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Dragons are proud creatures, and the stronger the dragon, the greater that pride burns within it.
When Clay had left Gaelithox behind in Dorne, his original intention had been quite simple. He wanted the great beast to keep those three unruly youngsters in line, and at the same time lend Daenerys some strength of presence. What he had overlooked, however, was that Gaelithox was far more irritable and quick-tempered than any of those three troublemakers.
For a while, life in Dorne suited the dragon well enough. It had good food, fine meat, and a comfortable place to laze about. But after some days of idleness, bullying Drogon every day lost its charm.
Aside from the fact that its body seemed to grow larger with almost every passing sunrise, so quickly that the change could be seen with the naked eye, there was little else to occupy it.
In the end, the ancient instinct of a dragon to seek a wider, wilder sky took hold. Gaelithox began to leave Sunspear behind, spreading its wings toward the far west and the distant north.
The first few times, it showed some restraint. It would fly far across the land before turning back toward the towers of Sunspear.
Of course, the sight of its vast shadow gliding across the sun-baked plains of Dorne, accompanied by the heat that rolled from its body like the breath of a furnace, brought panic wherever it passed. Any flock of livestock caught beneath it would almost certainly break into chaos, sometimes so terrified that half of them lost control of their bowels right there in the dust.
But such little incidents, even when word of them reached Sunspear, neither Prince Doran nor Daenerys paid them much heed. They would only smile when they heard of it, as though such things were nothing more than a passing breeze.
Each time Doran looked up and saw the dragon wheeling high above the city, he understood with growing clarity why the rulers of Dorne in centuries past, despite holding a land so defensible and commanding a people whose passion for independence burned so fiercely, had still chosen to ally themselves with the Iron Throne.
To see a Targaryen, and now a Manderly besides, astride a dragon… that was truly to see someone who stood nearest to the gods themselves. It was no empty saying.
The ability to command a dragon was something entirely apart from all else.
And Gaelithox' flights grew bolder. The first time, it reached Godsgrace. The second, it went as far as the Tor. On its third excursion, it crossed into the heart of Dorne, gliding over the tall towers of Skyreach. By the fourth, it had soared beyond the Prince's Pass itself, coming to rest at the Tower of Joy… the very place where Eddard Stark had once crossed swords with the legendary Sword of the Morning.
All across Dorne, every noble house had received a clear and urgent message from Sunspear: should the dragon appear, they were to provide it with as much food as they could muster.
No one was to lay a hand on the beast. If any injury were dealt to it, and it chose to answer in kind, Sunspear would not be held responsible for what happened next. And, should the noble in question survive the encounter, Sunspear would hold them personally accountable for their offence.
With such a decree hanging over all of Dorne, Gaelithox' journeys became an easy, almost leisurely affair. Wherever its wings carried it, there it ate, swooping down upon fields and pastures as it pleased. Though its immense size and the blazing heat it radiated were enough to rob any mortal of courage, leaving them pale and trembling, the beast itself was not unreasonable. So long as it was given food, it could be dealt with peaceably enough.
Once its belly was full, it would lift off again without lingering, never wasting what it took.
And therefore, the range of its flights grew ever farther.
By the time it set out on its fifth journey from Sunspear, Gaelithox had made up its mind. That day, it would cross the endless folds of Dorne's mountain ranges and see what lay beyond.
The dragon's instincts whispered to it that beyond the rugged peaks lay lands far richer than the sun-scorched soil of Dorne, lands where herds of cattle and flocks of sheep roamed in abundance, enough to fill its belly many times over.
Daenerys was not its rider, and so she had no bond to guide its will, no means of knowing what Gaelithox intended or where it might go. This giant dragon was Clay's, not hers, and its choices were its own.
Thus began Gaelithox' fifth voyage, setting out from Sunspear on a clear, bright morning when the air shimmered with heat.
It flew swiftly, for the sweltering sun and dry air of Dorne suited it well. Beating its vast wings, it headed northwest, covering the distance to Godsgrace in half a day. By the time the evening shadows lengthened, its massive silhouette had already fallen across the walls of Yronwood.
There, near the second-largest fortress in all Dorne, the dragon feasted under the wary yet fascinated gaze of the dornishmen. They stared from a safe distance, their faces caught between terror and awe, as Gaelithox devoured its meal with unhurried satisfaction. When it had eaten its fill, it curled up atop a nearby hill, the sound of its deep, rumbling breaths rolling through the night as it slept.
