Rewriting Targaryen History

Ormund Hightower did not attack again at dawn.

Honeyholt woke beneath a low grey sky, its walls blackened by smoke, its gate reinforced through the night with beams, carts, iron braces, and anything the defenders could drag into place. Men who had slept did so in armour. Men who had not slept moved as if their bodies had become borrowed things. The yard stank of blood, burned wood, wet ash, fear, and boiling herbs from the healers’ corner.

Outside the walls, Ormund’s host remained. That was the first truth. The second was stranger. It was moving. Not forward. Not yet away entirely. But changing shape.

From the southern wall, I watched Hightower men break down sections of their own forward works. Wagons rolled behind the lines. Banners shifted between camps. Men dragged damaged frames and broken ladders away from Honeyholt’s approach. A few companies moved south-west in ordered files. Others remained in place, facing us with shields and spears as if daring me to mistake movement for flight.

Dravvaxx lay beyond the outer ditch, dark and immense against the trampled field. He had slept little. Neither had I. Every time men moved too close to the damaged gate, he lifted his head, and every time he lifted his head, Ormund’s soldiers remembered the ram burning.

Ser Alester Beesbury joined me on the wall with his arm bound in fresh linen. "They are withdrawing," he said, though his voice made the words a question.

"Partly."

"Is that not good?"

"It may be."

He looked at me. "You do not sound glad."

"I am glad Honeyholt still stands. I am not glad Ormund has decided to stop doing the obvious thing."

Ser Alester followed my gaze to the enemy lines. "Perhaps your dragon convinced him."

"Dravvaxx convinced him the gate will not fall cheaply while I am here. That is not the same as convincing him to abandon the siege."

Below, men began cheering when they saw the first Hightower tents coming down.

I did not stop them. They had earned that sound. They had held their walls through one assault and nearly died in the second. They had watched a ram crawl toward their gate and heard the wood begin to fail. If they wanted to believe the enemy was leaving because courage had won, I would not take that from them in the first moment of relief.

I only made certain the officers did not believe it.

"Double the wall watch," I told Ser Alester. "No one opens the gate without my order. No pursuit. No shouting insults from the parapets. If Ormund means to draw men out, he will not be handed them."

Ser Alester bowed his head. "It will be done."

"And send word through the yard that any man leaving the castle to chase plunder or trophies will be treated as a deserter in sight of the enemy."

That order killed part of the cheering, but not enough to matter.

By midday, the pattern became clearer.

Ormund was not routing. His army did not break, scatter, or run for Oldtown with Dravvaxx at its back. It withdrew in layers. The damaged siege works were abandoned first. The forward companies pulled back next. The archers remained longest, covering the movement of wagons and wounded. Hightower banners stayed visible. Redwyne, Bulwer, and Roxton colours moved with them, not in panic but in deliberate order.

A commander who fled left things behind. Ormund was carrying his strength with him. That was why I did not burn them.

I could have. The thought came more than once, and I hated how easily it arrived. Dravvaxx could rise from the field, fall upon the withdrawing columns, and turn men, wagons, horses, banners, and wounded alike into a road of screaming ash. Ormund’s army was crowded by necessity. Men withdrawing from siege lines had less room than men formed in open battle. Fire would have done terrible work.

Useful work, some would say. War always had voices ready to call horror efficient.

But Honeyholt stood. The gate was not falling. Ormund’s men were moving away from the walls, and many among them were not knights or officers but levies who had followed banners because lords told them where duty lived.

I had already used dragonfire to break the assault. That was war. To burn a withdrawing army without immediate need would have been something else, something closer to the madness every enemy already wanted to place in Rhaenyra’s hands through mine.

I would not give them that weapon. Not today.

Rhaenys arrived in the afternoon.

Meleys came low over the northern road, red wings broad against the grey clouds. Behind her, dust marked the vanguard of our army approaching hard. When she landed beyond Honeyholt, the defenders cheered again, louder this time, because one dragon had become two and relief had taken visible form.

I rode out to meet her once the enemy had pulled far enough to make the immediate field safer.

Rhaenys dismounted with the contained fury of someone who had flown fast and found the battle half-decided without her.

"You stopped the fall," she said.

