Lord Daeron Qoherys was fifty-six years old this year.
Time had stripped away the good looks of his youth, leaving him with a soft, rounded belly and eyes that grew dimmer by the year.
Only his short silver hair, now shot through with grey, still kept something of its old shine.
In Quentyn’s eyes, his father had never been a particularly brave man.
He wasn’t even a knight.
Compared to sword and bow and horse, Daeron much preferred books, good food, a quill pen, and inspecting the stonework of the Wailing Tower and the Widow’s Tower.
After marrying Princess Valera, his father had thrown himself into family life completely.
Unfortunately, his mother had struggled for years to conceive, and it wasn’t until she was thirty-five that she first felt a child quicken inside her.
But whatever brother or sister Quentyn might have had never came into the world.
An accidental fall left Quentyn as the family’s eldest, and only, child.
Both Daeron and Valera doted endlessly on the son they’d had so late, past forty themselves.
It was, in fact, exactly the kind of unconditional indulgence that had let Quentyn freely experiment with the doors inside his own mind.
“My lord Daeron, if I may speak plainly.”
Maester Sven sighed and rolled the letter closed.
“You are Lord Butterwell’s own liege lord.
You ought, at the very least, to send out a few knights, if only to show your authority.
Trust me, the moment your knights ride out beneath your banner and the princess’s, every hired sword in every inn, every farmboy in every field, will take up arms and follow behind them.
In no time at all, you could have several hundred men gathered, perhaps even a thousand.
Even the landed knights unwilling to leave their own estates would fall in line quickly enough.
And it wouldn’t cost you a single copper.”
“I know…”
Lord Daeron pressed a hand to his forehead, pained.
“But what if the rebels launch a surprise attack on Harrenhal itself?
You know as well as I do, we only hold two towers, and Harrenhal’s garrison numbers only four hundred men.
Kingspyre Tower’s well enough defended, but if the rebels came creeping in through the Tower of Ghosts…
I have to protect my mother and my wife.”
On this one point, at least, Ser Merry of Merryton Vale had been mistaken.
Even reduced to its current straits, House Qoherys still kept twenty-five sworn knights and an equal number of mounted squires, two hundred elite crossbowmen trained personally by old Lord Aenys, and a hundred and fifty armored foot soldiers who had gathered in from the surrounding villages once the rebellion broke out, enough to keep the two occupied towers sealed tight against any attack.
“My mother and I can protect ourselves.”
Valera came down the somewhat twisted black staircase.
She was a year younger than Daeron, her long silver hair pinned up into a high knot, a slender sword hanging at her waist, produced from who knew where.
“Daeron, Maester Sven is right.
We could abandon the Widow’s Tower for now and consolidate everyone in the Wailing Tower.
That would free up a few knights to spare.”
“No.”
Daeron said, somewhat agitated, “Valera, listen to me.
Back when my own father faced enemies pouring into the Wailing Tower, my mother had to fight with a crossbow in her own hands.
I won’t have either of you go through that again.
So this time, just listen to me.
His Grace is bound to send a dragon to help soon enough.
From King’s Landing to Harrenhal, a dragon needs only a few hours…”
“But it’s already been days.”
Valera cupped her husband’s face in her hands, her fingers tracing the lines etched into it, before her hand fell, somewhat listlessly, back to her side.
“My brother is sixty years old now.
He may well be past fighting on dragonback at all…
and my nephew…”
Just then, a sudden commotion rose up outside the door.
Daeron pulled Valera behind him at once and reached, hands shaking, to draw the sword at his own hip, but whether from being too long out of practice or some other reason, the blade stuck fast in its scabbard.
“Father.
I’m back.”
Quentyn pushed the door open, with Robb behind him, and Garwyn with his two fighters close on his heels.
“Quenny!” Daeron cried out in alarm.
“Why have you come back?
Why would you come back?”
“For the family.” Quentyn set his satchel aside.
“Robb, go fetch my armor.”
The boy turned to face his parents.
If we can’t come to the aid of our own bannermen, what will everyone else think of us?”
“I don’t care what everyone else thinks.” Daeron said, growing frantic.
“Robb, come back here.”
“Now that you’re back, you’re staying put in this castle, and going nowhere.” Daeron put on his fiercest face, gripping the hilt of his sword.
“If you so much as try to run off, I’ll break both your legs.”
“I healed Daemon’s broken leg.” Quentyn knew this was simply his father’s own love speaking.
“So go ahead and break mine if you want.
Even if you do, I’ll be back on my feet in no time.”
