Life at Sea and First Aid

Ten days into the voyage, after the storm.

The deck of the Hao Yin was piled high with bulging barrels, each tightly bound with coarse hemp rope to keep it from rolling overboard during the voyage. The most conspicuous were the barrels of salted cod. Salt crust seeped through the gaps in their blackened wooden staves, and when the lids were lifted, a stench of rotting seaweed and dead fish hit you in the face.

The first time Yulon saw the sailors open a barrel, he thought it was some kind of punishment ritual, a biological bomb, or maybe a way to stink an enemy to death.

"Watch closely, little prince!" Red-haired Oakhart grinned, the gap where his front tooth was missing spitting out the smell of liquor. He pried open the lid with a dagger. A layer of milky-white maggots floated on the yellow-brown brine, writhing over the salted fish carcasses like a living mold.

Old One-Eye Wolf was unfazed. His rough fingers picked up a strip of dried cod, and maggots pattered down from it. He wiped it on his filthy apron and shoved it straight into his mouth, chewing as yellow juice trickled from the corners of his lips. "The more you chew, the better it tastes," he muttered, baring uneven black teeth. "Sea salt's good for you."

Yulon's stomach twisted. But while he hesitated, Daggmo's iron hook had already speared a piece of fish and held it out to him. "Eat," the old pirate said, narrowing his one eye. "Unless you want to end up like Torik, starving until you have to gnaw on your own leather armor." In the end, Yulon gently shook his head and refused.

Hardtack was another kind of torment.

The blackened round biscuits were locked in an iron chest to keep out rats and damp. By the time Old Lame Leg the cook hauled one out, they were as hard as reefs, their surfaces covered in suspicious green spots.

"Catch!" Oakhart swung his axe and brought it down hard. With a bang, the biscuit split in two, scattering crumbs. Yulon picked up a piece and discovered that its insides were crawling with tiny beetles, which fled in panic through the biscuit's honeycomb-like holes.

Baron grinned, grabbed half a biscuit, and shoved it into his mouth. The crisp crunch of beetles between his teeth was clearly audible. "Fresher than fish."

He wasn't wrong. It did look just a little better than the fish. Yulon followed their example, taking a biscuit that had already been cracked from the iron chest. He scraped the mold off with his dagger, then dipped it in seawater to soften it. At the first bite, his tongue tasted wood and grit. The biscuit had sawdust and ground seashells mixed into it to make it keep longer.

Fresh water was even more precious than food. Tarred goatskin flasks hung in the shadows beneath the masts, every drop carefully rationed. When Yulon drank, he noticed tiny, transparent creatures floating on the surface and swimming around inside the flask like wisps of living mist. Worst of all was the fresh water after the seventh day. The water in the goatskin flasks began turning green, and it tasted like a mixture of rust and rotting seaweed.

"Don't stare at it, and don't waste any! Every drop of fresh water is precious!" Daggmo warned him, handing over a rusty iron strainer. "Just strain it out. It won't hurt you to drink it anyway. Your guts will be full of sea worms sooner or later."

Yulon didn't follow the old pirate's advice. After filtering the water, he boiled it over the stove before drinking. His older brother Baron scorned him mercilessly for it.

For the sailors of the Hao Yin, the worst part was that their liquor was almost gone! They'd originally had enough to last at least a month, but a day ago, during the great storm, half of it had been taken by the Drowned God. The rest had to be strictly rationed. To sailors, liquor ranked alongside the swords in their hands and the heads on their shoulders.

The hold after sunset was the Ironborn's arena. Twenty sailors squeezed between barrels of salted fish and piles of rope, their sweat and the reek of fish rising into a murky, steamy heat.

"Come on! Let the little prince see what he's missing!" Old Wick shoved Yulon into the middle of the circle.

His opponent was one-eyed Grenn, whose face still bore the scabs from the day's fight. He had no weapon. Instead, he'd smeared his hands with sticky whale oil, which gleamed slickly in the dim light of the whale-oil lamps. "First rule of an Ironborn brawl," he said, lunging forward, his whale-oil-slicked hand reaching straight for Yulon's face. "Make sure your enemy can't keep his footing!"

Yulon dodged to the side, but Grenn hooked his boot around Yulon's foot. Just as Yulon was about to fall, he grabbed a rope overhead and swung himself up, his legs scissoring around Grenn's neck. They crashed hard onto the deck, making the cargo barrels hum.

