WILLAS
Without warning, the column began to slow. Various carts and horses fell behind, and some lords called their men off the road to erect their own shelters for the night. Then the order went up from the front, and the army halted completely. Willas looked to Ser Horas Redwyne. "What is happening?"
Ser Horas shrugged. "Your brother must have called a halt."
"Here? Why? It is only rain."
"It is a rain storm, cousin."
"But still only rain."
That won him another shrug. "By all means, go and ask Garlan."
Willas could not argue with that. He spurred his horse forwards, and rode up the left side of the column, past siege engines under awnings and wheelhouses with camp followers and orphan children riding on top. The men were already quick at work with canvas and pegs, erecting the Tyrell command tent.
Ser Horas had certainly not underestimated the rain. It seemed to be falling sideways, so heavy was the torrent; everyone everywhere was wet. The leather reins of Willas's horse felt greasy to the touch, and he saw that he was not alone in having removed his helmet; if you wore yours in a downpour like this, the unceasing percussion of the rain beat hard on your helmet and could send you mad from headaches. Even the waxy coverings which protected the salted meat and grain in the carts were caving inwards and failing; underneath, women and children hunched, trying in vain to keep warm. There were puddles of muddy water everywhere; in the meagre moonlight, they seemed like black blood. Stray dogs and unbound horses stalked up and down the column. Their eyes were strange. They had smelled something in the air.
The visibility was so limited that Willas did not see Brown Ben Plumm until he nearly walked into him. "Lord Willas!" Plumm had to shout to be heard over the rain. "Was this your command?" He gestured about him.
Willas shook his head. "My command is my brother's!" He pointed a gloved hand towards the command tent-under-construction. As they watched, the tent burst free of its constraints, and the men carrying the poles sprawled to the ground; the wind was so strong that it nearly carried the canvas away with it. Even at its diminished strength, the wind dragged the covering across the muddy waste to the left of the column. Fifty Tyrell men went chasing after it.
They were trying to light torches and braziers too, but the wind was having none of it. A few candle lanterns had succeeded, just about, and there was one big brazier than managed to stay lit, with a hundred knights pressing close around it. Willas, aided by Brown Ben Plumm and Kasporio the Cunning of the Second Sons, forced his way through; "make way for his lordship!" they shouted. Eventually he reached the centre, where he found Ser Garlan, Lord Yronwood and the Tattered Prince, and a dozen others whom he would have recognized at a glance on a sunny day, but now could not see because the rain was so heavy.
Garlan was saying something he could not hear; all the other lords were shouting too, interrupting one another, nothing was clear. Somewhere behind them there was a colossal boom of thunder; Willas used the brief silence to get his brother's attention. "Garlan! Why have we stopped?"
"Bridge!" Garlan shouted back, though he was all of five feet away. "The bridge!"
"What?"
"The bridge's come down! We can't cross!"
Willas swore. They must needs cross the Mander here, one last time one the Roseroad's meandering course back to Highgarden. If the bridge was down, and the banks of the river were overflowing, then there was nothing that could be done.
"We'll wait till morning!" shouted Garlan. Then he was done with Willas, turning to answer some query of Lord Yronwood's.
Someone was tugging on his arm. Tyene, he realised, recognising her young face. "Arianne wants to know—!" she shouted, before another thunderclap cut her off.
"Where is Arianne?" Willas shouted back.
"With Lord Uller and Varys!" Tyene drew a breath. "This rain will not be good for her, you know! Nor for the baby! She was wondering if you might—" Another thunderclap. "If you might find some way to send her on early to Highgarden—!"
"The bridge has fallen! There'll be no chance of that!"
Tyene pushed wet hair out of her eyes. "And have you seen this bridge?"
Willas shrugged. "Garlan wouldn't lie—" But Garlan never told me about his other plans. A strange paranoia came over him. Leaving Tyene, he forced his way back to Garlan. "Show me this bridge!" he commanded in the voice of Lord Tyrell. "I want to see that there is no way through!"
