Victarion I; A Dance with Dragons, Victarion and Euron’s hellhorn

A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel

On his way to Meereen and Queen Daenerys Targaryen, Victarion Greyjoy is sailing his fleet across the waters of Slaver's Bay, attacking and capturing ships from the enemy to add his own numbers.
After capturing the Willing Maiden, a slaver galley from Yunkai, he put all the slavers which were onboard to the sword, freed the slave rowers chained below deck and assigned them to row for the Iron Fleet.
The cargo, consisting of perfumed boys and girls destined for prostitution, he used to please his captains and to please two gods.
The boys were chained and thrown into the sea as a sacrifice for the Drowned God.
The girls were divided between his captains, but Victarion kept seven girl for himself; he kissed them and then burned them alive aboard a fishing ketch, as a sacrifice both for R'hllor, the Lord of Light, and the Drowned God.

Reference excerpt from the book: Victarion I; A Dance with Dragons

Near the end, before the smoking ketch was swallowed by the sea, the cries of the seven sweetlings changed to joyous song, it seemed to Victarion Greyjoy.

A great wind came up then, a wind that filled their sails and swept them north and east and north again, toward Meereen and its pyramids of many-colored bricks. On wings of song I fly to you, Daenerys, the iron captain thought.

That night, for the first time, he brought forth the dragon horn that the Crow’s Eye had found amongst the smoking wastes of great Valyria.

A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel.
Euron’s hellhorn. Victarion ran his hand along it.
The horn was as warm and smooth as the dusky woman’s thighs, and so shiny that he could see a twisted likeness of his own features in its depths.
Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands that girded it.

“Valyrian glyphs,” Moqorro called them.

That much Victarion had known. “What do they say?”

“Much and more.”

The black priest pointed to one golden band. “Here the horn is named. ‘I am Dragonbinder,’ it says. Have you ever heard it sound?”

“Once.” One of his brother’s mongrels had sounded the hellhorn at the kingsmoot on Old Wyk. A monster of a man he had been, huge and shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest.
“The sound it made … it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one.”

“And the man who blew the horn, what of him?”

“He died. There were blisters on his lips, after. His bird was bleeding too.” The captain thumped his chest.
“The hawk, just here. Every feather dripping blood. I heard the man was all burned up inside, but that might just have been some tale.”

“A true tale.” Moqorro turned the hellhorn, examining the queer letters that crawled across a second of the golden bands.

“Here it says, ‘No mortal man shall sound me and live.’ ”

Bitterly Victarion brooded on the treachery of brothers.
Euron’s gifts are always poisoned.

“The Crow’s Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?”

“Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you.”
Moqorro pointed to the band of steel.

“Here. ‘Blood for fire, fire for blood.’ Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn’s master. You must claim the horn. With blood.”

Moqorro the Dark Flame, Victarion Greyjoy holding Dragonbinder, and the dusky woman. by Winter Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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