[Look To The Stars] Chapter 69: King's Blood (Patreon)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all rights for character, plots and settings belong to GRRM and George Lucas/Disney. I have no ownership.

A/N: Hmmm... did anyone expect that ending? 👀

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Year 299 AC/8 ABY

Kings Landing, The Crownlands

Pungent smoke from King’s Landing drifted across the fields where Tywin Lannister’s men stood locked in their squares, carrying the taste of blood and the stench of charred flesh. Daenerys saw them as a wall of iron bristles, pike shafts rim to rim and crossbows trained upward. The Lannister men held their formation with the cold discipline of a veteran host treating Morghaes and Viserion like common cavalry, vulnerable to steel if kept at the right distance.

High above the dust, Daenerys flew Morghaes fast with wide sweeps as Viserion followed at his flank. She knew a disciplined volley would hurt her dragons, so she never lingered.

She could spare only a little fire, and a little was not enough. Though the gold-and-red line scorched at the edges and men blackened in their leather, the squares closed over the gaps as fast as she could make them. This disciplined order would not break for fire alone when they have the confidence of crossbows that could hurt her dragons. Two miles behind the column, a rising wall of dust marked the approach of Lord Tarly’s vanguard, the heavy horse of the Reach and the Stormlands closing the distance to strike the lion from the rear.

She turned Morghaes for another swoop. Her bond with her dragon grew stronger with every passing day, and she felt a dangerous hunger radiating from him. The scent of the column's fear was a sweet scent to her dragons. She pressed her heels into the black scales, seeking to lay her fire directly across the center of the bowmen.

A sudden wind from the river caught them, dragging Morghaes down ten feet when she had already lingered a moment too long. Below, the crossbowmen held their aim and found their mark.

The bolt struck with a sickening thud, and Morghaes's anguished scream pierced the air. Dany felt the pain as if the arrow had pierced her own flesh. Her hand instinctivly flew to the spot but found no wound on herself. The dragon's left wing collapsed, and the great black beast pivoted around its injured side, tail thrashing. They fell in a long, screaming spiral away from the road, the wind rushing past them.

The earth met them with a force that rattled her teeth. Greasy black mud erupted in a spray that coated her silver braid as Morghaes rolled, his tail carving a trench through the weeds until he lay panting with his head pressed flat. Through the bond, the twitching agony of the torn membrane where the steel bolt had bitten became her own, a silent scream shared between dragon and rider while they lay broken in the mire.

Viserion dropped beside them. The white dragon flared his wings wide to shield his fallen brother, his jaws open to reveal a throat like a furnace. His yellow eyes glared at the road. No man in the Lannister vanguard was foolish enough to charge two beasts on foot, even with one grounded and bleeding.

They did not need to charge the grounded dragons to remain dangerous.

Thirty men detached from the main force. They fanned out across the deep furrows of the field, spreading their lines cautioualy to deny her a single target. Steel bolts caught the distant green glare of the burning city as they came with their crossbows cradled against their chests.

The small silver cylinder at her ear crackled and she heard Robb speak.

"Dany, I felt... are you alright?"

"Morghaes is struck," she said, her words coming as short gasps. "A bolt. We are grounded."

"What?! I am coming right now!"

"Stay in the city, Lord Robb." She commanded. The city's people were dying in the green-lit alleys, and she would not have thier only salvation abandon the gates to fetch her from a ditch. "The people of Kings Landing need you more. These men are mine."

"Dany--" Robb said.

"That is my command, Lord Robb." Her voice formal and unyielding. "On my name, Robb. Stay. Please."

The line went silent and she knew he had accepted the command before she turned her face back to the field.

The detachment of Lannister bowmen had abandoned the safety of the pikes, lured into the open mud by the sight of a grounded queen. Without the shield-wall to cover them, they were exposed. They moved as if she were helpless with her mount brought low, failing to account for the white dragon standing sentinel over her flank.

"Now," she whispered, sending her will through the bond.

