Part 3 (2/2)

aAnd if we come upon the captain?a asked the Widower. Daario Naharis. aGive him a sword and follow him.a Though Barristan Selmy had little love and less trust for the queenas paramour, he did not doubt his courage, nor his skill at arms. And if he should die heroically in battle, so much the better. aIf there are no further questions, go back to your men and say a prayer to whatever G.o.d you believe in. Dawn will be on us soon.a aA red dawn,a said Jokin of the Stormcrows. A dragon dawn, thought Ser Barristan.

He had done his own praying earlier, as his squires helped him don his armor. His G.o.ds were far away across the sea in Westeros, but if the septons told it true, the Seven watched over their children wherever they might wander. Ser Barristan had said a prayer to the Crone, beseeching her to grant him a little of her wisdom, so that he might lead his men to victory. To his old friend the Warrior he prayed for strength. He asked the Mother for her mercy, should he fall. The Father he entreated to watch over his lads, these half-trained squires who were the closest things to sons that he would ever know. Finally he had bowed his head to the Stranger. aYou come for all men in the end,a he had prayed, abut if it please you, spare me and mine today, and gather up the spirits of our foes instead.

Out beyond the city walls, the distant thump of a trebuchet releasing could be heard. Dead men and body parts came spinning down out of the night. One crashed amongst the pit fighters, showering them with bits of bone and brain and flesh. Another bounced off the Chainmakeras weathered bronze head and tumbled down his arm to land with a wet splat at his feet. A swollen leg splashed in a puddle not three yards from where Selmy sat waiting on his queenas horse.

aThe pale mare,a murmured Tumco Lho. His voice was thick, his dark eyes s.h.i.+ny in his black face. Then he said something in the tongue of the Basilisk Isles that might have been a prayer. He fears the pale mare more than he fears our foes, Ser Barristan realized. His other lads were frightened too. Brave as they might be, not one was blooded yet.

He wheeled his silver mare about. aGather round me, men.a When they edged their horses closer, he said, aI know what you are feeling. I have felt the same myself, a hundred times. Your breath is coming faster than it should. In your belly a knot of fear coils like a cold black worm. You feel as though you need to empty your bladder, maybe move your bowels. Your mouth is dry as the sands of Dorne. What if you shame yourself out there, you wonder? What if you forget all your training? You yearn to be a hero, but deep down inside you fear you might be craven. Every boy feels the same way on the eve of battle. Aye, and grown men as well. Those Stormcrows over there are feeling the same thing. So are the Dothraki. There is no shame in fear, unless you let it master you. We all taste terror in our time.a aI am not afraid.a The Red Lambas voice was loud, almost to the point of shouting. aShould I die, I will go before the Great Shepherd of Lhazar, break his crook across my knee, and say to him, aWhy did you make your people , when the world is full of wolves?a Then I will spit into his eye.a Ser Barristan smiled. aWell said a but take care that you do not seek death out there, or you will surely find it. The Stranger comes for all of us, but we need not rush into his arms. Whatever might befall us on the battlefield, remember, it has happened before, and to better men than you. I am an old man, an old knight, and I have seen more battles than most of you have years. Nothing is more terrible upon this earth, nothing more glorious, nothing more absurd. You may retch. You will not be the first. You may drop your sword, your s.h.i.+eld, your lance. Others have done the same. Pick it up and go on fighting. You may foul your breeches. I did, in my first battle. No one will care. All battlefields smell of s.h.i.+t. You may cry out for your mother, pray to G.o.ds you thought you had forgotten, howl obscenities that you never dreamed could pa.s.s your lips. All this has happened too. Some men die in every battle. More survive. East or west, in every inn and wine sink, you will find greybeards endlessly refighting the wars of their youth. They survived their battles. So may you. This you can be certain of: the foe you see before you is just another man, and like as not he is as frightened as you. Hate him if you must, love him if you can, but lift your sword and bring it down, then ride on. Above all else, keep moving. We are too few to win the battle. We ride to make chaos, to buy the Unsullied time enough to make their spear wall, wea”a aSer?a Larraq pointed with the Kingsguard banner, even as a wordless murmur went up from a thousand pairs of lips. Far across the city, where the shadowed steps of Meereenas Great Pyramid shouldered eight hundred feet into a starless sky, a fire had awoken where once the harpy stood. A yellow spark at the apex of the pyramid, it glimmered and was gone again, and for half a heartbeat Ser Barristan was afraid the wind had blown it out. Then it returned, brighter, fiercer, the flames swirling, now yellow, now red, now orange, reaching up, clawing at the dark. Away to the east, dawn was breaking behind the hills. Another thousand voices were exclaiming now. Another thousand men were looking, pointing, donning their helms, reaching for their swords and axes. Ser Barristan heard the rattle of chains. That was the portcullis coming up. Next would come the groan of the gateas huge iron hinges. It was time.

