Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Bloodstone Engulfed in Battle

For a few brief moments, I believed I could hold.

World Breaker moved like an extension of my arm, its dark Valyrian steel cutting through rusted blades, leather, mail, and flesh with terrifying ease. Men came at me through the broken ribs of the ship, screaming in tongues I half-understood, their faces twisted with rage and hunger. Some wanted the glory of killing me. Others wanted the sword. A few looked as if they simply wanted to be the first to say they had brought down the fool who had walked alone into Bloodstone.

I killed them as they came.

One fell with his throat opened. Another lost three fingers when he tried to grab my sword arm. A third thrust a spear toward the gap beneath my breastplate, only for me to twist aside and drive World Breaker through his stomach. The movements came quickly, too quickly for thought. Othorion’s body remembered what Heinrich Adler had never learned, and for a time, that was enough.

Then more came.

The first six had been cautious. The next dozen were angry. The men after that came with the confidence of numbers, pressing in so tightly that skill began to matter less than space. I could parry one strike, but not three. I could kill the man in front of me, but not the two reaching from behind him. The broken ship that had offered cover became a cage, its shattered timbers trapping me in place as the Crabfeeder’s men crowded around the opening.

A blade scraped across my pauldron, leaving a bright scar in the gilded metal. Another struck my side hard enough to dent the plate and drive the breath from my lungs. I turned, slashed, stepped back, and nearly tripped over a body at my feet. Sand shifted beneath me, soaked dark where blood had spilt too quickly to dry.

I was skilled. Othorion Galeris was skilled.

But I was not some otherworldly warrior from a song, nor a hero blessed by gods and immune to exhaustion. Every movement cost strength. Every breath burned. The arrow in my upper back throbbed with each turn of my shoulders, and the wound sent sharp warnings through my body whenever I moved too suddenly. Sweat stung my eyes beneath the helm, and my grip on World Breaker grew slick despite the leather of my gauntlets.

A pirate with a hooked blade lunged low, and I caught his strike just in time. Before I could answer, another man rushed from the side and slammed a shield into me. My shoulder struck the broken hull behind me, pain exploding through the arrow wound. I snarled, drove my knee into the shield-bearer’s stomach, and cut him across the face as he folded.

Then steel kissed my neck.

It was only a nick, a lucky cut from a short blade that slipped beneath the edge of my helm and grazed the skin where armour could not fully protect me. The pain was small compared to the arrow in my back, but the warmth that followed was horrifying. Blood trickled down the side of my neck, thin but unmistakable.

For one heartbeat, panic broke through everything. A little deeper, and I would have died. The thought nearly cost me more than the wound.

A spear shaft cracked against the side of my helm before I could recover. The blow rang through my skull like a bell, and the world lurched sideways. My vision blurred. My legs weakened. I dropped to one knee in the sand, World Breaker point-first before me, my free hand catching against the ground to keep myself from falling completely.

The men around me howled. They saw it. They saw weakness.

The next few seconds stretched into something terrible and slow. I looked up through the narrow slits of my helm and saw them closing in, blades raised, teeth bared, eyes bright with the certainty of victory. In that moment, the plan, the future, the Dance, the Dread Legion, and every arrogant dream I had carried from Dresden seemed to shrink into nothing.

This was where it ended. Not with dragons. Not with history rewritten. Not with House Targaryen dragged from ruin by the knowledge of another world. Just sand, blood, and a rusted blade.

I forced my hand tighter around World Breaker’s hilt, but my arm felt heavy. Too heavy. Othorion’s body screamed for movement, but even that trained flesh had limits. Heinrich’s fear rose like bile, filling the spaces where strength had begun to fail.

Then the horn sounded.

It tore across the dunes, deep and sudden, rolling over the killing ground with enough force to make the men around me hesitate. A second horn answered from the ridge behind them, then a third from farther along the shore. For half a heartbeat, the pirates did not understand.

Then Corlys Velaryon’s soldiers rose from the sand and stone.

They came from the left first, sea-green and silver banners snapping open in the wind as men who had lain hidden behind the dunes surged forward with spears lowered. Corlys himself charged near the front, armour gleaming, his voice carrying above the clash as he drove his men into the exposed flank of the Crabfeeder’s force. The Velaryon assault struck like a wave breaking over rocks, sudden and violent, crashing into pirates who had pushed too far from the safety of the caves.

