He watched the sail grow for a long time, trying to decide
whether he would sooner live or die.
Dying would be easier, he knew. All he had to do was crawl
inside his cave and let the ship pass by, and death would find him.
For days now the fever had been burning through him, turning his
bowels to brown water and making him shiver in his restless sleep.
Each morning found him weaker. It will not be much longer, he had
taken to telling himself.
If the fever did not kill him, thirst surely would. He had no
fresh water here, but for the occasional rainfall that pooled in
hollows on the rock. Only three days past (or had it been four? On
his rock, it was hard to tell the days apart) his pools had been
dry as old bone, and the sight of the bay rippling green and grey
all around him had been almost more than he could bear. Once he
began to drink seawater the end would come swiftly, he knew, but
all the same he had almost taken that first swallow, so parched was
his throat. A sudden squall had saved him. He had grown so feeble
by then that it was all he could do to lie in the rain with his
eyes closed and his mouth open, and let the water splash down on
his cracked lips and swollen tongue. But afterward he felt a little
stronger, and the island’s pools and cracks and crevices once
more had brimmed with life.
But that had been three days ago (or maybe four), and most of
the water was gone now. Some had evaporated, and he had sucked up
the rest. By the morrow he would be tasting the mud again, and
licking the damp cold stones at the bottom of the depressions.
And if not thirst or fever, starvation would kill him. His
island was no more than a barren spire jutting up out of the
immensity of Blackwater Bay. When the tide was low, he could
sometimes find tiny crabs along the stony strand where he had
washed ashore after the battle. They nipped his fingers painfully
before he smashed them apart on the rocks to suck the meat from
their claws and the guts from their shells.
But the strand vanished whenever the tide came rushing in, and
Davos had to scramble up the rock to keep from being swept out into
the bay once more. The point of the spire was fifteen feet above
the water at high tide, but when the bay grew rough the spray went
even higher, so there was no way to keep dry, even in his cave
(which was really no more than a hollow in the rock beneath an
overhang). Nothing grew on the rock but lichen, and even the
seabirds shunned the place. Now and again some gulls would land
atop the spire and Davos would try to catch one, but they were too
quick for him to get close. He took to flinging stones at them, but
he was too weak to throw with much force, so even when his stones
hit the gulls would only scream at him in annoyance and then take
to the air.
There were other rocks visible from his refuge, distant stony
spires taller than his own. The nearest stood a good forty feet
above the water, he guessed, though it was hard to be sure at this
distance. A cloud of gulls swirled about it constantly, and often
Davos thought of crossing over to raid their nests. But the water
was cold here, the currents strong and treacherous, and he knew he
did not have the strength for such a swim. That would kill him as
sure as drinking seawater.
Autumn in the narrow sea could often be wet and rainy, he
remembered from years past. The days were not bad so long as the
sun was shining, but the nights were growing colder and sometimes
the wind would come gusting across the bay, driving a line of
whitecaps before it, and before long Davos would be soaked and
shivering. Fever and chills assaulted him in turn, and of late he
had developed a persistent racking cough.
His cave was all the shelter he had, and that was little enough.
Driftwood and bits of charred debris would wash up on the strand
during low tide, but he had no way to strike a spark or start a
fire. Once, in desperation, he had tried rubbing two pieces of
driftwood against each other, but the wood was rotted, and his
efforts earned him only blisters. His clothes were sodden as well,
and he had lost one of his boots somewhere in the bay before he
washed up here.
Thirst; hunger; exposure. They were his companions, with him
every hour of every day, and in time he had come to think of them
as his friends. Soon enough, one or the other of his friends would
take pity on him and free him from this endless misery. Or perhaps
he would simply walk into the water one day, and strike out for the
shore that he knew lay somewhere to the north, beyond his sight. It
was too far to swim, as weak as he was, but that did not matter.
Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. The
gods beneath the waters have been waiting for me, he told himself.
It’s past time I went to them.
