Chapter 14

A Hope of Spring

Princess Aliandra Martell

The funeral of her father was not a joyous affair. It wasn't raining, but the weather was far colder than any Dornish men and women remembered in their memories. For the first time in years, the warm clothes which were used to travel at night in the dunes were suddenly popular at Sunspear.

Aliandra would have loved to say the smallfolk and her bannersmen had come by the thousands to give a last farewell to the man who was their Prince. Alas, she couldn't. The crowd in front of the Old Palace and in the narrow streets of Sunspear was sparse. Hundreds of men and women had come out this day but to purchase cloaks, boots and furred tunics. The merchants looked happy they had a day where their customers had a reason to go outside in the cold. The inhabitants of the Shadow City did not look especially sorry to buy ale and other beverages and go back home to get drunk. Few of her subjects showed faces of mourning. A good third of the Noble Houses had deliberately chosen to slow their ride to the capital of Dorne rather attending the ceremony proclaiming their Prince had left this world forever. They would come here to swear her fealty but did not intend to present their respects to their deceased liege.

There were already some of her father's advisors demanding these traitorous Lords and Knights were arrested the instant they bent the knee in front of her. Aliandra had chosen to dismiss these empty-headed skulls out of her council. Prince Qoren Martell had not been beloved by his subjects. If she began her reign by hunting and imprisoning all the highborn and lowborn enemies her father had made these last years, there would be no more gold in the treasury next year and she would be forced to kill half of Dorne.

By the waters of Greenblood, she didn't know if she had really liked her genitor. Prince Qoren had sent her to Salt Shore the moment she had been able to walk and with her mother dead one year after her birth trying to give her a little brother, there had been no one to protest. To this day, she didn't know why and Prince Qoren had taken this secret with him to the grave. Was it because her father could not see her without being reminded her mother or was she simply inconvenient for his projects and it was best to let her mother's family raise her?

She had learned a lot of things in this castle tempered by the sprays of the Summer Sea. Aliandra had been offered lessons with the best tutors, how to wield a spear in the House of the red cockatrice and the teachings of the nomadic travellers making the dunes their home. But her father there had been her maternal uncle, Lord Manfrey Gargalen, not 'the old spider of Sunspear' like the denizens of the Dornish shores enjoyed calling him.

And when she had come back at the capital at the age of ten, it had been to meet an old man who was trying to avoid war and bloodshed while the rest of the continent burned in the fires of the dragons. She had been impressed by Prince Qoren's tenacity when he refused to call his banners and told its preference of scorpion beds before a dragon dance.

His bannersmen however had really not liked his methods. Taxes, executions in the desert and long exiles had been ordered by the Prince of Dorne against the Noble Houses. But all he had achieved was making him hated. Dornish were passionate people and they hadn't seen this cold and calculating man as one of their own. Tensions had been increasing and in certain oasis blood had been shed between the local tribes and the tax collectors of the Princedom.

According to her uncle, the only choice Prince Qoren had left her was either a war against the divided Targaryen realm to her north or a civil war in Dorne itself.

"A dark day," she commented to her uncle and his sworn spears when they left the holy grounds of the sept behind, following the coffin of the defunct Prince. "How long do you think I have, Uncle?"

The Lord of Salt Shore did not answer for a few heartbeats as they passed by the upper Wind Wall and began their descent in the tortuous streets of Sunspear.

"The Lords will wait the end of winter and no longer than that," answered Lord Manfrey, throwing a concerned look at the angry faces booing and shouting when they saw the men and women accompanying the previous Prince of Dorne to his last rest. "They want war and they won't tolerate your excuses for long."

"If they want war that badly, do they have a proper and reliable way to kill dragons?" asked sarcastically the new Princess of Dorne. "Because the moment war is declared, King Daeron can ride upon his beast and torch Sunspear in dragonfire."

"The new Lord Uller is convinced that proper ambushes with scorpions and archers will kill the flying beast."

