Sheepstealer

Sheepstealer hatched at Dragonstone while the Old King was still young, and stayed on the island's far side, away from the castle and its people. He hunted between Sharp Point and the Wendwater, and though he rarely touched shepherds, he would carry off the odd sheepdog that crossed his path.

No one claimed him as a hatchling, and the years without a rider made him warier still, less willing to bear a man's presence, until he became one of the wild dragons living on the fringes of Dragonstone's court.

By every account he was an ugly animal, mud-brown and unremarkable next to other dragons. He would not pick a fight with people unless provoked, but he had a name for cruelty and foul moods, and a particular weakness for lamb — which is how he came by his name.

With the Dance of the Dragons already declared, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon set out to find riders for the loose dragons of Dragonstone. Sheepstealer killed more dragonseeds than the other two wild dragons combined.

Alyn Velaryon tried and took a blast of flame for his trouble; his brother Addam reached him in time on Seasmoke and pulled him clear. Denys, who claimed descent from King Maegor, lost an arm in the attempt, and Cannibal himself drove Sheepstealer off before devouring Denys and the sons who had come to his aid.

In the end it was a sixteen-year-old girl, Nettles, who won the animal over — not with force or chains, but with a sheep every dawn, until the dragon learned to wait for her.

Nettles and Sheepstealer went into battle together for the first time at the Battle of the Gullet, alongside the rest of the newly tamed riders of Dragonstone's dragonseeds.

When King's Landing fell to the Blacks, Sheepstealer was one of the dragons that touched down on Visenya's Hill, already inside the conquered city.

Prince Daemon Targaryen decided to face down Vhagar's rider, and flew Caraxes into the Riverlands with Nettles and Sheepstealer at his side: only two dragons together, he judged, could match the oldest and largest of them all.

They made their base at Maidenpool, riding out each dawn to search the sky for the enemy.

The plan collapsed with the betrayals at Bitterbridge. Queen Rhaenyra, gripped by suspicion, accused Nettles of treason; Lord Manfryd Mooton refused the order to arrest her and warned Daemon and the girl in time. At dawn the next day Nettles mounted Sheepstealer and flew toward Crab's Bay. She did not come back.

After the war, it was said that Nettles and her dragon had gone to ground at Broken Claw Point or in the Mountains of the Moon, though no one ever confirmed it.

In 135 AC, Ser Robert Rowan led a royal army through the Mountains of the Moon toward the Vale, in support of Ser Joffrey Arryn's claim to the lordship. His men took shelter in a cave and ran into Sheepstealer: sixteen died and some fifty more were wounded. Nettles was riding the beast when they vanished into the mountains, never to be seen again.

Later tales from those parts told of a fire witch hidden in a secret valley, worshipped by a clan whose young had to bring her an offering and come back burned. Some see in that story the root of the Burned Men's custom of giving the fire a piece of their own bodies to prove their worth.