Fire & Blood

The Dying of the Dragons—The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II

“The time for hiding is done,” King Aegon II declared on Dragonstone, after Sunfyre had feasted on his sister. “Let the ravens fly that the realm may know the pretender is dead, and their true king is coming home to reclaim his father’s throne.”

Yet even true kings may find some things more easily proclaimed than accomplished. The moon would wax and wane and wax again before Aegon II took his leave of Dragonstone.

Between him and King’s Landing lay the isle of Driftmark, the whole breadth of Blackwater Bay, and scores of prowling Velaryon warships. With the Sea Snake a “guest” of Trystane Truefyre in King’s Landing and Ser Addam dead at Tumbleton, command of the Velaryon fleets now rested with Addam’s brother, Alyn, the younger son of Mouse, the shipwright’s daughter, a boy of fifteen…but would he be friend or foe? His brother had died fighting for the queen, but that same queen had made their lord a captive and was herself dead. Ravens were dispatched to Driftmark offering House Velaryon pardon for all its past offenses if Alyn of Hull would present himself on Dragonstone and swear allegiance…but until and unless an answer was received, it would be folly for Aegon II to try to cross the bay by ship and risk capture.

Nor did His Grace wish to sail to King’s Landing. In the days following his half-sister’s death, the king still clung to the hope that Sunfyre might recover enough strength to fly again. Instead the dragon only seemed to weaken further, and soon the wounds in his neck began to stink. Even the smoke he exhaled had a foul smell to it, and toward the end he would no longer eat.

On the ninth day of the twelfth moon of 130 AC, the magnificent golden dragon that had been King Aegon’s glory died in the outer yard of Dragonstone where he had fallen. His Grace wept, and gave orders that his cousin Lady Baela be brought up from the dungeons and put to death. Only when her head was on the block did he repent, when his maester reminded him that the girl’s mother had been a Velaryon, the Sea Snake’s own daughter. Another raven took wing for Driftmark, this time with a threat: unless Alyn of Hull presented himself within a fortnight to do homage to his rightful liege, his cousin the Lady Baela would lose her head.

On the western shores of Blackwater Bay, meanwhile, the Moon of the Three Kings came to a sudden end when an army appeared outside the walls of King’s Landing. For more than half a year the city had lived in fear of Ormund Hightower’s advancing host…but when the assault came, it came not from Oldtown by way of Bitterbridge and Tumbleton, but up the kingsroad from Storm’s End. Borros Baratheon, on hearing of the queen’s death, had left his newly pregnant wife and four daughters to strike north through the kingswood with six hundred knights and four thousand foot.

When the Baratheon vanguard was seen across the Blackwater Rush, the Shepherd commanded his followers to rush the river to keep Lord Borros from coming ashore. But only hundreds now came to listen to this beggar who’d once preached to tens of thousands, and few obeyed. Atop Aegon’s High Hill, the squire now calling himself King Trystane Truefyre stood on the battlements with Larys Strong and Ser Perkin the Flea, gazing at the swelling ranks of stormlanders. “We do not have the strength to oppose such a host, sire,” Lord Larys told the boy, “but perhaps words can succeed where swords must fail. Send me to parley with them.” And so the Clubfoot was dispatched across the river under a flag of truce, accompanied by Grand Maester Orwyle and the Dowager Queen Alicent.

The Lord of Storm’s End received them in a pavilion on the edge of the kingswood, as his men felled trees to build rafts for the river crossing. There Queen Alicent received the glad news that her grandaughter Jaehaera, the only surviving child of her son Aegon and daughter Helaena, had been delivered safely to Storm’s End by Ser Willis Fell of the Kingsguard. The Dowager Queen wept tears of joy.

Betrayals and betrothals followed, until an accord was reached between Lord Borros, Lord Larys, and Queen Alicent, with Grand Maester Orwyle as witness. The Clubfoot promised that Ser Perkin and his gutter knights would join the stormlanders in restoring King Aegon II to the Iron Throne, on the condition that all of them save the pretender Trystane would be pardoned for any and all offenses, including high treason, rebellion, robbery, murder, and rape. Queen Alicent agreed that her son King Aegon would make Lady Cassandra, Lord Borros’s eldest daughter, his new queen. Lady Floris, another of his lordship’s daughters, was to be betrothed to Larys Strong.

The problem posed by the Velaryon fleet was discussed at some length. “We must bring the Sea Snake into this,” Lord Baratheon is reported to have said. “Perhaps the old man would like a new young wife. I have two daughters not yet spoken for.”

