[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 34: CONNINGTON II (Public) (Patreon)

The fog blanketing the Mother Rhoyne hung heavy and stagnant, a pale shroud pressing down upon the shattered deck of the Shy Maid. The air tasted of ancient silt, choked with the metallic stench of freshly spilled blood and the foul odor of voided bowels. Jon Connington stood amidst the floating slaughterhouse, the breath rattling harshly in his chest. He tightened his leather-gloved grip around the hilt of his longsword. Dark, congealing lifeblood dripped slowly from the fuller, pattering against the splintered oak planks.

Yandry lay near the iron mooring cleats, his skull crushed into a shapeless, ruined mass. Ysilla rested a few paces away, her entrails spilling across the wet wood. Varys slumped dead inside the dark of the cabin, the Master of Whisperers choked on his own punctured lungs. Viserys Targaryen had vanished into the freezing depths, dragged to the muddy bottom by the petrified grip of a feral stone man. Ser Jorah Mormont had disappeared over the railing, swallowed by the river. The Volantene corsairs had vanished back into the impenetrable mist, taking Daenerys and the deep green-and-bronze dragon's egg with them.

Aegon thrashed upon the slick deck. The boy screamed in breathless, shuddering agony. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. His right hand grasped wildly at the empty air. His left forearm ended in a ruined, violently pumping stump. Bright crimson arterial spray mingled with the filthy river water pooling around his leather boots. The blue Tyroshi dye in his hair ran dark with his own blood.

Connington looked down at his own right wrist. A feral, greyscale-infected hand had clamped around his flesh during the chaotic melee. The skin there already prickled with a terrifying, cold numbness. The flesh looked unnaturally pale and stiff. The curse of the Sorrows had taken root.

The whispered words of the tattooed corsair captain echoed relentlessly in his ears, louder and more terrible than the phantom bells of Stoney Sept. The Golden Stag remembers, Spider. The Prince thanks you for the purple seeds.

The Usurper's son had reached across the Narrow Sea, struck deep into the Sorrows, and shattered their fifteen-year conspiracy in a handful of bloody moments.

Aegon let out another ragged, tearing shriek. The sound snapped Connington from his paralyzed horror. The boy was bleeding out. Infection and blood loss would claim the last scion of House Targaryen before the sun reached its peak.

"Lemore!" Connington roared, his voice cracking with the sheer force of his desperation. "Lemore, out of the bilges!"

Frantic, terrified scrambling sounded from the open wooden grate. Septa Lemore emerged from the dark hold. Her grey robes hung heavy, soaked in foul bilge water. Her face was ashen. She stared at the butchery on the deck, her wide eyes locking onto the pulped skull of Yandry, then shifting to the thrashing, mutilated boy. She clamped her hands over her mouth. A high, keening sob escaped her throat.

"The Mother's mercy," she wept, falling to her knees on the bloody planks. "The Gods have abandoned us."

"The boy is bleeding out!" Connington snarled. He strode forward, hauling the woman up by the shoulders of her habit and shaking her violently. "We must sear the stump. He dies here in the mud if you weep."

Lemore blinked, the brutal, physical command breaking through her paralysis. She nodded numbly. She scrambled toward the overturned cooking brazier near the aft, righting the heavy iron basket and frantically blowing on the smoldering coals.

Connington knelt beside Aegon. He stripped his heavy leather belt from his waist. He wrapped it tightly around the boy's upper left arm, pulling the thick leather through the iron buckle and hauling it back with all his remaining strength to form a crude tourniquet. Aegon thrashed wildly, his strength born of pure, blinding agony. Connington threw his entire armored weight across the boy's chest to pin him to the deck.

"Hold him!" Lemore cried. She returned from the brazier, her hands wrapped in thick, scorched rags. She carried the heavy iron poker they used to stoke the cooking fires. The tip of the iron glowed a dull, angry cherry-red.