The Red Lamb handed him his winged helm. Barristan Selmy slipped it down over his head, fastened it to his gorget, pulled up his s.h.i.+eld, slipped his arm inside the straps. The air tasted strangely sweet. There was nothing like the prospect of death to make a man feel alive.

aMay the Warrior protect us all,a he told his lads. aSound the attack.a TYRION.

Somewhere off in the far distance, a dying man was screaming for his mother. ”To horse!' a man was yelling in Ghiscari, in the next camp to the north of the Second Sons. ”To horse! To horse!” High and shrill, his voice carried a long way in the morning air, far beyond his own encampment. Tyrion knew just enough Ghiscari to understand the words, but the fear in his voice would have been plain in any tongue. I know how he feels.

It was time to find his own horse, he knew. Time to don some dead boyas armor, buckle on a sword and dagger, slip his dinted greathelm down over his head. Dawn had broken, and a sliver of the rising sun was visible behind the city's walls and towers, blindingly bright. To the west the stars were fading, one by one. Trumpets were blowing along the Skahazadhan, warhorns answering from the walls of Meereen. A s.h.i.+p was sinking in the river mouth, afire. Dead men and dragons were moving through the sky, whilst wars.h.i.+ps crashed and clashed on Slaver's Bay. Tyrion could not see them from here, but he could hear the sounds: the crash of hull against hull as s.h.i.+ps slammed together, the deep-throated warhorns of the ironborn and queer high whistles of Garth, the splintering of oars, the shouts and battle cries, the crash of axe on armor, sword on s.h.i.+eld, all mingled with the shrieks of wounded men. Many of the s.h.i.+ps were still far out in the bay, so the sounds they made seemed faint and far away, but he knew them all the same. The music of slaughter.

Three hundred yards from where he stood rose the Wicked ' Sister, her long arm swinging up with a clutch of corpses a”chunk - THUMPa” and there they flew, naked and swollen, pale dead birds tumbling boneless through the air. The siege camps s.h.i.+mmered in a gaudy haze of rose and gold, but the famous stepped pyramids of Meereen hulked black against the glare. Something was moving atop one of therm he saw. A dragon, but which one? At this distance, it could as easily have been an eagle. A very big eagle.

After days spent hidden inside musty tents of the Second Sons, the outside air smelled fresh and clear. Though he could not see the bay from where he stood, the tang of salt told him it was near Tyrion filled his lungs with it. A fine day for a battle. From the east the sound of drumming rolled across the parched plain. A column of mounted men flashed Mt the Harridan. flvino the blue banners of the Windblown.

A younger man might have found it all exhilarating. A stupider man might have thought it grand and glorious, right up to the moment when some a.r.s.e-ugly Yunkish slave soldier with rings in his nipples planted an axe between his eyes. Trion Lannister knew better. The G.o.ds did not fas.h.i.+on me to wield a sword, he thought, so why do they keep putting me in the midst of battles?

No one heard. No one answered. No one cared.

Tyrion found himself thinking back on his first battle. Shae had been the first to stir. woken by his father's trumpets. The sweet strumpet who'd pleasured him for half the night had trembled naked in his arms, a frightened child. Or was all that a lie as well, a ploy she used to make me feel brave and brilliant? What a mummer she might have been. When Tyrion had shouted out for Podrick Payne to help him with his armor, he'd found the boy asleep and snoring. Not the quickest lad I've ever known, but a decent squire in the end. I hope he found a better man to serve.

