96

Chapter 96: Interlude: Legio INotes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"I name you Firstborn; First and greatest of the Legions."

-King Rhaenyra I Targaryen granting the First Legion their cognomen

115 AC, 1st Moon, 2nd day, Southpool,

"We cannot afford to linger, speed is of the essence!" Lord Peake shouted, his face red with fury. "Every moment we dawdle is a moment Rhaenyra spends reinforcing her position!"

"We cannot march!" Lord Florent shouted back, pounding the table for emphasis. "We have been decimated, literally! Our troops need to rest, and our wounded need to heal!"

"Agreed." Lord Cuy added. "We need to replenish our ranks. Send horsemen out in every direction to levy and train more men."

"That will take too long! We have reports coming in on Longtable's fall to the Sixth Legion. And Cider Hall says that Third Legion outriders have already been spotted in the area!" Lord Blackbar retorted. "If we do as you say, the Legions would have arrived at Highgarden by the time we march again!"

"You disprove your own point!" Lord Mullendore insisted. "Cider Hall, our last line of defence, is on the verge of falling. And once it falls, assuming it hasn't already by now, Highgarden is next! We won't be able to reinforce the castle in time. A forced-march there would do nothing but exhaust our soldiers before feeding them into fortified Legion positions!"

There was another roar of anger as yet another lord began shouting, and the conversation quickly started going in circles.

How was it possible, that this war council seemed more interested in fighting one another than the Blacks?

"They're all being useless." Shaera whispered to Lord Otto, as Lord Peake began accusing Lord Mullendore of being a Black sympathiser and spy. The former, he probably was, of course. But the latter? No, too obvious.

Mysaria definitely had spies in the camp, and Rhaenyra very likely owned at least one of the Green lords body and soul— possibly literally— but it wasn't Lord Mullendore. Lord Florent was Shaera's best guess, the cousin he'd lost to the Cataphracts had been one of those ambitious and uppity relatives, and killing him brought more cause to celebrate than to mourn.

"Agreed." Otto whispered back, frowning as his older brother tried and failed to restore order. "But they are right about one thing, this situation is untenable."

Southpool was completely deserted by the time the Green host had arrived in force.

The Second Legion had skedaddled almost immediately after the attack that killed Urrax, having retrieved all of the Mangler bolts fired and Urrax's body before retreating back to Highgarden.

All that was left behind was a ruined town, mass graves full of dead Green soldiers and well over a thousand scared smallfolk, the original inhabitants of Southpool.

The Second Legion had left them a massive chest full of gold in compensation for the damage done, as well as several carts full of emergency supplies, but it was clear that there was no love lost between the locals and the soldiers.

While it was true that the legionaries had been impressively disciplined, with zero recorded incidents of rape or looting, they were still rather heavy-handed in their occupation of Southpool, and had left much of the town in ruins in their effort to slay the Green dragons.

"I've been thinking about the attack yesterday." Shaera revealed. "And I would like your opinion on the subject. Check my logic for me, if you would please."

"I'm all ears." The former Hand of the King nodded.

"Rhaenyra is paranoid. Really paranoid. So she'd keep her tricks up her sleeves for as long as possible, only slapping down her trump cards when absolutely necessary."

"Yes, that is consistent with her character."

"And these anti-dragon weaponry… they're an escalation. A major one. It could come around to bite her in the back in years to come, so she would not lightly resort to them unless she had no other choice."

"I follow your logic. She did not expect Aerion's theft, or our acquisition of dragons."

"Exactly. Meaning that these 'Manglers' and 'Megapults' were only recently brought out of storage. Presumably after Erik reported on our dragons."

"What are you saying?" Otto asked, leaning in.

"I didn't notice it at the time, but there was no way those ballistae came from Camp Cockleswhent." Shaera slowly said. "Megapults aside, the place doesn't have the resources to build such siege engines within such a short timeframe, and there's no way she'd stash away such sensitive and dangerous weapons in the Reach, under your gaze."

"Which means that the Manglers have to had come from King's Landing or Dragonstone instead." Otto frowned, cupping his chin in contemplation. "But given their sheer size, nothing short of a ship of the line could have transported them. And there is no way boats of that size could have slipped through the defensive lines. Which means…"

"Rhaenyra is tricking us." Shaera grimly concluded. "Highgarden and the rest have likely already fallen, and the reports we are receiving are likely false or doctored."