The men around me turned in confusion. That was all I needed.

I surged up from one knee with a cry that tore my throat raw and drove World Breaker through the nearest man’s chest. He fell backwards, dragging the blade partway with him until I ripped it free. Another turned toward me too slowly, and I cut him down before he could decide whether to face me or the Velaryon attack.

The trap had sprung. Across the dunes, chaos bloomed.

Pirates shouted orders over one another. Some tried to retreat toward the caves. Others turned to meet Corlys’s men. More continued pushing toward me, either too committed to stop or too enraged to think. The neat shape of the Crabfeeder’s ambush collapsed into confusion, and into that confusion came the Dread Legion.

They hit from the right with terrible discipline.

Jasper’s infantry led the charge, shields locked and spears thrusting forward in measured rhythm. They did not rush like glory-drunk fools. They advanced as a wall, stepping over uneven sand and dead men with grim purpose. Behind them came Rollis’s men, spreading wide to prevent the pirates from slipping around the flank, while Dick’s soldiers drove into gaps with brutal efficiency.

And at the centre of that advance, cutting toward me with a fury I had never seen in him before, was Vaeron.

My brother did not fight like Jasper. He did not have the older man’s raw strength, nor the terrifying calm of Rollis. Vaeron fought with precision and anger, his lighter blade moving quickly as he followed the infantry push.

Men around him tried to slow the advance, only to be met by the disciplined violence of soldiers who had crossed the sea, buried twenty comrades beneath it, and were in no mood to be denied.

The Dread Legion was coming for me.

The sight struck harder than I expected. I had known they would move when the signal came. I had known the plan. Yet knowing was not the same as seeing men bleed forward through a killing ground because their captain still stood there, half-surrounded and wounded.

"Forward!" Vaeron shouted, his voice cutting across the sand. "To the captain!"

The cry spread. "To the captain!"

The words rolled through the Dread Legion like fire catching dry grass. Shields slammed together. Spears drove forward. Swords rose and fell. The pirates between them and me buckled beneath the pressure, not all at once, but steadily, like a rotten door giving way under repeated blows.

For the first time since I had stepped into the dunes, hope returned. Then arrows fell again. The archers above had not been broken.

From the ridges and cave mouths, the Crabfeeder’s bowmen continued their work. They had lost the advantage of surprise, but not position. Arrows rained down into the advancing lines, striking shields, armour, sand, and flesh.

A Velaryon soldier beside Corlys spun and fell with a shaft in his throat. One of Jasper’s infantrymen dropped to his knees, clutching at an arrow buried beneath his collarbone. Another took two arrows in the leg and vanished beneath the boots of the men advancing behind him.

The tide had turned, but the battle was not won. The ridges were killing us.

Emeric’s archers answered as best they could from their concealed positions, loosing volleys toward the heights, but shooting uphill into scattered cover was ugly work. Some pirates fell, tumbling down the slopes with arrows in their chests, but too many remained. The longer they held those positions, the more men they would bleed before we reached the caves.

I saw Corlys look upward. I saw Laenor before I heard him. Seasmoke descended from the clouds like judgement.

The dragon came in low over the ridge, pale grey wings stretched wide, his shadow racing across the sand ahead of him. For one impossible moment, every man on the battlefield seemed to feel the change. The air itself tightened. Pirates looked up. Some froze. Others began to run before the fire came.

Then Seasmoke opened his jaws. Dragonfire poured across the ridge in a white-hot torrent.

The archers vanished.

There was no better word for it. Men who had stood moments before were swallowed by flame so bright it hurt to look at. The ridge became a line of burning bodies, blackened stone, and screaming shapes that stumbled blindly before collapsing into the sand. The heat rolled down over us like the breath of a furnace, and even from where I stood, I felt it press against my armour.

The smell followed. Burnt flesh. Scorched leather. Smoke. Death.

Men of the Dread Legion faltered, not from cowardice, but awe. The Velaryon soldiers did the same. Even the pirates who had not been touched by the flames seemed to lose some essential part of themselves. Steel and courage were things men understood. Dragonfire was different. Dragonfire did not defeat men. It erased them.

