In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain
whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the
fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet
tall she reared. She had a woman’s face, with gilded hair,
ivory eyes, and pointed ivory teeth. Water gushed yellow from her
heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a
dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a
scorpion’s curled and venomous tail. The harpy of Ghis, Dany thought. Old Ghis had fallen five
thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered
by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its
streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its
very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls. The gods of Ghis
were dead, and so too its people; these Astapori were mongrels, Ser
Jorah said. Even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten; the
slave cities spoke the High Valyrian of their conquerors, or what
they had made of it.
Yet the symbol of the Old Empire still endured here, though this
bronze monster had a heavy chain dangling from her talons, an open
manacle at either end. The harpy of Ghis had a thunderbolt in her
claws. This is the harpy of Astapor.
“Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes,” the
slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for
him. “I deal in meat, not metal. The bronze is not for sale.
Tell her to look at the soldiers. Even the dim purple eyes of a
sunset savage can see how magnificent my creatures are,
surely.”
Kraznys’s High Valyrian was twisted and thickened by the
characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with
words of slaver argot. Dany understood him well enough, but she
smiled and looked blankly at the slave girl, as if wondering what
he might have said.
‘The Good Master Kraznys asks, are they not
magnificent?” The girl spoke the Common Tongue well, for one
who had never been to Westeros. No older than ten, she had the
round flat face, dusky skin, and golden eyes of Naath. The Peaceful
People, her folk were called. All agreed that they made the best
slaves.
“They might be adequate to my needs,” Dany answered.
It had been Ser Jorah’s suggestion that she speak only
Dothraki and the Common Tongue while in Astapor. My bear is more
clever than he looks. “Tell me of their training.”
“The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no
praise, to keep the price down,” the translator told her
master. “She wishes to know how they were trained.”
Kraznys mo Nakloz bobbed his head. He smelled as if he’d
bathed in raspberries, this slaver, and his jutting red-black beard
glistened with oil. He has larger breasts than I do, Dany
reflected. She could see them through the thin sea-green silk of
the gold-fringed tokar he wound about his body and over one
shoulder. His left hand held the tokar in place as he walked, while
his right clasped a short leather whip. “Are all Westerosi
pigs so ignorant?” he complained. “All the world knows
that the Unsullied are masters of spear and shield and
shortsword.” He gave Dany a broad smile. “Tell her what
she would know, slave, and be quick about it. The day is
hot.” That much at least is no lie. A matched pair of slave girls
stood behind them, holding a striped silk awning over their heads,
but even in the shade Dany felt light-headed, and Kraznys was
perspiring freely. The Plaza of Pride had been baking in the sun
since dawn. Even through the thickness of her sandals, she could
feel the warmth of the red bricks underfoot. Waves of heat rose off
them shimmering to make the stepped pyramids of Astapor around the
plaza seem half a dream.
If the Unsullied felt the heat, however, they gave no hint of
it. They could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand
there. A thousand had been marched out of their barracks for her
inspection; drawn up in ten ranks of one hundred before the
fountain and its great bronze harpy, they stood stiffly at
attention, their stony eyes fixed straight ahead. They wore nought
but white linen clouts knotted about their loins, and conical
bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot tall. Kraznys had
commanded them to lay down their spears and shields, and doff their
swordbelts and quilted tunics, so the Queen of Westeros might
better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.
“They are chosen young, for size and speed and
strength,” the slave told her. “They begin their
training at five. Every day they train from dawn to dusk, until
they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three
spears. The training is most rigorous, Your Grace. Only one boy in
three survives it. This is well known. Among the Unsullied it is
said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the worst is done
with, for no duty that will ever fall to them could be as hard as
their training.”
Kraznys mo Nakloz supposedly spoke no word of the Common Tongue,
but he bobbed his head as he listened, and from time to time gave
the slave girl a poke with the end of his lash. “Tell her
that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no
food nor water. Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I
should command it, and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have
collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still,
and never move until his own death claims him. Such is their
courage. Tell her that.”
“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan
Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the
end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to
tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to
Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should
hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had
brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe.
Her bloodriders would do that well enough. Ser Jorah Mormont she
had left aboard Balerion to guard her people and her dragons. Much
against her inclination, she had locked the dragons belowdecks. It
was too dangerous to let them fly freely over the city; the world
was all too full of men who would gladly kill them for no better
reason than to name themselves dragonslayer.
“What did the smelly old man say?” the slaver
demanded of his translator. When she told him, he smiled and said,
“Inform the savages that we call this obedience. Others may
be stronger or quicker or larger than the Unsullied. Some few may
even equal their skill with sword and spear and shield. But nowhere
between the seas will you ever find any more obedient.”
“Sheep are obedient,” said Arstan when the words had
been translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much
as Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.
Kraznys mo Nakloz showed his big white teeth when that was
rendered back to him. “A word from me and these sheep would
spill his stinking old bowels on the bricks,” he said,
“but do not say that. Tell them that these creatures are more
dogs than sheep. Do they eat dogs or horse in these Seven
Kingdoms?”
“They prefer pigs and cows, your worship.”
“Beef. Pfag. Food for unwashed savages.”
Ignoring
them all, Dany walked slowly down the line of slave soldiers. The girls followed close behind with the silk awning, to keep
her in the shade, but the thousand men before her enjoyed no such
protection. More than half had the copper skins and almond eyes of
Dothraki and Lhazerene, but she saw men of the Free Cities in the
ranks as well, along with pale Qartheen, ebon-faced Summer
Islanders, and others whose origins she could not guess. And some
had skins of the same amber hue as Kraznys mo Nakloz, and the
bristly red-black hair that marked the ancient folk of Ghis, who
named themselves the harpy’s sons. They sell even their own
kind. It should not have surprised her. The Dothraki did the same,
when khalasar met khalasar in the sea of grass.
Some of the soldiers were tall and some were short. They ranged
in age from fourteen to twenty, she judged. Their cheeks were
smooth, and their eyes all the same, be they black or brown or blue
or grey or amber. They are like one man, Dany thought, until she
remembered that they were no men at all. The Unsullied were
eunuchs, every one of them. “Why do you cut them?” she
asked Kraznys through the slave girl. “Whole men are stronger
than eunuchs, I have always heard.”
“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute
strength of one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,”
said Kraznys mo Nakloz when the question was put to him. “A
bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting
pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in
Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than
strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion
of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis
come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly
without fear.”
Dany listened patiently to the translation.
“Even the bravest men fear death and maiming,”
Arstan said when the girl was done.
Kraznys smiled again when he heard that. “Tell the old man
that he smells of piss, and needs a stick to hold him
up.”
“Truly, your worship?”
He poked her with his lash. “No, not truly, are you a girl
or a goat, to ask such folly? Say that Unsullied are not men. Say
that death means nothing to them, and maiming less than
nothing.” He stopped before a thickset man who had the look
of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line
of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood
there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked
Kraznys.
“If it please your worship.”
It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on
Kraznys’s arm before he could raise the whip again.
