Meereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her
sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been
red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors.
Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair,
studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at
every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the
top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall
with a towering bronze harpy at its top.
“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said
when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a
chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their
walls.”
But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored
in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose
striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from
the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet
long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased
and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and
forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging
the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single
combat.
Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they
almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told
them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly,
no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and
Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable
to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts
too.
“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they
watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride
back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no
harm.”
“He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars
are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal
strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the
other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men
and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”
Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what
sort of seed would that plant?”
“A man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”
“We’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates
will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for
naught?”
“For honor, I would say.”
“I have heard enough.” Dany did not need their
squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her.
Meereen posed dangers far more serious than one pink-and-white hero
shouting insults, and she could not let herself be distracted. Her
host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer
than a quarter of them were soldiers. The
rest . . . well, Ser Jorah called them mouths
with feet, and soon they would be starving.
The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s
advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not
harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at
every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every
milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still
living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always
outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario
had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had
to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told.
“I will see them,” she said. “I will see every
one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will
remember.”
By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast
beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I
will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more.
The pink-and-white hero taunted the besiegers for an hour,
mocking their manhood, mothers, wives, and gods. Meereen’s
defenders cheered him on from the city walls. “His name is
Oznak zo Pahl,” Brown Ben Plumm told her when he arrived for
the war council. He was the new commander of the Second Sons,
chosen by a vote of his fellow sellswords. “I was bodyguard
to his uncle once, before I joined the Second Sons. The Great
Masters, what a ripe lot o’ maggots. The women weren’t
so bad, though it was worth your life to look at the wrong one the
wrong way. I knew a man, Scarb, this Oznak cut his liver out.
Claimed to be defending a lady’s honor, he did, said Scarb had raped her with
his eyes. How do you rape a wench with eyes, I ask you? But his
uncle is the richest man in Meereen and his father commands the
city guard, so I had to run like a rat before he killed me
too.”
They watched Oznak zo Pahl dismount his white charger, undo his
robes, pull out his manhood, and direct a stream of urine in the
general direction of the olive grove where Dany’s gold
pavilion stood among the burnt trees. He was still pissing when
Daario Naharis rode up, arakh in hand. “Shall I cut that off
for you and stuff it down his mouth, Your Grace?” His tooth
shone gold amidst the blue of his forked beard.
“It’s his city I want, not his meager
manhood.” She was growing angry, however. If I ignore this
any longer, my own people will think me weak. Yet who could she
send? She needed Daario as much as she did her bloodriders. Without
the flamboyant Tyroshi, she had no hold on the Stormcrows, many of
whom had been followers of Prendahl na Ghezn and Sallor the
Bald.
High on the walls of Meereen, the jeers had grown louder, and
now hundreds of the defenders were taking their lead from the hero
and pissing down through the ramparts to show their contempt for
the besiegers. They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they
fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were
a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates.
“This challenge must be met,” Arstan said again.
“It will be.” Dany said, as the hero tucked his
penis away again. “Tell Strong Belwas I have need of
him.”
They found the huge brown eunuch sitting in the shade of her
pavilion, eating a sausage. He finished it in three bites, wiped
his greasy hands clean on his trousers, and sent Arstan Whitebeard
to fetch him his steel. The aged squire honed Belwas’s arakh
every evening and rubbed it down with bright red oil.
When Whitebeard brought the sword, Strong Belwas squinted down
the edge, grunted, slid the blade back into its leather sheath, and
tied the swordbelt about his vast waist. Arstan had brought his
shield as well: a round steel disk no larger than a pie plate,
which the eunuch grasped with his off hand rather than strapping to
his forearm in the manner of Westeros. “Find liver and
onions, Whitebeard,” Belwas said. “Not for now, for
after. Killing makes Strong Belwas hungry.” He did not wait
for a reply, but lumbered from the olive grove toward Oznak zo
Pahl.
“Why that one, Khaleesi?” Rakharo demanded of her.
“He is fat and stupid.”
“Strong Belwas was a slave here in the fighting pits. If
this highborn Oznak should fall to such the Great Masters will be
shamed, while if he wins . . . well, it is a
poor victory for one so noble, one that Meereen can take no pride
in.” And unlike Ser Jorah, Daario, Brown Ben, and her three
bloodriders, the eunuch did not lead troops, plan battles, or give
her counsel. He does nothing but eat and boast and bellow at
Arstan. Belwas was the man she could most easily spare. And it was
time she learned what sort of protector Magister Illyrio had sent
her.
A thrum of excitement went through the siege lines when Belwas
was seen plodding toward the city, and from the walls and towers of
Meereen came shouts and jeers. Oznak zo Pahl mounted up again, and
waited, his striped lance held upright. The charger tossed his head
impatiently and pawed the sandy earth. As massive as he was, the
eunuch looked small beside the hero on his horse.
“A chivalrous man would dismount,” said Arstan.
Oznak zo Pahl lowered his lance and charged.
Belwas stopped with legs spread wide. In one hand was his small
round shield, in the other the curved arakh that Arstan tended with
such care. His great brown stomach and sagging chest were bare
above the yellow silk sash knotted about his waist, and he wore no
armor but his studded leather vest, so absurdly small that it did
not even cover his nipples. “We should have given him
chainmail,” Dany said, suddenly anxious.
“Mail would only slow him,” said Ser Jorah.
“They wear no armor in the fighting pits. It’s blood
the crowds come to see.”
Dust flew from the hooves of the white charger. Oznak thundered
toward Strong Belwas, his striped cloak streaming from his
shoulders. The whole city of Meereen seemed to be screaming him on.
The besiegers’ cheers seemed few and thin by comparison; her
Unsullied stood in silent ranks, watching with stone faces. Belwas
might have been made of stone as well. He stood in the
horse’s path, his vest stretched tight across his broad back.
Oznak’s lance was leveled at the center of his chest. Its
bright steel point winked in the sunlight. He’s going to be
impaled, she thought . . . as the eunuch spun
sideways. And quick as the blink of an eye the horseman was beyond
him, wheeling, raising the lance. Belwas made no move to strike at
him. The Meereenese on the walls screamed even louder. “What
is he doing?” Dany demanded.
“Giving the mob a show,” Ser Jorah said.
Oznak brought the horse around Belwas in a wide circle, then dug
in with his spurs and charged again. Again Belwas waited, then spun
and knocked the point of the lance aside. She could hear the
eunuch’s booming laughter echoing across the plain as the
hero went past him. “The lance is too long,” Ser Jorah
said. “All Belwas needs do is avoid the point. Instead of
trying to spit him so prettily, the fool should ride right over
him.”
Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see
plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight
might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a
Dothraki riding down a foe. The flat level ground allowed the
charger to get up a good speed, but it also made it easy for the
eunuch to dodge the cumbersome fourteen-foot lance.
Meereen’s pink-and-white hero tried to anticipate this
time, and swung his lance sideways at the last second to catch
Strong Belwas when he dodged. But the eunuch had anticipated too,
and this time he dropped down instead of spinning sideways. The
lance passed harmlessly over his head. And suddenly Belwas was
rolling, and bringing the razor-sharp arakh around in a silver arc.
They heard the charger scream as the blade bit into his legs, and
then the horse was falling, the hero tumbling from the saddle.
A sudden silence swept along the brick parapets of Meereen. Now
it was Dany’s people who were screaming and cheering.
Oznak leapt clear of his horse and managed to draw his sword
before Strong Belwas was on him. Steel sang against steel, too fast
and furious for Dany to follow the blows. It could not have been a
dozen heartbeats before Belwas’s chest was awash in blood
from a slice below his breasts, and Oznak zo Pahl had an arakh
planted right between his ram’s horns. The eunuch wrenched
the blade loose and parted the hero’s head from his body with
three savage blows to the neck. He held it up high for the
Meereenese to see, then flung it toward the city gates and let it
bounce and roll across the sand.
“So much for the hero of Meereen,” said Daario,
laughing.
“A victory without meaning,” Ser Jorah cautioned.
“We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a
time.”
“No,” Dany agreed, “but I’m pleased we
killed this one.”
The defenders on the walls began firing their crossbows at
Belwas, but the bolts fell short or skittered harmlessly along the
ground. The eunuch turned his back on the steel-tipped rain,
lowered his trousers, squatted, and shat in the direction of the
city. He wiped himself with Oznak’s striped cloak, and paused
long enough to loot the hero’s corpse and put the dying horse
out of his agony before trudging back to the olive grove.
The besiegers gave him a raucous welcome as soon as he reached
the camp. Her Dothraki hooted and screamed, and the Unsullied sent
up a great clangor by banging their spears against their shields.
“Well done,” Ser Jorah told him, and Brown Ben tossed
the eunuch a ripe plum and said, “A sweet fruit for a sweet
fight.” Even her Dothraki handmaids had words of praise.
“We would braid your hair and hang a bell in it, Strong
Belwas,” said Jhiqui, “but you have no hair to
braid.”
“Strong Belwas needs no tinkly bells.” The eunuch
ate Brown Ben’s plum in four big bites and tossed aside the
stone. “Strong Belwas needs liver and onions.”
“You shall have it,” said Dany. “Strong Belwas
is hurt.” His stomach was red with the blood sheeting down
from the meaty gash beneath his breasts.
“It is nothing. I let each man cut me once, before I kill
him.” He slapped his bloody belly. “Count the cuts and
you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.”
But Dany had lost Khal Drogo to a similar wound, and she was not
willing to let it go untreated. She sent Missandei to find a
certain Yunkish freedman renowned for his skill in the healing
arts. Belwas howled and complained, but Dany scolded him and called
him a big bald baby until he let the healer stanch the wound
with vinegar, sew it shut, and bind his chest with strips of
linen soaked in fire wine. Only then did she lead her captains and
commanders inside her pavilion for their council.
“I must have this city,” she told them, sitting
crosslegged on a pile of cushions, her dragons all about her. Irri
and Jhiqui poured wine. “Her granaries are full to bursting.
There are figs and dates and olives growing on the terraces of her
pyramids, and casks of salt fish and smoked meat buried in her
cellars.”
“And fat chests of gold, silver, and gemstones as
well,” Daario reminded them. “Let us not forget the
gemstones.”
“I’ve had a look at the landward walls, and I see no
point of weakness,” said Ser Jorah Mormont. “Given
time, we might be able to mine beneath a tower and make a breach,
but what do we eat while we’re digging? Our stores are all
but exhausted.”
“No weakness in the landward walls?” said Dany.
Meereen stood on a jut of sand and stone where the slow brown
Skahazadhan flowed into Slaver’s Bay. The city’s north
wall ran along the riverbank, its west along the bay shore.
“Does that mean we might attack from the river or the sea?
“
“With three ships? We’ll want to have Captain Groleo
take a good look at the wall along the river, but unless it’s
crumbling that’s just a wetter way to die.”
“What if we were to build siege towers? My brother Viserys
told tales of such, I know they can be made.”
“From wood, Your Grace,” Ser Jorah said. “The
slavers have burnt every tree within twenty leagues of here.
Without wood, we have no trebuchets to smash the walls, no ladders
to go over them, no siege towers, no turtles, and no rams. We can
storm the gates with axes, to be sure,
but . . . ”
“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?”
asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths?
The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook
your axemen where they stand.”
Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the
Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more
than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”
“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile.
“These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds
and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these
ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the
attempt.”
“You would die,” said Brown Ben. At Yunkai, when he
took command of the Second Sons, he claimed to be the veteran of a
hundred battles. “Though I will not say I fought bravely in
all of them. There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no
old bold sellswords.” She saw that it was true.
Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey
Worm. Perhaps we can starve the city out.”
Ser Jorah looked unhappy. “We’ll starve long before
they do, Your Grace. There’s no food here, nor fodder for our
mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen
shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep
wells. Already we’ve had reports of sickness in the camps,
fever and brownleg and three cases of the bloody flux. There will
be more if we remain. The slaves are weak from the
march.”
“Freedmen,” Dany corrected. “They are slaves
no longer.”
“Slave or free, they are hungry and they’ll soon be
sick. The city is better provisioned than we are, and can be
resupplied by water. Your three ships are not enough to deny them
access to both the river and the sea.”
“Then what do you advise, Ser Jorah?”
“You will not like it.”
“I would hear it all the same.”
“As you wish. I say, let this city be. You cannot free
every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in
Westeros.”
“I have not forgotten Westeros.” Dany dreamt of it
some nights, this fabled land that she had never seen. “If I
let Meereen’s old brick walls defeat me so easily, though,
how will I ever take the great stone castles of
Westeros?”
“As Aegon did,” Ser Jorah said, “with fire. By
the time we reach the Seven Kingdoms, your dragons will be grown.
And we will have siege towers and trebuchets as well, all the
things we lack here . . . but the way across
the Lands of the Long Summer is long and grueling, and there are
dangers we cannot know. You stopped at Astapor to buy an army, not
to start a war. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms,
my queen. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and march west for
Pentos.”
“Defeated?” said Dany, bristling.
“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are
defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.
Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my
blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the
food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is
known.”
“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.
