POV- Herrock Kenning
Seagard was left in chaos behind them, and Herrock did not look back at it. Ahead lay the kingsroad, empty and pale in the grey northern-riverlands morning, running between the Twins and the Oldstones, that had not known Ironborn swords for many years and would not forget them soon.
A hundred men rode with him, give or take the stragglers who would catch up to them soon. Most of them sat their horses the way stiff-backed and unhappy, gripping the reins like men gripping a rope over open water, Ironborns would never be good riders. Herrock had learned to ride as a boy on Pyke, hunting goats along the cliff paths, and even so his thighs ached by the second hour and he had no love for the animal beneath him, one of the many geldings that they taken from a Seagard stable. Its former owner was dead. That was the nature of most things they had taken since making landfall.
"You reckon the spy had it right?" That was Wex Sparr, riding at his shoulder, a young captain with more scars than sense. "Today, he said, not tomorrow."
"Today." Herrock had thought of this day all during their three days of travel when they left Harlaw, poking at all the reasons for why Lord Rodrik chose this day, looking for the answer where it might come apart. Rodrik Harlaw was no man with a blade and everyone from Ten Towers to the Stepstones knew that, knew he'd rather have a book in his hand than an axe, knew his own crew called him the Reader behind his back and sometimes to his face, since Rodrik did not care enough to make them stop. But the man's plans held together like good rope, every strand accounted for, and when Rodrik said the crows of the Night's Watch would be moving their catch along this stretch of road on this particular day, Herrock had learned to trust that more than he trusted his own eyes.
"And if he's wrong?"
"Then we've had a fine ride in green country and leave behind nothing for the dogs of the north." Herrock spat into the hedge they were passing. "Worse things have happened to worse men."
They found the column an hour past, where the road bent along a stand of alders and opened onto flat pasture on the north side. Herrock saw the shapes of bodies before his outriders confirmed them, dark figures moving unhurried along the road, wagons among them, banners hanging limp in the still morning air.
He raised his hand and the hundred horses shuffled down from their fast trot to walk to a restless standing stop, tack creaking, his own mount blowing hard through its nose.
"Crows," Wex said, in low voice, looking at the black cloaks ahead in the column.
"More than crows." Herrock had his glass out as he looked ahead for a right measure, a good Myrish piece taken off a Lyseni trader two years back, and he studied the banners as they came clear one at a time. The black of the Night's Watch, yes, that he'd expected, the letter had said as much, a party of the Watch moving south with prisoners. But there among them flew, a grey direwolf on a white and ice-green of House Stark, a black bear over a green wood of House Mormont, and beside it something on the yellow color banner, two rusted longaxes with black shafts crossed, a black crown between their points, Dustins of Barrowton, and it was neither of those that made Herrock lower the glass and stare with his naked eye instead.
Furs, men and women both, wrapped in furs that he had never seen among Northerners, walking on foot alongside horses in the loose, tireless way of people who had spent their lives walking great distances, carrying weapons that were bone more often than steel.
"What in the Drowned God's name," Wex said.
"Wildlings." Herrock had seen their like only twice before, both times when he had taken them as slaves on their raiding ship off the Bay of Ice. "This far south of the Wall."
He did not have long to make sense of it, because the column had seen them too, and the orderly line of it was already breaking into a defense perimeter; men shouting, shields coming up, the black-cloaked riders wheeling their mounts to face the new threat with the speed of men who had done this before and did not much care for surprises.
"A hundred against what, forty? fifty?" Wex was grinning now, happy with outcome that was sure to come. "Lord Rodrik's spy earns his silver today."
"Form up." Herrock knew that too but as commander he forced a serious projection to his men. "We take the column, not a foot of ground more than we need. Watch for spears in the front rank, they'll try to buy time for the wagons-"
Wex nodded, but he wasn't listening any longer. None of them were, not fully. He himself was more concerned of the gifts he shall receive from Lord Rodrik and Crow's Eye for his work.
