A CLASH OF KINGS
the riveting sequel to
A GAME OF THRONES
George not only continues the tales
of characters we have come to know
and love, but also adds some new
stories to the mix.
Here’s a special preview:
THEON
There was no safe anchorage at Pyke, but Theon Greyjoy wished to look on his father’s castle from the sea, to see it as he had seen it last, ten years before, when Robert Baratheon’s war galley had borne him from the island to be a ward of Eddard Stark. On that day he had stood beside the rail, listening to the stroke of the oars and the pounding of the master’s drum while he watched Pyke grow smaller and smaller in the distance, until it vanished beneath a green horizon. Now he wanted to see it grow larger, to rise from the sea before him.
Obedient to his wishes, the Myraham beat her way past the point with her sails snapping and her captain cursing the wind and his crew and the follies of highborn lordlings. Theon drew the hood of his cloak up against the spray, and looked for home.
The shore was all sharp rocks and glowering cliffs, and the castle seemed one with the rest, its towers and walls and bridges quarried from the same grey-black stone, wet by the same salt waves, festooned with the same spreading patches of dark green moss, speckled by the droppings of the same sea birds. The point of land on which the Greyjoys had raised their fortress had once thrust like a sword into the bowels of the ocean, but the great waves had hammered at it day and night until the land broke and shattered, thousands of years past. All that remained were three bare and barren islands and a dozen towering stacks of rock that rose from the water like the pillars of some sea god’s temple, while the angry waves foamed and crashed around them.
Drear, dark, forbidding, Pyke stood atop those islands and pillars, almost a part of them, its curtain walls closing off the headland to guard the foot of the great stone bridge that leapt from the clifftop to the largest islet, dominated by massive bulk of the Great Keep, whose walls still bore the scars of Robert Baratheon’s assault. Further out were the Kitchen Keep and the Bloody Keep, each on its own stony island at the end of a high, vaulting bridge. Towers and outbuildings clung to the stacks beyond, linked to each other by covered archways when the pillars stood close, by long swaying walks of wood and rope when they did not. The Sea Tower rose from the outmost island at the point of the broken sword, the oldest part of the castle, round and tall, the sheersided pillar on which it stood half eaten through by the endless battering of the waves. The base of the tower was white from centuries of salt spray, the upper stories green from the moss that crawled over it like a thick blanket, the jagged crown black with soot from its nightly watchfire.
Above the Sea Tower snapped his father’s sigil on a long banner with three tails. The Myraham was too far off for Theon to see more than the cloth itself, but he knew the device it bore: the golden kraken of House Greyjoy, arms writhing and reaching against the black field. The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted, like a bird struggling to take flight. Best of all, the direwolf of Stark did not fly above, casting its shadow down upon the Greyjoy kraken.
Theon had never seen a more stirring sight. In the sky behind the castle, the fine red tail of the comet was visible through thin, scuttling clouds. All the way from Riverrun to Seagard, the Mallisters had argued about its meaning. It is my comet, Theon told himself, sliding a hand into his fur-lined cloak to touch the oilskin pouch snug in its pocket. Inside was the letter Robb Stark had given him, paper as good as a crown.
“Does the castle look as you remember it, milord?” the captain’s daughter asked as she pressed herself against his arm.
“It looks smaller,” Theon confessed, “though perhaps that is only the distance.” The Myraham was a fat-bellied southron merchanter up from Oldtown, carrying wine and spice and seed to trade for iron ore. Her captain was a fat-bellied southron merchanter as well, and the stony sea that foamed at the feet of the castle made his plump lips quiver, so he stayed well out, further than Theon would have liked. An ironborn captain in a longship would have taken them along the cliffs and under the high bridge that spanned the gap between the gatehouse and the Great Keep, but this plump Oldtowner had neither the craft, the crew, nor the courage to attempt such a thing. So they sailed past at a safe distance, and Theon must content himself with seeing Pyke from afar. Even so, the Myraham had to struggle mightily to keep itself off those rocks.