“Tell the Good Master that I see how strong his Unsullied
are, and how bravely they suffer pain.”
Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian.
“Tell this ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has
nothing to do with it.”
“The Good Master says that was not courage, Your
Grace.”
“Tell her to open those slut’s eyes of
hers.”
“He begs you attend this carefully, Your Grace.”
Kraznys moved to the next eunuch in line, a towering youth with
the blue eyes and flaxen hair of Lys. “Your sword,” he
said. The eunuch knelt, unsheathed the blade, and offered it up
hilt first. It was a shortsword, made more for stabbing than for
slashing, but the edge looked razor-sharp. “Stand,”
Kraznys commanded.
“Your worship.” The eunuch stood, and Kraznys mo
Nakloz slid the sword slowly up his torso, leaving a thin red line
across his belly and between his ribs. Then he jabbed the
swordpoint in beneath a wide pink nipple and began to work it back
and forth.
“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as
the blood ran down the man’s chest.
“Tell the cow to stop her bleating,” said Kraznys,
without waiting for the translation. “This will do him no
great harm. Men have no need of nipples, eunuchs even less
so.” The nipple hung by a thread of skin. He slashed, and
sent it tumbling to the bricks, leaving behind a round red eye
copiously weeping blood. The eunuch did not move, until Kraznys
offered him back his sword, hilt first. “Here, I’m done
with you.”
“This one is pleased to have served you.”
Kraznys turned back to Dany. “They feel no pain, you
see.”
“How can that be?” she demanded through the
scribe.
“The wine of courage,” was the answer he gave her.
“It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade,
bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They
drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each
passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle.
Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with
the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her
bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.
“In Yunkai and Meereen, eunuchs are often made by removing
a boy’s testicles, but leaving the penis. Such a creature is
infertile, yet often still capable of erection. Only trouble can
come of this. We remove the penis as well, leaving nothing. The
Unsullied are the purest creatures on the earth.” He gave
Dany and Arstan another of his broad white smiles. “I have
heard that in the Sunset Kingdoms men take solemn vows to keep
chaste and father no children, but live only for their duty. Is it
not so?”
“It is,” Arstan said, when the question was put.
“There are many such orders. The maesters of the Citadel, the
septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the
dead, the Kingsguard and the Night’s
Watch . . . ”
“Poor things,” growled the slaver, after the
translation. “Men were not made to live thus. Their days are
a torment of temptation, any fool must see, and no doubt most
succumb to their baser selves. Not so our Unsullied. They are wed
to their swords in a way that your Sworn Brothers cannot hope to
match. No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man.”
His girl conveyed the essence of his speech, more politely.
“There are other ways to tempt men, besides the flesh,”
Arstan Whitebeard objected, when she was done.
“Men, yes, but not Unsullied. Plunder interests them no
more than rape. They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even
permit them names.”
“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe.
“Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no
names?”
“It is so, Your Grace.”
Kraznys stopped in front of a Ghiscari who might have been his
taller fitter brother, and flicked his lash at a small bronze disk
on the swordbelt at his feet. “There is his name. Ask the
whore of Westeros whether she can read Ghiscari glyphs.” When
Dany admitted that she could not, the slaver turned to the
Unsullied. “What is your name?” he demanded.
“This one’s name is Red Flea, your
worship.”
The girl repeated their exchange in the Common Tongue.
“And yesterday, what was it?”
“Black Rat, your worship.”
“The day before?”
“Brown Flea, your worship.”
“Before that?”
“This one does not recall, your worship. Blue Toad,
perhaps. Or Blue Worm.”
“Tell her all their names are such,” Kraznys
commanded the girl. “It reminds them that by themselves they
are vermin. The name disks are thrown in an empty cask at
duty’s end, and each dawn plucked up again at
random.”
“More madness,” said Arstan, when he heard.
“How can any man possibly remember a new name every
day?”
“Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those
who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black
of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant.”
Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he
blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her
face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she
allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”
“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave
marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it
before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that
there is no weakness left in them.”
She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself.
“You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she
watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”
When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed
aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore
of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the
mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped
his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that
test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each
boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first
year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and
fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we
find.”
Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as
he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap.
Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at
Kraznys any longer.
“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be
tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but
if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying
me . . . ”
“They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head,
tell her that,” the slaver answered. “Other slaves may
steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an
Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a
gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and
that is all.”
“It is soldiers I need,” Dany admitted.
“Tell her it is well she came to Astapor, then. Ask her
how large an army she wishes to buy.”
“How many Unsullied do you have to sell?”
“Eight thousand fully trained and available at present. We
sell them only by the unit, she should know. By the thousand or the
century. Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that
proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even
freemen, and forget who and what they are.” Kraznys waited
for that to be rendered in the Common Tongue, and then continued.
“This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come
cheaply. In Yunkai and Meereen, slave swordsmen can be had for less
than the price of their swords, but Unsullied are the finest foot
in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell
her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered
for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than
any metal on earth.”
“I know of Valyrian steel,” said Dany. “Ask
the Good Master if the Unsullied have their own
officers.”
“You must set your own officers over them. We train them
to obey, not to think. If it is wits she wants, let her buy
scribes.”
“And their gear?”
“Sword, shield, spear, sandals, and quilted tunic are
included,” said Kraznys. “And the spiked caps, to be
sure. They will wear such armor as you wish, but you must provide
it.”
Dany could think of no other questions. She looked at Arstan.
“You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you
have seen them, what do you say?”
“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at
once.
“Why?” she asked. “Speak freely.” Dany
thought she knew what he would say, but she wanted the slave girl
to hear, so Kraznys mo Nakloz might hear later.
“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no
slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods
and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you
should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men
will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great
harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”
“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The
boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking
politely.”
“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of
Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your
brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”
“And my father?” Dany said.
The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also
remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you
have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while
your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on
your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”
“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the
Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”
“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts
for the return of the dragons.”
“May,” said Dany. That was such a slippery word,
may. In any language. She turned back to Kraznys mo Nakloz and his
slave girl. “I must consider carefully.”
The slaver shrugged. “Tell her to consider quickly. There
are many other buyers. Only three days past I showed these same
Unsullied to a corsair king who hopes to buy them all.”
“The corsair wanted only a hundred, your worship,”
Dany heard the slave girl say.
He poked her with the end of the whip. “Corsairs are all
liars. He’ll buy them all. Tell her that, girl.”
Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at
all. “Remind your Good Master of who I am. Remind him that I
am Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, trueborn
queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. My blood is the blood of
Aegon the Conqueror, and of old Valyria before him.”
Yet her words did not move the plump perfumed slaver, even when
rendered in his own ugly tongue. “Old Ghis ruled an empire
when the Valyrians were still fucking sheep,” he growled at
the poor little scribe, “and we are the sons of the harpy.”
He gave a shrug. “My tongue is wasted wagging at women. East
or west, it makes no matter, they cannot decide until they have
been pampered and flattered and stuffed with sweetmeats. Well, if
this is my fate, so be it. Tell the whore that if she requires a
guide to our sweet city, Kraznys mo Nakloz will gladly serve
her . . . and service her as well, if she is
more woman than she looks.”
