Euron grinned, raising a single finger. "My price is modest," he said softly. "A longship. A weapon that can control dragons is worth far more than a single ship."
"Even if you hadn't said it, I could guess. That weapon must be in that woman's hands." Grazdan slapped his palm in frustration. "We all underestimated her. She feigned ignorance of Valyrian and hid her true wealth. Otherwise, given her desire for the Unsullied, we could have tricked her into revealing the dragon-controlling weapon."
Krazny's face flushed a deep crimson. He gritted his teeth. "Send a message to Kaiyuan immediately. Have them—"
"What can they do?" Euron interrupted with a wave of his hand, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "The bitch has thirteen thousand Unsullied now. Can Kaiyuan's slave soldiers stop them?"
"We don't need a war," Grazdan countered. "She can't possibly afford to feed and water an army of fifteen thousand. What exactly is this weapon we're forcing her to use? Tell me!"
Seeing Euron still acting so nonchalant, Grazdan's eyes turned dangerous. He threatened, "Remember your place. Don't force us to do things we'd be more than happy to do. If we were outside the city, if we were on the open sea and I caught you, I'd break you into the most obedient slave. You'd lick my boots and relish every second of it."
*If we were on the open sea, if my Serenity were still afloat, I could take on all eight of you fat pigs at once and easily carve off your cocks to sacrifice to the God of Storms!*
The vicious thought flashed through Euron's mind, but he simply shook his head. "A longship. I'll tell you everything I know. In exchange, you'll provide a place for me and my crew to rest. That's the basis for our cooperation."
"As the Good Lord said," Euron continued, "once we're at sea, who's to say you'll keep your end of the bargain? Without a ship of my own, I will never again explore the Valyrian ruins."
The eight Good Lords exchanged glances, quickly reaching a silent agreement. Krazny stepped forward to make the promise: "A New Ghiscari warship."
Ships at sea generally fell into three categories. The first was the kind Dany was currently on, the *Sedilion*—a flat-bottomed, wide-bellied ocean-going vessel. They could carry massive amounts of cargo and were unlikely to capsize in a storm.
Its strengths and weaknesses were equally pronounced: too massive, entirely dependent on wind power, slow, and prone to stalling in calms.
The second type was the warship, mostly longships with narrow hulls. They were powered by both wind and oars, and their reinforced rams could "pierce" an enemy ship's hull like a blade during boarding actions, both inflicting damage and creating a stable "boarding plank."
Armed longships were primarily designed to seize naval supremacy. Because the timber required for their construction was of exceptionally high quality, flagship-class armed longships were also exorbitantly expensive.
After the *Game of Thrones* version of the "Battle of the Red Cliffs," Cersei spent one million gold dragons to rebuild the Royal Fleet, yet she could only afford to construct a dozen or so armed longships.
However, the narrow hulls of armed longships meant they couldn't carry much cargo. Euron had plundered so many Eastern merchant ships, yet Dany hadn't found a single bolt of silk or a jar of spice on the *Serenity*. He had clearly thrown away all those "cheap" goods because they simply wouldn't fit.
The third type, similar to *The Sun of Summer* in Blackbeard Groley's fleet, had sails, oars, and a massive cargo hold.
These were oared merchant ships.
They possessed a certain level of escort capability, but their speed was relatively slow and their ramming power weak, making them unable to seize naval supremacy.
The New Ghiscari warship Krazny had promised was a standard armed galley—the very kind Euron craved.
"Oh, a New Ghiscari armed galley?" Euron's interest was piqued. He leaned forward from the back of his chair, his curiosity piqued. "New or old? How many oars?"
"Three hundred oars, in service for over ten years," the slave lord replied.
"Ten years?" Euron frowned. It wasn't that wooden ships couldn't last more than a decade, but the phrase "in service" meant it had been fighting pirates all this time, sustaining countless damages.
*Perhaps the Iron Legion of New Ghis retired them and sold them cheaply to the Astaporians?*
"Acceptable," he nodded slowly. "That is a Dragon's Call—"
*Hoooonnn—*
A low, mournful horn blast rippled like a wave, sweeping across the gardens atop the pyramid and throughout the entire city of Astapor.
"The Dragon's Horn?!" Euron shot to his feet in shock. He strode to the half-meter-thick granite wall, glanced out the city gates, and his face contorted. "Damn you, you useless Gith! Do you have no sense of defense? Ten thousand soldiers are fucking at the gates, and no one has even come to warn us?!"
Grazdan's Great Pyramid stood only a single Proud Plaza—a mere two hundred meters—from the city gates. From the tower's hundred-meter summit, one could clearly see the sea of unsheathed swords held by the Unsullied outside the walls.
"Report!"
The moment Euron finished speaking, a Ghis guard draped in a yellow silk cloak scrambled up the steps, gasping for breath. His voice cracked with a sob as he cried, "Lord of the Good, disaster has struck! The Queen of Westeros is attacking with the Unsullied!"
"What?" The Good Lord, who had been so shaken by the unfolding chaos that he hadn't yet fully processed the news, stared in disbelief. "Is she mad? Why would she do this?"
