Warning for gore

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Chapter 25

A Verse for Elia

Where nothing goes exactly as planned

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Sandor

"You are not a gnat," Sandor Clegane concluded, somewhat surprised, and from his mouth the offensive words sounded like the greatest praise. He was returning with the Elder Brother from the old Tourney Grounds in the direction of the King's Gate, on the last evening before the trial. "I already suspected so when we played at this in Harrenhal, but now I have no doubt left. You must have been really good in your youth. I believe that you may have a chance against my brother."

They were both dusty and sweaty, holding long wooden poles instead of tourney lances, trotting on Stranger and Patience, whom they would stable in a some poor man's barn near the Red Keep. The animals, apart from Nymeria who never left their side, could not fit with the fisherfolk. There were too many people there as it was. The number of devote visitors increased daily, and since the Elder Brother's stunt with the wall, the faithful would all leave a pair of their own shoes under it, in sign of their support to the champion.

The Elder Brother grinned, dismounted, and sat carelessly in the ditch on the side of the road, glad it contained only mud, and not any other residues of the life in the city, whose smell extended well beyond the relative safety of its high walls. The monk tossed the helm he wore on the ground and scratched his head where a relentless grey stubble now persistently grew not only around his ears, but also over most of his once bald head.

"You are still too young to be completely grey-haired, brother," the Hound found that the words left his mouth without much thinking, a habit he had with only a few people living in the world. "We should find a way to shave it off for tomorrow if it bothers you under the helm. Any distraction can prove to be a dangerous thing."

"Oh, I tried," the monk said, "but every time I did it, it grew thicker and thicker, and even more so since we came to the capital. I used to take a herb for it but it no longer grows in autumn. Might be best to leave it as gods want it, grey is as good a colour as any."

"You will ride my horse," the Hound said next.

"Didn't you say Gregor knows it, as he knows you? And that my only chance in fighting him is to attack him differently then what he knows?"

"Even so. Stranger is much swifter. It is worthwhile the risk."

"Let's see tomorrow," the Elder Brother said. "I will try to unhorse him. If the gods are good, it will be enough to end the trial."

"I wouldn't count on it, brother," the Hound gave a feral laugh. "And neither should you, being on this world far longer than I have been."

"Sometimes I believe," the monk said uncertainly and his dark eyes coloured with unknown emotion, "that you and I should have been born brothers."

"That is so very sweet of you," the Hound retorted gruffly, "but we were born as we were. There's nothing to do about it."

The evening came down to the road, the ditch, the two men and their horses. The sunset flared red in the horizon. Red like fresh blood.

"Tell me," the monk dared asking, "how can you believe at all that I might best Gregor when you wanted it all your life, and yet you never did it yourself. From your stories, you never made a serious attempt at it when you became a man grown. Did you not try for the obedience you owed to your liege lords?"

"No," the Hound shook his head, and stated, calmly, a truth he would not admit to himself for very long. "I never tried because I knew I was going to lose. I hated him too much to go after him with the required precision. You don't hate him. What is worse, you don't hate anyone. That is why you may be able to do what has to be done."

"I'm amazed to hear this from an old soldier as you see yourself," the Elder Brother thought aloud. "Even I have always thought that the hatred of your enemy is what brings you victory in war."

"I killed a countless number of people for who I didn't feel a thing. And I could not kill the one I hated most of all," Sandor Clegane admitted. "Hatred blinds. Like fear."

"Like love," added the Elder Brother.

"I wouldn't know about that," the Hound chased the annoying thought away as Stranger did with flies under his regal black tail.

"Sometimes, brother," the Elder Brother insisted on a conversation, where the Hound would have preferred the silence, "I still dream about Princess Elia and her children. Long time ago, when I was some years younger than you are now, I fought under the dragon banners on the Trident. I wore a favour of my second wife from the Reach, but for some reason, after the defeat, the face of Elia, tortured in her death, would not leave my mind, as if I had had a part in it, where I did not. At the Quiet Isle, I thought myself mad for remembering this. After all, who were they to me? A royal family I have never even seen from close by."

