The Witch-King of the Vale [GoT x LotR]

The Vale. The Eyrie. 299 AC.

Lord Axel Arryn.

"We're all friends here, so I'll say what everyone's thinking: what in the hells for?" Years of sellsword life had left their mark on Robar. "Don't take it the wrong way. If it pleases you, House Royce will follow you into the fire itself, but it would be good to hear the arguments for this... undertaking."

I have always held that for men of power, the speed of decision-making is one of the foremost virtues. A week ago, all the Powerful Lords of the Vale had convened, but given the tactical maneuvering and the coming pitched battle between Stannis and Kevan, those who shape the politics of an entire region had, at my request, remained as guests at the Eyrie.

No offense to Elena and her gifts, but watching a couple of individuals is not the same as scouting a battlefield, so I had relied on a more traditional method of gathering intelligence, augmented by the Snow girl's animal. A scout does his work, records his findings, and the northerner's raven flies straight to my castle. That pairing had let me learn a number of interesting things very promptly, in some cases before King's Landing itself. Three hours ago, the results had finally come in.

"Ser Robar expressed himself coarsely, but preserved the essential point," Templeton still had not grown accustomed to my forgiving the nearest members of my circle for lapses in decorum. "The defeat and death of Stannis puts a full stop to the senior Baratheon line's claim on the Iron Throne. Robb Stark may have withdrawn his army, but as a real force and a political one, the alliance of the North and the Riverlands has ceased to exist."

Stannis had not lived up to expectations. After an enormous success he had let himself be broken. The northerners had been fighting beyond their strength to begin with, with no clear understanding of why they were bleeding for someone else's throne. Had Stannis not been a formidable commander backed by Ned Stark, had they not arranged the betrothal between the heir of Winterfell and Princess Shireen, the northerners would long since have spat on the whole affair and gone home. The situation had now changed at its root. A war for the Iron Throne needs a symbol. Once, that symbol had been Stannis, a Baratheon man and a seasoned commander. What remained was only Shireen, a girl of ten. A rather unconvincing banner.

"Why should we march an army into the Riverlands? The Vale suits us perfectly well," Eyris had a point, in a manner of speaking.

"We finish off the remnants and thereby demonstrate our loyalty to the new power. With us alongside them they wrap up the war in a matter of months. As a bonus we recover the privileges that were lost." Over nearly twenty years the lords of the Vale had grown accustomed to the particular consideration shown their region by two successive Hands, and they were not averse to seeing those days return.

"The idea has merit. The Starks and Lannisters are nearly spent, and Renly still has strength. He could now suppress all the remaining rebellions and take the Iron Throne simultaneously," Templeton offered.

"HA! Just as he was going to at the start of the war, with the greatest army in recent history?" That drew an ironic smile from the room. If you boast, you must deliver, and Renly had done nothing but lose, which made his boasting look all the more absurd.

"My lords, you have not quite followed my meaning." My voice stopped the discussion and brought every eye in the room to me. "Lord Templeton was right: the Starks and the Lannisters are spent. They will not be capable of operations at that scale again any time soon. True. But you are forgetting one rather significant fact: nearly all the wealth of the Rock is currently sitting in the Riverlands. Millions of gold pieces. Undefended millions of gold pieces."

The men present were not fools. It took them only a few seconds to absorb what had been said. I watched the flame of greed kindle behind their eyes, not unlike dwarves. Though if the Children of Aulë tended toward a more acquisitive variety of avarice, what these men felt was something purely predatory. Plundering one's neighbor is among the favorite pastimes of the lords of Westeros.

They all understood why we had stayed out of the war and kept our neutrality. They understood it, but they had never truly accepted it. Knights want to prove their worth, to rise above the nameless thousands, to seize rich plunder, to leave their names somewhere in the record. The brief Fish Rebellion, and the royal rewards that followed it, had only sharpened that appetite. My decision to enter the war would therefore be received warmly.

"We will have trouble with Renly," Robar was the first to begin working through the situation. "He still has forces, and I doubt he is stupid enough not to exploit his enemies' weakness while it lasts."

