Blackwater Bay was rough and choppy, whitecaps everywhere. Black
Betha rode the flood tide, her sail cracking and snapping at each
shift of wind. Wraith and Lady Marya sailed beside her, no more
than twenty yards between their hulls. His sons could keep a line.
Davos took pride in that.
Across the sea warhorns boomed, deep throaty moans like the
calls of monstrous serpents, repeated ship to ship. “Bring
down the sail,” Davos commanded. “Lower mast. Oarsmen
to your oars.” His son Matthos relayed the commands. The deck
of Black Betha churned as crewmen ran to their tasks, pushing
through the soldiers who always seemed to be in the way no matter
where they stood. Ser Imry had decreed that they would enter the
river on oars alone, so as not to expose their sails to the
scorpions and spitfires on the walls of King’s Landing.
Davos could make out Fury well to the southeast, her sails
shimmering golden as they came down, the crowned stag of Baratheon
blazoned on the canvas. From her decks Stannis Baratheon had
commanded the assault on Dragonstone sixteen years before, but this
time he had chosen to ride with his army, trusting Fury and the
command of his fleet to his wife’s brother Ser Imry,
who’d come over to his cause at Storm’s End with Lord
Alester and all the other Florents.
Davos knew Fury as well as he knew his own ships. Above her
three hundred oars was a deck given over wholly to scorpions, and
topside she mounted catapults fore and aft, large enough to fling
barrels of burning pitch. A most formidable ship, and very swift as
well, although Ser Imry had packed her bow to stern with armored
knights and men-at-arms, at some cost to her speed.
The warhorns sounded again, commands drifting back from the
Fury. Davos felt a tingle in his missing fingertips. “Out
oars,” he shouted. “Form line.” A hundred blades
dipped down into the water as the oarmaster’s drum began to
boom. The sound was like the beating of a great slow heart, and the
oars moved at every stroke, a hundred men pulling as one.
Wooden wings had sprouted from the Wraith and Lady Marya as
well. The three galleys kept pace, their blades churning the water.
“Slow cruise,” Davos called. Lord Velaryon’s
silver-hulled Pride of Driftmark had moved into her position to
port of Wraith, and Bold Laughter was coming up fast, but Harridan
was only now getting her oars into the water and Seahorse was still
struggling to bring down her mast. Davos looked astern. Yes, there,
far to the south, that could only be Swordfish, lagging as ever.
She dipped two hundred oars and mounted the largest ram in the
fleet, though Davos had grave doubts about her captain.
He could hear soldiers shouting encouragement to each other
across the water. They’d been little more than ballast since
Storm’s End, and were eager to get at the foe, confident of
victory. In that, they were of one mind with their admiral, Lord
High Captain Ser Imry Florent.
Three days past, he had summoned all his captains to a war
council aboard the Fury while the fleet lay anchored at the mouth
of the Wendwater, in order to acquaint them with his dispositions.
Davos and his sons had been assigned a place in the second line of
battle, well out on the dangerous starboard wing. “A place of
honor,” Allard had declared, well satisfied with the chance
to prove his valor. “A place of peril,” his father had
pointed out. His sons had given him pitying looks, even young
Maric. The Onion Knight has become an old woman, he could hear them
thinking, still a smuggler at heart.
Well, the last was true enough, he would make no apologies for
it. Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still
Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high
hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in
the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights
sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a
maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and
raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run
before the wind.
Had he been admiral, he might have done it all differently. For
a start, he would have sent a few of his swiftest ships to probe
upriver and see what awaited them, instead of smashing in headlong.
When he had suggested as much to Ser Imry, the Lord High Captain
had thanked him courteously, but his eyes were not as polite. Who
is this lowborn craven? those eyes asked. Is he the one who bought
his knighthood with an onion?
With four times as many ships as the boy king, Ser Imry saw no
need for caution or deceptive tactics. He had organized the fleet
into ten lines of battle, each of twenty ships. The first two lines
would sweep up the river to engage and destroy Joffrey’s
little fleet, or “the boy’s toys” as Ser Imry
dubbed them, to the mirth of his lordly captains. Those that
followed would land companies of archers and spearmen beneath the
city walls, and only then join the fight on the river. The smaller,
slower ships to the rear would ferry over the main part of
Stannis’s host from the south bank, protected by Salladhor
Saan and his Lyseni, who would stand out in the bay in case the
Lannisters had other ships hidden up along the coast, poised to
sweep down on their rear.
To be fair, there was reason for Ser Imry’s haste. The
winds had not used them kindly on the voyage up from Storm’s
End. They had lost two cogs to the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay on the
very day they set sail, a poor way to begin. One of the Myrish
galleys had foundered in the Straits of Tarth, and a storm had
overtaken them as they were entering the Gullet, scattering the
fleet across half the narrow sea. All but twelve ships had finally
regrouped behind the sheltering spine of Massey’s Hook, in
the calmer waters of Blackwater Bay, but not before they had lost
considerable time.
Stannis would have reached the Rush days ago. The kingsroad ran
from Storm’s End straight to King’s Landing, a much
shorter route than by sea, and his host was largely mounted; near
twenty thousand knights, light horse, and freeriders, Renly’s
unwilling legacy to his brother. They would have made good time,
but armored destriers and twelve-foot lances would avail them
little against the deep waters of the Blackwater Rush and the high
stone walls of the city. Stannis would be camped with his lords on
the south bank of the river, doubtless seething with impatience and
wondering what Ser Imry had done with his fleet.
Off Merling Rock two days before, they had sighted a half-dozen
fishing skiffs. The fisherfolk had fled before them, but one by one
they had been overtaken and boarded. “A small spoon of
victory is just the thing to settle the stomach before
battle,” Ser Imry had declared happily. “It makes the
men hungry for a larger helping.” But Davos had been more
interested in what the captives had to say about the defenses at
King’s Landing. The dwarf had been busy building some sort of
boom to close off the mouth of the river, though the fishermen
differed as to whether the work had been completed or not. He found
himself wishing it had. If the river was closed to them, Ser Imry
would have no choice but to pause and take stock.
The sea was full of sound: shouts and calls, warhorns and drums
and the trill of pipes, the slap of wood on water as thousands of
oars rose and fell. “Keep line,” Davos shouted. A gust
of wind tugged at his old green cloak. A jerkin of boiled leather
and a pothelm at his feet were his only armor. At sea, heavy steel
was as like to cost a man his life as to save it, he believed. Ser
Imry and the other highborn captains did not share his view; they
glittered as they paced their decks. Harridan and Seahorse had slipped into their places now, and
Lord Celtigar’s Red Claw beyond them. To starboard of
Allard’s Lady Marya were the three galleys that Stannis had
seized from the unfortunate Lord Sunglass, Piety, Prayer, and
Devotion, their decks crawling with archers. Even Swordfish was
closing, lumbering and rolling through a thickening sea under both
oars and sail. A ship of that many oars ought to be much faster,
Davos reflected with disapproval. It’s that ram she carries,
it’s too big, she has no balance.
The wind was gusting from the south, but under oars it made no
matter. They would be sweeping in on the flood tide, but the
Lannisters would have the river current to their favor, and the
Blackwater Rush flowed strong and swift where it met the sea. The
first shock would inevitably favor the foe. We are fools to meet
them on the Blackwater, Davos thought. In any encounter on the open
sea, their battle lines would envelop the enemy fleet on both
flanks, driving them inward to destruction. On the river, though,
the numbers and weight of Ser Imry’s ships would count for
less. They could not dress more than twenty ships abreast, lest
they risk tangling their oars and colliding with each other.
