James Tyrell walked through the battle.
Steel rang through the corridors of the Eyrie. Servants pressed themselves into doorways while Arryn and Waynwood guards fought wherever they could form a line, but the defenders had been caught unprepared. Half did not yet understand who had betrayed them, while the other half had realised too late.
James stepped over a dead guardsman and wiped the blood from his sword on the man’s blue cloak.
“Villain!”
He turned toward the cry.
The heir to Ironoaks came running, a young man in dented mail with House Waynwood’s broken wheel painted across his shield. Rage had stripped him of all caution. He charged past his own guards, his sword raised high enough that any half-trained soldier could see the opening beneath his arm.
James did not need to lift his blade.
One of his men stepped forward and drove a sword through the young heir’s throat.
The Waynwood boy stopped so abruptly that his boots slid across the bloody floor. He dropped his shield and seized the steel protruding from his neck, his fingers clawing uselessly around the blade before his knees struck the stone.
“No!”
Lord Waynwood forced his way through the fighting.
The old lord saw his son collapse and forgot the battle around him. He struck one of James’s men across the helm, then reached toward the dying boy as though he might still pull him back from the Stranger.
That mistake killed him.
A swordsman caught Waynwood’s wrist and hacked through it. The severed hand fell beside his son’s shield, still gripping its sword. Before the lord could understand what had happened, another man swung from behind.
Waynwood’s head rolled across the floor and struck the wall beneath a painted falcon.
James smiled.
A father and son together. There were worse ways for a house to end.
“Hold this passage,” he ordered. “No one reaches the throne room.”
His men surged past him while he continued alone.
Artys had given him one task, and James intended to finish it personally.
Three obstacles stood in his master’s way.
A queen.
A king.
A prince.
James reached the doors to the High Hall and found them unguarded.
The hall appeared almost peaceful compared to the chaos behind him.
Queen Sharra knelt beside her sons near the throne.
The younger boy clung to her dress with both hands. The elder stood close enough that one shoulder pressed against hers, though he held a small sword before him. He was trying to look like a king.
“Everything will be well, sweetlings,” Sharra told them.
Her voice remained steady, though one hand trembled where it rested against the younger child’s hair.
James allowed his boots to strike the floor more heavily.
The sound carried through the hall.
Sharra turned.
Relief touched her face when she first saw him. Then James stepped fully into the light, and she realised who he truly was.
Her hand tightened around the younger prince.
“Ser Tyrell?” the young king asked.
James drew his sword, the sound cutting through the silence.
“No,” Sharra said.
She moved both boys behind her and backed toward the throne.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Where are my guards?”
“Dying.”
The elder boy raised his little sword higher. James almost laughed at the sight. The child’s wrist shook beneath its weight.
“Artys,” she said. The name came from her like poison.
James inclined his head. “My lord sees three obstacles between himself and the throne. He asked me to remove them.”
The younger prince began to cry. Sharra pushed both boys farther behind her.
“You swore guest right beneath this roof.”
James only smiled.
Sharra’s gaze shifted toward the nearest door, measuring the distance and judging whether she could reach it before him.
She could not.
“This need not be personal,” he told her.
Sharra seized a ceremonial spear from beside the throne and thrust it at him. She possessed none of a knight’s training, but terror gave the strike speed. James knocked the point aside and closed the distance before she could recover.
The young king rushed him.
“Let her go!”
His sword struck James’s mail and bounced away.
James backhanded him hard enough to send him sprawling across the floor. The younger brother screamed and kicked at James’s leg until a boot to the chest knocked him backward.
Sharra drove the end of the spear into James’s shoulder. He caught the shaft beneath one arm, tore it from her grip, and threw it aside.
Then he seized her by the hair.
Sharra cried out as he dragged her down. Her hands clawed at his wrist, her nails cutting into his skin, but he twisted her head until she could no longer fight without tearing out her own hair.
The sight of her stirred a hunger in him.
