Harren Hoare, King of the Rivers and the Isles, sat slumped on his massive throne of leviathan bone, the weight of doom pressing down on his hulking shoulders. The Hall of a Thousand Hearths was cold and empty. Beside him stood only a handful: First Captain Balon Goodbrother; two Ironborn lords—Farwynd of Lonely Light and Blacktyde of Old Wyk and a quiet priest of the Drowned God, his eyes sunken, his robes damp and heavy.
"Dagon failed?" Harren's voice was hoarse and quiet.
Balon stepped forward cautiously, his head lowered. "My king… that… that is… I mean—"
Harren's head twisted slowly. "That is? That is?! You stammer like a scared boy, not the First Captain of my fleet!" He surged to his feet with frightening energy. "I am surrounded by weakness by rot and failure!"
He stepped down from the dais, his rage billowing with every word, echoing like thunder through the vast hall.
"My sons—failures! Dagon, my heir, was supposed to be a sword in my hand, and what is he now? Dead. And Aeron dead!" His voice cracked. "My line… my legacy…"
The others said nothing, cowed by the storm building in the old king's eyes.
"This castle," Harren bellowed, gesturing to the black walls around him, "this glory of my line my triumph my grandfather's dream! What use is it now? It was meant to make kings kneel, not fall to greenlander scum and some sorcerer from Asshai!"
The Drowned Priest dared to speak. "If Seagard holds, my king, Wex might—"
"WEX?! WEX?!" Harren turned on him, spittle flying from his lips. "He was supposed to burn the western coast to the fucking ground! He was supposed to be the tide that washed them away. Where is the raven that told me Seagard fell? Where is Wex with the rest of my army?"
The First Captain tried again. "My king, we may still have a chance if we hold Harrenhal. The walls—"
"The walls won't stop a man who commands lightning and flame!"
Harren stumbled backward, laughing bitterly, and fell once more onto his throne. "It's over," he muttered. "All of it my sons, my kingdom. Our people die with me."
Silence fell over the throne room like a burial shroud.
But then something shifted.
Harren's eyes mad with fury and fear only moments ago now gleamed with something else: resolve… perhaps madness. He straightened, his hands gripping the arms of the leviathan-bone throne like claws.
"No," he whispered. "No. I won't die a coward, waiting for him to burn down my keep. I'll go down fighting."
He looked at Balon. "Where is my son? Where is Harren?"
Balon hesitated. "He is… missing, my king. No one has seen the prince since—"
Harren laughed, raw and bitter. "Cowards and fools! That is what my blood has become!"
He slumped back, breathing heavily as candlelight danced in his sunken eyes. Then, slowly, a new shadow crossed his face a darker thought.
"Round up the thralls," he said. The room stiffened.
"My king?" Lord Blacktyde asked cautiously.
"The greenlanders. The castle servants. All of them." Harren's voice was deathly calm. "I have a gift for the Dragonborn. When he arrives, he will find it waiting for him."
Balon swallowed hard. "A gift, my king?"
Harren's lips curled into a cruel smile. His fingers tapped the bone armrest.
"Yes…a gift."
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.
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Harrenhal was vast—so vast, in fact, that even Harald, who had walked beneath the spires of the White-Gold Tower and seen the great castles of High Rock, was finally impressed. Its black towers loomed above the Riverlands like a shadow that blotted out the sun, a monument to Harren's cruelty and megalomania.
He glanced back at the banners stretching as far as the eye could see: the blue trout of House Tully, the black ravens of Blackwood, the silver arches of Vance. More had joined in the days after Dagon's annihilation Roote, Wode, Vypren, Mandrake, Ryger, Goodbrooke, Grell lords who had either ridden with Dagon and surrendered or turned cloak on Harlaw and joined Harald from the east.
Mandrake, a grizzled man, had told him plainly how they had ambushed and gutted Lord Harlaw in the night after hearing of the rebellion. The new lords had witnessed what Harald had done to Dagon and become believers in the tale he and Leobald had crafted; by now, every lord accepted it.
Now the army of liberation now numbered twenty-four thousand strong.
Many were knights and retainers of the lords, but more and more had come from the fields and forests, the smallfolk, the broken men, the widows' sons hardened by a century under Hoare rule. Most had lost someone to Harren's cruelty, and they had come for blood.
Harald had not intended to let the rabble march with him, but these people would not be denied and he understood. In their eyes burned something he knew all too well: the righteous fury that boils in a man's heart when justice has been denied for too long.
"I want to see it torn down," Edmyn Tully said, riding beside him, his eyes fixed on Harrenhal's spires. "Piece by piece. Stone by stone."
"Why bother?" Hother Blackwood scoffed from the other side. "Let Harald keep it."
Harald laughed lightly. "Too big. Too dreary."
That drew a chuckle from the others.
But Edmyn remained grim. "It's a curse upon the realm. This place… it festers. As long as it stands, so will its shadow. If you truly want to heal the Riverlands, Harald burn it to the ground."
Harald nodded. He had once thought to make Harrenhal his seat, but now seeing it fully he knew better. It was a monument to fear, not a proper place to begin his rule.