"She's inducing a panic." Otto realised. "We force-march on Highgarden, desperate to relieve the siege before Cider Hall falls, only to find all six Legions mustered behind the walls of the castle, awaiting us to blunder right into their fortified position."

An exhausted and outnumbered army, already wounded from prior skirmishes, marching right into a Legion fortified position? Slaughter seemed too mild a word to describe such an outcome.

———

In the end, it took until the wee hours of the night before a solid plan of action was made.

On the morrow, half the host would ford the Mander and march north to hit Old Oak in the back, linking up with the Lannister host before moving to crush Rhaenyra as one united force. Meanwhile, the other half would remain in Southpool and dig in. Reinforcing their numbers by sending riders out to conscript levies from the surrounding Tyrell lands while simultaneously preventing the Legions from hitting the Green supply lines stretching up from Oldtown.

Exhausted, Shaera was eternally grateful when the meeting finally adjourned, the Lady Tyrell flopping down exhausted into her cot with a complete lack of decorum.

She was asleep the instant her head hit the pillow, only to be most cruelly awakened by the alarm bells what felt like a single heartbeat later.

———

115 AC, 1st Moon, 3rd day, Southpool,

The Cataphracts were attacking again.

Ser Richard Rodden grumbled as he mustered the knights on night watch to sortie out.

Despite all signs pointing to the Second Legion having retreated after slaying the dragon Urrax, Ser Richard knew it was too good to be true. A faked retreat. Or they had other bases to attack from in the region, mayhaps.

Regardless, they had clearly been banking on the Green host being exhausted from the fighting, and letting their guard down after the latest defeat.

Alas, Lord Hightower had an abundance of caution, and had insisted on a fortified camp with a full night watch. A precaution that was paying dividends now, as the knights on duty sallied out of the palisades, ready to repel the enemy horse archers.

They would not be pulling another fast one tonight, if Ser Rodden had anything to say about it.

The Cataphracts were rather lethargic this time, never fully committing to the attack. The horse archers let themselves be chased off, shooting parting shot after parting shot back at the pursuing knights in an attempt to bleed them. It was clear that this time, they weren't attempting to wake half the camp, and were after scalps instead.

Ser Richard kept up this game of cat-and-mouse, continuously pursuing the Cataphracts, but always reeling his men in before they could be drawn too far away from friendly lines. They'd learnt the hard way that chasing the Legionaries too far led to nothing but ambushes and shallow graves.

But then alarm bells rung dolorously, and the Rodden knight wheeled his horse around in shock, staring back at the Green camp. Which was now on fire.

Seeing the flames, the Cataphracts immediately cut and run, retreating into the night without a single word spoken. Their task as diversion was quite clearly accomplished.

Grimly, Ser Richard realised that the Second Legion had pulled yet another fast one over the Greens. 

———

115 AC, 1st Moon, 3rd day, Mander River,

The giants marched.

Fifty of them, clad head-to-toe in absurdly thick and heavy steel plates. Weighed down with bags full of rocks tied around their waists. Every step they took threw up great clouds of sand in silt, making the dark water even more opaque and obscure.

Not that visibility particularly mattered anyway. Giants didn't exactly have the best eyesight.

The Legion strike force marched along the riverbed of the Mander, the current pushing them ever forwards. The backbone of the force was made up of fifty hundred giants, each and every one of them wearing a breathing apparatus that was essentially a mask of glass with a long tube reaching up to the surface, allowing them to see and breathe despite being twenty feet underwater.

Trailing behind the behemoths were a hundred and fifty human soldiers, holding onto ropes attached to the backpacks of the stronger giants. Clad completely in waterproof leathers, with vests containing sacs of buoyant air keeping them afloat and wearing identical—if downsized—snorkels to breathe.

The Marines of Westeros were an experimental branch of soldiers, jointly trained and operated by both the First Legion and the Royal Fleet. They'd spent as much time in the islands of Dragonstone and Driftmark as they did down in Camp Cockleswhent, being drilled in all forms of amphibious warfare from seaborne landings to boarding actions.

