Lyanna braced as the first Redwyne men hit the docks like a tidal wave and disappeared just as fast.
Rowboats slammed against stone and timber with bone-rattling force. Men in wet mail leapt for the quay, only to meet a forest of spearpoints. The front rank of Dragonstone's defense had prepared well. Three Reachmen were impaled before their boots even found purchase, shrieking as they kicked and slid back into the crush behind them. One toppled sideways into the harbor with a spear through his belly and vanished between hulls.
Lyanna stood just behind the first line, shield raised, sword in hand, the storm lashing her face hard enough to sting. Around her the world had become noise and salt and breath. Men shouted, wood cracked, and water slapped stone. Dacey loomed at her side in borrowed Targaryen plate, anchoring their formation.
"Hold!" Ser Willem Darry roared. "Hold the line!"
Another boat struck the dock. Then another. Men came over the sides in bunches, some stumbling, some brave enough to scream battle cries into the wind. The bravest died first. The rest died just after.
Lyanna saw one of the village levies— a fisherman with a makeshift bucket helm shoved onto his head—shift his footing half a heartbeat too late.
The green vision came like a flash of light, mirroring the lighting in the air. She saw him falling before he knew he was dead. Saw the Reachman slipping past the spears on the right with his sword angled low, ready to gut the boy beneath his raised shield.
Lyanna moved before the world caught up.
She stepped out from behind the line, ducked the panicked levy's elbow, and cut across the attacker's throat in one hard slash. Blood blew sideways in the wind. The man dropped clutching at his neck, boots drumming against the boards.
The fisherman stared at her, white-faced.
"Stay behind the spears," Lyanna snapped.
Then another rowboat hit, and there was no time for thanks.
"Archers!" Darry shouted. "Loose!"
The men on the roofs and quay walls obeyed. Arrows hissed overhead in ragged volleys—then the storm took them. Some flew true. Most were shoved off course by the screaming wind and buried themselves in water, sailcloth, or empty boats.
Still the Reachmen came.
Bodies piled at the landing points, red and blue and green all muddled together in rain and blood. Some men tried to scramble over their dead. Others shoved from behind and drove the front rank onto waiting points like worms onto fishing hooks. Lyanna wove between the gaps in the defense, her visions flickering bright and brief: a spear thrust from the left, a shield buckling, a boot slipping on blood-slick boards. Each glimpse let her move a heartbeat before the danger arrived.
Wherever visions took Lyanna, Dacey stayed right behind her, watching her back.
One Redwyne knight broke through with an axe, catching thrusts with his shield and cutting spearheads off. He grabbed one man's haft and pulled him out of the line before cutting his throat. He tried to repeat the trick on Lady Mormont, only for her to pull him instead. Dacey crushed his helm flat with one swing and shoved his corpse back into the surf.
Another tried to flank them by running from one packed boat to the next. He made three good leaps before a wave pitched the last craft sideways and dropped him in full armor between the hulls. Lyanna saw his gauntleted hand once, reaching up out of black water, before the sea swallowed it.
Fire broke out near the outer piers. A lantern, perhaps, or burning pitch spilled from a struck boat. It spread strangely in the storm, flame running bright along wet wood, slowed but not stopped by the rain. Smoke twisted low over the harbor and made the air harder to breathe.
For a moment Lyanna forgot everything but the rhythm of killing.
Blade up. Step in. Parry. Cut. Shift left. Duck the spear. Thrust to the heart. Move to the next man.
She drove her blade into one Reachman's armpit and felt the resistance of flesh giving way. When she tore it free, she caught sight of the sea beyond the crowded harbor.
Farther out in the storm, some of the great warships were on fire, masts lit white and gold against the cloudy black sky. A great wave toppled a ship, while lightning struck the mast of another alight.
Weaving between the vessels were great columns of rotating water. They stitched sea to cloud like black ropes of wrath, walking across the waves with impossible hunger.
Dacey's hand clamped around Lyanna's arm and yanked her backward just as a axe head passed where her face had been.
"Stay with me!" Dacey shouted. The words cut through the blood-roar in Lyanna's ears.
Across the docks, Ser Willem was bellowing something. She caught only the end of it over the wind.
"—fall back! Fall back to the square!"
Men began to peel away from the barricades in knots, shields raised, spears still stabbing at any Reachman foolish enough to pursue too closely. The harbor had become too crowded, too damaged, and too chaotic to hold. Boats smashed together. Fires leapt. Men on both sides were starting to ignore the enemy in favor of finding shelter.
Lyanna stumbled as a blast of wind hit her broadside. Saltwater sprayed into her eyes hard enough to blind her for a heartbeat. When she wiped them clear, the first waterspout had reached the harbor mouth.
