Wife of the Wolf, Husband of the Sun
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Just a quick trigger warning guys, there are some...implications of self harm in this chapter. Nothing too explicit in my opinion but if you are sensitive to that then I would recommend reading with caution.
Obara smirked as she sat down in the Golden Tooth's feast hall with all of her men, as soon as she sat down a cup of wine was pressed into her hands by Tommen Wells who had a smile on his face which was an odd sight to see considering the man always seemed to have a scowl on his face from sunrise to sunset, if it stormed or snowed or was fair weathered it would not matter, he would always scowl.
But even he had cause to smile after the victory they had when they had ridden up on the Golden Tooth, while many of the Dornishmen who had gone up the Prince's Pass had broken into smaller groups numbering in the hundreds Lord Fowler had a larger host under his command, at least a thousand strong, give or take a few men and Lord Ladybright had a host of near the same number that answered to him.
The two lords had their hosts burn fields and attack trains of supplies just as the smaller ones did but they both had a greater goal that was given to them by her Father, the two of them would keep a slow pace up through the Reach to the boarder of the Westerlands, several of the smaller hosts had been given the instruction to push towards the boarder as well once they had done what they had deemed to be a sufficient amount of raiding.
So the thousand that both of the lords had started with had become the strong cores of two hosts that had grown to be near three thousand strong each. Six thousand of the ten thousand that had been sent to raid in the richest and most fertile lands of the Seven Kingdoms had amassed beneath the walls of the Golden Tooth.
When Obara had lain eyes upon it for the first time, she could not deny that she had been disappointed. Even in Dorne, there were stories of great battles fought beneath the Golden Tooth. Armies that numbered in the tens of thousands had clashed here, seeking to gain control of the castle in order to control passage to and from the West.
She had thought that it would be a great deal bigger, a massive castle that crowned the top of the hill with with great walls encircling the main courtyard with dozens of towers reaching high up into the sky. She had imagined that the castle's gatehouse would be the size of a small castle itself. She had imagined that it would almost be like how Casterly Rock had been described to her and the castle would almost look like it had been carved from the hill.
It was nothing like any of that, unfortunately. The only thing that even seemed close to how she imagined the castle looking was that it was at the top of a hill but that was about it. The castle was made of dull grey stone and it was quite a small castle, there were no great soaring towers and there was only a single wall at the front of it as the rest of the castle loomed over the road.
Of course, it didn't matter if it looked impressive at all. It was important, both to the Lannisters to ensure that their armies could move more easily into the Riverlands and to them, if they took control of the Golden Tooth here then they controlled the pass and the Lannisters would have no choice but to either take it back from them or they could march down through the Reach and across into the Crownlands and then up into the Riverlands, far to long a journey for a host that would needed to get to a battlefield or to reinforce King's Landing as quickly as they could.
Taking the Golden Tooth needed to be done, and no matter how unimpressive it looked at a glance it did not change the fact that the castle had been able to repel hundreds of assaults in it's history, the thing that was different about their assault was that the castle would not be attacked from only the one side, instead it would be attacked both as it's back and from it's front.
A host of Northmen, Stormlanders and men from the Vale had marched on the Tooth from Riverrun and would attack it as the Dornish hosts would attack it from the other side. The castle was strong, despite it's size but even the strongest castle in all the realm could not stand for long against an attack from it's weak side by a hostile army while they were trying to fight off another one.
Of course, the problem was that the Lannisters would have been fools if they allowed them to attack the castle that was vital to their hope of getting their men where they needed them to be as quickly as possible and so of course they had sent forces to defend it on their side as soon as they had heard the Dornish forces were approaching their boarder.
They had not underestimated them as the forces that waited below the walls of the Golden Tooth out numbered them by a great deal, they were not as large as they could have been of course considering that there were other smaller parties of raiders burning across the Westerlands in order to draw the ire of Casterly Rock and that the Ironborn had burned the Lannisport fleet and sacked the city itself and were now raiding up and down the coast and on Fair Isle, if the stories were to be believed.
But even so it was a large host, larger than both of the Dornish hosts put together. If Obara had to guess it's size then she would have put it near to at the very least twenty thousand strong. It had not been possible to attack them head on, while it might leave an opening for the forces from the Riverlands to break through but they did not plan to make martyrs of themselves unless they really had to.
