283 AD
Darry Castle, Riverlands.
"Tomorrow... Tomorrow... A fateful event will occur. Something that has long been leading up to. For many years, injustice, greed, and death have flourished in the glorious lands of the Seven Kingdoms. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer under the oppression of fools who, like magpies in the slums, strive to collect ever more shiny metal." The speech, quiet and yet loud, simple and yet poignant, at once truthful and yet utterly false, filled the small Great Hall of Darry Castle, crammed with the high society of Westeros, all ears and not missing a single word. "But tomorrow, everything will change.
Tomorrow, the ungrateful deer will perish, the rotting trout will drown, the bald falcons will fall, having forgotten how three hundred years ago my noble ancestor gave them all they had!" Tomorrow, I, the Prince of Dragons, will lead you, my friends, my comrades, into a great battle. Yes, the enemy outnumbers us, yes, their soldiers are more experienced than ours, but remember who you are! You are lords and knights who have remained loyal to the king despite all losses and hardships!
Men whose honor, strong as Valyrian steel, and whose justice, as high as the Moon Peaks, cannot be broken! Tomorrow we will fight our enemies and prove that the boiling blood of true warriors flows within us! Each of you will kill a dozen enemies and survive, leaving behind an unrivaled legend! One that will be remembered for centuries! Fire and Blood!
"Fire and Blood!" The roar that rose from the hall deafened the entire castle, even reaching the field camp, where it was picked up and carried for many miles, flying over the Green Fork and colliding with an answering cry.
The man who spoke it, a handsome man with silver hair and purple eyes, dressed in heavy, closed armor with a dragon engraved with rubies on his black breastplate, only smiled contentedly, satisfied with the effect he had spoken.
"You won't be smiling much longer, Rhaegar," I thought maliciously, grinning as I followed Prince Leven, in whose retinue I had been for the past week.
A month ago, heir to the Iron Throne, the Silver Prince and the prime mover behind the greatest rebellion since Daemon Blackfyre, Rhaegar Targaryen, returned to King's Landing.
The effect was comparable to pouring water into boiling oil.
First, there was a loud scandal between father and son behind closed doors, which resulted in Rhaegar being appointed commander-in-chief, while the king himself locked himself in his castle and began to deal with matters known only to Varys.
The second event was a gathering of all the remaining lords loyal to the crown in King's Landing. The official reason was a discussion of strategy for the coming war, but it began with a question from Lord Brune, head of a small house from the Shattered Claw, whose denizens had always been renowned for their insolence (and poverty). Stripped of all politeness and phrasing, Luther Brune, to whose chamber a casket worth a handsome sum had been delivered the day before, asked, "Your Highness, why in R'hllor are you, a married man, going off with the daughter of a great house betrothed to the head of another great house? And why the hell should we risk our lives and spill our blood over this?"
The only thing that saved him from being booed, cursed, and challenged to a duel by the prince's most loyal supporters was the fact that this question was on the minds of every lord and knight present.
As angry as I was with Rhaegar, one thing he had going for him was immense charisma and excellent oratorical skills. In response to a tricky question, he delivered an entire mini-speech, the gist of which boiled down to, "I'll explain everything when we crush the rebellion and Lady Stark arrives in King's Landing," framing the whole thing in such a way that anyone who brought up the subject again would be a pariah to everyone present.
The rest of the meeting proceeded more or less as usual - the question of how to deal with Prince Leven's eight thousand Dornishmen, Randyll Tarly's five Reachmen, whom Mace Tyrell had sent there to be on the safe side, and the remaining twenty-five thousand crowned and rivermen at the Targaryens' disposal to defeat the army gathering on the northern bank of the Trident.
The rebel forces, according to information obtained by the Spider's birds, consisted of eighteen thousand under Jon Arryn, who left the rest of his army in the Vale to hold back the highlanders and other "unreliable" vassals; fifteen under Eddard Stark, who became the new Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North; twelve under Hoster Tully, who had finally married his daughters to the great lords of the north and east and whose lands had lost the most in this war; and finally, the remaining ten thousand under Robert Baratheon, who had lost the most soldiers of all in the entire war. But it was important to understand that the Stag's Men were now the strongest and most seasoned warriors in all the Seven Kingdoms, and they could not be written off.
