Oldtown heard the tale before King's Landing understood it.
Ships carried grief faster than ravens when ravens had stopped flying from the mountain edge of the Vale. A sailor from Gulltown spoke first in a dockside tavern, saying Lord Arryn had gone into the mountains with more men than a man could count and that none had come down again. By evening, the number had grown teeth. By morning, every sept bell in the city seemed to know that castles had burned, lordly lines had ended, and the clans had come down from the heights like a punishment without a name.
The septons did not need the truth to be whole.
They had enough.
They spoke of Redfort, of Strongsong, of Wickendon, of Heart's Home, of Nine Stars and all the lesser places whose names sounded smaller until men imagined them empty. They spoke of noble children slain in their beds, of septs darkened, of mothers begging beneath broken banners, of the faithful being abandoned to monsters who knew neither law nor gods. Some of it was true. Some of it was not. None of it mattered once the people began to weep.
In the Starry Sept, a thin-voiced septon climbed the steps with hands shaking from fury and age.
"The Father saw judgment denied," he cried, "and the Mother saw children butchered. The Warrior does not sleep while the faithful bleed. Shall we pray only? Shall we ring bells and bury names while beasts in the mountains laugh at the Seven?"
The crowd answered him with a sound that was almost prayer and almost hunger.
Other septons took up the same cry. In market squares and guild halls, at the doors of motherhouses and under the long shadow of the Hightower, men began to speak of cleansing steel. They did not yet call it a holy war in every mouth, but the shape of the thing was plain enough. Knights came to kneel before altars with hands on sword-hilts. Young sons who had never seen the Vale swore they would climb for dead falcons. Mothers tied little strips of cloth around the wrists of boys too eager to die far from home.
Oldtown had been wounded by the Dance.
It had not forgotten how to sound righteous.
The Hightowers watched the city stir and did not move too quickly. Their house had lost more than pride in the years of dragon war, and power once spent was not easily gathered again. Yet Oldtown still held the High Septon, the Citadel, and the tallest tower in Westeros. A weakened lord could still possess a strong bell, and bells had a way of making men believe numbers had already gathered behind them.
In the Citadel, ravens came and went until the rookery smelled of ink, wax and worry.
The maesters copied what little was known and underlined what was not. No man had seen Joffrey Arryn die. No man had returned from his host. No survivor had named a commander among the clans. No reliable hand could say how so many castles had been struck so closely together. One archmaester wrote in the margin of a report from Gulltown that the barbarity was less remarkable than the timing.
A slaughter could be rage.
A sequence was thought.
Highgarden received the news with bowed heads and open ledgers.
Lord Lyonel Tyrell listened while a septon sent from Oldtown demanded public vows for the dead of the Vale. He promised prayers, candles, and letters of mourning. He promised that the Reach would not ignore the suffering of faithful houses. Then, when the septon had gone, his steward placed a different parchment on the table, one marked not with names of the dead but with numbers of carts, horses, grain sacks, masons, carpenters, river tolls and expected profit.
"The Riverlands will lose trade if the Vale roads remain broken," the steward said. "Gulltown will need grain by sea. Rebuilding will require timber, lime, nails, stonecutters, septons, guards, and loans. If the crown restrains Oldtown's fury, Highgarden can make itself useful."
"Useful," Lyonel repeated.
"It is the kindest word for profitable, my lord."
Lyonel looked toward the window, where the Reach lay green and fat beneath a sky untouched by mountain smoke. He was young enough to be troubled by the stories and wise enough to know his house had not grown great by bleeding every time a septon shouted. Oldtown could thunder. Highgarden would count wagons. Grief, properly guided, could travel with an invoice.
The royal command reached Oldtown before the High Septon departed.
No septon was to preach armed pilgrimage into the mountains without the king's leave. No knight, lord, sworn sword, hedge brother, guild band or pious company was to gather under the banner of vengeance against the mountain clans unless summoned by the crown. Prayers were permitted. Mourning was encouraged. Armed zeal was forbidden.
The words did not quench the city.
They gave its anger a crown to blame.
The High Septon left for King's Landing with a train of holy men, silent sisters, begging brothers, singers of lamentation and a few hollow-eyed refugees from the Vale whose stories had already become sharper than memory. The journey itself became a sermon. At every stop, people came to hear of the dead falcon lord, the vanished host, the castles with no voices left inside them. By the time the High Septon saw the Red Keep rising above the city, half the capital had heard he came to demand the Warrior's answer.
King's Landing was already tired of answers.
The small council met beneath a sky the color of old pewter. King Aegon sat at the head of the table with his hands folded before him, looking at the map as though the painted mountains might begin to smoke. He had not spoken much since the first Vale letters arrived. Men who mistook silence for weakness forgot that there were griefs too deep to wear armor.
Viserys stood beside the map.
He had drawn no sword, raised no voice, and made no promise he did not intend to keep. That alone made several men uneasy. Anger was easier to understand. Quiet arithmetic was not.
The Master of Coin spoke first because coin had begun to fail before vengeance had even been planned.
"The Vale's payments will fall," he said. "Not slightly. Heavily. Redfort, Belmore, Waxley, Egen, Templeton, Lipps, Corbray holdings near the mountains—some destroyed, some leaderless, some impossible to assess. Roads are unsafe, rents uncollected, harvest stores stolen or burned, and Gulltown will keep more coin for its own defense unless compelled otherwise."
