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Bloodwind answered Drogon with a howl.
For an instant, many ironborn captains shouted with triumph. The horn was real. Euron had not lied. A dragon had come.
Then Drogon folded his wings and dived toward Nagga's Hill, and triumph became panic.
Men scattered in every direction. Even those who had begged for the Old Way had no wish to be the first sacrifice beneath dragonfire.
Robb looked up at the black dragon and recognized him.
Drogon.
He was far larger than Robb had expected. By all the reports that had reached Westeros, Daenerys's dragons had been alive for little more than a year. Yet Drogon's body already carried a terrible weight and power, closer to the monsters of legend than to the young beasts Robb had imagined.
Daenerys should still have been in Meereen, struggling with the Sons of the Harpy.
So why was Drogon here?
Euron's laughter answered before the dragon did.
"I told you I had seen the world, Stark. I offered a gift to the Mother of Dragons. I told her of the wolf that had killed my brother and hunted kings. She accepted."
The Crow's Eye threw his daggers through the illusions around him.
Robb blocked the real blade once. Then Euron's shadows folded together and split again. Robb read the left shape as the true body, but the real man came from the right.
The mistake cost him a shallow cut across the arm.
Above them, Drogon opened his jaws.
A line of dragonfire tore down toward Bloodwind, with Robb in its path.
Bloodwind curled around him. A sphere of ice and crystal formed in a heartbeat. Green wildfire and red priestly flame had both been tested against Robb's magic before, but dragonfire was something else. The heat bit deeper, faster, hungry enough to eat through layers of ice as soon as they formed.
Drogon swept past instead of hovering. His flame could not stay fixed on one point.
Robb poured more magic into the ice. Steam burst outward. The scorched trench beneath Drogon's line of fire froze white, turning black earth into smoking frost.
When the mist cleared, Euron was gone.
Robb looked once toward the ships and then gave Bloodwind a new order.
The ice direwolf's body changed.
Bones stretched. Forelegs thickened. The line of the spine rose. In a few breaths, Bloodwind stood in a huge, wolf-headed form with arms strong enough to tear ships apart.
Robb formed eight long ice spears.
He did not throw them like a man showing off. He threw them like weapons meant to kill a dragon.
Drogon twisted aside from the first five. The last three shifted in the air as Robb changed their balance with fresh ice and magic. They struck Drogon's body.
Only the tips pierced the scales before melting.
Robb's expression tightened.
The dragon resisted magic too well. Drogon's scales and blood did not fear ice the way mortal flesh did. But where the ice had carried enough force, the body beneath the scales still bled.
High resistance to magic. Lower resistance to true physical impact.
That explained old legends better than any bard's song.
Drogon turned and breathed again.
Robb shifted most of his awareness into Bloodwind.
The giant wolf-headed form raised a huge shield of ice and advanced through the flame. The shield melted layer by layer. Water hissed and steam poured away, but Bloodwind kept walking.
On a distant ridge, Euron and Ramsay watched.
"Why not send the dragon against Theon, Asha, and the fleet?" Ramsay asked. "Burn the ships. End this."
Euron's visible eye did not leave Drogon. "Ironborn should not need a dragon to settle ironborn matters."
The lie was smooth.
In truth, Dragonbinder did not let him command Drogon as a rider would. The horn could summon the beast and mark friend from foe, but control was another matter.
Daenerys had blown Dragonbinder first.
Her dragonlord blood had awakened the bond in a way Euron's could not. The words carved on the horn were true only when the right blood sounded it.
I am Dragonbinder. No mortal man shall sound me and live. Blood for fire, fire for blood.
Daenerys had given Euron ships, a title, and Drogon's help after he brought her news of Bloodwind. Later, in the Great Pyramid, she had blown the horn again before Rhaegal and Viserion and released them from confinement.
Now she was safe with two dragons at her side.
Drogon belonged to her. Euron had borrowed a storm.
On Nagga's Hill, Bloodwind's ice shield finally collapsed.
Drogon beat his wings, trying to rise back into the clouds.
Robb drove a pillar of ice up from the ground.
Bloodwind rode it upward and leaped.
His claws caught Drogon's left leg.
The dragon shrieked.
Several long gashes opened through scale and flesh. Hot blood fell in burning drops across Nagga's bones.
Drogon clawed the air, tore free, and climbed toward the clouds with blood trailing from his leg.
Robb felt Bloodwind's magic reserves tremble close to emptiness. There was not enough left for a killing strike.
Drogon vanished into the grey.
For a long breath, the hill was silent except for burning wood, screaming men, and the sea.
Euron watched the clouds close.
Ramsay's voice went thin. "Run."
This time, the Crow's Eye agreed.
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