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Blackfish Out Of Water by jacobk

Books » A song of Ice and Fire Rated: M, English, Adventure & Fantasy, Brynden T., Words: 96k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Apr 30, 2016 Updated: Sep 15, 2016801Chapter 38

AN: Sorry about the missed update.

ooOoo

The Unsullied maintained a rigid schedule. Every morning shortly after sunrise they would file out of their camp and take up their defensive line. At noon camp followers would pass among them, sharing out food and water. Come sunset, they retired back to their camp.

This was not an army seeking out the best possible defensive terrain. This was a challenge. A rebuke: you will advance this far and no further.

We settled into a camp of our own to scout out our opposition and decide on a strategy. The tactical situation was simple. We were facing more or less Qohor's entire cohort of three thousand Unsullied. They were stretched in a line three deep across our path. Behind them were another two or three ranks of men armed with a motley assortment of slings, bows, and crossbows. These troops had more the look of a city guard than hardened soldiers, but they were more than capable of firing missiles from behind a wall of Unsullied. A block of a hundred or so Unsullied waited in reserve near the crest of the hill.

All of this was visible from where the Tattered Prince, Irrys, and myself sat mounted a short ride from our camp. What was not so straightforward was what we were going to do next.

"We have pushed them hard," the Tattered Prince said. "Qohor will offer generous terms."

He offered that assessment without turning his head from the study of the Unsullied soldiers. They stood tall and proud in the slanting rays of the evening sun. Presumably they sweat and itched like any other man but none of them seemed to move.

"Piss on that," I said. "This is it! If we break through this line the city is ours."

"As simple as that," the Tattered Prince said. He had turned to address me but spoke so softly that it was hard to make out his words. His eyes seemed focused on a distant sight from the past. "Have you ever fought the Unsullied?"

"I've listened to a slaver try to sell me on the abominations in Astapor."

He shook his head. "If you have not fought them then you cannot truly know what it is to face soldiers who will never break. Lop an arm off and they will try to kill you with the other. Run them through and they will pull themselves along your sword to strike at you. Strike down ten in great fury and the eleventh will not hesitate to step forward."

I looked to Irrys. The commander of the Long Lances had looked enthusiastic at my initial declaration. Now he shook his head.

"I am sorry, my friend. You teach me danger of disciplined men with spear."

I felt anger coursing through me. I thought of the dusty square in Astapor. The slaver and his enthusiastic description of the hellish training inflicted on unwilling slaves. The dead bodies produced along the way as failures were culled and the successful were put through ever more inventive tortures. I was not truly angry at my companions but I could tell that my emotion was coloring my tone.

"Are the Unsullied the kings of the battlefield then?" I snapped. "All must flee the unstoppable slave soldiers?"

"They are not unstoppable," the Tattered Prince said. He spoke slowly, either measuring his thoughts or attempting to placate me. "In broken terrain or in cities... alone or with few companions, they die much like normal men. Foolish commanders might position them poorly or sound a foolish retreat."

He looked back over the opposing lines for a long moment. Finally, he shook his head.

"They will not be moved from that spot. I'd wager their commander's life is forfeit if he should advance or retreat from that line. When they hold a position and refuse to be moved... it took twenty-five thousand Dothraki riders to kill two thousand of them. And we do not have twenty-five thousand riders on our side."

I knew the story of the Three Thousand of Qohor, of course. It was an impressive act of courage on the part of the Unsullied. But for my money it was also a cautionary lesson about the Dothraki tactical mindset: if charging straight at the enemy doesn't work, try it again but scream louder next time. There was a reason Westerosi lords didn't sit up at night worrying about a Dothraki invasion, and it wasn't just that they lacked ships.

"We have no Dothraki at all, and we're better off for it," I said. "Do you truly not want to press an attack?"

"What I want has nothing to do with it," he replied. "What I know is that throwing my men at that line would be a waste of time. And a waste of money. A failed attack would only hurt our bargaining position."

