Chapter 33: The Day Lannisport Burned

Wildfire was touchy stuff.

A single spark could ignite the world in flame if the green substance was involved, it's initial ignition an explosion that could throw armored knights aside like batting flies. Too much heat, a particularly violent bounce of a wagon wheel, sometimes only the sheer volatility of the substance; all could turn the jars and the surrounding area into wild green flame.

Transporting the thousands of jars from King's Landing to Lannisport had been a tedious thing, and highly discouraged by the members of the Alchemist's Guild that Jaime Lannister had left alive. Aelor Targaryen had ordered it done anyway, for the lion had bitten the dragon's tail and would burn for it.

The convoys had only moved at night, when the sun wouldn't be able to set off the fiery liquid. Wagons were filled with sand in order to keep the jars of varying sizes from being jostled, additional wagons filled with water jugs accompanying them from good distances away though there would be little water could truly do were the jars to light. The men guarding them had loaded their mounts down with waterskins as well, as well as rugs and related material to try and beat out any fire.

The teamsters and guards for the almost suicidal duty of transporting wildfire all those miles had to a man been volunteers. Most-particularly the actual teamsters driving the wagons and thusly closest to the substance-had been grizzled older men, weathered and worn faces showing not a bit of the constant fear they had to be feeling. Aelor had thanked them each individually, and though they didn't know it each man had a knighthood awaiting him once he reached the royalist camp.

Most already had, and it proved just in time.

For all his obvious arrogance, Tybolt Lannister had seen how deadly serious Aelor Targaryen had been. The next morning at dawn the gates of Lannisport had opened, and a column of people had slowly exited. The poorest inhabitants of the Lannisport's slums to the wealthiest merchants of the city walked together out of the doomed city, carrying nothing but their children, the clothes on their backs the only materialistic possessions they had left in this world. Aelor had ordered a gauntlet of his soldiers, all armed and ready for any deception, to line the sides of the Goldroad, and the fleeing innocents took it, old men glaring harshly at the soldiers while children in turn stared in fascination.

No one received more of either sentiment than the Prince of the Iron Throne, seated atop his black destrier at the head of the columns, watching the suddenly broke citizens of Lannisport shuffle by below. He'd negotiated with Lords Rowan, Bushy, Leygood and Roxton-the closest Lords of the Reach-to provide rations for the thousands of homeless, detaching a force of two thousand cavalry to escort them to his own seat of Duskendale. Finding homes, food and occupations for them would be almost as challenging as storming the Rock would be and none knew it better than Aelor, but Elia would have wanted this.

He knew nothing would bring his Dornish Princess back now-even the mad, blood crazy side of him knew it-but he couldn't help but try and honor her.

They wouldn't have cared even if they had known, though, this suddenly homeless lot of innocents caught in the middle of a war between two men most of them had never so much as seen. To them, Aelor was the man who had driven from their homes, even if it had been Lannister's to actually do the deed, not the man who had in actuality just saved their lives. He could feel the hatred emanating off of them in waves, but there was no attack, no shouted curses, no nothing; peasant and dragonlord merely regarded one another as the former shuffled by, neither caring a whit for the other's thoughts.

For four days from dawn to dusk they evacuated, each man, woman and child checked for weapons before they followed the thousands of others down the beaten road.

Even as this mass migration took place thousands of royalist soldiers worked. Aelor had close to sixty thousand men on the ground, most of whom had no experience in carpentry or the construction of siege weapons, but each of them-well, most of them, barring a few men who had been maimed-had two hands and strong backs. Many hands made light work, and under the guidance of the craftsmen brought in to build the weapons of warfare the royalist soon had all the catapults Aelor Targaryen needed. They'd forgone the building of rams or siege towers, neither of which factored into the Dragon of Duskendale's plans. If the Lannister's in either the Rock or Lannisport found it odd that the weapons were only being built around the latter, they were forced to scratch their heads in wonder.

