Machoking: Yes, yes it does.
JaceMaddox: Don't worry. They're not really used, and we'll get an explanation in the next chapter
Arianne
"He fights like the devil." One of them was admiring.
"Rides like a peasant, though." Another added.
"Not in a joust," a third assures them. "In a joust, he rides like uncle." Which one? she wants to ask. One is a drunken dwarf, another Westeros' most famous living murderer and the others…
Her unspoken thoughts are interrupted by a gasp, and then, "He turns himself out beautifully. Pity his brother doesn't grace the tourney ground as much."
"Prince Joffery prefers fighting with his brother over a dinner table than a tourney ground."
That much is true, Arianne thinks turning her eyes away from the group of ladies she is regrettably apart of, and looking to watch the objects of their fascination. Normally on a tourney field, Rickard certainly is a thing to behold: a beacon of black and silver steel plate, darting, cutting, thrusting passed his opponents guard, rolling through the sand and mud, and skirting round them like paper in the wind.
But not today. The heavy and unseasonable rain that has beset them these past week or so has departed and the full weight of the sun at the peak of Summer is burning down on them. So, all the armour is gone, too hot to fight in, and any who can bring themselves to fight both the heat and someone else, brave the sun that blazes over the training yard to fight in thin shirts and trousers. Except Rickard who has taken his shirt off, and is attracting attention for it.
The women of the court have begun circling them yard like vultures. Clinging together in obscure positions to spectate the Prince and his companions, all mostly hidden from view of course and out of the sun. Arianne is not so modest, and has no quarrel with the heat. In Dorne it'll still be far hotter, even as Summer turns to Winter.
Another gasp: Rickard has taken a hit, his first of the current bout, and then Beric Dondarrion is calling a cease to entreat with the Prince. "My Prince, it is too dangerous to spar without something on." He says, standing between Rickard and Harry Hardyng.
Rickard shrugs, grinning.
"I only feel it when I stop." He answers, rubbing the spot where the tourney blade landed its hit. It gone red already, and in an hour the it'll go purple. "I'm a Dothraki. I feel no pain." Dondarrion bows out. "Another round, Harry?"
The Young Falcon is cross legged on the floor, panting sweating buckets. When the Prince asks him for the next round, he stares at him, his tongue falling out his mouth, dry as a bone. "You're not serious?"
He nods. There's only a little perspiration on his skin, and looks as though he'd go on till nightfall, the way he swaggers and grins and laughs at Harry Hardyng. "Only if you're up to it?"
Th Valeman grunts, struggling to his feet, and snatches up his tourney sword he's let drop from his hand. and jerkin he laid as side as he duelled with the Prince. "A moment. Give me a moment."
While Harry limps away for water and shade, Rickard stands in the yard alone, his bare chest rising and falling. He looks around and sees her, standing there, leaning against a wall observing him, and he seems to falter a little. To her, its pleasing to see his confidence rocked so by her presence alone. Rickard is a blusterer, the one who can laugh down an opponent and cheerfully stick his boot in their arse as they turn away from him. Yet her stare gives him a terrible beating. She who had left the land of her birth without anything, content to feel her family and kin and her father's snubs forever, and is now dependant on the courtesy and generosity of a man who has no love of Dorne, permitted the murder of her aunt and cousins – and is a Lannister in all but name.
Eventually, the Prince approaches her. Not as they did in the Royal Sept, as friends and confidants, but as in their formal rolls at court: Prince and Ambassador. She gives him the customary two bows, one as he approaches and another when he is before her, and he replies with one of his own after she'd done hers.
"Your Excellency."
"My Prince."
He's still no shirt on.
"What brings you hear, Princess? I didn't take you for a great spectator of the lists."
"I'm not ordinarily. However, there happened to be extenuating circumstances which drew me here."