Under different circumstances, he might have enjoyed taking his time with the proud Queen of the Vale. Sadly, he did not have time for that.
“A shame,” he murmured.
He dragged her across the hall.
The Moon Door stood in the centre of the polished floor, its white marble frame carved with pale crescents. James kicked the locking bar aside and pulled the doors open.
Cold mountain air rushed upward.
Sharra’s sons screamed for her.
“Mama!”
“Let her go!”
She twisted in James’s grip and found enough breath to answer them.
“It will be all right,” she called. “Stay together. Do you hear me? Stay together.”
James threw her down beside the opening.
Sharra caught the marble frame and rolled onto her back.
For one moment, hope returned to her face. She believed she was the only target. A dead queen could no longer rule through her sons, and perhaps she thought Artys intended to keep the boys as prisoners.
James walked away from her.
Toward the princes.
Sharra understood then.
“No.”
The word came quietly at first.
The elder boy stepped in front of his brother, lifting his sword again despite the bruise spreading across his face.
James caught his wrist and twisted until the weapon fell. Then he seized the boy around the waist.
The younger prince tried to run. James trapped him beneath his other arm.
Both boys fought with everything they had.
Behind them, Sharra scrambled upright.
“No! Please!”
James carried the boys toward the Moon Door.
“I will do whatever you want,” she said. “I will name Artys regent. I will give him the crown. Please...”
James continued walking.
“Spare them!” Sharra cried.
The young king stopped striking long enough to look at his mother.
James smiled down at both princes. “It is time you little falcons learned to fly.”
He hurled them through the Moon Door.
Their screams fell away into the open sky.
Sharra reached the opening too late.
She dropped beside it and stared down, one hand stretched into empty air. No sound came from her at first. Her mouth remained open, her body bent over the white marble frame.
Then the scream tore through the High Hall.
James listened until it broke into ragged sobbing.
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her away from the edge.
Sharra turned on him with nothing left to protect and drove her nails toward his eyes. One caught his cheek. Another scraped across his brow.
“I curse you,” she spat. “May every god hear me. May the Seven drag you screaming into the deepest hell. I curse you!”
James struck her across the mouth.
“Whore.”
Blood ran over her lower lip, yet she laughed at him.
That sound followed him as he forced her toward the opening.
James pushed her against the frame.
She did not beg again.
Sharra Arryn looked down into the sky where her sons had vanished, then closed her eyes.
James threw her after them.
Her blue dress spread around her as she fell, the moonlight shining upon her against the mountains and clouds. Within moments, she became too small to distinguish from the empty sky.
=============
“I curse you.”
Sharra’s last words returned to James as dragonfire rained down around them.
Fire surrounded the Vale host, and James remembered the hatred in her eyes. Men ran past him with their cloaks burning. Horses dragged fallen riders through the mud, spreading flames wherever their hooves struck.
Above them, the red dragon banked through the smoke.
Its four limbs folded close beneath its body as it turned, while its wings moved with a speed James could not understand. The creature should have been too large to change direction so sharply. Instead, it circled the army as easily as a hawk circling rabbits.
‘We are doomed.’
James stood beside the man he had made king and felt Sharra’s curse tighten around him. He had murdered her children. He had thrown her into the sky after them. All of it had been done for Artys, for the promise of lands and power once the Vale belonged to them.
He was doomed. Sharra’s curse had come to claim him.
The creature roared again, and what remained of discipline broke.
James caught Artys by the arm.
“Your Grace, what do we do?”
The king did not answer.
Artys sat frozen in the saddle, staring upward with his sword still raised from the speech in which he had promised them victory. His lips moved, but no sound came from them.
“VEN MUL RIIK!”
“It spoke,” James whispered.
Wind burst outward from the dragon.
A wall of grey mist rolled across the field, swallowing flames and men. One moment, James could see thousands fleeing across the field. The next, the world ended only a few paces beyond his boots.
The screams became distant. James could hear Artys breathing beside him and the frightened snorting of their horses, but nothing else remained clear.
