Chapter 7: Onto The Deserts

4 AC.A year since words had failed.Now fire would speak in their stead.

From the Red Mountains to the Dornish Marches, the banners of House Targaryen rose crimson and black against the pitiless sky. The hosts of the Iron Throne had swelled — knights, lords, and men-at-arms gathering under the command of the Conqueror and his queens.

At the head of it all rode Aegon Targaryen himself, Blackfyre at his hip and Balerion overhead, a shadow vast enough to blot out the sun.

Lord Orys Baratheon led a thousand seasoned knights into the rugged Boneway, where narrow passes wound through treacherous canyons.Lord Harlan Tyrell, Warden of the South, commanded the great host of the Reach: two thousand knights, three hundred lords, and near thirty thousand men-at-arms. They marched for Hellholt, aiming to strike deep into the desert heart of Dorne.Aegon rode with twenty-seven thousand men, carving his way through the Prince's Pass with sword and flame.

And Queen Rhaenys — beautiful, bold, beloved — took wing ahead of them all atop Meraxes, her silver dragon a terror from the skies.

Rhaenys struck first.

As Meraxes soared above the Planky Town at the mouth of the Greenblood River, the Dornish scattered like leaves before a storm. Some sought the shelter of ships, others threw themselves into the waters, but there was no escape.

With a terrible roar, Meraxes descended, and her flame swept across the docks, the market stalls, the timber homes and warehouses. Planky Town, hub of Dornish trade and smugglers' routes, burned from end to end, smoke rising black and thick into the searing sky.

Seat after seat fell before Rhaenys's advance — small holdfasts, watchtowers, villages — surrendered or were put to the torch when no submission came.There were no great battles. The Dornish lords did not meet her in the field. They hid, scattered, fled to their desert fastnesses.

Meanwhile, Aegon pressed through the Prince's Pass, where the path narrowed and cliffs loomed high above. Resistance there was fierce: archers rained down arrows from hidden perches, boulders were loosed to crush marching columns, and traps claimed many a horse and man. Yet whenever the dragons circled overhead, the Dornish melted away into the rocks like smoke.

Lord Orys, forging through the Boneway, fared little better. His knights fought skirmish after skirmish against invisible foes who struck swiftly and vanished into the sands.

Even the mighty host of the Reach suffered. Under Lord Harlan Tyrell, they marched into the baking heart of Dorne toward Hellholt, yet the sun itself seemed to war against them. Armor grew hotter than forges. Men fell where they marched, dying of thirst, heat, and unseen enemy arrows. Horses collapsed midstride. Entire companies lost their way in the featureless desert, swallowed by the dunes.

When at last the battered remnants of the Reach host reached the Hellholt, they found only emptiness: gates thrown open, halls deserted, wells poisoned, stores burned. Not a single knight or lord remained to face them.

It was as if Dorne itself had vanished.

Aegon gathered his captains that night under the light of a blood-red moon.

"We burn their towns," he said, voice cold as the steel of Blackfyre. "We break their strongholds. We leave them no harvest, no shelter."

He gazed out over the desert, where enemy eyes surely watched from every dune and rock.

"They will not come to us. So we shall leave them with nothing to come back to."

Fire and blood.Not a war of banners and honor. A war of survival.

Thus did the Dragon's Wroth begin.