But now there was a sail; only a speck on the horizon, but
growing larger. A ship where no ship should be. He knew where his
rock lay, more or less; it was one of a series of sea monts that
rose from the floor of Blackwater Bay. The tallest of them jutted a
hundred feet above the tide, and a dozen lesser monts stood thirty
to sixty feet high. Sailors called them spears of the merling king,
and knew that for every one that broke the surface, a dozen lurked
treacherously just below it. Any captain with sense kept his course
well away from them.
Davos watched the sail swell through pale red-rimmed eyes, and
tried to hear the sound of the wind caught in the canvas. She is
coming this way. Unless she changed course soon, she would pass
within hailing distance of his meager refuge. It might mean life.
If he wanted it. He was not sure he did. Why should I live? he thought as tears blurred his vision. Gods
be good, why? My sons are dead, Dale and Allard, Maric and Matthos,
perhaps Devan as well. How can a father outlive so many strong
young sons? How would I go on? I am a hollow shell, the
crab’s died, there’s nothing left inside. Don’t
they know that?
They had sailed up the Blackwater Rush flying the fiery heart of
the Lord of Light. Davos and Black Betha had been in the second
line of battle, between Dale’s Wraith and Allard on Lady
Marya. Maric his thirdborn was oarmaster on Fury, at the center of
the first line, while Matthos served as his father’s second.
Beneath the walls of the Red Keep Stannis Baratheon’s galleys
had joined in battle with the boy king Joffrey’s smaller
fleet, and for a few moments the river had rung to the thrum of
bowstrings and the crash of iron rams shattering oars and hulls
alike.
And then some vast beast had let out a roar, and green flames
were all around them: wildfire, pyromancer’s piss, the jade
demon. Matthos had been standing at his elbow on the deck of Black
Betha when the ship seemed to lift from the water. Davos found
himself in the river, flailing as the current took him and spun him
around and around. Upstream, the flames had ripped at the sky,
fifty feet high. He had seen Black Betha afire, and Fury, and a
dozen other ships, had seen burning men leaping into the water to
drown. Wraith and Lady Marya were gone, sunk or shattered or
vanished behind a veil of wildfire, and there was no time to look
for them, because the mouth of the river was almost upon him, and
across the mouth of the river the Lannisters had raised a great
iron chain. From bank to bank there was nothing but burning ships
and wildfire. The sight of it seemed to stop his heart for a
moment, and he could still remember the sound of it, the crackle of
flames, the hiss of steam, the shrieks of dying men, and the beat
of that terrible heat against his face as the current swept him
down toward hell.
All he needed to do was nothing. A few moments more, and he
would be with his sons now, resting in the cool green mud on the
bottom of the bay, with fish nibbling at his face.
Instead he
sucked in a great gulp of air and dove, kicking for the bottom of
the river. His only hope was to pass under the chain and the
burning ships and the wildfire that floated on the surface of the
water, to swim hard for the safety of the bay beyond. Davos had
always been a strong swimmer, and he’d worn no steel that day,
but for the helm he’d lost when he’d lost Black Betha.
As he knifed through the green murk, he saw other men struggling
beneath the water, pulled down to drown beneath the weight of plate
and mail. Davos swam past them, kicking with all the strength left
in his legs, giving himself up to the current, the water filling
his eyes. Deeper he went, and deeper, and deeper still. With every
stroke it grew harder to hold his breath. He remembered seeing the
bottom, soft and dim, as a stream of bubbles burst from his lips.
Something touched his leg . . . a snag or a
fish or a drowning man, he could not tell.
He needed air by then, but he was afraid. Was he past the chain
yet, was he out in the bay? If he came up under a ship he would
drown, and if he surfaced amidst the floating patches of wildfire
his first breath would sear his lungs to ash. He twisted in the
water to look up, but there was nothing to see but green darkness
and then he spun too far and suddenly he could no longer tell up
from down. Panic took hold of him. His hands flailed against the
bottom of the river and sent up a cloud of mud that blinded him.
