Fire and Blood. George R.r. Martin
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into the Reach.
“This Vulture King is half-mad, and his followers are a rabble, undisciplined and unwashed,” Lord Harmon Dondarrion wrote to the king. “We can smell them coming fifty leagues away.” Not long after, that selfsame rabble stormed and seized his castle of Blackhaven. The Vulture King personally sliced off Dondarrion’s nose before putting Blackhaven to the torch and marching away.
King Aenys knew these rebels had to be put down, but seemed unable to decide where to begin. Grand Maester Gawen wrote that the king could not comprehend why this was happening. The smallfolk loved him, did they not? Jonos Arryn, this new Lodos, the Vulture King … had he wronged them? If they had grievances, why not bring them to him? “I would have heard them out.” His Grace spoke of sending messengers to the rebels, to learn the reasons for their actions. Fearing that King’s Landing might not be safe with Harren the Red alive and near, he sent Queen Alyssa and their younger children to Dragonstone. He commanded his Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth, to take a fleet and army to the Vale to put down Jonos Arryn and restore his brother Ronnel to the lordship. But when the ships were about to sail, he countermanded the order, fearing that Stokeworth’s departure would leave King’s Landing undefended. Instead he sent the Hand with but a few hundred men to hunt down Harren the Red, and decided he would summon a great council to discuss how best to put down the other rebels.
Whilst the king prevaricated, his lords took to the field. Some acted on their own authority, others in concert with the Dowager Queen. In the Vale, Lord Allard Royce of Runestone assembled twoscore loyal bannermen and marched against the Eyrie, easily defeating the supporters of the self-styled King of Mountain and Vale. But when they demanded the release of their rightful lord, Jonos Arryn sent his brother to them through the Moon Door. Such was the sad end of Ronnel Arryn, who had flown thrice about the Giant’s Lance on dragonback.
The Eyrie was impregnable to any conventional assault, so “King” Jonos and his die-hard followers spat down defiance at the loyalists, and settled in for a siege … until Prince Maegor appeared in the sky above, astride Balerion. The Conqueror’s younger son had claimed a dragon at last: none other than the Black Dread, the greatest of them all.
Rather than face Balerion’s fires, the Eyrie’s garrison seized the pretender and delivered him to Lord Royce, opening the Moon Door once again and serving Jonos the kinslayer as he had served his brother. Surrender saved the pretender’s followers from burning, but not from death. After taking possession of the Eyrie, Prince Maegor executed them to a man. Even the highest born amongst them were denied the honor of dying by sword; traitors deserved only a rope, Maegor decreed, so the captured knights were hanged naked from the walls of the Eyrie, kicking as they strangled slowly. Hubert Arryn, a cousin to the dead brothers, was installed as Lord of the Vale. As he had already sired six sons by his lady wife, a Royce of Runestone, the Arryn succession was seen to be secure.
In the Iron Islands, Goren Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, brought “King” Lodos (Second of That Name) to a similar swift end, marshalling a hundred longships to descend on Old Wyk and Great Wyk, where the pretender’s followers were most numerous, and putting thousands of them to the sword. Afterward he had the head of the priest king pickled in brine and sent to King’s Landing. King Aenys was so pleased by the gift that he offered Greyjoy any boon he might desire. This proved unwise. Lord Goren, wishing to prove himself a true son of the Drowned God, asked the king for the right to expel all the septons and septas who had come to the Iron Islands after the Conquest to convert the ironborn to the worship of the Seven. King Aenys had no choice but to agree.
The largest and most threatening rebellion remained that of the Vulture King along the Dornish Marches. Though Princess Deria continued to issue denunciations from Sunspear, there were many who suspected that she was playing a double game, for she did not take the field against the rebels and was rumored to be sending them men, money, and supplies. Whether that was true or not, hundreds of Dornish knights and several thousand seasoned spearmen had joined the Vulture King’s rabble, and the rabble itself had swelled enormously, to more than thirty thousand men. So large had his host become that the Vulture King made an illconsidered decision and divided his strength. Whilst he marched west against Nightsong and Horn Hill with half the Dornish power, the other half went east to besiege Stonehelm, seat of House Swann, under the command of Lord Walter Wyl, the son of the Widow-lover.