I turned to look at Irrys. He shrugged and shook his head.

I would have been willing to accept a negotiated end to this war after Selhorys. A quick victory and a modest payday would have suited me just fine. Having come this far and done so much, though, I wanted to finish the job. Not just that, I wanted to prove that the Unsullied could be beaten. I could choose to avoid this fight, but what about later? What if some invader brought thousands of Unsullied into my homelands? There would come a time when I would have to fight those cockless bastards. Now seemed as good a time as any.

ooOoo

The meeting at my command tent that evening started on a more belligerent note. I suppose that was my doing.

"Fuck those slave soldiers! I want to stomp them into the mud. Fuck negotiating with their masters!"

I had kept this meeting small. I didn't want to encourage contention and backbiting throughout the ranks by airing my grievances with our allied leaders. I probably shouldn't be speaking of them at all, but I was so frustrated that I had to talk to somebody. It was either that or leading a one man suicide charge on the Unsullied lines.

Petyr was propped up on a cot lying along one side of the tent. Rodrik, Walder, and I sat on camp stools gathered around a folding table that had been placed next to the cot. A sketch of our surrounding area and the position of the enemy forces sat on top of the table and had absorbed the lion's share of our attention. Unfortunately, no matter how long I spent staring at the map the simple reality of the situation was unchanged.

"The other captains won't attack?" Petyr asked.

He sounded almost personally offended. If he'd been in better health I'm sure he would have worked himself into full-on righteous indignation. His injuries may have sapped his physical vigor but they had done nothing to change his aggressive instincts. Petyr always wanted to seize the initiative and press on his enemy's weak spots until they broke. The only difficulty lay in finding a weak spot in the Unsullied.

The maester had repeatedly assured me that Petyr would make a full recovery. It was just a matter of time. Petyr clearly felt that it was taking too much time. Every day he would push himself to do at least a little bit more than he had the day before. To be honest I couldn't say if it was helping or hurting his health overall but I could hardly fault the effort. At the moment he was capable of walking for about ten or twenty paces before exhausting himself. He could stand or sit unaided for almost half an hour. Still, even if he wasn't going to be involved in military action for a long time, I thought he had earned the right to be involved in the planning stages. Not that we were planning much at the moment.

I pulled myself from my musings for long enough to shake my head in response to Petyr's question.

"What will we do, then?" Rodrik asked.

"Nothing."

Waiting wasn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. The people of Qohor couldn't be happy to have their final line of defense outside of the city walls. Every day that passed was another day for that to wear on them and for them in turn to pressure their leaders to make peace. On the other hand, it was also another day for Qohor to train up a citizen's army or recruit another pack of sellswords.

"Nothing?" Rodrik echoed.

I shrugged. "There's no point in a parley when we're at odds among ourselves. And if we want to attack we'll have to do it without any support from the Windblown or the Long Lances."

"It's strange," Walder said, "men who would happily charge the Golden Company refuse to fight the Unsullied."

I thought back to the words of the Tattered Prince. He had described the Golden Company as men like any others. When he spoke of the Unsullied it sounded more like he was describing some kind of supernatural creature. As though we were facing an army of flesh golems rather than men. Although it wasn't quite fair to say that he would never fight them.

"They'll fight the Unsullied if the terrain gives an advantage," I said, "or if there were some way to fight them one at a time."

I traced my finger along the map as I continued. "With the river and the cliff protecting them, we can't turn their flanks. Their fleet prevents us from sailing past and attacking them from behind."

Their fleet actually outstripped ours by such a margin that we had grounded our galleys near our camp for protection. Any attempt to take them would allow for continual reinforcement from our army, so they were safe enough. I suspected our pirate allies would have preferred to slink away downriver. As it happened, though, we were only able to sail all five vessels through heavy use of the windblown as rowers and fighters. The pirate crew was spread between the entire navy to manage things. They could make their escape on their original galley with the pay they'd been given, but any hope of keeping all of the captured boats hinged on our continued success. I still half-expected to wake up every morning to find four beached galleys and no pirates in camp.