“Not to me.” Dany set great store by Ser
Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than
she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their
posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms
pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no
food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”
“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed
themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes.
That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put
this scorched earth well behind us.”
Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the
red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again.
“No,” she said. “I will not march my people off
to die.” My children. “There must be some way into this
city.”
“I know a way.” Brown Ben Plumm stroked his speckled
grey-and-white beard. “Sewers.”
“Sewers? What do you mean?”
“Great brick sewers empty into the Skahazadhan, carrying
the city’s wastes. They might be a way in, for a few. That
was how I escaped Meereen, after Scarb lost his head.” Brown
Ben made a face. “The smell has never left me. I dream of it
some nights.”
Ser Jorah looked dubious. “Easier to go out than in, it
would seem to me. These sewers empty into the river, you say? That
would mean the mouths are right below the walls.”
“And closed with iron grates,” Brown Ben admitted,
“though some have rusted through, else I would have drowned
in shit. Once inside, it is a long foul climb in pitch-dark through
a maze of brick where a man could lose himself forever. The filth
is never lower than waist high, and can rise over your head from
the stains I saw on the walls. There’s things down there too.
Biggest rats you ever saw, and worse things. Nasty.”
Daario Naharis laughed. “As nasty as you, when you came
crawling out? If any man were fool enough to try this, every slaver
in Meereen would smell them the moment they emerged.”
Brown Ben shrugged. “Her Grace asked if there was a way
in, so I told her . . . but Ben Plumm
isn’t going down in them sewers again, not for all the gold
in the Seven Kingdoms. If there’s others want to try it,
though, they’re welcome.”
Aggo, Jhogo, and Grey Worm all tried to speak at once, but Dany
raised her hand for silence. “These sewers do not sound
promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the
sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no
less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were
horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on
the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a
slender hope? “I must think on this some more. Return to your
duties.”
Her captains bowed and left her with her handmaids and her
dragons. But as Brown Ben was leaving, Viserion spread his pale
white wings and flapped lazily at his head. One of the wings
buffeted the sellsword in his face. The white dragon landed
awkwardly with one foot on the man’s head and one on his
shoulder, shrieked, and flew off again. “He likes you, Ben
“ said Dany.
“And well he might.” Brown Ben laughed. “I
have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know.”
“You?” Dany was startled. Plumm was a creature of
the free companies, an amiable mongrel. He had a broad brown face
with a broken nose and a head of nappy grey hair, and his Dothraki
mother had bequeathed him large, dark, almond-shaped eyes. He
claimed to be part Braavosi, part Summer Islander, part Ibbenese,
part Qohorik, part Dothraki, part Dornish, and part Westerosi, but
this was the first she had heard of Targaryen blood. She gave him a
searching look and said, “How could that be?”
“Well,” said Brown Ben, “there was some old
Plumm in the Sunset Kingdoms who wed a dragon princess. My
grandmama told me the tale. He lived in King Aegon’s
day.”
“Which King Aegon?” Dany asked. “Five Aegons
have ruled in Westeros.” Her brother’s son would have
been the sixth, but the Usurper’s men had dashed his head
against a wall.
“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could
not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though,
must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the
land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a
cock six foot long.”
The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed.
“You mean inches, I think.”
“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was
inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your
Grace.”
Dany giggled like a little girl. “Did your grandmother
claim she’d actually seen this prodigy?”
“That the old crone never did. She was half-Ibbenese and
half-Qohorik, never been to Westeros, my grandfather must have told
her. Some Dothraki killed him before I was born.”
“And where did your grandfather’s knowledge come
from?”
“One of them tales told at the teat, I’d
guess.” Brown Ben shrugged. “That’s all I know
about Aegon the Unnumbered or old Lord Plumm’s mighty
manhood, I fear. I best see to my Sons.”
“Go do that,” Dany told him.
When Brown Ben left, she lay back on her cushions. “If you
were grown,” she told Drogon, scratching him between the
horns, “I’d fly you over the walls and melt that harpy
down to slag.” But it would be years before her dragons were
large enough to ride. And when they are, who shall ride them? The
dragon has three heads, but I have only one. She thought of Daario.
If ever there was a man who could rape a woman with his
eyes . . .
To be sure, she was just as guilty. Dany found herself stealing
looks at the Tyroshi when her captains came to council, and
sometimes at night she remembered the way his gold tooth glittered
when he smiled. That, and his eyes. His bright blue eyes. On the
road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of
some plant every evening when he made his
report . . . to help her learn the land, he
said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace,
daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s
gold . . . He tried to spare me the sight of
the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant
it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never
did.
Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed
Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. The
thought was exciting and disturbing, both at once. It is too great
a risk. The Tyroshi sellsword was not a good man, no one needed to
tell her that. Under the smiles and the jests he was dangerous,
even cruel. Sallor and Prendahl had woken one morning as his
partners; that very night he’d given her their heads. Khal
Drogo could be cruel as well, and there was never a man more
dangerous. She had come to love him all the same. Could I love
Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that
make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry,
she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two
husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it.
But these were foolish thoughts. She had a city to take, and
dreaming of kisses and some sellsword’s bright blue eyes
would not help her breach the walls of Meereen. I am the blood of
the dragon, Dany reminded herself. Her thoughts were spinning in
circles, like a rat chasing its tail. Suddenly she could not stand
the close confines of the pavilion another moment. I want to feel
the wind on my face, and smell the sea. “Missandei,”
she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as
well.”
The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I
summon your bloodriders to guard you?”
“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the
camps.” She had no enemies among her children. And the old
squire would not talk too much as Belwas would, or look at her like
Daario.
The grove of burnt olive trees in which she’d raised her
pavilion stood beside the sea, between the Dothraki camp and that
of the Unsullied. When the horses had been saddled, Dany and her
companions set out along the shoreline, away from the city. Even
so, she could feel Meereen at her back, mocking her. When she
looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing
off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the
slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on
lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such
delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild
anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore.
As they rode past the stakes and pits that surrounded the eunuch
encampment, Dany could hear Grey Worm and his sergeants running one
company through a series of drills with shield, shortsword, and
heavy spear. Another company was bathing in the sea, clad only in
white linen breechclouts. The eunuchs were very clean, she had
noticed. Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed
or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, but
the Unsullied bathed each evening, even if they’d marched all
day. When no water was available they cleansed themselves with
sand, the Dothraki way.
The eunuchs knelt as she passed, raising clenched fists to their
breasts. Dany returned the salute. The tide was coming in, and the
surf foamed about the feet of her silver. She could see her ships
standing out to sea. Balerion floated nearest; the great cog once
known as Saduleon, her sails furled. Further out were the galleys
Meraxes and Vhagar, formerly Joso’s Prank and Summer Sun.