There was no way Garlan could refuse. He took Willas by the arm and all but dragged him towards the front of the column, past the first line of Tyrell pikemen. Willas's leg was starting to throb again by the time they reached the bridge, followed by a score of knights and anxious lords. Garlan pointed. "There you are!"
Willas stepped forward, careful with his footing, to the bridge. The river had burst its banks long ago, and the water had risen to above his boots; he had to wade out a little ways into the mire to get a better look. It was so dark that it was difficult to see anything, but he knew at once there was no way across: the gap was two hundred feet, or more. It was impossible to say where along its length the bridge had broken, since not even its wreckage could be seen. Black water ran up inside his boots, and with the wind now blowing into his face from the west, he was all but blind.
Garlan grabbed his arm as he stepped back. "You see now? There's no way across that! All we can do is wait till morning! Come, now, back to the tent – if they ever get it up, that is!"
Willas nodded, and moved back. But as Garlan's lantern moved across, he caught something. "Wait!" he took the lantern, held it up. And felt horror that shook him to his bowels. For on the ruins of the bridge at the near end, were dark patches, that, to him, only spoke of one thing. Scorch marks.
"No," said Willas. "No, no, no!" He turned to Garlan, already running. "We have to go, we have to scatter, we have to—"
Dogs began to bark. Even from here he heard them. And there was howling from the woods, and next the shouts of his own men, as they too became away. And then Garlan was pointing, and then, even through the rain, they saw it: the shape in the sky.
"Back!" Willas shouted, running already, "back, back, get back, get to cover!" He was running, knowing he could never outpace it, but all the same—
The black shadow passed over him, spreading its wings low. Willas turned back, and as he did, he swore that he met the gaze of its rider, though she could never have seen him. And then the sky blew apart, and the rain became a torrent of fire, and the flames were almost black as they cut, sword-like, through their lines. Willas threw himself on the ground, but even then, he felt the searing heat above him, blistering the air. He fell into the mud, his feet gone from under him, and rolled ten feet down the bank. Desperately he dragged himself back up to his feet, coughing and spitting out clumps. His leg was in searing pain, but then a hand caught him under the arm, and hauled him up. Garlan grabbed him by the shoulders. "Get to the horses! Get to Arianne, and go!"
"I'm coming with you!"
Garlan did not respond, just shoved him away, back into the throng. Willas caught a glimpse of him drawing his sword before the tide caught up with him and buffetted him along, back down the road, and Garlan vanished into the crowd. He had no choice but to go along with the rest of them, fleeing back towards the tents from whence he had come.
Faces hurried past him: was that Bronn of the Blackwater there, and Horas Redwyne there? All streaked with soot and sweat, like him as he pushed against the crowd, knowing it could only be so long before—
"DOWN!" someone shouted, and Willas, instinctively, threw himself flat, with no regard for his poorly leg. He did so just in time, for then the dragon hurtled out of the darkness, and once more fire consumed the night. He heard men screaming all round him, not far away, and the smell – dear gods, the smell.
"The river!" came a yell, and then the crowd was retreating the other way, and pushing back against them, and the great mass – dismounting, screaming in pain or fire – swarmed for the river, and Willas felt himself being pushed with them, and he was powerless. And where was Arianne? He had left her near the back of the column, only an hour, but now that hour was unthinkable.
The crowd pushed him along, back towards the river and the bridge. The men knew off the current, of course, but in their folly they thought they could swim it. Perhaps that was not folly for some, but it was for Willas Tyrell in his bits and pieces of steel armour and with his broken leg. They pushed through the narrow gaps between the carts, towards the broken bridge, and he knew what was about to happen a moment before it did.
The dragon came down from the clouds again, facing the approaching swarm now. Its lips peeled back, and Daenerys Targaryen, on its back, whispered a word, and then – fire and blood, and not a drop of mercy in it at all. Just the single, endless, purifying torment of hellfire, tearing straight through them like a scythe.
