Fire & Blood (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Fire & Blood is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are products of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,

or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a

division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin

Random House LLC.

Portions of this book were previously published, some in an abridged form, as:

“Conquest,” published in The World of Ice & Fire by George R. R. Martin, Elio M.

“The Sons of the Dragon,” published in The Book of Swords (edited by Gardner

“The Princess and the Queen,” published in Dangerous Women (edited by George R. R.

Dozois;

“The Rogue Prince,” published in Rogues (edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner

Hardback ISBN 9781524796280

Ebook ISBN 9781524796297

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

Cover design: David G. Stevenson

Cover illustration: Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

v5.4

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Aegon’s Conquest

Reign of the Dragon—The Wars of King Aegon I

Three Heads Had the Dragon—Governance Under King Aegon I

The Sons of the Dragon

Prince into King—The Ascension of Jaehaerys I

The Year of Thethree Brides—49 AC

A Surfeit of Rulers

A Time of Testing—The Realm Remade

Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I

Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies

The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Policy, Progeny, and Pain

Heirs of the Dragon—A Question of Succession

The Dying of the Dragons—The Blacks and the Greens

The Dying of the Dragons—A Son for a Son

The Dying of the Dragons—The Red Dragon and the Gold

The Dying of the Dragons—Rhaenyra Triumphant

The Dying of the Dragons—Rhaenyra Overthrown

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

Aftermath—The Hour of the Wolf

Under the Regents—The Hooded Hand

Under the Regents—War and Peace and Cattle Shows

Under the Regents—The Voyage of Alyn Oakenfist

The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency

Lineages and Family Tree

The Targaryen Succession

Dedication

By George R. R. Martin

About the Author

About the Illustrator

who keep the histories of Westeros have

used Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the past three

hundred years. Births, deaths, battles, and other events are dated either

AC (After the Conquest) or BC (Before the Conquest).

True scholars know that such dating is far from precise. Aegon

Targaryen’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms did not take place in a

single day. More than two years passed between Aegon’s landing and his

Oldtown coronation…and even then the Conquest remained incomplete,

since Dorne remained unsubdued. Sporadic attempts to bring the

Dornishmen into the realm continued all through King Aegon’s reign and

well into the reigns of his sons, making it impossible to fix a precise end

date for the Wars of Conquest.

Even the start date is a matter of some misconception. Many assume,

wrongly, that the reign of King Aegon I Targaryen began on the day he

landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, beneath the three hills

where the city of King’s Landing would eventually stand. Not so. The

day of Aegon’s Landing was celebrated by the king and his descendants,

but the Conqueror actually dated the start of his reign from the day he

was crowned and anointed in the Starry Sept of Oldtown by the High

Septon of the Faith. This coronation took place two years after Aegon’s

Landing, well after all three of the major battles of the Wars of Conquest

had been fought and won. Thus it can be seen that most of Aegon’s

actual conquering took place from 2–1 BC, Before the Conquest.

The Targaryens were of pure Valyrian blood, dragonlords of ancient

lineage. Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar

Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long

Summer, and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings,

kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a

smoking mountain in the narrow sea.

At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center

of civilization. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied for

power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless,

subtle, oft savage struggle for dominance. The Targaryens were far from

the most powerful of the dragonlords, and their rivals saw their flight to

Dragonstone as an act of surrender, as cowardice. But Lord Aenar’s

maiden daughter Daenys, known forever afterward as Daenys the

Dreamer, had foreseen the destruction of Valyria by fire. And when the

Doom came twelve years later, the Targaryens were the only dragonlords

to survive.

Dragonstone had been the westernmost outpost of Valyrian power for

two centuries. Its location athwart the Gullet gave its lords a stranglehold

on Blackwater Bay and enabled both the Targaryens and their close

allies, the Velaryons of Driftmark (a lesser house of Valyrian descent) to

fill their coffers off the passing trade. Velaryon ships, along with those of

another allied Valyrian house, the Celtigars of Claw Isle, dominated the

middle reaches of the narrow sea, whilst the Targaryens ruled the skies

with their dragons.

Yet even so, for the best part of a hundred years after the Doom of

Valyria (the rightly named Century of Blood), House Targaryen looked

east, not west, and took little interest in the affairs of Westeros. Gaemon

Targaryen, brother and husband to Daenys the Dreamer, followed Aenar

the Exile as Lord of Dragonstone, and became known as Gaemon the

Glorious. Gaemon’s son Aegon and his daughter Elaena ruled together

after his death. After them the lordship passed to their son Maegon, his

brother Aerys, and Aerys’s sons, Aelyx, Baelon, and Daemion. The last

of the three brothers was Daemion, whose son Aerion then succeeded to

Dragonstone.

The Aegon who would be known to history as Aegon the Conqueror

and Aegon the Dragon was born on Dragonstone in 27 BC. He was the

only son, and second child, of Aerion, Lord of Dragonstone, and Lady

Valaena of House Velaryon, herself half Targaryen on her mother’s side.

Aegon had two trueborn siblings; an elder sister, Visenya, and a younger

sister, Rhaenys. It had long been the custom amongst the dragonlords of

Valyria to wed brother to sister, to keep the bloodlines pure, but Aegon

took both his sisters to bride. By tradition, he would have been expected

to wed only his older sister, Visenya; the inclusion of Rhaenys as a

second wife was unusual, though not without precedent. It was said by

some that Aegon wed Visenya out of duty and Rhaenys out of desire.

