129 53

Chapter 53: Part LIIINotes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: I own nothing, just borrowing for a while.

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"If I had a gold dragon for every time a member of royalty who commanded the City Watch went on to conquer the Stepstones I'd have two extra gold dragons in my purse. Which isn't a lot but it's odd it happened twice."

The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister

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The Red Keep - King's Landing – 300 AC

'Somehow I thought confirmation that the Targaryen girl had lost her husband, her child and her Dothraki Horde in short order would have been welcome news" Tywin Lannister observed wryly. "It never occurred to me that she might have immediately gained ten-thousand heavy infantry, a mercenary company and three dragons" he continued. "More fool me for daring to hope that fate would not be so cruel as to threaten Westeros with two existential threats at the same time."

"Are we certain that this talk of dragons is not merely some wild rumour or the usual mythical Essosi nonsense like Warlocks?" Eddard Stark asked plaintively. He was supposed to be hosting a family dinner with Lady Allyria in attendance at that very moment, the engagement being organised chiefly so she could get to know Lady Alys Karstark a little better in a hopefully welcoming and friendly environment, but the news from Varys had necessitated an unscheduled meeting of the Small Council.

Varys sighed. "I'm afraid to say that my sources on the matter are numerous, and whilst I oft talk of whispers my information in this case might be best described as deafening cries" he replied apologetically. "Though by coincidence warlocks [I]are[/I] tangentially involved. It seems that Daenerys Targaryen and the Warlocks of Qarth became adversaries, and they attempted to assassinate her, though this attempt was thwarted by a party or parties unknown" he informed the Small Council, lying about the last part because he knew full well.

"Three dragons? How did she obtain three dragons?" Lord Renly asked, nonplussed.

"There I have only rumour to base my answer upon, but it seems she hatched a trio of dragon eggs, all thought petrified and merely curios, that were originally gifted to her on the occasion of her wedding to the now deceased Khal Drogo" Varys replied. "Something about carrying them into the funeral pyre of her late husband and emerging unburnt and with the eggs hatched."

Grand Maester Pycelle frowned. "Although that sounds implausible, we should recall that the Tragedy of Summerhall was the result of Aegon the Unlikely attempting to hatch similar eggs, although in that case some within my order ponder that it was a careless and imprudent employment of wildfire in the attempt caused the resultant deaths."

"They don't call it 'wild' fire for nothing" Petyr Baelish observed sardonically.

"Indeed, My Lord" Pycelle concurred.

Octavian leaned forward in his chair. "Presumably these infant dragons will take some years to grow to maturity. Do we have any notion of how long it will be before they become an actual threat rather than a curiosity?" he asked Pycelle.

"I would have to make a detailed study of the literature, Your Grace" the Grand Maester replied, fortunately the Order had ignored the command by King Baelor to destroy all copies of Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History by Septon Barth so the best source still existed. "Though it seems to be variable and at least partially dependent on the extent of their food supply" he noted. "From memory the dragon Arrax was large enough to be ridden before it was a decade old but was still nonetheless a juvenile, less than a quarter the size of the mature adult Vhagar that slew him during the Dance of Dragons."

"And his rider, Prince Lucerys Velaryon" Ser Barristan added with a sigh, recalling the sad story he had first heard as a youth. A boy barely into his teens riding a dragon near the same age going up against Prince Aemond, a full grown man, riding a full grown dragon. It had not been a fight, it had been near murder, and vile kinslaying to boot.

Tywin Lannister looked thoughtful, even more than usual as he considered the new situation. "As a boy Tyrion was wont to talk of dragons incessantly, he mentioned more than once that the three dragons which Aegon the Conqueror and his sister's rode were all at least half a century in age at that time, and were not all fully grown" he recalled. 'We should not imagine these dragon-pups arriving to devastate our lands anytime soon. Of far greater immediate concern is that she seems to found herself in possession of an army that is, unlike the Dothraki, perfectly willing to travel by sea."

"Are we really to treat an army of eunuch slaves as a serious threat?" Mace Tyrell asked dismissively. "They're not even really men" he opined before he realised how that might be taken. "No offence intended, Lord Varys" he added quickly, his mother having warned him to never make an enemy of the Master of Whispers.

Varys smiled. "None taken Lord Tyrell" he responded, making a mental note to add the man to his list of enemies, albeit a very minor enemy ranked low on the list. "If you are imagining the Unsullied as resembling me either physically or in temperament you are far from the truth I'm afraid. In Essos the Unsullied have a well-deserved reputation for unfathomable endurance and peerless skills on the battlefield" he noted. "King Robert rightly feared the prospect of a Dothraki horde laying waste to Westeros, but the Dothraki fear the Unsullied."

"How many of these slave-soldiers does the girl command?" Eddard Stark asked.

