GOT: The Great Khal — Chapter 149 - Tearing Down Castles

Drogo dropped from the dragon's back. Drogon's wings folded slowly behind him, beating a wave of scorched air that carried sparks and the stench of char.

He drew his arakh. The blade caught the firelight and glowed dark red.

Cohollo, Qotho, Haggo. His three bloodriders fell in behind him.

"Keep up." Drogo walked toward the castle's iron gate, the one Drogon had melted off its hinges.

It lay on the ground, still smoking.

Seven or eight defenders stood behind it, clutching spears and swords, panic plain on every face.

Drogo's left hand shot out and grabbed the nearest spear shaft, yanking the man with it. His arakh drove up through the man's chin.

He let go. The corpse dropped with the spear still in it and tangled the two men beside him.

Qotho moved up on his left and punched his blade through a shield-bearer's gut.

Haggo swung wide on the right and cut down two spearmen angling in from the flank.

Cohollo held the rear and took a lancer's leg off at the knee.

Drogo shook the blood from his blade and kept walking. His pace never broke.

At the corridor corner, a garrison captain stood in the middle of the passage.

Bigger than the others. Plate armor, both hands on a long-handled battle-axe, the blade chipped and notched from years of use. He planted his feet and held the axe across his body, waiting.

Drogo walked toward him and threw a low-to-high feint.

The captain lifted the axe to block. Drogo pulled the blade back and changed direction in the same motion. The tip slipped through the gap between the axe haft and the handguard and punched into the captain's throat.

The man hadn't even started to fall before Drogo pulled the blade free and walked past him.

The three bloodriders followed, cleaning up what was left. No one else got in his way.

Less than an hour later, Griffon's Roost was taken.

Cohollo came up beside him and spoke in Dothraki. "Khal. Prisoners counted. Over 1,300."

Drogo nodded, sheathed his arakh, and walked out of the castle. He stopped beneath the outer wall and looked up at the dark-red stone.

"Tear it down."

"All of it?"

"All of it." He didn't look away from the wall. "Throw the stones into the sea. Not one left."

Cohollo grinned. "That I can do." He'd never liked these stone houses anyway.

The overseers split the prisoners into teams and handed out sledgehammers and iron chisels. Dothraki riders circled the walls. Anyone who slowed down caught an arrow.

The prisoners started slow.

These men had spent their whole lives building and defending castles. Now they were being told to tear one apart with their own hands. A lot of them couldn't make themselves swing.

Dothraki arrows weren't a warning. After the first body came off the battlements, everyone started moving. Hammers rang out across the walls, cracking and booming like summer thunder rolling in off the sea.

Drogo watched the dark-red stones come loose one by one, shoved off the cliff face and swallowed by the water below.

This castle had stood for centuries. Generations of lords had patched it, expanded it, built a small fort into a proper stronghold.

Now it was becoming rubble.

Good.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Every fortress left standing was a foundation waiting for the next man who wanted to raise a rebellion. Every stone house still intact was one more night his rule couldn't rest easy.

No castle, no fiefdom. No castle, no fallback. Simple.

The Dothraki took to demolition fast.

For Drogo, it was strategy. For the Dothraki, it was something better: it was fun.

They'd lived their whole lives on horseback, in tents, moving with the grass and water. Nothing had ever annoyed them more than those iron-clad men who hid behind stone walls. When Drogo had declared war on the Seven Kingdoms from the Dothraki Sea, he'd said it plainly: tear down all their stone houses. Now those words were turning into dust and rubble.

On the second day of Griffon's Roost's demolition, Drogo took his army south.

Crow's Nest was House Morrigen's seat, tucked into the northwestern tip of Cape Wrath.

The coalition's field battles had already bled Morrigen dry. What remained in the castle were the old, the sick, and the ones who couldn't fight. The Dothraki riders hadn't even reached the walls before more than half the garrison deserted the battlements.

Lord Morrigen tried to organize a defense. His own steward put a knife in his back, then knelt at the castle gate with the keys held out in both hands.

Drogo took the keys.

"Tear it down."

Hammers rang out along the walls.

The Dothraki worked faster this time. Some had already figured out the trick: go for the load-bearing columns. Chisel a row of holes along the outer wall, drive wooden wedges in, soak them with water. The wedges swell. The stone splits itself.

Drogo left a thousand freedmen to oversee the work and pushed the main force south.

Stonehelm was House Swann's seat.

Harder than Crow's Nest. House Swann had held the Dornish Sea coast for generations, once the strongest bannermen under the Storm Kings, and their walls showed it — thicker than anything else in the Stormlands.

Drogo didn't bother with a siege. He took one pass on dragonback and burned the roof off the main keep.

The castellan stood in the half-burned great hall watching embers drift down through the broken ceiling. He didn't even try to negotiate. He just surrendered.

Stonehelm's walls came down in 3 days. The stone was carted to the coast and used to fill in the docks.

Mistwood sat on the southern edge of the Rainwood, a small castle ringed by old-growth trees.

The lord here was barely past twenty, less than half a year into his title. His father had died in the fighting outside Griffon's Roost.

The young lord knelt in front of Drogo, voice unsteady. "I surrender my castle, Great Khal. I only ask that you spare my life."

Drogo looked at him for a moment.

"Your father fought. He died in battle. The debt dies with him."

Rain House was the hardest.

Lord Wylde had stacked every gold coin his family had ever accumulated inside the main keep and announced he would spend the last copper on crossbow bolts and nail Drogo, "this brute ox" — to the walls.

The scorpions on the battlements fired without stopping for a full day. The Dothraki couldn't get close. Even the freedmen's shield-carts got shot through twice.

Drogo didn't send anyone to die. He took Drogon and Rhaegal up and flew 3 circuits around the castle.

By the third pass, smoke was rising from inside.

The scorpion platforms collapsed one after another, stone and timber crashing down into the inner courtyard.

The walls were solid. The dragonfire was better. Somewhere in the smoke and the flames, the last of the garrison's will to fight burned away with everything else.

Rain House was the last castle Drogo tore down in the Stormlands.

When the prisoners dug Lord Wylde's body out of the rubble, he'd been crushed by falling stone. Beside him lay an armored steward and three maesters. Scattered around them was a pile of loan contracts, every one of them unredeemed.

The last was Wyl.

The southernmost castle in the Stormlands, sitting on a low hilltop, staring across a stretch of dry badlands at the Dornish Marches.

The walls had already taken a breach from dragonfire in an earlier assault. The garrison was under 500, led by some old lord's nephew.

The nephew held for one day. No reinforcements came. When night fell, he slipped out through the breach and ran south into Dorne.

The next morning, the men who stayed opened the gates themselves.

Drogo walked into Wyl's great hall and looked around the empty room.

The freedmen commander stood before him. "Khal. This is the last castle in the Stormlands. South of here is Dorne."

Drogo didn't order this one torn down. He needed it to hold the Dornish back.

"You stay," he told the commander. "Hold this castle. Root out any stragglers. Keep order."

One month. North to south across the Stormlands: Griffon's Roost, Crow's Nest, Stonehelm, Mistwood, Rain House, Wyl. All of them taken.

Castle after castle, falling. The Dothraki swept through the southern Stormlands like reapers working a field at harvest.

➤ Next: Building Fortresses, Garrisoning the Land