“It must be windy there,” the captain’s daughter observed.
He laughed. “Windy and cold and damp. A miserable hard place, in truth…but my lord father once told me that hard places breed hard men, and hard men rule the world.”
The captain’s face was as green as the sea when he came bowing up to Theon and asked, “May we make for port now, milord?”
“You may,” Theon said, a faint smile playing about his lips. The promise of gold had turned the Oldtowner into a shameless lickspittle. It would have been a much different voyage if a longship from the islands had been waiting at Seagard, as he’d hoped. Ironborn captains were proud and wilful, and did not go in awe of a man’s blood. The islands were too small for awe, and a longship smaller still. If every captain was a king aboard his own ship, as was often said, it was small wonder they named the islands the land of ten thousand kings. And when you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were a god. “The Drowned God makes men,” old King Urron Redhand had once said, thousands of years ago, “but it’s men who make crowns.”
The Myraham was rounding a wooded point. Below the pine-clad bluffs, a dozen fishing boats were pulling in their nets. The big merchanter stayed well out from them, tacking. Theon moved to the bow for a better view. He saw the castle first, the stronghold of the Botleys, a lesser house sworn to his father. When he was a boy it had been timber and wattle, but Robert Baratheon had razed that structure to the ground. Lord Sawane had rebuilt in stone, for now a small square keep crowned the hill. Pale green flags drooped from the squat corner towers; the Botley banner, he knew, emblazoned with a shoal of silvery fish.
Beneath the dubious protection of the fish-ridden little castle lay the village of Lordsport, its harbor aswarm with ships. When last he’d seen Lordsport, it had been a smoking wasteland, the skeletons of burnt galleys lying black on the stony shore like the bones of dead leviathans, the houses no more than broken walls and cold ashes. After ten years, few traces of the war remained. The smallfolk had built new hovels with the stones of the old, and cut fresh sod for their roofs. A new inn had risen beside the landing, twice the size of the old one, with a lower story of cut stone and two upper stories of timber. The sept beyond had never been rebuilt, though; only a seven-sided foundation remained to show where it had stood. Robert Baratheon’s fury had soured the ironmen’s taste for the new gods, it would seem.
Theon was more interested in ships than gods. Among the masts of countless fishing boats, he spied a Tyroshi trading galley offloading beside a lumbering Ibbanese cog with her black-tarred hull. A great number of longships, fifty or sixty at the least, stood out to sea or lay beached on the pebbled shore to the north. So many, he thought, uneasy. Theon could not recall ever seeing this many longships in Lordsport before, save on the eve of his father’s ill-fated rebellion. And some of the sails bore devices from the other islands; the blood moon of Wynch, Lord Goodbrother’s banded black warhorn, Harlaw’s silver scythe. He searched for a glimpse of his uncle Euron’s Silence. Of that lean and terrible red ship he saw no sign, but his father’s Great Kraken was there, looming over the lesser craft, her bow ornamented with a grey iron ram in the shape of its namesake.
Had Lord Balon anticipated him and called the Greyjoy banners when he received Robb’s message from Riverrun? His hand went inside his cloak again, to the oilskin pouch. No one knew of his letter but Robb Stark; they were no fools, and only a
fool entrusted his secrets to a bird. Still, Lord Balon was no fool either. He might well have guessed why his son was coming home at long last, and acted accordingly.
The thought did not please him. His father’s war was long done, and lost. This was Theon’s hour—his plan, his glory, and in time, his crown. Yet if the longships are hosting…
It might be only a caution, now that he thought on it. A defensive move, lest the war spill out across the sea. Old men were cautious by nature. His father was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the Silence did not seem to be in port. It is for the good, Theon told himself. This way, I shall be able to strike all the more quickly.
