Chapter 24; The War of the Bear;
Characters of the Chapter
Bern Servant to House Mormont
Lyanna Mormont, Lady of Bear Island
Ser Caleb Threestones, Knight of Westeros, Second to Lyanna Mormont
Lyanna peered cautiously through the leaves of the rows of bushes she was hiding behind. Her face was covered in ash taken from a burnt out campfire. Her armor and even the blade of her sword had likewise been coated with ash to keep light reflecting off the metal. Small plants woven to lengths of twine circled her legs, arms and torso.
Since being driven from her home Lyanna and her people had fled to the wilderness of her island. She had been doing what she could to organize resistance against the Qunari forces now in occupation of Bear island, starting with the people she had had with her, recruiting more as she found them. A few new Qunari dreadnoughts had showed up along with smaller Qunari transports, each bringing more troops and supplies with them. She was guessing the Qunari were in the early stages of a military buildup in preparation for larger attacks elsewhere. Her fight then was not simply to reclaim her home from these creatures, but to also disrupt or at least slow down the Qunari buildup and buy time for mainland Westeros to deal with their other enemies and come to their aid.
Understanding early on that the Qunari forces present were far superior to hers in term of numbers and capabilities, she had instead resorted to hit and run tactics. Nibbling at the flanks of the Qunari army, avoiding them where they were strong and hitting them where they were weak. Relatively speaking. That had been something of a learning curve for her, used to and trained as she was in direct set piece battles. Westerosi armies sometimes sent out smaller forces to raid the countryside, and ambushes were certainly a strategy sometimes attempted, but in the wars she had been in she had never been tasked with such. Her new war needed her to learn a new way to think and fight. Fortunately her cobbled together band of misfits included local hunters and others who gave her important lessons and tips, helping her improvise new tactics and strategies on the fly. And of course there had been Caleb. Ever her shadow since this began, he had been a great help with everything. Given the difficult circumstances, limited materials and people to work with, and the total lack of contact with anyone in the mainland, the help had been more than welcome. Indeed there were days Lyanna felt she might not have gotten anything done were it not for him.
Peering through the branches of the bush, what she saw was one of the Qunari internment camps, where they had been taking her people. This camp was fairly small one, a handful of tents alongside fenced areas where her people were kept. Crates containing supplies were scattered among all of it. What the Oxmen were going to do with them she had no idea, and she was not planning on waiting long enough to find out. This camp's small size and out of the way position made it a perfect target for her people.
Lyanna moved back and turned to Caleb. "I count about a dozen guards. Shouldn't have any trouble if we don't muck things up on our end." She said, keeping her voice as low as possible.
"The distraction group doing its job?" Caleb asked.
"Seems to. Gods be with them. I hope they'll be okay." She said.
Then she nodded. "Okay. Let's get this done."
She looked at the rest of her people around her. "Remember the plan. We are here to set our people free. Wait for me to move, then we hit them hard and fast, get the job done and leave before any more of the oxmen show up. Questions?"
When no questions were asked she nodded again. It was time to get to work. She briefly lowered her sword to the ground and put her hands around her mouth. Closing her eyes to concentrate she blew out a whistle, mimicking the cry of a bird, one of the tricks the hunters in her entourage had taught her.
Hearing the signal, an archer hiding among the branches of a nearby tree took aim and fired, catching one of the Qunari guards in the throat. Moments later other archers began firing as well, sending more arrows at the surprised guards.
"Now! Lyanna shouted, picking up her sword and charging forward, her people following at her heels.
To their credit the Qunari soldiers responded very well to the attack. Not one of them panicked despite the fact that a number of them were already dead, killed in the opening moments of the attack. They sought to organize themselves into to a single ordered unit, where their advantages would be greatest. The human attackers sought to do the opposite, to pull the guards apart, so a single Qunari soldier would have to face down multiple enemies at once. Both groups were partially successful, the Qunari forming into several clumps of two or three soldiers, surrounded on all sides by human fighters.
Knowing the Qunari soldiers to be physically strong and very skilled, the humans resorted to numbers and quick strikes, wounding the soldiers to weaken them until a killing blow could be landed. Having learned things from their first encounters with the oxmen, they tried to avoid hitting the parts of the enemy coated in their war paint. Even with these advantages some loss of life could not be avoided, and a number of Lyanna's people were killed, cut down by spear and sword. But the advantage remained with the attackers, and one by one the Qunari soldiers began to fall.
