George R. R. Martin likes boats.

In Arya’s The Blind Girl chapter in A Dance with Dragons, we hear tell of two boats in particular: the Elephant and the Goodheart. These two ships – a pair of Lyseni galleys, crewed by pirates and rascals – dropped anchor at Hardhome after having been driven north by a storm. Ever the enterprising (and amoral) businessmen, the Lyseni pirates offered to take all the women and children from Hardhome to safety. As soon as the women and children were loaded on the galleys, however, they were clapped in chains and hauled off to be sold as slaves at the markets in Lys.

Fate intervened, though. The gales of autumn still blew in the Narrow Sea. Another storm separated the Goodheart and the Elephant. The Goodheart was blown to Braavos, where the Sealord immediately seized her and her cargo. Slaving, after all, is illegal in Braavos. Arya (as Blind Beth) overhears sullen sailors from the Goodheart discussing their plight. She relays their conversation to the Kindly Man:

“Only then they ran into another storm and the ships were parted. The Goodheart was so damaged her captain had no choice but to put in here, but the Elephant may have made it back to Lys. The Lyseni at Pynto’s think that she’ll return with more ships. The price of slaves is rising, they said, and there are thousands more women and children at Hardhome.”

And that, as far as many in the fandom have been concerned, is that.

But it’s not.

I’m going to make my crazy assertion up front, and then go through point by point and show you just how right I am. Here we go. Are you ready? Hold on to your butts.

The Elephant did not, in fact, make it back to Lys. The Elephant was shattered against the rocks of Skagos, the Cannibal Isle. There, the Skagosi took the wildlings in (at least temporarily) and are currently holding court on what to do with the wildling problem. This is the situation Davos Seaworth will find when he reaches Skagos. Rather than return Rickon to Winterfell posthaste, Davos will (for one reason or another) take his ships to Hardhome, to rescue the wildlings trapped there. At Hardhome, Davos will be our point-of-view for the apocalyptic destruction we saw in Season 5 Episode 8 of the hit television show Game of Thrones.

Let’s take it from the top.

The Storms of Autumn

The Elephant wouldn’t be the first galley smashed against the rocks of Skagos. In ADWD, we learn that two of Salladhor Saan’s galleys, the Oledo and Old Mother’s Son, are “driven against the rocks.” This is backed up by what other ships report in the area. In AFFC, Samwell Tarly sees a smashed galley on the rocks of of Skagos; Cotter Pyke’s letter to Jon in ADWD mentions seeing a similar galley. The bodies of the crew are strewn along the shore, eaten by rooks and crabs.

The timing is imprecise here, so I won’t rely on any unofficial timelines for justification. But it suffices to say that there are a bunch of ships all sailing around Skagos within a few months of one another. We can split them into three groups, in order of when they’ve passed near Skagos:

1 – Salladhor Saan’s fleet, with Davos.

2 – Samwell Tarly, aboard the Blackbird

3 – Cotter Pyke’s rescue mission, including the ship Storm Crow.

We know that the Elephant and Goodheart arrived at Hardhome before Cotter Pyke, because Pyke sends a report on the recent slave raids to Jon Snow. So E&G go somewhere between Salladhor’s fleet and Cotter’s rescue mission. We know Davos & Sam leave within a few weeks of each other, because in Jon II ADWD, Davos has just departed, and Sam leaves a day or two later. So the galley Samwell saw on the rocks of Skagos was likely one of Salladhor’s.

So it’s established that the waves are treacherous. Cotter reports seeing the same galley (probably) that Sam saw; later, some of Cotter’s own ships are driven aground at Skane, the island near Skagos.

Skagos is a ship magnet. It’s absolutely believable that the Elephant, rather than absconding to Lys, foundered on the stones of Cannibal Isle. That’s our in-story logic, our Watsonian explanation. But what about the Doylist logic? How does this work in the larger context of the story?