Rhaenyra had not hidden their existence from the world, though she'd definitely downplayed great portions of their training. As far as most of the Realm knew, the Marines were little more than glorified guardsmen, serving to defend the ships of the Royal Fleet from pirate boarding actions or the like.

While currently assigned to the First Legion, it was anticipated that the Marines would eventually get a Legion of their own, should they sufficiently prove their mettle in this campaign.

The Greens were not fools, and had posted scouts along the river Mander, with several fishing boats having been commandeered, and positioned further out from the camp to spot any approaching enemy vessels quickly.

The Marines swam under the ships with none the wiser, their painted black-and-blue snorkels near invisible in the darkness of a new moon.

Before long, they had reached their destination, and the leader signalled a halt.

It was near impossible to see or hear anything in the darkness and below the water, so ropes had been tied around the waist of every giant. Half to keep them from getting separated, half to serve as a quick communication method in the absence of light and sound.

Tugs on the rope were submitted from the leader in a set pattern, and repeated by the giants further out, relaying the message in Morse code.

'HERE. ATTACK ON 3,'

Ropes were untied, and sacks of ballast rocks discarded.

The giants rose out of the river like breaching whales, water trickling down their bodies in thick rivulets as they stepped onto solid ground.

There were few soldiers at the riverside, many assuming that it was an impassable border that no army could attack over. One of the guards had been peeing into the river, and stood stunned at the sight of so many giants before himself.

A heartbeat later and he was sent flying through the sky by a single mace smash, pants around his ankles.

The rest of the soldiers were similarly dispatched, be it from the maces of the giants or the spears wielded by the men. With a foothold established, the giants all began drawing their weapons. Great long hollow cylinders made of metal, with a nozzle shaped like a dragon's head at the front. Flexible tubes connected these cylinders to massive canisters worn on the giant's back.

Shaking the contraption free of water, the giants bent over and let the human soldiers strike matches to ignite the wicks on the tips of their weapons. The flammable concoctions on both the matches and the wicks allowing for even damp substances to burn.

Satisfied that they were ready, the giants spread out, and aimed the dragon heads at the tents surrounding them, before pulling the triggers.

A veritable torrent of green flame promptly burst right out of the nozzles of the weapons, the giants swinging the streams around, spreading the fire even further.

Within moments, great swaths of the Green camp was afire.

———

115 AC, 1st Moon, 3rd day, Southpool,

Screams filled the night as wildfire leapt from tent to tent, disorganised and half-dressed soldiers ran in all directions.

Ormund Hightower shouted himself hoarse trying to contain the damage, but there was just too much fear and confusion to mount a proper response.

The Legions— at least Ormund assumed it was the Legions— had hit the sellsword camp hard. By some sorcery a force of giants had somehow emerged from the river, and were now burning a vicious swath through the camp with those fire-weapons of theirs.

Ormund Hightower had seen flamethrowers before. The late Rhaegar Fyre had been honoured by Rhaenyra for his contributions in the development of a safer and less volatile blend of Wildfire, allowing it to have practical uses on the battlefield. The first and foremost application of such a weapon was as ammunition for the Royal Fleet's flamethrowers, weapons designed to spew the alchemical fire at enemy vessels to set them ablaze and destroy them.

Ormund himself had been present at the demonstration of the prototype weapons, and had marvelled at how quickly and efficiently it destroyed the old warship used as a target.

He'd assumed the flamethrowers to be as siege weapons, unable to be transported by anything smaller than a horse-drawn cart. But it would seem that cunning Rhaenyra had tricked them all again. In the hands of giants, siege engines were man-portable weapons.

The sellswords were in complete and utter disarray, fleeing in blind panic and trampling over one another in an attempt to flee the blaze. The mercenaries clearly weren't professional soldiers, and it showed. Had the men-at-arms been the ones attacked in such a manner, they would have maintained discipline and rallied in an orderly manner.

It was utter chaos for the sellswords, with what resistance and firefighting efforts being sporadic and ill organised.

Half the calvary had been deployed to chase off the Cataphracts, stripping them of their most useful counter to the giants. Not that it would have mattered, for it would be an exceptionally brave horse that was willing to charge such an inferno.

"Circle around the blaze!" Ser Ormund ordered his men. "The giants are leaving the avenues largely untouched and going after the tents instead. We need to cut them off before they hit the inner camps!"

His men hastened to obey, and they took off to halt the giants.

