Author's Note: Hello again!
Several different segments to this update, but each are necessary for different reasons. I hope you enjoy them!
I also want to say thanks for the milestone numbers this story has reached. We broke 300 followers, 200 favorites and 100 reviews, all of which is mind-boggling. Thank you all so very, very much. Y'all truly do rock.
Really curious what you have to say about this one, so please review. Please forgive any grammar mistakes as well, as most of this was punched out in three hours of the very early morning where I'm from (and it's being posted instantly, so my brain is sleep-deprived). Save me some revision time and send me a PM if you see something major I butchered!
As always, I hope you enjoy and review this update.
He entered the command tent the next morning intending to blend in with the table, as he normally did. As a Prince, Damon was expected to be at the strategic meetings, and technically could be a large voice in the conversation. As it was, Damon had never said so much as a word at them; he was content to sit, listen and learn, absorbing the information to be gleaned from more experienced tacticians.
The second he came through the door on this day, however, a booming voice cut through the light conversations of inside.
"The Daring joins us."
It was the Strongboar, nodding his head at Damon and grinning widely. That's….odd. The other men in the tent, seasoned commanders and veteran warriors, each stopped their conversation mid-sentence, greeting the Prince with nods or murmured pleasantries. And that's odder. Damon froze in the opening, completely unsure what he was supposed to do with the eyes of seasoned knights on him.
Jaime saved him, for the thousandth time in Damon's life. "Please have a seat, Your Grace." Emerald met emerald, and Damon noticed that his uncle looked neither pleased nor disappointed. The Prince for his part tried to relay his thanks as he quietly took a chair across from Ser Damion Lannister, who nodded with a grin of his own. Damon tried to return it, though he doubted he had hidden his discomfort.
"Is your arm healing, Your Grace?" Lord Regenard Estern, middle aged and two stone or so overweight, had never said a non-pleasantry word to Damon prior to the war. The Prince wished he hadn't have said one now.
"Uh…it is fine. Lord Estren."
"Excellent to hear."
A few others chimed in questions or remarks Damon had no clue how to correctly answer or respond to, and Jaime let him suffer much longer than the Prince would have liked before he called the lords to order.
The meeting, thank the Gods, proceeded normally. The Prince remained quiet as he always did, listening intently to the discussions of the current objective, their present positions and the strategy moving forward. Many of the riverlords facing them had been captured underneath Riverrun's sandstone walls, including Lord Edmure Tully himself. They were being held in the middle of the center camp, where Jaime had settled his command tent within clear view of the besieged castle and its flooded battlefield.
A number of Riverlanders, however, had managed to retreat back within Riverrun and raise the bridge, hence the siege. Lord Tytos Blackwood of Blackwood Vale had refused Jaime's demands for surrender, and in response Jaime had split his command into three camps. The Southern camp, under Ser Forley Prester, was situated along the Red Fork on the opposite side of the central camp where they were currently situated. The Northern camp, under Ser Damion Lannister, was situated along the Tumblestone. It was the best way to uphold the siege on the island Riverrun had become, though it was difficult to command the army as a whole with its three-pronged positioning.
Adding to the difficulties was that not all of the Riverlanders were trapped in Riverrun or imprisoned within the Central camp. Ser Karyl Vance—now Lord Karyl Vance, courtesy of Damon—and Ser Marq Piper had reassembled their fathers' shattered host after the Battle of the Three Hills, and were intermittently striking the Lannister force with lightening raids on the supply lines. Their losses had been severe at the border, but what men the Rivermen had left were doing an excellent job of being a royal pain in the ass.
And Riverrun would not fall quickly, no matter how one-sided the conflict outside its walls had been. Damon couldn't say with any certainty how prepared the Tully's kept their home for a siege, but he was betting that they were prudent enough to be prepared for a long while in any case. And with Robb Stark somewhere in the North marching down on their heads, any time past tomorrow seemed to Damon like a very long time to wait.
The rest of the tent seemed to agree, though no one had any better alternative, much less the Prince.
He remained after the rest of the Lords had been dismissed, sensing his uncle wished to speak to him privately; they hadn't had a chance to talk since the battle the morning before. His hunch was proven correct when Jaime, still lounging at the head of the table, spoke as soon as Ser Damion was out of the tent.
"You're making a name for yourself."
Damon's eyebrows rose in genuine surprise. "I am?"
Jaime nodded, eyes locked on his nephew's identical ones. "You are. First with your sword, and then with your heroics. Dragging a dead man through rising water, trying to save him? Really?"
"It…it seemed the thing to do. I didn't have much chance to think about it."
