The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (69 page)

Kraznys’s High Valyrian was twisted and thickened by the
characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with words
of slaver argot. Dany understood him well enough, but she smiled and
looked blankly at the slave girl, as if wondering what he might have
said. “The Good Master Kraznys asks, are they not magnificent?” The
girl spoke the Common Tongue well, for one who had never been
there. No older than ten, she had the round flat face, dusky skin, and
golden eyes of Naath.
The Peaceful People,
her folk were called. All
agreed that they made the best slaves.

“They might be adequate to my needs,” Dany answered. It had
been Ser Jorah’s suggestion that she speak only Dothraki and the
Common Tongue while in Astapor.
My bear is more clever than he
looks,
she reflected. “Tell me of their training.”

“The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no praise,
to keep the price down,” the translator told her master. “She wishes
to know how they were trained.”

Kraznys mo Nakloz bobbed his head. He smelled as if he’d bathed
in raspberries, this slaver, and his jutting red-black beard glistened
with oil.
He has larger breasts than I do,
Dany reflected. She could
see them through the thin sea-green silk of the gold-fringed
tokar
he
wound about his body and over one shoulder. His left hand held the
tokar
in place as he walked, while his right clasped a short leather
whip. “Are all Westerosi pig ignorant?” he complained. “All the world
knows that the Unsullied are masters of spear and shield and short
sword.” He gave Dany a broad smile. “Tell her what she would know,
slave, and be quick about it. The day is hot.”

That much at least is no lie.
A matched pair of slave girls stood in
back of them, holding a stripped silk awning over their heads, but
even in the shade Dany felt a little lightheaded, and Kraznys was
perspiring freely. The Plaza of Pride had been baking in the sun
since dawn. Even through the thickness of her sandals, she could
feel the warmth of the red bricks underfoot. Waves of heat rose off
them shimmering to make the stepped pyramids of Astapor around
the plaza seem half a dream.

If the Unsullied felt the heat, however, they gave no hint of it.
They
could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand there.
A thousand
had been marched out of their barracks for her inspection; drawn up
in ten ranks of one hundred before the fountain and its great bronze
harpy, they stood stiffly at attention, their stony eyes fixed straight
ahead. They wore naught but white linen clouts knotted about their
loins, and conical bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot
tall. Kraznys had commanded them to lay down their spears and
shields, and doff their swordbelts and quilted tunics, so the Queen of
Westeros might better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.

“They are chosen young, for size and speed and strength,” the
slave told her. “They begin their training at five. Every day they
train from dawn to dusk, until they have mastered the short sword,
the shield, and the three spears. The training is most rigorous, Your
Grace. Only one boy in three survives it. This is well known. Among
the Unsullied it is said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the
worst is done with, for no duty that will ever fall to them could be as
hard as their training.”

Kraznys mo Nakloz supposedly spoke no word of the Common
Tongue, but he bobbed his head as he listened, and from time to time
gave the slave girl a poke with the end of his lash. “Tell her that these
have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water.
Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I should command it,
and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon
the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own
death claims him. Such is their courage. Tell her that.”

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when
the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood
staff against the bricks,
tap tap,
as if to tell his displeasure. The old
man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this
slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision.
That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride,
not to keep her safe. Her bloodriders would do that well enough.
Ser Jorah Mormont she had left aboard
Balerion
to guard her people
and her dragons. Much against her inclination, she had locked the
dragons below decks. It was too dangerous to let them fly freely over
the city; the world was all too full of men who would gladly kill them
for no better reason than to name themselves
dragonslayer
.

“What did the smelly old man say?” the slaver demanded of
his translator. When she told him, he smiled and said, “Inform the
savages that we call this
obedience
. Others may be stronger or quicker
or larger than the Unsullied. Some few may even equal their skill
with sword and spear and shield. But nowhere between the seas will
you ever find any more obedient.”

“Sheep are obedient,” said Arstan when the words had been
translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much as
Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.

Kraznys mo Nakloz showed his big white teeth when that was
rendered back to him. “A word from me and these sheep would spill
his stinking old bowels on the bricks,” he said, “but do not say that.
Tell them that these creatures are more dogs than sheep. Do they eat
dogs or horse in these Seven Kingdoms?”

“They prefer pigs and cows, your worship.”

“Beef. Pfag. Food for unwashed savages.”