They were Magister Illyrio’s ships, in truth, not hers at
all, and yet she had given them new names with hardly a thought.
Dragon names, and more; in old Valyria before the Doom, Balerion,
Meraxes, and Vhagar had been gods.
South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing
eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more
chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could
with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized
the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one
drilling here. They passed a driftwood fire where a hundred people
had gathered to roast the carcass of a horse. She could smell the
meat and hear the fat sizzling as the spit boys turned, but the
sight only made her frown.
Children ran behind their horses, skipping and laughing. Instead
of salutes, voices called to her on every side in a babble of
tongues. Some of the freedmen greeted her as “Mother,”
while others begged for boons or favors. Some prayed for strange
gods to bless her, and some asked her to bless them instead. She
smiled at them, turning right and left, touching their hands when
they raised them, letting those who knelt reach up to touch her
stirrup or her leg. Many of the freedmen believed there was good
fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch
me, she thought. There are hard trials yet
ahead . . .
Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the
Mother of Dragons to name her baby when someone reached up and
grabbed her left wrist. Turning, she glimpsed a tall ragged man
with a shaved head and a sunburnt face. “Not so hard,”
she started to say, but before she could finish he’d yanked
her bodily from the saddle. The ground came up and knocked the
breath from her, as her silver whinnied and backed away. Stunned,
Dany rolled to her side and pushed herself onto one
elbow . . .
. . . and then she saw the sword.
“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said.
“I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one
day.” His head was bald as a melon, his nose red and peeling,
but she knew that voice and those pale green eyes. “I’m
going to start by cutting off your teats.” Dany was dimly
aware of Missandei shouting for help. A freedman edged forward, but
only a step. One quick slash, and he was on his knees, blood
running down his face. Mero wiped his sword on his breeches.
“Who’s next?”
“I am.” Arstan Whitebeard leapt from his horse and
stood over her, the salt wind riffling through his snowy hair, both
hands on his tall hardwood staff.
“Grandfather,” Mero said, “run off before I
break your stick in two and bugger you with—”
The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back,
and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have
believed. The Titan’s Bastard staggered back into the surf,
spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth.
Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old
man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero’s ribs,
sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping
cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The
moves were so fast she could hardly follow. Missandei was pulling
Dany to her feet when she heard a crack. She thought Arstan’s
staff had snapped until she saw the jagged bone jutting from
Mero’s calf. As he fell, the Titan’s Bastard twisted
and lunged, sending his point straight at the old man’s
chest. Whitebeard swept the blade aside almost contemptuously and
smashed the other end of his staff against the big man’s
temple. Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the
waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him
too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a
frenzy.
Dany turned away, sickened. She was more frightened now than
when it had been happening. He would have killed me.
“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man,
and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you.
I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and
hair.”
“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to
stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere. “Take me back to my
tent. Please.”
By the time Mormont arrived, she was huddled in her lion pelt,
drinking a cup of spice wine. “I had a look at the river
wall,” Ser Jorah started. “It’s a few feet higher
than the others, and just as strong. And the Meereenese have a
dozen fire hulks tied up beneath the ramparts—”
She cut him off. “You might have warned me that the
Titan’s Bastard had escaped.”
He frowned. “I saw no need to frighten you, Your Grace. I
have offered a reward for his head—”
“Pay it to Whitebeard. Mero has been with us all the way
from Yunkai. He shaved his beard off and lost himself amongst the
freedmen, waiting for a chance for vengeance. Arstan killed
him.”
Ser Jorah gave the old man a long look. “A squire with a
stick slew Mero of Braavos, is that the way of it?”
“A stick,” Dany confirmed, “but no longer a
squire. Ser Jorah, it’s my wish that Arstan be
knighted.”
“No.”
The loud refusal was surprise enough. Stranger still, it came
from both men at once.
Ser Jorah drew his sword. “The Titan’s Bastard was a
nasty piece of work. And good at killing. Who are you, old
man?”
“A better knight than you, ser,” Arstan said
coldly. Knight? Dany was confused. “You said you were a
squire.”
“I was, Your Grace.” He dropped to one knee.
“I squired for Lord Swann in my youth, and at Magister
Illyrio’s behest I have served Strong Belwas as well. But
during the years between, I was a knight in Westeros. I have told
you no lies, my queen. Yet there are truths I have withheld, and
for that and all my other sins I can only beg your
forgiveness.”
“What truths have you withheld?” Dany did not like
this. “You will tell me. Now.”
He bowed his head. “At Qarth, when you asked my name, I
said I was called Arstan. That much was true. Many men had called
me by that name while Belwas and I were making our way east to find
you. But it is not my true name.”
She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just
as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.
Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you
grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody
familiar . . . ”
“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight,
lost.
“I saw him perhaps a dozen
times . . . from afar most often, standing with
his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven
Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his
sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you
kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who
betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert
Baratheon.”
The old knight did not so much as blink. “The crow calls
the raven black, and you speak of betrayal.”
“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If
Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He
served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and
abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me
dead, he need only have stood
aside . . . “I want the whole truth now,
on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or
mine?”
“Yours, if you will have me.” Ser Barristan had
tears in his eyes. “I took Robert’s pardon, aye. I
served him in Kingsguard and council. Served with the Kingslayer
and others near as bad, who soiled the white cloak I wore. Nothing
will excuse that. I might be serving in King’s Landing still
if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it
shames me to admit. But when he took the cloak that the White Bull
had draped about my shoulders, and sent men to kill me that
selfsame day, it was as though he’d ripped a caul off my
eyes. That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his
service—”
“I can grant that wish,” Ser Jorah said darkly.
“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him
out.”
“It may be that I must die a traitor’s death,”
Ser Barristan said. “If so, I should not die alone. Before I
took Robert’s pardon I fought against him on the Trident. You
were on the other side of that battle, Mormont, were you
not?” He did not wait for an answer. “Your Grace, I am
sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from
learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother
was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst
I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And
since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by
your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for
gold and promises.” He cannot mean . . . “You are
mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him
he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell
him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red
waste . . . ” Her heart fluttered like a
bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it
wrong.”
“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his
longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start,
before I came to know you . . . before I came
to love . . . ”
“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him.
“How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was
it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice
more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were
promised?”
“Varys said . . . I might go
home.” He bowed his head. I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury.
Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat
the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and
belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was
there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are
all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my
dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as
Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”
Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked
his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”
“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears
on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth.
“The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever,
both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your
traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though.
They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You
go . . . ” My bear, my fierce strong bear,
what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s
friend. “You
go . . . go . . . ”
Where?
And then she knew.
Meereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her
sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been
red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors.
Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair,
studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at
every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the
top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall
with a towering bronze harpy at its top.
“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said
when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a
chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their
walls.”
But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored
in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose
striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from
the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet
long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased
and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and
forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging
the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single
combat.
Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they
almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told
them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly,
no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and
Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable
to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts
too.
“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they
watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride
back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no
harm.”
“He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars
are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal
strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the
other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men
and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”
Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what
sort of seed would that plant?”
“A man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”
“We’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates
will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for
naught?”
“For honor, I would say.”
“I have heard enough.” Dany did not need their
squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her.
Meereen posed dangers far more serious than one pink-and-white hero
shouting insults, and she could not let herself be distracted. Her
host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer
than a quarter of them were soldiers. The
rest . . . well, Ser Jorah called them mouths
with feet, and soon they would be starving.
The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s
advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not
harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at
every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every
milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still
living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always
outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario
had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had
to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told.
“I will see them,” she said. “I will see every
one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will
remember.”
By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast
beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I
will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more.
The pink-and-white hero taunted the besiegers for an hour,
mocking their manhood, mothers, wives, and gods. Meereen’s
defenders cheered him on from the city walls. “His name is
Oznak zo Pahl,” Brown Ben Plumm told her when he arrived for
the war council. He was the new commander of the Second Sons,
chosen by a vote of his fellow sellswords. “I was bodyguard
to his uncle once, before I joined the Second Sons. The Great
Masters, what a ripe lot o’ maggots. The women weren’t
so bad, though it was worth your life to look at the wrong one the
wrong way. I knew a man, Scarb, this Oznak cut his liver out.
Claimed to be defending a lady’s honor, he did, said Scarb had raped her with
his eyes. How do you rape a wench with eyes, I ask you? But his
uncle is the richest man in Meereen and his father commands the
city guard, so I had to run like a rat before he killed me
too.”
They watched Oznak zo Pahl dismount his white charger, undo his
robes, pull out his manhood, and direct a stream of urine in the
general direction of the olive grove where Dany’s gold
pavilion stood among the burnt trees. He was still pissing when
Daario Naharis rode up, arakh in hand. “Shall I cut that off
for you and stuff it down his mouth, Your Grace?” His tooth
shone gold amidst the blue of his forked beard.
“It’s his city I want, not his meager
manhood.” She was growing angry, however. If I ignore this
any longer, my own people will think me weak. Yet who could she
send? She needed Daario as much as she did her bloodriders. Without
the flamboyant Tyroshi, she had no hold on the Stormcrows, many of
whom had been followers of Prendahl na Ghezn and Sallor the
Bald.
High on the walls of Meereen, the jeers had grown louder, and
now hundreds of the defenders were taking their lead from the hero
and pissing down through the ramparts to show their contempt for
the besiegers. They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they
fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were
a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates.
“This challenge must be met,” Arstan said again.
“It will be.” Dany said, as the hero tucked his
penis away again. “Tell Strong Belwas I have need of
him.”
They found the huge brown eunuch sitting in the shade of her
pavilion, eating a sausage. He finished it in three bites, wiped
his greasy hands clean on his trousers, and sent Arstan Whitebeard
to fetch him his steel. The aged squire honed Belwas’s arakh
every evening and rubbed it down with bright red oil.
When Whitebeard brought the sword, Strong Belwas squinted down
the edge, grunted, slid the blade back into its leather sheath, and
tied the swordbelt about his vast waist. Arstan had brought his
shield as well: a round steel disk no larger than a pie plate,
which the eunuch grasped with his off hand rather than strapping to
his forearm in the manner of Westeros. “Find liver and
onions, Whitebeard,” Belwas said. “Not for now, for
after. Killing makes Strong Belwas hungry.” He did not wait
for a reply, but lumbered from the olive grove toward Oznak zo
Pahl.
“Why that one, Khaleesi?” Rakharo demanded of her.
“He is fat and stupid.”
“Strong Belwas was a slave here in the fighting pits. If
this highborn Oznak should fall to such the Great Masters will be
shamed, while if he wins . . . well, it is a
poor victory for one so noble, one that Meereen can take no pride
in.” And unlike Ser Jorah, Daario, Brown Ben, and her three
bloodriders, the eunuch did not lead troops, plan battles, or give
her counsel. He does nothing but eat and boast and bellow at
Arstan. Belwas was the man she could most easily spare. And it was
time she learned what sort of protector Magister Illyrio had sent
her.
A thrum of excitement went through the siege lines when Belwas
was seen plodding toward the city, and from the walls and towers of
Meereen came shouts and jeers. Oznak zo Pahl mounted up again, and
waited, his striped lance held upright. The charger tossed his head
impatiently and pawed the sandy earth. As massive as he was, the
eunuch looked small beside the hero on his horse.
“A chivalrous man would dismount,” said Arstan.
Oznak zo Pahl lowered his lance and charged.
Belwas stopped with legs spread wide. In one hand was his small
round shield, in the other the curved arakh that Arstan tended with
such care. His great brown stomach and sagging chest were bare
above the yellow silk sash knotted about his waist, and he wore no
armor but his studded leather vest, so absurdly small that it did
not even cover his nipples. “We should have given him
chainmail,” Dany said, suddenly anxious.
“Mail would only slow him,” said Ser Jorah.
“They wear no armor in the fighting pits. It’s blood
the crowds come to see.”
Dust flew from the hooves of the white charger. Oznak thundered
toward Strong Belwas, his striped cloak streaming from his
shoulders. The whole city of Meereen seemed to be screaming him on.
The besiegers’ cheers seemed few and thin by comparison; her
Unsullied stood in silent ranks, watching with stone faces. Belwas
might have been made of stone as well. He stood in the
horse’s path, his vest stretched tight across his broad back.
Oznak’s lance was leveled at the center of his chest. Its
bright steel point winked in the sunlight. He’s going to be
impaled, she thought . . . as the eunuch spun
sideways. And quick as the blink of an eye the horseman was beyond
him, wheeling, raising the lance. Belwas made no move to strike at
him. The Meereenese on the walls screamed even louder. “What
is he doing?” Dany demanded.
“Giving the mob a show,” Ser Jorah said.
Oznak brought the horse around Belwas in a wide circle, then dug
in with his spurs and charged again. Again Belwas waited, then spun
and knocked the point of the lance aside. She could hear the
eunuch’s booming laughter echoing across the plain as the
hero went past him. “The lance is too long,” Ser Jorah
said. “All Belwas needs do is avoid the point. Instead of
trying to spit him so prettily, the fool should ride right over
him.”
Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see
plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight
might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a
Dothraki riding down a foe. The flat level ground allowed the
charger to get up a good speed, but it also made it easy for the
eunuch to dodge the cumbersome fourteen-foot lance.
Meereen’s pink-and-white hero tried to anticipate this
time, and swung his lance sideways at the last second to catch
Strong Belwas when he dodged. But the eunuch had anticipated too,
and this time he dropped down instead of spinning sideways. The
lance passed harmlessly over his head. And suddenly Belwas was
rolling, and bringing the razor-sharp arakh around in a silver arc.
They heard the charger scream as the blade bit into his legs, and
then the horse was falling, the hero tumbling from the saddle.
A sudden silence swept along the brick parapets of Meereen. Now
it was Dany’s people who were screaming and cheering.
Oznak leapt clear of his horse and managed to draw his sword
before Strong Belwas was on him. Steel sang against steel, too fast
and furious for Dany to follow the blows. It could not have been a
dozen heartbeats before Belwas’s chest was awash in blood
from a slice below his breasts, and Oznak zo Pahl had an arakh
planted right between his ram’s horns. The eunuch wrenched
the blade loose and parted the hero’s head from his body with
three savage blows to the neck. He held it up high for the
Meereenese to see, then flung it toward the city gates and let it
bounce and roll across the sand.
“So much for the hero of Meereen,” said Daario,
laughing.
“A victory without meaning,” Ser Jorah cautioned.
“We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a
time.”
“No,” Dany agreed, “but I’m pleased we
killed this one.”
The defenders on the walls began firing their crossbows at
Belwas, but the bolts fell short or skittered harmlessly along the
ground. The eunuch turned his back on the steel-tipped rain,
lowered his trousers, squatted, and shat in the direction of the
city. He wiped himself with Oznak’s striped cloak, and paused
long enough to loot the hero’s corpse and put the dying horse
out of his agony before trudging back to the olive grove.
The besiegers gave him a raucous welcome as soon as he reached
the camp. Her Dothraki hooted and screamed, and the Unsullied sent
up a great clangor by banging their spears against their shields.
“Well done,” Ser Jorah told him, and Brown Ben tossed
the eunuch a ripe plum and said, “A sweet fruit for a sweet
fight.” Even her Dothraki handmaids had words of praise.
“We would braid your hair and hang a bell in it, Strong
Belwas,” said Jhiqui, “but you have no hair to
braid.”
“Strong Belwas needs no tinkly bells.” The eunuch
ate Brown Ben’s plum in four big bites and tossed aside the
stone. “Strong Belwas needs liver and onions.”
“You shall have it,” said Dany. “Strong Belwas
is hurt.” His stomach was red with the blood sheeting down
from the meaty gash beneath his breasts.
“It is nothing. I let each man cut me once, before I kill
him.” He slapped his bloody belly. “Count the cuts and
you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.”
But Dany had lost Khal Drogo to a similar wound, and she was not
willing to let it go untreated. She sent Missandei to find a
certain Yunkish freedman renowned for his skill in the healing
arts. Belwas howled and complained, but Dany scolded him and called
him a big bald baby until he let the healer stanch the wound
with vinegar, sew it shut, and bind his chest with strips of
linen soaked in fire wine. Only then did she lead her captains and
commanders inside her pavilion for their council.
“I must have this city,” she told them, sitting
crosslegged on a pile of cushions, her dragons all about her. Irri
and Jhiqui poured wine. “Her granaries are full to bursting.
There are figs and dates and olives growing on the terraces of her
pyramids, and casks of salt fish and smoked meat buried in her
cellars.”
“And fat chests of gold, silver, and gemstones as
well,” Daario reminded them. “Let us not forget the
gemstones.”
“I’ve had a look at the landward walls, and I see no
point of weakness,” said Ser Jorah Mormont. “Given
time, we might be able to mine beneath a tower and make a breach,
but what do we eat while we’re digging? Our stores are all
but exhausted.”
“No weakness in the landward walls?” said Dany.
Meereen stood on a jut of sand and stone where the slow brown
Skahazadhan flowed into Slaver’s Bay. The city’s north
wall ran along the riverbank, its west along the bay shore.
“Does that mean we might attack from the river or the sea?
“
“With three ships? We’ll want to have Captain Groleo
take a good look at the wall along the river, but unless it’s
crumbling that’s just a wetter way to die.”
“What if we were to build siege towers? My brother Viserys
told tales of such, I know they can be made.”
“From wood, Your Grace,” Ser Jorah said. “The
slavers have burnt every tree within twenty leagues of here.
Without wood, we have no trebuchets to smash the walls, no ladders
to go over them, no siege towers, no turtles, and no rams. We can
storm the gates with axes, to be sure,
but . . . ”
“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?”
asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths?
The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook
your axemen where they stand.”
Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the
Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more
than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”
“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile.
“These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds
and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these
ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the
attempt.”
“You would die,” said Brown Ben. At Yunkai, when he
took command of the Second Sons, he claimed to be the veteran of a
hundred battles. “Though I will not say I fought bravely in
all of them. There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no
old bold sellswords.” She saw that it was true.
Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey
Worm. Perhaps we can starve the city out.”
Ser Jorah looked unhappy. “We’ll starve long before
they do, Your Grace. There’s no food here, nor fodder for our
mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen
shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep
wells. Already we’ve had reports of sickness in the camps,
fever and brownleg and three cases of the bloody flux. There will
be more if we remain. The slaves are weak from the
march.”
“Freedmen,” Dany corrected. “They are slaves
no longer.”
“Slave or free, they are hungry and they’ll soon be
sick. The city is better provisioned than we are, and can be
resupplied by water. Your three ships are not enough to deny them
access to both the river and the sea.”
“Then what do you advise, Ser Jorah?”
“You will not like it.”
“I would hear it all the same.”
“As you wish. I say, let this city be. You cannot free
every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in
Westeros.”
“I have not forgotten Westeros.” Dany dreamt of it
some nights, this fabled land that she had never seen. “If I
let Meereen’s old brick walls defeat me so easily, though,
how will I ever take the great stone castles of
Westeros?”
“As Aegon did,” Ser Jorah said, “with fire. By
the time we reach the Seven Kingdoms, your dragons will be grown.
And we will have siege towers and trebuchets as well, all the
things we lack here . . . but the way across
the Lands of the Long Summer is long and grueling, and there are
dangers we cannot know. You stopped at Astapor to buy an army, not
to start a war. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms,
my queen. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and march west for
Pentos.”
“Defeated?” said Dany, bristling.
“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are
defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.
Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my
blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the
food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is
known.”
“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.
