GOT: The Great — Chapter 287 - Sacking Bolton's Home

Drogo interrogated over a hundred people at the Dreadfort.

The steward, the maester, the guards, the cook, the stable hands, the milking maids, the old man at the gate.

Every one of them was brought into the great hall and made to kneel before him.

Every one of them gave the same answer: Ramsay Bolton had not come back.

"He marched north with his army to fight the Night's Watch and never returned," the maester said.

"My lord has not come back," the steward said.

"Haven't seen him," a guard said.

"How would someone like me know Lord Bolton's whereabouts," the stable hand said.

Drogo sat beneath the flayed man banner, one hand resting on the back of the chair. He had no intention of pressing further. He would simply assume Ramsay had gone to Winterfell.

Tormund strode in.

"My king, a skinchanger's hawk has spotted several hundred ships downstream."

Drogo reached out and seized the maester by the collar, hauling him off the floor. The man's feet dangled half an inch above the ground, a strangled gurgle rising from his throat.

"We weren't sitting on our hands." The maester's face was turning purple. "Lord Bolton truly did not return — everything we said is the truth. Most of the people in the Dreadfort, most of them fled by ship."

"Why didn't you say so sooner?" Tormund glared at him.

"You never asked. You kept asking about Lord Ramsay Bolton's whereabouts. So we answered that he hadn't come back to the Dreadfort."

"You couldn't expect me to volunteer that the Dreadfort's people had fled if you never asked, could you? Being a traitor is hardly a thing of honor."

Drogo's hand closed around the maester's throat.

The moment his fingers came together, the windpipe crumpled in his palm like a dry reed being crushed, a faint, brittle snap.

Drogo let go.

The body dropped limply to the floor, neck bent at an unnatural angle, eyes still open.

Tormund glanced at the corpse and said nothing. He had seen cleaner deaths beyond the Wall.

"That Ramsay Bolton you're looking for might be on one of those ships."

Drogo walked to the dragon and swung himself up onto its back.

"The people of the Dreadfort are yours. Their property too." He tugged the reins. "I'll appoint a different lord to govern this castle."

Most of the Free Folk had little concept of lordship, things taken in battle only felt real when held in their own hands, and none of them had any objection to whoever controlled the Dreadfort. When Drogo declared the property theirs, a visible stir ran through the crowd.

Only the Thenn men stood calm amid the cheering, their Magnar being the closest thing to a lord they had ever known.

Drogo flew upstream along the river.

The water was grey-green. The pine forests on both banks bowed under the weight of snow, and now and then a moose poked its head out from the tree line, looked up at the shadow of a dragon passing overhead, and shrank back into the trees.

After roughly 100 leagues, things began appearing on the surface.

First broken timber. Then snapped masts, sailcloth soaked pale in the water. Then shields. Then bodies.

The bodies lay thick across the river, drifting slowly downstream with the current. Some faced down, hair fanned across the surface like clumps of dark seaweed. Some faced up, whatever expression they had worn at the moment of death still fixed on their faces.

Flying further, he heard the sounds of battle.

The crisp ring of clashing steel floated up on the river wind, followed by screaming and the splash of men hitting the water.

Two groups were still fighting on the river.

Upstream sat a dozen or so longships, narrow and long, riding shallow in the water. The flags were a jumble: skulls on black, crossed harpoons, and some that flew nothing at all.

Downstream were over 20 warships, far larger, with iron-banded rams on their prows and archers packed along the decks. A banner flew from the mast of the largest: a white merman with dark green hair and beard, holding a black trident, standing upon a blue-green sea.

The banner of House Manderly of White Harbor.

Drogo recognized it.

White Harbor had stayed loyal to House Stark from beginning to end. They had followed Robb when he was crowned, and when Robb died, they had not bowed.

He made up his mind as he banked the dragon around.

The wind from Drogon's sweeping wings pressed a groove into the surface of the river. When the dragon's jaws opened, black flame surged up from deep in his throat, like molten rock that had been compressed too long finally finding its outlet.