"Do it," Connington commanded. He turned his face away from the boy.

Lemore pressed the glowing iron directly against the spurting, ruined stump of Aegon's left arm.

The hiss of searing meat and boiling blood was deafening. The sickening, sweet stench of burning human flesh immediately overpowered the rotting smell of the river. Aegon's body went completely rigid. He arched off the deck with a force that nearly threw Connington aside. The boy could find no breath to scream. His eyes rolled entirely white. He slumped backward, tumbling into the dark abyss of unconsciousness.

Connington stayed kneeling beside the boy, his chest heaving. Sweat stung his eyes. The stump was sealed, reduced to an ugly, charred mass of blackened flesh and melted bone. The immediate bleeding had stopped. The true danger had only just begun. The rusted, filthy edge of the corsair's boarding axe had undoubtedly driven the foul rot of the river deep into the boy's veins.

He stood up, his legs feeling like lead. He looked at Lemore. She wept silently, cradling the cooling iron poker against her chest, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

"We must clear the dead," Connington rasped, surveying the blood-soaked deck. "The smell will draw more of the stone men."

They lacked the time, the tools, or the dry land to dig proper graves. Connington dragged the heavy, armored bodies of the dead Volantene corsairs to the edge. He shoved them over the gunwales, watching the freezing black water swallow the killers.

He turned his attention to his comrades. He and Haldon had argued with the stubborn riverman a hundred times over the years. The Rhoynar had been loyal to the end, giving their lives to protect a king they barely knew.

"They belonged to the river," Connington murmured. He lifted Ysilla's slight, ruined body in his arms.

He eased the old woman into the dark water. Lemore helped him with Yandry, her tears mixing with the blood on the deck as she sang a broken, trembling hymn to the Seven, asking the Father for justice and the Mother for peace. They rolled Haldon Halfmaester over the edge, watching the scholar's staring eyes sink beneath the current. They dragged the massive, impaled bulk of Ser Rolly Duckfield from the mast, pulling the iron marlinspike free from the wood. They pushed the young knight over the side. Connington felt the last vestiges of his honor sink into the black water alongside his friends. He was no longer the proud Lord of Griffin's Roost. He was a desperate survivor.

Connington walked into the dark, ruined cabin. Varys lay in a pool of his own congealing blood. His soft face was frozen in a mask of absolute, horrific realization. Connington felt a surge of cold, bitter hatred for the eunuch. Varys had spun his intricate webs, promised them the world, and led them straight into an abattoir.

Connington knelt beside the body. He searched the heavy, blood-soaked robes. He felt a hard lump beneath the coarse wool. He pulled a small, heavy leather satchel free from an inner pocket. He opened the drawstring. The dull, muted light of the cabin caught the jagged edges of a dozen raw, uncut rubies.

The fat man's gold remained buried under the Red Keep. This small pouch held the only capital they had left to buy the swords they needed.

He tucked the rubies deep into his own tunic. He touched the heavy canvas sack strapped tightly across his chest. He had snatched the dragon egg from the splintering oak during the height of the slaughter, cradling it against his breastplate to save it from the grasping, petrified fingers of a stone man. It was immensely heavy, possessing the dense, unforgiving weight of a small boulder. The surface felt utterly cold against his leather gloves, devoid of the mythical heat the old Valyrian scrolls promised. It was a dead thing of black stone, rippled with veins of deep, blood-red scarlet. It was their ultimate leverage.

Together, they dragged Varys's heavy bulk out of the cabin and pushed him into the river.

"We must abandon the boat," Connington told Lemore, pointing toward the eastern bank, barely visible through the thinning fog. "I do not know the shifting currents of the Sorrows. Without Yandry, we will surely run aground or smash against the ruins. We drop the anchor here. We wade into the marshes and find a trade road. The Golden Company is camped near Volon Therys. We must reach them."

