279 AD
Twilight Valley
Night.
So dark... mysterious... frightening. Full of unsolved mysteries and secrets, it has haunted the minds of humans since their arrival on this world. For some, the night was a horror, hiding darkness, vice, and eternal evil in its unexplored depths. An abyss of gloom that follows the disappearance of the sun.
But for Barristan and me, she became a good friend, hiding our intentions from prying eyes. She gave us the opportunity to carry out a plan that could save the entire city from sack. Approaching the city wall in the darkness, scaling it with the help of cats, and passing through the thin line of the city's slums, we found ourselves at our first destination—the old godswood.
"More precisely, what used to be the old godswood," I thought, helping Selmy jump over the three-meter palisade and crawling after him.
Our plan was simple and reliable as a Swiss watch: infiltrate the city during the darkest hour of the day—the "Hour of the Wolf," approach the walls of the Twilight Fort, scale them with grappling hooks, reach the dungeons via the servants' paths, and free the king. Afterward, a small diversion, orchestrated by men I'd bribed, would follow. We'd steal horses from the local stables and gallop through the open castle gates to the nearest city gates, where a small escort would await us—the sixteen woodlanders I'd brought as bodyguards for the journey. Right now, having scaled the walls, they're climbing the buildings along the main street and preparing. They'll be the ones who will protect the monarch of the Seven Kingdoms from the overzealous Darklyn archers, preventing him from departing this world prematurely.
The whole idea was greatly facilitated by the godswood growing in the north of Twilight Vale, long since run wild and no longer a temple to the Old Gods. The godswood itself is a sacred place of worship for the gods and spirits of nature, a small patch of forest where prayers are offered, weddings are held, and funerals are held for the dead. In the North, all castles have godswoods located right within the castle walls, in a separate courtyard, an isolated space enclosed by walls with gates and wickets.
Many Westerosi claim that the weirwoods and godswoods south of the Neck have been cleared, but this isn't entirely true. Many lords of the Westeros, the Vale, the Reach, the Riverlands, and the Stormlands, even those ardently devoted to the Seven, preserve their godswoods out of tradition and prestige, using them as small gardens. The only exception is Dorne, but there it's quite difficult to grow a tree large enough to be called a heart tree.
Duskendale faced a slightly different, unique situation. When Duskendale was being rebuilt after the ironborn raid, the castle was expanded and the godswood was used as open space. The trees were cut down, the land was cleared, and construction began.
But misfortunes began to plague the construction site: an entire shift of workers would fall ill with a white mare, the scaffolding would suddenly collapse, burying several people, and a stone, blown by one of the many construction storks, would fall on the head of the maester architect, sending him to the next world. Ultimately, all the workers, despite threats from the then Lord Darklyns and the sharpened axes of the warriors standing behind them, refused to work there, claiming that the ancient spirits were angry and did not want people there. Work on the castle expansion was forced to cease.
I don't know the true reason for all these events, but this place was left alone, surrounded by a high palisade. Over the course of two thousand years, the godswood has completely recovered, turning into an almost impenetrable thicket and overgrown with so many superstitions and rumors that no local would dare set foot there, no matter what the cost.
Sir Selmy and I took full advantage of this, making our way through the dense thickets almost without hiding, towards the walls of the Twilight Fort, which were visible even from here.
A massive stone wall appeared before us twenty minutes later. Constructed from carefully fitted cobblestones, held together with a shoddy mortar—a mixture of slaked lime, eggs, and sand that couldn't even be called concrete—it blended in with our black cloaks in the darkness, guaranteeing us undetected by the guards making their rounds.
Nodding to Selmy that everything was fine, I watched as the Royal Guard began expertly spinning the cat, its sharp hooks missing his face by inches.
Ring…
The sound of three sharp points catching on a slit between the battlements was deafening. My palms began to sweat with excitement and my heart began to pound loudly, but seeing a forty-year-old man, without a trace of doubt or anxiety, deftly scale the sheer wall made me smirk wryly and follow him.