Ignoring them all, Dany walked slowly down the line of slave
soldiers. The girls followed close behind with the silk awning, to keep
her in the shade, but the thousand men before her enjoyed no such
protection. More than half had the copper skins and almond eyes
of Dothraki and Lhazareen, but she saw men of the Free Cities in
the ranks as well, along with pale Qartheen, ebon-faced Summer
Islanders, and others whose origins she could not guess. And some
had skins of the same amber hue as Kraznys mo Nakloz, and the
bristly red-black hair that marked the ancient folk of Ghis, who
named themselves the harpy’s sons.
They sell even their own kind.
It
should not have surprised her. The Dothraki did the same, when
khalasar
met
khalasar
in the sea of grass.

Some of the soldiers were tall and some were short. They ranged in
age from fourteen to twenty, she judged. Their cheeks were smooth,
and their eyes all the same, be they black or brown or blue or grey or
amber.
They are like one man,
Dany thought, until she remembered
that they were no men at all. The Unsullied were eunuchs, every one
of them. “Why do you cut them?” she asked Kraznys through the slave
girl. “Whole men are stronger than eunuchs, I have always heard.”

“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute strength of
one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,” said Kraznys mo Nakloz
when the question was put to him. “A bull is strong as well, but bulls
die every day in the fighting pits. A girl of nine killed one not three
days past in Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than
strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of
the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come
again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear.”

Dany listened patiently to the translation.

“Even the bravest men fear death and maiming,” Arstan said
when the girl was done.

Kraznys smiled again when he heard that. “Tell the old man that
he smells of piss, and needs a stick to hold him up.”

“Truly, your worship?”

He poked her with his lash. “Not, not truly, are you a girl or a goat,
to ask such folly? Say that Unsullied are not men. Say that death
means nothing to them, and maiming less than nothing.” He stopped
before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and
brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper
cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you
like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.”

It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on
Kraznys’s arm before he could raise the whip again. “Tell the Good
Master that I see how strong his Unsullied are, and how bravely they
suffer pain.”

Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian. “Tell this
ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has nothing to do with it.”

“The Good Master says that was not courage, Your Grace.”

“Tell her to open those slut’s eyes of hers.”

“He begs you attend this carefully, Your Grace.”

Kraznys moved to the next eunuch in line, a towering youth
with the blue eyes and flaxen hair of Lys. “Your sword,” he said. The
eunuch knelt, unsheathed the blade, and offered it up hilt first. It was
a short sword, made more for stabbing than for slashing, but the edge
looked razor sharp. “Stand,” Kraznys commanded.

“Your worship.” The eunuch stood, and Kraznys mo Nakloz slid
the sword slowly up his torso, leaving a thin red line across his belly
and between his ribs. Then he jabbed the swordpoint in beneath a
wide pink nipple and began to work it back and forth.

“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as the blood ran
down the man’s chest.

“Tell the cow to stop her bleating,” said Kraznys, without waiting
for the translation. “This will do him no great harm. Men have no
need of nipples, eunuchs even less so.” The nipple hung by a thread
of skin. He slashed, and sent it tumbling to the bricks, leaving behind
a round red eye copiously weeping blood. The eunuch did not move,
until Kraznys offered him back his sword, hilt first. “Here, I’m done
with you.”

“This one is pleased to have served you.”

Kraznys turned back to Dany. “They feel no pain, you see.”

“How can that be?” she demanded through the scribe.

“The wine of courage,”
was the answer he gave her. “It is no true
wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black
lotus root, and many secret things. They drink it with every meal
from the day they are cut, and with each passing year feel less and
less. It makes them fearless in battle. Nor can they be tortured. Tell
the savage her secrets are safe with the Unsullied. She may set them
to guard her councils and even her bedchamber, and never a worry as
to what they might overhear.

“In Yunkai and Meereen, eunuchs are often made by removing a
boy’s testicles, but leaving the penis. Such a creature is infertile, yet
often still capable of erection. Only trouble can come of this. We
remove the penis as well, leaving nothing. The Unsullied are the
purest creatures on the earth.” He gave Dany and Arstan another
of his broad white smiles. “I have heard that in the Sunset Kingdoms
men take solemn vows to keep chaste and father no children, but
live only for their duty. Is it not so?”

“It is,” Arstan said, when the question was put to him. “There are
many such orders. The maesters of the Citadel, the septons and septas
who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the dead, the Kingsguard
and the Night’s Watch...”

“Poor things,” growled the slaver, after the translation. “Men were
not made to live such. Their days are a torment of temptation, any
fool must see, and no doubt most succumb to their baser selves. Not
so our Unsullied. They are wed to their swords in a way that your
Sworn Brothers cannot hope to match. No woman can ever tempt
them, nor any man.”