Chapter 2
Sitting on the Iron Throne
King Daeron I Targaryen
Once upon a time in bard tales, seating on the Iron Throne had been a moment of triumph and satisfaction, knowing the man on top of these hundreds of swords was the master of lands going from the Wall to Oldtown.
This time had long gone away, assuming it had really existed.
These days the view was just depressing. That was Daeron opinion though, but the newly crowned monarch had just had mere days to get used to it. With time, it was possible it would change. Stranger things had happened. Stranger things could happen. The Wall could collapse. Casterly Rock could be taken by force of arms. The Ironborn could decide to abandon piracy and become respectable merchants. The last thought brought almost a laugh to the young dragonrider.
Looking straight in front of him, the smile disappeared altogether.
His father, the now deceased King Viserys Targaryen, First of the Name, had confirmed the tradition of putting the skulls of dragons deceased in the throne room, and his brother Aegon had never broken it.
It had not been a problem during his father and his grandfather's reign. Since the Conqueror had forged this thrice-cursed uncomfortable throne, there had only been three major dragons to die.
Balerion the Black Dread, dead of old age, so powerful none of its own species had managed to challenge it while it was alive.
Meraxes, Queen Rhaenys ride, shot down with the Queen by a scorpion bolt in the eye over the Hellholt when House Targaryen tried to conquer Dorne and failed.
Quicksilver, King Aenys's dragon. Defeated by Balerion while Aenys' son Aegon flew it in the Battle Beneath the God's Eye.
And that had been it. In over one hundred and twenty years of reign, three and only three adult battle dragons had been lost of all causes.
A survivability that would have been undoubtedly impressive if in the last three years the Targaryen dynasty had not lost no less than fifteen dragons, young and old.
Arrax, massacred by his brother Aemond and Vhagar at Storm's End.
Meleys, fallen at Rook's Rest in a desperate battle against his two brothers Aegon and Aemond.
Vermax, the dragon of Jacaerys, disappeared with his master at the Battle of the Gullet.
The Grey Ghost, eaten by Sunfyre in a pure act of cannibalism if there ever was one.
Sunfyre, the royal dragon infirmed and broken, shot down by a fateful arrow at Dragonstone.
Dreamfyre, Syrax, Morghul, Shrykos and Tyraxes, slain in the Storming of the Dragonpit and the riots having caused so much devastation to King's Landing.
Vermithor, Seasmoke and Silverwing, killed at the Second Battle of Tumbleton, two of them under his own orders to ensure the Betrayers paid with their lives their usurpation attempts.
Caraxes and Vhagar, the two most powerful battle-dragons living of their time, which destroyed each other at the God's Eye.
Fifteen. Out of eighteen mature dragons at the beginning of the war. And of the three left, no one knew where Sheepstealer could be at this moment, and the Cannibal had never accepted a rider in five decades of life. In practise, it left only his lovely Tessarion as the closest thing to a battle-dragon.
The carnage of the ongoing war had prevented all the dragon skulls to be present in the Red Keep, but they were still twelve of them now, darkening by their very presence the ambiance. For a dragonrider, the warning was clear.
The next skull they bring here could be your dragon. And by fate or battle, few Targaryen survived long the death of their bonded. Every bard tale and record agreed on that.
Not that they are many of us anymore.
The Targaryen dynasty was for now reduced to four members, Daeron himself and three girls.
So many deaths...
Contemplating the courtiers, knights, guards and nobles presently in the throne room, waiting for the last justice demands to be rendered for the day, Daeron Targaryen thoughts were not very light. Whether he cared to admit it or not in public, everyone knew the Targaryen main force to unite Westeros had been the dragons. The inheritance of Valyria. The rulers of the sky. And now this force was facing the real danger of extinction.
"Your Majesty, there is one last petitioner." Affirmed Grand Maester Orwyle, in this hesitant and tired voice that he had gained during his imprisonment in the Blacks Cells of the Red Keep, designing with a wave of his hand the figure of a knight wearing the banners of House Harte waiting patiently several feet away from the barbed blades where Daeron sat.