"I was twelve when Gregor killed Elia," the Hound changed his mind and decided to reward him with a story of his own. There could be no harm in talking earnestly to a man who might die on the morrow. "I took part in the sack of King's Landing and I killed my first man. Gregor found me in the camp of the Lannister soldiers when he was done raping and squashing children. He was after my blood too, but I wouldn't let him have it. Not then, not ever. I fought back and the other soldiers helped me out until Lord Tywin himself ordered him to stop. Gregor shouted to me over the ranks that one day he will make me squeal more than Elia and her children did. I've also thought about them ever since. It felt for the longest time as if I was also responsible for their deaths, and of so many others, because I was not capable of killing my brother when I should. What I want to say, brother, you are far from being the only person who lamented Elia's death or who was shocked by Gregor's atrocity. By all known records, she was a most kind woman."

"Still, I wonder…" said the Elder Brother, lost in the thoughts of the past.

"Let's head back," the Hound suggested. "Time to give one final try to your armour and the lance Gendry made."

The two unarmoured men rode back like victorious knights returning home, without a second thought about what tomorrow would bring.

The shadows of the evening grew longer and dark purple in colour over the land. But the sun still sank carelessly into the sea, beneath the high city walls, red like blood.

Brienne

The lists for the trial by combat of the Queen Regent, Cersei, of the House Lannister and Baratheon, were made in front of the Dragon Gate, next to the kingsroad heading north. The high dais hosted King Tommen and Queen Margaery, whom the Faith had found innocent of all charges only the day before. The Queen's father, Lord Mace Tyrell, the Hand of the King, sat on his daughter's side, together with his mother, Lady Olenna Tyrell, known as the Queen of Thorns, who had recently returned from Highgarden to the capital.

The Queen Regent sat one step under her son, stern and proud in Baratheon colours, black and yellow. The long golden waves of her hair were falling free of all styles fashionable in the south, in sign of penitence the occasion required. Her perfect face betrayed no emotion, her demeanour was a mask of piety and peace.

The Lady Brienne of Tarth balanced her considerable weight from one leg to another, very nervously, standing among the people of King's Landing, mixed with the knights of minor houses, only twenty feet away from the king and the queens, unable to calm down. She wore a light armour and a short sword, the best she could find fast in King's Landing. She was not particularly proud of the way she acquired it, buying it from a hedge knight from the Stormlands in front of the Dragon Gate. He wouldn't have sold it before she threatened to beat him bloody if he didn't accept her more than generous offer, taking with him the last of her father's coin.

When she went early in the morning to feed Jaime as his gaoler, she had found the Red Keep closed off to everyone. "The prisoner does not need food today," the gold cloaks jeered at her, "the roses will see to all of his needs after the trial."

Brienne froze at the cruel statement and walked away, pulling a face of a dumb wench they expected to see with more difficulty than usual. Now at least she was armed. The rough-spun dress she still wore in the morning was packed in a small saddle bag she carried in case she would need it later. She prayed for the Elder Brother to win the trial and to the Warrior to fortify her hand and help her bring Cersei to safety in a moment of confusion before the High Septon would order her apprehension, or death. Tommen should be safe for awhile, for she couldn't believe that His Holiness sought to sell him out as Mance Rayder had said. It would be much more dishonour than people were usually capable of, or so she found.

Jaime could not save his sister, so she had to do it for him.

In repayment for his gentleness… No, not in repayment, Brienne did not want to lie to herself. It seemed that, beyond her wildest expectations in the field, she had just become Jaime's… lady love. She remembered the response of his body under her hands, and of the sweetness of his fingers where no man's finger had ever been. And for much that it shamed her, she would not have it any other way. Even if he replaced her with Cersei later on again, when the times would become better, or a new spring would come. He couldn't see so well in the dark, my dear, said the voice of Septa Roelle in the pit of her confused mind.

"Shut up!" she told her, earning a peculiar look from a fat retainer standing next to her, thoroughly amazed at the tall knight speaking in a female voice to himself.

She looked around and pretended she didn't say a thing.

Very near the royal dais, across from where Brienne was standing, there was a simple wooden pedestal on four high pillars, built for the High Septon overnight, surrounded by a line of Warrior's Sons and the pressing undulating sea of sparrows, septons, septas, monks from all lands and silent sisters with their long mourning dresses. The Faith Militant came in force to the trial while the nobility and the people of King's Landing gathered together on the opposite side of them, mingling with each other with no regard for rank and stature.