All three siblings had shown themselves to be dragonlords before they

wed. Of the five dragons who had flown with Aenar the Exile from

Valyria, only one survived to Aegon’s day: the great beast called

Balerion, the Black Dread. The dragons Vhagar and Meraxes were

younger, hatched on Dragonstone itself.

A common myth, oft heard amongst the ignorant, claims that Aegon

Targaryen had never set foot upon the soil of Westeros until the day he

set sail to conquer it, but this cannot be truth. Years before that sailing,

the Painted Table had been carved and decorated at Lord Aegon’s

command; a massive slab of wood, some fifty feet long, carved in the

shape of Westeros, and painted to show all the woods and rivers and

towns and castles of the Seven Kingdoms. Plainly, Aegon’s interest in

Westeros long predated the events that drove him to war. As well, there

are reliable reports of Aegon and his sister Visenya visiting the Citadel of

Oldtown in their youth, and hawking on the Arbor as guests of Lord

Redwyne. He may have visited Lannisport as well; accounts differ.

The Westeros of Aegon’s youth was divided into seven quarrelsome

kingdoms, and there was hardly a time when two or three of these

kingdoms were not at war with one another. The vast, cold, stony North

was ruled by the Starks of Winterfell. In the deserts of Dorne, the Martell

princes held sway. The gold-rich westerlands were ruled by the

Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the fertile Reach by the Gardeners of

Highgarden. The Vale, the Fingers, and the Mountains of the Moon

belonged to House Arryn…but the most belligerent kings of Aegon’s

time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the

Black and Argilac the Arrogant.

From their great citadel, Storm’s End, the Storm Kings of House

Durrandon had once ruled the eastern half of Westeros, from Cape Wrath

to the Bay of Crabs, but their powers had been dwindling for centuries.

The Kings of the Reach had nibbled at their domains from the west, the

Dornishmen harassed them from the south, and Harren the Black and his

ironmen had pushed them from the Trident and the lands north of the

Blackwater Rush. King Argilac, last of the Durrandon, had arrested this

decline for a time, turning back a Dornish invasion whilst still a boy,

crossing the narrow sea to join the great alliance against the imperialist

“tigers” of Volantis, and slaying Garse VII Gardener, King of the Reach,

in the Battle of Summerfield twenty years later. But Argilac had grown

older; his famous mane of black hair had gone grey, and his prowess at

arms had faded.

North of the Blackwater, the riverlands were ruled by the bloody hand

of Harren the Black of House Hoare, King of the Isles and the Rivers.

Harren’s ironborn grandsire, Harwyn Hardhand, had taken the Trident

from Argilac’s grandsire, Arrec, whose own forebears had thrown down

the last of the river kings centuries earlier. Harren’s father had extended

his domains east to Duskendale and Rosby. Harren himself had devoted

most of his long reign, close on forty years, to building a gigantic castle

beside the Gods Eye, but with Harrenhal at last nearing completion, the

ironborn would soon be free to seek fresh conquests.

No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Harren, whose

cruelty had become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms. And no

king in Westeros felt more threatened than Argilac the Storm King, last

of the Durrandon, an aging warrior whose only heir was his maiden

daughter. Thus it was that King Argilac reached out to the Targaryens on

Dragonstone, offering Lord Aegon his daughter in marriage, with all the

lands east of the Gods Eye from the Trident to the Blackwater Rush as

her dowry.

Aegon Targaryen spurned the Storm King’s proposal. He had two

wives, he pointed out; he did not need a third. And the dower lands being

offered had belonged to Harrenhal for more than a generation. They were

not Argilac’s to give. Plainly, the aging Storm King meant to establish

the Targaryens along the Blackwater as a buffer between his own lands

and those of Harren the Black.

The Lord of Dragonstone countered with an offer of his own. He

would take the dower lands being offered if Argilac would also cede

Massey’s Hook and the woods and plains from the Blackwater south to

the river Wendwater and the headwaters of the Mander. The pact would

be sealed by the marriage of Argilac’s daughter to Orys Baratheon, Lord

Aegon’s childhood friend and champion.

These terms Argilac the Arrogant rejected angrily. Orys Baratheon

was a baseborn half-brother to Lord Aegon, it was whispered, and the

Storm King would not dishonor his daughter by giving her hand to a

bastard. The very suggestion enraged him. Argilac had the hands of

Aegon’s envoy cut off and returned to him in a box. “These are the only

hands your bastard shall have of me,” he wrote.

Aegon made no reply. Instead he summoned his friends, bannermen,

and principal allies to attend him on Dragonstone. Their numbers were

small. The Velaryons of Driftmark were sworn to House Targaryen, as

were the Celtigars of Claw Isle. From Massey’s Hook came Lord Bar

Emmon of Sharp Point and Lord Massey of Stonedance, both sworn to

Storm’s End, but with closer ties to Dragonstone. Lord Aegon and his

sisters took counsel with them, and visited the castle sept to pray to the

Seven of Westeros as well, though he had never before been accounted a

pious man.