And so the the two hosts split in half again, forming four smaller ones of one thousand five hundred. One would ride forward to land a heavy strike on the westerland men and then retreat quickly away, their sand steeds were not bred to carry heavy weights over time like a grown man in armor but they were bred for speed and even the fastest horse from the finest stables in the Westerlands could not match them for speed.
So when the forces tried to pursue the force that had attacked them, another host would land another strike on another flank of the armies. The plan was to pull enough of the forces away from the pass in order to allow the forces from the Riverlands to break through. Of course, whoever was in command of the Westerland armies was clearly away of that and he had not risen to their bait after the first time.
Of course, that meant that they were just slowly being whittled down as they had two armies on both sides of them. Eventually, it was clear that the hit and run strikes weren't going to work this time and so their plan of assault was changed. A heavy charge in order to break through the army's shield wall and overrun their lines.
It wasn't a tactic that the Dornish had ever been fond of using but it was needed now. Obara had volunteered to have her men lead the charge into the wall, no one would ever be able to say that she had not done her part but, while Lord Fowler had thanked her for her eagerness, command of the charge had been given off to Ser Aron Fowler, Lord Fowler's nephew.
Obara was given a command, her men placed with the bowmen on horseback. When the thrust broke through the shield wall they were to harass any of the stragglers with arrows as well as to cover their own men.
They had paid a bloody price for the thrust, but it broke through and Obara's arrows found their mark when they needed to. Even from far away she could hear the rage of the battle in the breach as her country men as they fought and died to try and gain a foothold in the middle of the chaos and in that moment all she could feel was how she should have been with them, her spear in her hand and a cry on her lips.
Regardless of what she wanted, the thrust had worked and the Dornish were inside the lines of the enemy and screams and shouts and panicked orders went out, Obara could hear stretches of them on the winds. The chaos gave the other army the opening it needed and soon the westerland forces were truly caught in between them.
When the horn sounded and the call to retreat went up Obara laughed, all the proud and honorable knights of the Westerlands with their breastplates embedded with gemstones and they were running away, the lowborn men who had been their foot host getting crushed underneath the hooves of their horses as they tried to save their own skins.
It was one of the funniest things that Obara had ever seen in her life.
A half of the host did eventually managed to fight their way away from the castle, though not without great cost to themselves. Even bloody and wounded, their host was still much larger than the Dornish host but that did not matter when they were running away. They had left themselves vulnerable and they were not going to ignore that opening.
Arrows and throwing spears had fallen thick as rain upon the fleeing host, Obara had used all of her arrows and half of her spears and she must have killed at least thirty men and unhorsed another twenty. It had been a glorious thing, her heart had been pounding in her chest and her blood had felt like it was aflame inside of her veins.
By the time they had finally been reduced in number by a great deal and vanished over the hills and it was time for them to ride their steeds back to the castle they found that almost all of the men that had remained behind had thrown down their weapons, with only a very few indeed choosing to fight on until some man finally putting a sword through their chest and making an end of it.
Obara had smiled when she saw the grey wolf of House Stark blowing in the wind atop a pike. She had been even gladder when she heard that Eddard Stark was the one in command.
The news only got better when she learned of the prisoners that had been taken, near a hundred knights from houses all over the Westerlands, Lord Asher Leofford who was the Lord of the Golden Tooth, Ser Harys Swyft who was the knight of Cornfield and the father of the wife of one of Lord Tywin's brothers and a prize that was greater than either of them.
Ser Kevan Lannister, younger brother to Tywin Lannister, husband to Ser Harys's daughter, had been taken as their captive as well. She had only seen him briefly, but he had blood running down the side of his face from where an arrow had grazed him and he looked very pale indeed as he had been marched forward with his hands bounded with hempen rope.
It was such a pity that they only had the one lion to show for their efforts, and not two. Apparently Lord Tywin's youngest brother, Ser Gerion Lannister, had also been with the army but when it had become clear that they had lost the battle his elder brother had ordered him to command the retreat and none of the bodies had been determined to be him and thus he was more than likely on his way back to Casterly Rock.
