Flames devoured the thatched roofs with sharp, crackling pops. The thick smoke made people's eyes stream with tears.
An Ironborn dragged a screaming woman along like a sheep. Her child followed, crying out, only for another man to kick the child away and cut them down with his sword.
Bronn leaned against a huge, smoke-blackened tree, watching the Ironborn create this hellish scene.
Roderick Greyjoy's longships sailed south along the Blue Fork like a pack of hungry wolves breaking into an unguarded sheep pen. They burned and slaughtered, looted and reveled. They chopped off the heads of men and women and hung them on the rails, while their holds filled with plunder.
The villages along the way were reduced to ash. The noble lords who were supposed to protect their people had locked their castle gates tight.
A thickset Ironborn grinned as he drank from a silver goblet he'd stolen.
He chuckled, flashing a mouthful of yellow teeth, and said to Bronn, "This is easy."
"These greenlanders are all cowards."
Bronn sneered inwardly but said nothing. Cowards? These nobles were a pack of useless lords who did nothing but collect taxes and bed women. They were worse than dogs.
At least dogs came out and barked.
He'd planned to slip away in the chaos once the Ironborn clashed with the Riverlands' army. But damn it, they hadn't encountered a single decent resistance along the way. These nobles would rather watch their own smallfolk slaughtered than send out a single soldier.
Bronn cursed inwardly. Damn it, they won't even give me a chance to escape. He snatched the goblet from the Ironborn beside him and took a long swallow, trying to suppress his anger.
After the raid, Roderick Greyjoy stood in the middle of a ransacked village, nudging a charred corpse