Episode 9: The Knights of Summer
9.0 INT: GREAT SEPT OF BAELOR – NIGHT
S.E: rain.
S.E: echoing footsteps.
CASSANA
Steffon?
Disturbed from his ruminations, the Lord of Storm’s End turns in his pew and blinks at his wife, disoriented as a somnambulist aroused from his stupor.
STEFFON
You should be in bed, Cassana. This is not a night for walking the streets, not in your condition.
CASSANA
I woke and found you gone. Edmund suggested I might find you here.
CASSANA joins her husband on the long narrow seat, taking his hand in hers.
STEFFON
Then Edmund knows my own mind better than I do. I couldn’t sleep, and thought I would take a stroll to clear my head. I was already at the door before I realised my feet had followed my thoughts and led me here.
STEFFON nods towards the short flight of worn stone steps, the altar at their summit flanked on either side by the towering effigies of the Father and the Mother.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
In ten days, Aerys will mount those steps and the High Septon will place the Conqueror’s crown upon his head and anoint him king of the Seven Kingdoms…and make our old friend Tywin the most powerful man in the realm.
CASSANA
And you’re sitting here wishing it were you by the prince’s side?
STEFFON
I’m sitting here wishing it were anyone but Tywin.
Without comment, STEFFON hands CASSANA a rain-spotted parchment. She reads its contents, the colour draining from her face.
CASSANA
Can this be true?
STEFFON
A raven arrived from Lord Reyne this afternoon, pleading with Aerys to intercede and command Tywin to accept his terms of surrender. Aerys refused.
CASSANA
The women…the children…Gods forgive us, Steffon, what has Tywin done?
STEFFON
This would never have happened if I had not refused Aerys when he offered to make me Hand.
CASSANA
And you would never have refused him had I not insisted we return to Storm’s End.
STEFFON
No, my love, you alone hold no share of blame in this. You do not know Tywin as I know him; you had no reason to believe he was capable of putting entire bloodlines to the sword.
I have no such excuse.
CASSANA
Your only fault here is trusting in the character of your oldest friend. You are too good a man to ever think the worst of people, let alone a man you’ve loved like a brother.
STEFFON
Perhaps you’re right, but if I am somehow exonerated by my devotion to Tywin, I am damned twice-over for my faith in Aerys. Fill your court with our friends, I told him. Clear away your father’s deadwood and pack the Small Council with the men that risked their lives to preserve your throne: Rickard Stark, Hoster Tully, Walter Whent…
I pleaded with him to name Jon Arryn as his hand. I begged him. I would have gone down on my hands and knees if I’d thought it would have swayed him…
But Aerys has always been slow to trust in others. Loyalty has never been enough for him: he demands devotion, absolute and unquestioning, and even then it takes years before he’s able to believe in it.
If it wasn’t me, it was always going to be Tywin. I was a fool not to see that.
STEFFON leans back against the smooth-worn wood of the bench, his eyes downcast.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
I cannot come with you. Cassana, I cannot walk away from this.
CASSANA
You promised me we would raise this child together, Steffon. You promised me –
STEFFON
I know what I promised, and I know what I am asking of you. But if I desert Aerys in the lion’s den now, I give up any chance I might still have of ever leading him out again.
STEFFON sighs wearily. He looks to the broad marble bier, where only this morning the dead king rested, quietly decomposing through the final hours of his laying-in-state.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
Tywin spent the entirety of Jaehaery’s reign whispering in Aerys’ ear that a good king rules from a position of strength, that a good king must never fear to deal his lords an iron fist when they presume upon his powers…and look what those whispers have wrought: Tywin has been Hand barely a moon’s turn, and the realm is already bleeding. How much farther will Tywin take things? How much father astray will he lead Aerys if I cannot act as counterbalance to his enticements by appealing to Aerys’ better nature? What greater infamies will he flatter Aerys into sanctioning if I am not here to remind Aerys of the king he always aspired to be?
CASSANA
What kind of world will our son inherit if you surrender your seat on Aerys’ shoulder?
Taken aback at his wife’s contribution to his litany, reassured by her strained yet accepting smile, STEFFON raises a hand and cups CASSANA’s cheek in a silent expression of gratitude.
STEFFON
Aerys is a better man than Tywin will ever allow him to be, and I will not allow the one to be sacrificed on the altar of the other’s ambitions.
I cannot come home, Cassana. I cannot abandon my friend.
INTRO.
9.1 EXT: WESTEROSI CAMP – MORNING
LEYTON
A blessed morning to you Walter. Mace.
MACE
Not so blessed for some, I fear.
Joining MACE TYRELL and WALTER WHENT at the back of the crowd, LEYTON and STEFFON follow their gaze towards the raised wooden dais. Upon the gallows, PRINCE AERYS watches with studied stoicism as TYWIN directs a pair of hangmen to fit hempen nooses about the throats of three protesting prisoners.
STEFFON
What’s all this about then? More deserters?
WALTER
Aerys put on his sneaking cloak last night and came down among the smallfolk.
MACE
He overheard those men up on the gallows making jest about his father.
STEFFON
Saying what?
WALTER
Nothing we haven’t said among ourselves half a hundred times, your friend Aerys loudest of all.
MACE
Tywin convinced the prince that a man calling his king weak while deep in his cups was tantamount to treason, and anything less than death by hanging would only lend testament to their slanders.
CONDEMNED 2 [DESPERATE, PLEADING]
We’re kings’ men, loyal and true, I swear it! Don’t do this, I’m begging you, Your Grace!
As though lamenting to the heavens, the condemned man directs his supplication skyward. Far above the stony shore, high atop the craggy peak that looms over the camp, a small figure sits beneath the shadow of the royal tent, as distant and disinterested as the Father himself.
TYWIN
I’d counsel you not to waste the scant few breaths you have left. The king cannot hear you.
STEFFON
But his son and heir can!
To the surprise of his companions, STEFFON moves with a drunkard’s balance towards the platform, pushing his way through the press and clambering onto the wooden dais.
AERYS
What are you doing, Steffon?
STEFFON shoulders TYWIN aside to reach the prince.
STEFFON
What are you doing, Aerys?! These men pose no threat to your father: words are wind, and wind has never done a king any harm.
TYWIN
They called their king a craven, Steffon. “A soft-minded, yellow-bellied fool”, wasn’t it?
STEFFON
I’ve no doubt they’ve said far worse about every captain in camp: men have been grousing about their betters since the Age of Heroes, bored and idle men most of all.
TYWIN
Left unpunished, such “grousing” ferments into ill-discipline, and in time distils into outright mutiny. Nip it in the bud and hang three men as an example today, or face insurrection three-thousand strong tomorrow.
STEFFON
Soldiers carry out insurrections, Tywin, not farmers and fishermen. They’ve been away from their families for almost a year now, with nothing to keep them occupied but guard duty and watered-down ale.
TYWIN glances at the crowd below, disconcerted to discover their disagreement being followed as closely as a mummer’s tragedy. He turns his back towards their audience, speaking only for the king’s hearing.
TYWIN [SOTTO VOICE]
Your Grace, consider how you will look if you pardon these men now.
STEFFON
Aerys, consider how you will look if you don’t.
The prince looks from one to the other, like a puppy whose master’s have deserted him in divergent directions. He looks again, from the earnest encouragement of STEFFON to the impatient insistence TYWIN. He peers past them to the sea of upturned faces, silent but for the phantom metallic tinkling of the tenterhooks upon which they await his decision. Finally, he draws himself up to his full height and raises an imperious hand towards the shrouded sentry observing from the clifftop.
AERYS
My father is a great man. A man of strength and courage. And only small men need fear idle chatter. Let them free.
CONDEMNED #2
Seven times seven blessings upon you, my prince!
S.E: cheers.
The pardoned men scurry from the platform, bowing and scraping at AERYS’s feet as they pass. The prince’s practiced regalness slips a moment and a surprised smile creeps at the corner of his slips as he soaks in the audience’s adulation. Observing his friend with a slight victorious smile of his own, STEFFON leans close to TYWIN’s ear.
STEFFON
It seems our dear Aerys learned an important lesson today: loyalty is better won through love than fear.
His expression as flinty and implacable as the unforgiving rock upon which their camp is constructed, TYWIN grants STEFFON a begrudging grunt.
TYWIN
Well played, Steffon.
STEFFON turns towards TYWIN, his brow knitted in pique.
STEFFON
Well played? Seven hells, Tywin, Aerys is our oldest friend, not some game piece for you to –
TYWIN [INTERRUPTING]
But if you believe that yours is the lesson the prince will take from this, I suspect you may not know our friend quite so well as you think.
STEFFON blinks his bleary eyes and looks back into the green-gold of TYWIN’s, cold and sharp as fresh-cut glass.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
When was the last time you heard the people cheering like this for Jaehaerys? Every day he sits up there on his hill, watching the tide roll in and roll back out again, lifting not a finger to end this war and send us all home again. He may as well be stuffed with straw; at least a scarecrow might keep the carrion birds away.
STEFFON
By your own understanding of justice, that counts as treason. Shall I help you fit the noose about your neck, or can you manage by yourself?
STEFFON’s smirk soon withers on his lips as he turns to AERYS, a shadow of disquiet creeping over his countenance as he watches the prince swell with satisfaction at the crowd’s adoration.
9.2 INT: HARRENHAL CELLAR – NIGHT
S.E: rustling paper.
WALTER
Nearly two centuries ago this castle played host to the Great Council of one-oh-one to decide who should succeed Old King Jaehaerys upon the Iron Throne.
QUELLON
Walter, did you really write a fucking speech for a treasonous conspiracy against the throne?
WALTER
Just a few words, Quellon. I thought, given the occasion…
WALTER WHENT looks to RHAEGAR. Sighing, the Prince nods his indulgence.
WALTER
One-thousand lords, fourteen claimants, thirteen days of debate…and at the end of it all: one anointed king. Now we chosen few gather here to anoint another.
RHAEGAR
For that me must give thanks to our host, Lord Whent, and to our patron, Lord Hightower. Special thanks also to Ser Oswell for conceiving of the pretence that permitted us to meet.
WALTER
Don’t give my brother too much credit, Your Grace. He lifted the notion from one of those histories the Lord Commander forces his White Cloaks to read.
Ambrose Butterwell used the occasion of his marriage as a means for those lords opposed to Bloodraven’s influence as Hand of the King to convene at Whitewalls and plot the Second Blackfyre Rebellion.
QUELLON
And how did that turn out?
DORAN
Well, Quellon, you fought in the fourth Blackfyre Rebellion, so perhaps you can infer for yourself how it turned out.
QUELLON
And yet here you all are now. What queer traditions you mainlanders keep.
LEYTON
Let us pray that history remembers us more kindly than it does Butterwell and his band, at least.
HOSTER
History is written by the winners, Lord Hightower.
WALTER
Actually, Hoster, I think you’ll find history is written by the Grandmaesters.
DORAN
To the flattery of the winners. How else do you think they become Grandmaesters to begin with?
9.3 INT: GRANDMAESTER PYCELLE’S TENT - MORNING
PYCELLE [WISTFULLY]
How do we know a tree, Novice Eon?
EON
A tree, Grandmaester?
NOVICE EON pauses in his transcription to look at PYCELLE with furrowed brow. The Grandmaester stands with his back to the younger man, peering out between two folds of canvas and taking a deep breath of the brisk sea air. From their perch atop the cliffs, the two dozen tents of the royal household command a panoramic view of the coastline and the vast campground spread like splattered paint about the pebbled beach below.
PYCELLE
Yes, Eon, a tree. I know we’ve been stuck on this barren, wind-blasted shore for months now, but surely you can still conjure to mind the memory. What is a tree known by? From what do we derive its nomenclature?
EON
I…I suppose…by its fruit?
PYCELLE
By its fruit. Very good.
Read back to me what we have so far. From the beginning, if you would.
EON
“Observations upon the recent blood-letting on –
PYCELLE [IRRITATED]
From the beginning of the passage, boy, not the entire bloody manuscript.
EON
Apologies, Grand Maester. “…and so from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms, the great lords of Westeros descended upon the Stepstones at the head of an army five-thousand strong, bonded in common cause: to repel this latest pretender and his mercenary host back across the Narrow Sea and once and for all cleave from the Targaryen family tree this black and corrupted branch that names itself Blackfyre. Seizing Tyrosh for their own, the self-styled Band of Nine continued their progress westward, capturing the Stepstones and establishing a foothold upon the south-eastern-most tip of Westeros with minimal opposition. So swift was their progress one might be forgiven for believing the Arm of Dorne were still of one piece, and that Maelys and his horde simply strolled across the land bridge that once connected the two continents.”
PYCELLE
Take out the part about “minimal opposition”.
The Grand Maester leans back his head, searching the ceiling of his tent for inspiration.
PYCELLE [TO HIMSELF, TESTING THE WORDS]
“So swift their progress…”
EON
Perhaps…”ruthless their advance”?
PYCELLE
There’s nothing wrong with the wording, thank you. It’s the tense that troubles me…
EON
Tense, Grandmaester?
PYCELLE
It invites one to question why their progress was so precipitous, from which it necessarily follows that the king must be at fault for not assembling a defensive force sooner. No, it needs to be phrased more passively…Ah, yes! “So miraculous was the good fortune of their campaign…”. Yes, that’s better. It lays the blame in the lap of the gods: inscrutable, unpredictable, beyond the control of king and commonfolk alike.
The amendment duly noted, EON looks up from his parchment, the tip of his tongue darting anxiously across his lower lip.