Lyanna soon found herself working as a team with Caleb. The two had spent a significant portion of whatever downtime they had training together to improve their skills. By now they had honed their abilities to extremely fine levels. As good as they were on their own now, it turned out they were even better when they pooled their efforts. They fought together harmoniously, completing each other's attacks with perfect precision. The flow of their movement was poetry to the eyes. Lyanna thought it quite beautiful in its way, all the more so because she was part of it. Three Qunari soldiers they managed to kill this way, and assist in the in killing of a fourth.
Fairly soon the last Qunari soldier was slain and the fight came to an end.
"How many casualties for our side?" Lyanna asked, cleaning her sword with a piece of cloth and sheathing it.
"Five. Not a bad result all told. Better than most earlier times. The surprise did its job this time." Caleb said.
Lyanna sighed and shook her head. "Still too many. With how few there are of us we need our people far more than the Qunari need theirs. And each time one of their ships shows up here a few hundred more are added to trouble us. At this rate we will be running out of people long before the Oxmen do. We've got to figure out a more efficient way of hitting them."
"Well, in the terms of a numbers game maybe some of the people kept here will be able to help us out?" Caleb offered.
"That's what I'm hoping for, and one of the reasons we came here." She replied. "When we have got them settled I intend to speak with them, find out which of them would join us in the fight."
"Set our people free. And have them collect as many of the supplies around here as they can carry. Our soldiers are to do so as well. Anything we can use. Anything we leave behind should be damaged in a way that it is no longer of any value to the Oxmen." She commanded.
"Let's get moving! We need to get this done before enemy reinforcements show up!" She said, clapping her hands together.
Her people went to work. Most of those they rescued were clearly grateful, thanking her people and breaking into displays of utter relief. Others to Lyanna's surprise seemed a little more reserved, but nonetheless pleased. But the strangest reaction came from a smaller group kept separated from the rest. Strange, because from that group there was no reaction at all. Even when the door of the pen they were in was opened they did not respond in any way. Only when some of Lyannas people went to speak with them directly did some of them react, slowly raising their heads to stare at them with blank faces.
Puzzled, Lyanna was about to go and take a closer look, until a woman they had rescued came to speak with her. "My Lady, thank you. Thank for freeing us. But… we need your help! They took our children from us!"
That caught Lyanna's attention. "Taken? What? Where to?"
"We don't know. They wouldn't tell us anything." The woman said, hanging her head, fighting back tears. "But they did it to everyone here. They tore our families apart, sent our children away, and separated us without any care or consideration to where our loved one's ended up. My husband and I are only here together because of happenstance. Many others were not so fortunate."
"Please my Lady. We have to have our children back. We can't leave them in the hands of these creatures." The woman pleaded.
"We will. I promise it. But I need some information. Anything that you can tell us about where they might have taken the children would be helpful." Lyanna said.
The woman became thoughtful, trying to comb her mind for anything useful. "Uh, well, they mostly spoke in their own language, but I think I heard them talking once about sending them to the… Tassan? Tamari? I forget the name. The way that talked made me think they were some group of theirs. I think maybe they wanted to handle their re-education separately from ours, so we couldn't interfere."
"Re-education? What do you mean re-education? What were they doing to you? What are these camps for?" Lyanna asked.
"They made us work. But that wasn't the reason they kept us here. They… they tried to convert us to their faith. No, faith isn't the right word. They said they wanted to teach us about the Qun, to help us." The woman said. "But they lied. They were just trying to control us. I know because of what they did with those that wouldn't be taught. Those who resisted too hard… they turned them into that." She added with venom, pointing at the group of blank faced people."
"The Qunari did that to them?" Lyanna gasped. "How? What do they do to them to make them that?"
"They took their souls!" The woman said, finally bursting to tears. "I don't know how they do it, but there's nothing inside them anymore! I'm so worried they'll do it to my children too! We can't let it happen to them. We have to find them!"
"I promise we will do everything we can to find them and rescue them, like we rescued you. I won't abandon my own." Lyanna reassured.