On the seventh day, a cloud of ravens burst from the towers of

Dragonstone to bring Lord Aegon’s word to the Seven Kingdoms of

Westeros. To the seven kings they flew, to the Citadel of Oldtown, to

lords both great and small. All carried the same message: from this day

forth there would be but one king in Westeros. Those who bent the knee

to Aegon of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles. Those

who took up arms against him would be thrown down, humbled, and

destroyed.

Accounts differ on how many swords set sail from Dragonstone with

Aegon and his sisters. Some say three thousand; others number them

only in the hundreds. This modest Targaryen host put ashore at the

mouth of the Blackwater Rush, on the northern bank where three wooded

hills rose above a small fishing village.

In the days of the Hundred Kingdoms, many petty kings had claimed

dominion over the river mouth, amongst them the Darklyn kings of

Duskendale, the Masseys of Stonedance, and the river kings of old, be

they Mudds, Fishers, Brackens, Blackwoods, or Hooks. Towers and forts

had crowned the three hills at various times, only to be thrown down in

one war or another. Now only broken stones and overgrown ruins

remained to welcome the Targaryens. Though claimed by both Storm’s

End and Harrenhal, the river mouth was undefended, and the closest

castles were held by lesser lords of no great power or military prowess,

and lords moreover who had little reason to love their nominal overlord,

Harren the Black.

Aegon Targaryen quickly threw up a log-and-earth palisade around the

highest of the three hills, and dispatched his sisters to secure the

submission of the nearest castles. Rosby yielded to Rhaenys and golden-

eyed Meraxes without a fight. At Stokeworth a few crossbowmen loosed

bolts at Visenya, until Vhagar’s flames set the roofs of the castle keep

ablaze. Then they too submitted.

The Conquerors’ first true test came from Lord Darklyn of

Duskendale and Lord Mooton of Maidenpool, who joined their power

and marched south with three thousand men to drive the invaders back

into the sea. Aegon sent Orys Baratheon out to attack them on the march,

whilst he descended on them from above with the Black Dread. Both

lords were slain in the one-sided battle that followed; Darklyn’s son and

Mooton’s brother thereafter yielded up their castles and swore their

swords to House Targaryen. At that time Duskendale was the principal

Westerosi port on the narrow sea, and had grown fat and wealthy from

the trade that passed through its harbor. Visenya Targaryen did not allow

the town to be sacked, but she did not hesitate to claim its riches, greatly

swelling the coffers of the Conquerors.

This perhaps would be an apt place to discuss the differing characters

of Aegon Targaryen and his sisters and queens.

Visenya, eldest of the three siblings, was as much a warrior as Aegon

himself, as comfortable in ringmail as in silk. She carried the Valyrian

longsword Dark Sister, and was skilled in its use, having trained beside

her brother since childhood. Though possessed of the silver-gold hair

and purple eyes of Valyria, hers was a harsh, austere beauty. Even those

who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, and unforgiving; some

said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.

Rhaenys, youngest of the three Targaryens, was all her sister was not,

playful, curious, impulsive, given to flights of fancy. No true warrior,

Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer,

mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys spent more time on

dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for above all things she

loved to fly. She once was heard to say that before she died she meant to

fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay upon its western

shores. Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya’s fidelity to her brother-

husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it

was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights

when Aegon was with her elder sister. Yet despite these rumors,

observers at court could not fail to note that the king spent ten nights

with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya.

Aegon Targaryen himself, strangely, was as much an enigma to his

contemporaries as to us. Armed with the Valyrian steel blade Blackfyre,

he was counted amongst the greatest warriors of his age, yet he took no

pleasure in feats of arms, and never rode in tourney or melee. His mount

was Balerion the Black Dread, but he flew only to battle or to travel

swiftly across land and sea. His commanding presence drew men to his

banners, yet he had no close friends, save Orys Baratheon, the

companion of his youth. Women were drawn to him, but Aegon

remained ever faithful to his sisters. As king, he put great trust in his

small council and his sisters, leaving much of the day-to-day governance

of the realm to them…yet did not hesitate to take command when he

found it necessary. Though he dealt harshly with rebels and traitors, he

was open-handed with former foes who bent the knee.

This he showed for the first time at the Aegonfort, the crude wood-

and-earth castle he had raised atop what would henceforth and forever be

known as Aegon’s High Hill. Having taken a dozen castles and secured

the mouth of the Blackwater Rush on both sides of the river, he

commanded the lords he had defeated to attend him. There they laid their

swords at his feet, and Aegon raised them up and confirmed them in their

lands and titles. To his oldest supporters he gave new honors. Daemon

Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, was made master of ships, in command of

the royal fleet. Triston Massey, Lord of Stonedance, was named master

of laws, Crispian Celtigar master of coin. And Orys Baratheon he

proclaimed to be “my shield, my stalwart, my strong right hand.” Thus

Baratheon is reckoned by the maesters the first King’s Hand.

Heraldic banners had long been a tradition amongst the lords of

Westeros, but such had never been used by the dragonlords of old

Valyria. When Aegon’s knights unfurled his great silken battle standard,

with a red three-headed dragon breathing fire upon a black field, the

lords took it for a sign that he was now truly one of them, a worthy high

king for Westeros. When Queen Visenya placed a Valyrian steel circlet,

studded with rubies, on her brother’s head and Queen Rhaenys hailed

him as, “Aegon, First of His Name, King of All Westeros, and Shield of

His People,” the dragons roared and the lords and knights sent up a

cheer…but the smallfolk, the fishermen and fieldhands and goodwives,

shouted loudest of all.

