Divide and Conquer, Chapter 4: The Siege of Harrenhal

Harrenhal’s colossal curtain walls rose as sheer and high as mountain cliffs from the flat fields, made out of black stone but so immense...

Third Moon, 97 AD (5 BC)

Aegon

Harrenhal’s colossal curtain walls rose as sheer and high as mountain cliffs from the flat fields, made out of black stone but so immense that in parts they were discolored and fissured. Atop the battlements, the wood-and-iron scorpions looked as small and numerous as their namesakes. Behind the walls rose five enormous towers, with the two tallest in the center not even complete yet but imposing nonetheless.

Had he been any other man, perhaps Aegon would have been intimidated by the fortress before him, despairing at any chance of conquering it. He was not. Instead all he could do was admire the fine work that Harren had done in making his imperial seat ready for him, even going out of his way to stock its provisions to the brim in the vast subterranean vaults beneath the towers. Truly, how helpful of him.

The man in question had accepted his request for a parley and had ridden out to meet him in the field before the great gatehouse outside of the range of either the scorpions on Harrenhal’s walls or the archers in Aegon’s army. Two truce banners stood at the parley, one for the Seven and one for the Fourteen Gods of Old Valyria. He would have put the Drowned God’s symbol on a third truce banner as well but to be honest he cared not one whit for that particular religion and it seemed to be lacking a symbol that truly represented it.

Harren rode up to the parley with a host of guards and his maester and banner bearer accompanying him. He was an old and grey man, the years of power and decadence having given him a fat and round belly. There was fierceness in the way he carried himself, but as Aegon took in the evidence of the man’s age and sloth, he wondered if it was simply for show.

For his part, Aegon had brought his own maester so that the words exchanged at this parley may be remembered, a company of Dragonguard with a banner bearer, and two particular prisoners.

“Harren Hoare,” he greeted the Black Tyrant as he approached.

“Aegon Targaryen,” the Ironman greeted in turn, with a scowl on his face, one that only deepened as he beheld his sons Othgar and Qhorwyn in chains at Aegon’s mercy.

“Yield now,” Aegon began, “and I will spare all of your sons, those at my mercy today and those that will be at my mercy tomorrow. Yield now, and you and your sons and all your servants and soldiers will be granted safe passage to the Wall where you may take the black and live out the rest of your days in honorable service beside your kin, the Lord Commander Harras Hoare. You see my army outside your walls. You see my dragons.”

“What is outside my walls is of no concern to me. Those walls are strong and thick,” came Harren’s retort.

“Strong and thick enough to repel forty thousand men?” Aegon challenged.

“Forty thousand dead men if they dare to march on these walls. They are high and impenetrable, no siege engine may break them, no ladder may scale them,” Harren boasted.

“But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.”

Harren the Black laughed then, a grim and cruel chuckling cackle. “I built in stone. Stone does not burn.”

“By the time sun rises on the morrow, your line shall end,” Aegon declared.

He turned his gaze over to his prisoners and at his nod the Dragonguard threw them onto the ground before Harren, drawing the Ironman king’s attention to them once again. “Starting with these two. You said that nothing outside your walls was of any concern to you. Does that apply to your sons as well?”

At that Harren spat upon his broken and pleading sons. “Do with the weaklings as you wish. I have three more worthier sons to replace them,” he said before he turned back to his castle.

As he rode away however, Aegon called out to him one last time. “You said that stone does not burn Harren Hoare. But what of men?”

To that, Harren gave no reply, riding off into the distance back to his walls. Aegon turned and rode back to his own army, the Dragonguard quick on his tail with their prisoners in tow.

As he arrived back in his encampment, he dismounted from his horse and pet it affectionately before handing the reins over to the stable hand. Though no mount could compare to Balerion, his black stallion Thunderer was a fine specimen of horseflesh in his own right and he was fond of him. All under his care would want for nothing, even the animals.

As he made his way through the encampment, Aegon espied some of the thralls that Harren had expelled right into the midst of his army when they had arrived yesterday. All of them had been emaciated and starved, with many on the brink of death due to overwork, exhaustion, and hunger.

Perhaps Harren had thought that the sight of the poor souls who were little more than skin and bones would weaken the morale of Aegon’s army and strain their supplies as they struggled to feed thousands more mouths. Perhaps it might have if the Rivermen hadn’t been eager to receive their kinsmen and give them aid and Aegon not made a speech about liberating and freeing more people from Harren’s yoke.