“He is traitor thrice over,” Queen Alicent said. “Rhaenyra could never have taken King’s Landing but for him. His Grace my son will not have forgotten. I want him dead.”

“He will die soon enough in any case,” replied Lord Larys Strong. “Let us make our peace with him now, and make what use of him we can. Once all is safely settled, if we have no further need of House Velaryon, we can always lend the Stranger a hand.”

And so it was agreed, most shamefully. The envoys returned to King’s Landing, and the stormlanders soon followed, crossing the Blackwater Rush without incident. Lord Borros found the city walls unmanned, the gates undefended, the streets and squares empty save for corpses. As he climbed Aegon’s High Hill with his banner-bearer and household shields, he saw the ragged banners of the squire Trystane hauled down from the gatehouse battlements, and the golden dragon banner of King Aegon II raised in their stead. Queen Alicent herself emerged from the Red Keep to bid him welcome, with Ser Perkin the Flea beside her. “Where is the pretender?” Lord Borros asked, as he dismounted in the outer ward. “Taken and in chains,” replied Ser Perkin.

Seasoned by countless border clashes with the Dornish and his recent victorious campaign against a new Vulture King, Lord Borros Baratheon wasted no time in restoring order to King’s Landing. After a night of quiet celebration in the Red Keep, he rode forth the next day against Visenya’s Hill and the “Cunny King,” Gaemon Palehair. Columns of armored knights climbed the hill from three directions, riding down the street scum, sellswords, and drunkards who had gathered round the little king and putting them to rout. The young monarch, who had celebrated his fifth nameday only two days previous, was carried back to the Red Keep slung over the back of a horse, chained and weeping. His mother walked behind him, clutching the hand of the Dornishwoman Sylvenna Sand and leading a long column of whores, witch women, cutpurses, sneaks, and sots, the surviving remnants of the Palehair “court.”

The Shepherd’s turn came the next night. Forewarned by the fate of the whores and their little king, the prophet had called upon his “barefoot army” to assemble around the Dragonpit, and defend the Hill of Rhaenys “with blood and iron.” But the Shepherd’s star had fallen. Fewer than three hundred came in answer to his call, and many of those fled when the assault began. Lord Borros led his knights up the hill from the west, whilst Ser Perkin and his gutter knights climbed the steeper southern slope from Flea Bottom. Crashing through the thin ranks of defenders into the ruins of the Dragonpit, they found the prophet amongst the dragon heads (now far gone in rot), surrounded by a ring of torches, still preaching of doom and devastation. When he spied Lord Borros on his warhorse, the Shepherd pointed his stump at him and cursed him. “We shall meet in hell before this year is done,” the begging brother proclaimed. Like Gaemon Palehair, he was taken alive and carried back to the Red Keep bound in chains.

Thus did peace return to King’s Landing, after a fashion. In the name of her son, “our true king, Aegon, Second of His Name,” Queen Alicent proclaimed a curfew, making it unlawful to be on the city streets after dark. The City Watch was re-formed under the command of Ser Perkin the Flea to enforce the curfew, whilst Lord Borros and his stormlanders manned the city’s gates and battlements. Pulled down from their three hills, the three false “kings” languished in the dungeons, awaiting the true king’s return. That return hinged upon the Velaryons of Driftmark, however. Behind the walls of the Red Keep, the Dowager Queen Alicent and Lord Larys Strong had offered the Sea Snake his freedom, a full pardon for his treasons, and a place on the king’s small council if he would bend his knee to Aegon II as his king and deliver them the swords and sails of Driftmark. The old man had proved to be surprisingly intractable, however. “My knees are old and stiff and do not bend easily,” Lord Corlys responded, before setting forth terms of his own. He wanted pardons not only for himself, but for all those who had fought for Queen Rhaenyra, and demanded further that Aegon the Younger be given Princess Jaehaera’s hand in marriage, so the two of them might jointly be proclaimed King Aegon’s heirs. “The realm has been split asunder,” he said. “We must needs join it back together.” Lord Baratheon’s daughters did not interest him, but he wanted Lady Baela freed at once.

Queen Alicent was outraged by Lord Velaryon’s “arrogance,” Munkun tells us, especially his demand that Queen Rhaenyra’s Aegon be named as heir to her own Aegon. She had suffered the loss of two of her three sons and her only daughter during the Dance, and could not bear the thought that any of her rival’s sons should live. Angrily, Her Grace reminded Lord Corlys that she had twice proposed terms of peace to Rhaenyra, only to have her overtures rejected with scorn. It fell to Lord Larys the Clubfoot to pour oil on the troubled waters, calming the queen with a quiet reminder of all they had discussed in Lord Baratheon’s tent, and persuading her to consent to the Sea Snake’s proposals.