The seven kings that Aegon the Dragon meant to uncrown were not

cheering, however. In Harrenhal and Storm’s End, Harren the Black and

Argilac the Arrogant had already called their banners. In the west, King

Mern of the Reach rode the ocean road north to Casterly Rock to meet

with King Loren of House Lannister. The Princess of Dorne dispatched a

raven to Dragonstone, offering to join Aegon against Argilac the Storm

King…but as an equal and ally, not a subject. Another offer of alliance

came from the boy king of the Eyrie, Ronnel Arryn, whose mother asked

for all the lands east of the Green Fork of the Trident for the Vale’s

support against Black Harren. Even in the North, King Torrhen Stark of

Winterfell sat with his lords bannermen and counselors late into the

night, discussing what was to be done about this would-be conqueror.

The whole realm waited anxiously to see where Aegon would move

next.

Within days of his coronation, Aegon’s armies were on the march

again. The greater part of his host crossed the Blackwater Rush, making

south for Storm’s End under the command of Orys Baratheon. Queen

Rhaenys accompanied him, astride Meraxes of the golden eyes and silver

scales. The Targaryen fleet, under Daemon Velaryon, left Blackwater

Bay and turned north, for Gulltown and the Vale. With them went Queen

Visenya and Vhagar. The king himself marched northwest, to the Gods

Eye and Harrenhal, the gargantuan fortress that was the pride and

obsession of King Harren the Black.

All three of the Targaryen thrusts faced fierce opposition. Lords Errol,

Fell, and Buckler, bannermen to Storm’s End, surprised the advance

elements of Orys Baratheon’s host as they were crossing the Wendwater,

cutting down more than a thousand men before fading back into the

trees. A hastily assembled Arryn fleet, augmented by a dozen Braavosi

warships, met and defeated the Targaryen fleet in the waters off

Gulltown. Amongst the dead was Aegon’s admiral, Daemon Velaryon.

Aegon himself was attacked on the south shore of the Gods Eye, not

once but twice. The Battle of the Reeds was a Targaryen victory, but they

suffered heavy losses at the Wailing Willows when two of King Harren’s

sons crossed the lake in longboats with muffled oars and fell upon their

rear.

In the end, though, Aegon’s enemies had no answer for his dragons.

The men of the Vale sank a third of the Targaryen ships and captured

near as many, but when Queen Visenya descended upon them from the

sky, their own ships burned. Lords Errol, Fell, and Buckler hid in their

familiar forests until Queen Rhaenys unleashed Meraxes and a wall of

fire swept through the woods, turning the trees to torches. And the

victors at the Wailing Willows, returning across the lake to Harrenhal,

were ill prepared when Balerion fell upon them out of the morning sky.

Harren’s longboats burned. So did Harren’s sons.

Aegon’s foes also found themselves plagued by other enemies. As

Argilac the Arrogant gathered his swords at Storm’s End, pirates from

the Stepstones descended on the shores of Cape Wrath to take advantage

of their absence, and Dornish raiding parties came boiling out of the Red

Mountains to sweep across the marches. In the Vale, young King Ronnel

had to contend with a rebellion on the Three Sisters, when the Sistermen

renounced all allegiance to the Eyrie and proclaimed Lady Marla

Sunderland their queen.

Yet these were but minor vexations compared to what befell Harren

the Black. Though House Hoare had ruled the riverlands for three

generations, the men of the Trident had no love for their ironborn

overlords. Harren the Black had driven thousands to their deaths in the

building of his great castle of Harrenhal, plundering the riverlands for

materials, and beggaring lords and smallfolk alike with his appetite for

gold. So now the riverlands rose against him, led by Lord Edmyn Tully

of Riverrun. Summoned to the defense of Harrenhal, Tully declared for

House Targaryen instead, raised the dragon banner over his castle, and

rode forth with his knights and archers to join his strength to Aegon’s.

His defiance gave heart to the other riverlords. One by one, the lords of

the Trident renounced Harren and declared for Aegon the Dragon.

Blackwoods, Mallisters, Vances, Brackens, Pipers, Freys, Strongs…

summoning their levies, they descended on Harrenhal.

Suddenly outnumbered, King Harren the Black took refuge in his

supposedly impregnable stronghold. The largest castle ever raised in

Westeros, Harrenhal boasted five gargantuan towers, an inexhaustible

source of fresh water, huge subterranean vaults well stocked with

provisions, and massive walls of black stone higher than any ladder and

too thick to be broken by any ram or shattered by a trebuchet. Harren

barred his gates and settled down with his remaining sons and supporters

to withstand a siege.

Aegon of Dragonstone was of a different mind. Once he had joined his

power with that of Edmyn Tully and the other riverlords to ring the

castle, he sent a maester to the gates under a peace banner, to parley.

Harren emerged to meet him; an old man and grey, yet still fierce in his

black armor. Each king had his banner bearer and his maester in

attendance, so the words that they exchanged are still remembered.