Beyond the line of warships, Davos could see the Red Keep up on
Aegon’s High Hill, dark against a lemon sky, with the mouth
of the Rush opening out below. Across the river the south shore was
black with men and horses, stirring like angry ants as they caught
sight of the approaching ships. Stannis would have kept them busy
building rafts and fletching arrows, yet even so the waiting would
have been a hard thing to bear. Trumpets sounded from among them,
tiny and brazen, soon swallowed by the roar of a thousand shouts.
Davos closed his stubby hand around the pouch that held his
fingerbones, and mouthed a silent prayer for luck. Fury herself would center the first line of battle, flanked by
the Lord Steffon and the Stag of the Sea, each of two hundred oars.
On the port and starboard wings were the hundreds: Lady Harra,
Brightfish, Laughing Lord, Sea Demon, Horned Honor, Ragged Jenna,
Trident Three, Swift Sword, Princess Rhaenys, Dog’s Nose,
Sceptre, Faithful, Red Raven, Queen Alysanne, Cat, Courageous, and
Dragonsbane. From every stern streamed the fiery heart of the Lord
of Light, red and yellow and orange. Behind Davos and his sons came
another line of hundreds commanded by knights and lordly captains,
and then the smaller, slower Myrish contingent, none dipping more
than eighty oars. Farther back would come the sailed ships,
carracks and lumbering great cogs, and last of all Salladhor Saan
in his proud Valyrian, a towering three-hundred, paced by the rest
of his galleys with their distinctive striped hulls. The flamboyant
Lyseni princeling had not been pleased to be assigned the rear
guard, but it was clear that Ser Imry trusted him no more than
Stannis did. Too many complaints, and too much talk of the gold he
was owed. Davos was sorry nonetheless. Salladhor Saan was a
resourceful old pirate, and his crews were born seamen, fearless in
a fight. They were wasted in the rear. Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooo. The call rolled across whitecaps
and churning oars from the forecastle of the Fury: Ser Imry was
sounding the attack. Ahoooooooooooooooooooo,
ahooooooooooooooooooooo. Swordfish had joined the line at last, though she still had her
sail raised. “Fast cruise,” Davos barked. The drum
began to beat more quickly, and the stroke picked up, the blades of
the oars cutting water, splash-swoosh, splash-swoosh,
splash-swoosh. On deck, soldiers banged sword against shield, while
archers quietly strung their bows and pulled the first arrow from
the quivers at their belts. The galleys of the first line of battle
obscured his vision, so Davos paced the deck searching for a better
view. He saw no sign of any boom; the mouth of the river was open,
as if to swallow them all. Except . . .
In his smuggling days, Davos had often jested that he knew the
waterfront at King’s Landing a deal better than the back of
his hand, since he had not spent a good part of his life sneaking
in and out of the back of his hand. The squat towers of raw new
stone that stood opposite one another at the mouth of the
Blackwater might mean nothing to Ser Imry Florent, but to him it
was as if two extra fingers had sprouted from his knuckles.
Shading his eyes against the westering sun, he peered at those
towers more closely. They were too small to hold much of a
garrison. The one on the north bank was built against the bluff
with the Red Keep frowning above; its counterpart on the south
shore had its footing in the water. They dug a cut through the
bank, he knew at once. That would make the tower very difficult to
assault; attackers would need to wade through the water or bridge
the little channel. Stannis had posted bowmen below, to fire up at
the defenders whenever one was rash enough to lift his head above
the ramparts, but otherwise had not troubled.
Something flashed down low where the dark water swirled around
the base of the tower. It was sunlight on steel, and it told Davos
Seaworth all he needed to know. A chain
boom . . . and yet they have not closed the
river against us. Why?
He could make a guess at that as well, but there was no time to
consider the question. A shout went up from the ships ahead, and
the warhorns blew again: the enemy was before them.
Between the flashing oars of Sceptre and Faithful, Davos saw a
thin line of galleys drawn across the river, the sun glinting off
the gold paint that marked their hulls. He knew those ships as well
as he knew his own. When he had been a smuggler, he’d always
felt safer knowing whether the sail on the horizon marked a fast
ship or a slow one, and whether her captain was a young man hungry
for glory or an old one serving out his days. Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, the warhorns called.
“Battle speed,” Davos shouted. On port and starboard he
heard Dale and Allard giving the same command. Drums began to beat
furiously, oars rose and fell, and Black Betha surged forward. When
he glanced toward Wraith, Dale gave him a salute. Swordfish was
lagging once more, wallowing in the wake of the smaller ships to
either side; elsewise the line was straight as a shield wall.
The river that had seemed so narrow from a distance now
stretched wide as a sea, but the city had grown gigantic as well.
Glowering down from Aegon’s High Hill, the Red Keep commanded
the approaches. Its iron-crowned battlements, massive towers, and
thick red walls gave it the aspect of a ferocious beast hunched
above river and streets. The bluffs on which it crouched were steep
and rocky, spotted with lichen and gnarled thorny trees. The fleet
would have to pass below the castle to reach the harbor and city
beyond.
The first line was in the river now, but the enemy galleys were
backing water. They mean to draw us in. They want us jammed close,
constricted, no way to sweep around their
flanks . . . and with that boom behind us. He
paced his deck, craning his neck for a better look at
Joffrey’s fleet. The boy’s toys included the ponderous
Godsgrace, he saw, the old slow Prince Aemon, the Lady of Silk and
her sister Lady’s Shame, Wildwind, Kingslander, White Hart,
Lance, Seaflower. But where was the Lionstar? Where was the
beautiful Lady Lyanna that King Robert had named in honor of the
maid he’d loved and lost? And where was King Robert’s
Hammer? She was the largest war galley in the royal fleet, four
hundred oars, the only warship the boy king owned capable of
overmatching Fury. By rights she should have formed the heart of
any defense.
Davos tasted a trap, yet he saw no sign of any foes sweeping in
behind them, only the great fleet of Stannis Baratheon in their
ordered ranks, stretching back to the watery horizon. Will they
raise the chain and cut us in two? He could not see what good that
would serve. The ships left out in the bay could still land men
north of the city; a slower crossing, but safer.
A flight of flickering orange birds took wing from the castle,
twenty or thirty of them; pots of burning pitch, arcing out over
the river trailing threads of flame. The waters ate most, but a few
found the decks of galleys in the first line of battle, spreading
flame when they shattered. Men-at-arms were scrambling on Queen
Alysanne’s deck, and he could see smoke rising from three
different spots on Dragonsbane, nearest the bank. By then a second
flight was on its way, and arrows were falling as well, hissing
down from the archers’ nests that studded the towers above. A
soldier tumbled over Cat’s gunwale, crashed off the oars, and
sank. The first man to die today, Davos thought, but he will not be
the last.
Atop the Red Keep’s battlements streamed the boy
king’s banners: the crowned stag of Baratheon on its gold
field, the lion of Lannister on crimson. More pots of pitch came
flying. Davos heard men shriek as fire spread across Courageous.
Her oarsmen were safe below, protected from missiles by the half
deck that sheltered them, but the men-at-arms crowded topside were
not so fortunate. The starboard wing was taking all the damage, as
he had feared. It will be our turn soon, he reminded himself,
uneasy. Black Betha was well in range of the firepots, being the
sixth ship out from the north bank. To starboard, she had only
Allard’s Lady Marya, the ungainly Swordfish—so far behind now
that she was nearer the third line than the second—and Piety,
Prayer, and Devotion, who would need all the godly intervention
they could get, placed as vulnerably as they were.
