Land of the King
Chapter 54: Age of Dragons
Jaenara was woken from her sleep by the screams of the men her fellow dragonlords immolated. Their gazes were judgemental, accusing, demanding to know why she had stood by and done nothing.
Even now, three days after the execution, the memory still troubled her, plaguing her with nightmares that deprived her of sorely needed sleep.
She got up from her slumber and sat on the edge of the bed, head in her hands.
It was at times like this that Túrin's words five years ago came to mind.
'If you stay in Valyria, it will corrupt you!'
Jaenara shook off her thoughts, she had to get ready for the meeting.
Like Gogossos, Tyrosh had initially been ruled by an Archon appointed by the Valyrian Senate, befitting a city that had been conquered by force from Arnor and then ruled as a military outpost for centuries. Eventually however, the Valyrian colonists in Tyrosh purchased the right to govern themselves and Valyria granted them their autonomy though the colonists had maintained the Archon as their head of state.
As the centre of government in the city, the Valyrian dragonlords had taken up residence in the Archon's Palace.
To an outside observer, it may have appeared like Valyria had just turned the tide of the war. After all, three hundred Valyrian dragons and their riders had arrived and annihilated the Arnorian armies in Tyrosh and Myr. Their riders were pushing north and west into Arnorian-occupied Pentos and Stepstones.
Yet someone on the inside like Jaenara knew that the truth was always more complicated then it seemed.
In their attack on Tyrosh, Valyria had taken the Arnorians by surprise. Coordination with the Tyroshi defenders had led them to devise a plan by which the Tyroshi would yield Outer Tyrosh to the Arnorians but not before tiring and exhausting them. Valyrian courier mages had utilised the glass candles in great numbers to screen the path of the Valyrian dragons, obscuring them from the view of the Seeing-Stones of Arnor. Sending ahead an advance force of their smaller and faster dragons, the Valyrians had taken the Arnorians completely off guard, knocking out what little of their anti-dragon weaponry and heavy artillery had been prepared, before crushing the remainder of their army with their full force.
Yet even in that situation, even in a night surprise attack against a tired and exhausted Arnorian force, the Arnorians had killed no less than twenty riders and fourteen dragons and severely injured countless more.
This had stunned the dragonlords, who had long thought themselves invincible to the petty weapons of lesser men. Some had argued that it had been a fluke, that majority of the casualties had been from the smaller dragons that had been sent ahead.
The attack on Myr had proven otherwise. Shortly after the fall of Tyrosh, a force of one hundred dragons had flown to retake the colony of Myr. Unlike Tyrosh however, Myr had fallen in its entirety to the Arnorians day earlier and the Arnorians had had more than enough time to fortify the city.
Though Myr had fallen eventually and the Arnorian force destroyed, it came at no small price.
A further nineteen dragons had been killed and of their remaining total force, no less than a hundred dragons and riders were injured to varying degrees and to destroy the Arnorian army at Myr, the Valyrians had been forced to lay waste to the entire city, killing hundreds of thousands of their own citizens.
And this is where the cracks in the seemingly unstoppable Valyrian war machine showed. To reach Tyrosh and Myr so fast, the dragonlords had neglected to prepare or secure their supply lines first which were overstretched to the breaking point.
Tyrosh was starving, with the dragonlords taking most of the remaining food supplies of a city that had been under siege and the countryside of Tyrosh and Myr had been completely ravaged by hundreds of voracious dragons.
The Valyrian army and navy had also not yet arrived, keeping the Valyrians from contesting the Arnorians by land or sea, and potentially forcing them to burn their own people in an attempt to retake enemy-held territory.
Though word of the battles and casualties had been reported to the homeland, the Senate had suppressed almost all news of the frontlines, giving the people only a propaganda story, mentioning nothing of dragon and rider losses or of the Desolation of Myr or the devastation of the countryside and economy of Tyrosh, reporting only how the dragons had annihilated over a hundred thousand Arnorian soldiers and burned countless numbers of their ships and convoys crossing the Narrow Sea.
The stories failed to mention how Arnor was believed to have well over two million soldiers more as well as thousands of ships.
A war like this had not been fought by Valyria since the Ghiscari wars of old. A war of attrition, where not even dragons could win the war decisively, not against a foe that threw thousands to their deaths and shrugged it off as a mere necessity.
