Daemona rode behind her father, who rode up further along with quite a few of the rest of the high-ranking members of the army, who chatted amongst themselves.
Behind them, several armies were on the march.
There were their own golden soldiers, with their flintlock, knights in shining armor, and elephants decked out in plated steel carrying cannons and towers on their backs.
There was the company of the Ebon prince, who composed the medieval English wet dream, with soldiers in brigandine and plate, trained and armed in both the use of melee and their terrifying bows.
Their flag was a crown of plumed feathers in many colors, with a green background.
There were the company of the Lord of Battles, a group that seemed just as professional as theirs if way smaller. Decked out with a flag that looked like the flag of the Spanish empire, only in the colors of Great Britain, every man in the company, whether cavalry, crossbowman or foot soldier, was armed and armored to the teeth in steel.
They also all wore that strange, thorny cross on a surcoat over the armor. Unlike several of the group, they were a truly multi-ethnical bunch, being composed of men from all over Essos and Westeros.
Everyone else seemed to have a commander core of people with a certain background like The Golden Company had Westerosi, the Jolly Fellows had mystics, or Saan's pirate band had Lyseni.
Not so, with the Red Crosses.
Then there were the army of spotted Tom the Butcher… Who was what she imagined Roose Bolton would have been like if he was an Essossi mercenary company, complete with a much more charming and warm son and heir.
The Spotted men marched under a banner of blue with holes deliberately cut out of the flags to give the appearance of holes.
Like the Golden Company, their leader core was mostly composed of Westerosi, but the common men were made up of Essossi of all stripes.
They were well decked out in a standardized brigandine, and they kept a good order as they marched, but there was no denying that there was something… Off about the spotted men.
Having seen the aftermath of how these men fought now, the thing that came to mind was that these men reminded her of nothing so much as the image she had always gotten from Bolton men. Brutal, cruel, but also very efficient.
They were FAR and away the most brutal of the armies gathered here.
Bad times were ahead for Myr.
Then there was the Jolly Fellows.
They were… An odd bunch to say the least.
For one thing, their top leaders all seemed to be mystics of some form or another.
Nine Eyes were the oddest of the bunch, but he was also not the only one. There was one who seemed to be a shadowbinder from Asshai, one who definitely was using a glamor of some kind for the person in question never seemed the same any of times she saw them, a maegi from Lhazareen, and finally a freaking skinchanger from the North.
With that kind of leadership, one would expect the Jolly Fellows to be full of weird, occult stuff.
They were not. Instead, they were… Just regular Sellswords from all over the land.
Their armor wasn't particularly different than the spotted Men, and though professional, they weren't quite up to the standards of the rest of the armies.
She had seen them fight though. They might not have the sheer discipline of the rest of the armies, but they were a ferocious bunch nonetheless.
They also had a peculiar flag, one which looked kinda like the Martell flag in Dorne, only the sun was golden, and the background blood red.
"So your grace, where do you think we should land?"
She was brought out of her thoughts by the question, asked by a man who in another time might have worn the symbol of a horse with bat wings, breathing a stream of fire.
As it was, Haegon Bittersteel instead wore the regular golden surcoat of the company, along with 3 golden bands around his armored arm.
The 18-year-old had moved from her father's side to trot his horse alongside hers.
She almost rolled her eyes at the guy but instead thought better of it.
Haegon Bittersteel would most likely become rather important in the future. Alienating him would not help her in any way.
"I assume you're referring to the landing in Westeros? And not the one we're planning for Tyrosh?"
"Of course! This diversion in the eastern lands is but a small milepost, quickly left behind, while we prepare for the homecoming."
It was strange how he talked about coming home to Westeros, despite the fact that neither he nor his parents had ever seen it.
Like Maelys, Haegon had been born and raised in Essos. The grandson of Aegor Bittersteel, the founder of the company.
That, along with a blood connection to the Blackfyre through Aegors wife(Who was a. Daughter of Daemon Blackfyre and Aegors own niece) meant that he had a place in the inner echelons of the Golden Company.
She might have liked the man, if not for the incredibly obvious way he was desperate to court her.
With the rest of the lords near the top, there was a level of separation between them, and the sons they wanted her to marry. It was quite a bit easier to be around them when she could think of them in a more fatherly way.
Not so with Bittersteel.
The fact he was 4 years her senior, and she hadn't even reached adulthood, yet he was rather blatant with courtship was also a very huge reason she wasn't interested in him.
But the fact he had been promised Storm's End by Maelys, along with overlordship over the Stormlands, meant she couldn't just brush him off either.
"Your father wants to smash right into the Stormlands then move from castle to castle up along the Rainwood. But, would It not be more grand if we sailed straight on to King's landing? Took the capital in one blow, and began the conquest of the land from there?"
"Yes, it would. It would most certainly make for the best kind of song. A ballad for the ages. Assuming we weren't blown to the winds and ended up as a bunch of smaller armies scattered along the coast of the Stormlands and the Crownlands."
"There is always risk in warfare your grace. Sometimes you have to take a risk or two to get what you want out of this cruel world."
"Yes… Like Daemon the second. He certainly took a big risk, and bet it all."
Bittersteel chuckled.
"Please your grace, landing and taking the capital in one blow isn't nearly as risky, nor as insane, as that plan was, and you know it."
"Regardless my lord… I cannot overrule my father's decisions. And even if I could, I agree with him. We should focus on securing the southern Stormlands, in particular, Storm's end."
