King Jon I Baratheon
Jon often thought of Margaery during the course of the march into the Riverlands. Her hair, her smile, her voice, the conversations they could have. All of it was present in his mind during the ride through the crownlands and the journey into the southern Riverlands. He wondered how she was doing, they had written letters to one another a few times, but nothing serious could be said for fear of the letters being intercepted. He wondered how she was handling his mother and the small council, and whether Jon Arryn was still alive. He wondered if she was with child, they'd only had one night together, but they'd slept with one another roughly five times during that night. He smiled at the thought and then sighed. The fighting that was before him would be brutal. Mace Tyrell had spoken to him countless times during the journey to the Riverlands to talk about why he should be hand. It was almost as if the man did not have a way to shut up. He just kept going and going. He'd only stopped when they'd joined forces with Ser Brynden.
The old knight had brought the royal army with him giving them added numbers. He'd spoken of the dangers, that the Dothraki had raided and pillaged but not engaged in open battle. Lord Edmure had joined them and spoken of the dangers being brought to the land. Some Riverlords had followed Lord Bracken's example, and declared openly for Viserys Targaryen. Bracken had broken the betrothal between his daughter and the heir to Raventree Hall, starting off another round of fighting between the two houses. Jon had wanted to resolve that matter, but then the southern Riverlands led by Lady Whent had erupted into rebellion and so, now here he was, trying to fight off the Riverlords commanded by some knight or the other, who were defending Harrenhal from the outside.
The fighting was currently something that he had tried to distract his mind from, but it seemed that his efforts were to be in vain. His hammer cascaded against some peasant's chest, splitting it open. He took no pleasure in the shedding of blood, these people were doing what their lords told them to. Lords who should really have known better. They thought the Targaryens would give them something, the same Targaryens who had brought horse fuckers to Westeros. These people were either delusional or mad. He had no time for such people in his kingdom. His hammer took another life, and another, and another. The Kingsguard were at his side, Ser Barristan was a shining example in white, Jon had worried that the old man would side with Targaryen when the news had come, but the man had said simply that the Targaryens had lost the throne and that he had sworn a vow. Ser Hugh, his old friend from Oldstones was proving to be a very good knight of the Kingsguard. He fought with the strength of ten men and now he seemed possessed.
The hammer led the way, the herd thinned. These rebels were being destroyed. They were nothing more than minor lords who had answered Lady Whent's call to arms. They had been content to let this all slide by them, and do nothing, but then they had been summoned by someone who was supposedly a great beauty in her youth and they had come. Jon sighed, how many more good men would need to die for the vanity of some good looking woman? He continued swinging his hammer and reducing ordinary men to nothing. These men should be tilling the land, they should be doing other things, not dying out here far from home. He had offered the lords a chance to surrender, to retire to their homes with dignity. But they had refused, and so they would die. He would not tolerate any sort of dissension within his Kingdom.
Men were charging at him from all sides, they fell to the ground, broken and destroyed. They likely would never get back up, and Jon knew he should feel some sort of sadness, but there was nothing there for him to feel. He knew that there wouldn't be any sort of happiness within such a thing. They were just men, young and old alike and they were dying. He killed a lord, and then his heir, he could tell because they were mounted and wore the same colours. He killed another lord and his heir and his second son and his third son. In between the fighting he looked at Harrenhal in the distance and he bellowed. "Is this what you want? How many men must die before you surrender?" There was no answer, he would not be surprised if his voice had been swallowed by the noise of the fighting going on around him. Jon felt tired, so very tired. He wished he could just sleep, but such a thing was not an option for him and so he kept fighting.
A sharp pain indicated someone had gotten passed his defences, who that person might have been he did not know. He dealt a blow to whoever came near him by swinging his hammer and breaking them against it. There was blood coming from his armour, and it was pouring out into the round below. He would need treatment once this fighting was done, but for now he kept fighting. As long as these people kept fighting and challenging his kingdom he would keep fighting as well. He would not sit there and allow them to challenge him. Jon rolled his shoulders his hammer was filthy covered with blood as it was. There would be time to rest once this was done.
Just as he started thinking that perhaps the fighting was over, he heard roars and cries. He turned and swore. There were horse fuckers coming toward him, charging in great numbers. It seemed this had been the plan. He bellowed commands and as one his host turned from the shattered remains of the Riverlords host and attacked the Dothraki, engaging in a suicide mission.