"At least eight thousand fully-trained and another five thousand partially trained according to my sources" Varys told him.

Mace Tyrell remained dismissive. "A paltry number" he declared. "And of mere infantry."

"I've read that three thousand Unsullied once defeated a Dothraki Horde numbering some twenty-five thousand at the gates of Qohor" Octavian spoke up again. "Even the finest cavalry breaks against well trained and disciplined infantry armed with sufficiently long spears and arrayed in close formation" he said. It seemed likely that the Unsullied had formed up in a phalanx, as the Macedonians had done in his own world and the Ghiscari had here with their 'Lockstep Legions', and although unwieldy, particular on rough ground, charging a phalanx on horseback was about as inviting as charging off a cliff.

"True enough" Eddard Stark agreed. "If pikemen stand then cavalry flees."

Tywin Lannister nodded his agreement. The Westerlands favoured pikemen too, in no small part because they might have to face heavy cavalry from The Reach one day. "What of these mercenaries you say joined her cause at Yunkai?"

"The Second Sons" Varys told him. "Two thousand armoured cavalry of some repute, both good and ill, formerly under the command of a Braavosi named Mero" he said. "They were hired by the Wise Masters of Yunkai to defend them from Daenerys and her army of Unsullied. Instead they switched allegiance to her under a new captain, one that she is rumoured to have taken as her lover, and opened the gates to her forces."

"I assume she also bribed them with gold and that she did not have to perform sexual favours for the whole company in order to obtain their service" Renly joked, Tywin giving him a disparaging look for seeking to inject humour into a serious discussion.

"Given their number I would suspect that to be so" Varys replied with a smile. "The cities of slaver's bay have grown very rich off their loathsome trade and the sacking of Astopor, and her subsequent taking of Yunkai intact, should have made Daenerys Stormborn extremely wealthy."

"Which means that she will be able to hire more mercenaries, good ones" Tywin surmised. "How did she obtain the services of these Unsullied to start with? Surely they had to be purchased, and if so how did she pay for them?"

Varys adopted a wry smile. "A simple double-cross it seems" he replied. "Finding herself in possession of three dragons but no army she offered to sell one of her dragons to the Good Masters of Astapor in return for all the Unsullied in the city, including those still in training. After concluding the deal she then ordered her new army to sack the city, kill the slavers, and took back her dragon."

Octavian rolled his eyes. "If I was wondering why the rulers of Yunkai not those Astapor are known as the 'Wise Masters' this explains it nicely" he said, facepalming.

"If they weren't slaver scum, as well as fools apparently, I might feel more sorry for them" Eddard Stark added for himself. "It does indicate that her word must be treated with suspicion because that clearly went against the spirit of the contract if not necessarily the exact wording perhaps."

Renly chuckled. "As Master of Laws I must say that, as a rule, in legal terms it is not normally expected to have to spell out that both parties are forbidden from murdering the other to take back the property they used to own after an exchange is made" he said. "I would contend that it is implicitly accepted as being the normal custom and practice when bartering goods in fact."

"As Master of Coin I would have to agree" Baelish added with a chuckle of his own.

"I don't find this matter as deserving of merriment" Tywin Lannister stated firmly in a stern tone causing both Renly and Baelish to look suitably abashed. "Where is she now?" he asked Varys.

"My most recent information was that she was preparing to march on Mereen, the largest and wealthiest of the Ghiscari slaver cities" Varys told him. "It lies just only fifty leagues by road from Yunkai so it is likely she had already reached her destination and had put it under siege well before the Whispers reached me all the way from Slaver's Bay" he said. "As well as her army a very large number of freed slaves from Yunkai were thought likely to follow her, fearing being once again placed into bondage, so that is another consideration. Whether she did so by moral conviction or expediency she has freed all the slaves in both cities that she took control of, and they are her fervently loyal supporters as a result."

Eddard Stark nodded. "That will slow her march and strain her logistics" he reasoned. "How long can the city hold?" he asked.

"I would not claim to be a military tactician but Mereen is larger and more populous than King's Landing and is ringed by thick, high walls" Varys replied. "Both Astapor and Yunkai fell as swiftly as they did because of a double-cross and mercenary turncoats respectively, and the Great Masters of Mereen will surely make efforts not to lose their own city to such tricks, so I would assume quite some time."

"If it's a coastal city then they can resupply by sea, the Targaryen girl may have an army but as yet presumably no navy to enforce a blockade" Renly supposed. "Both Lord Tyrell and myself have experience of such a siege, albeit from different sides of the wall."

Tyrell nodded. "Even with a navy maintaining a tight enough blockade is difficult, that smuggler and his onions proved that" he noted.

"If food supplies grown short they might even expel a few thousand slaves both to reduce their own mouths to feed and provide the Pretender with more" Octavian suggested. "It's what I would do given that if she wishes to maintain the loyalty of her followers she has to offer aid and not let them starve."