That scythe tore mercilessly through the Reachmen: the Reachmen in their clothes sewn with golden roses and wine-grapes and sheaves of corn and wheat, and it reaped and reaped. Oakheart's leaves, Rowan's golden tree, Merryweather's cornucopia of fruit, all consumed by fire, turned to black ashes. Then the dragon flapped its wings, and the ash flew into their faces and stung their cheeks and blinded their eyes, and when they looked up again, the dragon was gone.
The screaming fell quiet, and the shouting rose over it, as men squabbled over which way to run, over which way to go next. And those at the very centre were pressed together, boys and women were knocked underfoot and trampled, and Willas was pushed back against a cart, squeezed by the tide of his own men. He tried to shout for order but someone hit him in the belly and his shout meant nothing but pain.
The dragon screamed above them. Willas threw himself to the ground again.
There was a gap of maybe a few inches beneath the cart. Urgently, and not alone, he crawled underneath, oblivious to the pain in his leg. And behind him, he heard the screaming start up as the mortal purge began, and he could do nothing but keep crawling, even as the tide of ash rose and crept up his legs and blew into his face from all around, and he was a man trapped in a storm of dust and fire, and he could not breathe and then all at once he was out in the air, coughing, staggering, stumbling through bits of burning wood and metal. Behind him, the cart under which he had been crawling collapsed under the weight of red-hot fire; screams emanated from underneath for a few seconds, and then were snuffed out.
Above the carts, Drogon turned a wide circle, his wings once more gathering up the storm of ash. The ash flew through the fires and ignited, and the very air was alive with stuff that burned like a cloud of dusty fireflies.
And the fireflies ate the grass, wet and oily as it was, and they tore at wood with their blazing jaws. They melted metal, split leather, and then they met flesh and they consumed that too, they boiled blood in its vessels and imploded greasy eyes and charred bones and offal alike, and then they turned it all to ash, and the foul ash blew up into their eyes. And then that caught fire too, consumed like niter, and the whole thing was a cloud, a maelstrom of dark hellish fire.
The ash and the darkness turned men to beasts. Then the fire came and turned men to roast meat.
Willas watched it all with a look of undeniable horror. Drogon's fire went on and on, and the tempest rose up over the carts and filled the air, and he stepped back, tripping over himself in his haste to get away, and all around him, men – some of them already burning – threw themselves into the wet grass, even as it began to burn.
Then there came a great screeching noise, and Drogon suddenly spun sideways, wailing. Willas squinted, and just barely made out something planted in his side – a spear, a ballistic spear, maybe six feet long. Then another, thudding hard into the dragon's side.
Garlan, he thought. Garlan has gotten to the scorpions. Willas did not know what scorpion bolts would do to dragons, but plainly they did something, for Drogon suddenly rose higher. Then a bolt caught his wing joint, and he fell back to earth, landing in the smoke somewhere beyond the burning carts, between them and the bridge. Willas only barely glimpsed the dragon, but he heard its roaring.
And through it he heard the screaming of the Reachman. Of his people.
Sense – though it was not good sense – returned to him.
There is a point where a man sees such horror that he can no longer stand by and watch, and stay true to any morals he might have. Some choose to flee those morals altogether, and run for the hills. And some – the heroes and the fools, though truly the two are synonymous – take up a stand.
Willas was not entirely sure how he found himself mounting the horse, or taking up the lance. But there he was, and more than that, the lance felt sure and steady in his grip. He had not ridden at the tilt since Prince Oberyn knocked him from his horse, all those years ago, but some instincts never left you, and as he levelled the lance – it was really just a great splinter of wood, that was all – towards the smoke, he felt a great surging beneath him, and all at once his lessons came flooding back. He and the horse were one creature, hurtling towards the fire, and the lance was a part of his arm, sure and straight. Their course was true; he had his instinctual mark, and nothing, nothing would distract him from that.
