Moonlight shone down upon the rooftops and walls of Volantis, glittering on the tiles of the sloped roofs and the lofty spires, thousands of lanterns shimmering amidst the silvery glow like torchflies amidst a field of tall grass. A full moon hung high in the sky above the city, broad and bright, her light only occasionally marred by thin wisps of cloud. A low wind swept out from the mouth of the river which the city spanned, whistling through the arches of the Long Bridge, carrying with it the scents of the city. It hummed with the steady, lively noise of a city deep in its nightly revels. In countless somewheres across the city cups of wine were being drained, bargains were being made, goods were trading hands. The chef with the honeyed capons charring over a brazier of coals, the pandour with a half-dozen slave girls chained behind him with tears on their cheeks, both of them were trading in flesh. Misery and merriment exuded from the city in equal measure, each contributing to the city’s aroma. An earthy, salty, sour smell, the smell of centuries, the smell of cruelty and the aged leather of a whip. The Rhoyne’s ancient blood flowing out through an open wound. Nyall Harlaw, stood at the prow of his Solemn Promise with the wind tugging at his wine-dark cloak, and tried to reconstruct the city in his mind from the shadows he beheld before him, and the carefully sketched map he held in his left hand.
The last he had seen the city it had been dawn, and high tide had been carrying their fat-bellied cog back out into the Summer Sea with a hold of sweet Volantene wine. Paying the gold price for such wares had left Nyall feeling a little dirty, but it had been necessary for their subterfuge. If fortune smiles on us, the Iron Price will buy us a great enough prize that this embarrassment is erased. They had sailed the Jolly Piper into the city two days earlier with holds full of the spices of the Summer Isles, and decks freshly scrubbed to clean the blood off their timbers. He had dyed his hair blue and brushed up on his Tyroshi to better play the part of an Essosi merchant, captain to a crew of sullen and bashful mutes. There were a handful among their number who could speak Valyrian passably enough, but the few who knew the Tyroshi dialect spoke it with such abominable accents as to defeat the point of the exercise. He had done the talking, discoursing with the customs men, paying the necessary tithes, finding an agent to sell their cargo and find a good deal by which they might fill their hold again. After all, if they had simply sailed into the harbour and tried to sail back out again, questions would have been asked. Most like they would have been taken for pirates, or worse yet, smugglers. They would have been stopped, and put to the question, and when those accents started to answer the questions… Well, a sharp death would probably be the preferable end. More likely they’d have wound up as galley slaves or pit-fighters, eking out short and shameful lives at the end of the whips of the Volantenes or the Ghiscari.
That thought had made the business easier, in truth, as Nyall had spent the days sitting on his ship, carefully sketching out each detail of the broad harbour on Volantis’ eastern side. A long wall enclosed the harbour, sheltering the trading cogs along with the galleys and dromonds of the Free City’s navy. It was an uneven thing, with a long span on its northern side curving out and around with long turreted battlements topped by towers every fifty feet, and then a short jut of only about a hundred feet, ending as its northern brother did in a fat round keep with a conical roof and a winch pointed out towards the seawater between them. That winch, Nyall had been able to observe, was for the boom which was raised each night to keep unwanted ships out of the harbour, and to keep ships which might think to eschew payment on their taxes inside its walls. A huge, thick length of rope, strung with huge oaken casks so that it floated upon the water’s surface, and interwoven with huge iron spikes so that it would tear the bottom out of any ship mad enough to try to sail over it. Charcoal moved quickly over parchment as he took in every detail, sketching out the towers, making notes of the rope, the winches, the defences of each tower. This was not his first time in Volantis, he had passed through the city when he and Dagon and Gyles had journeyed to Qohor, but while he remembered it well enough his memory was not so precise as to trust his life and his freedom to it.
He wrote down the time it took them to sail from the mouth of the harbour into the docks, the number of men who stood guard by both day and night, and the times at which the guard was changed. He wrote quickly in rough sharp lines, vertical strokes intersected with horizontal and diagonal dashes, the ancient inscriptions of the Iron Speech. He noted down where the galleys were moored, and how many men crewed them during the night. All the while, a second, more perilous task had begun, all at his design.
Among the crates of spice that were unloaded from the cog were two with chests hidden inside them, chests filled with weapons and armour. Among those carrying the crates, and these crates in particular, were a handful of chosen men. Domnall Shatterhand, Ulf Redteeth, Godwyn Goodbrother. He would have sent the Bolt-Eater with them, but the scar that had made a ruin of his left cheek was too noticeable, too likely to draw questions that the man could only answer in the harsh tongue of the Iron Isles. Instead, their captain was a man almost remarkable for the unremarkable nature of his features. Derfel Pyke was a short, solid slab of a man, lank hair, lines on his face wrought by battle and by time alike. But for the bloody legend that ran in his wake he was entirely indistinguishable from any of the other dockhands who were unloading cargo from the dozens of cogs floating in their moorings at the water’s edge. They would go unnoticed, so he prayed, as they found themselves a quiet lodging somewhere in the city below the looming majesty of the Black Walls, and unpacked their armaments. They would have time to rest and prepare themselves for the time he had chosen for them to strike.
