8 Moons later
96 AC
The sea was calm as it stretched between the jagged, salt-bathed rocks of the Stepstones.
It was warm, very warm. But Craghas Drahar did not feel the heat.
He felt the numbness.
It lived deep beneath his skin, a crawling, maddening sensation that no amount of scratching could reach. He rubbed his gloved hand against his neck, where the grey, stony patches had begun to creep up from his collarbone. It was a slow death, turning a man to stone while he was still breathing, but today, it sharpened his focus.
He stood on the deck of his flagship, adjusting the mask that covered his face. He peered through the heavy Myrish spyglass in his hand, scanning the horizon.
He was waiting.
The Triarchy's spies had been efficient. They reported that the Dragon Tide Consortium's third expedition had been spotted in the Ghiscari regions several moons ago. Thirty-five heavy cogs, sitting low in the water, carrying enough jade, spice and saffron to buy a kingdom.
They had been delayed by the Triarchy's patrols near the Summer Sea, forced to take a wider route. But eventually, every ship sailing to the Narrow Sea had to pass through the Stepstones.
"Admiral," a man from his crew called out in Bastard Valyrian, pointing a scarred finger to the east. "Sails."
Drahar raised the glass.
There they were.
They looked different from the trade ships of the Free Cities. The Consortium's vessels were wider, their hulls reinforced for long sea travel, their sails dyed a distinctive deep crimson. There were more than thirty of them, a lumbering herd of giants ploughing through the waves.
Drahar moved the glass, searching for the cavalry. A convoy of this value would be guarded. It had to be. He expected an armada. Velaryon warships, Targaryen galleys, perhaps even a mercenary fleet hired from one of the other free cities.
He frowned.
He saw... five. Maybe six escort ships.
They were sleek, fast vessels, flying the Seahorse of Velaryon, but they were pitifully few. They flanked the merchant ships like stray dogs trying to herd a stampede of elephants.
Drahar lowered the spyglass.
Arrogance, he thought, a cruel smile twisting his lips. They think the name of the Dragon is enough to ward us off.
He turned to his crew. They were a curated filth. Pirates, exiles, and murderers gathered from the gutters of the Three Daughters, gathered under Drahar's command to give the Magisters plausible deniability. If they succeeded, the Triarchy got the gold. If they failed, they were just rogue pirates.
But looking at the fat, vulnerable ships ahead, failure seemed impossible.
"Signal the fleet," Drahar rasped.
A horn blew, a deep, mournful sound that echoed off the stone hills of the islands.
From the coves and inlets of the surrounding islands, they emerged. Galleys, longships, and boarding skiffs that massively outnumbered the convoy. They swarmed into the open water, a pack of wolves descending on a fat, slow prey.
Drahar felt the familiar rush of the hunt. His men were cheering, hooting, clashing their swords against their shields. They could see the gold already. They could taste the wine. They sailed faster, the oars churning the water to froth, spurred on by greed and the promise of an easy slaughter.
The distance closed. The Consortium ships did not turn. They did not scatter. They simply kept their course, sailing forward with a strange …calm.
Drahar narrowed his eyes.
Something was wrong.
He looked at the escort ships again. They weren't manoeuvring to intercept. They were holding a tight formation, staying close to the trade vessels, almost... inviting the attack.
Why aren't they running?
A convoy this rich, guarded this poorly, should be panicking. They should be breaking formation, dumping cargo to gain speed, signalling for parley.
Instead, they were silent.
The wind shifted.
It wasn't a change in the breeze. It was a sudden barrage of displaced air, a heaviness that pressed down on the lungs. The sun, high and bright a moment ago, seemed to dim.
Drahar looked up.
His heart, a cold and stony thing, hammered against his ribs.
It was impossible for a man with sight to miss it. And yet, Craghas Drahar could not believe he had been so blind, so catastrophically naive.
Two shadows, vast and terrifying, fell across his fleet.
"Turn!" Drahar screamed, his voice tearing at his throat. "Hard to port!"
The order was useless. The cheers of his men died instantly, replaced instantly by a collective, suffocating silence that shattered into shrieks of terror of men who knew they were doomed.
"Dragon!" someone shrieked. "Dragons!"
Above them, the clouds tore open.
First came the Red.
Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm, shrieked. He dove in a corkscrew, a high-pitched whistle piercing the air. On his back, Prince Aemon Targaryen was a speck.
A stream of fire, dark as blood, slashed across the starboard flank of the pirate fleet. Two galleys simply vanished, turned into splinters and ash in a heartbeat.
But the true horror came behind him.
Vhagar.
She was a flying island. Her wingspan seemed to stretch from one end of the channel to the other. Her roar shook the deck plates of the ships so hard that men were thrown off their feet.
Riding her was the Spring Prince, Baelon the Brave, barely visible on the back of the massive beast.
Vhagar opened her maw.
The fire that came out was a torrent of heated ruin. It washed over the center of Drahar's formation.
Drahar watched as the ship directly in front of him, a heavy galley manned by fifty souls, disintegrated. Wood, iron, and flesh were consumed instantly.
The heat hit him a second later. It blistered the exposed skin on his arms and seared the air around him.
"To the caves!" he roared, shoving a frozen helmsman away from the rudder. "Get us to the caves!"
He steered violently. The ship lurched, its hull groaning as it swung away from the inferno.
It was chaos. The pirate fleet, moments ago a unified spearhead, dissolved into a panic-stricken mob. Ships collided with each other in their desperate attempt to flee. Men threw themselves into the sea for any hope of survival.
Caraxes pulled out of his dive, banking sharply to strafe a line of skiffs that were trying to flank the convoy. The Blood Wyrm moved like a whip, precise and lethal as he hunted the smaller vessels.
Meanwhile, Vhagar banked, her massive tail clipping the mast of a nearby longship, shattering it like a twig. She was coming around for a second pass.
Drahar looked up and saw death descending. He knew they wouldn't make it.
"Abandon ship!"
He didn't wait for his crew. He threw himself over the rail.
The water was cold, a shock to his diseased skin. He kicked frantically, his heavy boots dragging him down. He surfaced just in time to see the world turn orange.
Vhagar's breath fell on his ship.
The explosion was deafening. The shockwave slammed Drahar underwater, tumbling him like a rag doll. Debris of burning wood, boiling metal and pieces of his crew rained down around him.
He clawed his way to the surface, gasping for air, choking on smoke and ash. His arm brushed against something hard in the water, a piece of the hull, still burning. He scrambled onto it, kicking toward the jagged rocks of a nearby island.
He dragged himself onto the wet stone, coughing up saltwater. His skin was burning beneath his mask.
He looked back.
His fleet was being decimated. Every time each dragon made a pass, a hole of flames was punched in the pirate fleet, leaving only a field of burning wreckage.
And through all of the carnage, the Consortium's convoy sailed on.
They sailed calmly through the center of the channel, flanked by the burning wreckage of their would-be ambushers. The smoke from the dying pirate fleet formed a black archway for them to pass under.
Drahar lay on the rocks, his chest heaving, his mask lost to the sea, revealing the grey, cracked ruin of his face.
He watched the gold sail away, untouched. Flanked by the two dragons circling overhead like gods of war.
And he realized with sickening clarity that it had never been for the taking.
The Targaryens hadn't sent the convoy out defenseless.
They had sent it out as bait.
And he had been idiotic to take it.
He dug his fingers into the rock, scraping them until they bled. The pain was grounding. It focused the hatred that was now colder than the sea.
The mask of the 'pirate' had been burned away.
Now, there was only war.