"Fly," he said, very softly, leaning close to his horse's ear. And Willas Tyrell, cripple, lord of Highgarden, flew. They thundered past the others, up the column of wagons and carts, weaving round burning carriages and loose oxen, leaping over wreckage, down towards the dragon. There was a great blast of flame from somewhere close by, and he ducked down low and felt it pass red-hot above his head, and he was pretty sure the plume of his helmet caught fire as they rode. But still he hurtled past them. He was quite alone, too – any that tried to follow were felled by fire left and right, but he continued, as though the gods had granted him this in return for the years as a cripple, this one moment that would confirm his name in the annals of history.
Suddenly the red-hot cloud of fire broke, and he was alone, out in front of the rest, and the dragon was before him, and on its back among the horns he saw a figure who could only be Daenerys Targaryen. His breath scorched in his throat. The sound of the battle and the screaming men behind him disappeared into dust. All flesh went dumb, save for his pointing, unstoppable arm. Time ate itself, and its passage became unnoticeable, like something out of fairytales.
The dragon raised its proud head, its jaws peeled back. But Willas kept going; his arm was there, a hundred feet, fifty feet, twenty—
There was a crack like thunder, and the sky above his head exploded. He was thrown from his horse, faster than he could comprehend. Or rather, as he saw in slowed-down-time, the horse kept at its course, now burning, a lance clean through its ribcage – or so he saw for half an instant, before it entered Drogon's maw and was consumed by the fire – while Willas Tyrell himself flew violently above the beast's dark wing, somersaulting like a dunce, crashing down on the hot baked black mud.
He became faintly aware that the plume of his helmet was burning, and his mouth filled with mud. Everything hurt. It would be easier to just die. But somehow he got the helm off and tossed it away into the dirt; it rolled, and extinguished. The feathered plume collapsed into ash, and Willas's conscious mind joined it.
When he came to, it was morning again. Yet all his illusions of the past night being a dream vanished at once as soon as he looked around from where he lay. The ground was a charred black desolation, the grass burned into dust. The sky was black, the snow-ridden ground a dirty white. Everything between those two planes was a band of strange grey fog and smoke: ethereal, almost.
He was lying on his back, on a slab of wood, and someone was dragging him along. He blinked thick dark soot from his eyes, saw a leather brigandine with a meaningless badge, then blinked again and saw a reassuringly familiar face.
Funny how fate always brought you back to the same people. "Ser Bronn," he tried to say, but his mouth was full of mud and ashes.
Ser Bronn heard his moaning, nonetheless, and offered a half-pitying, half-disgusted look in reply. "Shut the fuck up and lie down," he said roughly. "You're broken."
"My leg?" It certainly felt broken. Again.
"All of you," said Ser Bronn. "Your head most of all, unless suicide was your intent."
Ah. That explained it. "You pulled me out, then," Willas said, though to Ser Bronn his words were doubtless incomprehensible. Then, deliriously: "You killed my horse."
Ser Bronn did not reply, just kept dragging him across the battlefield. As they went on, and as Willas grew increasingly sensible to the world around him, the smell of ashes grew. And… something else. Not just ashes, he decided. Meat. Did someone—? Then he realised what the smell was, and he vomited, all over himself. Ser Bronn's disgusted look grew. "Make sure he doesn't choke," he said. A hand grabbed Willas under the shoulders, and dragged him towards a more upright position. Some boy. Bronn's son, mayhaps?
"He's not my fucking son, before you ask," said Ser Bronn harshly. "He's nobody. Nobody you need to worry about, unless you're planning on making him a knight for spotting you out in all this shit."
Willas was about to reply but suddenly a cough overcame him. After he'd finished he decided it would be best if he stayed silent. After all, the others might not know that he was alive. Ser Bronn could slit his throat here, and no one would ever know.
Fragments of grey ash floated through the air. They fell like petals of some great golden rose. And then, panic overtook him. "Where did she go? Daenerys?"