“Good Master Kraznys would be most pleased to show you
Astapor while you ponder, Your Grace,” the translator
said.
“I will feed her jellied dog brains, and a fine rich stew
of red octopus and unborn puppy.” He wiped his lips.
“Many delicious dishes can be had here, he
says.”
“Tell her how pretty the pyramids are at night,” the
slaver growled. “Tell her I will lick honey off her breasts,
or allow her to lick honey off mine if she prefers.”
“Astapor is most beautiful at dusk, Your Grace,”
said the slave girl. “The Good Masters light silk lanterns on
every terrace, so all the pyramids glow with colored lights.
Pleasure barges ply the Worm, playing soft music and calling at the
little islands for food and wine and other delights.”
“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,”
Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly
scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy
will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and
she may wager on which the bear will eat first.” Tap tap tap, Dany heard. Arstan Whitebeard’s face was
still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. She made
herself smile. “I have my own bear on Balerion,” she
told the translator, “and he may well eat me if I do not
return to him.”
“See,” said Kraznys when her words were translated.
“It is not the woman who decides, it is this man she runs to.
As ever!”
“Thank the Good Master for his patient kindness,”
Dany said, “and tell him that I will think on all I learned
here.” She gave her arm to Arstan Whitebeard, to lead her
back across the plaza to her litter. Aggo and Jhogo fell in to
either side of them, walking with the bowlegged swagger all the
horselords affected when forced to dismount and stride the earth
like common mortals.
Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to
climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in
such heat. She did not close the curtains as they got under way.
With the sun beating down so fiercely on this city of red brick,
every stray breeze was to be cherished, even if it did come with a
swirl of fine red dust. Besides, I need to see.
Astapor was a queer city, even to the eyes of one who had walked
within the House of Dust and bathed in the Womb of the World
beneath the Mother of Mountains. All the streets were made of the
same red brick that had paved the plaza. So too were the stepped
pyramids, the deep-dug fighting pits with their rings of descending
seats, the sulfurous fountains and gloomy wine caves, and the
ancient walls that encircled them. So many bricks, she thought, and
so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing
down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many
Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes
worse than sand.
“Make way!” Jhogo shouted as he rode before her
litter. “Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when
he uncoiled the great silverhandled whip that Dany had given him,
and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay.
“Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in
his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the
sound of whips.”
The streets had been largely deserted when they had set out from
the port that morning, and scarcely seemed more crowded now. An
elephant lumbered past with a latticework litter on its back. A
naked boy with peeling skin sat in a dry brick gutter, picking his
nose and staring sullenly at some ants in the street. He lifted his
head at the sound of hooves, and gaped as a column of mounted
guards trotted by in a cloud of red dust and brittle laughter. The
copper disks sewn to their cloaks of yellow silk glittered like so
many suns, but their tunics were embroidered linen, and below the
waist they wore sandals and pleated linen skirts. Bareheaded, each
man had teased and oiled and twisted his stiff red-black hair into
some fantastic shape, horns and wings and blades and even grasping
hands, so they looked like some troupe of demons escaped from the
seventh hell. The naked boy watched them for a bit, along with
Dany, but soon enough they were gone, and he went back to his ants,
and a knuckle up his nose. An old city, this, she reflected, but not so populous as it was
in its glory, nor near so crowded as Qarth or Pentos or Lys.
Her litter came to a sudden halt at the cross street, to allow a
coffle of slaves to shuffle across her path, urged along by the
crack of an overseer’s lash. These were no Unsullied, Dany
noted, but a more common sort of men, with pale brown skins and
black hair. There were women among them, but no children. All were
naked. Two Astapori rode behind them on white asses, a man in a red
silk tokar and a veiled woman in sheer blue linen decorated with
flakes of lapis lazuli. In her red-black hair she wore an ivory
comb. The man laughed as he whispered to her, paying no more mind
to Dany than to his slaves, nor the overseer with his twisted
five-thonged lash, a squat broad Dothraki who had the harpy and
chains tattooed proudly across his muscular chest.
“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard
murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her
people.”
“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.
“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I
never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the
blood of the slaves who make them.”
“I can well believe that,” said Dany.
“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as
well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.” Would that I could, thought Dany. “When I leave Astapor it
must be with an army, Ser Jorah says.”
“Ser Jorah was a slaver himself, Your Grace,” the
old man reminded her. “There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr
and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but
at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg
you.”
“My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the
Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises,
but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the
beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in
Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in
hand.”
“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan
said.
“There speaks one who has been neither.”
Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to
be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the
promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though
not as he had wished, and I . . . my
sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different
man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have
forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”
Whitebeard bowed his head. “Your Grace, I did not mean to
give offense.”
“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” Dany
patted Arstan’s spotted hand to reassure him. “I have a
dragon’s temper, that’s all. You must not let it
frighten you.”
“I shall try and remember.” Whitebeard smiled. He has a good face, and great strength to him, Dany thought. She
could not understand why Ser Jorah mistrusted the old man so. Could
he be jealous that I have found another man to talk to? Unbidden,
her thoughts went back to the night on Balerion when the exile
knight had kissed her. He should never have done that. He is thrice
my age, and of too low a birth for me, and I never gave him leave.
No true knight would ever kiss a queen without her leave. She had
taken care never to be alone with Ser Jorah after that, keeping her
handmaids with her aboard ship, and sometimes her bloodriders. He
wants to kiss me again, I see it in his eyes.
What Dany wanted she could not begin to say, but Jorah’s
kiss had woken something in her, something that been sleeping since
Khal Drogo died. Lying abed in her narrow bunk, she found herself
wondering how it would be to have a man squeezed in beside her in
place of her handmaid, and the thought was more exciting than it
should have been. Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of
him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was
always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting
shadow.
Once, so tormented she could not sleep, Dany slid a hand down
between her legs, and gasped when she felt how wet she was. Scarce
daring to breathe, she moved her fingers back and forth between her
lower lips, slowly so as not to wake Irri beside her, until she
found one sweet spot and lingered there, touching herself lightly,
timidly at first and then faster. Still, the relief she wanted
seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one
screamed out across the cabin, and Irri woke and saw what she was
doing.
Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely
could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast,
then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted
down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine
silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany’s thighs. It
was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her
breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or
perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back
up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done.
The next day, it all seemed a dream. And what did Ser Jorah have
to do with it, if anything? It is Drogo I want, my sun-and-stars,
Dany reminded herself. Not Irri, and not Ser Jorah, only Drogo.
Drogo was dead, though. She’d thought these feelings had died
with him there in the red waste, but one treacherous kiss had
somehow brought them back to life. He should never have kissed me.
He presumed too much, and I permitted it. It must never happen
again. She set her mouth grimly and gave her head a shake, and the
bell in her braid chimed softly.
Closer to the bay, the city presented a fairer face. The great
brick pyramids lined the shore, the largest four hundred feet high.
