The King of Winters

Chapter 63

Jorah

The most perilous part of the voyage was the last. The Redwyne Straits were swarming with longships, as they had been warned in King's Landing. With the main strength of the Arbor's fleet inland in the port of Oldtown, the few sellsword ships with the direwolf banner streaming from their masts had been attacking every enemy shipping bound for Oldtown to join forces with the Redwyne and Hightower navy.

Thrice longships were sighted by the crow's nest. Two were well astern, however, and the royal navy of King Rhaegar Tadown. The third appeared near sunset, to cut them off from Whispering Sound. When they saw her oars rising and falling, lashing the copper waters white, Ser Jorah Mormont sent his archers to the castles with their great bows of Dornish yew that could send a shaft farther and truer than any normal bows. Only the bows made of dragonbone and the goldenheart tree in the Summer Isles could outreach them. He waited till the longship came within two hundred yards before he gave the command to loose. One volley was all it took. The longship of the sellswords veered south and was caught in between Wolfsbane and Ruby, both of them crushing the galley as if it was some rag doll.

A deep blue dusk was falling as they entered Whispering Sound. Jorah stood beside the prow with the captain of the Dragonborn, the mightiest of the war galleys the new Master of Ships made for House Targaryen. Smaller only to Balerion, the flagship of House Targaryen, the vessel was a formidable foe to anything that comes in its path. Jorah Mormont had never liked Aurane Waters for he spent too much time with Princess Daenerys for his liking, but even he had to admit the bastard of Driftmark made a good job making the ship.

He gazed up at the castle on the cliffs. Three Towers, Jorah knew it, the seat of House Costayne. He had seen it before once, when he came here for his wedding to Lynesse. Etched against the evening stars with torchlight flickering from its windows, the castle made a splendid sight, but he was sad to see it. It reminded him of Lynesse and their miserable marriage.

"It's very tall," said Ed, the captain of the Dragonborn, who'd never seen these lands before.

"Wait until you see the Hightower."

The sellswords had penetrated even to the sheltered waters of Whispering Sound. Come morning, as the Dragonborn continued on toward Oldtown, he began to see other sellsword ships up the stream and drifting down to the sea. Scorched fields and burned villages appeared on the banks, and the shallows and sandbars were strewn with shattered ships. Merchanters and fishing boats were the most common, but they saw abandoned longships too, and the wreckage of two big dromonds. One had been burned down to the waterline, whilst the other had a gaping splintered hole in her side where her hull had been rammed.

"There has been a battle here," said Ed. "Not so long ago."

"I never knew that the wolf boy is so mad as to raid this close to Oldtown."

Ed pointed at a half-sunken longship in the shallows. The remnants of a banner drooped from her stern, smoke-stained and ragged. The charge was one Jorah has been seeing for a few days now: the grey direwolf of House Stark but it was the other one which caught his eyes: the violet rose. "The Company of Rose is here?" Jorah asked. Ed only shrugged.

The next day was cold and misty. As the Dragonborn was creeping past another plundered fishing village, a war galley came sliding from the fog, stroking slowly toward them. Huntress was the name she bore, behind a figurehead of a slender maiden clad in leaves and brandishing a spear. A heartbeat later, two smaller galleys appeared on either side of her, like a pair of matched greyhounds stalking at their master's heels. To Jorah's relief, they flew King Rhaegar black and red three headed dragon banner above the stepped white tower of Oldtown, with its crown of flame.