The City Squares.
The mercenary captains strode out of the inner fortress.
Their men were scattered across the plaza, waiting in a state of high anxiety as they watched the three dragons ravage the city of four hundred thousand people.
Goro stopped abruptly and turned to his subordinates.
"Boss, are we really going to the walls?" the one-eyed vice-captain asked.
"Those are dragons up there."
Goro looked up at the sky. Three dragons soared through the clouds, and the thick black smoke rising from the harbor already blotted out half the horizon.
"Go there and die?" Goro sneered.
"No. We're going to get rich."
He lowered his voice. "Listen, Tyrosh is finished. But the Targaryens need someone to open the gates for them. If we cause chaos inside now, they'll pay us a premium once the city falls. Between two sets of pay and whatever we can loot, we'll be set for life."
The eyes of his men lit up. They looked at Goro with newfound respect, did the boss already have a line to the Targaryens?
"What about the other companies?"
"I'll handle them," Goro said.
"Bloodbeard Maros isn't an idiot, and Mardo is a smart man. As for the Bronze Shields... if their captain doesn't know what's good for him, we'll kill him. The smaller companies don't matter; they can listen to us or die on their own."
Goro leaned in.
"Move now. Second and Third Battalions, head to the armory and backstab the guards. Fourth Battalion, hit the wealthy district, cause as much chaos as possible. When the wall defenders are forced to split up to suppress the riots, I'll personally lead First Battalion to open the West Gate."
"But boss..." the leaders of the Second and Third looked hesitant.
"The looting..."
"Don't worry," Goro assured them.
"I'll have men supervising the Fourth's haul. Afterward, we split everything equally."
With that, they nodded. One man asked, "How will the Targaryens know we're on their side?"
Goro pulled a roll of white cloth from his tunic.
"Tie this around both arms. The Targaryens said anyone wearing this is one of theirs."
The outlaws didn't hesitate further. They only recognized one god: gold.
Within the hour, two-thirds of the mercenary companies in Tyrosh had switched sides.
Instead of reinforcing the walls, they melted into the city streets, waiting for the signal.
In the inner fortress, five hundred heavy black-armored cavalrymen stood in formation.
Their commander, Caspar, peered through the slit of his visor.
A veteran of seventeen wars, he felt his skin crawl. The three dragons had been circling overhead for far too long.
The gates opened, and Archon Adrio rushed in personally.
"Caspar! The walls are breaking! Sally forth! Exit through the West Gate and crush them on the beachhead!"
Caspar signaled. Five hundred horses thundered out of the fortress and into the wide streets.
The sound of hooves was like a rolling storm, rattling the windows of houses where terrified citizens hid.
They had only cleared two streets when the attack came.
From directly above.
Caraxes plummeted in a vertical dive, snapping his wings open only a hundred feet from the ground to skim the rooftops.
Then, he breathed.
It wasn't a spray of fire, but a concentrated pillar of dark red flame that incinerated the middle of the cavalry column.
The first rider hit was carbonized instantly, horse and all.
The extreme heat turned the man to ash before the armor even began to melt; a second later, the steel liquified like wax.
The fire surged forward. Second, third, fourth...
Commander Caspar looked back and saw a vision of hell. A corridor of fire had been torn through his formation, flanked by molten plate and charred bone.
"Scatter! Scatter!" he shrieked.
Too late.
Syrax cut in from the left, her golden dragonfire sweeping the eastern side of the plaza. Horses panicked, throwing riders who were then engulfed in flame.
Meleys, the Red Queen, dove from the right. Her massive talons snatched two riders, horses included, into the air, before she shook them like toys and dropped them from fifty feet.
They hit the stone plaza with the sound of shattering metal and bone.
"Retreat! Back to the fortress!" Caspar cried, realizing this wasn't a battle.
But turning five hundred heavy cavalry in a narrow street was a catastrophe. Horses collided, riders were thrown and trampled.
One young rider had his visor knocked off just as a panicked horse slammed into his mount.
He fell to the stones, and a hoof crushed his chest, driving his ribs into his lungs. He coughed blood and died in the dirt.
Above, the three dragons began the hunt.
Meleys targeted the rear of the column, her fire killing dozens of jammed-together knights. Syrax flew low, the wind from her wings ripping tiles from roofs to pelt the riders.
Caraxes was the most brutal; he snapped up a knight in his jaws, the armor crunching like a tin can filled with blood.
In ten minutes, the finest elite force in Tyrosh had been reduced to a smoldering heap of flesh and iron.
Caspar ordered the survivors to dismount and hide.
He ducked into a blacksmith's shop, his stomach churning as he watched the one-sided slaughter through a window.
The West Gate.
As the cavalry died, Goro gave the signal in the city.
"Now!"
The "Iron Hand" mercenaries moved first. They began to loot, kill, and burn. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky, a signal to the Black fleet and the other mercenaries.
Bloodbeard Maros's men hit the wealthy district, smashing into jewelry shops and spice warehouses. The Street of Goldsmiths became a slaughterhouse within thirty minutes.
The guards on the walls saw the smoke.
"Captain! The city is on fire!" a soldier shouted to Rosso.
Rosso looked back. Smoke rose from the armory; screams echoed from the villas.
"Mercenaries..." he snarled.
"The bastards betrayed us!"
"Captain! Mercenaries are attacking the West Gate from the inside! The gate guards can't hold!"
Rosso felt the world go dark. The Black army was swarming the walls, mercenaries were rioting in the city, and the dragons were invincible in the sky.
If the gate fell from the inside, the height of the walls meant nothing.
The panic spread to the common soldiers.
"My family is in there..."
"My wife works at the granary..."
The defenders began to break. They threw down their weapons, stripped their armor, and scrambled down the walls, fleeing like frightened sheep to protect their homes.
At the West Gate, Goro led the charge. The fifty Tyroshi defenders were overwhelmed by two hundred mercenaries.
The gate captain shrieked for order until an axe buried itself in his neck.
He looked back to see a mercenary with a white cloth around his arm grinning as he yanked the blade free.
Creak...
The gate opened.
Outside, the main Black army had been waiting. As the West Gate swung wide, the Tyroshi defense collapsed entirely.
"The city is taken!"
"Run!"
The defenders vanished. They were no longer an army; they were just men trying to survive. Rosso watched his men vanish past him, he dropped his sword in a gesture of total defeat.
The Black army poured into the city like a tide. They met no further organized resistance.
Goro stood by the gate, his white armbands fluttering in the wind. A Black officer cantered up to him.
"One of ours?"
Goro nodded. The officer tossed him a heavy purse of gold.
"Well done. Here is your bonus."
The Archon's Hall.
An hour later, the bronze gates of the inner fortress opened. Olvar, the acting commander, led twenty officers out unarmed to surrender to Daemon Targaryen.
By twilight, Daemon and Rhaenyra entered the Archon's hall.
They found Archon Adrio dead by his own hand.
The three-hundred-pound man sat on his throne in full regalia, an empty cup in his hand and black blood seeping from his lips.
"He died with some dignity, at least," Daemon remarked.
Rhaenyra stared at the corpse. "What are our losses?"
"About eight hundred," Daemon replied.
"The defenders lost thousands. The civilians... perhaps tens of thousands. The fires are still burning."
Tens of thousands of lives for one city. But they were enemy lives, and to the conquerors, the price was worth it.
The dragons had arrived, and before them, men were nothing but dust.
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