Chapter Text
He and what remained of his men were no closer than half a mile from Summerhall…
When the galloping reached them — hooves cutting hard through the underbrush, coming blind and fast from the north.
Who's to say a shambler cannot mount a horse… Maekar's hand had already found his mace before his mind had finished the thought.
His captain of the guard had already raised the crossbow and loosed a bolt into the treeline ahead.
What followed was a high-pitched scream, it echoed harshly off the trees, sending a dark cloud of birds exploding into the sky. A frightened whinny and then a clamor of panicked voices, overlapping and incoherent.
A wench and two men. Maekar's jaw set. And one horse, by the sound of it.
"Who goes there?" Ser Jason bellowed into the shadow between the trees.
“Seven hells! W-we mean no harm!”
Maekar’s eyes narrowed. That voice. He knew that voice. Maekar had known that slurred, affected drawl for the latter part of nine-and-ten years.
“Hold,” he ordered, raising an open palm. Ser Jason lowered the crossbow without a word.
They emerged from the trees into a narrow stretch of road, and there was his son.
Daeron sat astride his destrier but he was not alone on it. There was a frightened hooded maiden, the would be source of the shriek. Her face was pressed against his son’s back, with both of her arms around his midsection, a leather satchel crushed between her and Daeron’s spine. She was visibly shaken.
Yet, Maekar swore he heard another man’s voice, where was the second man?
“Daeron.”
“Father.”
Daeron rode forward, blocking Maekar’s view of the hooded maiden. On closer inspection, it’s apparent his heir looked like he had been dragged through every tavern in Summertown.
Maekar’s jaw tightened.
“Why the fuck are you out?” he demanded.
Daeron’s eyes darted away. “Oh, you know. Fetchin’ the maester for the maester.” His son shifted his weight on the saddle and the horse promptly steered left, then gestured behind him at, not a maiden, but a young Northerner. “Maester Bobbert. I mean Bertbert.”
“Berbert.” The man pulled back his hood and peeled himself from Daeron’s back, revealing his heavy chains.
“Oh right. Maester Berbert mans the main rookery. He had Citadel seals for Maester Melaquin.”
The young maester nodded along.
Maekar could sense that this was a farce, but before he could question it, his idiot son narrowed his eyes and asked, “Why the fuck are you out, Father?”
Maekar looked down at his own chest. He and his men were splattered with bits of carnage and dark, drying stains of butchery.
He was too tired to argue with Daeron.
"Ride," he said. "Both of you."
The sun was higher in the sky when they rode into the outer yard. The servants stood ready with buckets of steaming water, basins of vinegar, and piles of clean cloth. Squires, grooms, and guards stood at the ready.
Maester Melaquin had already prepared for their return, the old man clearly not spent the remaining night sleeping.
Maekar, Ser Jason, and the seventeen men dismounted. They had ridden out with twenty. The horses were led away by the stable hands, he noticed they kept their distances and did not touch the riders.
Daeron twisted on his seat and firmly pushed back the young maester with one arm, then swung his leg over and dropped to the cobbles, leaving the maester to fend for himself.
“Your Grace, we have everything prepared in readiness for your return,” Melaquin said.
“I can see that.” Maekar nodded.
“Strip!” The old man straightened up and strode off. "Tunics and gambesons off. Everything that touched the outside goes into the pile." Melaquin was moving between the rows, pointing, his chain swinging.
The yard filled with the sounds of men undressing. Buckles. Laces. The wet, stiff resistance of linen that had been sweated and bled through. Around him, Maekar’s riders stripped wordlessly.
“Even your smallclothes.” Melaquin eyed Ser Jason.
“Alright, just try not to weep when you marvel at what the gods have gifted me.” Ser Jason winked at a servantmaid. “There is a reason why I walk heavy.”
Melaquin rolled his eyes and moved on.
Maekar noted how gingerly the squires worked, dodging the gore that stained his gambeson as they unbuckled his mail hauberk. As they pulled the stiff, sweat-soak garment over his head, he caught a sideways glimpse of Daeron. His eldest had already shed his cloak and tunic, beside him, the Northerner was still fumbling blindly with his own laces.
“Only those who rode with me,” Maekar growled.
Daeron shrugged at him. “I did, didn’t I?”
"Only those who rode with His Grace before morning, my prince," Melaquin said patiently.
Daeron looked up, relieved, and picked up his tunic from the ground.
"Wounds — any wound, any scratch, any bite — report to Eddan and Ser Will immediately. They will look at every one of you before you are permitted inside. Every one." The Maester shouted.
He reached Maekar and stopped.
"Your Grace." He looked Maekar over, assessingly. "Injuries?"
"None."
Melaquin looked at him.