"South, they said. South by southwest."
"Highgarden…"
"That would be my guess," said Ser Bronn.
Mother is in Highgarden. He did not dare say it aloud, because that would make it true. "You're sure she was going to Highgarden?"
"Where else would she go?"
"We have to go back there, then. We have to take back the castle."
Ser Bronn spat. "I'd sooner burn in hell."
They were approaching the tent when the full force of those words hit Willas. Sooner burn in hell… and you should have. "Ser Bronn," he croaked. "You knocked me off my horse. But you were coming in from my left. And that was where the dragon… breathed fire. So how did you survive it?"
"I didn't," said Ser Bronn.
The reality dawned upon him. "You're dead," Willas breathed. "And I'm dead too." He looked around him at the desolate, ashy field. Where else could this be?
"Seven hells, boy," said Bronn's rough voice. "Did you lose all your wits in that charge? You're not dead. This is hell, aye, but not that kind."
"You said you didn't survive."
"I said I didn't survive knocking you off your horse, because I didn't. No." And Willas knew, a moment before he said it. "That was your brother."
He made a noise, a weak, thin sound, like a man trying to swallow air that was not there, a word that might have been "No," but never fully formed itself. And Ser Bronn went on speaking, but what was there to say?
Garlan. Gone.
Inside the tent, they stripped him from his broken armour. They fed him dry bread and hot wine. They dressed him again, as befit the lord of Highgarden, only the clothes were dark in mourning. They were Arianne and her cousin Tyene, but it was a long time before he realised it.
Then she was kneeling before him, and her eyes were curiously without mercy. "He's gone, Willas," she said sharply, and he fell out of his reverie. "I'm sorry, but he's gone."
"I want to see him."
"No, you don't."
He had children. Osmund and Alysanne. Now without a father. And a wife. Leonette. "He saved me."
"Yes, he almost certainly did."
"Why?"
Arianne: "Why?"
Him: "Yes… why…" But it didn't matter. Did it? He didn't know. He never would. All he knew was that his brother was gone, like that.
He stared at her. "We've had this conversation already, haven't we?"
"We have," she said, "three times since they brought you back."
"And you've told me the same thing every time."
"You're in shock, Willas."
"And nothing's changed." Except Garlan is dead.
"Nothing except the urgency of our situation." Arianne helped lace his boots. "She will be back, you know that. Daenerys. And when she is, we must be gone."
"We?"
"You and I, and what remains of the army."
"Garlan's army."
"Your army, now."
"Where will we go? There is nowhere to go."
"There is always somewhere to go. Not Highgarden… not Dorne, either, but we will think of somewhere."
"You should leave me here. Let me…"
Suddenly Arianne stood up and grabbed his arm. "He's dead, Willas. I'm sorry, but that's that. Garlan is dead. And you are all we have left. Now, you can stay here if you like. I won't stop you, and I can't stop you, either. But I want you to remember that Garlan saved you for a reason."
He didn't know what it was. He would have made a better lord than me. He was a better man, a better brother, a better… everything.
"Garlan saved you for a reason," Arianne went on. "And if you give up here, then you are betraying him in that." Her voice was entirely ruthless. But, Willas realised, she had to be. Because she was right. And because her ruthlessness hid her fear.
From his right came a light coughing noise. When he turned, Varys was in the entrance of the tent. "My lady," said the eunuch, bowing. "My lord. We are ready to leave at your pleasure. I… I could not help overhearing your uncertainty with regard to a destination. Now, if you do not mind my intrusion, I have an idea."
A few minutes later, they were on the road again. Or rather, off the road, cutting north to where the black burned plains turned verdant again – or so they hoped. Behind them, they left the ashes of the Mander battle. Somewhere among those ashes they left Garlan the Gallant, and for him, Willas Tyrell left behind the last few hot tears that remained to him. It still did not seem real, and yet the sky burned so hot and bright and cloudless that it must be. It must be.
