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

Chapter 24

Maegor's Holdfast had become a prison, it's cellars slaughterhouses. Three men hung from the rafters in separate chambers, their naked forms showing the various tortures they had undergone. While the methods to get them to talk had been different for each, they all ended up the same; disembowled, their guts hanging to their knees, screaming as they died. The last still did, twisting weakly against the bindings holding him to a heavy wooden beam.

Ser Manfred Darke of the Kingsguard had been confident he had gathered all the information he was going to by the second man, but he had interrogated and killed the other anyway.

The knight of the Kingsguard stepped out of the cellar, leaving the man to finish dying alone. A Dornishman in the white and blue of House Santagar waited there with ten spearman, faces hard as stone. The knight's was trimmed by thick black hair and a beard peppered heavily with grey. "Anything?"

Manfred nodded once. "Enough. Status?"

"I acted as you commanded, Ser Manfred." Ser Symon was a big man, taller than Manfred though not nearly as broad, and a noble. He thankfully hadn't let that birth stop him from obeying the Kingsguard knight, something Manfred begrudgingly gave him credit for. The captain of the Dornishmen who had been left at the Red Keep with the queen, Santager and his men had been returning from their assigned duty of overseeing the cleanup of debris in Flea Bottom the night before when they had stumbled upon a half a coup. It was him and his detachment, let into the Red Keep by the oblivious guards at the gates and walls, who had stumbled upon a stable full of dead bodies and the three men in Targaryen colors who had laid them low. It was their alarm that had alerted the rest of the castle of the treachery within.

That was the only reason Manfred didn't view them as a threat. Even still, he was wary. Ser Symon knew it but was showing an admirable strength of character by not letting Manfred's commands or distrust rile him. I'd almost respect the fucker if I let myself. Manfred wouldn't, though. He'd seen too many 'respectable' men act utterly barbaric to think many men truly earned that regard. Tywin fucking Lannister was highly respected, and his orders left Elia dead on the stone.

Ten men had infiltrated the Red Keep. Manfred was confident that number was right, for all three prisoners had given it to him in pained cries. We killed four during the coup, then those three. Three of them escaped, along with the Lannisters. Hired men, catspaws, the type who didn't care what they did so long as they were paid for it. They'd been recruited by a man they never saw the face of from the brothels and taverns of King's Landing, then given the guardsmen uniforms in the back room of a nondescript tavern. From there, that same hooded figure had led them into a cellar, then a tunnel, then so many turns and twists that none of them—or at least none of the three who'd been captured—had had any idea where they were. At the end the hooded man had remained behind as the ten men climbed up rungs in one of the walls of a small shaft. They'd come out in the bedchambers of the Hand of the King, and gone about the bloody business, having been drilled with explicit instructions.

Four had gone to the stables, killing the grooms and master of the stables and then the horses themselves. Two had killed the men outside of Jaime Lannister's chambers. The final four had gone to the black cells, killing the unsuspecting gaelors with quiet knife work, then freeing Tywin Lannister and escorting him back to the Tower of the Hand under a heavy cloak and hood.

It was from there that the assassinations began, as a surprised son and knowing father reunited. Elia Martell's had been first, as she'd had the misfortune of unknowingly walking into their claws.

Easy. That'd been the word the man with a beard had used to describe it. Manfred had made that one scream the loudest before he died.

Varys stood waiting at the foot of the stairs leading to the upper levels of the Holdfast, hands clutched before him. Two more Dornishmen stood with him, having been sent by Ser Symon at Manfred's order to collect him. As he passed, Varys fell into step beside the Kingsguard.