Viserion and Morghaes's flames merged into an enormous inferno that swallowed the unwary men. The open-order detachment had no time to ready their crossbows. Their leather straps liquefied instantly, their iron caps turning red-hot and melting into their hair. In mere seconds, the thirty men were reduced to thirty smoldering heaps.

She forced herself to not look at the ash as she dragged herself from the saddle. Her fingers found the torn membrane of Morghaes's wing, the bolt's iron tail protruding from the green-black flesh.

She closed her fingers around the bolt.

I am the blood of the dragon, she thought, though the words rang hollow against the reality of her bleeding child.

With a yank, she wrenched the crossbow bolt from Morghaes's wing. The dragon shuddered, a low growl building in his chest as the arrow's withdrawal jolted through their bond like a physical shock. She pressed her palms to the smoking tear as she sent a wave of apology through their link, feeling his distress recede in response.

"Up," she told him. "We have not finished."

Morghaes rose on unbalanced wings, testing the injured one with a heavy snap. Behind them, the main Lannister column had still not broken.

The detachment had burned, but the main force remained untouched. Pikes still stood at attention, banners unfurled, but she can sense that a blanket of nervousness fell over them as Lord Tarly's cavalry finally made contact at their rear.

The clash of steel on steel echoed like a roar as Tarly's knights charged under the golden rose of Highgarden. Their lances shattered against the Lannister shields, and their horses screamed as they impaled upon the pikes. The lion's squares maintained their formation, falling back only three, then five paces, but holding their ground.

"Viserion," she called.

She mounted Morghaes once more, and they rose together in a clumsy lift that lacked the clean grace of her morning flights. She kept them low, not climbing for the clouds this time. They flew low, just above the tips of the trees, coming around the rear of the Lannister formation where their reserves were trying to dress a fresh line and away from the crossbowmen who were occupied by Daemon's forces.

"Dracarys," she screamed.

The black and white flames met the red cloaks of the Lannister reserves, causing panic to spread amoungst the ranks. They turned the baggage wagons and the spare horses into a roaring wall of charred meat and wood. The heat was intense enough that the green pines along the roadside burst into orange flame without a spark touching them.

Under the double pressure of Tarly's cavalry and the dragonfire, the gold-and-red square finally broke.

In a desperate bid for survival, the men cast aside their pikes, bows, and helmets. They scattered like sheep fleeing a wolfpack as Tarly's horsemen rode them down with swords and maces, turning retreat into a hopeless rout.

The road ran red with the blood of men and beasts. In the center, a magnificent grey stallion lay dead, its chest pierced by a Tyrell lance. Beneath the beast's flank, a tall man in gilded steel was pinned, his lion's head crest no match for the Tyrell blow. Tarly's knights wasted no time. They dismounted immediately, pressing swords to the man's throat before his guards could intervene. To capture, not slay. They seized the pinned knight, ripping away his armor and leaving him battered and bleeding in the muck.

Beside the ruins of a burning baggage cart, a massive warrior in blackened iron plate fought on alone. He wielded a great broadsword with two hands, his swings so heavy that they sheared through both horse and rider with a single blow. It took eleven of Tarly's men-at-arms throwing themselves upon him with heavy nets and iron-tipped poles to drag him down. He went down still swinging, and vanished beneath a pile of green-and-gold bodies.

Daenerys brought Morghaes down in the middle of the field, the black dragon landed with a heavy, limping thud.

Her dragons followed in her wake as Daenerys walked toward the subdued warfront. Morghaes limped heavily and Viserion kept pace on the left. Tyrell knights and Stormland warriors parted for them, some falling to one knee while others backing away in haste.

At the center of the enemy camp, a tight ring of heavy pikes bristled inward, their tips pointed at the Lord of Casterly Rock. He lay with his left leg twisted beneath the dead stallion's barrel, his lion-head helm lost in the fall, leaving his bald head bare to the cold wind. When she halted five paces from him, Tywin Lannister turned his face toward her. Tywin's eyes traveled over her, from the braid in her hair to the ash on her face, lingering on the bleeding dragon behind her.

The old lion met her eyes, his voice a rasping hiss through the blood in his mouth. "Malice, girl. You have your father's malice in your eyes. Do you think you have won?"