Both hosts met with disaster. Orys Baratheon, known now as Orys One-Hand, rode forth from Storm’s End one last time, to smash the Dornish beneath the walls of Stonehelm. When Walter Wyl was delivered into his hands, wounded but alive, Lord Orys said, “Your father took my hand. I claim yours as repayment.” So saying, he hacked off Lord Walter’s sword hand. Then he took his other hand and both his feet as well, calling them his “usury.” Strange to say, Lord Baratheon died on the march back to Storm’s End, of the wounds he himself had taken during the battle, but his son Davos always said he died content, smiling at the rotting hands and feet that dangled in his tent like a string of onions.
The Vulture King himself fared little better. Unable to capture Nightsong, he abandoned the siege and marched west, only to have Lady Caron sally forth behind him, to join up with a strong force of marchers led by Harmon Dondarrion, the mutilated Lord of Blackhaven. Meanwhile Lord Samwell Tarly of Horn Hill suddenly appeared athwart the Dornish line of march with several thousand knights and archers. Savage Sam, that lord was called, and so he proved in the bloody battle that ensued, cutting down dozens of Dornishmen with his great Valyrian steel blade Heartsbane. The Vulture King had twice as many men as his three foes combined, but most were untrained and undisciplined, and when faced with armored knights at front and rear, their ranks shattered. Throwing down their spears and shields, the Dornish broke and ran, making for the distant mountains, but the marcher lords rode after them and cut them down, in what became known after as “the Vulture Hunt.”
As for the rebel king himself, the man who called himself the Vulture King was taken alive and tied naked between two posts by Savage Sam Tarly. The singers like to say that he was torn to pieces by the very vultures from whom he took his style, but in truth he perished of thirst and exposure, and the birds did not descend on him until well after he was dead. (In later years, several other men would take the title Vulture King, but whether they were of the same blood as the first, no man can say.) His death is generally accounted as the end of the Second Dornish War, though that is somewhat of a misnomer, since few Dornish lords ever took the field, and Princess Deria continued to vilify the Vulture King until his end and took no part in his campaigns.
The first of the rebels proved to be the last as well, but Harren the Red was at last brought to bay in a village west of the Gods Eye. The outlaw king did not die meekly. In his last fight, he slew the King’s Hand, Lord Alyn Stokeworth, before being cut down by Stokeworth’s squire, Bernarr Brune. A grateful King Aenys conferred knighthood on Brune, and rewarded Davos Baratheon, Samwell Tarly, No-Nose Dondarrion, Ellyn Caron, Allard Royce, and Goren Greyjoy with gold, offices, and honors. The greatest plaudits he bestowed on his own brother. On his return to King’s Landing, Prince Maegor was hailed as a hero. King Aenys embraced him before a cheering throng, and named him Hand of the King. And when two young dragons hatched amidst the firepits of Dragonstone at the end of that year, it was taken for a sign.
But the amity between the Dragon’s sons did not long endure.
It may be that conflict was inevitable, for the two brothers had very different natures. King Aenys loved his wife, his children, and his people, and wished only to be loved in turn. Sword and lance had lost whatever appeal they ever had for him. Instead His Grace dabbled in alchemy, astronomy, and astrology, delighted in music and dance, wore the finest silks, samites, and velvets, and enjoyed the company of maesters, septons, and wits. His brother, Maegor, taller, broader, and fearsomely strong, had no patience for any of that, but lived for war, tourneys, and battle. He was rightly regarded as one of the finest knights in Westeros, though his savagery in the field and his harshness toward defeated foes was oft remarked upon as well. King Aenys sought always to please; when faced with difficulties, he would answer with soft words, whereas Maegor’s reply was ever steel and fire. Grand Maester Gawen wrote that Aenys trusted everyone, Maegor no one. The king was easily influenced, Gawen observed, swaying this way and that like a reed in the wind, like as not to heed whichever counselor last had his ear. Prince Maegor,