Lord Paxter Redwyne of the Arbor felt uneasy about betraying his liege, but Aunt Olenna told him to sail and he would listen. He had learned long ago that she was always right, even when he and cousin Mace didn't understand why. According to her, the Targaryen cause was doomed, and they needed to earn merit as Tywin had in his sack.
He stood beneath a snapping purple cloak on the quarterdeck of the Magnificent Mina and watched Dragonstone grow out of the sea ahead, black and monstrous. Even at a distance the island looked less like a holding and more like some great beast crouched in the Narrow Sea with smoke rising from its back. Such a dreary place couldn't hold a candle to the paradise that was his home.
Behind Lord Redwyne and around him stretched the full might of the Arbor war fleet, all the finest galleys of Westeros, two hundred hulls under banners of burgundy grapes. Their decks bristled with the foremost weapons of naval warfare: ballista, catapults, and polished steel rams.
Another two hundred Redwyne merchant ships acted as troop transports, sailing behind the war fleet. They had not brought the full might of the Reach, only the men of Houses Redwyne, Hightower, and Tyrell. House Tyrell couldn't afford Randyll Tarly getting any more merit or, gods forbid, the greedy Florents.
With the ships and men present, Paxter didn't worry about defeating the Dragonstone garrison. Even the Velaryons, if their navy attacked, could not defeat him. His only worry was the weather.
A storm brewed in the northeast like bruising under skin, dark and ugly. Clouds massed in layers, black beneath greenish grey, and the horizon where sea met sky had begun to vanish behind sheets of rain. Now and then a pale flicker pulsed inside the cloud bank, too distant still for thunder, but near enough to make even seasoned sailors glance that way and mutter to themselves.
Paxter glanced too, then looked back to the island.
This was the moment. It had to be.
His aunt had spelled it out with her usual arrogant clarity. The royal fleet had abandoned Dragonstone. Mutinty, she suspected. The sailors were not going to die for a doomed cause, and scattered to Driftmark, Claw Isle, or Massey's Hook. Queen Rhaella was exposed, a widow guarded by too few men and the blind hope that no one would dare strike at a woman in childbed.
Robert Baratheon had won a throne with a hammer and blood, but winning a throne was not the same as keeping it. Dragonstone still held Targaryen heirs. If the last dragonspawn was caught here before they could be smuggled across the sea, King Robert would have no other claimants to deal with.
Now was the chance for advancement of the house. If Lyanna Stark turned up dead in the chaos of Dragonstone, as a casualty of loyalist resistance or accident or whatever story proved most useful, then Janna Tyrell might yet have a path to a crown.
Paxter thought of his own children at the Arbor. Horas and Hobber, his twin boys, inseparable as ivy. His wife heavy with another child. If Janna became queen, their cousins would sit on the Iron Throne. Redwyne blood twined with royal blood. His house would have more prestige than at any time since Ryam Redwyne had been both Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and Hand to Jahaerys the Conciliator.
That was worth sailing through a storm.
"More wind from the east, my lord," called the captain of his flagship, one hand wrapped white-knuckled around the rail. "It'll worsen before we make harbor."
Paxter nodded as if he did not already know. "Then we make harbor quickly."
The sea answered by rising.
The next swell came higher than the last, lifting the ship under him with the ugly buoyancy of a body rolling in its sleep. One of the younger sailors at the foremast lost his footing and slammed hard into the rail. Another vanished outright with a thin shout and a flash of flailing limbs before the water took him. No one could spare hands to save him. A cruel truth of the sea: a man overboard in weather like this would never surface.
Still the fleet pressed on, heading north. Dragonstone loomed larger, with black walls and twisted towers now discernible. The long claw of the harbor was coming into view on the eastern side, next to the fishing village.
Paxter narrowed his eyes through spray and rain. No great war fleet waited there. No dragon banners crowded the cove. Lady Olenna's spies had spoken true. The island was nearly naked.
Good.
Or it would have been good, had the sky not chosen that moment to lower itself another shade.
The first thunder reached them like a god clearing his throat.
Paxter turned toward the harbor mouth and saw the problem at once. The cove below Dragonstone's walls was cluttered not with warships but with small craft and merchant vessels, packed in tight beneath the lee of the rock like sheep huddling under a cliff. There were no villagers in sight, only men at arms waiting at the docks with spears and crossbows raised.
Taking the harbor would be a bloody affair. He made the decision anyway.
"Send the rowboats first," he ordered. "Take the docks before they know what's upon them."
Horns sounded. Smaller boats were lowered into choppy water, men clambering down ropes with shields on their backs and swords in their teeth. They rowed for the harbor under a rain that had ceased to fall and begun instead to attack.
