Sheepstealer and Nettles’s Encounter in the Vale

Sheepstealer and Nettles’s Encounter in the Vale took place during Ser Robert Rowan’s difficult march through the Vale’s high mountain passes. The encounter cost lives and ended the last known recorded sighting of Sheepstealer and Nettles in Westeros, while later mountain stories preserved their presence as a legend of a fire witch and her dragon.

Background and Approach

Ser Robert Rowan’s host struggled through deep snow in the higher passes, where the conditions slowed its advance and mountain clans repeatedly attacked its baggage train. Cold, hunger, and these assaults were already taking a toll when the column reached a stretch of road from which a cave mouth could be seen high on the slope. A dozen men climbed up, hoping the cave might shelter them from the wind. Bones lay scattered at its entrance, but the men continued inside and roused the dragon.

The Encounter

The dragon was Sheepstealer, a brown dragon living in the mountains. Sixteen men died in the ensuing fight, and sixty more were burned. Sheepstealer then took flight deeper into the mountains with Nettles clinging to its back. The episode joins the practical dangers of the march—weather, hunger, and attacks along the route—to a threat the soldiers had not expected to find in the cave.

Aftermath and Memory

The encounter was the last known sighting of Sheepstealer and Nettles recorded in the annals of Westeros. That record ends with their flight into the mountains, not with a reported death or capture. The distinction between the written account and local tradition leaves their later fate unconfirmed: mountain clans continued to tell of a fire witch who had lived in a hidden vale far from roads and villages, and of a dragon associated with her.