EON
Grandmaester…? I wonder if perhaps you would allow me to contribute something to your telling?
PYCELLE
Oh?
EON
Yes, well, I recall you saying Prince Aerys was blessed with a scholarly mind, and a keen appreciation for historical prose.
PYCELLE
Yes, that sounds like something I might say within his hearing.
EON
And I thought perhaps that if I might impress His Grace with a passage or two in your manuscript, he might be inclined to speak in my favour to the council of archmaesters...
PYCELLE raises an eyebrow, amused at the novice’s gambit.
EON [CONT’D]
I’ve had a little trouble forging my links, you see…my progress has not been quite as…as…progressive as I might have hoped…the Citadel is a very…there’s a lot of politics at play, you see.
PYCELLE
Politics, hmm? How curious then that when I sent to the Conclave for a scribe to assist me, of all possible candidates…they sent me you. Why is that, I wonder?
EON
I…I wouldn’t presume to…that’s not –
PYCELLE [INTERRUPTING]
If you mean to spin me a yarn, young man, might I suggest you would be best served by closing your mouth, taking up your quill, and simply listening. Perhaps you might learn a thing or two about the proper mastery of fact and fiction.
EON
Yes, Grandmaester. Forgive me.
PYCELLE
Let’s get back to it, shall we?
PYCELLE clasps his hand behind his head, his gaze settling into the middle-distance.
PYCELLE
“After the rout on Grey Gallows, Maelys’s host fell back to the fortified island of Bloodstone, largest of the Stepstones. Burrowing down deep into the island’s extensive network of tunnels, employed and extended by pirates and smugglers for centuries, the enemy thwarted any hopes we may have held – no, make that “may have harboured”, while we’re speaking in maritime terms – may have harboured for bringing the war to a quick and decisive end, and set the stage for a long and interminable siege.”
Realising PYCELLE has skipped ahead in the chronology, EON furiously searches through the stack of papers to find the corresponding thread of the Grand Maester’s telling.
PYCELLE
“The topography of Bloodstone could not favour our campaign any less had the gods fashioned it from clay to Maelys’ own specifications. The island is surrounded on all sides by half-submerged upthrusts of rock seemingly designed for the express purpose of tearing through the hulls of unwary ships, as the wrecks of the enemy’s fleet that clutter the waters about Bloodstone readily attest. The one narrow channel of safe sailing that has thus far been discovered leads only to the most inhospitable of landing strips, an irregular headland large enough for no more than two-hundred men to occupy at any one time. Between this promontory and the sheer cliff-face in which is set the entrance to the tunnel system stretches one-thousand yards of flat and open ground, ideal for pitching battle. But even this small concession the gods have seen fit to qualify: a series of natural steppes rise high on either side to overlook this plain, and Maelys has populated every one with archers, rendering the approach to the tunnels utterly unpassable. Should we endeavour to land another two-hundred men upon our pitiful little beachhead, it is into the range of these archers the first landing party must necessarily advance in order to make room for the second.
Whichever ancient explorer first gave this accursed rock its name was surely possessed of a ghoulish sense of humour, for extracting blood from a stone would prove a far simpler prospect than drawing Maelys out from the safety of the island’s innards.”
Did you get all that?
EON glances at his manic scrawl, a trail of ink from his frantic refills bisecting the parchment.
EON
…yes?
9.4 INT: HARRENHAL CELLAR - NIGHT
QUELLON
Not to pick quarrel with your fine oration, Walter, but by my count the “chosen few” you spoke of are conspicuously fewer than expected.
RICKARD
As I explained in my letter, Quellon, Jon took injury in a skirmish with the hill tribes recently, and remains too weak to travel.
QUELLON
And that doesn’t strike anyone as at all convenient?
HOSTER
A warhorse fell on his leg. I hardly see what you might consider “convenient” about that,. Quellon.
QUELLON
Did you see this injury for yourself, Hoster? Did you set the bone? Have you attended Jon in his sickbed?
HOSTER
Do you have some reason unbeknownst to the rest of us for doubting Jon’s commitment to our cause? Or are you merely set upon trafficking in idle speculation against a good man’s honour?
QUELLON
No charge but this: just being here now required I not only place my own neck within the noose, but trust control of the trapdoor to each one of you. You can’t name me overly-cautious for wondering why the only man missing is the one that built the gallows to begin with.
HOSTER
You accuse Jon Arryn of conspiring to entrap us?
LEYTON
And the horse to be in on it, no doubt.
A round of smirks passes about the party at QUELLON’s expense.
RICKARD
Quellon, none of us would even be here were it not for Jon Arryn.
QUELLON
Exactly my point, Stark.
9.3 ½ INT: ARRYN TENT – MORNING
HOSTER
Tansy is with child.
JON
The fisherman’s daughter?
ARMOND
Hoster, you soft-headed fool.
HOSTER
I know, I know. I made a mistake. I thought I was being careful, but……What am I going to do?
In the large and handsomely furnished tent of House Arryn, Lord JON sits quietly for a moment contemplating HOSTER’s dilemma. As though arranged by seniority, JON is seconded at his elbow by ARMOND CONNINGTON, while across the table RICKARD stands beside the seated HOSTER.
JON
Are you certain she’s being truthful? She wouldn’t be the first girl of meagre means to try and trap herself a wealthy man.
HOSTER
She’s wouldn’t do that. She’s a good person. She doesn’t have it in her.
ARMOND
No, only a starry-eyed fool’s cock and now a highborn’s bastard.
HOSTER
Don’t talk about her that way, Armond. You don’t know her. She’s a very special girl.
ARMOND
Then brew her a very special pot of moon tea and have done with it.
HOSTER
It’s too late. She’s four months gone.
ARMOND
Then find a maester.
HOSTER
What do you – No, Armond! You can’t really be suggesting I –
ARMOND
Kill the damn thing? Aye, I am, and Shagger will tell you the same.
HOSTER turns his head in consultation to RICKARD. The heir to Winterfell glances to JON, then sighs resignedly.
RICKARD
He’s right, Hoster. I don’t see what choice you have, not unless you mean to take it back with you.
HOSTER
I can’t bring another woman’s baby home to Riverrun! Minisa will take the children and move back to Harrenhal with her father. She’s threatened it before.
JON
Hoster, are you telling us this isn’t the first time…
HOSTER
Minisa and I…we haven’t…she won’t…not since Lysa came along…I have needs the same as any man.
ARMOND
Gods above, how many other women have you been with?
HOSTER
Roughly?
ARMOND
Roughly or gently, I don’t see how it effects the tally.
JON
Leave it be, Armond. Hoster came to us for counsel, not correction. We’re none of us content to be sitting like statues on this blasted rock, so let’s not begrudge a man seizing upon whatever distraction suits his temperament best. Steffon drinks, Leyton preaches, Doran reads -
ARMOND [INTERRUPTING]
While Shagger here whores about like a dog with two dicks. This Tansy girl one of yours, is she Stark?
HOSTER
Tansy is no whore! She’s daughter to Erroll, the fisherman that made camp down the coast.
ARMOND
Giving her clams away for free, is she?
RICKARD
It makes no matter to you, Armond. Word around camp is that cockles are more to your taste.
ARMOND
What did you –
JON
Enough! We’re all friends here, need I remind you.
JON waits for RICKARD and ARMOND to nod their begrudging agreement, then returns his attention to HOSTER.
JON
There is one possibility. If it could be arranged, it would spare the child and your lady wife both.
HOSTER
Yes, yes, anything, I’ll do anything, just tell me…
JON
I warn you, you will not like it.
HOSTER
Whatever you have in mind, it has to be better than the alternatives, no matter what it is.
JON
Alright. Just sit tight and keep your head down for the next few days. Rickard and I will take care of the rest.
RICKARD
We will?
HOSTER
You won’t involve my father, will you Jon? If he should hear of this, I hate to think how he might react.
ARMOND
It’s not your father finding out you need be concerned by, it’s our friend Walter and the pretty pink broach he’ll make of your manhood for shaming his sister.
HOSTER
Oh gods…do you think…he wouldn’t…
JON
Calm yourself, Hoster. You have my word this conversation will not leave this tent. Rickard? Armond?
RICKARD nods; ARMOND sighs, then does the same.
JON [CONT’D]
Good, though I would have a promise from you in return, Hoster. While Rickard and I see about my solution, you are to make no more rides down the coast, do you hear me?
HOSTER
That won’t be an issue. Tansy’s father is trawling south of Greenstone, and she cannot leave their camp without his leave.
ARMOND
More fool you for rutting with girls young enough to still have a curfew.
ARMOND stalks from the tent. HOSTER follows, backing up to bow like a supplicant before JON, mouthing his eternal gratitude as he goes. RICKARD takes HOSTER’s seat.
RICKARD
I do not like that man.
JON
Yet you hide it so well.
RICKARD
You and he may be of an age, but the added years have brought that man no greater share of decency. How Steffon ever came to name him friend is beyond me.
JON
Steffon never has shown much discernment in that department, and not always to his credit.
RICKARD
I suppose spending time in the company of a fool like Armond Connington will at least have stood Steffon in good stead for serving on the king’s war council.
JON
Must you remind me? You should thank the gods for sparing you such tedium. Every night I sit at table surrounded by dithering old men sucking with toothless gums at the same decisions they couldn’t settle the night before.
RICKARD
Dithering old men to whom you’re near as close in age as you are young firebrands like me and Hoster, don’t forget.
RICKARD grins at the scowl this draws from his friend.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
Perhaps now Steffon has taken up his father’s seat you and he together can inject a little more purpose to proceedings besides smashing our heads against the rocks of Bloodstone like randy bulls against the cowshed.
JON
Lord Ormund has more purpose in him even now than the rest of the council put together, and he’s been in the ground a month. If he could not rouse that gaggle of timorous geese to greater action, I don’t see how Steffon could hope to fare any better.
JON considers RICKARD for a long moment.
JON [CONT’D]
Ass though he is, Armond’s not wrong, you know. You don’t exactly set a good example for Hoster.
RICKARD
Hoster’s a man grown.
JON
Be that as it may, he still looks up to you. So do the rest of our little circle, and it’s past time you assumed some of the burden of keeping the peace around here. You can start by finding me a good man willing to take in a ward.
RICKARD
You mean to send Hoster’s bastard to foster?
JON
That’s the only choice there is, and Hoster already knows it. He didn’t come to me looking for a solution, he came to me looking for someone to shoulder the responsibility he’s too weak to take upon himself.
RICKARD
And now you’re passing that responsibility on to me.
JON
Rickard, my boy, if there’s one lesson you ever learn from me it’s this: being a leader of men sometimes means making the hard decisions others are unwilling to make for themselves.
I’d have thought a descendant of Brandon the Builder would have cause to know that better than most.
INT: 9.3 INT: HARRENHAL CELLAR - NIGHT
QUELLON
For all his influence, it’s not Jon Arryn’s name signed across the bottom of every scroll the raven’s drop at my door, is it?
RICKARD
I make no apologies for insulating you all from one another. No man here knew all the moving parts save for myself and His Grace; each of you were innocent from association until this moment.
QUELLON
And that was your idea, or Jon Arryn’s?
RHAEGAR
Nobody forced that noose around your neck, Lord Greyjoy. Every man here has suffered the same risk, and as a consequence of Lord Stark’s efforts, every man here had ample opportunity to withdraw his involvement without ever being exposed to any risk of being proven complicit.
DORAN
Due respect, Your Grace, but that’s not true of every man, now is it?
RHAEGAR
I have spent every day since returning to court manipulating events to make this meeting possible, Prince Doran, during which time any one of a dozen actions could have left me without credible explanation had I been discovered as their architect. I understand well enough what’s at stake here, you can trust in that.
QUELLON
Beggin’ pardons, Your Grace, but how can you understand? If we’re discovered before we see this thing through, each one of us will die screaming in the black cells of the Red Keep. Our sons and brothers will be put to death, our wives and daughters given to Targaryen soldiers for sport. The homes that have been in our families for generations will be pulled down stone by stone, and if our names are not erased completely, then they’ll only live on to be spoken as a curse.
I have to think Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s fate would be quite different from our own. You are the king’s son and heir. He cannot harm you without harming himself and the future of House Targaryen.
RHAEGR
Must I remind, Lord Greyjoy, that I am not my father’s only son. Viserys is but a babe, it’s true, but he will be a man soon enough, and he is like to have more siblings by the time he comes of age. My father talks of more sons still, and my mother is young enough yet to bear them. I matter more to my father than the likes of you, that I cannot deny, but that does not mean I am any less expendable. If you believe kinship will spare me from his wrath, then you do not know your Targaryen family history.
A wry smile is shared by all present.
DORAN
If I may Your Grace, it was not in fact Jon Arryn’s absence to which I was referring when I spoke of our diminished numbers, but to Lord Baratheon’s.
HOSTER
I am certain I speak for all present when I say we grieve Steffon’s passing, Prince Doran.
LEYTON
Perhaps we might have a moment of prayer in our old friend’s memory?
RICKARD
We are trying the Gods’ good fortune by meeting as we are, Leyton. Let’s not push our luck by asking for greater favour, shall we not?
DORAN
I fear my meaning is mistaken. I am not saddened by Steffon’s absence, but troubled by his loss. Without House Baratheon we do not have the Stormlands, and without the Stormlands we are not as strong as we once were.
RHAEGAR
Lord Baratheon was an important ally, it’s true, but his death does not turn the odds against our favour. The men in this room carry the North, the Riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. The Vale belongs to Lord Arryn, and through Lord Leyton we have a solid foothold in the Reach.
