Chapter Text
All eyes were on the dragon, all noses on the dwarf.
That was wrong, he knew. Battles should have proper smells: sweat and piss and sh*t. Even here and now, the air should be flavored with the smoke of burning ships, the stink of horseflesh, the rot of corpses. And the stench of fear. Fear of that green monster in the sky. Yet on this ride through the Yunkish camps, the Second Sons may as well have been trotting through a field of roses. The perfume was strong and heady, covering all that might have reeked foul. Tyrion Lannister would have pinched his nose shut, but he was short two good nostrils for that.
“I can scarce breathe, dwarf,” Bokkoko grumbled from up on his filly. “You’re going to give us away. Take that bloody thing off.”
“Do you prefer me bound and naked?” Despite the ropes around his wrists, Tyrion forced a grin. “Is this how you treat your boys?”
“You? I’d sooner bugger a dead mule.” The axeman’s visor was closed, but Tyrion knew he’d made a disgusted face. “Besides, you’re not naked. You still got that cloak.”
“This threadbare thing? How perilous to be one of your playthings. Do they all die unclad in the field?”
“What are you saying? I’ve never lost a lover in battle.” “What about Rutter?” asked Kem. “And Dornish Jon?”
“You know nothing. Rutter and Jon are running with the Ragged Standard.” “Not what I heard,” said Snatch.
“They say dead men sing no songs. No doubt dead arses sing even fewer. Believe whatever tale suits you, but what suits me is armor. While a stray co*ck would be a nuisance, a stray arrow would prove a far more lethal buggering. Why do you think I chose a breastplate that goes to my knees?”
The noble’s breastplate did not actually descend that low, but it was still enough to chafe him. The metal knocked on his upper legs with every step. Come the morrow, if he survived, he’d have a great blackened mark upon each thigh. Like a bruised apple, aye, but better to be a bruised apple than a wormy one.
It was a step up from the rusted chainmail he’d abandoned, anyway; this armor might even stop a sword. And it was beautiful to boot: a scene of passion between men and women and harpies, inlaid in jet and jade and mother-of-pearl. It would have been a crime to leave it behind. Only after Tyrion had donned it had he learned its true owner’s identity: a Yunkish noble the sellswords mocked as the Perfumed Hero. And it was ripe with the man. Mormont slew him, but his ghost lingers in the air. A haunting from beyond the grave … or the latrine, rather.
“I can’t smell anything,” Brown Ben said sternly. The captain of the Second Sons rode three lengths ahead of them, his helmed face turned toward the dragon. With his silk cloak billowing from his shoulders, he seemed almost lordly, or at least knightly. “Not that it matters one bit. As it happens, the Beastmaster lost a nephew at Daznak’s. He’ll be hard on the scent o’ vengeance, not perfume.”
So that’s the trestle this shaky table rests on. Vengeance. Blood for blood. Truth be told, Tyrion thought this whole scheme a very bad one, and he cursed his wits for failing to hatch something better. The Second Sons needed the dragon queen’s hostages as proof of their loyalty, or so he had convinced the sellswords. But how would they actually go about such a rescue?
Kem suggested they ride hard and fast, and take the Yunkish camp while they lunched. But that was a meal Brown Ben Plumm couldn’t stomach—it might cost them half the company and leave them with dead hostages besides. Uhlan favored stealth: a group could scale the walls, find the men, and sneak out without the slavers even knowing. But without the cover of darkness, their action would be madness, a madness for all to see. In the end, they opted for a gentler plan, Kasporio’s plan, the one he had put forward as a mere jest. They would saunter up and simply ask for the hostages. May the gods have mercy on fools.
And so the company rode through the Yunkish camps with willful leisure as battle raged both east and west. Ser Garibald trotted out in front, bearing the company’s broken-sword standard, grey on white. Next was Brown Ben Plumm, with a hastily sewn dragon banner stashed in his saddlebag for when the time was right. He was flanked by Kasporio and Inkpots, then his serjeants, with the rest of the five hundred Second Sons in tow. All were mounted save for Tyrion, Penny, and Mormont, their wrists tied loosely with hempen rope—they were escaped slaves, after all, and would need to play their part. The dwarf’s leash was tethered to the front of Bokkoko’s saddle, Penny’s to Uhlan’s, Ser Jorah’s to Snatch’s. Prisoners to be lumped in amongst the queen’s hostages, or so would run their story, and all condemned to execution … if they weren’t slain first. This was a battlefield, and their roles did not grant them helms, but Plumm had at least allowed them armor beneath their mummer’s cloaks.
Snatch coughed. “Should have bathed yourself in horse piss. Pig sh*t. Cow’s blood. Something.”