He put his heels to the grey broad-chested gelding, and a hundred Ironborn rushed off the road's shoulder into the pasture at a gallop, and for one clean stretch of time, the wind in his face, the ground going by beneath him, the black-cloaked line of men of Night's Watch ahead bracing to receive the charge Herrock felt something close to what the songs meant when they sang of glory.
But then the shadow came and it fell upon them all at once, the whole field going the color of night in the space of a single stride of his horse, and Herrock's first thought seeing the shadow was a stupid, useless one. The kind of thought a man has in the half-second before his body understands what danger he really is in, his thought was that a storm had come up unnaturally fast off the Green Fork.
Then the ground itself trembled, one deep shock that came up through the gelding's legs and into Herrock's own spine before any sound had reached him at all, and the horse screamed and half-reared under him, and he had both hands full simply staying in the saddle. It was only then, fighting the horse, that the sound arrived, a roar that made his teeth ache and his heart skip the beat.
He never got the chance to turn and look properly. Beside him, close enough that their footrests had been near touching a moment before, Rus Goodbrother opened his mouth to say something, Herrock never learned what and then Rus was not there. There was no arrow or sword nor any blood then. There was Rus, and then there was a vast red presence where Rus had been, jaws closing on horse and rider together and Herrock's mind shut for a moment.
The dragon then turned its head. If his mind had been working at the moment he might have wet his pants seeing the sheer size of the dragon but worst of it was the eye. Dark gold, and molten in color, and they locked on him with an unhurried attention that had already decided what he was and did not need to look twice to be sure of it.
He thought, with the strange clarity men sometimes find in the last true moment, Drennan wasn't lying.
Drennan, the old man who had refused to march when he sat in Lord Rodrik's chamber in Harlaw and said the dragon was the true threat, beyond swords, beyond plans, beyond the reckoning of men who thought the world still worked the way it had worked during Baratheon's reign. Herrock had laughed at him along with the rest when the man had left, had called him a coward to his face even in the Ten Tower, had said the sea had addled him in the old age.
Then the creatures jaws opened, what came out of them was nothing so gentle or painless. It was his doom, red and hot, and Herrock had time to understand that he was going to die but he had no time to be afraid properly, no time to pray to the god beneath the waves who was supposed to be waiting for men like him.
The pasture became a furnace, briefly, and then it became a graveyard, and then, in the time of perhaps thirty heartbeats from the moment the shadow first fell, it became quiet.
POV- Aemon Targaryen
Meleys finished the rest of it while Aemon watched from her back and he could feel the heat come up off the ground even at this height.
He watched the last of the Ironborn horses running riderless across the pasture. He watched the thin black smoke coming up from grass that had been caught in Meleys rage and burned itself out quickly. He saw the column below him, the men he had come to save standing very still in the aftermath, looking up.
The wildlings had not moved. Not one of them, not even to raise a weapon. They stood in their furs with their bone knives and their strange bronze-headed spears and they looked at Meleys with an expression that Aemon could name even from this height was close to wonder.
He brought Meleys to the edge of the pasture, away from the worst of the burned ground, and felt the familiar jolt through his own body as she settled, folding her wings with that vast tearing-canvas sound. Brienne dropped from behind him without waiting to be told, already scanning the field out of old habit, her hand not quite leaving her sword hilt.
The column had begun to move again, cautiously, men picking their way past the last of the Ironborn dead, and at their head came the familiar old man in black, broad through the shoulder even now, white beard cropped close, a bear's pelt thrown over his cloak.
"Lord Commander," Aemon said, as the old man reached him.
"Your Grace." Jeor Mormont's voice was gravel worn by years giving orders in weather worse than this. He looked past Aemon at Meleys, briefly. "You've an unfashionable habit of arriving at exactly the moment a man needs you and not one moment before though I'll not complain of it."
"How many did you lose?"