That did not exactly fill Aliandra with confidence. She had met the 'Lord Uller' one year ago in the Sand Ship, a boy with two more name days than her busy ogling female servants and confident that Dorne would emerge victorious no matter what happened.

How quick were the Uller to forgive that in the last two centuries, it was House Martell which loaned them twice coffers of gold, silver and gemstones to rebuild their castle of Hellholt to its former glory. Killing Meraxes in the previous war against the dragonlords had given them a lot of prestige...and three-fourths of their arable lands had been devastated by the flames of the Black Dread in revenge. Where before the fields along the Brimstone could feed thousands of people, now they had to buy food elsewhere to survive. The Uller lands had been made infertile for centuries and in her mind, this was a poor price for the death of a single dragonrider. The Ullers had now the unforgivable sin of being poor, and the merchant caravans of the east avoided their den of madness.

"If we listened to Lord Uller, the armies would be marching right now in the Prince's Pass...never mind the snow has blocked everything in the Marches. Lord Yronwood and every castle of importance have sent ravens to me telling how difficult it is for scouts to travel to Nightsong and Blackhaven. But no, Wyl and Hellholt are convinced our spears will suddenly grow wings and we will fly over the mountains like prey birds."

"This would be quite the sight," chuckled the Lord of Salt Shore. "But Uller and his friends are not known for their brains and their abilities to supply a military campaign."

"Nor have they the gold to field the number of men they are boasting." And they used the mentions of tens of thousands of knights and spearmen to put the crowds into a frenzy everywhere they went. Men they never had and that the Princedom couldn't afford to lose or pay.

"Thank the Gods, it is a harsh winter," her uncle threw a few copper coins to children who were running alongside their horses. "The Marches are under feet of snow and the prices of food are rising. We don't have a fleet to send north, so the warriors wanting to fight a war will sign with sellsword companies and go die in the Disputed Lands."

"But once winter will end..."

Her uncle's expression was not encouraging. Once spring came, it would be war and since she liked rather keeping her head attached to her shoulders, it would be war against King's Landing. A war she was not sure at all they could win. Thousands of the Stormlands chivalry had died and the Reach plains were soaked with blood, but her subjects forgot these lands were huge and not a desert. And they would have a big dragon to help them.

"Would an alliance with the Black Kingdom be acceptable?" After all, the enemy of your enemy was your ally...or someone approaching that word until you had no land frontier with it. Then you were enemies once more.

"Maybe but I found no parchment trail indicating the Prince thought about it, thus I expect long and difficult negotiations. If we are serious about the idea of an alliance, we will need to send someone to the Riverlands."

"Someone named Uller?"

The Princess of Dorne giggled before taking an appropriate mourning face once they passed the great gates of Sunspear and rode to a nearby hill. In other lands, a Prince would have been buried in a great construction of stone and gold or in a holy ground surrounded by green fields. In Dorne, their remains were purified by the sands of the desert, returning to the arid land. The Princedom had no fertile lands to spare after the dragons burned everything, and if he she had tried to make an exception for Prince Qoren, there would have been a revolt by the end of the moon.

"But he remained unbroken to the end..."

King Daeron Targaryen

Two days ago, he had thought he would be able to rest once he came back home. The Iron Islands had been finally dealt with. Harlaw, Old Wyk and Pyke had been sacked; thousands of the men, women and children the Ironborn had taken in their damned raids had been saved. Castles had been stormed and burned. Hundreds of longships, fisher boats and a lot of small hulls had been sunk, dismantled or seized by force of arms. The Great Houses of the Iron Islands had been ruthlessly and methodically destroyed. The few forests the Ironborn had left had been burned to the ground by Tessarion and Westerners eager for some revenge. Harbours had been emptied of everything which might be valuable. Ancestral vaults had been raided.