Firstly: it’s a loose end. The Elephant‘s whereabouts are never confirmed. With so many named characters – Aurane Waters, Salladhor Saan, the Golden Company, Davos – making their way through the Narrow Sea, it’s not out of the question that one of them might happen upon some enslaved wildlings. And as we head into the endgame, we will need more plot hooks to bring people north. The Elephant is in many ways a plague ship, bringing the toxic news of the Others and the impending apocalypse.

So why Skagos? Why can’t the Elephant just make it back to Lys, as Arya assumed in her chapter?

That’s actually the answer: because Arya assumed as much in her chapter.

I’ve written before about one of GRRM’s strictest rules (and a general rule for good tension in fiction): if you spell the plan out, it won’t come true. It ruins the tension to tell us what’s going to happen, and then have it happen exactly that way. This is why Robb’s battle plan to retake Moat Cailin from Victarion, for example, is so meticulously laid out: because it will never happen. Moreover, there’s plenty of precedent for rumors in ASOIAF. I am thinking in particular of the Golden Company and Aeron Damphair (two great flavors that go better together).

Throughout the series, we are fed bits of information about the whereabouts of the Golden Company. They break contract with Myr. Some characters speculate that they may be riding to aid Stannis Baratheon. Others later learn that the Company intends to meet up with Daenerys Targaryen in Meereen. But in the end, the Company turns straight for Westeros, landing in the Rainwood and beginning a long-awaited conquest a little early.

After the Kingsmoot, Aeron Damphair disappears. Asha Greyjoy and Tristifer Botley speculate on his whereabouts. Some believe he is waiting to lead a revanchist rising on the Iron Islands. Others, like Tris, believe that Euron cut his throat. But in the end, Aeron was taken prisoner by Euron Greyjoy, tortured, force-fed shade of the evening, and finally lashed to the prow of Silence, a grisly figurehead riding into battle against the Redwyne Fleet.

In both cases (and there are more examples, yes; the series is full of them) we are fed some speculation on the whereabouts of a missing entity. The speculation starts far from the truth, and in the end the reality of the situation was almost completely unguessable from the limited information available.

Thus too with the Elephant. With all the different vessels foundering on Skagos – including a handful of other Lyseni galleys! – it’s no wonder that the wreck of the Elephant would go unreported. Arya’s speculation that it returned to Lys should be in and of itself evidence that Elephant never reached its destination, and we are given every reason to believe that merely sailing within spitting distance of Skagos is enough to drag a ship to wreck on the cannibal isle.

The Smuggler and the Stoneborn

I want to point you all to an essay written by the prolific BaelBard on the /r/asoiaf subreddit. BaelBard makes all the points I’d like to make, and frankly inspired me think about these goofy ships as it is (see Maester Monthly Episode 13: We Can Swear Now for our discussion of this essay!)

Davos is sent to Skagos to crown Rickon. Undoubtedly, this will be framed as a rescue mission: rescue the princeling from the cannibal savages. What Davos may discover, however – as BaelBard argues – is that the Skagosi may not necessarily be cannibals. I would add to that argument a point that my friend /u/glass_table_girl has made: that even if there are cannibalistic practices on Skagos, it could be far more ritualized and serious than the moral-panicky Northerners might believe. There have been cultures in our own world, for instance, who practice a form of ritual cannibalism to honor the dead. When the religion of the Old Gods calls for the strewing of entrails in the branches of a bloody tree to feed the gods, cannibalism isn’t far behind.

So Davos will arrive on Skagos guns blazing only to discover that Rickon is safe and happy here. He’ll likely be living out his wildest dreams as a warg prince, bopping around in Shaggydog all day. Rickon will be far from the throne, and content there. And Davos will be faced with a choice. As BaelBard puts it:

His duty as Hand of the King is to deliver the boy south. To get Manderly to Stannis’s side (this matter will probably be resolved before that, but Davos won’t know it) . But to do that he’ll have to take the boy against his will. And that’s something Davos the smuggler doesn’t stand for. One child life is “everything” for him, even compared to a kingdom. He wouldn’t want to take a child escaping from the war back to it. He lost four sons in Stannis’s war himself. He knows the stakes. He also knows the risk of taking a child with king’s blood to Stannis. So Davos will have to choose between his duty and his humanity. Is one child worth it?