“Yield now,” Aegon began, “and you may remain as Lord of the Iron

Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have eight

thousand men outside your walls.”

“What is outside my walls is of no concern to me,” said Harren.

“Those walls are strong and thick.”

“But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.”

“I built in stone,” said Harren. “Stone does not burn.”

To which Aegon said, “When the sun sets, your line shall end.”

It is said that Harren spat at that and returned to his castle. Once

inside, he sent every man of his to the parapets, armed with spears and

bows and crossbows, promising lands and riches to whichever of them

could bring the dragon down. “Had I a daughter, the dragonslayer could

claim her hand as well,” Harren the Black proclaimed. “Instead I will

give him one of Tully’s daughters, or all three if he likes. Or he may pick

one of Blackwood’s whelps, or Strong’s, or any girl born of these traitors

of the Trident, these lords of yellow mud.” Then Harren the Black retired

to his tower, surrounded by his household guard, to sup with his

remaining sons.

As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren’s men stared into the

gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no

dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon’s threats had been

hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds,

up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only

then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as

pitch Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of

Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed

them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.

Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made

of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef

and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren’s ironmen made of stone.

Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and

tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even

stone will crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside

the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against

the night, like five great candles…and like candles, they began to twist

and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.

Harren and his last sons died in the fires that engulfed his monstrous

fortress that night. House Hoare died with him, and so too did the Iron

Islands’ hold on the riverlands. The next day, outside the smoking ruins

of Harrenhal, King Aegon accepted an oath of fealty from Edmyn Tully,

Lord of Riverrun, and named him Lord Paramount of the Trident. The

other riverlords did homage as well, to Aegon as king and to Edmyn

Tully as their liege lord. When the ashes had cooled enough to allow

men to enter the castle safely, the swords of the fallen, many shattered or

melted or twisted into ribbons of steel by dragonfire, were gathered up

and sent back to the Aegonfort in wagons.

South and east, the Storm King’s bannermen proved considerably

more loyal than King Harren’s. Argilac the Arrogant gathered a great

host about him at Storm’s End. The seat of the Durrandons was a mighty

fastness, its great curtain wall even thicker than the walls of Harrenhal. It

too was thought to be impregnable to assault. Word of King Harren’s end

soon reached the ears of his old enemy King Argilac, however. Lords

Fell and Buckler, falling back before the approaching host (Lord Errol

had been killed), had sent him word of Queen Rhaenys and her dragon.

The old warrior king roared that he did not intend to die as Harren had,

cooked inside his own castle like a suckling pig with an apple in his

mouth. No stranger to battle, he would decide his own fate, sword in

hand. So Argilac the Arrogant rode forth from Storm’s End one last time,

to meet his foes in the open field.

The Storm King’s approach was no surprise to Orys Baratheon and his

men; Queen Rhaenys, flying Meraxes, had witnessed Argilac’s departure

from Storm’s End and was able to give the Hand a full accounting of the

enemy’s numbers and dispositions. Orys took up a strong position on the

hills south of Bronzegate, and dug in there on the high ground to await

the coming of the stormlanders.

As the armies came together, the stormlands proved true to their name.

A steady rain began to fall that morning, and by midday it had turned

into a howling gale. King Argilac’s lords bannermen urged him to delay

his attack until the next day, in hopes the rain would pass, but the Storm

King outnumbered the Conquerors almost two to one, and had almost

four times as many knights and heavy horses. The sight of the Targaryen

banners flapping sodden above his own hills enraged him, and the battle-

seasoned old warrior did not fail to note that the rain was blowing from

the south, into the faces of the Targaryen men on their hills. So Argilac

the Arrogant gave the command to attack, and the battle known to

history as the Last Storm began.

The fighting lasted well into the night, a bloody business and far less

one-sided than Aegon’s conquest of Harrenhal. Thrice Argilac the

Arrogant led his knights against the Baratheon positions, but the slopes

were steep and the rains had turned the ground soft and muddy, so the

warhorses struggled and foundered, and the charges lost all cohesion and

momentum. The stormlanders fared better when they sent their spearmen

up the hills on foot. Blinded by the rain, the invaders did not see them

climbing until it was too late, and the wet bowstrings of the archers made

their bows useless. One hill fell, and then another, and the fourth and

final charge of the Storm King and his knights broke through the

Baratheon center…only to come upon Queen Rhaenys and Meraxes.

Even on the ground, the dragon proved formidable. Dickon Morrigen

and the Bastard of Blackhaven, commanding the vanguard, were

engulfed in dragonflame, along with the knights of King Argilac’s

personal guard. The warhorses panicked and fled in terror, crashing into

riders behind them, and turning the charge into chaos. The Storm King

himself was thrown from his saddle.

Yet still Argilac continued to battle. When Orys Baratheon came down

the muddy hill with his own men, he found the old king holding off half

a dozen men, with as many corpses at his feet. “Stand aside,” Baratheon

commanded. He dismounted, so as to meet the king on equal footing,

and offered the Storm King one last chance to yield. Argilac cursed him

instead. And so they fought, the old warrior king with his streaming

white hair and Aegon’s fierce, black-bearded Hand. Each man took a

wound from the other, it was said, but in the end the last of the

Durrandon got his wish, and died with a sword in his hand and a curse on

his lips. The death of their king took all heart out of the stormlanders,

and as the word spread that Argilac had fallen, his lords and knights

threw down their swords and fled.