Jaenara had been horrified to hear when their spies had reported that the Arnorian homeland's response to the sheer casualties had been to say that they were glorious sacrifices for their cause. The Arnorian people themselves remained bloodthirsty and warmongering, not yet feeling the fatigue of the war or the price of the casualties, and why would they? Arnor had so far prosecuted the entire war with its massive standing military, the greater part of which remained at large.
Valyria on the other hand maintained no standing army and called its military from levies, militias, auxiliaries, and sellswords. The longer the war dragged on, the higher the chance of that disunited mess the Senate called a military falling apart. And there was no doubt in Jaenara's mind that the disciplined, skilled, and expertly trained Arnorian Royal Army would cut through Valyria's forces like a knife through butter.
Tyrosh and the survivors of Myr were on the brink of mutiny, kept obedient only by their fear of the dragons, a fear that lessened each and every time that word came from the fronts of more casualties and deaths for dragons and riders.
The Freehold of Valyria was simply not prepared for a war of attrition. Compared to Arnor who had had centuries to prepare, Valyria had been caught almost completely by surprise when the Arnorians had invaded the colonies. Many of the dragonlords sent on the expedition had expected a short war, and maybe even a glorious push all the way to the Arnorian capital of Annúminas.
It was why somewhere deep down, she wondered if this war would mark the end of the Age of Dragons. Would the Dúnedain bring the era of Valyrian dominance to a crashing end?
"Are you really sure you would mind that?" A treasonous voice whispered in her head, one that Jaenara tried desperately to suppress because she did not want to consider the ramifications.
At the council meeting, her brother Aelyx maintained a cool and harsh demeanor. With all the losses taken in only two engagements, Aelyx Belaerys had managed to assert power over their peers to become the expedition's new supreme commander.
In the war meeting, Jaenara and her fellow dragonlords discussed their next plan of action.
At present they had 267 live dragons though almost half of that number were injured to varying degrees and at least twenty were so severely injured that they would not be fit for battle for at least a year. Tragically, at least three dragons had been so maimed that it was not believed they would ever be able to fly again, even with Valyrian medicine and blood magic, and they would likely be put down. Jaenara pitied their riders.
Taking into account all their casualties and losses, they had only two hundred and twelve fit for battle and eleven of those were riderless, with their masters slain by Arnorian arrows.
In the meeting, the dragonlords concluded that their losses would remain unbearably high so long as the Arnorian armies could focus only on them without their attention being split with a ground force to distract them. To that end it was decided that they would cease attempting to lead offensives into enemy territory until their logistics issues were properly sorted out and their navy and army arrived in full force.
As decided in the meeting, a hundred dragons would remain in Tyrosh and Myr, split between both cities to defend them from a potential Arnorian offensive. The remaining dragons, mostly those injured, and their riders, would be pulled back to the Rhoyne to recuperate and avoid overburdening the economy and supply lines of the region.
Valyrian dragonlords, long used to being invincible and godlike in the air, were now ordered to practice evasive tactics, dodging and swerving to avoid the missiles and projectiles of the Arnorians.
Plans were even made to look into preparing armour for their dragons, nothing but Valyrian steel would work as any other metal would be so cumbersome as to make the dragon so slow it was target practice or even prevent it from flying in the first place.
It was here that Jaenara felt like banging her head on the table even more, since Valyrian steel was so expensive, only the wealthier houses would be able to afford it to equip their dragons with it, and even then, only around their eyes, the most vulnerable part of a dragon's body.
Even in wartime, the internal politics and balance of power amongst Valyria's elite remained cutthroat and detrimental to the war effort as a whole. Yes, it was the responsibility of each individual family to care for, feed, and armour their dragons, to avoid overburdening the state treasury, but this was war, surely an exception could be made? Clearly not, and Jaenara cursed the stingy old fogies that sat in the Senate and sent them all into the grinder.
It was another concern as well, that the war could be disruptive to the internal balance of power in Valyria. Already several families had fallen from power, having lost many dragons, and the more casualties they took on the front lines, the more the families would pressure the Senate to sue for peace, for it was their family members who were dying on the frontlines and their personal power being depleted with every dragon that died. Chaos was brewing in Valyria and the fear of rebellion in the colonies and tributaries was growing as they sensed weakness.
Dragonlords were rarely military trained, they had never had to be before, because the beast they rode was usually such a game changer on the battlefield. That lack of training showed now in the fraying situation on the frontlines where undisciplined, naïve, inexperienced, and idiotic young dragonriders rode their dragons in the most stupid of ways, making themselves easier targets and not properly utilising the destructive power of their mount.