His chest was growing tighter by the instant. He clawed at the
water, kicking, pushing himself, turning, his lungs screaming for
air, kicking, kicking, lost now in the river murk, kicking,
kicking, kicking until he could kick no longer. When he opened his
mouth to scream, the water came rushing in, tasting of salt, and
Davos Seaworth knew that he was drowning.
The next he knew the sun was up, and he lay upon a stony strand
beneath a spire of naked stone, with the empty bay all around and a
broken mast, a burned sail, and a swollen corpse beside him. The
mast, the sail, and the dead man vanished with the next high tide,
leaving Davos alone on his rock amidst the spears of the merling
king.
His long years as a smuggler had made the waters around
King’s Landing more familiar to him than any home he’d
ever had, and he knew his refuge was no more than a speck on the
charts, in a place that honest sailors steered away from, not
toward . . . though Davos himself had come by
it once or twice in his smuggling days, the better to stay unseen.
When they find me dead here, if ever they do, perhaps they will
name the rock for me, he thought. Onion Rock, they’ll call
it; it will be my tombstone and my legacy. He deserved no more. The
Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led
his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child
they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his
girl in King’s Landing and his girl in Braavos, they would
all be weeping soon. Matthos would never captain his own ship, as
he’d dreamed. Maric would never have his knighthood. How can I live when they are dead? So many brave knights and
mighty lords have died, better men than me, and highborn. Crawl
inside your cave, Davos. Crawl inside and shrink up small and the
ship will go away, and no one will trouble you ever again. Sleep on
your stone pillow, and let the gulls peck out your eyes while the
crabs feast on your flesh. You’ve feasted on enough of them,
you owe them. Hide, smuggler. Hide, and be quiet, and die.
The sail was almost on him. A few moments more, and the ship
would be safely past, and he could die in peace.
His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather
pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of
the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made
Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest,
groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones
with them. Stannis could never understand why he’d kept the
bones. “To remind me of my king’s justice,” he
whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone. The fire
took my luck as well as my sons. In his dreams the river was still
aflame and demons danced upon the waters with fiery whips in their
hands, while men blackened and burned beneath the lash.
“Mother, have mercy,” Davos prayed. “Save me,
gentle Mother, save us all. My luck is gone, and my sons.” He
was weeping freely now, salt tears streaming down his cheeks.
“The fire took it all . . . the
fire . . . ”
Perhaps it was only wind blowing against the rock, or the sound
of the sea on the shore, but for an instant Davos Seaworth heard
her answer. “You called the fire,” she whispered, her
voice as faint as the sound of waves in a seashell, sad and soft.
“You burned us . . . burned
us . . . burrrned usssssss.”
“It was her!” Davos cried. “Mother,
don’t forsake us. It was her who burned you, the red woman,
Melisandre, her!” He could see her; the heart-shaped face,
the red eyes, the long coppery hair, her red gowns moving like
flames as she walked, a swirl of silk and satin. She had come from
Asshai in the east, she had come to Dragonstone and won Selyse and
her queen’s men for her alien god, and then the king, Stannis
Baratheon himself. He had gone so far as to put the fiery heart on
his banners, the fiery heart of R’hllor, Lord of Light and
God of Flame and Shadow. At Melisandre’s urging, he had
dragged the Seven from their sept at Dragonstone and burned them
before the castle gates, and later he had burned the godswood at
Storm’s End as well, even the heart tree, a huge white
weirwood with a solemn face.
“It was her work,” Davos said again, more weakly.
Her work, and yours, onion knight. You rowed her into Storm’s
End in the black of night, so she might loose her shadow child. You
are not guiltless, no. You rode beneath her banner and flew it from
your mast. You watched the Seven burn at Dragonstone, and did
nothing. She gave the Father’s justice to the fire, and the
Mother’s mercy, and the wisdom of the Crone. Smith and
Stranger, Maid and Warrior, she burnt them all to the glory of her
cruel god, and you stood and held your tongue. Even when she killed
old Maester Cressen, even then, you did nothing.
The sail was a hundred yards away and moving fast across the
bay. In a few more moments it would be past him, and dwindling.
Ser Davos Seaworth began to climb his rock.
