Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXX- LAENOR TARGARYEN, EARLY 121AC, GHOST HILL
House Toland had barred their gates to us on our approach. Months of marching, fighting, and sieging, although this army did far more of the first than the latter two, had worn the men into something that only vaguely resembled shadows of themselves. It had worn me down as well, but I felt I had come out stronger for it. Sparring with Oberon and the best of Icarus' men for hours in the evenings had kept me sharp, and flights with Igneel during the day had allowed our bond to deepen even further. Then there were the lessons with the now more often than not bored Aurion Baelaerys that took my grasp of magic far enough that now I dared to call myself something more than a complete novice.
'Oh, the human need for self-deceit. What a joy to see it sated so,' he sniped at me from the safety of my own mind.
'I'd love to see you say those words to me face-to-face with a body I can actually punch,' I responded, and then I shut the door between my conscious mind and his. I turned my mind from him towards the problem at hand. Ghost Hill. It was a sturdy castle. One of those rebuilt after the famed Dragon's Wroth that had come out all the stronger for it. Scorpions lined the walls, given pride of place as they waited with the hope of doing what dozens before them had failed to do. One. Only one bolt had come close, and in our time here Igneel and I had faced hundreds.
Of course, only one could end things for us, so there was no point being too smug about it. I could feel smug when I thought of the slag that we had reduced Greenhold to, but they were far from the only castle to face dragonfire. Icarus' outriders had in the last few months become masters of the desert.
Vaith had been the first house to be hunted, and then ambushed and raided to the last man, but they were not the last. Somehow word had spread, and now it was more likely for Lords to meet us within their castles than without. Allyrion at least had the good sense to meet us with bent knee, but he was in the minority. The Dornish houses, great and small, seemed to be resolute on making sure that their lines ended with them. A wish I was all too happy to grant. The less of the old guard remained, the fewer minority interests Yronwood would have to manage, and the easier it would be for him to bend the knee openly when the time came.
Of course, there was the counterargument that having done this for him, I had ensured that he would have the full power necessary for him to rise far and fast. Power could be addictive, and burdened with it, he might decide that his knees had no taste for kneeling. But then if that happened, I'd be coming back to Dorne not just with a dragon and army, but with experience of what it takes to smite Dorne.
I learned quickly, after all. And I learned well.
"We can mount a traditional siege," Oberon said, looking at the castle when I met him. Ghost Hill had a small village within its outer walls that would both ensure that the people within were fed in a siege and that attacking with dragonfire would kill more than just the nobles and their guards. Innocents would have to die.
I wasn't so naive as to think I'd never killed innocents in over half a year of burning castles and men, but this would be much more explicit than what I was used to.
"I think a storming would do," Icarus responded. He was sober today. Well, not today. This morning. There were hours aplenty left in the day for him to find his way back to the embrace of his old friend.
"You'd storm that?" I asked, pointing at the well-fortified castle. Pale white stone made up walls that rose so high that the only things visible from without were the inner walls that rose even higher, and then the top parts of the castle.
"We would. A joint approach. Dragon and men. Dragon to blast those gates open and deal with the men on the walls. I would much rather this castle keep standing," he said, and I nodded, not letting the barb even so much as glance against my armour. The plan had been to leave Greenhold standing, but then they had gotten close to killing Igneel, and after that I didn't feel all that merciful to them anymore. If Icarus wanted the castle so badly, he should have taken it himself.
"That is acceptable to me," I said.
"Will you join the men in the storming after you open the gates?" Oberon asked, but he was no smooth operator. The way he very studiously did not look even for a second at the brother that stood at my other side when he spoke and the smell of anxiety wafting off him was enough to give it away.
"I shan't. Lest a sword find itself in the wrong back at some inopportune time," I said, turning and looking at Icarus as I said so.
"A reasonable precaution," he said then. Icarus would need to be taken in hand sooner rather than later before he did something that I would very unfortunately not be able to ignore.
"So dawn, then," I said.
"I think so as well. This war stretches so long and my bones tire of the days on the road. I miss my bed," Oberon said.
"And your wife," I added.
He flushed at that reminder before adding, "Of course. Her too."
It was not hard for anyone to figure out that Oberon did not care much for the girl that Icarus had forced him to marry to join his house and Yorren's. One's brother had wed the other's sister when in truth the men would much rather have just wed themselves. Dorne was liberal, but not so liberal, unfortunately for them. I felt some pity for Ynessa Yronwood in this. Oberon had little interest in her, and she was going to have the noblewoman's life of living in a castle and birthing heirs for a man who loved her not. And she wouldn't even get the little power that came from being the lady of a castle out of it when her name would ordinarily have entitled her to at least that much.
