After thirteen days of torment, Blood was at last allowed to die. Queen Alicent had commanded Larys Clubfoot to learn his true name, so that she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children, but our sources do not say if this occurred. Ser Luthor Largent and his gold cloaks searched the Street of Silk from top to bottom, and turned out and stripped every harlot in King’s Landing, but no trace of Cheese or the White Worm was ever found. In his grief and fury, King Aegon II commanded that all the city’s ratcatchers be taken out and hanged, and this was done. (Ser Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats into the Red Keep to take their place.)

Though Blood and Cheese had spared her life, Queen Helaena cannot be said to have survived that fateful dusk. Afterward she would not eat, nor bathe, nor leave her chambers, and she could no longer stand to look upon her son Maelor, knowing that she had named him to die. The king had no recourse but to take the boy from her and give him over to their mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, to raise as if he were her own. Aegon and his wife slept separately thereafter, and Queen Helaena sank deeper and deeper into madness, whilst the king raged, and drank, and raged.

The Dance of the Dragons entered a new stage after the death of Lucerys Velaryon in the stormlands and the murder of Prince Jaehaerys before his mother’s eyes in the Red Keep. For both the blacks and the greens, blood called to blood for vengeance. And all across the realm, lords called their banners, and armies gathered and began to march.

In the riverlands, raiders out of Raventree, flying Rhaenyra’s banners,* crossed into the lands of House Bracken, burning crops, driving off sheep and cattle, sacking villages, and despoiling every sept they came on (the Blackwoods were one of the last houses south of the Neck who still followed the old gods).

When the Brackens gathered a strong force to strike back, Lord Samwell Blackwood surprised them on the march, taking them unawares as they camped beneath a riverside mill. In the fight that followed, the mill was put to the torch, and men fought and died for hours bathed in the red light of the flames. Ser Amos Bracken, leading the host from Stone Hedge, cut down and slew Lord Blackwood in single combat, only to perish himself when a weirwood arrow found the eye slit of his helm and drove deep into his skull. Supposedly that shaft was loosed by Lord Samwell’s sixteen-year-old sister, Alysanne, who would later be known as Black Aly, but whether this is fact or mere family legend cannot be known.

Many other grievous losses were suffered by both sides in what became known as the Battle of the Burning Mill…and when the Brackens finally broke and fled back unto their own lands under the command of Ser Amos’s bastard half-brother, Ser Raylon Rivers, it was only to find that Stone Hedge had been taken in their absence. Led by Prince Daemon on Caraxes, a strong host made up of Darrys, Rootes, Pipers, and Freys had captured the castle by storm in the absence of so much of House Bracken’s strength. Lord Humfrey Bracken and his remaining children had been made captive, along with his third wife and baseborn paramour. Rather than see them come to harm, Ser Raylon yielded. With House Bracken thus broken and defeated, the last of King Aegon’s supporters in the riverlands lost heart and lay down their own swords as well.

Yet it must not be thought that the green council was sitting idle. Ser Otto Hightower had been busy as well, winning over lords, hiring sellswords, strengthening the defenses of King’s Landing, and assiduously seeking after other alliances. After the rejection of Grand Maester Orwyle’s peace overtures the Hand redoubled his efforts, dispatching ravens to Winterfell and the Eyrie, to Riverrun, White Harbor, Gulltown, Bitterbridge, Fair Isle, and half a hundred other keeps and castles. Riders galloped through the night to holdings closer to hand, to summon their lords and ladies to court to do fealty to King Aegon. Ser Otto also reached out to Dorne, whose ruling prince, Qoren Martell, had once warred against Prince Daemon in the Stepstones, but Prince Qoren spurned his offer. “Dorne has danced with dragons before,” he said. “I would sooner sleep with scorpions.”