"None that matter," Maekar said.
"And what of Ser Patrek?" Melaquin asked.
Ser Jason poured a bucket of vinegar water over his head and shook it off like a dog. “Had to put a bolt through him,” he said flatly. “Pitty. He was strong. But not very fast.”
A quick glance between Daeron and Berbert. The sudden stiffness in their shoulders. They had not known.
Melaquin closed his eyes for a moment. Then opened them. "I see," he said. He wrote something on the parchment in his hand. "Thank you, ser."
Ser Jason nodded and went back to his washing.
“There were three others.” Maekar added, rinsing his forearms in the vinegar basin. “You shall have their names when I’ve finished here.”
Melaquin pocketed his parchment and turned to the younger maester. “Come with me, Berbert.” Then he seized Daeron by the arm. “You as well.”
Maekar watched the three of them head toward the maester’s quarters — his son half-dressed and surly, stumbling along.
A pathetic sight.
Maekar was in his solar with fresh clothes on, the sour scent of vinegar lingers around him. The gambeson he wore this morning was ash by now, or would be shortly. He rolled up his right sleeve and scratched out the names of the men that did not return.
Seventeen men out of twenty.
He was grateful every single one of them, along with Ser Jason, had come back whole. No bites, no open wounds, no hidden tears in the flesh, nothing that needed a maester’s healing. He would need strong bodies in the days ahead.
For the partitioned failed.
He had known it would end in catastrophe the moment he saw the size of the camp. The camp was a small town in the making and twenty armed men was not enough.
Maekar should have known better. If the Hammer was here, he would have simply reminded his youngest brother that he was a slow study when it comes to numbers.
Gods be damned.
Now corruption and panic will flood the fields, the neighboring holdfasts, the farms along the road, and then to Summertown. The service-town is already swollen with bodies and more bodies to come. Unless his steward had somehow worked a miracle with the recruitment of strong men and the smallfolk of Summertown had proven more receptive than Maekar expected.
He grimaced. He saw little hope in that.
The smallfolk had been wary of him since Ashford. Since the news of Baelor’s death had reached them. A prince slaying his own brother — the realm’s heir — left a stain that no amount of coin or careful words could wash away. If the gods were punishing anyone, they had chosen their target well.
He cut and squared a fresh parchment—an inquiry after his father, his daughters, and any word of the sickness in the Red Keep.
He tucked the papers in the tab of his doublet then made his way to the southern end of the castle.
Maekar heard voices— heated, overlapping —as he approached the door to the maester’s quarters. Daeron’s was first, but not in his usual lacquered drawl, then Melaquin’s voice, it was lower though.
"...holy man spoke nothing of treason, Melaquin, I'm telling you the fucker—"
"—the square, what of the square, did Lorcan—"
He paused right before the entry.
"...the steward and the herald lost the crowd, they became angry, there was…"
"—how many—"
"...all of them, all of them, there was a scream from the middle of it and the whole—"
Maekar moved closer to the door.
A pause. Then Daeron's voice, the tone was deep and unfamiliar to him.
"...I dreamt something queer. Before any of this. Weeks ago."
"Another nightmare, my prince?"
“...white-eyed rats, creatures, they were consuming each other—dreamt it more than once…”
Maekar felt the cold move through him. The milky eyes. The flat dead stare of each wretched thing he had to put down in the camp— the mother, the hedge knight Ser Patrek had lost to, the maiden, and then the child —every one of them looking back at him with the same clouded emptiness where a soul had been.
His son had dreamt of the white-eyes. He always dreamt of strange things.
“...a dead dragon…a great beast…it had fallen…the dragon was dead.”
Maekar had heard his son muttering such words. They were all covered in mud and blood; his son bled from his ear and limped towards him as he held Baelor’s cold body. The giant continued to cry out. Aegon rushed to retrieve a maester. Yet, Daeron stood there, broken, and muttered the same words over and over. After that Maekar could not recall. It was all darkness.
He pushed the door open.
Three heads turned at once. Melaquin straightened behind his worktable, Maester Berbert knocked over an inkwell but caught it, and Daeron turned from where he had been standing by the window. His expressions shifted twice then settled on a stupid neutrality.
Maekar looked at his son. Then walked past him.
He set the folded parchments down on Melaquin's worktable. "The names of the men who did not return. And a message to the Red Keep — fly it today." He looked at the young maester. “Any word of my father?"
Berbert's hands were still pressed over the inkwell. "We are still working through the messages, Your Grace. As soon as we have anything of King Daeron—"
His father’s namesake stepped forward, voice rising. “Father, there is talk of treason in the town. They take you for a—”
“Kinslayer?” Maekar turned to face him fully.
