If it were not for the ironborn, surely the storm would have swallowed them all.
Daenerys felt relieved she heeded Yara Greyjoy’s suggestion of keeping a few men of Pyke in every ship. She was worried that the vanity and ambition of the ironborn would transmit into foolish attempts at mutiny but so far, they had taken to the task well. There had been no shipwrecks and, according to Varys, only a couple of ships missing, suspected to be merely lagging behind in the fleet. In addition, even though the ironborn and Dothraki did not speak the same language, Daenerys could sense kinship forming between them, which in turn helped the khalasar stay calmer in rough waters.
At sea Varys could receive no ravens or messages from his spies, which left Daenerys uncertain about the progress of the northern army. She reasoned that the storms, had they occurred in the Barrowlands as well, ought to have slowed his march. If so, she had the upper hand; despite the weather, tides were actually moving in favor of their fleet, and the ironborn ensured swiftly moving ships.
“Goldgrass is a sturdy but small keep,” Varys was telling her, “but it is Barrow Hall that will be difficult to capture, should the Starks reach before.”
“I have three dragons.”
“I must rephrase – difficult is a term relative when your dragons are concerned. Lives will be lost, but Barrowton will fall. Speaking of which, before we set sail I was told Lady Barbrey Dustin prepares banquets and refreshments for Jon Snow and the northmen at Barrow Hall. She once held ill will against the Starks of Winterfell in the past, a hate that has dissipated over the years.”
“Why so?”
“Most of it dissolved after Ramsay Bolton’s disastrous reign as Lord of Winterfell,” said Varys, “but some appears to stem from loyalty to the bastard king. Stories get more and more magical the more north my birds fly, and for a boy who has lived half his life on the Wall, there’s little wonder people consider him a God. The North are a superstitious people; it does not matter if anecdotes of Jon Snow rising from the dead or fighting White Walkers are fables, for they have united the country nonetheless.”
Daenerys wanted to enquire further, but she saw Ellaria Sand emerge from the cabins underneath and decided to shelve the subject. “We’ll speak of this later,” she said to Varys curtly, as Ellaria approached her. She looked sullen. “I know Princess Nymeria once sailed across to Dorne with ten thousand ships, but that does not stop me from despising the sea.”
“I thank you for coming,” Daenerys said in response. Ellaria was scarce known for skilled diplomacy, but she meant well. “Dorne and Highgarden are necessary for reclaiming the Iron Throne, but for this battle, you could have just sent your men and rested at your kingdom, like Lady Olenna did.”
Ellaria’s smile was scornful. “I am not an old lady yet. If I die, I die on the battlefield, not like Olenna. The only sword she can wield lies in her tongue. Do you know what she said to me when I asked her why she was not coming with her people? ‘I would love to dear, but the proposition sounds perfectly ghastly.’”
“In fairness,” Daenerys told her, as they gazed at the raging abyss that was the Blazewater Bay, “her words were not completely false.”
*
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