Of course, between the other raiding parties and the Ironborn it was still very possible that Ser Gerion would wind up dead before he managed to get even halfway back to Casterly Rock, and wouldn't that such a sweet happenstance indeed.
But of course, just because the armies defending had been dealt with did not mean that they were done. The Golden Tooth was not large but that did not mean that actually taking it would be an easy task for them. They could lay siege to the castle and wait for hunger to wear out the castle's defenders but time was not on their side.
Every second they stood doing nothing, was another second that Casterly Rock could muster all of it's strength and march to dislodge them, no it had been decided on the same night that they had run the men of the west off that they would need to take the castle by storm.
It was before dawn when they began, ladders had been made during the night and hooks had been tied to the end of ropes. A large wooden turtle had taken up most of the work, to cover the men who would hold the battering ram from the the arrow shafts from the men atop the castle walls. The North man, who carry cloaks made from the shaggy pelts of wolves and bears and other animals offered up their cloaks for the crafting of the turtle, to protect the wood from any fire arrow that the men atop the walls would shoot at it.
Obara and her men had been handed the ropes and hooks and had been ordered to scale the walls as other men raised their ladders and the men with the battering ram hoisted it up under the cover of the turtle and marched on the gates. Obara along with her men had been placed near the back of the castle, overlooking the road.
They had been ordered to wait until they heard the sound of the battering ram hitting the doors for the first time, the moment that they had the hooks were thrown and found their place on the castle walls. Atop the walls, men loosed arrows at them and some took out their knives to try and cut their ropes but bowmen on the ground did not let them do it without interference.
Obara could still remember the scream the men on the ladder closest to her rope made when the castle's defenders had managed to push it over, the screams that they had let out as they had fallen, the sound their bodies made when they broke against the ground and the thick silence that had followed after, she hadn't been able to stop and think about it however, not unless she wanted her rope to be cut.
The moment she managed to make it over the wall a man rushed over to her to try and take her head off with his blade and she barely managed to avoid, while she always preferred to use a spear when it came to battle but it would have made climbing the rope that much harder and on the battlements it would have been harder to wield and use she had worn a sword on her hip.
Thankfully, her Father had never neglected her training. To be sure, she was at her best when it came to a spear but she was skilled enough with a blade. So, as the man who had attacked her tried to regain his balance she drew her own blade from her scabbard and swung it at the man, he managed to rise it up in defense and blocked the first blow but the second she aimed at his hip and cut into the flesh.
When he stumbled back and let out a cry of agony, Obara did not hesitate and brought the blade down to make an end to him and then turned to face her next enemy.
Slowly but surely the defenders on the walls were pushed back further and further and then the air was filled with the sound of the gates of the castle being broken open by the battering ram and a loud roar went up as the forces surged through the castle gates.
After that, it wasn't long until the defenders threw down their weapons and Lady Leofford from the relative safety of her own chambers sent word that she was surrendering the castle to them.
That had been the day before Obara was fairly certain that the thrill of the victory had not yet worn off, the war was nowhere near done of course and yet she would not deny that some part of her was perhaps in a way glad of that. If the war was not over then that meant that there would be more battles in the future and if there were more battles, then that meant that was more of that feeling.
She didn't know if she could describe what the feeling was if someone ordered her to put it into words, but she knew that she loved it. That moment when she had a spear or a sword or any of her other weapons in her hand and she was fighting someone and then that beautiful, perfect moment came. That moment when they knew that she was better than them, and they were going to die.
Oh, what she would give to have that moment again and again and again.
Obara had finished her first cup and another was pressed into her hands by someone else and she drunk it gladly, whatever happened on the morrow would be for the morrow but now was the time to celebrate. She tore a leg off of a chicken when it placed on the table and bite into the warm flesh, it had been far too long since she had a proper warm meal even if any food north of the mountains was far too bland for her.
After she had finished that first leg she was about to get another one when someone tapped her on the shoulder, she did not recognize the man but if the broadness of his frame and the length and fullness of his beard were any indications then he was a Northman. "Lord Ned wants to see you, he wants you to be part of a meeting with the other lords."