The High Septon had become very powerful, and he favoured the equality among the faithful, so the lords and ladies tried not to react with disdain at the ragged commoners standing next to them. It has become known that anyone who would not be pious enough, could be the next person accused of treachery and fornication by the Faith. And not everyone could afford a Kingsguard champion like Ser Robert Strong to defend their cause, or have stored plenty of crops for the winter as the Tyrells to buy one. An appearance of humility became fashionable, and even the Queen Margaery, who would always be King Renly Baratheon's widow in Brienne's eyes, wore a simple grey robe very much closed on the chest, in contrast to her previous dresses revealing more than was proper of her lady's charms.

Brienne thought of how ridiculous she would look in one of Margaery's gowns open from the neck almost to the belly button with her two small breasts. Gowns or not, and still a maid, she had learned beyond any doubt that as ridiculous as it might have seemed to her only three days ago, her body, such as it was, could please a man.

And not just any man, one of the best men she had ever known, no matter what he sometimes thought of himself.

The Lady of Tarth had to distract herself from her inappropriate thoughts, and there was nothing better for it then to further study the situation in the field. An entirely necessary endeavour to the fulfilment of her new self-sworn oath to save Cersei for Jaime. She noted how only the Lady Olenna did not care for the newly found modesty in ladies' fashion, ostentatiously wearing a dark pink gown, somewhat too colourful for her venerable age. But her gaze was so sharp that even the High Septon did not dare observe a thing when she bowed with the rest of the royal family to greet him before stepping up to her own place. The highborn ladies whispered that she had paid a handsome sum in gold to the High Septon for the Queen Margaery's innocence. If one was to believe the rumours, in the love of gold at least, the new High Septon was just the same as his predecessors, except that he didn't let the riches of the Faith show, but rather kept them under key in the deep wine cellars near the Great Sept of Baelor. In the very first days when he took over the lamp of the Faith, His Holiness had had all the wine poured out, and spilled down the dirty streets of Vysenia's Hill, to condemn the sinful life of the Faith before he had been chosen to reinstate its dignity.

The crowd cheered when Ser Robert Strong rode out proudly in the open, on a huge white stallion with silver harness and silver reins, wearing an immaculate white armour of the Kingsguard, especially built to fit a man of his giant size. The Queen Regent's smiths came on purpose to do only that, all the way down from Casterly Rock. He bowed before the High Septon, and presented his long white lance for the blessing, as a true knight who meant no harm.

His Holiness blessed the weapon and announced in a placid fatherly manner: "Ser Robert Strong, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, the champion of the Queen Regent!"

Another knight in dark armour, thin and tall, even if much shorter in stature than Ser Robert Strong, rode out timidly from among the ordinary people. He emerged from the side of the Blackwater Bay, carefully guiding forward a large black horse, with attention not to hurt any of the smallfolk by a wrong step. The horse appeared much more dangerous than its rider. His lance was of middle length and the point of the spear intricately designed, a mastery of a single work of a smith. The point was forged together as one, but was clearly wrought of more different parts, metal and black stone. He wore a rounded wooden shield with a lonely tree on a red sunset field and a falling star.

Red stones gleamed on his breastplate almost resembling a pattern of the seven-pointed star. When he approached the High Septon, Brienne could see clearly that they were no jewels but a simple patient and long-lasting work of water on a non-precious common red stone.

She would have never recognised the Elder Brother if she didn't know beyond doubt it was him.

His Holiness frowned and declared briefly. "Surely, this must be some kind of mistake. The champion of the Faith has to wear the attire of the Faith."

To his words, a company of Warrior's Sons walked to the timid knight, forcing him to dismount, ignoring the occurrence when the mean black horse kicked one of them unconscious. They stripped the Elder Brother in front of the High Septon down to brown tunic and breeches, only barely preserving his modesty. They clad him in a light armour encrusted with many colourful crystals and handed him a lance with a white crystal spear-point, shining gracefully in the light of the morning. On his head they placed a light helm of leather, decorated with the embroidered image of the seven-pointed star. Finally, they brought him a lithe light brown courser, to replace the black animal from the seven hells. Five of them were needed to drag the ferocious black horse away by force, behind the lists, in the direction of the city.

