GOT : All Left Behind

"I received the greatest gift that day: a clear point of when everything went horribly, catastrophically wrong."​

Oswald was not a particularly complicated man. He had been born in the Shadow Town of Sunspear. He had been raised in the Shadow Town of Sunspear. More recently, he had fled the Shadow Town of Sunspear along with a score of other men loyal to House Martell. He had fled north, to the den of dragons, the future tomb of the Targaryens.

As had many others.

Others who no doubt had received the same instruction from their Princess of Dorne, but had received the same order not to communicate with others.

Why, from his vantage point of the home along the busy street he and his comrades had so valiantly liberated from the murderers living in it only a few days ago, he could see at least a dozen Dornish faces in the crowd.

And that was just on one side of the street. Who knew how many faced the other side?

Well, Oswald did. Any true Dornishman could recognize a bundle of throwing spears beneath a travel cloak, no matter how carefully disguised. Given how many had their backs turned to him, the odd protrusions were easy to spot, even in the crowd packed densely for almost a dozen ranks. A dozen ranks on the street itself. Past the street, into the alleys and the other streets crossing this main road, he could see yet more people piling in.

Fools, the lot of them. There was barely enough room to breathe amongst the sycophantic horde, let alone draw and throw a spear. A waste of Dornish life with nothing to show for it. They would be forced to watch as others reaped glory.

But even if they realized their folly, they could do little about it now.

All they could do, all that all Dornish in the city could do, was wait.

Wait with the armaments he and his fellows had bought from the local blacksmiths. Bows, crossbows, throwing spears, arrows, bolts. Tinctures and medicines from the apothecary. A few glass jars filled with rendered bacon fat and lamp oil were also present, but those had not been bought. No, those had been made. Acquired.

Liberated.

He craned his neck, stretching, gazing into the sky. This would be a great day for Dorne, and a beautiful day to do great things. Not a cloud in the sky, and only a single bird circling lazily high up in the sky. But with the sun high in the sky, it was hard to tell what kind it was, exactly.

The shouts from the street shifted, drawing Oswald's attention. Coming around the bend ahead, just past the foot of the hill, came a loose wedge of riders. Knights and lords without armor, bearing only shields and banners, trotting between the thin lines of guards. He knew only a few of them but had heard of most. While he could not name which house these northerners belonged to, he knew the sea of lions and fish and flowers and apples falcons and boars and stags were all important men. Those whose sigils were little more than dots on a plain field or a broken bridge, their importance was less obvious. Low priority targets, those.

Still, there were quite a lot of them.

If these poor deluded subjects of the northern kingdoms shared Oswald's ignorance, they did not let it dampen their enthusiasm. The cheers of the crowds began to grow even greater as they knew what would approach.

Not immediately, though. First came men on foot. At least half of them bore gleaming black mail over red tunics in the colors of Targaryen or the shining silver breastplates over sea-green of some other house. They must have been important, though. Others marched in a riot of color, but none managed to even approach the size of either of those two contingents.

But after that, they came.

They looked much the same as they had on their way to the wedding.

Seven carts styled to look like ships, each pulled through the streets by a pair of white horses, with faces carved upon the prows. No, not ships, barges. Rafts. Boats. The wagons lacked any semblance of masts or raised steering positions. These were no more than elaborately decorated carts!

Carts bearing faces no doubt meant to represent the Seven.

How utterly absurd.

Another affectation of the monsters in human skin.

How could they not see the plain truth before their eyes? These were monsters, beasts in the guise of men, riding through their midst, waiting to bring about their doom!

The monsters were surrounded by yet more riders, dressed even more finely than the riders that had preceded the march. He saw grapevines, flowers, and even a fox, riding alongside knights armored in white, a septon shrouded in silver, and even a chained maester clad in grey.

But they were of no concern to Oswald. Those in the carts, however? Now that was another story.

The ruling couple in one of the leading carts, the wedded couple beside them. The joy of the situation radiated from both in equal measure. One in pride, one in joy for the sake of joy. Oswald wanted little so much as to sink a knife into all of them. Behind those two carts were three more abreast, packed close, and two more behind those. If something were to happen to one of the leading carts, it would cause havoc for the trailing carts.

Strategically, it would have been best to fire upon the king as soon as he was within sure range. Or mayhaps a horse, if he thought his crossbow had the necessary power to bring it down in a single shot.

As a Dornishman, it would have been best to put a bolt through the throat of the white-clad princeling in the nearest cart of the second row.

Vaegon Targaryen.

The man who was responsible for so much Dornish suffering.

Oswald was clearly not the only man to harbor such thoughts. Already, he could see a man in crowd, one of many bearing a large oval bundle, struggle to shove his way to the front of the crowd. But he was not moving quickly, or moving far. Even if he was not the only one, dozens more within the crowd were armed as he was, but it was a behavior shared by the entire crowd as they tried to surge closer to the passing inbred abominations these northerners called royalty. No, those fools down below would be witnesses to his glory.