DORAN
This is true, Your Grace, but should this come to open war, Storm’s End can put more swords in the field than -
LEYTON snorts contemptuously.
DORAN
Does something amuse you, Hightower?
LEYTON
What amuses me, Martell, is that you have no patience for prayer, yet parade your cowardice in pomp and leisure.
DORAN
Take note, my friends, just how quickly the pretence of the pious slips.
RICKARD rolls his eyes and cringes in apology to RHAEGAR, exasperated that the fires of historic animosity between Dorne and the Reach should flare so soon.
DORAN [CONT’D]
Do you truly name it cowardice to insist upon a plain and honest accounting of our strength in the field?
LEYTON
Cowardice indeed, and no small measure of ignorance. I find it most remarkable that you feel so emboldened to speak of matters martial, given that you are the only veteran here never to swing a sword in earnest.
DORAN
And I find it most remarkable that you feel emboldened to speak at all, vassal, given that you are only here because Mace Tyrell is not.
LEYTON
Indeed, meaning I am committing treachery twice over, to my king and liege lord both. By my measure, that grants me greater right to have my say, not less.
QUELLON
Aye, about that…meaning no offence, Leyton, but Highgarden commands the largest army in Westeros. To do without Baratheon and Tyrell both…
DORAN
I would not rely on a Tyrell tally were they counting their own fingers, Quellon; the lords of the Reach are false by nature, raised from the cradle to lie and dissemble.
LEYTON
So speaks the prince of a people that place venomous snakes in their newborn’s cradles, and hides scorpions in their enemies’ beds.
DORAN
And what of the serpent in Luthor Tyrell’s garden? What lies did your forked-tongue whisper into our prince’s ear to turn his head towards Old Town, I wonder?
RICKARD
Enough, the pair of you! You’d think neither of you had aged at all these last twenty years, carrying on like spoiled children.
LEYTON and DORAN frown before their scolding, but hold their tongues nonetheless.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
Leyton: Doran is entitled to voice his reservations in light of Steffon’s passing; that is precisely the purpose of our meeting here tonight, so we might settle our course of action to everyone’s satisfaction. And one treachery or two, we all stand to lose the same number of heads should that course of action come a cropper, Doran included. I will not stand to hear his commitment questioned.
DORAN turns a satisfied smirk towards LEYTON.
DORAN
Thank you, Rickard.
RICKARD
And Doran: although Leyton has no cause to impugn your courage, nor does it count for nothing that he sailed with the rest of us to suffer and bleed on Bloodstone. He is no less one of us than Mace Tyrell, and he is nobody’s second choice.
LEYTON [SNEERING AT DORAN SMUGLY]
Thank you, Rickard.
RICKARD
As to Highgarden…Mace Tyrell we all know; Luthor Tyrell we do not, save as a member of the war council that kept us camped idle on the Stepstones for the better part of a year. We could not depend upon Mace taking sides against his father, nor would I care to force that choice upon him.
A round of concurring nods – some enthusiastic, others reluctant – circulates about the semi-circle.
QUELLON
Far be it from me to find the bright side in Steffon’s passing, but seems to me we might have lost one Baratheon, but fortunately for us our old friend was foreminded enough to leave us a spare. It’s not too late to make an approach to the boy Robert.
RICKARD
Robert is a brother to my son Ned, and soon to be a husband to my daughter Lyanna. I can think of no reason why he would not honour his father’s commitment… when the proper time comes.
DORAN
And when will that be? Before our heads are decorating the walls of the Red Keep, I hope?
RICKARD
Hoster and I have made our feelings on this plain enough, and our resolve plainer still. We will not have the children drawn into this until the die is cast and the danger behind us.
QUELLON
Any man that calls my sons “children” in their hearing is like to end up lashed to the prow of their ships, and they’re no older than Robert and Brandon.
RICKARD
But still I name them children, Quellon, no different than we all were that day on Bloodstone. Children, forced to fight the war our fathers wouldn’t.
I for one refuse to bequeath to my own children the curse that our father’s visited upon us. If we should fail, then let it be our heads on that wall, and no one else’s.
9.5 INT: WAR COUNCIL TENT - DAY
Gathered about a long table that admits room for little else within the royal tent, the War Council of KING JAEHAERYS TARGARYEN sits in session. In the absence of their liege, the high seat at the table’s head is occupied by Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, SER GEROLD HIGHTOWER, newly confirmed in his command of the King’s armies. At his left elbow is seated ROBERT REYNE, Lord of Castamere and acting Commander of the Westerlands’s forces. To GEROLD’s right sits the Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South, LUTHOR TYRELL.
Also in attendance about the table: EDWYLE STARK, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North; JON ARRYN, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, and Warden of the East; MORTYN MARTELL, the reigning Prince of Dorne; HARMON TULLY, Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident; and Lord of the Iron Islands DAGON THE YOUNGER of House Greyjoy. As the youngest and most recent appointment to the Council following the death of his father, STEFFON is relegated to the junior seat at the table’s far end.
ATTENDANT
My lords, Ser Tywin Lannister requests an audience?
ROBERT
See him in.
ROBERT REYNE leans in to provide surreptitious brief to the new Commander.
ROBERT [CONT’D, AMUSED]
The Lannister cub has been a regular visitor to council. Once a week he brings us some new scheme to draw Maelys and his army out from their hiding holes.
LUTHOR TYRELL makes no effort to disguise his amusement.
LUTHOR
Somehow each proposal succeeds in outdoing the last in its ludicrousness, which in itself is really quite the feat.
ROBERT
We’ve rather come to enjoy his little performances.
GEROLD [NOT ANGRY, JUST SURPRISED]
Lord Ormund entertained this farce?
ROBERT
Sieges are such dull affairs, my lord; one must find amusement wherever one can.
LUTHOR [DISMISSIVE, CHUCKLING]
My favourite was that scheme with the burning pigs. Just imagine the sight of our proud banners flying above an army of two-hundred squealing oinkers doused in oil. Maelys would shit himself insensible with terror, I’m sure.
ROBERT
I was rather partial to his suggestion we drown the enemy in their tunnels by somehow digging a trench to redirect the Narrow Sea.
[SNORT OF SNIDE AMUSEMENT]
Have you ever heard such a preposterous notion, I ask you?
S.E: footsteps.
GEROLD [FORMAL, BUT NOT UNKIND]
Ser Tywin, welcome. I understand you have something you’d like to present before this council?
TYWIN
Indeed, Lord Commander. As you are all aware, our campaign has ground to a halt before the caves of Bloodstone. To send men into those caves would surely bring their end in short and bloody order, but neither have we as yet devised a means of drawing the enemy from their bunker so we might make full advantage of our superior numbers.
It seems to me, my lords, that our solution may well lie in the pages of our own histories. Near two centuries ago, the Seven Kingdoms found themselves in a near identical predicament to our own. It took Daemon Targaryen landing alone and unarmed on the shores of Bloodstone to finally draw Craghas Drahar from his burrow.
ROBERT
The Rogue Prince rode a dragon. Could it be you’ve been holding out on us, Lord Tywin?
A current of smirks and half-smothered snickers ripples through the room. TYWIN gives no sign he hears them, and strides on undeterred.
TYWIN
Daemon reasoned that the only way to draw The Crabfeeder into the open was to provide him a reward commensurate with his risk. I propose we provide Maelys the same.
MORTYN [SIGHING]
How many times have you come before this council, Lord Tywin?
TYWIN
Sixteen, Prince Mortyn.
MORTYN
Then what could possibly have led you to believe your seventeenth proposal would find us any more receptive than we were to the previous sixteen?
S.E: door opening; footsteps.
The War Council rises to its feet at the arrival of PRINCE AERYS. There is a moment’s awkward pause as GEROLD - only ten minutes more experienced in Council than his young liege – considers the proper protocol. AERYS decides the matter himself by approaching the high chair, which GEROLD dutifully vacates.
GEROLD
Your Grace, welcome to council. If I had known to expect your attendance, I would of course have delayed our –
AERYS [INTERRUPTING
You may be seated, my lords.
Please continue, Lord Tywin.
TYWIN
Thank you, Your Grace. If we are to lure Maelys into giving battle, we must bait the trap so extravagantly that no commander could possibly refuse the enticement.
The Council members wait for TYWIN to continue, and look at one another with wry sufferance when he fails to do so.
HARMON
Well? Spit it out, boy.
Still, TYWIN does not speak, regarding his audience with stolid patience. Finally, realisation begins to pass from face to face, each more incredulous than the last.
LUTHOR [APPALLED]
Unless I’m very much mistaken, my lords, young lord Tywin is suggesting we offer ourselves as inducement.
TYWIN
If each man around this table took command of fifty infantrymen you could cross swiftly and silently under cover of darkness and establish a beachhead. The ground has proven too steep and narrow to settle a camp of any great size, but I’m confident it can accommodate four-hundred without any great issue.
HARMON
And you expect these four-hundred men to accomplish what four-thousand could not in all these months of trying?
TYWIN
You won’t be there to launch an attack, only to invite one upon yourselves. Winning this war with a single charge is too rare and tempting an opportunity for any soldier to resist. And if the sight of Westeros’ most powerful men landed upon his shores should somehow fail to compel Maelys to attack, his captains surely will.
EDWYLE
His captains?
TYWIN
Maelys himself fights for the throne, but his sellsword army fights for riches: whatever spoils he promised, they will not find them buried in the dirt beneath Bloodstone. The men in this room would bring more in ransom than any captain could possibly dream: they would never permit Maelys to let such treasure sit idle just beyond their doorstep.
HARMON [SNORT OF DISMISSIVENESS]
Maelys has two-thousand men in those caves; we’d be cut to ribbons by even half that number.
TYWIN
You need only hold out for the time it takes the rest of our forces to cross the strait. We can ready the troops and fill the ships before you even depart, and launch as soon as Maelys and his army are sighted.
ROBERT
We’d be marching ourselves into an abattoir.
TYWIN
And how many thousands has this council already sent through its doors, Lord Reyne?
ROBERT [COLDLY]
You forget yourself, Tywin.
STEFFON
Ser Tywin, Lord Reyne. Our friend of Lannister has shown you the proper respect and addressed you by your title, I would ask that you return the courtesy.
ROBERT
Respect? He as good as names us butchers and you speak of respect? I will not sit here and be a party to such absurdity.
TYWIN
Stand or sit, you will remain at table until your prince gives you leave to the contrary, my lord.
ROBERT REYNE’s rise from table slows to a stop. He glowers at TYWIN, then looks to AERYS to correct the young lord’s impudence. The prince regards the Lord of Castamere coldly, making plain that none shall be forthcoming. Sufficiently cowed, ROBERT silently retakes his seat.
JON
I fear you overlook a vital point of logistical import, ser: how would the enemy even know we were worthy bait?
TYWIN
Maelys has scum from every corner of the world fighting beneath his banners, including Westerosi. If his scouts don’t recognise your faces, then your fine castle-forged armour will make plain enough that you are men of great importance.
STEFFON
Or perhaps they’ll simply take notice of those faces they’ve never seen on the field of battle before.
LUTHOR
The eight lords of this council hold more knowledge in the ways of warfare than every man of your coddled generation put together, Lord Steffon, and we are settled in our opinion that starving out the enemy is the surest path to victory.
STEFFON
Settled and mistaken, Lord Tyrell.
LUTHOR [OFFENDED]
I beg your pardon?
STEFFON
We do not have the luxury of sitting idle. The Band of Nine still hold Tyrosh. For all we know, an armada may already be on its way to take our blockade in the rear.
I second Lord Tywin’s proposal.
LUTHOR
Every battle-tested officer, every maester with an iron link, every book ever written on the art of warfare…our strategy is entirely in line with the established wisdoms of all three expert sources.
TYWIN
The officer tells his war stories to a maester, the maester commits them to parchment, a learned lord such as yourself purchases the binding to shelve it in his library. By my count that makes one source, my lord, not three.
MORTYN
Over which you’d have this council heed the martial insight of a boy so green he smells of summer grass still?
TYWIN
When men speak of Aegon’s age at the time of his conquest, they cite his youth as a credit to his greatness, not a qualification, Your Grace.
DAGON
Ha! You cannot accuse the boy of lacking for confidence!
EDWYLE
Aegon the Conqueror forced my ancestor to his knees and put to an end to the line of Winter Kings that stretched back unbroken for thousands of years. You, ser, are no Aegon the Conqueror.
LUTHOR [PATRONISING]
If I may, Lord Tywin: Bloodstone has neither the game nor the fresh water to sustain thousands of men indefinitely. We need only wait out their supplies, and soon enough –
JON [INTERRUPTING]
And how long will that take, Lord Tully? A month? Six? Another year? If you ever cared to descend from this hill, you might notice the gallows that occupy the centre of camp. We’re already hanging two-score deserters a day, and that number will only grow larger the closer we come to the changing of the seasons. More than half our men make their living off the land, and if they’re not home to bring in the harvest before winter arrives whoever wins this war will be reigning over a starving kingdom.
LUTHOR
Your point is a fair one, Jon, so far as agricultural concerns should have any bearing on a military campaign, but –
JON [INTERRUPTING]
Agriculture be damned, then! Lord Ormond was a dear friend: every day that passes without our retrieving his bones and avenging his death is another stain upon the honour of all of us.
STEFFON nods his earnest gratitude to JON’s sentiment.
JON [CONT’D]
Tywin, Steffon…you have my support.
JON’s endorsement provokes those lords as yet uncommitted to shift anxiously in their chairs, disconcerted by the rising tide of momentum behind TYWIN’s proposal. GEROLD raises his eyebrows in question and invitation.