The next day Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, knelt before Queen Alicent as she sat upon the lower steps of the Iron Throne, as proxy for her son, and there pledged the king his loyalty and that of his house. Before the eyes of gods and men, the Queen Dowager granted him and his a royal pardon, and restored him to his old place on the small council, as admiral and master of ships. Ravens went forth to Driftmark and Dragonstone to announce the accord…and not a day too soon, for they found young Alyn Velaryon gathering his ships for an attack on Dragonstone, and King Aegon II preparing once again to behead his cousin Baela.

In the waning days of 130 AC, King Aegon II returned at last to King’s Landing, accompanied by Ser Marston Waters, Ser Alfred Broome, the Two Toms, and Lady Baela Targaryen (still in chains, for fear she might attack the king if freed). Escorted by twelve Velaryon war galleys, they sailed upon a battered old trading cog named Mouse, owned and captained by Marilda of Hull. If Mushroom may be trusted, the choice of vessel was deliberate. “Lord Alyn might have shipped the king home aboard Lord Aethan’s Glory or Morning Tide or even Spicetown Girl, but he wanted him seen to be creeping into the city on a mouse,” the dwarf says. “Lord Alyn was an insolent boy and did not love his king.”

The king’s return was far from triumphant. Still unable to walk, His Grace was brought through the River Gate in a closed litter, and carried up Aegon’s High Hill to the Red Keep through a silent city, past deserted streets, abandoned homes, and looted shops. The steep, narrow steps of the Iron Throne proved impossible for him as well; henceforth, the restored king must needs hold court from a carved, cushioned wooden seat at the base of the true throne, with a blanket across his twisted, shattered legs.

Though in great pain, the king did not retreat to his bedchamber again, nor avail himself of dreamwine or milk of the poppy, but immediately set to pronouncing judgment upon the three “dayfly kings” who had ruled King’s Landing during the Moon of Madness. The squire was the first to face his wroth, and was sentenced to die for high treason. A brave boy, Trystane was at first defiant when dragged before the Iron Throne, until he saw Ser Perkin the Flea standing with the king. That took the heart from him, says Mushroom, but even then the youth did not plead his innocence nor beg for mercy, but asked only that he might be made a knight before he died. This boon King Aegon granted, whereupon Ser Marston Waters dubbed the lad (his fellow bastard) Ser Trystane Fyre (“Truefyre,” the name the boy had bestowed upon himself, being deemed presumptuous), and Ser Alfred Broome struck his head off with Blackfyre, the sword of Aegon the Conqueror.

The fate of the Cunny King, Gaemon Palehair, was kinder. Having just turned five, the boy was spared on account of his youth and made a ward of the Crown. His mother, Essie, who had presumed to style herself Lady Esselyn during her son’s brief reign, confessed under torture that Gaemon’s father was not the king, as she had previously claimed, but rather a silver-haired oarsman off a trading galley from Lys. Being lowborn and unworthy of the sword, Essie and the Dornish whore Sylvenna Sand were hanged from the battlements of the Red Keep, together with twenty-seven other members of “King” Gaemon’s court, an ill-favored assortment of thieves, drunkards, mummers, beggars, whores, and panders.

Lastly King Aegon II turned his attention to the Shepherd. When brought before the Iron Throne for judgment, the prophet refused to repent his crimes or admit to treason, but thrust the stump of his missing hand at the king and told His Grace, “We shall meet in hell before this year is done,” the same words he had spoken to Borros Baratheon upon his capture. For that insolence, Aegon had the Shepherd’s tongue torn out with hot pincers, then condemned him and his “treasonous followers” to death by fire.

On the last day of the year, two hundred forty-one “barefoot lambs,” the Shepherd’s most fervid and devoted followers, were covered with pitch and chained to poles along the broad cobbled thoroughfare that ran eastward from Cobbler’s Square up to the Dragonpit. As the city’s septs rang their bells to signal the end of the old year and the coming of the new, King Aegon II proceeded along the street (thereafter known as Shepherd’s Way, rather than Hill Street as before) in his litter, whilst his knights rode to either side, setting their torches to the captive lambs to light his way. Thus did His Grace continue up the hill to the very top, where the Shepherd himself was bound amongst the heads of the five dragons. Supported by two of his Kingsguard, King Aegon rose from his cushions, tottered to the pole where the prophet had been chained, and set him aflame with his own hand.