From this distance the first clash on the docks looked almost petty. Tiny figures scrambling. A line of spears. One sailor fell into the black water. Then a man-at-arms in burgundy and blue went down with an arrow through his throat, and the whole scene sharpened at once into violence.
"Signal the second wave," Paxter commanded.
The captain hesitated. "My lord, the docks are already crowded-"
"Reinforcements," Paxter snapped. "Now."
Another wave hit them broadside. The ship lurched so violently that the mast groaned like a living thing. Somewhere off to starboard a galley rolled too far and did not come back up. Paxter watched its hull sink beneath the waves, men trapped underneath.
The storm was not merely worsening now. It was becoming something else.
Wind screamed through the rigging at such a pitch it sounded almost human. Rain slashed sideways so hard it cut the face. The sea beyond the harbor mouth no longer moved in swells but in great black shoulders of water that shoved ships wherever they pleased. Lightning began to strike the highest masts—white spears from the heavens, setting sailcloth ablaze even in the rain.
And then Paxter saw the first waterspout.
It touched down half a mile off the harbor, a twisting black column stitching sea to sky. For one unreal moment it seemed almost still, like a pillar set there by some wrathful giant. Then it began to move.
Men shouted prayers. One sailor dropped to his knees. Another laughed too loudly in the manner of the half-mad.
Paxter gripped the rail until his knuckles ached. This was no common storm. This was the sort of weather old men invented when they wanted children to fear the sea.
A second waterspout formed nearer the headland. Then a third, smaller but swifter, dancing over the surface with impossible hunger.
The docks below had become bedlam. Redwyne and Tyrell men fought knee-deep in water while shoving aside the Dragonstone garrison in the search for shelter. Wooden shacks creaked and crumpled under the strong winds. The whole harbor seemed to be trying to flee west.
"Make landing!" Paxter bellowed. "All ships, make landing now!"
It was no longer an assault. It was a race against annihilation.
The flagship turned for the cove, fighting the wind for every inch. Smaller vessels slammed against one another in the press. One rowboat shattered on the rocks, its men swallowed whole between one wave and the next. Another was lifted nearly upright before falling backward in a crash of oars and limbs.
Then the lightning came again. It struck the foremast dead center.
For an instant the world was only white. Then came the crack, loud enough to rattle his skull, and flame ran up the wet sailcloth as if the rain itself had turned to oil.
Men screamed. One jumped from the crow's nest rather than burn. One of Paxter's guards lay sprawled on his back, smoke rising from his plate.
They were not far from shore now, but in front of them was a flotilla of dinghies and driftwood.
"To oars, full speed!" Lord Redwyne bellowed. "We must ram a path to land!"
Lightning fell from the sky like a volley of arrows, striking one mast after another. Some ships burst apart immediately, while others took on water and listed to the side.
One of the waterspouts swerved into the armada, lifting ships into the sky. Small figures tumbled off the sides, only to stay aloft, spinning helplessly. It was all wrong, men were not meant for the sky.
He felt the keel of the Magnificent Mina shudder as the ram broke through debris between him and safety. A burning barrel of pitch nearby exploded, splashing fire onto the deck. Some of the oars caught on loose rigging and the ship slowed, now only 100 yards from shore.
He was close, but not close enough. Paxter opened his mouth to order buckets, knives, anything, when the ship beneath him gave a shudder unlike any he had ever felt.
The waterspout had them.
The deck lurched at an angle that made the harbor vanish. Men slid screaming toward the stern. Burning sailcloth whipped loose overhead. One of the masts tore free with a shriek of timber and disappeared into the black spinning heart of the storm. Rain and ash and salt became one furious skin around the ship.
Paxter saw Dragonstone from above, as if he were one of the great beasts who once lived there. He could make out the black castle, the harbor in chaos, the smoking slopes of the Dragonmont beyond.
He understood, then, that there would be no victory, no grateful Baratheon king, no royal marriage for his cousin.
Only death.
Hundreds of feet above ground, the twister at last lost hold of the Magnificent Mina. Paxter plummeted through water and fire and splintered wood toward the smoking mouth of the mountain.
Paxter Redwyne thought of the Arbor, of home. Of green vineyards heavy with sun. Of his twin boys chasing one another through warm courts with grapes stolen from the kitchens. Of his wife laying a hand over the swell of her belly and smiling that patient smile he did not deserve.
He hoped Lady Olenna would take care of them. He hoped she would not curse his name too loudly while doing it.
Lord Redwyne sailed into the fiery sea of the volcano, and the storm raged on.