NOVEL NEXT Chapter 92: Interlude: Jon.
The sight froze Jon in place atop one of the southern towers. A freezing curdling of his throat, something indescribably heavy choking the life out of him. The Tower of Ghosts' fall was stately, a crumbling rod of black slashing down on his King. His friend. It smashed into Drogon's body as it spilled its guts over the courtyard, great plumes of dust and smoke skyrocketing up its sides. Rhaegal revealed itself mostly unharmed, a sinuous bronze-green serpent screeching skywards, slit eyes leering between the smoke.
Raw shock finished its journey, settling into Jon's belly like a lead weight. "The King!" someone screamed. "Treachery!!!" the cry rang across the courtyard.
His friend had just won the greatest trial by combat in westerosi history, and he'd been repaid with treachery most foul, a thousand tons of rubble his prize. By the will of the last of the Targeryens the monster below had just murdered his friend. It was that thought that brought him out of the shock, the weight turned to fire, black fury crisscrossing his spine as he raised his hand up as if possessed by a specter, his call resounding within Harren's Folly; "FOURTH REGIMENT!!!"
A wordless roar answered him back, banners snapping into the wind as poles were raised high, red 'IV's and King's Fists, a rippling wave of black and silver bursting out of towers and parapets, trapdoors slamming aside to reveal men riding a sea of screaming half-plate armor. Harrenhal heaved like a boiling anthill, bricks and windows detonating from the inside as the remaining great towers were pocked by gaping holes now filled by ballistas and siege stagrams brought forth by heaving men. Centurions hollered instructions as the walls were lined by crossbows and fire-spears, a bristling row of steel and plate and humanity surrounding the monster in the midst of the courtyard.
It reared in surprise, maw opening to reveal a fearsome array of bloody teeth, its screech filled with hate and loss and rage. It rebounded against the walls, a full-powered challenge delivered by lungs made for fire-breathing, a hair-raising screech Jon understood all too well. It too felt the loss if its liege. It too wanted bloody revenge.
Jon could bloody well give it revenge. He slashed his hand down with a brutal heave. "FIRE!!!"
Stagrams ignited with fizzling screams, stubby-looking warheads tearing out of their carriages like devils on the loose. They exploded around Rhaegal's position in great plumes of fire and dirt, the beast moving across the courtyard in great leaps as it tried to get airborne. Ballista bolts rained from the smaller towers, steel reaping bloody gnashed down its flank even as most bounced against impossibly strong scales. Rhaegal was stunned by the explosions, its course frantic and unsteady as it absorbed the concentrated pummeling of the Royal Guard of Westeros avenging their liege.
"Send what's left of the Fourth Cohort to dig up the King!" Jon said before he slid down the wooden ladder, reaching the wall and sprinting between the line of shooting crossbowmen. He looked for Rhaegal between the blurred crenellations, mirroring his direction as he tapped shoulders and shouted as loud as he could. "Shoot the wings! Crossbows! Shoot the wings!!!" he said, eyes watering under the acrid smoke of leaping fire-spears.
Crossbow bolts and serrated spears peppered Rhaegal's wings as it made its way through the courtyard, each hit tearing a tiny hole on its wings as Jon's men shot the dragon down with relentless precision, a synchronized cadence of steel and fire. Its flapping turned desperate, its leap for the sky reaching; almost halfway up from the height of the walls a stagram hit it squarely in the back, Jon shading his eyes from the bright explosion. It went down in a tumble of flesh and smoke and leaping dirt, a revolving mess of limbs and wing that settled to a stop not far from Jon's position.
"Harpoons!" he roared, "Harpoons to the fore!"
The towers nearer the dragon opened to reveal centuries of men sprinting as fast as they could, carrying 'firepoons' and trailing long lines of rope. They reached the dragon from both sides, three men teams pulling levers and igniting the charges at the back end of their devices, streaking lines of steel emerging from their tubes and piercing the dragon's wings.
"Now!" bellowed the siegemaster by the tower next to him. Great counterweights of tied brick and rubble descended from the top of the tower, slammed to a halt as the lines grew taut and Rhaegal was smacked sideways before it could regain its bearing. The opposite tower by the north did likewise, ropes in that direction snapping straight and leaving Rhaegal splayed like the flayed man of House Bolton. It's harrowing screech made the men around Jon cover their ears, eyes wild under the relentless pressure.
Jon assessed the damage, unaffected by the screech as he noted the caved flesh on its back. Ballistas marginally effective, siege stagrams can do it but it'll take too long. The damned things were too imprecise; he couldn't rely on another hit before the beast tore free and scuttled over the wall. They had to swarm it before it broke loose. This is going to turn bloody. Jon turned to the hornbearer next to the centurion behind him, "Pike teams, go!" he said.
"Pike teams go, aye sir!" said the wide-eyed man, trumpeting the order as the centurion next to him kept directing his section of crossbowmen. They were still shooting with desperate haste and achieving little more than enraging it further and tearing up more of its wings.