When designing the camp, Ormund's father had insisted on broad avenues being cleared in the sea of tents, allowing for the swift mustering and deployment of soldiers.

The giants were running down those very same avenues now, torching everything on either side of the path, but otherwise leaving it untouched by fire. A clever move. It allowed them to avoid getting surrounded by their own flames, while giving themselves paths to both attack and retreat.

Most of the giants had split up into groups of five, and were dashing in all directions, increasing the rate at which they spread the flames throughout the camp.

Ser Ormund ambushed a group of them not too far away from the walls of Southpool.

He had forty men, facing down five giants, and still, it wasn't enough.

He'd attacked them from behind, correctly banking that they would not use the flamethrowers, for it would be as cutting off their own path of retreat.

But alas, even without flamethrowers, the giants were deadly.

The giants in plate brought their maces down, flanged heads shattering shields and pulping multiple men with a single swing. Bodies were thrown into the air, sent flying from the sheer impact of the swings.

Pikes and arrows glanced off of the thick armour covering the giants, doing nothing but annoy them.

Several knights rode into the fray, having somehow coerced their horses into charging the flamethrower-wielding giants, but they did nothing save add to the number of corpses.

Lances broke and shattered on breastplates the size of small huts, doing little but scuffing the steel. Maces taller than men came down, demonstrating that they could pulp both rider and horse in a single swing.

Eventually though, several soldiers atop the mudbrick wall turned scorpions and catapults against the giants, and where infantry and calvary failed, the siege engines did not.

Three of the five giants were slain before one of the survivors brandished his flamethrower, sweeping the walls and incinerating all of the brave soldiers and their siege engines in a roar of green.

The other surviving giant turned to face Ormund and his troops, mace raised threateningly, black rage writ on it's hairy face.

Ormund gulped, and bravely brandished the Valyrian steel sword of House Hightower; Vigilance. If he would die, he would die a warrior, straight-backed and fearless. Sword in hand until the bitter end.

He was saying his final prayers when there was a sudden horn blast. A second, and then a third. Long, short, long.

The giants immediately lowered their weapons and began a retreat, running back down the avenue they came from, retreating back to the river without any more fighting.

They weren't the only ones. From all across the camp, giants were running back to the river, returning to whence they came like rivers flowing to the sea. They regrouped, got onto several barges— clearly stolen from the Greens— and immediately began sailing back up the Mander, giants wielding massive oars the size of small towers.

As quickly as they came, the giants were gone. Sailing off into the distance, and leaving a burning camp behind them.

———

It had taken Shaera way more time than it should have to realise just what the giants were up to.

That this was a Legion raid was never in doubt. The First and Fifth Legions were the only armies on the continent to field giants in such numbers.

But no matter how powerful giants were, even with flamethrowers and the element of surprise on their side, they were not enough to crush the Green host underfoot. Sooner rather than later, the Greens would rally and drown the giants in sheer numbers.

And Rhaenyra was not the type to throw away the lives of her soldiers needlessly. Doubly so if they were giants. Triply so, if those giants were rare and highly expensive professionally-trained commandos.

This meant that the Legions had an objective on the camp beyond a mere raid. Though the wildfire blazes had killed hundreds if not thousands of Green soldiers in their sleep, casualties were not the main objective here. Rhaenyra had to know that House Tyrell could just levy up more men to replace those lost. The Reach had no shortage of manpower, after all.

It would be a different story if the full muster of the Legions hit them the very next day, when they were still reeling from this raid, but dragons would make quick work of any army. The Greens had learnt their lessons and would not be overconfident again.

House Hightower had alchemists whom prepared a batch of wildfire for this campaign. And the Greens had captured the skycart used by Rhaegar and the Oldtown crowd before their untimely deaths.

All it would take was a few bombing runs, out of siege engine range, and the Legions would rout.

Even Rhaenyra's new anti-dragon siege engines could not shoot down a target the better part of a mile into the sky.

But there was of course, an easy solution to that problem for Rhaenyra; Kill the dragons.

Fifty giants had come to attack on this dark night. Thirty of them wielded flamethrowers, and were setting any and everything alight, and being all bright and visible.

The other twenty had brought lances tipped with Valyrian steel, and had immediately dashed for the dragon paddock while their comrades acted as diversion.