A total of thirty-eight thousand, of which only three and a half were heavy cavalry, versus fifty-five thousand, with their seven thousand knights. The loyalists were losing in everything—quality, quantity, morale… And everyone understood it.
Of course, there were proposals to request reinforcements from the Warden of the South, who was besieging Storm's End with his forty-thousand-strong army, but in response, Rhaegar produced a letter in Mace's handwriting, along with his mother's words, stating that besieging the Baratheon stronghold with a smaller army was pointless, and that the rest of the army had retreated to their native Reach to drive out the remaining deserters and guard the coast from the resurgent ironborn. In short, the Targaryens were very gently and convincingly sent packing.
They were planning to pull the same trick on Dorne, but Doran already had a prepared answer: the Yronwoods. According to the letter I personally delivered to Rhaegar, the Martell army was currently holding the Ironwood lords from defecting to the rebels and was unable to leave their home. But knowing whose ships had brought the Dornish corps to King's Landing, and the long-standing counterweight in the form of the former lords of the Stone Way, the Fowlers, it immediately became clear that Doran, like the Queen of Thorns, had simply abandoned the former Valyrians.
The worst of all was the dialogue with the Westerlands. Tywin Lannister had holed himself up in Casterly Rock, quietly gathering troops, not responding to a single letter sent by Rhaegar or his father. And this alarmed our commander-in-chief more than Dorne and the Reach combined. Rhaegar was no Aerys and understood perfectly well what a dangerous man the Great Lion was, whom his father, in his foolishness, had been turning against the royal dynasty for almost ten years.
So the only way for the loyalists to achieve victory was to use the right tactics and strategy and neutralize the rebels' numerical advantage.
There was only one chance—the ford near Darry Castle. It was the most convenient and widest point on the Trident, where the rebel army would soon pass, retreating to the northern bank and joining up with the last reinforcements from the North and the Vale. It was there that the threat from Baratheon's numerous knightly cavalry was almost completely neutralized—heavy knightly horses simply cannot gallop on the muddy riverbed—and the enemy's numbers, which would prevent them from exploiting their superior numbers to the fullest.
After the meeting, a third event occurred. A meeting between Elia and Rhaegar, forced by me as Doran's official envoy, and Prince Lieven, who, while the epitome of a loyal royal guardsman (except for the moment with his mistress), still remembered his family and was very displeased with his liege lord's behavior.
The meeting couldn't have gone worse. Rhaegar simply ignored Elia, treating her like a strange courtier rather than his legal wife. It was clear that if Leven and I hadn't been there, he would have quickly left, completely forgetting about the Dornish princess.
As a result, when the couple's "date" ended, I, under the pretext of delivering personal family letters, had to stay with the poor girl, who simply burst into tears and cried on my shoulder for a long time.
All of this was reflected in the constant reports sent to Doran, and returned in the form of orders and clarifications sent by ravens. However great a schemer and manipulator I may consider myself in this war, my best effort is to correctly direct the thoughts of those at the top toward the most favorable outcome for me.
"You'll remember the devil," I thought, seeing the hunched figure of the castle maester at the exit of the Great Hall, whose chain, due to his stoop, almost reached the floor.
"A letter from Sunspear for you, Lord Temper," the bastard said, handing me a letter with a FRESH wax seal, which still emanated the faint scent of hot wax and the warmth typical of newly applied rivets. Rest assured, Lord Darry and Rhaegar, who has long since taken advantage of the maesters' well-known habit of reading other people's letters, will know the contents of the letter today.
"So we allowed you to do this," I thought sullenly, unfolding the letter and, having skipped most of the text, which carried the simple idea of "do everything possible for the victory of the Targaryens," I looked at the last line.
"In conclusion, I want to thank you for the book recommendation. Archmaester Piemon's 'Doom of Valyria' proved to be a very interesting read."
That's it. Doran has made his decision. He'll take the harshest possible approach to the dragons. So tomorrow I'll have to cross the river secretly.
*
283 A.D. (One Day Later)
Loyalist camp, near the unnamed ford near Darry, Riverlands.
"Is everyone ready?" I asked quietly, looking around at the assembled group.