GEROLD
Prince Mortyn, your thoughts?
MORTYN
The safety of the men about this table cannot be compromised: an army depends entirely upon its commanders; without them, the entire war effort collapses within days.
GEROLD
Lord Tully? We have yet to hear from you?
HARMON [PATRONISING]
I would have it be known that I am by no means opposed entirely to Ser Tywin’s, shall we say, “unorthodox” submissions, and it seems to me he should be commended for his initiative rather than castigated for his ignorance. We were young and inexperienced once too, my lords, and a little wetness behind the ears is only to be expected. Be that as it may, I must whole-heartedly concur with Prince Mortyn in his estimation of this august body’s critical importance to the continuation of our campaign, and the utter madness of considering even for a second putting its members in harm’s way.
GEROLD
Lord Greyjoy?
DAGON
I’ve never had Lord Tully’s way with words, so I’ll just say this: we’ve got thousands of infantrymen, all of them expendable. We’ve only got seven commanders in this council, all of them irreplaceable. A hard truth, but a truth all the same. Let us be done with this nonsense.
GEROLD
As mean with your words as you are with your coin, as your lady wife would no doubt agree, Lord Greyjoy.
DAGON
Ha! You’ve got me there, ser! It’s the one thing the salt wives and the rock all agree on!
GEROLD
Lord Stark? Are you of the same mind as Lords Tully and Greyjoy?
The Lord Commander waits as EDWYLE and HARMON confer in muttered conversation. Finally, EDWYLE inclines his head in agreement.
EDWYLE
I am, Ser Gerold. Speaking for myself, I believe I preferred the plan with the pigs.
GEROLD makes a survey of the table.
GEROLD
It would appear we are a council divided. Without a consensus, I do not see how I could possibly endorse our proceeding with this proposal.
AERYS
The choice is not yours to make, ser.
In the face of AERYS’s obvious displeasure, GEROLD bows his head respectfully.
GEROLD
As a sworn brother of the Kingsguard it is not my place to argue with a prince.
Mollified, AERYS turns his attention to the table and begins to rise.
GEROLD [CONT’D]
But as Commander of this War Council, I’m afraid I must beg to differ.
Halted in his ascent, AERYS looks in surprise to TYWIN and STEFFON.
GEROLD [CONT’D] [RESPECTFUL BUT SELF-CERTAIN]
His Grace had the opportunity to name you Lord Ormund’s successor, my prince, and he chose against it. My duty as Kingsguard and Commander both compel me to respect that decision and afford it all proper consideration when making my own.
GEROLD stands.
GEROLD [CONT’D]
On behalf of my fellow council members, Ser Tywin, I thank you for your time and commend you for your initiative.
When I make my report to King Jaehaerys, I will recount both sides of this discussion as faithfully and fairly as I am able. Your dissenting voices will not go unheard, my lords, nor yours, Your Grace. I give you my word.
9.6 INT: HARRENHAL CELLARS - NIGHT
LEYTON
Very well, Lord Stark, if you are so adamant upon this point of confining our confederacy to our own generation, perhaps you might in the name of good faith be moved to grant an alternative compromise instead. I propose we reconsider Lord Connington’s expulsion from our ranks.
RICKARD
Armond Connington died on Bloodstone; only his shade has lingered on these past twenty years.
LEYTON
But linger on he does. He could provide us the surer standing in the Storm Lands Steffon’s passing has denied us.
RICKARD
He is abrasive and quarrelsome by nature, impossible to depend upon.
LEYTON
He has four-hundred swords at his command, and as fine a cavalry as any house in Westeros.
RICKARD
He refused to commit his son Jon to our marriage pact.
LEYTON
He offered his sister to Lord Hoster’s brother, but the Blackfish refused.
RICKARD
He called me daughter a whore, Leyton!
The others side-eye one another, cowed into sudden silence. HOSTER places a calming hand on RICKARD’s forearm but RICKARD shrugs it off, his eyes boring into LEYTON’s, cold and hard as granite. Pointedly, it is the man least familiar with the Lord of Winterfell that determines to brave RICKARD’s ire.
RHAEGAR
Respectfully, Lord Stark, he did not. Lord Armond expressed his misgivings that my confidence in the bonds of betrothal drawing our houses together in closer union was misplaced, which prompted you to question his commitment to our endeavour, at which point he -
RICKARD [INTERRUPTING]
At which point he named me Robert Baratheon’s panderer. Which would make Lyanna what, Your Grace?
RHAEGAR eyes flit about the semi-circle, but none will meet his eye.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
We have all accepted a great deal of compromise in this undertaking. Our names, our oaths, the safety and security of those we love, but I swear before the Old Gods and the New that I will cut Armond Connigton open from balls to breast before I make common cause with a man that insults my daughter’s honour. That is a compromise I cannot and will not accept. Not this day, not any day.
QUELLON
There’s the wild wolf I remember. Well said, Stark.
A long moment passes, the cavern as still and soundless as the grave.
RHAEGAR [CLEARING THROAT]
Moving along, if all present are quite satisfied that their misgivings have been heard, perhaps we might turn our minds to –
RHAEGAR interrupts himself at the sight of HOSTER’s tentatively raised hand.
HOSTER
Actually, Your Grace…
RHAEGAR
Yes, Lord Hoster?
HOSTER glances at RICKARD, his old friend’s brow furrowed in confusion at HOSTER’s unexpected interjection.
HOSTER
Before we move on, I feel there is one last matter we needs discuss. I know we agreed the matter settled, but as we are revisiting previous resolutions in light of recent deprivations –
QUELLON
Spit it out, Hoster. I’d like to see my bed before the dawn, if there’s still a chance.
HOSTER
Quellon, I am quite capable, thank you, of reaching my point in my own –
RICKARD [INTERRUPTING]
You’re talking about Tywin.
HOSTER looks at his feet as the others glare at him in challenge.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
Aren’t you, Hoster?
Hesitating, HOSTER finally summons the resolve to overcome his friend’s frosted demand. He draws himself up defiantly.
HOSTER
Yes, I am.
His declaration is met with a chorus of sighs and muttered curses.
QUELLON
Hoster, you fanny, I thought we were done with this?
HOSTER
You all got to have your say, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get to have mine!
WALTER
I’m all for you having your say, brother, but this is just too much, it really is.
RHAEGAR holds up his hand, calling for calm. He waits for HOSTER’s ruffled feathers to settle and for QUELLON to finish the obscene gesture he waves toward the Lord of Riverrun.
RHAEGAR
We all know that Tywin is the true strength behind the Iron Throne. This is a rebellion as much against his rule as it is against my father’s reign. As long as Tywin’s power was tethered to my father, there was little and less reason for him to break that alliance.
LEYTON
From what I hear that tether is pretty damn frayed of late.
RHAEGAR
Indeed it is, and for that we have my mother to thank. It serves our ends for Tywin and my father to remain at odds for the nonce, but once this thing is done, I will do everything in my power to mend that breach and bring Tywin back into the fold.
HOSTER
Your Grace –
RHAEGAR
But make no mistake, Lord Hoster: Tywin Lannister will never hold a position of influence at court so long as I am king. I made that promise to Lord Steffon and I mean to hold to it. But neither do I intend to preside over a broken kingdom. I mean to build a brave new world, and all our work for a better tomorrow will be for naught if we invite a hungry lion into our bed tonight.
9.7 EXT: STEPSTONES - DAY
As the Lords of the king’s war council trickle from the tent and depart with the respective retinues down the steep incline towards the campground below, AERYS joins TYWIN and STEFFON in lingering at the cliff’s edge. As he passes, JON lays a hand on STEFFON’s shoulder and ducks his head in apology.
JON
I’m sorry, my friends, Your Grace. I thought perhaps my voice might swing things your way.
STEFFON
You did what you could, Jon, and I thank you for it.
Left alone, the three childhood friends huddle in butter, reproachful review.
AERYS
I told you it would never work.
STEFFON
I might have hoped for more from Hightower.
TYWIN
Hightower’s position may come from the king, but his influence depends entirely upon the council’s favour: he can only push his authority so far before he finds himself with none at all. Desertions have been limited to the rank and file thus far, but it would only take one of those high lords to march his bannermen home and the rest won’t be long in following.
STEFFON
Tywin has the right of it: we can only wage a campaign against one enemy at a time: as long as those fat old fools hold sway in council we’ll be fighting a losing battle before we can get within two-hundred leagues of the field.
AERYS
My father has indulged them far too long; they have grown accustomed to heeding no command but their own. They care for nothing and no one but their own damnable hides.
They watch the scene below in silence for a long moment, wallowing in their defeat. Suddenly, the light of inspiration illuminates TYWIN’s green-gold eyes.
TYWIN
My brother Gerion, fool though he is, has long been of the mind that it’s far better to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission.
STEFFON frowns, quick to follow but slow to reckon with TYWIN’s line of thought.
STEFFON
You can’t be suggesting that we…
Ignoring STEFFON entirely, TYWIN turns to AERYS.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
You heard how the crowd responded to you below the gallows, Your Grace. Your people love you. They would follow you into the Seven Hells if you only gave the command.
AERYS
Tywin, I -
Surprising AERYS and STEFFON both, TYWIN suddenly seizes the prince by his shoulders.
TYWIN [INTERRUPTING]
This is your moment, Aerys, the moment you’ve been waiting for. This is your time to lead.
AERYS holds TYWIN’s gaze, the spark of ambition ignited by TYWIN’s appeal to his vanity. He slowly begins to nod, allowing himself to be swept up in the older man’s bravado. He turns to STEFFON, eyebrows raised expectantly. STEFFON considers the pair for a long moment.
STEFFON
Give me an hour.
Animated by sudden purpose, STEFFON moves to depart but TYWIN grasps his forearm to halt his steps.
TYWIN
Do it quickly, but do it quietly. If word should reach the council before we have a chance to launch…
AERYS
Leave the hens to me. I’ll keep them at table as long as needs be. When you’re safely under sail, send me a messenger and I’ll make certain the cavalry follows.
9.8 INT: HARRENHAL CELLARS – DAY
LEYTON
Respectfully, Your Grace, each man here has voiced one concern or another this evening, and all have been summarily rebuffed by Lord Stark and yourself. Can you provide us no concession? Do you really mean to offer us nothing?
RHAEGAR
I can offer you the door, Lord Hightower. I am certain Ser Oswell will be glad to show you the way should you care to use it.
It is now Leyton’s turn to feel the eyes of the semi-circle upon him. The Lord of Old Town holds RHAEGAR’s eye, but his cool defiance sweats and thaws beneath RHAEGAR’s unflinching attention. He looks to the others, but finds no more succour there than he does in his prince. Finally, he nods, and the room breathes a collective sigh.
RHAEGAR
While I hear and understand all of your reservations, my friends, let us remember that if everything unfolds according to our plans, we need not strike even a single blow to accomplish our ends. Highgarden, Steffon’s passing, Tywin Lannister…none of that will matter.
When the tourney disbands, everyone will expect us to turn our parties homeward. Instead, while my father is occupied at Duskendale, we will march our combined strength directly to King’s Landing.
Thanks to Lord Darklyn’s contrivance, the bulk of the royal forces will be marching on Duskendale as we speak, leaving the capitol entirely in the hands of the City Watch. My mother has moved quickly to supplant the Lannister loyalists among the Gold Cloaks’ command with men of her own choosing. We will meet no opposition entering the city.
QUELLON
And thanks to my boys, there’ll be no help coming from the seas.
Too invested in his self-congratulation, QUELLON fails to register RHAEGAR’s withering glare.
QUELLON [CONT’D]
The Old Way was dead before my eldest boy was done sucking on his mother’s teats, but reaving is in our blood. Redwyne never knew what hit him, and given we used those stolen ships, he’s never like too neither.
RHAEGAR
I did not instruct you to attack the Arbor, Lord Quellon.
QUELLON
When we pay the iron price, it’s not for anyone else to decide what it is we’re buying. The Arbor is a far juicier peach than the handful of fishing villages you wanted us to reave.
LEYTON
The Arbor is not yours to take, Greyjoy. His Grace all but promised Redwyne’s [RED-WIN’s] choicest estates to me and mine.
QUELLON
You have my leave to try and take them, Hightower. We’ve made Old Town bleed before; I have no quarrel doing so again.
DORAN
First Tyrell and now Redwyne…my my, you are an ambitious little vassal aren’t you Hightower?
RHAEGAR
Silence, all of you. Lord Hightower, I made no such promises, all but or otherwise. And your orders, Lord Quellon, were to harry the shore north and south of Lannisport, to make Tywin fear for the security of his port. I wanted a campaign of distraction, not of conquest.
QUELLON
You wanted the royal fleet away from King’s Landing, and away it is. What difference the reason?
RHAEGAR
The difference, my lord, can be measured in months. If the danger were to his own interests, Tywin would have dispatched an armada the day you first dropped oar within sight of Fair Isle. But when it’s the Arbor under duress, he has naught to offer but half-measures and sermons on self-reliance. Were it not for my father’s fortuitous intervention, the royal fleet would still be gathering barnacles in Blackwater Bay even now.
QUELLON at least the good sense to look abashed. He folds his arms, petulant as a surly teenager.
QUELLON
I see. I did not know.
RHAEGAR
Nor did you need to, only to follow the orders you were given.
LEYTON
We can only hope the son was gifted the good sense the gods denied the father, and he retreats at first sight of a golden sail.
QUELLON
Balon is no fool, Hightower; he knows his purpose. He and his brother will lead Velaryon a merry dance, I promise you. They’ll make him give chase beyond the southern shores of the Summer Isles if need be.