"None of mine but two of the wildlings went down, before your beast came down, it could have been worse. Would have been worse if not for you." Mormont glanced back at his column, at the black cloaks reforming their order, a woman in furs binding a wound on a Watch brother's arm, and behind them, under close guard, two figures Aemon did not need to be told the names of. Theon Greyjoy stood with his shoulders drawn in on himself, staring at him with fear, and did not looked up at dragon behind him even for once. His sister stood straighter, her eyes moving from the burned field to Meleys and back, working through something that Aemon did not care for.
A woman came forward from among the northern riders, dark-haired, sharp-featured, dressed for riding, though the dagger at her belt looked well used. "Your Grace," she said. "That was close-run, Your Grace. I'll say plainly, I did not expect to owe my life twice to you now when I agreed to ride south."
"Few people plan for it," Aemon said. "Fewer still enjoy owing anyone anything. I won't hold you to gratitude, my lady."
Something of a smile appeared on her face. "It's a pleasure to meet you again your grace." Her eyes then went past him to Brienne, taking her measure the way the girl seemed standing with a hand on her sword. "Your knight."
"My knight," Aemon agreed.
There was no time to stand in a burned field trading pleasantries, he looked at Mormont, at Barbrey Dustin, at the wildlings still standing with that unreadable watchfulness, at the column stretching back along the road with its wagons and its prisoners and its wounded.
He then looked at a man standing at good distance with middling height, broad chest and brown hair. "I would meet you at better conditions at Harrenhal, Mance Rayder." He pitched his voice to the man and then turned to people in front of him. "Ride fast, Lord Commander and my lady, make haste to Harrenhal and do not stop for anything short to take rest. Lord Stannis and Lord Velaryon march to meet you there. I would have you behind walls before the next Ironborn scout finds this road."
Mormont did not waste breath on questions. "We will, Your Grace." He turned, already calling orders down the line in that same gravel voice, and the column began to ready itself, men who had marched under worse conditions and needed no further persuading.
Barbrey Dustin lingered a moment longer. "And you, you grace?" she asked.
"Seagard." Aemon looked west, toward smoke he could already see rising thin against the grey sky, miles off. "The Ironborn who rode out here were probably not the whole of it. There's a castle under siege and a harbor full of ships that have no business sailing here."
She went away after that. The column began its march south, and Aemon watched it a moment longer, watched Theon Greyjoy's bowed head pass, watched Asha Greyjoy's eyes find his own and he noticed them to be filled with fear, she must have heard my words, he pondered on her reaction.
Then he turned back to Meleys and to Brienne.
Seagard was in shambles, what had been a town with fishermen's cottages and net-sheds and the low grey warehouses where the sea tide came in off at the coast now it lay half-burned. Aemon guessed it happened in the first hours, Ironborn had taken what could not be defended and put to the torch what could not be carried. Smoke stood over it in a column thick enough to see from five miles off. In the middle of the town the castle stood. Grey walls, a keep that had clearly taken damage from siege of Ironborns but still stood whole, banners flying from what remained of the gatehouse tower.
And in the harbor, drawn up along the shingle and riding at anchor both, more longships than Aemon cared to count on a first pass.
"There," he said, and did not need to say more. Meleys understood enough, moons of flying together had taught him that her grasp of his intent ran deeper than words could account for, some old blood-bond he did fully understand even now. She banked low over the harbor then her jaws opened, and the ships began to burn.
It did not take long, ship after ship started catching fire down the line of them, men who had been resting of the early hours plunder spilled out onto the deck with their clothes half on, some running to the sea, some simply standing and staring up with the same stunned stillness Aemon had already watched this morning.
But this wasn't all of them. He was already looking toward the castle instead, toward the walls where the real fighting was, where men in Mallister colors, a silver eagle on banner of purple, held a gate against a press of Ironborn trying to force it before the fire at their backs made the attempt pointless.
"Put us down near the gate."
Meleys came around, low over the burning harbor, and Aemon felt Brienne's grip tighten briefly at his back, not from fear, he knew enough of her now and then they were down, in the open ground before Seagard's gate.
