is caught trying to get near his tent, the pirates will realize something is wrong, and everything else will come to nothing. Lord Corlys will deal with him himself. Is that clear?"

"Clear," Jon had answered then, though reluctantly. He understood that the handler was right, but he still regretted the lost chance.

The sun had already passed its zenith. Jon tossed the stick aside, tucked his knife into his belt and rose from the rock. Pulling on his customary smirk, he picked up two empty waterskins from the ground and strolled unhurriedly toward the caves. In the pocket of his jerkin, wrapped in an oiled rag, lay a small glass vial with a tightly ground stopper. The poison inside had been prepared on Driftmark. It had neither taste nor smell, did not change the color of the water, and began to work only many hours after reaching the stomach, when a man had already fallen asleep. A pirate who drank such water in the evening would simply not wake in the morning, and no one would understand why.

Two guards stood at the mouth of the cave. One sat on an upturned crate cleaning his nails with a dagger, while the other leaned lazily on his spear and yawned so widely he nearly dislocated his jaw. Catching sight of Jon, the one with the spear reluctantly straightened.

"Where are you off to, Jonny?" he asked, eyeing the waterskins in Jon's hands without much interest. "After water again? You filled up yesterday."

"Why do you think I'm carrying empty skins, Horas?" Jon answered with a smirk, holding them up higher so the guard could get a good look. "Won a cask of Dornish red off Skinny Reggo at dice yesterday and spent all night finishing it. Now my head's splitting and my mouth tastes like cats shat in it. If I don't drink some water, I'll drop dead right here at your feet, and you'll have to carry me."

The guard on the crate laughed hoarsely without looking up from his nails.

"Reggo lost a cask to you?" he asked, throwing Jon a brief glance. "That explains why he's been walking around mad as a demon all morning. Go on through. Just don't touch the gold, the Crabfeeder's got a heavy hand, you know that."

"Who needs your gold when your head's pounding like this," Jon said with a wave of his hand, and walked past them into the cool darkness of the cave.

Inside it was damp and quiet. The far end of the cave, fenced off by a crudely knocked-together grate, held chests and sacks of plunder, and it was at this grate that a third guard usually stood. The pirates cared far more that no one stole the gold and jewels than about who went for water, or how often. They should have cared. The water casks stood along the wall nearer the entrance in neat rows, and wooden spigots stuck out of some of them.

Jon went to the first cask, opened the spigot and began filling a waterskin, sniffling loudly and muttering curses under his breath, as befitted a man suffering from a hangover. The guard at the grate glanced his way, but seeing what he was about, turned away at once. Jon waited until the skin was full and moved to the next cask, and there, shielding his hands with his body, he quickly pulled the stopper from the vial and splashed poison into the hole in the lid. Then another cask, and another. He moved unhurriedly, without looking around or fussing, going from cask to cask as if searching for the one where the water was coldest. The vial ran dry just as he reached the end of the row, and Jon, stoppering the second skin, slipped the empty vial back into his pocket.

He had no intention of drinking from those skins, of course. His own water, like that of all the order's other men on the island, he had drawn four days ago and kept in a hiding place under the rocks not far from his tent.

Leaving the cave, Jon nodded to the guards and ambled back toward the camp. On the way he spotted by the cooking pots a familiar lad from their cell, who was helping the cook gut fish together with some other pirates. Their eyes met for only an instant, and the lad gave a barely noticeable nod. So his part was done as well.

In the evening the camp was as noisy as on any other evening. The pirates drank, played at dice, brawled and bellowed songs. Many had been celebrating for several days the news of the storm at King's Landing and of the king of Westeros's fleet lying at the bottom of the bay. They said there would be no war this year, that the Westerosi would not dare come to the Stepstones for a long while now, and that the magisters in Tyrosh would surely send them a cask or two of good wine for such news. Jon sat at the fire with the rest, laughed at their jokes and pretended to drink from his skin. All around him, men ladled water from the casks, mixed it into their wine, ate stew from the common pot and lay down to sleep right by the fires.

He was the last to lie down. Lying in his tent and staring into the darkness, Jon listened for a long time to the sounds of the camp gradually dying away, until nothing remained but the snoring of hundreds of men. He knew that many of them would never wake again, and he knew how much blood was on the hands of every one of those now sleeping by the fires. He had seen these men sell captives to Lys and Tyrosh; he had seen what they did to those who tried to resist. And still it took him a long time to fall asleep.

