Walys Mooton

Walys Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool, led a relief force that retook Rook’s Rest and then tried to destroy Sunfyre. The attack became a costly failure: the dragon killed Walys and many of his men, while Sunfyre himself vanished from the battlefield, leaving the expedition without the victory it had sought.

Lord of Maidenpool

Walys’s intervention came from Maidenpool, where he gathered a hundred knights before setting out with the Crabbs and Brunes of Crackclaw Point and the Celtigars of Claw Isle. The force crossed pine woods and mist-covered hills on its way to Rook’s Rest, arriving so unexpectedly that its garrison was taken by surprise.

After retaking the castle, Walys led his bravest men west to the field of ashes. Their next objective was not simply to secure the stronghold: they meant to put an end to Sunfyre, the dragon left there after the fighting.

The assault on Sunfyre

The attackers first drove away the guards assigned to feed, serve, and protect the dragon. They expected to find Sunfyre near death, but instead encountered him asleep among the bones of sheep. The clash of weapons and horses woke him, and the first spear to strike him roused his fury.

Sunfyre’s torn wing kept him from taking flight, but did not make him helpless. Slick with mud, he writhed among the bones, lashed his tail, and sent golden blasts of flame at the men surrounding him. Three times he rose from the ground, and three times he fell back. The attackers struck him with swords, spears, and axes, yet their wounds only seemed to enrage him further.

Death and disappearance

The dead eventually numbered sixty, and the survivors fled. Walys was among the slain. A fortnight later, his brother Manfryd found him on the field: only charred flesh remained inside his melted armor, crawling with maggots. The same field was strewn with dead men and the burned, bloated bodies of a hundred horses.

But Sunfyre was nowhere to be found. Manfryd found no tracks to show that the dragon had dragged himself away, and the account concludes that Sunfyre must have taken wing again, though no living person knew where he had gone. Walys’s campaign thus ended in a grim reversal: the force had retaken Rook’s Rest, but its attempt to finish the dragon cost its lord and dozens of men, while leaving the wounded beast’s fate uncertain.