- 'The prisoners will be here soon, Lord Snow,' said Prince Oberyn, holding a carved cup.
Jon Snow sipped his buffalo milk. He watched the sword-dancers lead forth at the Prince's word. They were as swift as hawks. They whirled so close and then so far apart, clanging their weapons together at the most unexpected moments to the beat of whistles and drums that it was hard to follow. Prince Oberyn was sitting with his legs spread wide apart on a spread wolf-skin, and for the first time since they had started he spoke. The buffalo milk was strong, its fermented taste lingering long in Jon Snow's mouth.
- What prisoners do you mean, bright-faced, glorious prince?
Jon Snow could share his doubts about Casta with Prince Oberyn, but what if that interferes with any hidden agenda the prince may have? The wisest thing to do now is to wait patiently. Oberyn squirmed a little on the skins.
- The Martells always sacrifice some prisoners of war to the new gods before battle. The souls of defeated foes thus bound to them will help the Lord of the Sun Land's to claim victory. As I said, it's not the first time I've fought the Dothraki hordes.
Jon Snow nodded.
- What kind of prisoners are these?
- Most of them are sons of the wildling nations beyond the Wall. But there are others among them, Essos or Baratheon mercenaries. Yunkai slavers and Pentosians. And Volantis.
- Volantis?
He never forgot the eyes of that slave killed at Jon Arryn's memorial service. Three years had passed, but he still remembered it clearly. Nor does he forget the language the slave spoke before Robert slit his throat. He was a Volantis warrior captured in Tywin Lannister's campaign.
- My father told me of Volantis. And he told me Volantis was greater than all the realms of the Seven Kingdoms put together. You have seen much, Prince Oberyn, more than I. Have you ever been to Volantis?
The prince shook his head.
- I have never been there, Lord Snow. The Martells men are long-tempered warriors to whom distance means nothing. Joining my brother Doran's battalions, many of us have trodden those lands. There is a road to the sunwest they have known ever since.
- Casta, my brother, said we had to kill Tywin Lannister, or he'd scatter us Starks to pieces or nail us to a tree and we'd be like flakes in a whirlwind. What do you know about this rumor of being nailed to a tree, which whispers say was done to the Targaryen children? What kind of a monster is it whose orders are to nail innocent children to a tree? Would Tywin have been so cruel as to do this, or did he have another purpose, as Prince Joffrey did when King Robert's bastards were drowned?
Oberyn turned his head before he could answer. The prisoners have arrived.
- It will be as your brother said, unless you do otherwise.
By the light of the fires, only black shapes were visible. Faces could not be seen clearly in the swirling shadows. They were shaven-headed, or slaves. Twenty or twenty-five of them stood there, some with their hands tied, others with ropes around their necks, like cattle. Doran Martell's men had tied them to stakes along the riverbank and seemed resigned to their fate. None of them tried to escape. Jon Snow's thoughts went back to the day Robert had stabbed the bull and then slit the slave's throat. He remembered everything, as well as Robert's words. "These traitors will all die now," Robert said, "because when they took up arms against us and surrendered, they were too attached to their lives." The drums sounded, the sword dancers passed long, straight daggers to each other, while Oberyn opened the ceremony by painting a stripe of a sacrificial goat's blood on their foreheads.
- The revenge of the Martells and the Starks on Tywin Lannister! For the deaths of Rhaenys and Aegon Martell and Princess Elia, I cry vengeance on Tywin Lannister!" roared Oberyn over the lit fires.
From the high perch in which he sat, which must have been older than Eddard's throne, Jon Snow watched the great, beaked birds, almost brought to life by the flames that danced the shadows. The prince raised his hands, and his robes rang with the countless silver coins, shells and animal bones.
- Let the blood of the victims now serve instead of the blood of the enemies of the House of Martell!
Now the Helper, moving around the throne in apparition, handed him a carved staff like a warrior's baton, with the skull of a snake glittering on the end. The prince raised the staff.