"When did I become such a coward?" I thought, trying to climb the fifty-foot wall as quickly and silently as possible.
At the top, a surprise awaited me, and not a pleasant one at that: the convulsing body of a guard, with blood still gushing from his throat, and Barristan standing nearby, wiping his dagger on the hem of his cloak with practiced movements.
"What a monster," I thought, feeling a shiver run down my spine. "To kill a man so silently and quickly, without raising an alarm... I don't remember the other knights having such skills."
Having quickly dragged the silent body to the nearest tower, leaning it against it to imitate a man who had fallen asleep at his post, we continued on our way.
The castle was asleep. Even the servants, scurrying like ants through their masters' castles, were now dreaming their seventh dreams. There was still plenty of time left before the hour of the nightingale, so the two intruders didn't need to worry about being discovered. After all, even the guards avoided the service passages, afraid of getting lost in this web of passages and nooks.
We soon approached the dungeon and realized the whole plan was about to go down the drain. In the guardhouse guarding the entrance to the prison cells, the light of a burning candle was visible and the laughter and singing of at least three people could be heard.
"We'll kill him," Selmi said, making a cross-world gesture by running his thumb across his neck.
"Two," I said, indicating with my finger how many enemies I could take on. The knight raised an eyebrow skeptically, and all I could do was point to my right hand, where a Myrish double-shot wrist crossbow was attached. It wouldn't penetrate armor, but it could easily kill. Expensive, though—it cost me one hundred and thirty dragons. A custom order.
Nodding to himself, Barristan abruptly opened the unlocked door, diving inside like a panther towards the nearest guard.
I was lucky—my targets were sitting on the bed, hugging each other, directly opposite the door, bawling out some song, just ten feet from the entrance. The bolts, with only a split-second's delay, sank precisely into the bridge of the first man's nose and the eye of the second. A quick and almost painless death. Ser Selmy made short work of him, too—the baselard expertly pierced between the third and fourth ribs, piercing the heart and ending the life of what, judging by his attire, appeared to be the captain of the guard.
"Where did you get such skill at silent killing, Ser Barristan?" I asked, reloading my crossbow and closing the door so that no guard would wander in at the worst possible moment and ruin everything.
"If you want to live in war, you'll learn a lot," the royal guard replied, helping me lay the bodies on their beds. "The later we're discovered, the better." "When you're thrown from your saddle and caught in a catfight, you somehow forget about knightly traditions."
"But that doesn't explain where you learned to kill so quietly," I continued to press as we descended the spiral staircase, the entrance to which was located in the corner of the gatehouse. "You can't learn such skills through training. It takes practice, lots of practice."
"A night assault on enemy camps, Felix," Selmy replied, a little wearily, leading the way with a torch he'd borrowed from one of the holders. "Most of the Ninepenny Kings' encampments were well-fortified camps, and assaults on them constituted almost every battle. After the fifth attack, when I lost most of my lance (p.a., referring to a unit of knights from a single castle), I had to learn stealth infiltration and silent assassination. No one wants to lose comrades. I never thought I'd need those skills again..."
At that moment his voice became apathetic and very sad, filled with such intense melancholy that even I, a nearly hundred-year-old cynic, was moved by it.
"I apologize, Ser Barristan, for stirring up these unpleasant memories.
"Nothing, Felix," the knight replied, almost instantly returning to his usual calm and firm tone. "And just call me Barristan. After such an adventure, we can hardly be called mere acquaintances."
"Hmmm..." I chuckled, mildly surprised that one of the finest knights in the Seven Kingdoms had practically declared me his friend. Such offers are not to be refused. And he's a good man, too. "Very well, Barristan."
Soon we descended into the castle dungeon, a small chamber with eight cells, each a few square meters in area. Damp, with large rats scurrying across the floor covered with rotten straw, and a terrible smell of decay and excrement… this is not the place for a king to be.
