TBOV: Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Price of Pride

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Price of Pride

“Every man’s a piece of the continent, a part of the main... any man’s death diminishes me.”

―Maester Aemon

…

The wind, a bitter old whore, clawed at Ferrago Dimittis’s face, whipping his salt-stiffened beard and making the banners in his camp snap like angry hounds. From this rocky perch, the grey expanse of the sea northwest of Braavos was a canvas of impending slaughter. The chill was not merely of the sea air; it was the ice of premonition, a frost settling deep in an old sailor’s bones. He’d seen death in a thousand forms upon the waters. Today, he would witnessed the death of great people.

Ferrago’s spyglass, a Myrish import of considerable expense, felt heavy in his trembling hand. He watched the two young princes atop their dragons, Vermax and Arrax wheeling in the sky, horribly outnumbered. Six against two, and Vermax wounded. It was a fight they could not win. He watched, helpless, as Sheepstealer, larger and more savage than its wild reputation suggested, slammed into Vermax’s flank. The two dragons tumbled, locked in a vicious grapple, green fire and black smoke spewing.

Then his spyglass found young Lucerys. Arrax, valiant but hopelessly outmatched, was caught between Seasmoke and Tessarion. One moment, the pearlescent dragon was twisting, spitting defiant fire; the next, Seasmoke’s jaws closed around its slender neck, and Tessarion’s claws ripped its wing from its body. Ferrago saw the small, bright flash of the prince’s cloak as he was thrown clear, tumbling end over end before Arrax’s broken, headless body plunged into the sea like a fallen star. A bitter taste filled Ferrago’s mouth then.

He forced his gaze back to Jacaerys. The elder prince, his Vermax bleeding and battered, fought on with the fury of grief and despair, trying to break free from Sheepstealer. But Seasmoke and Tessarion, their bloody work done, turned upon him. It was over in heartbeats. Ferrago saw Sheepstealer’s massive jaws close around Vermax’s torso, the sickening crunch audible even in his mind’s ear as the smaller dragon fell out of the sky.

The admiral lowered the glass, his hand shaking too violently to hold it steady. The sky north-west of Braavos was running red with the dying sun and the unholy light of dragonflame. Below, the sea was a charnel house.

As dusk bled into night, the tide turned. Ferrago had clung to hope, prayed that the strong outward current would dash the enemy upon the hidden reefs of the Shield Isles. Instead, the sea itself became Braavos’s betrayer, the current dragging her shattered hulls and crippled galleys back towards the open sea, or onto the fanged maws of the very rocks Ferrago had hoped would be their salvation. The Westerosi longships and cogs, numerous as hungry wolves, pressed in, while above, the remaining Green dragons – Vhagar, Vermithor, Silverwing, Sheepstealer, Seasmoke, and Tessarion – stooped and killed, again and again, hunting down stragglers with chilling efficiency.

By the time true night fell, the Braavosi armada was no more. Only burning spars, the cries of drowning men, and the waves themselves, fouled with pitch, blood, and the filth of war, remained. Ferrago Dimittis, a man who had served Braavos for fifty years, felt a tear trace a path through the grime on his cheek. He did not brush it away. 

✥✥✥​

The first harbinger of doom was not the clangor of alarm bells, nor the distant roar of dragons, but the silence. An unnatural, heavy stillness had fallen over the Purple Harbour, the usual raucous symphony of stevedores, shipwrights, and haggling merchants choked into an eerie hush. Armeno Sarren stood on the highest balcony of his manse, the wind whipping his expensive silk robes about his legs, his knuckles white where he gripped the marble railing. His Myrish spyglass, usually reserved for scrutinizing cargo manifests on incoming vessels, was trained on the churning waters beyond the Titan’s stony gaze.

What he saw turned the wine in his belly to bile.

Burning ships, hundreds of them, littered the sea like fallen stars, their masts broken spears against a sky bruised purple and red by the setting sun and the unholy glow of dragonflame. He had seen the glint of scales, the impossible silhouettes of too many dragons wheeling and diving. Six. Not the two Rhaenyra Targaryen had promised would turn the tide. Six. The Greens had played them all for fools. Koja Terys’s bold plan, the feigned retreat designed to lure the Westerosi into the lagoon’s embrace, had become a funeral pyre for Braavos’s maritime strength.

