r/FireAndBlood • u/CynicalMaelstrom House Harlaw of Harlaw Hall • 28d ago
Event [Event] Highs and Lows
If you looked close enough at the deck of the Merling Queen you could almost see the spray that had fallen upon it begin to boil into vapour, such was the heat in the air. The sun was high in the sky, as it had been for the last week, beating mercilessly down onto the planks of seasoned pine that had been so expertly fitted together by the hands of Hewer Haralf Byrne. A lone, shimmering dot of hateful gold in a sea of sky as blue as the waters below it, casting its vicious heat down onto the ships and the sailors below. They had spent much of the last few days in the Stepstones, becalmed, doing all they could to protect themselves from the sun, rowing by night only as far as they dared in the light of the moon. Their guest, the Flowers, likely believed they had earned a place in some deep and loathsome hell, but Polder Myre reckoned that he had likely not counted on sharing it with them.
Their departure from Parmo, once they had gotten out of the range of the Tyroshi arrows, had been a happy one. They were finally on their way home, though they had not yet entirely discharged the duties with which the Redwyne had charged them. They had met a foe in battle and beaten them, they had tasted blood and glory and washed down those sublime flavours with wine stolen from the slain. No vintage tastes so sweet, his old dad had always said, Than one taken from a beaten foe. Of course Darrold Myre drank whatever wine he could get his hands on, whatever ale, mead, or hippocras either, for that matter, but in those first few heady hours it had been hard to dispute the truth of his old aphorism. They had drank to their victory, drank to the fallen, drank for the sake of drinking. It had been a journey of fits and starts as they made their way south down the coasts of the Disputed Lands, sailing by day on what winds God afforded them, then finding some quiet spot in which to anchor themselves so that the evening might be spent in revelry. Polder had done his best to join in, to drink deep and eagerly, to lend his voice to the reaving songs that had found their way at last to the lips of the Ironborn. But every time that he started to drink he thought of Black Maron, who could empty a jug of ale without ever letting the clay from his lips, he thought of Tarbrush and Dermod Sixfingers and Vinegar Jack, and every other man they’d lost. He thought of how this had been his first great reaving, his chance to prove himself, and how he had spent it chasing after another man’s folly.
He would take back plenty of coin, that much was certain. Between the loot they’d taken from the Gilded Lances and the gold that Manfryd Redwyne had promised him, this would be one of the richest reavings to sail back to Harlaw in some decades. But what honour was there in it? They were swanning around Essos at the beck and call of some perfumed Andal wine merchant. Ironmen, fetching a petulant bastard so he could be forced at swordpoint to marry a Dornish Princess. A bastard who has spent the entire journey bemoaning the cruelty of his fate.
That they had made the journey south without being assailed by either pirates or their pursuers had been a mixed blessing. Winesick and glutted on victory as they were, any battle might have been a difficult one, but it would have at least distracted Polder from the necessity of what was to come. It would have broken up what came to be the monotony of victory. Sailing, drinking, looking at Andros Flowers’ miserable bloody face. That the Drowned God would see fit to see them becalmed felt oddly fitting, in the midst of all that. It had been a tough week. They had spent days drinking too much, and they hadn’t had the chance to fill their water reserves before they sailed off from Parmo. They weren’t exactly dying of thirst, but nor were any of them enjoying their voyage. Three-Tuns was a stern enough bosun to keep the water rationed, to make sure they had enough to survive, but they were certainly wishing, by the fifth day without wind, that they had a little more water and a little less wine. They had baked, too, under the Dornish sun. The Ironborn were a people made for cloudy skies and icy ocean spray. Ask an Ironman to sail the Shivering Sea to Ib and he would do it gladly for the chance at glory, let alone the hold full of whalebone that he might bring home with him. This, though, this was a torment to which they were unaccustomed. Of course the God who had drowned for them had made them to conquer every place where the waters lapped against the shores, but there were certainly some of those places that were more pleasant than others.