Jon grit his teeth as he leaned on the jagged remains of a crenellation, surveying the squads of pikemen making their way to the dragon from all sides. "For the King!" bellowed the leading centurions, "Westeros!" roared the standard bearers, silver lions and king's fists and bloody 'IV's snapping in the wind before Rhaegal hissed fiery defiance. Scores of guardsmen turned to sprinting torches in the span of seconds, their screams mingling with the battlecries and tearing at Jon's chest. Men blew back under Rhaegal's pressurized fire-breath, banners burning to a crisp and pikes blowing apart, but for every man that fell another one took its place, fluttering silver lion's peaking over the smoke before revealing a line of charging steel. "Westeros!" they roared before slamming into Rhaegal from all sides, pikes tearing up bloody holes on its sides and its neck, those that could aiming for its head. The last of the living dragons soon resembled nothing more than an enraged pincushion, three men teams slamming pikes against it like battering rams.
"They're not doing enough damage," whispered Jon, ice clutching his throat as Rhaegal tossed and turned, its snapping maw an unpredictable death sentence as it coiled about using its long reach to pluck the men who least expected it. It snapped chests in half like a seamstress cutting a new dress, steel plate doing nothing to stop the bloody carnage as soldiers sought to pin it down with all-bodied heaves. They were reaping a bloodier toll than the ballistae, but not fast enough.
Someone made way between him and the guardsman holding the Fourth Regiment's battlebanner by his side, grabbing him by the shoulder. "Jon!" yelled Edmure, clutching a bastard sword and looking ill, "Where's the King?"
"Under that tower!" he said, "Tribune Delyn's men are trying to dig him up." He only hoped he was still alive under all that rubble… him and half the Fourth Cohort.
"What can we do to help?!"
Jon blinked at the young Lord Paramount, a gaggle of Riverlander knights at his back. What the hells? "How many men?!" he said, crossbows ringing in his ears.
"Two score. The rest left." His smile was broken, "The antlered lion I'm not."
Jon nodded. Edmure Tully's brief paramountcy over the Riverlands had reaped a bounty of malicious whispers and half-followed orders, only his late father's most loyal bannermen following his lead. It will have to do, "Get down and grab pikes, you're in the next wave!"
He turned paler still, but nodded all the same. The rattling counterweights were growing strained, smacking to and fro as ropes sizzled under the friction and Jon turned towards Rhaegal. The dragon burned another century of guardsmen, fire cooking off more of the ropes by the far side. They won't hold, he realized in dread certainty. "Harpoons!" he said, lifting his arms to the tower by the other side of the courtyard, "Harpoons! Second wave now!"
Rhaegal sprayed fire upon them before the men were halfway there, guardsmen blowing apart as their firepoon's exploded in their hands. The rest of the ropes by the far side were shred to bits, and Jon heard the counterweights by his side reel without end. Gods, he thought as Rhaegal was pulled by the wing, right towards them as it skidded over the ground like a dragged toy. The dragon grew and grew before the ropes turned lax and the counterweights slammed against the ground by the other side, but the sheer momentum behind Rhaegal carried it the rest of the way. It slammed the wall right between his position and the tower, the impact tossing men off their feet and down the walls.
Jon managed to stand up to the sight of a dragon half-splayed against the wall, using its broken wings to scuttle the rest of the way up. They couldn't let it escape and wreak havoc upon the countryside. Not after today. Not after Joffrey. "Halberds!" he screamed, storming around for anyone who could stand. "Guardsmen! Grab what weapons you can!!!"
Edmure eyed the dragon as it laboriously made the rest of the way up the wall, almost reaching the crenellations, his sword held up. "Riverlanders! To me! To me!!!"
Jon grabbed the hornbearer by the cuff of his neck, "Sound Charge! Do it now!"
"Charge, a-aye Legate," said the guardsman, breathing in as much air as he could as Jon's frenzied search for a polearm left him with the First Cohort's battlebanner; a long poleaxe with the Regimental banner at the end. Rhaegal had reached the top of the wall.
The call cut through the warbled sounds of battle, a high-pitched beat that rang with the Song, guardsmen and Riverlanders with swords and axes transfixed by the sound. "Fourth Regiment!" roared Jon, blood-red 'IV' flapping from the end of his poleaxe. "For Westeros!"
"Westeros!" said Edmure, right by his side as they charged the dragon atop the wide walls of Harrenhal. It turned its head groggily, blood pouring out its mouth before it opened to reveal fire. The blast of searing heat washed above them, lesser in strength but still blasting men out of the wall and tearing ranks of charging soldiers into screaming blazes, but then they were upon him and the hour of steel dawned.
It was like fighting a bronze mountain, no, a volcano that shifted and stomped, fire and claws tearing men apart as they climbed atop it however they could, halberds and axes flashing under the high-risen sun. Any semblance of tactics faded under that heat-stroked haze, a primal battle of man against beast, a tribe against a monster. Edmure rammed his sword straight into Rhaegar's opened gob, blood fountaining over him before its jaw snapped shut and he stumbled back looking at his stump in confusion. The beast collapsed sideways, a tide of humanity half-swarming it under a rain of sweat and steel.
Jon stood atop that fallen mountain, over its head with the battlebanner held high. Slit yellow eyes looked up at him, and he felt something call deep within him; a keening bond that sung in his veins, a plea and a bargain that smelled of blood, smoke, and fire.
This one was for Lancel.
"Blood and Mud!!!" he roared as he nailed back end of the battlebanner right through its eye, a choking screech tearing its way out of Rhaegal's spasm-ridden body. Its rattle was short lived, muscles uncoiling as its head collapsed atop a crenellation, the banner of the Fourth Regiment flying wide from the pole stuck to its skull; a torn and singed 'IV' held aloft by Autumn's Kiss.