Until the day of the promised assault, when they learned why.

Tybolt Lannister watched from the guardhouse over Lannisport's main gates as the night turned into dawn, readying his men for the fight to come. The demon that was Aelor Targaryen had kept his word, at least as far as Tybolt could see. The citizens of Lannisport had been left unmolested, each checked for any hidden weapons or valuables before they shuffled away and out of sight, a long line of mouths to feed that was no longer Tybolt's problem. While not all had fled, most of those remaining either very rich or of Lannister blood (oftentimes both), the city seemed almost abandoned, even with thousands of knights and soldiers inside.

Targaryen's reasoning for this clear tactical error had been terrifying, even Tybolt would admit that, but it was all folly. Lannisport was a strong, well defended fortification; the Dragonlord outside its gates could have six hundred thousand men, ten times the number that he actually did, and he would still fail. The Lion would not fall to the dragon.

As the world finally lightened enough for him to see, Tybolt Lannister was taken aback by the lack of ladders and the lack of men preparing to assault. He had seen the catapults being built in a half circle, ready to fling stone at his walls, but he had confidence that they would have no true effect. The Seven were with him, not that inbred madman opposing his city.

When the Cruel Lion saw the teams begin to work the great machines, he called for his archers to brace, trumpets bidding the soldiers in the city itself to do the same. The siege weapons were nothing pretty but they did the job they were designed to, evidenced when each was fired the first time.

It wasn't stone or pitch that sailed over his head or smashed into his walls, however; it was jars.

Tybolt considered himself a very clever man, but as more and more of the jars smashed harmlessly on his defenses or the buildings in the city, the catapults adjusting their aim to seemingly cover the entirety of Lannisport as best they could with whatever the jars contained, he was utterly lost.

The catapults had fired for well over an hour, not a single soldier making to take the gates, before the substance they contained was identified. When the cry went up, whipping through the city's defenders like a Barristan Selmy through the Golden Company, true fear struck Tybolt, the type that rooted you to the ground and emptied your bladder.

But by then, it was all too late.

Aelor Targaryen had built one more structure besides the catapults, located behind his main lines in the direction of Casterly Rock. At first Tybolt had believed it to be a siege tower, the wood being erected upwards, but had soon dissuaded himself of the notion. It was too thin, only a square structure built into the air with a ladder on one side, a small platform atop it. Even as cries of 'wildfire' tore through his city a single figure climbed this structure in the growing light, reaching the top in moments.

As one the catapults stopped firing, the morning turning deadly silent as his own men held their breaths. There were near one hundred thousand men in, between and surrounding Casterly Rock and Lannisport, and not a one of them made a sound. Even the seagulls and the horses kept their silence, as if the animals and the very world itself knew what was to happen.

The sound of a single violin broke the eerie silence, the figure on the tower beginning to play. It was a song every person in Westeros knew, from the lowest peasant child to the Lord Paramounts and their families. As the chords floated across the morning air, solemn and lonely and clear as a whistle to Tybolt's ears despite the distance, telling their story of rains and coats of red and gold, he knew he was going to die.

In that odd clarity man received in the final moments of his life, Tybolt heard him. As the last notes of the Lannister song died, a single voice spoke over the silence in its wake. The Cruel Lion knew who it belonged to even if he'd only heard it for the first time a few days before, the command as clear as the notes had been.

Prince Aelor Targaryen's tone was as final as the fate of Lannisport. "Loose."

Tybolt and his men could only watch, too terrified to do anything else, as one last catapult was fired. A barrel of flaming tar, as bright as the sun itself to the eyes of the doomed men of Lannisport, flew over their heads almost in slow-motion. He turned as it sailed, never taking his eyes off it as it glided over his head and dipped down towards the wildfire-coated city below.

And then the world exploded, and Tybolt Lannister saw no more.

Even Aelor wasn't ready for the aftermath.

For a moment nothing happened as the flaming barrel dipped out of sight and into the city of Lions, but then all the Seven Hells broke loose.