All manner of trees and vines and flowers grew on their broad
terraces, and the winds that swirled around them smelled green and
fragrant. Another gigantic harpy stood atop the gate, this one made
of baked red clay and crumbling visibly, with no more than a stub
of her scorpion’s tail remaining. The chain she grasped in
her clay claws was old iron, rotten with rust. It was cooler down
by the water, though. The lapping of the waves against the rotting
pilings made a curiously soothing sound.
Aggo helped Dany down from her litter. Strong Belwas was seated
on a massive piling, eating a great haunch of brown roasted meat.
“Dog,” he said happily when he saw Dany. “Good
dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a
greasy grin.
“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had
eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she
could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. She
swept past the huge eunuch and up the plank onto the deck of
Balerion.
Ser Jorah Mormont stood waiting for her. “Your
Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “The slavers have
come and gone. Three of them, with a dozen scribes and as many
slaves to lift and fetch. They crawled over every foot of our holds
and made note of all we had.” He walked her aft. “How
many men do they have for sale?”
“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this
city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling
bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick,
like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs
with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the
sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t
even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”
“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury,
“the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”
“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany
could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand
flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was
either that, or cry.
Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have
displeased my queen—”
“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you
were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile
sty.” If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed
me, or looked at my breasts the way you did,
or . . .
“As Your Grace commands. I shall tell Captain Groleo to
make ready to sail on the evening tide, for some sty less
vile.”
“No,” said Dany. Groleo watched them from the
forecastle, and his crew was watching too. Whitebeard, her
bloodriders, Jhiqui, every one had stopped what they were doing at
the sound of the slap. “I want to sail now, not on the tide,
I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t,
can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” And with that she left
him, and went below.
Behind the carved wooden door of the captain’s cabin, her
dragons were restless. Drogon raised his head and screamed, pale
smoke venting from his nostrils, and Viserion flapped at her and
tried to perch on her shoulder, as he had when he was smaller.
“No,” Dany said, trying to shrug him off gently.
“You’re too big for that now, sweetling.” But the
dragon coiled his white and gold tail around one arm and dug black
claws into the fabric of her sleeve, clinging tightly. Helpless,
she sank into Groleo’s great leather chair, giggling.
“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,”
Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do
you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see
them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit
me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.
“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That
was the thing that frightened Dany the most.
“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty
air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”
She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it.
“I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be
locked up in a small ship’s cabin.”
“Dragons are like horses in this,” Irri said.
“And riders, too. The horses scream below, Khaleesi, and kick
at the wooden walls. I hear them. And Jhiqui says the old women and
the little ones scream too, when you are not here. They do not like
this water cart. They do not like the black salt sea.”
“I know,” Dany said. “I do, I know.”
“My khaleesi is sad?”
“Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost.
“Should I pleasure the khaleesi?”
Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to
do that. What happened that night, when you
woke . . . you’re no bed slave, I freed
you, remember? You . . . ”
“I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl
said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”
“I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I
don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I
want to be alone. To think.”
Dusk had begun to settle over the waters of Slaver’s Bay
before Dany returned to the deck. She stood by the rail and looked
out over Astapor. From here it looks almost beautiful, she thought.
The stars were coming out above, and the silk lanterns below, just
as Kraznys’s translator had promised. The brick pyramids were
all glimmery with light. But it is dark below, in the streets and
plazas and fighting pits. And it is darkest of all in the barracks,
where some little boy is feeding scraps to the puppy they gave him
when they took away his manhood.
There was a soft step behind her. “Khaleesi.” His
voice. “Might I speak frankly?”
Dany did not turn. She could not bear to look at him just now.
If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And
never know which was right and which was wrong and which was
madness. “Say what you will, ser.”
“When Aegon the Dragon stepped ashore in Westeros, the
kings of Vale and Rock and Reach did not rush to hand him their
crowns. If you mean to sit his Iron Throne, you must win it as he
did, with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your
hands before the thing is done.” Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She
had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will
shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight
thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes.
Eight thousand strangled dogs.”
“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw
King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day
as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped
than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when
you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the
beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I
have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to
the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of
those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy
them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want
dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I
recall.” The Usurper’s dogs. “Yes.” Dany gazed off at
the soft colored lights and let the cool salt breeze caress her.
“You speak of sacking cities. Answer me this, ser—why have
the Dothraki never sacked this city?” She pointed.
“Look at the walls. You can see where they’ve begun to
crumble. There, and there. Do you see any guards on those towers? I
don’t. Are they hiding, ser? I saw these sons of the harpy
today, all their proud highborn warriors. They dressed in linen
skirts, and the fiercest thing about them was their hair. Even a
modest khalasar could crack this Astapor like a nut and spill out
the rotted meat inside. So tell me, why is that ugly harpy not
sitting beside the godsway in Vaes Dothrak among the other stolen
gods?”
“You have a dragon’s eye, Khaleesi, that’s
plain to see.”
“I wanted an answer, not a compliment.”
“There are two reasons. Astapor’s brave defenders
are so much chaff, it’s true. Old names and fat purses who
dress up as Ghiscari scourges to pretend they still rule a vast
empire. Every one is a high officer. On feastdays they fight mock
wars in the pits to demonstrate what brilliant commanders they are,
but it’s the eunuchs who do the dying. All the same, any
enemy wanting to sack Astapor would have to know that they’d
be facing Unsullied. The slavers would turn out the whole garrison
in the city’s defense. The Dothraki have not ridden against
Unsullied since they left their braids at the gates of
Qohor.”
“And the second reason?” Dany asked.
“Who would attack Astapor?” Ser Jorah asked.
“Meereen and Yunkai are rivals but not enemies, the Doom
destroyed Valyria, the folk of the eastern hinterlands are all
Ghiscari, and beyond the hills lies Lhazar. The Lamb Men, as your
Dothraki call them, a notably unwarlike people.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but north of the slave
cities is the Dothraki sea, and two dozen mighty khals who like
nothing more than sacking cities and carrying off their people into
slavery.”
“Carrying them off where? What good are slaves once
you’ve killed the slavers? Valyria is no more, Qarth lies
beyond the red waste, and the Nine Free Cities are thousands of
leagues to the west. And you may be sure the sons of the harpy give
lavishly to every passing khal, just as the magisters do in Pentos
and Norvos and Myr. They know that if they feast the horselords and
give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It’s cheaper than
fighting, and a deal more certain.” Cheaper than fighting, Dany thought. Yes, it might be. If only
it could be that easy for her. How pleasant it would be to sail to
King’s Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a
chest of gold to make him go away.
“Khaleesi?” Ser Jorah prompted, when she had been
silent for a long time. He touched her elbow lightly.
Dany shrugged him off . “Viserys would have bought as many
Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like
Rhaegar . . . ”
“I remember, Daenerys.”
“Your Grace,” she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar
led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his
squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”
“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood
from the Prince of Dragonstone.”
“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder
with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the
weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the
Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our
dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in
Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid
for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited
for an answer.
“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you
say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle,
he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His
blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and
Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne.
Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought
honorably. And Rhaegar died.”
