The cheers of victory still echoed in King's Landing when the first grim tidings from Dorne arrived.
From the shadowed alleys of Sunspear, Dornishmen had surged forth like a tide. In a single night, Lord Jon Rosby was overwhelmed. Hauled before Princess Meria Martell — returned from her hiding place — the Warden of the Sands was given no mercy.
Atop the Spear Tower, they cast him down.His broken body lay crumpled below, a stark sign of the rebellion now begun.
In the Red Keep, the news fell like a hammer.
King Aegon's jaw clenched as the raven's message was read aloud.Rhaenys's face was set in grim fury.Visenya's purple eyes burned cold.
"We took the castle," said Queen Visenya, voice like steel. "We never took the realm."
And Dorne — unbowed, unbent, unbroken — was rising.
In 5 AC, Aegon commanded immediate retribution.
Lord Harlan Tyrell, still mustered at Hellholt, was ordered to march at once upon Vaith and Sunspear. The lords of the Reach — proud and eager to avenge the insult — spurred their banners through the desert.
They found no enemy in the open.
The Dornish struck from the rocks, from the sands, from hidden caves. Raiders set fires behind the marching host. Wells were poisoned. Scouts disappeared into the endless dunes and never returned.
One by one, the Reach's proud banners were swallowed by the desert.
Lord Harlan's army — twenty thousand strong — vanished as if the sun had consumed them. Only a scattering of broken survivors stumbled back to Hellholt, sun-maddened and raving.
Elsewhere, chaos reigned.
Targaryen garrisons, once planted proudly across Dorne, were overrun.Their knights, left to hold strongholds and river crossings, were betrayed by false allies and ambushed in the night.
Those captured met crueler fates.At the Wyl, Blackmont, and Skyreach, the Dornish proved merciless.Sword hands were hewn off, eyes gouged out, tongues torn free.
And at Wyl, the worst of it:Lord Orys Baratheon, the King's Hand, still shackled from his disastrous campaign up the Boneway, languished as a prize in the dungeons of the Wyl of Wyl, a cruel lord called the Widow-lover for his viciousness.
It was not until 7 AC — after two years of blood, humiliation, and futile vengeance — that a ransom was agreed.
One golden dragon for every pound a man weighed.A fortune for each of the lords held captive.
King Aegon, though bitter at the price, paid it.Orys Baratheon and the others were set free.
But vengeance had been exacted nonetheless:When Orys and the other lords rode back into King's Landing, there was horror in the streets.
Their sword hands were gone, hacked away with rough axes.They would never fight again.
Before the Iron Throne, Lord Orys Baratheon knelt — a broken man, stripped of the hand that had once gripped his sword, Durrandon's hammer, and the realm itself.
"I cannot serve you as Hand," Orys said bitterly. "Nor can I avenge the wrongs done to me."
King Aegon would not hear of it at first, but Orys was steadfast.He laid down his chain of office, and retired from court life altogether, retreating to his seat at Storm's End, nursing his hatred and grief.
Thus ended the first, disastrous phase of the Dornish war —Not with fire and blood, but with bitterness, mutilation, and a broken hand.