"Good." Daeron forced a smile to come to his lips. The knight was alone and did not look particularly angry or desperate, this should be an easy supplicant. "In that case, better -"
The King had not the time to finish the sentence. The great doors, the most direct access to the Iron Throne if one came outside Maegor's holdfast, opened in full, disgorging a massive cohort of septons and septas in their white ceremony clothes. And leading them, of course...
"The High Septon!" Announced the royal herald, doing his best and failing to not look completely overwhelmed by the situation.
Whispers and murmurs spread in the ranks of the nobility and the wealthy assisting to the spectacle, and a part of Aegon understood them. Since Maegor the Cruel had massacred the Poor Fellows by the tens of thousands and Jaehaerys the Conciliator had disbanded the Faith Militant, certain courtesies were to be maintained between the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and the leader of the Faith. And not just because the monarchs after the Maegor edict had justly proven they were far more powerful than any religious authority.
These measures had just been trampled and ignored in a single moment, as the High Septon advanced towards Daeron and the Iron Throne. Four times the High Septon had demanded an audience to Viserys I during his reign; each time it had been a fortnight in advance and with a far more limited number of influential lords assisting to it. Unless his memory fails him, Daeron could not recall having sent such a prestigious invitation.
Daeron did his best not to frown, grimace or show an expression of dissatisfaction. No matter how he personally felt, a king was entitled to certain behaviour. And that what he was: a king, thanks to the battle-lust of his two eldest brothers. If Daeron had to be honest with himself, the young Targaryen king knew he should have expected a move such like this from the Faith.
The Harte knight chose wisely to go join the public, wisely considering his luck of obtaining justice on this day was really nil. In turn, it allowed Daeron to contemplate the man marching towards him.
The highest representative of the Seven on this earth was no longer the one who had given his blessing to Aegon on his coronation's day after Lord Commander Criston Cole had proclaimed his eldest brother King. The former High Septon of three years ago had been solidly bought and paid by Hightower gold. Reliable, to the point Daeron's mother had been able to write his important sermons word for word, verse for verse. Alas, the man was no longer of this world. When King's Landing fell the first time, the High Septon had disappeared. According to Lord Larys, Prince Daemon Targaryen had very quietly arranged his assassination by unsavoury sellswords. The man chosen to be the replacement by Rhaenyra had been a black supporter through and through, who had been torn apart in the riots having killed so many in the capital. According to the Master of Whisperers, this death too had been nothing but due to chance, one hundred Stormlands men hacking their way through a sept to do the deed.
The replacement's replacement, to call a cat by its real name, was younger, showing a finely tailed beard and grim black eyes under the magnificent crystal tiara of his office. The priest wore white robes, with the only decoration in gold clearly visible being a seven-pointed star above where his heart beat. All in all it was a stern figure, not easy to make laugh or intimidate.
Why did the Most Devout not choose another man?
"Your Grace." Daeron managed with a great deal of self-taught control not to wince. The tone could have been considered respectful in other circumstances. Nevertheless, Daeron had heard this kind of voice a lot of times on the battlefield in the last moons. Respectful, yes, before the lord or the knight in front of you brandished his sword and tried to remove your head.
"Thank you for agreeing to see me so promptly, your Grace."
Daeron wanted no better to strangle the insolent priest at that moment. Not trusting his tongue to deliver an insult, his answer was a curt nod, along with the brief answer:
"The pleasure is all mine, your Holiness." Daeron lied. The silver-haired king could not resist a small pique at his interlocutor." But you did not come all this way from the Sept to hear this."
"Indeed not." The voice of the High Septon had turned truly mournful in one moment. A man less versed in the nasty talents required in the Game of Thrones would have almost believed the holy septon was about to cry. "A terrible loss happened, your Grace! A terrible and most awful event!"
The religious let just enough moment for everyone present to be devoured by curiosity then finished his oration.
"I speak of course, of foul and most horrid murder! West of Raventree Hall, Septon Lucos the Merciful and all the pilgrims following him were peacefully spreading the light of the Faith when they were odiously butchered by men in arms!"
Then the High Septon added, almost as an afterthought. "These monsters were carrying a banner of the black dragon."