Jaenara and her siblings were probably some of the few dragonlords that actually knew how to properly wield the Valyrian steel swords they carried, and that was likely only due to the martial and militaristic nature of the House of Belaerys, greatest and de-facto leader of the Tiger Party. Ever since the last great wars against the Rhoynar centuries ago, the Tigers had never held more than one Triarch seat, usually filled by the Lord Freeholder Belaerys. Jaenara could only hope that the deteriorating situation on the frontlines would lead to real change in Valyria and the election of more Tiger Triarchs.
After the meeting, Jaenara stayed back to speak with her brother.
Truth be told, Jaenara was more than a little concerned about her brother's wellbeing.
In the attack on Tyrosh, Aelyx's wife, the Lady Viserra of the House of Varezys, had been one of the thirty-three sent on the forward advance force and she and her dragon were also among those who had been shot down by the Arnorian archers.
Viserra had flown too close to the Arnorian positions and her neck and heart had been pierced while her dragon's wings had been shredded with a volley. In its rage and debilitating injury, the dragon had thrashed around and ended up crashing into the buildings of the city before dying an agonizing death from its broken ribs and bones puncturing its internal organs and blood vessels.
Viserra's broken body had been found not far from her dragon by Aelyx after the battle and his grief and despair had been painful to see.
Most marriages amongst the Forty were for political benefit and rarely for love, her father's marriage to her stepmother coming to mind. However, House Varezys and House Belaerys had long been allies and Aelyx had been betrothed to Viserra since they were both ten years old, and they had married at the age of twenty, seven years ago. It would not be an unreasonable assumption to say that her brother had been very fond of if not deeply in love with his wife and now their young children left behind in Valyria were motherless.
Aelyx's rage and fury after his wife's death had been terrifying to see. Consumed by his need for revenge, he had ordered the execution of the Arnorian prisoners, breaking the commonly held rules of war.
It had taken all Jaenara had to even convince him to spare Túrin. Jaenara had failed, she had failed her brother, failed Túrin who had trusted her, and failed to save thousands of men from an unjust execution. It was that failure that haunted her and kept her up at night.
Were none of her fellow dragonlords smart enough to see that the execution of prisoners would radicalise the Arnorians to fight to the death, stirring up their rage and courage to avenge the martyrs? All of them had been all too happy to follow her brother's orders and take their revenge. Once Jaenara would have thought her elder brother would side with her, but grief had changed him.
"Aelyx, are you alright?" she asked her brother, carefully.
"I don't know Jaenara. My wife is dead and many of our friends and comrades with her. The Arnorians still have millions of men and thousands of ships and this gods-forsaken war is looking to last a bloody decade. Yet I have to just push forward. That is the duty of a leader," he said, grim and weary.
"I'm sorry," Jaenara whispered.
"It's not your fault," he replied. "How, how do I find a way to win this war? The Arnorians' will remains unbroken and their king sits in Vinyambar, ready to throw millions at us and grind us down into dust. Even if our logistics and military problems are solved entirely, a war of attrition is something none of us are prepared for."
"You'll find a way, you always have," Jaenara consoled her stressed and depressed brother.
Jaenara however realised that her words would soon backfire on her when an almost evil smirk began to appear on her brother's face.
"You're right. Thank you Jaenara. I just found the perfect way to end this war or break the spirit of the Arnorians and their king."
Her concerns grew. "What do you mean?" she asked nervously.
"I just remembered that we have in our custody, none other than the Third Prince of Arnor. It would be easy to present an ultimatum to the King. I will demand that the King of Arnor agree to withdraw all forces from occupied Valyrian territory and agree to pay reparations for damages in exchange for the release of his son."
"Is that wise? Would you not need the permission of the Senate to make this deal? Furthermore, what if the King refuses?" Jaenara asked, concealing her panic.
"It would be a simple matter to speak to Father with a glass candle to get approval. You know as well as I that Triarchs have increased power in wartime. And if the King refuses… well I'm almost hoping he does. It will force him to live the rest of his long life with the knowledge that he condemned his son to death."
The glint in her brother's eyes as he gleefully imagined the way Túrin and his father would suffer was disturbing to Jaenara.
At noon the next day, Jaenara was saddened and horrified to hear that the ultimatum had been rejected by the Arnorian King.