The woman seemed to accept her words. "Thank you again My Lady." She said.
Lyanna smiled and nodded. Then Caleb came to her. "My Lady, we are almost ready to move out."
"Good. Are they fit to move?" She asked, pointing at the expressionless people.
"They seem to follow orders well enough… but that's all they seem to be able to do. They don't do anything unless someone tells them to. It's like they don't have a mind of their own. That could be a problem." He said.
"Well if they can follow orders then they can be told to follow us. That's good enough for now. Let's get them ready to move out."
The woman looked shocked. "My Lady, you can't mean to take them with us."
"Surely you aren't telling me to leave them behind? You knew these people, probably better than I did." Lyanna asked, equally shocked.
"My Lady, I know you feel for them but it's too late. They are just husks now. Leave them be, or put them out of their misery if you've the heart to. It's the only mercy left to give them." The woman said.
"We can't do that. We need all the people we can find. And if there's some way to help them…" Lyanna tried to reason.
"There isn't one. The Qunari left nothing for you to fix. Please My Lady, I… we don't want a constant reminder of what might have happened to us here. What could still happen to so many of us." The woman said.
Lyanna sighed. "I'm sorry, but I have already made my decision. We are not going to leave anyone behind."
Seeing that she could not win the argument, the woman bowed her head. "Yes, My Lady."
Lyanna placed a reassuring hand on the other woman's shoulder. "I understand having them around can be an unpleasant experience, but this is how it has to be. If it helps, since they bother you, I'll find them somewhere else to stay, so you don't have to be in their presence."
"You should make yourself ready to leave now. There's a long way for us to go yet today. We will take care of you all. You'll see." She told the woman then.
The woman nodded and left, and Lyanna turned to Caleb.
"She told me that the children of the people here may have been taken to another location, although she did not know where. As we travel I want you to talk to the rest of them, find out if any of them know more about this. Once we reach camp we will talk to the people there too. Once we are done and we have clues to point us in the right direction we will send out scouts to look for this other site." Lyanna told him.
"Lyanna, are you sure of this?" He asked, lowering his voice. "I mean, I get why you wish to do this. I don't disagree with that. But as we discussed earlier our resources are strained. Even if we find the site we might not have the strength to hit it. And even if we do have the strength it will cost us more people, which you told me we don't have to spare."
"I'd like to make the attempt. I gave these people my word, Caleb. We have to try. Let's just find the place these children are kept, then figure out how to handle the next step. If we don't have the resources then we can go about acquiring them when we have a better understanding of what we're up against."
"Understood. Not entirely sure the gains will justify the costs, but I wouldn't want to leave kids in the hands of these Qunari either. I just wanted to make sure you understood what we were getting into with this." Caleb said.
"I do. And at the end of the day Caleb, our children are our future. I won't let the Qunari take ours from us. Those are the gains we seek to win, and that will make this worth the cost." Lyanna said.
"Yeah. I should go make sure that these mindless ones are ready to move and double check that we didn't miss anything critical." He said.
"Good. Go." Lyanna said, and with a nod Caleb went to attend to the matter. Lyanna turned around, looking about herself. It was then that she spotted a man standing nearby, just looking at her. Lyanna did a double check as she recognized him as Bern, one of her household servants. One of those that had not made it out with the rest of them when the castle had been evacuated. Until this very moment she had thought everyone left behind that day was dead.
"Bern, is that really you? They were keeping you here as well? Gods is it good to see you! I hadn't thought…" She said, smiling and taking a step closer.
She almost did not see the knife until it was too late.
Her smile freezing on her face she jumped back, pushing away Bern's knife arm with both hands. She made no effort to draw her own weapons.
"Bern, stop! It's alright, it's just me! I don't mean you harm!" She shouted at him, taking steps back in an effort to stay out of his reach.
"But perhaps I meant to harm you, bitch!" He retorted, lunging at her again. She dodged away, grabbing his arm and using his own momentum to shove him to the ground. He stumbled and fell, rolling in the dirt. Then almost at once he was back on his feet and swinging at her with wild swings.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? STOP! STOP! BERN, STOP!" She screamed, scared and confused by what was happening. Still she wouldn't raise her own weapon against him, unwilling to strike at one of her own. Instead she continued trying to doge his attacks, pushing his knife away when it came too close. The commotion was beginning to draw attention, and some of her soldiers were now pressing their way through the crowds to intervene.