And they weren't alone.

Power rippled through the air, setting Shaera's blood to singing as it washed over her.

Sleep. The dragonblood in her veins told her.

Almost immediately, a wave of pain assaulted Shaera, the Dragonseed falling to her knees in response. Gasping, Shaera felt the tie, that invisible bond between Daybreak and herself, from which she commanded her dragon and drew mana from to power her spells, narrow.

Only a Valyrian could wield a dragonhorn, and given that there was a massive ward surrounding the paddock where the Green dragons rested, making everyone outside perceive anything that happened under its aegis as unimportant and unnoticeable…

Rhaenyra or the Dragonseeds, perhaps both, were here. Personally leading this little sneak attack.

Gritting her teeth, Shaera fought off the instinctive urge to run, reminding herself that she was no longer the bound and leashed girl Rhaenyra could torment at will.

Shaera waved a hand, and almost immediately, magic circles coiled around the wrists of her and every single soldier surrounding her, neutralising the effects of the ward.

The sight revealed was not pleasant.

Daybreak, Syrax and Tessarion were wounded, all bleeding profusely from the spears impaled into them. They were trying to fly away, but were being held down by the ward, which was acting as a ceiling, preventing their escape.

Fifteen giants surrounded the three beasts, attempting to wrestle them down, with the mangled corpses of five more sprawled on the ground around them.

And standing in a corner of the ward, hiding away from the trashing dragons and brawling giants, dragonhorn in hand, stood Rhaenyra Targaryen. She was clad head-to-toe in full plate, but there was no mistaking that blade-crowned helm and indigo gaze.

Shaera's breath hitched at the sight. The Dragonqueen herself was here, personally. If she could be killed, the war could be won on this very night.

Syrax lashed out, breathing dragonfire onto another giant, reducing it to a charred corpse before another two giants could wrestle the dragon's mouth shut.

Sleep. The dragonhorn commanded once more, and all three dragons faltered, desperately battling to stay awake even as more giants dogpiled them.

Syrax and Tessarion were able to recover quickly, batting aside the giants. Daybreak on the other hand…

Shaera but her tongue to keep herself from screaming, as a Valyrian steel speartip pierced right through Daybreak's heart. Her dragon reared up in pain and shock, allowing two more giants to grab ahold of the horns on its scaly head and wrestle it down. A second spear descended, punching straight through the skull and into the brain, and that was that.

Daybreak was gone. 

With battlecries, the Green soldiers threw themselves onto the giants, in a desperate attempt to kill them. Meanwhile, Shaera slunk around the periphery of the ward under veil of illusion, before moving to shoot Rhaenyra in the back.

The crossbow bolt failed to penetrate Rhaenyra's plate, but it knocked her off balance long enough for Shaera to toss a nasty flaying curse at the other sorceress.

Rhaenyra whirled around, shaping a shielding spell to tank the blow.

A heartbeat later, and the shield compressed into a single line of light, which Rhaenyra swung at Shaera like a whip, wire cleaving straight through a wooden palisade like it was nothing more than paper.

Shaera dodged the blow, flinging another hex at Rhaenyra with a flick of her wrist.

The Dragonqueen teleported, reappearing right behind Shaera, hands shining with the Electron Cutter.

Shaera reshaped her veil of illusion into a forcefield, blocking the blow. Rhaenyra's patented spell wielded electrons like a blade, making the tiny particles slip between atoms and sever molecular bonds. It was sharper than a monoatomic blade, and could reduce any matter it touched to dust, enabling it to cleave through anything short of spell-forged Valyrian steel.

But there was a catch.

Forcefields and other such shielding spells completely lacked atoms of any sort, making Rhaenyra's vaunted spell useless against it.

The two of them strained for a bit, Rhaenyra pushing down from above as Shaera held the forcefield up from below, indigo eyes staring straight into blue.

"Crucio." Rhaenyra ordered, and for one brief heartbeat of horror, Shaera felt the leash around her neck stir, heeding the call of its old master. The moment passed though, and the spell returned back to dormancy with no issue.

"Your leash no longer works on me!" Shaera yelled triumphantly, savouring the look of utter shock and surprise in Rhaenyra's eyes. "I am no longer your slave!"