All three of us frowned as we stared down at the map. A moment later, Rodrik broke the silence.

"If we beat them here, it would really prove something, wouldn't it? That free men can beat slaves?"

I smiled. "Not quite once and for all, but yes. It would certainly hurt their reputation and help ours."

Even in my wildest fever dreams I didn't think I could travel the world and stomp out all of the Unsullied. If I could break their aura of invincibility, though, that would be something. Driving down the price that people were willing to pay for Unsullied could put a real crimp on the production line. They weren't cheap to train up, after all. It wasn't quite the stuff of songs, but I'd be happy with anything I could do to head off a world subjugated by slave armies and dragons.

"We could attack by ourselves," Petyr said. "If we succeeded, surely the others would join in?"

Petyr reached out and rotated the map. From my perspective I was no longer looking at the battlefield from our position but rather staring down at it from the side. The line representing the Unsullied cut a ruler-straight slash across the terrain. Usually that would be an approximation but in this case it was probably the line on the map that lacked precision compared to the Unsullied arrayed three deep across the battlefield.

I tapped my chin. Something about that image was catching at my imagination, but I was having a hard time pinning it down.

"Yes Petyr," I said, grasping at the thought that was just out of reach but drawing closer by the second. "Yes, we could attack."FanFiction

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Blackfish Out Of Water by jacobk

Books » A song of Ice and Fire Rated: M, English, Adventure & Fantasy, Brynden T., Words: 96k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Apr 30, 2016 Updated: Sep 15, 2016801Chapter 39

AN: The lowdown on the showdown as the legion throws down by Qo-town.

ooOoo

The sun rose behind a curtain of cloud cover the next day. It would likely burn off by noon, but for now it provided much needed relief from the heat. For as far north as we'd marched the surrounding climate had stayed quite warm and the last few weeks had seen the start of one of the little warm spells that made surviving a multi-year winter possible.

Being as we'd be marching west to east, the cloud cover also meant that we could make a morning attack without the sun in our eyes. I counted that as a mark in our favor. Once I'd made the decision to attack I wanted to get to it as soon as possible. Delay only invited second-guessing.

By mid-morning I had the Sunset Legion kitted out and ready for action. They were gathered around me in tightly packed half-circles lined up one behind the other all the way up our hill. It wasn't exactly an auditorium, but most of them should at least be able to see me. They'd probably be able to hear me too. I couldn't match Robert Baratheon's booming voice, but Brynden Tully did have a lifetime of experience in making himself heard above the din of battle.

"There's a bunch of slave soldiers lined up over there," I called out, projecting from my diaphragm, "and we're going to kill most of them today!"

That brought an approving murmur from the crowd.

"For years sellswords have been running from those cunts, but we don't run!" I said, then paused. "I should say, we don't run away from anybody. We run towards the poor fuckers we're fighting!"

I looked around. The orange fabric inlay in the legionnaires' helmets gave the impression that the hillside was on fire, even in the dim morning light. The white feathers of the line sergeants and red feathers of the square lieutenants stood out in contrast. My own helmet was decorated with a veritable crest of red feathers. It looked like something a barbarian warlord might wear, which was probably fitting.

"They say these fuckers will die before they run. I say that means we don't have to chase them down to kill them!" I continued. "Don't stop moving! Don't stop attacking! If the Warrior himself stands before you, strike him down and trample over his body!"

That brought another round of cheers, and some of the men began beating on the ground with the butt of their pikes. I waited for them to quiet down.

"The maester has Lord Baelish tied to a bed, so he won't be joining us," I said. That wasn't precisely accurate. Petyr was actually strapped onto a horse and under strict instructions to stay with the Windblown cavalry, since he had insisted on at least watching the battle. "But we can't go to battle one man short."

With that I bent down and picked up the pike laying on the ground in front of me. I held it over my head with both hands like a trophy to the loudest cheers yet.