RHAEGAR fixes his gaze on QUELLON a moment longer then returns his attention to the room.
RHAEGAR
Ser Lewyn’s captains will open the gates of the Red Keep and command the garrison to lay down their swords, an order I will second if need be. While your men secure control of the castle, we will proceed directly to the throne room and take possession of the Iron Throne. The first the realm will know of what has happened will be the ravens you send to your vassal lords informing them that you have bent the knee and recognised my right to rule.
RICKARD
By blood, by birth, and by conquest.
WALTER
A conquest nobody will even know about until it’s already done.
LEYTON
Most people, you show them a man sitting on a throne with a crown upon his head, they’ll tell you he’s a king. But to others – mine own flock not discounted - until the High Septon gives his blessing they’ll tell you it’s just another man with ideas above his station.
HOSTER
And it’s not as though there isn’t precedence for a High Septon refusing to anoint a new king.
RHAEGAR
I understand well enough the power of ceremony and symbol, my lords. We are depending upon the people accepting my rule not as a break in tradition, but a continuation; not as a usurption, but a peaceful transfer of power. And for that I shall require all the attendant trappings of kingship: the crown, the throne, the Red Keep, and yes, anointment before the Seven. My first act as king will be to invite the High Septon to cross the hills and confirm me as my father’s successor.
DORAN
And if he refuses?
RHAEGAR
Then I will invite him to recall all the many calumnies Lord Tywin has been seeding about the city for years now. I’ve no doubt you’ve all heard them?
WALTER
They say the king hasn’t left the Red Keep since Prince Viserys was born. That he doesn’t dress, doesn’t bathe…
QUELLON
I heard he’s taken to strutting about the throne room in naught but his crown, his manhood swinging for all the court to see.
DORAN
There’s talk in Dorne that the king has discovered his grandfather’s lust for the flames. They say he’s been burning his way through the whores of King’s Landing like –
RHAEGAR [INTERRUPTING]
Thank you, Prince Doran. I think my point has been made. If the High Septon should query my kingship, or if the day should come when the people call upon us to justify our actions…well, as you said yourself, Lord Walter: history is written to the flattery of the victors.
WALTER
Here, here, Your Grace.
The seven men gathered in the makeshift cellar settle into a collective silence. Their anxieties addressed, the confederacy confirmed, and their plans for the morrow sufficiently settled, there remains nothing left to say. They meet one another’s eyes, nodding in communal accord.
RHAEGAR
The next time we are all standing together like this, we will be flanked by two rows of dragon skulls at the foot of the Iron Throne. Until then…go with the gods, my lords.
9.9 [MONTAGE 1] INT: JON ARRYN’S TENT – DAY
In JON ARRYN’s tent, the heirs of Westeros sit gathered in languid boredom, each man endeavouring to while away another day’s interminable hours of inaction: RICKARD and HOSTER play at dice, DORAN reads from a weighty tome, MACE picks at a ravaged turkey carcass, LEYTON polishes his enamelled breastplate, WALTER snoozes in an overstuffed armchair.
The soporific calm of the tent is suddenly disturbed by STEFFON’s unannounced arrival.
STEFFON
Alright, lads…
He grins broadly at the startled faces that receive him.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
…who else is sick of this fucking war?
[MONTAGE 2] INT: ROYAL TENT – DAY
HARMON
…just can’t find a dependable supplier these days. In my day, you could walk through just about any market and be sure of seeing apples, pears, peaches, dates, all manner of nuts and berries. But now you’re lucky to find yourself a punnet of grapes so tart they bring a tear to your eye. Why, just this past summer -
Summoned to the prince’s tent on the pretence of ameliorating any ill-feeling following their divided conference, the great lords of the war council sit arranged in various states of drowsy disinterest, politely suffering HARMON’s oft-revisited disquisition. Only AERYS sits upright, hoping by his performative fascination to encourage his guests to share in the same. As HARMON speaks, a flush-faced servant enters at a rush.
HARMON [CONT’D]
- my Gwendolin had to survive three whole weeks without enough plums to bake her famous pies. As for the prices –
SERVANT
Forgive me, Your Grace, but I –
AERYS [INTERRUPTING]
Can’t you see Lord Tully is speaking, man?
SERVANT
A thousand apologies, Your Grace, only –
AERYS
Only nothing! Stand there and wait in silence until his lordship is finished.
I do beg your pardon, Lord Harmon. Now, surely this can’t be true of root vegetables? Your potatoes, your parsnips, your radishes…
HARMON
Don’t get me started on root vegetables! When I was boy you couldn’t walk from A to B without tripping over a nice healthy potato patch, but these days the smallfolk seem to plant the ground with pebbles for all the good it does come the harvest. You know, I remember once when I was, oh, couldn’t have been more than eight or nine…
[MONTAGE 3] EXT: WAR CAMP - DAY
Like a comet streaking across the night sky, STEFFON forges a path through the sprawling camp, RICKARD, DORAN, and LEYTON at one elbow, HOSTER and WALTER at the other, and a tail of household guards following behind.
STEFFON
Leyton, gather as many men as you can; young men you can trust, men you’ve grown up beside.
Doran –
DORAN
I’ll hunt down Oberyn.
STEFFON
Good man.
LEYTON peels away, DORAN labouring slowly in the opposing direction.
RICKARD
We’ll need experienced steel in our line.
STEFFON
Hoster, the Blackfish?
HOSTER
I’ll hunt him down.
STEFFON
Walter, find Jon and send him to round up as many knights as he’s able. It will carry more weight coming from him.
WALTER nods, turns on his heels, and scarpers away between the tent rows.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
That just leaves the ships…
RICKARD grins, steering their course towards the waterfront.
RICKARD
I know just the man.
[MONTAGE 4] INT: GREYJOY TENT - DAY
With RICKARD at their head, the party steps into the packed and rowdy tent erected apart from the general encampment, closest to the shore. Before STEFFON can take his second step, RICKARD grabs him by the shoulder and yanks him sharply backwards beyond the flight of a battle axe whirling through the air across their path. Faster than a striking cobra, QUELLON GREYJOY snatches the axe’s handle from the air and brings its blade to a sudden stop only inches from his forehead.
S.E: cheers.
Standing twenty feet apart from his first-mate within an appreciative circle of Ironborn, QUELLON quaffs from a tankard of ale and points the axe head towards his challenger.
QUELLON
My turn.
QUELLON flips the axe about and takes aim at his first-mate’s face, sighting the line of sharpened steel between his opponent’s wide, terrified eyes. They somehow double in size once again when QUELLON pauses to drain his cup, staggering slightly as he tosses it aside and wipes his mouth across his sleeve. His tongue sneaking out the side of his mouth in concentration, QUELLON looses the axe, turning in the same movement towards the entrance as he catches sight of his guests.
S.E: scream.
QUELLON
Shagger, me old mucker!
QUELLON casts a derisive glance towards his whimpering first-mate scrabbling in the dirt to retrieve his severed fingers.
QUELLON [CONT’D]
Stop your bleating, you big girl! The Drowned God gave you seven more, didn’t he?
Walking with a subtle weave across the tent, the eldest son of DAGON claps a heart hand on RICKARD’s shoulder and eyes the others with a wry arch of his eyebrow.
QUELLON [CONT’D]
Now, what can I do you handsome little lordlings for?
[MONTAGE 5] INT: ROYAL TENT – DAY
HARMON
….and that’s only for starters, mind you. Let’s not even talk about the standard of citrus fruit the Free Cities have found the nerve to try and peddle on our docks.
SERVANT
Your Grace, if I may –
AERYS
Do you have wine?
SERVANT
Wine, Your Grace?
AERYS
Yes, wine. You know the stuff: comes in a variety of colours, makes even the homeliest wench seem appealing when consumed in sufficient quantities.
SERVANT
No, Your Grace, I have no wine. But I bring word –
AERYS
Can’t you see all the empty cups about the brazier? Go and fetch my lords three jugs of the Dornish Red.
SERVANT
But –
AERYS
Lord Luthor, I understand your daughter has been learning the lute?
[MONTAGE 6] EXT: WATERFRONT – DAY
On the stony shore where the royal encampment meets the Narrow Sea the familiar sight of soldiers embarking plays out in muted parody, as though a traveling troupe of mummers were rehearsing a new performance enacted entirely in mime. The silent squadrons hurry to climb into a procession of long rowboats lined up along the tideline, pushing off into the water one after the other on oars muffled in their locks. NOVICE EON pushes his way through the throng to secure himself a better view, his eyes flitting about the scene on posterity’s command, bright with alert excitement.
QUELLON
Quick and silent, quick and silent, just how your mothers like it.
QUELLON directs traffic, pausing only to point at the captain of the watch mounted upon a large promontory and running his finger across his throat in reminder. The captain nods his understanding and turns away, his jolly whistle providing incongruous accompaniment to the pantomime unfolding behind his back.
QUELLON [CONT’D]
Hang on, you: where’s your helmet?
IRONBORN #1
Never wear once. Fucks with my field of vision.
QUELLON
An axe to the head will fuck with it more. You! Don’t you own a shield?
IRONBORN #2
I lost it, didn’t I.
QUELLON
Do you have a fat friend?
IRONBORN #2
Aye.
QUELLON
Then stick close by him. On you go.
Come on, you sons of whores, quick about it!
Watching from amidst the crowd of perplexed spectators, NOVICE EON is suddenly overcome by a rush of blood to his head, and lurches forward to jump into the nearest departing rowboat.
[MONTAGE 7] INT: ROYAL TENT – DAY
LUTHOR
…and she was wedded to a Tully, a third cousin I believe, on Lady Imora’s side.
AERYS
And that’s the same Lady Imora that was mother to your son’s second wife?
LUTHOR
No, Your Grace, that was Imora Bracken. This is Imora Blackwood I speak of.
AERYS
I see. And what became of Lady Bracken?
The SERVANT dances impatiently from foot to foot, both hands full with two enormous jugs of wine.
AERYS
I seem to recall you mentioned a grand-niece that married a Bracken. Could they be any relation I wonder?
AERYS and the servant both hold their breathes as the questions works its way through Lord Tyrell’s lethargic mind, each anxiously waiting to see whether AERYS’ diversionary tactics have somehow exhausted LUTHOR’s reserves of familial trivia.
LUTHOR
Indeed, Your Grace. Sisters by marriage, I understand, Lady Jennifer being wedded to Lord Percy, brother to Lord Avery of Stone Hedge. Now, their firstborn son was betrothed to a Darry girl, if memory serves, but the poor thing perished before the marriage could be consummated, and so she instead married -
[MONTAGE 8] EXT: CLIFFS OF BLOODSTONE - DAY
As the makeshift armada knifes through the waters of the Narrow Sea, a line of silhouettes watch their progress with curious eye from their position along an overhanging promontory ridge above the entrance to the tunnel system carved into the rock of Bloodstone. From the darkness of the cave mouth emerges a blacker shadow still, joining his fellow commanders in the Band of Nine. Eight-feet tall and broad across as two men standing shoulder-to-shoulder, MAELYS Blackfyre carries with him the threat of precipitous violence the way others carry their cloak. His sloped brow hangs over the black coal cinders of his eyes, his lips parted to reveal two lines of yellowed teeth filed to razor-sharp points. Upon his shoulder, a second head no larger than a child’s fist bites at the air, long tendrils of spit spilling down from its gnashing maw to hang about the cords of MAELYS’ muscled neck. From the belt about his waist hang a dozen grey-white skulls, prizes claimed from men of influence and command slain by the pretender’s own hand. The most recent trophy he grasps in one shovel-sized hand, its eye sockets corked and sealed. MAELYS sips a mouthful of wine from the skull’s filed-down nape and follows the eyeline of his companions. Against the backdrop of the bleeding sky, a line of banners wave back and forth, their colours muted and drained by the half-light of approaching sunrise.
MAELYS
Xhobar. Prepare the archers.
XHOBAR
At once, Your Grace.
MAELYS inclines his head in summons and an immaculately-dressed and styled Volantine of pendulous jowel and prodigious belly steps forward.
MAELYS [CONT’D]
Adarys. Fetch the Bad Apple.
[MONTAGE 9] INT: ROYAL TENT – DAY
LUTHOR
…and that brings us back to the present, Your Grace, and my son Mace, as yet unwed though soon to be betrothed, if his mother has her way…which she typically does.
A captain of the guard bursts into the tent and drops to his knees before AERYS, clearly hoping his exaggerated show of servility with excuse his rude arrival.
AERYS
What is the meaning of this?
CAPTAIN
Forgive me Your Grace, but I bring urgent news from the waterfront -
Suddenly roused from their torpor, the great lords of the war council sit up and listen with rapidly escalating alarm at the captain’s report.
[MONTAGE 10] EXT: SHORE OF BLOODSTONE – DAY
The first light of dawn creeps above the horizon line as the first ships reach their destination. TYWIN and STEFFON are the first into the breach. RICKARD, HOSTER, and JON follow close behind, WALTER, ARMOND, MACE, and LEYTON bringing up the rear and corralling their hastily-assembled landing force across the thin strip of pebbled beach and onto the quickly-crowded thrust of water-rounded rock. NOVICE EON scrambles to follow, tumbles over the side of the boat to flounder in the shallows, then crawls spluttering after the others.
The outcrop on which they stand projects into the water like a nobbled horn on Bloodstone’s head, surrounded on three sides by sea and connected by a steep rise of shale on its fourth to the island proper, and a long, broad valley between two stepped rises of rock. A thousand yards away, the valley meets its terminus at the mouth to the cave system occupied by MAELYS and his armies. STEFFON takes six hurried steps up the slope until he is able to sight the opening over the edge of the valley floor.