“Aye.” Uhlan had stuffed a handkerchief inside his visor. “Mayhaps the Beastmaster will keel over when he gets a whiff.”
“We’ll keep far back when we speak to him,” Kem said blithely. “How far can a man smell, anyway?”
“When you fart, I can smell it clear across camp,” Snatch retorted. A quip came to Tyrion. “That’s not a fart you smell, but rather—”
As sharp and sudden as a headsman’s axe, the sound of a horn fell upon them.
aaaaRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Bold and woeful was its blast, a wail that made Tyrion’s teeth rattle in his mouth. The noise seemed to lay upon all and sundry like one great funeral shroud.
aaaaRRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
The men cast searching looks off toward the bay. Where was its source? The ships? The armies on the shore? Was it from the Yunkish or the ironmen?
aaaaaaaRRREEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
The sound was despair, a scream so noxious that it seemed to fill the air with fumes, stinging the eyes. Tyrion Lannister closed his and waited for the blower to exhaust his breath, yet the note sustained itself on and on. It was a horn of pain, of regret, of sorrow. The wail of his mother as she lay dying in a bed of blood. The voice of his father chiding him, “You are no son of mine.” The whimper of his wife as the fifth guard took her by the neck and entered her.
Just when Tyrion felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare forever, the sound finally ceased.
For the briefest moment there was quiet, an eerie quiet, before the clamor of battle returned to the air. The clang of steel, the crash of hulls, the call of a dragon. Then, a chunk-THUMP.
“What madness was that?” Uhlan asked, giving voice to what all were thinking.
“Harpy’s Daughter,” Brown Ben Plumm said, playing their game from before. “I meant the—”
“I know what you meant!” There was anger in Plumm’s voice, to cover his dismay. “Pay it no mind. You think they’ll bring down the walls o’ Meereen with some horn? No. We keep moving.”
Keep moving. His uncle Gerion had said that to him once. Keep moving, Imp.
So they kept moving, from one towering sister toward another. It was the Harridan they neared, a trebuchet as familiar as calamity. Yezzan’s compound had been close by, and Tyrion had no desire to return to its shadow. The plan was not to go that far, only to the Beastmaster’s camp. But things always go awry, don’t they? Before this day was through, he could very well be launched through the air himself.
He tried to take his mind off his dim prospects by reading. He had no book to hand, but Tyrion saw each camp they passed as a page writ in wood, dirt, and canvas. A camp’s size, defenses, and manner of arrangement all bespoke its owner’s aptitude, his taste, his ability to lead. The most impressive by far was that of Ghazdor zo Ahlaq: neat circles of golden tents ringed by sharpened stakes of blackened olivewood and a deep ditch. The camp was prodigious, regal, even ostentatious, and he imagined Lord Wobblecheeks was much the same. The banner of House Ahlaq was in proud display atop a massive silken pavilion, though it would seem the man himself had gone, leading his soldiers to face the ironborn. His remaining guards and servants could still be seen, however, going about their business as though a battle weren’t raging all around them. It was a well-fed lot to be sure, well-armed too, impossibly attentive. His loyal subjects, Tyrion mused. As true-hearted as westermen.
The next encampment lay in stark contrast to the former. Its canvas tents were faded, chaotically pitched, with more than a few listing perilously to one side. Half the chattel within appeared sickly, the other half starved. And nearly all stood idle, staring at the dragon over the water with faces that were not so much fearful as crestfallen, even despondent. In their carelessness, the camp had no ditches and no stakes, and even with a clear view Tyrion could not find a single flag flapping overhead. If Lannister men had pitched such a camp, his father would have had them gelded, though he supposed a rooster could not be made a capon twice. Still, banner or no, it was abundantly clear whose camp this was. The Charioteer’s. There the thing stood, on an earthen ramp at the encampment’s center: the Wise Master’s only point of pride. The great bronze chariot was in the style of the Old Empire, with an exquisitely wrought carriage. Tyrion could only squint as the sun gleamed off its rows of embossed harpies and sphinxes. Its spoked wheels were ebony and iron, and protruding from each was a twisted scythe, five feet long and razor sharp.
As radiant as the chariot was, it was no more than a relic from a bygone age, of little and less use in today’s battles. Oh, the kings and octarchs of Old Ghis might have ridden into war atop such a thing, its spinning blades lopping off heads and arms as it went, but that had been five thousand years ago. After the Dothraki gifted the world the stirrup, cavalry proved to be much more maneuverable, and chariots all but vanished from battlefields.