"Now form up! We've got work to do."

ooOoo

I had a few reasons to take Petyr's place in the column instead of commanding from the rear. Today's battle wasn't going to be some kind of tactical chess match. It was going to be a knock down drag out slugfest that would test our willpower and raw strength. Having the Blackfish in the thick of things should give the men a shot of confidence. I was also curious. I had heard so much about the Unsullied that I wanted to see them fight firsthand.

I was going to get that chance. It took a little while for the men to take their positions for the battle. Once they did I found myself ten rows from the front line. I had nine men standing on my left and ten men standing on my right. The entire Sunset Legion had been drawn up into a column twenty men wide and roughly one hundred and fifty men deep.

We stood aimed at the center of the enemy line. There was nothing subtle about our intentions, although it did cross my mind to wonder if the opposing commander was taking our threat seriously. The Windblown and the Long Lances were armored up and mounted ready for battle. Of course, they wouldn't be moving off our hillside until the battle was decided one way or the other. My fellow commanders hadn't begrudged me my right to launch this attack, but they had adamantly refused to join in.

The line sergeants called out their readiness up and down the column. I heard the shout from behind us, and the drums began to play. I started marching on cue, relaxing as I found myself in step with everybody else. While I hadn't marched with the Legion in battle, I had spent my fair share of time in training.

We began moving at a normal marching pace. It was the sort of ground eating stride that the men around me could maintain for hours on end. I might be a few years past being able to match them on a day-long march, but I was confident that I could keep up for the duration of a battle. The first bit of ground we had to cover was a gentle downhill slope, which made things even easier. We could have been in the middle of a training exercise.

The front rank reached the bottom of the hill. I followed them onto the flat ground a few strides later. Behind us, the drum picked up the pace. We broke into a jog. This was where practice and experience began to come into play. The pace was hardly punishing for a fit young man, but keeping in step with everybody else was a challenge. My heartbeat picked up as much from excitement as exertion when the column surged forward as one.

We reached the end of the flat land and started moving up hill. The rolling hills here weren't particularly steep but they were challenging enough for a man on the wrong side of forty. I started feeling the burning of exertion in my legs, but it was easy to ignore. My heart was pounding with the anticipation of battle.

We closed in on the enemy lines. I could make out individual Unsullied soldiers as we drew nearer. Their faces were flat and expressionless. They could have been statues for all that they reacted to our approach. They were all wearing matching breastplates over skirts of leather reinforced with sewn in metal bits of armor. Each of them had their spear and shield held at the ready. Their iconic spiked caps glistened even in the cloudy gloom.

The missile troops behind them were not nearly so stoic. They began firing at us even as most of their attacks fell well short of our front line. From this distance it would have taken a miracle of a shot even to kill an unarmored man. We had entered into what I knew from my talks with the other commanders to be the far edge of the Unsullied baiting zone. The preferred tactic for sellswords faced with Unsullied troops was to dance forwards and backwards into this zone, loosing missile attacks on the Unsullied in the hopes of baiting them into an attack that might render them vulnerable.

We had other plans.

The drums picked up in pace again. We broke into a near run. This was the fastest pace we could manage while still maintaining a good formation. My legs were burning in earnest now and I was heaving in great gulps of air, but it wouldn't be long now. A second volley of missile weapons clattered down around us. I heard a clang as a sling bullet struck the armor of the man next to me, but I didn't see anybody fall down. A heartbeat later we made contact.

I had my pike held at an angle to hang over the head of the man in front of me, my left hand higher up and almost touching against his back. Everyone around me was in the same position except for the five ranks at the front of the column who had their pikes down and ready to attack. The violence of the initial collision created a sort of shock wave moving back down the column. All around me people stumbled as they were pushed into taking an awkward half step.