A strangled sob escaped his wife, Lyra, who stood beside him, her hand clutching his arm with bruising force. “By the Many-Faced God… all lost?” she whispered, her voice thin as spun glass.

Armeno could only nod, the word a stone in his throat. He lowered the spyglass. The scent of ash and burnt flesh, carried on the cruel wind, began to taint the air even here, in the heart of Braavos. His three daughters, Lysara, Morella, and his youngest, Larra—Jace’s promised bride—had joined them, their young faces pale with a terror that mirrored his own.

“Father?” Larra’s voice was a mere thread. “What of Jacaerys? And Lucerys?”

Armeno looked at his youngest, at the innocent hope still flickering in her eyes, and felt a shard of ice pierce his heart. He’d seen two smaller dragons overwhelmed, falling from the sky like broken birds. He could not bring himself to voice the grim certainty. “They… they fought bravely, child.”

The sounds from the city below began to change. The initial shock was giving way to something uglier. A low rumble at first, like distant thunder, then distinct shouts, sharpening into a cacophony of rage and despair. Braavos was a city of merchants and bankers, yes, but it was also a city born of desperation, its foundations laid by escaped slaves. Beneath the veneer of civility lay a primal current, and it was now stirring.

“They would blame us,” Armeno whispered, his jaw tightened. “Rhaenyra. Where is the Sealord sheltering that cursed queen?” He had staked his family’s fortune, their reputation, on her claim. He’d hosted her, advised her, facilitated the alliances with the Iron Bank. And for what? Ruin.

A roar came from the street below. “Treason!” the voice bellowed, raw with fury. “The Sarrens sold us to the dragons! Death to the traitors!”

“We must leave,” Armeno said, his voice regaining some of its familiar steel. He grabbed Lyra’s arm. “Girls, with me. Guards! To the gates!”

His household guard, fifty men sworn to House Sarren, armed with spear and shield, were already forming a defensive perimeter around the main entrance. Their faces were grim, their eyes darting towards the sounds of the mob.

“The men have prepared a craft for you at the Purple Harbour, Master,” Belo, Armeno guard captain said as they descended the stairs. “I will buy you some time. Go swiftly.”

“...Thank you.”

The stoic man had few words to give in response. “It has been an honour serving you, Master. Stay safe.”

Armeno did not look back as he led his wife and daughters through a hidden passage that led from their cellars towards a less conspicuous side street. Ten guards accompanied them, their shields forming a tight circle around the family. The narrow alleyways of Braavos, usually teeming with life, were now filled with a frantic, dangerous energy. Pockets of smallfolk, their faces contorted by hunger, thirst, and fury, roamed the streets, armed with cudgels, fishing spears, and hatred.

Their guard pushed through the first few knots of rioters, their disciplined shield-wall parting the disorganized rabble. Shouts and curses followed them. A thrown brick glanced off a guardsman’s helm. They pressed on, the sounds of the larger mob sacking their manse echoing behind them, a grim counterpoint to Belo’s distant, defiant shouts.

The Purple Harbour, when they reached it, was chaos. Fights had broken out over boats, families scrambling to flee the city. The air stank of fear and desperation. Armeno scanned the docks, his eyes falling on the sloop a few more of their guards were protecting from the rabble. “There!”

It was a small vessel, barely large enough for them and their guards, but it was their only hope. As his men fought to clear a path to the sloop, Armeno saw Westerosi sails, like predatory birds, beginning to ghost through the main channel into the lagoon. Aemond’s butchers. They were too late.

They clambered aboard the sloop, his guards pushing off from the dock just as a larger wave of rioters spilled onto the quay. Oars dug into the water, the small boat lurching as they made for the perceived safety of one of the larger islands that ringed the lagoon.

Hope, however, was a fickle whore. They had not made it half a league before a swift galley cut them off. Red-cloaked soldiers lined its decks, crossbows aimed.

Armeno Sarren, patriarch of one of Braavos’s most puissant families, looked at his terrified wife, at his weeping daughters, at the grim faces of his last loyal guards. The fight was over. He stepped forward witrh his hands raised in surrender.

“Mercy!” he called out, his voice cracking. “We yield to the King’s justice!”

A rope snaked out, and their small sloop was drawn alongside the war galley. Armeno Sarren, the merchant prince who had dreamt of seating a queen atop the Iron Throne and reaping the rewards, felt the cold iron of shackles close around his wrists. The price of pride, he thought bitterly, was often paid in chains.