ARC III: THE AWAKENING OF THE DRAGONS AND THE WAR OF THE EMPIRE
Chapter 46: Petyr's Mistake
POV: Petyr Baelish (303 AC)
A single mistake. Just a millimetric slip, an imperceptible miscalculation at the base of a monumental structure. That is all it takes for the meticulous work of an entire lifetime to be reduced to ashes and absolute ruin.
For more than two decades, I operated in the shadows of Westeros with the precision of a master watchmaker. I moved from coin to coin, from whisper to whisper, ascending from the barren and insignificant rocks of the Fingers to the financial heart of the realm as the Master of Coin of the Iron Throne. I learned to buy the right people at the exact moments, to manipulate the crown's account books to create phantom debts, and to silently eliminate any political obstacle that dared to cross my dynastic path—whether it was an honorable lord like Jon Arryn or any meddlesome bureaucrat from the capital. I had designed the board. I had scattered the pieces. Everything was perfectly aligned for me to reach the absolute pinnacle of power.
And now, after so much intellectual effort, after so many masterly moves in the darkness, a single error of information was enough to collapse my impiero of influence.
No matter how much my pride tries to resist the humiliation, I am forced to admit to myself that I should have listened to the whispered warnings of that wretched eunuch. Varys, with his disgusting web of little birds, seemed to understand the board better than I did in this specific move, and he had warned me many years ago. The exact instant the first dark banners bearing the direwolf of the North appeared on the horizon of the Riverlands, the Spider simply vanished from the map in an incomprehensible manner. He did not try to bargain, he did not try to sell secrets; he merely fled like a rat sensing an imminent shipwreck. Varys knew perfectly well that the board would not be reorganized, but rather turned upside down by a relentless force.
The avassalador speed with which this military campaign advanced through the lands of the South was something that caught me completely unprotected, shattering all of my logistical forecasts. I gravely underestimated the strength and the reach of the North. Our intelligence information was always scarce and outdated, with the few real data we possessed about their military power being based on the reports of the festive tournament held right after the Greyjoy Rebellion, ten years ago.
What fools we were. Now it was clear that the Northmen had deliberately held back in that competition, not showing even half of their true mystical and warfare capabilities—and that camouflaged half was already enough to terrify the southern lords. Or perhaps, what seemed even more likely and disturbing to me, their damned Emperor Arawyn Stark spent the entire past decade improving and refining his accursed runic matrixes in the darkness of Winterfell, raising his army to a level of divine power. The real cause mattered not. A political plan drawn on the basis of entirely wrong information is already irremediably doomed to end in the worst possible way.
My grand plans to utilize the military power of the Vale of Arryn and manipulate the fragile mind of Lysa Arryn became completely useless. What good were the twenty thousand knights of the Vale to me if the entirety of their heavy cavalry was obliterated and disintegrated by King Robb Stark's shield wall on the High Road? The emergency plan to use the naval fleet to ensure an escape route or a counter-attack also collapsed; the imperial armies and the Iron Fleet commanded by Rodrik Harlaw already control our land gates and have locked down our sea absolutely. King's Landing was cornered in an iron throat.
To make matters worse for my private council, our supposed institutional allies had long since cowered in the face of imminent danger. The High Septon and his court of fat septons locked themselves in the depths of the Great Sept of Baelor, praying to the Seven for a salvation that would never come and refusing to offer any financial or moral support for the defense of the city.
Even Lord Hoster Tully, who had been spending his last remnants of political energy trying to fix the Southern alliances from his sickbed, was now in bed with one foot in the grave, coughing up blood and devoid of any real authority. His last official order, issued in a moment of despair and belated lucidity, was to immediately remove Eddard Stark from the dungeons of the Red Keep, seeking to free him to try to bargain for some mystical clemency or an armistice with the Empire of the North. But even this late move was ruined by the blind obstinacy of his own daughter. Catelyn Tully feigned accepting her dying father's order in front of the lords, but in the gloom of the dungeons, flatly refused to free the wolf, keeping him chained in the deep darkness.
Everything I tried to architect went wrong in this damned war. Even the elite mercenaries I hired at the weight of gold from across the Narrow Sea failed to meet their logistical deadlines. They did not arrive in time to reinforce our walls or, what my analytical mind considered even more likely, they are deliberately stalling their arrival upon discovering the real power of the runic army of Winter. It was a conduct I never imagined witnessing from the legendary and contractually impeccable Golden Company. They had broken their word for the first time, simply because the dread of facing Arawyn Stark outweighed the value of any chest full of gold dragons that I stole from the Lannisters.
I stepped away from the side of one of the great marble columns and saw Catelyn Tully leave the interior of the sept in a fury. Her once aristocratic features were contorted in an expression of pure hatred and frustration. She had spent the last two hours trying, by every possible means, to convince the High Septon to declare an official Holy War against the North, demanding that the Faith arm the thousands of faithful and make them march in a human wall of fanaticism against the runic armies waiting outside the walls. The high priest, however, had demonstrated a cowardly wisdom, knowing that the swarms of Prince Tommen and the enchanted blades of the Starks would turn the faithful into nothing more than a pile of minced meat within minutes.