“Rhaenyra the Pretender was gone, her dragons dead, the mummer kings all fallen, and yet the realm knew not peace,” Septon Eustace wrote soon after. With his half-sister slain and her only surviving son a captive at his own court, King Aegon II might reasonably have expected the remaining opposition to his rule to melt away…and mayhaps it might have done so if His Grace had heeded Lord Velaryon’s counsel and issued a general pardon for all those lords and knights who had espoused the queen’s cause.

Alas, the king was not of a forgiving mind. Urged on by his mother, the Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon those who had betrayed and deposed him. He started with the crownlands, sending forth his own men and the stormlanders of Borros Baratheon against Rosby, Stokeworth, and Duskendale and the surrounding keeps and villages. Though the lords thus accosted, through their stewards and castellans, were quick to lower Rhaenyra’s quartered banner and raise Aegon’s golden dragon in its stead, each in turn was brought in chains to King’s Landing and forced to do obeisance before the king. Nor were they freed until they had agreed to pay a heavy ransom, and provide the Crown with suitable hostages.

This campaign proved a grave mistake, for it only served to harden the hearts of the late queen’s men against the king. Reports soon reached King’s Landing of warriors gathering in great numbers at Winterfell, Barrowton, and White Harbor. In the riverlands, the aged and bedridden Lord Grover Tully had finally died (of apoplexy from having his house fight against the rightful king at Second Tumbleton, Mushroom says), and his grandson Elmo, now at last the Lord of Riverrun, had called the lords of the Trident to war once more, lest he suffer the same fate as Lords Rosby, Stokeworth, and Darklyn. To him gathered Benjicot Blackwood of Raventree, already a seasoned warrior at three-and-ten; his fierce young aunt, Black Aly, with three hundred bows; Lady Sabitha Frey, the merciless and grasping Lady of the Twins; Lord Hugo Vance of Wayfarer’s Rest; Lord Jorah Mallister of Seagard; Lord Roland Darry of Darry; aye, and even Humfrey Bracken, Lord of Stone Hedge, whose house had hitherto supported King Aegon’s cause.

Even more grave were the tidings from the Vale, where Lady Jeyne Arryn had assembled fifteen hundred knights and eight thousand men-at-arms, and sent envoys to the Braavosi to arrange for ships to bring them down upon King’s Landing. With them would come a dragon. Lady Rhaena of House Targaryen, brave Baela’s twin, had brought a dragon’s egg with her to the Vale…an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink hatchling with black horns and crest. Rhaena named her Morning.

Though years would need to pass before Morning grew large enough to be ridden to war, the news of her birth nonetheless was of great concern to the green council. If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as more legitimate. “I need a dragon,” Aegon II said when he was told.

Aside from Lady Rhaena’s hatchling, only three living dragons remained in all of Westeros. Sheepstealer had vanished with the girl Nettles, but was thought to be somewhere in Crackclaw Point or the Mountains of the Moon. The Cannibal still haunted the eastern slopes of the Dragonmont. Silverwing at last report had departed the desolation at Tumbleton for the Reach, and was said to have made her lair on a small, stony isle in the middle of Red Lake.

Queen Alysanne’s silvery she-dragon had accepted a second rider, Borros Baratheon pointed out. “Why not a third? Claim the dragon and your crown is secure.” But Aegon II was as yet unable to walk or stand, much less mount and ride a dragon. Nor was His Grace strong enough for a long journey across the realm to Red Lake, through regions infested with traitors, rebels, and broken men.

That answer was no answer, plainly. “Not Silverwing,” His Grace declared. “I will have a new Sunfyre, prouder and fiercer than the last.” So ravens were sent to Dragonstone, where the eggs of the Targaryen dragons, some so old they had turned to stone, were kept under guard in undervaults and cellars. The maester there chose seven (in honor of the gods) that he deemed most promising, and sent them to King’s Landing. King Aegon kept them in his own chambers, but none yielded a dragon. Mushroom tells us His Grace sat on a “large purple and gold egg” for a day and a night, hoping to hatch it, “but it had as well been a purple and gold turd for all the good it did.”

Grand Maester Orwyle, free of the dungeons and once more adorned with his chain of office, gives us a detailed look inside the restored green council during this troubled time, when fear and suspicion held sway even within the Red Keep. At the very time when unity was most desperately required, the lords around King Aegon II found themselves deeply divided, and unable to agree on how best to deal with the gathering storm.

The Sea Snake favored reconciliation, pardon, and peace.

