TBOV: Chapter Twenty-Four: The Great Burning

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Great Burning

An Extract from A Chronicle of the Dragon’s March East

compiled in the 132nd year since Aegon’s Landing by Archmaester Haradric of the Jade Quill, Keeper of Ships’ Logs and Correspondence, late of Oldtown

“Men will raise walls until they scrape the sky, yet dragons require only kindling.”

—fragment attributed to Maester Beltharios, The Ruin of Bronzegate

Of Roads, Rivers, and the Rumour of Endless Wagons

Scarce had the ink dried upon Marshal Luthor Sand’s compact with Khal Rhozko when the great machinery of Prince Aemond’s design ground forward once more. Witnesses along the Stoneway report that, for a span of thirty‑three days, one might stand upon the Dragon Road outside Pentos and never see the end of the column: ox‑carts laden with Reach grain, wains of Northmen timber, barrels of Hardharbor pitch, and whole trains of mules dragging bronze bell cast in Lannisport. Some septons—ever fond of number—reckoned near four hundred carts a day crossed the Inner March of Andalos, a figure I record with caution, yet cannot wholly discredit given the scale of the works that followed.

At Ghoyan Drohe the flood was dammed and re‑channelled. Here the Red Cloaks, that crimson host still new to Essosi eyes, raised warehouses on pilings of green pine, their soldiers labouring side by side with Unsullied stevedores and sweating Westermen levies. Grain was off‑loaded to flat‑bottomed barges, armor and logs stacked upon rafts of lashed cedar, and down the Rhoyne they drifted in close procession—each convoy bracketed by towers of scorpion‑bolts and guarded in the shallows by leather‑coracles crewed by contracted Summer Isles bowmen. The journey was perilous; twice in as many weeks Rhoynar pirates loosed fire‑arrows from the reeds, only to be answered by Westerosi bowmen and, once, by the snap‑flap of Sheepstealer’s wings as Lady Nettles stooped out of the dawn.

In Westeros the smallfolk heard only whispers: that Pentos had emptied its vaults to feed dragons, that Ny Sar rose anew upon pillars of golden Westerosi coin, that the prince levied a dragon‑tithe from every port from the Arbor to White Harbor. Lords grumbled of coffers bled dry, yet few dared open defiance; the memories of Fieldhands’ Pits and the Stepstones pyres are not soon forgotten.

The Purging of Chroyane, Called The Seven Days of Cinders

If Ghoyan Drohe was the gatehouse, Ny Sar the granary, then Chroyane—ancient, blighted, haunted by stone men and worse—was the canker at the heart of the Prince’s new dominion. No levy would march past while greyscale clung to its docks, nor river‑barges tie up where the waters steamed with foul vapours. Thus did Prince Aemond resolve upon cleansing by dragonfire—a remedy so cruel that even septons at the Starry Sept penned anxious sermons decrying it, though none were read aloud until weeks later, when the outcome could no longer be gainsaid.

On the first day of the tenth moon the sky above the Golden fields grew black with wings. Vhagar led the flight, vast as a keep in motion; beside her the bronze bulk of Vermithor, the pale shimmer of Silverwing, the smoke‑grey blur of Grey Ghost, and the swift blue blaze of Tessarion. Seasmoke and Sheepstealer beat lower, scouring riverbanks where stone men lurked beneath mangroves.

Seven days they wrought ruin. They did not content themselves with the ruined temples but torched every span of ground within ten leagues, so that farmers in the Painted Hills woke to pillars of flame on the southern horizon. On the fifth day barges heavy with wildfire—barrels stamped by the Alchemists’ Guild and sealed in lead—were scuttled in Chroyane’s waters. River captains downstream swore the Rhoyne itself burned green for two days and a night, and fish floated belly‑white in the current for a fortnight after.

When at last the fires guttered out, Septon Arlan of the Poor Fellows who had accompanied the grand army walked the ashen streets and found not a living thing: no cries, no cough of greyscale victims, only statues of slag where men had once begged for the Mother’s mercy. Whether this be deliverance or damnation I leave to wiser heads.

Seizure and Settlement

The Red Cloaks advanced at once from Ny Sar—two full Battalions under Captain Rogar Waters—entering the city on the fourteenth day. They raised the black‑iron standard and posted proclamations in High Valyrian, Common, and Qohorik: Chroyane is henceforth a Protectorate of the Iron Throne; trespass without writ warrants death. Some two hundred surviving stone men were found in vaults along the Marble Way; these unfortunates were beheaded and their bodies consigned to the already smouldering pits—an act the maesters of Oldtown have roundly condemned as needless cruelty, yet which the soldiers deemed simpler than mercy.

Within a moon’s turn engineers from King’s Landing arrived bearing chalk‑boards and river‑chains, intent on sounding the harbor for a new fortress‑dock. It is said Prince Aemond envisions a bridge of black stone spanning the Rhoyne at Chroyane, by which his Standards might march north or south at will—yet here my sources differ, and the Prince’s scribes remain close‑mouthed.

Of the Horselords and the Great Encirclement

Word of the great Khal Rhozko’s southward ride spread quickly: braids jangling, Myrish caravans fled east toward the Qohorik gate or else doubled back to Volantis. The Myrish magisters, who once dreamed of continuing their defiance, now dispatch near‑daily pleas to King’s Landing begging an audience with the King and his Butcher. In the alleys of Volantis drunken sellsails curse the “red devils” who choke their coin, while the Braavosi captains grow increasingly unsure in the face of the Crown’s encirclement.

Smallfolk along the Trident have taken to lighting seven candles each night—one for every dragon said to guard their interests abroad. Yet in Gulltown docklands the wine‑shops are loud with sailors who spit that the Prince’s wars feed only fire and bankers’ ledgers. Even in Oldtown’s Vault of the Faith, the High Septon is said to have murmured that dragonfire is a poor anodyne for the souls of stone men—though, prudently, he couched the remark in Maegi’s Cant so that few but the learned might grasp its sting.

Concluding Remark

Thus, by quill and testimonium, I set down the tale of the Prince’s eastward push in the second year of King Aegon’s reign: cities laid over Rhoynar graves, rivers turned to fire, and the breaking of curses long remembered. Whether these labours presage lasting empire or another Doom, only the gods may say. Yet the counting of carts continues, unbroken, and so long as grain and iron cross the Narrow Sea, the dragon’s army shall have fuel enough to cleanse whatever land displeases them.

Let the reader judge if that be cause for comfort—or dread.

—Archmaester Haradric