A Clash of Kings
Page 56

"And what would I do in Pyke?" Her hand stayed where it was.
"My father will feast his captains tonight." He had them to feast every night, while he waited for the last stragglers to arrive, but Theon saw no need to tell all that.
"Would you make me your captain for the night, my lord prince?" She had the wickedest smile he'd ever seen on a woman.
"I might. If I knew you'd steer me safe into port."
"Well, I know which end of the oar goes in the sea, and there's no one better with ropes and knots." One-handed, she undid the lacing of his breeches, then grinned and stepped lightly away from him. "A pity I'm a woman wed, and new with child."
Flustered, Theon laced himself back up. "I need to start back to the castle. if you do not come with me, I may lose my way for grief, and all the islands would be poorer."
"We couldn't have that . . . but I have no horse, my lord."
"You could take my squire's mount."
"And leave your poor squire to walk all the way to Pyke?"
"Share mine, then."
"You'd like that well enough." The smile again. "Now, would I be behind you, or in front?"
"You would be wherever you liked."
"I like to be on top."
Where has this wench been all my life? "My father's hall is dim and dank. It needs Esgred to make the fires blaze."
"The lordling has a honeyed tongue."
"Isn't that where we began?"
She threw up her hands. "And where we end. Esgred is yours, sweet prince. Take me to your castle. Let me see your proud towers rising from the sea."
"I left my horse at the inn. Come." They walked down the strand together, and when Theon took her arm, she did not pull away. He liked the way she walked; there was a boldness to it, part saunter and part sway, that suggested she would be just as bold beneath the blankets.
Lordsport was as crowded as he'd ever seen it, swarming with the crews of the longships that lined the pebbled shore and rode at anchor well out past the breakwater. Ironmen did not bend their knees often nor easily, but Theon noted that oarsmen and townfolk alike grew quiet as they passed, and acknowledged him with respectful bows of the head. They have finally learned who I am, he thought. And past time too.
Lord Goodbrother of Great Wyk had come in the night before with his main strength, near forty longships. His men were everywhere, conspicuous in their striped goat's hair sashes. It was said about the inn that Otter Gimpknee's whores were being f**ked bowlegged by beardless boys in sashes. The boys were welcome to them so far as Theon was concerned. A poxier den of slatterns he hoped he'd never see. His present companion was more to his taste. That she was wed to his father's shipwright and pregnant to boot only made her more intriguing.
"Has my lord prince begun choosing his crew?" Esgred asked as they made their way toward the stable. "Ho, Bluetooth," she shouted to a passing seafarer, a tall man in bearskin vest and raven-winged helm. "How fares your bride?"
"Fat with child, and talking of twins."
"So soon?" Esgred smiled that wicked smile. "You got your oar in the water quickly."
"Aye, and stroked and stroked and stroked," roared the man,
"A big man," Theon observed. "Bluetooth, was it? Should I choose him for my Sea Bitch?"
"Only if you mean to insult him. Bluetooth has a sweet ship of his own."
"I have been too long away to know one man from another," Theon admitted. He'd looked for a few of the friends he'd played with as a boy, but they were gone, dead, or grown into strangers. "My uncle Victarion has loaned me his own steersman."
"Rymolf Stormdrunk? A good man, so long as he's sober." She saw more faces she knew, and called out to a passing trio, "Uller, Qarl. Where's your brother, Skyte?"
"The Drowned God needed a strong oarsman, I fear," replied the stocky man with the white streak in his beard.
"What he means is, Eldiss drank too much wine and his fat belly burst," said the pink-cheeked youth beside him.
"What's dead may never die," Esgred said.
"What's dead may never die."
Theon muttered the words with them. "You seem well known," he said to the woman when the men had passed on.
"Every man loves the shipwright's wife. He had better, lest he wants his ship to sink. If you need men to pull your oars, you could do worse than those three."
"Lordsport has no lack of strong arms." Theon had given the matter no little thought. It was fighters he wanted, and men who would be loyal to him, not to his lord father or his uncles. He was playing the part of a dutiful young prince for the moment, while he waited for Lord Balon to reveal the fullness of his plans. If it turned out that he did not like those plans or his part in them, however, well . . .
"Strength is not enough. A longship's oars must move as one if you would have her best speed. Choose men who have rowed together before, if you're wise."
"Sage counsel. Perhaps you'd help me choose them." Let her believe I want her wisdom, women fancy that.
"I may. If you treat me kindly."
"How else?"
Theon quickened his stride as they neared the Myraham, rocking high and empty by the quay. Her captain had tried to sail a fortnight past, but Lord Balon would not permit it. None of the merchantmen that called at Lordsport had been allowed to depart again; his father wanted no word of the hosting to reach the mainland before he was ready to strike.