At its front, a four-horse team of white stallions stamped the ground where they stood, almost begging for a lash to spur them into the fray. Zamettari, Tyrion noted. It was a famed breed, originally from the north coast of Sothoryos. Swift, sure-footed, rare. There were so few left in the world that a purebred was a sight as scarce as … well, perhaps a dragon. The horses’ seed was more valuable than rubies, despite most oft only serving to produce mongrels. When two Zamettari were made to mate, the offspring usually came out weak, feeble, or monstrous. And yet this Wise Master had four healthy steeds. Tyrion might have been amazed, but this was already a day full of absurdities. Ironmen, flying corpses, dragons. The horses were ordinary by comparison. Perhaps it’s past time for me to die, Tyrion thought. Nothing in this life can surprise me. Not anymore.
Yet within minutes, Tyrion Lannister’s jaw had dropped once more.
“What is that?” asked Penny.
“A madman’s flaunt,” answered Mormont. “A show.”
And what a vivid show it was. Mixed within the palisade of sharpened stakes, the Beastmaster had an assortment of iron cages, some stacked ten feet high. Near the entrance of the camp, they had been turned out to display just a taste of his curiosities: birds, hundreds of birds, vibrant to a one. A sunrise. They were arranged by color for all to see, each bird a brushstroke in a great living painting of feathers. There were parrots from the Summer Islands that were blood red, ducks as orange as spring carrots, warblers to form the yellow sun.
It was clear to Tyrion why, of all the Wise Masters and their allies, the Beastmaster had been chosen to house the queen’s three hostages. Where better than a menagerie? If its cages could hold the world’s most violent beasts, there was no doubt they could hold a man, and the keepers would be well-versed in preventing escape. And was there a worse humiliation than to keep the men amongst the squalor of beasts?
A sentry atop a tower sighted them and gave a signal, and a dozen guards raced to fill in the entrance of the camp. Soon the sentry was joined up there by a serjeant, a homely man with sad eyes, his thin hair lacquered into short horns. “What business have you here, sellsword?”
Brown Ben Plumm opened his visor. “We’d have words with Izhaq zo Malghoz. Some call him the Beastmaster, I hear.”
“I am the master of the beasts.” The Yunkish lord’s jaw clenched. “I train them, I feed them, I tend their ails and sorrows. When the menagerie is wanting for new wonders, I travel far and wide, and dicker for such creatures.” The bitterness dripping from the man’s words made Tyrion smile. A second son. He should join us. “The man you seek is my elder brother.”
“Very well. Your brother, if he’s here. Tell him that supreme commander Morghar sent us,” Brown Ben told him.
“Morghar? Morghar zo Zherzyn does not command today.”
Plumm shrugged. “That’s what I told him. The man ordered me anyway, he did. Should I have refused him?”
The Yunkishman rubbed his brow with annoyance. “The masters on the council play their secret songs. The rest of us can only dance in silence. Very well. What message do you have for my brother?”
“We’re to take the hostages for execution,” Brown Ben said. “These three are escaped slaves we caught. Property o’ the late Yell—the noble Yezzan zo Qaggaz. Morghar bids us tie our three up with your three, then have the Harridan deliver them to Meereen.” Tyrion went to his knees, thrusting up pleading hands. Penny, mummer that she was, managed a tremble. Mormont simply stood there. Still the damned bear won't dance.
“Launch them from a trebuchet?” The slaver turned to the Harridan. The sister stood idle for the nonce. “That would be sweet … Praz, fetch my brother.”
While they waited, Tyrion peered between the guards’ legs to catch a glimpse of the exotic creatures within the camp. Staring back glumly from one cage was a queer bear with mismatched fur, half black as jet, half white as snow. Over on the left side of camp there were herons with bright pink feathers, and beside them, a shaggy camel with two humps instead of one. A guard moved, and now over on the far side of camp, he could see …
It can’t be.
Yet there it was, snarling in its cage, salt-and-pepper fur ragged and wild. It was not his first time seeing one. The Stark children had a whole damned litter, and he had spent a moon’s turn with the boy Jon Snow—his had never been far off. Tyrion had thought them large at the time, but now he could see they’d been mere pups. The bastard’s had nearly killed him once. The others, too, when he’d returned to Winterfell. They hate me. All of them.
The direwolf’s ear pricked up.
Tyrion Lannister decided he hated them too, every last one of them. It was thanks to a bloody direwolf that he was here at all. Send a dog to kill a wolf, Joff had said, a thousand years ago in a courtyard at Winterfell. That had started this whole mess, hadn’t it? Along with a certain dagger of Valyrian steel? His abduction by Lady Catelyn followed, then his father’s shame, then a war. After a skin of strongwine, a crown was put on Joffrey’s head while Ned Stark lost his own. And when his new wife had her vengeance, she’d left him with a dowry of regicide and exile. If only Sandor Clegane had killed him, like the little sh*t wanted.