"Barely."

Her gaze moved to the south, where Ormund’s last visible lines were withdrawing beyond the first low ridges. "And now he leaves."

"He moves. I am not ready to call it leaving."

She studied the field: the burned ram, the blackened ladders, the abandoned dead, the lines of retreat too orderly to be called panic.

"You did not pursue."

"No."

"Good."

That surprised me enough that I looked at her.

Rhaenys’s expression remained hard. "Do not mistake me. Part of me would like to see Ormund’s host broken before it can regroup. But a dragon chasing columns through the Reach would teach every undecided lord to fear you more than Aegon. Fear can win fields. It rarely builds rule worth keeping."

"I told myself something similar."

"Then you were wise to listen."

The vanguard began entering Honeyholt’s outer lands by late afternoon. Landrey arrived first with mounted men and Legion light infantry, followed by Unsullied companies moving at a pace that would have broken lesser soldiers. The main body would not fully arrive until the next day, but enough strength had reached us to secure the castle, tend wounded, and make any sudden Hightower turn more dangerous.

Baela came with the forward scouts, Moondancer circling once before landing beyond Meleys. She looked toward the retreating host with visible frustration. "They are getting away."

"Yes," I said.

"We could strike them while they are spread out."

"We could."

Her eyes narrowed. "But we will not."

"No."

"Because they are retreating."

"Because they are retreating, because we do not know whether Vhagar or Sunfyre is near, because our army is arriving tired, because Honeyholt needs securing, and because burning men who are no longer pressing the wall is not the same as saving the castle."

Baela did not like the answer. She did understand it.

After a moment, she said, "Daemon would chase."

"Daemon is in the Riverlands, which may be safest for all our tempers."

Rhaenys gave me a look that warned me not to enjoy that line too much. Baela’s mouth twitched despite herself. She was learning that restraint could be argued with, hated, and still obeyed.

That evening, the first proper reports came in from scouts who had shadowed Ormund’s withdrawal at distance.

The Hightower host had suffered badly at Honeyholt. Not destroyed. Not even close. But hurt. Between the failed assaults, dragonfire, arrows from the walls, disease beginning in the siege lines, wounded abandoned or carried south, and men scattered in the confusion of Dravvaxx’s arrival, estimates suggested Ormund had lost perhaps a fifth of the force he had brought against the Beesbury seat. Dead, wounded, missing, and men too injured or shaken to be useful in the next immediate action.

A fifth was a brutal cost. It was not a decisive one.

If Ormund had begun with over twenty thousand, he still had superior numbers to my forward force and likely enough strength to threaten any house not protected by dragons and a disciplined army.

He could withdraw toward stronger ground. He could turn west and seek to pull us away from Highgarden. He could attempt to lure me into overextending. He could wait for Aemond. That last possibility sat beneath every other like a blade hidden under cloth.

Rhaenys, Landrey, Grey Worm, Black Rat, Baela, Ser Alester, and several officers gathered in Honeyholt’s battered hall after dark. The table was cracked. One window had been boarded. The air smelled of candle wax and smoke. It was not Highgarden. That made it better suited to the decisions before us.

I placed Ormund’s last known position on the map.

"He is withdrawing south-west in good order. Our scouts believe he has lost heavily, perhaps a fifth of his effective force from the siege and its failure. That is enough to hurt him, not enough to make him harmless."

Landrey nodded. "His rear guard is disciplined. They want us to see them retreating, but not enough to know where the next stand will be."

"Which means we do not chase beyond support," I said. "The main army arrives tomorrow. Honeyholt is reinforced first. Wounded are treated. The Beesbury garrison is relieved where possible. Only then do we decide whether to follow."

Ser Alester looked as if he wanted to object and thank me at the same time. "My prince, if Ormund escapes, he may return."

"If I abandon your walls to chase him and he turns with more men than my vanguard can hold, Honeyholt may still fall. I did not come in time just to leave it open behind me."

He bowed his head, accepting the rebuke and the protection within it.

Baela leaned over the map. "If he is trying to draw us, where would he want us?"

"Ground where our numbers matter less and his remaining strength can strike from cover," Landrey said. "A river crossing. Narrow road. Orchards thick enough to hide men. Or somewhere Vhagar can arrive while we are stretched."

