Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother’s proposal with scorn. “Your sons might have had places of honor at my court if they had kept faith,” Her Grace declared, “but they sought to rob me of my birthright, and the blood of my sweet sons is on their hands.”

   “Bastard blood, shed at war,” Alicent replied. “My son’s sons were innocent boys, cruelly murdered. How many more must die to slake your thirst for vengeance?”

The Dowager Queen’s words only fanned the fire of Rhaenyra’s wroth. “I will hear no more lies,” she warned. “Speak again of bastardy, and I will have your tongue out.” Or so the tale is told by Septon Eustace. Munkun says the same in his True Telling.

Here again Mushroom differs. The dwarf would have us believe that Rhaenyra ordered her stepmother’s tongue torn out at once, rather than merely threatening this. It was only a word from Lady Misery that stayed her hand, the fool insists; the White Worm proposed another, crueler punishment. King Aegon’s wife and mother were taken in chains to a certain brothel, and there sold to any man who wished to have his pleasure of them. The price was high; a golden dragon for Queen Alicent, three dragons for Queen Helaena, who was younger and more beautiful. Yet Mushroom says there were many in the city who thought that cheap for carnal knowledge of a queen. “Let them remain there until they are with child,” Lady Misery is purported to have said. “They speak of bastards so freely, let them each have one for their very own.”

Though the lusts of men and the cruelty of women can never be gainsaid, we put no credence in Mushroom here. That such a tale was told in the wine sinks and pot shops of King’s Landing cannot be doubted, but it may be that its provenance was later, when King Aegon II was seeking justification for the cruelty of his own acts. It must be remembered that the dwarf told his stories long years after the events that he related, and might have misremembered. Let us speak no more of the Brothel Queens, therefore, and return once more to the dragons as they flew to battle. Caraxes and Sheepstealer went north, Vermithor and Silverwing southwest.

On the headwaters of the mighty Mander stood Tumbleton, a thriving market town and the seat of House Footly. The castle overlooking the town was stout but small, garrisoned by no more than forty men, but thousands more had come upriver from Bitterbridge, Longtable, and farther south. The arrival of a strong force of riverlords swelled their numbers further, and stiffened their resolve. Fresh from their victory at the Butcher’s Ball came Ser Garibald Grey and Longleaf the Lionslayer, with the head of Ser Criston Cole upon a spear, Red Robb Rivers and his archers, the last of the Winter Wolves, and a score of landed knights and petty lords whose lands lay along the banks of the Blackwater, amongst them such men of note as Moslander of Yore, Ser Garrick Hall of Middleton, Ser Merrell the Bold, and Lord Owain Bourney.

   All told, the forces gathered under Queen Rhaenyra’s banners at Tumbleton numbered near nine thousand, according to the True Telling. Other chroniclers make the number as high as twelve thousand, or as low as six, but in all these cases, it seems plain that the queen’s men were greatly outnumbered by Lord Hightower’s. No doubt the arrival of the dragons Vermithor and Silverwing with their riders was most welcome by the defenders of Tumbleton. Little could they know the horrors that awaited them.

The how and when and why of what has become known as the Treasons of Tumbleton remain a matter of much dispute, and the truth of all that happened will likely never be known. It does appear that certain of those who flooded into the town, fleeing before Lord Hightower’s army, were actually part of that army, sent ahead to infiltrate the ranks of the defenders. Beyond question, two of the Blackwater men who had joined the riverlords on their march south—Lord Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corne—were secret supporters of King Aegon II. Yet their betrayals would have counted for little, had not Ser Ulf White and Ser Hugh Hammer also chosen this moment to change their allegiance.

Most of what we know of these men comes from Mushroom. The dwarf is not reticent in his assessment of the low character of these two dragonriders, painting the former as a drunkard and the latter as a brute. Both were cravens, he tells us; it was only when they saw Lord Ormund’s host with spearpoints glittering in the sun and its line of march stretching back for long leagues that they decided to join him rather than oppose him. Yet neither man had hesitated to face storms of spears and arrows off Driftmark. It may be that it was the thought of attacking Tessarion that gave them pause. In the Gullet, all the dragons had been on their own side. This too may be possible…though both Vermithor and Silverwing were older and larger than Prince Daeron’s dragon, and would therefore have been more likely to prevail in any battle.

   Others suggest it was avarice, not cowardice, that led White and Hammer to betrayal. Honor meant little and less to them; it was wealth and power they lusted for. After the Gullet and the fall of King’s Landing, they had been granted knighthood…but they aspired to be lords and scorned the modest holdings bestowed on them by Queen Rhaenyra. When Lords Rosby and Stokeworth were executed, it was proposed that White and Hammer be given their lands and castles through marriage to their daughters, but Her Grace had allowed the traitors’ sons to inherit instead. Then Storm’s End and Casterly Rock were dangled before them, but these rewards as well the ungrateful queen had denied them.

No doubt they hoped that King Aegon II might reward them better, should they help return the Iron Throne to him. It might even be that certain promises were made to them in this regard, possibly through Lord Larys the Clubfoot or one of his agents, though this remains unproven and unprovable. As neither man could read nor write, we shall never know what drove the Two Betrayers (as history has named them) to do what they did.

Of the Battle of Tumbleton we know much and more, however. Six thousand of the queen’s men formed up to face Lord Hightower in the field, under the command of Ser Garibald Grey. They fought bravely for a time, but a withering rain of arrows from Lord Ormund’s archers thinned their ranks, and a thunderous charge by his heavy horse broke them, sending the survivors running back toward the town walls. There Red Robb Rivers and his bowmen stood, covering the retreat with their own longbows.

When most of the survivors were safe inside the gates, Roddy the Ruin and his Winter Wolves sallied forth from a postern gate, screaming their terrifying northern war cries as they swept around the left flank of the attackers. In the chaos that ensued, the northmen fought their way through ten times their own number to where Lord Ormund Hightower sat his warhorse beneath King Aegon’s golden dragon and the banners of Oldtown and the Hightower.

   As the singers tell it, Lord Roderick was bloody from head to heel as he came on, with splintered shield and cracked helm, yet so drunk with battle that he did not even seem to feel his wounds. Ser Bryndon Hightower, Lord Ormund’s cousin, put himself between the northman and his liege, taking off the Ruin’s shield arm at the shoulder with one terrible blow of his longaxe…yet the savage Lord of Barrowton fought on, slaying both Ser Bryndon and Lord Ormund before he died. Lord Hightower’s banners toppled, and the townsfolk gave a great cheer, thinking the tide of battle turned. Even the appearance of Tessarion across the field did not dismay them, for they knew they had two dragons of their own…but when Vermithor and Silverwing climbed into the sky and loosed their fires upon Tumbleton, those cheers changed to screams.