The old wolf howled. It was a grating call, old and sickly. The mangy thing was no doubt in pain. If it were a horse or an ox, it would have been put down long ago.
“Send a dog to kill a wolf, “ he murmured, this time aloud. As soon as he said it, though, he knew it was wrong. No … the prince had said, “Send a dog to kill a dog.” It was the Stark boy’s pet that had disturbed Joffrey, he suddenly recalled. The way it howled day and night … hadn’t he even praised Bran for his silent misery? But if not Joffrey … who?
The answer came easy. It would be a mercy. He had said it so casually over breakfast, but that too was a lie: mercy had nothing to do with it. His brother wanted the boy dead because of what he’d seen. That’s why he had thrown him from the tower in the first place, wasn’t it? Of course the catspaw was his.
Why had Tyrion ever thought him innocent? Because he might be too proud to let another man do his killing? No, Jaime Lannister wasn’t proud. He was craven. He was the most craven man Tyrion had ever known. After all, when it mattered, when it had mattered most of all, he couldn’t even tell their father no.
Brown Ben’s voice cut through Tyrion’s thoughts. “What of the battle, my lord?”
The Yunkishman looked out over the bay, where the dragon circled. “The Sunset corsairs are still landing more men. Their savage bloodlust has no end, but it's not all hard news. The sortie from the western gate has been routed: the Cats broke them near the Harpy’s Daughter. They’re retreating back to the gate now, or half of them are, at least. The rest are headed to the bay, toward that bloody horn, I think. Perhaps they mean to escape by sea.”
Barristan the Bold has failed? Could it be true? Far away across the narrow sea, men still recited all the tourneys he had won; little boys cried his name as they clacked their wooden swords together. How could a man like that fall here, out at the ends of the earth, amid sh*t and mud and fools? Was this how heroes died?
And what of the plan? Whom will the Second Sons yield to now, if not the white knight? The ropes around Tyrion’s wrists suddenly felt tighter. Will that purple cloak turn? He looked over to Plumm, but his face revealed nothing. “What of the Windblown?” the old sellsword asked, his voice calm, so very calm. “We’d heard that they’d gone over.”
“Just so. They shall share a charnel pit with the corsairs and the silver queen.” The Yunkishman’s face hardened. “The blood of the noble Gorzhak zo Eraz reddens their blades. Lady Malazza's too: her camp stormed not an hour past, she and all her slaves put to the sword. They tried to do the same to us, twice, but twice we drove them back.”
The hostages, thought Tyrion. They want to snitch the same purse, only the Tattered Prince favors Kem’s way. These new rivals were unwelcome. The Windblown had four times their number and a ruthless repute. Even if the Sons got their hands on the queen’s three, now they’d have to worry over how to keep them.
The direwolf howled again, rocking its cage with mighty front paws. It smells me. My perfume … or my fear?
“You must excuse me. My wolf needs me.”
Once the Beastmaster’s brother was gone, Kasporio cursed. “Stupid old man. Has he learned nothing in his century on earth?” He spoke the Common Tongue, a prudent choice amid the slave soldiers’ ears. “You don’t march on the Cats, not head-on. They use the square.”
Uhlan nodded in agreement. “Hasn’t every soldier heard ‘Red Ripples?’”
“Let's forget this folly,” Bokkoko said. “We haven’t turned our cloaks, not truly, not yet.”
“Oh, haven’t we?” Snatch opened his visor and spat out a mouth of sourleaf juice. “I must have dropped a ten-stone sh*t down that latrine, then.”
“There he’ll stay and none the wiser,” shrugged Kem. “All we have to do is follow our orders.”
“Which orders?” asked Inkpots. “To catch the Unsullied before they form up? That’s long passed. To face these ironmen at the edge of the sea, where that monster roams?”
Out on the bay, the dragon had landed upon a cog. The ship was aflame, sending a column of smoke into the air and all its sailors into the water. Feeling at home amongst the flames, the dragon settled on the deck. Then it clawed right into the hull like some giant bat burrowing into a pomegranate.
“Our plan remains the same,” decided Plumm. “Instead of riding to Ser Grandfather, we yield at the western gate. Simple as that.”
They nodded. There seemed little more to say; the Second Sons merely stood and watched a dragon tear apart a burning ship.
“You sellswords are fools,” called a voice from the tower. It was a new man this time: he was handsome, very handsome—tall and slender, with hair shaped into two great antlers. Upon his shoulder sat a golden lemur, and upon his lips a co*cksure smirk. No wonder his brother hates him.
