Джордж Мартин - Fire & Blood

Yet the greatest threat was in the south, where Septon Moon and his followers camped beneath the walls of Oldtown, defended by Lord Oakheart and Lord Rowan and their knights. A massive hulk of a man, Moon had been blessed with a thunderous voice and an imposing physical presence. Though his Poor Fellows had proclaimed him “the true High Septon,” this septon (if indeed he was such) was no picture of piety. He boasted proudly that The Seven-Pointed Star was the only book he had ever read, and many questioned even that, for he had never been known to quote from that holy tome, and no man had ever seen him read nor write.

Barefoot, bearded, and possessed of immense fervor, the “Poorest Fellow” could speak for hours, and often did…and what he spoke about was sin. “I am a sinner,” were the words with which Septon Moon began every sermon, and so he was. A creature of immense appetites, a glutton and a drunkard renowned for his lechery, Moon lay each night with a different woman, impregnating so many of them that his acolytes began to say that his seed could make a barren woman fertile. Such was the ignorance and folly of his followers that this tale became widely believed; husbands began to offer him their wives and mothers their daughters. Septon Moon never refused such offers, and after a time some of the hedge knights and men-at-arms amongst his rabble began to paint images of the “Cock o’ the Moon” on their shields, and a brisk trade grew up in clubs, pendants, and staffs carved to resemble Moon’s member. A touch with the head of these talismans was believed to bestow prosperity and good fortune.

Every day Septon Moon went forth to denounce the sins of House Targaryen and the Lickspittle who permitted their abominations, whilst inside Oldtown the true Father of the Faithful had become a virtual prisoner in his own palace, unable to set forth outside the confines of the Starry Sept. Though Lord Hightower had closed his gates against Septon Moon and his followers and refused to allow them entrance to his city, he showed no eagerness to take up arms against them, despite repeated entreaties from His High Holiness. When pressed for reasons, his lordship cited a distaste for shedding pious blood, but many claimed the real reason was his unwillingness to offer battle to Lords Oakheart and Rowan, who had granted Moon their protection. His reluctance earned him the name Lord Donnel the Delayer from the maesters of the Citadel.

The long conflict between King Maegor and the Faith had made it imperative that Jaehaerys be anointed king by the High Septon, Lord Rogar and the Queen Regent agreed. Before that could happen, however, Septon Moon and his ragged horde must needs be dealt with, so the prince could travel safely to Oldtown. It had been hoped that the news of Maegor’s death would be sufficient to persuade Moon’s followers to disperse, and some had done just that…but no more than a few hundred in a host that numbered close to five thousand. “What can the death of one dragon matter when another rises up to take its place?” Septon Moon declared to his throng. “Westeros will not be clean again until all the Targaryens have been slain or driven back into the sea.” Every day he preached anew, calling upon Lord Hightower to deliver Oldtown to him, calling upon the High Lickspittle to leave the Starry Sept and face the wroth of the Poor Fellows he had betrayed, calling upon the smallfolk of the realm to rise up. (And every night he sinned anew.)

Across the realm in King’s Landing, Jaehaerys and his counselors considered how to rid the realm of this scourge. The boy king and his sisters, Rhaena and Alysanne, all had dragons, and some felt the best way to deal with Septon Moon was the way Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had dealt with the Two Kings on the Field of Fire. Jaehaerys had no taste for such slaughter, however, and his mother, Queen Alyssa, flatly forbade it, reminding them of the fate of Rhaenys Targaryen and her dragon in Dorne. Lord Rogar, the King’s Hand, said, with some reluctance, that he would lead his own host across the Reach and disperse Moon’s men by force of arms…though it would mean pitting his stormlanders, and whatever other forces he might gather, against Lords Rowan and Oakheart and their knights and men-at-arms, as well as the Poor Fellows. “Like as not, we will win,” the Protector said, “but not without cost.”

Mayhaps the gods were listening, for even as the king and council argued in King’s Landing the problem was resolved in a most unexpected way. Dusk was falling outside of Oldtown when Septon Moon retired to his tent for his evening meal, exhausted by a day of preaching. As always he was guarded by his Poor Fellows, huge strapping axemen with unshorn beards, but when a comely young woman presented herself at the septon’s tent with a flagon of wine that she wished to give to His Holiness in return for his help, they admitted her at once. They knew what sort of help the woman required; the sort that would put a babe inside her belly.

A short time passed, during which the men outside the tent heard only occasional gusts of laughter from Septon Moon, inside. But then, suddenly, there was a groan, and a woman’s shriek, followed by a bellow of rage. The tent flap was thrown open and the woman burst out, half-naked and barefoot, and dashed away wide-eyed and terrified before any of the Poor Fellows could think to stop her. Septon Moon himself followed a moment later, naked, roaring, and drenched in blood. He was holding his neck, and blood was leaking between his fingers and dripping down into his beard from where his throat had been slit open.

It is said that Moon staggered through half the camp, lurching from campfire to campfire in pursuit of the doxy who had cut him. Finally even his great strength failed him; he collapsed and died as his acolytes pressed around him, wailing their grief. Of his slayer there was no sign; she had vanished into the night, never to be seen again. Angry Poor Fellows tore the camp apart for a day and a night in search of her, knocking over tents, seizing dozens of women, and beating any man who tried to stand in their way…but the hunt came up empty. Septon Moon’s own guards could not even agree on what his killer had looked like.

The guards did recall that the woman had brought a flagon of wine with her as a gift for the septon. Half the wine still remained in the flagon when the tent was searched, and four of the Poor Fellows shared it as the sun was coming up, after carrying the corpse of their prophet back to his own bed. All four were dead before noon. The wine had been laced with poison.

In the aftermath of Moon’s death, the ragged host that he had led to Oldtown began to disintegrate. Some of his followers had already slipped away when word of King Maegor’s death and Prince Jaehaerys’s ascension reached them. Now that trickle became a flood. Before the septon’s corpse had even begun to stink, a dozen rivals had come forward to claim his mantle, and fights began to break out amongst their respective followers. It might have been thought that Moon’s men would turn to the two lords amongst them for leadership, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Poor Fellows especially were no respectors of nobility…and the reluctance of Lords Rowan and Oakheart to commit their knights and men-at-arms to an assault on the walls of Oldtown had made them suspicious of the two lords.

The possession of Moon’s mortal remains became itself a bone of contention between two of his would-be successors, the Poor Fellow known as Rob the Starvling and a certain Lorcas, called Lorcas the Learned, who boasted of having committed all of The Seven-Pointed Star to memory. Lorcas claimed to have had a vision that Moon would yet deliver Oldtown into the hands of his followers, even after death. After seizing the septon’s body from Rob the Starvling, this “learned” fool strapped it atop a destrier, naked, bloody, and rotting, to storm the gates of Oldtown.