Dragon Tomb

Fields of stone pillars rose like the ribs of giant beasts, looming over the pitch-black earth.

Their orderly ranks resembled a ceremonial procession leading into hell, running straight toward the black mountains at the far end.

They involuntarily reminded Aegon of his previous life, of the stone figures standing silently along the spirit roads of imperial tombs.

As if standing guard, as if bowing in worship, countless stone dragons clung to the pillars in different poses. Even though time had cracked the rock and scored it with deep scars, their surviving outlines still hinted at the breathtaking craftsmanship and majesty they had once possessed.

They spoke silently of Valyria's former glory.

Aegon's cheap leather boots struck the hard, level road, leaving his feet faintly sore.

He gently brushed aside the volcanic ash with his toe, exposing the black grain of the stone beneath. Perhaps this road, and even the unbroken black mountain range at its end, had been fashioned from dragonstone.

Aegon had never been to Dragonstone, nor had he ever seen dragonstone, but that was the feeling he had.

A familiar, elusive sense of searing heat.

He turned his head slightly, pretending to glance casually to one side. Several figures who were growing familiar walked beside him.

They were the mercenaries he had saved along the way over the past few days. Among them was the cook who had demonstrated his "astonishing" culinary skills back at camp when they first landed in the ruins.

Aside from a few scattered mercenaries who still refused to band together, the expedition into the Valyrian Ruins had now divided into three distinct groups.

There were Euron Greyjoy's Ironborn, the private guards of their employer, Corlyon, and the mercenaries who had gradually gathered around Aegon as he deliberately saved lives over the past few days.

The strongest were undoubtedly Euron Greyjoy's Ironborn. They had excellent armor, practiced battle formations, and numbers second only to the ragtag group Aegon belonged to.

Next came Corlyon's private guards. From what Aegon had observed so far, their fighting skills fell short of the fierce Ironborn's, but their equipment was good—far better than that of the mercenaries. He still remembered the old sellsword aboard the ship, Old Buck, whose Chainmail looked like a tattered fishing net on the verge of crumbling away. That was the norm among their kind.

Then came the mercenaries gathered around him. They had plenty of men, certainly, but their equipment... Even his own armor had been stripped from a headless corpse, a man the Dothraki had beheaded.

He had only gotten that lucky because the Dothraki savages disdained such iron shells. Otherwise, a suit of Plate Armor was hardly easy to come by. Aegon reckoned that if he emptied his entire purse, he might be able to commission a craftsman to make him a slightly better-fitting plate codpiece.

Their fighting skills varied wildly, and their weapons were an even stranger assortment. One or two were fairly capable, but they too were used to fighting alone.

At first, Aegon had only saved one or two men in passing, and the survivors naturally stayed close to him.

As time passed, some of the other mercenaries began to realize how bad their situation was. Seeing the handful of men gathered around him, they approached of their own accord, gradually forming the group they had now.

Though it risked making him a target, Aegon had not turned them away. Unless they united what strength they had left, remaining a scattered rabble would only make it a matter of time before his turn came to serve as cannon fodder or a sacrifice.

The original group had formed around him, so they more or less regarded him as their leader.

Yet Aegon knew perfectly well that this fragile alliance rested entirely on his own prowess.

These men appeared to follow his lead, but in truth they were frightened souls clinging to driftwood in a storm. The moment the terrifying wave that was Euron crashed down, they would scatter, and then Aegon, the one who had stuck his neck out, would only die faster.

Yet he had no other choice.

In these hellish ruins, scattered stragglers were destined to become cannon fodder.

Since danger lay in every direction, he might as well turn this forced gathering of frightened men into real strength.

Aegon did not want temporary followers. He wanted ironclad order that could keep them all alive.

Only by twisting those scattered threads into a thick rope, obeying one voice and pulling in one direction, could they hope to achieve anything. They might not be able to defeat Euron Greyjoy's Ironborn head-on, but at least they could keep him from acting with such impunity.