Before stepping into the freezing, waist-deep water of the Rhoyne, Connington paused. He drew a long strip of boiled leather from the ship's supplies. He wrapped it tightly around his right wrist, securing it with a heavy brass buckle. It completely hid the creeping, deadly grey flesh from the world. If Lemore or the sellswords saw the mark of the greyscale upon him, they would abandon him to the rot. He would hide his death sentence until the boy was safely surrounded by thousands of loyal swords.

The descent into the river marshes was a grueling, agonizing plunge into utter squalor.

They waded through thick, sucking mud and stagnant pools of foul water. Connington hacked their way through dense walls of sharp river reeds with his longsword, his arms aching with the effort. Aegon hung as a dead weight between them. The boy was ravaged by septic fever from the crude amputation. His skin burned with an unnatural heat, radiating through his torn clothes. His breathing remained shallow and ragged. He slipped in and out of a dark delirium, murmuring the names of the dead, weeping softly for his lost hand.

Connington knew they could travel the roads bearing the appearance of highborn lords. The Tyroshi blue dye was washing out of Aegon's hair with the rain and the sweat of his fever. The fading dye threatened to reveal the unmistakable, dangerous Valyrian silver beneath. The corsairs had known exactly who they were looking for. The trade roads would surely be watched by men eager for a royal bounty.

They made a cold, miserable camp in the mud on the second night. Connington drew his dagger from his belt.

"Hold him still," Connington ordered Lemore.

He grasped the boy's chin, tilting the fever-flushed face upward. He brought the steel to the scalp, scraping the sharp edge against the skin. Silver-gold locks fell away, dropping into the stagnant pools of the marsh. The blade nicked the flesh, drawing thin beads of crimson, turning the boy completely bald. Connington took handfuls of the foul river mud and smeared it across the boy's pale face, over his own weathered features, and across Lemore's cheeks. He tore the fine wool of their tunics until the garments hung in ragged tatters. They adopted the appearance of ruined, plague-fleeing beggars.

Connington unwound a long strip of coarse canvas and a handful of filthy, blood-stained rags. He wrapped them tightly around the scabbard of his castle-forged longsword, binding the hilt and the crossguard until the weapon resembled nothing more than a thick, crude walking staff. He leaned heavily upon it, perfecting the hunched posture of a broken man.

On the fourth day, starving and shivering, they finally stumbled out of the endless reeds. They climbed onto a wide, hard-packed dirt road leading north toward Volon Therys.

The heavy, rhythmic thud of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels announced an approaching caravan. A long line of heavy supply wagons, groaning under the weight of grain, salted beef, and casks of wine, moved slowly up the road.

Connington stepped out from the brush, raising a muddy hand. A heavy, foul-smelling man driving a dung-cart near the rear of the column pulled his mules to a halt. He eyed the ragged, mud-caked trio with open disgust.

"Get back to the mud, beggars," the driver spat, waving a scarred hand dismissively. "I have no coppers for the diseased."

Connington stepped closer, shielding his movements from the rest of the caravan. He reached deep into his torn tunic. He withdrew a single, small, uncut ruby from Varys's pouch. He held it up in the shadow of his palm. The red gem caught the pale light.

The driver's eyes widened. Naked, calculating greed replaced the disgust on his weathered face.

"We seek the free companies," Connington rasped, his voice rough from the damp and the smoke. "Hide us under your canvas until we pass the gates of Volon Therys."

The driver snatched the ruby from Connington's palm. He bit down on it to test its hardness, then nodded sharply toward the back of the foul-smelling cart. Connington and Lemore hauled the feverish Aegon over the wooden tailboard. They buried themselves beneath a pile of soiled, heavy canvas tarps, the stench of manure burning their nostrils.

The cart rumbled forward. The agonizing jostling brought fresh groans from Aegon, his remaining hand clutching at his chest. Connington peered through a small tear in the canvas.