Craghas Drahar was woken by noise outside his tent. At first he thought it was yet another drunken brawl, the kind that broke out in the camp every morning, and he was already about to go out and break up the fighters with his whip, as he had done many times. But the noise was different. There was no laughter, no egging-on, no clash of blades. Men were shouting, and in their voices was a fear Craghas Drahar was not used to hearing from his warriors. He rose from his bed, pulled on his boots as he went, threw his cloak over his shoulders and, taking his curved sword from the table, went outside.

Outside, dawn was only beginning to break. A grey mist was rising over the sea, and in the camp something was happening such as Craghas Drahar had never seen in all his life. Men were rushing about everywhere. Some were shaking those who lay on the ground by the shoulders, others were shouting, calling their comrades by name, and still others simply stood looking about them with utter bewilderment on their faces. Most of those lying on the ground did not move. They lay as they had lain down the evening before, by cold fires, in tents, at the entrances of pavilions, and some were even still clutching cups in their hands. Craghas Drahar noticed that some of the faces had already taken on a greyish tinge, and arms and legs had stiffened into unnatural positions. Rigor. These men had not just died. They had died in the night.

"What is happening here?" Craghas Drahar barked at his guard, who stood at the entrance of the tent, pale as linen, gripping his spear as if his life depended on it.

"I don't know, Admiral," the guard answered, struggling to tear his eyes from the bodies on the ground. "This morning, when the men began to wake, they noticed that many weren't getting up. At first they thought they'd just drunk themselves stupid last night, and they started trying to wake them, and they... They're dead, Admiral. Most of them simply died in their sleep. No one heard any screams or any noise. They lay down to sleep and didn't wake up."

Craghas Drahar slowly swept his gaze across the camp. The longer he looked, the more dead he saw. There were not ten of them, nor twenty. There were hundreds, and judging by the shouts coming from the far ends of the camp, it was no better there. He saw one of his old captains, One-Ear Saan, on his knees over his brother's body, shaking him as if hoping he might open his eyes at any moment. He saw young pirates, only recently come to the Stepstones from Lys, backing away from the corpses and turning their heads in terror, not knowing where to run. Fear was spreading through the camp, and Craghas Drahar understood that if he did not get it under control soon, his men would be of no use at all.

He himself did not understand how such a thing was possible. He had seen pestilence aboard ships, seen the bloody flux carry off whole crews in a few days, seen men die of wounds and fever. But he had never seen hundreds of healthy men simply lie down to sleep and never wake.

Craghas Drahar went to the nearest dead man, who lay by a burnt-out fire a few paces from his tent, and squatted down beside him. It was one of the oarsmen from his own ship, a sturdy lad of about five-and-twenty whom he knew well by sight. The guard who had followed him stepped forward anxiously.

"Admiral, don't touch him," the guard said, not daring to come closer. "What if it's some sickness? They say in Old Volantis whole quarters once died out in a single night."

Craghas Drahar did not answer and looked at the dead man again. He carefully examined his face, hands and neck, and pulled aside the collar of his shirt. The oarsman's skin was clean. There were no grey patches on it, no sores, no boils, no rash. There were no signs of the grey plague, nor of greyscale, nor of any other illness he knew. The lips were not cracked, as happens with fever, and the eyes were not sunken. The lad looked as though he had simply fallen asleep and forgotten to wake.

"This doesn't look like sickness," Craghas Drahar said slowly, rising to his feet. "If it were a sickness, there would be clear signs. Men would fall ill first, start coughing, burn with fever, vomit blood, and only then would they die. But last night these men were drinking and singing so loud I couldn't sleep. No. This looks more like…"

He faltered, and the guard looked at him questioningly, waiting for him to go on. But Craghas Drahar stayed silent, because only now had he realized what he had been about to say. Hundreds of men who had eaten from the same pot and drunk from the same casks had died in a single night without making a sound. It looked like poisoning.

Before he could say it aloud, a breathless man came running up to the tent from the direction of the shore. Craghas Drahar recognized him as one of the lookouts he kept on the cliffs above the bay to watch the sea.

"Admiral!" the lookout gasped, stopping in front of him and struggling to catch his breath. "A fleet! A fleet has been sighted an hour's sail from us! It's coming straight here, from the northwest. Too big a fleet, Admiral. I tried to count the sails, but I lost count after sixty."

