Джордж Мартин - Fire & Blood

“And an elephant,” Lord Alyn answered insolently. “Pray, do not forget the elephant, my lord.”

The remark drew nervous titters even from Lord Peake’s own handpicked men, Mushroom tells us, but the Hand was not amused. “He was not a man who liked to laugh himself,” the dwarf says, “and he liked being laughed at even less.”

Though other men might fear to provoke Lord Unwin’s enmity, Alyn Oakenfist was secure in his own strength. Though barely a man grown, and bastard born as well, he was wed to the king’s half-sister, had all the power and wealth of House Velaryon at his command, and had just become the darling of the smallfolk. Lord Regent or no, Unwin Peake was not so mad as to imagine he could safely harm the hero of the Stepstones.

“All young men suspect they are immortal,” Grand Maester Munkun writes in the True Telling, “and whenever a young warrior tastes the heady wine of victory, suspicion becomes certainty. Yet the confidence of youth counts for little against the cunning of age. Lord Alyn might smile at the Hand’s rebukes, but he would soon be given good reason to dread the Hand’s rewards.”

Munkun knew whereof he wrote. Seven days after the triumphant return of Lord Alyn to King’s Landing, he was honored in a lavish ceremony in the Red Keep, with King Aegon III seated on the Iron Throne and the court and half the city looking on. Ser Marston Waters, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, dubbed him a knight. Unwin Peake, Lord Regent and Hand of the King, draped an admiral’s golden chain about his neck and presented him with a silver replica of the Queen Rhaenys as a token of his victory. The king himself inquired if his lordship would consent to serve upon his small council, as master of ships. Lord Alyn humbly agreed.

“Then the Hand’s fingers closed about his throat,” says Mushroom. “The voice was Aegon’s, the words Unwin’s.” His leal subjects in the west had long been troubled by reavers from the Iron Islands, the young king declared, and who better to bring peace to the Sunset Sea than his new admiral? And Alyn Oakenfist, that proud and headstrong youth, found he had no choice but to agree to sail his fleets around the southern end of Westeros to win back Fair Isle and end the menace of Lord Dalton Greyjoy and his ironmen.

The trap was neatly set. The voyage was perilous, and like to take a heavy toll of the Velaryon fleets. The Stepstones teemed with enemies, who would not be taken unawares a second time. Past them lay the barren coasts of Dorne, where Lord Alyn was not like to find safe harbor. And should he gain the Sunset Sea, he would find the Red Kraken waiting with his longships. If the ironmen prevailed, the power of House Velaryon would be broken for good and all, and Lord Peake need never again suffer the insolence of the boy called Oakenfist. If Lord Alyn triumphed, Fair Isle would be restored to its true lords, the westerlands would be freed from further outrage, and the lords of the Seven Kingdoms would learn the price of defying King Aegon III and his new Hand.

The Lord of the Tides made a gift of his elephant to King Aegon III as he took his leave of King’s Landing. Returning to Hull to gather his fleet and take on provisions for the long journey, he said his farewells to his wife, the Lady Baela, who sent him on his way with a kiss, and the news that she was with child. “Name him Corlys, after my grandsire,” Lord Alyn told her. “One day he may sit the Iron Throne.” Baela laughed at that. “I will name her Laena, after my mother. One day she may ride a dragon.”

Lord Corlys Velaryon had made nine famous voyages on his Sea Snake, it will be recalled. Lord Alyn Oakenfist would make six, upon six different ships. “My ladies,” he would call them. On his voyage round Dorne to Lannisport, he sailed a Braavosi war galley of two hundred oars, captured in the Stepstones and renamed the Lady Baela after his young wife.

Some might think it queer for Lord Peake to send off the largest fleet in the Seven Kingdoms whilst war with Braavos threatened. Ser Gedmund Peake and the royal fleet had been recalled from Tarth to the Gullet, to guard the entrance to Blackwater Bay should the Braavosi seek to retaliate against King’s Landing, but other ports and cities all up and down the narrow sea remained vulnerable, so the King’s Hand dispatched fellow regent Lord Manfryd Mooton to Braavos to treat with the Sealord and return his elephant. Six other noble lords accompanied him, along with threescore knights, guardsmen, servants, scribes, and septons, six singers…and Mushroom, who supposedly hid in a wine cask to escape the gloom of the Red Keep and “find a place where men remembered how to laugh.”

Then as now, the Braavosi were a pragmatic people, for theirs is a city of escaped slaves where a thousand false gods are honored, but only gold is truly worshipped. Profit means more than pride amongst the hundred isles. Upon arrival, Lord Mooton and his companions marveled at the Titan, and were taken to the fabled Arsenal to witness the building of a warship, completed in a single day. “We have already replaced every ship that your boy admiral stole or sank,” the Sealord boasted to Lord Mooton.

Having thus demonstrated the power of Braavos, however, he was more than willing to be placated. Whilst he haggled with Lord Mooton over terms of peace, Lords Follard and Cressey spread lavish bribes amongst the city’s keyholders, magisters, priests, and merchant princes. In the end, in return for a very sizable indemnity, Braavos forgave Lord Velaryon’s “unwarranted transgression,” agreed to dissolve her alliance with Tyrosh and break all ties with Racallio Ryndoon, and ceded the Stepstones to the Iron Throne (since the islands were held by Ryndoon and the Pentoshi at this time, the Sealord had in effect sold something that he did not own, but this was not unusual in Braavos).

The mission to Braavos proved eventful in other ways as well. Lord Follard became enamored of a Braavosi courtesan and elected to remain close to her rather than return to Westeros, Ser Herman Rollingford was killed in a duel by a bravo who took offense at the color of his doublet, and Ser Denys Harte supposedly engaged the services of the mysterious Faceless Men to kill a rival back in King’s Landing, Mushroom asserts. The fool himself so amused the Sealord that he received a handsome offer to remain in Braavos. “I do confess that I was tempted. In Westeros my wit is wasted capering for a king who never smiles, but in Braavos they would love me…too well, I fear. Every courtesan would want me, and soon or late some bravo would take umbrage at the size of my member and prick me with his little pointy dwarf-skewer. So back to the Red Keep Mushroom scurried, and more fool me.”

So it came to pass that Lord Mooton returned to King’s Landing with peace in hand, but at a grievous cost. The huge indemnity demanded by the Sealord so depleted the royal treasury that Lord Peake soon found it necessary to borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos just so the Crown might pay its debts, and that in turn required him to reinstate certain of Lord Celtigar’s taxes that Ser Tyland Lannister had abolished, which angered lords and merchants alike and weakened his support amongst the smallfolk.

The last half of the year proved calamitous in other ways as well. The court rejoiced when Lady Rhaena announced that she was with child by Lord Corbray, but joy turned to grief a moon’s turn later when she miscarried. Widespread famine was reported in the North, and the Winter Fever descended on Barrowton, the first time it had ever traveled so far inland. A raider named Sylas the Grim led three thousand wildlings against the Wall, overwhelming the black brothers at Queensgate and spreading out across the Gift until Lord Cregan Stark rode forth from Winterfell, joined with the Glovers of Deepwood Motte, the Flints and Norreys of the hills, and a hundred rangers from the Night’s Watch to hunt them down and put an end to them. A thousand leagues to the south, Ser Steffon Connington was hunting too, pursuing a small band of Dornish raiders across the windswept marches. But he rode too far and too fast, ignorant of what lay ahead until one-armed Wyland Wyl came down on him, and Lady Elenda found herself widowed once again.