Watching the four oar-and-sail ships that had just limped out of the Valyrian storm, the Ghiscari captain laughed. His hair was styled in the flamboyant "wings" of New Ghis, stiffened with enough lime and wax to resist a gale. He reached out to smooth his blue-dyed mustache, his eyes gleaming with the avarice of a vulture.
"Sound the horns! Beat the drums!" the captain commanded. "Charge in and secure the decks. Tie every survivor up. We'll sell the strong to the Wise Masters of Yunkai and the pretty ones to the pleasure houses of Meereen. We'll make a fortune before the sun sets."
In the mind of a Ghiscari slaver, plundering a storm-battered fleet was the easiest profit one could find. Survivors who had spent days staring into the abyss of the sea rarely had the stomach to face the cruel efficiency of a slaver's iron.
He looked at the banners fluttering on the masts. He didn't recognize the black field with the golden sunburst, nor the grey direwolf or the blue twin towers. To him, heraldry was just the wrapping on a box of coins.
The Ghiscari oars struck the calm sea in a steady, aggressive rhythm, closing the distance.
"Wait," the captain muttered, his smile faltering.
Something was wrong. The survivors on the deck weren't huddled in terror. They weren't praying to their gods or weeping for their lost kin. Instead, they wore strange, predatory smiles. They watched his flagship draw closer with the cold intensity of hunters who had just spotted a particularly fat stag.
"REVERSE! BACK OARS!" the captain shrieked, a sudden, primal sense of danger prickling his skin.
It was too late. A dozen grappling hooks, launched from the Karstark decks, bit into the Ghiscari railings. The ropes, interwoven with thin steel wires tightened with a snap. Capstans groaned as the Northmen winched the two fleets together.
BANG.
The hulls collided with a force that shattered the Ghiscari oars into splinters.
"BOARD!"
The command rang out in the Westerosi Common Tongue. Jason Mallister, his hair and beard a snowy white, stood on the sterncastle leaning on a crutch. Despite his fractured shin, his face bore a look of terrifying ferocity.
Then, the hold erupted.
Team after team of veterans, clad in studded leather and carrying heavy battle-axes and shields, surged onto the deck. But it was the monster that followed them that broke the Ghiscari spirit. Marga the Giant ducked out of the main hatch, nearly four meters of muscle and steel-plated armor. He let out a roar that seemed to vibrate the very water in the bay.
"AH-ROAR-"
Marga vaulted the railing, his thick legs hitting the Ghiscari deck with the force of a falling boulder. He swung a mace thicker than a human thigh. The first strike sent three Ghiscari thugs flying, their leather armor shattering as they were hurled into the sea like broken dolls.
The Karstark soldiers followed like tigers into a sheepfold. They had been trapped in the dark during the storm, feeling helpless against the wind. Now, they had a target for their pent-up rage. Weapons bit into Ghiscari flesh with a rhythmic, wet thudding sound.
Karas Snow moved with a lethal, quiet grace. He flicked the blood from the blade of Lady Forlorn, dodged the Ghiscari captain's desperate scimitar slash, and delivered a punch that sent the man's lime-stiffened hair flying. He grabbed the captain by the collar and dragged him across the deck like a sack of grain.
Eddard Karstark watched the slaughter from his quarterdeck, his hand resting on the hilt of Heartbreaker. The battle was over before he had even drawn his steel.
"Satisfying, Karas?" Eddard asked.
"Very, My Lord," Karas replied, dropping the captain at Eddard's feet.
The Ghiscari captain glared up, spitting a curse in High Valyrian and then a guttural, hissing dialect.
"That is Ghiscari, My Lord," Maester Bennett whispered, stepping forward. "He is questioning your parentage and promising the Harpy's wrath."
"Does he speak Common?" Eddard asked.
The captain remained defiant, his eyes full of hate.
Clang.
Lady Forlorn flashed in the sun. The captain's right hand was severed at the wrist in a single, surgical movement. He let out a piercing shriek, clutching the stump as blood gushed onto the deck.
"I asked a question," Eddard said, his voice as level as a frozen lake. "Do you speak Common?"
"Yes! Yes, I speak it!" the captain wailed, his pride vanishing along with his blood.
"Good. Tell me of Meereen. What is the state of the city?"
The captain, trembling and pale, gasped out the news. "Hizdahr zo Loraq... he has negotiated a pact. A marriage to the Dragon Queen. Ninety days of peace to avoid a massacre. Yunkai has already sacked Astapor. They have the sellswords. They have the blockade. The city is a cage!"
Eddard's eyes narrowed. Hizdahr. The marriage. He knew the timeline was tight. But more importantly, he knew what followed the sieges in the East.
"And the Pale Mare?" Eddard pressed. "Has the flux reached the camps?"
The captain's eyes widened in horror. "It is everywhere. The 'bloody flux' eats the Yunkish from within, and the dead are being flung into the city by trebuchets. No man can fight it!"
Eddard stood in silence for a long moment. He looked at Maester Bennett. In his previous world, dysentery was a matter of hygiene and antibiotics. Here, it was a death sentence for entire armies. He couldn't extract penicillin from bread mold on a ship, but he knew the basics of germ theory.
"Bennett, can you treat the bloody flux?"
Bennett shook his head, his face pale. "No, Your Majesty. It is a curse of the gods. Once it enters a camp, it does not leave until everyone is cold."
"Then we make our own luck," Eddard declared. He turned to his officers, his voice carrying across the captured ships.
"New orders! Starting now, no man drinks water that has not been boiled until it bubbles. Every man will wash his hands in boiled water before touching food. You will make masks of linen, two for every man and they will be boiled daily. Anyone caught drinking from a raw cask or ignoring these rules will be thrown into the sea to feed the sharks. Is that clear?"
The soldiers looked confused, but the fear of Eddard Karstark was greater than their confusion.
"Meereen may be a tomb," Eddard whispered, looking toward the horizon where the Great Pyramid presumably loomed. "But I'm not ready to join the dead just yet."
[System Notification: Mission Objective Updated: The Siege of Meereen.]
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