- 'All Lannister heads shall fall to the dust,' Oberyn continued. - And you, sons of the Sun Land's! Come, all of you, join this great army! March with the Lord of House of Martell, the Great King Doran, and drive the lions from King's Landing!
The prisoners stood motionless in front of the gallows where they had been tied. Among the sword-dancers, the sharp dagger passed from hand to hand. Finally, one of them stepped in front of the stakes and plunged the blade into the chest of a bound prisoner. The crash of drums and the shrill sound of whistles drowned out the death screams of the sacrificed. The bodies were thrown on the pyre, and the Martell's men came out to finish the ceremony with singing and drumming. Oberyn leaned forward on his throne and clapped his outstretched hands together. The sword-dancers began a frantic dance, their painted wooden swords twirling around the lit pyre like apparitions of the summoned Lord of Light. Huge hawk beaks, black, razor-sharp bear claws flashed into Jon Snow's eyes. He watched the sword-dancers for a long moment before Casta called for him to join him.
The next morning, Doran Martell, in chain mail and a tall, serpent-headed helmet, sat in the saddle of his warhorse, surrounded by his chiefs, his captains and his sons. Animal bones rattled in his neck as he held out his arms. His gaze was inscrutable. Ser Jaime jerked his horse's bridle nervously. His voice sounded muffled in the morning dewdrops beneath the fragrant trees.
- Honourable Lord Martell! Are you sure our scouts should be looking for the enemy in the direction of the river valleys? You know this land as the sun sees the field!" he pointed around the tent poles left behind, the half-demolished shelters, the mud-stuck wagons. - Yet I have led many a war, my lord. I know what it is like when the enemy does not expect to be attacked.
The prince looked thoughtfully at the ruins of the camp.
- This is an old lodging, honourable knight. Look how rotten the beams are and how old the skins are. It was long ago that the wildlings left it there.
The chiefs behind the prince must have said something in the southern tongue, for Jon Snow understood them. Doran's commanders, Oberyn and Quentyn, held them in their midst with furrowed brows as if they knew they would have to sacrifice blood to the Lord of the Sun Land's instead of the Starks.
- Do you understand what they say?" looked Casta at Jon Snow. - Shouldn't we...
- Leave it!" he whispered, leaning towards his brother. - Let them think we don't understand a word they're saying.
Casta nodded stiffly. Prince Oberyn suddenly switched to Valyrian.
- If you win, General Casta, you will have the liver of the first horse sacrificed!
Casta stepped closer to him, and his guards followed like shadows.
- If that is what you really want, then show me the way to the enemy. I cannot prevail over the dead and the unseen!
Jon Snow saw encouragement in Oberyn's eyes.
- We will find them before they know we are coming. I have sent my men into the valleys of the Red Mountains. My scouts will scout well in advance for the movements of their herds and buffalo. These lodges here are from years ago! Where the herds graze, where the grass grows, so will the wildlings. I have my best eyes in the Valley of the Broken Arm. All will be as I have commanded!
- "Good!" said Casta from the back of a black stallion, "I am the leader of the Stark army. Prince Doran is only my advisor! For your fallen warriors in defense of the empire, you will be paid a fair wage! My father is a merciful man, who rewards his friends but mercilessly exterminates his enemies.
Oberyn nodded, a smile crossing his lips.
- Eddard's blood..." he breathed.
- 'You will be greatly rewarded, Prince, if you support King Robert in his fight,' Ser Jaime added.
- "The defence of the realm is in our common interest," nodded the Lord of the Sun Land's.
- So be it!
