A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Victarion II
The Iron Fleet burns its way up Slaver's Bay taking prizes; Moqorro promises that the hellhorn Dragonbinder will bind a dragon ÔÇö for the price of a blooded man's lungs.
The chapter retold
VictarionÔÇÖs Iron Fleet burns and plunders its way up SlaverÔÇÖs Bay, taking prizes and provisions wherever the coalitionÔÇÖs attention is fixed elsewhere, while Moqorro presses his advantage over the captain further still ÔÇö promising that Dragonbinder, the ancient horn Euron once handed Victarion with a warning about its cost, can truly bind a dragon to its blowerÔÇÖs will, provided the ritual is paid for correctly: with the lungs of a man already marked for sacrifice.
The chapter is the clearest look yet at how thoroughly Moqorro has gotten inside VictarionÔÇÖs plans, turning a straightforward raiding campaign into something closer to a religious mission with a dragon as its promised reward. Victarion, never subtle and never particularly self-aware, is being maneuvered by forces well above his understanding, and the hornÔÇÖs blood price ÔÇö someone elseÔÇÖs death purchasing his triumph ÔÇö is exactly the kind of bargain this book likes best: cheap for the man making it, ruinous for whoever else ends up paying.
This movement: The Dragon's Peace Breaks
- Cersei walks her penance through King's Landing, shorn and naked, while her champion waits: an eight-foot silence in white armor.
- Kevan Lannister steadies the realm as regent ÔÇö competence the realm can't be allowed to keep.
- On the Dothraki sea, Dany ÔÇö fevered, alone but for Drogon ÔÇö meets Khal Jhaqo's riders in the grass.
- Asha, Stannis's prisoner, watches the northmen prepare a battle in the snow that the book leaves unfought.