The three ranks of Unsullied who had been forced to absorb the attack were more or less blown back off their feet. The Sunset Legion stutter stepped, then surged forward with renewed vigor. The archers now staring down the brunt of our attack immediately turned to flee but received pikes to the back before they made it very far. We kept pushing forward, trampling the downed Unsullied underfoot. I would have liked to pause and knife them to make sure, but there was no time. We had to keep moving.

Our front line was just closing in on the reserve square of Unsullied when a whistle pierced through the noise of the battlefield from behind us. I stopped, brought my pike to stand straight up and down, and rotated ninety degrees to the left. The nine men who had been to my left had done the same, while the ten men who had been to my right had turned the other direction.

I took advantage of the brief pause to catch my breath and survey the battlefield. The difference between normal troops and the Unsullied was clearly illustrated in that moment. The missile troops Qohor had thrown together for this fight had already broken and started to run. It almost looked like what you would see if you slammed your first against a table covered with a line of sand: the troops closest to us had separated the farthest from the Unsullied and were a quarter of the way to clearing our formation, while the troops farther away were just starting to run. The Unsullied, on the other hand, had hardly reacted at all.

The terrain had prevented us from attacking the Unsullied from the flank, so we made our own.

What had been a line of men three deep and a thousand men wide was now two lines three men wide and five hundred men deep. On each side they were faced with a block of pikemen ten men deep and a hundred and fifty men wide. The whistle blasted again and we began to advance.

The Unsullied were relentless, remorseless, fearless killers. But they were still bound by human physical limitations. Each of the three men at the front of the line was facing attack not just from four of five of the legionnaires directly facing them, but also from many of the men standing to their sides. Iron willpower or no, they were struck down almost as soon as they came in reach of our pikes.

The legion advanced at a steady pace. Our block of troops began to bend in a bit as the men who were face to face with the Unsullied moved slower than those who faced no opposition, while everybody who saw a chance to hit the Unsullied from the side naturally angled their march inward. I kept a wary eye on the shape. A little bit of bend was ok, even desirable, as it allowed for more pikes attacking each Unsullied. Too much bend could open us up to a counterattack.

Our sergeants had been briefed on the matter, and I only intended to intervene if something went horribly wrong. Most of my attention was focused on the main reason I had attached myself to the front of the column: the Unsullied reserve. If they moved to attack us I needed to break my section of the legion away from the main body and turn to defend our flank.

I heard a whip crack and the reserve force began to move. I started to shout an order but held my tongue when I saw what the Unsullied were doing. They weren't marching toward us but rather moving in parallel to us. They were moving quickly, almost running, but their course didn't take them close to us at all. They caught up with our advance and kept going rather than turning and trying to take our flank. They kept moving until they were well ahead of our line of advance and then came to a stop, turning smartly to face downhill toward us.

The fleeing missile troops were almost upon the Unsullied when they stopped. I watched in shock as the two groups came together... and the Unsullied started attacking their own allies.

"Fuck me!"

I wasn't the only one keeping an eye on that situation. My fellow legionnaire had summed up my reaction quite nicely. I could understand feeling frustration with soldiers who broke and ran, but I couldn't imagine what the opposing commander hoped to accomplish by attacking his own men. As I watched the fleeing troops split to go around the Unsullied. Well, most of them did. A fair few elected to stand out of spear range and start firing at their erstwhile allies.

I shook my head. "Don't get distracted. We've got our own problems!"

Indeed, the fighting was spreading out closer and closer to our edge of the formation. With the missile troops out of the way the Unsullied were clear to reposition themselves. Their troops that had been on the rear of the formation had been marching forward and outward, gradually increasing the width of the front. Where three men standing abreast had been killed almost immediately, and ten men had occasioned only a slight pause, twenty and thirty were proving to be more of a challenge.

It was honestly intimidating. We had already wreaked terrible destruction upon them. The battlefield was littered with dead Unsullied. We had paid a price visible in the colorful forms of downed legionnaires here and there on our line of advance, but the balance of casualties was overwhelmingly in our favor. Any normal opposition would have long since fled. The Unsullied not only didn't run, they didn't hesitate to march towards the grinding slaughter.

