Divide and Conquer, Chapter 33: The Conquest of Dorne

Third Moon, 123 AD (22 AC)

Rhaenys

“It all leads here in the end,” Rhaenys could not help but think as Hellholt came into view.

In another world, another time, she had died here. She could imagine it in her mind’s eye. The scorpions bristling on Hellholt’s walls would unleash their deadly loads, a stray lucky bolt would pierce her beloved Meraxes’ eye, and they’d both plummet to their doom. If she was lucky, she would die on impact, and if not…

Rhaenys did not normally like to dwell on such things yet faced with the place she might have died if not for her husband’s otherworldly memories, she could not help but feel a slight sense of dread. Even after years spent convincing herself and her siblings that the fear of Hellholt, of dying in the same way, held no sway over her and she was simply that much better of a rider than her counterpart.

Her other self had died at a young age and left behind a broken family. Rhaenys had so much more to live for than she had ever had. A loving husband and a doting older sister, four grown children, three nephews and a niece that might as well be her own children, and a whole host of grandchildren.

Rhaenys’ family might not break as it did in that other world if she died here. Yet in contrast, she had so much more to lose if she did.

That was why she couldn’t allow herself to falter here. She was a seasoned and hardened conqueror for Fourteen’s sake, she thought as she shook herself out of her malaise. Hellholt would not take her from her family any more than Brandon Snow, the Faith Militant, or all their other enemies had. And that little upstart red priestess who had thought to threaten Rhaenys’ family would be destroyed just as they had been.

Rhaenys hadn’t thought she could feel such rage again after Brandon Snow had died, but she had been wrong. When she had fended off the shadow assassin that had come after her, when all of her siblings and their children had reported doing the same, she had seen red.

It didn’t matter that they were beyond such magic, that they had all survived without dire injuries. Thoughts of what ifs and maybes plagued her mind and she couldn’t rest until the threat was eliminated.

She had ordered every Eye, every Ranger, spy, and glass candle that they had to track down this ‘Melony’, and now finally they had found her. Hiding in Hellholt, because of course she was.

Fate had brought Rhaenys to Hellholt in this world as well; she had been the closest to it when they had received word of the shadowbinder’s location. It spoke volumes of how confident her siblings and their children were in her that they had no qualms sending her here of all places and this time, Rhaenys would not fail.

Spurring Meraxes onwards, Rhaenys dived towards the castle of doom, unleashing her bloodfire to destroy every scorpion on the castle battlements before Meraxes did the rest, her silver-gold flames melting the sandstone walls into mishappen blocks. Over and over their fire strafed over the castle until it was all reduced to rubble.

The shadowbinder never even stood a chance. How could a shadow hope to stand against the flame? How could a pretender to the true power of flame hope to challenge a scion of Valyria?

When her soldiers pulled the charred corpse from the ruins of Hellholt and identified it with the ashen red threads melted into the skin from the heat, Rhaenys smiled in satisfaction.

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Ninth Moon, 123 AD (22 AC)

The Last Heir of Nymeria

How had it all come to this? Deria would weep if she had any tears left to give, but she had none. She had given them all when her father had refused to leave Sunspear, holding it even until the end when the dragons had come and obliterated their ancestral home. She would curse if she could, but she had wasted all her breath on impotent curses already, a thousand countless curses that had done nothing.

Cursing the dragonspawn for their greedy conquests had not brought them any succor, raging against the Orphans of the Greenblood or the Daynes and Yronwoods for their treachery had not seen them struck down, and cursing the fake mages for their cowardice and duplicity had not brought any magic to win the day for them.

Years of her father’s desperate preparations had all been for naught in the end. The Orphans of the Greenblood had never had any water magic, and even if they had it hadn’t mattered. The ungrateful and treacherous bastards had sided with the heirs of Valyria than the heirs of Nymeria and Deria was unwilling to admit aloud just how much that stung.

