Chapter 27: Winter's Judgment, The Red Keep's Fall
The three days granted to King's Landing passed like a breath held too long. From their temporary forward camp in the northern Riverlands, established after the swift consolidation of Tully territory and the annihilation of outlying Lannister forces, King Torrhen Stark and his war council received no word of capitulation. No raven brought news of Joffrey's surrender or Cersei's plea for mercy. No traumatized envoy arrived with Sansa Stark in tow. The silence from the capital was the silence of defiance, of terror-stricken paralysis, or perhaps, Torrhen mused with a glint of Kaelen's cynicism, of fools deluding themselves that the storm would pass.
It would not.
"They have made their choice," Torrhen announced to Robb, Catelyn Stark (who had remained at Riverrun but whose worried counsel reached him via swift riders), and his assembled Northern and Riverlord commanders. His voice, calm and cold as the heart of winter, resonated through the pavilion. "They cling to their stolen power, to their false king, and they hold my descendant, Lady Sansa, hostage to their arrogance. They believe the walls of King's Landing and the shadow of the Red Keep will protect them. They are mistaken."
His greensight, a constant, vivid stream of images amplified by the Philosopher's Stone, had shown him the chaos within the city. Tyrion Lannister attempting to rally the Gold Cloaks, his efforts undermined by Joffrey's petulant cruelty and Cersei's frantic, contradictory orders. He saw Sansa, a pale, terrified bird in a gilded cage, hostage to Queen Cersei's whims. Arya, his fey great-great-great-granddaughter, was a fleeting, elusive shadow in his visions, lost in the city's underbelly – alive, resourceful, but beyond his immediate reach for now. His priority was the regime, and Sansa's liberation.
He had also seen the extensive wildfyre caches beneath the city, the deadly legacy of the Mad King Aerys. Aerys had planned to burn the city rather than yield it to Robert Baratheon. Cersei, Torrhen knew, possessed a similar destructive madness.
"The city itself is filled with innocents," Catelyn Stark had pleaded in a message delivered by Ser Brynden Tully. "Whatever justice you seek for Eddard, for the North, spare the smallfolk who have no part in Lannister crimes."
Torrhen had acknowledged her plea. "Lady Catelyn's heart is noble. We are not butchers, indiscriminate in our wrath. Our quarrel is with House Lannister and their false king. The Red Keep will be our primary target. The city will be spared if it does not hinder us. But any who raise arms in defense of Joffrey Waters will share his fate." He had a specific plan for the wildfyre. Flamel's knowledge of controlling volatile alchemical substances was profound.
The Dragon Armada Descends
The assault began not at dawn, but in the dead of night, under a moonless, star-draped sky. Torrhen, astride Morghul, the Obsidian Death, led the charge, a phantom king on a dragon of shadow. Robb, his youthful face set in a grim mask of determination, rode Issylra, Winter's Light, her pearlescent scales shimmering faintly even in the darkness, her presence a preternatural chill. Skane, the Golden Terror, flew high above them, a lurking inferno, ready to descend upon command. With them was an elite force of five thousand Northmen and Riverlanders, mounted on swift horses, having made a forced march, their ice-steel weapons eager.
They did not target the city walls initially. Torrhen's first concern was the wildfyre. As they approached King's Landing, Morghul descended like a silent meteor towards the known locations of the largest caches beneath the Dragonpit and the Great Sept – locations gleaned from Flamel's historical knowledge of King's Landing and confirmed by Torrhen's own subtle magical reconnaissance.
Torrhen did not intend to detonate it. Instead, drawing upon the immense power of the Philosopher's Stone and Flamel's most esoteric alchemical arts, he wove a complex enchantment of containment and nullification. Morghul's shadow-magic acted as a conduit, blanketing the volatile substance in an aura of magical suppression, rendering it inert, its unstable energies safely dissipated into the earth. It was a feat of incredible magical control, performed in moments, unseen and unknown by the sleeping city below, averting a catastrophe that could have consumed hundreds of thousands of lives. Kaelen might have used the wildfyre as a weapon; Flamel's wisdom dictated its neutralization. Torrhen, as always, chose the path that best served his ultimate goals – control, not senseless annihilation.
