Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
Of course, I didn't have to take Icarus all that seriously. Whatever he said mattered little. This was still his army, not mine. His problem to solve, not mine. But I would solve it nonetheless. And in doing so, I would show him what Dorne stood to gain from bending the knee when the time came. What it stood to gain under my rule.
First things first, I needed to figure out just what we had in our stores. Oberon at my side, I made my way to the massive tent that acted as storage for all the facilities: water, food, healing supplies, most notably. In charge of it all was Alaric, a knight who had been born to a steward at the Tor. He was a smart enough man. Sharp with his numbers, and honest enough to say the words I did not want to hear.
And I really did not want to hear those words. I didn't even know just how much I didn't want to hear them. Assuming we imposed hard rationing right now, we had enough food for nine days, water for four, and thankfully, an abundance of healing supplies. Not like we could eat them. But still. The cloud had a silver lining.
Oberon was near pulling his hair out after Ser Alaric gave the cold truth.
"Impose the strictest possible rationing regime. And as for water, have some of your servants fetch it from the Brimstone, boil it first, and then store and ration it. Make sure no one drinks from the river directly. If the men complain, tell them the orders come from Icarus Jordayne himself," I said. Alaric's eyes flittered over to Oberon, clearly seeking confirmation that I spoke true. To his credit, Oberon nodded almost immediately, and so Alaric was gone. Seconds later, so were we.
"I need three hundred men," I said to Oberon, and he looked confused, but still he nodded.
"Hellholt will have to have had supplies somewhere in that mess. With enough men, there's a high chance that we find whatever survived of those supplies," I said. There was a small village not too far from Hellholt, but it had been deserted by the time we arrived, so there was no food in there—my mind thankfully did not focus for too long on whether those villagers had been taken into Hellholt, or forced to spread out across Dorne. I hoped for the latter, but I knew better than that. It was just another thing I would have to live with for the rest of my life.
Now on to the pressing situation: food. Armies marched on their stomachs, and this one had done so much marching that it was only a matter of days before there would be nothing left to put in said stomachs.
Any food left in the wreckage of a castle was unlikely to be edible. Not with all that stone and dust and whatnot falling about. Food had to come from somewhere else, and there were three options. There was Sandstone, there was the Tor, and there was Bloodstone. Sandstone was closest, but whatever we got from Sandstone would be suspect. They had bent the knee, but the Dornish were not well known for their strict adherence to oaths and pesky things like honour. It would mean their deaths, but Dornishmen had given their lives for less.
So Sandstone wasn't an option. The Tor was another. Icarus had prepared well for this war. He would have the necessary supplies, but his ships could not approach lest they risk being set upon by pirates. Igneel and I could escort them, but that would still take a sennight with how slow and small his ships were, and the men were likely to have starved to death or become too hungry to be sensible by then.
Bloodstone was the farthest away, but somehow also the best option, and this wasn't just because I wanted to see my wife and children. Bloodstone was well stocked with all the things that would make waging a war easier. We had food readily packaged and ready to be distributed across an army and then—. Wait. The thought hit me like a lightning bolt.
"Why don't we just fish the Brimstone?" I asked, turning to Oberon.
He looked at me and then looked into the river in the distance.
"We have eight thousand men here, and that's only the fighters. Waters in Dorne don't yield that kind of fish. If we fish here to feed the army for even a sennight, then we'd permanently end the prospects of this land. No castle would be able to be built here," he said. Oh. I almost suggested the Summer Sea, but where were we going to get the ships for something like that? Fishing a river could just be as simple as wading into the water with spears and nets. And if they didn't have the fish in the Brimstone to make it possible, then there was no point looking into it. Any food we got had to come from elsewhere, and that elsewhere was looking more and more certain to be Bloodstone.
"My good man, if you could, kindly supervise the rationing. Igneel and I will be making the journey to Bloodstone to get more food. At least enough to tide us over until the pirate threat can be properly dealt with," I said, and he nodded slowly.
I wondered for a second if he thought this was me abandoning them. If I were, this is how I would do it as well. Beg off to get help, and then just never come back. But then, even if he thought I wasn't coming back, it wasn't like there was anything he could do to stop me leaving in the first place. That must have been why the vibe I got from him was one of resignation over everything else.