"Your son is Ned Stark's prisoner, your army broken, and soon, King's Landing will once more belong to House Targaryen. Yes, I do think we have won."

"And you have taken a city in ruin." The dry chuckle came again, and ended in a bloody cough. "You believe you have taken a kingdom, but it is a kingdom in ruin. Look at it. That is what you crossed the world for."

"Your own grandson put it to the torch," she declared. "Joffrey did this, not I."

"You did not see it. You assume the boy, because it serves you to. I will tell you what smallfolks will asume, girl. That three dragons flew above King's Landing, and inturn, King's Landing burned. Your father roasted men alive in their armor and called it justice. Now his daughter comes home on a dragon, and the city is aflame once more." A cruel smile spred on face. "Tell the smallfolk a boy did it with a torch. Tell the lords. See which tale they keep — the King burning his own seat, or the Mad King's blood returned to finish them."

She searched for a response that would not empower him, and found none. Her hands balled into fists at her sides.

"You and that bastard are the last of a mad breed," Tywin said, almost gently, "and they will remember the both of you by your fire."

She turned her back on him, refusing him the satisfaction of her anger. "Lord Tarly. Pin his arms, and bind him to a cart. If he dies of his leg before we reach the city, his head will suffice."

Randyll Tarly gave her a curt nod, his hard face covered in ash. "And the Mountain?"

She walked twenty paces further down, where the path narrowed near a ditch of stagnant grey water. There, the corpses of four Tarly men-at-arms lay scattered. At their center lay a mountain of black iron and raw muscle, bound within six heavy iron nets, his limbs secured with stout chains wrapped three times around his massive chest and thighs. Even so, the Mountain thrashed with the fury of a wild bull, his raw-throated roars vibrating through the soil under her feet.

His battered face came into view as they lifted him up. One side swollen and burned, the other as pale as White Harbor's stones. As they marched him past Tywin, he glared at her with pure hate. The man who murdered her young niece and nephew. For a moment, she considered letting Morghaes devour him. But Ned Stark's disapproving eyes flashed through her mind, and she held back. He will face execution after the trial, regardless.

The formation had crumbled under the dragon's fire, but the man remained unbroken. Tywin stood tall with a limp, bound and defiant, already assessing the price of his capture.

"Bind him, and let the realm bear witness. I will not stoop to the acts of sellswords and murderers. He will plead his case, and then the swordsman's justice will be enacted in full view of all."

The smallest of smiles tugged at Tarly's cheek, recognizing the futility in her words. Though he remained silent, she knew exactly what he was thinking. The end result will be the sword.

Daenerys now spoke into the comm-link.

"Daemon," she said. "We have won the battle outside. Tywin Lannister and the Mountain are now our prisoners."

The wind rose and fell in a pause that stretched too long for comfort. Then Jon's voice came, raw and hollow as if he had stared directly into the inferno.

"Dany," he said. "I am in the Red Keep but the city... the city is a pyre."

The green furnace consuming the capital made her victories on the road seem small. Her fire, though able to break the Lannister reserves, was not enough to protect a single child from Joffrey's madness raging through the city, leaving her powerless and drained.

"What must I do?" she asked, her voice strained.

Luke's voice cut through the comms, "The fire in the eastern gate is clear now."

Robb added his voice, "Rally the army Dany. Get as many people out as you can!"

"Understood," Daenerys replied. She pivoted to face Lord Tarly, her gaze steady as she conveyed the orders with the urgency she now felt.

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The eastern wing ran hard for the rear of the Redwyne blockade, the Black Betha at the head of the line. Davos Seaworth stood at the tiller and watched King's Landing burn green above the water. The fire had the color of old copper gone to verdigris, and it climbed the walls below the Red Keep faster than any honest fire climbed anything.

Two shapes moved through the smoke above Aegon's Hill. Dragons, he had only heard of in the letters Stannis read at the parley. The Targaryen girl and her beasts, come to take the realm by fire. And the problem of Jon Snow, Ned Stark's bastard now named a dragon. It was beyond reckoning, a thing that flew, and the boy's heritage. He stored it all away, in the little drawer a man keeps shut, and kept the ship on course.