Krazny stumbled from his high-backed wooden chair, his ornate tokar robe sliding off his shoulders. A single glance at the scene below sent him collapsing to the floor like a lump of wet clay.
"This is impossible... This..." he muttered, his mind blank. "Just yesterday, she gave each of us a precious dragonbone scepter. Why would she attack Astapor now?"
Euron's mind raced. "When did she give you the gifts?" he demanded.
"Before she left."
"Shit! You fools!" Euron roared in fury. "Those were guest gifts—they mark the end of a guest's relationship!" How had they missed such an obvious sign?
*You greedy slave lords squeezed her for every last gold dragon. Only a fool would give a gift of gratitude after being robbed blind.*
"She didn't attack immediately," Grazdan suddenly snapped awake. As if clutching at a last straw, he grabbed the reporting guard's collar and roared like a possessed man, "Is she trying to extort travel expenses for her journey home?"
"No!" The Ghis guard's black-and-red hair stood on end, and he wailed with tears streaming down his face, "It's over, we're all doomed! She didn't want a single copper coin, she just came here to kill all the slave lords!"
As he spoke, he held up a scroll of parchment.
The slave lord snatched it and read. The text was written in Valyrian, titled *Seven Hates*.
The first few grievances—bloody cruelty, inhumanity, violation of divine tenets—Grazdan could barely comprehend. But the last two, "obstructing the development of civilization" and "hindering social harmony"? What the hell were those?
Euron leaned in to take a look. He didn't understand what "civilization development" or "social harmony" meant either, so he could only rub his nose and guess, "The Targaryen family converted to the Faith of the Seven three hundred years ago. That bitch probably believes in the Seven too. For followers of the Seven, 'seven' is the luckiest number, so she probably just forced a list of seven charges."
"Siga, siga—"
Suddenly, the Lords of the Good felt the sky above them darken.
*Boom!*
With a dull thud, "snowflakes" began to drift down from the sky.
"A dragon. It's her dragon." Euron looked up to see the black dragon circling fifty meters overhead, with small white slips of paper fluttering down from the sky.
"Hurry, into the Pyramid!" The scabbed skin on his face seemed to throb with a dull ache. Euron sprinted into the stone stairwell.
The eight Good Lords weren't as quick to react. It was their first time seeing a true dragon, and they stood there, mesmerized, staring up at the sky.
Dany, however, remained in her Dragon Dream state. While she was scattering leaflets over the Pyramid, she was also trying to scout the enemy's strength. After all, besides the Unsullied, Apostta still had several thousand city guards, and the Good Lords kept a few slave soldiers of their own.
Seeing the eight Good Lords having a party with Euron in the Pyramid's rooftop garden, with not a single crossbowman in sight, Big Black immediately dove from the sky.
*BOOM—*
The surging dragonfire instantly incinerated three Good Lords and the six servants behind them.
"Aaaah!" As if jolted awake from a dream, the remaining five Good Lords scrambled to their feet, wailing as they fled toward the corridor.
*Siga—BOOM—*
Big Black locked onto his target and roared past Grazdan, leaving a seven-to-eight-meter pillar of fire in his wake.
"Ah—!" Grazdan's eyes and nose melted in the crimson dragonflame, like wax meeting intense heat.
*Siga—*
Circling above, Big Black watched Krazny and two other Good Lords flee into the corridor. He let out a frustrated roar and flew toward the next pyramid.
There were eighteen pyramids in the city, and five hundred copies of a proclamation titled *The Declaration of Freedom* had been scattered over each one: *I am the Mother of Dragons, the Hater of Slavery, the Mother of Freedom. In the name of my army of thirteen thousand Unsullied and the honor of my three dragons, I declare you free. Take up the swords in your hands and kill the slave lords beside you. Remember, freedom can only be won for oneself, even if you only shout, "I want freedom, long live freedom!"*
Aside from the pyramids, Dany had not scattered leaflets anywhere else.
The Unsullied could easily conquer the city, but each pyramid was a fortress in its own right.
The number of literate slaves was pitifully small. It was estimated that few of them would be able to read the leaflets even if they found them, but the slave lords would definitely understand.
The flyers were, in truth, meant for the Ghis. They would be the ones to convey Dany's message to the slaves—by adding heavier chains to the slave soldiers, or by whipping the slaves to keep them from rebelling.
Slaves are human. They know how to read a master's face, to catch the slightest flicker of expression and discern the emotion behind it. Those who didn't have already been strung up on the platforms in the center of the Proud Plaza.
Each time a slave sensed their master's hidden fear grow, their own fear diminished. Eventually, the fear vanished entirely, and they began to find their courage.
Dany divided her forces into three groups, securing the main gate to the north, the east gate near the Worm River, and the docks to the west.
On the northern wall, a Ghis soldier in a bronze helmet suddenly appeared. Crouching behind his shield, he shouted through a tin megaphone to the motionless army below: "Unsullied! Protect your masters! Protect your city! Kill that oath-breaking Westerosi whore!"
The five thousand Unsullied stood as still as stone statues. Only the black-dragon-on-white banner held by the front rank snapped and fluttered in the sea breeze.
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