Author's Note: Hello guys and gals.
Sorry for the wait and how short the chapter is, but I need to get things moving again if I can. Once I get out of a groove I can have a hard time getting back into it, but I'm doing my best. Not my favorite chapter but it is necessary to set up a few future plotlines, and it gave me an excuse to plant a small and rather insignificant-to-the-main-story detail that will show up in the future in a minor way that I'm entirely too excited about.
Way in the future. If I ever get there. Someday.
Thanks for the support in any case! Let me know what you think. Y'all rock.
As always, I hope you enjoy and review this update.
He awoke to screams.
Damon was not of a forceful nature, either in personality or in his treatment of others, but before he realized what he was doing he had gripped an equally startled Bella by the waist and hurled her off of him and the cot with all his might. With a surprised yelp his—lover, paramour?—landed in a tangle of naked flesh on the worse-for-wear carpet covering the packed dirt of the Harroway's Tower courtyarrd. Before she even landed the prince leapt from where they had been sleeping half a second earlier, halfway into dark breeches by the time her shout stopped. His body acted as his mind tried to catch up, stepping into and lacing up his armored boots and grabbing his sword in record time as a familiar, terrifying sound filled the dark of the night.
War horns. Northern war horns, singing their mournful song of death. Low, otherworldly cries sang a dark harmony as attackers shouted and screamed, hoping to further rattle the already shocked camp. Damon was instantly back in the Whispering Woods, reliving that moment when he had realized they were all going to die.
The same terror that had seized him then seized him now, making his knees buckle and his heart stop. His mind told him to run now as he had then but his body was made of sterner stuff, and he shouted to Bella over the cacophony of war cries and warnings outside. "Get into the tower, Bella, now!" Damon saw only a glimpse of the growing terror on her face before he drew his sword from its scabbard and stepped out into the dark.
It was chaos, men flooding out of the canvas tents around him as others stumbled up from dotted campfires, confusion and fear on their face. Damon imagined it was worse outside the old curtain wall of Harroway's Tower, in the small town of the same name. It was from the western perimeter that the shouts and screams were coming, though Damon had assumed as much the second he recognized the horns. The prince, torso as bare as the sword in his hand, rushed across the small enclosed space of the tower's courtyard, weaving through the maze of rushing men, once knocking a man-at-arms flat when their paths converged. He jumped atop the rampart—they were only two feet high, the outer wall only another four beyond that—and stared in that direction as archers came into position around him, shouted into action by men more veteran than the young prince in charge of them all.
The city of tents outside the Harroway's Tower and its wall was burning, the fire blazing on the outer ring and starting to grow inwards.
Only the most veteran knights and a handful of archers had made their encampments around the old roundtower alongside the prince. The rest of were either sleeping in the small inn, the smaller brothel, or pitching their tents on the frgines of the scattering of buildings and homes that made up Harroway. Damon had decreed before their assault on the small town that there would be no forceful evictions of the smallfolk who lived there, and had insisted those who slept in the inn pay for their rooms. Damon hadn't been able to tell how well that had gone over with the men under his command, as he could seemingly never tell what others were thinking, but he imagined it hadn't made him popular. Still, he had reasoned with himself that stricter demands had been made of soldiers in the past, and reminded himself of his grandfather's parting words when Damon rode from Harrenhal.
A lion doesn't concern itself with the opinions of sheep.
He'd told himself that repeatedly before he had stormed the town, only to find that even a sheep could have taken the place.
In his first command, Damon had taken his objective without taking a casualty. That would have been a great feat for certain, save that he hadn't inflicted any casualties either. Harroway had been devoid of any form of resistance, Damon and his knights riding through the streets unopposed. Expecting a trap once he'd realized they had met no opposition, Damon had ordered every inch of the town scoured even as a defensive encirclement was formed, unwilling to let his guard down as they had in the Whispering Wood.
There had been no trap, at least not up until now. House Roote, the Lords of Harroway, had weeks ago taken their men and possessions and fled both the town and the small roundtower that was their seat, off to join Robb Stark at Riverrun. It was a prudent move, what with Harroway's close proximity to Harrenhal and the massive army encamped there, and the Roote's had taken everything an army could use with them—steel, surplus grain, even stock animals, leaving only a scattering of pigs and milk cows.
Only one Roote had remained, to continue to govern the town and go about her House's business. Allison Vypren, the elderly mother of Lord Alman Roote, had been waiting for Damon under the opened gates of the tower. Small and graying but unmistakably proud, she had merely cocked an eyebrow as a Baratheon in battle armor rode to her atop a brawny stallion, neither impressed nor intimidated. Within a few moments of her opening her mouth, Damon had instead found he was both.
"I wondered how long it would take a Lannister army to take an undefended town. Weeks, apparently. Lions indeed, though I daresay you are a cub. Regardless, Harroway is yours. Try not to choke on your accomplishment, child."
It had been barbed responses and witty banter, and it had left Damon half afraid of the old woman ever since. Damon had left her in her tower, though she had been confined to her quarters within it. Though it was expected he would take some of the abandoned chambers within for his own, both as a prince and as the commander of the 'victorious' side of the fight that never occurred, Damon had preferred his tent and cot outside. Part of that decision was to ensure he was far, far away from the woman's wit.
But all of that was unimportant, as the sound of the enemy spread like the flame to his men's tents outside.
