Chapter 103 — Deserted Island, Fire over Tyrosh
The caves of Grey Gallows swallowed sound.
Torchlight flickered weakly against jagged stone as Westerosi men pressed forward, shields raised, boots scraping over damp rock. Smoke clung to the ceiling like a second skin. The Triarchy had doused every brazier deeper within, turning the caverns into a choking maze of darkness.
From the shadows came the snap of bowstrings.
Crossbow bolts punched through flame-bearers first. Torches fell, hissing as they died, plunging whole files of men into blackness. Screams followed—short, sharp, abruptly silenced.
Craghas Drahar knew these tunnels as well as he knew his own scars.
"Extinguish the light," he had ordered. "Let them bleed blind."
Steel rang.
Prince Daemon Targaryen moved through the dark like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. Dark Sister whispered as it slid between ribs, severed tendons, opened throats. He did not shout commands. He did not need to. Men followed where he went, sensing the pressure of his presence like a storm front.
Yet the enemy melted away upward, retreating into higher, narrower passages where shields were useless and numbers a curse.
Then the dogs came.
The Winter Wolves had brought their hounds from the North—great mastiffs bred for war and winter, their noses keen, their jaws merciless. Unleashed, they surged forward, snarling, dragging men screaming from crevices where darkness had hidden them moments before.
A Summer Islander mercenary thought himself invisible, his dark skin pressed to stone, his breath held tight. Fear betrayed him. The hounds found his blood, his sweat, his terror. They tore him apart without ceremony, red slicking the rocks.
"Relight the torches," growled Rodrik Dustin, the Tomb Wolf. "Forward."
When the Westerosi pushed higher, death rained down.
Stones. Logs. Bolts.
Men were crushed. Shields shattered. Rodrik Dustin staggered beneath a storm of arrows, his mail ringing like a struck bell before he was dragged back bleeding, half-conscious. The caves became slaughter pens.
Above, the dragons came.
Caraxes, Vermithor, and Silverwing screamed their arrival, their roars shaking dust from the cliffs. Dragonfire flooded the upper mouths of the caverns, turning air into a killing wave—but Craghas had burrowed deep. Too deep.
The assault stalled.
Daemon called the withdrawal at dusk. Hundreds of Triarchy dead. Hundreds more wounded. The caves remained contested, the heights still in enemy hands.
Grey Gallows did not yield.
The siege dragged on.
By day, men prayed—each to their own gods. Northerners carved faces into elm trunks for the old gods, offering blood and corpses. Ironborn drowned captives in surf-dark rites. Septons raised seven-pointed stars of driftwood. Red priests whispered by flame.
By night, the dead burned.
Then the sickness came.
First nosebleeds. Then vomiting. Then men collapsed clutching their bellies, voiding themselves as fever cooked them from within. Pyres multiplied. The Silent Sisters worked until they too fell coughing into ash.
Daemon stood before the fires with Maester Michiel and Lamont the alchemist.
"This is no common flux," Lamont said flatly. "Even Stepstones men die of it."
"The rivers," Daemon said. Understanding hardened his voice. "Craghas holds the springs."
Feces. Corpses. Rot. Poison.
The poor drank water. The lords drank wine.
Daemon summoned Lord Corlys Velaryon at once.
"Empty the holds," Daemon ordered. "Ale. Small beer. Anything that ferments."
Corlys grimaced. "It will cost—"
"It will cost less than defeat," Daemon cut in. "And less than dragons dying of thirst."
The order saved the host. The sickness faded. Craghas's last weapon dulled.
But time favored no one.
On the cliffs above the sea, Caraxes coiled restlessly as Daemon and Corlys watched Grey Gallows smolder.
"We cannot sit here forever," Corlys said at last. "Craghas waits us out."
"No," Daemon replied. His eyes gleamed. "He waits for rescue."
Corlys turned slowly.
"Tyrosh," Daemon said. "Strike the heart. Let the hand wither."
The fleet sailed at dawn.
Grey Gallows was blockaded. The rest of the host vanished eastward—Royal ships, Velaryon war galleys, Ironborn longships, Celtigar claws—all converging at Bloodstone before turning toward Tyrosh.
Above them flew fire.
Caraxes. Meleys. Dreamfyre. Vermithor. Silverwing. Seasmoke.
Seven shadows crossed the sea.
The Isle of Cedars fell in a single day.
Scorpions shattered. Ring-forts burned. Men screamed and fled only to be cut down by knights and Ironborn axes. Harbor ships burned. Warehouses looted. The sky was black with smoke and wings.
By nightfall, Tyrosh knew.
The Supreme Council of the Triarchy met in terror.
"Seven dragons," shouted one. "Seven!"
"Impossible," said the Myrish governor weakly.
"Look west," snarled Lord Draz of Tyrosh. "Do you see the smoke?"
Arguments raged. Accusations flew. Pride cracked.
"We will kneel if we must," Draz said coldly. "Better bent than burned."
Others cursed him for it.
Far away, in the black mouths of Grey Gallows, Craghas Drahar waited—cut off, starved of hope, his war unraveling thread by thread.
Daemon Targaryen had not come for the caves.
He had come for the world beyond them.
End of Chapter 103
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