Raegon’s eyes snapped open.
The rain had stopped.
He could fly.
Whether out of trust in Raegon and his dragon, or simple reluctance to interfere with his decisions, King Argilac chose to let the boy act as he saw fit.
The Storm Kingdom’s soldiers marched out in orderly columns.
Cavalry.
Mostly cavalry.
Of the fifteen thousand men Argilac had brought to the Disputed Lands, seven thousand were an iron tide of knights, household knights, hedge knights, and sellsword riders.
Raegon’s attention was seized almost instantly by those superbly equipped horsemen.
The finest gear belonged to the Durrandon household knights, sworn directly to Argilac himself.
They wore full breastplates over chainmail, their warhorses armored in chainmail barding, their surcoats bearing the crowned stag of House Durrandon.
The one thing not uniform was their helms.
Most wore greathelms, each crest adorned with different ornaments: two stag antlers on some, sculpted figures on others.
Griffins, steeds, eagles, tigers, lions.
The Durrandon landed knights were similarly equipped.
The wealthier among them were actually better-outfitted than the household knights.
The poorer ones fell short, some lacking breastplates and making do with chainmail and helm alone, others with only cloth barding for their mounts.
The household knights and landed knights of other lords’ retinues fell into the same range.
The remaining hedge knights and sellsword riders were a patchwork lot.
Some had no barding at all.
Some barely had enough armor to keep a knight’s dignity intact.
Argilac’s infantry was just as well-equipped.
These were not the unarmored levies of Westeros’s usual wars.
They carried fine steel poleaxes and wore kettle helms, a fair number even boasting breastplates.
Elites.
The kind that clearly cost a fortune.
*The old man’s war chest, most likely,* Raegon thought wryly.
For one honest moment, he did feel an urge to let Raegor loose with a blast of flame.
Where that impulse came from, he had no idea.
Raegon drew a deep breath and shoved the stray thoughts aside.
This was his first time riding a great dragon onto a land battlefield.
Burning ships at sea was one thing.
Burning men promised a different kind of shock.
He hoped he wouldn’t throw up.
And if he did, hopefully not on old Raegor.
Cleaning the old dragon’s scales afterwards was a long, tedious chore.
“Soves!
Dori Volantis Rybas!”
Raegor roared at the sky, wings spreading wide, and surged upward.
The marching Stormlands soldiers saw a sudden darkness sweep across them.
At the head of the column, King Argilac Durrandon looked up.
He watched the enormous beast, a creature as long as his entire column, pass overhead.
The battle-hardened old man felt his spine go cold.
His assessment from the rain had just been confirmed.
A dragon’s power on the battlefield was no tall tale.
It was cold fact.
“I can scarcely imagine facing that ourselves…”
Earl Caron muttered the words under his breath.
Fortunately, no one heard him.
The Stormlands army advanced steadily.
The morning mist burned off, revealing the broad plain with its scattered low hills.
Ground enough for tens of thousands to clash.
Balerion hid in the cloud layer.
The black dragon owned the night, but as the sun climbed higher, that advantage began to thin.
If Aegon wanted the best result, he had to cut off the Volantenes’ escape before he was spotted.
Just as the scouts had reported, the Volantenes had seen the dragons’ arrival but clung stubbornly to their original plan. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Two reserve legions were positioned on the hills, ready to reinforce the main force.
The Tiger cloaks’ commander had placed four war elephants at the front, aiming to shatter the Storm Kingdom’s lines fast.
Until the commander saw the enormous shape gliding toward him.
That magnificent golden monster.
The well-trained war elephants let out shrieks of terror.
They went mad, throwing off their handlers, desperate to flee.
The cavalry horses did the same.
“The elephants have gone mad!
They’ve gone mad!”
“Run!”
“My horse!”
“Help!
Lord of Light, save us!
Help!”
Screams, curses, and wails tangled together in one ugly chorus.
The elephants trampled their own infantry in their panic.
The cavalry meant to pin down Argilac’s armored knights and stop them from forming a charge instead scattered in chaos.
Some horses carried their riders straight into their own comrades.
Others bucked and hurled their masters to the ground.
The Tiger cloaks had lost most of their fighting strength before the battle even began.
Chaos spread.
Argilac watched and said nothing.
Earl Dondarrion and Earl Caron, the two lords who had swallowed their pride and bent their heads in fear earlier, exchanged a glance.
Both read the same thing in the other’s eyes.
Cold relief that the dragon was on their side.
“Dracarys!”
A simple command.
Pure ruin.
Golden flames erupted from the dragon’s throat without warning.