Matthos came aft along the gangway with no helm on his head, letting the bay wind pull at his hair. He had Marya’s mouth and her way of finding a kind word for a hard morning. "The Lord of Light goes before us, Father," he said. "You will see. The harbor will open like a gate."

"Mind the oarsmen, not the harbor," Davos said. He kept his thoughts to himself, the harbor itself looked like a furnace and the gate was shut. Matthos had his faith, born on Dragonstone when the red woman’s fires first caught his eye. Davos had no words to take it from him; to steal the boy's belief would be to leave him with nothing at all.

His other son Dale followed, a quieter shadow, resting his hand on the wood near Davos’s own. The boy kept his eyes off the sky. He watched the Redwyne line instead, counting the hulls from port to starboard and naming the dangerous ones first. It was a smuggler’s lesson, one Davos had given them both before they ever learned their letters.

"With their numbers," Dale said. "This is going to be a difficult battle. And they have more behind the smoke."

"Then we best keep our--"

"Davos!" Saan's voice carried thinly over the water, barely audible against the crashing waves. "Madness, this is! The sea's turned green, and the sky's full of dragons and other unnatural creatures! My crew thinks we'll perish in this fool's quest!"

Salladhor Saan held his Lyseni galleys off the Black Betha's flank, keeping a careful margin from the witch-wind. He stood on the forecastle of the Valyrian in striped silk and gold, a man who had never once in his life been mistaken for an ordinary pirate.

"Steer closer, Salla. Keep that line!" Davos ordered, his voice demanding over the wind.

"For what?" Saan yelled, gesturing toward the burning harbor. "The Lord of Light promised us a city, he promised us gold! He forgot to mention the flying lizards! There is no profit in a charred rock, Davos! My contract has expired!"

"Your contract holds while Stannis leads!" Davos shouted. "If you turn your stern to him now, his galleys will run you down before you clear the bay!"

Saan spat into the sea, the clinking of his gold earrings echoing as he shook his head. His ship stayed near, the rowers maintaining a steady stroke. He was assessing the price, as he always did, balancing Stannis's royal promises against the green flames ahead.

"A king who pays in promises is a poor partner," Salla called back. "My men require silver, Davos. Lysene sailors drink wine and take women who demand coin. Stannis offers us nothing but his iron face and his laws."

"The lordship of Dragonstone, women lining up for your bed, all yours once we clear the harbor," Davos said, his hands steady on the tiller. "Your coin-purse will be fuller than a sailor's belly after a feast of fish and wine."

The rowers of the Black Betha labored in silence, their backs slick with sweat beneath their wool jerkins. They refused to glance at the sky as they kept thier eyes fixed on oars, yet their strokes remained short and ragged. A palpaple dread seeped through the air from the rowers to the Knights.

Duram, the mate, climbed the ladder to the helm, his eyes wide as he gazed upon the winged beasts.

"Ser," Duram said, his voice trembling. "The men are saying the red woman has unleashed her demons. They fear that the fire will turn our blood to water if we sail into the bay, and they look to you for guidance."

"The red woman is at the king's side, as ever," Davos said trying to keep his tone steady. "The winged beasts in the sky belong to the Targaryen girl. Keep from their path, and they will let us be. Set your eyes on the Redwyne line ahead. Our work is there."

"But the metal beast, Ser?" Duram pointed a shaking finger at the grey slab hovering above the Red Keep.

"From where it comes," Davos muttered. "I do not know." He raised his voice. "But we will deal with it when we have to. Keep your eyes on the gold-stripe galleys in front of us. The Redwynes are pinned against the shoals. They must turn to face us, and they have no room to maneuver."

He spoke with a certainty he lacked. Yet the crew needed a pilot, a man to lead them through the channel without showing the rot in his own heart. He kept his hand firm on the wood, his eyes fixed on the distant Arbor masts.