“No.” Valera pulled her son into a fierce embrace without a moment’s hesitation.
Quentyn felt nothing but warmth wash over him, though he now stood taller than his own mother.
Valera had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“I absolutely will not allow you to risk your life, Quenny.
The battlefield is far too dangerous.
You’re still a child.
What if…
what if…
your mother is so afraid…”
As she spoke, Valera’s voice caught in her throat.
“I know, Mother.” Quentyn said gently, comforting her, his eyes turning to his father.
“But this has to be done.
Father, if House Qoherys can’t protect its own bannermen, people will start to wonder whether we’ve gone into decline.
The other lords will start to look down on us, our own bannermen will think us weak, and slowly, they’ll drift away from us.
And when that happens, we’ll have nothing left at all.”
“When I say no, I mean no.” Daeron was unyielding.
“You’re my only son.
If anything happened to you, House Qoherys would be finished on the spot.
As for what everyone else thinks, let them think whatever they like.”
“Be a good boy, Quenny, and listen to your father.”
Valera, entirely at her wit’s end by now, grabbed hold of her son’s arm at once, though she seemed to worry she might grip too hard and hurt him, drawing her hand back until she was only holding onto the fabric of his sleeve.
“Listen to me, Father.
On my way back, I already worked out the rebels’ true strength.
They number fewer than three hundred, with only four properly equipped brigand knights among them, and three of those four have nothing more than simple mail and unbred horses.
What they’ve relied on is catching Lord Brynden completely off guard, and then using the terrain and ambushes to beat Lord Osmund’s men.”
Quentyn laid out the situation calmly.
“The rebels are camped carelessly right outside Milkstone as we speak, splitting off small parties to raid the villages around them.
They’ve grown proud enough to forget we’re even a threat.
This is the best chance we’ll get.
Our own knights have plate armor and warhorses, the finest equipment there is.
All we need to do is bypass the ground the rebels know so well, strike from surprise, and we can win this in a single blow.
And as it happens, we have ships.
We can come around by way of the God’s Eye and hit the rebels from behind.
Trust me, there are still old men living along the God’s Eye who lived through Maegor’s own wars, and the intelligence they’ve brought me is solid.
We can win this.”
Quentyn knew his mother had never been one to hold firm opinions of her own, but his father, soft-spoken as he was, was stubborn as an old mule.
By now, Robb had already dragged Quentyn’s armor over, straining under its weight, with the elderly man responsible for guarding it hurrying along behind him, unsure whether to scold him or let him be, and could only shoot Daeron a pleading, helpless look.
By this point, servants and knights, drawn by the commotion Quentyn had caused, were streaming toward the Raven Tower from every direction.
“Sebaston, take my lord back to his room to rest.” Daeron shouted the moment he spotted the castle’s master-at-arms, Sebaston, appear below.
“Don’t let him out again without my say-so.”
“Hogen, stop Master Sebaston.” Quentyn said, “Father, this is the best chance we’ll get to prove House Qoherys’s own strength, and to lay a solid foundation for everything that comes after.
And I can promise you, my own safety is well in hand!”
Quentyn said this without so much as turning his head, his eyes still fixed on his father.
“For an eagle to grow, it first has to break its own beak and claws, and tear out its own feathers.
Father, there’s no such thing as a feast that falls from the sky.
Once we’ve devoured this rebellion, we’ll grow new claws and new wings of our own soon enough.”
Ser Sebaston, hearing this, had only just started up the stairs when a silver-haired boy blocked his path.
He was a lean, wiry boy, his short silver hair cut clean and close, a fierce glint flashing in eyes of violet, his bronzed skin stretched over lean, corded muscle, making him look dangerous in a way that was hard to miss.
Fourteen-year-old Hogen was Quentyn’s own milk-brother.
Beyond that bond, he was also part of the retinue Quentyn’s grandmother Agatha had brought with her as part of her own household, descended from a Qohorik horseman of Valyrian blood.
Hogen had grown up alongside Quentyn ever since.
This quiet boy lived by exactly one principle.
Whatever Quentyn said, he did.
“Son, a boy has to grow up sometime.” Right in the middle of the standoff, an old voice drifted up from below.
“I dreamed of a bone-white dragon breaking through the waves of the great lake, fire for its flesh and blood, steel for its claws and fangs, swallowing whole the wicked wolf that hunted the cattle.
And I dreamed too of a moon-silver dragon resting in the woods, crowned with a diadem of white bone, pale and blood-red both.”
“Mother!”
A flicker of panic crossed Daeron’s face.