A squad of heavy cavalry rode past the caravan, heading south toward Volantis. They wore padded jacks and boiled leather. Over their shoulders hung heavy cloaks dyed in a pattern of jagged, vibrant green stripes.

Tiger Cloaks. A cold, suffocating paranoia gripped Connington's chest.

The corsair captain who had severed Aegon's hand had borne the tiger tattoos. Connington was dragging the boy straight into a region swarming with the very soldiers who might have taken Joffrey’s gold to finish the job. Every shadow, every man wearing green stripes, represented a potential blade in the dark. The Golden Stag had reached across the world, turning the very fabric of Essos into a hostile weapon.

The journey ended with the sounds of massive, chaotic industry. The cart rolled to a halt. The driver banged a heavy fist against the wooden side.

"Out," the driver hissed, his voice muffled through the canvas. "We're past the outer pickets. The sellsword camps are ahead."

Connington dragged Aegon from the cart, his boots hitting the hard-packed earth. Lemore climbed down, supporting the boy's other side. They stood in the dust and looked upon the golden illusion.

The sprawling encampments surrounding Volon Therys presented a picture of pristine, terrifying martial splendor. The Golden Company did not live like ragged sellswords huddled in muddy ditches. They were a premier, elite fighting force, currently fat and happy on rich Volantene Elephant-faction gold. Rows of immaculate, heavy canvas pavilions stretched for miles across the plains. Thousands of seasoned men-at-arms drilled in the wide yards. Their polished steel armor baked in the hot Essosi sun. Near the riverbanks, the massive, grey bulks of two dozen war elephants stood chained to heavy iron stakes. Their handlers fed the beasts vast piles of fresh hay, hauling water from the river in heavy wooden buckets.

Into this overwhelming display of wealth and power walked Jon Connington, crusted in dried Rhoynish mud and old blood. He leaned heavily on a canvas-wrapped stick, supporting a bald, one-handed, feverish boy who looked like a diseased beggar.

Connington led them toward the main thoroughfare of the camp. They did not make it far.

A dozen paces past the wagons, a line of crossed spears blocked their path. Stern, disciplined sentries wearing gilded armbands and polished half-helms stepped forward. Their eyes filled with absolute disgust at the sight of the ragged beggars intruding upon their pristine camp.

"Halt," the lead sentry barked, lowering his spear point toward Connington's chest. "This camp is closed to the sick. Back to the river, beggar, before we feed you to the dogs."

Connington planted his wrapped sword-staff into the dirt. He straightened his spine, casting off the hunched posture. He locked his pale eyes onto the sentry.

"I demand a sergeant," Connington commanded, his voice ringing with the unmistakable, aristocratic authority of a Westerosi lord. "Fetch the Watch Commander. Tell him the Griffin has returned to the roost."

The sentries hesitated, exchanging confused glances. The tone of command confused their orders. One of the men turned and jogged toward a nearby guard post. He returned moments later with a grizzled sergeant, a man bearing a scarred face and a heavy golden ring in his ear.

The sergeant approached, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Connington stepped closer, lowering his voice so only the veteran could hear. He whispered a specific string of passcodes, words used only by the inner circle during the command of Myles Toyne, words buried with the former Captain-General.

The sergeant paled, the blood draining from his weathered face. He stared at Connington's mud-smeared features, recognizing the sharp lines beneath the filth.

"Gods above," the sergeant breathed. He turned sharply to his men. "Disarm them. March them to the Captain-General."

The sentries moved swiftly. They ripped the canvas-wrapped sword from Connington's grasp, leaving him entirely empty-handed. They searched Aegon, pulling a small, hidden dagger from the boy's belt. They formed a tight, heavily armed ring around the trio. Connington supported Aegon's full weight as they were marched under heavy, suspicious guard through the winding, bustling avenues of the camp, drawing stares from the training men-at-arms.

They reached the center of the encampment. The command tent was a massive, sprawling pavilion of cloth-of-gold, surrounded by a ring of heavily armed, fiercely disciplined guards bearing the golden skulls of their fallen commanders on tall pikes.