Borros Baratheon scorned that course as weakness; he would defeat these traitors in the field, he declared to king and council. All he required was men; Casterly Rock and Oldtown should be commanded to raise fresh armies at once.

Ser Tyland Lannister, the blind master of coin, proposed to sail to Lys or Tyrosh and engage one or more sellsword companies (Aegon II did not lack for coin, as Ser Tyland had placed three-quarters of the Crown’s wealth safely in the hands of Casterly Rock, Oldtown, and the Iron Bank of Braavos before Queen Rhaenyra seized the city and the treasury).

Lord Velaryon saw such efforts as futile. “We do not have the time. Children sit in the seats of power at Oldtown and Casterly Rock. We will find no more help there. The best free companies are bound by contract to Lys, Myr, or Tyrosh. Even if Ser Tyland could prise them loose, he could not bring them here in time. My ships can keep the Arryns from our door, but who will stop the northmen and the lords of the Trident? They are already on the march. We must make terms. His Grace should absolve them of all their crimes and treasons, proclaim Rhaenyra’s Aegon his heir, and marry him at once to Princess Jaehaera. It is the only way.”

The old man’s words fell upon deaf ears, however. Queen Alicent had reluctantly agreed to the betrothal of her granddaughter to Rhaenyra’s son, but she had done so without the king’s consent. Aegon II had other ideas. He wished to marry Cassandra Baratheon at once, for “she will give me strong sons, worthy of the Iron Throne.” Nor would he allow Prince Aegon to wed his daughter, and perhaps sire sons who might muddy the succession. “He can take the black and spend his days at the Wall,” His Grace decreed, “or else give up his manhood and serve me as a eunuch. The choice is his, but he shall have no children. My sister’s line must end.”

Even that was thought to be too gentle a course by Ser Tyland Lannister, who argued for the immediate execution of Prince Aegon the Younger. “The boy will remain a threat so long as he draws breath,” Lannister declared. “Remove his head, and these traitors will be left with neither queen nor king nor prince. The sooner he is dead, the sooner this rebellion will end.” His words, and those of the king, horrified Lord Velaryon. The aged Sea Snake, “thunderous in his wroth,” accused king and council of being “fools, liars, and oathbreakers,” and stormed from the chamber.

Borros Baratheon then offered to bring the king the old man’s head, and Aegon II was on the point of giving consent when Lord Larys Strong spoke up, reminding them that young Alyn Velaryon, the Sea Snake’s heir, remained beyond their reach on Driftmark.

“Kill the old snake and we lose the young one,” the Clubfoot said, “and all those fine swift ships of theirs as well.” Instead, he said, they must move at once to make amends with Lord Corlys, so as to keep House Velaryon on their side. “Give him his betrothal, Your Grace,” he urged the king. “A betrothal is not a wedding. Name Young Aegon your heir. A prince is not a king. Look back at the history and count how many heirs never lived to sit the throne. Deal with Driftmark in due course, when your foes are vanquished and your tide is at the full. That day is not yet come. We must bide our time and speak to him gently.”

Or so his words have come down to us, from Orwyle by way of Munkun. Neither Septon Eustace nor the fool Mushroom was present at the council. Yet Mushroom speaks of it all the same, saying, “Was there ever a man as devious as the Clubfoot? Oh, he would have made a splendid fool, that one. The words dripped from his lips like honey from a comb, and never did poison taste so sweet.”

The enigma that is Larys Strong the Clubfoot has vexed students of history for generations, and is not one we can hope to unravel here. Where did his true loyalty lie? What was he about? He wove his way all through the Dance of the Dragons, on this side and that side, vanishing and reappearing, yet somehow always surviving. How much of what he said and did was ruse, how much was real? Was he just a man who sailed with the prevailing wind, or did he know where he was bound when he set out? So may we ask, but none will answer. The last Strong keeps his secrets.

We do know that he was sly, secretive, yet plausible and pleasant when need be. His words swayed the king and council in their course. When Queen Alicent demured, wondering aloud how Lord Corlys could possibly be won back after all that had been said that day, Lord Strong replied, “That task you may leave to me, Your Grace. His lordship will listen to me, I daresay.”

And so he did. For though none knew it at the time, the Clubfoot went directly to Sea Snake when the council was dismissed, and told him of the king’s intent to grant him all he had requested and murder him later, when the war was done. And when the old man would have stormed out sword in hand to exact a bloody vengeance, Lord Larys soothed him with soft words and smiles. “There is a better way,” he said, counseling patience. And thus did he spin his webs of deceit and betrayal, setting each against the other.