Brienne was moved by pity for the older man, and wondered what would happen next and if he could still miraculously prevail in the ridiculous armour he was awarded. It is as useful for him as the pink dress was for me, she remembered the Lord Bolton's gift, and felt a shameful pleasure that the Lord Bolton had died as he had lived, with his skin weaved in a sad white cloak of a wildling King-beyond-the-Wall.

"Your Faith will be your shield," declared one of the Warrior's Sons to a would be knight of their design.

And that was how they gave him no shield against the White Knight on his powerful white horse.

"No one can withstand the power of the Faith," whispered the sparrows, and the septas sighed from misplaced devotion, seeing how their champion now looked much more hallowed than he did before.

Only one tall septa, the tall highborn maid for whom Brienne had been searching in the riverlands for months, staggered nervously in the first row of the faith, tucking a strand of auburn hair under her headdress. A very tall man in a black tunic, wearing no armour except for a simple helm over his large face, tried to reassure her: "Do not despair. If he doesn't have the strength and the ability to fight, no metal will protect him."

A large direwolf wailed sadly from the septa's feet in direction of Ser Robert Strong, its lamentation strangely resembling some melodious words of a dead language that no one could speak any more. The wolf acted as if it wished to run to the White Champion, but the tall septa scratched it behind the ears and asked it to stay, calling it a good dog for all to hear. The animal stayed, howling in regular intervals, like a bird of bad omen.

Brienne noted that the High Septon gave a sharp displeased look to the direwolf, as if the ungodly animal posed a threat to his peaceful flock of men adoring the Seven.

"The Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle is now the champion of the Faith and the opponent of Ser Robert Strong in this trial," the High Septon announced and both riders trotted down the lists to the positions from which the joust would begin.

All eyes were on them, and Brienne rejoiced when no one paid attention to a tall boy with a hammer and an uncouth man in his odd cloak. Gendry and Mance Rayder were able to collect the gear the timid knight had worn before he was made to look like the Knight of Crystals. Then they stood aside and waited, quietly, for what the day would bring.

All eyes were on the champions, and no one, not even Brienne, to her disgrace, saw an army creeping slowly up the kingsroad unfolding the banners of the three-headed dragon as it went, unfolding the banners of fire, unfolding the banners of blood.

Three times the contenders rode past, and three times the lances clashed but both riders remained firmly in the saddle amidst the clatter of white armour on crystal, like two bright stars dressed to look like mortal men.

"Ser Robert is not good enough in jousting," the Hound said quietly to the Lady Sansa with rekindled hope. "Maybe he is not my brother."

"Or it is the gods that guide the Elder Brother's steps," Sansa observed.

"Or I am the Knight of Flowers," the Hound gave a dry laugh at a joke only he seemed to understand, earning him a reprimanding look of the blue eyes, under a pair of auburn eyebrows.

On the fourth pass, the white courser of the Knight of Crystals missed a step, and Ser Robert leaned from his saddle to unhorse him. The champion of the Faith remained hanging sideways on his beautiful horse and returned to his end of the lists. He was seemingly unable to straighten himself in the saddle, and the horse turned around for another pass, meek as a lamb ready for slaughter.

Forward they ran, the clumsy horse and the semi-conscious rider, to meet the onslaught of the White Foe, high as the Mountain.

Sansa prayed to the gods, old and new: "Please, help him! He believes in you, he does! Even if some others do not." Her tall companion had no comment to that, he only placed a huge hand on her right shoulder for a passing moment.

The champion of the Faith hung almost upside down, lifeless as a corpse, but when the White Knight of the Kingsguard passed him, aiming his faultless white lance to the middle of the hanged man's chest, the Elder Brother pulled himself half way up and held his crystal-topped lance as a flat bar in front of Ser Robert Strong's armoured belly. The spear point broke and splintered, but the force of the onslaught of the Kingsguard did the rest, and Ser Robert Strong flew forward, over the head of his horse. His flight spanned almost twenty feet in distance until he finally landed on his head, rolling in the dust, as a heap of precious white metal, tainted at last with the average dull grey colour of the world.