The sergeant shoved them through the heavy flaps of the tent.

The command council was in session. The veteran martial captains of the Golden Company—men like Laswell Peake, the fierce, scarred Franklyn Flowers, and the deadly archer Black Balaq—sat around a heavy oak table covered in detailed maps and thick ledgers. At the head of the table sat Harry Strickland. The Captain-General was a cautious, soft-looking man, currently rubbing his bare, blistered feet, a cup of sweet wine resting near his elbow.

The captains froze. Hands dropped instinctively to the hilts of their swords. They stared at the ragged, mud-caked intruders. Their eyes widened in absolute, stunned disbelief as they recognized the man beneath the dirt.

"By the Seven," Laswell Peake breathed. He rose slowly from his chair, his hands flat on the table. "Connington? You’ve been dead for years."

"I am returned," Connington said. His voice was hard as iron, ignoring the shock rippling through the tent. He dragged Aegon forward, lowering the gasping, delirious boy into an empty wooden chair at the table.

"What in the hells is this, Jon?" Harry Strickland demanded. He hastily pulled his leather boots back on, his round face flushing with sudden, intense irritation. "You barge into my camp looking like a drowned rat, dragging a diseased beggar. The men think you drank yourself to death in Lys."

"The men think what I needed them to think, Harry," Connington replied. He stood tall despite the exhaustion radiating through his bones. "I bring you the true King. Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of His Name."

The silence in the tent grew heavy and utterly cynical. Franklyn Flowers leaned over the table, staring at the bald, sweating boy. His eyes dropped immediately to the blood-soaked bandages wrapped thickly around the charred stump of Aegon's left arm.

"That is a crippled boy, Jon," Flowers said bluntly, spitting on the carpet. "Where is the silver hair? Where is the dragon?"

"He was ambushed in the Sorrows," Connington stated, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Volantene corsairs took his hand. He is Rhaegar's son. He is the blood of the dragon. We are going home."

Strickland scoffed. He leaned back in his chair, picking up his cup of wine. He looked profoundly inconvenienced by the entire ordeal.

"We are currently under a highly lucrative contract with the Triarchs of Volantis, Jon," Strickland said, executing the mercenary arithmetic with cold, practiced precision. "The Elephants are paying us a mountain of gold to sit on this border and look menacing. You ask us to break a contract that pays in heavy silver, to follow a one-handed boy across the Narrow Sea. Where is Illyrio Mopatis? Where is the Pentoshi gold that was supposed to fund this grand restoration?"

"Illyrio is dead," Connington admitted. The words tasted like ash. "His vaults were seized by the Iron Throne. Varys is dead. The usurper's son, Joffrey Baratheon, purged the capital and locked down the realm."

The mood in the tent shifted instantly from shocked disbelief to cold, calculating hostility.

"The fat man's gold is gone, the Spider is dead, and the Iron Throne is held by a boy who apparently knows how to wield a sword," Strickland summarized, his eyes narrowing. "You bring me a maimed boy who cannot even hold a shield. A one-handed boy cannot lead a vanguard, Jon. We are a free company. We require coin, secure supply lines, and strong leadership. If we march on Westeros with a crippled beggar, the lords will laugh us off the continent before they slaughter us."

Strickland looked at the other captains, seeking their agreement. "We cut our losses. We finish the Volantene contract. We send a raven to this new Golden Stag in King's Landing. The Iron Throne will surely pay a handsome bounty for the head of a Targaryen pretender."

Connington’s hand dropped instinctively to his empty hip. His heart hammered against his ribs. The ghosts of Stoney Sept howled in his ears. He prepared to fight bare-handed, ready to die defending the boy against the very men he had once commanded. He readied himself to reach into the canvas sack, to throw the heavy dragon egg on the table as a desperate, final bribe.

A sharp, ragged sound stopped him.

