Chapter 77: The Riverlands Burning - Part 2
ULF
Thirty men had thrown down their swords.
The garrison had surrendered. Knights and soldiers both, hands raised, quarter begged, kneeling on the courtyard stones in front of a heap of their own steel. Their captain had walked out under a bedsheet because nobody in that keep owned anything white.
Hugh burned them anyway.
Vermithor's fire swept across the courtyard, catching men mid-plea. Their screams lasted seconds. Long enough to haunt, short enough to be efficient.
When the flames stopped, Hugh laughed.
"That's how you deal with traitors!"
Those were prisoners. Those were men who'd yielded.
I'd seen him bank. I'd seen the glow start in Vermithor's throat and I'd told myself he was showing off for the walls.
I guided Silverwing between Vermithor and the inner keep. Where the women and children huddled.
"Move, White."
"No."
Hugh dismounted. His face was flushed. Victory, bloodlust, something worse.
"They're Black sympathizers. All of them."
"They're farmers' wives. Children. They don't choose which dragon burns their homes."
"They chose when they opened their gates to Daemon's forces."
"They opened their gates because they didn't want to die." I dismounted. Hand on my blade. "Same reason they surrendered to us."
"And now they're going to die anyway." Hugh stepped forward. "Get out of my way."
Steel sang as I drew.
"Try it."
We stood five feet apart. Behind him the courtyard was still cooking, and the smell came across us both on the same breath of wind, and neither of us moved out of it.
His hand went to his own sword.
"You'd fight me? Over peasants?"
"I'd fight you over the difference between war and murder."
"There is no difference." He drew. "Not anymore."
He's going to attack. He's actually going to—
"Enough."
Aemond's voice cracked like a whip.
The prince regent landed Vhagar with ground-shaking force. Mortar dust came off the gatehouse in a sheet. He dismounted with cold efficiency.
"Save it for the Blacks." His single eye moved between us. "I need you both alive for now."
"He's protecting traitors—"
"He's protecting assets." Aemond gestured at the huddled women. "Dead peasants tell no tales. Living ones spread fear." He smiled without warmth. "Fear is more useful than corpses. We've discussed this."
We had. Two days ago, in a burned village, with a boy's mouth shut under his mother's hand. I'd said it first and I'd said it better, and he'd kept the useful half and thrown away the half that made it worth saying.
And it hadn't reached the courtyard. Soldiers don't carry stories home to their villages. Soldiers are just arithmetic that doesn't multiply.
Hugh's grip tightened on his sword.
For a moment, I thought he'd attack Aemond instead.
Then he sheathed his blade.
"Fine. For now." He glared at me. "But this isn't over, White."
"No. It isn't."
He stalked back to Vermithor.
Aemond watched him go.
"You're making an enemy."
"I already have one."
"You have several. Don't add to the list unnecessarily." He turned toward Vhagar. "We fly north. Scouts report Daemon's heading toward God's Eye."
Of course he is. He burned it into the ground. His challenge, his chosen battlefield.
"It's a trap."
"Obviously. We spring it anyway." Aemond mounted his dragon. "Three to one. Whatever trap he's planned, it won't be enough."
You don't know Daemon. You don't know what he's capable of.
But arguing would accomplish nothing.
The women came out of the keep as the dragons lifted. One of them stopped in front of me, looked at the sword I hadn't put away yet, and spat on the stones by my boot.
I'd have done the same.
I returned to Silverwing. Checked her harness. Prepared for another day of hunting.
THAT NIGHT
My network still had contacts here.
A serving girl at an inn we'd commandeered. A stable boy who'd delivered horses to Daemon's forces. A refugee who'd watched Caraxes from a distance and lived to tell it.
The girl wouldn't take coin. She wanted to know whether we'd burn the inn when we left. I told her we wouldn't.
I didn't know if that was true.
The picture emerged slowly. Daemon wasn't fleeing. Wasn't even evading.
He was circling.
Each day, his path curved closer to God's Eye. Each night, his forces consolidated around Harrenhal. He was gathering, preparing, setting pieces on a board only he could see.
"He's baiting us." I spread the map across the trestle in the command tent, and the tallow guttered and dripped and I moved the candle twice before the light held. "Look at his movements. He could have attacked three times by now. He's choosing not to."
"He's choosing to die on his terms." Aemond barely glanced at the markings. "Noble, in a twisted way."
"Or he has something planned we haven't anticipated."
"Such as?"
I don't know. That's the problem.
"I don't know. But Daemon's survived fifty years of warfare. He didn't do that by being predictable."
"He survived by being ruthless and lucky. His luck has run out." Aemond rolled up the map and tucked it under his arm. "God's Eye tomorrow. We end this."
At the tent flap he stopped.
"My sister. Does she still dream?"
I said nothing. He hadn't waited for an answer, and he was gone before I'd decided whether to give him one.
I stood alone in the command tent, staring at the space where the map had been.
Three dragons. One target. Simple mathematics.
But war was never simple.
SILVERWING
She found me in the field.
I'd walked away from camp. Needed space, needed air, needed to think without Hugh's glares and Aemond's cold confidence. The barley had gone to seed unharvested because there was nobody left to cut it, and it came up past my knees, and it stank of smoke like everything else did now.
Silverwing landed beside me and flattened a circle of it. Her massive head lowered until those amber eyes were level with mine.
A questioning rumble.
"I'm considering running."
Another rumble. No judgment.
"Flying back to King's Landing. Taking Helaena and the children. Disappearing before this battle kills me."
She huffed warm breath across my face.
"I know. I know it wouldn't work." I touched her snout. "If I flee, Aemond names me traitor. Helaena becomes a hostage. The child, our child, becomes something to bargain with."
Trapped. By the very thing I'm fighting for.
"Thirty men knelt today. I watched him do it and I didn't get there in time." My hand stayed where it was. She let it. "By morning I'll have a reason why I couldn't have. A good one. I'll believe it, and I'll fly, and I'll be useful all day."
The wind moved the barley. She waited.
"That's the part that frightens me. Not Daemon."
She made a low sound, deep in her chest, and I felt it in the ground more than I heard it.
"I didn't expect fatherhood." The words came out strange. Honest. "Didn't expect to have something worth running toward."
Silverwing pressed closer. Comfort, as much as a dragon could offer.
"I'll fight tomorrow. I'll survive if I can. And then I'll go home."
A rumble. Agreement.
"Thank you. For everything."
She curled around me. Massive coils of ancient muscle and warm scales. Protecting me from the cold. From the dark.
North of us the sky carried a light that wasn't stars, low down, steady, and it hadn't gone out by the time my eyes closed.
I slept against my dragon's side and dreamed of silver hair and dark eyes and a child I'd never met.
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