Seasmoke roared as he climbed again, circling above the battlefield with Laenor on his back.

That was when the battle became clear.

The archers were broken. The pirates were exposed. The Velaryons held one flank, the Dread Legion the other, and the caves that had protected the Crabfeeder’s men now threatened to become their tomb if we reached them quickly enough.

I tore the arrow from my back with a cry that felt more like rage than pain. Blood ran warm beneath my armour, but the wound was shallow enough that the arrowhead had not buried too deep. It hurt like hell, but pain no longer mattered in the same way.

I lifted World Breaker high. "Dread Legion!" I shouted.

The nearest men turned toward me. My voice came rough through my helm, but it carried. "Through the centre! Break them before they reach the caves!"

Vaeron reached me then, breathless, blood across one cheek that I did not think was his. For a moment, his eyes flicked to my neck, my armour, the blood, the dents, the torn ground around me. Relief crossed his face so quickly that only I might have seen it.

"You look terrible," he said.

"I feel worse."

"Good. You are alive enough to complain later."

I almost laughed, but the battlefield would not allow it.

Jasper pushed up beside us, shield notched by arrows and sword dark with blood. "Orders, captain?"

I pointed World Breaker toward the caves, where the Crabfeeder’s men were beginning to break and flee. "We drive through the centre. Do not let them regroup. Do not let them vanish into the tunnels."

Jasper grinned like a man hearing music. "You heard him!"

The Dread Legion surged. I ran with them.

The charge through the centre was not elegant. It was not the clean, glorious thing singers might have claimed if any song ever came from this day. It was brutal, choking, and close. Men slipped in sand darkened by blood. Shields crashed into bodies. Spears punched through gaps. World Breaker rose and fell in my hands, cutting wherever an enemy stood between us and the cave mouths.

The Crabfeeder’s men fought desperately now, but desperation is not always strength. Some threw down weapons and tried to flee. Others fought with the wild panic of trapped animals. A few tried to rally near a broken banner, only for Corlys’s men to crash into them from the side and scatter them completely.

Above us, Seasmoke circled again, though Laenor held his fire now that the lines had begun to merge too tightly. The dragon’s presence alone was enough. Each time his shadow passed over the battlefield, the pirates flinched, and each flinch cost them ground.

I saw him then. The Crabfeeder.

He stood near the largest cave mouth, half-hidden behind a knot of retreating men. His body looked twisted beneath scraps of armour and torn cloth, his face marked by the mask or ruined flesh that had given him the appearance of something less than fully human. Even from a distance, I recognised him. There was no mistaking the way his men moved around him, shielding him even as they fled.

He looked toward the battlefield once. Then he turned and disappeared into the tunnels.

For half a heartbeat, I stopped.

Every instinct screamed that following him was foolish. The caves were his ground. Dark, narrow, unknown, filled with men who knew every turn. A commander with sense would halt, regroup, and send scouts. A man who had nearly died moments earlier should have been grateful to remain beneath the open sky.

But if the Crabfeeder escaped, the war might continue. If he vanished into those tunnels, the trap would be incomplete.

Vaeron appeared beside me, following my gaze. "No." I did not look at him. "Brother, no."

"The Crabfeeder is fleeing."

"Then we seal the caves and burn him out."

"He knows the tunnels."

"You do not."

"I know."

"That is not an answer."

I tightened my grip on World Breaker. The blade felt heavier now, or perhaps my arm was finally beginning to realise how much blood it had spilt.

Vaeron stepped in front of me. "You have done enough."

I met his eyes through the slit of my helm. "Not yet."

His face twisted with anger and fear. "You are not going in there alone."

"No," I said. "I am not."

I turned toward Jasper and Rollis, who were driving the last of the nearby pirates back. "Jasper! Rollis! With me. Vaeron, hold the mouth and send men behind us. No one escapes."

Vaeron looked ready to argue, but the battlefield did not give him time. More pirates were still trying to flee into smaller cave openings. The line had to be held. The trap had to close.

I moved before he could stop me.

World Breaker in hand, blood running down my neck, armour scratched and dented from a dozen near-deaths, I crossed the last stretch of bloodied sand and entered the shadow of the cave.

Behind me, the battle still raged beneath dragonfire and banners.

Ahead of me, the Crabfeeder fled into darkness.