A lord at the table frowned.
"This is a time for mourning, not counting copper."
"Dead lords do not pay," the Master of Coin replied. "Burned roads do not carry coin. Empty keeps do not collect rents. If the Vale cannot govern its lands, it cannot render what it owes. If it cannot render what it owes, the crown pays for its weakness."
Aegon's eyes lifted at that, but he still said nothing.
The Master of Coin continued, less boldly now that he felt the king's attention.
"The loss is not only men, Your Grace. It is taxable order. Lord Arryn took soldiers, captains, stewards, sons, sworn shields, and the men who made lesser men obey. The clans did not merely kill. They removed the hands that gathered coin."
Viserys nodded once.
"That is why no second army climbs while the first is still a question."
"The first is not a question," another councilor said. "It is dead."
"Then it is a warning."
The doors opened before that answer could curdle into argument.
The High Septon entered in cloth-of-silver and white, carried more by ceremony than by age. Men rose. Even Viserys inclined his head, though not deeply enough for those who had come to measure respect by inches. Behind the High Septon stood men of the Faith with faces stern from rehearsed sorrow, and beside them two women from the Vale in black, one old, one young, both placed where the council could see them without being asked to hear too much.
"Your Grace," the High Septon said, "I come for the dead."
Aegon looked at him.
"So do all men, eventually."
The room stilled. It was not mockery in the king's voice. That made it worse. It sounded like something learned too early.
The High Septon pressed on.
"The faithful have been butchered. Ancient houses have been extinguished. Sept bells in the Vale have been silenced by hands that know no law. The Warrior must be answered. The Seven Kingdoms cannot allow mountain beasts to murder lords, children and sworn men beneath the king's peace and receive only letters in reply."
"No one has proposed only letters," Viserys said.
"You have forbidden men to gather."
"I have forbidden men to die without command."
The High Septon's eyes hardened.
"There are knights in the Reach ready to ride. There are sons of good houses willing to take vows before the Warrior. There are thousands who would answer if the crown allowed grief to become duty."
"A holy war that dies in the same mountains will not make the Seven stronger."
A murmur passed through the men behind the High Septon.
Viserys did not look away.
"Lord Joffrey climbed by choice. He climbed with a host larger than any holy company you can gather before winter turns roads cruel. He climbed with men who knew the Vale, men sworn to houses that had guarded those heights for generations. They did not come back. If the Faith sends boys with bright swords and hymns, the mountains will not become kinder because they are singing."
"The crown speaks as though the clans had cause."
"The crown speaks as though cause is less useful than fact."
The High Septon turned toward Aegon.
"Your Grace, will you let savages learn that the blood of lords may be spilled without judgment?"
Aegon looked at the map. His face was pale and still, and for a moment every man in the room remembered whose mother had died before dragons, whose childhood had been shaped by ashes, whose crown had been placed on a head too young to bear the weight of all the dead before him.
"At Storm's End," Aegon said softly, "men called vengeance justice. At Tumbleton, men called slaughter necessity. At King's Landing, men called dragonfire many things until they had to breathe it."
No one spoke.
"I will not have boys marched into mountains because old men know how to make grief sound holy."
The High Septon's mouth tightened.
Viserys took the answer before silence could become open insult.
"The crown will restore order in the Vale. Ronnel Arryn will be recognized as Lord of the Eyrie. A royal council of protection will be formed in his name. The Gates of the Moon, the Bloody Gate, Gulltown and the surviving roads will be secured. Sellsword contracts will be subject to royal approval. No lord will enter the mountains without leave. No septon will preach armed war without leave. The dead will have prayers. The living will have walls."
"And the clans?" the High Septon asked.
Viserys looked down at the painted peaks.
"The clans will have patience until we know where to place the knife."
That, more than any refusal, angered the holy men. They had come for thunder and received a locked door.
The council might have broken there, with Faith offended, coin unsettled, and the Vale still bleeding across the map. Instead a runner entered with mud on his boots and salt dried white along the edge of his cloak. He looked first to the king, then to Viserys, then to the Hand's empty chair as if some older order might save him from saying what he carried.
"Speak," Viserys said.
"A raven from White Harbor, my prince. Marked urgent by Lord Manderly."
The North was far from the Vale on most maps.
It was not far from the Bite.
Viserys took the parchment, broke the seal, and read. His eyes moved once over the page, then again more slowly. Aegon watched him. So did the Master of Coin, the High Septon, and every man who had just been speaking of mountains as though mountains were the only wound in the realm.
Viserys laid the letter on the table.
"Sistermen ships tested White Harbor's waters," he said.
The Master of Coin closed his eyes.
The High Septon looked confused for half a breath, then irritated that a different sin had interrupted his own.
"Pirates?" one councilor asked.
"Not pirates," Viserys said. "Opportunists."
Aegon's hand moved at last, touching the edge of the map where the Vale, the Bite and the northern coast leaned toward one another like men too tired to stand alone.
"Did they take the harbor?"
"No," Viserys said. "Manderly patrols drove them off. Some ships were taken. Some fled back toward the Sisters."
"That is good news," someone said too quickly.
Viserys did not answer him.
He looked at the Vale, then the Bite, then the mountain roads no man wished to climb.
"Lord Joffrey marched into the mountains," he said quietly, "and now every border near him has begun to move."