Harrenton outside the western walls of Harrenhal had been seized by their army once they had set camp and many of the thralls had been sent there to rest and shelter with a few of his most trusted units serving as guards and protectors. Aegon had formally decreed the thralls freed from their servitude before their grateful eyes and ears and then ordered them all fed and watered generously. Supplies were of no concern to him, not when Harrenhal and all the provisions within would soon be theirs.

His siblings and their commanders were waiting for him in the command tent. Visenya, Rhaenys, Orys, Quenton Qoherys, Josua Scales, Gaemon Gryvetheon, the Velaryons, the Celtigars, all the lords of the Riverlands and Blackwater Bay who had joined them, and all of the sellsword captains.

“The negotiations failed, as expected. Ready the army. The Free Companies will take point and lead the vanguard,” Aegon ordered.

As he had predicted, the sellswords protested. “Do you think us expendable King Aegon?” Gyllaro of the Bright Banners demanded. His fellow captains and commanders murmured in agreement.

“Far from it. It is out respect for your skill. Even with dragons, Harrenhal will be no easy castle to storm and only the finest and most skilled swords can take it. Who better to be the tip of the spear than the finest warriors of Essos?” he flattered them.

And to sweeten the deal he offered, “And of course, those in the vanguard will have the greatest share of the treasure.”

Flattery and the promise of rich rewards had them all salivating and eager to fight then. Aegon smirked. Pride and greed never failed to motivate.

Turning to the Rivermen he spoke again. “You all have your own pound of flesh to take from the Ironmen I am sure. You will go in next after the sellswords and exact your vengeance upon those who have oppressed you and your people.”

The Riverlords nodded eagerly in excitement, their eyes alight with righteous wrath at the promise of vengeance. Aegon was not done yet however.

“There are twenty thousand defenders inside Harrenhal but only seven in twenty are Ironmen. The rest are your fellow Rivermen. Kill all the Ironmen and any who would join them, but spare the servants for they are innocent and oppressed. If any Rivermen and lords who bear arms throw them down or would turn them against the Ironmen alongside you, let them. The same goes for all of you as well,” he concluded, turning to the sellsword captains and his other lords. All nodded their assent to his orders.

By the time the stakes had been readied and the brothers Othgar and Qhorwyn Hoare tied to them and screaming their pathetic pleas for mercy, the entire army had finalized its preparations and formed up in front of the gates waiting for the attack.

Harrenhal had only four gates, the enormous main gate, a smaller eastern gate, an even smaller postern gate, and a water gate. Before both of the two major gates on land, the cavalry components of each of the sellsword companies and some reinforcing Riverlander knights took point at the head of the vanguard while right behind them awaited thousands of sellsword and Rivermen infantry hungry for glory, gold, and vengeance.

The brothers Hoare had been tied to stakes diagonally to the main gate so that their pyre would not obstruct the impending charge but would still be within easy view of the defenders on the battlements and Harren in his tower. A warning of the fate that awaited all who defied the Dragon.

Mounted atop their dragons, Aegon and his sisters stalked round the stakes before Visenya finally had Vhagar set them on fire with a slight breath, the flames intentionally weak as his sister sought to make her would be rapists suffer. The screams they made as their flesh cooked and their skin charred was music to Aegon’s ears. Finally, Visenya tired of playing with her food and at her order Vhagar let loose a stronger blast of flame that instantly burned away the Hoares and the stakes into ash and ember blowing in the wind.

With that settled the three of them spurred their dragons into the sky, launching upwards at speeds that shocked all lesser men who beheld their ascent. They climbed up through the clouds, higher and higher until they were no bigger than flies upon the noon sun to those on the ground and even the great Harrenhal was naught but an anthill.

Only then did they descend, the wind seeming to whistle past their helmeted ears as their dragons dived, wings tucked in, snouts pointed straight down, and fires brewing in their bellies and maws. Until at last the great walls of Harrenhal appeared before them and they took aim and unleashed ruin and death.

Stone does not burn, Harren had said. And that was true enough. But Harrenhal did not have stone alone. Wood turned to cinders and metal into slag upon the ground as Balerion’s breath burned through the great gates. And even stone could crack and melt if the fire was hot enough. Whenever Aegon’s control slipped ever so slightly, Balerion’s flames would make the walls glow almost red as they warped, making him sigh at the damage to his new castle that he would have to repair.

Black flames met black stone walls as men screamed and smoked and died. The men in the courtyard before the main gatehouse died. The men about the eastern gate died when Vhagar and Meraxes fell upon them. All the men that manned the battlements burned and died as the three dragons soared overhead and bathed them in fire.

By the end of their onslaught, the curtain walls had been cleansed of all foes on its battlements and even those within the walls at the gatehouses manning the murder holes had likely been cooked to death by the sheer heat. The gates were broken and the courtyards on the other side had been laid waste and made empty.