The fighting was close enough now that I could see it in detail. An Unsullied soldier stepped forward, catching three spear points on his shield. The impact forced him to take a step back. He ducked under another spear thrust, then stepped forward and threw a javelin. The throw caught a legionnaire in the face, his head snapping back as he fell to the ground. Another pike finally struck home in the leg of the Unsullied. He reached back and drew a spear from his back as he fell to the ground, twisting to try to launch another attack before three more pikes stabbed down and he fell still.

Our advance slowed, almost stuttering to a halt. I could feel the nervousness starting to creep in. We kept killing Unsullied and still they kept coming.

Then a shout rang out over the fighting.

"Death or glory!"

I turned to see a horse racing into the battle. It took me a moment to recognize Petyr sitting on its back. He had somehow gotten hold of the Golden Company's standard and was brandishing it overhead. He was swaying dangerously in the saddle and likely would have fallen if he wasn't tied in place, but he kept screaming like a madman and urging the horse onward.

He trampled over an Unsullied and then was past us.

Behind him rode the entire Windblown cavalry, swords out and flashing down as they laid into the Unsullied with a will.

ooOooFanFiction

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Blackfish Out Of Water by jacobk

Books » A song of Ice and Fire Rated: M, English, Adventure & Fantasy, Brynden T., Words: 96k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Apr 30, 2016 Updated: Sep 15, 2016801Chapter 40

AN: I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to note that the rest of the fic won't be as battle heavy as things have been lately. You know what that means? Politics, yay!

ooOoo

The sounds of celebration filtered through the walls of my tent. I was alone, staring down at the folding table where an array of reports had been gathered. I wasn't reading the words on the page. Instead, my mind kept replaying scenes from the battle. An Unsullied soldier rising from the ground just far enough to drive a spear upward into the thigh of a legionnaire. Another impaled twice in the stomach, methodically throwing a javelin from point blank range. Another left for dead stabbing straight upward, spitting an unfortunate legionnaire.

Over two hundred dead. More to come as the maester dealt with the wounded.

Brynden Tully had been introduced to war as a young man with little more on his mind than to close with the enemy in pursuit of glory. He grew into a leader of men, often taking charge of scouting detachments. He was no stranger to life and death decisions. But while his advice was often valued, he had never been responsible for deciding whether a battle was worth fighting in the first place. Weighing potential loss of life against potential gains was a new experience for me.

Now that the potential loss of life had turned into actual deaths I was having a hard time deciding that it was worth it. We'd won a greater bounty from Qohor, but in exchange we'd lost upwards of one in ten of the men. Everyone in the Sunset Legion lost a friend today. It would take an awful lot of gold to make up for that loss.

A knock on the tentpost drew me from my thoughts. I looked up to see Rodrik Lolliston lingering in the doorway.

"Will you be joining the victory feast, captain?"

I snorted. "Another couple victories like that and we won't have an army left."

Rodrik smiled and shook his head. "To hear the other companies talk nobody else would have an army left at all doing what we did. The Unsullied have never been beaten like that before."

That was something. Not just the bragging rights, though those were nice too, but to puncture the myth of invulnerability carried by the Unsullied. If some poor bastard had to face down a line of slave soldiers marching through the Riverlands, at least he'd do it knowing they could be beaten. With luck we'd provide the blueprint others could follow.

We'd paid a high price today but if our efforts kept the Unsullied out of Westeros it would be well worth it.

I stood, squared my shoulders and pasted a smile on my face before following Rodrik outside. Whatever doubts I might harbor, it wouldn't do the men any good to see me moping around.

ooOoo

The end of the battle has gone about as smoothly as we could reasonably have hoped. Finishing off the Unsullied was a nasty, dangerous business, but the rest of Qohor's troops proved more human. The sailors in the galleys cut and run long before we could reach the shore, rowing hard up the Qhoyne. The ragtag band of missile troops fled before doing any noticeable damage to our men, and proved easy enough to round up. A bunch of them helped us finish off the last knot of Unsullied, and I suspected they'd be willing to join up with us if we were willing to trust them that far.