"I will go get the men settled," Oberon said, and then he walked away, leaving Icarus and me to stand and look at Toland's keep together.
"What happens after this?" I asked when the silence had stretched for long enough.
"Dorne is pacified. It rests under one banner now. After this, all will be summoned to Yronwood to swear fealty. Their oaths will be taken. The castles that have been taken or destroyed will receive new Lords. It will be much the same with all the Knightly houses," he said, keeping things vague. There was nothing that surprised me out of what he had said. Conquering a realm was the easy bit. Unification, the hard bit, could take centuries. It had been a decade after Aegon's death before Jaehaerys took the throne, and decades more before Westeros became something resembling a single realm and not a mishmash of kingdoms. And even then the work was not fully done in that respect.
"I am sure you have a plan for paying for all the reconstruction," I said.
"Loans will be given to the new houses to allow them to start on the front foot," he said. And also to make sure their loyalties were very much tied to the throne he was seeking to prop up, undoubtedly.
"Financed from your own coffers?" I asked.
"I have the means. And war is profitable, as we well know," he said. The massive baggage carts loaded with gold from the castles I'd destroyed came to mind then. Loan the gold from destroyed castles to their new lords to allow them to rebuild said castles. Icarus would have fit right in with the merchants of Essos with thinking like this.
"Then I will leave you to it. But do not forget our agreement," I said. His smile became somewhat fixed, but he nodded. I turned to leave before pausing.
"Dorne will come out better for it. What has independence ever given you? Enemies across the sea and at your borders? A false sense of national pride from resisting a man who had been able to force you all from your castles into the deserts like rats? You saw how I handled the food situation. You have seen the Stepstones. You, better than most, know that my rule would be the best thing for Dorne. The question now becomes whether you are going to listen to stubborn pride that has bought your people nothing, or to common sense that will tell you that joining a greater empire as it is born will give you access to wealth your people could never imagine before. To comforts that will boggle their minds, and to a world where the children of Dorne do not hunger and thirst their way to bed night after night," I said, and only when I could see some contemplation in his eyes did I walk away. Perhaps it wouldn't work. I had to try, though. For all his faults, he was a competent peacetime administrator. What he had done with The Tor was masterful work. Spreading that all across Dorne would make my job easier. Much easier.
----
I climbed on Igneel's back some half an hour after the sun rose, and we shot into the air in a matter of seconds. The alarm was sounded from Ghost Hill. The castle stirred like a hornet's nest and we made our first pass over the walls. The men on the ground were marching towards the gates. The archers, scorpions, and defenders had to decide where to turn their attention, and credit to them, they made the wise choice. Scorpions and most of the archers turned to me. The rest of the defenders, those with pots of boiling tar and the other classic castle defence weapons, turned their attention to the men that approached.
The first two scorpion shots didn't even come close. Igneel flapped his wings, creating a powerful gust that blew away the next set. We reached the walls again, and this time we did more than wake them up.
"Dracarys!" I screamed, and two scorpions were gone in an explosion of blue fire. We swept around, over and over again, clearing the walls, and then all the castle's towers and high points of their scorpion defenders.
Then we came back and swept over the walls with fire that ended whatever defence had been mounting there. The castle's defenders either died or jumped off the walls, falling to their deaths in most cases.
We landed on the ground right in front of the gate, and with one more blow, the castle's massive gates slammed open, charred and smoking. We shot into the air again. The inner walls were taller, but we had dealt with their scorpions already and so the defenders were next. On seeing our approach, most just jumped off the walls. They were the wise ones.
The rest died to fire. And when we were done, we opened those gates as well, and then we took to the air, roaring our dominance all the while. Jordayne's army, heady with the rush of inevitable victory, turned from an organised army into a horde. The plan had been to sweep past the peasant village and straight for the main castle. But one in every three men peeled off from the army towards the village. Some entered houses, some began looting, and others started doing what men did when their blood was up, discipline was low, and consequences seemed distant. They turned into animals.
I fought the urge to turn away. I watched it all from the skies, aware there was nothing I could do to stop it.
XXXXX- EARLY 121 AC, Yronwood
The feast had been raging for hours at this point. Men drank themselves into a stupor as they celebrated the end to a war they had done little to win. No matter how it ended up dressed up, some would know the truth in their hearts of hearts. I'd won them this war. So was it any surprise that the little Dornish knights and sellswords toasted to me as often as they toasted their new Prince?