Before Catelyn could utter any word of complaint in my direction, the thunderous, sharp, and metallic sound of an enemy trumpet echoed from outside the city walls, making the ground beneath our boots vibrate slightly.
The final attack had begun.
"— It is time to put my escape plans into practice, Cat... —" I murmured in a low voice, gripping her firmly by the forearm and pulling her away from the retinue of septons. "— The city is lost. I have not the slightest intention of remaining in this hall to deliver my head on a silver platter to the damned Starks. We will find a way to escape through one of the secret harbor routes, and I will take you with me far away from this disaster."
I hurriedly led Catelyn out of the sept premises and we got into a discreet black carriage, which began to advance rapidly through the chaotic streets toward the relative safety of the Red Keep. The screams of terror from the civilian population mingled with the sound of horses' hooves against the cobblestones.
Suddenly, a colossal and deafening crash shook the entirety of King's Landing. The impact was so violent that the glass windows of our carriage shattered into thousands of pieces. I threw my body over Catelyn's to protect her from the shards and glanced through the side opening of the cabin, directing my gaze toward the King's Gate.
What my eyes witnessed was a scene of pure supernatural horror. An immense column of dense smoke and flames of a brilliant, greenish fire rose toward the heavens, consuming the entirety of the gate's structure and melting the iron as if it were hot wax.
I sat completely paralyzed inside the carriage, my mind entering a logical short-circuit.
*Wildfire... why on earth would the Starks use wildfire against us?* The logic made absolutely no sense. The Empire of the North possessed runic cannons, elemental sorcery, and warriors modified with magic in their flesh; they had not the slightest need to resort to the unstable and obsolete mixtures of the Southern alchemists to tear a breach in our defenses.
In the next second, a gélid and violent shiver ran up my spine, making the hairs on my arms stand up. My mind, always accustomed to connecting the deepest secrets of the realm, finally deciphered the enigma of that emerald inferno. My train of thought did not fixate on the Stark forces outside, but rather on the ghostly figure of the Mad King, Aerys II, and his last Hand of the King, the pyromancer Rossart.
For thirteen long years, the entirety of Westeros's aristocracy and the lords of the great houses had mocked and spat upon the name of Jaime Lannister, rotulando-o as an abominable oathbreaker and a kingslayer devoid of any shred of honor for having driven his sword into the back of the monarch he was supposed to defend. I myself spent years wondering internally about the true motive behind that sudden act; after all, it was perfectly clear to my intelligence that Jaime had not acted under the explicit orders of his father, Tywin, since the Lord of Casterly Rock was still sacking the city gates when the king was killed. Jaime had acted on his own.
Looking now at the apocalyptic devastation caused by that single, accidental underground explosion at the King's Gate—detonated purely by the impact of runic projectiles that triggered the hidden caches—the naked, raw truth slapped me across the face. *I finally know...* — I thought, dread leaving me breathless.
The Mad King had scattered thousands of barrels of that accursed substance under every street, every sept, every gate, and every dwelling in King's Landing. He intended to burn the entirety of the capital with his own people inside so as not to hand over anything to the rebels in the past. Jaime Lannister had not killed the king out of political ambition or loyalty to his father; he had assassinated him to prevent Rossart from springing the traps and turning the city into an immense human crematorium. The greatest irony in all the history of Westeros lay in the fact that the Kingslayer's most infamous and repudiated act was, in truth, the secret salvation of half a million innocent souls.
The carriage continued to tear its path toward the Red Keep, narrowly avoiding the debris and the bodies of soldiers who were beginning to retreat in a widespread rout. Catelyn remained huddled beside me, her once haughty blue eyes now exhibiting the glassy stare of a mind beginning to break under the weight of reality.
Suddenly, cutting through the clamor of secondary explosions and the screams of agony from the defenders on the walls, a monumental, long, and terrifyingly wild howl echoed from the eastern limits of the city. The sound was so absurdly loud and laden with an ancestral mystical energy that it seemed to have been been born from the very throat of an old god.
In the next second, that first call was answered in unison. Dozens of other colossal howls echoed from all directions of the northern and southern walls, creating a symphony of canine terror that drowned out the noise of the war drums.
Even with the afternoon sun shining in the sky of Westeros, a sensation of deep and cold darkness seemed to physically descend upon the rooftops of King's Landing. I looked at Catelyn and then clutched my own neck with a trembling hand, primitive dread taking total control of my thoughts. My brilliant mind understood the warning of the Old Gods. The lighting of the day mattered not; the **Hour of the Wolf** had definitively arrived to collect the blood debts of the South. And I needed to ensure, at any political or moral cost, that my own neck did not end up crushed between the relentless fangs of the Winter Throne.
Author's thoughts:
Well, the next chapter will seal Catelyn's fate—I'm still deciding, but I'm leaning more towards having her meet the gods she is so devoted to.