But the Elder Brother fared even worse. To hold the lance steady took all his force, and moments later than Ser Robert Strong, he also hit the ground. The horse of the Faith stepped on his chest with a single hoof, cracking the fancy crystal armour as a shell of a rotten egg. The Elder Brother screamed in pain, lay back and closed his eyes.

The crowd cried out in awe, and the High Septon was on his gnarled feet, motioning to his minions to check if any of the champions still lived. The eyes of His Holiness burned with the righteous flame of a man chosen by the gods who would soon win over all his enemies in a single stroke.

The sparrows moved forward as ordered, but their way to the champion of the Faith was blocked by the jointly drawn warhammer and longsword of Gendry and Mance Rayder. Three septas, and the Hound, already tended to the fallen man.

"Tell it to your priest, woman, tell him true!" Mance Rayder commanded one of the septas harshly, pointing at the crashed armour on the Elder Brother's chest. "I won't steal you for it, but I might think better of you."

"He lives, Your Holiness," Septa Tyene said to the High Sparrow, her golden brown face acquiring a livid shade of green, "but the majestic armour you have seen fit to award him with has been ruined. It tore open a very old wound on his chest, and nearly killed him. If this trial is to continue, he will have to wear the black armour he had chosen for himself. There is no other way in the face of the gods. Unless what you intended with this trial is to sentence the Elder Brother to his death."

His Holiness seemed most displeased, but he still nodded in agreement, looking expectantly at Ser Bonifer Hasty who went in person to check on the queen's champion, kneeling next to him.

No one paid attention to how the champion of the Faith was fast bandaged by the skilled hands of a pale septa, nor how Gendry and the Hound helped him to don his armour and to rise from the ashes as a black dragon reborn, under the watchful steel of Mance Rayder's sword.

For Ser Bonifer stood up, holding the head of Ser Robert Strong, severed from his body in the fall, and still covered with the immaculately white helm.

The crowd sighed in fear when Ser Bonifer unclasped it.

Revealing auburn curly hair and lifeless blue eyes of a young man who had let others call him the King in the North, before he lost his life to a vain lord he had failed to take as a father-in-law.

Brienne knew she had no time to lose. She moved swiftly among the people towards the Queen Regent.

Elder Brother

The Elder Brother rose in great pain from the freshly open chest wound, which very nearly cost him his life in the Battle of the Trident. Septa Lemore and Septa Tyene dressed it well but the pain was still searing.

Dimly aware of his surroundings, first he noticed Nymeria spring forward from the crowd, toppling Ser Bonifer over like a wooden puppet. Lady Sansa dressed like a septa was not far behind the wolf. Running to Ser Bonifer in the mud, she took a severed head from his hands, crying louder than a mother whose infant child had been taken away from her breast to be impaled on a sword.

"Robb!" she sobbed. "Couldn't they let you die after they had killed you?"

"My lords and ladies," Sansa cried, "this is my brother, Lord Robb Stark, murdered at the Twins as a guest on a wedding!" And then to King Tommen: "Your Grace! My brother was a traitor to your reign, but still the laws of men and the sacred teachings of the Faith order that his remains shall be buried with dignity. Not that his head is sewed to another body..."

Wiping tears larger than crystals on the armour the Elder Brother had been forced to wear, Sansa lifted the head high up in the air so that all could see the threads still hanging from the severed neck, mingled with drops of thick black blood.

"This is a crime in the eyes of the gods and I implore the King and the High Septon for justice," she said but her words were hushed by a mighty roar. The headless armoured body of Ser Robert Strong stood up from the ground, and advanced to a confused Ser Bonifer Hasty still sitting in the mud. A huge arm grabbed the knight's neck and cracked it as if it were a dry twig before he could make a peep. The body then looked for a sword, and took one from another Warrior's Son, cutting the man in two as it did so, easily as if he was made of reed, and not of sinew and bone.

The body advanced towards Sansa, still crying over her brother, maybe in desire to put its head back on, or in a blind killing fury, the Elder Brother found it hard to tell. Nymeria leapt on the corpse, only to be thrown away by a sweep of a huge hand, as if she were a weak cur, kicked by a vicious master. The Hound, armed with a greatsword stood in front of Sansa in no time, barring the way with his body.

"I'd told you once that I would die for you," he told her and raised his sword.

Sansa screamed in shock.

