Ice and Fire: Reign of the Dragon.

Chapter 376: Rebellion in the Riverlands

Before dawn, the Moon Mountains were shrouded in thick fog, and the watchtowers of the Vale of Arryn stood on the edge of the cliff like sleeping giants. Ser Rodrik Dustin, a knight of the Bloody Gate known for his caution, was walking on the battlements wrapped in a heavy bearskin cloak. His eyes swept over the watchtowers in the distance. The braziers on the top of each tower were lit, like hazy stars in the fog.

“Sir!” A sentry stumbled up to the battlements, his face pale, “The Stone Raven Tower in the east… is gone!”

Rodrik frowned. "Speak clearly."

"Fire...fire from a dragon! The tower melted like a candle!"

The old knight's blood instantly ran cold. He immediately looked towards the east.

On the distant ridge, all that remained was a pool of molten rock, emitting thick smoke.

And farther away in the sky, three dark shadows were passing through the clouds and passing through the valley like ghosts, destroying only the key watchtowers but ignoring the Blood Gate.

"They're going to the Riverlands..." Rodrik muttered.

When Rodrik and his cavalry arrived at the nearest watchtower ruins, all that was left was a pile of charred rubble and a few charred corpses.

“There was no battle,” the accompanying maester examined the traces, “the tower was directly melted by dragon flames.”

The old knight squatted down and picked up a half-melted copper bell - this was a tool used by sentinels to warn, and now it has merged with the stone. He looked up in the direction where the dragon disappeared, and his fists clenched and made a creaking sound.

"Send a raven to the Eyrie at once," he hissed, "and tell the Duke that the Bloody Gate is safe, but the Riverlands are in danger."

"Oh, right." He pulled the maester aside and said, "Send another letter to King's Landing. The three dragons bypassed the fleet of Tidemark Island and attacked the watchtower in the Vale. Their target is the Riverlands."

"Yes."

Riverlands, Harrenhal.

"This is treason!" Lord Harvard Mallister's roar echoed in the Hundred Hearths Hall, his sapphire-studded sword half an inch out of its sheath. "How dare you set a trap in the name of a tournament! This is a blasphemy against the rights of guests!"

Lady Catelyn Blackwood stood beside him, snapping the raven feather fan in her hand shut, the ribs of which were carefully carved from fish beam wood. "My husband always said that the Rothstein family's vows were shorter than the chastity of a whore." Her emerald eyes swept across the East River nobles present, "It seems that he was too polite after all."

The smile on Lucas Rothstein's face froze. The banquet hall he had carefully decorated was now tense - the nobles of the West Riverlands had stood in the west of the hall without knowing when, while Sir Wymond Tully, who was supposed to be detained, was sitting at the table, leisurely picking his nails with a table knife.

"You have misunderstood." Quentin Boll stood up hastily, with panic flashing across his eyes, "We just..."

"Just what?" Wymond Tully thrust his knife into the table, knocking the wine glass over, and spilling the crimson wine on the tablecloth, looking like blood. "Just crossbowmen ambushed in every tower of Harrenhal? Or three hundred sellswords hidden in the cellar? Or the sleeping wine you put in the celebratory wine of the tourney?"

The hall suddenly fell into an eerie silence. Even the fire seemed to have stopped beating. No one expected that the heir of Riverrun, who was known for his good temper, would be so irritable.

Lord Bracken tapped the table nervously with his wrinkled fingers. "Where's the evidence?" he hissed. "Without evidence it's slander!"

"Evidence?" Sir Marco of the Piper family sneered, took out a roll of parchment and a bag of bloody gold coins from his arms and threw them on the table. The paper unfolded, the gold coins scattered, revealing a dense list of mercenaries. "This morning, a mercenary captain in a red robe boasted in the brothel that he could earn enough gold tonight to spend a lifetime." Lady Catelyn Blackwood stared at the Earl of Bracken opposite her with her emerald eyes, and the fish beam wood fan in her hand closed with a "snap".

“Ser Marco, there is no point in talking to a liar. My father said so,” her voice was like ice cutting through glass. “A Bracken would lie even if he swore under a weirwood. If my husband were still here, he would gladly rip your intestines out and hang them from a tree.”