The room grew quieter at Vhagar’s name.

Rhaenys spoke next. "Aemond has not shown himself. That may mean he is far away, or it may mean Ormund wanted Honeyholt taken without spending the larger dragon. If he comes now, he may come to restore fear after this failure."

"Then we keep Dravvaxx and Meleys near enough to answer but not predictable enough to trap," I said. "Moondancer scouts only within protected range."

Baela opened her mouth, then closed it when Rhaenys looked at her.

Progress again.

Black Rat spoke through Grey Worm. "The Unsullied can hold Honeyholt and the approaches. But if the enemy returns with greater numbers, he advises preparing outer killing ground before they come, not after horns sound."

"Do it," I said. "No damage to fields that is not needed, but clear lanes near the gate, mark ditches, prepare water against fire, and strengthen the damaged northern approach. If Ormund comes again, he finds a different Honeyholt."

Ser Alester gave a tired, fierce nod. "My men will help."

"They will also sleep," I said. "Exhausted defenders make poor heroes."

A few men almost smiled. The council ended with orders rather than certainty. That was common now. War rarely gave certainty in time for it to be useful.

Later, I walked the outer wall again.

The night was colder than before. Ormund’s campfires had withdrawn from the immediate fields, but some still glowed in the distance, scattered beyond the ridges like embers carried by wind.

Honeyholt’s defenders were quieter now that survival had become something more complicated than relief. Men understood the enemy had not vanished. They understood too that a dragon had saved them, and dragons could not be everywhere.

Dravvaxx rested beyond the gate, his dark shape visible beneath the moon. I looked at him and thought of the fire I had not spent.

There would be men, perhaps even among our own allies, who would call that weakness. They would say Ormund’s army should have been burned while exposed. They would say mercy to enemies was cruelty to future loyal dead.

They would not be entirely wrong, and that was the worst part. Some of the men spared today might kill men under my command tomorrow. Some might burn villages, take hostages, or stand beneath Aegon’s banners until death made their loyalty irrelevant.

But I had seen what happened when dragonriders let possibility become permission. A field became ash because it might hold enemies. A town burned because surrender might be false. A line of marching men became fuel because ending future danger mattered more than present restraint.

I was Master of War, not master of slaughter. The distinction needed to survive somewhere, or Rhaenyra’s cause would become only another fire arguing that its flame was cleaner.

Rhaenys found me there. "You are thinking too loudly again," she said.

"I was wondering whether mercy becomes arrogance when it risks other men later."

"It can."

"That is not comforting."

"It was not meant to be. Mercy is not clean. Neither is ruthlessness. Anyone who tells you one path keeps your hands pure is selling something."

I looked toward Ormund’s distant fires. "He may persist. He still has numbers. He may decide killing me is worth another attempt."

"He might. If he kills you, he shakes Rhaenyra’s war, removes Dravvaxx from the board for a time, and gives Aegon a song before the singers have finished tuning."

"Then I should avoid becoming convenient."

"That would be wise."

I almost laughed, but the night was too heavy for it.

Rhaenys stood beside me, eyes on the dark. "You were right not to burn them."

"I hope so."

"No. Do not make it smaller with hope. You made a choice. Own it. If it proves costly later, you may grieve it. But do not pretend the better answer was obvious and you simply failed to see it. There was no obvious answer. There was only the one you could live with while still serving your queen."

Below, men moved beams across the gate. Somewhere in the yard, a wounded Beesbury soldier cried out while a healer worked. Far beyond the walls, Ormund Hightower carried away the remains of his failed siege, not broken, not beaten enough, but checked.

He had withdrawn from Honeyholt with too much order to be dismissed and too much loss to be called success. Whatever his next plan was, it would not be simple repetition. Ormund was rethinking. That made him more dangerous, not less.

I watched until the last of his distant fires dimmed behind the ridgeline. Honeyholt had survived. The Hightower host had moved away. And I, standing beside a dragon who could have turned retreat into massacre, understood that restraint had not ended the danger.

It had only ensured that when the next danger came, I would still know the difference between necessary fire and madness.