At first light the next morning, Gaelithox unfurled its wings and soared upward once more, continuing northwest.
It passed over Kingsgrave, pushing beyond even the distance it had reached when it last flew to Skyreach.
But as a dragon, it had no sense for maps or borders, no thought for how far it had strayed. It crossed the Prince's Pass again, leaving behind all the lands it had known, flying into places where no memory guided it.
The second day faded toward dusk as the dragon's swift passage carried it over the rugged mountains in northwestern Dorne. Yet this time, it found no human castles among the peaks.
That did not trouble it. The mountains teemed with wild creatures, and while the hunting there could not match the easy feasting it enjoyed in Sunspear, it was enough to quiet its hunger for the night.
On the third morning, Gaelithox rose with the sun and left the mountain ridges of Dorne behind entirely. Before long, its sharp eyes caught sight of a human settlement in the distance. The moment it saw the clustered rooftops and the stone crown of a castle, it angled its wings to descend, ready to take its share of whatever livestock it might find there.
But before it could even begin its descent, something unexpected happened.
The men along the walls were moving in great agitation, their voices rising in cries that carried the sharp edge of desperation.
Gaelithox, who could not comprehend the language of men, had no way of knowing the depth of fear gripping the place before it. It did not realise that the castle below, Starpike, was already in the throes of a terror so heavy it seemed to hang in the very air.
Within those walls, the master of the castle, Lord Titus Peake, who had kept himself from the front lines for personal reasons and refused to ride into battle, was now so terrified he felt as though his heart might fail at any moment.
Only the night before, he had slept soundly. Rising in the morning in rare good spirits, he had stepped out onto the castle balcony, leaning against the balustrade to enjoy the gentle touch of the early sunlight.
And then, without the faintest warning, a roar split the air, so loud and so terrible that it felt as if the sky itself had cracked open. The sheer force of the sound swept away the last traces of drowsiness from his mind, leaving it clear and cold.
A heartbeat later, he saw it…
A colossal shape, easily nearing twenty metres from snout to tail, burst through the clouds and came hurtling down, arrowing straight toward his castle.
The instant his eyes made sense of what he was looking at, a chill shot through his very soul.
Even though he had never seen one in the flesh before, Lord Peake knew at once what it was.
Seven hells… why in the gods' name was a dragon here?
Had that Targaryen woman the Dornish so adored brought her armies north, come to strike with fire and blood?
In the space of a breath, the Lord of Peake thoughts tangled into a hopeless snarl. Starpike lay on the very border between Dorne and the Reach, and in any war between the two, if the Reach fought on the defensive, Starpike would stand as the first bulwark against Dorne's advance.
So the instant he saw Gaelithox, his mind leapt to the only conclusion that made sense; that Daenerys had come with the full strength of Dorne to attack his seat!
But almost at once, he realised such thinking was useless now.
For the dragon was already circling overhead.
Round and round it wheeled, and in the bright light of the eastern sun its vast wings, streaked in blue and gold, cast a shadow so wide it blotted out nearly half of Starpike.
The name of the dragon was already a thunderous thing among the nobility of Westeros. The tally of lords and ladies executed by Targaryens in dragonfire might well outnumber those slain by sword.
Listening to the deep, reverberating roars that rolled down from the sky, Titus Peake felt the cold seep all the way into his bones.
He had refused the front lines, had endured the mockery of his peers, all for one reason… because he was afraid of dying.
And yet, staring up at Gaelithox, he understood with a dreadful clarity that death was now closer to him than it had ever been.
All it would take was for this dragon, already looking every bit the image of full-grown might, to fold its wings and dive, to open that massive, flame-fed maw, and he, Titus Peake, would follow the same grim path as Harren the Black at Harrenhal, burned alive within the very stones of his own castle beneath the searing breath of dragonfire.
The thought gripped him so hard that he could not hold himself back. From somewhere deep in his chest, rising up past his tightened throat, came what might have been the loudest, most pitiful scream of his entire life.
"Help me!"
Though, in truth, he had no idea who in the world could possibly save him now.
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Gaelithox did not know where Dorne ended or the Reach began.