STEFFON
It’s a straight shot! We could make it before they knew what hit them!
As though summoned in answer to STEFFON’s bravado, two bands of fifty archers apiece appear along the topmost ridge of the parallel cliffs that frame the valley ahead and loom like granite sentries over the packed promontory below. STEFFON hurriedly retreats back down the rise.
RICKARD
Shields up!
EON
Shields?
Crouching down onto their heels, every man of the incursion party raises their shield flat above their heads. Half-a-second later, a storm of arrows rains down from above to drive like hammered nails into the wooden canopy. NOVICE EON curls into a foetal ball, whimpering into the unyielding rockface. No sooner has the first volley left their bows then the archers positioned in quarter-circles either side of the valley nock, lean back, and loose another.
[MONTAGE 11] EXT: CLIFFS OF BLOODSTONE – DAY
MAELYS
What am I looking at, Fossoway?
SER DERRICK FOSSOWAY, late of Cider Hall, pushes back the fold of his patchwork cape of half-a-hundred colours and pulls a spyglass from his belt. He raises it to his eye.
DERRICK
Gods be good, I must be drunk still. Lannister, Stark, Tully…the heirs to half the great houses of Westeros are down there!
See that one in the yellow cloak? That’s Steffon Baratheon, son to…
DERRICK trails away as MAELYS [MAY-LISS] takes a long swallow from Lord Ormund’s skull, its gumless grin drawing a queasy rictus of distaste from the Westerosi exile.
SAMARRO
The boy has come to claim vengeance against his father’s killer. How heroic.
ADARYS
And brought his little friends to share in his glory.
SAMARRO
Or try and finish the job their fathers cannot, more like.
ADARYS
Oh, to be young again…so eager to throw one’s life away on the hope the bards may sing of my valour after I’m gone.
SPOTTED TOM
I’m half-inclined to compose a couple myself: those valorous young lordlings would fetch enough coin in ransom to hire every sword in Essos ten times over, I should think.
MAELYS
I don’t pay you to think, Tom.
SPOTTED TOM
You haven’t paid us at all, in point of fact. You promised us lands and titles and all the gold of Casterly Rock.
MAELYS
Your prizes wait for you in the Seven Kingdoms. Once I take my throne -
SAMARO
The Seven Kingdoms are still a long way off, and they’re not getting any closer with us hiding like rats in these fucking tunnels.
ADARYS
I have been in the ground so long I would think myself a corpse, were it not for the gnawing in my empty belly.
MAELYS
Have the winds set your tongues to flapping, or are you truly so blind as to believe the shit you’re speaking? This is clearly some trap, meant to draw us into the open.
SPOTTED TOM
In Westeros you shall be king, Maelys, but here on this rock you are only one of nine, and we eight say this is too tempting a plunder to ignore.
MAELYS consider a moment, his gaze sweeping up the avenue approach below and the naturally-formed rises of rock fringing its sides before coming to rest on the beleaguered invaders at the valley’s mouth, their shield-ceilinged incursion like a wooden splinter piercing the tip of the island’s pointer finger. Finally, he nods.
XHOBAR
My archers, Your Grace?
MAELYS
Call them off. Hostages tend to bring less ransom when they’re full of holes.
MAELYS’ confederates in the Band of Nine stumble over one another towards the tunnel opening in their haste to descend into Bloodstone and rouse their respective forces.
MAELYS [OMINOUS]
Not you, Tom.
[MONTAGE 12] EXT: SHORE OF BLOODSTONE - DAY
Lowering their shields, the young lords of Westeros and the two-hundred men at their back brace themselves to receive the flood of sellswords pouring from the cave mouth a thousand yards ahead. Five-hundred men clad is mismatched armour and wielding a motley array of swords, spears, maces, and morningstars race across the open ground towards the beachhead. TYWIN draws his sword and levels it towards the onrushing enemy.
TYWIN
Charge!
The rank and file of this most conglomerated of armies burst forth like water expelled from a geyser, the blues and whites and crimsons and golds of their respective houses spilling out over the parched and sun-beleaguered plain. RICKARD moves to follow, but TYWIN grabs him by the arm to hold him in place.
RICKARD
What are you doing?!
TYWIN
It’s us that Maelys wants, you bloody fool!
TYWIN flashes a steely glare around the group.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
Stay where you are, all of you! Hold your ground.
JON
If I cared to cower like a craven while others fought my battles for me, Tywin, I’d have kept my company with your fathers!
TYWIN
What difference do you expect we few will make?
STEFFON
Tywin’s right. If we’re taken before our fathers arrive with reinforcements then Maelys and his army will scurry back into their holes and those men will fight and die for nothing.
RICKARD
Better that than they fight and die thinking we’ve abandoned them!
RICKARD roughly frees himself from TYWIN’s grip, draws his sword, and races after the charge. HOSTER hesitates, then dutifully follows in RICKARD’s wake.
QUELLON pulls his twin daggers from his belt, spinning them expertly. He points at Hoster diminishing into the distance.
QUELLON
Sorry, boys. If it were Stark alone I might give it a miss, but I can’t let myself be shown up by a bloody Southerner.
He pushes past STEFFON and climbs the slope; barely has he reached the top when JON barges TYWIN aside and follows after him, the elder man’s example compelling the young scions of Griffin’s Roost, Harrenhal, Highharden, and the High Tower to join the exodus also. Now only TYWIN and STEFFON remain of the highborn command remain, though both are surprised to discover they are not entirely alone. EON smiles deferentially, shrugging his shoulders in sheepish apology as, to their shared consternation, the young novice walks between them and towards the coming storm. STEFFON raises a hand to stop him in his tracks. He pulls a knife from his belt and slaps it into EON’s hand. The novice looks at the blade, aghast.
EON
Oh, no, thank you my lord, I just wanted a better view. I wasn’t intending to actually fight anyone.
STEFFON
Well now you’re going to. We need every man we can get.
STEFFON pulls his Warhammer from its sling strapped across his back, ignores TYWIN’s death-stare, and lumbers into the breach, dragging the squirming, protesting EON along with him. TYWIN looks back across the water, picks out the royal fleet still at anchor. He scans the shoreline for signs of activity, his gold-green eyes narrowed in apprehension.
[MONTAGE 13] EXT: CLIFFS OF BLOODSTONE - DAY
Returning to report his troops muster to MAELYS, ADARYS steps from the cavemouth and onto the stoney overhang. Feeling something squelch beneath his boot, he looks down to discover the ground covered in a layer of gore and gristle, a pool of blood shimmering in the sun as it settles over the irregular rock, the occasional snapped and splintered bone rearing up like the branches of shrubs submerged beneath the tideline. Amid the viscera, ADARYS spies a familiar technicoloured cape, its tones tempered now into shades of brown and black by the dark claret soaking into its fibres. He speaks with quavering voice to MAELYS’s back.
ADARYS
Where’s Tom?
MAELYS expectorates a glob of derisive phlegm to float upon the surface of the bloodpool at his heels, then turns back to the scene unfolding far below.
MAELYS
*Spits* You’re standing in him.
The Volantine’s face drains of its colour, and when XHOBAR appears at his side he seizes the opportunity to bolt back into the tunnels, sprinting on jelly legs for the relative sanctuary of the battle just begun. Possessed as XHOBAR is of harder experience and sterner constitution, the tall and lean Summer Islander steps around the viscera that once answered to “Spotted Tom” and joins MAELYS at the cliff’s edge.
XHOBAR
Fools. They bait us into open battle, but to what end? To feast the carrion birds?
Like TYWIN, MAELYS peers across the water at the Westerosi fleet.
MAELYS
We’re not the only ones they mean to bait.
Empty the tunnels. Do it fast.
XHOBAR turns back to the cave mouth to relay the order, but MAELYS drops an arm thick as timber across his path.
MAELYS [CONT’D]
Make sure your men understand that if they don’t bring me those lordlings before their reinforcements land, I’ll personally fuck every last one of their eyeholes until I’m soaked to my stones. Go.
[MONTAGE 14] EXT: BATTLEFIELD - DAY
MACE
Stark!
RICKARD follows MACE’s outstretched index finger. Fifty yards away, HOSTER cowers against the cliff wall, one hand curled about his head protectively and the other waving his sword at the air, the steel hanging limply from his hand. RICKARD turns and races across the field, dodging lethal strokes and leaping piled corpses to reach his friend and haul him to his feet.
HOSTER
I can’t do this, Rickard! I thought I could, but I can’t!
RICKARD
You can, Hoster!
HOSTER
I can’t! I can’t do this! How can anybody do this?!
RICKARD
Because they’ll die if they don’t, and so will we!
RICKARD drags HOSTER back towards the fray, but HOSTER clings to the rock wall, limpet-strong. RICKARD plants his hand behind HOSTER’s head and forces him to face the water: a dozen galleys bound for Bloodstone, near twice that number in longships darting between their wakes like a shiver of basking sharks slicing through a herd of humpbacks.
RICKARD
See?! We just have to hold out a little while longer!
Turning HOSTER to face him, RICKARD draws him close and rests his forehead against HOSTER’s.
RICKARD
Just a little longer, do you hear me?
Like a pair of blinkers strapped upon a panicked horse, RICKARD’s hands wrapped about his temples seems to calm HOSTER: his wild rolling eyes slowly settle, coming into focus on the face that fills his entire field of vision.
RICKARD
Just stay close to me, and I’ll get you through this, I swear it.
HOSTER nods, his ragged breathing beginning to level out and some semblance of composure returning to counterpose the fear-fuelled mania that threatened to overcome him only a moment ago.
S.E. Horns.
RICKARD and HOSTER turn towards the clarion call: the last and largest charge of the Blackfyre forces come bolting from the gaping maw of the cave mouth like demons regurgitated from the deepest pits of the Seven Hells, their ranks filling the valley from one cliff-face to the other. And at their front, MAELYS the Monstrous stalks steadily towards his quarry as sure and certain as nightfall. The first brave soul to hazard across his path swings his sword in a wide, careening arc, looking to end the war with a single stroke. Maelys contemptuously bats the strike aside with a mailed forearm and plants his meaty paws about the doomed man’s skull as though in morbid mockery of RICKARD’s embrace of HOSTER. With a short sharp flex of his rounded biceps, MAELYS wrenches the brave fool’s head from his body and lobs it with a disdainful underhand toss into the midst of the quailing Westerosi.
The first man off the boats, AERYS charges up the black shale of the beachhead like a golden comet streaking across the sky. Before he has surmounted the incline into the valley floor proper, a dozen more longships plough into the shore and disgorge their cargo.
GEROLD
Move! Move! Move! Clear the landing zone! Follow your prince!
GEROLD waves the king’s armies onward, permitting himself a last survey of the galleys still inbound. Muttering curses lost to the whip and crack of the ocean air, he unsheathes his steel and drives fast and sure after his prince and into the chaos and carnage of the valley ahead.
9.10 EXT: BATTLEFIELD - DAY
MAELYS [CONTEMPTUOUS]
Little prince.
AERYS freezes in his tracks. All about him the battle rages, but at the sound of MAELY’S voice everything else falls away and the prince’s world contracts to the small circle of open ground at his back, and the gargantuan shadow that stretches from its outer edge to fall across the blood-stained ground before AERYS’s boots. He slowly turns and looks up into the gore-drenched visage of the last son of Blackfyre. In one hand he clutches a seven-foot-long bearing sword as though it were of no greater weight and heft than a wooden imitation sized for a child. In the other, he holds the last of the several dozen decapitated heads he has claimed over the course of the day’s carnage. He gestures to the ring of skulls he wears about his middle, the macabre accessories tethered in place by the hempen belt lacing through each pair of empty eye-sockets.
MAELYS [CONT’D]
I’ve been keeping two spaces spare: one for you, and one for the paper dragon that sits my throne. I have no room for this one.
MAELYS throws the head at AERYS, the prince catching it reflexively. Beneath the raised visor of the Kingsguard’s great-helm, Ser Boros Belmore’s apple-wide eyes stare unseeing into his prince’s own. AERYS drops the head, his complexion turning white as freshly-fallen snow and his knees bending unbidden as though ready to buckle. MAELYS grins, his filed-down teeth gleaming like razorblades. The stunted twin upon his shoulder somehow looks to share his amusement, pink-flecked slaver bubbling between its lop-sided smile.
MAELYS [CONT’D]
I’ve been looking for your father, boy, but he doesn’t seem to be here. Is that because he’s too old and feeble…or too weak and craven?
In all-too-obvious expenditure of reluctant self-resolve, AERYS manages to recover a sliver of composure and draws himself up with every inch of royal bearing he can muster.
AERYS
You are the bastard seed of a bastard house, Maelys, and your wretched kin have plagued my family and my kingdom for far too long. I mean to put an end to it here and now: the Blackfyre line dies with you today.
MAELYS
Come and try, little prince.
AERYS rushes at MAELYS, his sword clenched in two hands and levelled before him like a jousting lance. MAELYS brings his bearing sword down in a lazy stroke and redirects AERYS’ blade towards the ground, holding both sword and wielder in place with the weight of his weapon while swinging a mailed fist to stave in the steel of AERYS’s helm, cracking the cheekbone within. AERYS crumples to the ground and coughs up a belly-full of vomit and bile flecked with shards of broken teeth. MAELYS reaches down and clamps a vice-like grip about his ankle. He drags AERYS towards the sheer face of the valley’s southernmost wall, the prince clawing uselessly at the ground as he twists and squirms for freedom. Like a distempered toddler flailing a straw-stuffed doll by its poorly-stitched limb, MAELYS swings the smaller man into the unforgiving rock. AERYS takes the impact in the shoulder, and when he rolls to his knees as much by chance as intention, his finds his left arm hanging limp and useless at his side.
