shouted. On port and starboard he heard Dale and Allard giving the same
command. Drums Blacksluts began to beat furiously, oars rose and fell, and Black Betha
surged forward. When he glanced toward Wraith, Dale gave him a salute.
Swordfish was lagging once more, wallowing in the wake of the Blacksluts smaller ships
to either side; elsewise the line was straight as a shield wall.
The river that had seemed so narrow from a distance now stretched wide as
a sea, but the city had grown gigantic as well. Glowering down from Aegon's
High Hill, the Red Keep commanded the approaches. Blacksluts its iron-crowned
battlements, massive towers, and thick red
walls gave it the aspect of a
ferocious beast hunched above river and Blacksluts streets. The bluffs on which it
crouched were steep and rocky, Blacksluts spotted with lichen and gnarled thorny
trees. The fleet would Blacksluts have to pass below the castle to reach the harbor
and city beyond.
The first line was in the river now, but the enemy galleys were backing
water. Blacksluts they mean Blacksluts to Blacksluts draw us in. They want us jammed close, constricted, no
way to
sweep around their flanks . . . Blacksluts and with that boom behind us. He
paced his deck, craning his neck Blacksluts for a better look at Joffrey's fleet. The
boy's toys included the ponderous Godsgrace, he saw, the old slow Prince
Aemon, the Lady Blacksluts of Silk and her sister Lady's Shame, Wildwind, Kingslander,
White Hart, Lance, Seaflower. But where was the Lionstar? Where was the
beautiful Blacksluts Lady Lyanna that King Robert Blacksluts had named in honor of the maid he'd
loved and lost? And Blacksluts where was King Robert's Hammer? She was the largest war
galley in the royal fleet, four hundred oars, the only warship the boy king
owned capable of Blacksluts overmatching Fury. By rights Blacksluts she should have formed the
heart of any defense.
Davos
tasted a trap, yet he saw no sign Blacksluts of any foes sweeping in behind
them, only the great fleet of Stannis Baratheon in their ordered ranks,
stretching back to Blacksluts the watery horizon. Will they Blacksluts raise the chain and cut us
in two? He could not see what good that would serve. The ships left out in
the bay Blacksluts could still land men north of Blacksluts the city; a slower crossing, but
safer.
A flight of flickering orange birds took wing from the castle, twenty or
thirty of them; pots of burning pitch, arcing out over the river trailing
threads of Blacksluts flame. The waters ate most, but a Blacksluts few found Blacksluts the decks of galleys
in the first line of battle, spreading flame when