"Clearly. If you had you wouldn't have done it."
Damon realized Jaime was scolding him. "I couldn't let him…" The Prince trailed off, realizing the absurdity of what he was about to say.
Jaime finished it anyway. "Die? Yet you were the one to stab him with a sword, Damon."
"You wouldn't have let him drown either."
"You're right. I would have cut his throat and then ran like hell." Jaime reached a hand out suddenly, patting the Prince on the arm. "Listen, Damon, and listen well. That knight, some nameless no one from no place important, is not worth a hair off of your head. Those men are here to kill you; that same knight you risked drowning in a ditch to try and save was the one who cut your arm, yes? Yet you tried to save him still."
"It…"
Jaime grimaced sympathetically. "Seemed the thing to do. I understand, Damon. I do. I was fighting a war around your age too. Dealt with things I didn't know how to deal with. But I'm telling you now, heroes die. You don't need to be a hero, Damon. You're much too valuable to die in a ditch."
"I could've died long before I even made it to the ditch, or before I even made it near Riverrun."
Jaime shook his head confidently. "No. I've sparred with you since you could hold a sword. I know your ability, and I know no normal swordsman is your match." Pride blossomed in the Prince's chest, unperturbed by his uncle's continued narrative. "As long as you don't do something stupid."
It hit Damon then, as clear as day. Jaime wasn't mad at him for trying to save the man he had already killed, not really. He was mad because he thought Damon had put himself in unnecessary danger. Which was somewhat absurd, considering he was seemingly completely fine with Damon charging up hills under archer fire and down Riverman spear lines, but then again his uncle had explained that in his own way; Jaime was confident Damon could handle himself on the field of battle, and with another wave of pride Damon realized he had done just that, twice now. His uncle was upset because his nephew had taken his mind off of the fighting, focusing instead on an errand that could have and probably should have gotten him killed.
The Prince, filled to the brim with pride, grinned at his uncle knowingly. "I'm here, aren't I?"
Jaime shook his head, trying to keep his face blank but finally breaking down and smirking an identical grin to his nephew's. "Stay that way, or your mother will have both of our cocks."
Tyrek was improving rapidly. Damon attributed most of that to the war, but he took a small amount of pride in thinking that he had a small hand in it as well.
"Better. You need to watch your shield though, Tyrek; it drops right before you strike. You fight anybody for more than two or three strikes and they'll notice."
His cousin cocked his head at him, both of them on the bank of the Tumblestone in the early morning mist. "Have you ever gone more than two or three swings before someone is dead, Your Grace?"
The Prince looked to the ground for a moment before shrugging in acknowledgement. "No." He glanced back up as he returned to a ready stance, live steel extended before him and the borrowed Prester shield—Damon's own was lost below the putrid waters of the ditch—in the ready position. "But if I ever do, I intend to win."
Tyrek grinned and nodded, settling into his own stance. They met in another clash of blades, the sound rising alongside the smell of frying meat and human odor into the brightening sky. Tyrek came hard at Damon's left, where his wound was still healing. That suited Damon fine; he'd told his cousin not to slack off on that side. The wound was healing as well as could be expected, and Damon didn't intend to let the arm grow lax and weak just because there was some pain.
This had become the two young men's routine; wake early, train with one another for three or four hours, eat breakfast, train for several hours more, eat dinner, train until night and return to their tent. That was it, day in and day out. No one had ever told Damon how horribly boring a siege was.
The songs don't talk of that. Or that men shit themselves when they die. Or any of the truth, really.
"How is Bella?"
Damon cocked an eyebrow at the question. Few men knew about Bella—few meaning only Tyrek and Jaime—although she ventured throughout the camp more and more. The Prince couldn't well expect her to remain in his tent at all times for weeks on end, and even if he did she probably wouldn't do it. As it was she had taken on the role of both a paramour and a servant, most likely to keep herself sane. She changed his bandages, cleaned his armor when he allowed her, disposed of the chamber pot, kept his hair close shorn...the list went on and on.
Most importantly, however, she could talk for hours on end. That could grind upon Damon's nerves whenever he let the boredom get to him, but in most instances it was a godsend. Whenever Damon became mired in thoughts of his father or how shit the world was turning out to be or whether that very first Riverlander at the Hills had a family who was missing him, Bella would speak. The Prince reckoned he knew most of her life by this point, or at least the parts she would ever be comfortable talking of. When she wasn't talking of herself she told stories, some of the same ones Cersei had told Damon when he was child and some that the Prince had no idea where in the world they could have come from or how in the name of the Seven anyone would tell them to their children.
Sometimes, Damon even talked back.
