After unleashing its dragonfire, Tyraxes plunged earthward in a brutal dive.
The instant its vast bulk struck the ground, the world seemed to break. The frozen earth buckled and split beneath the dragon's weight, a shockwave rippling outward as if the land itself recoiled in terror.
Wildlings and giants alike were hurled away, flung screaming through the air like broken dolls. Some were spared even the chance to cry out. Tyraxes crushed them outright in its descent, bodies flattened and smeared into the churned mud and snow, flesh and bone ground together until nothing recognizable remained.
To the wildlings who witnessed it, the blood-red dragon was no mere beast of flesh and scale. It was the ancient horror of their oldest tales made real, the earth-overturner, the doom-wyrm said to wake mountains and shatter the ground beneath its coils.
Tyraxes reared back and roared, a sound so deep and violent it seemed to tear at the sky itself.
It came down among them with savage purpose. Its foreclaws swept left and right, each motion harvesting lives. Men died by the dozen beneath those talons, crushed, torn apart, or flung aside like refuse. Compared to other dragons, Tyraxes' wings were shorter, less suited to graceful soaring. Its forelimbs, however, were massive and knotted with muscle, built not for elegance but for slaughter at close quarters. This was a dragon made for war on the ground.
The giants stood no chance.
Their towering forms, each one many times the strength of a grown man, meant nothing before a true dragon. Against such a creature, all living things were equal. Tyraxes advanced with dreadful calm, its hind claws rising and falling in a steady rhythm that bordered on indifference. Each step crushed a giant three or four times a man's height into pulp, ribs snapping like kindling beneath the dragon's weight. Even the smallest movement was lethal. A casual shift of its body sent wildlings and giants alike flying, bones shattered, lives ended in an instant.
This way of fighting belonged to Tyraxes alone.
Other dragons relied on teeth and flame, on snapping jaws and raking talons. Tyraxes was something more terrible. It was a monster of pure muscle and mass. A sweep of its tail carved bloody corridors through the wildling host. A single slash of its claws opened the ground and left nothing standing.
Watching from afar, the Bone-Armor King felt his courage drain away like blood from an open wound.
He was a small man, barely a meter and eighty in height. Any giant among his host could have crushed him without effort. Yet those same giants, whom he had believed unstoppable, were being slaughtered like insects beneath the dragon's feet.
How could anyone fight this?
The answer came unbidden.
Run.
To hell with dragon slayers. To hell with crowns of bone and feather, to hell with being King Beyond the Wall. None of it was worth more than his life.
With shaking hands, the Bone-Armor King tore the bright feathers from his crown and cast them aside. He stripped away anything that marked him as a leader. Abandoning his mount, he forced himself onto a single horse alongside his guards and fled northeast toward the dark line of the forest, surrounded by his elite escort.
As for the rest of the host, there was no thought of honor left among them. Survival was all that mattered.
Others might still cling to desperate hope, but he knew better. There was no defeating dragons such as these.
His guard numbered scarcely one or two hundred men. Amid a battlefield of nearly ten thousand, they were little more than a ripple. Their flight went unnoticed.
Baelon Targaryen's attention was elsewhere. From above, he directed Tyraxes and Sheepstealer with ruthless precision, his focus fixed entirely on the slaughter below.
Even for him, dividing his will between dragons was no small feat.
Cries rose from the wildling ranks, voices breaking with terror.
"I am done. I am going home."
"The South is cursed. I will never come back."
At last, the wildling army broke. Wailing and sobbing, they fled in a ragged mass, streaming after their fleeing king.
Baelon frowned as he saw them scatter. "Sheepstealer," he commanded, "after them."
Mounted upon Sheepstealer's back, Baelon had no intention of letting such prey escape. The ambush had caught the wildlings unprepared and shattered them utterly. Losses were catastrophic. Yet he knew well enough that if they were allowed to regroup and plan, even three dragons would not find it so easy to wreak such devastation again.
The pursuit was merciless but brief.
When at last the fighting ended, Sheepstealer collapsed onto the ground, utterly spent. The impact jarred Baelon in the saddle, nearly throwing him clear. In that moment, the dragon lived up to its name as the Mud Dragon. Its great body sagged like wet clay, limbs sprawled, chest heaving as it dragged air into burning lungs.
Tyraxes, by contrast, still stood like a living engine of war. Steam poured from its body in thick clouds, rising from blood-slick scales and scorched earth alike, a testament to the terrible power it had unleashed.
Grey Ghost fared worse. The right half of its wing sagged unnaturally, warped and sunken, the bones beneath clearly fractured or wrenched from their sockets.
"Your Grace, are you harmed?"
Cregan Stark leaned heavily upon his sword as he forced himself forward, lifting his voice toward Baelon atop the dragon.
"Lord Cregan," Baelon answered, dismounting at once. Relief washed over his face when he saw the man still standing. "Seeing you alive gladdens me more than I can say."
He had feared the worst. Cregan had charged into the wildling ranks with only a few hundred men at his back.
Now fewer than a hundred remained behind him.
"Luck alone," Cregan said, offering a bitter smile. "Without those men, I would be lying dead beneath wildling blades."
Only days before, he had marched north from Winterfell with several hundred chosen warriors. Now scarcely two or three dozen still stood.
"Summon the maesters," Baelon ordered. "Every wounded man is to be treated at once."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Bloodflame Legion," Baelon continued, his voice steady despite his exhaustion, "secure the field and see it cleared."
At last, the strain caught up with him. Weariness seeped into his bones, heavy and unyielding. He was only ten years of age. Prolonged dragonriding and the burden of command had pushed even him to his limits.
The Bloodflame Legion moved at once.
They had suffered little in the fighting, most of their losses coming when giants had forced them into close combat. Against the wildlings, the battle had been absurdly one-sided. Men clad head to heel in plate armor against foes dressed in hides and furs. It had been less a battle than a chastisement.
Cregan watched them work with open admiration and a flicker of envy. With a trained eye, he could see how formidable this force truly was.
"Your Grace, my lord," said another voice. "Please return to the castle and rest. I will see to the field."
The speaker was a tall Northman with frost-pale hair and a hard, weathered face.
"He is the head of House Umber," Cregan explained. "Whitefrost Umber, Lord of Last Hearth."
Baelon nodded. "Very well. Whitefrost, the field is yours."
He truly needed rest.
"And do not waste the bodies," Baelon added calmly. "Set aside what is needed to feed Tyraxes, Sheepstealer, and Grey Ghost. After such flight and battle, they will be hungry."
"At once," Whitefrost replied without hesitation.
From the moment he had seen Baelon descend from the sky upon a dragon's back, his awe had hardened into something close to devotion.
Who would not be moved?
When death stood moments away, and a dragon fell from the Sky to save you, such faith came easily.