"However many Reachmen you kill, they breed more," Desmond's tidy observation drew smiles from the room.

"The stag will have more pressing concerns. Within a month, perhaps two, a Dothraki host with Viserys at its head will reach the shores of Westeros." ...The Dothraki again...

"Not even a year!" Melcolm exclaimed. "It isn't, is it? No? Fine. Enough. You have been feeding us this particular song for half a year now."

I and those companions of mine who had spent time in Essos were deeply skeptical of Khal Drogo's plan to cross the Narrow Sea. Against all expectation, the stubborn khal had managed to scrape together a fleet. Leading a naval armada from the far reaches of Essos is a foolish idea, so Viserys's less visible friends had arranged passage with a triarch of Volantis to the Orange Shore, where the fleet was waiting, along with assistance in crewing it.

An ordinary merchant vessel made the passage from Volantis to the Stormlands in roughly two months. We, accounting for the savages' inexperience at sea and the general difficulties of moving troops by ship, had multiplied that figure by three, and even then we felt we were being ungenerous to the wildlings. The bastards had managed to surprise us all the same, reaching the Stepstones in only seven months. From time to time the Dothraki appeared to be preparing to continue their journey and finally make landfall, but each time something had stopped them.

Since Morgan carried out his obligations with great thoroughness and possessed an excellent head, he noticed the nomads' preparations for departure every time. He noticed, reported, we prepared, and the wildlings ran into some fresh difficulty. Then the Dothraki would make another attempt, their activity would catch Morgan's eye, he would report, and the whole cycle began again. This happened several times, as a result of which my master of whisperers had been receiving pointed commentary at regular intervals. I did not discourage it. He was earning it.

"This time it is certain," Morgan said, coldly, in the tone of a man who does not enjoy being mocked. "Part of the Pentoshi fleet has arrived to assist Viserys. They are rounding Bloodstone as we speak."

"Tell me, why would Pentos involve itself in the affairs of Westeros?" Symond Templeton asked the reasonable question.

"The magisters of Pentos have stated that this assistance is a private matter originating with Illyrio Mopatis, and that the city itself has no part in it."

Immediately after suppressing the Fish Rebellion I had thrown myself into restoring my domain with full energy. In that work I had been greatly assisted by the trade agreements with Pentos, and with Illyrio Mopatis in particular. These were arrangements of mutual benefit, but there is no denying that the magister's actions had made my work considerably easier. So: a murky Free City magister who helps me but plays for the Targaryens. House Arryn, meanwhile, is one of the architects of the Targaryen dynasty's overthrow, which by definition makes us enemies. By every logic, Mopatis ought to have been doing everything in his power to obstruct the Vale's recovery and weaken me before the Targaryen invasion, and instead he had helped to advance my interests in Pentos and Braavos.

The reasonable questions followed naturally: what does he want? That remained unclear. His actions contradicted one another. One might write it all off as a desire to turn a profit, but the sums involved were not large enough to justify complicating the position of his chosen horse so substantially. Or perhaps Mopatis believed that a few tens of thousands of gold pieces would bring me over to the side of a beggar king? I doubted it. Fools do not become magisters. Some piece of the puzzle was missing. I would have to think on it later.

"This is good news." At the puzzled looks I elaborated. "Renly's forces will be occupied with the Dothraki horde and no one will be in a position to interfere with our…. privatization of the gold. Let us draw up a plan of action. How much can we raise in a fortnight?"

"Accounting for all our current preparations..."

Greed is a powerful incentive, and we worked through the main points in a bare half hour. The matter of our friendship with the North did come up, of course, but their inaction during the Fish Rebellion had said everything that needed saying on the subject. During the discussion I became aware of a less than friendly gaze from my cupbearer. Snow was watching with fury, and disappointment, and something that looked like desperate resignation. It was not difficult to guess what she intended to do next. I was not troubled by it. On the contrary, I waited with interest to see how it would unfold.

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