Obara nodded and rose from the table, Ned had only been meeting with Fowler and Ladybright so she had to assume that he did not actually know that she was here until fairly recently. Though it did please her that he wished for her presence and why not? She had done more than her fair share of the raiding, she had taken castles in the Reach and held them and she had done her part in taking the Golden Tooth as well, she was the daughter of a prince and niece to the other, she should have demanded that her presence be included.
She followed the Northman through the corridors of the castle until they arrived outside of Lord Leofford's solar which had been given over to the commanders of the armies when they had taken the castle, Lord Leofford and his family had been confined to their chambers and most of the highborn prisoners had also been confined to chambers as well and when the lords had taken all of them, the lower ranking knights had been confined to the damp cells below the castle.
Ned was standing next to lord's desk while Lord Fowler was sitting behind it, his son standing at the other side of the desk. Chairs had been placed in the middle of the room along side some tables which held platters of bread, cheese and fruit along pitchers of wine and ale. Lord Ladybright was sitting in one of the chairs.
Half a dozen lords were sitting in other chairs, none that Obara recognized. One was the biggest man that she had ever seen though, unless you counted the Mountain that rides but that had been so very long ago and even then it had only been at a distance during the tourney at King's Landing, and an older man was sitting next to him who bore a resemblance only very slightly shorter and older than the other man.
"Obara." Ned nodded and walked closed to her, resting his hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "I'm glad to see that you are well, I was told that your group was one of the first atop the walls. It seems to me then that a great deal is owed to you, and the men that followed you."
The words filled her with pride and a sense of satisfaction, long ago she had been just a little bastard girl on the streets of Oldtown with a whore for a mother and a Dornishman for a father, she was the lowest of the low, scum for the highborn to spit on, everything that they had ever hated and now she was a vital part of this war, she had won this castle for them. Ned had almost as good as said it.
"It was my honor." It was more than that, it meant a future. She didn't just have to be the bastard daughter of the Red Viper of Dorne, she could be something for herself. She could have her own lands, a keep and a title and why not? Many bastards in Dorne had risen high above their start, it was not so odd there and it had been known to happen on this side of the mountains as well.
And if what she had done here had not been enough, well there would be plenty of other battles to fight. Plenty of other chances to make a name for herself, to revel in her own glory. To be a hero that had songs written about them, and wouldn't that be the sweetest victory of them all? In the halls of Highgarden and Goldengrove and Hightower and Brightwater Keep and Cider Hall and Horn Hill and Honeyholt men would hear songs about the girl Dornish bastard.
Oh yes, she would like that indeed.
She was not dismissed and so she took a seat in the middle of the room and picked up a slice of bread but did not pour herself a drink when she saw that it was the dark northern ale that seemed to be undrinkable to anyone but the northmen. She chewed on the bread as they spoke of what news they had heard and what their next move was to be.
The first and most urgent thing, at least according to Lord Fowler, was that the maester of the Golden Tooth had been sent to tend to Ser Kevan in the middle of the night, while the wound to his head had been treated with boiling wine and it had been wrapped in herbs smeared with a herbal poultice a fever had appeared in him and the maester was concerned that he might be in more danger than he had first thought considering that wound was so close to his brain.
Thankfully, they quickly moved on to the things that Obara actually cared about. It seemed that Lord Tywin and Lord Randyll and Lord Mace had moved out from King's Landing and from the word that they had received were just about to cross into the Reach, considering that the message had come from the Reach from a rider in the night who had come from one of the raiding parties in the Reach who had managed to take a castle that more than likely meant that they were well in the Reach, more than likely heading for Highgarden.
Which meant that more than likely Lord Tywin was riding to Casterly Rock to take control of the forces there, Obara volunteered then to ride out and intercept him but both Ned and Lord Fowler denied her that.
Lord Tywin would not be lightly protected, after all. No doubt the King had given him men to see him safely back to the Rock along with the men that had escorted him to the capital in the first place and mayhaps Lord Tyrell would send men with him as well. The fat flower would no doubt content himself with hiding inside of Highgarden and sending his men to hunt down her countrymen.
Everything else was just truly speculation, but they worked with what they had and a rough sounding plan began to be sounded out. Casterly Rock was a strong castle, if not the strongest in all of the realm. There was that famous story about how Visenya, or was it Rhaenys?, had expressed with even three of the greatest dragons to ever live they did not fancy their chances of being able to take the Rock.