Aegon gripped the edge of the heavy oak table with his surviving right hand. His knuckles turned stark white. He forced his trembling legs to bear his weight, pulling himself up from the chair. The boy shook violently. His skin was deathly pale. Sweat poured down his face, cutting tracks through the river mud. Fresh, bright blood seeped through the crude linens wrapped around his left stump, pattering softly onto the woven Myrish carpet.

"You will sell me to no man," Aegon gasped. His voice was thin and broken, yet it carried an unmistakable, razor-sharp edge of absolute command.

The captains fell silent. They stared at the boy.

Aegon ignored Connington. He locked his deep, mesmerizing purple eyes—the unmistakable eyes of Old Valyria—directly onto Harry Strickland. The boy burned from the inside out. He ran on nothing but pain and the sheer, fanatical pride of his bloodline.

"You sit here, fat on Elephant gold, rubbing your sore feet while you polish your armor for parades," Aegon spat. The words tore from his throat with raw, desperate fury. "You call yourselves the Golden Company. You boast that beneath the gold, the bitter steel. You are nothing but dogs on a Volantene leash."

Aegon turned his fierce gaze to the veteran captains. He looked directly at Laswell Peake and Franklyn Flowers.

"Your grandfathers were lords," Aegon said. His voice rose, fighting through the fever. "They held castles in the Reach. They held lands in the Riverlands. They were stripped of their homes and driven into the dirt by the usurpers. You have spent your entire lives fighting other men's wars. You bleed in the mud of the Disputed Lands for masters who despise you."

The boy swayed slightly. He gripped the table harder, his chest heaving with the effort of remaining upright.

"I am maimed," Aegon declared. He held up the bloody stump for all of them to see, refusing to hide his weakness. "I have bled for my birthright. I will bleed again. I am going to cross the Narrow Sea. I am going to tear down the Golden Stag and burn his throne to ash. I will restore every acre of land, every ruined keep, and every stolen honor your families lost."

Aegon looked around the tent. His eyes burned with a desperate, terrifying fire.

"You can stay here," Aegon challenged them. His voice echoed in the sudden, heavy silence of the pavilion. "You can grow old and rich, and you can die in foreign mud, forgotten by the history of the world. Or you can draw your swords and follow the dragon. We will take back our home. Even if we fail, even if we are slaughtered on the shores of Westeros and left without a burial in the dirt, it is a death worthy of legends. It is a death better than rotting away in exile!"

The silence in the command tent was absolute. The soft, comfortable illusion of the sellsword camp evaporated under the sheer, undeniable grit of the crippled boy standing before them.

Harry Strickland opened his mouth to speak, seeking to dismiss the boy's fever-dreams with cold arithmetic. A harsh scrape of metal cut him off.

Franklyn Flowers, the scarred, bitter bastard of the Reach, stood up. He looked at the blood dripping from Aegon's stump, and then into the boy's burning purple eyes. Flowers drew his longsword, the steel ringing sharply in the tent.

He ignored Strickland completely. He stepped forward and drove the point of his sword into the Myrish carpet. He dropped heavily to one knee before the table.

"My grandfather was a lord," Flowers rumbled. His voice was thick with a sudden, overwhelming hunger for home. "I am tired of Essosi mud."

Laswell Peake drew his blade. He stepped up beside Flowers, kneeling. Black Balaq bowed his head. One by one, the veteran martial captains of the brotherhood of exiles drew their steel. Men starved for purpose and moved by the raw, bleeding defiance of a boy who refused to die a victim pledged their lives to the maimed dragon.

Jon Connington stood frozen, watching the kneeling men. He looked at Aegon. The boy trembled, his face a mask of absolute agony, but he remained standing, accepting their oaths.

Connington felt the heavy canvas sack containing the black-and-scarlet dragon egg resting against his back. He did not need to use the bribe. The boy had won them with fire. The dragon was awake.

~~~