It was queer, but Tyrion remembered the Green Fork much better than the Blackwater. It was my first. You never forget your first He remembered the fog drifting off the river, wending through the reeds like pale white fingers. And the beauty of that sunrise, he remembered that as well: stars strewn across a purple sky, the gra.s.s glittering like gla.s.s with the morning dew. red splendor in the east. He remembered the touch of Shae's lingers as she helped Pod with Tyrion's mismatched armor. That b.l.o.o.d.y helm. Like a bucket with a spike. That spike had saved him, though, had won him his first victory, but Groat and Penny had never looked half as silly as he must have looked a that day. Shae had called him 'fearsome” when she saw him in his steel, mind you. How could I have been so blind, so deaf, so stupid? I should have known better than to do my thinking with my c.o.c.k.

The Second Sons were saddling their horses. They went about it calmly, unhurriedly, efficiently: it was nothing they had not done a hundred times before. A few of them were pa.s.sing a skin from hand to hand though whether it was wine or water he could not say. Bokkoko was kissing his lover shamelessly, kneading the boy's b.u.t.tocks with one huge hand, the other tangled in his hair. Behind them, Ser Garibald was brus.h.i.+ng out the mane of his big gelding. Kem sat on a rock, gazing at the ground... remembering his dead brother, perhaps. or dreaming of that friend back in King's Landing. Hammer and Nail moved from man to man, checking spears and swords, adjusting armor, putting an edge on any blade that needed it. s.n.a.t.c.h chewed his sourleaf, making j.a.pes and scratching at his b.a.l.l.s with his hook hand. Something about his manner reminded Tyrion of Bronn. Ser Bronn of the Blackwater now, unless my sister's killed him. That might not be quite so simple as she thinks. He wondered how many battles these Second Sons had fought. How many skirmishes, how many raids? How many cities have they stormed, how many brothers have they buried or left behind to rot? Compared to them, Tyrion was a green boy, still untested, though he had counted more years than half the company.

This would be his third battle. Seasoned and blooded, stamped and sealed, a proven warrior, that's me. I've killed some men and wounded others, taken wounds myself and lived to tell of them. I've led charges, heard men scream my name, cut down bigger men and better, even had a few small tastes of glory... and wasn't that a fine rich wine for heroes, and wouldn't I like another taste? Yet with all he'd done and all he'd seen, the prospect of another battle made his blood run cold. He had traveled across half the world by way of palanquin, poleboaL and pig, sailed in slave s.h.i.+ps and trading galleys, mounted wh.o.r.es and horses, all the time telling himself that he did not care whether he lived or died... only to find that he cared quite a lot after all.

The Stranger had mounted his pale mare and was riding toward them with his sword in hand, but Tyrion Lannister did not care to meet with him again. Not now. Not yet. Not this day. What a fraud you are, Imp. You let a hundred guardsmen rape your wife, shot your father through the belly with a quarrel, twisted a golden chain around your lover's throat until her face turned black yet somehow you still think that you deserve to live.

Penny was already in her armor when Tyrion slipped back inside the tent they shared. She had been strapping herself into wooden plate for years in service to her mummery; real plate and mail were not so different once you mastered all the clasps and buckles. And if the company steel was dinted here and rusted there, scratched and stained and discolored, no matter. It should still be good enough to stop a sword.

The only piece she had not donned was her helm. When he entered, she looked up. ”You're not armored. What's happening?”

”The usual things. Mud and blood and heroism, killing and dying. There's one battle being fought out on the bay, another one beneath the city walls. Whichever way the Yunkish turn. they have a foe behind them. The closest fighting's a good league off still, but we'll be in it soon.” On one side or the other. The Second Sons were ripe for another change of masters, Tyrion was almost certain of that... though there was a great abyss between ”certain” and ”almost certain.' If I have misjudged my man, all of us are lost. 'Put on your helm and make sure the clasps are closed. I took mine off once to keep from drowning, and it cost me a nose.” Tyrion picked at his scar.

”We need to get you into your armor first.”

”If you wish. The jerkin first. The boiled leather, with the iron studs. Ringmail over that, then the gorget.” He glanced about the tent. ”Is there wine?”

”No.”

”We had half a flagon left from supper.”

”A quarter of a flagon, and you drank it.”

He sighed. ”I would sell my sister for a cup of wine.”

”You would sell your sister for a cup of horse p.i.s.s.” That was so unexpected that it made him laugh aloud. ”Is my taste for horse p.i.s.s so well-known or have you met my sister?”

”I only saw her that one time, when we jousted for the boy king. Groat thought she was beautiful.”