He pulled himself up with trembling hands, his head swimming
with fever. Twice his maimed fingers slipped on the damp stone and
he almost fell, but somehow he managed to cling to his perch. If he
fell he was dead, and he had to live. For a little while more, at
least. There was something he had to do.
The top of the rock was too small to stand on safely, as weak as
he was, so he crouched and waved his fleshless arms.
“Ship,” he screamed into the wind. “Ship, here,
here!” From up here, he could see her more clearly; the lean
striped hull, the bronze figurehead, the billowing sail. There was
a name painted on her hull, but Davos had never learned to read.
“Ship,” he called again, “help me, HELP
ME!”
A crewman on her forecastle saw him and pointed. He watched as
other sailors moved to the gunwale to gape at him. A short while
later the galley’s sail came down, her oars slid out, and she
swept around toward his refuge. She was too big to approach the
rock closely, but thirty yards away she launched a small boat.
Davos clung to his rock and watched it creep toward him. Four men
were rowing, while a fifth sat in the prow. “You,” the
fifth man called out when they were only a few feet from his
island, “you up on the rock. Who are you?” A smuggler who rose above himself, thought Davos, a fool who
loved his king too much, and forgot his gods. His throat was
parched, and he had forgotten how to talk. The words felt strange
on his tongue and sounded stranger in his ears. “I was in the
battle. I was . . . a captain,
a . . . a knight, I was a knight.”
“Aye, ser,” the man said, “and serving which
king?”
The galley might be Joffrey’s, he realized suddenly. If he
spoke the wrong name now, she would abandon him to his fate. But
no, her hull was striped. She was Lysene, she was Salladhor
Saan’s. The Mother sent her here, the Mother in her mercy.
She had a task for him. Stannis lives, he knew then. I have a king
still. And sons, I have other sons, and a wife loyal and loving.
How could he have forgotten? The Mother was merciful indeed.
“Stannis,” he shouted back at the Lyseni.
“Gods be good, I serve King Stannis.”
“Aye,” said the man in the boat, “and so do
we.”
He watched the sail grow for a long time, trying to decide
whether he would sooner live or die.
Dying would be easier, he knew. All he had to do was crawl
inside his cave and let the ship pass by, and death would find him.
For days now the fever had been burning through him, turning his
bowels to brown water and making him shiver in his restless sleep.
Each morning found him weaker. It will not be much longer, he had
taken to telling himself.
If the fever did not kill him, thirst surely would. He had no
fresh water here, but for the occasional rainfall that pooled in
hollows on the rock. Only three days past (or had it been four? On
his rock, it was hard to tell the days apart) his pools had been
dry as old bone, and the sight of the bay rippling green and grey
all around him had been almost more than he could bear. Once he
began to drink seawater the end would come swiftly, he knew, but
all the same he had almost taken that first swallow, so parched was
his throat. A sudden squall had saved him. He had grown so feeble
by then that it was all he could do to lie in the rain with his
eyes closed and his mouth open, and let the water splash down on
his cracked lips and swollen tongue. But afterward he felt a little
stronger, and the island’s pools and cracks and crevices once
more had brimmed with life.
But that had been three days ago (or maybe four), and most of
the water was gone now. Some had evaporated, and he had sucked up
the rest. By the morrow he would be tasting the mud again, and
licking the damp cold stones at the bottom of the depressions.
And if not thirst or fever, starvation would kill him. His
island was no more than a barren spire jutting up out of the
immensity of Blackwater Bay. When the tide was low, he could
sometimes find tiny crabs along the stony strand where he had
washed ashore after the battle. They nipped his fingers painfully
before he smashed them apart on the rocks to suck the meat from
their claws and the guts from their shells.
But the strand vanished whenever the tide came rushing in, and
Davos had to scramble up the rock to keep from being swept out into
the bay once more. The point of the spire was fifteen feet above
the water at high tide, but when the bay grew rough the spray went
even higher, so there was no way to keep dry, even in his cave
(which was really no more than a hollow in the rock beneath an
overhang). Nothing grew on the rock but lichen, and even the
seabirds shunned the place. Now and again some gulls would land
atop the spire and Davos would try to catch one, but they were too
quick for him to get close. He took to flinging stones at them, but
he was too weak to throw with much force, so even when his stones
hit the gulls would only scream at him in annoyance and then take
to the air.