Prying apart that last group revealed the location of the Qohorik commander. Our impromptu allies set upon him with a will, killing him in brutal fashion before he had a chance to surrender. Our men on the scene were at first too shocked to react then rather disinclined to risk themselves protecting an enemy. Once he was dead his killers were all too happy to explain themselves.

As they explained it, Qohor is run by a city council. They had their own fancy name for it, but that's basically what it was. There were five or six major political parties, depending on how you counted it. They would ally with each other to achieve temporary majorities but none of them really trusted each other. They were all savvy enough to recognize that control of the Unsullied was a de facto monopoly on force within Qohor, and paranoid enough not to want another party to have that level of control. The usual practice was to divide up the Unsullied between the parties. They were only put under unified command in times of crisis.

When looking for a commander the wise elders of Qohor were not looking for a brilliant military mind. They were looking for a man who would do his duty and then relinquish control of the Unsullied. In other words, they needed a diehard, hidebound, fanatical patriot. Once they found their man he was put in command of the Unsullied and a mix of supplementary troops drawn from the city watch, private security forces, slaves, and volunteers.

What I had taken to be a reserve force had actually been assembled by the commander as his personal guard when his non-Unsullied troops expressed their opinion of his intention to defend the city to the last drop of their blood. He had kept them in line through threats of immediate execution by Unsullied, and had decided to follow up on that threat rather than try to relieve his overextended forces after our breakthrough.

After hearing all that I couldn't blame them for extracting some rough justice. I would have liked to have the man as a hostage, but it didn't sound like anybody in Qohor would have put a particularly high value on his life.

The remainder of the march up the river passed without incident. Our pirate friend kept his boats close to the shore in case Qohor tried to launch a surprise naval attack, but we were within sight of the city walls before we saw another galley. I would guess that our last battle exhausted the Qohorik appetite for taking chances.

The city walls themselves were quite well constructed. Twenty-odd feet high, very solidly built. I was happy that that was all there was to them. No absurdly high dragonproofed fortifications. No esoteric fantasy materials used in the construction. Just a well built, well maintained wall. It could have been a significant barrier, if Qohor had an army to man it and hadn't had a surrounding forest that could be used to build siege machinery.

I didn't want to have to storm the city. I'd lost enough men fighting in this war already. Of course it wouldn't do to let our enemies know about that. If I wanted to convince them to surrender they would have to believe that I was perfectly willing to take what I wanted through force. The upcoming parley would be as much about attitude and showmanship as it would be a rational discussion.

We set up for the parley out of bowshot from the city, but not far out of bowshot. We arranged three covered wagons on either side of the road leading to the main gate, then set up portable chairs on the road itself for each of the members of our party. The Tattered Prince, Irrys, and myself were there, of course. I also had Petyr, Rodrik, and Walder with me. Jon Connington sat on the far side of our group, while the last member of our party was a man from the Windblown who claimed to be able to speak the Qohorik dialect of low Valyrian. A handful of armed men lurked behind us, acting in concert with the mounted Long Lances a short distance away to discourage our negotiating counterparts from trying anything underhanded.

Irrys and the Tattered Prince had agreed to let me take the lead in the negotiations. They had seemed more willing than before to defer to me in general after the victory over the Unsullied, although I hadn't tried pushing anything outrageous. For the moment my leadership dictated that we plant the flag of parley in the road and sit back and wait for somebody to show up.

It didn't take long for the gates to open. The group that rode out to meet us was one of the oddest that I had ever seen. There were ten of them, and their armor was amazing. Beautiful, rich color, intricate detail work, stunning artistic design, the works. The only armor I had seen back in Westeros that could even compare was Tywin Lannister's monument to golden excess. The problem was that the men wearing the armor were sat atop horses that would have looked more at home pulling carts than riding into war, and from the way the men were sitting they may well have been driving those carts this morning.