The Redwyne fleet lay across the mouth of the bay, more than sixty great galleys arranged in a tight crescent. They had been sent to seal the port, to keep the city from receiving grain or iron, yet now they were trapped. The wildfire at the gates had cut off their retreat toward the land, and the royal fleet approached from the open sea, closing the trap from behind.

Behind the Black Betha, the royal warhorns blew from the Fury. Stannis's flagship rode the swells like a heavy fortress, her triple banks of oars churning the water to grey foam. A second blast from the warhorns shook the air. Stannis meant to have the city, and he drove his fleet onward even as the dragons circled and the embers fell around them.

Davos's fingers dug into the tiller, his voice low mutter. "He will take his crown, or it will be his grave."

His belief in the cause was unraveling, like a fraying rope under too much tension. He had followed Stannis because the man was fair, meting out equal justice for smuggled onions and theft. But now, he watched helplessly as Stannis marched them all to ruin, guided by the words of a Red witch.

"Rowers! Davos bellowed. "Pull together! Let the Redwynes see our iron!"

The Lady Grape came out from the blockade to meet them, an Arbor galley with a hull built to hunt smugglers and a deck bristling with crossbowmen. Davos watched her oars churning the sea. He knew the type well enough. He had spent half a lifetime outrunning her sisters in the dark, leaving the king's men to curse his wake as he slipped away into the night.

"They are raising their bows!" Duram sceramed.

"The sun is behind us and the smoke is in their faces. They cannot see to aim." Davos laid the helm over. "Focus on her midships. We run her down before she comes about."

The water between the ships vanished, a spear's throw narrowing until the hulls were on them.

The Valyrian came in from the sea and took the Lady Grape's oars all in a line. Wood turned to splinters in the ports and the looms kicked back to break the men on the benches. Grapples flew, the lines went taut, and the two ships slammed together with a sound like a barn falling over in a gale.

Matthos called out from the bow, his voice thick with a joy Davos did not share. "We are inside her guard!" The boy looked back with bright eyes as if the red god himself had reached down to part the way.

Then the smoke thinned, and Davos saw what else the Arbor had waiting for them.

Three Arbor hulls crawled out of the gray to leeward, oars working like beetle legs between the Black Betha and the sea. Lord Paxter had played the coward to lead the king’s wing deep, and now his center was folding shut behind them. The gap had been bait.

The bay was a soup of green and orange. Wildfire chewed the docks to splinters below the walls, and high over Aegon’s Hill the sky was screaming where the dragons had their war. A man could not say which fire was the more certain death.

"Get her about!" Davos said, and put his weight on the helm.

She was slow to the helm, heavy with the weight of the Lady Grape. The Redwyne ship clutched her like a drowning man, dragging at her side. A stone from a catapult hissed past, near enough that Davos felt the wind of it. The next one struck home. It came down through the forward benches, and the wood and the men broke together.

The rowing deck was a memory of timber and blood, crushed into the stone. Matthos was under it, caught in the tangle of the ship’s own bones.

"Matthos!" Davos bellowed along with the shouts and cries of the dying men.

But the boy lay quiet. He would be quiet now until the end of the world.

A captain at the helm is a captain whose men might live, so Davos stayed. He kept the ship’s head true and called for the oars, though the grief sat heavy in his chest, a weight no wind could move. His shortened fingers were white where they gripped the wood. He watched Dale go forward into the ruin, searching for his brother among the broken timber and the blood.

"Boarders coming!" Duram yelled, getting the men prepared.

Iron bit into oak with a heavy thud. A Redwyne captain in polished plate was across the rail before the wood stopped groaning, his sword already raised for the strike. Davos moved before the blow could fall. He stepped inside the man’s reach, caught the scent of sweat and hot steel, and shoved his short sword into the seam of the gorget. The man collapsed into a heap on the deck. Davos wiped the red from his steel and put his hands back on the helm.

Duram was at his shoulder, pointing. "The shoals, Ser! We’re running onto the shoals!"

He felt the drag of the bottom through the soles of his boots as the keel found the mud. The water was too shallow for a galley, but the Redwynes on their high decks did not care. The Redwynes held their lines and they fought. They would not be broken this morning, and Davos knew it. The losing had begun. Now he only had to see how it finished.

