The night over the Neck was a filled with rotting smell of decaying animals, woods and clogged marsh-water. Damp-cold winds, sharp as a knife flew across Moat Cailin. Victarion Greyjoy lay slouched inside a makeshift solar, made from pieces found in the ruins of castle and from items they got by sacking nearby villages. His table nothing but a dented shield of wood and on top of it lay goblet of Arbor red. Victarion had been drinking since the morning with nothing else to do but holding the ruined castle making sure Robb Stark and his band of savages stay out of North.
Then suddenly a scream came, for once he thought it was his mind playing games seeing how deep he was wine, but the horror in that voice was enough to cut through the dulling comfort the wine had on him. Victarion's hand freeze in middle of sipping, the scream he had heard increasing anxiety and fear in his veins. His cup slips down, rolling on the stone floor with a dull, echoing in the empty castle.
A second cry follows few moments later now heard much clearly and sharply as if dropping from the sky itself. "Jon no! Please no brother! I am your sister, please forgive me!"
Victarion surges to his feet, the chair falling in recoil with a heavy crash. He moves out of the solar almost wrenching the door from their hinges. His closest aide, Horgan the Helm-Split among them clustering outside his room with spears and hammer in arms, their faces looking sickly pale in the dull torchlight.
"Did you hear that too, my lord?" Horgan's voice was edged, his lips trembling behind his red salt-filled beard. Before Victarion could counter with an answer, the scream tore through the silent and moonless night for third time, full of overwhelming horror. The men flinched as one, as if struck by a whip all at once. Seeing reaction of his men, Victarion's fear filled with unfamiliar dread instantly curls into rage.
"What are you waiting for you fools?" he roars. His breath coming misted in the cold air. "Climb the tower, find which kraken-spawned bastard plays tricks with my ears!" Heeding their lord's command many surged toward the stairs of few still standing towers, their boots scraping stone softly. At the top, clinging to the broken ramparts, they peered up into the moonless black sky.
What they saw made their knees buckle up. A huge shape flew over them, a living horror. It had the colour of blood while the fire that glowed in its eyes was shining as if golden moon itself. "M-my lord…" the reaver nearest the parapet whimpers, his voice cracking. "Gods… may the Drowned Gods save us…"
Victarion opened his mouth to question his words but by then the sky itself was ripped apart as flames descended on the parapet drowning the men red fire. It struck the courtyard like a hammer falling on heated sword. Men began burning in the blaze, shrieking until they simply became ash. The old stones of Moat Cailin melting in the heat as flesh of many began sticking to it.
Above, Aemon Targaryen sat upon Meleys, tucked between the bone-spikes emerging along her spine. Shiera clung behind him, her cloak snapping wildly in the dragon's generated wind. Aemon raises his voice amongst the screaming of wind and dying men.
"Dracarys, Meleys. We will leave none alive." Hearing his rider's word, Meleys turns opposite from her place, her vast wings beating loudly in the air as she released a second breath in a sweeping arc of fire that devoured towers, pits, palisades anything that didn't burn in her first breath or seemed to offer sanctuary to enemies of her bonded.
Victarion soon called for surviving men inside the hall, hidden in the rubble of fallen stones of the ruined castle. Five hundred reavers he had brought and now less than half of original remain standing, many luckily burned to cinders directly for few died screaming as their flesh got stuck in molten rock, the stench of those cooked man so thick that it made Victarion and many gag, despite the wind.
"North!" he screams at the survivors remaining. "Go check the northern escape route!" His men sprinted in that direction, hoping for a chance to find the escape path. Victarion, meanwhile runs to the southern edge, his mind wishing for salvation. But there, through the smoke, stood the men of marsh, crannogmen. The light of hundred of torches, shining like a lighthouse in the smoke, revealing men in leather armour and spear glinting in poison wrapped on them.
Victarion's heart sinks seeing the view in front of him however soon a man comes running gasping for breath from behind him, his face smeared with ash. "My lord, the north road is blocked. Men of House Dustin had surrounded us from the north."
Victarion swallows, a knot of despair tightening in his throat. "That kraken-spawned fool," he mutters, his voice low and unsteady. "Theon Greyjoy has doomed us all." He scans the handful left, no more than two hundred men, their face turned ashen from fear.
"A bow," Victarion snarls, his desperation to live turning him mad. "Bring me my bow. I will kill that beast myself from the tower." The men stare at him first confused then horrified, as if he had finally gone mad.