As the second line swept past the twin towers, Davos took a
closer look. He could see three links of a huge chain snaking out
from a hole no bigger than a man’s head and disappearing
under the water. The towers had a single door, set a good twenty
feet off the ground. Bowmen on the roof of the northern tower were
firing down at Prayer and Devotion. The archers on Devotion fired
back, and Davos heard a man scream as the arrows found him.
“Captain ser.” His son Matthos was at his elbow.
“Your helm.” Davos took it with both hands and slid it
over his head. The pothelm was visorless; he hated having his
vision impeded.
By then the pitch pots were raining down around them. He saw one
shatter on the deck of Lady Marya, but Allard’s crew quickly
beat it out. To port, warhorns sounded from the Pride of Driftmark.
The oars flung up sprays of water with every stroke. The yard-long
shaft of a scorpion came down not two feet from Matthos and sank
into the wood of the deck, thrumming. Ahead, the first line was
within bowshot of the enemy; flights of arrows flew between the
ships, hissing like striking snakes.
South of the Blackwater, Davos saw men dragging crude rafts
toward the water while ranks and columns formed up beneath a
thousand streaming banners. The fiery heart was everywhere, though
the tiny black stag imprisoned in the flames was too small to make
out. We should be flying the crowned stag, he thought. The stag was
King Robert’s sigil, the city would rejoice to see it. This
stranger’s standard serves only to set men against us.
He could not behold the fiery heart without thinking of the
shadow Melisandre had birthed in the gloom beneath Storm’s
End. At least we fight this battle in the light, with the weapons
of honest men, he told himself. The red woman and her dark children
would have no part of it. Stannis had shipped her back to
Dragonstone with his bastard nephew Edric Storm. His captains and
bannermen had insisted that a battlefield was no place for a woman.
Only the queen’s men had dissented, and then not loudly. All
the same, the king had been on the point of refusing them until
Lord Bryce Caron said, “Your Grace, if the sorceress is with
us, afterward men will say it was her victory, not yours. They will
say you owe your crown to her spells.” That had turned the
tide. Davos himself had held his tongue during the arguments, but
if truth be told, he had not been sad to see the back of her. He
wanted no part of Melisandre or her god.
To starboard, Devotion drove toward shore, sliding out a plank.
Archers scrambled into the shallows, holding their bows high over
their heads to keep the strings dry. They splashed ashore on the
narrow strand beneath the bluffs. Rocks came bouncing down from the
castle to crash among them, and arrows and spears as well, but the
angle was steep and the missiles seemed to do little damage. Prayer landed two dozen yards upstream and Piety was slanting
toward the bank when the defenders came pounding down the
riverside, the hooves of their warhorses sending up gouts of water
from the shallows. The knights fell among the archers like wolves
among chickens, driving them back toward the ships and into the
river before most could notch an arrow. Men-at-arms rushed to
defend them with spear and axe, and in three heartbeats the scene
had turned to blood-soaked chaos. Davos recognized the
dog’s-head helm of the Hound. A white cloak streamed from his
shoulders as he rode his horse up the plank onto the deck of
Prayer, hacking down anyone who blundered within reach.
Beyond the castle, King’s Landing rose on its hills behind
the encircling walls. The riverfront was a blackened desolation;
the Lannisters had burned everything and pulled back within the Mud
Gate. The charred spars of sunken hulks sat in the shallows,
forbidding access to the long stone quays. We shall have no landing
there. He could see the tops of three huge trebuchets behind the
Mud Gate. High on Visenya’s Hill, sunlight blazed off the seven crystal towers of the Great
Sept of Baelor.
Davos never saw the battle joined, but he heard it; a great
rending crash as two galleys came together. He could not say which
two. Another impact echoed over the water an instant later, and
then a third. Beneath the screech of splintering wood, he heard the
deep thrum-thump of the Fury’s fore catapult. Stag of the Sea
split one of Joffrey’s galleys clean in two, but Dog’s
Nose was afire and Queen Alysanne was locked between Lady of Silk
and Lady’s Shame, her crew fighting the boarders
rail-to-rail.
Directly ahead, Davos saw the enemy’s Kingslander drive
between Faithful and Sceptre. The former slid her starboard oars
out of the way before impact, but Sceptre’s portside oars
snapped like so much kindling as Kingslander raked along her side.
“Loose,” Davos commanded, and his bowmen sent a
withering rain of shafts across the water. He saw
Kingslander’s captain fall, and tried to recall the
man’s name.
Ashore, the arms of the great trebuchets rose one, two, three,
and a hundred stones climbed high into the yellow sky. Each one was
as large as a man’s head; when they fell they sent up great
gouts of water, smashed through oak planking, and turned living men
into bone and pulp and gristle. All across the river the first line
was engaged. Grappling hooks were flung out, iron rams crashed
through wooden hulls, boarders swarmed, flights of arrows whispered
through each other in the drifting smoke, and men
died . . . but so far, none of his. Black Betha swept upriver, the sound of her oarmaster’s
drum thundering in her captain’s head as he looked for a
likely victim for her ram. The beleaguered Queen Alysanne was
trapped between two Lannister warships, the three made fast by
hooks and lines.
“Ramming speed!” Davos shouted.
The drumbeats blurred into a long fevered hammering, and Black
Betha flew, the water turning white as milk as it parted for her
prow. Allard had seen the same chance; Lady Marya ran beside them.
The first line had been transformed into a confusion of separate
struggles. The three tangled ships loomed ahead, turning, their
decks a red chaos as men hacked at each other with sword and axe. A
little more, Davos Seaworth beseeched the Warrior, bring her around
a little more, show me her broadside.
The Warrior must have been listening. Black Betha and Lady Marya
slammed into the side of Lady’s Shame within an instant of
each other, ramming her fore and aft with such force that men were
thrown off the deck of Lady of Silk three boats away. Davos almost
bit his tongue off when his teeth jarred together. He spat out
blood. Next time close your mouth, you fool. Forty years at sea,
and yet this was the first time he’d rammed another ship. His
archers were loosing arrows at will.
“Back water,” he commanded. When Black Betha
reversed her oars, the river rushed into the splintered hole she
left, and Lady’s Shame fell to pieces before his eyes,
spilling dozens of men into the river. Some of the living swam;
some of the dead floated; the ones in heavy mail and plate sank to
the bottom, the quick and the dead alike. The pleas of drowning men
echoed in his ears.
A flash of green caught his eye, ahead and off to port, and a
nest of writhing emerald serpents rose burning and hissing from the
stern of Queen Alysanne. An instant later Davos heard the dread cry
of “Wildfire!”
He grimaced. Burning pitch was one thing, wildfire quite
another. Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a
cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm
and your hand was aflame. “Piss on wildfire and your cock
burns off,” old seamen liked to say. Still, Ser Imry had
warned them to expect a taste of the alchemists’ vile
substance. Fortunately, there were few true pyromancers left. They
will soon run out, Ser Imry had assured them.
Davos reeled off commands; one bank of oars pushed off while the
other backed water, and the galley came about. Lady Marya had won
clear too, and a good thing; the fire was spreading over Queen
Alysanne and her foes faster than he would have believed possible.
Men wreathed in green flame leapt into the water, shrieking like
nothing human. On the walls of King’s Landing, spitfires were
belching death, and the great trebuchets behind the Mud Gate were
throwing boulders. One the size of an ox crashed down between Black
Betha and Wraith, rocking both ships and soaking every man on deck.
Another, not much smaller, found Bold Laughter. The Velaryon galley
exploded like a child’s toy dropped from a tower, spraying
splinters as long as a man’s arm.
