Rewriting Targaryen History

For a week, the forest refused to move.

Ormund Hightower had withdrawn thousands of men beneath its canopy, hidden his wagons among the trees, and turned every path into a question that could only be answered with blood.

From Honeyholt’s walls, the woods looked almost peaceful. Wind stirred the highest branches. Birds rose in scattered groups when disturbed. Smoke appeared occasionally through gaps in the leaves, thin enough to vanish before anyone could judge its source.

Beneath that ordinary green, an army waited. So did Baela.

During the first two days, I continued speaking of her as missing. It was the language Rhaenys demanded and the language I allowed because certainty without proof was its own form of cruelty.

Patrols searched the outer tracks. Legion scouts entered in pairs and groups of four, guided by Footly and Beesbury men who had hunted those woods before war made every familiar tree suspicious.

By the third day, I no longer believed Baela had survived. I did not say it aloud.

Moondancer had fallen from high enough that survival seemed less like hope and more like refusal. Even if the dragon had softened the impact, Baela had been strapped to her saddle while thousands of pounds of scale, muscle, and bone crashed through branches and earth.

If she had been thrown clear, Ormund’s men had reached the ground long before ours could. If she had remained attached, then the dragon’s body might have crushed her beyond recognition.

Still, we searched. Hope did not need to be reasonable before it demanded obedience.

The waiting game settled around Honeyholt with greater discipline than comfort. Thirteen thousand men formed a tightening cordon around the forest’s northern and eastern approaches.

Mounted patrols watched the known roads. Unsullied companies held crossings and farm tracks in shifts, their stillness making them better suited to the work than men who grew careless when nothing happened. Dread Legion scouts studied streams, animal trails, woodcutters’ paths, and stretches of undergrowth where a wagon might have passed despite leaving no proper road.

The southern side remained harder to close.

Ormund still held superior numbers, even after losing perhaps a fifth of his host during the siege. He had enough men to protect several approaches, send out raiding parties, and threaten anyone who stretched too far from support. I could encircle the forest in theory. In practice, a ring thin enough to surround him would be a ring he could break.

So I held the strongest roads and waited for hunger to do what courage could not.

No grain entered from Honeyholt’s lands. No cattle were allowed near the woods. Wells outside the forest were placed under guard where possible. Patrols stopped carts before they reached the southern lanes and searched them under royal authority. Those carrying ordinary goods were paid for delay. Those carrying supplies intended for Ormund lost both wagon and freedom.

It was slow work.

War had trained men to expect decisions through charges, flames, and banners falling. Starvation lacked spectacle. It was arithmetic applied to the stomach. Every day Ormund remained beneath those trees, his host consumed grain, fouled water, exhausted forage, and grew less able to remain where it was.

Every day we waited, Baela became less likely to be found alive. That was the price beneath the strategy. Rhaenys reminded me of it whenever I visited her.

She remained confined within Honeyholt, though the phrase house arrest made the arrangement sound gentler than it felt. Her chamber was comfortable by the standards of a besieged castle.

She had food, attendants, writing materials, and a view toward the western countryside. She was permitted to walk the inner gardens and parts of the wall under escort, but she was kept away from the gate and from Meleys.

She tested every boundary.

On the second morning, she tried to leave the keep with only one maid beside her, arguing that walking the walls did not violate my order. The guards stopped her before she reached the outer yard.

On the third evening, she sent a note to one of Meleys’s handlers instructing him to prepare the saddle before dawn. The handler brought the note to me rather than obeying. On the fourth day, she refused food until I agreed to hear the newest scout reports in her chamber.

None of it was childish. That would have been easier.

Rhaenys was a princess, a dragonrider, and a woman accustomed to commanding rooms through presence alone. She knew exactly how far dignity could be used as a weapon against men reluctant to lay hands upon her. Every guard understood that restraining her physically might provoke Meleys, offend half the army, and become the kind of tale that travelled badly to King’s Landing.

