Okay, here is Chapter 14, dealing with the fallout and the next strategic moves.
Chapter 14: The Queen's Edict and the Dragon's Lament
The days immediately following the fall of Harrenhal and the capture of Prince Aemond Targaryen were a blur of grim necessity and simmering tension. The cursed fortress, now even more ruinous, echoed with the sounds of the wounded, the clang of hammers repairing what little could be repaired, and the ceaseless, mournful roars of Vhagar in the distance. The colossal bronze dragon, though no longer attacking the castle directly after the fiery discouragement orchestrated by Ciel, remained a terrifying sentinel in the skies over the Riverlands, a constant reminder of her grief and her potential for renewed fury. Her presence was a heavy psychological weight on the Black forces, a visible manifestation of the Greens' power even in defeat.
Ciel Phantomhive, wearing the mantle of Cregan Stark, found little solace in his stunning victory. The cost had been appallingly high. Nearly a third of his Northern host lay dead or too grievously wounded to fight again. Lord Karstark was a broken man, mourning his eldest son. Bennard Stark, Ciel's uncle, was recovering slowly from his spear wound, his usual gruffness replaced by a brooding silence. Even the ever-stout Lord Manderly looked weary, the lines of care etched deeper around his eyes.
"A victory, they call it," Ciel murmured to Sebastian one evening, as they stood on the precarious battlements of the Kingspyre Tower, watching Vhagar's distant, sorrowful silhouette against the bruised twilight sky. Sarx, pressed close to Ciel's leg, let out a low, sympathetic whine, sensing his master's mood and the dragon's anguish. "We hold a pile of cursed rubble, our army is depleted, and that beast still haunts our every move."
"Yet, my Lord," Sebastian replied, his voice smooth as polished obsidian, "you hold Prince Aemond Targaryen. You have plucked one of the Greens' fiercest talons. The strategic map of this war has been irrevocably altered by your hand. Such achievements are rarely without cost." His crimson eyes gleamed with an unholy light. "Besides, the despair of this place… it has a certain… piquant flavor. And the Prince's rage in his confinement is quite… invigorating to observe."
Ciel shot him a sharp look. "Your definition of 'invigorating' continues to be… unique, Sebastian." He turned his attention back to Vhagar. He had tried, cautiously, to extend his warging senses towards the great dragon, not to control, but to understand. What he touched was a maelstrom of primal emotions: overwhelming grief, a burning, agonizing pain from her wounds, confusion, and a deep, instinctual rage. There was also a profound, almost childlike attachment to Aemond, a bond forged over years, now violently sundered. It was like touching a raw, exposed nerve the size of a mountain. He recoiled, the feedback too intense, too chaotic for his human mind to fully process. But it confirmed one thing: Vhagar was not thinking strategically; she was a creature consumed by loss.
The ravens bearing Queen Rhaenyra's response arrived carried by a relay of riders, the final one reaching Harrenhal nearly a week after Aemond's capture. The Queen's missive, penned in a surprisingly strong and decisive hand, was read aloud by Prince Jacaerys in the somewhat repaired Hall of a Hundred Hearths before Ciel and his assembled lords.
Rhaenyra's elation at the news was palpable even through the formal script. She lauded Lord Stark's "unparalleled courage and strategic brilliance," proclaiming the capture of Aemond a "divine judgment upon the treachery of the Greens." She showered praises upon the valor of the Northern and Riverlander forces.
Then came her instructions. Prince Aemond was to be transported to Dragonstone under heavy guard as soon as feasible. He was deemed too valuable and too dangerous a prisoner to remain in the field. She would personally oversee his imprisonment and decide his ultimate fate. She also promised, in vague but hopeful terms, that reinforcements and supplies were being marshalled, though the Green blockade of Blackwater Bay made their dispatch challenging. She urged Lord Stark and her son to continue their valiant efforts to secure the Riverlands and to coordinate with other Black loyalists.
Aemond, when informed of the Queen's decree by Ciel himself in his dank cell, merely sneered, though his one sapphire eye held a new flicker of apprehension. "So, my dear half-sister means to parade me before her court like a prize boar? Let her try. I will not be so easily broken. And Vhagar… Vhagar will find me. She will burn Dragonstone to the ground to reach me."
"Vhagar is a wounded animal, Targaryen," Ciel stated, his voice cold. "Her grief makes her unpredictable, but not omnipotent. And Dragonstone is an ancient Targaryen fortress, built to withstand dragonfire. Your confidence is misplaced."
"My confidence is in Vhagar's love for me, Stark," Aemond spat. "Something a cold-blooded Northern savage like you would never understand."
"I understand loyalty, Prince Aemond," Ciel countered softly. "And the bonds between a warrior and his companion." He thought of Sarx, then, surprisingly, of Sebastian, bound to him by a pact far stranger than any dragon's affection. "But loyalty can be exploited. And love can be a fatal weakness."
