Aelor Targaryen had never been particularly passive in nature, his temper as hot as the blood of the dragon coursing through his veins, and he was as wroth as he had ever been in his life.
His stallion thundered underneath him, its huge lungs working like a billows as it raced towards the sound of slaughter ahead.
Alaric had taken to calling the stallion Warrior, a name Aelor was certain the High Septon would disapprove of but that fit the massive destrier like a gauntlet.
The beast seemed to love battle almost as much as Aelor did, having emerged from the Slaughter of the Straits with a red muzzle from where it had bitten hunks out of the Stormlander enemy.
While it was particularly unwise of a knight to grow attached to his mount, as more horses would die underneath him than women would writhe, Aelor found himself liking the animal more than he did most men.
But right now the Dragon of Duskendale wasn’t focusing on things he liked.
No, right now he was focusing on his hate, and there was certainly plenty of that to go around.
The Lannisters hadn’t left many men guarding the Mud Gate that lead to the Roseroad and southern Kingsroad.
They clearly hadn’t felt the need, as no one was supposed to know they were marching on King’s Landing with the intent of sacking it.
But Aelor Targaryen did know, thanks to the chittering’s of a little bird that had appeared in his tent the night before he was to assault Robert Baratheon, and while he hadn’t been able to reach the city of his birth in time to prevent the start of the Lannister’s pillaging, he was certainly in time to prematurely end it.
Aelor Targaryen was going to kill them all.
Each and every one.
He drove his lance through the throat of the first man he came to, turning the guard’s shout of warning into a gurgle of blood and death.
The others fared no better, one turning and trying to flee through the gate but instead being trampled by the mass of armored horses crashing through.
The streets of King’s Landing were awry with soldiers and citizens both dead and alive.
Some men in the red and gold of House Lannister were battling with those in the gold of the City Watch or the red and black of House Targaryen, blood being spilled onto the already red streets.
Others had given up the pretense of waging war and were openly looting, the city’s wealth being stolen from brothels and Septs alike.
Aelor drew his sword, the ruby in its crossguard glittering, and cut into them like a demon from the deepest of the seven hells.
His men knew their commands, and they would carry them out with gusto.
There would be no chance of redemption, no declaration of repentance; there would be no mercy.
The Lion had bitten the Dragon’s tail, and it was going to be burned into blackened nothing for the offense.
Some knight with a purple unicorn surcoat tried to knock Aelor off of his destrier, the Dragon Prince driving his sword through the narrow slit of his visor in response.
Aelor roared as the lust of battle flooded his veins, withdrawing his blade from his dead enemy’s face only to plunge it into the back of the next man at arms he crossed.
Aelor didn’t give a damn whether it was an honorable blow or not; he just wanted to kill, and whether he did so by cutting off a man’s head and killing him instantly or cutting off a man’s hand and letting him bleed to death on the shit covered street mattered not a whit to him.
Aelor had gotten good at killing.
He intended to get much better.
The deeper he drove into the city, cutting a bloody path up the streets of his family’s capital, the more Lannister red he saw, and the more his rage grew.
Warrior felt his rider’s fury and responded, his frequent neighing sounding more like a predator’s roar, running more than one man down and turning them into a fleshly pulp underneath the stallion’s hooves and weight.
The black armored knight and black hided horse made a terrifying duo, spilling blood as if they were the embodiment of the Stranger.
Even those Westlander’s who had sense enough to run could not escape, feeling the bite of a blade or the crushing clamp of a set of flat herbivore teeth digging into their skin.
Men died by the score, and still the Targaryen Prince drove on.
Whether Alaric or Ser Barristan were still beside him Aelor couldn’t say.
Whether Lord Randyll Tarly had successfully brought the infantry up to block off the city’s gates, ensuring not a single Lannister would escape the purge of their own making, Aelor didn’t know.
The Lord of Duskendale didn’t even know if this euphoric slaughter was real or just the dream of a man from a family known for its madness, dark and terrifying and beautiful.
Aelor didn’t care.
All the mattered was killing and the Red Keep.
When Aelor came upon a man in a lion’s helm, his shoulder pads forged to look like the faces of the predator the Lannister’s were so proud of, all of his rage focused on that one being.
This knight was atop a horse almost as big as Warrior, the long blond hair that flowed from underneath his helm waving to and fro as he tried to set up a defensive line. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
His men weren’t listening, too intent on the loot they were pillaging and the women they were defiling to worry about something so trivial as a war.
Aelor ended his efforts for him.
Warrior crashed into the Lannister’s mount, nearly unhorsing the knight as the stallion beneath him staggered sideways.
The second son of Aerys brought his blade in at a downward angle, hard and fast.
To his utmost surprise the Lannister knight parried it with his own, forcing Aelor’s blade up and away as the Lion’s horse regained its balance.
Warrior, enraged that the other stallion in front of him hadn’t gone down, slammed his armored body back into his rival’s flank, sinking his teeth into the blanket of heavy mail covering the Lannister horse’s haunch.
Aelor used that momentum to strike again, his own fury growing as the Lannister parried once more, knocking Aelor’s blade aside and going on the offensive even as his mount staggered again, screaming hauntingly at the pain Warrior was inflicting.
The Lion’s blade crashed into Aelor’s shield, the sword slashing a furrow into the warring white dragon’s painted onto the heavy oak and banded steel.
Aelor had almost forgotten the thing was strapped to his left arm; he hadn’t needed it to this point.
The Dragon swung the newly rediscovered defense out, knocking the blade of his opponent away, and once again struck, this time aiming the point of his sword at the slit in the man’s visor, intending to skewer the Lion’s brains as he had the purple unicorn’s.
Lannister managed to block this blow as well, not giving up a fraction of a second in transitioning from the defensive to the offensive, slashing his blade in at Aelor again, carving another groove into the Dragon’s shield.
On an on the two danced, parry being met with parry, their stallion’s warring with each other every bit as hard as their rider’s.
Thrice Aelor thought he had an opening, and thrice the Lannister knight managed to close it off before the Dragon of Duskendale could drive his blade home.
Their deadly dance paid no heed to the carnage around them or the passage of time, blade meeting blade meeting shield meeting blade.
Aelor roared as Lannister landed a blow, the tip of the Lion’s blade catching Aelor’s helm, carving through the steel with the strength only battlelust could give, biting into the skin around Aelor’s right eye and setting his helm ajar, his vision blocked.
The Dragon roared in fury and pain, the Lion laughing as he aimed his sword for a killing blow.
Warrior saved him, at that moment driving his muscular shoulders into his rival’s flank again.
The Lion’s laughed turned into a curse as he had to regain his balance.
In that time Aelor Targaryen had removed and discarded his helm, the gash that carved diagonally from his right brow over his eye and sliced cleanly until it ran off the point of his cheek bleeding freely.
Violet eyes, both unscathed despite the mess of blood surrounding the right, burned out from a face twisted in anger.