As far as he was aware, the power of the Iron Islands had been broken for decades. The Lords and Ladies of the Westerlands and the Reach were extremely satisfied by the bloody vengeance he had wrecked onto the pirates and reavers of the deceased Red Kraken. Daeron had not liked at all massacring men and women who couldn't fight back and for all he knew, weren't guilty of the atrocities their captains had done on the Sunset Sea's coast. But he had to gain the loyalty of the Redwyne fleet and what was left of the Lannister and their bannersmen. Half of the kingdom had already been lost; it wouldn't do to provide the Blacks an excuse to add more lands to their rule.

He had hoped the capital would be calm when he came back. This had been a really naive wishing, really. Of all his expectations, a warm bed was the only thing he had been really able to enjoy. The Black Reachers he had pardoned were whispering in their beards certain taxes would never have been raised if the other side had won. The Faith eldest septons were furious non-believers – the Starks and the Northerners if one wanted to name them – had gained the control of the Riverlands for the time being. Exiled Lords, led by the survivors of House Bracken, were calling for a renewal of the war as soon as the snow melted and the roads were able to support an army on the march. The merchants were furious Pentos and Braavos were robbing them blind on the prices of the goods they came with.

These problems were dreadful, but paled compared to the one facing him in the room he was seated at this moment.

He had no Small Council anymore.

He had a Master of Whisperers and a few Knights, Captains and his sworn swords were obeying his will but the aftermath of Bosworth Bridge had not been good for his advisors. Or at least the men he had thought would advise him justly and wisely for the good of the realm.

By the Seven, save Larys they had done nothing to prove they were the best men for these positions. Few men and women truly mourned them and if he showed a mourning expression in public, it was because he had understood too late how unsuitable the Stormlanders and many of their allies had been to govern the Seven Kingdoms.

"The first Master we must absolutely replace is the Master of Coin, your Grace," said the exiled Lord of Harrenhal Larys Strong. "We are in a perilous economic situation, despite the return of the treasury to King's Landing, and the death of Ser Tyland Lannister has left several of the wealthiest merchants and important guilds in turmoil."

It was certainly true the death of the master of Coin a fortnight ago - from an infection of the wounds he had suffered when he was tortured - had not been good for the order of the capital and the activities of its smallfolk.

"We will need to replace him with a Westerner," affirmed Daeron in a tired voice. The day had been full of petitioners and new problems no one wanted to deal with. "They have the greatest experience with gold dragons." The Targaryens had mastered the fire-breathing ones, but the Masters of Casterly Rock were in control when it came to money. Since his coronation, the young King had learned the former was not necessarily more powerful than the latter. "A Lannister would be ideal, but I would be glad to have any competent Lord Lady Johanna can spare." He waited a moment before asking his spymaster. "I suppose you have names to propose?"

"Lord Willam Stackspear and Lord Roland Westerling are the best choices, according to my agents," with his cane and his dark clothes, the last of the Strong Lords was looking like a poor and defenceless cripple, but appearances were deceiving. "They served well Lord Jason before the war and are free of their duties."

It was a manner like any other to say they had been liberated from Black jails, Daeron thought.

"Lord Westerling was far more popular and has my preference. You will show me the reports we have on them before we sent the ravens," and the small Riverlander clothed in black nodded. "The problem of the Master of Coin is closed, though we will have to find a Crownlander Knight to assume his duties the time he arrives from the Westerlands. I intend to name Lord Alan Redwyne as Master of Ships."

Lord Corlys Velaryon had been released from his titles and authorised to go back to the Black-held island of Driftmark a last time. Daeron had understood the grieving old man was tired, ill and would not see the end of winter. Better he spent his last moments with his family than making plans they didn't have the gold for.

Alan Redwyne, victorious from the Ironborn at the Shield and Iron Islands, would replace him. The Reacher High Admiral had gained thousands of admirers in the last moons by annihilating the pirates of the Red Kraken and this was always good to seize on.

"A wise choice, "commended Larys. "Who do you intend to place as Hand of the King?"

