By mid-year of the fifth year of the Conquest, the sun had grown steadily fiercer, and the temperature slowly began to rise. The long winter, which had lasted for two and a half years, was finally showing signs of coming to an end.
From the direction of Oldtown, alarming reports of raids by the Seven Sea Kings arrived with increasing frequency.
In Dorne, the first to suffer at the hands of the Ironborn was House Dayne of Starfall. The Ironborn swept through like a tidal wave, looting massive amounts of food and coin, which they then hauled back to Oldtown in grand procession.
For a time, the Ironborn of the Seven Sea Kings grew rich beyond measure, reaping enormous profits.
As a special organization directly under the king, the Seven Sea Kings were exempt from paying taxes to any liege lords for the iron money they seized at sea. They were only required to offer a portion of their spoils as tribute to the royal family.
Aegon would occasionally receive these tributes—goods from Dorne and rare treasures.
Sometimes it was antique weapons; other times, it was Dornish women.
But Aegon no longer indulged recklessly. He already had five women, each a beauty beyond compare—what more could he ask for?
During this time, Aegon once flew on Balerion to Sunspear, the royal seat of Dorne.
Yet upon arriving, he found the palace completely abandoned.
Dorne's current ruler, Princess Meria Martell—the Yellow Toad—seemed utterly determined to resist House Targaryen to the bitter end.
Having made the arduous journey in vain through winter, Aegon was furious. In his anger, he ordered Balerion to burn down Sunspear's royal palace.
But no sooner had the fire died down than dozens of scorpions appeared, unleashing a storm of thick bolts at Balerion like a swarm of locusts.
Balerion, however, was no fragile creature like the dragons of House Velaryon. The bolts clanged off his scales, sparking and ringing with the sharp sound of metal against metal.
Aegon was consumed by fury. He commanded Balerion to incinerate the crossbowmen where they stood.
Then, circling Sunspear atop his dragon, he declared for all to hear: anyone who refused to submit to the Targaryen Kingdom would face total annihilation.
Aegon left Dorne in frustration. Along his return route, every Dornish stronghold he passed took a shot at him with scorpions.
Clearly, someone had spotted Balerion in flight and raised the alarm—Dorne had prepared for war and believed they could bring down the dragon.
Aegon hadn't expected such stubborn resistance. Though he refrained from destroying those castles, he issued a stern warning: any who dared attack the Dragonlord again and refused to submit would be put to the sword.
...
Not long after Aegon returned to Harrenhal, a letter from the Yellow Toad, Meria Martell, landed on his desk.
In it, Meria brazenly declared, "The people of Dorne will never kneel," and went on to denounce Aegon as the degenerate spawn of the Dragonlords of Valyria. She demanded that he lift the naval blockade imposed by the Federal Council, compensate for the destruction of the Sunspear palace, and hand over the Seven Sea Kings to House Martell for execution—or else Dorne would show him the true meaning of relentless vengeance.
Aegon laughed at the absurdity of her demands. Whatever illusions he had left about peace with Dorne were gone. He immediately ordered Orys to begin preparing military supplies and to muster the kingdom's armies.
King Aegon of the Targaryen dynasty issued a royal conquest decree: all lands of the enemy state Dorne were now declared terra nullius—no man's land. Whoever could conquer them would be granted rightful ownership, protected under Targaryen law.
The moment this decree was announced, nearly every lord in Westeros sprang into action—stockpiling food, rallying troops, and marching toward the Targaryen-Dorne border.
Within a month, the Head of House Greyjoy—one of the Seven Sea Kings—declared the successful capture of a small fortress known as Sandstone. Aegon immediately issued a royal proclamation, affirming that House Greyjoy's claim to Sandstone was sacred and inviolable. The lords of the realm grew even more eager.
...
Two months passed. Winter had faded, and early spring arrived. All across Westeros, life returned in full bloom.
In the past half-year, aside from preparations for the Dornish campaign, the most significant development had been the emergence of the new Citadel in Harrenhal.
Public rail carriages were now running smoothly in the area, shuttling daily between several nearby markets on a fixed schedule. Each carriage was built extra-large, capable of holding more than twenty passengers. These animal-powered rail coaches were hardly different from the buses Aegon had known in his previous life.
Tracks were also being laid in the direction of Dorne, providing logistical support for transporting military supplies to the front.
Witnessing the tangible success of these inventions, the nobles of the realm began investing heavily in the Citadel's projects.