"Everything, my lord," Torhen answered for everyone, dressed, like everyone else present, in dark hunter's clothing, which served as camouflage in the nighttime coniferous forests.
"We're moving." The excitement and nervousness that was trembling through me made my words clipped and cold, fitting the current atmosphere.
Ten dark figures emerged from a tent on the edge of the camp, passing the Dornishmen who had been warned in advance, and quickly disappeared into the forest without attracting any undue attention.
Alongside me walked Torhen, one of my most trusted men, who had followed me since Bear Island; a guide from the local hunters, who knew the local swamps like the back of his hand; and seven guards, recruited from the best warriors of the Martell Guard. Their role was simple: having learned that the decisive battle of the entire rebellion would take place tomorrow, the area was flooded with dozens, if not hundreds, of marauders and bandits hoping to find work as scavengers on the battlefield. And these people would not hesitate to slaughter lone travelers traversing the dark forest.
The Riverlands are so named not only because of the vast number of large rivers that flow through them. They are also known for the vast abundance of rare river fish, revered as a delicacy throughout Westros, and the incredible humidity that persists both summer and winter, making the local pine forests the epitome of "the most vile and disgusting places where a normal person wouldn't venture at night."
I learned this firsthand when I emerged onto the banks of the Trident so wet and dirty I felt like I'd been in the forest for days, not just twenty minutes. Fishermen were already waiting for us on the bank, and for a few silver coins, they agreed to secretly transport us to the camp on the opposite side of the river.
Nodding to the nearest fisherman and settling into one of the small boats, barely big enough for two people, I braced myself for a long wait. My destination was to the northeast, almost two leagues away, and the sail would take almost an hour.
While my retinue, taking advantage of the cloudy night, quietly rocked unnoticed on the waves of the Trident, I was in a state of slight melancholy.
This world and the events unfolding within it have surely changed profoundly because of me. The founding of Osgiliath, my meeting and friendship with Oberyn, my journey through Essos, my encounter with Drogo... these are just the first events that come to mind, and how many there actually were, only the gods know. The butterfly effect in all its glory. But one way or another, history changes, slowly and inexorably. And now, because of me, it will somersault, completely changing its course.
In that letter, the title of the book, according to pre-agreed signals, could only mean one thing: Doran had decided to betray the Targaryens.
I don't know whether it was under the pressure of my words or the independent decision of Grandlord Dorne, a venomous snake whose thoughts were often a mystery to me, but the decision had been made. Tomorrow, as soon as the battle begins, the eight thousand swords stationed on the right flank of the dragon army will defect to the rebels, and Robin, to whom my message will arrive tomorrow evening, will prepare to kidnap the princess.
Now my role was simple - to meet with the main rebels and negotiate "preferences" for Dorn in exchange for assistance in achieving a future victory and saving the lives of Elia and her children.
"I hope Bolton keeps his end of the bargain," I thought, remembering the young northern lord with the colorless eyes and cruel temperament, who had already amassed a small fortune from his dealings with me. "Otherwise, everything will go down the drain. Including my life."
*
PO V Eddard Stark
283 AD
Main Tent, Rebel Camp, Riverlands.
The Old Gods had a strange and sometimes wicked sense of humor, and I, Eddard Stark, was one of the most striking examples of these jokes.
The second son of an ancient family of Wardens of the North, younger brother of the future Lord Stark, son of the Old Wolf, I was groomed from childhood to take my place as advisor, aide, and warrior to my elder brother. Sent to the Vale for twelve years to be raised by Lord Jon Arryn, I spent most of my life amidst the endless sky, pierced by the Eyrie. Over time, I even came to regard the old falcon, Lord Jon, a wise and very friendly old man, as my father, and the irrepressible and loud-mouthed Robert as my brother, constantly dragging us into various adventures from which we didn't always emerge unscathed.
Life was wonderful and I didn't want to change anything. But everything changed.
First came that simultaneously ill-fated and wonderful Tourney of Harrenhal. It was there that I was fortunate to meet her—the embodiment of beauty, a goddess descended from the heavens, the most beautiful angel anyone could have ever seen. I fell in love with her at first sight. And the most astonishing thing was, the feelings were mutual. I don't know what she saw in me, the second son of an ancient but not particularly wealthy family, but that night and the memories of it will forever remain the most precious treasure, kept in the deepest recesses of my soul.