Judging by Barristan's face, which was flushed with rage, he thought so too.
Aerys was found in the farthest and driest cell, sleeping on a dirty skin next to a small brazier that provided at least some crumbs of warmth and light in this terrible place.
"But he's been here for six months," the thought flashed through my mind as Selmy unlocked the rusty bars with the keys he'd borrowed from the captain of the guard. The creak of the door opening woke Aerys, who instantly jumped up and hid in the farthest, darkest corner of the cell.
One glance was enough for me to realize we were too late. Even if the king returned to the Red Keep, he would never sit on the Iron Throne.
For he does not tolerate broken and weak people.
And Aerys broke, and it was obvious to the naked eye. Incoherent hand movements, loud cries of "No, no. Help, stop!", a lack of recognition of his own royal guard (!!!), and most importantly—his eyes. Flickering, distracted, and simultaneously empty, with flickering sparks of a broken mind. The eyes of a madman.
And the more I looked at this picture, while Selmi was calming and bringing the king back to his senses, the less I liked it.
"We must hurry," I thought, helping the king, who had barely recovered his composure, to his feet with Barristan and heading for the exit from the dungeon. "A kingdom with such a monarch won't last long. We must hurry with the construction."
"... I'll reduce these Darklyns to rubble. I'll behead them all, hang them, burn them, and feed them to the dogs. At the same time." I tried to ignore Aerys's quiet whispers, more concerned that the crowned monarch wouldn't stumble. Until he turned to me, breathing the stench of a man who hadn't cleaned his mouth in a long time, and addressed me. "And who are you? I don't know you... A new member of the Kingsguard? But only I can appoint people to it..."
"My name is Felix Temper, Your Majesty." A slight nod of the head replaced the standard bow, as I couldn't bend over even if I wanted to.
"Temper? Temper! Temper..." When the king started repeating my name, as if tasting it, I even began to fear for my life. But looking more closely at his eyes again, I realized I had been slightly mistaken—though Aerys Targaryen can hardly be called mentally healthy, once in some semblance of safety, he began to more or less come to his senses—even the tremors in his hands had disappeared. Although his next phrase almost sent me flying down the stairs. "I don't remember that."
— Hmmm...
But Barristan even found it funny - he even tried to hide his laughter with a cough.
"You wrote me a letter six months ago asking me to come to King's Landing," I said, opening the door to the gatehouse and helping the king sit down on the nearest bed, having moved the corpse aside first. "You didn't give a reason, though."
Having settled himself more comfortably and looked at me more attentively, he only said once more:
— I don't remember.
"Ah-h-h..." It became clear that this was a momentary whim, which Targaryen had long since forgotten. And because of this I had to rush all the way from Dorne? I hate royal power. "Barristan, we need to change the king's clothes."
"Why?" The knight looked at me, puzzled.
"That way we can escort His Majesty to the stables without raising an alarm," I replied, walking toward the two guards I'd killed—their wounds were minor, and barely any blood had gotten on their clothes. "You'll need to change your clothes, too. That way you can pretend to be one sober guard carrying another tipsy one. I'll follow you across the rooftops, and once you've secured the horses, I'll give the signal to begin."
"Good idea," Selmi replied, coming over and helping me remove the cuirass from one of the corpses.
I don't even want to remember the hysteria Aerys threw when he was asked to don the clothes of the dead, much less pretend to be a simple guard. At that moment, only my hand, gagging him and pouring a diluted mixture of belladonna, lily of the valley, mandrake, and milk of the poppy down his throat, knocking him out for eight hours or until they gave him an antidote, saved us from early detection and the subsequent slaughter. Of course, Barristan, though he looked at me disapprovingly, took action, donning the clothes of one of the dead men in half a minute, even though they were frankly too small for him. With Aerys, from his long captivity, the picture was the exact opposite—everything on him hung like rags on a scarecrow. The disguise wasn't great, but in the darkness of the night it would suffice.
