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The North, White Harbor.
The Lazy Eel was a cheap tavern tucked into an alley off the left side of Fishmarket Square. Its owner had a bold streak. No one knew whether the name was meant as a jab at Lord Wyman, the "Lord Lamprey."
The Lazy Eel did brisk business every day, because it offered the oldest and cheapest whores in White Harbor, the poorest and cheapest ale, and, of course, enormous meat pies filled with lard and gristle for the best value a hungry man could find.
"A large ale and half a meat pie. Pack another pie as well. I will take it with me."
A very tall, powerful man entered the tavern with a hood hiding most of his face. He pushed aside a middle-aged whore painted too heavily and leaning toward him, then spoke to the serving girl.
"Aye. One hundred and ninety coppers in all."
"Keep the rest."
"Thank you!"
He flicked her a silver stag and ignored the girl's delight at the tip. Then the big man found a corner and sat down.
Several half-drunk patrons around him began glancing his way. Most people who came here had thin purses. Few left tips.
Realizing that a small habit from King's Landing had drawn eyes, Sandor lightly tugged his hood lower.
He and Brienne had brought the three children north. The first part of the journey had gone smoothly, but when they reached Moat Cailin, they had no pass and could not go through.
They had been forced to turn back, only to run into the northern army sweeping up the remnants of the rebels fleeing north. After spending a great deal of time hiding and circling around, they finally reached the rebuilt town of Maidenpool and took a passenger ship by a roundabout route to White Harbor.
Sandor still had plenty of coin on him, and he had come to this tavern to gather news of the North.
"Did you hear? Ral, who lives near the fishmarket, went to the free folk settlement in the Gift and bought a huge lot of furs and herbs from beyond the Wall for next to nothing. He came back, sold them on, and made a fortune!"
"He dared go to a free folk settlement? Ral has courage, I will give him that.
"Their laws are not like ours. I heard a man looked too long at some free folk and somehow got forced into a duel. Ended up legally dead there."
"Tch. You only care about little things. Do you not know House Stark has moved entirely to King's Landing?
"They do not mean to guard the North anymore!"
"Do not talk nonsense. House Stark and the whole North are one. They will never forget us."
Clang, clang, clang!
Sandor was wondering whether he and Brienne might sail from White Harbor to King's Landing only to miss Sansa and the others on the road when a frantic alarm bell rang through the city.
The noisy Lazy Eel fell silent at once.
A few seconds later, every drinker in the tavern scattered like a kicked anthill, stumbling and shoving toward the door.
Sandor forced his way to the front with his strength. When two drunkards blocked the door and refused to yield to each other, he knocked them senseless with two punches and ran out toward the inn where Brienne and the children were staying.
The Merman's Court was the administrative hall of the New Castle. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of thick wooden boards cleverly joined together. Sea creatures of every sort had been painted across them, making the hall feel as if it lay beneath the waves.
Lord Wyman handled routine matters in his study, but important business was dealt with here. When the alarm bell rang, he was in the Merman's Court attending to governance.
Lord Wyman's mind moved quickly. The bell from the harbor meant the highest alarm, and when he joined that to the summons King Robb had recently sent out, he roughly guessed who had come against White Harbor.
He bellowed toward the doors of the Merman's Court without hesitation. "Someone! Notify Maester Cyke. Have him send every raven. The news that White Harbor is under attack must get out!"
The Merman's Court stood close to the maester's tower. A servant heard the urgent order and ran there at once.
Listening to the footsteps recede, Lord Wyman muttered, "If the tales about the enemy dragon have only been exaggerated...
"No. I cannot think that way. The women and children must be evacuated first."
Inside White Harbor, the chaos caused by the sudden alarm bell kept spreading. Outside the city, the battle had already begun.
Thrum, thrum!
Hiss, hiss!
Bolts and arrows rained from Seal Rock toward the Iron Fleet closing fast on the harbor.
Seal Rock was a gray-green mass rising from the sea, fifty feet tall, and it guarded the entrance to White Harbor's outer harbor.
At its crown was a ring of weathered stone, the remnants of a ringfort built by the First Men centuries before.
During the War of the Five Kings, the ruin had been armed again. Large crossbows and scorpions had been placed there, with hundreds of crossbowmen and archers guarding it.
Ser Marlon Manderly, commander of the White Harbor garrison, shouted for his soldiers to concentrate fire on the enemy flagship leading the way beneath a squid banner, with black sails and a red hull.
Thump, thump, thump!
