Chapter 25: The Death of a King


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We have arrived in Darkmoor and joined with the forces of The Vale. With some 25,000 men now under my command I am well placed to take the fight to Jarl and finally push back this menace. I wonder idly how long it was since such a large force was assembled for a Targaryen. My mother’s conquest of The Reach, I think?

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As we move to engage Jarl’s army I am brought word from King’s Landing. We have a daughter, whom Visenya has named Cyaena, a good name. With news of this birth gladdening the men’s hearts we join battle near Lord Harroway’s Town.

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The battle goes even better than I dared hope for. Jarl himself is there, leading the right flank, and although he inspires his men to fight to the last it does not profit them much. Jarl himself slips away as the battle closes, but we have ridden down almost all of his soldiers and over ten thousand dead Northerners and Wildlings lie in sight of Harroway Tower.

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We march for Wycombe to again besiege it. Shortly after arriving there my men from Dorne finally reach the war, bringing my manpower up to almost 28,000 soldiers despite our losses in the last battle. With winter lifting it should be significantly easier to maintain these forces in the field, and I hope losses to attrition are much lower than they have been before.

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It does not take long for such a force to besiege Wycombe, and I order the place stripped to the bones for loot. Disrespectful, perhaps, but I have many debts and little interest in obliging the rights of traitors. Wyctown and Combetown meet the same fate, though I order the smallfolk to be left in peace as long as they do not resist. This pillaging has nonetheless helped to bolster our coffers considerably, and I estimate that within another year the debts of the Iron Throne I inherited from my mother will be paid off.

With these lands secured I move north towards the lands of House Frey. I will forgive Lady Tilly Terrick of Wycombe if she asks for it, she is too small to resist the forces that were crashing towards her. The Freys are another matter. Had they held at The Twins it would have taken months or longer for Jarl to cross, and that would have given me time to meet him much more confidently. Instead Ermen Frey chose to side with Jarl and open the way south for the Wildling hordes. Even if I were to forget their betrayal of my great-grandfather Aerys II, I hold many of the deaths in this war to be on the heads of House Frey, and I will see them punished.

Just before we set off though, word comes that another sizable army is south at the Red Fork of the Trident. I change our orders immediately, we cannot win this as long as Jarl’s forces roam around our lands. The Freys can wait. Justice might come late, but it will come.

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We join battle at the Red Fork, near the castle of Stonemill, which Jarl had been besieging. He is here again, at the head of his army this time, but I am reinforced by thousands of Tully soldiers and we outnumber them three to one. Even with Jarl’s brilliance in war it would be an incredible feat for him to win, and this is a feat he cannot manage. We crush another army and I order my men to again move towards The Crossing.

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In the aftermath of the battle I make sure Lord Paramount Laren Crabb knows of my gratitude. I give him a role on my Small Council as a general adviser and I bestow upon him the title Warden of the East, a title which had fallen into vacancy in the late wars. House Crabb has a notion of loyalty and the importance of obeying one’s liege, and I shall ensure this is repaid.

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Letters from King’s Landing give worrying suggestions about my son Orys, who seems to be deeply distrustful and very much convinced he is the enemy of all. Hopefully the years he will spend learning at the feet of the Maesters will change his convictions.

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It seems these two defeats have finally shaken Jarl’s grip loose enough that a plan I had long drawn up can be attempted. Many people in The North are, unsurprisingly, unhappy with the coarse and cruel rule of the Wildlings and although they live in fear of Jarl’s retribution these late defeats he has suffered are weakening that fear. Jarl is planning a speech soon to appeal to his retainers and men and press them for more commitment to the war, and if we manage to weaken the balcony beforehand…

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Days before we arrive at the Freylands, Lord Ermen is murdered by unknown conspirators and his daughter and only child, the one-year-old Lady Arwyn Frey, comes into her throne. Immediately her regent pledges the Frey’s loyalty to Barion Tully and the Riverlands, and as he accepts, there is no more cause to fight House Frey. This galls me. What a convenient twist of fate for House Frey that they should find their loyalty just as their justice is at hand. Still, it does conserve men for the war in general. There is some consolation in that.

My mother was an uncanny master of intrigue and duplicity. I am told that only Lord Varys The Spider exceeded her skills. Nobody knows how many she had killed, for she was careful to cover her tracks and rarely even implicated, but I do know from my childhood that the rumors of her killing every usurper on the Iron Throne did not come from nowhere. I am a far poorer practitioner of this dark art, but apparently I am good enough at it - Jarl did not even have time to begin his address when the balcony collapsed and he fell many feet to the ground in Winterfell, where he smashed like a rotten fruit.

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Jarl the Handsome, scourge of the Seven Kingdoms and Harrier of the North, is dead.