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***
The year 283 A.D.
Darry Castle, Riverlands.
«Tomorrow... Tomorrow... A momentous event will take place. Something that has been a long time coming. For years, injustice, greed and death have flourished in the glorious lands of the Seven Kingdoms. Hundreds of thousands of people have suffered under the oppression of fools who, like magpies in a slum, try to collect more and more shiny metal. - The speech, quiet and yet loud, simple and yet penetrating, truthful on the one hand but completely false on the other, filled the small Great Hall of Darry Castle, packed with the highest lights of Westeros, who had turned their ears fully to listen and did not miss a single word. - But tomorrow everything would change. Tomorrow ungrateful stags will die, rotting trout will drown, balding falcons will fall, forgetting how three hundred years ago my noble ancestor gave them all they have! Tomorrow I, Prince of Dragons, will lead you, my friends, my comrades, into the great battle. Yes, the enemy outnumbers us, yes, his soldiers are more experienced than ours, but remember who you are! You are lords and knights who have remained loyal to the king despite all loss and hardship! Men whose honor is as strong as Valyrian steel and whose justice is as high as the Moon Peaks! Tomorrow we will fight our enemies and prove that we have the boiling blood of true warriors in us! Each of you will kill a dozen enemies and survive, leaving behind an unrivaled legend! One that will be remembered for centuries to come! Flame and Blood!
«Flame and Blood! - The roar that rose in the dormitory deafened the entire castle, reaching even the field camp, where it was picked up and spread for miles, flying over the Green Tooth and colliding with the answering cry.
The man who uttered it, a fine man, with silver hair and purple eyes, clad in closed heavy armor, with a dragon engraved with rubies on his black breastplate, only smiled contentedly, satisfied with the effect he had uttered.
"You won't have long to smile, Rhaegar." - I thought gloatingly and, smirking, followed Prince Lieven, whose retinue I had been in for the past week.
A month ago, Rhaegar Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, Prince of Silver and the main cause of the biggest rebellion since Damon Blackfire, had returned to King's Landing.
The effect was comparable to putting water into boiling oil.
First there was a loud scandal between father and son behind closed doors, which resulted in Rhaegar's appointment as commander-in-chief, while the king himself locked himself in his castle and began to do things Varys alone knew.
The second event was a meeting of all the remaining lords loyal to the crown in King's Landing. The official reason was to discuss strategy in the coming war, but it began with a question from Lord Brune, the head of a small house on the Split Claw whose inhabitants had always been known for their insolence (and poverty). If you take away all the politeness and verbiage, Luther Brune, to whose room a chest of jewelry worth a good sum had been delivered the day before, asked-"Your Highness, why R'Glor, you, a married man, went off somewhere with the daughter of a great house engaged to the head of another great house? And why on earth should we risk our lives and spill our blood over this?"
The only thing that saved him from being booed, berated, and challenged to a duel by the prince's staunchest supporters was the fact that the question was on the minds of every lord and knight there.
As angry as I was with Rhaegar, what he had was tremendous charisma and oratory skills. In response to a tricky question, he gave a mini-speech that boiled down to, "I'll explain everything when we put down the rebellion and Lady Stark arrives in King's Landing," framing it so that anyone who brought it up again would be a pariah to everyone present.
The rest of the meeting went more or less smoothly, with eight thousand of Prince Leaven's Dornish, five of Randyll Tarly's men, who had been sent here by Mace Tyrell, and the remaining twenty-five thousand Targaryens at the Targaryens' disposal to defeat the army gathering on the north shore of the Trident.
The rebel forces, according to the Spiderbirds, had eighteen thousand Jon Arryn, who had left the rest of his army in the Vale to hold off the Highlanders and other "unreliable" vassals, fifteen Eddard Stark, who had become the new Lord of Winterfell and Keeper of the North, twelve of Hoster Tully, who still married his daughters to the Grand Lords of the North and East and whose lands lost the most in the war, and finally, the remaining ten thousand of Robert Baratheon, who lost the most soldiers in the war. But it had to be realized that the Stag's Men were now the strongest and most hardened warriors in all the Seven Kingdoms and could not be written off.
