Somewhere off in the far distance, a dying man was screaming for his mother.

A man was yelling in Giscari in the next camp to the north of the second song.

High and shrill, his voice carried a long way in the morning air, far beyond his own encampment.

Tyrion knew just enough Giscari to understand the words,

but the fear in his voice would have been plain in any tongue.

I know how he feels. It was time to find his own horse, he knew. Time to dawn some dead

boy's armor, buckle on a sword and dagger, slip his dented great helmet down over his head.

Dawn had broken, and a sliver of the rising sun was visible behind the city's walls and towers,

blindingly bright. To the west, the stars were fading, one by one.

Trumpets were blowing along the Skahazadan, warhorns answering from the walls of marine.

A ship was sinking in the river mouth of a fire. Dead men and dragons were moving through the sky

whilst warships crashed and clashed on Slaver's Bay. Tyrion could not see them from here,

but he could hear the sounds, the crash of pole against pole as ships slammed together,

the deep-throated warhorns of the Ironborn and queer, high whistles of calm.

The splintering of ores, the shouts and battle cries, the crash of acts on armor

soared on shield, all mingled with the shrieks of wounded men.

Many of the ships were still far out in the bay, so the sounds they made seemed faint and far away

that he knew them all the same. The music of slaughter.

300 yards from where he stood rose the wicked sister, her long arms swinging up with a clutch

of corpses, chunk thumped, and there they flew, naked and swollen, pale dead birds tumbling

boneless through the air. The siege camps shimmered in a gaudy haze of rose and gold,

but the famous stepped pyramids of marine hulked black against the glare,

...