The Valyrian was backing water off the seaward flank, her grapples cut and her bow coming round to find wind.

"Salla." Davos found him across the noise. "Hold your line. We break their rear together or not at all!"

"Then not at all, my onion lord." Salla called back, his voice ghosting over the swells. "I am a man for gold, not for dying. I will not give my hulls to the fire for a king with nothing in his pockets but prayers. Move, Davos. Come away before the way is shut."

The Lyseni oars took up their stroke and the purple sails filled. The gap where they had been opened the Black Betha's flank to the whole weight of the Redwyne wing.

Dale came aft with Matthos in tow, dragging him by the arms like a sack of grain. The boy’s ribs were stove in, the side of him crushed as deep as a hull after a ramming. The breath had gone out of him, yet his mouth remained locked in his final shout and those staring pupils would not close.

Davos kept his grip on the helm like a man clinging to his last hope. A father's job comes when the storm's run out and the bodies are counted and not before.

He gave the only order that might yet save a man's life. "Lighten her forward," he said, his voice hard as the wood under his hands. "Steer for the shingle."

The keel tore open as the Black Betha hit the gravel beneath the city wall. The mast came down with the shock of it. She settled into the low surf, a broken thing with the tide already washing through the wreckage.

Davos clambered over the Black Betha's shattered side into the muck, Dale's arm across his shoulders. The lad limped, a shard of his own ship through his leg, his brother's blood drying on his hands. Davos got him up the shingle to a baggage boat that had broken free, and sat him in the bottom of it. Then he stood and scanned the smoke for his king.

Up the beach the wreck of three more galleys lay broken on the stones, their hulls bleeding pitch into the surf, and men crawled out of the shallows on their hands and knees onto the dark shale.

"Form up!" a loud voice boomed through the mist. "To the standard! Keep your shields high!"

There, by a heap of charred driftwood, Ser Godry Farring stood with his greatsword in hand and silver armor streaked with soot. Beside him, the Lord of Light's banner drooped on its pole, the yellow silk singed black by the spitting water.

Davos stumbled toward them. "Ser Godry! Where is the king?"

"At the base of the gatehouse," Godry replied. "He holds the center. The traitors from the Reach are trying to flank us from the riverbanks."

"The harbor is closed," Davos said, wiping salt from his eyes. "Salladhor Saan has pulled his galleys out of it. He'll not burn them for a beach."

Spitting onto the ground, Ser Godry watched the smoke rise. "The pirate showed his true color. The Lord of Light will judge his cowardice in the fires of the morning. Let him run. We have enough steel remaining to take the gate."

"The King's Gate is a wall of green fire." Davos said, his smuggler's eye measuring the sheer stone above them. "Only ash passes those stones."

Ser Godry turned toward the clamor of the warhorns. "The king will decide what we are able to pass, and nothing more," he said. "We will follow his command, whatever it may be."

A unsettling shadow fell over the beach unlike any Davos had ever felt.

Davos glanced up, his hand clutching the bag of finger bones at his neck. Above them, the grey metal ship glided through the smoke, its shadow sweeping across the men huddled on the beach.

"Witch-craft," Godry Farring muttered, his hand trembling on his hilt.

The warhorns of the Redwynes blasted from the west, their sound carrying the doom of the knights' approach on foot. Davos turned his head, his eyes darting from the knights to the burning gate and then to the sea, where the Black Bethalay broken behind him.

No way out. His heart sank as the reality of their situation slammed into him.

In the distance, the purple sails of the Valyrian ships hung back in the water. Salladhor Saan had pulled his galleys out of the fight, then sent one boat back for Davos. He leaned over the side and called out, his voice carrying across the shallow water.

"Davos!" Saan shouted, gesturing toward the burning gatehouse with a hand heavy with jade and silver. "The city is lost, my friend! Come away, you stubborn old turnip. Come away before you melt with the rest of those poor fools."

"The king's banners are still on the shore, Salla," Davos called back, his throat raw from the soot of the harbor. "There are men on this shingle yet."