He withdrew his gaze. He needed a workable way to bind these men together. A few empty words would never make these slippery mercenaries give a damn about him.

While he pondered, the expedition drew close to the black mountains at the end of the road.

Scattered bones began to appear along the way. Some were old, while others were still white and fresh, as though they had been left there only recently!

Aegon quietly tightened his grip on his sword hilt as a stir broke out at the front of the column.

"That's Hogg's armor!"

"How did it get here? I saw a monster drag him away with my own eyes the day before yesterday!" a mercenary said, fear in his voice.

Aegon pushed through the crowd and saw a bloodstained suit of armor standing out among the bones ahead.

He remembered that armor. It had belonged to a burly man named Hogg. A full suit of Plate Armor had looked so out of place among their impoverished band that it was hard to forget.

He had not seen the man for days. So a monster had dragged him off during one of the earlier attacks.

Looking at the shattered, bloodstained armor, like the peeled shell of a shrimp, he did not need to imagine what horror its wearer had suffered.

From behind came the faint sound of the Ironborn's foul curses, thick with the distinctive salt-soaked accent of the Iron Islands. The expedition was forced onward again.

The farther they went, the more bones appeared. Some of the armor on the remains looked familiar to Aegon. Beneath the damage and rust, it seemed to resemble what their employer's private guards wore.

In an atmosphere so tense it seemed almost frozen, the expedition reached the foot of the unbroken black mountains.

A vast fissure, as though cleaved open by a god's enormous axe, formed a sinister entrance beneath a narrow strip of sky.

A foul wind laden with sulfur and rot blew from the fissure, making a sound like sobbing.

More bones, old and new intermingled, lay scattered across the ground at the entrance.

More unnerving still were the enormous, translucent sheets of pale membrane mixed among them, resembling shed snakeskin. They gleamed greasily in the dim firelight.

These shed skins were unimaginably large. The slightest touch reduced them to powder, yet they still revealed just how colossal their owners had been.

"Wh-what the hell shed this skin?" a mercenary asked, his voice trembling as he lifted a scrap on the tip of his sword.

No one could answer.

Fear spread through the crowd like a plague. The column stopped, and the mercenaries exchanged glances. No one dared step into the fissure that resembled a giant beast's gullet.

Low footfalls sounded. Surrounded by Ironborn, Crow's Eye approached directly, his stride languid and dangerous.

His single eye swept over the crowd before fixing firmly on Aegon's silver hair.

"Aha... Look what I've found. Another fellow with silver hair."

Crow's Eye strolled up to Aegon, his voice cloying and loud enough for everyone present to hear clearly.

"That silver hair is much prettier and purer than the other mongrel's. Perhaps you really do have a little dragonlord bloodline in you. Oh, forgive me. I forgot the whores of Lys look like that too."

"Speaking of which..."

"Your... 'performance' along the way has been quite impressive." Crow's Eye stopped before Aegon in a loose, careless stance, idly gesturing with his dagger as though he might drive it into him at any moment.

Aegon tightened his hand around his sword hilt, ready to draw at any instant.

At the sight, some of the mercenaries standing behind Aegon hesitated, while others looked ashamed. In the end, fear overcame everything, and they backed away, leaving only Henry and a few others at his side.

Crow's Eye caught the movement from the corner of his eye. The almost tangible wariness in his lone eye quietly faded a little, but his murderous intent did not diminish in the slightest.

His tone was cold and cloying, carrying the peculiar salt-soaked tang of the Iron Islands.

"You've saved quite a few poor wretches and gathered them beneath your silver hair, like a true Dragonlord leading his flock."

Crow's Eye suddenly turned and spread his arms toward the crowd with exaggerated flourish, his blue-stained lips stretching into a smile. "Gods! A born leader! Everyone here owes him their life, don't they? Shouldn't you... do something for him?"

"Like scout ahead for our 'born leader'!" The instant Crow's Eye finished speaking, the Ironborn accompanying him drew their blades as one and advanced on the crowd.