I understood that as well. I still kept her confined.

When I visited her on the fourth evening, she stood by the window before I entered and did not turn to acknowledge me.

"You have lost more scouts," she said.

"Three today."

"And yet you continue sending them beneath the same trees."

"We change the routes each time."

"The forest remains the same."

"The men within it do not."

She turned then. "Do you hear yourself? You speak of routes and numbers while Baela may be lying wounded somewhere your caution refuses to reach."

"My caution has sent dozens of men into that forest."

"Not enough to bring her back."

"Would a thousand be enough? Five thousand? Should I feed the whole army into Ormund’s ambushes until the ground is covered in men searching for one body?"

Her expression tightened at the final word. I regretted it immediately, though not because it was false.

"You believe she is dead," Rhaenys said.

I did not answer quickly enough. She crossed the chamber toward me, grief giving her voice a steadiness more dangerous than shouting. "You have already buried her in your thoughts, and now you use that burial to justify waiting."

"I have accepted that surviving the fall would be near impossible. Acceptance is not abandonment. The searches continue."

"Careful searches."

"Yes."

"Slow searches."

"Yes."

"Searches that preserve your army while my granddaughter disappears beneath leaves."

"My army includes thousands of sons, brothers, fathers, and boys who trusted me not to spend them without reason. I will not treat them as lesser lives because Baela is royal."

"She is not merely royal. She is your scout, placed in danger under your command."

"And she disobeyed a direct order meant to keep her alive."

Rhaenys struck me. The blow was open-handed, hard enough to turn my face but not hard enough to stagger me. The guards outside heard it. I knew because one shifted closer to the door, then stopped when I did not call.

Rhaenys’s hand trembled after. "Do not speak of her disobedience to me as if that makes her death deserved."

"I did not say it did."

"You thought it."

"No. I thought it made her death avoidable, which is worse."

The anger left her face for half a moment, exposing the grief beneath it. She turned away. I stayed where I was.

After a while, she said, "Leave before I decide your caution deserves another lesson."

Outside, the senior Legion guard looked at the red mark on my cheek and then fixed his gaze on the opposite wall.

"She remains confined," I told him.

"Yes, my prince."

"She is also grieving. Do not mistake that for licence to speak of her without respect."

"I would not."

"Good."

By the fifth day, thirty-six scouts had entered the forest. Twelve did not return.

Some vanished without sound. Others left signs. One pair was found near a stream with their throats cut and boots taken. Another group stumbled back after dark carrying a man with an arrow through his thigh and reporting that Hightower patrols moved between prepared positions beneath the trees. Two Unsullied returned without the third man who had gone with them. They had heard him fall into a concealed pit before arrows forced them away.

The forest was full of shallow traps, hidden archers, false trails, and sections deliberately left open to invite pursuit. Ormund had planned well. He did not intend only to hide from dragons. He intended to make every attempt to find Baela or count his numbers cost enough that we eventually chose rage over discipline.

By then, the scouts had confirmed several things.

The hidden ballistas were not fixed weapons. They had been mounted in wagons reinforced to absorb recoil, allowing them to be shifted along rough tracks and concealed under canvas. At least three had been seen, possibly five. Their crews guarded them heavily. Additional machines might remain deeper in the woods.

Ormund’s host was spread through several camps rather than one great gathering. That made fire less effective and ground assault harder. Men could withdraw from one position and strike from another. Trails between camps had been marked in ways visible only to those who knew what to look for. Water came from two streams and several shallow wells within the forest.

They were not starving yet. But they would.

On the sixth morning, one scouting party returned carrying a piece of pale-green wing membrane wrapped around a spear shaft. No one needed to say what it was. The colour had faded beneath dirt and dried blood, but enough remained.

Moondancer.

I took the fragment myself and went with the next search party. Landrey objected. Grey Worm objected. Black Rat did not bother hiding that he considered it an indulgence unworthy of command. They were all correct. A Master of War crawling through hostile woodland while Ormund’s men hunted scouts was poor strategy.