Three or four scores of conversations started in low voices at the announce of these news. The King did his best not to smile or show his pleasure.
Daeron had heard of this 'Lucos the Merciful'. Formerly a septon in the Crownlands, Lucos had travelled in the Riverlands and the Reach murdering and stealing every settlement or village on his way that wasn't powerful enough to make flee his band armed with cudgels and rusty pointed tools. Unlike many brigands and other sellswords of the war, Lucos had been intelligent to avoid the patrols Greens and Blacks had sent to track him down. The septon had survived and gained enough popularity for his band of 'pilgrims' to become a real problem. A couple hundred of religious fanatics are no danger to a small army, but with cudgels they were sufficient to beat any smallfolk wanting to resist them. Well, until now. Someone had evidently managed to send this Lucos and his supporters to the Seven Hells where they belonged.
In other circumstances, Daeron would have stood up on the throne and cheered at this news. Perhaps even sent a gift to the black lords and his cousin Baela for ridding his kingdom of such poisonous filth.
He couldn't. Not only he wasn't exactly keen to thank the person who had slain his brother in dragon duel, standing on the throne would have meant risking been bled out by these hundreds of blades fixed by the Black Dread, and cheering would cost him the support of the Faith.
Not that they revealed themselves useful in this war, whispered a little voice in his head.
"This is dreadful." Told Daeron, trying his best to feign sympathy.
"Thank you, your Grace." Answered suavely the High Septon. The damnable priest had evidently waited for such an answer to come out of his mouth.
"But I'm afraid this was only the beginning of the atrocities these blasphemous traitors committed on the Faithful." Continued the High Septon. "Once they had slain most of the innocent, the barbarians took Lucos and his most faithful supporters and then ripped them apart. Then they spilled their entrails on several trees, to manifest their worship in false deities!"
Daeron wanted nothing better to scream and swear one or two insults. For all its atrocities made by the Blacks and the Greens, the war had remained a conflict thankfully void of any religious doctrinal problems. There had been warriors fighting not believing in the Seven, the Essossi of the Three Sisters came to mind, but at no moment there had been clashes because one side hated the Gods of the other. Given the violence of the battles and the scale of destruction, it was a good thing. The last thing Westeros had needed was a religious war on top of everything else.
At least until this afternoon.
Northerners. It had to be Northerners. No one else considers spilling the entrails of an alive enemy on a tree is a valid method of worship.
"Don't fear, your Holiness." Grumbled in his large beard the Hand of the King, Lord Borros Baratheon. The Lord of Storm's End, in spite of this being the royal court, was in plate armour, with only the antlered helmet removed. How he had managed to stand all these hours on the throne's right with this weight of steel on his shoulders and the rest of his body, Daeron had no idea."Soon, these murderous black scums will be corpses rotting on the battlefield. Me and my army are going to make sure of that!"
Had it been politically possible to kick the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands in the head, Daeron would have done so in a hurry. Alas, Lord Borros was a giant taller than him by several feet, but he was also the father of his own wife. Arianne would certainly not invite him in the bed this night if he dishonoured her father in view of the whole court.
"This abominable act will not go unpunished. Once the culprits are in the hand of the Royal Justice" Daeron spoke before Lord Borros made promises the Crown would regret in the next years, making great care to mark each word with the emphasis they deserved, "they will receive the full sentence demanded by their many crimes." Execution by decapitation. No need to bother with a trial for the Blacks, given the absolute certainty they wouldn't bother with one if the situation was reversed.
Most of his small council to his side made little noises of agreement, but did not offered more support. Grand Maester Orwyle had plunged in a sort of torpor. Lord Durran Grandison and Lord Unwin Peake were once again informally showing they were agreeing with his father-in-law. Ser Tyland Lannister was whispering something angrily to himself, an alarming occurrence since his torture experience. And Lord Larys Strong, Master of Whisperers, remained as enigmatic and silent as ever.
"And the rumours the Blacks intend to convert to the Old Gods of the Northern barbarians?"
The question had been posed in a near-innocent voice, but Daeron was not fooled. This was most likely the real reason the High Septon had bothered to leave his stalwart supporters from whatever sept in Westeros he had been elevated.