There were other rocks visible from his refuge, distant stony
spires taller than his own. The nearest stood a good forty feet
above the water, he guessed, though it was hard to be sure at this
distance. A cloud of gulls swirled about it constantly, and often
Davos thought of crossing over to raid their nests. But the water
was cold here, the currents strong and treacherous, and he knew he
did not have the strength for such a swim. That would kill him as
sure as drinking seawater.
Autumn in the narrow sea could often be wet and rainy, he
remembered from years past. The days were not bad so long as the
sun was shining, but the nights were growing colder and sometimes
the wind would come gusting across the bay, driving a line of
whitecaps before it, and before long Davos would be soaked and
shivering. Fever and chills assaulted him in turn, and of late he
had developed a persistent racking cough.
His cave was all the shelter he had, and that was little enough.
Driftwood and bits of charred debris would wash up on the strand
during low tide, but he had no way to strike a spark or start a
fire. Once, in desperation, he had tried rubbing two pieces of
driftwood against each other, but the wood was rotted, and his
efforts earned him only blisters. His clothes were sodden as well,
and he had lost one of his boots somewhere in the bay before he
washed up here.
Thirst; hunger; exposure. They were his companions, with him
every hour of every day, and in time he had come to think of them
as his friends. Soon enough, one or the other of his friends would
take pity on him and free him from this endless misery. Or perhaps
he would simply walk into the water one day, and strike out for the
shore that he knew lay somewhere to the north, beyond his sight. It
was too far to swim, as weak as he was, but that did not matter.
Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. The
gods beneath the waters have been waiting for me, he told himself.
It’s past time I went to them.
But now there was a sail; only a speck on the horizon, but
growing larger. A ship where no ship should be. He knew where his
rock lay, more or less; it was one of a series of sea monts that
rose from the floor of Blackwater Bay. The tallest of them jutted a
hundred feet above the tide, and a dozen lesser monts stood thirty
to sixty feet high. Sailors called them spears of the merling king,
and knew that for every one that broke the surface, a dozen lurked
treacherously just below it. Any captain with sense kept his course
well away from them.
Davos watched the sail swell through pale red-rimmed eyes, and
tried to hear the sound of the wind caught in the canvas. She is
coming this way. Unless she changed course soon, she would pass
within hailing distance of his meager refuge. It might mean life.
If he wanted it. He was not sure he did. Why should I live? he thought as tears blurred his vision. Gods
be good, why? My sons are dead, Dale and Allard, Maric and Matthos,
perhaps Devan as well. How can a father outlive so many strong
young sons? How would I go on? I am a hollow shell, the
crab’s died, there’s nothing left inside. Don’t
they know that?
They had sailed up the Blackwater Rush flying the fiery heart of
the Lord of Light. Davos and Black Betha had been in the second
line of battle, between Dale’s Wraith and Allard on Lady
Marya. Maric his thirdborn was oarmaster on Fury, at the center of
the first line, while Matthos served as his father’s second.
Beneath the walls of the Red Keep Stannis Baratheon’s galleys
had joined in battle with the boy king Joffrey’s smaller
fleet, and for a few moments the river had rung to the thrum of
bowstrings and the crash of iron rams shattering oars and hulls
alike.
And then some vast beast had let out a roar, and green flames
were all around them: wildfire, pyromancer’s piss, the jade
demon. Matthos had been standing at his elbow on the deck of Black
Betha when the ship seemed to lift from the water. Davos found
himself in the river, flailing as the current took him and spun him
around and around. Upstream, the flames had ripped at the sky,
fifty feet high. He had seen Black Betha afire, and Fury, and a
dozen other ships, had seen burning men leaping into the water to
drown. Wraith and Lady Marya were gone, sunk or shattered or
vanished behind a veil of wildfire, and there was no time to look
for them, because the mouth of the river was almost upon him, and
across the mouth of the river the Lannisters had raised a great
iron chain. From bank to bank there was nothing but burning ships
and wildfire. The sight of it seemed to stop his heart for a
moment, and he could still remember the sound of it, the crackle of
flames, the hiss of steam, the shrieks of dying men, and the beat
of that terrible heat against his face as the current swept him
down toward hell.
