dread, fearing that King Aegon’s dragons would arrive before the night was out, with an army close behind them. No longer believing that the queen could protect them, they looked to their Shepherd for salvation.
But that prophet answered, “When the dragons come, your flesh will burn and blister and turn to ash. Your wives will dance in gowns of fire, shrieking as they burn, lewd and naked underneath the flames. And you shall see your little children weeping, weeping till their eyes do melt and slide like jelly down their faces, till their pink flesh falls black and crackling from their bones. The Stranger comes, he comes, he comes, to scourge us for our sins. Prayers cannot stay his wroth, no more than tears can quench the flame of dragons. Only blood can do that. Your blood, my blood, their blood.” Then he raised his right arm and jabbed the stump of his missing hand at Rhaenys’s Hill behind him, at the Dragonpit black against the stars. “There the demons dwell, up there. Fire and blood, blood and fire. This is their city. If you would make it yours, first must you destroy them. If you would cleanse yourself of sin, first must you bathe in dragon’s blood. For only blood can quench the fires of hell.”
From ten thousand throats a cry went up. “Kill them! Kill them!” And like some vast beast with ten thousand legs, the lambs began to move, shoving and pushing, waving their torches, brandishing swords and knives and other, cruder weapons, walking and running through the streets and alleys toward the Dragonpit. Some thought better and slipped away to home, but for every man who left, three more appeared to join these dragonslayers. By the time they reached the Hill of Rhaenys, their numbers had doubled.
High atop Aegon’s High Hill across the city, Mushroom watched the attack unfold from the roof of Maegor’s Holdfast with the queen, her sons, and members of her court. The night was black and overcast, the torches so numerous that “it was as if all the stars had come down from the sky to storm the Dragonpit,” the fool says.
As soon as word had reached her that the Shepherd’s savage flock was on the march, Rhaenyra sent riders to Ser Balon at the Old Gate and Ser Garth at the Dragon Gate, commanding them to disperse the lambs, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragons…but with the city in such turmoil, it was far from certain that the riders had won through. Even if they had, what loyal gold cloaks remained were too few to have any hope of success. “Her Grace had as well commanded them to halt the Blackwater in its flow,” says Mushroom. When Prince Joffrey pleaded with his mother to let him ride forth with their own knights and those from White Harbor, the queen refused. “If they take that hill, this one will be next,” she said. “We will need every sword here to defend the castle.”
“They will kill the dragons,” Prince Joffrey said, anguished.
“Or the dragons will kill them,” his mother said, unmoved. “Let them burn. The realm will not long miss them.”
“Mother, what if they kill Tyraxes?” the young prince said.
The queen did not believe it. “They are vermin. Drunks and fools and gutter rats. One taste of dragonflame and they will run.”
At that the fool Mushroom spoke up, saying, “Drunks they may be, but a drunken man knows not fear. Fools, aye, but a fool can kill a king. Rats, that too, but a thousand rats can bring down a bear. I saw it happen once, down there in Flea Bottom.” This time Queen Rhaenyra did not laugh. Bidding her fool to hold his tongue or lose it, Her Grace turned back to the parapets. Only Mushroom saw Prince Joffrey go sulking off (if his Testimony can be believed)…and Mushroom had been told to hold his tongue.
It was only when the watchers on the roof heard Syrax roar that the prince’s absence was noted. That was too late. “No,” the queen was heard to say, “I forbid it, I forbid it,” but even as she spoke her dragon flapped up from the yard, perched for half a heartbeat atop the castle battlements, then launched herself into the night with the queen’s son clinging to her back, a sword in hand. “After him!” Rhaenyra shouted. “All of you, every man, every boy, to horse, to horse, go after him. Bring him