The House of Ice and Fire

Krakens and Spears

Summerhall 104 AC

Aemon Targaryen

Aemon sat in his solar in Summerhall before the large table with maps, battle plans, and letters. He looked to the hills, valleys, shores, and beaches and the figures of the possible movements of potential allies and the Ironborn themselves. The Ironborn were showing strategy, which they normally did not show. His mind swirling with the chaos that had unfolded in his absence—three weeks, he reckoned since he last set foot upon these rugged islands. The journey from Harrenhal to Summerhall took three weeks, and with nearly five thousand men at his back, it set up what Aemon knew would be months of conflict. Three weeks, and in that time, the Greyjoys had dared to stir the simmering cauldron of rebellion. Three weeks later, the continent was at war, and now, months after the beginning of this war, Aemon had to focus on his own lands, which he had only recently acquired.

The timing was as cunning as it was cruel. They had chosen their moment maliciously, waiting until the great lords of the Seven Kingdoms dispersed from their councils and feasts, scattered like leaves in the autumn wind. It was a calculated gamble, seizing opportunity when all the lords were too far away to join together as one great army, and yet waiting until they were far enough away from their keeps to make it impossible to claim back territories lost in a short time. Aemon could almost admire the audacity of it were it not for the devastation that now swept across the Iron Islands.

In their absence, the Greyjoys with their Ironborn had struck like a storm unleashed upon unsuspecting shores. Castles and keeps alike had felt the wrath of their onslaught, the Ironborn reavers descending upon the lands of their foes with a ferocity born of centuries of salt and sea. In Jon Snow's life, Aemon had dealt much with Ironborn. They had no rhyme or reason, were harbingers of chaos, pillaging, and raiding, and had no plans save for the barest of things to start campaigns. And yet here, Aemon was looking over battle plans and notes that spoke otherwise, and it angered him to know that the Ironborn were acting in a way that was so very much not like Ironborn; they were cunning for once. Aemon knew the carnage firsthand, the smoke of burning villages and the cries of the wounded still echoing in his ears.

They had struck hard, and they had struck fast, leaving devastation in their wake. It was a gambit, a bid for power writ large upon the canvas of war, and the Greyjoys had played their hand with all the savagery of the Ironborn reavers of old. But Aemon knew this was the opening gambit that would claim many pieces, a game where the stakes were nothing less than the fate of the Seven Kingdoms.

Aemon wondered if this rebellion would benefit Viserys like the Greyjoy Rebellion, which benefited Robert Baratheon. Aemon did not remember much of this event, except for a few key things he needed to, the battle of the Straits of Fair Isle being one of the most important things he had forced himself to recall after several sleepless nights of trying. He did recall a snip of understanding from the life of Jon Snow that most thought Robert's control of the kingdoms was weak at best until he was able to secure the Crownlands, Riverlands, North, Stormlands, Westerlands, and Redwyne fleet to fight the Ironborn for their rebellion. That war shows that Robert had, for certain, at least five of the kingdoms at his beck and call. Aemon recently wondered why the Vale did little during the Greyjoy Rebellion when the Hand was an Arryn. If Viserys won this war, it would show he could fight for the crown like Jaehaerys had done during the Dornish Wars. But Aemon did not know what Viserys was doing; he did not even know if Viserys knew the realm was at war yet.

In the dimly lit confines of his study within the nearly finished halls of Summerhall, Aemon sat hunched over a desk made of black dragon bone and white weirdwood bark, his eyes tracing the intricate script that danced across the parchment before him. Most of the furniture of Summerhall, whose stones were as white as driven snow, was made of dragon bone, so dark it looked black due to the high amounts of iron found in the bones and weirdwood bark that matched the driven snow and the stones of the keep. The furniture of Summerhall was expensive; Aemon supposed he could fund the creation of two more Summerhalls by selling the furniture, and Summehall, without the bones and still unfinished, was shaping to be the most extravagant, largest both in size and height and most fortified castle in the Seven Kingdoms. Aemon did not know how his father had found enough dragon bone to furnish the entire castle. Aemon did hear from several workers that Daemon was able to secure the bones from dead dragons recently found buried near Valryia, including one that belonged to the dragon of the self-proclaimed Emperor of Valyria, Aurion; no last name has ever been recovered, one of the few dragonlords who survived the Doom of Valyria. The dragon was estimated to be twice as large as Balerion, a terrifying creature. Aemon supposed most of the dragon bone furniture came from the dragon's remains.