"Milord," a plaintive voice called down from the forecastle of the merchanter. The captain's daughter leaned over the rail, gazing after him. Her father had forbidden her to come ashore, but whenever Theon came to Lordsport he spied her wandering forlornly about the deck. "Milord, a moment," she called after him. "As it please milord . . . "
"Did she?" Esgred asked as Theon hurried her past the cog. "Please milord?"
He saw no sense in being coy with this one. "For a time. Now she wants to be my salt wife."
"Oho. Well, she'd profit from some salting, no doubt. Too soft and bland, that one. Or am I wrong?"
"You're not wrong." Soft and bland. Precisely. How had she known?
He had told Wex to wait at the inn. The common room was so crowded that Theon had to push his way through the door. Not a seat was to be had at bench nor table. Nor did he see his squire. "Wex", he shouted over the din and clatter. If he's up with one of those poxy whores, I'll strip the hide off him, he was thinking when he finally spied the boy, dicing near the hearth . . . and winning too, by the look of the pile of coins before him.
"Time to go," Theon announced. When the boy paid him no mind, he seized him by the ear and pulled him from the game. Wex grabbed up a fistful of coppers and came along without a word. That was one of the things Theon liked best about him. Most squires have loose tongues, but Wex had been born dumb . . . which didn't seem to keep him from being clever as any twelve-year-old had a right to be. He was a baseborn son of one of Lord Botley's half brothers. Taking him as squire had been part of the price Theon had paid for his horse.
When Wex saw Esgred, his eyes went round. You'd think he'd never seen a woman before, Theon thought. "Esgred will be riding with me back to Pyke. Saddle the horses, and be quick about it."
The boy had ridden in on a scrawny little garron from Lord Balon's stable, but Theon's mount was quite another sort of beast. "Where did you find that hellhorse?" Esgred asked when she saw him, but from the way she laughed he knew she was impressed.
"Lord Botley bought him in Lannisport a year past, but he proved to be too much horse for him, so Botley was pleased to sell." The Iron Islands were too sparse and rocky for breeding good horses. Most of the islanders were indifferent riders at best, more comfortable on the deck of a longship than in the saddle. Even the lords rode garrons or shaggy Harlaw ponies, and ox carts were more common than drays. The smallfolk too poor to own either one pulled their own plows through the thin, stony soil.
But Theon had spent ten years in Winterfell, and did not intend to go to war without a good mount beneath him. Lord Botley's misjudgment was his good fortune: a stallion with a temper as black as his hide, larger than a courser if not quite so big as most destriers. As Theon was not quite so big as most knights, that suited him admirably. The animal had fire in his eyes. When he'd met his new owner, he'd pulled back his lips and tried to bite off his face.
"Does he have a name?" Esgred asked Theon as he mounted.
"Smiler." He gave her a hand, and pulled her up in front of him, where he could put his arms around her as they rode. "I knew a man once who told me that I smiled at the wrong things."
"Do you?"
"Only by the lights of those who smile at nothing." He thought of his father and his uncle Aeron.
"Are you smiling now, my lord prince?"
"Oh, yes." Theon reached around her to take the reins. She was almost of a height with him. Her hair could have used a wash and she had a faded pink scar on her pretty neck, but he liked the smell of her, salt and sweat and woman.
The ride back to Pyke promised to be a good deal more interesting than the ride down had been.
When they were well beyond Lordsport, Theon put a hand on her breast. Esgred reached up and plucked it away. "I'd keep both hands on the reins, or this black beast of yours is like to fling us both off and kick us to death."
"I broke him of that." Amused, Theon behaved himself for a while, chatting amiably of the weather (grey and overcast, as it had been since he arrived, with frequent rains) and telling her of the men he'd killed in the Whispering Wood. When he reached the part about coming that close to the Kingslayer himself, he slid his hand back up to where it had been. Her br**sts were small, but he liked the firmness of them.
"You don't want to do that, my lord prince."
"Oh, but I do." Theon gave her a squeeze.
"Your squire is watching you."
"Let him. He'll never speak of it, I swear."
Esgred pried his fingers off her breast. This time she kept him firmly prisoned. She had strong hands.
"I like a woman with a good tight grip."
She snorted. "I'd not have thought it, by that wench on the waterfront."
"You must not judge me by her. She was the only woman on the ship."
"Tell me of your father. Will he welcome me kindly to his castle?"
"Why should he? He scarcely welcomed me, his own blood, the heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands."
"Are you?" she asked mildly. "It's said that you have uncles, brothers, a sister."
"My brothers are long dead, and my sister . . . well, they say Asha's favorite gown is a chainmail hauberk that hangs down past her knees, with boiled leather smallclothes beneath. Men's garb won't make her a man, though. I'll make a good marriage alliance with her once we've won the war, if I can find a man to take her. As I recall, she had a nose like a vulture's beak, a ripe crop of pimples, and no more chest than a boy."
"You can marry off your sister," Esgred observed, "but not your uncles."