With the wildfyre threat contained, the dragons turned their attention to the city's defenses. Issylra, with Robb guiding her, swept along the city walls. Her ice-breath was not aimed at the stone, but at the defenders. Gold Cloaks and Lannister guards on the ramparts found their limbs freezing, their weapons encrusted in instant, heavy ice, their courage shattering as a supernatural winter descended upon them. She froze the mechanisms of the great city gates – the Dragon Gate, the Gate of the Gods, the Lion Gate – sealing them shut from the inside, preventing any organized sally or escape.
Skane then descended upon the Mud Gate and the King's Gate, those closest to the Red Keep. His fiery breath, precisely controlled, did not set the surrounding city ablaze, but melted the portcullises and shattered the gatehouses, creating clear breaches for the Northern forces that were now approaching on the ground.
The Red Keep Under Siege
The heart of King's Landing, the Red Keep, erupted into chaos. Alarm bells clanged, horns blared, but the defenders were confused, terrified. Dragons of unimaginable size were upon them, ice and fire and shadow raining down.
Torrhen, on Morghul, led the direct assault on the Red Keep itself. Morghul, wreathed in shadows that seemed to drink the torchlight, landed with an earth-shattering impact in the outer courtyard, his roar scattering the Kingsguard like frightened children. Skane joined him, his golden flames incinerating ballistae and catapults on the castle's battlements. Issylra, with Robb, landed on the roof of the Great Hall, her icy aura causing stone to crack and groan.
"Joffrey Waters! Cersei Lannister!" Torrhen's voice, amplified by the Stone, boomed across the Red Keep, a sound of doom. "Your reign is over! Surrender, and perhaps your deaths will be swift. Resist, and every stone of this fortress will be your tomb!"
The Northern vanguard, led by Greatjon Umber and Hallis Mollen (Ser Marlon's equally loyal son), poured through the dragon-made breaches in the Red Keep's outer defenses, their war cries echoing the dragons' roars. Lannister guardsmen, though brave, were no match for enraged Northmen backed by the terrifying presence of three ancient dragons.
Within Maegor's Holdfast, the most secure part of the Red Keep, Joffrey was screaming, a terrified, blubbering child. Cersei, her face a mask of pale fury, alternately cursed the Starks and tried to rally her remaining guards, her efforts futile. Tyrion Lannister, having foreseen the inevitable, had made his own, quieter preparations, less concerned with defending the indefensible and more with his own survival and perhaps, if an opportunity arose, mitigating the worst of the carnage.
Torrhen, dismounting from Morghul, his ice-steel sword in hand, strode into the Red Keep as if he owned it. Robb, landing Issylra nearby, joined him, flanked by a score of Northern champions. They moved through the castle's corridors like avenging spirits, their progress marked by the sounds of brief, brutal skirmishes as remaining Lannister loyalists were cut down.
They found Sansa Stark in her chambers, guarded by Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Boros Blount of the Kingsguard, who clearly intended to use her as a hostage. The confrontation was brief. Morghul's shadow, seeping through the very walls, disoriented the two knights. Robb, his grief for his father fueling his sword arm, engaged Trant, while Torrhen, with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, sent Blount crashing into a wall with a telekinetic blast, his armor crumpling. Robb, after a fierce exchange, disarmed and subdued Trant.
Sansa, pale and trembling, stared at her brother, then at the impossibly ancient, powerful figure beside him. "Robb?" she whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Is it… is it truly you?"
"It is, Sansa," Robb said, his voice thick with emotion as he rushed to embrace her. "You are safe now."
Torrhen regarded his young descendant with a flicker of something akin to compassion in his ancient eyes. "Lady Sansa, you have endured much. Your suffering will be avenged." He then tasked several trusted Northmen with escorting her to safety, back to Issylra. He knew Arya was not here; his warging senses told him she was a wild thing, loose in the city, but alive. He would find her later.
The King and Queen of Nothing
Joffrey and Cersei were found cowering in the Queen's Ballroom, surrounded by a few terrified serving women and the last of their personal guard. Ser Ilyn Payne, the King's Justice, stood near them, his face impassive, though even his dead eyes held a flicker of fear.