They pressed on, and as the sun dipped toward the horizon they arrived. The Army of Liberation fanned out, establishing camps and preparing for a siege.
Harald called for a council to discuss their next steps, and soon the lords gathered in the command tent.
Blackwood and Bracken stood opposite each other, bristling as always. Edmyn Tully stood beside the Vances Lothar and Lymond. Piper and Roote, Wode and Vypren, Mandrake and Ryger, Goodbrooke and Grell lords from every corner of the Riverlands filled the tent.
Harald made it clear he wished to spare the innocent. The thralls and servants trapped inside Harrenhal, who had lived as slaves in all but name, should not suffer for Harren Hoare's madness. Even in war, mercy mattered; that was Harald's way.
Before he could continue, the flap of the command tent burst open and a knight stumbled inside.
"My lords… Dragonborn… on the walls. They… they—"
"What is it?" Harald demanded.
"You must see it. All of you."
They moved together through the darkening camp. The wind had picked up; it tasted of smoke and rot.
At the outer trench they looked up.
Harrenhal's titanic walls loomed like black cliffs, jagged and grim beneath the fading crimson sun. But it was not the walls that made the lords reel.
It was what hung from them.
Corpses dozens, perhaps hundreds.
Men. Women. Children.
Naked, bloodied, broken strung up like butchered animals. Some dangled by ropes from the parapets; others were nailed to the battlements or crucified against scorched stone. A few had been flayed. Some were still twitching.
Harald stepped back in horror.
A cold gust swept through the host, but it was not the wind that made so many men shiver.
"That monster…" someone whispered hoarsely behind him.
Leobald pushed his way forward. The septon stared in horror and then, with a groan of grief, dropped to his knees, burying his face in his hands.
The guards atop the walls laughed. One of them shoved another corpse over the parapet, letting it tumble to the ground like garbage.
Harald turned to Edmyn. "Our men, are they rested?"
Tully nodded, face ghost-pale yet resolute. "Yes."
Harald looked back at the walls, eyes burning with quiet fury. "Then sound the horns. Tell them to prepare. We attack when the sun goes down."
Murmurs rippled through the gathered lords. Mandrake grumbled about rashness, Vypren raised cautious issues as well, and Grel suggested delaying a day.
Harald silenced them all with a single look.
"There will be no waiting," he said. "We end this tonight."
=======
Night fell, and as the full moon climbed higher it bathed the land in cold, silvery light.
Harald walked alone at the head of the host, twenty-four thousand men following in solemn, deadly silence. Their boots hammered a steady rhythm into the earth as they marched toward Harrenhal's looming black silhouette.
The greatest fortress in Westeros rose before them like a mountain of midnight stone. On the battlements, Ironborn scurried like ants stringing longbows, loading scorpions, and readying trebuchets.
Harald saw them. They were ready but so was he.
He lifted one hand. The army halted.
Then Harald let out a roar, a dragon's cry of war and burst into a sprint.
The defenders answered in kind: arrows rained from the walls.
"FEIM!" he shouted, and his body shimmered, faded became incorporeal. The arrows passed through him like mist.
"WULD… NAH… KEST!" came the next shout, and in a flash of blue light he surged forward at impossible speed, a blur across the fields.
"WULD… NAH… KEST!" he cried again; his figure shot even faster, a comet of motion streaking toward Harrenhal.
Now he was close. The great wall, tall as a mountain, loomed before him.
Harald skidded to a stop, armored boots slamming into the earth. He closed his eyes.
Paarthurnax's lessons echoed in his mind.
Fus…
Fus…
Fus…
He reached deep into his dragon-soul, into the knowledge the Black Book had given him of the Thu'um.
His eyes snapped open, glowing faintly.
Then he spoke.
"FUS… ROH… DAH!"
The Shout struck the wall with the fury of a million hurricanes.
The entire outer wall was destroyed, not cracked, not broken, obliterated.
Stone meant to be unbreakable shattered like glass. A wave of force rolled outward, tearing through the outworks and blasting the outer bailey into rubble.
One of Harrenhal's five colossal towers built to be impervious to siege, wide enough to house armies, shook. It groaned, then toppled sideways, crushing everything beneath it.
The Ironborn inside screamed: some were buried in the rubble, others blown back by the shockwave, still more hurled into the air like dolls.
For a heartbeat, silence reigned.
Then Harald raised his arm high and twenty-four thousand voices howled behind him.
The charge began.
Steel gleamed in the moonlight; horns sounded across the field.
Harald did not wait for them. Battle-axe in hand, he sprinted through the breach, charging into the heart of Harrenhal.
=======
Harald charged through the breach.
The outer bailey was gone, nothing remained but debris and broken bodies. The Unrelenting Force had torn it apart like dry parchment. Ironborn corpses lay flung against splintered walls, impaled on jagged beams, or crushed beneath collapsed towers. The survivors offered no resistance; they sprawled screaming, dying, or already still.
But Harald did not slow.
"WULD… NAH… KEST!" he cried, and in a flash of blue light he blurred forward, crossing the ravaged yard in moments. He sped past the broken barracks, the smithy now a blazing ruin, and the armory reduced to shattered stone.
