Boom! Boom!
Bells rang out over Oldtown, deep and sonorous, their echoes lingering long in the air.
From the Hightower alone, the sound slowly spread across the whole city. Wherever Hightower's surrender had been accepted, the bells began to toll.
The ringing crashed like thunder across the battlefield. The king was not dead. This was the sign that the Hightower had changed allegiance.
Upstream in Oldtown, the Citadel's domes and towers stood on both sides of the Honeywine, linked by stone bridges woven among the houses.
Most of the timid maesters, novice maesters, and others had already fled Oldtown by boat or along The Roseroad.
Only a handful of men of little standing, those unwilling to flee, and old scholars loyal to the Citadel remained at their posts.
"Seven Gods, save us!"
"Seven Gods, save us!"
Those who climbed the Citadel's towers saw madness in the distance. The storm had risen, and Oldtown had fallen.
The Citadel had organized an army of maesters, novice maesters, servants, and laborers. It might well have been the weakest and most wretched army in the world.
Few of them had armor. Their weapons were crossbows and longswords.
Green Sphinx colossi flew above the Citadel, while from the towering Hightower descended the stone Dragons, winged black shadows.
Most terrifying of all was the torrential rain from the sky, the sea lifting in great waves, and the Kraken stretching out their tentacles to destroy Oldtown.
These strange creatures, these magical beasts, had overturned the maesters' faith in "science" completely. Even the Citadel, which had always forbidden magic, possessed Sphinxes.
"A marvel. The Hightower surrendered so quickly." Alleras (Sarella), whose skin was the color of black pomelo, murmured to himself as he watched the strange sky.
The Kraken had swept through Oldtown, but the war was not over.
Wrath spread like wildfire. The Storm King had always had a fierce temper. The Stag repaid every grudge, and provoking the fury of both the Stag and the Dragonlord was a terrifying thing.
Alleras picked up his goldenheart bow. He could have fled north at once, but he had not. Wonders and war had stirred his curiosity.
The Kraken and the Dragonlord Storm. Which one would win the final battle?
"The Hightower has surrendered, but what about those poor old scholars?
"Those strange, gloomy old men were actually hiding a weapon like the Sphinx. Were they planning to use it against the Dragonlord, or the Others?" Alleras thought with interest, waiting to see what choice the Citadel would make.
"Why haven't you run?" the apprentice Mollander asked.
"My legs are bad, and my father was a knight. I would rather die like a knight."
Mollander had thick arms and broad shoulders. His feet were deformed, so he had never been able to become a knight like his father.
"Leo ran, but I'm not a coward like Leo. I am the Sphinx."
"You're right, Sphinx. Before the King arrives, let's shoot a few iron bastards. I saw the golden battle banners."
"Where's Woodcock?"
"Haven't seen him. That coward probably ran. He was only in charge of looking after incontinent old men. No need for him to die in battle."
Alleras also thought there was something strange about Woodcock, though he could not say exactly what.
Outside the Citadel, Oldtown's northern walls were completely unguarded.
This area had never been heavily defended. North of Oldtown lay the Hightower heartland and its vassals, so it had always been the weakest side. Most of the city's defenses had been on the southern walls and in the barracks along the city hall, which of course had suffered the worst losses.
The few surviving soldiers fled Oldtown in a rush, leaving the Hightower beacon banners thrown carelessly on the ground.
The northern gates of Oldtown stood wide open. Survivors of the disaster streamed out from the north, on foot, by boat, or swimming.
Atop the Citadel's tallest tower, the Conclave looked toward the black sky in the distance. The thunderstorm was terrifying.
"The green fire has vanished, and the bells are ringing. Hightower has surrendered to the Kraken. The golden Kraken banner flies from the Hightower." Archmaester Theobald gazed toward the distant Hightower, listening to the endless tolling.
Archmaester Walgrave had been chosen to serve as the Citadel's Seneschal this year.
But since he was old, frail, and confused, Archmaester Theobald had volunteered to take over the office in his place.
"Lord Leyton has surrendered." Archmaester Theobald rubbed his aching brow. "The Citadel cannot escape either. Do we surrender, or do we hold?"
"Lord Hightower is the Protector of the Citadel, but we are not his servants. If we surrender to the Ironborn, the Citadel's reputation will be ruined, and the Iron Throne will surely take revenge," Archmaester Norren said. He was an archmaester of the Citadel and a former Seneschal, his ring, rod, and mask made of an alloy of gold and silver.
"This is a matter of survival now. If we do not surrender, we die. Does the Citadel have the strength to stand against the Kraken? Even the Hightower fears it," Archmaester Vaellyn said. His ring, rod, and mask were all bronze, a sign of his mastery of astronomy.
"Ring the bells, but do not lower Hightower's banner or the King's golden banners. Wait a little longer," Archmaester Theobald ordered. One step back, one step forward, all to make sure the Citadel held until the King arrived.
The Citadel's bells rang as well, but its golden quartered banners had not yet been taken down.
"Right, the Sphinx. Retrieve the key to the Sphinx at once." Archmaester Theobald suddenly remembered the Sphinx on the ground and spoke in haste.
