"My old friend, I beg you. Do not go back into that wretched snake pit," Salladhor Saan urged, swirling the cheap Myrish wine in his goblet. "The tide in Myr has already turned against you. You will drown. Take your fire-weed, and let my Mede carry you and your men somewhere safe. An island in the Stepstones, or one of Lys's vassal estates! You can drink, whore, and feast until you forget this miserable contract. The price of fire-weed is obscene this year. You hold a king's ransom in the hold right now!"
"Thank you for the counsel, Salladhor," Pretty Boy smiled, though the scar on his cheek pulled tight. "You have always guarded your coin purse well. But I am bound by my oath. And besides, Greybeard is your friend, too."
"When I first met Greybeard, he was nothing but a squire cleaning armor," the Lyseni pirate scoffed, though a flicker of genuine regret crossed his face. "But there is no helping it. I cannot watch you march to your death. The situation is entirely blind, and Magister Calasso has likely already suffered a catastrophic defeat!"
"I will be fine. I am going to Myr," Pretty Boy said, standing up from the captain's table.
"Excellent! I adore this particular Northern stubbornness. It is so utterly unlike the cowardly Magisters of the Free Cities," Saan laughed, raising his goblet in a mock toast. "But you cannot be stubborn forever!"
"Will you hold the ship off the coast for a few hours?" Pretty Boy asked seriously. "If the city has truly fallen, we will need to run."
"Loyalty comes with a price, my friend. Salladhor Saan requires another reward for risking his beautiful ship in hostile waters. A small tip. I will take another tenth of the fire-weed."
"Fine," Pretty Boy gritted his teeth.
"Done! But I will not wait past the witching hour," Saan warned, his smile vanishing, replaced by the cold pragmatism of a pirate lord. "The Mede cannot linger too long near the Myrish patrols without arousing suspicion. If you are not on the beach by dawn, I am sailing."
"Wish me luck, old friend," Pretty Boy said, turning to the door.
"He who hurries through life hurries to his grave!" Saan called after him.
When night finally fell, the Mede dropped anchor in a secluded, rocky cove several miles down the coast from the bustling harbor of Myr. The cove was unremarkable, but its true value lay hidden behind a tangle of dense coastal brush—an ancient smuggler's tunnel carved deep into the limestone, leading directly beneath the outer walls of Myr.
Most minor smugglers relied on small skiffs to ferry goods under the cover of darkness, tossing ropes over crumbling sections of the city walls. But an elite pirate lord like Salladhor Saan did not climb walls. He bought men to dig under them.
Pretty Boy assembled a strike team of twenty elite veterans on the beach, including Longspear, Gendry, and Fletcher Dick. The rest of the detachment was ordered to remain aboard the Mede with Qyburn to guard the cargo. If the strike team failed to return by dawn, the survivors were to sail for the Stepstones.
"You two don't need to come," Pretty Boy said, looking at Fletcher Dick and Gendry. "One is too old, and the other is too young."
"My soul died over a decade ago," Fletcher Dick barked a rough laugh, stringing his massive yew longbow. "I died the day the Sword of the Morning and the White Bull slaughtered my brothers in the Kingswood. I wasn't there to stand with them, and the guilt has made me feel like a coward every day since. The Seven have given me fifteen extra years of life. I will not sit on a boat while my new brothers bleed!"
"And the vanguard needs a heavy hitter," Gendry added, hefting his warhammer. Pretty Boy was lethal with a sword, but when it came to sheer, shield-shattering kinetic force, Gendry was unmatched.
"Keep your eyes open, lad," Fletcher Dick murmured to Gendry as they fell into line. "I've taught you everything I can about the wind. Don't let yourself get cut down before you grow into a proper monster."
"Myr is split into two halves," Pretty Boy briefed the team in the dark. "The outer city is a sprawling slum of waterfronts and poor craftsmen. The inner city is a fortress of wealth, where the Magisters and the high guilds reside. Magister Calasso's manse is deep in the inner city. The outer walls are easy to bypass, but the inner walls are heavily guarded. It will be incredibly difficult to break through."
Pretty Boy lit a pitch torch and led the strike team into the narrow, damp smuggler's tunnel. It was claustrophobic, wide enough for only two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. If a man was too fat or too tall, the tunnel would be pure torture. Horses were completely out of the question.
Gendry walked in the center of the file, his breathing steady. He carried his warhammer in his hands and the captured Meereenese arakh at his hip. He wore a dark wool cloak over his black scale mail to muffle the clinking of iron rings and hide the gleam of metal.
After what felt like hours of suffocating darkness, Pretty Boy halted.
Above them, a heavy stone paving slab scraped backward. Starlight spilled down into the tunnel. One by one, the Wolf Pack emerged into a quiet, shadowed alley in the outer slums of Myr.
As soon as they breached the surface, the noise hit them.
"Public Enemy Calasso! Calasso is dead!"
"The traitor Calasso has fallen!"
The city was in a state of absolute, roaring chaos. The Magister had fallen. In the span of a single afternoon, Calasso's wealth, status, and life had been obliterated by the rival guilds. Down in the streets below the inner walls, Gendry could see columns of Myrish city guards marching with torches, hastily confiscating the Calasso family's outer properties—warehouses, merchant stalls, and slave pens. When a Magister fell in the Free Cities, the victors swarmed like jackals to strip the corpse.
Pretty Boy quickly pulled his cloak tight, hiding the grey wolf sigil on his breastplate.
"The timeline is worse than we feared," Pretty Boy whispered grimly, his scarred face tight with anxiety.
It wasn't that the fire-weed had arrived too late. It was that Calasso's political enemies had struck before the harvest could even reach the city. They had measured his remaining wealth and crushed him before he could convert the fire-weed into bribes.
But what of Greybeard? The Captain of the Wolf Pack had been stationed in the inner city to personally guard the Magister.
"Kill them! Kill the Northern dogs!"
A sudden, thunderous roar of combat erupted a few streets over, followed by the clash of steel and the shrieks of dying men.
Looking down the sloping street toward the inner city gates, Gendry saw a dozen blood-soaked men engaged in a desperate, fighting retreat. They were being hunted by a massive mob of Myrish city guards and rival sellswords armed with heavy crossbows.
But the Myrish guards were keeping their distance. The retreating men were fighting like cornered demons, their swords rising and falling with terrifying, brutal efficiency. They wore grey cloaks.
"The Pack!" Longspear hissed.
"Draw!" Fletcher Dick commanded smoothly. He unslung his yew longbow, knocking an arrow in a single, fluid motion. The Westerosi longbow was vastly superior in range and penetrating power to the Myrish crossbows.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Fletcher Dick's arrows hissed through the night like invisible silk, punching cleanly through the breastplates of three pursuing guards. The Myrish line staggered, confused by the sudden plunging fire from the dark alleyway.
"The Pack survives!" Pretty Boy roared, drawing his sword and breaking from the shadows to relieve their brothers.
Gendry pulled his heavy, horned iron helm over his head. The iron was cold against his cheeks. He tightened his grip on his warhammer and sprinted into the torchlight, charging into the Myrish guards like a hurricane of black iron.
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