Whilst plots and counterplots swirled around him, and enemies closed in from every side, Aegon II remained oblivious. The king was not a well man. The burns he’d suffered at Rook’s Rest had left scars that covered half his body. Mushroom says they had rendered him impotent as well. Nor could he walk. His leap from Sunfyre’s back at Dragonstone had broken his right leg in two places, and shattered the bones in his left. The right had healed well, Grand Maester Orwyle records; not so the left. The muscles of that leg had atrophied, the knee stiffening, the flesh melting away until only a withered stick remained, so twisted that Orwyle thought His Grace might do better were it cut away entirely. The king would not hear of it, however. Instead he was carried hither and yon by litter. Only toward the end did he regain the strength to walk with the aid of a crutch, dragging his bad leg behind him.

In constant pain during the last half year of his life, Aegon seemed to take pleasure only in contemplating his forthcoming marriage. Even the capers of his fools never made him laugh, we are told by Mushroom, the foremost of those fools…though “His Grace did smile from time to time at my sallies, and liked to keep me by his side to lighten his melancholy and help him dress.” Though no longer himself capable of sexual congress due to his burns, according to the dwarf, Aegon still felt carnal urges, and would often watch from behind a curtain as one of his favorites coupled with a serving girl or lady of the court. Most often Tom Tangletongue performed this task for him, we are told; at other times certain knights of the household took the place of dishonor, and thrice Mushroom himself was pressed into service. After these sessions, the fool says, the king would weep for shame and summon Septon Eustace to grant him absolution. (Eustace says nothing of this in his own account of Aegon’s final days.)

During this time King Aegon II also commanded that the Dragonpit be restored and rebuilt, commissioned two huge statues of his brothers Aemond and Daeron (he decreed they should be larger than the Titan of Braavos, and covered in gold leaf), and held a public burning of all the decrees and proclamations issued by the “dayfly kings” Trystan Truefyre and Gaemon Palehair.

Meanwhile, his enemies were on the march. Down the Neck came Cregan Stark, Lord of Winterfell, with a great host at his back (Septon Eustace speaks of “twenty thousand howling savages in shaggy pelts,” though Munkun lowers that to eight thousand in his True Telling), even as the Maiden of the Vale sent off her own army from Gulltown: ten thousand men, under the command of Lord Leowyn Corbray and his brother Ser Corwyn, who bore the famous Valyrian blade called Lady Forlorn.

The most immediate threat, however, was that posed by the men of the Trident. Near six thousand of them had gathered at Riverrun when Elmo Tully called his banners. Sadly, Lord Elmo himself had expired on the march after drinking some bad water, after only nine-and-forty days as Lord of Riverrun, but the lordship had passed to his eldest son, Ser Kermit Tully, a wild and headstrong youth eager to prove himself as a warrior. They were six days’ march from King’s Landing, moving down the kingsroad, when Lord Borros Baratheon led his stormlanders forth to meet them, his strength bolstered by levies from Stokeworth, Rosby, Hayford, and Duskendale, along with two thousand men and boys from the stews of Flea Bottom, hastily armed with spears and iron pot helms.

The two armies came together two days from the city, at a place where the kingsroad passed between a wood and a low hill. It had been raining heavily for days, and the grass was wet, the ground soft and muddy. Lord Borros was confident of victory, for his scouts had told him that the rivermen were led by boys and women. It was nigh unto dusk when he spied the enemy, yet he ordered an immediate attack…though the road ahead was a solid wall of shields, and the hill to its right bristled with archers. Lord Borros led the charge himself, forming his knights into a wedge and thundered down the road at the heart of the foe, where the silver trout of Riverrun floated on its blue and red banner beside the quartered arms of the dead queen. His foot advanced behind them, beneath King Aegon’s golden dragon.

The Citadel names the clash that followed the Battle of the Kingsroad. The men who fought it named it the Muddy Mess. By any name, the last battle of the Dance of the Dragons would prove to be a one-sided affair. The longbows on the hill shot the horses out from under Lord Borros’s knights as they charged, bringing down so many that less than half his riders ever reached the shield wall. Those that did found their ranks disordered, their wedge broken, their horses slipping and struggling in the soft mud. Though the stormlanders wreaked great havoc with lance and sword and longaxe, the riverlords held firm, as new men stepped up to fill the place of those who fell. When Lord Baratheon’s foot came crashing into the fray, the shield wall swayed and staggered back, and seemed as if it might break…until the wood to the left of the road erupted with shouts and screams, and hundreds more rivermen burst from the trees, led by that mad boy Benjicot Blackwood, who would this day earn the name Bloody Ben, by which he would be known for the rest of his long life.