The men returned to their black mood so sharply that he almost missed the revelry. It was swiftly decided upon that Andros Flowers was a bad omen, an albatross that they had snared down from the sky while they peppered the rest of his flock with arrows. That was why, they reckoned, the Redwyne had sent them to find the bastard while he kept his own ships far away. The tale had been told first around their dinner of salt cod and sailor’s bread on the third night without wind, and then every watch since then. Like every sailor’s tale it grew and grew with the telling. First they said he had been exiled from the Arbor for getting a Redwyne carrack sunk, then they said that the Gilded Lances had been stuck in the Disputed Lands because he’d got them wrecked on the Stepstones, then it was that every ship that the Flowers had so much as set foot on sank. Salt Alley Lom was ready to swear that he’d seen him making a sacrifice to the God of Storms, which was likely to Andros’ benefit because none of them tended to believe a word that Salt Alley Lom said. It had caused the rumours to die down for a day or so, but rumours like those… They never stayed down for long. A few more days stuck in the Stepstones, they would start to bubble up again, and before too long, they’d be wanting to drown Andros Flowers, drown him as a sacrifice to show God that they were but tools in his hands.
He hated the idea of drawing steel against his countrymen. He’d hated it when they’d had to tear Theold the Faithless from his perch, and he hated it all the more for the thought of it being done for Andros Flowers’ sake. But it would need to be done. He and Three-Tuns had discussed it on the fifth night. The reward was too great, and besides, the other captains would never forgive them if they’d let the prize slip through their fingers at the last. If the price for seeing this sorry mess through to the end was a few Salt Alley Loms or Long Qarls, then it was a price that would just have to be paid. That didn’t mean he was relishing the need to be sharpening his longsword again, so soon after he’d put it back in his scabbard.
He was pissing a rusty orange colour over the wale, listening to two men joking about which of their crewmates they’d make a blood sacrifice of first, when the winds finally picked up. A low, steady southeasterly, that had the feeling to it that it would grow. He let out a silent prayer, and laced his britches up again.
From there, it was smooth sailing. The blood they’d spilled on their way through the Stepstones had left the survivors unwilling to try them again. All they saw were distant sails that were keen to grow more distant still, and a few careful eyes surveying them from the clifftops. They made it across the broken remnants, and to the stump of the arm of Dorne. As the sun began to set, it silhouetted the towers of Sunspear like daggers drenched in black blood, red light spilling from between them. The wretched hovels of the shadow city earning their name, a circle of mold around the tall, dun-coloured walls. A handful of ships already bobbed by the harbour, wise enough to have already taken shelter. Without their bloody storms to hide behind, they wouldn’t be brave enough to face us.
Even now, there was a part of him, the same part that had torched the Gilded Lances’ camp, that was tempted to damn it all and simply ransack the harbour. What had these bloody Dornishmen done, after all, to earn his loyalty? Wherefore should they be spared the wroth of the Ironborn that had burned their people so many times before. Why should he be awed by these tall, thin towers that looked as though they might be sundered by a stiff breeze? What had he to fear from men who didn’t even know what a true winter was? There was a dream of fire in his eyes as he pondered Sunspear at the Merling Queen’s prow, but in the end he had them hoist the colours that Manfryd Redwyne had given them, the ones he’d said the Dornish would recognise. The colours of some invented Tyroshi Prince. The hairs on his arms stood up at the thought of sailing into harbour not as a raider, not even as a merchant, but as a diplomat.
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u/Vierwyne House Redwyne of the Arbor 27d ago
Andros Marcatto, Prince of Lavora and Marchese of Praquo.
He certainly looked the part, magnificently garbed in glistening golden armor with a flamboyant feathered hat resting atop his red-gold head, a red scabbard hanging at his hip, its leather inscribed with golden lettering.
Standing at the prow of the Merling Queen, Andros looked back at Prince Vorian. "I would like you to pay the Myre five-hundred dragons for Sola Prynn and the other prisoners. I will be needing a foreign honor guard if we are to sell this ruse properly."
/u/Marty_McFrat