“Not to me.” Dany set great store by Ser
Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than
she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their
posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms
pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no
food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”
“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed
themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes.
That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put
this scorched earth well behind us.”
Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the
red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again.
“No,” she said. “I will not march my people off
to die.” My children. “There must be some way into this
city.”
“I know a way.” Brown Ben Plumm stroked his speckled
grey-and-white beard. “Sewers.”
“Sewers? What do you mean?”
“Great brick sewers empty into the Skahazadhan, carrying
the city’s wastes. They might be a way in, for a few. That
was how I escaped Meereen, after Scarb lost his head.” Brown
Ben made a face. “The smell has never left me. I dream of it
some nights.”
Ser Jorah looked dubious. “Easier to go out than in, it
would seem to me. These sewers empty into the river, you say? That
would mean the mouths are right below the walls.”
“And closed with iron grates,” Brown Ben admitted,
“though some have rusted through, else I would have drowned
in shit. Once inside, it is a long foul climb in pitch-dark through
a maze of brick where a man could lose himself forever. The filth
is never lower than waist high, and can rise over your head from
the stains I saw on the walls. There’s things down there too.
Biggest rats you ever saw, and worse things. Nasty.”
Daario Naharis laughed. “As nasty as you, when you came
crawling out? If any man were fool enough to try this, every slaver
in Meereen would smell them the moment they emerged.”
Brown Ben shrugged. “Her Grace asked if there was a way
in, so I told her . . . but Ben Plumm
isn’t going down in them sewers again, not for all the gold
in the Seven Kingdoms. If there’s others want to try it,
though, they’re welcome.”
Aggo, Jhogo, and Grey Worm all tried to speak at once, but Dany
raised her hand for silence. “These sewers do not sound
promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the
sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no
less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were
horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on
the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a
slender hope? “I must think on this some more. Return to your
duties.”
Her captains bowed and left her with her handmaids and her
dragons. But as Brown Ben was leaving, Viserion spread his pale
white wings and flapped lazily at his head. One of the wings
buffeted the sellsword in his face. The white dragon landed
awkwardly with one foot on the man’s head and one on his
shoulder, shrieked, and flew off again. “He likes you, Ben
“ said Dany.
“And well he might.” Brown Ben laughed. “I
have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know.”
“You?” Dany was startled. Plumm was a creature of
the free companies, an amiable mongrel. He had a broad brown face
with a broken nose and a head of nappy grey hair, and his Dothraki
mother had bequeathed him large, dark, almond-shaped eyes. He
claimed to be part Braavosi, part Summer Islander, part Ibbenese,
part Qohorik, part Dothraki, part Dornish, and part Westerosi, but
this was the first she had heard of Targaryen blood. She gave him a
searching look and said, “How could that be?”
“Well,” said Brown Ben, “there was some old
Plumm in the Sunset Kingdoms who wed a dragon princess. My
grandmama told me the tale. He lived in King Aegon’s
day.”
“Which King Aegon?” Dany asked. “Five Aegons
have ruled in Westeros.” Her brother’s son would have
been the sixth, but the Usurper’s men had dashed his head
against a wall.
“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could
not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though,
must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the
land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a
cock six foot long.”
The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed.
“You mean inches, I think.”
“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was
inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your
Grace.”
Dany giggled like a little girl. “Did your grandmother
claim she’d actually seen this prodigy?”
“That the old crone never did. She was half-Ibbenese and
half-Qohorik, never been to Westeros, my grandfather must have told
her. Some Dothraki killed him before I was born.”
“And where did your grandfather’s knowledge come
from?”
“One of them tales told at the teat, I’d
guess.” Brown Ben shrugged. “That’s all I know
about Aegon the Unnumbered or old Lord Plumm’s mighty
manhood, I fear. I best see to my Sons.”
“Go do that,” Dany told him.
When Brown Ben left, she lay back on her cushions. “If you
were grown,” she told Drogon, scratching him between the
horns, “I’d fly you over the walls and melt that harpy
down to slag.” But it would be years before her dragons were
large enough to ride. And when they are, who shall ride them? The
dragon has three heads, but I have only one. She thought of Daario.
If ever there was a man who could rape a woman with his
eyes . . .
To be sure, she was just as guilty. Dany found herself stealing
looks at the Tyroshi when her captains came to council, and
sometimes at night she remembered the way his gold tooth glittered
when he smiled. That, and his eyes. His bright blue eyes. On the
road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of
some plant every evening when he made his
report . . . to help her learn the land, he
said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace,
daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s
gold . . . He tried to spare me the sight of
the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant
it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never
did.
Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed
Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. The
thought was exciting and disturbing, both at once. It is too great
a risk. The Tyroshi sellsword was not a good man, no one needed to
tell her that. Under the smiles and the jests he was dangerous,
even cruel. Sallor and Prendahl had woken one morning as his
partners; that very night he’d given her their heads. Khal
Drogo could be cruel as well, and there was never a man more
dangerous. She had come to love him all the same. Could I love
Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that
make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry,
she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two
husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it.
But these were foolish thoughts. She had a city to take, and
dreaming of kisses and some sellsword’s bright blue eyes
would not help her breach the walls of Meereen. I am the blood of
the dragon, Dany reminded herself. Her thoughts were spinning in
circles, like a rat chasing its tail. Suddenly she could not stand
the close confines of the pavilion another moment. I want to feel
the wind on my face, and smell the sea. “Missandei,”
she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as
well.”
The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I
summon your bloodriders to guard you?”
“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the
camps.” She had no enemies among her children. And the old
squire would not talk too much as Belwas would, or look at her like
Daario.
The grove of burnt olive trees in which she’d raised her
pavilion stood beside the sea, between the Dothraki camp and that
of the Unsullied. When the horses had been saddled, Dany and her
companions set out along the shoreline, away from the city. Even
so, she could feel Meereen at her back, mocking her. When she
looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing
off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the
slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on
lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such
delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild
anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore.
As they rode past the stakes and pits that surrounded the eunuch
encampment, Dany could hear Grey Worm and his sergeants running one
company through a series of drills with shield, shortsword, and
heavy spear. Another company was bathing in the sea, clad only in
white linen breechclouts. The eunuchs were very clean, she had
noticed. Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed
or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, but
the Unsullied bathed each evening, even if they’d marched all
day. When no water was available they cleansed themselves with
sand, the Dothraki way.
The eunuchs knelt as she passed, raising clenched fists to their
breasts. Dany returned the salute. The tide was coming in, and the
surf foamed about the feet of her silver. She could see her ships
standing out to sea. Balerion floated nearest; the great cog once
known as Saduleon, her sails furled. Further out were the galleys
Meraxes and Vhagar, formerly Joso’s Prank and Summer Sun.