----
Igneel and I made good time to Bloodstone. From the moment I reached the Stepstones, I felt a feeling I struggled to put into words. I guess the best way to put it would be to say that it felt like coming home, but more than that. There was pride mixed in with the comfort and warmth I felt as well as I passed lighthouses that sent warnings of my approach. The lighthouses were now almost always surrounded by either farms or industry. We were working to put every single island to use. Bloodstone itself was the size of a small country, but we had filled the bits we didn't use for the castle, the city, or the sprawling industrial activities that now filled my coffers, with farmland that was now finally beginning to bear fruit.
It wasn't fertile land, but it would still produce something, and something was always better than nothing. Anywhere we couldn't put a farm despite how much we tried, we tried to make productive. We planted trees, as many as we could, because we always needed wood. Even if we used ironwood for all our best ships, everything else was made with bog-standard wood.
Then there was cement and concrete production. We had built the things we would use for building before building itself, and now as I passed through my kingdom from above, I saw just how well everything came together. Massive lighthouse towers, roads that connected every city with the relevant port or industrial outcropping.
And then there was Bloodstone. The Valyrians had built a fearsome castle. It was a fortress meant to project imperial power at this point that was recognised as the end of the Empire itself, so they had not pulled any punches in the building of it. It was small for a castle of this world—that is to say, it was not a village of its own the same way the Red Keep, Harrenhal, Casterly Rock, or even Winterfell were. It was humbler than they were from a size perspective, but it used what it had well.
Black fused stone that supported towers that reached for the skies and walls so high that any invading army would be daunted. And each bit of decoration on the exterior was dragon-themed. A warning and a boast. Because if the walls and the stone did not dissuade you, then the dragons that could be brought to bear would. In truth, I would probably have kept the castle as a fortress and then built a more beautiful thing to serve as my main seat and the centre of my administrative system, but this castle had one advantage nothing else in Westeros could compete with. It was immune to dragonfire. We'd tried, trust me.
And where the castle got its name from, I'd figured out on one of those experiments. Hot enough fire would make the black stone that made the castle glow a deep red the colour of blood. It was eerie.
Bells rang on my return to Bloodstone. I flew over the city once, garnering attention more because of my dragon's colouring than anything else. This city was home to Sunfyre and Vhagar, after all. Speaking of them, I spotted both dragons at different points on my flight. Vhagar was at one edge of the island, closer to sea than the castle, and didn't even bother to look up at our arrival. Sunfyre, on the other hand, was almost next to the castle itself, and his head rose before his body did as he flew to join us. Behind him, I noted four dragons.
The young ones had grown well. Before I'd left, they'd been more capable of spirited jumps and glides than true flight, but now they were able to follow along behind Sunfyre, trilling and snarling at each other as they did so. We circled the city twice more, before landing right outside the castle.
I turned to look at the golden dragon, giving him a wave in greeting and receiving a sniff and a friendly push from his head for doing so. He was probably one of the only dragons in the world who could touch me in Igneel's presence and not have a fight for their lives on their hands for the affront. The others were the four that came after the golden one.
They surrounded me, sniffing at my hair and then at my body before demanding rubs and pats with their needy little pushes. I did my best to acquiesce. But I only had so much patience, and seeing them made my hunger for my children all the stronger. When I finally turned to go into the castle, there she was. She looked...unreal. Clad in a tunic and trousers, she somehow still looked regal. Her hair was done in a simple braid that fell over her shoulder and down to her waist. Her eyes sparkled, amethysts that conveyed love, and longing, and a bit of rage. She was beautiful.
Genuinely. She looked like an angel given corporeal form. I couldn't believe this was the woman I was married to. What kind of luck did I have? The luck of the devil, for sure. I didn't even feel the distance between us as it bent and snapped as I ran across the courtyard. She did the same, and when she reached me, her legs snapped around my waist, and I didn't even feel her weight as I held her up and against me. We kissed, and I was transported to another world. A world of our own, where every second was an eternity, and it was just the two of us, and we never needed to part. This kiss was endless, and still too brief at the same time.
"Ewwwww." Aegon's voice brought us back to this world—when had he come out— and we separated. I looked into those amethysts and wondered how I could ever manage to bring myself to leave this woman again. The war was over, surely. My role was done. I couldn't return there. Not when I'd just been freshly reminded of what I would be giving up to do so.
I pressed my forehead against hers and just held her. My wife. In my arms. There was nothing that could compare to this feeling, and then I heard the giggling. My eyes snapped open, and she gave me a smile and tilted her head to the side.