All he needed to do was nothing. A few moments more, and he
would be with his sons now, resting in the cool green mud on the
bottom of the bay, with fish nibbling at his face.
Instead he
sucked in a great gulp of air and dove, kicking for the bottom of
the river. His only hope was to pass under the chain and the
burning ships and the wildfire that floated on the surface of the
water, to swim hard for the safety of the bay beyond. Davos had
always been a strong swimmer, and he’d worn no steel that day,
but for the helm he’d lost when he’d lost Black Betha.
As he knifed through the green murk, he saw other men struggling
beneath the water, pulled down to drown beneath the weight of plate
and mail. Davos swam past them, kicking with all the strength left
in his legs, giving himself up to the current, the water filling
his eyes. Deeper he went, and deeper, and deeper still. With every
stroke it grew harder to hold his breath. He remembered seeing the
bottom, soft and dim, as a stream of bubbles burst from his lips.
Something touched his leg . . . a snag or a
fish or a drowning man, he could not tell.
He needed air by then, but he was afraid. Was he past the chain
yet, was he out in the bay? If he came up under a ship he would
drown, and if he surfaced amidst the floating patches of wildfire
his first breath would sear his lungs to ash. He twisted in the
water to look up, but there was nothing to see but green darkness
and then he spun too far and suddenly he could no longer tell up
from down. Panic took hold of him. His hands flailed against the
bottom of the river and sent up a cloud of mud that blinded him.
His chest was growing tighter by the instant. He clawed at the
water, kicking, pushing himself, turning, his lungs screaming for
air, kicking, kicking, lost now in the river murk, kicking,
kicking, kicking until he could kick no longer. When he opened his
mouth to scream, the water came rushing in, tasting of salt, and
Davos Seaworth knew that he was drowning.
The next he knew the sun was up, and he lay upon a stony strand
beneath a spire of naked stone, with the empty bay all around and a
broken mast, a burned sail, and a swollen corpse beside him. The
mast, the sail, and the dead man vanished with the next high tide,
leaving Davos alone on his rock amidst the spears of the merling
king.
His long years as a smuggler had made the waters around
King’s Landing more familiar to him than any home he’d
ever had, and he knew his refuge was no more than a speck on the
charts, in a place that honest sailors steered away from, not
toward . . . though Davos himself had come by
it once or twice in his smuggling days, the better to stay unseen.
When they find me dead here, if ever they do, perhaps they will
name the rock for me, he thought. Onion Rock, they’ll call
it; it will be my tombstone and my legacy. He deserved no more. The
Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led
his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child
they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his
girl in King’s Landing and his girl in Braavos, they would
all be weeping soon. Matthos would never captain his own ship, as
he’d dreamed. Maric would never have his knighthood. How can I live when they are dead? So many brave knights and
mighty lords have died, better men than me, and highborn. Crawl
inside your cave, Davos. Crawl inside and shrink up small and the
ship will go away, and no one will trouble you ever again. Sleep on
your stone pillow, and let the gulls peck out your eyes while the
crabs feast on your flesh. You’ve feasted on enough of them,
you owe them. Hide, smuggler. Hide, and be quiet, and die.
The sail was almost on him. A few moments more, and the ship
would be safely past, and he could die in peace.
His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather
pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of
the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made
Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest,
groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones
with them. Stannis could never understand why he’d kept the
bones. “To remind me of my king’s justice,” he
whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone. The fire
took my luck as well as my sons. In his dreams the river was still
aflame and demons danced upon the waters with fiery whips in their
hands, while men blackened and burned beneath the lash.