He looks confused, and is about to enquire, but as she says it, there is a chorus of giggles behind her. Rickard looks and spots the gaggle of ladies watching them, and she sees the cogs clicking into place in his head. He's biting back something: the urge to grin or scream, and his ears and neck start to redden. He bows to them, "Good morning, ladies." And puts his hands on his hips, and leans to push his chest out some more, and they just stare at him, fanning themselves or pretending to.
"You fight well, ser." One of them says, and he inclines his head politely.
"Thank you, my lady, though I am no ser. Not yet any way."
"Soon, though?" Another asks him.
"I should hope so."
She, Arianne, raises an eyebrow. "And how would you hope to earn your spurs, my lord."
His brow furrows and he considers for a moment. "Who knows? Not I, but I'd be lying were I to say that the thought hasn't come to me. Mayhap I'll earn my spurs in some great battle, or slay some beast that terrorizes a poor village."
Arianne smiles, "The kind of things all hedge knights dream of."
"That, and rescuing Princesses." He adds, a tightness folding itself into his smile. "Though I've never known a hedge knight who'd had his travels take him to anything like these kinds of adventures."
He tells them of an old knight he met once, in Highgarden, - she too had met the knight perhaps this was why he's telling the story – those knights who made an honest living by riding to tournaments across Westeros and the gladiator pits of Essos. He'd cross the mountains and frontiers that separate one kingdom from another, a band of squires and horses in tow, always on the move from one prize to another, till age and too many injuries put him out of the game. Now in his final years he makes a living showing the young lords of the Reach, fighting against their spite and prejudice and bravado. He had told Arianne, in the days of Rhaegar and Aerys, the young learned to respect their elders, yet now I am forced to polish the armour of some giggling streak of piss I wouldn't let have lick my boots in the years gone by. And now look, he said to Rickard, I'm forced to drink with a… what even are you – Stormlander or Westerman?
The Knight himself was Dornish, an Orphan of the Greenblood river, and spoke a form of Rhoynish and a combination of Old, High and Bastard Valyrian. In those days, tournaments were the ground by which men tested themselves, not the place the idle went to show off and enjoy their luxuries. Then, the winner was not so clearly found, scoring would be complex and the judge would have no mercy for any break of the rules, so shatter your lances all, you may but a loss of points would lose you the title. All opposition flattened and come out with the beg of gold, but a fine on your record would mark you forever, and an offense caused in Lannisport, might catch you again in Sunspear, or even Braavos.
A small crowd is gathering around Prince Rickard now, and he is stroking his chin trying to look like the man whose wisdom he is trying to impart. Harry Hardyng and Lord Beric and the other knights and squires of the yard are even here, listening intently. For this, it maybe he doesn't mention what the knight said about how women were not left in the sun to sneer and smirk at you from behind pavilions, but kept in your tent for afterward.
"You need to set your squires at each end of the barrier," Rickard says, "so your mount won't go wide if the he tries to cut the corner, or your foot will catch, easy done too; for I myself have done it, and it's bloody painful. It's one of three ways to fail: Horse goes, squires go, nerve goes. Use a helm that gives you a good line of sight, keep your body square on and when you are to strike, turn to meet your opposition, and watch the tip of your lance fall straight onto the target. But your instinct may pull you back, make you lean away from your foes blow. Break it! And do not close your eyes as you go in. Keep them open, break this instinct too. Stay loose in the saddle, but a good hold on your ride. Carry the lance loose, don't tighten the muscles of your arms, else you pull yourself off target. Again, we have the lesson to learn: defeat your instinct. The will to have glory must surpass your will to survive, else do not take up the lance."
Everyone is lulled into a steady hush by the time Rickard finishes speaking, and he's managed to slip a shirt and doublet over his head without anyone really noticing it. It takes a good while for anyone to acknowledge that he's finished with his tale, people so stunned by the way he talks about jousting as if it were love-making. Perhaps it's his voice that does it really, his deep Western burr, soft melodic; he'd make a good minstrel or an actor on a stage, should his fortunes seriously crumble.