It lifted a warship whole.
Soldiers screamed as they spun upward with it, limbs flailing in a situation no training had ever prepared them for. One was ripped free and hurled into a stone wall hard enough to burst like rotten fruit.
The defenders regrouped in the square above the docks, a wall of spears and shields facing the harbor. Panic did half the work for them now. Reachmen fled the piers in clumps, and any who ran toward the square were cut down or driven back. A man in Tyrell green dropped his sword and tried to beg. A villager with a boat hook rammed it into his throat before he got half a prayer out.
Another twister made landfall, shedding its aquatic cargo in favor of rocks and burning planks as it crawled along the coastline. Wind nearly knocked Lyanna to her knees as it reached the village.
"Link arms!" Dacey roared. "Link arms, you fools!"
She grabbed Lyanna with one hand and Ser Willem with the other, making herself the iron center of a human chain. The men caught on quickly, each taking hold of the next—arms, shields, belts, whatever they could seize. They turned from a battle line into a climbing rope of flesh and steel.
"Up!" Darry shouted. "To the gate!"
They began to march, just as the twister turned back to feast upon a galley in the harbor.
The path to the keep was steep, slick, and now full of half-mad survivors pushing uphill while the storm tried to peel them off the island. Rain no longer fell so much as attacked from all directions at once. Men leaned forward and climbed like children on a wet staircase, boots sliding back half a pace for every one they gained.
Once, a soldier ahead of Lyanna lifted clear off the ground with a startled cry, legs kicking before the man behind him caught his belt and hauled him crashing back down. Another was not so lucky. He slipped from the chain and vanished sideways into white spray and black air without even time for a scream.
Dacey never gave an inch.
She planted each step like she meant to stomp on a spider and dragged everyone linked to her onward through sheer stubborn strength. Ser Willem leaned into her on one side, Lyanna on the other, and together they hauled half-drowned men uphill while the heavens tried to tear the world apart above them.
A waterspout slammed into the Sea Dragon Tower, just as they neared safety.
Lyanna saw it happen through stinging rain: the twisting column struck the great black structure head-on with enough force to flatten any normal building. Instead the tower seemed almost to reject it. The wind sheared around the ancient Valyrian stone and split apart, the tower holding against the impossible blow while the stone dragon's head at the top gazed on, unperturbed. With a crash, all the carried water fell back into the sea.
Then the gate was before them.
Men inside the keep hauled on ropes and chains while those outside stumbled through in knots of survivors. The moment Lyanna crossed beneath the arch, the worst of the wind seemed to ease immediately—not because the storm had lessened, but because the walls of Dragonstone were simply that stubborn.
The gate thundered shut behind the last of them.
Then the survivors scattered, some vomiting seawater, some laughing with madness at the spectacle outside, some simply collapsing where they stood.
Lyanna barely felt her legs.
"We must check on the queen," Ser Willem said hoarsely.
Lyanna nodded at once, but Dacey didn't bother speaking. She looked drained in a way Lyanna had never seen.
They crossed black halls slick with tracked-in rain and ash, descending rather than climbing. The birth chamber had been moved to a windowless lower room in the Wyndwyrm Tower, deep enough that the storm could barely be heard inside. Servants lined the passageway, pale and frightened. One was praying. Another had blood on both sleeves.
The maester met them at the door. His face told the story before his mouth did.
"There is nothing more I can do," he said quietly.
Ser Willem closed his eyes in pain. They went in.
Rhaella lay against bloodied sheets, white as snow and nearly as still. Her silver hair clung damply to her temples. In her arms she held a newborn child wrapped in dark cloth, so small and red and furious with life that the sight of her seemed impossible in that desolate chamber.
Rhaella's eyes found Lyanna at once. "Come here," the queen whispered.
Lyanna went to her knees beside the bed.
Rhaella's hands trembled as she passed the baby over. Lyanna took her carefully, terrified by how light she was. The child's face was wrinkled and outraged, her tiny mouth opening in a weak cry before settling again against Lyanna's chest.
The infant's eyes opened to reveal a vibrant violet just like the queen's, brimming with passion.
"Promise me," Rhaella whispered. Her fingers caught at Lyanna's sleeve with surprising strength. "Promise me, Lyanna."
Rhaella's grip tightened. "Take care of my daughter. Take care of Daenerys."
Lyanna looked down at the tiny child in her arms, so full of life and potential, then back at the dying queen.
"I promise," she said.
Rhaella exhaled.
The hand at Lyanna's sleeve went slack. Her head turned slightly on the pillow. Whatever strain had held her features tight at last eased out of them.
Queen Rhaella did not breathe again.