"The Crown will be hearing these rumours with the greatest attention." Promised Daeron. "Rest assured however, that no matter the heresies done by the Blacks, I King Daeron I Targaryen remained strong and dedicated to the worship of the true Faith!"
A huge clamour of applauses mounted from the nobles and courtiers gathered around to hear the audience. The High Septon bowed largely, apparently satisfied, before taking three steps back. Too bad this mummer farce on the Iron Throne was useless.
No, Daeron did not fear the Blacks were going to abandon the Seven as a religion anytime soon. No matter what the Starks, the Blackwoods, the Boltons and their bannersmen wanted, they were as many if not more Faithful in their armies. House Manderly of White Harbor. House Arryn of the Eyrie. House Tully of Riverrun. House Rowan of Goldengrove. The Seven were entrenched everywhere in Westeros, even in Dorne, which wasn't part of the Seven Kingdoms in the first place.
It would have required a very stupid man to make a mistake uniting tens of thousands men, women and children against himself, and for all his faults, Daeron did not think the new enemy Hand, Lord Cregan Stark was such a man.
As the High Septon withdrew from the Red Keep with his large group of septons and septas, Daeron thought with bitterness winning the war was probably going to be easier than settling all the problems caused by it.
Lord Larys Strong
It was raining.
His father Lyonel, the Seven bless his soul, had often said that in the Riverlands, heavy rains tended to fall at the approaches of the great battles.
For Larys, this was not a good omen.
From his secret post near the Gate of the Gods, what was falling from the skies was a true deluge.
The Blackwater had already left its riverbed, flooding of its musky waters the Fishmarket, the Mud Gate and the northern extremities of the Kingswood. The waters were dark, carrying along countless debris, wood branches, stubbles, straw and substances it was best knowing not to know exactly what they were. Drinking this was...not advised in Larys's honest opinion. Several roads frequently used by farmers and merchants to come to the city sell their harvests had disappeared under the water. Awful weather.
But Larys had not taken one of the numerous secret passages out of Maegor's holdfast to see the rain fall or the large quantities of mud surrounding the capital. No, the Master of Whisperers had come to see the soldiers.
From the start of the morning, or what passed for a morning in this rain swept up by violent and screaming winter winds, the massive Southern army of King Daeron had with difficulty left camp.
An enormous snake of iron, steel, flesh and blood. Metal, leather, hate and blood thirst. Long columns of swords and spears, axes and hammers. Marching in columns, first had come the skilled archers of the Marches. Then the levies of the Honeywine, smallfolk bloodied by the endless skirmishes and battles they had been forced to fight thorough the Reach to arrive to King's Landing. The heavy cavalry of the Hightower and Baratheon Houses, their horses trying their best to brave the equivalent of several water buckets per turn of hourglass on their heads. Light infantry of the Rainwood, heavy infantry of Storm's End, proud knights of the Seven.
These warriors together formed the last army the Greens would be able to put on the field before moons. Possibly years. The whispers of a new Rowan offensive had arrived to his ears by the agents he had left at Cider Hall, and while Larys dearly hoped the loyalists there would repulse the storm of swords coming from them, help would not come from this direction. Nor would it come from the Stormlands. Lord Borros Baratheon, this ferocious and merciless butcher, had glorified himself arriving with one full army, but the little rainbows he had in the Stormlands all said how depleted the Lord of Storm's End had left his ancestral lands.
That was what happened when you left an illiterate man without tax or money knowledge governing one of the Kingdoms. Plus raiders and pirates from Tyrosh still attempted to launch attacks on the coasts of the Dornish Sea.
Still, the Green army was two and thirty thousand men strong, even after leaving a garrison of four thousand armsmen to guard King's Landing against any conceivable attack. Close to five and ten thousand were Baratheon men or lords sworn to Storm's End. The seven and ten thousand remaining were Reachers, with a majority of Hightower bannersmen.
No Crownlords or Riverlanders. After the 'exploits' of Prince Aemond and Ser Criston Cole having led to the annihilation of the former's army and a series of massive massacres from the Golden Tooth to Crackclaw Point, the knights of said kingdoms had deserted the Green cause. Larys didn't blame them.