“It spoke,” the king repeated.
James dismounted when his horse became unruly. The moment his boots touched the ground, the animal tore free and fled into the mist.
“Your Grace, we must leave. The dragon is...”
A shadow moved behind him.
It passed through the mist without a sound, too large and too close. James began to turn.
Jaws closed around his waist.
James screamed as teeth punched through mail, flesh, and bone. The dragon lifted him from the ground, his legs kicking beneath him while blood poured across the red scales of its muzzle.
Artys stared up at him.
“Help,” James said softly.
The dragon bit down and James felt his body break in half.
=========
Lord Royce held his sword before him and listened to the dragon laugh.
The sound moved through the mist, deep and pleased. It came first from the left, then from behind him, then from somewhere above. Men turned in circles as they tried to follow it, their weapons raised against shapes that vanished whenever they looked directly at them.
A shadow slipped between two companies and disappeared before either could react. Something red flashed through the mist. Three men vanished with it. Their weapons struck the ground a moment later, followed by pieces Royce refused to examine too closely.
“How can it move like that?” one of his knights asked.
No one answered.
The mist opened ahead.
Artys stumbled through it on foot.
Blood covered his cloak and armour, though Royce saw no wound upon him. His eyes darted over every man nearby as though he expected each of them to be the dragon.
“Your Grace.”
Royce seized him by both shoulders.
“Your Grace, you are safe. Look at me.”
Artys focused on him with difficulty.
“James,” he said. “It ate James.”
Royce had no response to that.
The mist shifted around them.
“Foul thing!” Lord Hunter shouted from somewhere nearby. “Demon! We are the Seven’s own, and the Seven Who Are One will...”
His voice ceased.
A moment later, Hunter screamed.
The sound travelled through the mist, then broke beneath the crunch of armour.
The dragon laughed again.
Royce gripped his sword harder.
“What is this creature?” he whispered.
The men around him began to break. One dropped his spear and ran without choosing a direction. Another fell to his knees and prayed so quickly that the words tangled together. A third began begging the Father for judgment, then changed halfway through and begged the dragon instead.
Royce stepped away from Artys and raised his face toward the mist.
“WHAT ARE YOU?”
The answer came from everywhere.
“I am VENGEANCE.”
Its voice rumbled through his bones.
The dragon’s shadow passed overhead.
========
Lord Corbray stood back-to-back with Belmore, Lady Forlorn drawn before him.
The Valyrian steel blade stood dark against the fog, its edge sharp enough to cut through any armour. Corbray had killed Edmyn Tully with it, even if the man had somehow returned. He had cut down Vance. He had faced champions from every corner of the Vale and watched courage leave their faces when they recognised the sword.
He would not back down before a beast like this.
Belmore did not share his certainty. The older lord breathed through his mouth and kept glancing at the men surrounding them. Those men had begun looking at their lords instead of the fog.
The dragon spoke again.
“Why do you follow him?”
The question came from ahead, though Corbray could see nothing there.
“Your king murdered the rightful king and the sons of House Arryn. He murdered their mother. He stained the Eyrie with the blood of children, and you named him your king.”
Men shifted around them.
Corbray heard one whisper Sharra’s name.
“Do not listen to it,” he ordered. “It lies.”
The dragon continued.
“Did you truly believe the gods would remain silent after such a transgression?”
Belmore’s sword lowered by an inch.
Corbray turned on him. “Raise your blade.”
A shape moved through the mist.
“The gods are merciful,” the dragon said. “Their champion, Harald Stormcrown, is more merciful still.”
The fog parted.
Red scales filled the world.
The dragon stood directly before them, its head lowered until its burning eyes were level with the men. Blood ran between its teeth.
“And yet,” it said, “I am not the Dragonborn.”
“I am the vengeance he chose to unleash.”
Belmore dropped his sword.
He sank to both knees, his hands raised before him.