"If that key falls into the Kraken's hands, then we truly will have gone over to the enemy."
Although the Sphinx project was housed in the Citadel, House Hightower had always been its patron, and the Hightower maesters understood it best.
Now that the Hightower had surrendered, there was no telling what those maesters might do.
In the flooded ground before the Citadel's gates, the Sphinx statue landed again in a pool of water, a towering green Sphinx.
The Citadel had not been flattened, but enough water had gathered there for longships to glide through. Beside the Sphinx lay several fallen old maesters, the dead men who had awakened it.
"It's too late," an archmaester said with a grim face. "The Ironborn are here."
Longships appeared on the water, their sterns flying the black iron and blood-red banner, the sign of Crow's Eye.
Rodrik Harlaw looked grim as well as the Ironborn steered their longships to the Citadel's gate.
By the gate where the Sphinx had landed, several maesters had appeared at some point and boarded the Ironborn ship.
They were handing the key to the Sphinx over to the Ironborn. It, too, was a horn.
"What are those men trying to do?"
"Have you forgotten? They are all distant kin of Hightower. Bastards, far-off relatives, cousins," one archmaester told Archmaester Theobald, the Citadel's Seneschal.
As Hightowers, they remained loyal to Hightower.
Archmaester Theobald collapsed onto the floor. "It's over. Everything is over. We did not turn traitor, but Hightower has already made the choice for us."
At that moment, Maester Gormon hurried up the tower with a group behind him: apprentices, laborers, men carrying weapons and longswords, all bristling with killing intent.
"Archmaester Theobald, I believe you should give up control of the Citadel. By choosing to ring the bells, you have betrayed the Iron Throne."
"What are you trying to do?"
"What am I trying to do? You have chosen the road of traitors, so I will place you under temporary restraint," Maester Gormon said coldly, his voice as hard as his black iron chain.
"I remember now. You are Great Lord Mace's uncle. You..." Theobald was furious and anxious. The whole Citadel had been infiltrated like a sieve, and he could only surrender control.
"We are not traitors. But you are about to become the same as the traitor Hightower, my fellow archmaesters."
The maesters behind Gormon were men from the Stormlands and other houses of The Reach. Naturally, they remained loyal to the Iron Throne and House Baratheon.
"I order the Citadel to strengthen its defenses and refuse to open its gates to the Ironborn." Gormon took the Seneschal's seal and looked at the archmaesters. "Now, does anyone object?"
"No."
"I have already sent out ravens. The King's forces will arrive soon. This is a battle of fire and sea."
The Citadel's bells stopped, and the horns of battle sounded.
"This is getting more and more interesting. The Conclave has been stripped of power?" A strange smile curved Alleras's lips. The Citadel and the Hightower had split apart.
The Citadel was in chaos everywhere, and no one paid any attention to the cellars or the library.
The cellar guards had already gone to defend the walls. The Citadel was a mess.
"Pig Herder" Woodcock, the Faceless Men, gently weighed the black iron key in his hand. It was ancient and heavy. An archmaester's key could open every door in the Citadel. Other archmaesters either carried theirs or hid them somewhere safe.
Only the senile Walgrave had offered an opportunity to steal one, and he would think he had simply lost his key.
"Someone has read them several times already. Does someone want to read them again?" Woodcock lit a candle, inserted the key, and opened the ancient door.
The Citadel's old, deep cellars held the rarest and most complicated solitary copies.
Fire and Blood, also known as The Death of the Dragons, Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History, Songs the Drowned Men Sing, The Stag's Crown, Legends of the North.
"Stags, Dragons. Kraken, Others. Someone has already seen everything he wanted to see, and copies have already been sent back to Braavos. But now..." Woodcock told himself he remembered every detail clearly.
But now, should he leave, or stay and watch the Stag and the Kraken tear at each other?
...
Rodrik rubbed the horn in his hand. How strange. He had not expected Crow's Eye to give him such a task.
But the Citadel refused to let him in. For now, bringing back the horn was good enough.
Crow's Eye's deputy took the horn. "I will go ahead, Lord Rodrik."
"But... why does Crow's Eye trust me so much?" Rodrik wondered. What if he simply surrendered to the Iron Throne?
A sharp horn blast rang out, and Rodrik's expression changed at once.
"They're here. Baratheon reinforcements?"
The golden battle banners burned like flame. Everyone in the Citadel saw them.
"The King has come! King Gendry has come! I saw their golden battle banners!" the maesters wept with joy.
"Kill with me!" Gendry swung the longsword in his hand, and longships and knights poured in one after another, charging into Oldtown from the north.
Jason Melisent personally commanded a small longship, scouting ahead for the army.
Troops rushed through Oldtown's northern gates and water gates. They were the elites of the Seven Kingdoms.
The sky mattered even more.
Winged black shadows appeared overhead, and all the Dragons roared at once, their voices shaking all of Oldtown.
Boom.
Boom.
The Dragons beat their wings and unleashed torrents of flame upon the Ironborn longships in the upper reaches of Oldtown.
"Crow's Eye, you bastard." Rodrik suddenly understood. Crow's Eye's men had brought back the horn.
Whether his own men died here or not no longer mattered.
***
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (50 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.
***