"W-what…?" he whispered.
But the soldiers were already seizing his arms.
A scream split the sky.
With that single, world-shaking wail, the Tyroshi captain Equis was gelded, neatly, almost surgically, turned into the piece Baelon meant to set within Tyrosh like a seed. Whether the man would remain loyal in years to come mattered little. Equis was a passing whim, a convenient pawn placed upon the board. Even if the wounded captain failed to claw his way to the title of a Prince, Baelon possessed a hundred other paths to the next one.
Poison. Assassins. War. Dragons.
He was not like other men. If a method worked, he would use it.
Once Equis was properly humbled, Baelon dismissed him and his surviving crew without ceremony. Should the man dream of contending for the Equis's seat, he would require his strength intact, and his bitterness properly directed.
With that small matter settled, Baelon's fleet bent its course toward Tyrosh.
They encountered two more patrol squadrons along the way, one a joint fleet of Myr and Tyrosh, bristling with scorpion engines crafted explicitly to bring down dragons.
A bolt caught Sea-Smoke in the hind leg when Laenor Velaryon failed to spot the shot in time, but the wound was shallow. The dragon shrieked, wings beating in pain, yet he would fly.
After the joint fleet was reduced to wreckage drifting on the waves, Baelon finally saw the distant outline of Tyrosh rising from the horizon.
Even from afar the city loomed behind high, sea-sprayed walls, a quarter of its perimeter opening into a sprawling harbor where dozens upon dozens of masts pierced the sky. Towers jutted upward in gaudy colors, buildings layered upon one another like scales in Tyrosh's riotous style of brick, marble, and painted stone.
Even with the memories that lived behind his eyes, Baelon could not help admiring the city-state perched upon the northeastern edge of the Stepstones.
It possessed a beauty that belonged wholly to this age.
"Tyrosh is beautiful," he murmured. "A pity. Soon enough, this fair city will exist only in memory."
He mounted his dragon. This time he would lead the assault himself, riding Tyraxes.
"With only a few thousand men and two dragons, we can't erase Tyrosh entirely," Laenor said as he climbed onto Sea-Smoke's back. The dragon's injured leg trembled, but Laenor would fly regardless. "That's why I didn't stop you from using Equis."
"It wasn't 'using,'" Baelon replied. "Merely turning circumstance to my benefit."
Laenor tightened Sea-Smoke's leather harness. "Strike the great estates first, the mansions, the towers. That's where their merchants and nobles roost. Leave the slums and the slave warrens to burn themselves."
The plan was brutally simple. Baelon and Laenor would bring chaos down from the sky, burning soldiers and scorpion engines alike. Once the defenders were broken, Baelon's fleet would land, butcher the Tyroshi within the walls, and carry off everything worth coin.
It was simple, and by their reckoning, better than a seventy percent chance of success. For a strike launched with no solid intelligence, that was more than favorable.
Sea-Smoke and Tyraxes roared as they climbed into the sky, two long, echoing calls that rolled across the sea like thunder.
Then they plunged straight toward Tyrosh, dragonfire spilling from their jaws in sweeping ribbons of orange and blood-red flame.
Baelon and Tyraxes struck the walls first, burning the soldiers manning the battlements and melting the scorpions aimed at the sky. Tyraxes's crimson flame clung like tar. The instant it touched wood or flesh, scorpion crews screamed and flailed, weapons forgotten, bodies already lost.
"Dragons! Dragons!"
"The Westerosi are here! where's the army!?"
"Hide! Run! The Dragonlord of the western continent has come!"
For all the tales that had spread through the southern seas, from singers, from sailors fleeing the Stepstones, most Tyroshi had never seen a dragon with their own eyes. They had never felt the choking heat rolling across stone, or heard the thunder of wings descending upon their city.
After the patrol fleets had been annihilated, Tyrosh had received no warning at all. Their first alarm was the dragons' roar.
Flame rained down upon them. Towers toppled as the dragons crashed through their highest chambers, stone splitting under the force of beating wings. Tyraxes's blood-red fire clung to everything it touched, the stones, the soldiers, the panicked crowds. Freeborn and slave alike caught stray sparks as they fled.
Within moments the crimson blaze spread like a plague. Burning men staggered through the streets, screaming, flailing, brushing their fire onto anyone who came too near. The wind carried the stench of cooked flesh down every narrow alley.
A rough count put Tyraxes's victims at several times, perhaps ten times, those consumed by Sea-Smoke's orange flame.
"R'hllor preserve us... has the Lord of Light sent His wrath to punish us?"
In the Red Temple, an elderly priest stared out through a smoking arch, horror writ deep upon his face. Tyraxes's crimson fire was too similar to the sacred heart-flame kept in their inner sanctum, and to his trembling mind the two blurred as one.
"Idiot!" a younger priest barked, striking him hard across the cheek. "That's a dragon! A Targaryen dragon! The Dragon King has returned!"
The old priest blinked himself back to sense, seized his companion's sleeve, and fled the temple. The marble walls were already sweating with heat; soon they would glow red. The city was no longer safe, perhaps the fields beyond the walls offered the faintest chance of survival.
As the towers collapsed one by one and Tyrosh drowned in fire and chaos, Baelon's fleet made landfall.
Their first act was to seize every ship in the harbor.
Trader galleys. Warships. Longships. Two massive, three-masted Myrish vessels undergoing repairs along the dry docks.
Steel-clad men from Harrenhal and Crab Isle spilled across the piers, their boots slickening the planks with blood. They left no Tyroshi alive.
Merchant. Slave. Freeborn. Noble. Soldier.
If they were Tyroshi and crossed the invaders' path, they died.
"By Lord Baelon's command!" a Harrenhal knight cried as he rammed his spear through a fleeing sailor's back. "Kill every Tyroshi! Take anything that glitters!"
"Brothers!" roared another voice. "Your chance to win knighthood, land, and a name is here today!"
"Weapons up!!! Charge!"
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A/N:The war begins here. If you think you know what comes next, you don't. BUT It's already waiting in the chapters ahead.
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