But before the dead and the living brother could clash, the elected champion of the Faith, against his will or not, stood firmly on his two feet behind the headless body and said in an iron voice: "I am your enemy, creature of the underworld."

The body hesitated, unsure about whom to attack.

The Elder Brother turned to look back, at Septa Lemore and Septa Tyene, but their faces radiated only utter calm. Septa Lemore's headdress was shorter than it should have been and he wondered if that was what she tied around his wound. What is wrong with me? he thought. Do I suddenly expect a septa to grant me her favour, a ribbon, or a smile? Only because she did her duty, to heal those in need?

He still had to touch a bandage on his chest. He still had to look back one more time. Whatever he wanted, it was stronger than him. And he was certain that he had not found it. Yet.

The corpse made another step in direction of Sansa, and crossed swords with the Hound, initiating a deadly dance of equals between a dead brother who had no face, and a living one who only had half.

Sansa screamed harder and set Robb's head carefully on the ground. Then she returned to the corpse of Ser Bonifer and pulled out his sword, holding it up in trembling, unpractised hands, in direction of the men fighting, determined to help in any way she could.

The Elder Brother did not look back any more.

"I am your opponent!" he shouted from the top of his lungs, his blood boiling black in an unstoppable blazing fury. "The High Septon said I was to fight you, I, the Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle!"

Two black lines of fear were etched deep on the wrinkled forehead of His Holiness, when the champion of the people he had created remembered his holy name in his anger.

The body understood the Elder Brother, or merely heard the loudest of all voices. It turned around and paid its undivided attention to the insolent challenger.

The Knight of the Faith was no longer timid, and no longer made of crystal. The red stones on his chest gleamed next to the shimmering painted trail of the falling star on his shield. The stones no longer resembled the seven-pointed star, despite all Sansa's efforts to that end, revealing instead the broad lines of the once mighty royal sigil Aerys II had worn on his breastplate, unseen in the capital since his demise.

"Three heads has the dragon," Sansa whispered the words from one of the old scrolls of Maester Luwyn in Winterfell, lowering the sword she hastily took. She grabbed the Hound's left arm, and was glad that her touch made him relent and observe the change in the Elder Brother.

The black clad champion held no sword, only a masterfully crafted middle length lance with a black shining spear end, which he didn't hold in his right hand any more, but in his left.

I am left handed! In battle, at least, the Elder Brother remembered, and for the first time since the Trident the memory was real, like a full juicy taste of a summer fruit, not an empty knowledge of the life he had lived.

"I am your enemy," repeated the Elder Brother, devoid of fear, to the armoured headless monster towering above him like a desolate mountain over a lesser hill.

And when what was left of Gregor approached, and raised the stolen longsword to kill, the Elder Brother lifted the rounded wooden shield with the right hand to meet the blow.

"For Elia," he whispered, "the most innocent of women."

It sounded like one of the old songs, but it was the best reason he could remember.

A surge of red and golden flames burst forward from the falling star painted on the Elder Brother's shield, devouring the white armour of the walking corpse as if it were a thatched roof of a house of the poor, and not made of forged metal. And where it passed, the fire revealed black charred flesh in the middle of the body's cursed belly.

"For Elia," the Elder Brother vowed again, words mingled with tears. "For Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon, for whom no one was there when they should have been," his voice lamented, defeated.

But his left arm still had strength. It held no regret and it did not falter when it buried the spear point of obsidian and Valyrian steel deep into the monster's guts, turning it around to cause the biggest possible damage.

The body walked in circles, and fumed, and steamed, and roared, and dropped to the ground, twitching like an animal unsuccessfully slaughtered. It was still alive, yes, but it lost all strength and the ability to fight.

Unable to lift a little finger from the ground, the corpse lay still, and moaned and gurgled pitifully.

"For Elia," the Elder Brother said once more, before the new wave of pain in his chest forced him to sit down.

Aegon

"Mother," the young Usurper, Tommen, said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the field. "The monk won and your champion lost. Must I condemn you now? You told me this was not going to pass…"

But the Queen Cersei was not with her son and no one could tell when and where she left.

"You will not condemn anyone any more, my son," said Lady Olenna with kindness. "The time for play is over." The watching crowd opened up, to let through the Golden Company, proudly flying in the open air the banners with the three-headed dragon of the House Targaryen.