All the warlocks and assassins her father had hired had all been mummers or failures. The branch of the Sorrowful Men hadn’t stood a chance against the family that had annihilated the Faceless Men. Most of the other warlocks and mages had either failed to wield any meaningful magic or turned craven and fled with their money instead of fighting the dragons as they had promised. Only the fanatic shadowbinder had been worth anything in the end and even her zealous spells had amounted to nothing more than an annoyance.

The stories had all been true. The Faith Militant Uprising, the Warg War, all of it. House Targaryen had fully reclaimed its heritage and knowledge as the Last of the Forty, and with magic and dragons combined, nothing could stop them now.

Dayne and Yronwood, rather than having the decency and honor to die with the rest of Dorne, had sold them out just like the Orphans. With the knowledge they had given to the enemies and who knows what dark magics they had used besides, the Targaryens had discovered and rooted out all of their hidden hideouts, sietches, oases, and caves, killing all of their people sheltering within.

Yet such quick deaths by fire had almost been a mercy, for many had been starving as the food supplies had run out and the dragonspawn had taken control of all their rivers, wells, and farmlands despite their attempts to poison them and deny them to the enemy.

Everything that her father and grandmother had worked towards had been undone. And now the enemy was at their gates. Deria and a whole host of men, women, and children had taken shelter in what might very well be the last refuge in Dorne. A refuge that was under siege even now. They could hear the roars of the dragons outside, the battering of their legions’ rams against the doors.

She could see the terror in the eyes of her people, the fear of death. For the briefest moments, the thought of surrendering appealed to her. Mayhaps her people might be spared some small mercies.

Then she remembered her father’s fate, the fate of Brandon Snow and whoever else had dared to stand against the Targaryens, and she steeled her resolve. There would be no surrender for any of them. They would die as proud Dornish, not craven turnloacks to their heritage like others had become, like the treacherous Orphans, Daynes, and Yronwoods.

To the very end, they would remain Unbowed, Unbent, and Unbroken, she swore to herself, even as the wildfire barrels were rolled into the cave and the dragons breathed their terrible flames.

The screams did not last long before the fires consumed them all.

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Eleventh Moon, 123 AD (22 AC)

Visenya

It hadn’t taken them even a year to pacify Dorne. Quite the difference from the other world, an almost unbelievable one some would say. Visenya knew better. She knew that Dorne’s fate was sealed. They simply had too many advantages, too much knowledge and hindsight not to win with ease.

With their foresight, they had lured Dayne, Yronwood, and the Orphans away from their fellow Dornishmen. They had predicted the scorched earth and guerilla strategies the Dornish would use and turned it against them. And with the intelligence passed to them by the turncoats and their own glass candles, finding and rooting out every last hideout, refuge, and pathetic cave the Martells and their ilk had been hiding in had been child’s play.

With the exception of Dayne, Yronwood, and their vassals, every last Dornish noble house had been destroyed, including House Martell. All of their members had either been killed or captured. Surviving women and girls would be sent to the silent sisters. Boys younger than six and ten meanwhile would be shipped straight to Hardhome as a veiled mercy while men older than the age of majority would be simply shoved right out the gates of the Wall with little more than the clothes on their back and a week’s worth of supplies. As it was currently winter, such a verdict would be little more than a barely disguised death sentence, especially for Dornishmen so used to the heat of the southern deserts and ill-prepared for the frigid wilderness beyond the Wall.

Such a harsh treatment mirrored that which most of the rest of Westeros’ defiant nobility had been subjected to, yet in some ways it was done with even more relish and flair. An enthusiasm born of Visenya and her kin’s knowledge of Dorne’s misdeeds against their family in that other world.

Though Brandon Snow and the North had wronged them far more in this world and it was for them that the greatest depths of their hatred were still reserved, they had not forgotten nor forgiven the Dornish the treacheries and defiance that they would have surely replicated in this time and world as well if they had but had the chance.