At that, she detonated her forcefield in a wave of force, throwing Rhaenyra backwards, causing her to bounce off right into her own ward.

Shaping an Electron Cutter of her own, Shaera took a single step forwards, and thrust her left hand straight into Rhaenyra's heart. 

The Dragonqueen stuttered, spitting out blood as she fell.

Rhaenyra called motes of magic to herself, a last desperate defence, but Shaera did not let her complete the spell.

She swung her hand once more, and the Electron Cutter decapitated the woman whom invented it.

The wards vanished as sudden as a match lit, and the remaining two dragons shot into the sky. Wounded and bleeding boiling blood from a dozen wounds, but still alive.

That was when it truly sank in that Rhaenyra was dead.

Shaera fell to her knees, all her strength having abandoned her as she realised the full magnitude of her actions. She opened her mouth as a strange noise involuntarily tore itself out of her lips. Neither a laugh, nor a cry, yet both at the same time.

She didn't know how long she sat down in the dirt, doing this strange laugh-cry.

Long enough for the surviving giants to run away, a horde of angry Greens in hot pursuit of them.

Long enough for the remaining legionaries to pile onto stolen boats and retreat back to Highgarden.

Long enough for the fires ravaging the camp to gutter out, extinguished by a combination of firebreaks and Green firefighters.

Long enough for the sun to peek over the horizon as dawn broke, ash falling like snow over the battered host.

Shaera wiped her tears away, a coating of ash flaking off of her face as she did so. She'd spent the last dozen years of her life scheming her way to the top, with nothing too vile or beneath her in her attempt to claw her way up the social ladder. And finally, finally, she had accomplished her lifelong goal.

Rhaenyra was dead, and all that was left on her path to the Iron Throne were the very final steps.

Shaera pulled herself to her feet. Despite her victory being all but assured now, there were still plenty of work to do. She had to show the Greens proof of their victory, pivot her murder of the Dragonqueen into heroism, enabling her to subsume the Greens from the inside out and consolidate her position for her eventual queenship.

She picked up Rhaenyra's decapitated head, only to recoil almost immediately.

That wasn't Rhaenyra under the blade-crowned helm. It wasn't even a Valyrian. Just some common soldier with brown hair and eyes. A female legionary, from the looks of things.

In disbelief, Shaera picked up the helmet, looking inside as though by some miracle another severed head would pop out of it, only to stutter to a halt as she took in what lay beneath the steel.

Twisted obsidian similar to that of the glass candles was coiled around the edges of the helmet, almost like a circlet crown. Hundreds of tiny glyphs had been engraved into the metal, inlaid with platinum for purity and silver for clarity.

Oh.

Oh gods.

Rhaenyra was still—

———

115 AC, 1st Moon, 3rd day, Highgarden Godswood,

Rhaenyra gasped, rearing up in the elaborate altar of stone she laid upon, almost like a sepulchre. She removed the headdress of twisted obsidian, platinum and silver. Shaking her long electron hair free of the regalia.

Disconnecting herself from the ritual which had allowed her to mimic the skinchanging abilities of the First Men and possess a volunteer marine from the First Legion.

Rhaenyra was weakened when she rode another person's mind, being capable of wielding only about seventy percent of her full sorcerous might. But considering that the Dragonqueen was the single best mage on the continent, capable of levelling entire city blocks when pissed, seventy percent was still more than enough to fight with.

On the other side of the godswood, Daenys was shaking herself free from her own resting place. Shaeterys' sister had been laid alongside the Three Singers, the three Weirwoods twisted into one that was the heart tree of Highgarden. Coiled up in a tangle of their roots to boost Rhaegar and her own skinchanging abilities, amplifying them by an entire magnitude.

"Welcome back, Rhaenyra. How was death?" Shaeterys asked, offering his cousin a helping hand.

"Not fun." The Dragonqueen grumbled, glaring unamusedly at the Dragonseed.

She took his hand though, allowing him to gallantly help her to her feet.

"How long was I out?" Rhaenyra asked, stretching from the time spent lying down for so long.

"Four hours." Shaeterys answered, gesturing to the dawn sky above them. "The Royal Fleet has secured the Marines, and are on the way back for debriefing. I expect them to be here by lunchtime."

"Good, and how did it go on your end?" Rhaenyra asked, turning to face Daenys.