A young lad, barely more than a boy, with long silver hair, rode forward, and Lord Mace Tyrell readily knelt in front of him. "Your Grace, please accept from our hands the Usurper, Tommen, bastard of Cersei Lannister with her brother Jaime Lannister. If it please you, I shall kill him in your stead!"

"But you are my father-in-law!" said Tommen looking at Lord Mace and then towards his queen who withdrew behind her grandmother and looked modestly towards the ground. "You swore that my father was King Robert and that Uncle Jaime was lying!"

Lord Tyrell put a hand on his sword, clumsily attached to his belt, but the silver-haired rider lifted his arm. "I, Aegon of the House Targaryen, Sixth of My Name, the King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, by the grace of the gods the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm do not wish to start my rule by spilling blood of children. That is what the grandfather of this Usurper did when he ordered my death. Surely a suitable accommodation can be found for Tommen until the true king's justice can be decided for his crimes."

Lord Mace said something under his voice to two of his personal guards, bearing the rose of Highgarden high on their chests. They took little Tommen away while the boy struggled and cried to Aegon in a child's voice, sounding suddenly older than the scarce number of his name days: "They are the real traitors! Just like my mother said and I never believed her because Lady Margaery gave me kittens! They will betray you as well!"

Aegon visibly shivered from the boy's words and chose to look away, not to show any weakness in his kingly armour.

A familiar almost purple-eyed septa stepped out from the crowd of the people of the Faith, ending the unease Aegon felt. She bowed deeply, and fell on her knees, presenting him a naked greatsword of Valyrian steel. The colours of silver, pearl and ivory danced and rippled on the blade, glowing as a sign of a new hope in the cold light of the morning.

"Your Grace," she said. "A sword from Prince Rhaegar was not preserved after the battle of the Trident. But we who stood by your side since you were saved from the Red Keep as an infant have been able to preserve a sword of one of his best friends and most loyal Sworn Brothers of the Kinsguard, Ser Arthur Dayne. This sword is named Dawn, Your Grace, the Sword of the Morning, as its previous master had been. And it is yours for the keeping."

Aegon dismounted and walked to the kneeling septa, gladly accepting the gift. "Please, rise, Septa Lemore. I would not have you kneel in my presence for you have been like a mother to me. And nothing will please me more than to wield this sword. May I be found worthy of the great knight who wore it before me!"

Septa Lemore rose as she was bid an urgently whispered a few choice words to the ear of the new self-proclaimed King. They made him turn towards Lord Tyrell and say in a cold voice. "See to it that young Tommen lives in the accommodation you have just attributed him. Should he die, your life will be forfeit as well."

"Well spoken, Your Grace", said the elderly knight with very short orange hair, dismounting behind the King. "Like a true king."

"Lord Connington," Aegon recognised him with respect, "you will take the badge of the Hand of the King from Lord Tyrell from now on. I am convinced that he will not mind."

"Your Grace," a shaggy commoner unknown to Aegon, in a peculiar light-coloured cloak, barged in on the conversation of his betters, not showing much regard for the new king in his attitude, where at least he showed some in his words. Aegon noticed that the man was standing as a leader at the forefront of a very mismatched group of abandoned people, nursing each other in the middle of the lists made for the Queen Regent's trial. "It may be just a little bit too soon to celebrate your victory. Look!"

The fearless looking cloaked man pointed at the Blackwater Bay gleaming blue in the distance. There a black mass of sails rolled on the water, from the far lands towards the capital, headed by a pair of large black wings obstructing the lucid clearness of the sky.

"Dromonds, dromonds in the north," the commander of the Golden Company cried out.

"Dromonds and galleys and more ships to come!" one of his sellswords responded to the call.

"A thousand ships," a beautiful auburn-haired septa exhaled dreamily at the unearthly beauty of it all. Aegon almost shivered again when he realised that the septa had been holding a man's severed head as a treasured possession, with the colour of the hair equally auburn as her own.

Septa Lemore whistled quietly in a non-ladylike manner. Her prophetic dark eyes became glued to the menacing distance, burning like an honest lighthouse, showing the way home to the honourable sailors and to the smugglers and the pirates alike.

Then she just said. "Daenerys has come!"