The flames hit the deck of a longship. Pine wood exploded into splinters, burning fragments spinning through the air before landing on the river with a hissing sizzle. The men aboard had no time to scream. Their armor warped in the heat, molten iron trickling down the charred planking into the water, erupting into bursts of steam on contact.

Viserion and Rhaegal followed behind him. The 3 dragons turned the sky above the river into a corridor of fire.

The ships lit up one after another, forming a curving line of flame across the water's surface. Black smoke boiled skyward and swallowed half the river in darkness.

The White Harbor archers lowered their bows. They stood at the rails and looked up.

The battle ended quickly.

The pirates who had lost their ships jumped into the river. The freezing water was no better than dragonfire. Their armor dragged them under, and only a handful managed to swim to shore.

Drogo landed on the bank. He unclipped the buckles on the dragon saddle and dropped down off the dragon's back.

The White Harbor flagship eased toward the bank.

It was a 3-decked warship, its prow carved into a merman with its mouth open in a roar, the wooden tail still flecked with blood from the fighting. The gangplank extended from the side and settled onto the shore.

The first person down was an old man.

His hair was grey-white, blown into disorder by the sea wind. His beard matched, trimmed short, following the line of his jaw. His back was slightly stooped. His eyes were deep brown, set shallow in their sockets, the corners webbed with fine lines.

What drew the eye were his hands. 3 fingers were missing from his left, the last joints of the index, middle, and ring fingers had all been cleanly cut away.

The old man went down on one knee before Drogo.

"King Drogo. I am Davos Seaworth. I have come to serve you."

"The Onion Knight?" Drogo looked him over. "Weren't you Hand of the King for Stannis Baratheon? How did you end up with White Harbor?"

The corner of Davos's eye twitched. Not nerves. More like he hadn't expected the new king to actually know his name.

"You've heard of me?"

"Lord Manderly told me you were advancing on the Dreadfort." Davos didn't wait for Drogo to answer. "He sent me to lead the fleet and seal off House Bolton's retreat along the Weeping Water. We intercepted Bolton's fleet at the river mouth and fought them for half a day."

"I see. Most of the Dreadfort's people had fled by ship. I followed the river downstream and found you in the middle of a fight." Drogo glanced at the still-smoking wreckage on the water. "But those ships don't look like they were Bolton's."

"Bolton's fleet is already at the bottom of the river." Davos rose. "The wreckage you saw, the bodies drifting downstream — those are Bolton's men. The ones fighting us just now were pirates from the Three Sisters."

"Pirates?"

"Hired by House Bolton to escort the fleet to safety. But they arrived too late." Davos said. "We had already broken up Bolton's fleet before the Three Sisters fleet finally showed up."

Drogo frowned.

"That doesn't add up. If the Three Sisters fleet arrived late, they should have caught up with you downstream. But when I flew over, those pirate ships were clearly upstream of you."

Davos's gaze flickered.

"Ah — ahem." He raised a fist to his lips and coughed twice. "We drove them upstream."

Drogo opened his mouth. Before he could get the next question out, Davos was already speaking again.

His pace quickened slightly.

"When we departed White Harbor, Lord Wyman Manderly had already set out north with the land army from the White Knife. They should be near Winterfell by now."

"Your lady, Sansa Stark, went with them."

His gaze settled on Drogo's face for a moment, catching the flicker of puzzlement crossing his brow. "You probably don't know yet, your wildling army has no ravens."

Sansa was with Wyman Manderly's army. Was she really in that much of a hurry to go home? If Manderly's forces were defeated outside Winterfell, she would end up right in Ramsay Bolton's hands.

The more Drogo thought about it, the more irritated he became.

"Onion Knight. You'll govern the Dreadfort and its lands on my behalf."

Davos gave a slight bow.

"Your soldiers — give me half. I'm marching on Winterfell now."

Davos looked up at him.

"As you wish, Your Grace."

On the river, the last burning longship was finally swallowed by the water.

The mast came down and threw up a sheet of spray. Sparks skipped across the grey-green surface a few times, then went dark.

The black smoke was torn by the wind into ragged shreds, drifting past the white merman banner on the masts of the White Harbor fleet, and scattered away toward the sea.

➤ Next: She Threw Up