“Begging your pardon, are you the noble Izhaq zo Malghoz?”
The slaver ignored Plumm’s question. “Use the Harridan to dispose of the hostages? Impossible. Has no one told you?”
Brown Ben shifted his helm to scratch his head. “My orders …”
The Beastmaster chuckled. “We have prepared the trebuchets for the Pallios.”
Pallios? What has cyvasse to do with this? Tyrion’s mind leapt back to a pole boat, a naked septa, a river full of turtles. It was there the sharp-faced halfmaester had first shown him the cavalry and spearmen, the catapults and trebuchets, the elephants and dragons. For the better part of an hour, he had rattled on about the moves, the countermoves, the strategies. The game is one of feints, Yollo, Haldon had told him. An attack where your opponent defends avails you nothing. What did he say about a Pallios?
Just then, a loud chunk-THUMP sounded and the great trebuchet released another load. It wasn’t bodies that flew this time, but boulders. Heavy boulders … Hadn’t he seen something like this before?
He had. The Blackwater. His nephew had been giddy to return Stannis’s conspirators to him by air. Conspirators according to Varys. The Antler Men had flown across the burning river, farther than any cask of pitch. One had even burst in front of him, blood splattering into the slit of his helm. He could almost feel the flames from the river now, the scent of that blood in his nostrils.
The clutches were flying yet again, here and now, larger, heavier, and shorter to fall. The bodies had landed just within the city, which meant the boulders … would land without. Tyrion could not see them drop, but he felt the ground shudder at the impact, heard the crash and the screams even over the din of battle, and he knew just where they had landed. The gate … where Ser Barristan’s retreating men were clustered outside.
Now he remembered Haldon’s lesson. Had his friend even been clutching a trebuchet as he spoke? For a Pallios Strike, you feign an attack at a distance, but strike a closer target instead.
The western gate was no place for a safe retreat, no place to yield. Even if they managed to make it there, the guards would never open the gate, for fear a stone would come flying through. The Second Sons’ plan lay as broken as a hundred eunuchs.
Tyrion could only guess his fate now. An ironborn thrall? Roasted by dragonfire?
His head sent to Cersei in a sack?
“Noble Izhaq,” Brown Ben Plumm called up. “Your brother tells me the Windblown have been harrying your camp. With your leave, we’d enforce your line against future attacks, seeing as we’re here and all.”
“Ride to the eastern side of camp and join my men,” said the Beastmaster, nodding approvingly. “If it please you, leave the slaves with us.”
Tyrion had half a mind to untie his wrists, remove his cloak, and show them the slaver’s armor as proof of the sellsword’s scheme. He could tell the Beastmaster about the contracts, the disregard for orders, the dragon banner in Brown Ben’s saddlebag. But for what? So five hundred brothers could die with him? Plumm was doing what would protect his men and let them see another day. There’s honor in his treachery. For once, Tyrion stayed quiet, kept his eyes down, and followed the large overseer pulling his rope.
The Beastmaster’s prison tent was hot and foul and dark, and only more so the farther in they ventured. This little demon has returned home. There were seven hells, if the septons were to be believed, each more torturous than the last. The final one was reserved for the vilest of sinners: the murderers, the rapists, the profane. He was all three, and a kinslayer to boot. Perhaps I belong here, baking amongst the beasts.
By the light of the overseer’s torch, Tyrion could make out a few of the animals around him. They passed a black porcupine, a lizard-lion tearing at its own tail, a shaggy unicorn. But there was also a beaver, a turkey, a stoat. So common in the westerlands, yet scarce seen here. Like my luck. What he couldn’t see, he could hear: somewhere among a mess of shadowy cages bullfrogs croaked, snakes hissed, a monkey laughed. And a dwarf wept.
She was lost to him in the darkness, past Mormont and half a dozen guards, but he could still hear Penny’s sobs between the animals’ calls. He was not surprised; he was on the verge of crying himself. They had escaped captivity for a breath or two, only to fall right back into it before they drew their next. That was his doing. They could have stayed in Yezzan’s grotesquerie, perhaps been passed to his kin, and been safe enough. It was one thing to wager his own worthless life, but he had bet hers as well. When the Beastmaster gets around to killing us, her blood will be on my hands. Like so many others’.
How many was it now? It was a hard count to figure. Should he only include the ones slain by his hand, or all that had died because of him?
From the cages came growls, like those of the brigands on the High Road. The torch passed a fox, silver as Ser Vardis’s hair. A goat screamed, but he heard that northman at the Green Fork. A bird sang Symon’s song.
