Night Assault on Tumbleton

The Second Battle of Tumbleton was a night assault led by Addam Velaryon against the royalist army encamped around Tumbleton. It broke the camp’s cohesion, killed Prince Daeron Targaryen and Hugh Hammer, and ended with the deaths of Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Tessarion. Yet Addam’s forces could not breach the town’s walls. The battle was therefore at once a major battlefield reversal and an incomplete victory: the attackers devastated the army outside Tumbleton, but the royalist survivors remained behind its gates.

Background and the Attack

Addam had set out to prove that a man of bastard birth need not betray the queen’s cause. After the treasons at Tumbleton had stained him by association, he moved through the Riverlands, gathering support from lords and communities that had already suffered in the war. His determination and persuasive manner helped him assemble nearly four thousand men. Among them were Benjicot Blackwood, the twelve-year-old Lord of Raventree; Sabitha Frey, Lady of the Twins; and depleted contingents raised by Lords Stanton Piper, Joseth Smallwood, Derrick Darry, and Lyonel Deddings. Hugo Vance arrived with three hundred men and Black Trombo’s Myrish sellswords.

The most important change in the coalition came when Ser Elmo Tully finally called the banners of House Tully for the queen, despite the opposition of his bedridden grandsire, Lord Grover. Seasmoke’s appearance at Riverrun had helped persuade him. The decision brought the reluctant Riverlands power into Addam’s campaign and showed how the presence of a dragon could turn hesitation into action.

The royalist host surrounding Tumbleton was larger, but its numbers concealed serious weaknesses. It had remained in one place too long: drunkenness was common in the camp, disease had taken hold, and Prince Daeron’s death left the army without a settled leader. Lords who might have assumed command were divided by rivalries. On the night the Caltrops planned to strike at Hugh Hammer and Ulf White, the attackers instead found the camps burning and the army caught unprepared. Addam’s assault came from the north and west, with Seasmoke striking from above. Many of the royalist soldiers were roused from their tents or were still trying to prepare themselves when the attackers reached them.

The Camp and the Deaths of the Betrayers

Seasmoke’s flames spread through the encampment, setting a hundred tents alight, including the pavilions of Ser Hobert Hightower, Lord Unwin Peake, and Prince Daeron. The town itself was also caught in the attack: buildings that had escaped the earlier destruction were burned. Daeron was asleep in his pavilion when the assault began. The accounts disagree about how he died. One says Black Trombo killed him after he emerged with his nightclothes on fire; another substitutes an unidentified man-at-arms and a sword; a third, preferred by Grand Maester Munkun’s True Telling, says Daeron never escaped his collapsing, burning pavilion. The record preserves these alternatives rather than resolving them.

Ulf White was in Tumbleton, asleep after drinking at the Bawdy Badger, and could not be woken. Hugh Hammer, who was also inside the town, responded more quickly, asking for his armor, horse, and hammer so he could reach Vermithor. Jon Roxton was already in the yard. He confronted Hugh, addressed him as though he were already dead, and killed him with Orphan-Maker. Hugh’s men then attacked Jon; he killed three before they killed him. The episode ended the lives of both men, but the battle’s result was not decided by this encounter alone: the larger royalist army was already being thrown into disorder by the surprise assault and the fires spreading through its camp.

The Dragons’ Battle

The four dragons on the field were without riders except for Seasmoke, whose rider, Addam, was fighting to destroy the dragons of the Two Betrayers. The young Seasmoke and Tessarion first fought in the air without closing decisively. They circled, feinted, and exchanged bursts of flame; Tessarion once disappeared into cloud and returned behind Seasmoke, scorching his tail. Their contest, watched by people on Tumbleton’s rooftops, was described as resembling a dance, an image that sharply contrasts with the killing that followed.

The struggle changed when Vermithor rose. Seasmoke struck him from above and forced him down into the mud. The two older, heavier dragon’s strength threatened to overwhelm Seasmoke, until Tessarion also fell into the fight. The surviving account cannot establish why Tessarion joined or which dragon, if any, she meant to aid. It leaves open whether a riderless dragon could distinguish friend from enemy, and whether a dragon’s bond with its rider shaped its loyalties. What it does establish is the outcome: Vermithor killed Seasmoke, then collapsed and died when his damaged wings could not lift him. Tessarion survived longer, but after repeated failed attempts to take flight, she was killed by arrows on Benjicot Blackwood’s order. The three dragons that died made this battle an exceptional loss even within a war fought by dragonriders.

Outcome and Aftermath

By dusk the fighting had stopped. The Riverlanders had lost fewer than a hundred men, while killing more than a thousand men from Oldtown and the Reach. They also killed Prince Daeron, destroyed or captured almost all the royalist wagons, fodder, and provisions, took three-quarters of the army’s warhorses, and left the enemy without two of its dragons as well as Vermithor’s opponent, Tessarion. The scale of these losses did not give Addam the town. Tumbleton’s walls remained intact, and the royalists who survived withdrew behind them and shut the gates. Without siege equipment or dragons, Addam’s forces could not force an entrance.

The Riverlords withdrew from the battlefield at moonrise. Benjicot Blackwood carried Addam’s body away after finding him dead beside Seasmoke. Addam’s bones remained at Raventree Hall for eight years. In 138 AC, his brother Alyn had them returned to Driftmark and buried in Hull, Addam’s birthplace. His tomb bears the word LOYAL, supported by carvings of a seahorse and a mouse: a later memorial that makes explicit the allegiance Addam had tried to prove in battle.

The following morning, the royalists looking out from Tumbleton found the attackers gone and the dead scattered around the town. Silverwing was the only dragon left alive. She had circled above the battlefield during the fighting and descended after dark among the dead dragons. A later singers’ tale says she tried three times to lift Vermithor’s wing with her nose, though the account treats this as likely fable. In the morning she remained on the field, feeding among the burned remains. The image of Silverwing among her dead kin closes the battle not with a triumphal flight but with survival amid the wreckage.