Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind.
He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark.
I am,” he confessed, “but I am running to and you are running from, and there’s a world of difference there.
Hodor looked at him innocently. “Hodor?
I am Asha of House Greyjoy, aye. Opinions differ on whether I’m a lady.
Such folly. He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing beneath him, the black stone rough beneath his fingers. Talking gargoyles and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child again. Had a lifetime’s hard- won wisdom fled him along with his health and strength? He was a maester, trained and chained in the great Citadel of Oldtown. What had he come to, when superstition filled his head as if he were an ignorant fieldhand?
A bite.” She touched the hilt of her sword, the sword that he had given her. Oathkeeper. “My lord, you gave me a quest.
Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.
The hardest part of any battle is just before, waiting for the carnage to begin.
I hope his sword is quicker than his wits. The day may come that Tommen has some need of it.
They say the king loved to hunt. The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that.
Drink won his sword, meet with my hammer. That’s more than my demon can object.
Many a voyager has been lost here, poleboats and pirates and great river galleys too. They wander forlorn through the mists, searching for a sun they cannot find until madness or hunger claim their lives. There are restless spirits in the air here and tormented souls below the water.
Sellswords put gold before honor.
For a moment, he was relaxed and mindless, drifting peacefully, and then his identity returned to him lazily, like an unwanted afterthought.
His sufferings were nothing compared to their own, but that did not make him hurt any less.
Behind you, behind you, behind you!” Quentyn turned and threw his left arm across his face to shield his eyes from the furnace wind. Rhaegal, he reminded himself, the green one is Rhaegal. When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning. Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.
They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy.
After the deep, warm nothingness, there was no pleasure in recalling who he was. Without coming fully awake, he nonetheless felt the weight of his own being settling on his heart. Despair and anger and the constant gnawing worry sounded in his mind like a man in the next room clearing his throat.
The Conqueror was once heard to say that he even loved the scent of Dragonstone, where the salt air always smelled of smoke and brimstone.