"Mother is bringing them," she said, and even as I hated to let her down, I had to. Not when I could hear them. Not when in a few seconds I could see them. The four of them were little creatures, not even up to Mother's knee fully, but they were walking, toddling before her in a clear formation as they babbled at each other in those words that only children truly knew.
"Kepa," Caesar called, the first to recognise me, and then all their attention was on me. Once more, time and space bent around me. One second I was standing with Laena, and the next I was on my knees, and I had my precious boy in my arms, and then I brought the others in. Romulus whimpered on seeing me, and my heart broke just a bit. He had forgotten.
Not all of them had, but one had. It took Diana and Alexandra longer than I would have liked for them to hug me back, and then that might as well have been them following Caesar's lead more than anything else. Romulus' gaze met my own, and he relaxed into the hug finally. I felt at peace here. But I could only stay for so long.
My children had as much energy as the sun, and in no time they wanted to keep moving. I had no choice but to let them go then. I rose with compliant little Caesar in my arms, hoisting him into the air and kissing his forehead as I rose. The others ran back to their mother.
"Where were they going?" I asked. An army was waiting for me, but it could wait for longer.
"We wanted to take them flying," Laena said, and I could see her body harden and brace as she said that.
"Their first flights?" I asked, hesitant. She nodded and stepped closer to me, putting a hand on my cheek.
"You are here now," she said.
"I almost wasn't," I pointed out. This trip hadn't been scheduled. Had I come even a day later, I would have missed it. One of the oldest traditions in our culture, and I would just have missed it. Away at war.
"Whose fault is that?" she asked, brow arched. There was that rage I'd seen earlier. I retreated, releasing my frustration with a breath.
"Can I take them?" I asked.
"Caesar first," she said. I nodded. She was right. Of course, she was right. I couldn't go with the others. Not with how hesitant they were with me. Not with how even now none of them asked to be lifted by me despite seeing Caesar in my arms. I looked at my children, and my wife, and I turned my gaze away.
"If needs must," I said.
I took my son in my hands, and he held on to me, fingers bunching against my tunic. It was good that I had chosen not to wear armour for the journey. This would have been a mess with it. And I didn't know if Laena was in the mood to wait for me to go get changed. She was angry. Probably for the change I'd made to the plan. I knew she would be angry even when I decided it. But I also knew that if I looked into her eyes, I would never be able to leave. And the extra time in King's Landing hadn't allowed me much space in making my plans.
I went up to Igneel, and found him just as excited as I was. His head came up, sniffing at Caesar and breathing into his face. The air would have burnt any other child, but the blood of the dragon was strong in my children. Strongest in Caesar. He reached up, patting the dragon's nose.
"Caesar, this is Igneel. He is my brother," I said to him in Valyrian. He nodded seriously, and I thought for a second he'd understood me perfectly, only for him to point at Igneel and say, "Brother." Close enough.
Igneel huffed a breath that was as much a chuckle as it was a sigh. He tilted his head to the side, baring his neck to us and the saddle within. Igneel's size made climbing more complicated, but I managed it well enough, even one-handed.
Caesar held on to me tightly, and for the first time in years, I wrapped the chains around me and held my son tightly against me.
"Softly, Igneel. Softly," I said, and he listened, bless him. We took off softly, pushing off against the ground with less strength and force than normal, making it necessary for him to flap his wings a few times to take us well into the sky. Normally, Igneel and I flew as one skin, but I didn't dare meld so deep with Caesar here. I needed to pay full attention to him. But not once did he fuss. He took to the sky with the joy that I suspected most Targaryens did. We were creatures of fire and air just as much as our dragons were, and this was his homecoming. We flew around the island three times, and I noted that Laena had still not called for Vhagar as I did so. Guess she was careful to avoid Igneel and Vhagar meeting today. Wise. With her feelings for me now, there was a real chance that Vhagar would attack, and Igneel would not take that lying down.
We did four more circles, and then we returned to the ground. I climbed down and found Laena waiting to take Caesar from me. It stung, but I passed him over. I was about to tell Igneel to go hunt to give Vhagar space to come in, when she pushed a cloth into my grip. I looked down at it and then at her. Mother came with Diana in one hand and Alexandria in the other.
"Romulus is painfully shy. But these two will fly with you next," she said, and if there was a tear in my eyes when she finished strapping them to me, then no one mentioned it. There wasn't. I swear.
A/N: Back home for a minute, hmmm? Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), you can support me there and read them early.