Author's Note: Hello again, and apologies for the wait!
A bit of a longer chapter this time, with a few quotes. Also a not-so-subtle-but-kind-of-subtle homage to Jaime and Damon's similarities amidst the action.
Keep the reviews, suggestions and potential pairings coming! Y'all rock.
As always, I hope you enjoy and review this update!
"Do you feel it?"
The question was asked quietly, murmured under his uncle's breath while the commanders kicked their horses into gallops, veering left, right or rearward as they went to their commands. Ser Jaime Lannister and Prince Damon Baratheon sat their respective mounts firmly in the center of the Lannister lines, fifty yards in front of the infantry. Four hundred knights and freeriders flanked them, the vanguard of the fifteen thousand strong Lannister force. It was a third of their mounted forces, another third under the command of Lord Roland Crakehall on the left and the final third under Lord Quenten Banefort on the right.
"Feel what?" Or what in particular, anyway. Damon felt a lot of things. Apprehension, because he knew the political ramifications of a prince fighting for one or the other side in what was, for now, a localized conflict between two subordinate regions. Excitement, because after a life dedicated to training for war he was at the doorstep of a true battle. Shame, because he knew he should have been strong enough to prevent this but instead had meekly gotten manhandled into not only allowing it, but aiding in it. Concern, for Tyrek was on his left in chainmail and a halfhelm and Damon knew from years of sparring that his cousin was only decent with a blade, no true warrior.
"Fear."
Oh, Damon felt fear alright. That was partly to do with his shame, for it was taking everything Damon had to keep his hands from shaking. His throat was parched, heart pounding so hard he was certain it would soon beat out of his chest and through the black and gold armor of his breastplate. When he'd been training with Jaime in the safety of King's Landing, he had thirsted like nothing else for a taste of war, wanting so desperately to be a part of the glorious battles sung about in songs. But now that he was mere minutes from one, that excitement was gone, replaced by the terrifying realization that this might be his last few moments on earth.
He'd done no small amount of praying to the Seven in the last half hour. A man never realized how much he owed them for his life until it was possible it was about to be taken away.
For a moment Damon thought about denying the fear running through him, but he'd never made a habit of lying before, particularly not to his uncle. "Yes," he whispered quietly, wondering if it would make the man he near worshiped ashamed of him.
The Kingslayer nodded once, sharp and approving. "Good. That means you're not stupid." Jaime's voice held none of the mirth and lightheartedness it normally did, his voice confident but serious, with no room in it for anything except the matter on hand. "Use what I taught you, and stick close to my side. No heroics, Damon. Your main goal is to stay alive, understood?"
Damon met his uncle's eyes, emerald on emerald as they peered out of their respective helms. "Understood."
The knight of the Kingsguard held his nephew's eyes a moment longer. "And Damon…don't hesitate."
He returned his attention to the front without giving the prince the chance to respond. He lifted his voice into a single word, that word being relayed by the bellow of veterans all along the lines to either side. "Forward."
Damon took a deep breath to fight down a fresh wave of fear as he nudged his red destrier into a trot, the sound of clanking armor, hundreds of hooves and thousands of footsteps filling his ears. You are a Baratheon. You are the son of Robert, the nephew of Jaime. Cravenness is not in your blood, and you will not be the one to introduce it.
Jaime and Damon had split from Tywin Lannister the morning after the prince had arrived in his grandfather's camp, taking half of the Westerlander army with them. Houses Crakehall, Banefort, Westerling, Brax, Estren, Greenfield and Prester were among them, while the Leffords held the Golden Tooth looming a ways behind them.
The Tooth was a stout castle, situated squarely in the center of the only pass leading through the mountains into the heart of the Westerlands from the Riverlands. In the distance to either side of Damon the ridges of mountains, unpassable by armies of any size, rose high into the clear, cloudless sky. He, along with the Westerlander army, were moving slowly down a 'valley', though it was the hilliest valley Damon had ever known. It also was a vertical one, steadily rising towards the Golden Tooth, which the prince was pretty sure meant it actually wasn't a valley, but instead a broad spur in the ridge of the mountains. Not that it mattered what he thought, for it had been referred to as a valley for generations and would be for generations to come.
Valley or no, the ground was uneven, rising into countless hills of various sizes, and the farther down the valley you moved the more wooded they became save for the road cutting through roughly the middle. The hills rising towards the Golden Tooth were mostly clear cut, leaving any approaching army no cover as they moved up the valley to the pass and the castle guarding it. Many an army in Westerosi history had been decimated in this approach, prevented from entering the Westerlands by withering fire from the walls of the Tooth.
Damon and the army he was a part of had left those cleared areas behind the night before, though, and the lines of the Lannisters were constantly shifting to avoid thick patches or particularly sharp peaks of the hills, making their descent towards the Riverlands a slithering, slow process.