But, unfortunately, that's where this nightmare began. Like all the Starks, I was furious to the point of gnashing my teeth at the bastard dragon's behavior toward Lyanna, whom he insulted with his advances in the presence of her fiancé. But later, after drinking a few jugs of wine with Robert and calming down, I completely forgot about the incident, casting it from my memory, thinking of the Targaryen family's famous outrageousness.
This turned out to be the biggest mistake I made in my entire life.
The death of his father and Brandon... being declared a rebel... the outbreak of war... a near-death experience in the frigid waters of the Maw, saved only by Ilana, the kind fisherman's daughter... being captured by his sisters... gathering troops... being appointed the new Warden of the North... marrying his older brother's ex-fiancée... All of this merged into a kaleidoscope of events that one would want to brush aside and forget, like the worst nightmare. But, as mentioned earlier, the Old Gods have a very strange and sometimes cruel sense of humor.
And now, looking at the man who entered the main tent, I wondered whether this was for good or bad.
"Well then, Lord Temper," said John, sitting in a deep wicker chair placed close to the hearth, his thick brows, long since whitened by age, furrowed. He was, after all, the oldest living Grandlord. "Tell us, then, what is Prince Lieven's second-in-command and one of Prince Doran's confidants doing here?"
Although Robert is called the head of the rebellion, the leader and our pillar, back in Riverrun, after the marriage between me and Catelyn and Jon and Lysa, an agreement was made - we left all the politics and negotiations to Lords Hoster and Jon, in exchange for giving Robert and me complete freedom on the battlefield.
And now Jon was the only one who could conduct a dialogue with the unexpected messenger from Dorne, because the head of the Riverlands had still not recovered from the wound inflicted by the hellish griffin Connington, and my friend and I were forced to sit quietly in our seats and entrust all this southern verbal lace to our teacher.
"I bear a secret message from Prince Doran and the right to speak on his behalf during negotiations," said a tall man dressed in dirty, wet hunting clothes, making it difficult to recognize him as one of the richest men in the Seven Kingdoms.
"Otherwise, Ruse wouldn't have taken such a risk, secretly negotiating with him and organizing this meeting," I thought, frowning involuntarily, remembering my wayward, irreplaceable vassal. "Alas, but nothing can be done about him now..."
Two days ago, when Bolton, after a meeting attended by only myself, Robert, and Jon, along with a few close associates, revealed that he'd been corresponding with a Dornish lord since the very beginning of the rebellion, who'd requested a secret meeting, some stormtroopers and rivermen immediately began shouting treason. But when the descendant of the Red Kings gave them his famous icy stare and produced all the letters, which contained no hint of treason (though it seemed to me that many of the southerners were more interested in the number of golden dragons Temper and Bolton had earned from their collaboration), most immediately shut up. Jon also told me later that if Bolton had decided to betray us, it would have been disastrous—four thousand Boltons and three thousand Dustins and Ryswells, loyal allies of Roose, could have struck our army in the back at any moment. And then there were the Freys...
So, despite the distrust of the majority and Robert's personal dissatisfaction, the meeting had to be organized.
All these thoughts flashed through my head while John carefully studied the letter given to him, having first opened the seal with the Martell coat of arms - a spear piercing the sun.
"It says here that you, Lord Temper, have the right to negotiate on behalf of all of Dorne and make your own decisions," he said thoughtfully, looking at the night visitor with his usual searching squint. "Quite a privilege."
"That is true, Lord Arryn," he replied.
— And what proposal do you want to convey to us, since you spent so much effort organizing this meeting?
The next words plunged me and everyone present into mild shock; even John raised his eyebrows in surprise.
— The Dornish army and Dorne itself are ready to side with the alliance of the Stormlands and Riverlands, the North and the Vale, by attacking the Targaryens' flank tomorrow during the battle.
The ensuing din probably disturbed all the guards outside. Whatever one may say, the offer was truly royal—to gain eight thousand soldiers at the start of a battle and deprive the enemy of them was no small matter. Although we had a significant numerical advantage, the fact that strategically we were losing was undeniable. Storming the opposite bank of the ford, where we couldn't fully deploy cavalry, and where the dragons had the commanding heights, was a bloody and dangerous undertaking. And that old sly Frey, standing a day's march away, could stab us in the back with his four thousand.