I went anyway. Some duties could not be handed to men whose names would never appear in the family’s grief.

Dravvaxx remained near Honeyholt under strict signal, restless enough that I felt his unease even beneath the trees. Rhaenys was not told before I left. Had she known, she would have demanded release or found another way to become impossible.

We entered the forest from the north-eastern edge shortly before dawn. Twelve Dread Legion veterans came with me, four Unsullied, two Beesbury woodsmen, and Landrey despite my telling him he was more useful elsewhere. He replied that I had already made the same mistake, so rank no longer supported the argument.

The trees swallowed the sky quickly.

That explained how the ballistas had remained unseen. From above, the canopy looked dense but uneven. From below, every gap revealed only another layer of branches, brush, mist, and uncertain movement. Men could stand twenty paces away and vanish by leaning behind the right trunk.

We found signs of the crash before we found Moondancer.

Broken branches high overhead. Bark torn away in long pale scars. Furrows in the earth where something vast had struck, rolled, and dragged. Blood marked leaves and soil in places the rain had not reached. Several trees had snapped under the impact.

Then the dragon appeared between the trunks.

Moondancer lay on her side in a torn clearing, neck twisted beneath her body, one wing crushed against the ground and the other spread in ruin over broken trees. The bolt remained lodged through the shattered wing joint. Another had struck lower along the body, buried between scales near the ribs. Her pale-green colouring was dulled by mud and death.

She looked smaller on the ground. Dragons always did when life left them.

For a long while, none of us spoke. One of the Unsullied moved first, checking the surrounding brush before grief could make vigilance weaker. Legion men spread outward. The Beesbury woodsmen searched the immediate trail for signs of Hightower patrols.

I approached Moondancer. There was no movement. No breath. No residual twitch beneath scale. The impact had broken her badly enough that I could not tell whether the bolt or the fall had killed her.

The saddle had been partly torn from its fittings. One strap remained. The others were cut, snapped, or missing. There was blood near the saddle. Too much to be reassuring. But there was no body.

We searched beneath the visible part of the dragon as far as we could without tools or enough men to shift her. Moondancer’s weight had crushed deep into the earth. If Baela had remained beneath her, there would be no simple way to see. If she had been thrown free, Ormund’s men might have taken her. If she had crawled away, wounded beyond sense, the forest had already had six days to hide the trail.

Landrey knelt near a patch of disturbed mud. "Boot marks," he said. "Several men. They came after the crash."

"Carrying something?"

"Perhaps. The ground is too damaged. There are drag lines near the broken wing, but those could be from clearing branches."

One of the Legion scouts found a strip of dark riding leather caught on a thorn. Baela’s. I held it for a moment, then folded it into my belt pouch. The search widened. We found no corpse. No clear trail of a living rider. No proof except the dead dragon and the blood around her saddle.

By every reasonable judgement, Baela was dead. Crushed beneath Moondancer or taken after dying from the fall. If Ormund had captured her alive, he had not announced it, and a royal hostage was too valuable to hide forever unless secrecy itself served some larger trap.

I ordered the men not to attempt moving Moondancer. We marked the clearing carefully and withdrew before Ormund’s patrols closed around us. Two arrows followed us near the forest edge. Neither struck. That felt like a mercy too small to celebrate.

Rhaenys learned before I returned to the keep.

News travelled through armies faster when everyone wanted to be the one carrying it. By the time I entered her chamber, she was standing in the centre of the room with two guards behind her and fury sharpened into purpose.

"You went without me."

"Yes, I led a scouting party."

"You found Moondancer."

"I found her dead on the forest floor."

"And Baela?"

"We found no body."

Her face changed instantly. Hope returned so quickly it was almost cruel to watch. "Then she may live."

"She may. We found blood near the saddle, damaged straps, and signs that Ormund’s men reached the site. Moondancer fell hard enough to crush trees. We could not search beneath her body without bringing equipment and more men into the clearing."