That had been prepared for though, and the worst of it had already been undertaken. Now, there were only a few hills between them and their enemy, who awaited them at the bottom of their descent.
Scouts reported the Riverlander numbers to be three and a half thousand, which gave the Lannister forces a near overwhelming numerical advantage. They also had the advantage of starting on the high ground, able to come boiling out of the hills at their foe.
But years of battle in this area had shown the strongest way to defend, and the Riverlander commander had wisely chosen it. Just as the Golden Tooth was situated in a pass where the unpassable peaks drew close together, the mountains drew close together at the foot of the valley where the border of the Riverlands and Westerlands met. This pass was broader than the one farther in the mountains, though it was dominated by three larger hills. The River Road was paved between the middle and left of the three hills, where the terrain on the other side was a gradual dip towards the lowlands. Another road of sorts, rougher and unpaved but also a straighter line from the Riverlands to the Westerlands, split between the middle and right of the hills, suitable for men on horseback but the terrain on the other side too rough for wagons of any sort.
The Tully forces were spread on each of the three hills, freshly built defenses of spiked barricades added to the sparse fortifications of stone that had been added over the centuries prior, the ground leading to the three hills cleanly cut to leave little cover. Damon didn't need scouts to know that high numbers of archers were on those hills, and that they would make any army trying to simply bypass them by riding on down the River Road pay dearly.
Not that we can. No commander with any manner of brains would leave an enemy force at his back.
That was why the men under Jaime's command were split into three even units. The men under Lord Crakehall would assault the left hill, the men under Jaime himself the center and those under Lord Banefort the right, the cavalry softening the enemy while the larger number of foot soldiers came in to finish the job. It was bound to be bloody, and while stands against more serious odds had been made it was unlikely to happen today. The Riverlanders hadn't had enough time to build as many fortifications as they would have needed, nor the traps and other obstacles that would have been useful in slowing the Lannister attack. They hadn't cleared enough space leading up the pass either, leaving time for only a volley or two before attackers would reach the hill. While the dip between where Damon and his uncle were to the Riverlander positions was sizeable, it wasn't enough.
I imagine the Tully's know that, yet here they are. I wonder if they, too, feel the fear I do. Surely they must.
And while he knew the dip he would soon be charging down wasn't enough, it still looked as long as the whole of Westeros.
The Lannister lines came to a halt at the edge of archer range, taking a few moments to straighten their formations. An eerie silence had fallen over the battleground, only broken by the occasional snort of a horse or cough of a soldier. The three hills were still, though Damon could see the men in battle lines opposing them.
Damon never remembered the command to charge, nor did he remember kicking his destrier into action or drawing his sword. One moment he had been staring across the ground he needed to cover, terrified and exhilarated, and the next the thundering sound of hooves and the war cries of thousands of men had filled his ears. His body shook with each step his destrier took, Damon finding he needed to focus no small amount on simply staying in the saddle. They barreled across the ground to their front, his uncle on his right, Tyrek somewhere on his left. Damon's mind was everywhere at once, on his horse, on the ground he was traversing, on the defenses steadily growing closer to his front and the men behind them, on how much he didn't want to die and how awful it would be to never kiss scandalous Jocelyn Swyft again.
He heard the sound of arrows long before he heard the call for shields, already hefting the steel banded oak over his head and the antlers on his helm, a golden stag on a black field its coloring. Up until that point Damon had forgotten entirely about its existence, though he was certainly thankful when he felt the terrifying impact of more than one arrow digging into its face that otherwise would have hit him. He couldn't stop the alarmed shout from escaping his lungs when another deflected off of his right leg, startling him so much he nearly jumped off of his stallion. The terrible scream of hit horses struck his very soul, redoubled by the agonized cries of wounded men.
Even as arrows struck his shield and deflected off of his leg he never looked away from his target. They were at the base of the hill, having covered the ground both amazingly fast and horribly slow, their speed decreasing slightly as they started up the clear cut incline. He had somehow pulled slightly ahead of Jaime, a knight in green trappings several horses to his left ahead of even Damon, and the prince knew in the back of his mind that the line was less of a formation and more of a conglomeration of steel and horseflesh now. His stallion, whom Damon had never named, instinctually angled away from the first of the spiked barricades, and by virtue of having gotten farther ahead than most others he found himself soon behind only the knight in green. A second volley of arrows soon swarmed them, another finding its way into Damon's shield as the disorganized lines became a series of disorganized wedges flowing around the barricades.
And then they were on the enemy.
Until his dying day Damon would remember the feel of the knight in green's blood as it sprayed over Damon's visor, slipping through the breathing holes and filling his mouth with its coppery taste as a Riverlander with a longaxe cleaved the knight nearly in two. Without realizing what he was doing Damon had ridden his stallion over the big axe-wielder, the destrier trampling him as Damon instinctually swung his sword in a deadly arc towards the Riverlander line he was very suddenly on top of.