This is where the Elephant comes in.

Davos’s choice will be more than just “Do I take Rickon or do I return empty-handed?” It will be “Do I abduct the child or do I rescue the wildlings at Hardhome?” The women and children taken captive aboard the Elephant and subsequently stranded on Skagos will remind Davos of his own wife and children. By rescuing the wildlings at Hardhome, Davos will be choosing that which he has wanted to choose all along: family, union, reunion. He will choose this over sacrificing Rickon to the political games of Westeros. After all, as we have heard so often, to crown [him] is to kill [him].

Of course, the tragedy of this mission will be that Shireen will die. Davos’s long delay at Hardhome will mean that he is absent when Stannis wins Winterfell, when Selyse flees south with Shireen and the Queen’s Men to escape the wildling bloodbath at Castle Black, when Stannis, seeing little alternative, sacrifices Shireen to defend Winterfell from the onslaught of winter.

The Followers of the Mole

So what will Davos find at Hardhome?

First, he’ll find Cotter Pyke’s obliterated fleet. Of Pyke’s eleven ships, only six remained at the end of ADWD. The wildlings were attempting to storm the ships. There were, in case you’d forgotten, “dead things in the water.”

Second, he’ll find the absolutely miserable wildlings. They’ll have resorted to cannibalism – a fun twist on Davos’s mission to Skagos! They will be desperate and angry. Only Davos, likely with an emissary from the Elephant‘s prisoners, will be able to negotiate a peace. And only Davos, with his superb sailing skills, will be able to lead the fleet to and from Hardhome.

But all of it will be in vain. We will see something like what happened in the Game of Thrones episode “Hardhome:” an eradication, an apocalypse on a miniature scale. The Others are content to toy with their prey for now, picking them off slowly, like the horror monsters they are. But with Davos’ arrival, a real evacuation will be possible. And this, the Others cannot allow.

Davos (and whoever accompanies him – Osha seems likely, as GRRM has said she will have an “expanded” role in TWOW) will witness the destruction of Hardhome. He will witness the Others at their true might, our first real POV on them since Sam in ASOS. When he returns to the mainland – escaping in the nick of time with a mere handful of survivors – he will be a prophet of the apocalypse, a witness to the icy hell bearing down on humanity.

The wildlings were led to Hardhome by Mother Mole, a witch who prophesied that they would be saved by ships. The first ships to arrive were the Elephant and Goldheart; believing them to be saviors, the wildlings placed too much trust in the treacherous Lyseni slavers. The second wave of ships came with Cotter Pyke. Now suspicious, the wildlings tried to kill Pyke and his men, especially when Pyke brought only women and children aboard – just like the Lyseni slavers had done. The third wave of ships, the true rescue, will be Davos Seaworth. All attempts to fulfill prophecy intentionally – by boarding the Lyseni ships, by sending Cotter Pyke – were in vain. Only the vicissitudes of fate bring salvation.

Beyond Hardhome

In the TV show, Davos ends up on Team Jon, a buddy to the new King in the North after Stannis dies. His role expands beyond “Stannis’s conscience;” he takes on new responsibilities. So too in the books, I think. By sailing to Hardhome rather than merely returning with Rickon, Davos will expand himself beyond Stannis; he will be a Lord in his own right, not merely a man serving his lord. He may return in time to meet up with a resurrected Jon; he may still bring Rickon into the game, or may leave him to linger in quiet, happy anonymity on Skagos.

From the moment he stepped onto the page, Davos has had a strong ethical center. When the chips are down, he is the man you want on your side. He errs on the side of doing what is right, rather than what is easy.

His moral compass, in other words, points North.