Three days later, at the northwestern corner of Crackclaw Point, near Crab Bay.
Swamps and dense woods covered the land. Vines dangled from branches, and muddy pools bubbled between the roots.
This had once been a gathering place for most of the peninsula's wildlings, as well as a hideout where local pirates stashed their loot.
"Hyah!" Aegon rode his Dothraki stallion, leading his peninsula knights at a gallop. Three full days had passed since he had settled the matter of Grey Ghost, the "fish thief."
First, he had found Alyn and learned the general situation-for some unknown reason, wild mountain folk from the clans of the Mountains of the Moon in the Vale had crossed Crab Bay to reach Crackclaw Point, competing for a livelihood with their native peninsula "cousins."
Some seemed to have heard of Aegon's reputation and the peninsula's current "good employment prospects and living conditions" from those wildling "cousins," and had come specifically to "join him."
But over the past few days, their sudden influx from the north had sparked a series of clashes with the peninsula wildlings who had already been settled.
And settling them was not even the most troublesome issue.
These mountain clansmen who had crossed south were not all obedient folk willing to "bend the knee." Unruly as they were, most had come south to follow their old tradition of "helping themselves to a little plunder."
Seeing that the "well-off" kneelers-the peninsula's original subjects-mostly lived farther south, they had simply begun robbing the wildling cousins who had initially welcomed them, whom Aegon had settled in the hills toward the southern end of the peninsula's northern region.
After robbing them, they settled nearby, gathering in outlaw bands in the swamps and deep woods farther north, near Crab Bay.
And it was not as though