"I have not a lot of men available." Between the losses suffered during the last campaign and how dangerous a brainless Baratheon had proven for his own cause, a prudent and conciliatory Lord was necessary.

"I was thinking of Lord Marq Merryweather." The Lord of Longtable was not Borros Baratheon in military matters and it had to be a good thing, right?

"His support towards the cause of your brother has been rather...lukewarm."

A polite manner to say Lord Marq had sent one thousand soldiers to join the Hightower army when it came eastwards where he could have easily mustered three times time that number and his support in gold was small and unimportant.

"The Lords who supported eagerly my brother are dead, Lord Larys," his answer sounded more aggressive than he wanted but it was the truth. "I can't choose a bannersmen of Oldtown now or the rest of the South will revolt once winter will end. But we need a Reach Lord to convince Highgarden they are the granary and the heart of our armies."

The Westerlands had had its villages and fields burned by the Ironborn. The Stormlands had lost their entire army at Bosworth Bridge. Despite its losses, the Reach would recover faster than the two other kingdoms and his personal domains in the Crownlands – whose loyalty had to be considered dubious at the best of times. Therefore the new Hand had to be a Reacher, and it had to be one who had not given any reasons to the rest of his kingdom to hate him.

"Unless I find a better candidate than Lord Marq, he will be candidate to become the new Hand of the King." Daeron poured himself a cup of wine and drank it in one swallow. "We also need someone to replace Grandison as Master of Laws."

Lord Grandison had perished at Bosworth Bridge and while they had found his helmet near the ruined bridge, there were hundreds of corpses which could be his and between the flames and the water, nobody was able to recognise him.

"Lord Royce Caron is the best choice we have left." The Green King found himself nodding in approval. After the amount of destruction the Lord of Grandview and his troops had done, the Stormlanders he could trust with the position were few in numbers.

"Until the Citadel chooses another Grand Maester, we will keep working with Master Tyler and his assistants." The chaos unleashed by the deaths of the Citadel and the accusations a bastard had ordered the assassination had been a masterstroke...but now the students and professors were unable to do their duties.

Daeron had almost refused to believe it at first. These old fools had tried to kill the dragons but were unable to keep in order their house once the grey beards were gone? It was saying very bad things about the Maesters. It was in many ways worse for House Targaryen; it was the last dragonlords who had been neglectful enough to let these vipers come close to use their poisons and machinations.

Yes, they had fallen far. But Westeros was not completely lost to them. Dragons were alive and once summer warmed the skies and the earth again, he would try to restore the dream of the Conqueror. New dragons would be birthed at Dragonstone for his children, villages and cities would be rebuilt. The errors of the past would be learned. Dragons could not fight dragons once more, the realm would not survive it and thousands of his subjects deserved peace.

"And then there is Lord Unwin Peake." Daeron sighed as the visage of the 'Clubfoot' was part-apologetic and part-satisfied. "I may not have liked the man very much but was it necessary to eliminate him?"

"His actions were harmful to the realm, your Grace."

"Yes and trying to kill him five times in a single moon wasn't a sign you were after his head personally?"

"I serve the realm."

Absently, Daeron wondered if there was a King of Westeros who hadn't wanted to strangle his Master of Whisperers once per day.

Maybe this was the reason why Maegor and Prince Daemon had chosen women for the position. Instead of strangling them, they were venting their fury in the royal bed. Maybe he would fire Larys and hire a Braavosi courtesan in his place...though given the short lives of the aforementioned royals, his reign would be short and agitated if he acted upon it.

No, he wouldn't do this to Arianne. And Larys could be useful...although evidently not when a Peake was involved.

"When you want to kill one of my Lords, please ask me first." He ordered to the spymaster. "Now what are these rumours of a Targaryen residing at Lys?"