Yet Ser Otto was losing the trust of his king, who mistook his efforts for inaction, and his caution for cowardice. Septon Eustace tells us of one occasion when Aegon entered the Tower of the Hand and found Ser Otto writing another letter, whereupon he knocked the inkpot into his grandsire’s lap, declaring, “Thrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink.”

The fall of Harrenhal to Prince Daemon came as a great shock to His Grace, Munkun tells us. Until that moment, Aegon II had believed his half-sister’s cause to be hopeless. Harrenhal left His Grace feeling vulnerable for the first time. The subsequent defeats at the Burning Mill and Stone Hedge came as further blows, and made the king realize that his situation was more perilous than it had seemed. These fears deepened as ravens returned from the Reach, where the greens had believed themselves strongest. House Hightower and Oldtown were solidly behind King Aegon, and His Grace had the Arbor too…but elsewhere in the south, other lords were declaring for Rhaenyra, amongst them Lord Costayne of Three Towers, Lord Mullendore of Uplands, Lord Tarly of Horn Hill, Lord Rowan of Goldengrove, and Lord Grimm of Greyshield.

Loudest amongst these traitors was Ser Alan Beesbury, Lord Lyman’s heir, who was demanding the release of his grandsire from the dungeon, where most believed the former master of coin to be confined. Faced with such a clamor from their own bannermen, the castellan, steward, and mother of the young Lord Tyrell of Highgarden, acting as regents for the boy, suddenly thought better of their support for King Aegon, and decided House Tyrell would take no part in this struggle. King Aegon began to drown his fears in strongwine, Septon Eustace tells us. Ser Otto sent word to his nephew, Lord Ormund Hightower, beseeching him to use the power of Oldtown to put down this rash of rebellions in the Reach.

Other blows followed: the Vale, White Harbor, Winterfell. The Blackwoods and the other riverlords streamed toward Harrenhal and Prince Daemon’s banners. The Sea Snake’s fleets closed Blackwater Bay, and every morning King Aegon had merchants whining at him. His Grace had no answer for their complaints, beyond another cup of strongwine. “Do something,” he demanded of Ser Otto.

The Hand assured him that something was being done; he had hatched a plan to break the Velaryon blockade. One of the chief pillars of support for Rhaenyra’s claim was her consort, yet Prince Daemon represented one of her greatest weaknesses as well. The prince had made more foes than friends during the course of his adventures. Ser Otto Hightower, who had been amongst the first of those foes, reached across the narrow sea to another of the prince’s enemies, the Kingdom of the Three Daughters.

By itself, the royal fleet lacked the strength to break the Sea Snake’s chokehold on the Gullet, and King Aegon’s overtures to Dalton Greyjoy of Pyke had thus far failed to win the Iron Islands to his side. The combined fleets of Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr would be more than a match for the Velaryons, however. Ser Otto sent word to the magisters, promising exclusive trading rights at King’s Landing if they would clear the Gullet of the Sea Snake’s ships and open the sea lanes once again. To add savor to the stew, he also promised to cede the Stepstones to the Three Daughters, though in truth the Iron Throne had never claimed those isles.

The Triarchy was never quick to move, however. Lacking a true king, all important decisions in this three-headed “kingdom” were decided by the High Council. Eleven magisters from each city made up its membership, every man of them intent on demonstrating his own sagacity, shrewdness, and importance, and winning every possible advantage for his own city. Grand Maester Greydon, who wrote the definitive history of the Kingdom of the Three Daughters fifty years later, described it as “thirty-three horses, each pulling in his own direction.” Even issues as timely as war, peace, and alliance were subject to endless debate…and the High Council was not even in session when Ser Otto’s envoys arrived.

The delay did not sit well with the young king. Aegon II had run short of patience with his grandfather’s prevarications. Though his mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, spoke up in Ser Otto’s defense, His Grace turned a deaf ear to her pleading. Summoning Ser Otto to the throne room, he tore the chain of office from his neck and tossed it to Ser Criston Cole. “My new Hand is a steel fist,” he boasted. “We are done with writing letters.”