Craghas Drahar felt everything inside him go cold, and for a moment he looked toward the sea, though from here he could make out nothing through the cliffs and the mist.

"What banners does the fleet fly?" he asked, though he already guessed what answer he would hear.

"The seahorse, Admiral," the lookout replied. "A silver seahorse on a blue field."

"Fucking Velaryons," Craghas Drahar hissed through his teeth, gripping the hilt of his sword so hard his knuckles went white. "This cannot be a coincidence. Our men die in a single night, and in the morning that gods-damned Corlys Velaryon turns up on our doorstep with his fleet. This is all his doing. He poisoned us, curse him."

The lookout and the guard exchanged glances, but neither dared say anything. At last the lookout asked uncertainly, "What are your orders, Admiral?"

Craghas Drahar forced himself to think. Panic, fear and rage could do nothing for him now.

"Gather everyone left alive on the island," he ordered the lookout, gesturing toward the camp. "Everyone who can hold a weapon. Have Saan and Redbeard organize the defense of the shore, in case the Velaryons break through at sea and try to land. Have them haul every arrow we have down to the bay. All the other captains are to go to their ships at once. I am going to the fleet myself and will command it. And tell everyone that no one is to drink from the casks in the cave or eat from the common pots. Not a drop, not a bite. Understood?"

"Understood, Admiral," the lookout nodded, and ran off to carry out the order.

Craghas Drahar strode quickly toward the shore, his guards hurrying after him. On his way through the camp he saw more and more dead. They lay by the fires, in the tents, at the entrances of pavilions, on the rocks beside the path. He saw the living pirates, having grasped what had happened, begin to scatter; one tried to drag off a sack of plunder with him, another prayed in tongues Craghas Drahar did not understand, and two by the cooking pots were fighting over whose fault it was. He walked past the cook, who sat on the ground beside an overturned pot staring blankly ahead of him, and past the cave with the casks, where two dead guards also lay at the entrance. Panic reigned everywhere, and Craghas Drahar cursed the Velaryons with every step.

He cursed himself as well. After news had reached the Stepstones of the storm in the capital of Westeros and of the royal fleet sinking right in the harbor, they had all grown far too complacent. The pirates had been drinking for three days, and he had allowed it, because he too believed the danger had passed. Besides that, even earlier he had heard that Corlys Velaryon had fallen out with the king of Westeros over something, and that they had quarreled over it at a feast, in front of the whole court. Craghas Drahar had only laughed at the time, deciding that the offended Sea Snake would now refuse to fight for a king who had humiliated him and would sit quietly on his island. He had been wrong. Corlys Velaryon had not gone to war for the king. He had come to wage war for himself.

A boat was already waiting for him on the shore. The sailors quickly brought him to the flagship anchored in the bay, and Craghas Drahar, climbing onto the deck, at once ordered the anchor weighed. The signalmen began passing orders to the other ships, and soon the Triarchy fleet began moving out of the bay. The crews aboard the ships were nearly full. The men had spent the night aboard, eating and drinking from their own stores, and so had not been harmed, but rumors of what was happening on the island had already reached them too, and Craghas Drahar saw how anxiously the sailors kept glancing back at the shore.

When the ships had reached open water and drawn away from the island, forming a defensive line, the Velaryon fleet appeared on the horizon.

There were many of them. Craghas Drahar stood at the prow of his ship and watched sail after sail rise above the horizon, and the more of them there were, the grimmer his face became. At Bloodstone he kept sixty ships, and until this morning he had thought that more than enough to fend off any enemy. But the Velaryons had more ships. And that was bad. Very bad. He knew full well that Velaryon ships were reckoned the finest in the world. Even in an even fight they would be hard to deal with, and when they had the advantage of numbers as well, the task became all but impossible.

One could hope that the fleet was led by some inexperienced captain who would make a mistake. But at the head of the fleet sailed a ship Craghas Drahar would have known among a thousand. Long, swift, high-sided, with enormous sails. A ship known throughout the Narrow Sea as the Sea Snake. And one did not need to be a maester to guess who stood on its deck.

"It's him," said his second beside him, a Lyseni named Mello, who had also recognized the flagship. "Corlys Velaryon himself."

"I see," Craghas Drahar answered grimly, never taking his eyes off the Sea Snake. "And this is our chance. If we can fight our way to his ship and take him, the war will be over before it begins. Corlys Velaryon alive in our hands is worth more than their whole fleet. With him we can dictate any terms we like to the Velaryons. Tell everyone to cover us. We ram the Sea Snake."

