Chapter 29: The Field of Fire's Echo and the Shadow King's Calculation (Aegon's Conquest: Part 2)
The news from the south came in waves, each more devastating than the last, carried by Tibbit's unseen agents, by the panicked whispers of merchants fleeing north, and confirmed by the increasingly vivid, blood-soaked visions of Lyra and Daenys Volmark. Aegon Targaryen was not merely carving out a kingdom; he was birthing an empire in a crucible of dragonflame, his methods as brutal as they were effective.
The focus of Aelyx's intense scrutiny, and indeed that of all Westeros, soon centered on the vast, fertile plains of the Reach. Here, King Mern IX Gardener, Lord of Highgarden, and King Loren I Lannister of Casterly Rock, the King of the Rock, had combined their formidable might. An army of over fifty thousand men, the flower of Westerosi chivalry from two of the richest and most powerful kingdoms, marched to meet Aegon's much smaller host. They were confident that their numbers, their steel, and their valor would overwhelm the foreign invaders, dragons or no.
"They are proud, and they are fools," Aelyx declared in the obsidian council chamber beneath Mount Skatus, his voice devoid of emotion as he addressed his assembled immortal family. Lyra had just recounted a harrowing greensight vision of the impending battle, her face pale. "They believe conventional warfare can counter creatures of absolute aerial supremacy and magical fire. They will learn a costly, fatal lesson."
And learn they did. The battle, which would forever be seared into the memory of Westeros as the Field of Fire, was not a battle; it was a slaughter. Aegon and his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys, unleashed all three of their dragons simultaneously for the first time. Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes descended upon the packed ranks of the allied kings like a triune apocalypse. Dragonflame, black, bronze, and silver, turned the grasslands into an inferno. Knights in heavy plate were cooked alive, their armor melting into their flesh. formations of spearmen and archers dissolved into screaming chaos as the dragons made pass after fiery pass. Forty thousand men were said to have burned that day. King Mern Gardener and all his sons perished in the flames, House Gardener extinguished in a single, horrific afternoon. King Loren Lannister, witnessing the utter annihilation of his forces and the proud army of the Reach, wisely chose to flee the carnage.
Aelyx received the detailed reports from Tibbit's agents – some of whom had been embedded as camp followers with the allied armies, their survival a testament to house-elf ingenuity and potent shielding charms – with a grim, analytical focus. He had his own children, his dragonriders, study magically projected illusions of the battle, reconstructed from Lyra's visions and spy accounts.
"Observe the coordination," Aelyx instructed Torrhen, Visenya, and Maegor, as the phantom Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes wheeled and dove, their fiery breaths interweaving. "Aegon commands from Balerion, the central, overwhelming force. Visenya Targaryen on Vhagar secures one flank, her attacks precise, cutting off escape routes. Rhaenys on Meraxes is the harrier, striking at command centers, sowing terror. They do not merely unleash fire; they employ it tactically, creating firebreaks, herding enemy formations into kill zones. Their dragons are extensions of their will, weapons of devastating, calculated psychological impact."
Visenya Volmark watched, her violet eyes blazing with a mixture of professional admiration and fierce Valyrian pride. "They fight as one mind, Father. Their dragons are ancient, their bond absolute. We must achieve such synchronicity with our own mounts, with our own squadrons."
Maegor, for once, was subdued, the sheer scale of the slaughter depicted in the illusionary flames sobering even his boisterous spirit. "So many… burned. No shield, no armor, could withstand that."
"Precisely, Maegor," Aelyx affirmed. "Which is why direct confrontation with such power, unless one possesses an overwhelming counter or an unassailable defense, is strategic suicide. Secrecy, misdirection, and the exploitation of an enemy's arrogance are our keenest weapons."
The aftermath of the Field of Fire was as instructive as the battle itself. King Loren Lannister, having escaped the inferno, rode to meet Aegon, laid his ancestral crown at the conqueror's feet, and bent the knee. Aegon, in a display of pragmatic statesmanship that Aelyx noted with respect, accepted Loren's fealty, confirmed him as Lord of Casterly Rock, and named him Warden of the West. House Lannister, though defeated, endured. In the Reach, with House Gardener extinguished, Aegon raised Harlen Tyrell, the hereditary steward of Highgarden, to Lord Paramount of the Mander and Warden of the South, creating a powerful new vassal house utterly dependent on Targaryen favor.
"He understands power," Aelyx commented to Lyanna. "He destroys utterly those who defy him absolutely, like Harren. He spares and elevates those who recognize his supremacy, binding them to him with chains of gratitude and self-interest. He is not merely a warlord; he is building an empire to last." And Aelyx, who planned in terms of millennia, not just generations, filed away every nuance of Aegon's statecraft.
While the fires of the Reach still smoldered, Visenya Targaryen, aboard Vhagar, undertook another, equally effective, form of conquest. She flew directly to the Eyrie, the supposedly impregnable mountain fortress of House Arryn, rulers of the Vale. Queen Regent Sharra Arryn, a proud woman, had boasted that no army could reach her. She had not accounted for a dragon landing in her pristine inner courtyard. Faced with Vhagar's terrifying presence and the threat to her young son, King Ronnel Arryn, Sharra wisely chose submission over incineration. The Vale bent the knee without a single sword being drawn in anger, a victory of psychological warfare.
Aelyx ensured his children studied this event as well. "Power is not always expressed through brute force," he told them. "The threat of overwhelming power, skillfully applied, can be just as effective, and far less costly. Remember this. A dragon held in reserve, its presence merely hinted at, can sometimes achieve more than one unleashed in open battle."