The night wore on and I watched as things got even more chaotic. People started kissing and groping the serving girls openly now, the little restraint left in them worn off by the combination of the alcohol and the passage of time.
"A dance, my lord?" I found my watching interrupted by a voice from my side.
Tyrene Yronwood, wife to Yorren, mother to the two young ones that had joined her and her husband in greeting me on my arrival, and recent orphan if what I had heard was true. I looked to her side and found her husband deep in conversation with Icarus. I wasn't even offended to not be sat at the man's side. If I had to weather them making the looks they presently were at each other over me, I would have left the table by this time. My eyes went back to her, finding her smile quite wooden.
"It would be my pleasure, my lady," I said, offering her my hand. She reached her other hand out to tap her husband, most likely to tell him that she was rising for a dance, but he just waved her away without even turning. She turned back to me, and we rose, heading to the floor.
I led her around the floor to the tune of The Dornishman's Wife while trying not to think about the irony of dancing with a Dornish Lord's wife while a song about a man who slept with a Dornishman's wife and got killed for it played.
"Is something the matter, my lord?" she asked. I quirked a brow at her, looking at her for what might as well be the first time. And by that I mean I really looked at her. Her eyes were a warm brown that matched the colour of her hair, and she batted them at me when I met them. Beneath the eyes, she had on one of those sheer silk dresses that were the fashion in Dorne, and dancing with her left little to my imagination about just what was under that dress as she fumbled her steps once or twice every few minutes, which led to our bodies touching more than was proper. It was subtle, but happened far too often to be truly accidental.
"Nothing, my lady. Would you like some air?" I asked, slowing our pace somewhat.
"That would hardly be proper," she said with a laugh, tilting her head in her husband's direction. I chuckled.
"I meant fresh air, my lady. And only fresh air. I am a married man. Happily so, I would add," I said, and she smiled at me, but it was markedly faker than the one that she had given earlier. We spent the rest of the dance in silence.
"I apologise, my lady, if I have offended in any way. I think it might be time for us to go our separate ways," I said as the song finally came to an end. As the next song, some different version of The Burning of the Ships, altered to be about Nymeria rather than Brandon the Burner, began—I'd heard it twice already tonight alone, and a million times at the camp—I bowed to her and stepped back, only for her to step closer to me and grab my hand.
"I think I will take that fresh air, my lord. My apologies," she said, and while I did think this was a problematic woman, there was no easy way to refuse, and so I escorted her out of the hall and into the inner courtyard of Yronwood's beautiful castle. This courtyard was filled with some of the most beautiful orange trees I had ever seen, the trees themselves almost weighed down by the bright golden fruit they carried.
We walked through the courtyard in silence for a while.
"My husband loves me little, and cares even less for our children," she said, crashing through the silence with that sudden revelation. And I was almost certain she wasn't supposed to be saying that to another Lord.
"So when you made your comment about your happy marriage, I found myself thinking about my own and was less than pleased," she said after.
"It is normal in this world of ours, my lady. You should take consolation in the things that you do have going for you. Yorren is a fair lord from what I see. Your children will grow strong and healthy. They will inherit much. You can find your happiness in your children, get your love from them," I said.
"But my children cannot love me the way I want. The way I need. The way a man loves a woman," she said, and then I noticed she had taken a step and now our shoulders were touching. Oh hell no.
"I think I will be heading back to the hall now, my lady. I think the fresh air is a bit too much for me," I said, and I began to take some steps backwards. She turned to face me, and I noticed that we had strayed to a part of the courtyard where the orange trees shielded us from observers.
"I think the fresh air is exactly what you need, my lord. What we both need. Has the war not been long for you? I know what men need in war. I need you just as much as you need me, my lord," she said, and then her fingers moved. With only a single motion, her dress dropped from her shoulders, the sheer thing hitting the ground and pooling at her feet. I looked. Of course, I fucking looked. No one could say they wouldn't.
But look was all I did. I turned around, not speaking a word more, and practically sprinted from the courtyard.
A/N: Flee ye from temptation, I guess. Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), you can support me there and read them early. Also, the new story I mentioned last week is up now. It's called Can You See the Vision and is an SI into Vision from the MCU. It's up wherever you can see this now and we're doing one chapter a day this week so we're already on chapter four. You can go read that by clicking on my profile and looking at my other stuff.