A flood of capital poured into Harrenhal. The Dragonlord's treasury received its second major deposit, and the Maesters of the Citadel began enjoying a far more comfortable life.
Under Grand Maester Gawen's deliberate promotion—and some strategic exaggeration—many Maesters from Oldtown began migrating north to Harrenhal. Their arrival caused the number of resident Maesters there to surge to nearly two thousand, transforming the citadel into a thriving hub of learning.
With such a vast pool of talent at his disposal, Aegon was able to relaunch a number of research projects that had previously been shelved.
During this unique period, the Alchemist's Lion Tower became a focal point of Aegon's attention. It housed several of his most carefully overseen projects, including papermaking, steel refining, cement production, ice-making, soap crafting, and more.
These advanced innovations were all initiated by Aegon himself. Although results were still some way off, he was confident that once society reached a certain threshold, a technological explosion would follow—one that would completely transform the light industry landscape of Westeros.
Meanwhile, the Maesters of the Eagle Tower likely had the hardest lives in the new Citadel. Their work in cultural and philosophical studies produced no immediate results, and cultural development itself was a slow, gradual process—one that required time, reflection, and deep accumulation.
Aegon had initially shared with them elements of ancient Valyrian culture, but with little success.
He then introduced philosophies from the ancient Eastern civilizations of his past life. Perhaps due to his own deep exposure to Eastern traditions, Aegon's explanations were clearer and more engaging—leading to much faster uptake among the Eagle Tower scholars.
He provided them with a range of philosophical frameworks, among which Confucianism, Legalism, Taoism, Mohism, and the School of Diplomacy were the most favored—each offering overarching systems of thought. Some schools that embraced the new doctrines even renamed themselves after the Hundred Schools of Thought.
For example, the school previously focused on legal principles rebranded itself as the School of Law—a blending of East and West.
Amid the exchange and synthesis among nearly a thousand cultural scholars, something remarkable was taking shape in Harrenhal's Eagle Tower.
Aegon felt that a new and unfamiliar cultural identity was being born there. It was like a newborn child—and in this metaphor, he was its father, and the Maesters its many mothers. Together, they were nurturing the birth of a new civilization.
This process could take decades, or even centuries, but the thrill of shaping a culture with his own hands filled Aegon with joy. These weren't biological offspring, but this culture—this vision—brought him more fulfillment than even his own bloodline.
...
At the close of winter, in the latter half of the fifth year of the Conquest, the Targaryen dynasty was ready. The war for Dorne had officially begun.
Rhaenys intended to ride Meraxes to Sunspear, hoping to make one last effort to convince Meria Martell—the Yellow Toad—to surrender.
But as Aegon watched his sister-wife ascend into the sky on Meraxes, he was suddenly struck by a chilling vision from his Apocalypse Dreamtrace: the brutal death of Rhaenys and her dragon.
In that vision, atop the tallest tower of a fortress, a guard loosed a massive scorpion bolt—an iron arrow a yard long—that struck Meraxes directly in the right eye. Though the dragon didn't die instantly, it plummeted to the ground in agony.
The vision left Aegon frozen in place, stunned. He only snapped out of it when Rhaenys was nearly out of sight. At once, he leapt onto Balerion and soared after her.
Cursing internally, he thought, The Dornish must be absurdly lucky! Meraxes and Vhagar are both over forty meters long—fully grown dragons with scales harder than steel. And yet they managed to hit the eye with one bolt? Really...?
Aegon managed to intercept Rhaenys in time and forced her to turn back.
Frustrated, she returned to Harrenhal and sulked in silence.
She had hoped to earn merit and bolster her son Aenys's prestige. With Visenya holding such high status at court, Rhaenys feared she might become an obstacle to her son's future claim to the throne.
...
Following this episode, the Targaryen armies began their campaign.
Marshal Orys Baratheon led a force of ten thousand elite knights through the Boneway.
Aegon himself marched with an army of fifty thousand toward the Prince's Pass. His host included nearly three thousand mounted knights and three hundred lords of various ranks.
The army was made up of troops from the Crownlands and the Reach, personally commanded by King Aegon of House Targaryen.
Lord Hightower, Warden of the South, even claimed that the army could crush any Dornish resistance—even without Aegon and his dragon Balerion.
He had good reason to believe this, though he'd find no proof on the battlefield—for the Dornish refused to give battle.
