A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Victarion I

The Iron Fleet limps into the Gulf of Grief, half its strength drowned; Victarion feeds his rotting hand to a red priest's fires and gets back something that frightens his crew.

The chapter retold

The Iron Fleet limps into the Gulf of Grief with barely half its original strength intact, battered by weather and desertion on the long voyage from the Iron Islands, and Victarion Greyjoy, its stubborn, humorless captain, finally lets the red priest Moqorro tend to a wound heÔÇÖs let rot rather than admit weakness over ÔÇö a hand gone black and foul, fed at last into the priestÔÇÖs fires rather than a maesterÔÇÖs knife.

What Victarion gets back from the treatment is not simple healing but something closer to a bargain, and it visibly unsettles a crew that already half-fears their captainÔÇÖs temper more than any storm. The chapter marks VictarionÔÇÖs slow conscription into RÔÇÖhllorÔÇÖs designs, a blunt instrument of a man being sharpened by forces he understands only well enough to be useful to them, and sets his fleetÔÇÖs grim, plundering progress toward Meereen ÔÇö and toward the dragons heÔÇÖs been promised ÔÇö properly in motion.

This movement: The Harpy's Bargain

• Dany weds Hizdahr zo Loraq to still the knives; the fighting pits reopen with a queen presiding.
• In Daznak's Pit the locusts are poisoned and the crowd screams ÔÇö for Drogon, descended on the sand. Dany mounts him and is gone.
• Quentyn Martell tries to steal a dragon with a whip and burns for the family words.
• Barristan Selmy takes the city in hand, arrests Hizdahr, and readies Meereen for the Yunkish war outside the walls.