His aide steps forward, bow in hand but instead of offering it, he lifts the oak wood bow high. "My lord… forgive me." He brings the wood down with enough strength that Victarion falls down. Seeing Victarion now crumpled, the aide look at others and starts with tremor in voice. "We surrender. Now."
Not one man argued to that.
It was only after every stone was burnt that Aemon Targaryen brought Meleys down into the Northern direction of Moat Cailin. Her wings churned mud and low reeds, as she settled her colossal weight ahead of the Northern ranks present.
Ser Beron of House Dustin walks forward, his helm tucked under his arm, as he kneels on one knee, his armour dull with sword marks, "Your Grace."
Aemon turns his gaze from the still burning castle of Moat, "Rise, Ser Beron."
Beron rise and starts. "We hunted the scattered reavers from our battle at the gates of Barrowton, as you commanded, Your grace. We slew many of them but few hid in the castle here. We were waiting for reinforcements to root them out."
"You did well," Aemon speaks quietly. "Now we wait for them to come willingly." After few moments of silence the, Ironborns stumbled from the ruin, hands raised high in defeat with no weapon visible on the body. One of them shoving a figure with blood-matted all over his head, ahead of all of them. His beard was half-singed, no armour on his body, yet a hatred burned in his eye.
"We surrender, your Grace!" the man second in line cries loud. "This is our lord, Victarion Greyjoy, who led us to seize the North!"
Aemon looks at the survivors, then at Victarion and whispers a single word: "Meleys."
The dragon's massive head rises from behind him, shadowing the survivors. The soft sound rolling out from her heart, making all captured men tremble.
Aemon steps forward and resting his hand upon Meleys' warm scales. "Last words."
Victarion opens his mouth, his face turning ugly ready to utter a final curse but Meleys struck before any sound could escape his throat. Her jaws clamped around his upper body with a wet horrifying crunch of ribs and breastbone. She tears him in half by the waist, his lower half falling in the mud, twitching and spilling red blood into the reeds.
A profound silence followed that was broken by Aemon, as he offered them a choice, "The Black or death, choose." They decided quickly with every single one of them choosing the blacks.
Aemon turns to Beron as the knight begins to walk him towards the Dustin camp, speaking of lives lost in villages pillaged by reavers and loss of property in holdfasts made as checkpoints by the shores. When they the camp however, Lord Howland Reed waited for them outside.
Seeing the first glance of the king, Howland kneels, the mud sticking at his knees. "Your Grace."
Aemon motions them inside and begins, "Ser Beron, you will take these men to the Night's Watch. Pass through Winterfell. Their Lady Dustin and Lord Manderly will be waiting for you where you will inform them of Ironborn's demise from the North."
Ser Beron bows low in agreement. "At once, Your Grace."
Aemon then turns to Howland Reed. "Lord Reed, you will send a raven from Greywater Watch to Dragonstone, informing Lord Velaryon to begin mining dragonglass and turning them into daggers, spear-ends, arrowpoints."
Howland nods, and opens his mouth to ask something but then hesitates, his eyes looking troubled which Aemon notices, "You can ask me anything you wish, Lord Reed"
"Your Grace… I saw Sansa Stark in your custody earlier." His voice coming as statement and not a question. "Do you wish Lord Stark to surrender… for the price of her safety."
Aemon's face so often a calm and unreadable most time, turns into anger, something not seen by many. Anger flickers on his face but then vanishes, few moments later. "What," he askes softly, "do you think is the most horrendous crime a man or woman can commit, Lord Reed?"
Howland blinks, first unsettled by the shift in his king face and then the question but before he could answer, Aemon continues, leaning closer to them and his voice dropping to a whisper. "In a moon's time, Lord Commander Mormont, Lord Manderly, Lady Dustin, even your daughter, Lady Reed will pass these roads to Harrenhal. Ask them what Sansa Stark did, ask all of them. Then ride with them their destination." His voice almost like a hiss by the end. "I will see you there."
Outside, Shiera waited by Meleys towering size. A figure bound tight with thick rope by her side. Sansa Stark sobbed uncontrollably, shaking in fear, her cheeks streaked with tears and soot. Her eyes begged and pleaded in a miserable frightening situation.
Aemon approaches to the side of the terrified girl. "Tie her to Meleys legs again, as before." he speaks quietly to Shiera. "I will make an example of her for the whole of Westeros to see, giving her the cruelest death possible." Shiera nods, her expression grim as she takes Sansa by the arms and walks to Meleys legs.
Aemon looks up at his dragon, at the most beautiful creature he has ever seen turns her own gaze to him "Maester Aemon was right, dragons are not born for sowing seeds."