The Dragon of Duskendale -- A Song of Ice and Fire Fanfic

Chapter 14

"Not yet, Oberyn."

"We can't execute him, Prince Oberyn." Rhaegar's voice agreed with his brothers, heavy with fatigue from having to reiterate this point repeatedly. The king was still in armor, the men having convened in the Small Council Chamber almost immediately after taking the Great Sept of Baelor. The light of dawn was only now beginning to brighten the window outside.

"And why not," demanded the lean form of Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne. One of his hands was lightly stroking the side of the woman in his lap, the newest in a long line of Prince Oberyn paramours. While this Ellaria Sand wasn't beautiful in the conventional sense, she had an exotic, sensuous flair to her that caught the eye and held it.

Prince Oberyn seemed especially taken. Aelor knew the Dornishman easily grew bored, be it with ballads or bed partners, but this one seemed different. The girl was younger than Aelor, her arrangement with the Prince of Dorne a new development, but Oberyn already seemed heavily invested in the bastard of Lord Uller.

Invested enough to insist, despite Rhaegar's protests, to bring her into the Small Council chambers for the war council. Or maybe that was because of Rhaegar's protests. As angry as Aelor was with Rhaegar's treatment of Elia—for less than chivalrous reasons, it seemed—he held nothing on the rage her brother had for the king. Aelor was going to have to make sure Prince Oberyn didn't kill Rhaegar in his wrath.

"Because we need what is left of his army." The king sat at the head of the table, an untouched tankard of ale beside him. Aelor sat to his right, his own hand gripping a bloody cloth. He'd opened two of the stitches—again—when a man in Swyft yellow, stumbling sleepily into the melee in his shock, had landed a punch to his face. "There are three thousand left alive. We could use those numbers to fight the rebel houses."

"They are the rebel houses," Oberyn argued, as he had been since they'd entered the chamber. "They were caught sacking your city, raping your women. They sent an assassin to do the same to my sister and her children. Children." Oberyn emphasized it with a slap of his open palm on the table. "A babe and a little girl. Yet you want to spare them?"

Aelor glanced at his brother as the king responded. His king mask is firmly in place. I wonder how long it will take Oberyn to crack it. "They didn't succeed," Rhaegar said, utterly calm.

"No thanks to you." Oberyn had no such mask in place, not that it would have done any good anyway; his voice held enough venom to kill the king ten times over. Red Viper indeed. Ellaria Sand placed a soothing hand on his chest, rubbing small circles as she whispered something in his ear that made the razor-sharp tension in the Prince of Dorne's shoulders subside. The glare remained, but that was likely to be Oberyn's standard expression around Rhaegar until the end of time. So long as he didn't have to block a dagger, Aelor considered it a win; he was very glad for the paramour's presence in that regard.

"No, it was thanks to me, with the help of Lord Varys," Aelor said, nodding at the Spider as he did so. "And as much as I'd love to slit the throat of every Lannister in our custody, the king is right. Baratheon has near forty thousand men. With those Westermen we'll have close to the same, and with allies in the Riverlands we'll have more."

"Numbers do not win wars," said Randyll Tarly, grim faced as he was in everything. For a second Aelor thought that was all the man was going to say, surprising him; the Dornish and the men of the Reach had been killing each other for centuries, and there was no love lost between them. But Tarly continued a minute later, not sparing Oberyn a glance. "But they certainly help."

Oberyn glared at the Lord of Horn Hill, then turned that ire on the other men seated at the table; Varys, Jon Connington, Lord Mathis Rowan of Goldengrove, Sers Barristan and Arthur, and the Targaryens themselves. The War Council, as the king had called them, consisting of the commanders of the royalist forces and the spymaster supporting them. Oberyn hadn't technically been invited, at least not in words, but Rhaegar and his brother both had known there would be no keeping him out, even if they had wanted to.