MAELYS flattens AERYS to the ground beneath one enormous boot, pinning him in place. Inch by inch, he slowly shifts more of his weight from his standing leg; AERYS’s mouth gapes in a silent scream of agony. The Blackfyre pretender lays the tip of his bearing sword against AERYS’s gorget, a malevolent sneer spreading from ear to ear.
MAELYS
How do you prefer to die, little prince: by the blade…or by the boot?
MAELYS crouches forward to rest his forearm across his knee, increasing the weight in agonising increments as though anticipating with ghoulish glee the precise second he will hear AERYS’ ribs crack and feel his foot punch through the gory innards to snap the prince’s spinal cord beneath his heel.
BARRISTAN
Maelys!
The Monstrous turns. BARRISTAN THE BOLD raises his sword and assumes his stance, his brown cloak emblazoned with three stalks of yellow wheat pushed back behind his shoulders. MAELYS interrupts his slow execution of the heir to the Iron Throne and takes three long strides towards the knight of the Stormlands, then stops. He waits for BARRISTAN to rush him, but The Bold is far too wily a swordsman to engage on his opponent’s terms. With a curl of his fingers, he invites the bigger man to come to him.
From the relative safety of a shallow cavern hewn by wind and rain into the wall of rock that fringes the southern boundary of the battlefield, NOVICE EON stares with eyes the size of saucers as the two men square off.
9.11 INT: HARRENHAL CELLAR – NIGHT
RHAEGAR
We need to tell them.
Alone together in the stillness of Harrenhal’s deepest cellar, RHAEGAR and RICKARD discern one another only as vague bright blemishes amid the blackness.
RICKARD
Your Grace –
RHAEGAR
We need to tell them. The White Walkers, the Long Night, everything Aemon and I have discovered these past years, my grandfather’s diaries…all of it.
If the gods are good the transition will be as smooth as we have planned for, but what comes after won’t be half so simple. We need to be united. You heard Greyjoy and Hightower, already squabbling over the spoils; Hightower and Martell, still fighting ancient battles…
RICKARD
Old enmities sink deep in the fibres; it will take more than a new king to wash them out, Your Grace.
RHAEGAR
And what of new alliances? Your friend Hoster pining for Tywin Lannister? And did you catch the look that passed between Greyjoy and Martell when I raised the matter of the Arbor? The Seven Kingdoms have been awash with Dornish Red since the trading channels were first disrupted. Quellon’s disobedience has made Dorne a small fortune at the Arbor’s expense.
RICKARD
If men of wealth and power passed up any and all opportunity to advance their interests, you and I would have just spent a very lonely hour together.
RHAEGAR
All the more reason, then, why we must offer these men the common cause of something greater than their self-serving ambitions.
RICKARD
You’re awfully quick to disparage these men for striving to improve their station, but make mention of our true enemy and you’ll be even quicker in realising the advantage of motives you can count down to the very last copper. My family has been ringing that bell since the days of the first men, but with every coming spring fewer and fewer care to hear it tolling.
RHAEGAR
Then let us ring it louder and longer than ever before! To make then understand that what we’re doing is so much bigger than any one of us alone. If I could only show them the scrolls, explain to them –
RICKARD
Listen to yourself, Rhaegar! Do you have any idea what you sound like? Who you sound like? You’re a young man still, but the rest of us are old enough to remember when news of Summerhall first reached us. Spread through the Seven Kingdoms faster than the wildfire that consumed the castle, it did: the unlikely king burned alive trying to birth dragons back into the world.
Not that we knew about that part to begin with, mind, though plenty had their suspicions. How could they not? There was still folk knocking round that could remember their grandfather’s tellings from the days the Targaryens set this county aflame fighting among themselves.
Every time a Targaryen is born, they say, the gods flip a coin in the air and the world holds its breath. If you start talking to these men about mystical scrolls and ancient prophecies, they’ll decide your coin came up madness, just as it did for Aegon the Unlikely, and they’ll abandon you in a heartbeat. I cannot let that happen, Your Grace.
RHAEGAR
You don’t think me mad, do you Lord Stark?
RICKARD
You know I don’t, or you would never have sought me out. Do you remember what I told you when you did?
RHAEGAR
You said that if a sleeping dragon sits the Iron Throne when the Long Night descends, then none of us will ever see the dawn again.
RICKARD
You and I alone know what’s coming. And we both know what has to be done, regardless of how grubby you might feel doing it. But the others…you have their support now because no man with serviceable wits would ever insist on swimming against the current by denying the future king, not when that same current will carry him to the throne sooner or later regardless. To earn their loyalty tomorrow, you will need to reward them for their efforts today.
RHAEGAR
This does not sit well with me, Lord Stark. Can a man ever truly trust another whose motives are so very different from his own?
RICKARD
I certainly hope so, or you and I are well and truly fucked.
9.12 EXT: BATTLEFIELD – DAY
Somewhere in the darkness BARRISTAN becomes aware of two points of pressure beneath his arms, followed by a queer weightlessness as he feels himself sliding backwards. His eyes flit open to stare up at an absurdly peaceful sky of the clearest blue. He looks down the length of his body to watch his heels tracing shallow trails through the top soil. He tries to lean back his head to see who has hold of his arms, but every time he tilts his chin up he feels the darkness come galloping back to swallow him whole. With a sudden jolt that sends blinding pain hurtling through his body like wildfire through kindling, the naked rock of the open plain rushes up to slam into the base of his skull. BARRISTAN lies flat and still, no strength left in his body to power anything but the punctured bellows that force air along the ragged ruin of his throat.
Slowly, agonisingly, he rolls himself onto his side. In this first moment he can make no sense of what he’s seeing, but in the second grim realisation gradually creeps upon him to settle like a stone in the centre of his stomach.
TYWIN has taken control of the scene. He drags a bloody and befuddled AERYS by the neck of his gorget, the prince’s feet scrabbling at the ground in a vain effort to keep pace. Dumping AERYS before the motionless mound of MAELYS BLACKFYRE, he slaps the royal sword into the hand of its rightful owner. BARRISTAN watches TYWIN’s mouth moving, sees AERYS mutter a silent reply. AERYS’s shoulders slump, the sword loose in his open palm, but TYWIN once again seizes his prince roughly and hauls him to his feet, gesticulating wildly at MAELYS. In the years to come, BARRISTAN will doubt the truth of his own eyes a thousand times or more, but in that instant he is certain he sees MAELYS raise his head. Even on his knees, he is of a height with the standing prince, and if BARRISTAN’s read is true AERYS must be looking the last of the Blackfyre’s dead in the eyes when he swings his sword and separates MAELYS’ head from his shoulders.
TYWIN takes a step and raises his foot over the decapitated body, the still-slavering second head gabbling indecipherably as the underside of TYWIN’s boot comes rushing down.
Grimacing disdainfully TYWIN wipes his boot clean against a convenient rock, then moves to retrieve his prince’s prize. He raises MAELYS’s head aloft by a handful of filthy silver-grey hair, thrusting it up towards the heavens and turning in a wide circle so that all men might bear witness to AERYS’ triumph.
TYWIN
Maelys is dead! Prince Aerys granted him a clean death; throw down your weapons and bend your knee, or you will receive no such mercy!
An astonished EON gawps as all about the valley, MAELYS’ army breaks apart and dissipates like Winter snows come the spring.
Spying STEFFON weaving his way across the battlefield, EON hurries to meet him at BARRISTAN’s side. He begins to speak, to regurgitate forth the history he has just witnessed and the sudden right-angled tangent it was taken, TYWIN’s interjection distorting its direction like a beam of light refracted through a prism…but STEFFON waves him away. The NOVICE instead hovers haplessly at STEFFON’s elbow as he crouches down over the glassy-eyed knight.
STEFFON
Ser Barristan? Focus on my voice, Barristan; stay with me.
BARRISTAN gives no sign that he’s even aware of STEFFON’s presence, his failing gaze fixed somewhere a thousand leagues away. STEFFON tears a strip from his long yellow cloak and gently wraps it about the insensible knight’s throat, the fabric almost immediately soaked through with blood. In his delirium, BARRISTAN murmurs a string of semi-coherent sounds, so weak he doesn’t so much as speak the words as allow them to dribble listlessly from between his lips. STEFFON leans his ear closer to BARRISTAN’s mouth.
BARRISTAN
Maelys…
STEFFON
He’s dead, Barristan. Maelys is dead.
BARRISTAN
…kill him…I…killed him…
The knight’s eyelids drop. STEFFON holds the back of his hand to BARRISTAN’s mouth to confirm for himself he’s still breathing, then looks across the plain to the crowd of Westerosi gathered about AERYS, MACE and ARMOND endeavouring to raise the prince upon their shoulders in celebration.
STEFFON
I know you did, Ser. I know you did.
9.13 INT: HARRENHAL CELLAR – NIGHT
RHAEGAR
And how would you advise I best apportion these spoils of war, Lord Stark?
RICKARD
Prince Doran’s motives are easy enough to understand. By binding his fortunes to your own he becomes brother by law to a king. In time, his children will become cousins to a second, and we both know your family rarely strays from beneath the shade of the family tree when it comes to sourcing suitors. Doran won’t be alone among our company to harbour designs upon your children, I promise you.
Lord Leyton has an infant daughter, born only a few months before Prince Aegon. House Targaryen has made a Hightower queen before; I expect Lord Leyton has hopes it will do so again. And his ambitions will not end there.
RHAEGAR
What richer prize could he possibly covet?
RICKARD
Highgarden. If the Tyrell’s make so much as a murmur of dissent towards your ascension, Leyton will not be slow in suggesting his own house as ideal rulers of the Reach. And these are not the only prizes being assayed by covetous eyes, Your Grace. When the time comes to make your appointments to the Small Council, you can expect Lord Greyjoy to take personal affront should you deny him Master of Ships. Hoster has always held Prentys Tully in greatest reverence among all his ancestors; following in his stead as Master of Laws is an ambition he has spoken of since we were young men serving on the Stepstones together. Walter will come sniffing after a seat too, no doubt, if only so he might remit himself a share of the taxes that have crippled the holder of Harrenhal’s estates for centuries. The upkeep alone would eventually prove ruinous to any house save perhaps the Lannisters, but should Walter control the crown’s largesse as Master of Coin…
RHAEGAR
And Jon Arryn? What bauble will he expect of me?
RICKARD
You know the answer to that well enough, Your Grace.
RHAEGAR
As you know mine, Lord Stark. Have you given any more thought to my offer?
RICKARD
My place is at Winterfell. Especially now, with so much work to be done reinforcing our northern borders.
RHAEGAR
Brandon is a man grown, soon to be wed. Name him castellan, and take your seat beside me in King’s Landing.
RICKARD
He’s not ready.
RHAEGAR
Were you ready when you rode south with your father? Or did you make yourself ready in the forge of combat?
RICKARD [SNORT OF DERISION]
“The forge of combat”. Respectfully, Your Grace, only a man whose never been closer to an actual war than the books in his father’s library would ever describe it in terms quite so grand as those.
In the gloom of the cavern, RHAEGAR is spared the greater indignity of RICKARD witnessing the pink blush that colours the prince’s cheeks.
RHAEGAR
You cannot bend my arm to fill the council with your oldest friends then ride off back to Winterfell and abandon me to their mercy, Lord Stark.
RICKARD
What good would my counsel do you in the capitol, when you refuse to heed my advice here and now?
RHAEGAR permits himself a slight smirk at RICKARD’s reasoning, nodding his head to signal his surrender.
RHAEGAR
Very well. I will not speak of prophecy. I will pay your friends their price. I will hold to my word on Tywin Lannister. But I must have something of you in return.
RICKARD
Which is?
RHAEGAR
A promise. Do you remember what I told you when first we met?
RICKARD
You said you loved your father. You respected your father. But you could never bring yourself to harm your father.
RHAEGAR
The preparations we must make to set this country on a footing for war cannot begin until I have command of the Seven Kingdoms, and for that my father must be removed from power. But I will not step over his body to reach my throne. Promise me, Rickard.
RICKARD
You have my word, Rhaegar: as long as I have any hand in the matter, no harm will come to the king.
RHAEGAR studies RICKARD’s face a long, circumspect moment, then nods. He turns to take his leave, then hesitates at the door.
RICKARD
Your Grace?
RHAEGAR
A septon once told me that a thousand-leagues-and one separate the noble man from the Seven Hells and all its torments. Do you believe that to be true, Lord Stark?
RICKARD
I wouldn’t care to say, Your Grace. Though I’m fairly certain that if it is, the path must run downhill all the way. Easier on the calves, at least.
RHAEGAR returns RICKARD’s wry smile, though the humour shows no sign of reaching the prince’s eyes.
9.14 EXT: COASTAL CLIFFS – NIGHT
The victory celebrations are in full swing atop the cliffs overlooking the packed-down campground, the waters of the Narrow Sea beyond shimmering like stardust beneath the silver semi-moon. The royal stores have been emptied, enormous casks of wine and ale drawing long lines of revel-makers while servants circulate among the crowd with plates piled high with all the meat, fruit, and assorted incidentals the stewards no longer need ration for the siege of indefinite length that only hours ago loomed over the Stepstones like a fat black stormcloud. Spying GRANDMAESTER PYCELLE standing apart with a beneficent smile upon his wine-wet lips, NOVICE EON sidles apologetically to his elbow. PYCELLE nods in greeting, his eyebrows arched in expectation.
