Fire & Blood ÔÇö The Dance of the Dragons ÔÇö A Son for a Son

Blood and Cheese come over the walls of the Red Keep with a purse of Daemon's gold and instructions that fit in five words. Queen Helaena is made to choose among her sons; they take Jaehaerys's head regardless. The greens answer with a mummer's Cargyll: twin meets twin at Dragonstone's gates and both die of it. Daemon takes Harrenhal without a blow; Bracken and Blackwood open the war of the rivers at the Burning Mill; and Ser Criston Cole, Hand and kingmaker, marches the green host into the crownlands.

The chapter retold

This is the section where the Dance loses its floor. Two hirelings the histories remember only as Blood and Cheese come over the Red Keep's walls with Daemon's gold and five words of instruction ÔÇö a son for a son ÔÇö and, unable to find Aemond, make Queen Helaena choose among her own children before taking little Jaehaerys's head regardless. The greens answer with a mummer's trick of their own, sending one Cargyll twin in the other's likeness to murder the black queen, so that Arryk and Erryk meet at Dragonstone's gates and die weeping in each other's arms. The war has begun eating the very people sworn to end it.

Around these intimate horrors the wider war finally ignites. Daemon flies Caraxes to Harrenhal and takes the greatest castle in Westeros without a blow; the Brackens and Blackwoods turn nine centuries of neighborly hatred into the Battle of the Burning Mill, the first real bloodshed of the Dance, fought over dragons by lords who own none; and Ser Criston Cole, Hand and self-made kingmaker, marches the green host out of King's Landing to bring the crownlands to heel. The section closes with both sides committed past all argument and the realm's institutions ÔÇö Kingsguard, council, the sanctity of a nursery ÔÇö revealed as no protection at all.

This movement: The Dance Begins

• Blood and Cheese answer Shipbreaker Bay in a nursery; the Cargyll twins answer each other at Dragonstone's gates.
• Daemon takes Harrenhal; Bracken and Blackwood open the rivers' war at the Burning Mill; the Winter Wolves march south.
• Cole's host takes Duskendale by march and Rook's Rest by trap ÔÇö and the trap costs the greens their king, burned under his own dragon.
• Aemond One-Eye rules as regent with Vhagar for a scepter, and the rivers burn wherever her shadow passes.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen ÔÇö Six years old. 'A son for a son' ÔÇö the debt for Lucerys, paid in a nursery.
• Ser Arryk Cargyll ÔÇö Sent in his brother's likeness to kill a queen. His brother found him first.
• Ser Erryk Cargyll ÔÇö They fought for the better part of an hour, weeping as they fought, and died in each other's arms.