The first to suffer were the elephants still rampaging through their own ranks.
The iron blades on their tusks melted in the golden fire.
The beasts that had just been merrily crushing men underfoot stood motionless in the flames.
Only those who felt the fire devour their own flesh could see, in their last agony, that the elephants standing in the inferno had already become pillars of char.
Even the massive war elephants of Slaver’s Bay were mere toys before a great dragon.
One elephant that had dodged the flames by sheer luck was just trampling a company of its own soldiers when it thought it had escaped.
A dragon’s talons came down from the sky.
Raegor seized the elephant like a hawk snatching a sparrow.
Razor claws tore through its hide in an instant.
The old dragon, seemingly bored with this plaything, climbed for only a moment before dropping the elephant, careless, straight into a Tiger cloak spear formation.
The carefully arrayed square shattered on impact.
The next moment, a continuous tide of dragonfire swept through the Tiger cloak formations like a plow through soil.
One pass.
Good enough.
Raegor cut the Tiger cloak army in half.
The blazing golden fire vaporized every soldier it touched, carving a long scar through the center of their ranks.
A second scar crossed the first.
The Tiger cloak formations collapsed without any pretense of holding.
And what awaited them were the lances of the Storm Kingdom’s knights.
*Crack.*
King Argilac’s lance was the first to snap.
The old king, crowned stag antlers on his helm, laughed wildly as he discarded the broken shaft and pulled free his great warhammer.
Now the storm would truly roar.
“Your Grace, how did you find the road I plowed for you?” Raegon felt thoroughly satisfied.
He had been a little tense before, but when he saw thick smoke rising from both hills, the tension vanished.
Aegon had struck.
Raegon rubbed his smooth chin, rather pleased with himself.
The old dragon’s flame swept across the Tiger cloaks’ rear ranks just then.
The retreat was cut off.
Only one fate awaited this Volantene army.
Annihilation.
Argilac’s camp.
The old king’s maester carefully rolled a letter, coiled it tight, and tucked it into a special bamboo cylinder.
He fastened it to a raven’s leg.
“To the Citadel.
Find Archmaester Merrick at the Tower of Wisdom.”
He released the raven, a bird conspicuously fatter, or rather sturdier, than the others.
But it seemed someone had beaten him to it.
A dim tower is ill-suited for reading and study.
It suits conspiracy perfectly.
“Archmaester, these are data and reports gathered over the past year.” The voice drifted across the darkened conference table.
A hand followed, knuckles sharp, laying down a stack of letters and notes covered in tiny script.
“As per tradition, including the pregnancies and birth records of lords’ wives.
However, the maesters of several regions have refused to supply these records.”
The hand tapped the table, calling the shadowed figures to attention.
“The entirety of the Kingdom of the North, even House Manderly, yielded not a single maester or assistant willing to cooperate.
This was a method our dear old Seneschals passed down generation after generation.
Damn them.
It has turned against us in the end.
Furthermore, Dragonstone’s maester has long ceased all communication with the Citadel.”
“Hold.
Dragonstone?” An older voice cut through the murmur.
“You are telling us that, after a hundred years, dragons are entering the battlefield again?”
“A pity.
Dragonstone’s maester is that arrogant, stubborn ass, Garwyn.”
“The Citadel must obtain firsthand data on dragons.
We preserved precious little from a century ago.
This is a betrayal of the Citadel’s spirit, of its very purpose.” The older voice overrode the room again.
“By whatever means necessary, we must be the first to commence proper study.
Compared to vague, unprovable magic, the dragon is a living, breathing mystery, and far more compelling.”
The old man rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen.
We are all co-conspirators.
We have gravely violated the maester’s code.
And yet, what of it?”
Around the table, the maesters rose one by one.
Some among them were archmaesters, men entitled to direct every maester, assistant, and acolyte in their field of study.
They stood.
“For Truth.”
Back to the battlefield of the Disputed Lands.
This contested ground had just witnessed a victory beyond all contest.
Raegor and Balerion had fought in concert, sealing the Tiger cloaks’ retreat and pinning them in place to burn.
Argilac and his storm knights had delivered the finishing blow.
But after the victory, Raegon and Aegon declined all offers of a feast and left the field at once.
This left Argilac in a wistful mood.
He had no son.
Only a daughter, Argella.
He had a plan.
If he could wed his daughter to a dragonlord and secure the support of dragons, the Storm Kingdom would surely rise again.
But the words “be my son-in-law” had not yet left his lips before Raegon and Aegon were gone.
Argilac found himself with nothing to say.
Let it be, then.
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