Lord Borros himself was still ahorse in the middle of the carnage. When he saw the battle slipping away, his lordship bade his squire sound his warhorn, signaling his reserve to advance. Upon hearing the horn, however, the men of Rosby, Stokeworth, and Hayford let fall the king’s golden dragons and remained unmoving, the rabble from King’s Landing scattered like geese, and the knights of Duskendale went over to the foe, attacking the stormlanders in the rear. Battle turned to rout in half a heartbeat, as King Aegon’s last army shattered.

Borros Baratheon perished fighting. Unhorsed when his destrier was felled by arrows from Black Aly and her bowmen, he battled on afoot, cutting down countless men-at-arms, a dozen knights, and the Lords Mallister and Darry. By the time Kermit Tully came upon him, Lord Borros was dead upon his feet, bareheaded (he had ripped off his dented helm), bleeding from a score of wounds, scarce able to stand. “Yield, ser,” called the Lord of Riverrun to the Lord of Storm’s End, “the day is ours.” Lord Baratheon answered with a curse, saying, “I’d sooner dance in hell than wear your chains.” Then he charged…straight into the spiked iron ball at the end of Lord Kermit’s morningstar, which took him full in the face in a grisly spray of blood and bone and brain. The Lord of Storm’s End died in the mud along the kingsroad, his sword still in his hand.[10]

When the ravens brought word of the battle back to the Red Keep, the green council hurriedly convened. All of the Sea Snake’s warnings had proved true. Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and Oldtown had been slow to reply to the king’s demand for more armies. When they did, they offered excuses and prevarications in the place of promises. The Lannisters were embroiled in their war against the Red Kraken, the Hightowers had lost too many men and had no capable commanders, little Lord Tyrell’s mother wrote to say that she had reason to doubt the loyalty of her son’s bannermen, and “being a mere woman, am not myself fit to lead a host to war.” Ser Tyland Lannister, Ser Marston Waters, and Ser Julian Wormwood had been dispatched across the narrow sea to seek after sellswords in Pentos, Tyrosh, and Myr, but none had yet returned.

King Aegon II would soon stand naked before his enemies, all of the king’s men knew. Bloody Ben Blackwood, Kermit Tully, Sabitha Frey, and their brothers-in-victory were preparing to resume their advance upon the city, and only a few days behind them came Lord Cregan Stark and his northmen. The Braavosi fleet carrying the Arryn host had departed Gulltown and was sailing toward the Gullet, where only young Alyn Velaryon stood in its way…and the loyalty of Driftmark could not be relied upon.

“Your Grace,” the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green council had assembled, “you must surrender. The city cannot endure another sack. Save your people and save yourself. If you abdicate in favor of Prince Aegon, he will allow you to take the black and live out your life with honor on the Wall.”

“Will he?” King Aegon said. Munkun tells us he sounded hopeful.

His mother entertained no such hope. “You fed his mother to your dragon,” she reminded her son. “The boy saw it all.”

The king turned to her desperately. “What would you have me do?”

“You have hostages,” the Queen Dowager replied. “Cut off one of the boy’s ears and send it to Lord Tully. Warn them he will lose another part for every mile they advance.”

“Yes,” Aegon II said. “Good. It shall be done.” He summoned Ser Alfred Broome, who had served him so well on Dragonstone. “Go and see to it, ser.” As the knight took his leave, the king turned to Corlys Velaryon. “Tell your bastard to fight bravely, my lord. If he fails me, if any of these Braavosi pass the Gullet, your precious Lady Baela shall lose some parts as well.”

The Sea Snake did not plead, or curse, or threaten. He nodded stiffly, rose, and took his leave. Mushroom says he exchanged a look with the Clubfoot as he went, but Mushroom was not present, and it seems most unlikely that a man as seasoned as Corlys Velaryon would act so clumsily at such a moment.

For Aegon’s day was done, though he had yet to grasp it. The turncloaks in his midst had put their plans in motion the moment they learned of Lord Baratheon’s defeat upon the kingsroad.

As Ser Alfred Broome crossed the drawbridge to Maegor’s Holdfast, where Prince Aegon was being held, he found Ser Perkin the Flea and six of his gutter knights barring his way. “Move aside, in the king’s name,” Broome demanded.

“We have a new king now,” answered Ser Perkin. He put a hand upon Ser Alfred’s shoulder…then shoved him hard, sending him staggering off the drawbridge onto the iron spikes below, where he writhed and twisted for two days as he died.