“Mercy,” he pleaded. “Great one, I was deceived. I swear it.”
Corbray attacked.
The first strike glanced off the dragon’s teeth. Corbray turned the blade and cut toward its eye, but the creature shifted its head aside with mocking ease.
“Stand still!”
The dragon stopped moving.
“Go on,” it said.
Corbray roared and drove Lady Forlorn into its face with both hands.
The point struck between the scales.
Nothing happened.
The dragon began to laugh.
The sound shook Corbray’s chest as he dragged Lady Forlorn back for another strike. Belmore remained kneeling beside him, sobbing prayers into the mud.
“Geh!” the dragon exclaimed. “Yes. Geh! I felt that.”
Its burning eyes widened with delight.
“Oh, do it again.”
Corbray swung.
The dragon opened its mouth.
“YOL.”
Fire swallowed them both, and they died screaming.
Men fled in every direction.
The dragon stepped backward into the fog and vanished while the two lords burned.
=========
Royce heard their screams from somewhere beyond the mist.
All around him, the dragon killed slowly.
Each death announced itself with a scream or the creature’s laughter. Royce could no longer see most of his own men. He did not know how many lords remained alive.
Artys crouched beside him, shaking badly enough that the plates of his armour clicked together.
The nearby knights had begun watching the king.
Royce recognised the accusation in their faces. These men had followed Artys because their lords had called the war holy. They had burned villages and killed women and children.
Now a dragon had come, claiming to be vengeance sent by the gods and calling their king a murderer and a kinslayer.
The creature’s voice rolled through the fog once more.
“Perhaps I should be merciful.”
“Perhaps those who were deceived by his lies should live.”
Royce saw several soldiers lower their weapons.
Artys saw it too.
“No,” the king whispered.
The dragon continued.
“The Vale has been promised to the champion of the gods. I will deliver it to Harald Stormcrown.”
A knight took one step toward Artys.
Then another followed.
“Perhaps you should prove your loyalty to your new king,” the dragon said.
Royce reached for the nearest man.
“Hold, damn you! It deceives us! Do not fall for its lies!”
The soldier struck him across the face with the rim of his shield.
Royce staggered. Before he could recover, someone struck the back of his knee. He fell, and boots closed around him.
Artys ran.
The king disappeared into the fog without looking back.
A spearhead entered Royce’s side beneath his breastplate. He cried out and seized the shaft, but three men forced him onto his back. One had served House Royce since boyhood. Another was a knight Royce had once knighted himself.
“Traitors,” Royce gasped.
The man he had knighted drove a sword through his stomach.
Royce tried to speak again, but blood filled his mouth.
The men did not stop.
Spears and swords descended until his bronze armour split apart and his body was torn open.
The last thing Royce saw was the fog above him and the dragon’s glowing eyes.
=========
Artys ran blindly through the fog. His breath rasped beneath his helm, and the blood drying across his armour filled his nose with the smell of iron.
Someone shouted behind him.
“There! There he is!”
Artys glanced back.
Ten men emerged from the mist with swords and spears in their hands. Less than an hour ago, those same men had cheered his name and raised their weapons when he promised them victory.
Now they hunted him.
“Stay back!” Artys shouted. “I am your king!”
The soldiers quickened their pace.
“Murderer!”
“Child-killer!”
“For Queen Sharra!”
Artys turned and ran.
His boots slipped in the mud churned by thousands of men. He passed a burning horse that kicked weakly against the ground, then stumbled over a corpse whose face had been crushed beyond recognition. More figures appeared ahead, forcing him to change direction.
The fog seemed to move with him.
Whenever Artys thought he had found open ground, armed men stepped out of the grey and drove him elsewhere. Some threw stones. Others shouted the names of Queen Sharra and her sons.
The dragon laughed above them all.
Its voice moved through the mist, sometimes distant, sometimes close enough that Artys felt hot breath against the back of his neck. The creature was enjoying this. It could have killed him with fire or swallowed him as it had swallowed James, but it preferred to terrorise him.
