Chapter 75: The River Campaign
ULF
"You're deploying. All three dragonriders."
Aemond didn't phrase it as a question.
We stood in the war council chamber with the maps spread across the long table, markers showing troop positions and supply lines and the spreading stain of Black control. The Riverlands looked like a wound on the realm's body. A moon ago that stain had been three counties. Now it ran from the Trident down to the Blackwater Rush.
Criston Cole had brought the numbers in himself that morning. Eleven villages since the last moon. Two holdfasts and a mill town. Nobody defended, nobody garrisoned, nothing taken but grain.
"He isn't feeding an army," Cole had said. "He's emptying the ground in front of one."
Aemond had listened to that without a word and then sent for us.
"Daemon has terrorized that region long enough." He moved pieces on the map, three markers sliding out from King's Landing in a spread line. "Three dragons against one. Vhagar, Vermithor, Silverwing. We end this."
"And if Caraxes refuses to engage?"
"Then we burn everything he's protecting until he has no choice." Cold. Logical. Ruthless. "The Riverlands either submit to the crown or cease to exist."
Hugh Hammer came off the wall he'd been leaning against and put both hands on the table. He'd been hungry for this for weeks, penned up by Aemond's careful sieges and starvation lines, and he grinned down at the markers like a man reading a bill of sale.
"About time. Let's show the Rogue Prince what real dragonriders can do."
"A moon ago you wanted him starved out," I said. "Harrenhal is a fortress. Your words."
"Harrenhal is a fortress with nobody in it." Aemond didn't look up. "He's out. He's in the open, burning barns, and a man in the open can be killed. That is the whole of my reasoning and I don't intend to repeat it."
"Three riders is thin."
"Three is what the crown has. My brother lies in a bed. Daeron and Tessarion march with the Hightower host and will not be recalled for this." Now he looked up, and the single eye came to rest. "Unless you've found me a fourth dragon in the pit that I don't know about."
Hugh laughed. I said nothing. My mind was in Helaena's chambers, where she was waiting. Three months gone now, though not yet showing. Three months of our child growing while war called me away.
"Ulf." Aemond's voice cut across it. "You have objections?"
"No objections, my prince."
"Your hesitation says otherwise."
"Personal matters. Nothing that affects my readiness."
He studied me. That eye missed nothing, and never had.
"We leave at dawn. Whatever personal matters concern you, resolve them tonight."
Resolve them. As though I could resolve the fact that my child might grow up never having met me.
"Understood."
THE GOODBYE
Helaena's chambers. Midnight.
She stood by the window with her silver hair loose around her shoulders, and the moonlight had washed all the colour out of her. Pale. Ghostly. Already in mourning for something.
"I have to go."
"I know."
"I don't want to. If there was any way—"
"If you refused, Aemond would ask questions. He'd wonder why the queen's protector suddenly values his own life over the crown's wars." She turned from the window. "You must go."
"Helaena—"
"And you must come back." She crossed to me and took my hands, both of them, and her grip was harder than I expected. "This child needs a father. Not a memory. Not a story about the hero who died fighting the Rogue Prince."
"I'll come back."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
"Now say it to the child."
I looked at her. She meant it, and she wasn't going to explain herself, and there was no arguing with that face. So I knelt down on the cold floor of the queen's chambers, put my hand flat where I'd put it a hundred times this last moon, and said it again to something that couldn't hear me yet.
"I'll come back."
She kissed me. Desperate. Hungry. The candle guttered on the sill and neither of us went to it.
When we finally broke apart I put my hand on her stomach. Still flat under my palm. I knew what was in there.
"Stay safe. Both of you."
"We'll be safe. The children are here. Orwyle is here. The city is secure." Her fingers tightened. "It's you who faces Daemon. It's you he wants dead."
The Dragonslayer. The man who killed Blood and Cheese in Flea Bottom before either of them ever got under the Red Keep, and left the Rogue Prince nothing to show for the gold he'd spent. There's no grudge worse than the one that made a man look foolish.
"I've survived worse."
"Have you?"
"I've survived everything so far."
She didn't smile at that. Her eyes had gone to that far place where she sees what I can't, and knows what she isn't permitted to say.
"In my dreams, you're always standing. Always fighting. But the fire around you grows higher every time."
"Then I'll learn to walk through higher fires."
I kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. Her lips.
Then I walked away, and she let me, and neither of those was easy.
THE FLIGHT
Three dragons flew northwest into a wind coming off the bay.
Vhagar led. Ancient, enormous, each wingbeat slow enough to count, Aemond a small black mark at the root of her neck. Vermithor came behind her with Hugh Hammer laughing into the wind. Silverwing flew steady under me, and she knew my head wasn't where it belonged. She held her line without being asked and let me be useless for a while.
King's Landing shrank behind us. The city that had somehow become home. The place where everything I loved was staying put and vulnerable.
In my pocket, the token Helaena had pressed into my hand at the last moment. A silver ribbon from her hair. Small. Precious. Nothing anyone would look at twice if they searched me.
Our child. Our future. Everything depending on what happens in the next few days.
Hugh brought Vermithor across the wind and came in close enough that I could see the bronze scarring along the old dragon's jaw.
"You seem distracted, bastard."
"Focused."
"Focused on what? We've got three dragons. Daemon has one. The mathematics are simple."
"Simple mathematics get people killed."
"You worry too much." Hugh's grin was too wide, too eager, the same grin he'd worn in the training yard with wine on his breath, telling me to come find him when I had a real idea. "Relax. Enjoy the hunt."
He pulled Vermithor away and went up whooping at the open sky.
I watched him go.
He's still planning something. Still waiting for his moment. And he wants me in the sky beside him when it comes, which is the only reason I'm still breathing.
Aemond circled back and brought Vhagar alongside Silverwing, close enough that her wind pushed us sideways before he corrected.
"Hugh seems excited."
"Hugh is always excited about killing."
"True. But useful." The single eye came round. "You seem less excited."
"I'm focused on the mission."
"See that you remain so. Daemon is dangerous. He won't make the same mistakes Rhaenys did."
No. He won't. Rhaenys came down to fight three dragons because she had no other way out of that field. Daemon will pick his ground, his hour, and his weather, and he'll pick water.
I already knew which water. I'd known it since the council, and before the council, sitting in my head with all the other things I remember happening that haven't happened yet. A lake wide enough to drown an army. A dead castle standing over it.
We flew on toward the Riverlands.
Toward Daemon.
Toward the God's Eye, which had been waiting for us the whole time.