Mello nodded and turned to the signalman, but he did not have time to give the order. Flags of different colors suddenly rose above the Sea Snake, and answering signals flashed almost at once on the other Velaryon ships. Craghas Drahar frowned, trying to understand what it meant, and the next moment he saw the Velaryon fleet begin to part. The ships turned diagonally to either side, wheeling so that the Triarchy fleet lay directly abreast of their broadsides, and they did it in perfect unison, without any fuss, as though performing a drill they had repeated hundreds of times.

"What are they doing?" Mello asked in surprise, watching the Velaryon line stretch into two long rows. "They're opening the way to their own flagship."

The answer came before Craghas Drahar could say a word. One after another, scorpions began to loose from the sides of the Velaryon ships. Huge bolts, as long as a man was tall, soared into the air and flew toward the Triarchy fleet. But the distance was too great, and the bolts fell into the water short of the ships, throwing up columns of spray.

Laughter broke out on the flagship's deck. One of the pirates shouted that the Westerosi had apparently decided to frighten all the fish out of the sea. But Craghas Drahar did not laugh. He was watching where the bolts fell, and he saw that with each new volley they landed closer and closer.

"Widen the gap between the ships!" he shouted, turning to the signalman. "Don't bunch up! Spread out and close in!"

The order was passed, and the Triarchy ships began to spread out, but it helped only for a little while. Some time later, the huge scorpion bolts began striking the ships. One of them punched through the side of a galley sailing on the flagship's left and passed clean through, killing two oarsmen. Another tore away part of the gunwale on One-Eye Tessario's ship. A third buried itself in a mast, which groaned and listed to one side. Craghas Drahar watched, and slowly it dawned on him what was happening. The Velaryons had not been missing. They had needed the first volleys only to judge the distance. They had been finding their range.

And as soon as they had the rough trajectory, the bolts rained down on the Triarchy fleet one after another. Now nearly every one found its mark. They pierced hulls, snapped oars, tore sails and pinned men to the decks. The Triarchy ships tried to close with the enemy to force a fight at close quarters, but the Velaryon ships maneuvered swiftly, turning and slipping aside, keeping exactly at the distance where the pirates' scorpions could not reach them. Every time one of the Triarchy captains rushed forward, breaking from the line, bolts fell upon him from several ships at once.

"They won't let us get close," Mello said through gritted teeth, watching yet another Triarchy galley, half its oars gone, swing helplessly broadside to the enemy. "They're just shooting us down like partridges."

Craghas Drahar had already opened his mouth to give a new order when a ballista loosed from the Sea Snake. He saw something round and dark fly over the water, trailing smoke behind it, and did not immediately understand that it was a burning cask.

The cask slammed into the deck of one of the Triarchy ships and burst with a roar that could be heard even on the flagship. The next instant the whole ship was engulfed in flame. But this flame was not orange, like ordinary fire. It was a vivid green. It spread across the deck like water, climbed the masts and rigging, leapt to the sails, and the sailors who tried to beat it down with buckets of seawater discovered in horror that water did not put it out.

The first cask was followed by a second, and then a third. Each one burst on impact, and the green fire spread quickly through the ranks of the Triarchy ships, leaping from one vessel to the next wherever they sailed too close together. Burning men threw themselves overboard, but even on the water the fire kept burning. Thick black smoke rose over the sea, the green flames breaking through it, and the screams of burning men drowned out every other sound.

"Gods..." Mello whispered, going pale before Craghas Drahar's eyes. "What fire is this? What sorcery is this?"

Craghas Drahar did not answer. He did not know himself. He had heard of dragonflame, had heard tales of the sorcerers of Asshai, but he had never seen anything like this. One thing he understood for certain: if they stayed here, they would burn to the last man.

Barely an hour after the sea battle began, what had started as a fight had turned into a one-sided slaughter. More than twenty Triarchy ships were burning, some had already gone down, and the rest were trying to break out of range. The Velaryon ships pursued those lucky enough to escape the green fire, raking them with scorpions and ballistae, and once the ships had lost way, they came alongside and boarded them. Craghas Drahar watched warriors in seahorse armor leap onto the decks of his ships; he watched pirates throw down their weapons and raise their hands, while those who kept fighting were cut down where they stood.

He understood that if he continued the battle at sea, they would all simply die.