The light was so great it nearly blinded the Dragon of Duskendale. With a great burning boom Lannisport went up in green flame, the heavy dose of wildfire catching nearly all at once. The explosion it caused flung a shockwave so fierce that several stones from the city's walls were blown nearly to Aelor's own lines, the archers atop them who had been so ready to rain death on Aelor's men tossed like dolls outwards.

Those that weren't incinerated instantly, anyway.

The shockwave was still potent when it reached Aelor's own men. With a grunt it hit him squarely, the Prince of the Iron Throne knocked cleanly off of his feet. With cries or grunts of their own most of his mean did the same, even boulder-like Manfred Darke, his white cloak billowing as he was shoved backwards. Catapults rolled backwards on their hasty wheels, horses screamed in terror, and men were tossed aside like driftwood on the tide.

Aelor found himself face down in the dirt several feet from where he had been, his mostly healed head suddenly throbbing again. Shakily the Prince pushed himself to his knees, looking up at the mass of green flame he had created. The flames reached high, a great green cloud rising into the air. He knew in the back of his mind that what parts of the city hadn't been covered by the wildfire would soon catch fire itself from the heat of the explosions and green substance, within hours turning all of Lannisport into a pillar of smoke and flame.

But Aelor couldn't focus on that, his mind overwhelmed by the sight before him.

The screams began almost immediately, men in the city being covered in a fire they couldn't put out. They could be heard even over the crashes of buildings falling, parts of the wall crumbling and the unnaturally loud crackle of the green fire. Aelor stared into the flames, no pride or bloodlust flooding his veins, only a numb, morbid amazement.

The men around him one by one gained their feet but no one said a word, each and every man, all the thousands of them, staring in awe and horror and senselessness at the flaming havoc before them. No one looked away for no one could, the terrors of what had just occurred overruling all else.

Aelor was a Targaryen, and beyond that a son of Aerys. He was used to fire, had seen its devastation and great capacity for destruction up close since he was a child, but this… this was something else, something different. Even he couldn't take his eyes away, despite the wave of heat causing tears to run down his cheeks. The longer he stared into the flames, the more his vengeful mind took over, reveling in the screams of the dying Lannister's. This had been his intent, his entire goal since the day Elia died besides the death of Tywin.

But suddenly, Aelor Targaryen wasn't looking at a burning Lannisport. He wasn't kneeling in the dirt of the Westerlands. He wasn't a heartbroken battle scarred Prince.

Instead he was nearly a year in the past, back in the throne room of the Red Keep in King's Landing, his father's laughs echoing in his ears. Instead of a burning Lannisport he was seeing a burning Rickard Stark, the Lord of the North baking alive in his armor. Instead of the screams of dying Lannister's he was hearing Brandon Stark choking to death, desperately trying to reach his longsword to save his father's life.

Both men were as real as the green flame, staring at him with eyes full of agony and pain, Brandon Stark's hand no longer reaching for a longsword but instead reaching for Aelor, the Wild Wolf of the North desperately trying to reach the Dragon of Duskendale.

Aelor reached his own hand out, trying to grab the heir to the North's hand, trying to save him from the fate that Aelor hadn't tried to save him from months earlier. He scuffled a few feet forward, trying to do something, intent on using this second chance to stop the war that took the lives of his brother, best friend and love. He desperately reached for Brandon Stark, trying to erase his greatest failure of doing nothing before it was too late, trying to save not only this Northerner but Rhaegar and Renfred, Balman Byrch and Talana Vaith, Elwood Harte and Denys Arryn.

Trying to save Elia.

Something else in the city of Lannisport exploded with another colossal boom and both Starks vanished, leaving Aelor once again staring at a wall of green flame, hand reaching towards nothing. The crushing feeling of his failure once again washed over him, his head pulsating in a pain both physical and mental.

Aelor found himself falling forward, the ground rushing up to meet him, and the world went black.