Groat was a stunted little lickspittle with a stupid name. ”Only a fool rides into battle sober. Plumm will have some wine. What if he dies in the battle? It would be a crime to waste it.”

”Hold your tongue. I need to lace this jerkin up.”

Tyrion did try, but it seemed to him that the sounds of slaughter were growing louder, and his tongue would not be held. ”Pudding Face wants to use the company to throw the ironmen back into the sea.” he heard himself telling Penny. as she dressed him. ”What he should have done was send all his horse at the eunuchs, full charge, before they got ten feet from their gates. Send the Cats at them from the left, us and the Windblown from the right, rip apart their flanks from both ends. Man to man, the Unsullied are no better or worse than any other spearmen. It's their discipline that makes them dangerous, but if they cannot form up into a spear wall...”

”Lift your arms.” said Penny. 'There, that's better. Maybe you should command the Yunkishmen. ”

”They use slave soldiers, why not slave commanders? That would ruin the contest, though. This is just a cyva.s.se game to tho Wise Masters. We're the pieces.” Tyrion canted his head to ' ”One side, considering. 'They have that in common with my lord father. these slavers.” ”Your father? What do you mean?”

”I was just recalling my first battle. The Green Fork. We fought between a river and a road. When I saw my father's host deploy, .I remember thinking how beautiful it was. Like a flower opening its petals to the sun. A crimson rose with iron thorns. And my father, ah, he had never looked so resplendent. He wore crimson armor, with this huge greatcloak made of cloth-of-gold. A pair of golden lions on his shoulders, another on his helm. His stallion was magnificent. His lords.h.i.+p watched the whole battle from atop that horse and never got within a hundred yards of any foe. He never moved, never smiled, never broke a sweat, whilst thousands died below him. Picture me perched on a camp stool, gazing down upon a cyva.s.se board. We could almost be twinsa If I had a horse, some crimson armor, and a greatcloak sewn from cloth-of-gold. He was taller too. I have more hair.”

Penny kissed him.

She moved so fast that he had no time to think. She darted in, quick as a bird, and pressed her lips to his. Just as quickly it was over. What was that for? he almost said, but he knew what it was for. Thank you, he might have said, but she might take that as leave to do it again. Child, I have no wish to hurt you, he could have tried, but Penny was no child, and his wishes would not blunt the cut. For the first time for longer than he cared to think. Tyrion Lannister was at a loss for words.

She looks so young, he thought. A girl, that's all she is. A girl, and almost pretty if you can forget that she's a dwarf. Her hair was a warm brown, thick and curly, and her eyes were large and trusting. Too trusting.

”Do you hear that sound? ” said Tyrion.

She listened. ”What is it?” she said as she was strapping a pair of mismatched greaves onto his stunted legs.

”War. On either side of us and not a league away. That's slaughter, Penny. That's men stumbling through the mud with their entrails hanging out. That's severed limbs and broken bones and pools of blood. You know how the worms come out after a hard rain? I hear they do the same after a big battle if enough blood soaks into the ground. That's the Stranger coming. Penny. The Black Goat. the Pale Child, Him of Many Faces, call him what you will. That's death.”

”You're scaring me. ”

”Am I? Good. You should be scared. We have ironborn swarming ash.o.r.e and Ser Barristan and his Unsullied pouring out the city gates, with us between them, fighting on the wrong b.l.o.o.d.y side. I am terrified myself.”

'''You say that, but you still make j.a.pes. ”

”j.a.pes are one way to keep the fear away. Wine's another.”

”You're brave. Little people can be brave.”

My giant of Lannister, he heard. She is mocking me. He almost . slapped her again. His head was pounding.

”I never meant to make you angry; Penny said 'Forgive me. I'm frightened, is all.” She touched his hand.

Tyrion wrenched away from her. ”Iam frightened.” Those were the same words Shae had used. Her eyes were big as eggs, and I swallowed every bit of it. I knew what she was. I told Bronn to find a woman for me and he brought me Shae. His hands curled into fists, and Shae's face swam before him, grinning. Then the chain was tightening about her throat, the golden hands digging I deep into her flesh as her own hands fluttered against his face with all the force of b.u.t.terflies. If he'd had a chain to hand... if he'd had a crossbow, a dagger, anything, he would have.., he might have... he...

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