"Nice!" Daggmo took a swig of rum. "But in a real fight, you do this!" He suddenly kicked over a barrel, splashing amber liquid all over Yulon. The instant Yulon's vision blurred, the old pirate's knee was already braced against his lower back, a rough dagger pressed to his throat. "Dead men don't get to swing on ropes!"

The bloody lessons went on until late into the night. Ironborn fighting came down to two words: practical. How to bite through an enemy's windpipe, gouge out his eyes with your fingernails, even hide a sharpened fishbone up your sleeve. "Elegance is landlubber bullshit! At sea, surviving is the only truth!"

Aside from eating, sleeping, bragging, fighting, drinking (though there was too little liquor to really enjoy it), and staring blankly at the ocean, there was another dangerous pastime during the voyage: the Finger Dance.

The Finger Dance was a game popular among the Ironborn of the Iron Islands, and it required at least two players. The participants threw hand axes at each other. The person being targeted had to catch the whirling axe or dodge it, but couldn't move more than half a step. The game was called the Finger Dance because it usually didn't end until one of the players had lost at least one finger. Balon Greyjoy loved the game, especially after hearing a tale that Heras Hoare had defeated Lorgar Greyiron II in a Finger Dance duel and inherited the title of King of the Iron Islands as a result. Heras Hoare had lost two fingers in the duel, however, and was thereafter known as Heras "Crippled Hand." The tale had turned Balon's fondness for the Finger Dance into an obsession. Yulon thought it hardly counted as a game at all; it was just idiotic self-mutilation.

But five-year-old Yulon couldn't change the Ironborn's ways yet, so all he could do was watch.

The Sharkskin War Drum thundered on the deck, every beat like a blow against the ribs.

"Let the Drowned God witness the brave!" Daggmo roared, bringing down his drumsticks. The Sharkskin War Drum pounded painfully against their eardrums. The sailors marked out a circle five paces across with whale oil. Balon Greyjoy stood facing Hoke "Split Finger," hand axes glimmering with mercury-cold light in the moonlight. When Daggmo's drumsticks struck for the third time, the duel erupted!

Balon's right arm drew back like a catapult. As he twisted his waist, the hand axe shot straight at Hoke's chest in a horizontal silver arc. Yulon clearly caught the rush of air torn apart by the spinning blade. This wasn't a game; it was a killing blow aimed at a vital spot.

Hoke's one-armed body exploded into motion with astonishing resilience. He spun sharply around his left foot, and the blade skimmed past his leather breastplate, throwing off a trail of sparks. Almost as soon as he'd dodged, his only remaining hand had drawn the axe at his waist and hurled it back with the force of his rotation! The axe shrieked like Kikoku, hurtling straight for Balon's throat.

"Clang!"

Balon raised his axe to block. The blades collided in a blinding shower of sparks. The force knocked him half a step back, his boot heel landing at the edge of the oil circle.

"Step back! Into the sea!" the Ironborn roared. With a wicked grin, Daggmo lifted a bucket of brine and dumped its murky contents over Balon's head. The salt water seeped into the lash wound on the side of his neck that hadn't yet healed, making him spasm.

Balon wiped the salt from his face, his eyes blazing with ferocity. He threw both axes at once! One swept low at Hoke's ankles, while the other spun high, cutting off his escape. A deadly pincer attack!

Hoke roared and leaped. The high-spinning axe grazed the sole of his boot. But the moment he landed, the low-sweeping axe had already hacked into his calf! The crack of breaking bone made Yulon's stomach churn. Yet even as he fell to his knees, Hoke bit down on the axe handle and hurled it back with all his strength!

The bloodstained axe spun like a red wheel. Balon jerked his head to the side. The blade sheared away half an inch of black hair above his left ear and buried itself deep in the mast behind him. Amid the flying wood chips, Hoke dragged his leg, its white bone exposed, and somehow stood up again!

"His artery's severed!" Yulon rushed into the circle and pointed to Hoke's calf. Blood was spraying from the wound in a fan-shaped arc three meters wide. "His femoral artery's ruptured! If we don't stop the bleeding within three minutes, he'll die!"

Daggmo's drumsticks froze in midair. Balon glared at his younger brother, panting, the axe humming in his hand. "You want to die in his place?"