He left Aemond to his fuming, instructing Sebastian to begin preparations for the prince's eventual transport – a task fraught with peril given Vhagar's continued presence in the region.
The Greens' reaction to Aemond's capture, as gleaned from terrified refugees and captured Green scouts, was predictably apoplectic. King's Landing was said to be in an uproar. King Aegon II had reportedly flown into a drunken rage, while his mother, Dowager Queen Alicent, had taken to her chambers in despair, only to emerge with a cold fury, demanding immediate and overwhelming retaliation. Ser Criston Cole, the Lord Commander and Hand, was rumored to be gathering a massive army to march on Harrenhal and rescue Prince Aemond, or avenge him. More worryingly, there were whispers that Prince Daeron Targaryen, Aemond's youngest brother, known as Daeron the Daring and rider of the beautiful blue dragon Tessarion, was being summoned from Oldtown to join the fray.
"If Daeron and Tessarion join forces with a still-at-large Vhagar, and Criston Cole marches with a fresh army," Lord Elmo Tully stated grimly during a war council, "our position here, even without Aemond to worry about, becomes untenable."
"Which is why we will not remain here indefinitely," Ciel declared. "Harrenhal has served its purpose. It has bloodied the Greens and given us their second most dangerous prince. But it is a cursed deathtrap, not a viable long-term base." He looked at Jacaerys. "Your Grace, your mother wishes Aemond brought to Dragonstone. This is a perilous undertaking. Vhagar will undoubtedly sense any attempt to move him."
Jacaerys, his own arm still bandaged from burns Vermax had suffered, nodded. "I understand the risks, Lord Stark. But my mother's command must be obeyed. Perhaps if we move him by night, under heavy secrecy…"
"Secrecy is difficult when one of your party is a one-eyed prince renowned for his arrogance and the other is a colossal, grieving dragon," Ciel pointed out dryly. "We need a plan that accounts for Vhagar's almost certain interference."
It was Sebastian who offered a typically audacious and morally ambiguous solution. "My Lord, if I may? Prince Aemond is… attached to his dragon. And Vhagar to him. Perhaps a… carefully managed reunion… could be arranged. One that leads Vhagar away from the Prince's intended path of travel, towards a… pre-selected destination of our choosing. A diversion, if you will."
Ciel's eye narrowed. "Explain."
"Vhagar is wounded, grieving, and likely starving, my Lord," Sebastian elaborated. "A large, easily taken bait – a herd of cattle, perhaps, or even a mock convoy appearing to transport the Prince in a different direction – might draw her off. If she can be lured far enough, and if her attention can be held… it might create the window needed to transport the true Prince Aemond safely towards the coast, where a ship bound for Dragonstone could await."
"Deception and misdirection," Manderly rumbled. "Risky, but it has the scent of Stark cunning about it."
The plan was refined. A small, heavily armed party, including Jacaerys (whose presence would lend credence to the idea that Aemond was being moved under Targaryen authority) and Ciel himself (who refused to entrust such a critical operation entirely to others), would escort Aemond overland towards a Black-held port on the Bay of Crabs, such as Maidenpool or Antlers. Simultaneously, a larger, more conspicuous force, trailing a scent heavily doused with Aemond's personal effects (courtesy of Sebastian's pilfering from his cell) and making a great show of guarding a covered litter, would travel in a different direction, hoping to draw Vhagar's attention.
"And if Vhagar ignores the decoy and comes for the true party?" Jacaerys asked, the question hanging heavy in the air.
"Then we rely on speed, the terrain, and Sebastian's… unique talents… to see us through," Ciel said, his gaze meeting his butler's. Sebastian merely smiled, a flicker of demonic amusement in his eyes.
Before they could enact this perilous plan, however, Ciel needed to address his own Northern forces. Their losses had been severe, and the prospect of further fighting so far from home, escorting a hated Targaryen prince while another Targaryen dragon hunted them, was weighing heavily on their morale. He gathered his surviving Northern lords and their principal knights in the ruin of the Hall of a Hundred Hearths.
"Lords and knights of the North," Ciel began, his voice echoing in the vast, shadowed space. Sarx stood at his side, a silent testament to Stark authority. "You have fought with the courage of wolves. You have faced down dragonfire and steel, and you have given the Greens a wound from which they will not easily recover. You have taken Harrenhal. You have captured Aemond One-Eye. These are deeds that will be sung of in the North for a thousand years."
He paused, letting his words sink in. "The cost has been great. Too many of our brothers lie dead in this cursed soil. Too many more are wounded. I mourn every man lost. But their sacrifice was not in vain. We have shown the realm the strength of the North. We have shown them that oaths matter."