King Viserys III Targaryen
They fell upon the Baratheon camp with relish. The fools had thought he would not know what they were doing. He had not been to Westeros in years, but he knew the geography of the entire kingdom. He knew where the marches were and he had marched the unsullied, the men of Stonedance and Sharp Point, and the Dothraki he had taken with him, for day and night and ensured that they had only stopped when necessary. Viserys had smelled a chance to strike early and garner some blood. And so he had. The Dothraki had ridden behind him, part of his main body, and now they were cutting their way through the enemy. The fools had been in tents, their camp a mess, with little organisation to it.
Viserys swung Dark Sister, cutting through the enemy as he went. There were peasants and lords and knights only in their shirts and trousers, trying desperately to get their armour on. He fell on them with a savagery he had not known he had possessed. He swung his sword and the enemy fell and died, there was no hope for them, no hope whatsoever. This was something that would make for a fascinating time he thought. The enemy was going to suffer, and they would know the true power of the Targaryen dynasty. He kept going, the swathes of bodies only adding to his blood lust. He knew what was needed and so he kept going, pushing and arguing and doing whatever he could to cut through the nonsense.
Viserys used his sword to cleave a bloody path through the enemy. Baratheon soldiers fell and died by their dozens, and he heard the Dothraki yelling out their war cries. He laughed. He felt the thrill of it all, the excitement and the chill. There was something innately perfect about this, something that would make it seem almost inevitable that victory would come. His horse was drinking in the blood of his foes and he knew they had found harmony. His horse had been a tough nut to crack before today, and now, well now he suspected they would get on famously. His sword cracked someone over the head and he watched blood fall from that man and laughed. Perhaps there was something more to the fighting than he had first thought. It was good to be away from Dragonstone and the insufferable bitch his sister had become during her pregnancy, she likely had given birth by now. And then there was Euron Greyjoy, the man was mad as a hatter, and Viserys knew he would need to remove him soon enough.
The body count continued to grow, but the Baratheons finally seemed to have found their balls, or their armour. They were mounting a challenge. Viserys yelled happily, he wanted a fight, he wanted to cut down a foe on equal terms, none of this nonsense about butchery. He killed a knight before the knight even had the chance to fight him. He stood firm and cut down another man, and then another. He took a few blows himself, but that was nothing compared to the exhilaration that he got from killing others. There was just something about this feeling, the inhibitions were stripped away and he was able to fight properly, just without any limitations without anything to hold him back. He kept fighting, kept going pushing himself to his limits. The enemy bled and died, and the Baratheon commanders were dying alongside their men. He thought he saw a rose out there somewhere, the rose fell and didn't get back up. He laughed, that would serve Tyrell for rejecting him. Now where was Baratheon?
Viserys knew that if he killed Baratheon and captured the boy who was to serve as Baratheon's heir then he would have struck a significant bargain. From what his spies had told him, the usurper's second son was someone with a mind that could be easily moulded like clay. That would be something he wished to exploit, to potentially better usages. He knew he could not give Storm's End to someone else, therefore he would drag the Baratheon name on if he had to, with a puppet. A puppet who would bend to everything he demanded. That sounded quite nice. He cut down another man and yelled something at the man, what he yelled he would never remember, but he kept going. Baratheon was the person he needed to find.
There were so many of these fuck wits out there fighting and dying by their dozens, that it was becoming slightly hard to correctly identify them. The Dothraki had fought well and killed more than they had lost for which he was grateful, he did not want to explain the deaths to his sister who had for some strange reason fallen into some maternal thing for these savages. Perhaps it was the pregnancy making her act this way. Frankly he found it insane. He kept going, though, pushing these thoughts from his mind, focusing on the one thing that mattered. As he rode by he found a boy with brown hair, lying dead, a white cloak on his back, a knight of the Kingsguard had died it seemed. A shame, he could have used such people for his own ends. He kept riding and stopped. There a few feet away from the knight of the Kingsguard was a man in Baratheon livery, a stag helm lying near him. With black hair, and blue eyes staring unseeingly. "Who is that?" He asked as he got down. One of the men near the body said. "Renly Baratheon, Sire. He died trying to get to Ser Loras."
Viserys nodded. "And the boy?"
"Boy, Sire?" the knight replied.
"Yes, there is a boy, a Prince, where is he?" Viserys demanded.
The man looked nervous. "He escaped, Sire."
Viserys said nothing. He sighed. "We move for Storm's End." He could not leave his rear exposed after all, that would be madness.