The first man Damon ever killed was a nameless soldier in the garb of House Piper, who had stepped towards him holding a spear and wearing a halfhelm. Damon's blade carved a red line in his throat, the man's spear deflecting off the chainmail blanket of the prince's stallion. Damon barely had time to think of what he had done before he was swinging again, this time wounding another man in the shoulder as he blocked a passing spear thrust with his shield. His third strike was deflected away, but his fourth caught a man in the back as the Riverlander was blocking someone else's sword.
His stallion roared as he burst out the back of the Riverlander line, his rider's bloody sword held high as they began to build back up the momentum lost in the original impact and started towards the second formation mere yards ahead. This time Damon was the first attacker on the line, and in response had to use both his shield and his sword to block the spears of the Riverlanders. His stallion roared again, this time in pain, as a glancing blow cut underneath its blanket, though the animal kept moving. Damon swung again and again, disarming one man in every sense of the word while slicing another through the mouth as he shouted, leaving the man's jaws cleaved and cheeks slit.
It was instinct and training. Damon had no malice behind the blows, had no hatred for the men he was maiming and killing. He emotionally felt nothing, the only things he could sense being the rush of battle and the feel of his sword in his hand. His movements came natural, practiced a thousand times in training yards. While the sounds and smells here were nothing like they were there, the movements were much the same. Parry, strike, parry. Block with shield and sword, strike with shield and sword. Keep your horse moving to prevent an archer at the back of the lines from sighting down on you, use your stallion as the weapon it had been trained from birth to be.
Simple. Instinctual.
Glorious.
The small part of Damon's brain that was still functioning—instinct had taken over near everything—was pondering at how alive he felt when he was suddenly catapulted forward, the shrill shriek of his stallion filling his ears as a knight in Vance colors cut its legs out from underneath it. Damon lost his arrow-riddled shield in the sudden jerked movement, yet somehow kept the grip on his sword as he crashed to the ground on his right shoulder, hearing the clang of his armor striking the armored body of a corpse when he came to a stop.
Damon was on his feet well before his mind realized what had happened, sinking his sword into the belly of a man closing in for the kill with his standing motion, the Prince's full weight behind the blow. Even as he withdrew the sword from the screaming man's guts Damon felt figures closing in on him, the distance yet close shout "To the prince!" in his ears.
Damon cut down one man with a backhand move he had learned from Jaime mere days earlier, then sliced another's legs out from under him much as the Vance knight had his horse. One shieldless man crossed blades with him, and Damon instinctually used the disarming move that had so vexed him in the Red Keep's courtyard, leaving the Riverlander weaponless. Damon didn't hesitate, his uncle's admonishment from earlier ringing in his ears as he stepped forward to end the defenseless man's life.
The Riverlander didn't hesitate either.
In a move that surprised the prince like nothing else ever had, the weaponless Riverlander stepped towards the Baratheon, sidestepping Damon's stab with his hands outstretched. The Prince was so shocked he didn't react as the levy gripped the antlers on Damon's helm.
And twisted.
Damon was suddenly blind and terrified his neck was about to be broken, the Riverlander wrenching the helm down and in. The prince had no choice but to go with it, the strap of the helm digging into the underside of his chin as he wailed his arms—one holding a sword—wildly. Damon had to drop to a knee to keep the Riverlands from snapping his neck.
In his panic the prince felt a rush of strength and dexterity, enough to snap the thick leather strap digging into his skin with a fierce tug from his left hand. Damon's vision was returned as he rocked backwards on one knee, his helm pulled off and tossed to the side by the Riverlander who had been about to break his neck with it.
The prince stared dumbly at the dagger the man had procured while holding his helm as it raised high, knowing he had no chance of blocking or avoiding it.
And then the Riverlander was dead, and a man in red and gold armor with golden hair was pulling Damon to his feet, shouting all the while. "Up, up, fight!" His Uncle Jaime whirled, cutting another man down. Damon, who by all accounts should be dead, couldn't do anything but rejoin the battle all around them. He had no sense who was winning or even where on the blasted hill he was, but he did as his uncle commanded, swinging again and again.
A knight in the colors of House Vance—perhaps the same one who had cut his stallion down, though Damon didn't know—was suddenly all over him, his armor expensive and well-made but also covered in blood and gore. The man was good, better than any Riverlander the prince had crossed blades with so far, keeping him on his back foot. His Uncle Jaime was suddenly gone, likely in his own duel, and Damon had to dodge away from the swinging man's blade twice and backpedal to miss his swung shield, stumbling for a moment on a corpse as he did so.