Lord Bracken's face flushed red, and the gem ring on his finger scraped against the oak table. "You Blackwoods are a bunch of -" Ser Osser Bracken drew his sword and pointed it at Lady Catelyn: "Bitch, shut up."

"Enough!" said Sir Wymond Tully coldly, "We are here to hold Rostam and Bold accountable, not to see you settle your feud!"

"Tell us, where did you lose the honor of knights? Where did you lose the rights of guests?" Sir Merry Frey said coldly, the twin towers emblem on the chest of the young Frey was polished to a shine. Since the reputation of Lord Forrest Frey's loyalty and bravery spread throughout the world, the Frey family has produced many famous knights. This once "upstarts" and "traitor" family has now become the mainstay of the riverlands.

Lord Root stood up suddenly, knocking over the wine jug in front of him. "Does the Frey family have the right to talk about honor? You are the lackeys of Durrenden, the minions of the silver dragon, you -"

"What's wrong with us?" Merry put his hand on the hilt of the sword. "Ever since Lord Forrester and Lady Satherby fought bravely for the dragon, even Stark, Arryn, and Vareses have acknowledged the courage of the Frey family. But you" he glanced at the nobles in the East Riverlands, "hiding in Harrenhal and plotting. This is the real shame."

"Aegon is the true king." The Root family, which was devastated by the fall because they chose the wrong side in the Dance of the Dragons, hated the current royal family. Old Earl Root said in his heart
"We just want to talk to you adults, talk." Quentin Boll said patiently.

"What to talk about? About how you plan to betray the real king and lick the boots of the bastard? Sorry, we don't have such a strong appetite." Wymond Tully interrupted Quentin Pole with a sneer.

The faces of the lords of the East River Land turned pale in an instant. Lord Darry's wine glass slipped from his fingers and hit the marble floor with a crisp sound.

Exposed?
Earl Ambrose Butterwell retreated uneasily behind the crowd. He was a fence-sitter to begin with. Having briefly served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he chose to stand on the side of Aegon III, and was therefore one of the first river nobles to be won over. However, this old fox was always cunning, and he neither refused nor really agreed.

Because he was afraid, afraid of the Silver Dragon's arrangement, and also afraid that the wealth that the Bartwell family had worked hard to build for generations would be destroyed in the war.

The situation was getting out of control. Quentin Pole's eyes moved rapidly, and he noticed that the nobles from the West Riverlands and the knights from other regions had quietly retreated to the exit, while his own guards were still separated at the other end of the hall. What was worse was that the archers from the Blackwoods and Freys had occupied the second-floor balcony without anyone noticing - Harrenhal was too big, and Blackwood and Frey were quite familiar with this huge city.

At this critical moment, a deafening roar came from afar.

The tall windows of the hall suddenly burst, and emerald flames poured in like a flood, but no one was hurt. Jad Olyns's huge head poked through the broken window, his dragon eyes glowing with a strange golden light in the shadows. Aegon Sunfyre sat in the gap between his scales, with a charred and broken dragon whip wrapped around his arm, the tip of the whip dripping with molten gold.

The new dragon knight looked excited and proud.

“It seems I came at the right time.” There was an annoying sluggish tone in his voice. “Didn’t you miss the show?”

Then, the shadow of Korakshuu covered the hall. Daemon Blackfyre held the Blackfyre Sword, and the dark red ripples on the sword were like flowing blood. "Everyone," his purple eyes swept over everyone gently, "Why don't you sit down and have a good talk?"

The last one to arrive was Aegor Rivers. The sheep thief's peat-colored claws crushed half of the long table, and the dragon was still holding a struggling sentry in its mouth. Aegor calmly glanced at the somewhat panicked nobles of the West Riverland: "Damon, you have to hurry. At nightfall at the latest, your good brother and the poisonous snakes of the Silver Dragon family will send out dragons to hunt us down. We only have less than a day."

"so."

Iger smiled and said, "Let them die now, or they may make a fortune, or at least be forgiven by our weak brother."

(End of this chapter)