In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain
whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the
fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet
tall she reared. She had a woman’s face, with gilded hair,
ivory eyes, and pointed ivory teeth. Water gushed yellow from her
heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a
dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a
scorpion’s curled and venomous tail. The harpy of Ghis, Dany thought. Old Ghis had fallen five
thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered
by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its
streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its
very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls. The gods of Ghis
were dead, and so too its people; these Astapori were mongrels, Ser
Jorah said. Even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten; the
slave cities spoke the High Valyrian of their conquerors, or what
they had made of it.
Yet the symbol of the Old Empire still endured here, though this
bronze monster had a heavy chain dangling from her talons, an open
manacle at either end. The harpy of Ghis had a thunderbolt in her
claws. This is the harpy of Astapor.
“Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes,” the
slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for
him. “I deal in meat, not metal. The bronze is not for sale.
Tell her to look at the soldiers. Even the dim purple eyes of a
sunset savage can see how magnificent my creatures are,
surely.”
Kraznys’s High Valyrian was twisted and thickened by the
characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with
words of slaver argot. Dany understood him well enough, but she
smiled and looked blankly at the slave girl, as if wondering what
he might have said.
‘The Good Master Kraznys asks, are they not
magnificent?” The girl spoke the Common Tongue well, for one
who had never been to Westeros. No older than ten, she had the
round flat face, dusky skin, and golden eyes of Naath. The Peaceful
People, her folk were called. All agreed that they made the best
slaves.
“They might be adequate to my needs,” Dany answered.
It had been Ser Jorah’s suggestion that she speak only
Dothraki and the Common Tongue while in Astapor. My bear is more
clever than he looks. “Tell me of their training.”
“The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no
praise, to keep the price down,” the translator told her
master. “She wishes to know how they were trained.”
Kraznys mo Nakloz bobbed his head. He smelled as if he’d
bathed in raspberries, this slaver, and his jutting red-black beard
glistened with oil. He has larger breasts than I do, Dany
reflected. She could see them through the thin sea-green silk of
the gold-fringed tokar he wound about his body and over one
shoulder. His left hand held the tokar in place as he walked, while
his right clasped a short leather whip. “Are all Westerosi
pigs so ignorant?” he complained. “All the world knows
that the Unsullied are masters of spear and shield and
shortsword.” He gave Dany a broad smile. “Tell her what
she would know, slave, and be quick about it. The day is
hot.” That much at least is no lie. A matched pair of slave girls
stood behind them, holding a striped silk awning over their heads,
but even in the shade Dany felt light-headed, and Kraznys was
perspiring freely. The Plaza of Pride had been baking in the sun
since dawn. Even through the thickness of her sandals, she could
feel the warmth of the red bricks underfoot. Waves of heat rose off
them shimmering to make the stepped pyramids of Astapor around the
plaza seem half a dream.
If the Unsullied felt the heat, however, they gave no hint of
it. They could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand
there. A thousand had been marched out of their barracks for her
inspection; drawn up in ten ranks of one hundred before the
fountain and its great bronze harpy, they stood stiffly at
attention, their stony eyes fixed straight ahead. They wore nought
but white linen clouts knotted about their loins, and conical
bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot tall. Kraznys had
commanded them to lay down their spears and shields, and doff their
swordbelts and quilted tunics, so the Queen of Westeros might
better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.
“They are chosen young, for size and speed and
strength,” the slave told her. “They begin their
training at five. Every day they train from dawn to dusk, until
they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three
spears. The training is most rigorous, Your Grace. Only one boy in
three survives it. This is well known. Among the Unsullied it is
said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the worst is done
with, for no duty that will ever fall to them could be as hard as
their training.”
Kraznys mo Nakloz supposedly spoke no word of the Common Tongue,
but he bobbed his head as he listened, and from time to time gave
the slave girl a poke with the end of his lash. “Tell her
that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no
food nor water. Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I
should command it, and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have
collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still,
and never move until his own death claims him. Such is their
courage. Tell her that.”
“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan
Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the
end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to
tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to
Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should
hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had
brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe.
Her bloodriders would do that well enough. Ser Jorah Mormont she
had left aboard Balerion to guard her people and her dragons. Much
against her inclination, she had locked the dragons belowdecks. It
was too dangerous to let them fly freely over the city; the world
was all too full of men who would gladly kill them for no better
reason than to name themselves dragonslayer.
“What did the smelly old man say?” the slaver
demanded of his translator. When she told him, he smiled and said,
“Inform the savages that we call this obedience. Others may
be stronger or quicker or larger than the Unsullied. Some few may
even equal their skill with sword and spear and shield. But nowhere
between the seas will you ever find any more obedient.”
“Sheep are obedient,” said Arstan when the words had
been translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much
as Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.
Kraznys mo Nakloz showed his big white teeth when that was
rendered back to him. “A word from me and these sheep would
spill his stinking old bowels on the bricks,” he said,
“but do not say that. Tell them that these creatures are more
dogs than sheep. Do they eat dogs or horse in these Seven
Kingdoms?”
“They prefer pigs and cows, your worship.”
“Beef. Pfag. Food for unwashed savages.”
Ignoring
them all, Dany walked slowly down the line of slave soldiers. The girls followed close behind with the silk awning, to keep
her in the shade, but the thousand men before her enjoyed no such
protection. More than half had the copper skins and almond eyes of
Dothraki and Lhazerene, but she saw men of the Free Cities in the
ranks as well, along with pale Qartheen, ebon-faced Summer
Islanders, and others whose origins she could not guess. And some
had skins of the same amber hue as Kraznys mo Nakloz, and the
bristly red-black hair that marked the ancient folk of Ghis, who
named themselves the harpy’s sons. They sell even their own
kind. It should not have surprised her. The Dothraki did the same,
when khalasar met khalasar in the sea of grass.
Some of the soldiers were tall and some were short. They ranged
in age from fourteen to twenty, she judged. Their cheeks were
smooth, and their eyes all the same, be they black or brown or blue
or grey or amber. They are like one man, Dany thought, until she
remembered that they were no men at all. The Unsullied were
eunuchs, every one of them. “Why do you cut them?” she
asked Kraznys through the slave girl. “Whole men are stronger
than eunuchs, I have always heard.”
“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute
strength of one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,”
said Kraznys mo Nakloz when the question was put to him. “A
bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting
pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in
Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than
strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion
of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis
come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly
without fear.”
Dany listened patiently to the translation.
“Even the bravest men fear death and maiming,”
Arstan said when the girl was done.
Kraznys smiled again when he heard that. “Tell the old man
that he smells of piss, and needs a stick to hold him
up.”
“Truly, your worship?”
He poked her with his lash. “No, not truly, are you a girl
or a goat, to ask such folly? Say that Unsullied are not men. Say
that death means nothing to them, and maiming less than
nothing.” He stopped before a thickset man who had the look
of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line
of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood
there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked
Kraznys.
“If it please your worship.”
It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on
Kraznys’s arm before he could raise the whip again.