How did it come to this? How did we manage to ruin the kingdom in three years?
Larys knew the answer. Two words. Targaryen madness. Two little words which had ravaged the realm and caused so many deaths the Lord of Harrenhal doubted anyone would ever know how many persons had been killed during this war. Larys personal try was four hundred and seventy-five thousand. It was certainly below the real number.
The Masters of Whisperers knew he had a large part in these deaths. Enough to know his final destination when he died would not be the Seven Heavens.
But we hadn't the choice. We couldn't leave Daemon Targaryen sit on the throne. This monster would have torn apart everything.
Unlike many lords and knights, Larys had sent agents everywhere in the search of the truth long before King Viserys I agonised. Of course, one might argue he had better reasons than most to act in this manner. His father and his brother had died at Harrenhal in a fire that shouted high and loud murder.
What Larys had discovered using all his artifices of spymaster had frozen him in the marrow his bones beyond his worst nightmares. Prince Daemon Targaryen had assassinated Larys older sibling and his father, hiring a score of sellsword to light the fire. Laenor Velaryon, Rhaenyra's husband, had been too murdered on Daemon's orders. Ser Lomar Staunton, missing at sea never to be seen again. Ser Aemon Celtigar, gone hunting a boar and never come back. Ser Carnan Pyle, knocked out permanently by a jug in the head when a tavern became the site of a brawl. All these murders with the obvious goal of marrying Rhaenyra Targaryen and taking the throne for himself. Not to mention his private war in the Stepstones, his 'duels' against opponents having no experience in wielding a sword or the corruption spread under his watch in the King's Landing guards.
Larys had tried to get enough evidence to sentence Daemon to death. In vain. Daemon was a formidable enemy, and hadn't stayed alive all these years against the Triarchy and thousands of enemies without learning a thing or two to cover his traces. Not to mention Mysaria, Daemon's Lysene lover. And the magical tricks the two had gained with Essossi warlocks and magical outlaws.
If Daemon had been a common knight or lord, the proofs Larys had gathered would have seen the rider of Caraxes dance at the end of a rope. But Daemon was a Prince of the Blood. Deductions, indirect proofs and low-born witnesses could not be used against a member of the Royal family. At least that had been King Viserys I's declaration.
A decision having condemned Westeros to the night and disaster. And now winter was coming, like the Starks always warned.
A throbbing pain manifested in his right leg, forcing Larys to take support on his cane. The Master of Whisperers grimaced. At four and forty namedays, he was far from his youth, and now the rains were painful by their simple presence.
Perhaps it is a divine retribution for my sins.
The thought somewhat amused him. Retribution for what? Protecting Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in her childhood from the litany of catastrophic actions she had made? Stopping Prince Aemond Targaryen from being a kinslayer and a mass murderer? Giving King Aegon II good advice?
Larys had done his best. He had done his duty to the realm. As confessor of King Viserys, the First of the Name. As Lord of Harrenhal. As Master of Whisperers. As spy, confident, advisor, manipulator, schemer and, when times called for it, assassin. But he was the Clubfoot, the mysterious enigmatic man in the shadows. No one trusted him, and his advices most often than not when ignored. When he had taken the post, it had bothered him a lot. Now, Larys was taking it as an accomplished fact.
Take the case of the starting campaign. Seeing a score of Swann infantry lamentably wading in the mud, any decent military commander could tell you fighting in these conditions was an idiotic idea. Autumn was well-advanced and the freezing winds told winter would not be long in strangling the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
By simple logic, launching a campaign in these conditions fell into a strategy of despair.
Which wasn't far from the truth.
Larys had seen the numbers presented by Ser Tyland Lannister. They were bad. Worse, the mutilated Lannister thought they were probably too good to be true. And if there was a thing the Lannisters understood, it was gold and how to spend it. Better to hear with complete attention when the brother of the defunct Lord of Casterly Rock had told them starvation was going to be an ugly reality in a matter of moons. Already, the order had completely collapsed in several provinces. The Westerlands were a charnel-house, thanks to Dalton Greyjoy and his reavers. Villages had been razed by the hundreds. Columns of refugees marched and pillaged, often turning on each other for a piece of bread.
