When the Sun Rises in the East
A/N: So yeah...I warned you about the sporadic bit, truly sorry. I do love reviews, and I take them to heart, hence this Tyrion chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 6: Tyrion
The wagon jumped, sending the sharpened quill tip into his thumb and setting Tyrion to cursing. The roads had changed from muddied ruts to paved cobbles once they had passed Bhorash, but long stretches were grossly unkempt. Desperate villagers from remote enclaves had needed to shore up and reinforce their collapsing homesteads, and many used loose cobblestones to do so.
The result was an unpredictable ride, and a sore and bloodied thumb for Tyrion. He wasn't sure why he continued adding sums and wages for Inkpots and the Second Sons, since he planned to change sides the moment he laid eyes on the fabled Targaryen queen. The reason he finally settled on was the same that caused him to excel as Master of the Sewers of Casterly Rock and as Hand of the King, he was good at it and it needed to be done.
The fact that the confusing jumble of numbers gave Penny a headache and left him blessedly free of her company was simply an added bonus. Ever since he had slapped her at the armaments wagon she had been at turns sullen and ingratiating, Tyrion had trouble deciding which aspect he despised the most. At least the sullen Penny was a quiet one, the ingratiating one had called upon that awkward, fatalistic kiss aboard the Stinky Steward and kept at him in hopes of a repeat performance. The thought of it repulsed him to no end. Not because she was a dwarf, but because he saw her as a child, a child with no skills or independence. Tyrion needed a partner with both, and perhaps even a larger skillset than he himself had.
Seven save him, he actually missed Bronn. If only the sellsword had been a little more interested in gold and adventure than a homestead with titles and a lackwit of a wife, Tyrion could have altogether avoided this Eastern disaster that now made up his daily life. He sighed heavily as the wagon train ground to a halt, such was the price of trusting the combat skills of a venomous Martell noble over that of a tried and true killing machine.
Tyrion shut his book of sums and tucked it away on the floor of the wagon, next went his carefully stoppered ink bottle and his flamboyant quill. When it came to writing implements, Inkpots seemed impervious to sensible style, and the least garish quill Tyrion had found so far had been his current choice of a peacock feather. He slid forward along the bed of the wagon and braced himself for the fall that was quite a bit more than half his height. With a grunt, Tyrion launched himself from the wagon to the hard packed cobbles below, bending his knees to absorb the shock and praying to the Seven that he didn't roll an ankle this time, twice had been bad enough.
A flurry of activity shot through the idle band of sellswords, and Tyrion made his way to what appeared to be the center of it. He shoved his way through legs and asses until he found himself at the forefront, something he found taller people didn't mind, since blocking their view was something he could only aspire to in his dreams. An advance scout had come back in a hurry, so much so that his horse was heavily lathered. Breathless and panting, the rider looked almost as exhausted as the animal. "I've found them." He wheezed to the crowd. "Someone get Ben," the scout pleaded, "I've found her."
Her. Tyrion raised an eyebrow at this. The Second Sons had been following the stale trail of the Silver Queen's army for weeks now, but this was the first time they had actually caught sight of anything more than old cook fires, muddy footprints and Dothraki horseshit. Why Plumm had continued his contract with the defeated forces of the Yunkish Masters was beyond Tyrion, who, if he had captained this particular band of sellswords, would have offered fealty to the victorious queen in a heartbeat.
It was not as though they had even fought in the one sided melee that left every Yunkish warrior or slave infantryman dead. Ben had been far too occupied wringing every last golden dragon out of Casterly Rock with Tyrion's signature to actually fight in the battle he had been contracted for. Tyrion was hardly sure that there were even any slavers left alive to pay off Yunkai's contract with the Second Sons, much less persuade them from changing sides. He needed to get Ben alone with a cyvasse table, and soon, otherwise his newly adopted brothers would become so much ash and dragonshit once they met up with that black monstrosity Daenerys was partial to.
"I'll do it." Tyrion piped up, turning around and shoving once more through a sea of infrequently washed humanity, this time more codpiece than ass, but smelling just as pungent. The sellswords' stares followed him all the way to the flap of Ben's tent. He strode past the guards, insisting that he was on an extremely urgent errand, and entered without knocking, as was his specialty. To his complete unsurprise, Ben was seated on a chair fondling a half dressed camp follower, her milky breasts spilling out between his ring encrusted fingers.
"Oh good." Tyrion interrupted, pulling up a chair and a checkered table, "You're already seated." He began laying out the pieces for the cyvasse game. "The girl can stay," Tyrion advised Ben, "perhaps she'll even improve your game."
"What is the meaning of this?" The sellsword captain responded angrily, his face red and his pants ready to burst at the seams.
"Important news from an outrider," Tyrion responded casually, "but since you seem to be in no rush I thought we'd play a little cyvasse first." His first move was to destroy Ben's heavy horse with his dragon, the move was incredibly bold, and risky to a fault, but so was the young Targaryen queen.
Ben sighed in annoyance, but countered Tyrion's infantry with his own, getting ready to take his elephants and archers out to deal with the dragon, a common strategy amongst novice players.
"They've found your silver queen." Tyrion reported, moving his heavy horse in to support his beleaguered infantry.
"A scout finally finds her, and you'd rather play cyvasse than tell me about it?" Ben was angry, fuming, so mad that he stood up, dumping the girl to the ground and knocking the cyvasse table so that all the pieces toppled from their places. His hand was at his sword in an instant, "You're lucky you're worth so much, Lannister imp, or I'd have your skull off in a heartbeat." His blood was raging and he was impulsive, which was exactly how Tyrion wanted him.