There were no grand pronouncements. No statements denouncing the monsters that passed by.

One moment all was peaceful. The air was filled with cheers, life was good for these poor folk. The sun was shining, the day was almost warm, and all was well with the world. They were all too happy to enjoy the empty pageantry of these inbred abominations celebrating a marriage that was almost acceptable, were it not to a Reachman. Oh yes, he might not be able to name every house, but he knew a Reachman when he saw one.

Thankfully, by the next moment, his crossbow was brought up, a target spotted, and the release squeezed.

With only the sound of the released string, the bolt was loosed.

And the king fell, a bolt sprouting from his shoulder.

Damn, Oswald thought. Too far to the side.

Screams erupted in the street as Oswald dropped back behind the wooden balcony, reaching for the tool to reload the crossbow. It was a work of a few seconds, to lock the mechanism in place and work the lever. Before long, he was already reaching for another bolt. Beside him, a comrade was still busy winding the crank on his far heavier crossbow. Beyond the balcony, he could hear the faint sound of crossbows unleashing on the monsters from all around him.

He popped back up and surveyed the scene before him. Or rather, the scene below him.

As was to be expected, the crowds were losing their mind. Packed as close as they were, nearly close enough to smother the life out of one another, there was nowhere for them to go. They could not go back, not with the masses behind them. And ahead of them was a thin line of men armed with a motley assortment of cudgels and spears and clubs.

But for some indiscernible reason, the hordes retreated. They did not swarm their king and his abominable kin. They retreated. They ran. They chose the path of most resistance. Not the thin line of men ahead, no. They ran for the thick crowds. Like the fools they were.

At least it gave the fools amongst his fellow Dornish a chance to contribute something meaningful.

Well, save for a cluster of men of city. They were not running, oddly enough. One of whom, a burly fellow, was worrying at one of the paving stones, so Oswald paid him no mind. Clearly, he must have gone mad.

But the scene of his targets was even less to his liking. The king was out of sight, to Oswald's eternal dismay, a trio of white knights standing where the abomination once stood. Luckily for Oswald, there were many more below him. An entire family's worth, really.

Fortunately, the trio of knights had no shortage of bolts buried within their bodies. And as he heard the mechanism of the heavy crossbow beside him loose yet another bolt, the knight with the black crow upon his shield earned yet another bolt sheathed within his chest.

Unfortunately, his dismay only deepened when he saw the other abominations.

Or rather, did not see them at all.

Either the low walls on the carts had suddenly more than doubled in size in a few moments, or there was something else at play. No, it was the latter. Most certainly the latter, that much was easy to see. Those gleaming shields drawn over their heads were hard to miss. An image repeated sevenfold across the carts.

Where had they been hiding them? Aboard the carts?

Damn the Targaryens and their tricks.

No killing the abominations, then.

But those white knights? The trio was a tempting target, and the other four bellowing instructions to the people around them even more so.

But Oswald knew how to prioritize. And the man wearing the grapes on a field of blue of Redwyne, clad in such fine raiment that he had to be important, seemed such a tempting target. Besides, he was a Reachman. What sort of Dornishman would he be if he did not at least attempt to kill one of their kind when the opportunity presented itself?

He loosed a bolt and saw his target flinch from the impact. He did not pause to check where he hit, dropping back behind the low wall of the balcony to reload.

Behind him, the balcony was blessedly free of the sound of impacts. Oh, how kind of these abominations to not arm their men with anything that could strike a man outside of arm's reach. He would exploit this to the hilt, he already knew.

Oswald rose again, crossbow loaded, and surveyed the paucity of targets. The carts still had yet to move, though the dead horses that were strapped to them were no doubt to thank for that. The Targaryens were still cowering behind the shields that they had managed to hide… somewhere.

The men around them, however, were not so well protected.

A hulking white knight fell from his horse, covered in so many bolts that he could have been mistaken for a porcupine.

A septon riding an admittedly splendid white mule took a single bolt to the neck and was sent to plummet to the cobbled street.

One of the white knights standing over the king's body suddenly sprouted a bolt from an eyeslit and tumbled to the street below.

Out in front, the mounted escort was quarreling, unable to decide whether to rush to find reinforcements. Bunched up as they were, they kept the carts from moving, and that was perfectly fine for Oswald. With the knights in front and the small folk to the side, the carts could not move.

It was only a matter of time before their work was done.

A sudden breeze enveloped Oswald, buffeting him, but had not had time to think before a great bellowing roar filled his ears, reverberating through every bone in his body as a wave of heat washed over him. He barely even registered the sound of crumbling stone and splintering wood over the ringing in his ears before he was thrown from his perch and into the streets.

Right in front of a large man holding a heavy paving stone.

...

Hey guys I really need you to throw some power stones to elevate the ranking :)

...

If you want to read ahead of the public release, or just want to support me.

you can join my p atreon :

[email protected]/Nolma