Through black smoke and swirling green fire, Davos glimpsed a
swarm of small boats bearing downriver: a confusion of ferries and
wherries, barges, skiffs, rowboats, and hulks that looked too
rotten to float. It stank of desperation; such driftwood could not
turn the tide of a fight, only get in the way. The lines of battle
were hopelessly ensnarled, he saw. Off to port, Lord Steffon,
Ragged Jenna, and Swift Sword had broken through and were sweeping
upriver. The starboard wing was heavily engaged, however, and the
center had shattered under the stones of those trebuchets, some
captains turning downstream, others veering to port, anything to
escape that crushing rain. Fury had swung her aft catapult to fire
back at the city, but she lacked the range; the barrels of pitch
were shattering under the walls. Sceptre had lost most of her oars,
and Faithful had been rammed and was starting to list. He took
Black Betha between them, and struck a glancing blow at Queen
Cersei’s ornate carved-and-gilded pleasure barge, laden with
soldiers instead of sweetmeats now. The collision spilled a dozen
of them into the river, where Betha’s archers picked them off
as they tried to stay afloat.
Matthos’s shout alerted him to the danger from port; one
of the Lannister galleys was coming about to ram. “Hard to
starboard,” Davos shouted. His men used their oars to push
free of the barge, while others turned the galley so her prow faced
the onrushing White Hart. For a moment he feared he’d been
too slow, that he was about to be sunk, but the current helped
swing Black Betha, and when the impact came it was only a glancing
blow, the two hulls scraping against each other, both ships
snapping oars. A jagged piece of wood flew past his head, sharp as
any spear. Davos flinched. “Board her!” he shouted.
Grappling lines were flung. He drew his sword and led them over the
rail himself.
The crew of the White Hart met them at the rail, but Black
Betha’s men-at-arms swept over them in a screaming steel
tide. Davos fought through the press, looking for the other
captain, but the man was dead before he reached him. As he stood
over the body, someone caught him from behind with an axe, but his
helm turned the blow, and his skull was left ringing when it might
have been split. Dazed, it was all he could do to roll. His
attacker charged screaming. Davos grasped his sword in both hands
and drove it up point first into the man’s belly.
One of his crewmen pulled him back to his feet. “Captain
ser, the Hart is ours.” It was true, Davos saw. Most of the
enemy were dead, dying, or yielded. He took off his helm, wiped
blood from his face, and made his way back to his own ship,
trodding carefully on boards slimy with men’s guts. Matthos
lent him a hand to help him back over the rail.
For those few instants, Black Betha and White Hart were the calm
eye in the midst of the storm. Queen Alysanne and Lady of Silk,
still locked together, were a ranging green inferno, drifting
downriver and dragging pieces of Lady’s Shame. One of the
Myrish galleys had slammed into them and was now afire as well. Cat
was taking on men from the fast-sinking Courageous. The captain of
Dragonsbane had driven her between two quays, ripping out her
bottom; her crew poured ashore with the archers and men-at-arms to
join the assault on the walls. Red Raven, rammed, was slowly
listing. Stag of the Sea was fighting fires and boarders both, but
the fiery heart had been raised over Joffrey’s Loyal Man.
Fury, her proud bow smashed in by a boulder, was engaged with
Godsgrace. He saw Lord Velaryon’s Pride of Driftmark crash
between two Lannister river runners, overturning one and lighting
the other up with fire arrows. On the south bank, knights were
leading their mounts aboard the cogs, and some of the smaller
galleys were already making their way across, laden with
men-at-arms. They had to thread cautiously between sinking ships
and patches of drifting wildfire. The whole of King Stannis’s
fleet was in the river now, save for Salladhor Saan’s Lyseni.
Soon enough they would control the Blackwater. Ser Imry will have
his victory, Davos thought, and Stannis will bring his host across,
but gods be good, the cost of this . . .
“Captain ser!” Matthos touched his shoulder.
It was Swordfish, her two banks of oars lifting and falling. She
had never brought down her sails, and some burning pitch had caught
in her rigging. The flames spread as Davos watched, creeping out
over ropes and sails until she trailed a head of yellow flame. Her
ungainly iron ram, fashioned after the likeness of the fish from
which she took her name, parted the surface of the river before
her. Directly ahead, drifting toward her and swinging around to
present a tempting plump target, was one of the Lannister hulks,
floating low in the water. Slow green blood was leaking out between
her boards.
When he saw that, Davos Seaworth’s heart stopped
beating.
“No, “ he said. “No, NOOOOOOOO!” Above
the roar and crash of battle, no one heard him but Matthos.
Certainly the captain of the Swordfish did not, intent as he was on
finally spearing something with his ungainly fat sword. The
Swordfish went to battle speed. Davos lifted his maimed hand to
clutch at the leather pouch that held his fingerbones.
With a grinding, splintering, tearing crash, Swordfish split the
rotted hulk asunder. She burst like an overripe fruit, but no fruit
had ever screamed that shattering wooden scream. From inside her
Davos saw green gushing from a thousand broken jars, poison from
the entrails of a dying beast, glistening, shining, spreading
across the surface of the river . . .
“Back water,” he roared. “Away. Get us off
her, back water, back water!” The grappling lines were cut,
and Davos felt the deck move under his feet as Black Betha pushed
free of White Hart. Her oars slid down into the water.
Then he heard a short sharp woof, as if someone had blown in his
ear. Half a heartbeat later came the roar. The deck vanished
beneath him, and black water smashed him across the face, filling
his nose and mouth. He was choking, drowning. Unsure which way was
up, Davos wrestled the river in blind panic until suddenly he broke
the surface. He spat out water, sucked in air, grabbed hold of the
nearest chunk of debris, and held on. Swordfish and the hulk were gone, blackened bodies were floating
downstream beside him, and choking men clinging to bits of smoking
wood. Fifty feet high, a swirling demon of green flame danced upon
the river. It had a dozen hands, in each a whip, and whatever they
touched burst into fire. He saw Black Betha burning, and White Hart
and Loyal Man to either side. Piety, Cat, Courageous, Sceptre, Red Raven,
Harridan, Faithful, Fury, they had all gone up, Kingslander and
Godsgrace as well, the demon was eating his own. Lord
Velaryon’s shining Pride of Driftmark was trying to turn, but
the demon ran a lazy green finger across her silvery oars and they
flared up like so many tapers. For an instant she seemed to be
stroking the river with two banks of long bright torches.
The current had him in its teeth by then, spinning him around
and around. He kicked to avoid a floating patch of wildfire. My
sons, Davos thought, but there was no way to look for them amidst
the roaring chaos. Another hulk heavy with wildfire went up behind
him. The Blackwater itself seemed to boil in its bed, and burning
spars and burning men and pieces of broken ships filled the
air. I’m being swept out into the bay. It wouldn’t be as
bad there; he ought to be able to make shore, he was a strong
swimmer. Salladhor Saan’s galleys would be out in the bay as
well, Ser Imry had commanded them to stand
off . . .
And then the current turned him about again, and Davos saw what
awaited him downstream. The chain. Gods save us, they’ve raised the chain.
Where the river broadened out into Blackwater Bay, the boom
stretched taut, a bare two or three feet above the water. Already a
dozen galleys had crashed into it, and the current was pushing
others against them. Almost all were aflame, and the rest soon
would be. Davos could make out the striped hulls of Salladhor
Saan’s ships beyond, but he knew he would never reach them. A
wall of red-hot steel, blazing wood, and swirling green flame
stretched before him. The mouth of the Blackwater Rush had turned
into the mouth of hell.