The total was thirty-eight thousand, of which only three and a half were heavy cavalry, against fifty-five, with their seven thousand knights. The Loyalists were losing in everything - quality, quantity, morale... And everyone understood that.
Of course, there were proposals to ask for reinforcements from the Guardian of the South, who was besieging Storm's End with his forty-thousand-strong army, but in response Rhaegar showed a letter where Mace's handwriting and his mother's words said that it made no sense to besiege the Baratheon stronghold with a smaller army, and that the rest of the army had gone to their native Spaceland to drive out deserters and guard the coast from the Ironborn. Roughly speaking, the Targaryens were very gently and reasonably sent away.
They wanted to do the same thing with Dorne, but Doran already had an answer ready - the Ironwoods. According to the letter I'd given to Rhaegar, the Martell army was holding the Ironwood lords from defecting to the rebels and couldn't leave home. But knowing whose ships brought the Dornish corps to King's Landing and the long-standing counterweight in the form of the former lords of the Stone Road, the Fowlers, it was immediately clear that Doran, like the Queen of the Spikes, had simply ditched the former Valyrians.
Worst of all was the dialog with the Westlands. Tywin Lannister locked himself away in Casterly Rock and quietly rallied his troops, not answering a single letter sent by Rhaegar or his father. And that alarmed our commander-in-chief more than Dorne and Prostor combined. Rhaegar was no Aerys and was well aware of how dangerous a man the Great Lion, whom his father had foolishly turned against the royal dynasty for nearly a decade, was.
So the only way to achieve victory for the Loyalists was to use the right tactics and strategy and neutralize the numerical advantage of the rebels.
There was only one chance - the ford near Darry Castle. The most convenient and wide place on the Trident, where the rebel army, which had retreated to the northern shore and joined the last reinforcements from the North and the Vale, would soon pass. It was there that the danger from Baratheon's numerous knightly cavalry - heavy knights' horses simply cannot keep a gallop on the muddy river bottom - and the numbers of the enemy, who would not be able to use their advantage in men to the maximum, was almost completely neutralized.
After the meeting, a third event occurred. A meeting between Elia and Rhaegar, pressured by me, as Doran's official envoy, and Prince Leaven, who was the ideal of a loyal Kingsguard (except for the mistress thing), but who still remembered who his family was and was very unhappy with his suzerain's antics.
The meeting went from bad to worse. Rhaegar simply ignored Elia, treating her as if she were an outsider court lady rather than his lawful wife. It was obvious that if Leawen and I hadn't been there, he would have walked away quickly, forgetting all about the Dornish princess.
In the end, when the "date" of the spouses ended, I, under the pretext of transferring personal family letters, had to stay with the poor girl, just burst into tears and cried on my shoulder for a long time.
All this was reflected in the constant reports sent to Doran, and returned in the form of orders and clarifications sent by the crows. Still, no matter how great a combinator and manipulator in this war I consider myself, my maxim is to properly direct the thoughts at the top of the standing to the most favorable result for me.
"Remember the devil," I thought as I saw the hunched figure of the castle maester, whose chain was almost reaching the floor because of his slouching.
«A letter for you from the Sunspear, Lord Temper. - Said the bastard, handing me a letter with a fresh wax seal that still smelled of hot wax and the warmth of newly applied rivets. There was no doubt that Lord Darry and Rhaegar, who had long ago taken advantage of the Maesters' well-known habit of reading other people's letters, would know the contents of the letter by now.
"So we let you have it," I thought grimly as I unfolded the letter and, skimming past most of the text bearing the simple thought "do your best for a Targaryen victory," looked at the last line.
"In closing, I want to thank you for the recommended book. 'Rock of Valyria' by Archmaester Piemont proved to be a very interesting read."
That was it. Doran has made his decision. To take the harshest possible course of action against the dragons. So tomorrow I'll have to cross the river in secret.
***
283 A.D. (A day later)
Loyalist camp, around an unnamed ford near Darri, Riverlands.
«Is everyone ready? - I asked quietly, looking around at the crowd.
«All of them, my lord. - Torchen, dressed like the rest of us in dark hunter's robes that acted as camouflage in the pine forests of the night, answered for them.