So their own chances were somewhat less than likely. the decision was made then to not focus any of their efforts against the Rock itself. With the Ironborn raiding along the shore and right under Lord Tywin's nose he would have to root them out first, his pride would allow him to do nothing else and even if he did managed to send them crawling back to their islands, it would not matter much in the end. All they needed was time.
It would mean a great deal of more raiding for her then, and the rest of the Dornish. More burning fields of crops and stopping men and supplies from getting where they were needed, the road into the Riverlands was not so painless and option for them now and the other route was far too long for them to take. They work was to make as it unbearable as them as was possible.
Harassing any army that would come on to the Golden Tooth would be a large part of that, they would need to scout out for them and making it so they came to the Golden Tooth bloody and limping and making it child's play for the forces that held the castle to throw them back.
In the mean time, other forces would march deeper into the West and then south, a slow march all the way down to Highgarden. It might be that if Lord Mace saw that his own castle was threatened after all that he might indeed surrender to save his own skin. Most of the Reach would no doubt follow their liege lord and if Obara had to guess they might be more than welcome to a change of allegiance considering that it would stop the raids and from making all of their food taste like ashes.
The meeting came to an end then and Obara stood to leave and to go back to the feast hall when Ned asked her to stay, everyone else left the room and so it was just the pair of them standing in the middle of the room and the way her looked at her...
She had always hated that look, it made her feel like she was a girl again when she had been brought to the Water Gardens for the very first time and she had seen it in the eyes of washer women, and guards and kitchen servants and Aunt Elia and Uncle Doran. It was the look that said that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, that she would always be that weak little girl deep down who had cried herself bitterly to sleep at night.
She had always hated it, them for looking at her that way, for making her remember. Her tears, she had hated them and herself for being so very weak and she hated her Mother for not being strong, for not being able to walk away from that brothel and for being so weak that she killed herself with flagons of wine and endless tears when Obara had finally left her. She should have been strong, she could have been.
But she wasn't, but Obara was. And she would prove that no one would ever have need to look at her with pity and so she tilted her head backwards slightly and meet Ned's eyes, refusing to look away from them.
She was a fool, she should have run away.
For a moment, it was as though the words did not make any sense. They were spoke in the common tongue and she knew all of them when they were spoken separately but when they were all put together in the way that they were they just did not make even the slightest bit of sense and yet her aunt's husband continued to speak them as though they continued to mean something.
After he had stopped speaking, the words had begun to sunk in. And when they had sunk in, a rage the likes of which she had never known sunk into her bones and grasped hold of her heart. She had been angry before, she had been furious before. She had been angry enough to kill before, in point of fact and yet in that moment she had never been so angry.
Ned was saying something else but she did not stop to hear it, instead she said something to him or at least she thought she did as she turned on the heel of her feet and stormed away from the solar. She could hear Ned calling after her but she did not stop, she didn't look back.
She made it to the chambers that had been given to her, being a bastard of House Martell did come with some status at least among the Dornish, and once she was inside she barred the door and just stood in the middle of the room, saying and doing nothing but breathing.
It could not be true.
It had to be a lie. Some trick.
But why would Ned lie to her, why about that? What would be the point.
The why did not matter. She knew that it was a lie.
It was not even a very good lie.
Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne. He had been wounded, he was lying in the middle of a bed and he might die. It wasn't true.
It was a lie.
it was a lie.
It was a lie.
It wasn't a lie, Eddard Stark did not lie and he would have no reason to lie about this.
Something that might have been a sob once ripped it's way out of her throat, but it sounded like a roar of rage and fury and vengeance to Obara's ears. This was their fault, the Mad King and Tywin Lannister and Mace Tyrell and Randyll Tarly and Asher Leofford and Jon Connington and it was all of their fault and she needed to make them pay. All of them.
She crossed her room and picked up her spear, it wasn't as heavy as when she had been a girl but the strength and the power and the safety that flooded through her as she held was exactly the same.
