Hugh Hammer
A blacksmith's bastard of Driftmark with dragonseed silver under the soot — big as the Breakbones, strong as his hammer, and owed back pay by the crown, as he mentions.
The fuller tale
A blacksmith's bastard from Driftmark, Hugh Hammer carries dragonseed silver hair under a life's worth of forge-soot — a big, strong man with a legitimate if unacknowledged claim to Targaryen blood, and a very specific grievance about back pay the crown owes him that he is not shy about mentioning at every available opportunity.
When the black council's desperate Sowing opens dragon-claiming to anyone plausible, Hugh's size and strength and blood combine to win him one of the war's great prizes — Vermithor, the Bronze Fury, once the mount of the Old King himself and among the largest and most dangerous dragons ever to answer to a rider.
The page and the screen
The show has not yet reached the dragonseed campaigns where Hugh's story unfolds; Fire & Blood covers his rise and betrayal in considerably more military and political detail than the series has had occasion to dramatize.
In the show, season by season
Season Two. In The Red Sowing — A smith who asked the crown for back pay now rides the Bronze Fury.
In the books
Fire & Blood — The Dance of the Dragons. In The Fall of the Dragons — A crown dreamed on a blacksmith's brow — briefly.
Where they stand, season by season
Mentioned in the chronicle
- Hugh Hammer, a blacksmith's bastard, masters Vermithor, the Bronze Fury — second only to Vhagar; Ulf the White stumbles drunk onto Silverwing. (S2·E7)
- The queen's arithmetic: the Red Sowing gives dragons to bastards and boasters — Hugh Hammer on Vermithor, Ulf White on Silverwing, Addam of Hull on Seasmoke — and the sky belongs to the blacks. The price is paid in the Gullet, where the Triarchy's ninety ships break the blockade and Prince Jacaerys falls with Vermax into the sea. But King's Landing cannot be held against six dragons: the gates open, Rhaenyra takes her father's throne — and the Hightower host coming up the roseroad meets betrayal at Tumbleton, where the Two Betrayers burn the town they were sworn to. (F&B 5)
Their fate — if death has found them, it is written here. Open at your peril.
The books: Knifed at Tumbleton before his crown arrived (F&B, ch. 7)
The blacksmith's bastard rode Vermithor, turned his cloak at Tumbleton, and began dreaming of a crown — smiths had worn them before, he noted. Hard Hugh died with a knife in him at Second Tumbleton, his crown still at the forge.
The series has not yet reached this stage of the war; Hugh Hammer's fate remains ahead of the current seasons.
Fire & Blood has him ride Vermithor to real prominence before turning his cloak at Tumbleton, growing openly ambitious about the crown he believes his new dragon and his Targaryen blood entitle him to — smiths have worn crowns before, he is recorded as observing. He is knifed at Second Tumbleton before that crown ever reaches him, one betrayal among several that collapse the greens' southern campaign into chaos.