In that same hour, Lady Baela Targaryen was being spirited away to safety by agents of Lord Larys the Clubfoot. Tom Tangletongue was surprised in the castle yards as he was leaving the stables, and beheaded forthwith. “He died as he had lived, stammering,” says Mushroom. His father Tom Tanglebeard was absent from the castle, but they found him in a tavern on Eel Alley. When he protested that he was “just a simple fisherman, come to have an ale,” his captors drowned him in a cask of same.

All this was done so neatly, swiftly, and quietly that the people of King’s Landing had little or no inkling of what was happening behind the walls of the Red Keep. Even within the castle itself, no alarum went up. Those who had been marked down for death were killed, whilst the rest of the court went about their business, undisturbed and unawares. Septon Eustace tells us that twenty-four men were killed, whilst Munkun’s True Telling says twenty-one. Mushroom claims to have witnessed the murder of the king’s food taster, a grossly fat man named Ummet, and asserts that he was forced to hide in a barrel of flour to escape the same fate, emerging the next night “floured from head to heels, so white the first serving girl to see me took me for Mushroom’s ghost.” (This smells of story. Why would the plotters wish to kill a fool?)

Queen Alicent was arrested on the serpentine steps as she made her way back to her chambers. Her captors wore the seahorse of House Velaryon upon their doublets, and though they slew the two men guarding her, they did no harm to the Dowager Queen herself, nor to her ladies. The Queen in Chains was chained again and taken to the dungeons, there to await the pleasure of the new king. By then the last of her sons was already dead.

After the council meeting, King Aegon II was carried down to the yard by two strong squires. There he found his litter waiting, as was customary; his withered leg made steps too difficult for him, even with a crutch. Ser Gyles Belgrave, the Kingsguard knight commanding his escort, testified afterward that His Grace seemed unusually fatigued as he was helped into the litter, his face “grey and ashen, sagging,” yet instead of asking to be carried back to his chambers, he told Ser Gyles to take him to the castle sept. “Perhaps he sensed his end was near,” Septon Eustace wrote, “and wished to pray for forgiveness for his sins.”

A cold wind was blowing. As the litter set off, the king closed the curtains against the chill. Inside, as always, was a flagon of sweet Arbor red, Aegon’s favorite wine. The king availed himself of a small cup as the litter crossed the yard.

Ser Gyles and the litter bearers had no notion aught was amiss until they reached the sept, and the curtains did not open. “We are here, Your Grace,” the knight said. No answer came, but only silence. When a second query and a third produced the same, Ser Gyles Belgrave threw back the curtains, and found the king dead upon his cushions. “There was blood upon his lips,” the knight said. “Elsewise he might have been sleeping.”

Maesters and common men alike still debate which poison was used, and who might have put it in the king’s wine. (Some argue that only Ser Gyles himself could have done so, but it would be unthinkable for a knight of the Kingsguard to take the life of the king he had sworn to protect. Ummet, the king’s food taster whose murder Mushroom claims to have seen, seems a more likely candidate.) Yet whilst the hand that poisoned the Arbor red will never be known, we can have no doubt that it was done at the behest of Larys Strong.

Thus perished Aegon of House Targaryen, the Second of His Name, firstborn son of King Viserys I Targaryen and Queen Alicent of House Hightower, whose reign proved as brief as it was bitter. He had lived four-and-twenty years and reigned for two.

When the vanguard of Lord Tully’s host appeared before the walls of King’s Landing two days later, Corlys Velaryon rode out to greet them with Prince Aegon somber at his side. “The king is dead,” the Sea Snake announced gravely, “long live the king.”

And across Blackwater Bay, in the Gullet, Lord Leowyn Corbray stood at the prow of a Braavosi cog and watched a line of Velaryon warships haul down the golden dragon of the second Aegon and raise in its place the red dragon of the first, the banner that all the Targaryen kings had flown until the Dance began.

The war was over (though the peace that followed would soon prove to be far from peaceful).

On the seventh day of the seventh moon of the 131st year after Aegon’s Conquest, a date deemed sacred to the gods, the High Septon of Oldtown pronounced the marriage vows as Prince Aegon the Younger, eldest son of Queen Rhaenrya by her uncle Prince Daemon, wed Princess Jaehaera, the daughter of Queen Helaena by her brother King Aegon II, thereby uniting the two rival branches of House Targaryen and ending two years of treachery and carnage.

The Dance of the Dragons was done, and the melancholy reign of King Aegon III Targaryen had begun.