Lord Commander Ramsay Bolton

When it came to House words, most Northerners recognised the 'Winter is coming' of House Stark were the best. According to the old tales of the Dreadfort, Starks and Boltons had fought at the end of the Age of Heroes to know who would take the title. It was rumoured the Lord of Winterfell of this era had claimed that since he had built the Wall, the words should go to him and his descendants. The first Lord Bolton had disagreed and flayed a bannersman of the Builder. All it had achieved had been his long and dolorous execution. House Bolton had been forced to take 'our knives are sharp' for House words, and centuries after centuries this had been far from the only defeat Winterfell had given the Dreadfort.

But millennia later, Seven Kingdoms or not Seven Kingdoms, winter was still coming, burying the Gift, the trees, the rocks and the forts of the Night's Watch under a heavy cold and white mantle. Staying outside without furs and clothes covering every part of the skin was a death sentence for a man. Veteran or novice, nobody stayed long outside in a Northern winter anyway and the reason had to be excellent. With all this snow, walking was difficult and exhaustion was never far away.

Rangings, small or great, were abandoned for the entire season. The animals were rare, sleeping or having fled to more clement skies. The wildling tribes were hiding in caverns, under the snow or in certain villages they had spent most of autumn building. The openings of the tunnels were partially buried under ice and snow and work was hard to keep the ancient gates completely functional. If the rangers were to find refuge quickly as they were pursued by someone or something, by the time the builders and the stewards opened the gates everyone would be long dead.

Guarding the Wall was a nightmare too. Ramsay was sure that there was some Lord or Knight in the South at this very moment telling his friends the black brothers feared climbing the very edifice they defended.

It was true. The snow, the cold weather and the ice made everything incredibly dangerous for the Night's Watch, beginning with the very earth and ending with the Wall. The cage which should have allowed them to come up and down was inside the fort, as were the chains, the ropes the wood parts and every important piece of their lifter. When the blizzards were too cold, the ice destroyed the metal faster than you could say it in High Valyrian.

As for the stairs, it was better not to think about it. Five men had died trying to reach the top when autumn had come and now they were a deadly trap in all but name. Under this climate, the steps had become too irregular, too slippery and there was nothing to find anew your equilibrium once you had lost it. When you were hundred or two hundred feet above the ground, it was a small problem...no one had ever survived a fall that high.

Winter was a deadly period but the moons where they were buried under the snow were also supposed to be calm. Wildlings were hibernating like the animals they were supposed to be copulating with. Ships came once or twice per moon, bringing with them supplies and small numbers of recruits, but far less than in spring or summer.

Discarding the snow a new gust of wind had sent on his black clothes, the Lord Commander walked the last steps towards the refuge he intended to visit and knocked three times powerfully in order for Maester Hollis to hear him.

"Open for the Lord Commander! The word of the day is apple!" Days ago, these measures would not have been necessary. But then days ago he had not been forced to kill five black brothers because they had tried to imitate his voice and storm their way in.

After a wait which seemed to last too many turn of hourglasses for his fingers and every apart of his body, the great door half-opened and he rushed into the gap. A heartbeat later, Hollis closed brutally again, trying to preserve as much warmth in the space as it was possible.

It didn't feel terribly necessary, of course. After the terrible cold he had endured outside, the place he had just entered was like the antechamber before a great pyre. Layer by layer, he got rid of his furs, his cloak and the different pieces of cloth he used to keep himself warm.

"How fares our estimated visitor today, Hollis?" He asked to the senior and most experienced maester of Castle Black.

It didn't mean a lot, since Hollis looked his age and he was barely thirty name days old. But when the old Maester Deremond had died from a fever a year ago, someone at Oldtown must have believed Hollis career was best served on the Wall. With his continuously dishevelled brown hairs and beard, the Reacher had a visage which didn't incite trust and confidence in himself or those surrounding him.

"Our visitor is getting better, despite all the Night's Watch efforts to feel her unwelcome," replied the man of the Citadel rudely. Ramsay Bolton let it pass, one because shouting at the man for not respecting his authority had proved pointless and two because he had no maester to replace him here.