«Let's move out. - Because of the excitement and the shivering in my gut, all the phrases were chopped and cold, in keeping with the current atmosphere.
The ten dark figures who had come out of the tent at the edge of the camp and passed the Dornish who had been warned in advance, quickly disappeared into the forest without attracting undue attention.
I was accompanied by Torhen, one of my most trusted men who had followed me since Bear Island, a guide from the local hunters who knew the marshes like the back of his hand, and seven guards drawn from the best warriors in the Martellian guard. Their role was simple - having learned that tomorrow would be the general battle of the entire rebellion, the neighborhood was flooded with dozens, if not hundreds, of marauders and brigands hoping to work as scavengers on the battlefield. And these men will not hesitate to slaughter lone travelers walking through the dark forest.
The Riverlands are so named not only because of the vast number of large and great rivers flowing through them. They are also known for the vast amount of rare river fish, which are revered throughout Vestros as a delicacy, and for the incredible humidity in both summer and winter, making the local pine forests the standard for "the nastiest and most disgusting places a normal person wouldn't go at night."
I was convinced of this on my own skin, coming out on the shore of the Trident so wet and dirty, as if I had spent several days in this forest, not twenty minutes. Fishermen were waiting for us on the bank, and for a few silver pieces they agreed to smuggle us to the camp on the other side of the river.
Nodding to the nearest fisherman and sitting down in one of the small boats, where two people could barely fit, I prepared myself for a long wait. The destination of my visit was to the northeast, nearly two leagues away, and it would take nearly an hour to get there.
While my retinue, taking advantage of the cloudy night, swayed quietly on the waves of the Trident, I was in a slight melancholy.
This world and the events in it must have changed a great deal because of me. The founding of Osgiliath, meeting and befriending Oberyn, traveling through Essos, meeting Drogo... these were just the first events that came to mind, and Gods only know how many. The butterfly effect in all its glory. But anyway, history is changing, slowly and inevitably. And now, because of me, it's going to do a somersault, completely changing its direction.
In that letter, the title of the book, according to the prearranged signals, could only mean one thing: Doran had decided to betray the Targaryens.
I do not know if it was the pressure of my words or the independent decision of Grandlord Dorne, who was a poisonous snake whose thoughts were often a mystery to me, but the decision was made. Tomorrow, as soon as the battle began, the eight thousand swords on the right flank of the dragon army would join the rebels, and Robin, to whom my message would arrive tomorrow evening, would prepare to kidnap the princess.
For now, my role was simple, to meet with the main rebels and negotiate 'preferential treatment' for Dorne for helping to secure a future victory, and keeping Elia and her children alive.
"I hope Bolton keeps his end of the bargain." - I thought, remembering the young northern lord with colorless eyes and a cruel temper, who had already amassed a small fortune on deals with me. - "Otherwise, everything will go down the drain. Including my life."
***
P.O.V. Eddard Stark.
283 A.D.E.
Main Tent, Rebel Camp, Riverlands.
The Old Gods had a strange and sometimes wicked sense of humor and I, Eddard Stark, was one of the clearest examples of those jokes.
The second son of an ancient family of the Guardians of the North, the younger brother of the future Lord Stark, the son of the Old Wolf, I was prepared from childhood to take the place of advisor, aide, and warrior to my older brother. Sent to be raised in the Vale for twelve years by Lord Jon Arryn, I spent most of my life in the vast sky, where the Eagle's Nest stabbed me with a needle. In time I even began to think of the old falcon, Lord John, a wise and very friendly old man, as my father, and the irrepressible and loud Robert as my brother, constantly dragging us into various adventures, from which we could not always get out unharmed.
Life was wonderful and I didn't want to change anything. But everything changed.
First came that both ill-fated and beautiful Harrenhal tournament. It was there that I was lucky enough to meet her - the embodiment of beauty, a goddess who had come down from heaven, the most beautiful angel I could see in this world. I fell in love with her at first sight. And the amazing thing is, the feeling was mutual. I don't know what she found in me, the second son of an ancient, but not too rich family, but that night and the memories of it will forever remain the most important treasure, stored in the most secret corners of my soul.