“Mother, have mercy,” Davos prayed. “Save me,
gentle Mother, save us all. My luck is gone, and my sons.” He
was weeping freely now, salt tears streaming down his cheeks.
“The fire took it all . . . the
fire . . . ”
Perhaps it was only wind blowing against the rock, or the sound
of the sea on the shore, but for an instant Davos Seaworth heard
her answer. “You called the fire,” she whispered, her
voice as faint as the sound of waves in a seashell, sad and soft.
“You burned us . . . burned
us . . . burrrned usssssss.”
“It was her!” Davos cried. “Mother,
don’t forsake us. It was her who burned you, the red woman,
Melisandre, her!” He could see her; the heart-shaped face,
the red eyes, the long coppery hair, her red gowns moving like
flames as she walked, a swirl of silk and satin. She had come from
Asshai in the east, she had come to Dragonstone and won Selyse and
her queen’s men for her alien god, and then the king, Stannis
Baratheon himself. He had gone so far as to put the fiery heart on
his banners, the fiery heart of R’hllor, Lord of Light and
God of Flame and Shadow. At Melisandre’s urging, he had
dragged the Seven from their sept at Dragonstone and burned them
before the castle gates, and later he had burned the godswood at
Storm’s End as well, even the heart tree, a huge white
weirwood with a solemn face.
“It was her work,” Davos said again, more weakly.
Her work, and yours, onion knight. You rowed her into Storm’s
End in the black of night, so she might loose her shadow child. You
are not guiltless, no. You rode beneath her banner and flew it from
your mast. You watched the Seven burn at Dragonstone, and did
nothing. She gave the Father’s justice to the fire, and the
Mother’s mercy, and the wisdom of the Crone. Smith and
Stranger, Maid and Warrior, she burnt them all to the glory of her
cruel god, and you stood and held your tongue. Even when she killed
old Maester Cressen, even then, you did nothing.
The sail was a hundred yards away and moving fast across the
bay. In a few more moments it would be past him, and dwindling.
Ser Davos Seaworth began to climb his rock.
He pulled himself up with trembling hands, his head swimming
with fever. Twice his maimed fingers slipped on the damp stone and
he almost fell, but somehow he managed to cling to his perch. If he
fell he was dead, and he had to live. For a little while more, at
least. There was something he had to do.
The top of the rock was too small to stand on safely, as weak as
he was, so he crouched and waved his fleshless arms.
“Ship,” he screamed into the wind. “Ship, here,
here!” From up here, he could see her more clearly; the lean
striped hull, the bronze figurehead, the billowing sail. There was
a name painted on her hull, but Davos had never learned to read.
“Ship,” he called again, “help me, HELP
ME!”
A crewman on her forecastle saw him and pointed. He watched as
other sailors moved to the gunwale to gape at him. A short while
later the galley’s sail came down, her oars slid out, and she
swept around toward his refuge. She was too big to approach the
rock closely, but thirty yards away she launched a small boat.
Davos clung to his rock and watched it creep toward him. Four men
were rowing, while a fifth sat in the prow. “You,” the
fifth man called out when they were only a few feet from his
island, “you up on the rock. Who are you?” A smuggler who rose above himself, thought Davos, a fool who
loved his king too much, and forgot his gods. His throat was
parched, and he had forgotten how to talk. The words felt strange
on his tongue and sounded stranger in his ears. “I was in the
battle. I was . . . a captain,
a . . . a knight, I was a knight.”
“Aye, ser,” the man said, “and serving which
king?”
The galley might be Joffrey’s, he realized suddenly. If he
spoke the wrong name now, she would abandon him to his fate. But
no, her hull was striped. She was Lysene, she was Salladhor
Saan’s. The Mother sent her here, the Mother in her mercy.
She had a task for him. Stannis lives, he knew then. I have a king
still. And sons, I have other sons, and a wife loyal and loving.
How could he have forgotten? The Mother was merciful indeed.
“Stannis,” he shouted back at the Lyseni.
“Gods be good, I serve King Stannis.”
“Aye,” said the man in the boat, “and so do
we.”