"Yes… Storms end…"
He glanced over at the nearest War elephant carrying their siege equipment on it's back.
"Do forgive me if I question the effectiveness of your marvelous Dragons… And don't take this the wrong way, your grace… They truly are magnificent and destructive… But… I think they will make much of a difference in taking Storm's End. It's walls are by all accounts indestructible."
"Yes, they are. My guess is that they would be impossible to break by any means, short ripping the ground under them asunder. Luckily for us, there is one, singular weak spot in the fortress. It's gates."
"I suppose… Though if it was that easy to break with siege equipment, you'd think someone would have done it by now."
"We'll see when we get there. Worst case scenario, we'll have to create a dragon to lobby projectiles over the walls to kill the defenders that way."
Haegon was about to say something, but instead, he shut up, as they spotted something in the distance.
That something was city walls.
There were just over a dozen different cities in the disputed lands. And in less than a month, they had conquered every single one of them, and brought them, and the resources they had to offer, into the fold. All of them, except one.
Tyroshi landing.
Despite it's name, the city had very little in common with King's landing.
Being positioned on the very northwestern part of the disputed lands, the fortress city of Tyroshi Landing was the spot where the Tyroshi would send any offensive directly from Tyrosh itself that lay just over the water from it.
If you wanted to conquer Tyrosh, then this city was the logical base to use for a staging platform.
It was also, really heavily defended, with walls not any smaller in height than King's Landing, and a strong garrison.
Most of the cities that the band of Nine had faced so far had surrendered very quickly in the face of the overwhelming force they had to bring to bear.
A few had chosen to resist, and not a single one of the armies had shown any mercy afterwards.
This city, however, would not surrender.
If it did, then the path to bringing down Tyrosh would lay wide open, and everyone of the soldiers defending it knew it.
It would mean a siege while they peppered the walls with cannons, then an assault. And then… A sack of the kind only reserved for especially resisting cities.
The kind Rome would have gotten had it ever been taken by the power of Carthage.
Tyroshi Landing was not important for the Silvertongue's future kingdom, and as such, he had given full permission for his allies to "Do as you please with it.".
Most of the other resisting cities had lots and lots of infrastructure and had thus received only "Light" sacks.
This poor city, however, only served a single purpose, and that was to allow the Tyroshi to keep an ironclad hold over the parts of the disputed lands that lay just by Tyrosh.
It had no large factories, or glassmakers, or anything other than being a place where Fishers and farmers came to trade with the home city.
Anything they destroyed could easily be rebuilt later, with no economic consequence. Except the 50 000 lives inside the walls.
This was gonna be a depressing affair.
I
The lady of the waves truly had a strange sense of humor.
Samarro Saan had long ago accepted that his goddess loved to toy with the fates of men as she pleased, and who was he to judge her for that? He quite enjoyed doing so himself.
In this case, the waves had brought him and his old enemy Silvertongue together, and the two of them, who had once fought like lions on the waves, had found themselves in a shared boat.
The greatest men of their respective cities, both forced to flee their homes in exile for their lives by the machinations of lesser, and more jealous men.
In earlier days, the two of them had done all they could to break the other. The old veteran of Lys, and the young upstart from Tyrosh.
Oh, how they had sung on the waves. Those battles had been some of the most cherished moments of his life.
And here they were, almost over a decade afterwards, united together in crushing their own homes and destroying the corrupted institutions of republics.
Outside the walls, the armies had besieged the old city of Tyroshi landing.
Countless Lyseni had tried to take this city before, and none had ever decisively succeeded. Something always went wrong, or the Tyroshi managed to lift the siege, either on land or sea.
Not today.
Today, the most powerful mercenary companies in Westeros had gathered to put the old city that had once given him so much trouble under the tightest land blockade it had ever suffered, while here out on the ocean, he and the old Mother(Another old foe turned into a friend and comrade in arms) had bestd and captured half a hundred ships from the Tyroshi fleet.
There was nothing to save this city from what was about to happen. And as if to illustrate that point, in the distance, loud bangs began to sound.
The sound of Dragons.
He grinned and looked up on the banner he sailed under. His fair lady with her long, golden hair, her illustrious naked Visage that showed how all women should long to be, and the confident blue eyes, the same color as the blue her Visage was sewn upon.
Yes, the lady of the waves had quite the sense of humor.
Over the waters not far from his own beloved Waveblessed, was The flagship of the woman who dreamed of royal ambition over the waves, just like he and Adarys.
The Old Mother flew a hilarious banner of a white skull, crowned in the golden laurel crown that was the style of Valyria of old, on a turquoise background.
That she, a pirate who aspired to be a legitimate queen, didn't see the irony in her choice of flag, just made the whole thing even more hilarious.
Not nearly as much as Fossaway's banner though.
He had, in a stunning example of hubris, decided to take for his personal flag an old War banner of the Valyrian freehold, and then plop a red apple beneath the dragon and the laurel. Whatever else, it did look rather nice against the gold, red, and black of the background, laurel, and dragon respectively.
It was either the move of someone with Supreme confidence in himself and his destiny or someone who aimed too high and would soon come crashing down.
Though maybe he was not one to talk either. Many had tried to topple the fair republic of Lys, and yet the institutions that had led to the downfall of so many promising young souls had endured through the centuries.
It was, a real possibility that both their upcoming reigns would come crashing down, leaving nothing but a short page in a history book somewhere.
But hey, at least it would make for an interesting time.