Blackwater Bay was rough and choppy, whitecaps everywhere. Black
Betha rode the flood tide, her sail cracking and snapping at each
shift of wind. Wraith and Lady Marya sailed beside her, no more
than twenty yards between their hulls. His sons could keep a line.
Davos took pride in that.
Across the sea warhorns boomed, deep throaty moans like the
calls of monstrous serpents, repeated ship to ship. “Bring
down the sail,” Davos commanded. “Lower mast. Oarsmen
to your oars.” His son Matthos relayed the commands. The deck
of Black Betha churned as crewmen ran to their tasks, pushing
through the soldiers who always seemed to be in the way no matter
where they stood. Ser Imry had decreed that they would enter the
river on oars alone, so as not to expose their sails to the
scorpions and spitfires on the walls of King’s Landing.
Davos could make out Fury well to the southeast, her sails
shimmering golden as they came down, the crowned stag of Baratheon
blazoned on the canvas. From her decks Stannis Baratheon had
commanded the assault on Dragonstone sixteen years before, but this
time he had chosen to ride with his army, trusting Fury and the
command of his fleet to his wife’s brother Ser Imry,
who’d come over to his cause at Storm’s End with Lord
Alester and all the other Florents.
Davos knew Fury as well as he knew his own ships. Above her
three hundred oars was a deck given over wholly to scorpions, and
topside she mounted catapults fore and aft, large enough to fling
barrels of burning pitch. A most formidable ship, and very swift as
well, although Ser Imry had packed her bow to stern with armored
knights and men-at-arms, at some cost to her speed.
The warhorns sounded again, commands drifting back from the
Fury. Davos felt a tingle in his missing fingertips. “Out
oars,” he shouted. “Form line.” A hundred blades
dipped down into the water as the oarmaster’s drum began to
boom. The sound was like the beating of a great slow heart, and the
oars moved at every stroke, a hundred men pulling as one.
Wooden wings had sprouted from the Wraith and Lady Marya as
well. The three galleys kept pace, their blades churning the water.
“Slow cruise,” Davos called. Lord Velaryon’s
silver-hulled Pride of Driftmark had moved into her position to
port of Wraith, and Bold Laughter was coming up fast, but Harridan
was only now getting her oars into the water and Seahorse was still
struggling to bring down her mast. Davos looked astern. Yes, there,
far to the south, that could only be Swordfish, lagging as ever.
She dipped two hundred oars and mounted the largest ram in the
fleet, though Davos had grave doubts about her captain.
He could hear soldiers shouting encouragement to each other
across the water. They’d been little more than ballast since
Storm’s End, and were eager to get at the foe, confident of
victory. In that, they were of one mind with their admiral, Lord
High Captain Ser Imry Florent.
Three days past, he had summoned all his captains to a war
council aboard the Fury while the fleet lay anchored at the mouth
of the Wendwater, in order to acquaint them with his dispositions.
Davos and his sons had been assigned a place in the second line of
battle, well out on the dangerous starboard wing. “A place of
honor,” Allard had declared, well satisfied with the chance
to prove his valor. “A place of peril,” his father had
pointed out. His sons had given him pitying looks, even young
Maric. The Onion Knight has become an old woman, he could hear them
thinking, still a smuggler at heart.
Well, the last was true enough, he would make no apologies for
it. Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still
Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high
hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in
the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights
sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a
maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and
raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run
before the wind.
Had he been admiral, he might have done it all differently. For
a start, he would have sent a few of his swiftest ships to probe
upriver and see what awaited them, instead of smashing in headlong.
When he had suggested as much to Ser Imry, the Lord High Captain
had thanked him courteously, but his eyes were not as polite. Who
is this lowborn craven? those eyes asked. Is he the one who bought
his knighthood with an onion?
With four times as many ships as the boy king, Ser Imry saw no
need for caution or deceptive tactics. He had organized the fleet
into ten lines of battle, each of twenty ships. The first two lines
would sweep up the river to engage and destroy Joffrey’s
little fleet, or “the boy’s toys” as Ser Imry
dubbed them, to the mirth of his lordly captains. Those that
followed would land companies of archers and spearmen beneath the
city walls, and only then join the fight on the river. The smaller,
slower ships to the rear would ferry over the main part of
Stannis’s host from the south bank, protected by Salladhor
Saan and his Lyseni, who would stand out in the bay in case the
Lannisters had other ships hidden up along the coast, poised to
sweep down on their rear.
To be fair, there was reason for Ser Imry’s haste. The
winds had not used them kindly on the voyage up from Storm’s
End. They had lost two cogs to the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay on the
very day they set sail, a poor way to begin. One of the Myrish
galleys had foundered in the Straits of Tarth, and a storm had
overtaken them as they were entering the Gullet, scattering the
fleet across half the narrow sea. All but twelve ships had finally
regrouped behind the sheltering spine of Massey’s Hook, in
the calmer waters of Blackwater Bay, but not before they had lost
considerable time.
Stannis would have reached the Rush days ago. The kingsroad ran
from Storm’s End straight to King’s Landing, a much
shorter route than by sea, and his host was largely mounted; near
twenty thousand knights, light horse, and freeriders, Renly’s
unwilling legacy to his brother. They would have made good time,
but armored destriers and twelve-foot lances would avail them
little against the deep waters of the Blackwater Rush and the high
stone walls of the city. Stannis would be camped with his lords on
the south bank of the river, doubtless seething with impatience and
wondering what Ser Imry had done with his fleet.
Off Merling Rock two days before, they had sighted a half-dozen
fishing skiffs. The fisherfolk had fled before them, but one by one
they had been overtaken and boarded. “A small spoon of
victory is just the thing to settle the stomach before
battle,” Ser Imry had declared happily. “It makes the
men hungry for a larger helping.” But Davos had been more
interested in what the captives had to say about the defenses at
King’s Landing. The dwarf had been busy building some sort of
boom to close off the mouth of the river, though the fishermen
differed as to whether the work had been completed or not. He found
himself wishing it had. If the river was closed to them, Ser Imry
would have no choice but to pause and take stock.
The sea was full of sound: shouts and calls, warhorns and drums
and the trill of pipes, the slap of wood on water as thousands of
oars rose and fell. “Keep line,” Davos shouted. A gust
of wind tugged at his old green cloak. A jerkin of boiled leather
and a pothelm at his feet were his only armor. At sea, heavy steel
was as like to cost a man his life as to save it, he believed. Ser
Imry and the other highborn captains did not share his view; they
glittered as they paced their decks. Harridan and Seahorse had slipped into their places now, and
Lord Celtigar’s Red Claw beyond them. To starboard of
Allard’s Lady Marya were the three galleys that Stannis had
seized from the unfortunate Lord Sunglass, Piety, Prayer, and
Devotion, their decks crawling with archers. Even Swordfish was
closing, lumbering and rolling through a thickening sea under both
oars and sail. A ship of that many oars ought to be much faster,
Davos reflected with disapproval. It’s that ram she carries,
it’s too big, she has no balance.
The wind was gusting from the south, but under oars it made no
matter. They would be sweeping in on the flood tide, but the
Lannisters would have the river current to their favor, and the
Blackwater Rush flowed strong and swift where it met the sea. The
first shock would inevitably favor the foe. We are fools to meet
them on the Blackwater, Davos thought. In any encounter on the open
sea, their battle lines would envelop the enemy fleet on both
flanks, driving them inward to destruction. On the river, though,
the numbers and weight of Ser Imry’s ships would count for
less. They could not dress more than twenty ships abreast, lest
they risk tangling their oars and colliding with each other.
