VICTARION

At night in the narrows near Astapor, the Iron Fleet ambushes a Ghiscari trading galley exactly where Moqorro foretold. Victarion takes the ship, rejects news that Daenerys is dead, and has the captain’s tongue torn out before drowning him. He renames the prize Red God’s Wroth and tolerates the crew’s fear of Moqorro because the priest’s guidance proves accurate.

After a squall, three ships vanish, but Moqorro’s fires promise they will rejoin at Yaros. The fleet captures the Myrish cog Dove, and later two swift empty galleys bound to supply Yunkai’s legions, whose ranks are thinned by the pale mare. Victarion beheads the galley captains and kills their crews, breaks the oarslaves’ chains to row for him, and renames the galleys Ghost and Shade. He exults in his burned, strengthened hand and the sense that both the Drowned God and R’hllor favor him.

At Yaros, the lost ships return as prophesied. Choosing speed and risk, Victarion runs the straits and seizes more prizes, hearing from fishermen that Daenerys flew off on Drogon. When one mocks him, Victarion strangles the man. He boasts of restoring the Old Way and dreams of wedding the dragon queen.

Nearing Yunkai, Victarion takes a Yunkish slaver loaded with girls and boys. He kills the slavers, disperses the girls to captains, drowns the perfumed boys, and keeps seven girls only to ceremonially burn them alive on a captured ketch as an offering to both gods. A fresh wind rises as the fleet turns toward Meereen.

That night Victarion studies Euron’s Valyrian horn, Dragonbinder. Moqorro reads the glyphs: the horn binds dragons but kills any mortal who blows it. He counsels that the blower need not be the master, and that Victarion must claim the horn with blood—"blood for fire, fire for blood"—shaping Victarion’s plan to seize Daenerys’s dragons.