“Tell the Good Master that I see how strong his Unsullied
are, and how bravely they suffer pain.”
Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian.
“Tell this ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has
nothing to do with it.”
“The Good Master says that was not courage, Your
Grace.”
“Tell her to open those slut’s eyes of
hers.”
“He begs you attend this carefully, Your Grace.”
Kraznys moved to the next eunuch in line, a towering youth with
the blue eyes and flaxen hair of Lys. “Your sword,” he
said. The eunuch knelt, unsheathed the blade, and offered it up
hilt first. It was a shortsword, made more for stabbing than for
slashing, but the edge looked razor-sharp. “Stand,”
Kraznys commanded.
“Your worship.” The eunuch stood, and Kraznys mo
Nakloz slid the sword slowly up his torso, leaving a thin red line
across his belly and between his ribs. Then he jabbed the
swordpoint in beneath a wide pink nipple and began to work it back
and forth.
“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as
the blood ran down the man’s chest.
“Tell the cow to stop her bleating,” said Kraznys,
without waiting for the translation. “This will do him no
great harm. Men have no need of nipples, eunuchs even less
so.” The nipple hung by a thread of skin. He slashed, and
sent it tumbling to the bricks, leaving behind a round red eye
copiously weeping blood. The eunuch did not move, until Kraznys
offered him back his sword, hilt first. “Here, I’m done
with you.”
“This one is pleased to have served you.”
Kraznys turned back to Dany. “They feel no pain, you
see.”
“How can that be?” she demanded through the
scribe.
“The wine of courage,” was the answer he gave her.
“It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade,
bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They
drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each
passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle.
Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with
the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her
bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.
“In Yunkai and Meereen, eunuchs are often made by removing
a boy’s testicles, but leaving the penis. Such a creature is
infertile, yet often still capable of erection. Only trouble can
come of this. We remove the penis as well, leaving nothing. The
Unsullied are the purest creatures on the earth.” He gave
Dany and Arstan another of his broad white smiles. “I have
heard that in the Sunset Kingdoms men take solemn vows to keep
chaste and father no children, but live only for their duty. Is it
not so?”
“It is,” Arstan said, when the question was put.
“There are many such orders. The maesters of the Citadel, the
septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the
dead, the Kingsguard and the Night’s
Watch . . . ”
“Poor things,” growled the slaver, after the
translation. “Men were not made to live thus. Their days are
a torment of temptation, any fool must see, and no doubt most
succumb to their baser selves. Not so our Unsullied. They are wed
to their swords in a way that your Sworn Brothers cannot hope to
match. No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man.”
His girl conveyed the essence of his speech, more politely.
“There are other ways to tempt men, besides the flesh,”
Arstan Whitebeard objected, when she was done.
“Men, yes, but not Unsullied. Plunder interests them no
more than rape. They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even
permit them names.”
“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe.
“Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no
names?”
“It is so, Your Grace.”
Kraznys stopped in front of a Ghiscari who might have been his
taller fitter brother, and flicked his lash at a small bronze disk
on the swordbelt at his feet. “There is his name. Ask the
whore of Westeros whether she can read Ghiscari glyphs.” When
Dany admitted that she could not, the slaver turned to the
Unsullied. “What is your name?” he demanded.
“This one’s name is Red Flea, your
worship.”
The girl repeated their exchange in the Common Tongue.
“And yesterday, what was it?”
“Black Rat, your worship.”
“The day before?”
“Brown Flea, your worship.”
“Before that?”
“This one does not recall, your worship. Blue Toad,
perhaps. Or Blue Worm.”
“Tell her all their names are such,” Kraznys
commanded the girl. “It reminds them that by themselves they
are vermin. The name disks are thrown in an empty cask at
duty’s end, and each dawn plucked up again at
random.”
“More madness,” said Arstan, when he heard.
“How can any man possibly remember a new name every
day?”
“Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those
who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black
of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant.”
Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he
blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her
face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she
allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”
“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave
marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it
before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that
there is no weakness left in them.”
She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself.
“You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she
watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”
When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed
aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore
of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the
mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped
his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that
test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each
boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first
year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and
fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we
find.”
Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as
he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap.
Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at
Kraznys any longer.
“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be
tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but
if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying
me . . . ”
“They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head,
tell her that,” the slaver answered. “Other slaves may
steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an
Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a
gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and
that is all.”
“It is soldiers I need,” Dany admitted.
“Tell her it is well she came to Astapor, then. Ask her
how large an army she wishes to buy.”
“How many Unsullied do you have to sell?”
“Eight thousand fully trained and available at present. We
sell them only by the unit, she should know. By the thousand or the
century. Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that
proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even
freemen, and forget who and what they are.” Kraznys waited
for that to be rendered in the Common Tongue, and then continued.
“This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come
cheaply. In Yunkai and Meereen, slave swordsmen can be had for less
than the price of their swords, but Unsullied are the finest foot
in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell
her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered
for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than
any metal on earth.”
“I know of Valyrian steel,” said Dany. “Ask
the Good Master if the Unsullied have their own
officers.”
“You must set your own officers over them. We train them
to obey, not to think. If it is wits she wants, let her buy
scribes.”
“And their gear?”
“Sword, shield, spear, sandals, and quilted tunic are
included,” said Kraznys. “And the spiked caps, to be
sure. They will wear such armor as you wish, but you must provide
it.”
Dany could think of no other questions. She looked at Arstan.
“You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you
have seen them, what do you say?”
“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at
once.
“Why?” she asked. “Speak freely.” Dany
thought she knew what he would say, but she wanted the slave girl
to hear, so Kraznys mo Nakloz might hear later.
“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no
slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods
and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you
should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men
will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great
harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”
“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The
boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking
politely.”
“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of
Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your
brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”
“And my father?” Dany said.
The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also
remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you
have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while
your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on
your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”
“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the
Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”
“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts
for the return of the dragons.”
“May,” said Dany. That was such a slippery word,
may. In any language. She turned back to Kraznys mo Nakloz and his
slave girl. “I must consider carefully.”
The slaver shrugged. “Tell her to consider quickly. There
are many other buyers. Only three days past I showed these same
Unsullied to a corsair king who hopes to buy them all.”
“The corsair wanted only a hundred, your worship,”
Dany heard the slave girl say.
He poked her with the end of the whip. “Corsairs are all
liars. He’ll buy them all. Tell her that, girl.”
Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at
all. “Remind your Good Master of who I am. Remind him that I
am Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, trueborn
queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. My blood is the blood of
Aegon the Conqueror, and of old Valyria before him.”
Yet her words did not move the plump perfumed slaver, even when
rendered in his own ugly tongue. “Old Ghis ruled an empire
when the Valyrians were still fucking sheep,” he growled at
the poor little scribe, “and we are the sons of the harpy.”
He gave a shrug. “My tongue is wasted wagging at women. East
or west, it makes no matter, they cannot decide until they have
been pampered and flattered and stuffed with sweetmeats. Well, if
this is my fate, so be it. Tell the whore that if she requires a
guide to our sweet city, Kraznys mo Nakloz will gladly serve
her . . . and service her as well, if she is
more woman than she looks.”