But rarely. And never, ever fully willingly.
"She is…fine."
Tyrek struck high, Damon parrying easily. "Is she as bored as we are?"
"Worse, I think."
They reset once Damon had knocked the Lord of Hayford off his feet with a shield rim to the back of the knee. "I like her."
Damon almost grinned. "Me too."
Tyrek, having to this point been teasing—it was odd, Damon found, to have somebody outside of Jaime or his younger siblings tease him and him not be upset about it—gave him a slightly concerned smile. "You do know she is a whore, right Your Grace? And that you'll never…you couldn't…"
The Prince cracked a smile. That was a conversation he and Bella had had many times over, and despite the undeniable closeness they shared—or at least that Bella shared with him—neither was fooling themselves with untrue notions of love. "I am fully aware, Tyrek, as is Bella."
"Good. I wasn't trying to tell you how to handle your own friendships, Your Grace, but I figured I'd try and make sure you weren't…you know."
"Thinking of marrying a whore? Worry not."
It hit Damon that he'd never discussed something so personal with Tyrek before as Jaime rode up suddenly.
"Get in your armor and on your horses," the Kingsguard ordered. Both young men straightened out of their fighting stances. The Prince could see the boredom and irritation he had noticed on his uncle's face for days was finally replaced by determination. "I am tired of these strikes by Piper and Vance. They'll have a hard time striking our supply lines when they are dead.
Damon and Tyrek both took off at a run, excited at the prospect of doing something different after weeks of monotony to the point of their complete focus being on getting in armor and in the saddle quickly.
Except for the small part of Damon's brain that wondered if he and Tyrek might actually be friends.
Damon had felt fear before.
His first memory of it was when he had been a small child, staring at the skulls of the long dead Targaryen dragons beneath the Red Keep. Another was when he was ten, on his first hunt with his father, and a boar charged his horse before Robert speared it through the neck—an odd bit of irony, considering just such a boar would do the King in years later. Recently he'd felt it at the Hills, when arrows had been falling around him and horses began screaming their horrible death screams and people started swinging swords at him. Even closer in the past at Riverrun, when he thought he was about to drown in a ditch of dead men.
Fear was a part of life for all of them, especially men who lived by the sword. Damon knew how to use it to his advantage, how to heighten his senses and swing harder than he ever had because he was so afraid. Fear was something he had grown used to.
But he had not known terror, true and complete terror, until Northern horns and war cries—hundreds of them—filled the woods around him.
Damon sliced a charging stallion's leg out from under it with a shout of exertion, his armor already filthy and sword covered in blood. He had lost another horse, because of course he had considering he was perfect on the ratio of horses ridden to horses killed in battle before he rode into this one, and was sprinting in one direction, cutting down the men he came across as he went. Not that that particular direction had an end goal for him; the Northmen were all around them, amongst them, everywhere at once with their furs and beards and swinging axes.
His borrowed shield was gone, hacked to bits in mere seconds of fighting by countless Northern blades. Somehow Damon had kept himself from following in the shield's footsteps, slicing through the burly Stark soldiers in a way only hours of training and sheer desperation could bring.
But even now, as he leaped several corpses—all in Lannister red—Damon knew he wouldn't stay alive much longer. Robb Stark, who was supposed to be somewhere in the North, had them surrounded and trapped in a wooded valley, less than a day's ride north of Riverrun. The trap had been well laid and blundered into, the Lannister desire to end the annoyance caused by the Rivermen paired with Jaime's irritation at having hunted them with no luck for several days, leading the Kingslayer to engage the first force of Riverlords he could find.
We should have known. Their scouts had disappeared, leaving them blind to where Vance and Piper were, but they had charged forward anyway. The strikes on Lannister lines had increased in number and strength leading up to the catastrophe Damon was currently living out, another indicator that perhaps something wasn't right, yet they'd engaged the dwindling number of men in Piper blue eagerly. The woods had been quite, horribly quite all around them, but they'd paid no mind.
We should have known.
But they hadn't known.
The Prince of the Iron Throne nearly cleaved a man in the colors of Vance in half with a two-handed, downward strike. Damon's brain was racing through the helplessness of the situation, his body acting on instinct alone. There was enemy everywhere, most of them mounted, striking and screaming and killing. Damon was almost convinced he had caught a glimpse of a wolf, an actual wolf, in the middle of it all.
They're all wolves, and they're tearing us apart like sheep.
"Get the Prince behind Tyrek!"
