Chapter 115: The Ambush off Dragonstone

The voyage south should have been a mercy. It was not.

Daenerys’s fleet made for Dragonstone beneath hard winds and low clouds, bearing weary men, wounded dragons, and a queen who spoke little. The Narrow Sea rolled grey and restless about them. The Unsullied kept discipline. The Dothraki grew sullen aboard ships they had never loved. Barristan watched Daenerys with the careful sorrow of an old knight who knew better than to intrude upon a grief he could not mend.

Drogon and Rhaegal followed the fleet at low height, unable to rise for long. The black dragon’s wing wound had darkened beneath old frost. Rhaegal’s leg remained stiff, and both dragons tired quickly. They were still dragons, which meant every sailor below them looked up with awe and terror, but there was no hiding the heaviness in their flight.

Dragonstone came into sight at last, black cliffs rising from the sea like the bones of some great beast. Smoke curled faintly from the volcanic slopes. The castle brooded above the water, ancient, strange, and familiar, shaped by dragonlords who had apparently decided stone should frighten guests before anyone even opened the gates. For the first time since leaving the Wall, Daenerys felt something like relief.

That was when the fog moved.

From the reefs north of the harbor, longships emerged without warning. They were few, but their hulls were lean and dark, altered in ways that made seasoned sailors swear under their breath. At their head came a black warship scarred by old fire and battle, its torn sails hanging like carrion wings.

Silence.

The name was almost funny, in the way a headsman’s axe might be funny if one were already dead. Euron Greyjoy had not fled to the Iron Islands after Deepwood Motte. He had not run east across the sea. He had waited. Like a patient wolf, or a rat clever enough to know when the cat was wounded, he had hidden along the sea road between Dragonstone and King’s Landing until Daenerys came home tired, grieving, and sure of her own waters.

The Ironborn struck at once.

They did not waste themselves against the outer escorts. Their course was narrow and direct, driving toward the queen’s flagship and the ships carrying her commanders. Several of the longships bore monstrous rams on their prows, rough things carved or fashioned like skulls from some deep-sea nightmare, stained dark and glowing with a red light that had no business belonging to honest wood or iron.

From the deck of Silence came low chants, broken horns, and sounds like men screaming beneath planks. Dark red beams lashed out from the ram, thin and writhing like living ropes. They did not strike the ships. They rose toward Drogon and Rhaegal.

The dragons screamed.

Drogon’s wings faltered. Rhaegal twisted hard in the air, snapping at empty space. The red light struck around them, not piercing flesh but clawing at mind and blood. Their flight broke apart. Drogon swerved too near Rhaegal, and Rhaegal answered with a panicked bite that scraped black scales. For a terrible moment the two living dragons fought the air, the light, and each other, as if some foul hand had reached into their grief and stirred it into madness.

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Daenerys ran to the deck rail. “Drogon!”

Her voice carried, but the strange red light did not release him. Euron’s sorceries, if sorceries they were, had found them weakened. A healthy dragon might have shrugged off such filth with rage and fire. These dragons had just flown from the edge of the world, wounded in body and spirit. Cruel timing was the most reliable ally of villains everywhere.

The rest of the Ironborn ships loosed fire arrows soaked in black oil that clung and burned even when waves broke over it. Small catapults hurled jars that shattered upon the decks, spilling yellow-green fumes and rot. Other pots burst open with dead flesh crawling with sickness. They were not trying to board. Not yet. They were sowing panic, fouling the air, blinding crews, breaking formation, and keeping the dragons from turning the ambush into a very brief lesson on the dangers of ships challenging fire.

“Shields!” Barristan shouted, white cloak whipping behind him. “Protect the queen. Archers, the black ships. Grey Worm, hold the deck.”

Grey Worm’s orders came sharper and colder. The Unsullied formed around Daenerys, shields up, spears angled outward. Archers returned fire. Sailors hacked at burning rigging and shoved smoking jars overboard. Dothraki cursed the sea, the ships, the Ironborn, and probably the concept of naval warfare, which was fair enough.

The battle was short and ugly. Daenerys’s fleet had numbers, but Euron had surprise, fog, and weapons that struck where her strength was most wounded. Silence cut across the path of one escort and rammed it amidships, the skull-prow bursting red as the hull split. Men spilled into the sea among fire and smoke. Another longship dragged chains across a transport’s oars, turning it helpless while black-oil fire climbed its side.

Drogon finally broke free enough to answer. His flame came ragged but terrible, washing over a longship and turning its deck to screaming light. Rhaegal struck another, though a poison jar burst near his shoulder and left ugly marks across his scales. He climbed away, roaring in pain, green wings beating unevenly.

Euron did not stay to test his luck past its profitable use. His laughter rolled across the water, magnified by some horn or tube from Silence’s deck, mad and delighted and very pleased with itself. Then the black ship turned back into the fog, and the surviving longships followed, slipping among reefs too dangerous for larger ships to pursue.

By the time Daenerys’s flagship reached Dragonstone’s harbor, the sea behind her burned. Several ships were sunk. Others limped in with torn sails, poisoned decks, and crews coughing blood or smoke. Drogon and Rhaegal landed heavily on the black stone above the harbor, exhausted, shaking, and newly wounded. Rhaegal’s scales where the poison had struck had begun to corrode in small, ugly patches.

Daenerys stood at the rail and watched the last of the Ironborn vanish into the fog.

She had returned from saving the world and been struck like a wounded deer at her own gate.

Humiliation was too small a word. Rage was too easy a word. Grief had followed her from the Wall, and now the south had greeted it with knives.

“Find me who aided him,” she said.

Barristan looked at her. “Your Grace?”

“Euron Greyjoy did not know my route and my weakness by prayer alone.” Her voice was quiet, which worried the old knight more than shouting would have. “Find me who told him.”

Grey Worm bowed his head.

The harbor bells of Dragonstone rang out for fire, wounded ships, and a queen’s return. Above the black cliffs, Drogon lifted his head and gave a low, exhausted roar that carried across the water. It was not victory. It was warning.

Far to the west, ravens were already flying.