The howling wind swept past his ears, lifting strands of silver hair.
Aegon gripped King Ghidorah's pale golden scales, steadying himself amid the fierce wind and streaming clouds.
Through the vision he shared with King Ghidorah, he looked down from high above. On the ground, the routed soldiers of the Holy Sword Knights were converging along the roads toward a single destination.
They fled in utter disarray, their weapons discarded, their helmets lost, their banners abandoned somewhere along the way.
Some had lost their boots and stumbled barefoot over the gravel road, scrambling up to keep running.
Like a flock of sheep being driven onward.
And Tumbleton would be their slaughterhouse.
As Aegon watched the fleeing soldiers, the corners of his mouth curved into a faint, cold smile.
Men on the ground could not outrun a dragon in the sky-unless the dragon let them.
But what drew his attention more just then was the banner flying atop Tumbleton's walls.
A golden Seven-Pointed Star on a white field.
The Poor Fellows. The so-called Starry Warriors.
Aegon's gaze lingered on that banner for a long time. He remembered the news enclosed in Jon Connington's plea for aid.
Those reports from the Stormlands: Earl Caron, whom he had appointed supreme commander of the Dornish Marches, had seen his entire family slaughtered by the Faith Militant and his castle burned.
Then there were the Stormlands nobles whose names he knew, and those he did not, each marked as dead in the letter.
Their castles had fallen, their lands had been plundered, and their family members had been dragged out and publicly executed.
Villages had been burned, thick smoke blotting out the sky.
Towns had been sacked, the bodies of common folk strewn across their streets.
Rather than the Faith Militant, they were a band