"Prince Damon!" He turned to face the authoritative voice that had been barking commands since the onset of the attack. Ser Philip Foote, big and brawny, strode towards him, parting the scrambling men of the courtyard like a longship. The Westerman knight was near forty, grizzled and experienced at war, as evidenced by the patch covering the socket of his left eye, the organ itself having been lost to a Saltcliffe spear during the Greyjoy Rebellion. He had, almost certainly on Lord Tywin's orders, become Damon's prefect and aide, helping the green prince command the seven hundred soldiers under him. Damon had been thankful for his presence, even if he found the man to be a touch overbearing at times.
"They're setting the tents ablaze, as Your Grace can see." The big man stepped close, a good half a foot taller than Damon. "I've ordered the gate sealed and archers to the wall, and have a rider ready to ride for Harrenhal at your command."
Damon's mind raced through the facts. Sealing the gates of the roundtower was a prudent move, as they didn't know the numbers they were facing or if the Northerners meant to take the town or merely raid it. However, it left the confused men outside to fend for themselves, both against the attacking force and the fires that force was setting. Still, the Northmen had clearly killed the pickets and sentries and slipped amidst the tents before sounding their attack; they had the element of surprise on their side, and were charging from the darkness towards a surprised, sleeping enemy. It was the prudent move to leave his men outside to fend for themselves until they knew for certain the threat they faced.
Damon's mind returned to the Whispering Wood, to the men who had died or been captured to ensure that he alone escaped. For the first time since that morning Damon wondered what the others, the men who weren't princes worth saving but had been instead left to die, had felt.
"Tyrek!" His cousin had appeared alongside Ser Philip, and Damon somehow knew that his friend was thinking the same thing he was. "You're with me. Ser Philip, you have command of the roundtower."
The big man turned to watch after them as both blonde boys, one shirtless and the other having only slipped on a loose tunic, shot past him towards the impromptu stables. "Where are you going, Prince?"
Neither the prince nor his companion answered.
Damon didn't know if he was doing it for the men out there, for the men he had abandoned in the Whispering Wood, or because he thought it would make a good tale for the bards. Whatever his reasons, be they selfish or altruistic, he was atop his bay and galloping out the gates before he could realize about how stupid he was being.
Tyrek had joined him, as had a handful of other knights and men-at-arms when they realized what he intended. They rode down the streets, the warm night air buffering his bare torso as terrified smallfolk ran from the battle and stumbling soldiers ran towards it.
Men shouted and screamed up ahead, half of them fighting northerners, half of them fighting the fires. Damon and his contingent barreled into the middle of what well could be one of the Seven Hells, the prince hacking a Northman out of the saddle. He'd forsaken his shield in his rush to leave his tent, realizing the foolishness of that when another Northerner came at him from his left side. The prince twisted in time to block the blow but it was a close thing, the heavily bearded man cast into a terrifying contrast of shadow and flame by the burning fire all around them.
Damon, at the disadvantage in that position, simply kicked his heels into his stallion's flanks, thankful for the hastily fastened saddle as he broke away and wheeled around amidst the burning tents and men. The Northerner got a lunging blow in as Damon rode out of range, the tip of his blade slicing a shallow cut across Damon's back. The prince gasped in pain, but he instinctually knew the wound wasn't serious. By the time the Northerner recovered his balance from the lunge, Damon had turned his right side to him, and in a few hard struck blows from this new direction the man fell dead from his saddle.
And then, quick as they'd arrived, there weren't any Northerners left to fight.
Damon dismounted in the middle of a living hell, no longer a prince but instead another hand to man the fire lines pulling buckets from the nearby Trident.
It was morning by the time they extinguished the blaze.
Damon was soot stained and filthy, standing amidst charred remains that had once been his men's tents and, in places, his men. It'd been a lightning raid, the Northerners only there to kill a few sentries, set a few tents ablaze, slaughter a few sleeping men, and leave. They had succeeded grandly, losing less than a dozen while Damon figured his losses for near forty.
It pissed the prince off royally.
I take a town and lose not one man. But when I go to sleep that night, I wake up to forty dead.
Damon knew this was war, but it certainly didn't feel like war. It felt like murder, like a cheap trick, though part of him thought that, if the roles had been reversed, he wouldn't have hesitated to do it himself. Or would I have? Is this honorable? Is killing a few dozen at night better than a few thousand in the middle of the day, or worse?
Damon didn't know. He didn't know much of anything these days.
His back was a red line of pain. His breeches had become soaked in blood, the repeated motion of tossing buckets of water on the fires having not allowing the wound to clot properly for a long while. Damon wasn't concerned; he could deal with physical pain. But staring at the lined up corpses of men—his men—was something he couldn't deal with at all. They'd followed him, willingly or no, and now they would follow no one ever again.
This too was war, but it tore him to pieces.
Damon, still shirtless, stared sightlessly at their half-burnt corpses before turning to face Ser Philip and Tyrek. One Northerner had been taken prisoner, captured when a mule, its mane burning and mad with pain, had sprinted into his horse and knocked all three to the ground. The man, middle aged and unremarkable in the white on purple of House Woolfield, could not remount before falling into the furious hands of the men whose tents he'd burned while they slept inside. He showed the effects of the experience on every inch of bare skin, bruising turning his face as purple as his shirt while one eye was swelled closed and his lips were a shredded, red mess. Damon had no doubts his men would have beaten the Northerner to death with fists and feet if not for the calmer, level-headed knight that had intervened.
Damon knelt down in front of the Northerner's swollen eyes. "Are you alive?"
The Northerner grumbled something Damon could only assume was a curse about his mother, but state of the man's face made Damon almost sympathetic. Almost.
"Good." The prince reached out his hand bearing a piece of folded parchment, a hastily scribbled note it's unsealed contents. "You're going to give this to Robb Stark."
"Tell him Damon wants to talk."