The man at the head of the group at least seemed to have some martial training, though he still fell well short of the standard I would have expected of somebody in his getup. It was full plate armor in gleaming black steel worked so as to appear that an enormous snake was wrapped around him. The uppermost coil merged into his helm, a gleaming piece of art fashioned into the likeness of a snake's head. Precious metals had been shaped to form individual scales, and a pair of rubies gleamed from its eyesockets.

I couldn't resist turning to the Tattered Prince. "Armor that fancy has to have a name. What do you think? Snakebit? Snakebiter, maybe?"

"I couldn't possibly say," he replied, shrugging. Sometimes Essosi just don't get it.

"What about you, Petyr?"

"Brightfang Souldrinker," Petyr said, not missing a beat.

I whistled. "You're right. That is exactly what my brother would call that monstrosity if I brought it home with me."

As we watched the group of them formed up in a ragged line even with the farthest pair of wagons. The serpent armored man swung off his horse and walked forward. As he did, he opened his visor-the helmet was designed so that it looked like a snake opening its mouth-revealing a young man of two and twenty, at most.

I turned to our translator.

"Tell him to piss off. We're not here to waste time talking to messengers. If anybody in that city wants to see another moon they'd best send out somebody worthwhile to negotiate."

The translator said something in that gobbledygook language of theirs. Judging by the way the snake man's face darkened as he spoke, I'd say he managed to get across the gist of my words. When the translator fell silent, I could see the jaw muscles on his face working as he ground his teeth. Rather than say anything, he snapped his visor shut and mounted his horse before riding back to the city. The other nine men stayed in place. We sat there in a rather awkward silence for what felt like a much longer wait before the gate opened once more.

Four older men walked out of the city under their own power. They didn't move particularly quickly, but they didn't strike me as particularly decrepit. They seemed far more comfortable in their rich clothing than their honor guard did in their fancy armor. Coupled with what seemed to be a faintly disdainful attitude, it seemed to me that we had some real decision makers on our hands. They walked into the center of our parley grounds and one of them began to speak.

I held up my hand to silence him. I didn't really care what he had to say, and I wanted him to know that. I spoke directly to him, trusting the translator to relay my words.

"Do you know this man?" I asked, pointing at Connington.

He nodded before the translator finished asking the question. I suppose it made sense that somebody leading a trading hub like Qohor would be multi-lingual.

"Ask him if the Golden Company will be coming to save you."

He did, in lightly accented common tongue. Connington shook his head. Unprompted, he asked why.

"They're gone," Connington said, his eyes focused on a battlefield only he could see. "All gone."

I felt a little bad about dragging him through this, but his obvious emotional pain conveyed the truth of what had happened in a way that words never could. I saw the lead negotiator's eyes widen before he smoothed out his features into a near-expressionless mask.

I snapped my fingers. The men arrayed around the carts by the road whipped off their covers to reveal the grisly contents within. Each cart contained a pyramid of human heads. Each head was topped with the distinctive spiked cap of the Unsullied.

"You're welcome to count them yourself. We made it..." I turned to Petyr.

"Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety six."

The negotiator's jaw tightened, but he remained silent. I leaned forward, spreading my arms.

"Nobody is coming to save you. Your city will fall. The defenders will die if we fight, as will their commanders. We will take all the riches we can carry."

I leaned back. "The good news is, we will not kill your children. We will not rape your women. We will not pull each stone from stone and burn the rest until nothing is left to mark where your city once stood. We do not do such things."

I paused for a moment. "Of course, you might consider whether the next Dothraki mob to show up will be so considerate."

The negotiator glared at me. "Why do we speak, then, if all this is inevitable?"

"If you don't want a horselord running wild through what's left of your city," I said, then smiled, "you'd better make us one hell of an offer."

ooOoo

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