But unfortunately, that is where this nightmare began. Like all Starks, I was pissed to the teeth at the bastard dragon's behavior toward Lyanna, whom he insulted with his advances in the presence of her fiancé, but later, after drinking a few jugs of wine with Robert and calming down, I completely forgot about the incident and dismissed it from my memory, thinking of the Targaryens' famous egregiousness.
It became the biggest mistake I had ever made in my entire life.
The death of my father and Brandon...being declared a rebel...the war that broke out...nearly dying in the cold waters of the Mouth, retreating only thanks to Ilana, the kind daughter of a fisherman...being captured by the Sisterhood...gathering the troops...being appointed the new Guardian of the North...marrying my older brother's former fiancée.... All this merged into a kaleidoscope of events that I wanted to brush aside and forget about like the worst dream. But, as it was said earlier, the Old Gods have a very strange and sometimes cruel sense of humor.
And now, looking at the man who entered the main tent, I wondered whether it was for good or bad.
«Well, Lord Temper. - Said John, sitting in a deep wicker chair close to the hearth, frowning his bushy eyebrows, long since whitened by old age. The oldest Grandlord alive, after all. - Tell us what the Deputy Prince of Leaven and one of Prince Doran's confidants is doing here.
Robert is called the head of the rebellion, the leader and our pillar, but back in Riverrun, after the marriage between Catelyn and I and Jon and Lysa, we made a pact to leave all politics and negotiations to Lords Hoster and Jon, giving Robert and me complete freedom on the battlefield.
And now Jon was the only one who could dialog with the unexpected messenger from Dorne, for the head of the Riverlands had still not recovered from the wound inflicted by the scorching griffin Connington, and my friend and I were forced to sit quietly in our seats and entrust all this southern verbal lace to our teacher.
«I have a secret message from Prince Doran and the right to speak on his behalf when negotiating. - Said a tall man dressed in the dirty and wet clothes of the hunters, making it hard to recognize him as one of the richest men in the Seven Kingdoms.
"Otherwise, Ruse wouldn't have taken such a risk by secretly negotiating with him and organizing this meeting." - I frowned involuntarily, thinking back to my willful, irreplaceable vassal. - "Alas, there is nothing that can be done about him now..."
Two days ago, when Bolton, after the end of a meeting where only Robert, John, and I were present, with a few of his cronies, had told me that he had been in correspondence with a Dornish lord since the beginning of the rebellion, who had asked for a secret meeting, some of the Stormriders and rivermen immediately began to cry treason. But when the descendant of the Red Kings looked at them with his famous icy gaze and provided all the letters that didn't even hint at betrayal (though it seemed to me that many of the Southerners were looking more at the amount of gold dragons Temper and Bolton had gotten from their cooperation), most of them shut up immediately. Oh, and Jon later told me that if Bolton had thought of betraying us, it would have been a disaster - four thousand Boltons and three Dustins and Riswells, loyal allies of Ruse, could have stabbed our army in the back at any moment. And then there are the Freys.
So the meeting, despite the distrust of the majority and Robert's personal displeasure, had to be organized.
All these thoughts flew through my head while John scrutinized the letter handed to him, having opened the seal with the Martell coat of arms - a spear piercing the sun.
«It says here that you, Lord Temper, have the right to negotiate on behalf of all of Dorne and to make your own decisions. - He said thoughtfully, his usual scrutinizing squint looking at his nocturnal guest. - Quite a privilege.
«It is, Lord Arryn. - The man replied.
«And what proposition do you wish to convey to us, since you've gone to so much trouble to arrange this meeting?
The next words threw me and everyone else in the room into a mild shock, even Jon raised his eyebrows in surprise.
«The Dornish army and Dorne itself are ready to side with the alliance between the Stormlands and the Riverlands, the North and the Vale, by attacking the Targaryen flank during the battle tomorrow.
The ruckus that followed must have disturbed the guards outside. What can't be said, but the offer was truly royal - to get eight thousand soldiers at the start of a battle and deprive your opponent of them is worth a lot. Even though we had a significant numerical advantage in strength, the fact that strategically we were losing was undeniable. Storming the opposite bank of the ford, where we can't use cavalry to its full potential, and the dragons have a dominant height, is a bloody and dangerous business. And the old weasel Frey, standing a day's march away, with his four thousand might stab them in the back.