He hurried toward the Raven Tower’s entrance, where Hogen still blocked the narrow staircase, holding the high ground and leaving Harrenhal’s master-at-arms, Sebaston Mudd, caught with nowhere to go.
Below, the servants parted to clear a path, and Quentyn’s own old nurse, Reyla, slowly wheeled a weirwood chair into view, under the servants’ visibly awed gazes.
“Ha.
I really am getting foolish in my old age, trying to guide my darling little Quenny with nothing more than an idle dream.”
Lady Agatha said, with a self-deprecating laugh.
Quentyn’s grandmother was a sharp, shrewd old woman, her grey-streaked hair pinned up in the high style Westerosi noblewomen favored, wearing no jewelry to speak of, only a long, flower-patterned gown in black and red, a thick blanket draped over her legs.
She was nearing eighty now, a lifetime of wisdom etched into the lines of her face, yet in her amethyst-colored eyes there wasn’t a trace of an old woman’s fog.
If anything, she seemed sharper and more vital than sixty-year-old King Jaehaerys himself.
“Mother, why have you come all the way up here?” Daeron tried to push past Hogen to reach her, but the boy stood fixed in the stairwell like a tall, narrow post driven into the ground, and Daeron, to his own surprise, couldn’t budge him an inch.
Quentyn said nothing.
He only looked at his grandmother.
The dream Lady Agatha had described sent a jolt through him, and an absurd thought suddenly took shape in his mind.
Is my grandmother a dreamwalker?
No, that couldn’t be right.
As he recalled it, the source material only ever attributed prophetic dreaming to two possible origins.
The first was among Targaryens of true dragon blood, where a rare few emerged with the gift of “dragon dreams,” the most famous being Daenys Targaryen, “the Dreamer,” who had foreseen the Doom of Valyria itself.
Later, in the source material, “the Drunkard” Daeron and Daenerys, Mother of Dragons, had both shown flashes of the same gift.
The second was the green sight belonging to the greenseers, servants of the Old Gods.
The clearest example there was the little soothsayer Jojen Reed, two hundred-odd years in the future, and Bran, whose own power was still slowly awakening.
When Quentyn was young, his grandmother had only ever shown him her vast store of knowledge.
She had never once claimed any gift for prophetic dreaming…
Whatever the case, better to make a note of this for now.
Quentyn quietly filed his grandmother’s strange behavior away in his mind.
“I’ve come to see just how my fool of a son plans to lose everything his own father worked to build.”
Agatha shot Daeron an exasperated glare, then turned to Master-at-Arms Sebaston.
“Young Mudd.
Come give me a hand.”
“As you wish, my lady.” Master Sebaston backed down the stairs and, together with Nurse Reyla, lifted Agatha’s chair between them.
“All right, child, step aside now.” Lady Agatha looked up at Hogen, narrowing her eyes to slits.
As the oldest woman living at Harrenhal, she had watched every single soul in this ruined city grow up before her own eyes.
Hogen glanced back at Quentyn.
Quentyn nodded, and Hogen took the chair from Nurse Reyla’s hands at once, helping Master Sebaston carry Lady Agatha up into the Raven Tower.
This left the already cramped Raven Tower more crowded still.
“Quenny.
Tell your foolish father what he ought to be doing.”
Lady Agatha looked at her meek, hesitant son, gave his head a light, exasperated poke, as though despairing that he’d never live up to her hopes, and only then reached out both hands, her face full of warmth.
Quentyn stepped forward at once and crouched down halfway, letting his grandmother cup his face in her hands.
“We are the liege lords of the God’s Eye.
It’s only right that we send men to protect our bannermen’s interests.
But that’s only the reason on the surface.”
Quentyn let his grandmother stroke his cheek a moment longer before straightening back up.
“Father, the Conqueror granted us Harrenhal for one purpose: to serve as the Crown’s western bulwark, to balance the crownlands’ power against the Riverlands on the Crown’s behalf.
More than that, we are Valyrians, blood kin to the royal house itself.
In a very real sense, we represent the Crown here.”
Knowing his father was simply weak-willed and indecisive by nature, Quentyn decided to press the point home.
“And besides, it should have been House Qoherys marching to House Butterwell’s aid, but instead it’s House Strong who’s taken the field.
What will the other great houses think of that?
What will House Strong itself think?
Father, don’t forget, House Strong’s deference to us has only ever been skin deep.”
At this, Quentyn’s tone turned cold.
“You don’t want to see our family’s own lands fall apart, do you?”