Instead, they retreated step by step before Aegon's advance, burning crops and poisoning every well behind them.
The Targaryen army discovered that all the watchtowers in the Red Mountains had been abandoned. Every pass had been sealed off with walls made from the rotting carcasses of shorn sheep—useless for food and blocked off for good.
By the time the army emerged from the Prince's Pass and crossed into the Dornish desert, their provisions and fodder were already running low.
Aegon split his forces.
He ordered Lord Hightower to march south and confront Lord Uther Uller of Hellholt, while he himself turned east to lay siege to Lord Fowler's mountain stronghold at Skyreach.
It was early spring, and though there was still a lingering chill in the air, rainfall was plentiful.
The soldiers of House Targaryen hoped the desert heat would ease soon, and that the spring rains would become more frequent, making it easier to find water.
But on Lord Hightower's march toward Hellholt, Dorne's sun remained as merciless as ever.
In the punishing heat, the men desperately needed water—but every pond and oasis along the route had been poisoned.
Horses began dying in droves, and the situation worsened rapidly. With their mounts lost, many riders soon collapsed themselves.
Even the proud knights were forced to abandon their banners, shields, and eventually even their armor.
By the time Lord Hightower finally reached Hellholt—having lost a quarter of his force and nearly all his horses—he found nothing but an abandoned fortress.
Orys Baratheon faced hardships of his own.
His cavalry had to struggle through narrow, twisting passes and steep, rocky slopes. In the steepest places, the Dornish had carved stairs directly into the mountainside, rendering them impassable to horses, which had to be left behind.
Rocks rained down from above, crashing onto the knights under the command of the Hand of the King—an ambush unlike anything the men of the Crownlands had ever seen. At the point where the Boneway crossed the Wyl River, Dornish archers suddenly emerged and loosed thousands of arrows on the cavalry as they crossed the bridge.
Marshal Orys ordered a retreat, but it was too late—a landslide cut off their escape.
Caught in a trap, the Crownlands soldiers were like pigs penned for slaughter. In the end, only Orys Baratheon and a dozen lords deemed valuable enough for ransom were spared—they were taken captive by the savage mountain lords, ruled by Wyl, the infamous "Widow's Lover" of Wyl Castle.
...
Aegon, meanwhile, made far greater progress.
He led his forces east along the foothills, where mountain streams provided fresh water and the valleys teemed with game.
He launched a direct assault on Skyreach and captured it. After a brief siege, Yronwood fell as well. The Lord of Tor had recently passed, and the castellan surrendered the city without a fight.
The king's army pushed further east. At Ghost Hill, Lord Toland sent a proxy knight to challenge Aegon. Aegon accepted and slew the man in single combat—only to discover he hadn't been a real knight at all, but merely Toland's court jester.
Lord Toland used the distraction to flee.
When King Aegon arrived at Sunspear atop Balerion, Princess Meria Martell followed Toland's example.
The king's army continued its campaign, capturing Lemonwood, Spottswood, and Stinkwater Keep in quick succession. They were greeted by crones and children alike—but still saw no sign of the true Dornish army. Even the outer fortress of Sunspear was nearly deserted. Those who remained couldn't say where the Dornish lords or the princess had gone.
"The Yellow Toad has melted into the sand," Grand Maester Gawen reported to King Aegon.
Aegon responded by declaring victory.
In Sunspear's great hall, he gathered the remaining noblemen of Dorne and solemnly proclaimed the annexation of Dorne into the unified kingdom, ordering them to swear loyalty as his vassals.
He denounced their former rulers as traitors and rebels, placing bounties on their heads—none higher than the one on Princess Meria Martell, the so-called "Yellow Toad."
He appointed Jon Rosby as acting Castellan of Sunspear and Warden of the Sands, to govern Dorne in the king's name. Other conquered cities and castles were each assigned governors and provisional lords.
Aegon spent the New Year of the sixth year of the Conquest in Sunspear.
Afterward, he led his army westward through the hill country and then north through the Prince's Pass, retracing their original path.
But before Aegon even returned to King's Landing, Dorne erupted in rebellion under the leadership of Princess Meria Martell—the Yellow Toad.
When the news reached him in King's Landing, Aegon flew into a rage and issued a proclamation to all of Westeros:
"I will wipe out House Martell and every Dornish noble who betrayed me—until none remain alive!"
...
[Upto 20 chapters ahead for now]
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