The Iron Islands, already crippled by House Volmark's decisive war against Dagon Greyjoy years prior (a fact Aegon Targaryen likely knew nothing about, attributing their current weakness to internal strife), also submitted to Aegon with little fuss. He allowed them to choose their own Lord Paramount from among their own, and they chose Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke, who duly swore fealty. Aelyx watched this development with particular interest. The Ironborn were his western neighbors, their ambitions now curtailed not just by Skagos, but by the dragons of King's Landing. It created a new dynamic, one he would monitor closely.
With every new Targaryen victory – the Riverlands, the Stormlands, the Westerlands, the Reach, the Vale – the pressure on the North mounted. Ravens flew daily to Winterfell, carrying grim tidings. King Torrhen Stark, a man of deep honor and Stark pride, found himself in an agonizing position. The lords of the North were divided. Some, like the fiery Greatjon Umber (successor to the one Aelyx had known) and the fiercely independent clans of the northern mountains, clamored for defiance. They spoke of the resilience of the First Men, of the ancient defenses of Moat Cailin, of fighting to the last man rather than bending the knee to a foreign, dragon-riding conqueror. Others, more pragmatic, like Lord Wyman Manderly and many of the eastern lords who understood the devastating power of fleets and fire, urged caution. They pointed to Harrenhal's ashes and the charnel field of the Reach.
Lord Torrhen Volmark, Aelyx's son and public face, played his role with masterful subtlety in the councils of Winterfell. Guided by his father's constant, magically relayed counsel, he never openly advocated for submission. Instead, he spoke of the North's strength, its unity, but also of the unprecedented nature of the Targaryen threat. He presented detailed (Aelyx-sanitized) reports of Aegon's dragons, their destructive power, and the futility of conventional armies against them. He emphasized the need to preserve the North's people, its ancient lineage, its unique traditions. He asked pointed questions of the war hawks: "How do our stone castles fare against dragonflame that melts Harrenhal's towers? How do our brave spearmen stand against fire that consumes forty thousand knights and men-at-arms in an afternoon? What victory is there in becoming a kingdom of ash and bone?"
His words, backed by the undeniable prestige and wealth of House Volmark, and his own reputation as a wise and capable young lord, carried immense weight. He did not appear as a coward urging surrender, but as a pragmatist seeking the North's survival.
Within the sanctuary on Skagos, Aelyx and his inner circle analyzed every potential scenario for the North. "If King Torrhen chooses to fight," Aelyx mused, tracing lines on his magical map, "Moat Cailin might hold against a land army, but not against dragons flying overhead. Winterfell itself, for all its strength, is not Harrenhal, but neither is it impervious to three coordinated dragon attacks. The cost in Northern lives would be catastrophic."
"And if they fight and lose, Father," Visenya Volmark interjected, her violet eyes narrowed, "what then? Will Aegon be as… generous to a defeated North as he was to the Lannisters?"
"Unlikely," Aelyx replied. "The Starks are Kings. Defiance from a King often meets a harsher punishment. He might seek to replace them, to break the North's spirit. That would be… inconvenient for our long-term plans, which rely on a stable, Stark-led North as our public shield."
The training of the Volmark dragonriders intensified. The vast caverns beneath Mount Skatus echoed with the roars of nearly fifty Skagosi dragons, their riders – Aelyx's children and now some of his older, most magically adept grandchildren – practicing coordinated defensive formations, rapid ascents and descents, and the precise application of their own unique dragonfire. Aenar, with Rhaenys and Aegon Volmark assisting, perfected new heat-deflecting wards for their armor and their dragons' most vulnerable areas, and experimented with alchemical compounds that could create superheated, directed blasts of air, or dense, disorienting smoke screens. Skagos was preparing for a siege that might never come, but Aelyx left nothing to chance.
The "Heir's Hoard" gold was also subtly employed. Through Torrhen Volmark, Aelyx funneled significant "loans" and "gifts" to key Northern lords, ostensibly to help them prepare their defenses, but also to ensure their continued goodwill and to subtly influence their counsel towards pragmatism. A North bankrupted by war preparations before a single Targaryen soldier crossed the Neck would be a weakened North, prone to internal strife. Aelyx preferred a strong, unified North that would make a rational decision.
He was still playing the long game. Aegon Targaryen was a storm, a conflagration. The wise man does not stand on a mountaintop in a lightning storm and defy the heavens. He seeks shelter, observes the storm's passage, and rebuilds when it has passed, perhaps even benefiting from the changes it has wrought. Aelyx had no desire to rule Westeros publicly; that was a fool's game, played for fleeting glory. His ambition was for an eternal, hidden empire, a dynasty of immortal sorcerers and dragonlords who would outlast all others.
The news came that Aegon Targaryen, having consolidated his hold over the southern kingdoms (save Dorne, which remained stubbornly defiant), was finally turning his gaze northward. His fleet was sailing for the Trident, his dragons casting their long shadows before them. King Torrhen Stark, the King of Winter, had called his banners. The armies of the North were marching south to meet the Targaryen threat.
The moment of decision for the North was at hand. Within the sanctuary, Aelyx watched, his violet eyes holding the calm of centuries. Lyra and Daenys brought him constant updates from their greensight, their faces strained with the effort.
"They gather at the Trident, Father," Lyra whispered. "The Targaryen host, with all three dragons. And the Stark army, vast and grim, the greatest host the North has ever assembled."
Aelyx nodded slowly. The stage was set for the confrontation that would decide the fate of the last independent kingdom south of the Wall. His son, Torrhen Volmark, was with King Torrhen Stark, his counsel one of measured caution. The future of the North, and by extension, the security of Skagos's public façade, hung in the balance. The Field of Fire had been a lesson. Now, it remained to be seen if the King of Winter had learned it.