GOT : All Left Behind

"Unscathed? Mayhaps. Unaffected? Most certainly not."

It had been nearly two weeks since King Yronwood's host had arrived at Skyreach. It was a formidable castle, situated at the base of a mountain but still rising above an impressively sized castle town. Only recently rebuilt from the devastation visited upon it by my great grandfather, it boasted only the finest innovations in castle design. Like rounded walls and towers.

And for two weeks it had remained intact.

Part of me was grateful that King Yronwood had expressly forbidden me from turning the Cannibal on the Fowlers. I remembered the carnage I had unleashed on Starfall only too well. In my dreams, I still saw stone walls melt and run, saw men reduced to streaks of rendered fat and steaming gore, saw the fear in the eyes of children as they saw a monster laying waste to their home.

Still smelled the sweet stench of cooked flesh.

The memory brought bile to my throat. Swallowing it, feeling it burn my throat on the way back down, I was distracted from my surroundings until a resounding clang drew me back to the present. Whipping my head around, I was treated to the sight of a knight in unknown livery getting sprawled on the ground, signaling an end to the current fight, as his opponent moved to help him up.

Light sparring only. It was less satisfying and less tiring, but the king had been very clear.

This was technically a siege after all. A siege where he had explicitly denied me permission to use the Cannibal, but a siege nonetheless. He wanted to capture the castle, or rather the castle town which surrounded it, intact.

There was a logic behind it.

With the forts of the Prince's Pass well within eyesight, the castle town made for a natural trade post for caravans making their way to Dorne. The river running alongside it was impressively broad, too, broad enough to allow for barges to float to the coast laden with trade goods.

Anyone who held the castle would have a near stranglehold on goods flowing into Dorne over land. Anyone who held the town could make obscene piles of gold without needing to lift a finger.

That did not explain why we were just sitting here and waiting. The Yronwood host was smaller than what Lord Fowler could muster, thanks to the desertions and the early ambush. The way the land around the castle was set up, it was very easy to trap the besieging force between the castle, the river, and the walls of the forts guarding the Prince's Pass.

But the king had made his orders very clear. And I was not about to undermine my ally's authority in his own camp.

"Vaegon!" The familiar voice of the Yronwood Prince tore me from my thoughts, clapping me on the shoulder. He stood next to me, towering above me solely by virtue of the fact that I was sitting on a stool. "Quit your brooding and join in on the fun!"

"If you insist," I said, rising to my feet. Training weapons were, to my surprise, commonplace in the camp. Plenty of weapons had been salvaged from the first battle after all. With only so many knights and men at arms in the host, quite a few had been dulled down to serve as training weapons. Grabbing a long sword, the weapon Ser Ryam had spent quite some time drilling into my mind, I walked to the opposite end of the cleared area as the Yronwood Prince.

Come to think of it, I had yet to actually learn his name. Or be formally introduced to him. Odd how camaraderie worked.

Still, as we took up our positions on opposite sides of the hardpacked dirt of the improvised practice yard, I gave his stance a critical eye. Weapon pointed at my face, shield covering his torse, feet shoulder-width apart, it was solid enough. But not everything that started well would end well.

And as he charged, I could already see the opportunities present themselves. His shield was perpendicular to the ground, its usage obviously defensive. His sword was held back in preparation for a thrust. Simple enough.

I did not bother to answer his charge with one of my own, instead raising my sword to my right shoulder. The prince's shield shifted slightly, moving to cover his left side to block a blow to what he expected to be the target.

Unfortunately for him, I knew how to feint, only flicking towards the now slightly more covered side. And as his shield shifted even more out of position, my sword slammed into his weapon arm.

Impressively, he managed to bring up his shorter sword in an attempt to block. His reflexes were good, but two arms behind a blow were better than one, sending the prince staggering back. Before he had a chance to stabilize his footing, I switched to a one-handed grip on my sword to throw a punch with my left.

The left which had a shield strapped to the forearm.

Already unbalanced, the blow crashed into his side and sent him sprawling to the ground in a quick victory for me.

"Gods be good, you're wasted atop that dragon," the prince muttered as I hauled him to his feet. He swayed briefly, and I felt a flash of regret at how hard I had hit him. It had not been necessary. I could have brought him down without endangering him. Was I relying too much on brute force? Was I too eager to resort to it?

Gods be good, what was I becoming?

The kind of man whose idea of restraint involves the slaughter of innocents, a treacherous part of my mind all but whispered to me.

"I would be doubly wasted on foot," I answered, pulling off my helmet to properly appreciate some almost cool air on my face. Before we had any further chance to converse, a man whose dress made it very clear that he was not there to practice.

"Your Grace, His Grace the king would like a word," the messenger said, to my great disappointment. I had been hoping to turn this into a decent training session, but I could always help another knight become a better fighter. "Prince Vaegon, you are invited to join as well."

Huh.

Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

"We shall be there shortly," the prince vowed, but I was wasting little time setting aside my helmet and arms. Summons such as these were not unexpected, though rare these past two weeks. I was his most valuable outrider and his greatest foreign ally, after all. But since I had been forbidden from performing that task, our meetings had grown rare outside of the occasional brief chat during meals.

As I waited for the prince to remove his own helmet, I savored the slight breeze upon my skin. Even this close to the mountains and right next to a river, I was still in Dorne with all its sweltering heat.

Once we were almost presentable, we were on our way.

"Your form is good, but you need to watch your footing," I mentioned as we walked through the camp. "Cross your ankles like that, and all it will take is a single solid blow to knock you down. You cannot rely on your reflexes to keep you safe."

"I know, I know," the prince muttered, though he kept a good-natured smile on his face as the many members of the host shouted greetings and waved as we passed. "How did you even get that good? I could have sworn you were younger than me."

"Practice," I answered. "Lots of practice. I can give you some more advice later."

Our chatter switched to more inane topics as we made our way through the camp. Nothing serious, mere chatter about life outside of the war, but it was a welcome distraction. The darker thoughts were getting worryingly common.

Finding the large central tent was easy enough; The layout of the camp had not changed in weeks, and we were quite used to navigating it. Unlike the past times I had been summoned to speak with the king, there was a rather significant amount of noise spilling out of the tent's silken walls, loud enough to be heard from beyond the wagon fort.

The guards did not waste our time, allowing us to enter without trouble, revealing far more people than I had been expecting. Several dozen men, all crowded around the large central table, dressed in a riot of color. The portcullis of Yronwood decorated more than a few of them, the colors differing greatly, but most had unfamiliar symbols. Houses sworn to House Yronwood they were, the king's foremost bannermen.

And I felt more than a little out of place.

"Finally!" a thickly bearded man who doublet displayed a goat's head shouted, drawing the attention of the assembled knights and lords. "The princes arrive!"

There was scattered muttering, but the crowd did part enough to allow us access to the table which dominated the center of the tent. Like every time I had reported to the king, the table was covered in a map of the surroundings. This time, however, it was different.

A large wooden disk took the place of the mountain next to which Skyreach was located. The wall of forts that guarded the Prince's Pass and the broad river which bordered it were likewise represented. Our forces were set up in a line between them, while a single carved figure of a hawk stood far to the rear.

I might not have been an expert on military matters, but I could recognize an obvious trap when I saw it.

"Excellent," the king declared, looking worryingly excited. "Then we can begin this war council."

Then again, that may well have been the point.

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