Old Wick stepped in front of Yulon. Even aboard the ship, he hadn't forgotten his duty as a guard. "I'm saving the Hao Yin's fighting strength!" Yulon kicked away the bloodstained axe and slapped the sea chart down in the pool of blood. "There are signs of a fast ship from Braavos to the northeast! If we lose men now, they'll be hunting us by morning!"

"An Ironborn's courage," Balon said, his voice icy, "is worth more than his life."

"Reckless maiming isn't courage!" Yulon stepped forward, his mismatched eyes bewitching and unnerving in the moonlight. "It's stupidity!" He abruptly drew his sword and cut the rope. The heavy iron anchor crashed into the circle of death. "Want to play? Then tie your feet together and dance on the anchor's point! Only the ones who survive deserve to be called warriors!"

Silence fell over the deck. Daggmo suddenly burst into laughter, smashing a barrel of liquor. "You hear that, you fools? That's how we'll play next time!" He didn't want to see the two brothers arguing on his ship, so he turned the small conflict aside with a joke.

Play, my ass! Yulon grumbled inwardly. By the light of the moon, he saw the terrifying wound on the outside of Hoke's calf. The axe blade had split his fibula, and dark-red muscle gaped like a cracked pomegranate, with the pulsing blue-purple vessel faintly visible at its deepest point.

"Hold him here!" Yulon shouted, grabbing Old Wick's hand and pressing his thumb hard into the crease at the top of Hoke's thigh. It was the surface pressure point for the femoral artery. His modern first-aid knowledge had become a lifeline. The spurting blood suddenly weakened, changing to a steady flow.

"Get me strong liquor! A needle and thread! A strip of sailcloth!" Yulon's childlike voice carried an unquestionable authority. Daggmo hesitated for a moment, then kicked open a crate and dug out half a bottle of rum. Balon silently cut off a length of sailcloth rope, its coarse hemp fibers soaking up blood.

Yulon bit open the bottle's wooden stopper and poured the amber liquid over the wound. "Aaaagh!" Hoke woke in agony, then passed out again. As the alcohol washed over it, Yulon could see the severed vessel clearly. The main branch of the femoral artery had been cut open a third of the way by the axe blade, and blood bubbled out of it like water from a ruptured bladder. Splinters of bone and wood were embedded in the muscle, trembling faintly with each pulse.

"Give me a shark's tooth!" Yulon held out his hand. Grenn hurriedly took off his necklace, an Ironborn talisman strung with six shark's teeth. Yulon picked out the longest, thinnest tooth, soaked it in rum, then threaded it with hemp rope twisted into "thread." When he used the tooth to pierce the torn flesh, the watching Ironborn gasped. The point neatly avoided the nerve bundles, passing back and forth along both sides of the severed vessel. Each time he tightened the hemp thread, the gap in the artery closed a little more. Yulon tore the strip of sailcloth rope Balon had brought him into strips. He first laid down coarse hemp soaked in rum, then wrapped the strips around it in a spiral. When he'd reached the third layer, he suddenly shoved Hoke's dagger between the injured man's teeth. "Bite down!" Then he grabbed both ends of the cloth and pulled as hard as he could—"Crack!"

The broken bone grated with a sound that made their teeth ache. Hoke's eyes bulged, and the dagger handle was left with deep tooth marks. But even more horrifying was how the bandage turned crimson, instantly soaked with blood. Without hesitation, Yulon added a second layer, then a third, applying pressure with each one. By the time the seventh layer was tight, the bleeding had finally stopped. Yulon broke two oars and used a dagger to whittle them into splints. Grenn donated his last footwrap to serve as a bandage. Once the splints were secured, Yulon raised Hoke's injured leg and propped it on a rum barrel. In the moonlight, the wounded man's ashen face, pale from blood loss, finally regained a little color.

Daggmo crouched in the pool of blood, his one eye fixed on the skillfully made splint. "Who taught you that?"

"The Drowned God taught me in a dream." Yulon wiped his bloody hand across his face. His mismatched eyes glittered eerily in the moonlight as he chuckled. "Do you believe me?"

Daggmo looked unconvinced. Balon snorted from the side. "I believe... you're full of shit! Last month, Vincent Rayne fell off Blackwater Cliff and broke his leg. A northern woman healer sawed off his ruined leg, and when she stopped the bleeding afterward, she did it just like this. That brat watched the whole thing from the sidelines, just for the show. He probably just copied what he saw."