“Good Master Kraznys would be most pleased to show you
Astapor while you ponder, Your Grace,” the translator
said.
“I will feed her jellied dog brains, and a fine rich stew
of red octopus and unborn puppy.” He wiped his lips.
“Many delicious dishes can be had here, he
says.”
“Tell her how pretty the pyramids are at night,” the
slaver growled. “Tell her I will lick honey off her breasts,
or allow her to lick honey off mine if she prefers.”
“Astapor is most beautiful at dusk, Your Grace,”
said the slave girl. “The Good Masters light silk lanterns on
every terrace, so all the pyramids glow with colored lights.
Pleasure barges ply the Worm, playing soft music and calling at the
little islands for food and wine and other delights.”
“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,”
Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly
scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy
will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and
she may wager on which the bear will eat first.” Tap tap tap, Dany heard. Arstan Whitebeard’s face was
still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. She made
herself smile. “I have my own bear on Balerion,” she
told the translator, “and he may well eat me if I do not
return to him.”
“See,” said Kraznys when her words were translated.
“It is not the woman who decides, it is this man she runs to.
As ever!”
“Thank the Good Master for his patient kindness,”
Dany said, “and tell him that I will think on all I learned
here.” She gave her arm to Arstan Whitebeard, to lead her
back across the plaza to her litter. Aggo and Jhogo fell in to
either side of them, walking with the bowlegged swagger all the
horselords affected when forced to dismount and stride the earth
like common mortals.
Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to
climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in
such heat. She did not close the curtains as they got under way.
With the sun beating down so fiercely on this city of red brick,
every stray breeze was to be cherished, even if it did come with a
swirl of fine red dust. Besides, I need to see.
Astapor was a queer city, even to the eyes of one who had walked
within the House of Dust and bathed in the Womb of the World
beneath the Mother of Mountains. All the streets were made of the
same red brick that had paved the plaza. So too were the stepped
pyramids, the deep-dug fighting pits with their rings of descending
seats, the sulfurous fountains and gloomy wine caves, and the
ancient walls that encircled them. So many bricks, she thought, and
so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing
down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many
Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes
worse than sand.
“Make way!” Jhogo shouted as he rode before her
litter. “Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when
he uncoiled the great silverhandled whip that Dany had given him,
and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay.
“Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in
his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the
sound of whips.”
The streets had been largely deserted when they had set out from
the port that morning, and scarcely seemed more crowded now. An
elephant lumbered past with a latticework litter on its back. A
naked boy with peeling skin sat in a dry brick gutter, picking his
nose and staring sullenly at some ants in the street. He lifted his
head at the sound of hooves, and gaped as a column of mounted
guards trotted by in a cloud of red dust and brittle laughter. The
copper disks sewn to their cloaks of yellow silk glittered like so
many suns, but their tunics were embroidered linen, and below the
waist they wore sandals and pleated linen skirts. Bareheaded, each
man had teased and oiled and twisted his stiff red-black hair into
some fantastic shape, horns and wings and blades and even grasping
hands, so they looked like some troupe of demons escaped from the
seventh hell. The naked boy watched them for a bit, along with
Dany, but soon enough they were gone, and he went back to his ants,
and a knuckle up his nose. An old city, this, she reflected, but not so populous as it was
in its glory, nor near so crowded as Qarth or Pentos or Lys.
Her litter came to a sudden halt at the cross street, to allow a
coffle of slaves to shuffle across her path, urged along by the
crack of an overseer’s lash. These were no Unsullied, Dany
noted, but a more common sort of men, with pale brown skins and
black hair. There were women among them, but no children. All were
naked. Two Astapori rode behind them on white asses, a man in a red
silk tokar and a veiled woman in sheer blue linen decorated with
flakes of lapis lazuli. In her red-black hair she wore an ivory
comb. The man laughed as he whispered to her, paying no more mind
to Dany than to his slaves, nor the overseer with his twisted
five-thonged lash, a squat broad Dothraki who had the harpy and
chains tattooed proudly across his muscular chest.
“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard
murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her
people.”
“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.
“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I
never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the
blood of the slaves who make them.”
“I can well believe that,” said Dany.
“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as
well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.” Would that I could, thought Dany. “When I leave Astapor it
must be with an army, Ser Jorah says.”
“Ser Jorah was a slaver himself, Your Grace,” the
old man reminded her. “There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr
and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but
at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg
you.”
“My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the
Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises,
but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the
beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in
Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in
hand.”
“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan
said.
“There speaks one who has been neither.”
Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to
be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the
promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though
not as he had wished, and I . . . my
sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different
man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have
forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”
Whitebeard bowed his head. “Your Grace, I did not mean to
give offense.”
“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” Dany
patted Arstan’s spotted hand to reassure him. “I have a
dragon’s temper, that’s all. You must not let it
frighten you.”
“I shall try and remember.” Whitebeard smiled. He has a good face, and great strength to him, Dany thought. She
could not understand why Ser Jorah mistrusted the old man so. Could
he be jealous that I have found another man to talk to? Unbidden,
her thoughts went back to the night on Balerion when the exile
knight had kissed her. He should never have done that. He is thrice
my age, and of too low a birth for me, and I never gave him leave.
No true knight would ever kiss a queen without her leave. She had
taken care never to be alone with Ser Jorah after that, keeping her
handmaids with her aboard ship, and sometimes her bloodriders. He
wants to kiss me again, I see it in his eyes.
What Dany wanted she could not begin to say, but Jorah’s
kiss had woken something in her, something that been sleeping since
Khal Drogo died. Lying abed in her narrow bunk, she found herself
wondering how it would be to have a man squeezed in beside her in
place of her handmaid, and the thought was more exciting than it
should have been. Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of
him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was
always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting
shadow.
Once, so tormented she could not sleep, Dany slid a hand down
between her legs, and gasped when she felt how wet she was. Scarce
daring to breathe, she moved her fingers back and forth between her
lower lips, slowly so as not to wake Irri beside her, until she
found one sweet spot and lingered there, touching herself lightly,
timidly at first and then faster. Still, the relief she wanted
seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one
screamed out across the cabin, and Irri woke and saw what she was
doing.
Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely
could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast,
then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted
down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine
silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany’s thighs. It
was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her
breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or
perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back
up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done.
The next day, it all seemed a dream. And what did Ser Jorah have
to do with it, if anything? It is Drogo I want, my sun-and-stars,
Dany reminded herself. Not Irri, and not Ser Jorah, only Drogo.
Drogo was dead, though. She’d thought these feelings had died
with him there in the red waste, but one treacherous kiss had
somehow brought them back to life. He should never have kissed me.
He presumed too much, and I permitted it. It must never happen
again. She set her mouth grimly and gave her head a shake, and the
bell in her braid chimed softly.
Closer to the bay, the city presented a fairer face. The great
brick pyramids lined the shore, the largest four hundred feet high.