"I think we can safely assume that the girl will wait until her dragons are full-grown before she makes a move upon Westeros at least" Mace Tyrell suggested.

"We can do nothing of the sort" Tywin told him. "If we find ourselves having to send most of our fighting strength to the North to resist an invasion by these Wights and White Walkers then she would not need a host of tens of thousands to successfully invade" he stated flatly. "The fact she has dragons at all will sway some in Westeros to her cause because if she does win then in the longer-term the beasts will ensure her ability to maintain a hold onto the Seven Kingdoms later."

"Opportunists may view her as a rising star in the ascendant and seek to align themselves with her early on, thus gaining favour if she triumphs" Octavian agreed. "I might suggest we make diplomatic overtures in an attempt to get her to see the White Walkers as a threat to all, one that must be dealt with first, rather than have mankind fighting itself, but after what happened at Yunkai her word does not seem like it would be reliable currency."

"Simply seeking to negotiate, rather than to warn her we will meet any invasion with steel would be seen as a sign of weakness in any case and might only embolden her" Tywin added his own thoughts as regards diplomacy. "If we want to deter her from an invasion that would force us to fight a war on two fronts, one at each end of the continent, we need to secure the Stepstones" he said. "That at least would make it more problematic for her."

"How fortunate that someone already formulated a detailed plan for such a campaign" Octavian observed, not even bothering to try and avoid looking smug about it.

Tywin gritted his teeth. The boy had been insufferable enough already but this would only increase his grandson's apparent belief he was some time of political and strategic savant. Of course what grated the most was that near everything he meddled in ended up turning our so well, be it the drastically improved state of the Royal coffers, his reforms of the City Watch, or the way that so many members of the Small Council seemed to be willing to acquiesce with his ideas.

If he didn't know better Tywin would have assumed Joffrey had some kind of hold over almost the whole lot of them, but how in the name of the gods would a boy yet to rule in his own name have managed that, he wondered, dismissing the notion as fanciful.

"With the Royal Fleet to defend the Narrow Sea, and the Stepstones secured, as an enterprise getting an army to Westeros would be a considerably more daunting prospect" Eddard Stark told the Small Council. "Fortunately our naval strength is of little use against the Ice Demons and their undead horde so we can spare it readily enough but it is unfortunate we will have to dispatch a force of thousands at least to seize and then garrison some worthless islands."

"Not entirely worthless Lord Stark, at least in financial terms. Controlling the Stepstones will allow us to reduce smuggling and hence increase our income from tariffs, although not by near enough to cover the cost of the garrison I suspect" Petyr Baelish told him.

"If I recall the king's proposal for an annexation of the Stepstones correctly, command of the land forces was to be placed in the hands of Lord Randyll Tarly, with your agreement of course since his House is one of your vassals" Tywin addressed Mace Tyrell.

"I would prefer to command it myself, though of course I will be needed to command the Royal Fleet instead and he is a very capable commander" Tyrell replied.

"King Robert respected his abilities greatly" Eddard Stark recalled, "said he was the only man to ever kick his arse in the field and he was glad it wasn't Tarly in command at the Trident instead of Prince Rhaegar. Not that Rhaegar was a bad general, it was just that Tarly is a very good one."

"Precisely why I considered him the ideal choice" Octavian noted. "We need a quick, decisive campaign and once he is done there we might need him again in the North."

"I suppose you've got a plan for defeating the White Walkers too, nephew?" Renly asked him, grinning.

"Two so far, though they are only in the preliminary stage as yet for lack of detailed intelligence on our foe" Octavian replied. "I'll need better officers than myself to carry them out though, I can plan the logistics and organise the manpower but as for telling them exactly what to do once battle is joined there are far better people for that than myself."

Tywin raised his eyebrows, not that the boy had been planning the next war but one but that he admitted his limitations in such a way.

Later he decided that was even more annoying because it meant the little sod wasn't just going through life thinking he was infallible because he was irritatingly clever. He was actually cognisant of his strengths and weaknesses, and kept his ego in check enough to accept the latter, meaning he was wise as well as just smart.

None of which detracted from the fact he was still gratingly, and yes insufferably, smug.

Notes:

Note from the Author:

Events over in Essos continue much as in canon... up to a point. Daenerys Stormborn has her dragons, her Unsullied, her mercenary company and a great deal of support among the freed slaves of Slaver's Bay. What she does not have is Barristan Selmy of course.

Both Eddard Stark and Tywin Lannister largely dismissed the idea of a Dothraki Horde invading over the Narrow Sea, these new Targaryen forces are a more realistic threat to their way of thinking hence the notion of taking the Stepstones to bolster the defence of Westeros to the south seems more prudent now.

Varys knows a lot more than he is saying...