"Never. For the Qun it must be done." Bern said and launched himself into another attack.
"The Qu..?" She had time to say before Bern was on him. She flinched, turning her head to the side and closing her eyes.
Bern stopped mid-attack, coughing and gurgling. His arms fell to his sides, his knife falling from his grasp. Slowly he turned his head down to stare at Lyanna's sword buried in his belly, then raising his eyes back up to Lyanna's.
In the last possible moment Lyanna had forced herself to attack, letting her instincts draw her sword and strike at her opponent, all in the space of a heartbeat. Yet immediately after she regretted what she had done, looking at Bern with pleading eyes, trying to find the words for an apology. Bern began to sway, to then fall off her sword, landing on his back on the muddy ground with a squelch.
Lyanna dropped her blade, covering her mouth with her hands, tears beginning to stream from her eyes. She sank to her knees next to Bern.
"No, no, gods, no. What have I done?" She sobbed.
"Why, Bern? Why did you do this? Why did you make me do this?" She asked.
"For the Qun. A demand of the Qun, so they said. You had to die, so your resistance could be ended. But you proved hard to find, harder to catch. There was… an opportunity." Bern said.
"A demand of the Qun? I don't… I don't understand. They made you do this? They forced you to come here to kill me?"
Bern laughed weakly. "No. They sent me here to be an example to the ones here. I, others. We were to help them, talk to them with words they could understand, aid in bringing the wisdom of the Qun to them. And then… you happened. When you came here most of us fled to bring reinforcements. But not me. I believed I could get close because of familiarity. Close enough to strike, to cut off the head of the snake. I was right, only not enough so."
His words finally made it click for her. "You work for the Qunari? Voluntarily? They've turned you?" She said, horrified.
"They've liberated me!" Bern countered. "They opened my eyes. They exposed you for what you and all your kind are. You and all the nobles in Westeros. You tell us that you have a right to rule over us given to you by the Gods. That we must do what you say at all times. But the Qunari have revealed the lie. It's all a ruse, made so that the few powerful could leech off of the many, without ever deserving it."
"How can you say that? I've done everything in my power to do right by you. I'm out here right now, fighting for you!" She said.
Bern smiled. "It's a good ruse I'll admit. So good in fact that even you believe it, as much a slave to it that the rest of us were. But look at the world you seek to protect. We exist by your whim alone. You and the rest of the nobility of Westeros. You take actions to shield the people here only so you can keep taking from them, like a parasite does. Greed lies at the heart of all you do, even if you are blind to it."
"That's not true! I care!" She countered.
"The laws of Westeros bind us to you. You speak of the laws of gods and men, but I the end the only law that matters is the one you dictate to us. Even in the stories we tell the ruse is present. If the common folk are mentioned at all then it is in failing to rebel against the order you have established, of being cast down and punished horribly for daring to stand up to you. The Qun is different. In the Qun we strive for better together. In the Qun our leaders are where they are because it is the Qun's conclusion that that is where they belong. Merit decides our place, not our birth. If only you could see. If only the illness in your heart didn't make you rail against it. We don't belong to no lord or ruler. We belong to each other, and the nation forged in the Qun." Bern continued, ignoring her interruption.
"Traitor! You motherfucking traitor!" Lyanna snarled, growing angry. "How can you defend them!? Look at what they have done! Look at how much pain they have caused! Have you seen what they have done to those who resisted them!?"
"All necessary. All required to make them see. How else to do it? They have lived their blind existence for so long the transition to the truth is painful for most of them. It is a sickness in their hearts and minds, one that must be cured. And some sadly are too far gone to be cured. In that case the Qunari save the body, then only thing left to save, so even in that state their flesh can be made to serve the Qun." Bern countered.
"You've gone mad!" Lyanna exclaimed. "There's no help for you now. And I have heard enough of you." She said, standing up, retrieving her sword.
"Tell me where the children of these people were taken, traitor. Do that and I will ease your passing. Otherwise I will make sure you suffer before the end, for everything you have done." She said, her face stone cold.