He could feel their beady eyes watching. In one cage was Nurse. In another, Oberyn Martell. There was Groat and Shae and Allar Deem, and all the men at the Mud Gate and on the bridge of ships. There were so many at the Blackwater. The wildfire. The heat was unbearable. The smell. The screams. They were coming from everywhere, from all the cages, like a blast from that accursed warhorn. He heard his father, again. His mother. This hadn’t started with a direwolf. It had started with her. No … it started with me.
The torch fell.
The ground met Tyrion’s face as the sound of steel biting into flesh erupted all about him. One man shrieked in the dark, then another. A warm rain of blood fell upon Tyrion, followed by a body, which knocked the breath from his lungs. What madness was this? Did Mormont think he could fight six men? This is how he’ll die, then. No, there must have been more than one attacker. Who? The Windblown?
The dwarf lay deathly still until the frenzy died down. Animals still yipped and hissed, a dying man groaned, and several pairs of lungs panted heavily, but it was over. Penny was whimpering. Alive, then. That’s one mercy. Someone picked up the torch, and as the flames swelled, the shadows became three wizened men, their coppery skin freckled with blood. The guards, the overseer, and a fourth intruder lay dead on the floor.
“Rommo?” Mormont asked from somewhere in the tent. “Andal?” the old man asked back.
They began speaking in a tongue Tyrion did not know. Dothraki, he decided.
An ugly tongue for ugly men.
“You speak horse, do you, Mormont?” Tyrion interrupted. He wriggled out from beneath the corpse, freed his hands, and wiped the blood from his face. “Be kind and request a khalasar to come to our rescue. Ten thousand screamers should suffice.”
“These are the queen’s jaqqa rhan,” Jorah explained. “Mercy men.” “How kind of them to answer my prayers.”
“They’re not here for us. They want Jhogo, blood of the queen’s blood. The honor of the khalasar demands his freedom.”
A glimmer of metal near Tyrion’s feet caught his eye, so he snatched up the iron ring from the overseer’s corpse. He gave the keys a jangle. “Let’s hope there’s some honor to be found, then.”
At the back of the tent, they found a cage large enough for lions. The hostages within were manacled, ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist. The horse boy squatted, barking something at his fellow Dothraki. Beside him, the eunuch sat quiet, patient, expressionless. As for the whor*, he was sprawled out at the back of the cage as if he were lounging in a garden.
“So good of you to rescue me, Mormont,” Daario Naharis said, grinning. A gold tooth shone in the torchlight. “You keep interesting company. Dwarfs and jaqqa rhan? I would have sooner expected lambs and butchers.”
“We can leave you in the cage,” said Tyrion. “Can you, little one? I think not.”
So this is the one whom the queen takes to bed. Admittedly, he had the right of it. Tyrion inspected the keys in his hand; there must have been a hundred, of various metals and sizes. He flipped through them as fast as he could, acutely aware of the blood-speckled Dothraki glaring over his shoulder. When he came to the largest keys on the ring, he tried them one after the other until one finally turned in the lock.
“The shackles now,” said the Unsullied calmly.
Tyrion stopped, considering. What’s to keep these coins from rolling away? Without the hostages by their side, they could hardly take credit for the rescue. He examined the ring. “There doesn’t seem to be a key small enough for the fetters,” he lied.
“How can this one ride?” The eunuch shook his manacled ankles. Chained as they were, they would be unable to straddle a horse.
The Dothraki boy said something, then a parley of grunts erupted between Jorah and the savage horsem*n. Penny spoke for them both: “What are they saying?”
“Jhogo will ride sidesaddle,” the Tyroshi sellsword translated. “But only him. The jaqqa rhan says we’re not of the khalasar, and besides, they only have Obbo’s horse to spare.” Naharis gestured at an old Dothraki on the ground, his guts spilled out beside him.
Tyrion watched as the captives waddled by in their chains. Jhogo picked up the arakh of his fallen brother, while the others took swords from the dead guards. Fighters in fetters. All I need is stilts for Mormont and I can pass for a Yunkish lord. It wouldn’t do. Ser Jorah was the only man both free and deft, and a thousand soldiers lay between them and Meereen. “Surely we can ride double.”
Penny entreated, “We’re small—”
“Too slow,” insisted Rommo in the Common Tongue. With that, the mercy man made for the front of the tent; the other Dothraki followed, now carrying the manacled Jhogo. There goes our most valuable hostage. The dragon from our purse. The two that remained would have to serve. Perhaps she loves the sellsword madly after all. That seemed unlikely, but young women could have questionable tastes. He had married one such.