As the Myraham made her way landward, Theon paced the deck restlessly, scanning the shore. He had not thought to find Lord Balon himself waiting at quayside, but surely his father would have sent someone to meet him. Old Sylas Sourmouth the steward, or perhaps Lord Botley or Dagmer Cleftjaw. They knew he was coming. Robb had sent word before Theon left Riverrun, and when they’d found no longship waiting at Seagard, Lord Jason Mallister had sent his own birds to Pyke, supposing that Robb’s were lost.
Yet he saw no familiar faces on the landing, no honor guard of riders to escort him from Lordsport to Pyke, only smallfolk going about their small business. Shorehands rolled casks of wine off the Tyroshi trader, fisherfolk cried the day’s catch, children ran and played. A priest in the seawater robes of the Drowned God was leading a pair of horses along the pebbled shore, while above him a slattern leaned out a window in the inn, calling out to some passing Ibbanese sailors.
A handful of Lordsport merchants had gathered to meet the ship. They shouted up questions as the Myraham was tying up. “We’re out of Oldtown,” the captain called down in reply, “bearing apples and oranges, wines from the Arbor, feathers from the Summer Isles. I have pepper, woven leathers, a bolt of Myrish lace, mirrors for milady, a pair of Oldtown woodharps sweet as any you ever heard.” The gangplank descended with a creak and a thud. “And I’ve brought your heir back to you.”
The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that they did not know who he was. It made him angry. He pressed a golden dragon into the captain’s palm. “Have your men bring my things.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode down the gangplank. “Innkeep,” he barked, “I require a horse.”
“As you say, m’lord,” the man responded, without so much as a bow. He had forgotten how bold the ironborn could be. “Happens as I have one might do. Where would you be riding, m’lord?”
“Pyke,” Theon snapped curtly. The fool still did not know him. He should have worn his good doublet, with the kraken embroidered on the breast, that would have left no question.
“You’ll want to be off soon, to reach Pyke afore dark,” the innkeep said. “My boy will go with you and show you the way.”
“Your boy will not be needed,” a deep voice called, “nor your horse. I shall see my nephew back to his father’s house.”
The speaker was the priest he had seen leading the horses along the shoreline. As the man approached, the smallfolk bent the knee, and Theon heard the innkeep murmur, “Damphair.”
Tall and thin, with fierce black eyes and a beak of a nose, the priest was garbed in mottled robes of green and grey and blue, the swirling colors of the Drowned God. A waterskin hung under his arm on a leather strap, and ropes of dried seaweed were braided through his waist-long black hair and untrimmed beard.
Theon frowned at the prod of memory. In one of his few curt letters, Lord Balon had written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he washed up safe on shore. “Uncle Aeron?” he said, doubtfully.
“Nephew Theon,” the priest replied. “Your lord father bid me fetch you. Come.”
“In a moment, uncle.” He turned back to the Myraham. “My things,” he commanded the captain.
A sailor fetched him down his tall yew bow and quiver of arrows, but it was the captain’s daughter who brought the pack with his good clothing. “Milord.” Her eyes were red. When he took the pack, she made as if to embrace him, there in front of her own father and his priestly uncle and half the island.
Theon turned deftly aside. “You have my thanks.”
“Please,” she said, “I do love you well, milord.”
“I must go.” He hurried after his uncle, who was already well down the pier. Theon caught him with a dozen long strides. “I had not looked for you, uncle. After ten years, I thought perhaps my lord father and lady mother might come themselves, or send Dagmer with an honor guard.”
“It is not for you to question the commands of the Lord Reaper of Pyke.” The priest’s manner was chilly, most unlike the man Theon remembered. Aeron Greyjoy had been the most amiable of his uncles, feckless and quick to laugh, fond of songs, ale, and women. “As to Dagmer, the Cleftjaw is gone to Old Wyk at your father’s behest, to roust the Stonehouses and the Drumms.”
“To what purpose?” Theon asked sharply. “Why are the longships hosting?”
“Why have longships ever hosted?” His uncle had left the horses tied up in front of the waterside inn. When they reached them, he turned to Theon. “Tell me true, nephew. Do you pray to the wolf gods now?”