Beyond the line of warships, Davos could see the Red Keep up on
Aegon’s High Hill, dark against a lemon sky, with the mouth
of the Rush opening out below. Across the river the south shore was
black with men and horses, stirring like angry ants as they caught
sight of the approaching ships. Stannis would have kept them busy
building rafts and fletching arrows, yet even so the waiting would
have been a hard thing to bear. Trumpets sounded from among them,
tiny and brazen, soon swallowed by the roar of a thousand shouts.
Davos closed his stubby hand around the pouch that held his
fingerbones, and mouthed a silent prayer for luck. Fury herself would center the first line of battle, flanked by
the Lord Steffon and the Stag of the Sea, each of two hundred oars.
On the port and starboard wings were the hundreds: Lady Harra,
Brightfish, Laughing Lord, Sea Demon, Horned Honor, Ragged Jenna,
Trident Three, Swift Sword, Princess Rhaenys, Dog’s Nose,
Sceptre, Faithful, Red Raven, Queen Alysanne, Cat, Courageous, and
Dragonsbane. From every stern streamed the fiery heart of the Lord
of Light, red and yellow and orange. Behind Davos and his sons came
another line of hundreds commanded by knights and lordly captains,
and then the smaller, slower Myrish contingent, none dipping more
than eighty oars. Farther back would come the sailed ships,
carracks and lumbering great cogs, and last of all Salladhor Saan
in his proud Valyrian, a towering three-hundred, paced by the rest
of his galleys with their distinctive striped hulls. The flamboyant
Lyseni princeling had not been pleased to be assigned the rear
guard, but it was clear that Ser Imry trusted him no more than
Stannis did. Too many complaints, and too much talk of the gold he
was owed. Davos was sorry nonetheless. Salladhor Saan was a
resourceful old pirate, and his crews were born seamen, fearless in
a fight. They were wasted in the rear. Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooo. The call rolled across whitecaps
and churning oars from the forecastle of the Fury: Ser Imry was
sounding the attack. Ahoooooooooooooooooooo,
ahooooooooooooooooooooo. Swordfish had joined the line at last, though she still had her
sail raised. “Fast cruise,” Davos barked. The drum
began to beat more quickly, and the stroke picked up, the blades of
the oars cutting water, splash-swoosh, splash-swoosh,
splash-swoosh. On deck, soldiers banged sword against shield, while
archers quietly strung their bows and pulled the first arrow from
the quivers at their belts. The galleys of the first line of battle
obscured his vision, so Davos paced the deck searching for a better
view. He saw no sign of any boom; the mouth of the river was open,
as if to swallow them all. Except . . .
In his smuggling days, Davos had often jested that he knew the
waterfront at King’s Landing a deal better than the back of
his hand, since he had not spent a good part of his life sneaking
in and out of the back of his hand. The squat towers of raw new
stone that stood opposite one another at the mouth of the
Blackwater might mean nothing to Ser Imry Florent, but to him it
was as if two extra fingers had sprouted from his knuckles.
Shading his eyes against the westering sun, he peered at those
towers more closely. They were too small to hold much of a
garrison. The one on the north bank was built against the bluff
with the Red Keep frowning above; its counterpart on the south
shore had its footing in the water. They dug a cut through the
bank, he knew at once. That would make the tower very difficult to
assault; attackers would need to wade through the water or bridge
the little channel. Stannis had posted bowmen below, to fire up at
the defenders whenever one was rash enough to lift his head above
the ramparts, but otherwise had not troubled.
Something flashed down low where the dark water swirled around
the base of the tower. It was sunlight on steel, and it told Davos
Seaworth all he needed to know. A chain
boom . . . and yet they have not closed the
river against us. Why?
He could make a guess at that as well, but there was no time to
consider the question. A shout went up from the ships ahead, and
the warhorns blew again: the enemy was before them.
Between the flashing oars of Sceptre and Faithful, Davos saw a
thin line of galleys drawn across the river, the sun glinting off
the gold paint that marked their hulls. He knew those ships as well
as he knew his own. When he had been a smuggler, he’d always
felt safer knowing whether the sail on the horizon marked a fast
ship or a slow one, and whether her captain was a young man hungry
for glory or an old one serving out his days. Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, the warhorns called.
“Battle speed,” Davos shouted. On port and starboard he
heard Dale and Allard giving the same command. Drums began to beat
furiously, oars rose and fell, and Black Betha surged forward. When
he glanced toward Wraith, Dale gave him a salute. Swordfish was
lagging once more, wallowing in the wake of the smaller ships to
either side; elsewise the line was straight as a shield wall.
The river that had seemed so narrow from a distance now
stretched wide as a sea, but the city had grown gigantic as well.
Glowering down from Aegon’s High Hill, the Red Keep commanded
the approaches. Its iron-crowned battlements, massive towers, and
thick red walls gave it the aspect of a ferocious beast hunched
above river and streets. The bluffs on which it crouched were steep
and rocky, spotted with lichen and gnarled thorny trees. The fleet
would have to pass below the castle to reach the harbor and city
beyond.
The first line was in the river now, but the enemy galleys were
backing water. They mean to draw us in. They want us jammed close,
constricted, no way to sweep around their
flanks . . . and with that boom behind us. He
paced his deck, craning his neck for a better look at
Joffrey’s fleet. The boy’s toys included the ponderous
Godsgrace, he saw, the old slow Prince Aemon, the Lady of Silk and
her sister Lady’s Shame, Wildwind, Kingslander, White Hart,
Lance, Seaflower. But where was the Lionstar? Where was the
beautiful Lady Lyanna that King Robert had named in honor of the
maid he’d loved and lost? And where was King Robert’s
Hammer? She was the largest war galley in the royal fleet, four
hundred oars, the only warship the boy king owned capable of
overmatching Fury. By rights she should have formed the heart of
any defense.
Davos tasted a trap, yet he saw no sign of any foes sweeping in
behind them, only the great fleet of Stannis Baratheon in their
ordered ranks, stretching back to the watery horizon. Will they
raise the chain and cut us in two? He could not see what good that
would serve. The ships left out in the bay could still land men
north of the city; a slower crossing, but safer.
A flight of flickering orange birds took wing from the castle,
twenty or thirty of them; pots of burning pitch, arcing out over
the river trailing threads of flame. The waters ate most, but a few
found the decks of galleys in the first line of battle, spreading
flame when they shattered. Men-at-arms were scrambling on Queen
Alysanne’s deck, and he could see smoke rising from three
different spots on Dragonsbane, nearest the bank. By then a second
flight was on its way, and arrows were falling as well, hissing
down from the archers’ nests that studded the towers above. A
soldier tumbled over Cat’s gunwale, crashed off the oars, and
sank. The first man to die today, Davos thought, but he will not be
the last.
Atop the Red Keep’s battlements streamed the boy
king’s banners: the crowned stag of Baratheon on its gold
field, the lion of Lannister on crimson. More pots of pitch came
flying. Davos heard men shriek as fire spread across Courageous.
Her oarsmen were safe below, protected from missiles by the half
deck that sheltered them, but the men-at-arms crowded topside were
not so fortunate. The starboard wing was taking all the damage, as
he had feared. It will be our turn soon, he reminded himself,
uneasy. Black Betha was well in range of the firepots, being the
sixth ship out from the north bank. To starboard, she had only
Allard’s Lady Marya, the ungainly Swordfish—so far behind now
that she was nearer the third line than the second—and Piety,
Prayer, and Devotion, who would need all the godly intervention
they could get, placed as vulnerably as they were.