"Why fight her?" Tyrion asked. "There's no more Yunkish slavers to pay off the contract, at least not anywhere outside of Yunkai, and you face certain death for the Second Sons if they raise arms against a dragon, so why?"
There was one cyvasse piece left upright on the table, it was Ben's dragon, Tyrion caught him looking at it from the corner of his eye. "You think you can run this company?" Ben challenged him. "You think anyone will follow a twisted little Lannister shit like you? Well you're wrong," Ben stared down at Tyrion, a crazed look in his eyes, "now get out of here before I lose my temper and we both miss out on that Lannister gold you love so well."
Tyrion ran as fast as his short legs could carry him, he ran out of the tent and into the newly fallen evening. He could hear the roar of Brown Ben Plumm's voice through the thin walls of his tent, so loud it felt as though he were right behind him. "If he comes back again, kill him," he heard Ben order the guards, "I don't care how much he's worth."
Tyrion mind raced as he ran, feeling his legs cramp and his breath come ragged as he headed back to his wagon of sums. He needed a plan, and he needed one fast. He didn't know how long it would be before Ben figured out that Tyrion knew exactly what he wanted, why he continued to pursue Daenerys when he had no reason to. He didn't want to destroy her or her army, he wanted her dragon, and he was going to risk absolutely everything to get it. Tyrion's eyes watered and he gasped as a particularly painful stitch grew in his side, he blinked away the moisture and crashed directly into what felt like a very large, armor clad tree. Tyrion fell with a crash, blinking in the darkness as he gathered his bearings, "What in the Seven Hells was that?" he wondered aloud.
"That was me." A rough and familiar voice responded.
"Jorah Mormont?" Tyrion asked, standing up in the darkness and brushing himself off.
"Do you know of any other Mormont in exile selling his sword in the east?" The big man countered. His fearsome countenance flickering in and out as Tyrion's eyes adjusted to the darkness.
"I can't see yet, are we alone? I don't have much time." Tyrion explained.
"We're alone as anyone can be when they decide to meet downwind of a newly dug latrine pit," Jorah responded wryly, "so I would say yes."
"Ah, so that smell isn't you and I did not in fact soil myself, that's reassuring." Tyrion joked. "On a more pressing note, how much do you love Daenerys, the silver queen that banished you?"
Jorah bristled. "Say what you mean." He growled, suddenly suspicious.
"I mean, you were willing to ransom me to her to regain her good favor, would you be willing to let me escape so that I could warn her?"
"Warn her?" Jorah laughed, the mocking sound of it deflated Tyrion's hope, "Why do you care anything at all about her, you haven't even met her. This sounds more like a Lannister escape plot than a plea to assist my former sovereign."
Tyrion let out an exasperated breath, sometimes being a descendent of Lann the Clever was not always in your best interests. "Fine, I don't have much time but I'm going to tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young boy who lived in Casterly Rock. After killing his mother by simply being born, he was scorned by his father and sister, in addition to the entire Lannister court. Thereafter, the boy's only friends were the books he could read."
"I doubt that highly," Jorah said, but allowed Tyrion to continue.
"One day the boy found a book on the history and breeding of dragons, and it caught his imagination like nothing else, every spare moment, each and every dream, and every last make believe playtime fantasy the boy concocted revolved around dragons, and do you know what the saddest day of this boy's life was?"
"What was it?" Jorah asked, yawning, he'd play along, if only to get to the end of this sad and woeful lie the Imp was spinning.
"When Tywin Lannister, Warden of the West, Lord of Casterly Rock and Hand to the King, told him that all the dragons were dead." The memory still stung, Tyrion felt his eyes grow damp and he wiped the back of his hand across them irritably. "That's when my boyhood died, Jorah, that was when I stopped hoping for the impossible. But later, from the far East, arise tales of the lost Targaryen exile princess. She made her entire rule from nothing, hatching the first dragons in more than a hundred and fifty years and becoming head of a Dothraki army when they don't even follow women to begin with!"
"She is a woman like none other." Jorah admitted, with perhaps a grudging hint of a smile and Tyrion could see some glint in the sellsword's eyes that gave him hope. "But what is she to you, Lannister? Your story has told me that you love dragons, and that you admire the queen, but none of this proves your loyalty to her."
"Fine." Tyrion could see that he needed to bring out a larger axe to fell this particular tree. "Would you believe me if I told you the reason we're marching on her army is so that Ben Plumm can steal her dragon?"
"What proof do you have?" Jorah asked.
"Why do you think I was running blindly into the night, for sport? I confronted Ben, since the Yunkish Masters are dead and there's no one left to pay the Second Son's contract, so why continue to fight a losing battle?"
"You do have a point." Jorah conceded.
"But here's the heart of the matter," Tyrion told him, "you should have seen his face when I told him we had spotted Daenerys' army, the man was crazed, he wants either her or her dragons and he'll stop at nothing to get there, not even gold matters to that man anymore, and he's a sellsword for Sevens' sake."
"So why shouldn't I leave you behind and tell her this news myself?" Jorah asked, planning an escape route of his own.
"Would she even see you?" Tyrion asked him, "Much less trust your advice? Besides, how much do you know about dragons, I can assure you that no one, and I mean no one, knows more about dragons than I do, except maybe those ancient shadowbinders east of Asshai...and I'll bet they don't speak Westerosi."
"Fine, but I'm going with you. Do you need to collect your things?" Jorah asked him.
"No," Tyrion replied, "Everything I need is on my person."
"Everything, you're sure?" Jorah asked again, confused, and Tyrion knew he was referring to Penny.
"Everything," Tyrion assured him. "Now let's get some horses."