He then outlined the Queen's command and his plan for transporting Aemond. "This task is perilous. But it is crucial. Removing Aemond from the board cripples the Greens. Securing him for the Queen strengthens her hand immeasurably." He looked directly at Lord Karstark, who still mourned his son. "I know some of you may question why we risk more Northern lives for a Targaryen prince, even one who is our prisoner. We do so because it serves the North. A swift end to this war, a stable realm under a rightful Queen who respects our pact – that is what serves the North. Aemond's delivery is a step towards that end."
"My men will follow you, Lord Stark," Karstark said, his voice rough with grief but firm with resolve. "We came south to see this through. We will not falter now." Similar sentiments were echoed by Manderly and the other Northern commanders. Ciel's cold pragmatism, mixed with his undeniable successes, had forged a fierce, if wary, loyalty.
The execution of the plan to move Aemond began under the cover of a moonless night three days later. The decoy force, led by a reluctant Elmo Tully (who understood the necessity but hated the risk to his men), set off westwards, making as much noise and showing as many torches as possible, the heavily scented litter prominent among them.
Ciel, Jacaerys, Sebastian, and a handpicked escort of fifty elite Northmen and twenty of Jacaerys's personal guard, slipped out of Harrenhal through a little-used postern gate, Aemond Targaryen heavily chained, gagged, and disguised in common traveler's clothes, thrown over a horse like a sack of grain. Sarx scouted ahead, Ciel's mind linked with the direwolf's, tasting the night air, listening for any sign of Vhagar or Green patrols.
For the first day, their desperate gambit seemed to work. Scout reports indicated that Vhagar, her senses likely confused by her wounds and the conflicting scents, had indeed begun to follow the decoy force, her distant roars echoing from the west. The true party made good time, pushing eastwards through the war-ravaged but now eerily quiet Riverlands.
Aemond, despite his bonds and gag, was a constant source of trouble. He writhed, he tried to throw himself from his horse, his one sapphire eye blazed with impotent fury. Sebastian, riding beside him, dealt with these outbursts with a quiet, almost bored efficiency, employing pressure points and subtle applications of pain that quickly subdued the prince without leaving lasting marks or making undue noise.
"He possesses a… spirited tenacity, my Lord," Sebastian observed to Ciel during a brief halt. "One might almost admire it, were it not so tiresome."
On the second night, as they sheltered in a ruined sept, Ciel's greensight flared again, not with grand visions of battle, but with something more intimate and unsettling. He saw Aemond, not as he was now – a captive – but as a younger boy, standing before Vhagar, his face alight with a fierce joy as he claimed the great dragon after Laena Velaryon's death. He saw the burning pride, the desperate need for validation that drove the one-eyed prince. And then, he saw Aemond's recurring nightmare: the loss of his eye at Driftmark, the pain, the humiliation, and the burning, unquenchable thirst for revenge against Lucerys Velaryon.
Ciel came out of the vision shaken. He understood Aemond a little better now – not his actions, but the desperate, wounded pride that fueled them. It made the prince no less dangerous, perhaps even more so.
"He is more than just a monster," Ciel found himself saying to Sebastian, who was keeping watch. "He is… broken. And his dragon is the only thing that ever made him feel whole."
Sebastian's lips curved into a faint smile. "Most monsters are, my Lord. Broken things, lashing out from their own pain. It is what makes them so… tragically predictable. And so very entertaining to dismantle, piece by piece."
Ciel shivered, despite the clammy night air. Sometimes, Sebastian's detachment was more chilling than any overt display of demonic power.
As they neared the Black-held port of Antlers on the Bay of Crabs, their luck began to run out. A raven arrived from Elmo Tully. The decoy force had been sighted by Green loyalists under Ser Criston Cole, who was indeed marching a large army towards Harrenhal. Worse, Vhagar, after initially following the decoy, had lost interest, her grief and pain perhaps making her behavior erratic. She had been seen flying eastwards, back towards the region where Harrenhal – and Aemond – had last been.
"She is hunting for him by instinct now," Jacaerys said, his face pale. "She knows the decoy was false. She will find us."
"Then we must reach Antlers before she does," Ciel stated, his jaw tight. "Force march. No more rests."
The final push was a desperate race against time, the shadow of Vhagar a constant threat in their minds. Sarx ranged far and wide, Ciel pushing his warging senses to their absolute limit, desperate for any sign of the great dragon.
They were less than half a day's ride from Antlers, the salty tang of the sea already in the air, when Sarx let out a mental howl of alarm directly into Ciel's mind.
Dragon! Huge! Burning inside! Coming fast!
Ciel's blood ran cold. "Vhagar," he breathed. "She's found us." He looked to the sky, and there, a monstrous silhouette against the morning sun, was the Queen of All Dragons, wounded but implacable, her roars of recognition shaking the earth. She had found her prince.