A sword cut through the fog near his face. Artys ducked and struck the attacker with his shoulder, knocking the man aside before forcing his way between two more soldiers. Hands caught at his cloak. He tore himself free, leaving half the fabric behind.
“Seven above,” he gasped. “Help me.”
No answer came.
He ran harder.
“Father, judge me with mercy. Mother, forgive my sins. Warrior, give me strength.”
The prayers sounded wrong in his own ears.
“I used you, but I can repent. I can make it right.”
The dragon laughed again.
Artys stumbled but kept moving.
“Sharra,” he called into the mist. “Forgive me.”
“Ronnel..Jonos,” Artys whispered. “Forgive me.”
A spear flew through the fog.
Its point struck Artys high in the shoulder and punched through his mail. The impact spun him around and threw him into the mud.
He screamed.
The shaft remained lodged beneath his collarbone. Every breath shifted the metal against bone. Artys seized it with both hands, but his first attempt to pull it free filled his vision with darkness.
Men were coming.
Artys snapped the shaft against the ground, leaving the spearhead buried inside him, and forced himself upright. His left arm hung uselessly. Blood ran beneath his breastplate and down his side.
Still, he ran.
The fog thickened until even the ground disappeared beneath him. He dragged one hand through the air as though he might touch a wall hidden ahead.
Then an enormous shadow rose through the grey.
Artys stopped.
The dragon emerged one piece at a time. First came the horned head, its scales dark red beneath streaks of blood. Then came the long neck, broad shoulders, four clawed limbs, and wings spreading behind it until they seemed large enough to hold the fog apart.
The dragon stood before him in all its glory.
“Artys Arryn,” Odahviing said. “My master has judged you.”
Artys fell to his knees.
“Mercy,” he begged. “Please. I surrender. I surrender to King Harald. I will give him the Vale. I will confess everything.”
“My master has spent all his mercy.”
The dragon laughed once more.
“And I never possessed any.”
Artys raised his good hand.
“Wait.”
“Krii. Lun. Aus.”
A purple force struck Artys.
The first pain entered his bones.
It felt as though thin blades had been pushed into every joint at once, then twisted against one another. Artys felt his strength torn from him in strips. His muscles knotted and split. It was pain unlike anything he had ever felt before.
He screamed until his throat bled as he collapsed into the mud, shaking uncontrollably.
Shapes gathered around him.
Soldiers emerged from the fog with their weapons ready. They slowed when they saw Odahviing standing over their disgraced king.
Odahviing looked toward them.
“I would allow you to kill him,” the dragon said.
Artys tried to lift his head.
“But my Thuri requires something,” Odahviing continued, “and this creature will serve.”
Hope bloomed within him.
The sorcerer still had need of him.
A king could still be useful, even in defeat.
“Yes,” he gasped. “I can serve. I can give him everything.”
Odahviing’s eye turned toward him.
“A curious shout my Thuri taught me,” the dragon said. “Let us see how well I learned it.”
The dragon opened his jaws.
“RII VAAZ ZOL!”
The purple shout struck Artys in the chest.
He felt himself tear apart.
He saw his own body lying in the mud, blood spreading beneath it. For one impossible moment, he hovered above himself as a pale shape connected to the corpse by threads of light.
Then those threads snapped.
The world around him became white.
The white faded into violet.
Artys opened his eyes.
He stood upon cracked black earth beneath a sky that resembled an enormous eye. Ruined towers stretched across the horizon.
He looked down at his hands.
They were translucent.
Figures moved across the wasteland.
Hundreds at first.
Then thousands.
Some wandered without purpose. Others stood trapped inside glowing structures while black, winged creatures circled above them.
Far away, something enormous moved behind the ruined towers.
The sky watched through its vast purple eye.
Understanding came slowly because his mind fought against it until no other answer remained.
He had been sent to the seven hells.
Artys screamed.
.
.
Harald's Plan for The Vale