Visenya took more than a little satisfaction in the fate of House Martell. They had been bowed, bent, and broken beneath her family’s boot, with both Nymor and Deria killed, the survivors soon to be forced into ignominious obscurity, and their ancestral castle reduced to a mishappen pile of molten slag that would put the other world’s Harrenhal to shame. A permanent example that would accompany the ruined Hightower as a symbol of House Targaryen’s power.

In place of Dorne’s nobility, they had installed their own. House Dayne of Starfall and House Yronwood of Yronwood had been rewarded for their services, their lands doubled or even tripled and their houses granted the coveted title of Warden. House Dayne had been granted the lands of House Blackmont and the whole Torrentine river valley as the Ward of the Torrentine while House Yronwood had been granted the lands of Houses Fowler, Manwoody, and Wyl as the Ward of Redmarch.

House Dagareon, formerly of Lys, meanwhile had been granted Hellgate Hall as their seat and all the lands watered by the Brimstone River and the vast deserts of southwestern Dorne as the Ward of Brimstone while House Pendaerys, also of Lys, had been granted the entire Greenblood River basin as the Ward of Greenblood. Pendaerys’ seat would be the Planky Town, or more specifically the stone citadel that had been built by the Martells to guard it while the town itself had been granted a charter and made autonomous under the governance of the local Orphans.

The ruins of Sunspear itself and other lands in the northwestern corner of Dorne facing the Sea of Dorne and the Stepstones remained under direct Targaryen rule, though as of yet unorganized due to their impending plans for them.

Unfortunately for the new lords, many of Dorne’s smallfolk had foolishly followed their lords into pointless resistance, fleeing into the deserts to starve, burn, and die. As a result, much of Dorne, especially outside the more compliant Dayne and Yronwood lands, had been left severely depopulated, in some places even more than the North had been.

Honestly, Visenya shook her head in confusion, what did the naïve fools think would happen when they abandoned or worse, poisoned, their own farms, wells, and rivers as they had fled? What had they expected to eat in the deserts? Sand?

With their superior logistics, keeping their army fed and watered had been simple enough and it hadn’t been long before they had repaired the damage the Dornish had dealt to their own lands, proving it had simply been all for naught. With their dominance over all important economic and agricultural areas in Dorne, it hadn’t been long before what remained of the populace had either surrendered or starved in the deserts.

Some small dregs of resistance still remained, but they were little more than starving bandits and would not last very long.

With Dorne’s subjugation, all of Westeros was now under their rule, from the Summer Sea to the Wall. It had been the work of decades to make the dream she and her siblings all shared come true… but the Conquest was not over yet. For years they had been content to let the Free Cities feud and war in the endless Century of Blood, distracting themselves from the rising power to their west.

But the time had come for a reckoning. It was the reason they had struck at the Faceless Men before even taking Dorne. With Dorne’s ports secured, a grand armada of fleets, supplies, and armies was massing in both Dorne and the Stormlands, ready for a final War of Conquest that would humble Essos and remind them who the true heirs of Valyria were.

They would conquer and subjugate as they pleased, annexing what they wished and forcing the rest to pay constant yearly tribute, like a wolf among sheep, a dragon among lesser creatures.

Slavery would be brought to an end and vast hosts of freed slaves immersed in Valyrian culture with their veins having at least some drops of Valyrian blood would help to resettle the depopulated lands of Westeros and bring their talents, skills, and labor to enrich Westeros and further weaken the defiant spirits and culture of the local Andals, First Men, and Rhoynar.

Once the preparations were complete, and they had all had some time to rest back in Summerhall and spend time with the children (Visenya was quite eager to see her grandchildren again on her part), they would return to war one last time and finish the Conquest once and for all.

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Author’s Note: I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter despite its short length! I will be the first to acknowledge that it is indeed the shortest chapter we’ve had in quite a long time but I couldn’t really figure out how to expand it nor strictly see a need to. I was considering combining Ch34 into it to get that length but I ultimately decided not to because Chapter 34, pacing and narrative wise, is quite different from this chapter.

Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, and questions in the comments below or over on Discord!