"Fall back to shore!" he ordered, turning to the signalman, and for the first time in many years something like despair sounded in his voice. "All ships make for Bloodstone! We land and gather at the bay!"

On land he still had men. The sailors who survived this battle, and the warriors who had not drunk the poisoned water that night. If he could regroup them on the shore, they would have a chance to fight off a landing. And the mountains of Bloodstone, with their tunnels and caves, would let them hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive from Tyrosh.

The Velaryons pursued them all the way to the island. Triarchy ships that were damaged and could not move quickly fell behind one by one and became the enemy's prey. Craghas Drahar's flagship took two bolts in her side and one in her stern, but still reached the bay, where Craghas Drahar ordered the ship run aground and, together with the crew, rushed to the defensive line that Saan and Redbeard had managed to form by then.

Several hundred men had gathered on the shore, all of them armed with bows, crossbows and spears. When the Velaryon ships entered the bay and lowered boats full of warriors, the pirates met them with a hail of arrows. But the Velaryon soldiers simply raised their shields and covered the oarsmen with them, so that the arrows lodged in the wood without doing any harm. Meanwhile, the ships kept up a ceaseless bombardment of the shore with their ballistae. Heavy stones and bolts landed squarely in the defenders' ranks, breaking their formation, and the pirates were forced to fall back again and again, farther from the water and deeper into the island.

"Hold the shore!" Craghas Drahar shouted, trying to make himself heard over the crash of stones and the cries of the wounded. "Don't let them land! Shoot the oarsmen!"

But the shore could no longer be held. The first boats grounded on the sand, and warriors in bronze helms began to disembark. They did not move the way pirates or sellswords moved. They did not shout, did not charge forward one by one, did not stop to strip the dead. They simply formed up in even ranks, locked their shields, and advanced at a measured pace, spearing those defenders who had not managed to leave the shore. Craghas Drahar had heard of such warriors. The Unsullied of Astapor. But what they were doing here, under Velaryon banners, he could not understand.

Before he finally abandoned the thought of holding the shore, he saw one more boat, larger than the others, come in to the sand. From it stepped a tall man in armor on which a silver seahorse gleamed in the morning sun. Craghas Drahar had never seen Corlys Velaryon up close, but he knew at once that it could only be him. Who else would be guarded so carefully by so many warriors in the finest armor he had ever laid eyes on? They surrounded the man in a tight ring, and beside him, to Craghas Drahar's astonishment, ran an enormous black panther. One of the warriors around Corlys stood out above all the others. He was a full two heads taller than the rest and walked in front, hacking a path with a huge sword, cutting down the men of the Triarchy left and right as though they were not warriors but wheat in a field.

Craghas Drahar understood that he could not stop the Velaryons from landing. His men were already demoralized by the morning's deaths, and now, having watched their fleet burn in green fire and seen the silent warriors in bronze helms advance from the shore, they were beginning to flee without waiting for orders.

"Fall back!" he shouted, waving his sword toward the mountains. "Everyone into the mountains! To the caves! We gather at the Red Gate!"

The pirates rushed away from the shore, and Craghas Drahar fell back with them, seizing on the way the shoulder of Mello, who by some miracle had managed to escape the flagship alive.

"Listen to me carefully," Craghas Drahar said, without slowing his pace or letting go of his second's shoulder. "As soon as we reach the caves, you'll take the best boat of those we keep hidden in Quiet Cove, and the most reliable oarsmen. Tonight you'll put out to sea and make for Tyrosh. Tell the magisters everything you saw today. About the poisoning, about the fleet, about the green fire and the Unsullied. Tell them that if they want to keep the Stepstones, they must send reinforcements as fast as they can. Ships, sellswords, everything they can gather. Otherwise, within a month there won't be a single man of the Triarchy left in the Stepstones."

"And if the Velaryons catch me at sea?" Mello asked, glancing back at the bay, where ships with seahorses on their sails lay at anchor.

"Then make sure they don't," Craghas Drahar answered harshly. "Our lives depend on it. Yours too."

He looked back only once, already climbing the path toward the mountains. Below on the shore, the Unsullied were finishing off those who had not managed to retreat, while the Velaryon ships kept entering the bay, putting more and more warriors ashore. Beyond them, out on the open sea, the remains of his fleet were burning out, and black smoke still rose above the water, green flame breaking through it.

The war for the Stepstones had begun.