For a few days it was feared that Storm’s End might suffer the same

fate as Harrenhal, for Argilac’s daughter Argella barred her gates at the

approach of Orys Baratheon and the Targaryen host, and declared herself

the Storm Queen. Rather than bend the knee, the defenders of Storm’s

End would die to the last man, she promised when Queen Rhaenys flew

Meraxes into the castle to parley. “You may take my castle, but you will

win only bones and blood and ashes,” she announced…but the soldiers

of the garrison proved less eager to die. That night they raised a peace

banner, threw open the castle gate, and delivered Lady Argella gagged,

chained, and naked to the camp of Orys Baratheon.

It is said that Baratheon unchained her with his own hands, wrapped

his cloak around her, poured her wine, and spoke to her gently, telling

her of her father’s courage and the manner of his death. And afterward,

to honor the fallen king, he took the arms and words of the Durrandon

for his own. The crowned stag became his sigil, Storm’s End became his

seat, and Lady Argella his wife.

With both the riverlands and stormlands now under the control of

Aegon the Dragon and his allies, the remaining kings of Westeros saw

plainly that their own turns were coming. At Winterfell, King Torrhen

called his banners; given the vast distances in the North, he knew that

assembling an army would take time. Queen Sharra of the Vale, regent

for her son Ronnel, took refuge in the Eyrie, looked to her defenses, and

sent an army to the Bloody Gate, gateway to the Vale of Arryn. In her

youth Queen Sharra had been lauded as “the Flower of the Mountain,”

the fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps hoping to sway

Aegon with her beauty, she sent him a portrait and offered herself to him

in marriage, provided he named her son Ronnel as his heir. Though the

portrait did finally reach him, it is not known whether Aegon Targaryen

ever replied to her proposal; he had two queens already, and Sharra

Arryn was by then a faded flower, ten years his elder.

Meanwhile, the two great western kings had made common cause and

assembled their own armies, intent on putting an end to Aegon for good

and all. From Highgarden marched Mern IX of House Gardener, King of

the Reach, with a mighty host. Beneath the walls of Castle Goldengrove,

seat of House Rowan, he met Loren I Lannister, King of the Rock,

leading his own host down from the westerlands. Together the Two

Kings commanded the mightiest host ever seen in Westeros: an army

fifty-five thousand strong, including some six hundred lords great and

small and more than five thousand mounted knights. “Our iron fist,”

boasted King Mern. His four sons rode beside him, and both of his

young grandsons attended him as squires.

The Two Kings did not linger long at Goldengrove; a host of such size

must remain on the march, lest it eat the surrounding countryside bare.

The allies set out at once, marching north by northeast through tall

grasses and golden fields of wheat.

Advised of their coming in his camp beside the Gods Eye, Aegon

gathered his own strength and advanced to meet these new foes. He

commanded only a fifth as many men as the Two Kings, and much of his

strength was made up of men sworn to the riverlords, whose loyalty to

House Targaryen was of recent vintage, and untested. With the smaller

host, however, Aegon was able to move much more quickly than his

foes. At the town of Stoney Sept, both his queens joined him with their

dragons—Rhaenys from Storm’s End and Visenya from Crackclaw

Point, where she had accepted many fervent pledges of fealty from the

local lords. Together the three Targaryens watched from the sky as

Aegon’s army crossed the headwaters of the Blackwater Rush and raced

south.

The two armies came together amongst the wide, open plains south of

the Blackwater, near to where the goldroad would run one day. The Two

Kings rejoiced when their scouts returned to them and reported

Targaryen numbers and dispositions. They had five men for every one of

Aegon’s, it seemed, and the disparity in lords and knights was even

greater. And the land was wide and open, all grass and wheat as far as

the eye could see, ideal for heavy horse. Aegon Targaryen would not

command the high ground, as Orys Baratheon had at the Last Storm; the

ground was firm, not muddy. Nor would they be troubled by rain. The

day was cloudless, though windy. There had been no rain for more than a

fortnight.

King Mern had brought half again as many men to the battle as King

Loren, and so demanded the honor of commanding the center. His son

and heir, Edmund, was given the vanguard. King Loren and his knights

would form the right, Lord Oakheart the left. With no natural barriers to

anchor the Targaryen line, the Two Kings meant to sweep around Aegon

on both flanks, then take him in the rear, whilst their “iron fist,” a great

wedge of armored knights and high lords, smashed through Aegon’s

center.

Aegon Targaryen drew his own men up in a rough crescent bristling

with spears and pikes, with archers and crossbowmen just behind and

light cavalry on either flank. He gave command of his host to Jon

Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool, one of the first foes to come over to his

cause. The king himself intended to do his fighting from the sky, beside

his queens. Aegon had noted the absence of rain as well; the grass and

wheat that surrounded the armies was tall and ripe for harvest…and very

dry.

The Targaryens waited until the Two Kings sounded their trumpets

and started forward beneath a sea of banners. King Mern himself led the

charge against the center on his golden stallion, his son Gawen beside

him with his banner, a great green hand upon a field of white. Roaring

and screaming, urged on by horns and drums, the Gardeners and

Lannisters charged through a storm of arrows down unto their foes,

sweeping aside the Targaryen spearmen, shattering their ranks. But by

then Aegon and his sisters were in the air.