He was off Meleys's back before she had fully settled, sword already in hand, Blackfyre, and Brienne was beside him a heartbeat later, her own steel out, the two of them moving into the chaos with wordless coordination, they had done this before in Morne's gap, in worse place than this.
Ironborn were falling back from the gate now, fire at their backs and a dragon in their midst doing more to break their nerve than any action of Mallister strength had managed however many hours this battle may have waged on.
Three of them broke from the general rout and came at Aemon directly. They had picked him out for simply the fact that he had come down off the dragon's own back and so must be the thing worth killing above every other thing on this field, the King's head would surely give them a good chance at victory and prize.
"Behind you," Brienne said, already turning to meet a fourth man who had tried to come at his unguarded side, and then there was no more time for words at all.
The first of the three was a big man with an axe, moving with more strength than worthy footwork, and Aemon saw the overhand swing a full half-second before it arrived and stepped inside rather than back, letting the axe head bury itself in the mud where he'd been standing, and put his sword into the gap between gorget and shoulder before the man had finished understanding his swing had missed.
"Jon." The shout from the side made him turn to another man closing to him, faster than the first, a young man with a longsword held properly in a two-handed grip that spoke of real training rather than the raw brawling most Ironborn brought to a fight.
"And who might you be." Aemon asked the man fighting him.
"Maron Volmark," the man said, with arrogance dripping in all but the two words he spoke, a valiant young lord, Aemon though, from the quality of the blade and the arrogance in the voice, wanting his killing remembered even before it happened. "You'll want to know whose steel-"
He did not finish the sentence, because Aemon was already moving, and the boast cost Volmark the half-breath he needed to bring his guard back up. Aemon caught the first exchange on his own blade, felt the strength of it up through his wrist, and gave ground rather than press. Volmark was quick, quicker than Myre had been, but the young man lacked patience.
Volmark pressed the advantage he thought he had, two strikes, three, driving Aemon back a full pace with each and it was on the fourth, overextended strike with weight too far forward, that Aemon turned the blade rather than met it, let Volmark's sword slide past his shoulder close enough to see it was freshly forged, and slid his sword straight through the man's chest.
Volmark's eyes went wide for he could not understand the mistake in the play, and then he was on his knees in the mud beside Jon Myre, with now only one left.
Ser Harras Harlaw did not rush to him all this time, the man wielded the valyrian steel in his hands, the Nightfall.
Aemon had marked him during the first two exchanges without fully attending to him, a lean and tall man with a long face with severe face than the other two and better armored. He had held back while his companions died.
"You'll be the one whom they're calling a king." Harlaw asked, his accent carried the flatness that he had not noticed in Theon and Maron who just died, his accent and stance carried a proper knight's stance. "Strange thing, a Targaryen rises when Robert dies. Were you afraid when Robert was alive, feared your death would come the same way it did for your father."
"You don't need to talk this much, Euron died before spitting no more than ten words." Aemon said. "Surrender and i would have you join the Nights Watch, for it has some use of brace man like you."
"Cannot do that." Harlaw's blade came up. "Queen Daenerys might make me lord paramount of Iron Island for your head, usurpe ."
He was good, better than the other two together, and Aemon understood within the first three exchanges that this one would not be settled by a single mistake or a moment of overreach. The man fought with each strike measured and every retreat controlled.
The fight ran longer than the other two combined. He gave ground twice more before he found the rhythm of it, Harlaw's guard was flawless from the front, but flawless from the front meant something had been sacrificed elsewhere.
Aemon broke the rhythm on the ninth exchange, it opened Harlaw's guard for the length of a single heartbeat, no more, and Aemon did not waste the heartbeat as he rushed to his right near he sword arm and spun on his heel taking the man's head with him.
Aemon stood over the three of them with the crackle of the burning harbor behind him. Brienne somewhere close, her own fight ending. The Mallister men at the gate beginning, tentatively, to believe the day might actually be theirs.
"You're hurt," Brienne asked, arriving at his shoulder, her sword still red, her breathing harder than his own.