Horns sounded through the entire army then as the cavalry charged for the two gates at a thunderous gallop, the infantry far outpaced as they ran up behind them. The remaining defenders scattered throughout Harrenhal had barely recovered and regrouped when Aegon’s cavalry fell upon them, their lances and swords tearing through them like a knife through butter. In some parts he even espied defenders and servants, especially Rivermen, surrendering to his army eagerly or turning their coat and joining them to attack the Ironmen in savage mobs.

As their infantry poured into the castle and fighting began in earnest within the towers, barracks, and halls, Aegon knew that their part in the battle was at an end. He took Balerion back to camp and when he made his way to his personal tent, he found his sisters abed and wanting, as naked as the days they had been born and eager to continue where they had left off earlier.

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The Tyrant’s Fall

How did it come to this Harren wondered? Only yesterday he had thought his great castle impregnable and now he laid besieged in the highest levels of his own tower. They could not go any further up, for construction was not complete and even if they could, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide anymore.

His last remaining Ironmen guards barred the doors desperately with anything they could, pushing against it with their own bodies even as the horde outside rammed against it. Sellswords greedy for his gold and Riverlander knights thirsting for his blood. The barbarians were at the gates and there was naught that he could do about it!

This was all the fault of those accursed Targaryens! He rued the days that those sibling-fuckers had ever been born. If only they had never come his reign and line would have been secure until the end of time and the Riverlands would have never escaped the grip of the black blood.

He would not weep, for tears were for the weak, but in his heart Harren mourned his sons Othgar and Qhorwyn. They had failed him but they had still been his sons and a small part of him had died with them when he had seen them immolated by the Targaryens’ monstrous beasts. The very same beasts that had destroyed his gates and scorched his walls and allowed the demons of hell to enter his castle, slaughter his vassals, and steal his treasures.

How he cursed Bracken and all the other filthy Rivermen traitors! They had turned their coats as easily as they breathed lies and falsehoods and with their might combined with the invaders, his seven thousand good and loyal Ironmen hadn’t stood a chance. Slaughtered to a man until now only they in this tower remained.

The last doors began to give way and Harren’s remaining three sons drew their swords beside him as he called his guards back from the door to join them. They would die here, there was no doubt about that, but they could still die as proud Ironmen, weapons in hand as they faced down their foes until an honorable warrior’s death came for them. Oh how the bards back in the Iron Islands would forever sing of their legendary last stand!

But when the doors broke open at last, it was not the sellswords of Essos or the knights of Bracken and Tully or some other Riverlord like he expected. Instead it was mere peasants, dressed in nothing more than their smallclothes and wielding the most rudimentary of weapons, broomsticks sharpened to a point to serve as spears, smiths’ hammers, kitchen knives, cleavers, and even simple rocks. Even the servants of Harrenhal had turned against him and joined the usurping invaders it seemed.

Harren almost laughed at the pathetic sight of the rabble before him but their numbers soon grew as more and more them poured into the room, backing them into a corner. Harren growled. He would not let mere filthy servants who did not know their place be the end of him!

He surged into the mob before him, his black plate armor making him nigh impervious to their puny primitive weapons as he bloodied his sword with their lives, cutting through their unarmored bodies like a scythe through wheat. His guards and sons were right beside him and for a time it looked like they had almost pushed the mob back before dozens if not hundreds more stormed in to replace every single one they killed.

One by one their ends came, ignominious as it was to die to peasants, die they did all the same. The peasants bashed his guards’ helms in with rocks and slipped their knives into the gaps of their armor. They threw his youngest son Harrag out the window to fall to his death, strung his eldest Harwyn up by his entrails, and ripped the armor off his second son Harlan and stabbed him over and over again until there was nothing left of his body but a hole-riddled bleeding mess of flesh and blood.

But for him they gave no such mercy. For Harren they reserved the cruelest and most painful death they could think off, slicing off his cock and balls and crushing them furiously before they used their knives and their hands and their hammers and spears and tore him apart, piece by piece. And the pain, so much endless, excruciating pain. As the mob descended upon him, Harren died screaming until he could scream no more for his very throat had been ripped out.

When the Riverlander knights and sellswords Harren had thought to face finally arrived, they found only the bloodied carcasses of the Hoares and their guards surrounded by scores of dead servants and the cold, grim, and satisfied smiles of those that still lived to enjoy their victory. The light of the rising sun peeked in through the windows.

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Author’s Note: Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Stay tuned for Chapter 5! Let me know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below or over on the Discord! https://discord.com/invite/NSEwuzpcWm