"I'm going to the roof. I'll cover you," I said before slipping out of the guardhouse and diving into the nearest dark corner. Waiting for a nod, I walked outside.
"How fortunate that it's the hour of the wolf," I thought, slowly gliding along the rooftops of the castle buildings behind the slowly trudging Barristan, dragging the king on his shoulder. "If it were even a little brighter, any guard in the castle who occasionally peers into the courtyard would have noticed me."
They had to walk carefully, testing each tile with their feet beforehand to minimize the risk of falling through the roof and throwing the entire Twilight Fort into disarray. They could only thank providence that most of the buildings in the castle's courtyard were stone, allowing them to walk on anything other than the beams.
Thank goodness, a castle courtyard—if it's the castle of one of the Grandlords, of course—is a fairly small place, and within five minutes Barristan was standing in front of the stables, trying to explain something to one of the guards, while his colleagues slept, almost standing, at the stable entrance. And before they could discover us, Selmy, with a barely perceptible movement, draws a dagger and plunges it into the guard's chin. The unfortunate man's body falls to the ground, startling both guards.
"Late"
Phew...
Phew...
The whistle of two arrows was barely audible in the night, unlike two falling bodies and death rattles. Although I hadn't spent much time practicing my marksmanship, I could still hit a stationary target from twenty paces away. Two shots hit their mark, piercing the guards' throats.
"Lucky," the thought flashed through my head as I jumped to the ground and walked towards the stables, from where Barristan was already leading out one of the stallions.
But…
"Alarm! Napa-khra..." The guard's cries, interrupted by a reflexively fired bolt, put an end to our secret entry. A few seconds later, shouts and the blaring of alarm horns began to echo throughout the castle, signaling the alarm.
"Your mother!" I cursed, quickly pulling out an arrow wrapped in oiled cloth and, placing it against the torch, launching it into the night sky.
Bang...
The explosion that thundered literally ten seconds later probably drowned out all the sounds in the castle and briefly distracted the agitated guards, giving Barristan and me a couple of extra moments needed to tie the king to his horse.
The explosion itself was orchestrated by the customs chief, who, through smugglers, received ten gold pieces from me, a letter, and an entire crate of Wildfire, brought from King's Landing for the siege of the city and only obtained by me thanks to Prince Rhaegar. It will distract most of the guards for a long time, giving us time to escape.
"Well, well, well... Who do we have here?" Hopes were dashed. From behind one of the buildings emerged a tall, fully armored knight, armed with a large mace, leading a good ten guards. "Could it be black rats, sneaking in in the middle of the night to rescue their king? I thought better of you, Barristan Selmy."
"Simon Hollard," the king's guard hissed through his teeth, hatred in his voice. "You will answer for the death of my comrade, whom you dishonorably stabbed in the back, Gwayne Gaunt!"
"I highly doubt it," Hollard said with anticipation, pointing his mace at us. "Take them!"
Of the ten Darklyn warriors, only seven were able to rush at us - one was hit in the solar plexus by an arrow, another was hit in the eye by the second bolt from my crossbow, fired after the arrow, and the third was killed by Barristan, who pierced the unlucky man's throat with a well-aimed throw of his dagger, immediately drawing his sword.
"Run!" Selmy shouted at me, rushing forward and cutting down one of the attackers almost instantly. "I'll deal with them and then follow you. Save the king, Temper!"
To object in such a situation would have been sheer stupidity, so I, without wasting any time, jumped on my horse and, instantly breaking into a gallop, rode out of the city.
The castle gates, as Barristan had predicted, were open, so I soon found myself in the streets of a city that was beginning to resemble a disturbed anthill. A crowd of people scurried along the streets, dispelling the night with torchlight, carrying buckets of water or sand in their hands. Under the experienced leadership of the guards, they were gradually moving toward the port, where an explosion had started a raging fire.