"Men who have not stopped shivering," Salla said. "There is a clean berth on the Valyrian and dry wool for your back. The wind is veering south; the tide will clear the spit in half an hour. I offer you a fair price, Davos. Your life, and nothing more."

Davos's hand went to the leather pouch at his throat, the one that bore the scars of a smuggler's life. But he was no longer a smuggler, not since Stannis Baratheon had made him a knight with four clean cuts of a cleaver. A man who took the honor of the law upon himself was bound to pay the price, no matter the cost.

"My place is with the king," Davos said with finality.

Salladhor Saan looked at him from the stern of the boat. The Lyseni's eyes were heavy with the grief of a merchant who knew when a customer would not buy.

"An onion," Salla muttered, shaking his head. "A hard, dry onion that wants to rot in the dark. I will tell your Marya you died because you loved an iron face more than you loved her."

The Lyseni rowers bent their backs into the oars, the boat wheeling tight in the foam as it pointed back to the purple sails already snatching at the cold wind. Salla never glanced back.

Davos turned toward the shore, his breath coming short in the heavy air. The smell was everywhere, sweet and rotten at once, like a cellar of spoiled honey and old fat. He went up toward the gatehouse, past the men who had crawled out of the bay and could not yet stand.

At the gatehouse base, stood Stannis Baratheon with his stag-horned iron crown glinting in the city's odd green light. Beside him, Melisandre's red gown and pale skin stood out against the blackened armor of the knights. Her red eyes were wide and fixed on the Red Keep's towers rising above the smoke, reading them with unwavering assurance.

Davos bowed. "Your Grace."

Stannis did not stir, and Davos stayed on his knees. The king's silence meant he had already spied the purple sails.

"That pirate," Stannis spat, "has turned his stern. I cannot say I am suprised."

"He says his contract has expired, Your Grace," Davos said.

"A thief's loyalty always expires when the wind changes," Stannis said, biting off each word. "I should have hanged him at Dragonstone when he first spoke of gold."

"Your Grace," Davos said, "we have forty boats left. The tide is with us still, and there's a channel east of the old fishing village. The current runs shallow along the western spit, but the small gigs can clear the sandbar if we move before the Redwyne galleys close the mouth. I know a creek from my smuggling days that runs there. We could hold there and choose our next move."

The king dismissed the conditional without a second thought. For the first time, Stannis failed to consider the navigable route, leaving Davos's advice unheard and the path to safety uncharted.

Stannis's voice was unyielding as he spoke, his tone carrying a conviction that brooked no argument. "The throne is mine by right of law. Robert took it with his hammer, but I will take it with my sword and the Lord's fire. Joffrey's fools have fired their own gates, and the dragon-queen's beasts circle the towers. Ned Stark's bastard stands beneath them with his sorcerer, but the boy will realize I have a sorcrer of my own. I will not hand Robert's seat to a Targaryen whore and a Snow who names himself a dragon."

Melisandre's eyes did not leave the towers. "I have seen him in the flames, my king. The grey boy, wreathed in fire. He will be the fuel for your coronation."

"That's if we get past the wildfire, Your Grace," Davos said gravely. "It burns in the water itself, eating through wood and stone, skins and bone alike." He had watched it devour the docks. "It does not cease its hunger, and it knows no mercy."

"It matters not. The Lord of Light has shown the path through the fire," Stannis said, his hand tightening on the pommel of his sword.

Melisandre spoke, her voice sweet like honeyed milk. "The fire speaks only truth, my king. The red banners will fly from the tower of the drum once the price is paid."

Stannis's grip tightened on the pommel. "Joffrey is no trueborn son of Robert's and so no lie can satisfy the fire's hunger. But the priestess has revealed the path. The Lord of Light demands the blood of a king. And I have held such a one in my keeping, a bastard of Robert's."

Davos knew the boy he meant. Gendry, the bull-shouldered apprentice who had come to Storm's End under guard out of King's Landing. Robert's own face stamped on a baseborn son. Davos had called the boy a ward to his own mind. He understood now what the boy had been kept for, and the wind went out of him as out of a sail turned inside out.