The Vance knight jumped forward with his blade at the opportunity, and Damon was only just able to catch it with his own. They locked for a moment, the other knight not as tall as young Damon but with the strength of a full grown man instead of a teenaged youth. He'd soon used that superior strength to force their swords down to Damon's left hip, and the prince knew the Riverlord was waiting for the right angle to bring his own back up in a backhand blow across the Damon's face or throat.
Damon rammed his shoulder into the Vance knight's chest, knocking him off balance and stopping him from applying pressure to their locked swords long enough for Damon to drop his own without letting the other knight's bite into his side.
The Riverlander regained his balance and tried to bring his sword in in one move, but Damon had twisted and caught the man's wrist with his right hand, pulling him more off balance. The knight's shield slammed against Damon's back and his head nearly collided with the side of Damon's own as the Riverlander flailed to keep his balance, but the Prince held his enemy's sword locked against his right hip. With a quick movement the Baratheon drew his dagger with his left hand, stabbing across his own body to sink it into the eye of his enemy.
The man's face was mere inches from Damon as he stiffened in death, a few strangled breaths all that escaped his mouth before he crumpled to the ground, the hilt of Damon's dagger protruding out of the eyeslit in his helm.
And like that, all of it was over.
Damon scrambled to recover his dropped blade, expecting another enemy to be on him at any moment, but when Damon rose up all he saw was corpses and standing Lannister men. Jaime stood a dozen feet away, dead Riverlanders piled at his feet. Other notable warriors from the vanguard that Damon recognized were scattered across the field; Strongboar, Damion Lannister, Ser Flement Brax. All of them seemed to be coming down from the same battle high Damon himself was, their weapons slowly lowering as they realized their enemies had quite the field.
The coppery taste that had been on his tongue since the death of the green knight finally registered, and Damon vomited his guts out in revulsion. Everywhere he looked he saw dead men, a number of them slain by his own hand, and the cries of the wounded filled the air. One horse's screams were particularly loud and pained.
Jaime was suddenly at his side, leaning close to say something. Damon, still heightened by the battle rush even as he began to shake from its withdrawal, couldn't hear him over the screams of the animal. "What!" He nearly shouted, despite Jaime being only a few inches away.
The Kingsguard, having removed his helmet to reveal a reddened face and sweat-soaked hair, showed a flash of annoyance at the prevalence of the sound, and turned to the downed animal. With a horrified start Damon realized it was his own red, two of its legs severed.
"Wait!" Damon shouted as the Kingslayer raised his blade to end the creatures suffering. Jaime looked back at him, cocking a brow, and Damon stepped forward with his own blade. "I should do it." He stooped over the last man he had fought, pulling his dagger from the man's face with a sickening shlunk, and moved to his mount's side. With a hard thrust the prince ended the animal's misery, whispering a word of thanks to the beast for its service.
The cries of wounded and dying still filled the air, as did the shrieks of another wounded horse in the distance, but Jaime was able to speak to his nephew much easier. "Are you alright?"
Damon nodded, body shaking near uncontrollably. A sudden pang of concern shot through him. "What happened to Tyrek?"
"Here, Your Grace." Damon whirled to see his cousin a few feet away, white of face but otherwise unharmed, Damon's antlered helm in his hands. His cousin's pupils were wide, body shaking much like Damon's, and the traces of his own breakfast covered the toes of his bloody boots.
Jaime stepped towards the lad. "Are you alright, lad?"
Tyrek nodded. "I…er…yes." He presented Damon the helm he had recovered, hands shaking. The prince noted the blood on Tyrek's gauntlets as he did so, and as Baratheon reached out to take the proffered hunk of steel he noticed it on his own.
The sound of nearing hooves had all three similar-looking men glancing up, and bulky Lord Quenten Banefort dismounted from near them, giving Damon a small bow. "Ser Jaime, Prince Damon."
Jaime nodded at him. "Report?"
"We've taken all three hills, my lord. This one held out the longest." Absently, Damon heard the distance shrieks of the stallion cut off abruptly. "Our losses were light, the Riverlander's heavy. A number of them escaped down into the flatlands."
Jaime nodded, giving his nephew another glance over to make sure he was still on his feet before beginning to walk towards a horse that an unknown Lannister man had brought up. "Gather the commanders, Lord Banefort. We'll care for our wounded and organize a pursuit."
Damon hesitantly reached a hand out to grasp Tyrek's shoulder, noticing his cousin was staring off unseeing. The shorter, broader Lannister jerked back to his senses. Damon simply looked at him, unsure what to say or how to say it but knowing what his cousin was feeling. Tyrek seemed to understand that, and simply nodded at the prince, who nodded back. They both turned to follow after Jaime.
But not before Damon recovered a hefty axe from one of the corpses and neatly lopped off both of the antlers on his helm.