Bern scoffed. "Threatening with violence and pain to get your way? Typical. But you might as well know. Because it changes nothing. They are no longer on this island. We told the Qunari that you would be trying to interfere. The adults were needed here, but children were not. And so they were sent into the Qunari lands, to be raised to the Qun."
"No. You wouldn't have dared!" She said, not wanting to believe it.
"They are beyond your reach now. They belong to the Qun, as does this island." Bern stated with finality.
Lyanna was quiet for a time, looking at Bern with absolute disgust. "Gods forgive you. Because I cannot." She said then, putting her sword through his head. Afterwards she found she could not turn her eyes from Bern's corpse. It was only a little while later she noticed Caleb standing right next to her. How long he had been there she didn't know. His sword was drawn, and Lyanna guessed he had been intending to come to her aid only for her to resolve the matter herself.
"It's… not enough that they invade our land and drive us from our homes. It's not enough that they hunt us down like animals. It's not enough that they kill us. These monsters have to turn our own people against us. To make us destroy ourselves even as we seek to defeat them!" She said, bowing her head, her face caught somewhere between grief and rage.
"No worse enemy than the one right in our midst, the one that wears a friend's face." Caleb said.
"Fuck 'em." Lyanna suddenly declared.
"Lyanna…" Caleb chided.
"Fuck 'em." Lyanna repeated. "Fuck all the traitors wherever they are, fuck Bern, and fuck the Qunari!" She said, before turning and taking several brisk steps in the opposite direction. Then she stopped herself and sighed.
"I'll… I'll mourn the man he used to be, not what the Oxmen twisted him into. But for now the wound is too fresh for me to consider forgiving him. As for the Qunari… it's one more thing on my list of things I'm going to make them pay for." She conceded.
Caleb nodded. "Do you… do you think he was telling the truth about the children?" He asked quietly.
"I don't know. Gods help me, I don't know." She said. "But if it was true, telling it to us would do no harm, because it is too late to do anything about it, and he was already dying. Either way we cannot rely on his words. We will proceed as we discussed earlier, and take a look for ourselves. If we find indicators that the children of our people are still here we will know that he lied, and then we will act. If not, then we have to get used to the idea that the Qunari committed yet another crime against us."
"Come on. We can't stay here any longer. We have to go." She said then. With no more words to say Lyanna's people left in a long column snaking through the woods, scouts screening them to make sure they did not walk into an ambush. Walking at the head of the column Lyanna kept her eyes directed toward the ground, deep in her thoughts. Watching her walk, Caleb could tell she was still upset about how things had transpired with Bern from the tension in her shoulders and the briskness in her step.
About halfway to their camp Lyanna stopped, raising her hand, which brought the column to a halt. She turned her head to look over her shoulder, motioning for Caleb to come over.
"Why have we stopped? There are long ways for us to go yet." Caleb asked.
"I have just been thinking. We can't bring this many people to our main camp. Far too big a target. Easy for the enemy to find, far too large for us to defend effectively. I want these people divided into smaller groups, here and now. Four or five in groups at least. Keep groupings of friends and family intact whenever possible. We are not the Qunari, and we will not callously ignore the bonds among our people. Spread out around the island, far enough out that the Oxmen won't be able to figure out where the main camp is based on their location, but close enough so we can come to their aid should there be need. We'll send them supplies from our main camp so they can get comfortable, along with a couple soldiers for each group to watch over them." Lyanna told him.
"That can be done if you want. But could this not wait until we are back at camp, sort this out there?" He asked, not trying to hide his surprise.
"No, it cannot. Because I also don't want these people to know where the main camp is. Not yet. Not until we are sure about them." She said.
"Sure? What are you talking about? Lyanna, what brought this on?" He asked.
Lyanna paused before answering. "…Today's battle has shown us that the Qunari have managed to turn some of our own people against us, enough so that they would do us harm. Bern was one, but there may be others as well. Some of them might be right here with us."
"You can't know for certain that is the case." He said.
