Four slender, black-hulled ships sat low in the water along the winding coast of the Disputed Lands. Their sails were furled, but from their masts flew the dual banners of the rebellion: the grey wolf of the Pack and the shattered silver links of the Free Army.
These were not Myrish merchantmen. They were predators from the waters of Volantis—raiders who had survived by plundering slave galleys on the Rhoyne until the rumors of a "Liberator" in the west reached their ears.
Four captains stepped onto the sand, their boots heavy, their faces masks of jagged white scar tissue. Each man bore the same ragged mark on his cheek—a place where the tattooed ship of a Volantene slave-owner had once been, now carved out by their own knives to reclaim their faces. They knelt before Gendry, laying their salt-stained swords at his feet.
"We swear our hulls and our lives to the man who breaks the chains," the lead captain, Harys, rasped. "Though the night is long and the winter nears, we sail for the Wolf."
"From this moment, you are captains of the Free Navy," Gendry said, pulling Harys to his feet. Behind him, the Unsullied stood like statues of bronze, and the Free Army cheered from the dunes. "In my lands, no man wears a mark. Every man is born free."
"The slaves of Volantis are whispering your name, Commander," Harys said, his voice a low rumble. "The Widow of the Waterfront has sent word through the docks. She is the one who directed us to your shore."
"The Widow?" Gendry asked.
"She is the true power of the Volantene wharves," Qyburn whispered at Gendry's shoulder. "A former bed-slave of Yunkai who married a Triarch. She has more eyes than the Spider and more gold than many Magisters. If she is watching us, then the world is truly paying attention."
Gendry led the captains toward the improved fortifications of the estate. The old Fire-weed manor had been reborn as a "Wolf's Den." The walls had been heightened, a deep moat bristling with sharpened stakes now encircled the compound, and the northern paddocks held a hundred horses—including the black sand steed that was Oberyn Martell's parting gift.
As they walked, the Volantene captains saw something they had never witnessed in Essos: men working the fields with their heads held high, and an army of former slaves maintaining a discipline that rivaled the city guards of Myr.
"We have come to the right place," Harys mused.
Leagues away, in a camp that was as silent and orderly as a tomb, another council was meeting.
The Golden Company did not live like other sellswords. Their tents were aligned with geometric precision; their horses were groomed to a shine; their weapons were free of rust. They were the most professional army in the known world, and they dressed the part. Every officer wore heavy gold arm-rings—one for every year of service—and silks that would make a Magister envious.
At the center of the camp stood the Captain-General's tent, sewn with golden thread. Around it was a ring of pikes, each topped with a gilded skull. The most prominent was the skull of Maelys the Monstrous—grotesquely large, with a smaller, parasitic skull sprouting from the neck. It was the legacy of Bittersteel: Beneath the gold, the bitter steel.
"This little 'Hammer King' is a plague," Tristan Rivers grumbled, pacing the rug of the tent. He was a hard man with the sharp features of a Westerosi exile. "He's setting the Disputed Lands on fire. If he keeps this up, there won't be a slave left south of the Selhoru."
Harry Strickland—"Homeless Harry"—sat at the table, rubbing his swollen feet. He was a stout man with a tired face, looking more like a merchant than a warlord. "Myr has offered us a king's ransom in gold and slaves to wipe him out. They want the Wolf Pack gone before the next harvest."
"The Wolf Pack doesn't break easily," Tristan countered. "And this boy has the slaves worshiping him like a god. Even if we win, we'll lose half our strength in the marshes. We're sellswords, Harry, not martyrs."
"He's a variable," a third officer noted, fingering his gold arm-ring. "He's doing what we've always dreamed of—taking and holding the land. If we had those numbers, we'd be sitting in King's Landing by next moon."
"We aren't here to play at being kings in the dirt," Strickland sighed. "We are here to go home. Our goal is the Iron Throne, not a fire-weed farm."
"Then we wait," Tristan said. "The Myrmen want us to bleed for them. I say we let the Hammer King and the Magisters tear each other apart. We keep our steel bitter and our gold bright until the True Dragon arrives."
The officers exchanged a look. The secret of the "True Dragon"—the boy they called Young Griff—was known to only a few, but it was the north star of their existence.
"Let the Beggar King and his sister rot in Pentos," Franklin Flowers muttered. "We wait for a real dragon. Until then, let the boy in the iron mask play his game. If he survives the Myrmen, perhaps he'll be a tool we can use when we finally cross the sea."