Its mind, sharp in its own way, could not quite grasp matters of such human complexity.
To the dragon, people were still quite agreeable creatures… at least, they usually gave it something to eat when they saw it.
So when it spotted Starpike from high above, it thought only of breakfast.
After circling lazily over the castle a few times, it chose its spot: a little hill just outside the walls.
The place faced the sun, its pale-golden grass catching the morning light until it seemed to gleam like a sheet of warm metal, and the sight alone promised comfort.
Dragons, born of blood and fire, always sought out warmth.
Its wings beat the air with a heavy, thrumming whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, each stroke deep enough to make the ground below shiver. Then, with a resounding thud, the vast body of Gaelithox landed just beyond Starpike's walls.
Its long, serpentine neck stretched forward, and it loosed a deep, rumbling call toward the castle, a sound that to the dragon's mind was filled with the pleasant anticipation of a meal about to begin.
But to those within the walls, that sound rang like the toll of their own death knell.
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"My lord! What in the gods' names is going on?"
Margot Lannisterhad still been basking in the warmth of her earlier good mood when the air was split by that deafening roar. Her head snapped toward the open ground outside the castle, her expression freezing in wide-eyed terror.
When her gaze fixed upon the massive shape that had landed there, she went rigid, every trace of colour draining from her face.
A moment later, the younger daughter of one of the West's lesser Lannister branches, her lips still full and flushed with the blood of her house, parted them slightly, and from her throat burst a shriek pitched so high it could have rivalled a dolphin's call.
"Ahhh!"
The shrill, high-pitched scream tore through the air, and it snapped Titus Peake from his stunned daze. His eyes flicked to his wife, standing beside him on the balcony, her face drained of all color, her expression so pale it was as though she were a stranger in her own skin. It only took a moment before he understood the reason for her terror.
She was, by nature, a woman of faint heart.
And this… this dragon before them, was no ordinary beast. Even the bravest man would tremble at the sight of such a towering, fearsome creature.
And then, of course, there was that cursed Lannister name.
Those who knew the truth needed no further explanation. The mingling of three powerful fears — of dragons, of the Targaryen bloodline, and of that name — must have made his wife think, if only for a fleeting moment, that this mighty beast had come for her, to avenge the sins of Tywin Lannister's bloodline and to claim the life of this poor offshoot of the house.
The two of them stood there, locked in a shared gaze, both staring out over the slope beyond Starpike, where that magnificent creature, its blue and gold scales glinting in the sunlight, remained.
The dragon, after landing outside the castle, kept roaring in their direction, its massive form looming over the land, but it did not attack. There was no infernal flame spewing from its mouth, no raging fire reducing men and beasts alike to ash as legends had promised.
Titus Peake narrowed his eyes and tried to peer beyond the dragon's huge form, looking for any sign of an army… but none appeared.
This was it. Just the dragon, seemingly alone, perched on the hill like some otherworldly sentinel.
For reasons Lord of Starpike couldn't explain, something about the dragon's roars seemed oddly… pleased.
How absurd!
This strange contrast in the dragon's behavior, its deep, rumbling calls, somehow gave off the impression of contentment. The more Titus listened, the more it seemed… familiar.
Could it be? Was it possible that this dragon meant no harm?
The thought flitted through his mind, ridiculous as it was, before Titus cast it aside, banishing it from his thoughts.
What a joke! Who would dare risk such a possibility?
After all, in this world, who but the Targaryens from the south were known to tame dragons?
This dragon… there was no question it belonged to her. And now, he was with King Renly's side, not hers.
The situation was awkward, to say the least. Had Titus seen an army marching behind the dragon, it would have been easier to deal with.
A simple bow, a swift surrender, and he could kneel before the creature. After all, kneeling before a dragon did not bring shame. Look at the North, where King Torrhen Stark, after witnessing the mighty Balerion the Black Dread, had done just that. The very place was still remembered in the North by a spot called "The Kneeling Pass."
But here lay the dilemma. Titus Peake was trying to rally the noble families of the Riverlands, and yet no one had arrived.
How was he supposed to face this stunning dragon alone? He couldn't just stroll up to its massive feet and kneel by himself.
What kind of strange death wish would that be, kneeling before a dragon as if offering himself for breakfast?
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[Chapter End's]
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