"No I cannot. That is exactly the problem. Bern's mistake was that he was impatient. He revealed himself too soon, and in failing in his attempt he alerted us to the danger defectors like him could pose to us. The smarter among them will hide themselves, preying on out trust and our familiarity with them. They will watch and wait for a perfect moment to strike us down. Right now the worst thing they can do to us is to betray our position to our enemy. Our only advantage over them is concealment, which comes from the fact that we know this island better than the Oxmen. If that advantage is lost, then so will we be." She said.
"So that's why you don't want the people we have freed in our camp." He said. "Pardon me… but that sounds a little paranoid." He added.
"It does, doesn't it? But I think it's better to be a little paranoid than lose our freedom and our lives because of carelessness." She said.
"To avoid that possibility I have some new orders I will need carried out when we get back to camp. From now on no one is to leave our camps except for errands agreed beforehand. And when they do go on such errands they will be paired with someone else as decided by the guards I sent to watch over them. No one will be going out alone to make it harder for spies to get in contact with their Qunari masters. We will also need to send some of our fighters to set up secondary camps for themselves, only coming together when we are about to attack a targer. When our civilians and soldiers are spread around like that, even if one camp is attacked the rest will survive and will be able to continue the fight." She continued.
"Caleb, for the good of everyone this must be done." She said when he appeared hesitant. "I hate it more than anyone that we have to be this paranoid and suspicious of our own people, but those are the conditions the Oxmen have put us in. One is supposed to be able to trust the people in service to your own house, but now we know that might not be the case any longer. If we do not act on what we know, then more the fools are we. We are the last chance for our people in this invasion. And if we fall there's a good chance the mainland will be next. They are already dealing with one invasion, they won't be able to take another one. For all their sakes we can't take any risks in this matter."
Caleb was quiet for a long time. Finally he nodded gravely. "Okay. I'm not comfortable with this business at all. But I get your point. You are the Lady of Bear Island. We are sworn to your service. If these are the measures you wish to take, then we will see it done."
"Thank you, Caleb." She said, genuinely grateful.
"Lyanna, I've been meaning to ask… are you alright? Since the mission today something has been bothering you." He asked.
Lyanna laughed bitterly. "Alright? No. Hells no."
"I never would have thought that he would do what he did. Bern I mean. I trusted him once you know. I knew him." She said, crossing her arms and looking at the landscape. "He was the Master of Stables for House Mormont. He took care of all our horses, like his father and his father before him. And he loved what he did. Sometimes I think he liked horses better than people. People are complicated. People can be deceitful and cruel. Horses are simpler, and he understood their ways well. He was around since before I was even born. Eighteen years. That's a long time to know someone. He was there when I rode a horse for the first time, just a young man then." She said.
"I can't claim to have known him as well as you, but it sounds like he was a decent person at one time." Caleb said.
"He was. And the Qunari turned him even so. I saw the look in his eyes before I killed him. There was no regret, no remorse. Just a disappointment that he didn't get the job done. I don't know what means they employed to turn a man like him, but somehow the Qunari had him completely suckered into their ideology." She said.
"I also happen to know that he was married. Had three small children. A cat, named Max." She added quietly, her words making Caleb bow his head with the realization.
"What the Qunari have done will make this a war different from any other we have ever faced. This time we will know many of those we kill. They will be people we worked with, our friends and loved ones, taken and twisted into our enemies. So in short no, I'm not okay at all." She finished.
"Yeah, figured as much. Just thought you might want to talk about it. And I can certainly see why you are upset. It bothers me too. If there is anything I can do to help…" He said.
"There is one thing." Lyanna said. "I think I need to vent a little to get over this. Will you train with me when we get back to camp? That always makes me feel better. I know we just came out of a fight and you're probably exhausted. I'll understand if you say no."
Caleb smiled. "I'd never turn down a chance to spar with you. It's a done deal."
"Good. I'm glad." She said smiling as well. "But first we must attend to our responsibilities. Starting with dividing these people into groups."
"On it." Caleb said.
On hearing Lyanna's plan there were a few groans and complaints, but fortunately her orders were accepted nonetheless. As soon as it had been decided which group was going where they set out, each group accompanied by a few of her soldiers. As soon as the civilians were gone she led the rest of the soldiers back to their main camp, checking in with the sentries before entering the camp itself. The camp was a cluster of makeshift tents concealed with leaves and branched. To further help conceal the camp there was little rhyme or reason to the arrangement of the tents in the camp. Some tents were for people to sleep in, others to keep the supplies they salvaged or stole from the Qunari. There were no permanent fortifications of any kind since the camp was moved to a new location every few days.