As the second line swept past the twin towers, Davos took a
closer look. He could see three links of a huge chain snaking out
from a hole no bigger than a man’s head and disappearing
under the water. The towers had a single door, set a good twenty
feet off the ground. Bowmen on the roof of the northern tower were
firing down at Prayer and Devotion. The archers on Devotion fired
back, and Davos heard a man scream as the arrows found him.
“Captain ser.” His son Matthos was at his elbow.
“Your helm.” Davos took it with both hands and slid it
over his head. The pothelm was visorless; he hated having his
vision impeded.
By then the pitch pots were raining down around them. He saw one
shatter on the deck of Lady Marya, but Allard’s crew quickly
beat it out. To port, warhorns sounded from the Pride of Driftmark.
The oars flung up sprays of water with every stroke. The yard-long
shaft of a scorpion came down not two feet from Matthos and sank
into the wood of the deck, thrumming. Ahead, the first line was
within bowshot of the enemy; flights of arrows flew between the
ships, hissing like striking snakes.
South of the Blackwater, Davos saw men dragging crude rafts
toward the water while ranks and columns formed up beneath a
thousand streaming banners. The fiery heart was everywhere, though
the tiny black stag imprisoned in the flames was too small to make
out. We should be flying the crowned stag, he thought. The stag was
King Robert’s sigil, the city would rejoice to see it. This
stranger’s standard serves only to set men against us.
He could not behold the fiery heart without thinking of the
shadow Melisandre had birthed in the gloom beneath Storm’s
End. At least we fight this battle in the light, with the weapons
of honest men, he told himself. The red woman and her dark children
would have no part of it. Stannis had shipped her back to
Dragonstone with his bastard nephew Edric Storm. His captains and
bannermen had insisted that a battlefield was no place for a woman.
Only the queen’s men had dissented, and then not loudly. All
the same, the king had been on the point of refusing them until
Lord Bryce Caron said, “Your Grace, if the sorceress is with
us, afterward men will say it was her victory, not yours. They will
say you owe your crown to her spells.” That had turned the
tide. Davos himself had held his tongue during the arguments, but
if truth be told, he had not been sad to see the back of her. He
wanted no part of Melisandre or her god.
To starboard, Devotion drove toward shore, sliding out a plank.
Archers scrambled into the shallows, holding their bows high over
their heads to keep the strings dry. They splashed ashore on the
narrow strand beneath the bluffs. Rocks came bouncing down from the
castle to crash among them, and arrows and spears as well, but the
angle was steep and the missiles seemed to do little damage. Prayer landed two dozen yards upstream and Piety was slanting
toward the bank when the defenders came pounding down the
riverside, the hooves of their warhorses sending up gouts of water
from the shallows. The knights fell among the archers like wolves
among chickens, driving them back toward the ships and into the
river before most could notch an arrow. Men-at-arms rushed to
defend them with spear and axe, and in three heartbeats the scene
had turned to blood-soaked chaos. Davos recognized the
dog’s-head helm of the Hound. A white cloak streamed from his
shoulders as he rode his horse up the plank onto the deck of
Prayer, hacking down anyone who blundered within reach.
Beyond the castle, King’s Landing rose on its hills behind
the encircling walls. The riverfront was a blackened desolation;
the Lannisters had burned everything and pulled back within the Mud
Gate. The charred spars of sunken hulks sat in the shallows,
forbidding access to the long stone quays. We shall have no landing
there. He could see the tops of three huge trebuchets behind the
Mud Gate. High on Visenya’s Hill, sunlight blazed off the seven crystal towers of the Great
Sept of Baelor.
Davos never saw the battle joined, but he heard it; a great
rending crash as two galleys came together. He could not say which
two. Another impact echoed over the water an instant later, and
then a third. Beneath the screech of splintering wood, he heard the
deep thrum-thump of the Fury’s fore catapult. Stag of the Sea
split one of Joffrey’s galleys clean in two, but Dog’s
Nose was afire and Queen Alysanne was locked between Lady of Silk
and Lady’s Shame, her crew fighting the boarders
rail-to-rail.
Directly ahead, Davos saw the enemy’s Kingslander drive
between Faithful and Sceptre. The former slid her starboard oars
out of the way before impact, but Sceptre’s portside oars
snapped like so much kindling as Kingslander raked along her side.
“Loose,” Davos commanded, and his bowmen sent a
withering rain of shafts across the water. He saw
Kingslander’s captain fall, and tried to recall the
man’s name.
Ashore, the arms of the great trebuchets rose one, two, three,
and a hundred stones climbed high into the yellow sky. Each one was
as large as a man’s head; when they fell they sent up great
gouts of water, smashed through oak planking, and turned living men
into bone and pulp and gristle. All across the river the first line
was engaged. Grappling hooks were flung out, iron rams crashed
through wooden hulls, boarders swarmed, flights of arrows whispered
through each other in the drifting smoke, and men
died . . . but so far, none of his. Black Betha swept upriver, the sound of her oarmaster’s
drum thundering in her captain’s head as he looked for a
likely victim for her ram. The beleaguered Queen Alysanne was
trapped between two Lannister warships, the three made fast by
hooks and lines.
“Ramming speed!” Davos shouted.
The drumbeats blurred into a long fevered hammering, and Black
Betha flew, the water turning white as milk as it parted for her
prow. Allard had seen the same chance; Lady Marya ran beside them.
The first line had been transformed into a confusion of separate
struggles. The three tangled ships loomed ahead, turning, their
decks a red chaos as men hacked at each other with sword and axe. A
little more, Davos Seaworth beseeched the Warrior, bring her around
a little more, show me her broadside.
The Warrior must have been listening. Black Betha and Lady Marya
slammed into the side of Lady’s Shame within an instant of
each other, ramming her fore and aft with such force that men were
thrown off the deck of Lady of Silk three boats away. Davos almost
bit his tongue off when his teeth jarred together. He spat out
blood. Next time close your mouth, you fool. Forty years at sea,
and yet this was the first time he’d rammed another ship. His
archers were loosing arrows at will.
“Back water,” he commanded. When Black Betha
reversed her oars, the river rushed into the splintered hole she
left, and Lady’s Shame fell to pieces before his eyes,
spilling dozens of men into the river. Some of the living swam;
some of the dead floated; the ones in heavy mail and plate sank to
the bottom, the quick and the dead alike. The pleas of drowning men
echoed in his ears.
A flash of green caught his eye, ahead and off to port, and a
nest of writhing emerald serpents rose burning and hissing from the
stern of Queen Alysanne. An instant later Davos heard the dread cry
of “Wildfire!”
He grimaced. Burning pitch was one thing, wildfire quite
another. Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a
cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm
and your hand was aflame. “Piss on wildfire and your cock
burns off,” old seamen liked to say. Still, Ser Imry had
warned them to expect a taste of the alchemists’ vile
substance. Fortunately, there were few true pyromancers left. They
will soon run out, Ser Imry had assured them.
Davos reeled off commands; one bank of oars pushed off while the
other backed water, and the galley came about. Lady Marya had won
clear too, and a good thing; the fire was spreading over Queen
Alysanne and her foes faster than he would have believed possible.
Men wreathed in green flame leapt into the water, shrieking like
nothing human. On the walls of King’s Landing, spitfires were
belching death, and the great trebuchets behind the Mud Gate were
throwing boulders. One the size of an ox crashed down between Black
Betha and Wraith, rocking both ships and soaking every man on deck.
Another, not much smaller, found Bold Laughter. The Velaryon galley
exploded like a child’s toy dropped from a tower, spraying
splinters as long as a man’s arm.