Then the Prince rises from the stool someone had set down for him as he was speaking, and he announces, "Well, it is getting late. I wouldn't want to detain any of you from your suppers, and I myself shall have an engagement I'd hate to be late for." And everyone is suddenly bowing and curtseying him, shrugging off the effects of his charms. He returns the bows, saying, "Ladies, my lords, sers," his eyes meet hers, shiny, deep like a pair of glittering lakes, "Until this evening, Princess." And while he is grinning and swaggering away with some retainers in tow, she is stationary and blushing, watching him go.
And then she is welcoming him into her dining room. It's just gone dusk, and the room I full of candlelight, burning low and lighting the room in an orange glow, which is only enhanced by the Dornish tapestries, drapes, and Martell banners she has on the walls. Rickard is intrigued by them, stops to admire them as he enters, but after that is does, he is unusually curt with her. "Before we begin dinner," he says, "I need to talk business with you."
"Business?" she wonders, innocently.
Rickard drops his smile. "About the cause my friends and I have declared ourselves for."
"Friends?"
His eyebrows furrow, and he looks at her like a man whose loosed his only arrow, and has to trod across the ground to seek an ally or enemy. "The friends I went to the Small Council with Yesterday. The friends which encompass a great amount of Westeros. Those who I spoke for when they signed their names to…"
She cuts him off. "Those who signed your armoured ultimatum."
"What? Don't call it that!"
"Too late everyone has already started." He looks irritated, and she adds, "Perhaps wearing armour was not a good idea."
Rickard gives a little shake of his shoulders, as if to shake off the dampeners she put on him. "Regardless, the cause me and my friends campaign in aid of is ours, but, as I'm sure you know, the better part of Westeros would rejoice…"
She cuts him off again. "I don't think the better part of Westeros knows or cares." But that's it. When Rickard says, 'the better part of Westeros' he really means 'one of my Westeros's'. Either the Westeros of the Stormlands and the Westerlands, and occasionally the Reach: the Andal South, as the Dornish and Northerners call it. Or he means the Westeros he thinks slipped through his Father's fingers: where there are no Seven Kingdoms, but one, called Westeros, and one people, one language, led by one absolute and benevolent king, under the protection of the Seven Gods. Any other Westeros, to Rickard, is not worth living in.
"So," Arianne goes on to say, "what would you have of me?"
"We require you to support us. To join with us. We have no scruples about the Dornish presence at court, as our opponents do, which you know well enough. It's a goal of ours to ensure that the realm is drawn closer together, that there are no special cases."
"A goal as close to mine own heart, as yours." She smirks.
"Which is where our difficulty lies, Arianne. Under your father, Dorne is a part of the Seven Kingdoms in name only. Prince Doran is lord unto no one. And, despite your… 'disagreements' with him, this is your only common ground. It's your great want, for Dorne, and the other Kingdoms, for all I know, to secede from the Crown. Whereas…"
Whereas it is Rickard's great want to strengthen the bonds that keep Westeros one kingdom. Though he has no idea how to do it, for no one ever has, no one ever thought that Westeros could be one country, not just more than a collection of a dozen different nations.
"So, you see our problem. That we're asking help from a potential enemy."
She touches her chest, around her heart. "Why, Rickard, I thought I'd made it plain the other night? My deepest wish is to be the best possible friend I can to you."
And their deal is struck. She will do what she can to assist Rickard and his fellows to usher in their new regime, to oust Jon Arryn and the other undesirables, to do what she can to ensure that the Dornish lords back him at his Great Council. In return, he will do his best to guarantee that Dorne, while brought back into to the fold, is respected and afforded certain rights, and that, should the question ever be raised at any time, Dornish borders are off the table in negotiations with the Marcher lords of the Stormlands and the Reach, all of whom failed to, or were not asked to sign the Armoured Ultimatum.
And eventually, they sit down together, for dinner.