The black-sailed, red-hulled flagship at the front suddenly vanished as the attack came. The first volley of arrows, bolts, and stones from White Harbor's defenders splashed uselessly into the sea.
After the flagship disappeared, an ordinary ironborn longship behind it seemed to transform by sorcery into the same vanished flagship.
"Large illusions really do depend on your kind. Well done, Qartheen warlocks. Take what shade-of-the-evening you need from over there."
Euron stood leisurely on the deck of Silence, a cup of blue drink in hand. He nodded in satisfaction to the three pale-skinned warlocks beside him, whose lips were the same blue.
Then he turned and roared to the crew of Silence. "Lads! Before they reload those great crossbows, drive us in!"
The tongueless crewmen of Silence could not answer him, but the ship's speed immediately increased as it rushed toward the entrance to White Harbor.
In other days, Euron would never have taken Silence at the front of an assault.
But he had once sworn before Daenerys that he would recover the whole Iron Fleet and become a man worthy of her. The result had slapped him across the face.
If Euron did not shine brightly enough in this invasion of Westeros, his dream of conquering the Dragon Queen and becoming a new king would remain only that: a dream.
Ser Marlon watched the enemy fool their first attack with strange sorcery and snorted calmly.
Even with hundreds of enemy ships crowding the outer harbor, he still believed White Harbor could hold. The harbor's structure favored defense.
Thud, thud, thud!
Arrows and crossbow bolts shot down from Seal Rock and struck Silence. Most buried themselves in the deck or the shields of its mute crewmen. A few unlucky sailors were hit.
During the time the defenders on Seal Rock needed to reload, Silence pushed through the outer harbor entrance under an arrow rain that was more threatening in sound than effect.
Thrum, thrum, thrum!
But the moment Silence entered White Harbor's inner harbor, a chain of scorpion strings snapped, and a broad wave of heavy bolts shot straight at the ship.
Crash, crack!
Those powerful scorpion bolts did terrible damage. Holes burst open in the side and deck of Silence. From time to time, a bolt punched clean through one of the mute sailors and his shield together.
Euron was stunned by the blow. He had not expected the inner harbor's defenses to be stronger than the outer harbor's. This was nothing like the situation Tyrion had described in the strategy council.
White Harbor's harbor was divided into an outer and inner harbor by the breakwater. One side leaned on the city wall, while the other was anchored by the abandoned Wolf's Den.
After the War of the Five Kings, a new stone wall thirty feet high and nearly five hundred yards long had been built along the breakwater. Now the wall was crowded with scorpions, defensive works, and White Harbor soldiers.
After taking the Iron Throne, Robb had focused on strengthening the three great northern gates that protected Winterfell: Moat Cailin, Moat Town, and White Harbor.
And as Sam's intelligence network spread through the Seven Kingdoms, Varys's old little birds had largely been cleaned out. The enemy's knowledge of White Harbor remained stuck in the past.
Silence was pinned under fire from the defenders on the breakwater, and the ironborn longships behind it were pressed down as well.
With Seal Rock reloaded and attacking again, Euron's fleet, trapped between the inner harbor and the channel mouth, fell into the awkward position of being beaten from both sides without room to answer.
Seeing the enemy fleet enter the trap like rats, Ser Marlon nodded in satisfaction and shouted for his men to quicken the attack and win what honors they could.
Then a majestic dragon cry, one that made men tremble before they understood why, tore through the heavens and rang across all of White Harbor.
Whump, whump!
Drogon burst through the clouds behind the Iron Fleet, black-scaled and deathlike, vast enough to seem like a flying fortress from legend.
Daenerys rode on his neck, looking almost like a doll by comparison. She wore a fitted black dress made for battle.
The clothing lent the Dragon Queen a cold severity. Its sharp, flared shoulders and the silver chain with four dragons slanting across her front added to her presence.
"Dracarys."
Drogon crossed the distance to Seal Rock in the blink of an eye. Daenerys glanced down at the defenders staring up in shock and spoke the Valyrian word without expression.
Bright yellow dragonflame, far more terrible than it had been at the Iron Islands, fell from the sky. In an instant, the whole top of Seal Rock became a sea of fire.
Splash, splash!
Dozens of garrison soldiers were burned into charcoal by the dragonflame and died where they stood. Many more caught fire and leaped into the sea while screaming as if their lungs were being torn out.
Below Seal Rock, Ser Marlon broke the surface with terror on his face. He had reacted quickly. The moment he saw the dragon coming toward them, he had jumped into the sea and escaped with his life.