Aegon flew above the ranks of his foes upon Balerion, through a

storm of spears and stones and arrows, swooping down repeatedly to

bathe his foes in flame. Rhaenys and Visenya set fires upwind of the

enemy and behind them. The dry grasses and stands of wheat went up at

once. The wind fanned the flames and blew the smoke into the faces of

the advancing ranks of the Two Kings. The scent of fire sent their

mounts into panic, and as the smoke thickened, horse and rider alike

were blinded. Their ranks began to break as walls of fire rose on every

side of them. Lord Mooton’s men, safely upwind of the conflagration,

waited with their bows and spears, and made short work of the burned

and burning men who came staggering from the inferno.

The Field of Fire, the battle was named afterward.

More than four thousand men died in the flames. Another thousand

perished by sword and spear and arrow. Tens of thousands suffered

burns, some so bad that they would remain scarred for life. King Mern

IX was amongst the dead, together with his sons, grandsons, brothers,

cousins, and other kin. One nephew survived for three days. When he

died of his burns, House Gardener died with him. King Loren of the

Rock lived, riding through a wall of flame and smoke to safety when he

saw the battle lost.

The Targaryens lost fewer than a hundred men. Queen Visenya took

an arrow in one shoulder, but soon recovered. As the dragons gorged

themselves on the dead, Aegon commanded that the swords of the slain

be gathered up and sent downriver.

Loren Lannister was captured the next day. The King of the Rock laid

his sword and crown at Aegon’s feet, bent the knee, and did him homage.

And Aegon, true to his promises, lifted his beaten foe back to his feet

and confirmed him in his lands and lordship, naming him Lord of

Casterly Rock and Warden of the West. Lord Loren’s bannermen

followed his example, and so too did many lords of the Reach, those who

had survived the dragonfire.

Yet the conquest of the west remained incomplete, so King Aegon

parted from his sisters and marched at once for Highgarden, hoping to

secure its surrender before some other claimant could seize it for his

own. He found the castle in the hands of its steward, Harlan Tyrell,

whose forebears had served the Gardeners for centuries. Tyrell yielded

up the keys to the castle without a fight and pledged his support to the

conquering king. In reward Aegon granted him Highgarden and all its

domains, naming him Warden of the South and Lord Paramount of the

Mander, and giving him dominion over all House Gardener’s former

vassals.

It was King Aegon’s intent to continue his march south and enforce

the submission of Oldtown, the Arbor, and Dorne, but whilst at

Highgarden word of a new challenge came to his ears. Torrhen Stark,

King in the North, had crossed the Neck and entered the riverlands,

leading an army of savage northmen thirty thousand strong. Aegon at

once started north to meet him, racing ahead of his army on the wings of

Balerion, the Black Dread. He sent word to his two queens as well, and

to all the lords and knights who had bent the knee to him after Harrenhal

and the Field of Fire.

When Torrhen Stark reached the banks of the Trident, he found a host

half again the size of his own awaiting him south of the river. Riverlords,

westermen, stormlanders, men of the Reach…all had come. And above

their camp Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar prowled the sky in ever-

widening circles.

Torrhen’s scouts had seen the ruins of Harrenhal, where slow red fires

still burned beneath the rubble. The King in the North had heard many

accounts of the Field of Fire as well. He knew that the same fate might

await him if he tried to force a crossing of the river. Some of his lords

bannermen urged him to attack all the same, insisting that northern valor

would carry the day. Others urged him to fall back to Moat Cailin and

make his stand there on northern soil. The king’s bastard brother

Brandon Snow offered to cross the Trident alone under cover of

darkness, to slay the dragons whilst they slept.

King Torrhen did send Brandon Snow across the Trident. But he

crossed with three maesters by his side, not to kill but to treat. All

through the night messages went back and forth. The next morning,

Torrhen Stark himself crossed the Trident. There upon the south bank of

the Trident, he knelt, laid the ancient crown of the Kings of Winter at

Aegon’s feet, and swore to be his man. He rose as Lord of Winterfell and

Warden of the North, a king no more. From that day to this day, Torrhen

Stark is remembered as the King Who Knelt…but no northman left his

burned bones beside the Trident, and the swords Aegon collected from

Lord Stark and his vassals were not twisted nor melted nor bent.

Now Aegon Targaryen and his queens parted company. Aegon turned

south once again, marching toward Oldtown, whilst his two sisters

mounted their dragons—Visenya for the Vale of Arryn and Rhaenys for

Sunspear and the deserts of Dorne.

Sharra Arryn had strengthened the defenses of Gulltown, moved a

strong host to the Bloody Gate, and tripled the size of the garrisons in

Stone, Snow, and Sky, the waycastles that guarded the approach to the

Eyrie. All these defenses proved useless against Visenya Targaryen, who

rode Vhagar’s leathery wings above them all and landed in the Eyrie’s

inner courtyard. When the regent of the Vale rushed out to confront her,

with a dozen guards at her back, she found Visenya with Ronnel Arryn

seated on her knee, staring at the dragon, wonder-struck. “Mother, can I

go flying with the lady?” the boy king asked. No threats were spoken, no

angry words exchanged. The two queens smiled at one another and

exchanged courtesies instead. Then Lady Sharra sent for the three

crowns (her own regent’s coronet, her son’s small crown, and the Falcon

Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a

thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the

swords of her garrison. And it was said afterward that the little king flew

thrice about the summit of the Giant’s Lance, and landed to find himself

a little lord. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her

brother’s realm.

