The King of Winters

Chapter-98

Theon

She was undeniably a beauty. But your first is always beautiful, Theon Greyjoy thought.

"Now there's a pretty grin," Dagmer Cleftjaw's voice said behind him. "I believe you like the look of her."

Theon turned to give the man an appraising glance. He found the hideous smile of Dagmer Cleftjaw a welcoming sight even though it made for a hideous sight. Under a snowy white mane of hair, Dagmer Cleftjaw had the most gut-churning scar Theon had ever seen, the legacy of the longaxe that had near killed him as a boy. The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two. A shaggy beard covered his cheeks and neck, but the hair would not grow over the scar, so a shiny seam of puckered, twisted flesh divided his face like a crevasse through a snowfield.

"Yes, she's a sweet sight," he told her, "and I mean to put her to good use."

"I have no doubt that you would," Dagmer said, smiling. He had no lack for smiles. "I can't wait to sail with you." A lesser man might have been afraid to show a smile as frightening as his, yet Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had.

Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he'd jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. He'd seen it when he blocked a blow from Dagmer's sword, when he put an arrow through a seagull on the wing, when he took the tiller in hand and guided a longship safely through a snarl of foaming rocks. He gave me more smiles than my father and my brothers together. Even today . . . he ought to have won a smile at least today where he'd won the command of his own longship, but instead all he'd gotten was a scowl that still doubted his skill at the command.

"You and I must talk, Uncle," Theon said. Dagmer was no true uncle, only a sworn man with perhaps a pinch of Greyjoy blood four or five lives back, and that from the wrong side of the blanket. Yet Theon had always called him uncle nonetheless.

"Come onto my deck, then. I must set sail soon. Your father has a command for me." There were no m'lords from Dagmer, not when he stood on his own deck. On the Iron Islands, every captain was a king aboard his own ship.

Dagmer's own longship the Foamdrinker was docked on the sea beside Theon's own Sea Bitch. Theon had known that his father had assigned Dagmer and the Foamdrinker for something important but he did not know what it actually was. He suspected that his wicked witch of a sister might know but none said anything to Theon Greyjoy, the last of Balon Greyjoy's children.

He climbed the plank to the deck of the Foamdrinker in four long strides, and Dagmer led him back to the cramped aft cabin, where the old man poured a horn of sour ale and offered Theon the same. He declined. "Where are you leaving to?"

"Your father has asked me to go to Old Wyk to roust the Stonehouses and the Drumms," the Cleftjaw said.

"To what purpose? Why are the longships hosting?"

"Why have longships ever hosted?" Dagmer asked. "I think you know the answer to it."

"Will father join the war?" Theon asked.

"I think you know the answer to it, Theon."

Did he? For days Lord Balon has gathered his best champions and his captains in his solar and counselled with them ever since word of the wolf King's return has reached Pyke. While both of his elder brothers were invited there had not been one for Theon Greyjoy. And worse was that even Asha had a place at his father's council.

"There is no man in the Iron Islands half so skilled with spear or sword, uncle. If I had a man like you in my service, I should not waste him on this child's business of heralding men. This is no work for Lord Balon's best man . . . "