A northman was guarding the door to Ser Kevan's chamber. He saw the spear before he saw her and he opened his mouth to yell for help but Obara was fast and she was strong and she swept out with her leg to take the guard's legs out from under him and she buried the point of the spear into his throat. She ripped it out and left him to chock on his own blood.
She kicked the door open and the Maester turned to face her, he was young for a Maester which meant that he was nearly thirty years older than Obara if not more so. He was going to scream as well, so she threw her spear and turned to focus on Ser Kevan on the bed as she drew her knife. She didn't need to see if the spear had landed, she knew that it would and the man made so much noise.
She lunged at Ser Kevan and brought the knife down, the blade cut into the flesh of the arm that he brought up to defend himself and blood welled out of the wound and began to run further down his arm. She drew her knife back and readied herself to thrust it back in again but there was some strength in the stout man, she supposed that no member of Tywin Lannister's pride was going to die easily.
His hand caught her at the side of her head and knocked her off of the bed and down to the floor, she still had the knife. Ser Kevan was on his feet and half running, half stumbling towards the door but he must have still been disoriented from his fever and the blood that was running down his arm and Obara was still strong, she was on him again.
The knife sunk deep into his back and he fell forward into the corridor. No, that wasn't good enough. She wanted to see his face. So, she turned him on to his back and looked at him, really looked at him.
For all that she had heard that the Lannisters were beautiful, it seemed Ser Kevan Lannister had missed that. He was a portly man and he was short, his hair was dirty and his eyes were dim. Blood was bubbling out of his mouth and Obara imagined that she must have stabbed into his stomach. He was going to die, very soon.
She meant to make sure of that.
Obara wasn't sure how many times she stabbed him, she wasn't sure of a great deal of what happened next. All she knew was that someone came for her, there was a great deal of shouting and someone called to get the knife and someone had put his hands on her and pulled her away from the Lannister scum and she fought so hard to get free from the hold. Her Father would be so proud.
They shoved her into a room, it was smaller than the one she had been in and the fire was unlit and they just threw her inside. She tried to run but the door was slammed in her face it was barred from the outside and she could not get out at all but her rage would not leave her alone. There was an empty chamber pot in the corner which she flung at a nearby wall and it shattered into a thousand pieces.
She screamed and raged and pulled at her own hair so harshly that clumps of it came out and there was blood at the end of it and when the rage had ended, all that was left was the sadness and the stinging at the eyes that meant she was going to cry. She tried to be strong, she tried to fight it but in the end she could not.
And so Obara Sand curled into a ball like a little girl, and she wept.
She must have fell asleep, because she started to dream. For at first there was naught but darkness and then there was naught but a cliff and then there was a sea and thousands and thousands of ships and then, one by one, each of them caught alight and the flames were so pretty and a tall woman with Rhoynish features stared proudly out in the flames, singing a song that she had heard some of the orphans of the Greenblood who had come to the Water Gardens sing with tears in her eyes.
But then the woman melted away and a man took her place, he could have been Ned's brother but he was thin and gaunt and his features were pale like a corpse and he did not look like he had eaten in months and as he watched the ships burn there was no joy in him, no rage. There was naught but an emptiness as the work of hundreds of men went up in flames, anything to fill the hole.
The man turned to face her but his features melted as he turned and when he finally faced her, her mother was standing in her place. Obara thought that she had forgotten what she looked like. She was staring at her so sadly, tears were running down her cheek. Then, there was the roar of a great demon and the sickening green consumed all.
She awoke long before the door opened, but she had not moved from the spot where she lay until the door had opened. Ned walked in, she remembered the man who had shown an interest in her sisters, when he had no need too. Just to be kind to them, when most men would simply pretend that they did not exist at all.
The way he looked at her, this might as well have been a complete stranger. He was taking no chances, he was flanked by two men in armor and both were armed with swords.
"I don't suppose you will be surprised to hear that Ser Kevan Lannister is dead, even if you had not killed the maester as well it is unlikely that anyone would have been able to do anything for him." Ned stared at her and his voice was so cold and Obara remembered the last time she had truly been afraid, when her uncle had threatened her with Ghaston Grey, that was nothing compared to this.
