The King of Winters

Chapter-92

Rhaegar

In the center of the solar in Maegor's holdfast of the Red Keep stood his new friends and allies from the east each with their own entourage of unsullied guards in spiked helms and sellswords and prized slaves. In the center of the company stood the combined force of the magisters, the triarchs and the Archon of Tyrosh and the wise masters of the slaver cities.

Here are my friends from the east, Rhaegar thought. The entire might of Volantenes, Tyroshi, Pentoshi, Ghiscari and others who he cared not know the name of. The men who stood here claimed inheritance from old and proud bloodlines. Where the Free Cities was new and young compared, the Ghiscari liked to claim that they brought civilization to this world. Old Ghis had fallen five thousand years ago, its legions shattered by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls. The gods of Ghis were dead, and so too its people; these Astapori and Yunkish and Meereense masters were mongrels and vultures circling around the bleeding beast waiting for it to die so they could swoop down for anything they could grasp onto. Even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten; the slave cities spoke the High Valyrian of their conquerors, or what they had made of it.

Yet the symbol and remnants of the Old Empire still endured there in the slaver cities. And they were here in front of him right now.

"My King," Master Kraznys lowered his head. His companions followed suit. "Me and my friends are more than pleased to be here at your service. We have brought our finest soldiers and creatures to serve at your disposal."

Kraznys's tongue was twisted and thickened by the characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with words of slaver argot. Rhaegar understood him well enough without the need for a translator.

"Thank you, good master. They might prove adequate to my needs," Rhaegar answered. It had been a good suggestion to turn towards the east for support and the move has paid well off. His hand had done a wonderful job at turning the wealth and power of the east to his disposal.

The men they brought were no mere slave soldiers. The Astapori claimed that the unsullied was the best infantry unit in the entire known world and Rhaegar had seen them in battle, stalwart and formidable, when he had brought the Free Cities to heel. They would be a great asset in stopping Stark.

A double column of unsullied in spiked bronze hats stood behind the slave masters, holding round shields and tall spears. The tip of the spears caught the light of the sunlight coming in through the open windows and flicked in the low orange light.

They had been standing still behind their masters for a long time. If the Unsullied felt anything, they gave no hint of it. They could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand there. Tens of thousands had been marched out of their homeland on his orders; drawn up in several units and individual camps ready to point their spears in the way the slavers would point them to. They stood stiffly at attention, their stony eyes fixed straight ahead. They wore naught but a dark leather vest and britches, and conical bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot tall. The wise masters had commanded them to lay down their swordbelts and any other clothes they might wear, so that the Westerosi might better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.

Rhaegar was not new to them, for he had fought alongside them in the past. Most of the men to serve as the unsullied were chosen young, for size and speed and strength. He had seen them train which begun when they barely turned five. Every day the unsullied trained, from dawn to dusk, until they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three spears. The training was much more rigorous than anything he had ever seen. Only one boy in three survives it, the slavers said, calling those who failed the training as a disgrace more fit to die than to join a fight. Among the Unsullied it was said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the worst was done with, for there was no duty that could fall on them could be as hard as their training. The king meant to see the truth of it.