Túrin would die at her brother's hands and there was nothing Jaenara could do about it, or was there?
What was Túrin to her? Jaenara didn't know for sure, but faced with the possibility of him being taken away from her forever, she forced herself to reflect.
Túrin was the first person she had ever confided the full story about her mother in. He had been a very good friend in their time in Sothoryos, someone who had risked their life to save her from her own stupidity. He had risked his relationship with her to try and convince her to see the evil in Valyria, the evil that she had begun seeing clearly only now. She owed him her life, a debt that she needed to repay.
Yet more than just fulfilling a debt, Jaenara had been so blind for so long. Could she continue to turn a blind eye to the evil and depravity in Valyria to join Arnor?
Years ago Túrin had told her she didn't have to choose to cut out a part of herself, didn't have to choose to be Arnorian or Valyrian, yet the choice of either nation would always be laid before her.
Jaenara was someone who was neither and yet also both. She was a descendant of Númenor that rode a dragon, a scion of Valyria that spoke Sindarin as her mother tongue. She, Jaenara Nimloth Belaerys, would forever stand alone. But maybe… just maybe, that would be fine, if Túrin was by her side.
Yet if she did this, she would throw away everything to save someone that now resented her. Her family, her father and siblings who she still loved despite all their evildoing, they would be hurt and betrayed. Her brother, who had just lost his wife, would be forced to name his little sister a traitor. The House of Belaerys would fall into disgrace. Could she do that to them?
Arnor or Valyria? The choice had been presented to her once more, and this time, Jaenara hoped she found the courage to make the right one.
When he was a child, Arahad's father had shared his dream with him.
"One day my son, you and I will avenge our kin and reclaim Lys and the Isles, we will make Valyria pay for what they did, together," Araglas had said.
To the young and impressionable prince, his father's words had been his inspiration.
Arahad had worked towards that dream for years. He had joined the army and risen the ranks, becoming an expert in strategy, tactics, and logistics, becoming one of the finest generals Arnor had ever seen.
Even when he felt tired, even when he felt like the dream was too big and too ambitious, he had pushed to make it a reality.
One can thus imagine the betrayal he felt when his own father, the person who had given him his dream, had ordered him to stand down.
That betrayal had been the end of the once close relationship Arahad had had with his father. The sudden shift had been too much too fast for him. In Arahad's eyes, his father had betrayed him, betrayed their dreams, and betrayed the will of the Arnorian people who hungered for vengeance, who thirsted for justice.
His father had told him that he had seen in his visions that the price they would pay to win the war was too great but it had all sounded like nonsense to Arahad, from the man who once said that no price would be too much to end Valyria's evil.
That first and last argument had been the end of the discussion. Arnor would not go to war. Arahad refused to cease his preparations and his father did not stop him, but he also did not continue trying to convince him to stop, simply giving up.
They had not reconciled until his father was on his deathbed, when the last words he ever told him had crushed Arahad.
"I was so so, cruel to you my son. Forgive me. I gave you a dream and then I told you it could not be. And now, with or without me you will push onwards with that foolhardy dream I should never have given you. You will understand one day, that some dreams are not worth the price paid for them"
It was now almost three years since his father had said those words to him, and Arahad finally understood.
Over a hundred thousand dead in only two battles. A hundred thousand souls who would never see their loved ones again, never laugh or be merry again, never cry or rouse to anger again.
Dead men could no such things and with the hardest decision he had ever made, Arahad had condemned his own son to die.
To a King it was an easy choice, how could the life of one man be worth the sacrifices of the tens of thousands who had given their lives so that Arnor may hold what they now did? Yet to a father, condemning your child to death would break you.
Arahad supposed that was to be his punishment. For sending the sons of so many Arnorians to their deaths, he would lose his own son. Yet to avenge all their sons, Arnor would not stop until this war had ended in their victory, and Arahad swore that he would have his vengeance one day.
"Goodbye my son," Arahad said as he looked out the balcony to the north.
Perhaps one day Túrin, in whatever afterlife Eru had planned for them, would forgive him. But Arahad knew that he would never forgive himself.
Heavy was the head that wore the crown and weary was the hand that bore the sceptre. The weight of responsibility was crushing. King Arahad could not mourn, could not show weakness by weeping for the son he had condemned to die, but for a while, just a little while, Arahad Elendillion allowed the tears to flow.
An urgent knock on the door interrupted the mourning of the king, filling him with rage for any man who dared to disturb him in his grief.
