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

Chapter 15

"There are forty thousand of them, yet our scouts can't tell us exactly where they buggering are?"

The march had not been kind to the loyalist forces. Rains, some so savage that Aelor almost believed he was somehow back in the Stormlands, had plagued the army almost from the moment it left King's Landing. After only a few days of the onslaught of water, the wear of thousands of feet and hooves had turned the roads into a muddy mess that nearly swallowed wagons of provisions whole. It seemed like half of his men had come down with either a chill or loose bowels—sometimes both—and everything was damp. Always so bloody damp. Even here, camped in the ruins of Harren the Black's castle where Aelor's ancestors had burned the Iron King and his sons, moisture permeated the air and everything it touched. No matter where he was, outside with the poor levies or here in one of the towers, Aelor couldn't escape the dampness or the residual chill it brought with it.

I'm a Targaryen; we're built for heat and fire, not cold and damnable water.

It hadn't done his mood all that many favors either.

"Baratheon and his forces keep fighting small skirmishes, my Prince," answered the always calm Barristan Selmy, white plate as clean as new fallen snow despite the copious amounts of mud and refuse. Just how his mentor managed to keep everything so polished and presentable Aelor would never know; it took the combined efforts of both the Dragon of Duskendale and Desmond to keep his own looking even remotely respectable. "A few dozen cavalry here, a sudden volley of arrows there; he seems content to keep mostly hidden and harry us as we near."

"It's not the worst of strategies," Randyll Tarly admitted grudgingly. "He can stay relatively in place, leaving all the pains and nuisances of moving an army this size in this weather to take its toll on our own forces."

"We could always do the same," came the quiet voice of Ser Kevan Lannister. "Harrenhal is a ruin, but it's a well-positioned one, and we have thousands of men to provide labor. It would not take long to make it a stout fortification."

Aelor compulsively glanced at Oberyn. He'd developed a habit of doing that whenever Ser Kevan spoke and kicked himself for it every time, knowing it made it that much harder on the already-prickly Oberyn to hold his temper. Aelor had heard more than one rant from the Prince of Dorne about the Lannister presence on this march, and imagined he would hear many more, though Oberyn did a good job of keeping his silence on the matter during war councils.

It was a loud silence, but a silence nonetheless.

Kevan, for his part, had done an admirable job of not provoking the Dornishman any further. The brother to Tywin had been overshadowed by his elder brother all his life, but he had proven both intelligent enough to avoid reminders of the Sack and capable enough to keep what remained of his fellow Westlanders in line. It had been nearly as difficult as the march itself; the bad blood between the Lannister men and Aelor's own veterans, men who had been enemies slaughtering one another mere weeks ago, had threatened to boil over early in the march, but the firm reprimands issued by both Ser Kevan and Aelor had stemmed the potential tide of violence.

Kevan had also sent orders to the remaining lords and men in the Westerlands, warning them not to raise the levies Lord Tywin had forsaken in the name of speed. While several royalist lords had wished the King to raise those men to bolster their own forces, Rhaegar and Aelor had both decided to push onwards without them. They'd left Baratheon and his friends mostly unmolested for much too long, and the time it would take for the West to finish raising men was time they didn't have.

"No," said the King, seated at the head of the table the war council was seated around, the thrum of rain on the ruined castle overhead a constant background to their deliberations. "We need to end this war soon, before Robert finds more support. The Ironborn are of yet uncommitted, and while the Free Cities don't usually involve themselves in Westerosi disputes, their mercenaries certainly might."