Upon a Shield Seen
Twenty-Sixth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
The Hound had not known what his new duties would be when he decided to take the Dragon King's offer. The guarding part made sense, though. If there was one thing the Targaryens didn't lack for it was enemies, starting with the Stag King and the Old Lion, going down through every damn lord who got the better endof the Rebellion and every pissed-off magister in the Disputed Lands, which seeing as they had freed all the slaves he figured meant every magister, even if some of the bastards were better at keeping their spite behind their teeth. So when his new sworn lady literally flew into the room with news that they would be flying to the Reach to kill devil worshipers he thought he'd misheard her.
Sure she was able to turn into a dragon, but it was the size of a bloody cat, and she might know spells but a fight was no place for a little...
"Sandor," she interrupted his thoughts. "I know I did not explain everything. I was expecting to have more time before this business with the Florents. I
do have to do this though, for one thing I am the one with the translocation magic. Please trust me when I say that I can handle myself." The dress she had been wearing, or seemed to be wearing at least, shimmered to armor bright as a mirror in the light coming in through the widow. "I did not spend three months figuring out how to move in this thing because I enjoy how it looks," she finished with a wistful smile that fit oddly well on her face.
"Can you turn that armor black?" the Hound asked, still off-balance, not least for being asked instead of just ordered around. "If we're gonna try to kill a lord in his own keep without going through half his armsmen we'll have to get in close."
"That's the beauty of starting on the inside and working your way out," the boy who had followed the princess laughed. "Best way to start a heist."
"We are not going in there to
rob anyone, Maelor," she sighed, sounding to all the world like she was the elder of the pair.
"You mean we aren't going to take their books on conjuring?" he asked, glib as a singer on feast day.
The little princess threw him a look that said more clearly than words:
"See what I have to deal with?"
Sandor found himself nodding almost instantly. When he discovered that the Viper would be coming with them the knot in his throat loosened a little. She could stay in the back and work magic and they would be hitting the enemy from out of the blue anyway, the best way to start any fight.
***
The first thing that hit Sandor after the nauseating lurch of the spell was the smell, the bitter coppery slaughterhouse reek covered by perfume and some other shit he couldn't name, then the scrape of a chair and the thud of a spear going into flesh... into the lord bent over some scribbling at his table.
He was trying to shout something, but as Sandor himself had so recently discovered it was hard to do with the Viper's spear going through your lung, not that he had the chance to try for much longer. The Hound's heavy sword smashed into his spine, then as the boy threw some sort of witchy shadow at him, the heavy black sword cut his head clean off neat as old Ilyn had ever done it.
"Well he ain't answering any questions about pages..."
The words trailed off as the princess picked up the bloody head by its hair set it on the table and said: "You would be surprised how talkative the dead can be under the right circumstances." Eyes flicking towards the door of the windowless and likely secret room she added, "Watch that while I work. There shouldn't be any visitors according to the signs, but divination isn't perfect."
Catching Sandor's face she added, "I would have preferred to take him alive, too, but he had some means to call for help magically which could have ruined the whole mission..."
"And here it is," the other kid, Maelor, patted down the corpse's pockets with an air of experience, picking out what looked like a perfectly normal gold dragon to Sandor... then he waved his hands over it, mumbling something, and a leering devil's face showed in place of the face of whichever king should have been on it.
"What the fuck is going on?" Sandor thought, shaking himself.
"We are winning the war, and a few others most people don't know are in the winds," the Dornishman said. "No, I didn't read your thoughts, just your face."
Hearing the word face Sandor lifted his hand to his cheek instinctively, feeling a familiar jolt of surprise when it only touched smooth skin and nothing
hurt.
"Can you get that to work?" The princess had been paying little mind to their byplay, instead looking at the coin.
The boy thought about it a long moment. "Yeah, I think I can," he finally replied with a nod, dipping his hands in the corpse's blood before starting whispering to it, sounding to all the world as though he was trying to sweet-talk it, though not in a tongue Sandor knew or even
wanted to.
"I'll take the left side of the door, you take the right," the Viper said, stepping up to do just that.
Once all the questions had been torn from dead lips the boy started using the coin, the gold glowing sickly yellow amid the drying blood. What followed wasn't a fight, it was butchery as man after man came in alone and unsuspecting right into their weapons and the strange coiling shadows that seemed to grasp and strangle... until what had seemed to be just another footman, the fourth one,
changed before their eyes, not seeming to care for the spear driven into him or the sword cutting into his shoulder. Thorns sprouted and tore through his clothes, eyes glowing vicious gold as its voice seemed to reach out into Sandor's head:
"What did you do here, maggots? I will enjoy..."
Quicker than she had any right to be, the princess darted forward and pressed her hand into the spikes with a single word that cut the air like a knife. The thing didn't even scream, it just fell apart into a grey pile of dust small enough to hold in two cupped hands.
"It seems like they have been getting more help since we have first learned of them," the girl said, shaking the drops of blood off her hand in an almost cat-like gesture as the flesh knitted back together. "Alright, now let's get Ser Erren so he can see his son safe," the added as the boy started tossing battered and now slightly blood-soaked books into his magic bag.
When the princess had said the fight would be too dangerous for a trained fighter like the Florent but not for her, Sandor had to bite his tongue against the foolishness.
Not so foolish after all, is it? Sandor thought, strangely proud of his uncanny little liege lady, even if he didn't really understand her yet.
OOC: The part with the blood and the whispers is just how I fluffed Maelor's UMD check. I don't usually linger on that since most of the PoVs are from people used to magic, but Sandor certainly focused on the details.