Casta jerked the reins. The Prince nodded vigorously. His headdress was dancing on his helmet. His words sent a chill through Jon Snow. The Starks and Martells were now divided, and Prince Oberyn was back at the head of his own army. They marched in a long procession, marching separately, following the order of the generals. Oberyn's knights formed both the vanguard and the rear guard, securing Stark's army. The silence of the Valley of the Broken Arm was broken by the march of the warriors. The small, round shields, bows and arrows, the clatter of wood and metal and the thunder of horse hooves, suddenly brought the dormant nature to life. Alarmed deer leaped through the trees, and a troop of wild geese marched across the rivers, splitting the crystal-clear air. In the distance, the swirling wind brought the bellowing of a bull deer calling to mate. In the distance, the waters of small ponds and sharply winding rivers glistened. Reaching the shallows, Jon Snow noticed the carcass of a deer. It was not the animal's carcass or its broken gaze that bothered him, for the turning of the world follows life in death, but the presence of the wildlings that weighed on his soul. Blood-black water floated under the carcass's half-broken antlers. Other than a few abandoned tents, a few shreds of leather, a few broken beams, nothing else was seen on the nearby hilltops. The traces of these, as evidence of the scattered quarters of the enemy, warned the army to increased caution until the arrival of the advance guard, scouts, or a message from the leader, if he wished to avoid the traps which had been treacherously laid.
- The floodplain of the river stretches far to the east-west, and these paths could be flooded at any time if the river swells, General Casta," said one of Oberyn's men returning from a reconnaissance, "I say avoid it at all costs if you don't want your horses and perhaps your men to be death here.
Casta's face was gloomily. The horses whinnied in confusion, and the men hacked at them with growing impatience.
- So I lose another day.
- The Martell knight leads us straight into the middle of the marsh - an elderly Stark knight whispered hoarsely behind Jon Snow after they were underway.
Jon Snow glanced at his brother, who sat gloomily in the saddle of his horse. Oberyn's armour-clad men stared boredly at the flocks of birds soaring over the river's marshy meanders. They were apparently in no hurry to track the enemy. Jon Snow stared at the puffed-up roots twisting at the horses' feet. A large, black-skinned, yellow-eyed snake hissed from among the tree roots. His horse jerked slightly when he tried to jump over it, and he hoped his companions hadn't noticed the bad sign.
- The river water was black. As we passed, I saw a dead deer in the water.
Casta's face seemed bronze in the setting sun. He stared into the distance, his gloom sharply contrasting with Doran's confident command. It was as if the dancing shadows in the twilight, the dark, evil spirits of the strange land, had cast ashes and embers on his eyes to blind him.
- Did you see it, brother? Did you see in the grass, in the roots of the trees, the creature of darkness?
Casta raised his eyes.
- Why do you say that?
- Your wife had a dream about a snake, that's what you said.
- That's what I said.
- Maybe that dream means something different than you think it does. Maybe Tywin wasn't the snake. Maybe it wasn't King Robert!
Casta's voice crackled, even the knights marching in the distance looked.
- I think nothing of it!
He lowered his voice suddenly, as if afraid that Ser Jaime, camped far away, might hear him.
- I have now received the stamp from Robert. What else can I do but win?
- Let Prince Oberyn lead us to a land where there is nothing but death.
Jon Snow noticed the red beam of light across the sky. The stars would appear from time to time when the dark clouds above had lifted. It was like the flaming face of the deity dwelling in the branches of the forest of gods.
- Look, brother. The signs in the sky are multiplying!
Casta also looked up.
- A comet flew over the Bone Road. Perhaps the spirit of our grandfather was looking down on us from the realm of the God of Seven to encourage us.
- I don't know, brother, what that bright sign up there was. Did Rickard or Cregan send it?
Casta pulled his fur robe tighter.
- Listen to me, brother. If you and I are together, we can defeat the powers of Stannis. We have the shadow of the Wolf. It means we must rule together!
Jon Snow looked at his brother's hand. The amber ring Robert had given him was still on his finger, glowing like a red, cold eye in the firelight.
- Our brother Robb has never lost a battle. Yet now we are sent to war, with the luck and strength to see us through.
Jon Snow turned away, holding what he thought to himself. He had no evidence of Prince Oberyn's ulterior motives, and besides, who would believe him?
- 'Your heart is right, brother,' said Jon Snow after a while, 'that is why you will win!
The comet swept across the darkened horizon like a great, glowing arrowhead. For a moment it split the sky in two with its flaming streak, and in its cloudy field it lit up the sun.