"He is only a boy, Your Grace," Davos said, his words hushed against the wind to keep the men on the shingle from hearing what was being asked. "A baseborn lad who never did you harm. King Robert left his mark in taverns from the Wall to Casterly Rock, but the boy had no choice in his father. You cannot hold him to account for whose son he is."

"Fault does not enter into it," Stannis said, but Davos heard the doubt in him, a small gap in the iron. "Blood does. The fire wants what it wants."

"Take mine instead." He did not stop to think if the trade was fair. "Take what is left of the smuggler and let the lad go back to the water."

"Your blood is common, Ser Davos.Robert's is not." The king kept his back to him, fixed upon the burning city. "If the stone will not yield, we seek a path through the fire, for a king must not shy from the hard price."

Davos looked at his king and saw a stranger. Stannis was filled a quiet rage that whittles a man into something they are not. When the green glare of the wildfire washed over him, the king showed his teeth in a smile that held no warmth at all. It seemed to Davos that the man was gone, and only the Throne remained.

The bond died there. There was no word exchanged, no sword drawn. Davos stood in silence as his king turned away to stare at the burning city.

The red woman's skirts dragged in the wet grit as she walked to the edge of the water. The beach was crowded with the dead the bay had taken. Hundreds of Stormlanders who drowned when the Redwynes closed in, their skin white and bloated from the salt. Following the red woman's sorcery from the shore, Davos's smuggler-trained eyes saw naught but confusion in the water. Yet, a cold awareness stirred in his chest, the residue of the shadow from Storm's End.

Two men led the boy to the water's edge, his wrists bound and bare feet slipping on the wet shale. Davos saw no one had told him why. Gendry's eyes darted from the bloated corpses to the red woman, confusion on his face. Finally, he looked to the king, the one a lad seeks to save him.

The lad's voice shook as he cried, "What's going on? Why'd you bring me back?"

Davos took one step, and one step only. For the king's men were there, enforcing the king's law. And on this shore, crowded with the dead, a fallen onion knight could do naught more.

Melisandre swiftly tilted Gendry's head, her movements almost gentle.

Gendry's voice cracked as he asked, "What is it you want from me?"

The red woman's voice was a whisper, a gentle breeze in the night. "All will be well," she murmured, her words a balm to Gendry's frayed nerves.

With a flash of a knife, she sliced open his throat. Black blood poured out, glinting in the green light, and trickled into the surf among the drowned.

Davos felt his head drop in shame and looked away. But that was when the red woman's chant began.

The sound she made was quiet, but it ate through the night. A thin, harsh rasp, like nails down glass — and where it grazed the water, the foam writhed.

And from the sea of bodies, the dead stood up.

The dead did not rise as men awakening from slumber. They made no struggle, caught no breath, nor cleared their throats. A drowned oarsman from the Marya merely turned his face from the mud, his limbs stiff as driftwood, and planted his grey feet on the stones.

Davos struggled to fathom the horror, yet it was the fire on the dead that left him dumfounded.

He watched them rise, but these weren't just men ablaze. Fire's a hungry beast, eats wood and turns tallow to grease, but this green light in their bodies didn't devour. It sat deep, shining through their ribs. Water and salt couldn't put it out. The fire was in them now, cold and unnatural, like oil in their bones. It stood them up, since their own life had left them.

He strained to recall a tale from his father's mouth or a story Salladhor Saan once spun of the shadow-lands beyond Asshai. But his mind drew a blank. He was Davos Seaworth, a smuggler made knight, versed in timber and fish but ill-equipped to fathom the dark magic his king's cause had summoned.

"By the Seven, what have you done..." He couldn't find the words for it, even to himself.

The city walls became the focus of the burning dead's vacant, hollowed-out eyes. They spoke, but no human could make such a sound. All at once, the dead began to speak carrying the faint echo of Melisandre's voice.

"Take the city," they hissed, the words grating out like flint on flint. "Take the city for the true king."

Unbeknownst to all of them, in the far to the North past the Wall, something began to stir.