When the tent flap opened, Rommo peered out into the blinding daylight. He snigg*red; something outside clearly amused him. Before heading out, he put the torch to the tent’s canvas until it began to burn. Then he yelled something to Mormont.
“What did he say?” Tyrion asked. “We’ll need to outrun the wolf.”
Outside, the camp was in a panic. Guards darted past, nearly knocking Naharis and Tyrion over, but neither the blue-haired man nor the blood-covered dwarf drew much attention. Tents and pavilions were aflame. Two Dothraki riders thundered by—neither could have been older than eight. What was going on here? He saw a flash of orange fur. A dog? No, an ape. When the band of prisoners turned a corner, they were met by a bird, taller than a man, shaking its black feathers. They eased away from it slowly. Distractions, Tyrion realized. The Dothraki were loosing the animals to make chaos.
“Where do we go?” Penny quailed.
“South,” said Mormont, and they were given no time to question him. They heard a growl. Then a tent beside them came crashing down.
They didn’t stop to look, setting off in fear as fast as two dwarves and two fettered men could run. Mormont led, cutting down anyone unlucky enough to block his path. The guards posted at the Beastmaster’s gates had already fled, so out they went unchallenged, then across a muddy field and past the undefended lines of the next camp over.
“There!” Ser Jorah yelled, pointing.
The great chariot was right where they had left it. The slaves attending the prized antique either cowered or froze when the five of them bowled through to climb aboard the carriage. Mormont snapped the reins, and the Zamettari exploded into a gallop.
Gods be good. Tyrion flew backward, but he managed to catch the upper lip of the carriage as Penny grabbed hold of his waist. Naharis and Hero stood to Ser Jorah’s right and left, swords in their manacled hands. The chariot raced through the camp, swerving between tents, the wheel’s blades slashing through canvas as they went. Slaves jumped out of the way, screeching—the ones who were fast enough.
Mormont struck east. Most of the Charioteer’s soldiers were gathered there at the line, but when they saw the war machine careening toward them, they scattered in alarm. One lonely soldier stood his ground, his spear pointed upward. Then a horse screamed and the chariot shuddered as the man was trampled underhoof.
They slowed. One of the horses had gone limp, a spear dangling from its belly. Bound to the chariot, it was dragged between the others, its lifeless legs dancing in the mud. Damn it. We can’t make haste dragging that. Could they cut it loose somehow? He leaned over to examine the web of leather that kept the horse strapped in place. Then he saw something fly by from the corner of his eye. Is that… ?
Clang! Jet and jade filled the air, and Tyrion found himself on his back. He gasped for air. His head throbbed. His chest ached, but his groans were drowned out by Naharis. “Slingers!” the sellsword shouted. “Duck!”
They all dropped low. The sound of hail echoed off the side of the carriage, dents appearing in the bronze all around. Hero plonked down beside the dwarf, his face to the chariot’s floor. Warm blood puddled beneath Tyrion’s hair. He sat up sharply and gave his head a shake to clear away the dizziness. Penny was covering her eyes, while Naharis and Mormont exchanged dark looks. Beside him was a mess of blood and brains. With a kick from the Tyroshi’s salt-stained boot, the Unsullied corpse fell from the chariot into the mud; Tyrion watched the body shrink quickly in the distance. The purse grows ever lighter. I must hold this Naharis as a pander clutches his last copper.
But as Tyrion stared out the back of the carriage, he saw something else bounding toward them.
No, no, no … How? Does it smell me still?
“Make the horses bleed!” Naharis ordered Ser Jorah.
The knight’s eyes widened. He jumped up, reins in hand, and snapped them up and down with a madman’s fury. Gods speed us on our way.
The thing still raced over the battlefield, intent on its prey. It wasn’t closing in, but it wasn’t falling behind either. That’s how wolves hunt, he remembered. They stalk and wait for their prey to flag or stumble.
“The southern gate, Mormont,” Tyrion urged.
“Where do you think I’m going?” Ser Jorah bellowed. “This dead weight isn’t doing us any good.”
Tyrion rose with Hero’s sword and slashed at a leather strap behind the fallen horse. It did nothing. He cut another, then another, to no avail.
The walls of Meereen loomed larger every moment. In their shadow he could already see a few soldiers here and there, broken, fleeing in different directions. They were like a thousand birds erupting from a tree, as colorful as the Beastmaster’s flock. Some were Unsullied, bronze caps shining; a few were armored in pink, impossibly tall; many were naked, one of these as large as the Mountain That Rides. Others were there as well, pale riders stalking the frightened: the Qartheen camelry.