Seeing corpses still burning on the surface of the water, Marlon went pale and swam toward the shore away from White Harbor.
After passing over Seal Rock, Daenerys guided Drogon toward the inner harbor breakwater. The straight wall looked almost as if it had been built to make a dragon's work easier.
Thrum, thrum!
Several bold defenders adjusted their scorpions and fired at the dragon, but the angle gave them no real chance of threatening Drogon.
"Dracarys."
At Daenerys's cold command, a bright yellow stream of flame connected Drogon's savage mouth to the breakwater below.
Unlike the sudden burst against Seal Rock, this breath was less explosive but continued without stopping.
Boom, boom, boom!
Ah! Ah!
One scorpion after another was blasted apart by the impact of the dragonflame. Countless human torches fled across the breakwater. The defensive works that had seemed so solid a moment before were turned into char as Drogon swept his fire from right to left.
Euron watched the black dragon pass before him with greed in his eyes. He waved for Silence, now facing no resistance ahead, to make for the docks and land.
Daenerys turned the enormous Drogon in the air and then flew at an ordinary pace above White Harbor. There, with his wings beating in place, he hovered over the city like a god while countless smallfolk ran in panic below.
Ting, ting, ting!
A rain of arrows came from Drogon's left, striking his hard scales with crisp sounds.
Daenerys tilted her head aside to avoid an arrow that passed near her, then looked down at the enemy soldiers who did not know death when they saw it. Her delicate nose wrinkled sharply.
"Frant! Frant!"
Sandor, covered in dirt and carrying little Susie in his arms, forced his way against the panicked flow of smallfolk and shouted for Susie's older brother.
Brienne had Joshy, Susie's second brother, by the hand and was searching from another street.
The fighting had clearly broken out toward the harbor district, so once Sandor reached the inn and found Brienne and the children, he had led them toward the road to Winterfell.
The other smallfolk had plainly reached the same conclusion. The road from Fishmarket Square toward Winterfell was packed tight.
When the dragon's cry shook White Harbor, every fleeing person froze for an instant, then screamed and ran madly.
At that same moment, a force Lord Wyman had sent from the New Castle to reinforce the harbor district happened to pass through the area.
Facing the smallfolk surging against them, the soldiers used fists or the flats of their longswords to beat anyone who blocked their path.
Sandor, carrying Susie and holding Frant by the hand, could not move freely. The crush pushed him in front of the reinforcing soldiers, and they knocked him down without mercy.
Because Sandor tried to protect Susie in his arms, Frant's hand was torn from his. By the time Sandor forced himself back up with brute strength, the boy had disappeared.
"Uncle! Uncle Sandor!"
When Sandor pushed back into the broad space of Fishmarket Square, he heard Frant's voice.
He turned slowly and saw Frant standing beside the reinforcing soldiers, jumping, waving, and shouting as he ran toward him.
When Frant had been swept away, knocked down, and nearly trampled, a soldier from the New Castle had pulled him up.
The soldiers had kept him among them until they reached the open square and had to prepare for battle. Only then did they let him go.
Whump, whump!
Seeing Frant unharmed, Sandor's scarred face broke into a genuine smile. Then the sound of beating wings came from the sky.
"Frant, run!"
"Brother!"
Sandor and Susie saw the black death flying in from behind Frant, and both shouted to him at the same time.
Hiss, hiss, hiss!
Ting, ting, ting!
The reinforcing soldiers in Fishmarket Square were truly brave. Even with Daenerys riding Drogon almost into their faces, they kept drawing and firing.
Already irritated, Daenerys parted her red lips and said in a low voice, "Dracarys."
The blazing yellow dragonflame swallowed the fearless soldiers in Fishmarket Square. The wave of fire spread outward like a tide and consumed Frant as he ran.
The sight of Frant vanishing into dragonflame burned itself into Sandor's eyes. The fire came for him as well. With no time to think, Sandor clutched Susie tightly and crashed through the side of an empty shop.
Whoosh!
The edge of the dragonflame swept past the street, lit several flammable things, and vanished in an instant.
Sandor lay on the shop floor with Susie in his arms. His mind was full of the moment Frant had been swallowed by fire. This hard man wept without a sound.
In his ears, he seemed to hear the words Frant had spoken on the road to Winterfell.
"Uncle Sandor, one day I want to be someone strong like you!
"I want to protect my little brother and sister, and anyone else who needs me."
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