Chapter 8: Ghosts Beyond The Sands

The Red Mountains ran deep and cruel across Dorne, and no king's crown nor dragon's fire could tame them.

King Aegon pressed onward.

From the Prince's Pass, he turned southward to Yronwood — the mightiest house of Dorne after House Martell. The gates of Yronwood, once proud and strong, stood ajar when the Targaryen banners approached. No army manned the battlements, no challenge was given. Inside, the halls were eerily silent.

Only a scattering of old men, frightened boys, and women too frail to flee remained to face him. They wept, they knelt, they pleaded.

Aegon did not burn Yronwood. Blackfyre remained sheathed.

"It is no victory to slaughter the helpless," he told his men.

Still, the emptiness gnawed at him.

Skyreach, the ancient seat of House Fowler, lay abandoned as well. The towers were shuttered, the wells poisoned, the food stores fired. Not a single foe had remained to resist him.

Each mile deeper into Dorne, Aegon found only ruins, ashes, and silence.

At Ghost Hill, at last, a figure awaited him — a lone knight in mismatched armor, bearing the standard of House Toland. The man called for single combat, his voice high and mocking across the sands.

"Send me your king!" the challenger bellowed, "and I will send him back on broken knees!"

Aegon, weary of this empty conquest, consented. Before all his captains, he drew Blackfyre and met the knight between the lines.

The duel was no contest. The knight stumbled and laughed and swung wildly, as if the very gods had addled his wits. Aegon parried a clumsy blow and ended it with a clean slash through the belly.

Only afterward, when the helm was removed, did the truth come clear: the man he had killed was no knight, but the court fool of Lord Toland — dressed up in a lord's armor, sent to mock him.

Ghost Hill too stood deserted.

From the Boneway, darker tidings soon reached the king's camp.

Lord Orys Baratheon's assault had turned disastrous.

The Boneway, narrow and treacherous, had become a death trap. Dornishmen rained arrows, boulders, and boiling oil down from hidden perches high above. Every step forward cost blood. Every night, screaming men vanished into the blackness, dragged from their tents and throats slit in the dark.

Worse still, the Wyls of Wyl — cruel and cunning — had laid their snares well.

As Lord Orys's battered forces pressed deeper into the mountains, they found themselves hemmed in: the passes behind them collapsed with rockslides, and the way ahead blocked by barricades and traps.

At Wyl's command, the Dornish fell upon them from all sides.

Surrounded, starving, wounded — Orys fought like the storm his house had taken for its sigil. Black with blood, he swung his sword until it shattered in his hands. His knights fought bravely but were overwhelmed.

When the dawn broke across the red rocks of the Boneway, Lord Orys Baratheon, first Hand of the King, lay bound in chains, captured by the Wyls, alongside many of his loyal bannermen.

It was a humiliation unlike any the Targaryens had known.

And Aegon, standing atop the empty ramparts of Ghost Hill, gazed east across the burning sands, his jaw tight with fury.

Dorne would not yield easily.Dorne would bleed them for every stone and every grain of sand.

The war had only begun.