Ranking all 11 sample chapters from The Winds of Winter

9. “Victarion I”

Following the theme of sample chapters preceding the siege of Meereen, Victarion’s chapter provides some insight into the red priest Moqorro, whom Victarion fished out of the ocean on his way to Meereen, and the dragon horn Euron brought to the moot on Great Pyke. According to Valyrian legend, the hellhorns brought death and destruction down on all those who heard their sound. The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, presumably to control dragons, before the Doom of Valyria devoured them. There’s a particularly interesting revelation about the horn around the middle of the chapter:

"“My brother found this thing on Valyria,” Victarion told the thralls. “Think how big the dragon must’ve been to bear two of these upon his head. Bigger than Vhagar or Meraxes, bigger than Balerion the Black Dread.” He took the horn from Moqorro and ran his palm along its curves. “At the Kingsmoot on Old Wyk, one of Euron’s mutes blew upon this horn. Some of you will remember. It was not a sound that any man who heard it will ever forget.” “They say he died,” the Boy said, “him who blew the horn.” “Aye. The horn was smoking after. The mute had blisters on his lips, and the bird inked across his chest was bleeding. He died the next day. When they cut him open his lungs were black.”"

Victarion plans to have his thralls blow the horn when he arrives in Meereen on his ship Iron Victory. “Let the freedmen hear you in Meereen, the slavers in Yunkai, the ghosts in Astapor,” he says. Victarion may have come intending to help Daenerys, but who knows what that horn will do?

The sample chapter ends with Moqorro and Victarion speaking together: “Go pray to your Red God. Light your fire, and tell me what you see,” Victarion says. “Moqorro’s dark eyes seemed to shine. ‘I see dragons.'”