"She is a woman. Women are not serving in the Watch and for good reasons."

Maybe in ancient times it had been different. Before the Conqueror decided to unite Westeros and put an end to the long quarrels between the different kingdoms, the Night's Watch had been an old and respected order. They had had their periods of defeat and doubt certainly, but they had been ten thousand strong and with a thousand Knights to lead the charges and provide leadership when the arrows started to fly.

But the Conquest had been the death of the Night's Watch. The South had before the last decade forgotten the northern frontier, happy to bathe in their decadence and stop thinking about the Wall and the men protecting it. Now there were barely two thousand and five hundred men wearing the black...between the young, the elders and the ill, he could count on two thousand swords if he had to defend the Wall.

But this admission didn't seem to satisfy the young maester at all.

"Your men are rapists, Commander." The contempt when Hollis uttered the last word was venomous. "Their heads should be put on pikes and placed at the top of the Wall!"

"Don't you think I know it?" Ramsay replied bitterly. "I know the black brothers are unreliable! I know I can't trust them!" There were about four hundred men he could rely on to obey his orders from Eastwatch to Shadow Tower; all were men-at-arms and sworn swords from Winterfell, the Dreadfort, Karhold and White Harbor. This was four hundred out of two thousand and some. "But until south of the Neck the Lords decided to send true warriors instead of the prisoners, rapists, murderers and green boys, the Night's Watch will continue on this path."

The visage of Hollis tensed but the Lord Commander didn't care. The Reach was the most populated of the Seven Kingdoms, it should and could have sent hundreds of proper recruits if they wanted. They had the treasure and the population. But they ignored him, preferring to send one or two old and young maesters, the outlaws they captured poaching or killing and the few veteran soldiers who caused them too many problems.

The brother of the Lord of the Dreadfort finished to remove his winter clothes and turned around, before walking at a slow pace in direction of the warmth. This room had been built with width in mind, at a time where they were a lot of Knights, their squires and their friends to accommodate.

It was a good thing because the brown dragon revealing itself to his sight was not exactly small.

"Young Nettles and her daughter are doing fine, my Lord." Said Hollis as he watched a young woman hold a baby in her arms, coiled between the claws of Sheepstealer. "The birth was far better than I'd hoped for and both baby and mother are eating well."

"Good, because a raven from our new Queen has arrived." True, they were a king and a Queen now, but in Ramsay's mind there was only one sovereign worth recognising these days. Yes, they were supposed to take no sides but when one crown told you they had found some bored Braavosi, new recruits and new supplies for the Watch and the other didn't deign answering your messages, the choice wasn't that difficult. "She, the baby and the dragon are expected at Winterfell the moment they are able to evade the blizzards."

"It will be too dangerous," protested the Maester.

"We may have not the choice," and there was no trace of joke in his voice. "This dragon is eating our reserves of meat at a prodigious rapidity. Winterfell and the northern castles have promised to send us more supplies as compensation but Sheepstealer is eating too much. And the black brothers are getting angrier a newly arrived woman is getting everything she wants while they're enduring the food of the worst cook of the Seven Kingdoms."

In fact the food was just one pretext amongst many. Between her dragon, her rather comely looks – which had attracted a Prince no less if the rumours were to be believed – and the fact the she-dragonrider had angered the cannibal tribes by annihilating one of their clans in dragonfire, the less intelligent men he was forced to call 'brothers' were whispering things which were quite concerning. The further 'Princess' Nettles flew away from the Night's Watch, the better it would be for anyone. Ramsay feared a mutiny was a very frightening and likely outcome if the young woman stayed here for the next moons. With nothing to keep their minds alert and their hands out of trouble, men could think of very ugly things to do.

"What is the name of the baby by the way?"

"Daena," replied the man who helped the young mother during the childbirth in a thoughtful voice. "Will the last name be Waters or Targaryen?"