His uncle's voice came from directly next to him, the way Damon had been turning with sword raised. Suddenly there was armored men all around him, Lyle Crakehall, Tyrek atop his gray charger, Ser Talman Jast, others. Two strong arms from two different men—Strongboar and someone Damon couldn't name for the life of him—bodily wrenched Damon up off the ground and deposited him behind his cousin with burst of strength only the crisis around them could bring out.
From aback atop a horse Damon could gather the situation more clearly. And by that, it meant he could see that the situation was every bit as bad up here as it had been down there.
They were surrounded by Stark banners, the grey wolf on white everywhere the Prince looked, intermingled with the colors of their bannermen. Giants of Umber, bears of Mormont, suns of Karstark. The dancing maiden of Piper, which until this point Damon had only seen dancing away from him in fear, seemed to be swaying to the rhythm of the Lannister defeat.
All Lannister banners were gone. Most of their men were, too.
It all went through Damon's shocked mind in a moment. Jaime had never stopped shouting.
"Get the Prince out of here. All of you, strike at one point of the line. Get yourselves out if you can, but Damon escapes!" His uncle was covered in blood and gore but his face was unflappably calm. Damon saw in an instant the Jaime had accepted the situation for what it was, and was trying to salvage it the only way he knew how.
He had rallied his retainers, gotten to Damon's side, and ordered them to help the Prince escape at the cost of their lives. And he, Jaime, the man whom Damon trusted any and everything to, clearly wasn't going with him.
Damon shouted back, fear that he was about to lose his uncle more potent than even the terror the Northern war cries had brought. "No, I will not leave you!"
His uncle gestured sharply with his sword, ignoring his nephew's protest as if it had never been made. Except for his emerald eyes, which locked with Damon's identical ones for a moment through the eyeholes of their respective helms. "Go! GO!"
Later, the Prince wouldn't remember if he had shouted or cried or demanded Tyrek to follow Jaime, or if he had said nary a word. His uncle had charged brazenly in the direction where Damon instinctually knew Robb Stark could be found the same instant the last few vestiges of Lannister coherency galloped in another.
Tyrek was a good horseman Damon learned, sitting behind his shorter cousin with one arm gripping him tightly and the other swinging his sword at every northern face he saw. The gray destrier they rode, which Damon was fairly certain wasn't the mount Tyrek had rode into the ambush, was a good horse, fast and strong even with two armored men astride his broad back.
The men around him, the best of the Lannister forces, thinned one by one as they charged towards the southern end of the valley. Damon saw the Strongboar set upon by Northmen and disappear from his sight in a moment. He saw the other man to lift him up to Tyrek's horse, still nameless, slump dead from his saddle, a Stark spear in his side. He heard the sound of Northern cavalry thundering after them, shouts of alarm and 'save the Prince' from the dying men trying to help him escape, and gurgles of pain from men he killed as they sprinted by.
The end of the valley was blocked by several ranks of Northern cavalry. Damon and the remnants of his uncle's command hit them hard and centralized, the chasing Northmen crashing down on their back. The Prince swung and swung and swung, hanging onto his cousin for dear life with the other arm, trusting Tyrek to know which direction to ride as the man around them died.
It was bloodier than anything Damon had been a part of yet, men trampled beneath the hooves of horses if they fell beneath the hundreds of men fighting on horseback. He also saw very little of it, Tyrek keeping the grey at a full lope made possible by the deaths of the Lannister men around him. Damon swung repeatedly at passing faces and Northmen, hitting some, missing others, slicing horses and man alike. He couldn't see much of anything going on, working through feel and sound.
It startled him when they suddenly burst out of the chaos into open field, the light of the rising sun turning the blueish field into a beautiful scene that clashed with the sound of hell behind them. Damon looked left, then looked right, where seconds ago there had been Lannister friends and Stark enemies alike.
There was nothing, the sound of battle growing farther and farther behind.
I left him. I left Uncle Jaime. I left him to die!
Two blood covered, golden haired men, who had so recently been boys, galloped across an empty field all alone.
Bella saw her Prince return from the flap in their tent. He was soaked in blood and gore and sweat, seated behind his sweet cousin on a grey stallion that was clearly about to die from being ridden into the ground. When he dismounted the grey, which promptly fell over dead once Tyrek had also dismounted, he staggered, clearly having been in the saddle for hours. He had ridden out days ago handsome and pristine atop a bay only to return bedraggled and half-dead.
He'd also left as silent as ever, and he was returning louder than a baying hound.
"To arms! To arms!" To speak so little he could apparently bellow when he tried, and the Prince, once his legs were back under him, stomped through the camp doing just that. Bella followed at a distance, concerned over his outwards appearance but absolutely horrified that his wits might have snapped.
