Chapter 200

Axel Arryn.

Seagard truly is a formidable place, when all's said and done. Sturdy high walls that command respect on sight alone, disciplined architecture, and defensible, well-ordered streets offer a cleanliness rare in Westeros; even King's Landing, capital of the Seven Kingdoms, can hardly match its seaside resolve and tidy stone. Rounding out the picture were the corpses, no shortage of them, rivermen, ironborn, and men of the Vale alike, along with the screams of panic, the clash of steel, looting, violence, killing, weeping women, burning buildings, and every other hallmark of a successfully conquered fortress.

Despite my retinue's constant grumbling, I had taken part in storming one of the walls myself. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was not my section of the wall that opened the gates. On the far side, Ser Monfryn and his band had somehow reached the mechanism well ahead of me, and they would be richly rewarded for it in due course. Once word came that the gates had opened, my appetite for cutting down rivermen evaporated, and I simply stayed on the wall, watching how the rest of the assault played out.

In my head, I understood well enough that what was unfolding in the city ought to have stirred at least some measure of sympathy in me, or, at the extreme, pushed me toward some rash attempt to halt the injustice of it. But no, I felt nothing beyond satisfaction at a job well done. A thousand more, a thousand fewer, what mattered was that they weren't mine being killed. Trying to stop a slaughter already in motion would have been pointless, even counterproductive. These men had fought, had died; they'd earned their release. And these were rivermen, at that... I seem to carry some pathological dislike toward this whole region and its people.

Toward the end, while my men were smoking the maesters out of their barricades, I finally got around to reading a message from my master of whisperers. It had arrived shortly before the battle, marked urgent, but I hadn't wanted to clutter my mind with it and lose focus before the coming assault. My many talents did not make me immune to a stray arrow or a lucky spear through the heart (Not quite true though). Once the gates fell, the message suddenly came back to mind, and curiosity got the better of me. Ten minutes later, a trusted knight had the coveted paper in my hands.

At first it left me baffled, then it drew a smile, and finally, outright laughter. Instead of some tidy little report, what I'd been sent was an entire story about the fall of the Lannisters in King's Landing. How Viserys the Third, and so on and so forth, had gone about "restoring justice in his family's name." The little king had apparently planned to burn the lion cubs alive with wildfire, but his hand, JorahMormont had put a stop to that particular foolishness, and the Lannisters got off with mere beheadings. What set me laughing was the loving detail given to the lions' final, dying indignities: pitiful, humiliating, utterly without dignity. Given the content, it wasn't hard to guess whose hand had written it.

"Ha-hah-ah!" Elena had a gift, and she hated lannisters with real passion, which made her story a genuinely funny read.

"What's got you cackling?" Asha Greyjoy sauntered over with her band of cutthroats.

"The inglorious end of House Lannister." The information wasn't worth hoarding. "Here." A minute later the princess of the Iron Islands was laughing in a distinctly unladylike fashion.

"Ha-hah-ah, who wrote this?" Her laughter made sense; the phrasing was wonderfully inventive, dragging the lion house through the mud with real style.

"A kinsman of the Lannisters' blood enemies." No need for outsiders to know the finer details of Elena's particular talents. "Is my share loaded?"

"Yes, your men have already started stacking it into the wagons," the girl replied, none too pleased.

I had, quite unilaterally, decided how the spoils between Greyjoy and myself would be split: seventy to thirty, in my favor. The princess was, naturally, displeased; she'd spent months laying siege to this castle, counting on a rich haul, and here I'd arrived and walked off with the lion's share of the treasure. I couldn't have cared less about her wants, though as a concession I left them the city, the maesters, and every last inhabitant of it. That softened the pirate's temper somewhat, though she remained put out all the same.

"Well, since we're finished here, time to say our goodbyes." The view was pleasant enough (a burning city), and the company was excellent (corpses everywhere), but the blood on my armor had started to dry. "Lady Greyjoy." A small bow; the girl had earned that much, sharp minded and formidable both.

"Lord Arryn," came the quick reply, "if you have the time, I wouldn't mind a word with you about... expanded cooperation."

I let my eyes travel over her figure and face: slender, long legged, black hair cropped short, a sharp nose, and that boldly piratical smile of hers. Not the fairest beauty in the realm, perhaps, but a striking woman all the same. And her cunning, sharp wit, decisiveness, and taste for blood all lent her a certain spice.

"Indeed, Lady Greyjoy." There was nothing quite like a good battle to stir up a man's blood. And nothing quite like a beautiful woman to see to what followed.

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