Then he spotted Rommo and a score of Dothraki riders. They too were heading toward the southern gate, yet they moved no faster than a canter. Jhogo’s sidesaddle is slowing them down, Tyrion realized. The chariot, despite dragging a dead horse, was gradually gaining on them.
And they weren’t alone. To his left, hundreds of riders moved in formation, blue and white standards flying. The Windblown. Led by a large man with a warhammer slung over his back, they angled to intercept the Dothraki … and perhaps the chariot as well. Tyrion cursed Nahraris’s blue hair—their hostage could be spotted from a mile away.
The Windblown were closing in, and a few of the sellswords pulled ahead of the pack. What are they planning? They couldn’t attack them with arrows for fear of harming their Tyroshi prize. A man in armor painted with spiderwebs rode nearest to their chariot, careful to stay ahead of the wheel’s blades. He had a mace in hand. Does he hope to bludgeon the horse? He didn’t get the chance. Lifting both hands over his head, Naharis hurled his sword at him like a spear. The blade struck the horseman’s gorget and bounced off, failing to pierce through; still, the distraction was enough. The stunned sellsword pulled back on his reins, slowing the horse and sending it into the scythes. A spray of blood filled the air.
The sellswords kept their distance from the chariot after that. A few of the Windblown rode past them toward the Dothraki ahead, but some horse boys volleyed arrows back. One flew perilously close to the chariot. The pursuers scattered.
Then, without warning, the big man gave a signal and the Windblown slowed and veered away. They called off their pursuit. That seemed queer. The sellswords had both speed and numbers. Did they fear the arrows? The chariot blades? The direwolf?
When Tyrion saw the toppled Ghost of Astapor, his heart fluttered. The southern gate nears. The chariot had caught up to the Dothraki, and soon they were surrounded by the riders—children and old men—all blocking his view. He could see behind them, however, where the wolf was still in pursuit, not three hundred yards back. Do its old bones not tire?
The Dothraki began falling behind, revealing the walls of Meereen to Tyrion’s eyes again. He searched anxiously for the gate. It was there! And it was open! But above it …
The white one.
Perched on the wall above the gate, it watched with disinterest. The thing seemed calm, sedate, even lazy, but its eyes were like golden flames. It was the closest he’d ever got to one, and he would need to get closer still. Others had the same idea. Despite the beast, soldiers and riders were all crowding the gate to get inside.
That was when the Dothraki’s horses began to squeal. They fear the dragon, was Tyrion’s first thought, but when the khalasar veered away, he saw the truth of it: elephants! The giant bloodied beasts were pounding right toward them, swatting aside man and horse alike in their stampede.
Their horses reared, the chariot wrenched sideways, and the next thing he knew he was in the air.
Tyrion Lannister flew.
“I’ll be hurt,” he had protested, all those years ago. They had gone out a window at the Rock to practice climbing and tumbling. The height of the next leap was daunting. “The impact …”
His uncle had smiled and mussed his hair. “At some point you’ll fall, Tyrion. We all do. That’s unavoidable, but what happens next, that’s your choice. You can do nothing and let the earth destroy you … or you can keep moving, Imp.”
Tyrion tucked his legs in, as Uncle Gery had taught him, making himself into a ball as best he could. When the ground came, he unfolded, his toes pointed for the landing. He leaned forward, rolled, and bounced up to his feet and into a run. His legs burned where the breastplate had knocked into his thighs, but he was alive. All he could do was laugh.
With a glance back, he could see the elephants’ carnage, the bodies of horses and men, some trampled, others reeling from the stampede. He did not see the chariot; the Zamettari no doubt raced off with free rein. Their passengers were there, however, amongst the dirt and the chaos. Daario Naharis was bleeding from his head and struggled to raise himself in his manacles. Mormont was already on his feet, his arm mangled, screaming something that might have been High Valyrian. Penny only lay on the ground; he couldn’t tell how hurt she was.
He looked to the gate. It was near, not a hundred yards from where he’d landed. Just beneath the dragon. So close, and the elephants will have scared off the damn wolf.
But dread and doubt made him look back over his shoulder. No, there it was. Direwolves hunt mammoths north of the Wall. What’s an elephant to that? And it was closing in fast.
He could make it if he ran. Yes, he could. The mercy man was wrong. I don’t need to outrun the wolf, just the man behind me.
Yet foolish words were ringing in his head. Stupid words. Callow words. The words of a mummer. You’re brave, she had said. Little people can be brave.
Tyrion seethed. Damn you, you bloody dwarf. He thought of Tysha and Sansa and Shae. Will you never learn?
He went back.
She was dazed, but alive. He lifted her up, put her arm around his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he told her. “We keep moving.”