"A roaring success." Rhaegar nodded. "You were a wonderful diversion. Nobody realised until too late what Daenys and I were up to."

Shaeterys shuddered slightly as the girl approached them both. He was still unnerved by the union between the two Royce scions. His brother spoke with Daenys' voice, yet it was unmistakably Rhaegar. That somehow made it even more creepy. The uncanny valley effect making the wrongness feel even more pronounced.

"Did you get them all?"

"After our own marines retreated, we hid in the minds of the camp animals, hiding from sight." Daenys reported. "The rank-and-file seem to think that there are no survivors left, and of the forty-two Valyrians assembled by the Greens, we have thirty-seven confirmed kills, and are pretty sure on the rest."

"We'll have to double-confirm with Mysaria's spies, but I think we can safely submit preliminary reports that all enemy dragonrider candidates are dead." Rhaenyra nodded. "Good job, you two."

She smiled at them.

"Operation River Knife was a big success."

Shaeterys shook his head as the three— or was it four? This was confusing— of them strode out of the Godswood. He and most of the Generals had thought Operation River Knife to be rank madness when it was first proposed, and yet somehow they managed to make it work anyway.

Operation River Knife was a brainchild of Rhaenyra's, a truly vicious and batshit crazy plan to strip the Greens of their new draconic air superiority.

While General Dondarrion's initial ambush using the Manglers and Megapults to lure the enemies to the specifically chosen town of Southpool had been relatively sane and straightforward, and the fact that he'd managed to bag a dragon a most exemplary bonus, the rest of the plan quickly went downhill in terms of logic and sanity.

Step two had been a diversionary assault by the Cataphracts, in order to draw away Green calvary and focus from their main camp.

Step three had been an amphibious night assault by the Marines of the First Legion. Fifty giants wielding flamethrowers, and three times as many human marines, diving beneath the Mander to slip past Green defences and hit their camp in the most vulnerable spot.

While the humans attacked and stole the fleet of requisitioned barges the Greens intended to use to ferry their troops the rest of the way to Highgarden, the giants had gone on the offensive, torching everything in sight.

This was yet another diversionary assault, with the bulk of the giants being tasked to cause as much collateral damage as possible, all in order to draw attention away from the next prong of the attack.

Step four involved Rhaenyra possessing a volunteer marine, and leading a detachment of giants to kill the grounded Green dragons.

But this was yet another diversionary assault, to draw attention away from the next prong of the attack.

Step five had involved Rhaegar and Daenys, both possessing their own volunteer marines, to quietly find and assassinate every single Valyrian in the Green war camp, depriving the enemy of any and all of their potential dragonriders.

This move was a stroke of genius, in Shaeterys' opinion. Even for fully-armed giants, killing dragons was no easy task. But as Rhaenyra was fond of saying, there was more than one way to skin a cat. The riders were but regular humans, most of them unskilled at arms, having never trained as a soldier before this war. Far easier prey to hunt down and kill.

Step six had involved a retreat from the camp, using the stolen barges as getaway vehicles, with the giants torching what watercraft they did not take, in a form of asset denial.

Madness, the whole thing. Rank and utter madness.

But sometimes, just sometimes, a plan was so crazy that it actually looped back around to pure genius. And Operation River Knife had clearly been insane and unpredictable enough to work.

Gods take mercy on the Greens, for Rhaenyra Targaryen was back on her feet after the initial setbacks, and she was angry.

Notes:

Ha, I bet nobody expected the attack of flamethrower-wielding elite-commando scuba giants.

BTW, my uncle is an ex-officer from the Singaporean Armed Forces' Naval Diver Unit (NDU). Our equivalent of the US Navy SEALs. I asked him for a battle plan for an amphibious raid with maximum collateral damage, and I think he delivered.

He's not the only one I've been talking to. One good thing about living in a country with mandatory military conscription is the sheer number of ex-soldiers I can talk to to discuss battle plans.

My other uncle is an ex-officer from the SAF Commandos. One of my cousins is an ex-tank driver, his brother is currently a full-time combat engineer and his other brother used to work in logistics. My older brother and I both served in Intelligence. Plus I've got dozens of friends whom have served in everything from the medic corps to signals.

Pretty much every single adult male in the country has served in the army at some point, and many of them have interesting stories and valuable experiences to share.