Still, she would not submit to anything meekly. So, she grabbed one of the clay shards of the chamber and leapt to her feet and both the guards were ready to draw their swords but Lord Eddard, it did not feel right calling him Ned anymore, held his hand up to hold them. Obara glanced at the both of them before she turned her full attention to the man in front of her. "He was our enemy, you would have killed him too."
"Some would say that I did, I told you what happened to your Father after all." He rose his hand to his eyes and rubbed at them, he looked older than she remembered and she might be wrong but she thought that she could see some grey in his dark brown hair. "And yes, on the battlefield if he gave me no choice I would have killed him without a moment's hesitation."
"But this was not a battlefield, this was a castle and he was our prisoner and that doesn't just mean that he was a bargaining chip, that meant he was our responsibility, he was under our protection and under our protection he was butchered by you. Do you think that other lords will be quick to yield their castles to us now, when they hear of this? What do you think that Lord Tywin will do when he hears that his brother has been murdered?"
"I don't fear Lord Tywin, do you remember I offered to go and ride out to meet him before he gets back to Casterly Rock? Let me go now and deal with him, it can be my atonement for my crime." And it would mean one more of the men that were responsible for her Father's currant state was rotting in the ground, it would work out for all of them.
"It is bold of you to assume that you will have the chance to atone for this, or indeed that you can."
Obara scoffed and shook her head, pacing back and forth as she held the clay shard out towards Lord Eddard's direction. "So, that is it then? I am to die? I am to die for doing something that anyone else would do in a heartbeat in different circumstances, but because I did it in these specific circumstances then it is abhorrent and I am to die. Tell me, how is that fair?"
"You might ask how it is fair to Ser Kevan, he has a son and two daughters I believe. A wife, one who is pregnant according to him. That woman is a widower now, her son has no father, none of their children do. You have destroyed lives Obara. Not just one or two or three, but several. The man who was guarding the door was an Umber man, Rickon Umber is calling for your head and he is well within his rights to call for it and not just him. Lord Leofford, Lord Fowler and many others are all calling for your head."
"And you have to do it, not just because it will balance some scale, wipe the stain off of your honor but because it's the smart move to make." Her eyes were stinging again, even as she laughed. "Because you can convince more castles to surrender to you, if you can promise that anyone who tries to do harm to them after they surrender will lose their life. Will my head be sent to Lord Tywin, in a velvet lined box? Perhaps he can put my skull on some pedestal and and he can crow over his victory."
"Perhaps he will, in another life." He sighed. "It will not make me popular, and it may not be the smartest move for me to make but you will not die today. You will be remaining here in the Golden Tooth, however. You will be under guard until the war comes to an end and when it does you will be escorted back to Dorne where I am sure your Uncle will have some punishment waiting for you, but you will not lose your life so far from your home. I will promise no more."
Obara wanted to thank him, but the words did not come out. Thankfully, it seemed that he knew what she was going to say and then he glared at her. "Do not think that I did this for you, I did not. As I said, this was a hard decision for me to make and killing you might have solved a great deal of problems that could come up in the future but is not with what I know would happen if I did kill you."
"What would happen, why spare me?"
"Your Aunt, she is my wife and I love her and I would cause her no pain if it is possible for me to avoid it. She has suffered more than enough." He looked at her then, his face was a mask. "Goodbye Obara, before I leave I will send men to clean up these shards to stop you from hurting anyone. Needless to say, they will be under guard. I hope one day I will be able to forgive you, but I do not think that I will."
And just like that, he was gone and the door was barred once again and Obara sat in the middle of the floor and held the clay shard in her hands so tightly that it cut into the skin of her palm and blood began to drip on to the floor, staining the grey stone pink.
End of Chapter Eighty-Seven
Well, another chapter done and well um...all of that just happened.
A canon character dies, well before their time and we learn more about Obara through the lense of her making what may be the biggest mistake of her life and we will see what comes of that, but there can be no doubts that Tywin Lannister will hear of this and he will make sure that there is hell, all seven, to pay.
No doubt if the Golden Tooth was still under his control, he would send a singer to play a certain song...
Also, Obara's dream was...interesting, don't you think? I'd love to hear your guys thoughts about what all of it might meant.
Anywho, please consider leaving a review, following the story and maybe adding it to your favorites.
With a great deal of love and much respect,
DiscordantSymphony