"But there was no corpse."

"No."

Rhaenys held that fact like a shield. "Then release me. If Baela was taken, we must demand her return."

"If Ormund has her alive, he will use her when it benefits him. Riding Meleys into the forest will not force him to place her where you can safely take her."

"I did not say I would ride into the forest."

"You have said it in every way except those exact words for a week."

She looked past me toward the guards. "You intend to keep me confined even now."

"Yes, even now."

"Othorion, if Baela is alive and hears that I remained behind walls while men searched in my place..."

"She will hear that you were prevented from turning the forest into ash while she might still have been inside it."

Rhaenys’s eyes filled then, though the tears did not fall. "You always have an answer."

"No. I have orders. Answers would be kinder."

She turned away from me.

The days of house arrest had worn against her more than she allowed others to see. She had stopped eating properly. She slept little. Every report from the forest reopened the fall. Yet the discovery of no body gave her new strength, and new strength made her harder to contain.

That night she attempted to leave again.

She waited until the guards changed, used her rank to order a young Beesbury man aside, and reached the lower stair before two Legion veterans blocked her path. She did not draw steel. She did not need to. Her voice alone made one of them look ready to step aside.

The other held. I was called from the command tent. When I reached her, Rhaenys stood beneath a torch with her cloak fastened and riding gloves on.

"You will return to your chamber," I said.

"I will walk to Meleys and see her. I have not seen my dragon in seven days."

"That is because Meleys would carry you wherever your grief pointed."

"She is suffering too."

"I know."

"You know nothing of that bond."

"Perhaps not. I know enough to see what it would do if I placed you beside her now."

Rhaenys looked at the guards. "Would you have them seize me?"

"No. I would stand here until you chose whether making loyal men lay hands upon a princess was worth proving that I should not trust you."

For several breaths, I thought she might choose exactly that. Then she removed one glove. Not in surrender. In exhaustion.

"I hate you for this," she said.

"I would prefer you alive enough to hate me later."

She returned to the chamber.

The guards watched her go with more relief than dignity permitted them to show.

By the seventh day, Ormund’s forest remained sealed in silence, but the first signs of pressure appeared. More men tried slipping through the southern paths in small groups. Two supply carts were intercepted carrying grain beneath sacks labelled as seed. A patrol captured six Hightower soldiers searching for cattle. One said their rations had been reduced. Another refused to speak. A third claimed Ormund meant to move soon.

I believed the last one, though perhaps not for the reason he intended.

The forest could not hold that many men indefinitely. Ormund had hidden well, struck our dragon, and forced me into a week of expensive caution. Soon he would have to choose whether to break south, attack Honeyholt again, or offer battle on ground outside the trees.

I could wait longer than he could. That was the advantage I held. It did not feel like one while Moondancer’s body lay among the trees and Baela remained missing beneath every possible answer.

A raven arrived near dusk.

It came from King’s Landing, bearing Rhaenyra’s black-and-red seal and a strip of blue thread tied around one leg. Daeron had apparently reached the capital safely. That should have been welcome news.

The expression of the maester who brought it told me the message carried something else. I broke the seal in Honeyholt’s battered hall while Rhaenys, Landrey, Grey Worm, and several officers watched.

The first lines were brief.

Daeron had landed under peace and sworn fealty to Rhaenyra before the council. Alicent, Helaena, and the twins had been granted greater freedom under guard in recognition of his submission. Tessarion now rested under royal authority near King’s Landing.

Then I read the remainder. For a moment, Ormund’s forest, Baela’s disappearance, and Honeyholt’s scarred walls seemed to recede. The news did not concern Oldtown. It did not concern Aegon.

Another part of the realm had split against itself. Banners had risen on opposing sides, blood had already been spilt, and two factions now claimed lawful authority over the same lands.

The first civil war had not yet reached its height.

A new one had just begun.