Damon didn't notice her, Tyrek or anyone else; he just kept shouting. "Form a shieldwall to the north! Spears and archers to the front!"
Bella kicked into a sprint after him, even as the Prince in black armor stomped through the evening light. She only stopped when the Prince was intercepted by Lord Andros Brax, the commander of the central camp in Ser Jaime's absence. The nobleman looked both alarmed and dumbfounded, the camp becoming a beehive of shouting soldiers as men rolled out of tents and shot up from card games to sprint for weapons.
"Your Grace, what the hell is going on?"
Damon, for the first time since she'd known her client, didn't hesitate. His words were clear, strong and to the point. "Stark is in the Riverlands. Our host is crushed. They have Jaime."
Other figures, knights and lords alike, were swarming to the Prince as others took command of the forming shieldwalls. Bella, despite her short height and small stature, muscled her way to near the Prince's side. Lord Brax spoke above the dozen different voices asking the Prince and young Tyrek a dozen different questions. "Where, Your Grace, where are they?"
"They slaughtered us half a day's ride north, maybe a bit farther. All cavalry."
Tyrek put in then, his voice parched but as insistent as his cousin's. Bella imagined Damon's would be as rough sounding if he weren't so riled up. "We lost pursuit hours ago, my lord, but they might be close."
Damon was staring into Andros Brax's soul. "We are all that's left of Jaime's force."
Some of the lords and knights began to swarm in a dozen different directions. "Solidify the shieldwalls!"
"Watch for a sortie from Riverrun!"
"Form a skirmishing force!"
One voice, loud and insistent, calmed them all at once. "Enough!" Shouted Ser Damion Lannister, half dressed as he jogged forwards with his eyes on Damon. "How many, Your Grace?"
The Prince shook his head. "I have no idea. It was an ambush, and they were everywhere at once."
"Your uncle?"
Damon's face showed his concern, even if his voice remained the same even tone. "I don't know."
Ser Damion turned. To Bella's surprise, his eyes settled on her. "You, girl. Fetch the Prince and Tyrek water, quickly!"
Bella rushed to obey, sprinting back to the Prince's tent. When she returned, two chairs had been foraged for the Prince and his cousin, who all of the sudden looked their age again. The camp was much more controlled, although a clear shieldwall had been formed on the perimeter.
The whore from Wayfarer's Town knew Damon wouldn't want her to do what she was about to, but she did it anyway. Pushing through the crowd, she stepped immediately to his side, pulled the cork on a bottle of wine, and brought it to his lips while laying what she hoped was a reassuring hand on the back of his sweat-soaked neck.
The Prince hardly acknowledged her. From this close, she saw his normally brilliant emerald eyes were black, pupils wider than any she had seen. When she brought the wine to Tyrek, she saw his were the same.
The Lords around them had grown silent, Damion Lannister speaking above the hum all around them. "I will lead a scouting force in strength to make sure the Starks haven't closed in yet. Get word to the other camps to keep their shieldwall strong but to begin preparing to pull back to the Golden Tooth."
Some lord Bella didn't know—she only knew Andros Brax because his son had propositioned her once and she'd actually been able to say no—spoke. "Break the siege?"
Damon's voice startled her, Bella turning back to his side at once. From the jumps of the other men, it had startled them too. "We don't know their strength, and while three separate camps are good for a siege it will not hold against a concentrated attack." He was staring off, as if his mind was one place even though his lips were moving. "We need to pull the prisoners we took weeks ago and the men we have left back to a stronger position, and then rejoin Lord Tywin." His voice dropped. "We have to have something and someone they'll trade Jaime for."
From what Bella had heard, it was unlikely Jaime was even alive, but she knew better than to say anything like that to the Prince.
Ser Damion was nodding. "The Prince has the right of it. We've lost Jaime and a large number of men; we can't lose the rest of the army as well. Get things rolling, my lords; time may be of the essence."
Bella was suddenly, most likely unintentionally left in charge of both of the shocked young men who were all that returned from the force that had left in strength days ago. Unsure of what else to do, she led them both back to Damon's tent. They followed like dogs, giving her no arguments as she stripped them both of armor and began to scrub them clean. Tyrek at least came more to himself when she was halfway down his stomach, flushing and telling her he was capable of handling it, pulling on trousers and leaving the tent, his armor and chainmail left behind.
But Damon never moved until she started to turn to get some more water after finishing, the whore absently wondering who was technically in charge of packing the Prince's tent and how she might get them to go about it. Then, as she started to angle away, the Prince abruptly grabbed her in a desperate grip, pulled her standing form to his sitting one, and sobbed like a child into her chest.