"I miscalculated the quantity," I thought, flying unhindered toward the main city gates, since no one was paying much attention to me. Everyone was too busy saving the port, where most of the city's food supplies were stored and where most of the citizens worked.
Luck abandoned me right at the gates - fifty guards blocked the road with spears and were not going to let anyone through.
"Hey, who are you, ta-khar-ooy…" One of the foremen started to address me, but before he could finish, one of the arrows fired from the roofs of the buildings hit him in the throat.
And then came a real rain of steel.
Phew...
Phew...
Phew...
Phew...
Phew...
"Ah-ah-ah-ah! Where are they shooting from!" The first cry of despair rang out, followed by cries of pain and fear:
- A-a-a-a! My hand!
— Leg! C-c-r-r…
— Where are they shooting from?
- Don't know!
"Calm down! Maintain your formation! Raise your shields! Prik-bha..." One of the commanders even tried to organize the panicked soldiers, but he stood out too much and received an arrow in the back—arrows were also flying from the wall.
"The foresters did it," I thought, watching as fifty people turned into pincushions in a single minute. Of course, some managed to escape, but my guys had no intention of killing them all.
"Open the gate!" I shouted, riding as close as I could to the enormous wooden gate, clad in good gunmetal and secured with a massive wooden bolt. Only four foresters, with a combined effort, were able to lift it.
Soon the gates opened. Selmy and I's mission was almost complete.
"By the way, where's Barristan?" I thought, turning my head and cursing good-naturedly. The wolf's hour was drawing to an end, but the street was still pitch-dark, so dark I couldn't even see my own hand clearly.
"Okay," I said to one of the woodfolk. "Half of you stay here. Go to the castle across the rooftops and look for Ser Selmy. If you don't find him by the Hour of the Nightingale, go to the Old Godswood and hide there. Darklyn will surrender in the next few days, and I will come for you. Understood?"
Seeing only affirmative nods, I slapped the reins and galloped toward the distant lights of the besiegers' camp. I had no fear of the archers threatening me from the wall—my highlanders had slaughtered everyone near the gate, and in the darkness of the night, they couldn't even see me, let alone aim. And most of the soldiers were probably at the port by now, having forgotten that the alarm had sounded before the explosion.
As I approached the camp, a whole delegation of lords, members of the Small Council, Prince Rhaegar, and the Hand of the King, surrounded by guards, was already waiting for me. They were probably awakened by the recent explosion.
Riding up almost right up to the line of tensing red cloaks, I threw back my hood and black cloth mask, revealing my face to everyone. The commander of the Lannister guard must have recognized me, because almost immediately orders and curses were heard, quickly creating a small corridor to the most influential people in the Seven Kingdoms.
"I want to sleep," I thought, jumping from the saddle and remembering that Morpheus had visited me almost twenty-four hours ago. The subsequent untying of the king's bundle from the horse's rump and carrying it to the bewildered lords, who had no idea what I was doing, brought back some rather unpleasant thoughts. "Usually, in such cases, it's a beautiful young woman who should be lying in my arms, not an old, smelly, and insane man. That's why I'm going through all this…"
Just when it became clear to everyone who I was carrying, the Grand Maester rushed toward me like a bullet, accompanied by Prince Rhaegar, who, for the first time in my memory, showed any emotion other than his perpetual apathy and drowsiness. After all, he loved his father and was moved by his fate.
"Why is His Majesty unconscious?" Pycelle shouted, quickly examining the king and confirming he had a pulse. Sure, they'd expected to see either a royal corpse riddled with arrows, or Aerys, gushing with threats and curses and yet to be calmed down before he caused any harm, not a peacefully sleeping monarch, carried in by one of his would-be saviors.
Saying that I had given the king a tincture of herbs that weren't the most beneficial wasn't the best idea, so I got off with just one word:
— He's sleeping.
Even the Great Lion's eyebrows rose in surprise.