Chapter 114: Racing the Wolf
ULF
The village was dark when Ulf rode in, Silverwing coming down onto the shingle with a noise like a slow landslide, the fishing boats knocking at their moorings and every cottage window shuttered against the sea wind. He'd come straight from the war council and his leathers still carried the tallow smoke of the tent. Dawn assault. Dual dragons. A city that would burn before it bent. The orders were on the roads already, carried by men who would never see his face. One last visit before the steel met stone.
The path up from the beach stank of tar and drying nets. Behind him Silverwing folded herself down among the overturned boats and went quiet, and the villagers, who'd had two months to get used to a dragon on their strand, stayed behind their doors anyway.
Dalla's shutters showed a seam of firelight. Inside, the hearth was banked low and Jaehaera sat at the table with a bowl of mussels she wasn't eating, while Dalla stood behind her and worked her hair into a braid, talking about nothing at all. Which nets wanted mending. What oil cost in Duskendale now. Whether crabs slept. The talk wasn't for the girl. It was for the room, and for the basket by the fire where Aegon lay with one fist against his cheek, because a frightened room woke him and a woken baby cried and sound carried a long way over water.
"You smell like burning," Jaehaera said, without turning around.
"Lamps," Ulf said.
"Maelor asked whether the sky can fall on a house." She set one mussel shell on top of another, squared the edges, and looked at them. "I told him no. Was that right?"
"That was right."
Dalla's hands didn't stop moving. "They've both had their supper," she said, "and the little one will sleep till the tide turns, if the yard stays quiet." Her eyes came up once, and went back down to the braid. It was as close to an instruction as she'd ever give him.
Helaena was waiting in the doorway across the yard. She didn't ask if he was leaving. She didn't ask if he'd come back. She stepped into his arms and held on hard enough to hurt.
"Tomorrow," she said against his chest. Her voice came out level. Her hands shook against his back, and that was the only part of her that would admit anything. "The city falls tomorrow. I've seen it. Not in a vision, in you. The way you prepare. How you refuse to leave anything to chance."
"The plan is solid. Cole's ground forces are positioned. Stokeworth's tunnel is mapped. By this time tomorrow, Rhaenyra will be in chains and you'll be riding through the city gates." He took her face in both hands. The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the mother of his children, the woman who'd seen him at his worst and chosen him anyway. "Stay hidden. Keep the children close. Aegon stays with Dalla. No one outside this village knows he exists. When it's done, I'll send word."
"And if the word doesn't come?"
"Then you don't wait for it. You take the boats out on the night tide and you go north, and I'll find you."
She was quiet a moment. "The gulls went inland this evening," she said. "All of them at once, before the light went. I don't know what it means. It might not mean anything."
"It might not."
"I know." She kissed him, once, brief and fierce. "Come back. Not for the realm. Not for the crown. For me. For the children. Come back."
"Always."
He heard what he hadn't said. She heard it too, and didn't make him say it, and let him go.
Jaehaerys was waiting at the garden wall. He'd dressed himself in the leather tunic Dalla had made him, the one he wore when he wanted to feel like a soldier instead of a child, and his wooden practice sword was clutched in both hands. He'd carried that sword since the day he'd learned he was a king. His face was blotched red and his jaw was working.
"I want to fight," he said. "I've been training. You've seen me train, every day, every drill, every form you taught me. I can hold a blade. I can follow orders. I'm not a child anymore."
"You're seven years old," Ulf said.
"I'm the *king*." The word came out fierce, trembling. "My mother rules in my name until I'm old enough. But how am I supposed to become old enough if you keep treating me like I'm still in the nursery? How am I supposed to prove I'm worthy of the crown if you won't let me fight for it?"
Ulf knelt to meet his eyes. Behind the boy, in the cottage window, Helaena stood still and silent and did not come out.
"You're right," Ulf said. "You're not a child anymore. A child wouldn't ask to fight. A child wouldn't understand what's at stake. But you're also not a soldier, not yet. And sending you into battle before you're ready isn't courage. It's waste."
"So I just stay here? Hiding in a fishing village while you and Cole and everyone else—"
"You guard the family." Ulf stood close, and felt the boy lock rigid at the words. "Your mother. Your sister. Your brother Maelor. Aegon, in Dalla's cottage. They're the reason we're fighting. They're the whole point of everything we've done since the city burned. And someone has to protect them while I'm in the sky."
"That's not fighting. That's waiting."
"That's the most important job in this war. And I'm trusting you with it." Ulf held his eyes. "You're the only one I can trust. You're the king. They're your subjects. Protect them."
Jaehaerys stared at him. The fury hadn't gone anywhere. It sat behind his eyes, banked like the fire in Dalla's hearth, and under it there was something slower that would take him years to name.
"Fine," the boy said. Flat, the word bitten off. "I'll guard the family. But when I'm old enough, when I'm *ready*, you won't stop me."
"When you're ready, I'll hand you the sword myself."
Jaehaerys turned and walked back toward the cottage without a word, the wooden blade dragging point-down through the dirt behind him, his shoulders squared against a weight he was too young to carry. He didn't look back once. He stayed on one knee in the cold until the door shut.
The rider came down the village track while Ulf was getting a boot up onto Silverwing's foreleg. His horse was blown, flanks steaming in the salt air, and he didn't dismount to speak.
"North Road, ser. Stark's van is closer than the last count put them. Not days. Hours, if he marches through the night, and he's been marching through the night."
"How many hours?"
"Ten. Twelve. Fewer, if the roads stay hard."
"Ride to Cole," Ulf said. "Tell him the hour stands. Tell him nothing after it does."
He put Silverwing into the air off the shingle, one heave and the beach falling away, wind cutting through his riding leathers and coming out the other side. Behind him the village went dark cottage by cottage, until only Dalla's candle was left in her window, and the boats creaked and the tide came in over the stones where the dragon had been standing. Ahead, past the black water, the city stood against the stars: the Dragonpit's broken towers, the blunt shoulder of the Red Keep, torchlight crawling along the wall walks where Rhaenyra's watch changed at the third hour, none of it knowing what the sun was bringing.
He'd left a boy holding a wooden sword and a duty he hadn't wanted. That would come due. It could come due later. Ulf leaned down along Silverwing's neck until the cold came off the bay hard enough to sting his eyes, and let her run for the camp.