Through black smoke and swirling green fire, Davos glimpsed a
swarm of small boats bearing downriver: a confusion of ferries and
wherries, barges, skiffs, rowboats, and hulks that looked too
rotten to float. It stank of desperation; such driftwood could not
turn the tide of a fight, only get in the way. The lines of battle
were hopelessly ensnarled, he saw. Off to port, Lord Steffon,
Ragged Jenna, and Swift Sword had broken through and were sweeping
upriver. The starboard wing was heavily engaged, however, and the
center had shattered under the stones of those trebuchets, some
captains turning downstream, others veering to port, anything to
escape that crushing rain. Fury had swung her aft catapult to fire
back at the city, but she lacked the range; the barrels of pitch
were shattering under the walls. Sceptre had lost most of her oars,
and Faithful had been rammed and was starting to list. He took
Black Betha between them, and struck a glancing blow at Queen
Cersei’s ornate carved-and-gilded pleasure barge, laden with
soldiers instead of sweetmeats now. The collision spilled a dozen
of them into the river, where Betha’s archers picked them off
as they tried to stay afloat.
Matthos’s shout alerted him to the danger from port; one
of the Lannister galleys was coming about to ram. “Hard to
starboard,” Davos shouted. His men used their oars to push
free of the barge, while others turned the galley so her prow faced
the onrushing White Hart. For a moment he feared he’d been
too slow, that he was about to be sunk, but the current helped
swing Black Betha, and when the impact came it was only a glancing
blow, the two hulls scraping against each other, both ships
snapping oars. A jagged piece of wood flew past his head, sharp as
any spear. Davos flinched. “Board her!” he shouted.
Grappling lines were flung. He drew his sword and led them over the
rail himself.
The crew of the White Hart met them at the rail, but Black
Betha’s men-at-arms swept over them in a screaming steel
tide. Davos fought through the press, looking for the other
captain, but the man was dead before he reached him. As he stood
over the body, someone caught him from behind with an axe, but his
helm turned the blow, and his skull was left ringing when it might
have been split. Dazed, it was all he could do to roll. His
attacker charged screaming. Davos grasped his sword in both hands
and drove it up point first into the man’s belly.
One of his crewmen pulled him back to his feet. “Captain
ser, the Hart is ours.” It was true, Davos saw. Most of the
enemy were dead, dying, or yielded. He took off his helm, wiped
blood from his face, and made his way back to his own ship,
trodding carefully on boards slimy with men’s guts. Matthos
lent him a hand to help him back over the rail.
For those few instants, Black Betha and White Hart were the calm
eye in the midst of the storm. Queen Alysanne and Lady of Silk,
still locked together, were a ranging green inferno, drifting
downriver and dragging pieces of Lady’s Shame. One of the
Myrish galleys had slammed into them and was now afire as well. Cat
was taking on men from the fast-sinking Courageous. The captain of
Dragonsbane had driven her between two quays, ripping out her
bottom; her crew poured ashore with the archers and men-at-arms to
join the assault on the walls. Red Raven, rammed, was slowly
listing. Stag of the Sea was fighting fires and boarders both, but
the fiery heart had been raised over Joffrey’s Loyal Man.
Fury, her proud bow smashed in by a boulder, was engaged with
Godsgrace. He saw Lord Velaryon’s Pride of Driftmark crash
between two Lannister river runners, overturning one and lighting
the other up with fire arrows. On the south bank, knights were
leading their mounts aboard the cogs, and some of the smaller
galleys were already making their way across, laden with
men-at-arms. They had to thread cautiously between sinking ships
and patches of drifting wildfire. The whole of King Stannis’s
fleet was in the river now, save for Salladhor Saan’s Lyseni.
Soon enough they would control the Blackwater. Ser Imry will have
his victory, Davos thought, and Stannis will bring his host across,
but gods be good, the cost of this . . .
“Captain ser!” Matthos touched his shoulder.
It was Swordfish, her two banks of oars lifting and falling. She
had never brought down her sails, and some burning pitch had caught
in her rigging. The flames spread as Davos watched, creeping out
over ropes and sails until she trailed a head of yellow flame. Her
ungainly iron ram, fashioned after the likeness of the fish from
which she took her name, parted the surface of the river before
her. Directly ahead, drifting toward her and swinging around to
present a tempting plump target, was one of the Lannister hulks,
floating low in the water. Slow green blood was leaking out between
her boards.
When he saw that, Davos Seaworth’s heart stopped
beating.
“No, “ he said. “No, NOOOOOOOO!” Above
the roar and crash of battle, no one heard him but Matthos.
Certainly the captain of the Swordfish did not, intent as he was on
finally spearing something with his ungainly fat sword. The
Swordfish went to battle speed. Davos lifted his maimed hand to
clutch at the leather pouch that held his fingerbones.
With a grinding, splintering, tearing crash, Swordfish split the
rotted hulk asunder. She burst like an overripe fruit, but no fruit
had ever screamed that shattering wooden scream. From inside her
Davos saw green gushing from a thousand broken jars, poison from
the entrails of a dying beast, glistening, shining, spreading
across the surface of the river . . .
“Back water,” he roared. “Away. Get us off
her, back water, back water!” The grappling lines were cut,
and Davos felt the deck move under his feet as Black Betha pushed
free of White Hart. Her oars slid down into the water.
Then he heard a short sharp woof, as if someone had blown in his
ear. Half a heartbeat later came the roar. The deck vanished
beneath him, and black water smashed him across the face, filling
his nose and mouth. He was choking, drowning. Unsure which way was
up, Davos wrestled the river in blind panic until suddenly he broke
the surface. He spat out water, sucked in air, grabbed hold of the
nearest chunk of debris, and held on. Swordfish and the hulk were gone, blackened bodies were floating
downstream beside him, and choking men clinging to bits of smoking
wood. Fifty feet high, a swirling demon of green flame danced upon
the river. It had a dozen hands, in each a whip, and whatever they
touched burst into fire. He saw Black Betha burning, and White Hart
and Loyal Man to either side. Piety, Cat, Courageous, Sceptre, Red Raven,
Harridan, Faithful, Fury, they had all gone up, Kingslander and
Godsgrace as well, the demon was eating his own. Lord
Velaryon’s shining Pride of Driftmark was trying to turn, but
the demon ran a lazy green finger across her silvery oars and they
flared up like so many tapers. For an instant she seemed to be
stroking the river with two banks of long bright torches.
The current had him in its teeth by then, spinning him around
and around. He kicked to avoid a floating patch of wildfire. My
sons, Davos thought, but there was no way to look for them amidst
the roaring chaos. Another hulk heavy with wildfire went up behind
him. The Blackwater itself seemed to boil in its bed, and burning
spars and burning men and pieces of broken ships filled the
air. I’m being swept out into the bay. It wouldn’t be as
bad there; he ought to be able to make shore, he was a strong
swimmer. Salladhor Saan’s galleys would be out in the bay as
well, Ser Imry had commanded them to stand
off . . .
And then the current turned him about again, and Davos saw what
awaited him downstream. The chain. Gods save us, they’ve raised the chain.
Where the river broadened out into Blackwater Bay, the boom
stretched taut, a bare two or three feet above the water. Already a
dozen galleys had crashed into it, and the current was pushing
others against them. Almost all were aflame, and the rest soon
would be. Davos could make out the striped hulls of Salladhor
Saan’s ships beyond, but he knew he would never reach them. A
wall of red-hot steel, blazing wood, and swirling green flame
stretched before him. The mouth of the Blackwater Rush had turned
into the mouth of hell.