Daeron was almost taller than him now. When had that happened?
Maekar dropped his voice to a hard tone. “Is that not what I am, boy? Unlike you, I understand the weight of my actions. I wear the consequences. Or are you so fucking craven and so deep in your cups that you sooner hide behind the horrors of your damned mind than claim any responsibility on your part?”
His words pierced the marrow. Daeron said nothing, but his jaw clenched and his violet eyes met his with a steadiness Maekar had rarely seen in him. Then he noticed something that had always been there: their eyes were the same shade.
The door hit the wall.
“Your Grace! Your Grace! We need healers. Now. It’s Lorcan.” Wylla stood by the frame, her hands nervously clasped together tightly.
“He’s been stabbed. Multiple times. I am afraid it’s grave.”
Melaquin was already moving, but Berbert caught his arm. “I can see to the wounded, Maester Melaquin. You must be very tired. I have silver links. So do not worry.”
“I trust you.” The old maester went back to his worktable and sat down.
Maekar turned away from Daeron without another word and followed the young maester out of the room, his boots heavy on the stone.
They reached the outer yard as Lorcan was lowered from a horse. The steward lay on the cobbles in a spreading pool of his own blood, tunic soaked black, the color of his face faded. Two guards knelt beside him, pressing rags against his side. No one had carried him inside.
The rule held: no one entered the keep until they had been washed and inspected.
Berbert pushed through without hesitation, dropping to his knees in the blood. Maekar stood over them, arms folded, jaw set.
“Five wounds,” Berbert said, voice tight but steady. He tore the ruined tunic open with a small knife. “Three shallow. Two deep.”
Lorcan’s eyes fluttered. A wet groan escaped him.
“Boiling wine,” Berbert snapped at the nearest servant. “Now.”
Maekar noted the wounds: one high on the left side, below the armpit—that one was the worst of the visible bleeds, pulsing rather than seeping, the cloth pressed over it already soaked through. Two were in the abdomen, lower. One was along the ribs—shallow, by the look of it. The last was in the side, below the lowest rib, angled inward.
Lorcan was conscious. That was both a mercy and hell. His eyes were open, fixed on the sky above the yard. Maekar does not want to see another pair of milky-eyes.
"Lorcan." Berbert's voice was even. "Look at me."
The grey-blonde head turned.
"You are going to live," Berbert said slowly. “But I’m afraid this is going to hurt and I need you to bear with the pain.”
Lorcan’s mouth moved, blood spilling out of the corner of his lips; Maekar wondered if it was meant to be a smile.
Berbert reached into the satchel and produced a small glass bottle. The contents were pale, it was milk of the poppy.
"Drink this," he said, pressing it into Lorcan's mouth. "It will dull the pain, though you must grant it time to work its full mercy."
Lorcan swallowed, choking, then sagged to steady his ragged breathing.
The servant arrived with the first pot of boiling wine, steam rising from it.
Berbert took it without looking up.
"Hold him," he said.
The guards took Lorcan by the shoulders and the legs and held.
Berbert poured slowly on the open wounds.
Lorcan screamed. The sound tore out of him, raw and animal, as the wine hissed into the open gashes. His back arched off the stone. Blood and wine mixed, pink and steaming, running between the cobbles.
Berbert murmured his apologies.
“A hot iron,” Berbert ordered. “Burning coals. More clean cloth — now!”
A brazier was dragged over. The iron poker glowed cherry-red. Berbert packed the two deepest wounds with strips of boiled linen, jamming them in hard to staunch the flow. Then moved his attention to the three shallower cuts. He took needle and thread and began sewing with quick, practiced stitches, pulling the skin closed while Lorcan twitched and moaned under the poppy.
Maekar watched without blinking.
When Berbert finally lifted the glowing iron, he looked up at Maekar. “Once I seal the two largest wounds, he shall mend. They missed the heart. And the lungs too. He is lucky.”
Maekar said nothing. Lucky was not the word he would have chosen.
He turned to the nearest guard still standing in nothing but smallclothes, vinegar dripping from his bare chest. “What in the seven hells happened?”
The man looked half-sick. “They dragged the herald off the dais and killed him, m’lord. Then they came for the steward. We got to him’n time, but barely. Dragged him out between us while the rest of the watch tried to hold the square.”
Another guard, still half-naked and shivering, spoke up. “The town’s watch took over the line. We rode back with him. Not sure they held.”
A third guard, younger, voice cracking, added, “It was chaos, Your Grace. They started turning on each other. Some of them… they were biting. I saw three different men sink their teeth into anyone close enough. Not fighting. Biting. Like dogs.”
Every guard around the brazier nodded.
Maekar felt the word settle in his gut like cold iron.
Biting.