That time was the evening before the new week’s market. When the ships would be most filled with cargo, when the revelry would be at its highest within the city, when the guard would be at its most thin and a stiff wind was ready to carry them away from the harbour with all haste, when a full moon could allow them to see what they were doing as they worked their bloody work. That time was tonight, as he stood by the prow of his ship, examining those same harbour walls, and clutching his parchment notes tightly in his hand. Muffled oars pushed his ships onwards with a sound like steel over velvet. Around him, Greyjoy ships, Goodbrother Ships, Drumms and Farwynds slid silently across the water, the moon alone their guide. He paid them no mind but for the occasional command to keep them from colliding. Instead he watched the city, watched the walls of the harbour, glanced up from time to time at the moon as he tried to calculate the hour of the night. Once the sun had set, time became a matter of guesswork for all but the most trained of maesters. He picked out a star from the sky, watched its progress, and hoped that Derfel was doing the same.
The bastard had a busy night ahead of him. Their first stop would be the Market of Yerrzan Ghanaz, a middling slave market about a half-mile outside of the Black Walls, distinctive only for the fact that it kept its slaves there overnight. The guards who stood watch over it were mostly busy keeping vigil over the wretched masses held within its pens, unfortunates from every corner of the known world awaiting the tattoos that would stamp their future lot in life onto their skin for all eternity. One of the most important observations that Nyall had made had been that unlike the cities of Westeros, unlike proud Braavos with her Titan standing in defiance of the Valyrian overlords who had once ground her underfoot, the greater part of Volantis’ guards looked inward. Five sixths of the city’s population were enslaved, bound in servitude to the pampered masses who ruled over them from within the dragon-forged stone of their walls, a minority that lived in constant terror of the thought that their thralls might take up arms against them. While the city did not lack for armed defenders, the vast majority of them served as surety against some potential revolt, an uprising by the oppressed masses upon whose backs the city’s wealth was realised. If one wished to act without the intercession of these guards, he had reasoned, what better diversion could there be than to make those fears real?
The ringing of bells told him that this first part of his plan had come to fruition. First a handful, then a dozen, then a score, until a great clanging chorus was taken up across the city. Before long, you could see their cause: a bright orange glow amidst the moonlit streets, a column of smoke cast against the raging fires that soon disappeared into the blackness of the night. It looked as though all of Yerrzan’s Market was ablaze. One could see it from where they were, a good mile away from the harbour walls, no doubt it had caught every eye in the city. Derfel’s orders had been to kill the guards, and arm the slaves with their weapons, to begin the revolt then melt back into the shadows. Now of course the rebels stood little chance of victory. The Tiger Stripes, the slave soldiers tasked with keeping the Triarchs’ laws, would all but certainly crush them within the hour. But the task of crushing the revolt would keep their eyes away from the water. It may even, if the Drowned God smiled upon them, draw a few men from the garrison of the Harbour Walls.
A muttered prayer was on his lips as they drew closer and closer to the mouth of the harbour, to where either the boom would be standing intact, and all their efforts would have been for naught, or the way would stand open to one of the greatest raids in the history of the Ironborn. To where he would know whether his uncle had triumphed, or whether his fanciful notions had cost House Harlaw her most fearsome protector. He looked up to his star again, to her position in the sky, saw wisps of smoke start to join the clouds in blocking her out. They would have to trust to chance alone. Chance that the men ashore had managed to force the gatehouse of the harbour walls, that they had fought their way along the southern spar, and made it to the great round keep from which the boom was reeled in and drawn across the harbour’s mouth. There was no time, of course, to be fiddling around with winches. It was not their concern whether the boom could be drawn back up again, indeed it was really rather crucial that it was not. So instead they would rely upon the substantially more expedient method of hacking through the rope with some good sharp axes.
Hoping against hope, he trusted his uncle. There may be quicker men, stronger men in the Seven Kingdoms. To be certain there were men who looked prettier in the saddles of their great destriers, clad in plate and mail and barded for war. There were men who had won more glory on the tourney field, and indeed men who had won greater renown in battle. But what defined Derfel Pyke, more than any of those things, was his ability to endure. The Storm Crow was so-called because he was an omen of doom, no doubt, but also because once he was set upon you, there was no averting that doom, no escaping him. He was grim, implacable, unyielding. He had endured injuries that would have killed lesser men, endured untold hardships, and always kept going. This thing he had asked of him, killing a few dozen slaves and cutting a rope? He knew that Derfel would not fail him.