When Torrhen Stark entered, the very air seemed to grow cold. Joffrey shrieked and tried to hide behind his mother. Cersei faced Torrhen, her beautiful face contorted with hatred and defiance.
"So, the Northern demon has come," she spat. "Have you come to gloat before you murder us all?"
"Murder is your family's specialty, Cersei Lannister," Torrhen said, his voice devoid of inflection. "I am here for justice. For Eddard Stark. For the North."
He gestured, and Northern warriors seized Joffrey, Cersei, and Ilyn Payne. Joffrey sobbed and pleaded. Cersei cursed them with every vile epithet she knew. Ilyn Payne remained silent.
Torrhen looked at the Iron Throne, that ugly, twisted seat of blades and ambition. He felt nothing for it but contempt. He had no desire to sit it, no ambition to rule these southern lands. His kingdom was the North.
The City Secured, The Realm Adrift
By dawn, King's Landing was under Northern control. The Red Keep was secured, its Lannister defenders slain or captured. The Gold Cloaks had either fled or surrendered. The smallfolk, after the initial terror of the dragons' arrival, remained huddled in their homes, unsure if this new power was better or worse than the old. Torrhen had ordered his men to maintain strict discipline, to prevent looting or unnecessary violence against the populace. His dragons, perched atop the Red Keep's highest towers, were a formidable deterrent to any thoughts of resistance or chaos.
The fate of Joffrey and Cersei was swift. Torrhen convened a brief, drumhead court martial in the throne room itself. The charges were read: treason against the true Warden of the North (Eddard Stark), murder, incest, usurpation. The evidence, Torrhen declared, was self-evident.
Joffrey, screaming and blubbering for his grandfather Tywin, was dragged to the courtyard where Eddard Stark had been executed. There, before the assembled Northern lords and a terrified, silent crowd of King's Landing citizens, Robb Stark, using Ice, his father's sword, personally took Joffrey's head. It was a grim, bloody justice, but one the North demanded.
Cersei Lannister, after witnessing her son's execution, was imprisoned in the Black Cells, her fate to be decided later. Perhaps, Torrhen mused, she would be a useful bargaining chip against Tywin, or a permanent symbol of Lannister disgrace. Ser Ilyn Payne, for his role as executioner, was given a swift, unceremonious death by the same blade he had wielded against Eddard.
With King's Landing secured, Torrhen Stark, the Dragon King of Winter, stood upon the battlements of the Red Keep, his ancient dragons circling above him. He had unmade a king, broken a dynasty, and brought the proud capital of the Seven Kingdoms to its knees in a single night of terrifying power.
He looked south, towards the lands where Tywin Lannister still commanded armies, where Stannis and Renly Baratheon still vied for a now-vacant (or Stark-held) throne. The game had changed. The North was ascendant.
He issued a new proclamation to the remaining lords of Westeros:
"Let it be known. Joffrey Waters, the false king, is dead. Cersei Lannister is my captive. King's Landing is under the benevolent protection of House Stark and the Kingdom of Winter. The North and the Riverlands are, and shall forever remain, a free and sovereign kingdom under my rule. My quarrel was with those who murdered Eddard Stark and sought to subjugate the North. That justice is now served upon their persons in this city.
To Lord Tywin Lannister, I say this: your armies are broken, your seat defiled, your port in ashes, your grandson dead, your daughter my prisoner. Disband your remaining forces, renounce all claims to power, and retire to your blighted Rock. Perhaps then, what remains of your House will be spared further retribution.
To Stannis and Renly Baratheon, I say this: your quarrel for the Iron Throne is your own. The North has no interest in that ugly chair. Rule the south as you will, or fight over its ashes. But know this: any who dare threaten the sovereignty of the North or the Riverlands will face the full fury of Skane, Morghul, and Issylra. Winter has come to the South, and it will not be denied."
He then turned his attention to finding Arya, to consolidating his hold on the Riverlands, and to the looming confrontation with Tywin Lannister's remaining armies. But a significant part of his mind was already looking further north, towards the Wall, towards the true enemy. This war in the south, however necessary, was merely a prelude, a clearing of the board before the Great Game against the endless night could begin in earnest. The Philosopher's Stone thrummed with power, his dragons were unmatched, and his resolve was as cold and hard as the ancient ice from which his kingdom drew its strength.