Rhaenys Targaryen had no such easy conquest. A host of Dornish

spearmen guarded the Prince’s Pass, the gateway through the Red

Mountains, but Rhaenys did not engage them. She flew above the pass,

above the red sands and the white, and descended upon Vaith to demand

its submission, only to find the castle empty and abandoned. In the town

beneath its walls, only women and children and old men remained.

When asked where their lords had gone, they would only say, “Away.”

Rhaenys followed the river downstream to Godsgrace, seat of House

Allyrion, but it too was deserted. On she flew. Where the Greenblood

met the sea, Rhaenys came upon the Planky Town, where hundreds of

poleboats, fishing skiffs, barges, houseboats, and hulks sat baking in the

sun, joined together with ropes and chains and planks to make a floating

city, yet only a few old women and small children appeared to peer up at

her as Meraxes circled overhead.

Finally the queen’s flight took her to Sunspear, the ancient seat of

House Martell, where she found the Princess of Dorne waiting in her

abandoned castle. Meria Martell was eighty years of age, the maesters

tell us, and had ruled the Dornishmen for sixty of those years. She was

very fat, blind, and almost bald, her skin sallow and sagging. Argilac the

Arrogant had named her “the Yellow Toad of Dorne,” but neither age nor

blindness had dulled her wits.

“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel

to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.”

“I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the

next time we shall come with fire and blood.”

“Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent,

Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady…but you will not bend us, break

us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at

your peril.”

Thus queen and princess parted, and Dorne remained unconquered.

To the west, Aegon Targaryen met a warmer welcome. The greatest

city in all of Westeros, Oldtown was ringed about with massive walls,

and ruled by the Hightowers of the Hightower, the oldest, richest, and

most powerful of the noble houses of the Reach. Oldtown was also the

center of the Faith. There dwelt the High Septon, Father of the Faithful,

the voice of the new gods on earth, who commanded the obedience of

millions of devout throughout the realms (save in the North, where the

old gods still held sway), and the blades of the Faith Militant, the

fighting order the smallfolk called the Stars and Swords.

Yet when Aegon Targaryen and his host approached Oldtown, they

found the city gates open and Lord Hightower waiting to make his

submission. As it happened, when word of Aegon’s landing first reached

Oldtown, the High Septon had locked himself within the Starry Sept for

seven days and seven nights, seeking the guidance of the gods. He took

no nourishment but bread and water, and spent all his waking hours in

prayer, moving from one altar to the next. And on the seventh day, the

Crone had lifted up her golden lamp to show him the path ahead. If

Oldtown took up arms against Aegon the Dragon, His High Holiness

saw, the city would surely burn, and the Hightower and the Citadel and

the Starry Sept would be cast down and destroyed.

Manfred Hightower, Lord of Oldtown, was a cautious lord and godly.

One of his younger sons served with the Warrior’s Sons, and another had

only recently taken vows as a septon. When the High Septon told him of

the vision vouchsafed him by the Crone, Lord Hightower determined

that he would not oppose the Conqueror by force of arms. Thus it was

that no men from Oldtown burned on the Field of Fire, though the

Hightowers were bannermen to the Gardeners of Highgarden. And thus

it was that Lord Manfred rode forth to greet Aegon the Dragon as he

approached, and to offer up his sword, his city, and his oath. (Some say

that Lord Hightower also offered up the hand of his youngest daughter,

which Aegon declined politely, lest it offend his two queens.)

Three days later, in the Starry Sept, His High Holiness himself

anointed Aegon with the seven oils, placed a crown upon his head, and

proclaimed him Aegon of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King

of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven

Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. (“Seven Kingdoms” was the

style used, though Dorne had not submitted. Nor would it, for more than

a century to come.)

Only a handful of lords had been present for Aegon’s first coronation

at the mouth of the Blackwater, but hundreds were on hand to witness his

second, and tens of thousands cheered him afterward in the streets of

Oldtown as he rode through the city on Balerion’s back. Amongst those

at Aegon’s second coronation were the maesters and archmaesters of the

Citadel. Perhaps for that reason, it was this coronation, rather than the

Aegonfort crowning on the day of Aegon’s landing, that became fixed as

the start of Aegon’s reign.

Thus were the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros hammered into one great

realm, by the will of Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters.

Many thought that King Aegon would make Oldtown his royal seat

after the wars were done, whilst others thought he would rule from

Dragonstone, the ancient island citadel of House Targaryen. The king

surprised them all by proclaiming his intent to make his court in the new

town already rising upon the three hills at the mouth of the Blackwater

Rush, where he and his sisters had first set foot on the soil of Westeros.

King’s Landing, the new town would be called. From there Aegon the

Dragon would rule his realm, holding court from a great metal seat made

from the melted, twisted, beaten, and broken blades of all his fallen foes,

a perilous seat that would soon be known through all the world as the

Iron Throne of Westeros.