Though the fool Mushroom does not figure in Septon Eustace’s account of the Last Day, nor in Munkun’s True Telling, both speak of the queen’s sons. Aegon the Younger was ever at his mother’s side, yet seldom spoke a word. Prince Joffrey, ten-and-three, donned squire’s armor and begged the queen to let him ride to the Dragonpit and mount Tyraxes. “I want to fight for you, Mother, as my brothers did. Let me prove that I am as brave as they were.” His words only deepened Rhaenyra’s resolve, however. “Brave they were, and dead they are, the both of them. My sweet boys.” And once more, Her Grace forbade the prince to leave the castle.

With the setting of the sun, the vermin of King’s Landing emerged once more from their rat pits, hidey-holes, and cellars, in even greater numbers than the night before.

On Visenya’s Hill, an army of whores bestowed their favors freely on any man willing to swear his sword to Gaemon Palehair (“King Cunny” in the vulgar parlance of the city). At the River Gate, Ser Perkin feasted his gutter knights on stolen food and led them down the riverfront, looting wharves and warehouses and any ship that had not put to sea, even as Wat the Tanner led his own mob of howling ruffians against the Gate of the Gods. Though King’s Landing boasted massive walls and stout towers, they had been designed to repel attacks from outside the city, not from within its walls. The garrison at the Gate of the Gods was especially weak, as their captain and a third of their number had died with Ser Luthor Largent in Cobbler’s Square. Those who remained, many wounded, were easily overcome. Wat’s followers poured out into the countryside, streaming up the kingsroad behind Lord Celtigar’s rotting head…toward where, not even Wat seemed certain.

Before an hour had passed, the King’s Gate and the Lion Gate were open as well. The gold cloaks at the first had fled, whilst the “lions” at the other had thrown in with the mobs. Three of the seven gates of King’s Landing were open to Rhaenyra’s foes.

   The most dire threat to the queen’s rule proved to be within the city, however. At nightfall, the Shepherd had appeared once more to resume his preaching in Cobbler’s Square. The corpses from last night’s fighting had been cleared away during the day, we are told, but not before they had been looted of their clothes and coin and other valuables, and in some cases of their heads as well. As the one-handed prophet shrieked his curses at “the vile queen” in the Red Keep, a hundred severed heads looked up at him, swaying atop tall spears and sharpened staffs. The crowd, Septon Eustace says, was twice as large and thrice as fearful as the night before. Like the queen they so despised, the Shepherd’s “lambs” were looking to the sky with dread, fearing that King Aegon’s dragons would arrive before the night was out, with an army close behind them. No longer believing that the queen could protect them, they looked to their Shepherd for salvation.

But that prophet answered, “When the dragons come, your flesh will burn and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire, shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black and crackling from their bones. The Stranger comes, he comes, he comes, to scourge us for our sins. Prayers cannot stay his wroth, no more than tears can quench the flame of dragons. Only blood can do that. Your blood, my blood, their blood.” Then he raised his right arm and jabbed the stump of his missing hand at Rhaenys’s Hill behind him, at the Dragonpit black against the stars. “There the demons dwell, up there. Fire and blood, blood and fire. This is their city. If you would make it yours, first must you destroy them. If you would cleanse yourself of sin, first must you bathe in dragon’s blood. For only blood can quench the fires of hell.”

From ten thousand throats a cry went up. “Kill them! Kill them!” And like some vast beast with ten thousand legs, the lambs began to move, shoving and pushing, waving their torches, brandishing swords and knives and other, cruder weapons, walking and running through the streets and alleys toward the Dragonpit. Some thought better and slipped away to home, but for every man who left, three more appeared to join these dragonslayers. By the time they reached the Hill of Rhaenys, their numbers had doubled.

   High atop Aegon’s High Hill across the city, Mushroom watched the attack unfold from the roof of Maegor’s Holdfast with the queen, her sons, and members of her court. The night was black and overcast, the torches so numerous that “it was as if all the stars had come down from the sky to storm the Dragonpit,” the fool says.

As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd’s savage flock was on the march, Rhaenyra sent riders to Ser Balon at the Old Gate and Ser Garth at the Dragon Gate, commanding them to disperse the lambs, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragons…but with the city in such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through. Even if they had, what loyal gold cloaks remained were too few to have any hope of success. “Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the Blackwater in its flow,” says Mushroom. When Prince Joffrey pleaded with his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from White Harbor, the queen refused. “If they take that hill, this one will be next,” she said. “We will need every sword here to defend the castle.”

“They will kill the dragons,” Prince Joffrey said, anguished.

“Or the dragons will kill them,” his mother said, unmoved. “Let them burn. The realm will not long miss them.”

“Mother, what if they kill Tyraxes?” the young prince said.

The queen did not believe it. “They are vermin. Drunks and fools and gutter rats. One taste of dragonflame and they will run.”

At that the fool Mushroom spoke up, saying, “Drunks they may be, but a drunken man knows not fear. Fools, aye, but a fool can kill a king. Rats, that too, but a thousand rats can bring down a bear. I saw it happen once, down there in Flea Bottom.” This time Queen Rhaenyra did not laugh. Bidding her fool to hold his tongue or lose it, Her Grace turned back to the parapets. Only Mushroom saw Prince Joffrey go sulking off (if his Testimony can be believed)…and Mushroom had been told to hold his tongue.

It was only when the watchers on the roof heard Syrax roar that the prince’s absence was noted. That was too late. “No,” the queen was heard to say, “I forbid it, I forbid it,” but even as she spoke her dragon flapped up from the yard, perched for half a heartbeat atop the castle battlements, then launched herself into the night with the queen’s son clinging to her back, a sword in hand. “After him!” Rhaenyra shouted. “All of you, every man, every boy, to horse, to horse, go after him. Bring him back, bring him back, he does not know. My son, my sweet, my son…”

   Seven men did ride down from the Red Keep that night, into the madness of the city. Munkun tells us they were men of honor, duty bound to obey their queen’s commands. Septon Eustace would have us believe that their hearts had been touched by a mother’s love for her son. Mushroom names them dolts and dastards, eager for some rich reward, and “too dull to believe that they might die.” For once it may be that all three of our chroniclers have the truth of it, at least in part.