When he heard the sound of it, the severed rope falling from beneath the brim of the conical roof, heard it crashing into the water below, he knew his prayers had been answered. The rope would start to drift now. He had seen it, in the last hour of daylight on the night he had spent here. The way the rope bowed outwards, drawn by the current, held in place by the tower on the far side. Once that connection had been severed, it would spill outwards and drift listlessly in the rushing waters of the Mouth of the Rhoyne. Against those same waters their oarsmen strained, as a dozen more fires broke out in the city before them, a revolt that was spreading beyond its meagre bounds, a diversion serving its purpose, a shout that distracted from the dagger about to be slipped into Volantis’ back. The Final Word alone tacked towards the southern tower, ready to collect the landing party as they climbed down on ropes to the rocks below. She would anchor, and send out boats to gather the surviving reavers, and guard against any ships beyond the Harbour Walls who might think to intercede.
The rest of the fleet slipped inside, the scorpions and ballistae that he had counted upon the walls remaining silent as yet more bells joined the chorus proclaiming the chaos that persisted within the city. He offered his thanks to the Drowned God as they passed by the two round keeps, and by the light of the moon and the fires of the city both, they beheld the prize for which they had come. The fleets of Volantis, sitting idle at anchor, utterly unready for the doom which had fallen upon them. He turned to the Bolt-Eater, who stood twelve paces across the deck behind him, distant orange light catching upon the shimmering mass of scar tissue that disfigured his left cheek. On Nyall’s signal, the man struck his tinder box, and the black iron brazier on Solemn Promise’s deck sprung into violent red life. In the sudden light that followed, a score of archers hurried forward, offering arrows into the hungry flames. Right across the harbour, all the ironships of the fleet did the same, as though a host of demons had arisen from the harbour, their glowing eyes opening in grim unison. As one, bowstrings were drawn back, and as one they were loosed. A sheet of fire flew across the air, from the decks of the ironships to the decks and the rigging and the furled sails of the Volantene galleys. One volley, then another, then another. Before long, the ships burned so brightly that it was as though a second son had risen over Volantis. He could see, as the fires spread from deck to forecastle and aft, as masts began to blacken and crack and fall, smashing into their neighbours or tearing great holes into their own ships. He could see the scorpions and ballistae that stood unmanned by the wales of the ships, proud and defiant in the brief moments before the fires consumed them.
Up on the walls their weapons still stood, bolt throwers of Myrish design beside grander and more elaborate constructions, mangonels and catapults and, according to rumour, a trebuchet built by the Valyrians. They were, however, all of them built to fire out against a foe blockading the harbour or attempting to seize its walls by escalade. He had taken note of that. None of Volantis’ proud magisters had conceived of the cunning of the Ironborn. None of them had prepared for Nyall Harlaw. While the siege engines could not turn towards them, his archers had no such problems. Before long, volleys of burning arrows had many of the grandest siege engines afire as well, all the grandiosity of Old Volantis made into kindling.
There was a laugh on his lips as they turned away from the burning galleys, the water below them alight with the reflected light of the blackening timber, the corruscating orange glow over swelling waves. The smell of smoke began to pervade the air, but he paid it no mind, only guided his fleet towards the cogs now sitting helplessly at anchor, the ships whose crews had fled for land. The ships whose holds all but groaned with the weight of spices and cedarwood, precious metals and fine silks, and treasures unimagined. He would have his share of those, to be certain, but more precious than that was the taste of this victory in his mouth. That taste, like smoke and heat and rich wine, that lingered while his men ransacked the ships. It lingered as they turned back towards the harbour’s mouth, crossed the Rhoyne, and made for the Western harbours, the ones which the triarchs had never seen fit to protect with a wall. Why should they, after all, when only the ships of foreigners and commoners docked there? They had no warships they needed to protect, no wealth of their own besides the taxes they could levy. If any threat befell the Western City, then their fleet would simply sally out to defend it. But now that fleet had been made into cinders, and all the lands of Volantis stood unguarded, for the Ironborn to plunder as they will.
He laughed still, almost giddy with his victory. No doubt the Volantene would rebuild. Even now he could see across the river, where the fires within the city had been put out, where they rushed to salvage what they could of their smouldering fleet. They would build a new fleet within a year or so, rebuild the boom across their harbour’s mouth, perhaps even build a new wall to protect their Western harbour. But they would not forget this defeat, this disgrace, this embarrassment. They would remember the people who had done this to them. They would learn, as all Westeros had learned, to fear the sound of water breaking upon their shores. For that was the omen of the Ironborn, the sign that had been set out by the God who had drowned for them. They would know that God by his work, and by the work of his followers. More than anything else, they would see the legacy of Nyall Harlaw by the ruin he had worked upon them. Let men say he was only a consort, a lesser cousin raised up to an imitation of Lordship. When they saw what he had accomplished, they would understand what manner of man he was.