So the Dornishmen's proposal was very timely and made our victory almost certain.
"Quiet!" John's loud bark, the same one he'd used to stop my fights with Robert as a child, immediately brought silence. Everyone returned their attention to the two of them—the old falcon, tense in his chair, and the grimy desert messenger. "Your offer, Lord Temper, is most unexpected and, I must admit, tempting. But I've been around for a while and am well aware of Prince Doran's identity. What are your terms?"
"Dorne has only three conditions for a new royal dynasty of the Seven Kingdoms," said the green-eyed Dornishman, who at that moment reminded me of a very cunning and dangerous creature with bright green eyes. A snake. "They consist of maintaining the privileges gained under the Madman, non-interference in Dorne's internal affairs..." While the first demand didn't cause much stir, since most lords didn't know what freedoms he had granted to the southernmost kingdom (and I found out by chance from that sorceress at the Harrenhal tournament), the second... "...and the pardon and exile to Sunspear of Princess Elia of Dorne and her children, Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys."
— Crunch…
Only a deaf person would not have heard the crunch of the armrests of the chair where Robert was sitting.
"This will not happen!" he roared, leaping up from his seat, startling the knights standing nearby and making them reach for the weapons hanging at their sides. "All those Targaryen bastards must die! I will personally crush that son of a bitch's head for everything he did to Lyanna! And his children will suffer the same fate!"
"Robert!" I shouted in shock, rising from my chair and placing my hand on my enraged comrade's shoulder. "They're children! Innocent children! They can't be judged for the sins of their father."
"Ned! How can you! It was your sister that that bastard kidnapped! And only the Seven know what he did to her!" His fists were clenched until the knuckles were white, and his face was distorted in a grimace of rage and grief. "Whatever you say, he loved my sister, and he probably would have stopped his womanizing after the wedding."
"But the children and their mother are innocent," I said, turning him to face me and squeezing his shoulders, looking into his lightning-sparkling blue eyes. A family trait of the fierce Baratheons, inherited from the Durranons. "You yourself saw that silver bastard's wife when he handed Lyanna the bouquet. She was no less shocked and grief-stricken than you are now. Understand, children are born innocent, and their first sins are committed by their parents. You can't blame a newborn boy and a two-year-old girl for their madman of a father."
For the rest of the meeting, where John and the night ambassador discussed the finer details of the agreement, I plied Robert with light, watered-down wine and tried to direct his anger toward the battle that would take place tomorrow.
Later, when Baratheon came to his senses and went to bed, taking three half-naked girls into his tent at once (Tsk-tsk), Jon told me about the results of the negotiations.
The Martells retained all the privileges they had acquired throughout the dragons' reign. They even added one: as long as Robert Baratheon sat on the Iron Throne, the crown would not be able to interfere in Dorne's personal affairs.
Princess Elia and Rhaenys would go to Sunspear, where they would live under the name Martell. However, they were not considered a threat in terms of personalities—Elia, the last princess of the deposed dynasty, would be stripped of all political power, and Rhaenys, being a girl, would not be able to claim the Iron Throne according to the law and the tenets of the Seven. The same applied to their descendants.
Things weren't so simple with Aegon. The boy could be used in the future to sow discord in the land or organize a remnant of the Blackfyre Rebellion. It was decided that upon reaching the age of eight, he would go to the Citadel, where he would train as a maester, and later, having completed his chain, go to the Wall to succeed his ancestor, Aemon Targaryen, brother of Aegon the Unlikely.
When I found out WHO was sitting in the Maester's place in the Night's Watch, I was so shocked I almost missed Jon's last words as he went to bed.
"The only concession Temper could wring from me was the right of the little Targaryen to visit Sunspear once a year and see his mother. Who am I to refuse such a small request?" Arren's old eyes flashed with an old pain and sadness that only someone who knew him well could see.
"John is a very unhappy man," I thought as I headed to my tent and prepared for bed. "To lose two beloved wives and eight children... I hope Lisa can give him happiness."
So, reflecting on the themes of fate and my future life after our victory, I quietly fell asleep, internally preparing myself for tomorrow's battle.
This battle will decide everything.