EON
I wonder, Grandmaester, if you had a chance to read my account of the battle of the Bloodstone I left on your desk?
PYCELLE
The account in which you present Ser Barristan Selmy as the true slayer of Maelys Blackfyre and Prince Aerys as a cowering incompetent? I did indeed.
EON [REALISATION OF HIS ERROR SLOWLY DAWNING]
That’s not… I never intended…When you say “cowering”, I don’t think that -
PYCELLE [INTERRUPTING]
I was so impressed, in fact, that after I was finished, I passed it on to the prince to read for himself.
The novice suddenly turns a deathly pale.
EON
You…you…
AERYS
Ah, Grandmaester!
His arm strapped to a wooden splint wrist to bicep and the entire left side of his face a patchwork of blood-speckled bandage, Prince AERYS’s evident good-humour strikes a discordant note with his cavalcade of injury, even his gait limping and laboured.
PYCELLE
How are you feeling, Your Grace?
AERYS
Sore, and more than a little humbled, I’m not too proud to admit. What news of Ser Barristan?
PYCELLE
I have done all I can, Your Grace. A lesser man would have succumbed to death there on the battlefield, but Ser Barristan it seems is made of sturdier stock than most.
AERYS
It must have been a most singular warrior to deal Barristan the Bold so grievous a beating. Has he told you how he came by it?
EON appears about to speak, but PYCELLE moves quickly to pre-empt the younger man’s quixotic folly.
PYCELLE
I’m afraid he has yet wake from the slumber in which we found him, Your Grace, and in truth I fear he never shall. Ser Barristan’s fate is in the hands of the gods, now.
AERYS
If the gods are good and deliver Ser Barristan back to us, I want to be the first to know about it.
PYCELLE
Of course, Your Grace. You are most gracious to show such concern for the men under your command.
AERYS
Which reminds me: I just finished those pages you gave me…
EON eyes dart panicked towards the nearest exit path through the crowd, all too aware that the two stalks of shivering suet beneath his waist would almost certainly fail him should he make a mad dash for safety.
AERYS [CONT’D]
Wonderful stuff! You may have flattered me a little, but one must make allowances for artistic licence I suppose! Good work, Grandmaester.
AERYS slaps PYCELLE across the back, beaming with gracious bonhomie. PYCELLE bows his head.
PYCELLE
I’m almost too honoured for words, Your Grace. You wield your compliments as expertly as you do your blade.
AERYS affords PYCELLE another pat of appreciation then ambles away back towards the high table. Once he is beyond earshot, the Grandmaester turns a satisfied sneer upon the wide-eyed, stricken novice.
PYCELLE [CONT’D]
Of course I didn’t give him your execrable scribblings you thrice-damned fool! I gave him my own account, and you should be down on your hands and knees kissing the hem of my robe that I did. Maelys the Monstrous slain by Barristan Selmy? What madness ever possessed you to write such a thing?
EON
I saw it with my own eyes, Grandmaester.
PYCELLE shakes his head in disappointment.
PYCELLE
You’ve got a lot to learn, boy, foremost being that there is a time and a place for plain and honest telling.
EON
But…but…Grandmaester, where is that place if not in our history books?
PYCELLE
Death beds are not just for lying in, young Eon. I love and esteem our history as much as the next man, but never to the cost of hurrying myself to become a part of it.
Now, let us retire to my study: every house in the Seven Kingdoms will want a copy of my telling.
CUT TO:
Though their presence has been barred from the celebrations proper, the camp followers are in even greater demand this evening than any other. Drunken soldiers teeter and totter in a steady stream down the incline towards the beach, the several rows of tents in the makeshift Street of Silk still standing like the last sentries on an abandoned fort’s battlements. RICKARD separates himself from the steady flow of fresh custom and strikes off at an angle with the confidence of a man that knows his way. He makes a beeline for the largest of the tents position at the farthest edge of the camp-within-a-camp, and nods in greeting to the red-haired young woman sat out front stoking a crackling fire labouring to heat an enormous cauldron of bubbling water.
RICKARD
Good evening, my lady.
PIPPA [FLIRTY, TOUTING FOR CUSTOM]
No ladies round here, m’lord, but cross my palm with coppers and you can call me what you like.
RICKARD
I’m not here for that. I’m looking for a man.
PIPPA [MORE BRUSQUE/DISMISSIVE NOW SHE REALISES HE’S NOT A CUSTOMER]
Third tent on your left. Ask for Ben. Tom’s cheaper, but he’s more like to give you something to take back to the wife, if you take my meaning.
MARLY
What’s this now?
A familiar face rounds the corner of the tent and RICKARD bobs his head in greeting. MARLY the madam joins the younger girl at the cauldron.
PIPPA
He says he’s looking for a man.
MARLY [GENTLY MOCKING]
They do say variety is the spice of life, ay Lord Stark?
MARLY winks at RICKARD. Curling a twist of flamed-red hair about her index finger, MARLY’s charge looks RICKARD over salaciously.
PIPPA [ADMIRING, LEERING]
So this is the famous Shagger I’ve been hearing so much about?
MARLY [FIRM AND SCOLDING, BUT NOT AGGRESSIVE]
Quiet, you.
MARLY turns her attention back to RICKARD, waving a hand vaguely towards the cliffs at her back.
MARLY [CONT’D]
If it’s a man you’re after, just look around. You’ll find no shortage up there with the decent folk.
RICKARD
If bravery in battle were a quality best suited to my particular need, aye, I could have my pick. But I’m looking for something else entirely, and I thought a little woman’s intuition might help me find it.
PIPPA [TEASING]
We was “ladies” a minute ago, now its “women”. Keep going in that direction and I’m like to take offense before long.
MARLY tosses the girl a withering look.
MARLY
Shouldn’t you be making a start on that pile of smallclothes?
PIPPA [PETULANT]
I’m waiting for the water to boil.
MARLY
Well wait somewhere else.
RICKARD waits patiently for the girl to depart, pointedly forcing himself to redirect his eyes when she looks over her shoulder to wink in invitation.
MARLY [CONT’D]
Your friend Lord Greyjoy beat you here, but I knew you wouldn’t be far behind. You want the usual girls?
RICKARD
As I said, I’m not here for that.
CUT TO:
TYWIN
Look about you, Your Grace. Imagine the possibilities for our country’s future if this energy were harnessed and made to pull in the same direction…
From their seat behind the high table, elevated above the general merry-making by the wooden dais that latterly served as the gallows, TYWIN sweeps a hand across the scene. AERYS nods in appreciation, but frowns when his old friend’s demeanour shifts and TYWIN slumps back in his chair as though pressed by some great and burdensome weight.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
But alas, this will not last forever.
AERYS
Do you imagine you’re telling me something I do not already know?
TYWIN
Of course not, Your Grace. But you are one man among ten thousand. Lesser men are slower to grasp hard truths, and slower still to face them.
AERYS follows TYWIN’s gaze to the conclave of great lords making a point of lingering at the fringes of the party, the members of the king’s war council regarding the revelries with sour expressions and muttered asides.
AERYS
Hm. We should have called our banners the day the Band of Nine captured Tyrosh. We all knew what they intended, but my father was too preoccupied settling the squabbles between these great friends to confront the danger until it landed on his shores.
TYWIN
And now the danger is passed it’s only a matter of time before they return to their squabbles. Peace and prosperity breed complacency, and a complacent kingdom cultivates weakness the way a dank wine cellar causes even the stoutest wood to rot. These high lords will forget the oaths of brotherhood they’ve sworn tonight, and remember instead all their well-gnawed enmities. Unless, that is, we provide them a new cause to rally behind, a new purpose to bind them all together…
TYWIN stands and to AERYS’ confusion descends the short wooden steps to the ground and positions himself before the high table, looking out at the sea of faces turned expectantly towards him.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
My friends!We won a great victory today. A victory of which the bards will sing for centuries, passing down from one generation to the next the legend of your bravery, your courage, your selflessness and your sacrifice in the face of an enemy that would send lesser men to cower and shake beneath the skirts of their tablecloths.
More than a few heads turn to seek out the war council, half of whom have the good grace to at least appear abashed, while the other half return the crowds stares with obstinate defiance. At the rear of the group, unobserved and unremarked, GEROLD spits onto the ground and stalks away beyond the ring of torchlight and into the darkness.
TYWIN
And when the good people of Westeros hear the story of what transpired on that thrice-damned spit of rock today, there is one name above all others that they will come to celebrate as the architect of our assault and the hero of our campaign: the name that seized this faltering war effort by the scruff of its neck and dragged it with his own two hands through a maelstrom of blood and steel to pitch that flag of victory upon a mountain of our enemy dead and put an end to the Blackfyre scourge once and forever.
TYWIN steps about to face AERYS.
TYWIN
Your Grace. I am humbled to name you my friend. I am proud to name you my prince.
S.E: sword drawn.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
And, if you will permit me, I would be honoured to name you “ser”.
AERYS blinks at TYWIN, his understanding lagging a few seconds behind his hearing. He looks out at the crowd, so still and silent they may as well be oil effigies rendered on canvas. TYWIN inclines his head in a subtle nod of encouragement, and AERYS stands, descending the steps on leaden legs.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
Kneel, if you would, Your Grace.
CUT TO:
RICKARD [CONT’D]
Tell me, of all the men that pass your way…are there any that stand out to you?
MARLY [GOSSIPY]
Well, there’s Roger with the ten-inch todger, he’s a popular one. Then there’s Garth the Girth: if I put him to work I’d wind up rich as a Lannister. We get our share of wrong ‘uns too, of course.
RICKARD
You get a lot of rough trade?
MARLY
We had some trouble just last night, as it happens. Polly turned Jon Pox away when he got all vague on how he earned his name, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Tore up the poor girl’s insides something terrible. Captain Saxton will do for him, no doubt, just like he done for that other pair that bruised up Polly-Pretty-As-A-Petal a couple moons back.
RICKARD
This Saxton…he spends a lot of time around here?
MARLY
Not in the way you’re thinking, he don’t. But he stops by every now and then, just to make sure nobody’s taking liberties, and seeing to it that them what do keep well away. He’s a good man is Saxton.
RICKARD
Is he wed?
MARLY
Twice.
RICKARD
Children?
MARLY
No, they were both women grown.
RICKARD
I meant –
MADAM [INTERRUPTING]
I know what you meant, Shagger. His first wife died in childbirth, the baby too. Him and his second have been trying for years but his seed is weaker than a septa’s tipple.
RICKARD
He told you all this?
MADAM
Not him, but others that know him, and never an ill word to say against him, neither. Men talk once they’ve taken their pleasure. Take that friend of yours, Lord Connington. Pretty Peter says the only way to cease his spillings is to shove his –
RICKARD
Whose colours does Saxton wear?
MARLY
He fights for Lord Arryn, though by his colouring you’d take him for Dornish, like as not.
RICKARD
Does he come with a first name?
MARLY
We don’t stand on ceremony round here, you should know that by now Shagger. Saxton is his first name. Saxton Baelish.
RICKARD
You’ve been very helpful. Might I give you some coin for your troubles?
MARLY
That’s not necessary, m’lord; I’ll just add it to your slate.
RICKARD reaches back into his purse and extracts a fistful of silvers.
RICKARD
That should settle it.
MARLY
You’re clearing your dues already? But the night is still young, and we won’t be packing up until the very last man has set off back home to his beloved. You sure I can’t tempt you with one last roll in the hay for old time’s sake?
RICKARD
Best not. I have to be on my best behaviour for the old guard. Or maybe I’m turning over a new leaf entirely…
MARLY [CHUCKLING TO HERSELF]
It won’t stick. Sooner or late a man’s true nature will always out, and seems to me the beds of whores is a safer place than most for a man as wild as you.
CUT TO:
While AERYS rejoices in the adulation of his people for the second time that day, the press of congratulatory supplicants spearheaded by MACE and ARMOND once again, TYWIN surreptitiously recuses himself and watches from the shadows with a satisfied half-smile. If he hears STEFFON’s approach from his blindside, he betrays no sign, but neither does he react with surprise at his sudden presence.
STEFFON
I saw what you did.
TYWIN turns cool eyes upon his friend.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
It’s not right, Tywin. I cannot allow this deception to stand.
TYWIN
Look at our prince, Steffon. Look at how they receive him. The highborn of Westeros are united about the throne for the first time in a generation. When the time comes for him to don his father’s crown, they will name him the Warrior King, the Conqueror King. At home, no man will dare make challenge to his authority. Abroad, his name will strike fear in the hearts of our enemies. And you would have me throw all that away for what? To further burnish the reputation of a man already spoken of with awe and reverence throughout the Seven Kingdoms? To shame your oldest friend and hobble his reign before it has even begun?
STEFFON
If that is the price of honour, then so be it.
TYWIN surprises STEFFON by taking a short step closer; the bigger man braces himself, but TYWIN’s hands remain at his sides. Instead, he studies STEFFON’s face with exhaustive attention, peering into his eyes as though seeking to confirm some anticipated flaw in a precious stone of otherwise immaculate cut. He shakes his head.
TYWIN
No, I think not. I know you too well, Steffon. And you know Aerys too well to fool yourself into thinking he would ever forgive you. But, if you can make peace with burning that bridge to cinders, then by all means do what you believe you must. I’m certain Aerys and I will manage the realm well enough without you…
OUTRO.