Ahead rose the inner walls taller, thicker, built to withstand the fiercest engines of war. Atop them Ironborn scrambled, eyes wide with terror. They did not notch arrows; they ran.
Harald opened his mouth again.
"FUS… ROH… DAH!"
The inner wall erupted. Stone cracked, then shattered; men flew backward with screams that ended in bone-splintering crunches. Parapets collapsed in great slabs, the Thu'um ripping the very soul from the stones.
From a tower on the left, a knot of Ironborn charged desperate, weapons raised. Harald wheeled toward them.
"FUS… ROH… DAH!"
They flew: some slammed into the tower and crumpled, others sailed clear across the bailey, one landing on a spiked barricade and dying instantly.
Harald advanced.
He crossed into the inner bailey the heart of Harrenhal as more Ironborn poured forth, panic shining in their eyes. Some charged; others turned and bolted.
He gave them no chance.
"FUS… ROH… DAH!"
Again and again the Shout broke the night. Men slammed into walls and into one another; some were hurled skyward and vanished over rooftops. Buildings shook, cracked, and collapsed, roofs caving in as all of Harrenhal seemed to tremble beneath the onslaught of his fury.
He moved like a storm, cutting down all whom the Thu'um had left standing.
A screaming Ironborn lunged at him with a spear; Harald buried his axe in the man's chest, splintering bone and mail. Another turned to flee Harald hurled the axe, shearing the man's head from his shoulders.
A third begged for mercy; Harald showed none.
By the time he finished, the inner bailey was drenched in blood. The stones ran red, and he stood alone amid the ruin.
Then came the sound of horns.
Edmyn Tully led his host through the breach, with Lothar Vance and Hother Blackwood flanking him. They swept into the bailey and began entering the buildings, hunting for any remaining Ironborn.
Harald pointed toward the rest of the castle.
"Secure every tower," he barked. "Kill every Ironborn."
The lords nodded and fanned out.
Harald turned to the looming black spire of the King's Tower where he knew Harren would be and stormed inside. There, the last of Harren's sworn swords had made their stand.
"YOL… TOOR… SHUL!" Harald shouted, unleashing a wave of blistering flame that surged down the hall.
They didn't scream.
They didn't even have time.
The inferno consumed them in a heartbeat, leaving only ash and blackened armor.
Harald stepped through the scorched archway into Harrenhal's vast throne room. At its far end, seated upon his throne, sat Harren Hoare.
There were only two men in the chamber.
Harald hurled his battle-axe at the man cowering beside the throne. The blade split his chest, slammed him to the stone, and left him twitching in a widening pool of blood.
But Harren did not flinch.
"So," the Black King said, his voice echoing coldly through the hall, "you are the sorcerer, the false prophet of the greenlander gods. The Dragonborn."
Harald said nothing. His boots thudded steadily across the floor.
Harren's voice rose proud and mad. "You rebels think you've won, but I shall have the last laugh! Even now my son Wex burns your western shores. You will rule nothing but ash!"
Still Harald did not answer.
He kept walking.
Behind him the heavy doors of the throne room flew open. Edmyn Tully strode in with Hother Blackwood, Lothar Vance, Lord Piper, Bracken, Roote, Ryger lords of the Riverlands, knights sworn to the rebellion. Blood-spattered soldiers spilled in behind them, victorious and grim.
Harren's eyes widened. His voice cracked.
"Did you not hear me?" he barked. "You have won nothing! You—"
He never finished.
Harald's armored fist slammed into his jaw.
The king cried out as Harald seized him by the collar and flung him from the throne. Harren Hoare, Black King of the Isles and Rivers, crashed to the stone floor.
Cheers erupted from the gathered lords and men.
Harald loomed above him. "Your sons are dead. Your lords are dead. Your line is dead. And now" he reached out his hand "I take your kingdoms as well."
He yanked the black-iron crown from Harren's head.
The king whimpered, dazed and bleeding.
Harald stared at the crown, a twisted thing, a symbol of a century of Riverlander suffering.
He closed his gauntleted hand around it.
Flames burst from his palm.
The metal sagged, then ran molten between his fingers.
"You are king of nothing," Harald said.
Harren whimpered, bloodied and broken slumped against the cold stone of his own hall. His once-proud glare was now a mask of agony, twisted with hate and humiliation, yet a flicker of defiance still smoldered in his eyes.
Harald loomed over him.
"I… I will kill—"
Harald drove his boot down on Harren's knee with a sharp, brutal crack.
The fallen king howled, his scream echoing through the hall. The gathered lords cheered.
"Kill him, Dragonborn," Lord Piper growled.
"End that wretch," Hother Blackwood urged.
But Harald raised a hand. "No."
Silence fell.
He turned to Tully and Vance. "Take him. I want him to see something before I take his head."
Without hesitation, Tully and Vance hauled Harren upright limping, coughing blood, his shattered leg dragging behind and dragged him from the throne room to the roar of the victorious host.
The tyrant was defeated.
Only one task remained.
Harald faced the throne of Harrenhal and smiled: it was time to claim a crown of his own.
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