"Who is it!?" he growled.
"It's me, Father," his eldest Aragost said.
"What do you want Aragost?" he answered, all the anger gone now.
"To see you, so that we may mourn together."
"Come in then."
When his eldest son entered, Arahad noticed that his eyes were bloodshot but he said nothing.
"Is Ciryaher… is he aware?" the king asked, his voice breaking.
"He is. I told him myself. He's upset, he's angry and raging but he understands."
"Your mother would never forgive me, and neither would your grandmother," Arahad said.
Arahad's wife and mother had died years ago in a freak storm that had sunk their ship. The loss had been hard on Arnor and on none more so then the then King Araglas and his heir Prince Arahad.
"They probably won't. But Grandfather would, and I already have. It's something only kings and their heirs will ever be able to truly understand. I am… am as guilty as you."
"Then let us mourn together for your brother, son, a brother we both condemned to die."
The King and his Heir allowed themselves to break the mask entirely, indulging in drink on a rare occasion to drown away their sorrows and guilt.
It was not long however before they were interrupted again.
"Your Majesty, Your Highness! There is a Valyrian hailing us on the palantir, they say they can save Prince Túrin!" the messenger barged into the room without knocking to say.
Arahad and Aragost looked at each other before running to the Seeing-Stone, not caring about their dignity as royalty.
For the first time that day, they allowed themselves to feel something. Hope.
Túrin stewed in his cell. He had failed to kill the blasted dragonlord who had condemned his comrades to die, none other than Aelyx Belaerys, Jaenara's elder brother.
He would have felt like laughing if it wasn't so ironic and painful. The brother of the woman he had tried to save, had save, would be the death of him on the morrow.
Túrin knew the ultimatum had been rejected. The decision was obvious, even to him, yet it still hurt.
He was going to die, alone and abandoned and far from home. His father and brothers had measured the worth of his life and found it wanting, paling in comparison to the glory of Arnor.
Túrin had been condemned to forever be nothing more than a martyr.
Mother, Grandmother, Grandfather, I will see you soon.
Yet even as he lied on the floor, unable to sleep, his keen Dúnedain ears picked up signs of struggle outside his cell.
Túrin got up and saw a hooded figure standing outside his cell, the two guard's corpses lying on the ground.
Wary, he kept his guard up as the figure unlocked the cell door and opened it.
"Who are you, why are you helping me?" he demanded.
"I'm repaying a debt old friend, but more than that, I'm doing something I should have done a long time ago," the figure said with a woman's voice as they pulled down their hood to reveal the ethereal pale skin, silver hair, and amethyst eyes of Jaenara Belaerys.
In that moment, she looked so captivating that Túrin froze and his heart skipped a beat. If you had asked him who he thought was the most beautiful in the world right then, Túrin would have answered that it was the woman standing before him.
It seemed his staring had been noticed as Jaenara began to blush slightly and shift nervously, the red tint of her cheeks easily noticeable on her pale complexion.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked.
Túrin realising he was likely being very rude to his saviour, shook off his indecent thoughts and replied, "I'm sorry. It's just… I didn't think anyone was coming to save me. Why me, why now?"
Jaenara wore a sad smile, "I realised I couldn't stand by and watch a friend die, couldn't turn a blind eye to Valyria's evil anymore, even if it meant betraying my family."
She held out a hand to him, the same way Túrin had five years ago, "Are you coming or not?"
Túrin smiled, a real genuine smile, and grasped her hand tightly.
Jaenara's own smile became more joyful and she passed him a sword sheathed in its scabbard, one Túrin excitedly drew and smirked when he saw the pitch-black blade.
Anglachel had returned to its master's hands.
"You can stare at your sword more later. Come, we have to go," Jaenara said as she took Túrin's hands and together they ran out of the prison.
It was the height of the Age of Dragons, a time when Valyria and its dragonlords ruled the world with great evil and darkness. Yet one dragonlord chose a different path, and now a whole new world awaited her, yet she felt that she could face it easily, as long as he was at her side.
Author's Note: So Jaenara has finally made her choice and what a choice! I hope that the explanation on how Valyria took Tyrosh explained everything and the clarification that their position is very insecure despite them seemingly turning the tide of the war.
Some readers had their concerns in the last chapter, so I hope that this has made it all clear.
And if you didn't realise, Viserra Varezys was indeed the dragonlord shot down by Túrin and his company last chapter.