There were only two solutions. First, proposing peace to the Blacks. Lord Corlys Velaryon had been in favour, but the old Master of Driftmark had been the only one. The hate between the two factions was now well and truly rooted.
Secondly, to force the Blacks forces to a decisive battle. Larys had been very dubious it was possible, but Lord Borros Baratheon had taken some of his own agents' reports at face's content, and estimated it was feasible to intercept the Arryn reinforcements landing at Maidenpool after their sea travel in the Bay of Crabs. Should the Starks and the Tullys musters try to make a stand all the better according to the Baratheon lord. Lord Durran Grandison had agreed it was the opportunity to crush the whole rebellion in one big battle.
Larys thought the two Stormlanders lords were arrogant imbeciles. Lord Mooton had turned his cloak because of Rhaenyra Targaryen's madness. For a new young Queen, one of sound sanity and advised by skilled lords, Lord Manfryd the Poor Traitor would turn his cloak back to the Blacks. It may have already happened.
However, Lord Borros and his bannersman had been enough convincing or told enough strategic evidences to the King for Daeron to give his consent. Larys didn't see how in the Seven Hells a single battle was going to make Winterfell, the Eyrie, Riverrun and Pyke beg for terms, but the King had decided to take the field with the last majority the Greens had, and that was it.
Two and thirty thousand men now marched in the mud and the rain for one of the biggest battles Westeros had ever seen. And at the end, Larys hoped, victory and the end of this terrible and bloody conflict.
Peace. When had this word become so...strange?
Over his head, a loud and powerful roar sounded. The rain hid everything not in the near vicinity, but the Master of Whisperers thought for an instant he had seen a flash of blue in the darkness. Too bad. The spectacle of a dragon flying was one the Lord of Harrenhal had never been weary of. And Tessarion, the Blue Queen and actual Royal Dragon, was really a magnificent specimen, with wings, scales and fire-breath cobalt blue coloured. The crest, claws and belly showed a shade of copper, though. A new roar echoed in the distance, but Tessarion was invisible to his mortal eyes. Next to the ramparts, the knights and men-at-arms of House Connington could be perceived, forming the rear-guard of the army.
Larys shook his head and stopped watching the army's march northwards. All his worries for the fate of the upcoming campaign were fruitless. He had never been a warrior; his illnesses and his malformation in the feet had made sure of that. No, the fate of the war was not going to be in Larys weak hands. What the Master of Whisperers could and would do, was making plans to ensure there would be a capital and a kingdom if King Daeron came back victorious.
Contrary to what everyone in the good taverns of Visenya' Hill thought it was far from an easy task. In the last fortnight alone, three assassins had been tortured and killed before they attempted to kill Princess Jaehaera Targaryen, King Daeron's niece. Larys had recognised the malevolent work of Lord Unwin Peake on that one. The Lord of Starpike was a dead man, the Master of Whisperers had given the orders. A friendly arrow in the midst of battle is so easy to arrange after all.
More concerning were the maesters attempts to poison the dragons. The grey beards thought they were very clever and subtle, but they were playing in Larys battlefield. Bypassing Grand Maester Orwyle, weakening the structure of the Dragonpit, hiring these dragonslayers in the middle of the riots...clever. Clever but not enough. Larys had put the dragon eggs in security, and the elimination of the black sheep was going to start. Their ends were going to be as dolorous as the magnitude of their betrayal.
Westeros had been united in the fire of dragons, and only the dragons maintained the unity of the Seven Kingdoms. If the price of the realm was to be the Archmaesters lives, so be it. If a Master of Whisperers had to shed torrents of blood and blacken his soul, so be it. So long as the realm survived, the price was acceptable.
"The things I do for the realm..." Whispered the Clubfoot, as the rain redoubled in intensity. The Lord of Harrenhal donned his black cloak, took a last hold on his wooden cane, and threw a last glance at the torrential rains before disappearing in the tunnels.
You were right Father. Great rains call for great battles. Winter is coming, but before, I'm going to make sure the dragons will dance again in the skies.