All manner of trees and vines and flowers grew on their broad
terraces, and the winds that swirled around them smelled green and
fragrant. Another gigantic harpy stood atop the gate, this one made
of baked red clay and crumbling visibly, with no more than a stub
of her scorpion’s tail remaining. The chain she grasped in
her clay claws was old iron, rotten with rust. It was cooler down
by the water, though. The lapping of the waves against the rotting
pilings made a curiously soothing sound.
Aggo helped Dany down from her litter. Strong Belwas was seated
on a massive piling, eating a great haunch of brown roasted meat.
“Dog,” he said happily when he saw Dany. “Good
dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a
greasy grin.
“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had
eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she
could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. She
swept past the huge eunuch and up the plank onto the deck of
Balerion.
Ser Jorah Mormont stood waiting for her. “Your
Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “The slavers have
come and gone. Three of them, with a dozen scribes and as many
slaves to lift and fetch. They crawled over every foot of our holds
and made note of all we had.” He walked her aft. “How
many men do they have for sale?”
“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this
city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling
bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick,
like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs
with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the
sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t
even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”
“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury,
“the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”
“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany
could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand
flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was
either that, or cry.
Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have
displeased my queen—”
“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you
were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile
sty.” If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed
me, or looked at my breasts the way you did,
or . . .
“As Your Grace commands. I shall tell Captain Groleo to
make ready to sail on the evening tide, for some sty less
vile.”
“No,” said Dany. Groleo watched them from the
forecastle, and his crew was watching too. Whitebeard, her
bloodriders, Jhiqui, every one had stopped what they were doing at
the sound of the slap. “I want to sail now, not on the tide,
I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t,
can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” And with that she left
him, and went below.
Behind the carved wooden door of the captain’s cabin, her
dragons were restless. Drogon raised his head and screamed, pale
smoke venting from his nostrils, and Viserion flapped at her and
tried to perch on her shoulder, as he had when he was smaller.
“No,” Dany said, trying to shrug him off gently.
“You’re too big for that now, sweetling.” But the
dragon coiled his white and gold tail around one arm and dug black
claws into the fabric of her sleeve, clinging tightly. Helpless,
she sank into Groleo’s great leather chair, giggling.
“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,”
Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do
you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see
them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit
me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.
“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That
was the thing that frightened Dany the most.
“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty
air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”
She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it.
“I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be
locked up in a small ship’s cabin.”
“Dragons are like horses in this,” Irri said.
“And riders, too. The horses scream below, Khaleesi, and kick
at the wooden walls. I hear them. And Jhiqui says the old women and
the little ones scream too, when you are not here. They do not like
this water cart. They do not like the black salt sea.”
“I know,” Dany said. “I do, I know.”
“My khaleesi is sad?”
“Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost.
“Should I pleasure the khaleesi?”
Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to
do that. What happened that night, when you
woke . . . you’re no bed slave, I freed
you, remember? You . . . ”
“I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl
said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”
“I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I
don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I
want to be alone. To think.”
Dusk had begun to settle over the waters of Slaver’s Bay
before Dany returned to the deck. She stood by the rail and looked
out over Astapor. From here it looks almost beautiful, she thought.
The stars were coming out above, and the silk lanterns below, just
as Kraznys’s translator had promised. The brick pyramids were
all glimmery with light. But it is dark below, in the streets and
plazas and fighting pits. And it is darkest of all in the barracks,
where some little boy is feeding scraps to the puppy they gave him
when they took away his manhood.
There was a soft step behind her. “Khaleesi.” His
voice. “Might I speak frankly?”
Dany did not turn. She could not bear to look at him just now.
If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And
never know which was right and which was wrong and which was
madness. “Say what you will, ser.”
“When Aegon the Dragon stepped ashore in Westeros, the
kings of Vale and Rock and Reach did not rush to hand him their
crowns. If you mean to sit his Iron Throne, you must win it as he
did, with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your
hands before the thing is done.” Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She
had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will
shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight
thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes.
Eight thousand strangled dogs.”
“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw
King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day
as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped
than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when
you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the
beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I
have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to
the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of
those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy
them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want
dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I
recall.” The Usurper’s dogs. “Yes.” Dany gazed off at
the soft colored lights and let the cool salt breeze caress her.
“You speak of sacking cities. Answer me this, ser—why have
the Dothraki never sacked this city?” She pointed.
“Look at the walls. You can see where they’ve begun to
crumble. There, and there. Do you see any guards on those towers? I
don’t. Are they hiding, ser? I saw these sons of the harpy
today, all their proud highborn warriors. They dressed in linen
skirts, and the fiercest thing about them was their hair. Even a
modest khalasar could crack this Astapor like a nut and spill out
the rotted meat inside. So tell me, why is that ugly harpy not
sitting beside the godsway in Vaes Dothrak among the other stolen
gods?”
“You have a dragon’s eye, Khaleesi, that’s
plain to see.”
“I wanted an answer, not a compliment.”
“There are two reasons. Astapor’s brave defenders
are so much chaff, it’s true. Old names and fat purses who
dress up as Ghiscari scourges to pretend they still rule a vast
empire. Every one is a high officer. On feastdays they fight mock
wars in the pits to demonstrate what brilliant commanders they are,
but it’s the eunuchs who do the dying. All the same, any
enemy wanting to sack Astapor would have to know that they’d
be facing Unsullied. The slavers would turn out the whole garrison
in the city’s defense. The Dothraki have not ridden against
Unsullied since they left their braids at the gates of
Qohor.”
“And the second reason?” Dany asked.
“Who would attack Astapor?” Ser Jorah asked.
“Meereen and Yunkai are rivals but not enemies, the Doom
destroyed Valyria, the folk of the eastern hinterlands are all
Ghiscari, and beyond the hills lies Lhazar. The Lamb Men, as your
Dothraki call them, a notably unwarlike people.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but north of the slave
cities is the Dothraki sea, and two dozen mighty khals who like
nothing more than sacking cities and carrying off their people into
slavery.”
“Carrying them off where? What good are slaves once
you’ve killed the slavers? Valyria is no more, Qarth lies
beyond the red waste, and the Nine Free Cities are thousands of
leagues to the west. And you may be sure the sons of the harpy give
lavishly to every passing khal, just as the magisters do in Pentos
and Norvos and Myr. They know that if they feast the horselords and
give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It’s cheaper than
fighting, and a deal more certain.” Cheaper than fighting, Dany thought. Yes, it might be. If only
it could be that easy for her. How pleasant it would be to sail to
King’s Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a
chest of gold to make him go away.
“Khaleesi?” Ser Jorah prompted, when she had been
silent for a long time. He touched her elbow lightly.
Dany shrugged him off . “Viserys would have bought as many
Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like
Rhaegar . . . ”
“I remember, Daenerys.”
“Your Grace,” she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar
led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his
squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”
“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood
from the Prince of Dragonstone.”
“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder
with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the
weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the
Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our
dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in
Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid
for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited
for an answer.
“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you
say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle,
he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His
blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and
Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne.
Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought
honorably. And Rhaegar died.”