They were Magister Illyrio’s ships, in truth, not hers at
all, and yet she had given them new names with hardly a thought.
Dragon names, and more; in old Valyria before the Doom, Balerion,
Meraxes, and Vhagar had been gods.
South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing
eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more
chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could
with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized
the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one
drilling here. They passed a driftwood fire where a hundred people
had gathered to roast the carcass of a horse. She could smell the
meat and hear the fat sizzling as the spit boys turned, but the
sight only made her frown.
Children ran behind their horses, skipping and laughing. Instead
of salutes, voices called to her on every side in a babble of
tongues. Some of the freedmen greeted her as “Mother,”
while others begged for boons or favors. Some prayed for strange
gods to bless her, and some asked her to bless them instead. She
smiled at them, turning right and left, touching their hands when
they raised them, letting those who knelt reach up to touch her
stirrup or her leg. Many of the freedmen believed there was good
fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch
me, she thought. There are hard trials yet
ahead . . .
Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the
Mother of Dragons to name her baby when someone reached up and
grabbed her left wrist. Turning, she glimpsed a tall ragged man
with a shaved head and a sunburnt face. “Not so hard,”
she started to say, but before she could finish he’d yanked
her bodily from the saddle. The ground came up and knocked the
breath from her, as her silver whinnied and backed away. Stunned,
Dany rolled to her side and pushed herself onto one
elbow . . .
. . . and then she saw the sword.
“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said.
“I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one
day.” His head was bald as a melon, his nose red and peeling,
but she knew that voice and those pale green eyes. “I’m
going to start by cutting off your teats.” Dany was dimly
aware of Missandei shouting for help. A freedman edged forward, but
only a step. One quick slash, and he was on his knees, blood
running down his face. Mero wiped his sword on his breeches.
“Who’s next?”
“I am.” Arstan Whitebeard leapt from his horse and
stood over her, the salt wind riffling through his snowy hair, both
hands on his tall hardwood staff.
“Grandfather,” Mero said, “run off before I
break your stick in two and bugger you with—”
The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back,
and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have
believed. The Titan’s Bastard staggered back into the surf,
spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth.
Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old
man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero’s ribs,
sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping
cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The
moves were so fast she could hardly follow. Missandei was pulling
Dany to her feet when she heard a crack. She thought Arstan’s
staff had snapped until she saw the jagged bone jutting from
Mero’s calf. As he fell, the Titan’s Bastard twisted
and lunged, sending his point straight at the old man’s
chest. Whitebeard swept the blade aside almost contemptuously and
smashed the other end of his staff against the big man’s
temple. Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the
waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him
too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a
frenzy.
Dany turned away, sickened. She was more frightened now than
when it had been happening. He would have killed me.
“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man,
and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you.
I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and
hair.”
“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to
stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere. “Take me back to my
tent. Please.”
By the time Mormont arrived, she was huddled in her lion pelt,
drinking a cup of spice wine. “I had a look at the river
wall,” Ser Jorah started. “It’s a few feet higher
than the others, and just as strong. And the Meereenese have a
dozen fire hulks tied up beneath the ramparts—”
She cut him off. “You might have warned me that the
Titan’s Bastard had escaped.”
He frowned. “I saw no need to frighten you, Your Grace. I
have offered a reward for his head—”
“Pay it to Whitebeard. Mero has been with us all the way
from Yunkai. He shaved his beard off and lost himself amongst the
freedmen, waiting for a chance for vengeance. Arstan killed
him.”
Ser Jorah gave the old man a long look. “A squire with a
stick slew Mero of Braavos, is that the way of it?”
“A stick,” Dany confirmed, “but no longer a
squire. Ser Jorah, it’s my wish that Arstan be
knighted.”
“No.”
The loud refusal was surprise enough. Stranger still, it came
from both men at once.
Ser Jorah drew his sword. “The Titan’s Bastard was a
nasty piece of work. And good at killing. Who are you, old
man?”
“A better knight than you, ser,” Arstan said
coldly. Knight? Dany was confused. “You said you were a
squire.”
“I was, Your Grace.” He dropped to one knee.
“I squired for Lord Swann in my youth, and at Magister
Illyrio’s behest I have served Strong Belwas as well. But
during the years between, I was a knight in Westeros. I have told
you no lies, my queen. Yet there are truths I have withheld, and
for that and all my other sins I can only beg your
forgiveness.”
“What truths have you withheld?” Dany did not like
this. “You will tell me. Now.”
He bowed his head. “At Qarth, when you asked my name, I
said I was called Arstan. That much was true. Many men had called
me by that name while Belwas and I were making our way east to find
you. But it is not my true name.”
She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just
as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.
Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you
grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody
familiar . . . ”
“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight,
lost.
“I saw him perhaps a dozen
times . . . from afar most often, standing with
his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven
Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his
sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you
kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who
betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert
Baratheon.”
The old knight did not so much as blink. “The crow calls
the raven black, and you speak of betrayal.”
“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If
Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He
served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and
abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me
dead, he need only have stood
aside . . . “I want the whole truth now,
on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or
mine?”
“Yours, if you will have me.” Ser Barristan had
tears in his eyes. “I took Robert’s pardon, aye. I
served him in Kingsguard and council. Served with the Kingslayer
and others near as bad, who soiled the white cloak I wore. Nothing
will excuse that. I might be serving in King’s Landing still
if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it
shames me to admit. But when he took the cloak that the White Bull
had draped about my shoulders, and sent men to kill me that
selfsame day, it was as though he’d ripped a caul off my
eyes. That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his
service—”
“I can grant that wish,” Ser Jorah said darkly.
“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him
out.”
“It may be that I must die a traitor’s death,”
Ser Barristan said. “If so, I should not die alone. Before I
took Robert’s pardon I fought against him on the Trident. You
were on the other side of that battle, Mormont, were you
not?” He did not wait for an answer. “Your Grace, I am
sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from
learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother
was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst
I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And
since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by
your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for
gold and promises.” He cannot mean . . . “You are
mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him
he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell
him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red
waste . . . ” Her heart fluttered like a
bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it
wrong.”
“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his
longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start,
before I came to know you . . . before I came
to love . . . ”
“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him.
“How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was
it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice
more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were
promised?”
“Varys said . . . I might go
home.” He bowed his head. I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury.
Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat
the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and
belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was
there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are
all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my
dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as
Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”
Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked
his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”
“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears
on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth.
“The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever,
both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your
traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though.
They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You
go . . . ” My bear, my fierce strong bear,
what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s
friend. “You
go . . . go . . . ”
Where?
And then she knew.