As soon as her people were settled, Lyanna went to work to see her other plans were carried out. Small teams of her soldiers were sent to new locations and briefings held about the new restrictions to movement she wanted enforced. Being the first to follow her own rules she announced her intent to leave the camp to train with Caleb later that day. The attack against the Qunari internment camp had happened during the morning hours. By the time her errands for the day were done it was well past midday. As soon as she was sure she had no further responsibilities to attend to that day she collected her equipment and headed out with Caleb.
The site they chose to train in was a meadow. The place was quite beautiful: Tall grass, butterflies, the works, all bathed in sunlight coming from a cloudless sky. The classic scenery from any fairytale. Lyanna could not deny the beauty of the place although she was unlike your average highborn girl that might have been taken in by such. With evening starting to set in, it was no longer as swelteringly hot as the days typically had been lately, but a pleasant warmth still lingered. Still, because of the heat and because this was just training rather than full on combat, neither of them had chosen to wear armor. Instead they had opted for simple clothes as they trained.
At first Lyanna drove at her second hard, raining swordblow after swordblow on him, each attack marring the edge of his blade. For his part Caleb took her assault gracefully, parrying each attack with precision, occasionally managing to sneak in an attack of his own. But ultimately he made no serious attempts to turn the tables on her, ignoring several opportunities to counterattack. Instead he fought defensively, attacking only when the most obvious openings were presented, just to remind Lyanna to be wary of mistakes that would get her killed in a real fight. He knew that the real objective of today's training session was to let her unwind and work through the emotions of today. Their mutual training was already at a very high level, and if either of them wanted to add to that it could always come later.
Fairly soon Lyanna began to relax, a smile growing on her lips as the worries and the stresses of recent times left her. Bern, the Qunari, the general state of war in Westeros… all were distant things that didn't exist right now. None them mattered. The only thing that was real for her right now was this moment between the two of them.
She settled to a more relaxed form of fighting, style before power. Caleb took note and switched to the same mode of fighting. She was once again struck at the beauty and harmony of their fighting. Each attack was met with a parry and counterattack and on and on it went, their movements flowing together into perfection.
During the course of their dueling she became aware of the… look… that Caleb was giving her. There was an intensity there that was about more than just the alertness of combat. The way his eyes lingered on her whenever there was a moment to spare…
If another man would have looked at her like that she might have taken offense. But when it was him? To her surprise she found that she didn't mind. In fact in some strange way she was happy to have such attention from him. And in truth she had found herself looking at him in much the same way. Caleb was a tall man, as muscular as any lifelong fighter would be, but surprisingly slim in spite of it. Watching him move, the way light glinted off his muscles… taken all together it was quite intoxicating.
Lyanna had been aware of Caleb watching her for some time now, brief moments when he had thought she would not notice. But she had noticed, something that Caleb was apparently unaware of. It had started a while before the Qunari invasion, their friendship developing into something that could best be described as casual interest. After the Qunari had attacked things had hit a high pitch, rapidly developing into something deeper. Recent events had left little time to process or act on those emotions, and Caleb was apparently afraid of her rejecting him, given that he was yet to do anything. But it was real...
As their weapons met once again, Lyanna managed to send his sword spinning away with a twist of her blade. She grinned, thinking she had beaten him. Instead he grinned in return and dove at her, wrapping his arms around her just below her armpits. Lyanna gave a surprised and delighted shriek as they tumbled over, her weapon tossed aside, both of them laughing and giggling as they rolled in the grass. Eventually they came to a stop, Caleb ending up on top of her. It was then that they suddenly stopped, lost in each other's eyes. Lyanna felt herself blush, her breath hitching in her throat, her heart beating faster inside her chest. She could feel his hand stroking her hair, and that simple gesture felt so good…
"…It really was… a warm day." She thought. In the back of her head she wondered where that random thought had come from. Then she decided that it was irrelevant.
She raised her hand, cupping his cheek, then moving his head down, kissing him…