"No." And he looked past her, toward the gate, where Mallister men in purple and silver were spilling out now that the Ironborn press had broken entirely, some giving chase after the last of the raiders toward the burning shore, most simply standing in the strange sudden quiet of a battle that had ended faster than anyone inside those walls could have prepared for.
Aemon found the nearest man and asked him. "Where is your lord."
The man's face turned as he understood mid-breath, exactly who was asking. "He.... he is not here, my lord." The honorific arrived wrong and the man too rattled to correct himself.
Brienne's look did the correcting for him. It was not a large expression, nothing more than a slight narrowing of her eyes, but the man caught the woman's disapproval, and color came up hot in his face.
"Your Grace," he said quickly. "Forgive me. Lord Jason is not here, for he rode to join Robb Stark. We've had no word of him since."
There was truth in man's word. A lord caught outside his own walls when the enemy arrived was not uncommon in a war fought across this much ground.
"Then who has held this castle in his absence."
The serjeant's face was something closer to reluctance now. "His son and heir, Your Grace. Ser Patrek."
"Bring him to me." Aemon paused a beat. "Right now."
The men nearby, three or four of them, close enough to have heard, traded the look with each other as they had been asked to do a thing they would rather not, and for a moment no one moved, the silence stretching a breath too long to pass for simple hesitation.
Above them, close enough that the wind of her wings stirred the smoke still hanging over the gate, Meleys passed low across the castle yard, banking once, her shadow sliding over the assembled men.
That settled the matter and two of them went at something close to a run.
It did not take them long to return. The young man they brought, walking between two soldiers who held his arms not quite gently, though not roughly either as if uncertain how much force they owed their own lord's heir. The man was four or five years his senior, with brown hair in Mallister fashion, his tunic only half-laced, one hand still occupied holding his breeches at the waist where the ties had never been properly done at all.
He did not look like a man who had spent the morning at a castle's defense.
"Who is he," Aemon asked to the soldier holding his left arm, though he had already knew from the shiny sigil of eagle worked into the boy's half-fastened doublet and the way every other Mallister men in the yard had, as one, found something else to look at.
"He is the son and heir of Lord Jason Mallister, Your Grace. Ser Patrek."
Aemon looked at him. Patrek Mallister looked back with the look of a man who knows he has been caught red handed.
"Your Grace," Patrek said. "I can explain the delay in coming to the gate-"
"Where did you find him." Aemon did not look away from Patrek's face as he said it.
The soldier's jaw tightened. Whatever loyalty he owed his lord's son was plainly losing ground to something else in him, anger, Aemon judged, true anger, the one that comes from men who have spent a battle bleeding for a castle their heir could not trouble himself to properly defend.
"In bed, Your Grace." Each word came out flat and hard. "With the miller's wife, he was promising the woman heads of Ironborns while face deep in her tits while even servants of the castle were on the gates defending the gatehouse."
The yard had gone very quiet. Even the sound of the burning harbor seemed to recede for a moment, or perhaps it was only that everyone within earshot had stopped breathing quite so loudly.
Aemon's eyes sharpened, though nothing else about him moved.
"Is that so," he said.
Patrek opened his mouth, to explain, to protest, to salvage some part of the moment but then, reading whatever was in Aemon's face, appeared to think better of it, and closed it again.
"Your Grace," the man said carefully, into the silence that followed. "The castle held because o of your timely arrival, thank you, your grace."
"It was not mine effort alone." Aemon looked at the man who had spoken and something in his own expression eased, fractionally. "You all have worked hard. What's your name?"
"Fenn, Your Grace. Fenn, of the household guard."
"Fenn. You'll see to the wounded and the dead, and to what's left of the granary, I expect the Ironborn helped themselves to a fair portion of it." He looked past the man, toward the harbor, where the last of the longships were burning down to blackened ribs in water gone the colour of rust with reflected fire. "As for Lord Jason's heir-"
He let the sentence sit, unfinished, and watched fear flicker across Patrek Mallister's face for the first time since he'd been brought into the yard.
He went to find Meleys. The work of the day was not done.
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