Theon seldom prayed at all, but that was not something you confessed to a priest, even your father’s own brother. “Ned Stark prayed to a tree. No, I care nothing for Stark’s gods.”
“Good. Kneel.”
The ground was all stones and mud. “Uncle, I—”
“Kneel. Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?”
Scowling, Theon knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need Aeron’s help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.
“Bow your head.” Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon’s head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. “Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were,” Aeron Greyjoy intoned. “Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel. Nephew, do you still know the words?”
“What is dead may never die,” Theon said, remembering.
“What is dead may never die,” his uncle echoed, “but rises again, harder and stronger. Stand.”
Theon stood, blinking back tears from the salt in his eyes. Wordless, his uncle corked the waterskin, untied his horse, and mounted. Theon did the same. They set off together, leaving the inn and the harbor behind them, up past the castle of Lord Botley into the stony hills. The priest ventured no further word.
“I have been half my life away from home,” Theon ventured at last. “Will I find the islands changed?”
“Men fish the sea, dig in the earth, and die. Women birth children in blood and pain, and die. Night follows day. The winds and tides remain. The islands are as our god made them.”
Gods, he has grown grim, Theon thought. “Will I find my sister and my lady mother at Pyke?”
“You will not. Your mother dwells on Harlaw, with her own sister. It is less raw there, and her cough troubles her. Your sister has taken Black Wind to Great Wyk, with messages from your lord father. She will return e’er long, you may be sure.”
Theon did not need to be told that Black Wind was Asha’s longship. He had not seen his sister in ten years, but that much he knew of her. Odd that she would call it that, when Robb Stark had a wolf named Grey Wind. “Stark is grey and Greyjoy’s black,” he murmured, smiling, “but it seems we’re both windy.”
The priest had nothing to say to that.
“And what of you, uncle?” Theon asked. “You were no priest when I was taken from Pyke. I remember how you would si
ng the old reaving songs standing on the table with a horn of ale in hand.”
“Young I was, and vain,” Aeron Greyjoy said, “but the sea washed my follies and my vanities away. That man drowned, nephew. His lungs filled with seawater, and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. When I rose again, I saw clearly.”
He is mad as he is sour, Theon thought, saddened. He had liked what he remembered of the old Aeron Greyjoy. “Uncle, why has my father called his swords and sails?”
“Doubtless he will tell you at Pyke.”
“I would know his plans now,” Theon said.
“From me, you shall not. We are commanded not to speak of this to any man.”
“Even to me?” Theon’s anger flared. He’d led men in war, hunted with a king, won honor in tourney melees, ridden with Brynden Blackfish and Greatjon Umber, fought in the Whispering Wood, bedded more girls than he could name, and yet this uncle was treating him as though he were still a child of ten. “If my father makes plans for war, I must know of them. I am not ‘any man,’ I am heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands.”
“As to that,” his uncle said, “we shall see.”
The words were a slap in the face. “What does that mean, we shall see?” Theon said scornfully. “My brothers are both dead. I am my lord father’s only living son.”
“Your sister lives.” Aeron gave Theon not so much as the courtesy of a glance.
Asha, he thought, confounded. She was three years older than Theon, yet still…“A woman may inherit only if there is no male heir in the direct line,” he insisted loudly. “I will not be cheated of my rights, I warn you.”
His uncle grunted. “You warn a servant of the Drowned God, boy? You have forgotten more than you know. And you are a great fool if you believe your lord father will ever hand these holy islands over to a Stark. Now be silent. The ride is long enough without your magpie chatterings.”
Theon held his tongue, though not without struggle. So that is the way of it, he thought. He almost laughed. As if ten years in Winterfell could make a Stark. Lord Eddard may have raised him among his own children, but Theon had never truly felt one of them. The whole castle, from Ned Stark himself to the lowliest kitchen scullion, knew he was there as hostage to his father’s good behavior, and treated him accordingly. Even the bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor than he had.
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