So the Dornish offer was well-timed and makes our victory almost certain.
«Quiet!" John's loud bellow, the one he used to stop my fights with Robert when I was a boy, brought silence at once. Everyone's attention returned to the two men, the old falcon tense in his chair and the dirty messenger of the wilderness. - Your offer, Lord Temper, is very unexpected and, admittedly, tempting. But I've lived on this world for a long time, and I'm well aware of who Prince Doran is. What are your terms?
«Dorne has only three conditions for the new royal dynasty of the Seven Kingdoms. - Said the green-eyed Dornean, who at this moment reminded me of a very cunning and dangerous creature with bright green eyes. A snake. - They consist in preserving the privileges received under the Madman, non-interference in the internal affairs of Dorne... - If the first demand did not cause much commotion, because most of the lords did not know what freedoms gave the southern kingdom itself (and I learned by chance from that sorceress at the Harrenhal tournament), then the second... - ... and pardon and expulsion to the Sun Spear of Princess Elia of Dornish and her children - Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys.
«Crunch...
The crunching of the armrests of the chair where Robert sat would not have been heard only by the deaf.
«No way! - He jumped up from his seat and roared, startling the knights standing nearby, making them involuntarily reach for the weapons hanging at their sides. - All Targaryen bastards must die! I will personally smash that son of a bitch's head in for what he did to Liana! And his children will suffer the same fate!
«Robert!" I shouted in shock, standing up from my chair and putting a hand on my furious comrade's shoulder. - They are children! Innocent children! You can't judge them for the sins of their father.
«Ned! How could you! It was your sister who was kidnapped by that bastard! And only Seven knows what he did to her! - His fists were clenched to white knuckles and his face was contorted in a grimace of rage and grief. He loved my sister, no matter what he said, and he would have stopped his womanizing after the wedding.
«But the children and their mother are innocent. - I said, turning him around to face me and squeezing his shoulders, looking into his lightning-blue eyes. A family trait the fierce Baratheons inherited from the Durranons. - You saw the silver bastard's wife when he handed Lyanna the bouquet. She was just as shocked and grief-stricken as you are right now. Understand, children come into this world innocent, and their first sins are committed by their parents. You can't blame a newborn boy and a two-year-old girl for their crazy father.
For the rest of the meeting, where Jon and the night ambassador discussed the minor details of the agreement, I drank Robert some lightly diluted wine and tried to translate his rage into the battle that would happen tomorrow.
Later, when Baratheon came to his senses and went to bed, taking three half-dressed maidens into his tent at once (tsk-tsk) Jon told me the results of the negotiations.
The Martells retained all the privileges they had gained during the dragons' reign. Even one more - as long as Robert Baratheon sits on the Iron Throne, the crown cannot interfere in Dorne's personal affairs.
Princess Elia and Rhaenys would go to Sunspear, where they would live under the Martell family name. Elia, the last princess of the deposed dynasty, would be deprived of any political power, while Reynis was still a girl and could not claim the Iron Throne according to the law and postulates of the Seven. The same was true of their descendants.
It was not so simple with Aegon. The boy could be used in the future to sow turmoil in the country or organize a Blackfire Rebellion. It was decided that when he reached the age of eight, he would go to the Citadel, where he would be trained as a Maester, and later, having completed his chain, he would go to the Wall to succeed his old ancestor, Aegon Targaryen, brother of Aegon the Incredible himself.
When I found out WHO was sitting in the maester's seat at the Night's Watch, I almost missed Jon's last words when he went to bed out of shock.
«The only relief Temper had gotten out of me on this matter was the right of a minor Targaryen to visit the Sunspear once a year and see his mother. Who was I to refuse such a small request? - Arryn's aged eyes flashed with a lingering pain and sadness that only someone who knew him well could see.
"Still, John is a very unhappy man." - I thought, heading to my tent and getting ready for bed. - "To lose two beloved wives and eight children... I hope Lisa can give him happiness."
So, pondering on the topics of fate and my future life after our victory, I imperceptibly fell asleep, inwardly preparing for tomorrow's battle.
This battle will decide everything.
***
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