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.
…
The Dragon of Duskendale looked nothing like a man in that moment.
As he raised his sword, thundering out a war cry of rage and pain and hate, he looked more like a fire breathing bringer of death than even the white dragons etched onto his breastplate.
This attack was twice as furious as his first, the Dragon swinging hard enough to nearly break the Lion’s shield arm when he met the blow.
Whatever momentum Lannister had won with the blow that nearly blinded the Prince was lost, and soon he was barely able to ward off the deadly blade of his opponent.
The Dragon Prince seemed to be growing only stronger, bloodlust fueling his every strike, his unshielded face snarling as he struck again and again.
In truth, the Lion could only hold off the Dragon’s onslaught so long.
One parry was a fraction too slow, the weak counter knocking the Prince’s sword aside but also knocking the Lion’s blade away.
Before he could bring it back, the Dragon of Duskendale had thrust his sword forward, driving the point of his blade through gorget and chainmail, unleashing a roar so vicious one would think he was a dragon reborn.
The Lion never cried out in pain, as silent and sullen in death as he had been in life.
Tygett Lannister only twitched twice, blood running in a torrent down his breastplate, before falling backwards as stiff as a tree, sliding off of both Aelor’s blade and his own battered and bleeding horse to land in a crimson and gold heap in the street.
The gold of his shoulder plates made a sharp contrast to the blood soaked filth, long blond hair turned red and brown.
Aelor Targaryen gave his dead opponent only the briefest of glances before he kicked Warrior back into a sprint, thundering up the blood-soaked street for the Red Keep.
The fighting hadn’t quite reached the fortress of his ancestors, the drawbridge up and nervous men manning the battlements.
One man was so tense from waiting for an enemy that had yet to arrive that he had drawn his bow and loosed an arrow before he truly saw the figure riding towards him.
His heart nearly burst when he saw that figure was a Targaryen Prince, face, armor and stallion all so bloodied as to almost be unrecognizable.
The archer fell to his knees in relief when his hastily shot arrow sailed well wide of his target, the man never so glad to be a lousy shot than he was in that moment.
“It’s Prince Aelor!” “Hold your arrows!” “A friend, hold fire!” Each of those cries and more echoed through the line of men holding the walls.
“Open that gate, let the Prince in!” Cut through the mass of voices, and men rushed to obey.
The Dragon of Duskendale galloped through the rapidly raised portcullis, not slowing as men at arms in the courtyard had to leap out of the way of his charging animal.
The Keep seemed untouched, the whirlwind of death Aelor had unleashed on the Lannister rear having seemingly saved the inhabitants. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Aelor rode hard anyway.
Tywin Lannister was smart; he knew that the only thing that would keep many of the defenders fighting was the lives they protected.
If he could slip a few men into the Keep and eliminate the Targaryen’s inside, most would lose heart, ending his brilliant sack of the city with the termination of most of the bloodline that had insulted him repeatedly over the years.
Aelor knew the murder of children like Aegon and Elia wasn’t above the lion.
The Rains of Castamere began playing in the young Prince’s mind as he neared his destination.
They have to be alive.
They have to be.
I must see them, I must hold them again.
Aelor came to the dry moat defending Maegor’s Holdfast, finding the drawbridge up and men, the last line of defense for the Targaryen’s inside, tense and ready.
“Lower the bridge,” the Dragon called, the blood flowing down his face to mix into the silver of his beard.
A knight Aelor didn’t recognize with a leaping swordfish on his chest peered down from the walls nervously.
“But Prince Aelor, the King demanded we open for no—”
“LOWER THE FUCKING BRIDGE,” the Prince bellowed, and within a second the sound of turning gears filled his ears.
Aelor thundered across the drawbridge almost before it even settled into place, flying under the ingress and into the courtyard.
The Dragon of Duskendale flew off of his stallion, barreling into the castle within a castle.
It was then and only then that he realized Ser Barristan Selmy, white cloak and armor turned red, and Alaric Langward, covered in gore, were beside him.
“Barristan, check Rhaenys’ room and then my mother’s!
Alaric, with him!
Find my family!”
His companions gave no argument, Ser Barristan turning a corner with Alaric close on his heels.
Aelor himself ran like a madman, paying no heed to the sting of the cut down his eye.
All that mattered was reaching the nursery, was seeing that Aegon and Elia and Rhaenys were alive, holding them in his arms and seeing that he hadn’t been too late.
Aelor burst in, hoping beyond hope to see his favorite Dornishwoman and her children safe and sound.
Instead, he was greeted with the sight of a mountain with legs and armor, a massive surcoat bearing three black dogs on a yellow field stretched across the broadest chest Aelor had ever seen.
Aelor followed the surcoat up and up and up until he was staring at the biggest man the Dragon of Duskendale had ever heard of even so much as existing.
And the blade, as long as Aelor was tall, that the moving mountain was swinging towards the Dragon Prince’s head.
…
She knew something was wrong the moment she heard the trumpets.
She’d just burst into Rhaenys’ chamber when the first cries entered the fringes of her hearing.
By the time she’d managed to sprint to her son’s nursery, cradling the infant under one arm and hoisting her toddler on the other hip, the cries were as loud her own heartbeat.
The Dornish Princess nearly screamed when the door to the nursery crashed inward, instinctively shielding her children from whoever had burst into the chamber.
A being filled the doorway, broader than the width between doorposts, a huge hand resting on the sword at his hip.
Her knees almost gave out when that someone turned out to be Manfred Darke, her lady-in-waiting Ashara Dayne slipping around the boulder of a man and rushing into the nursery, her violet eyes panicked.
Ser Manfred’s eyes were not, the knight as unflappable even in this clear emergency as he was in day to day life.
“Princess,” came his gruff voice.
“We need to go.
Now.”
Elia needn’t be told twice, and she gratefully handed the whimpering Rhaenys to Ashara before pulling Aegon, sleeping and blissfully unaware of what was going on around him, closer to her chest.
Ser Manfred turned and Elia followed instantly, Ashara close behind her.
Men at arms rushed through the corridors, shoving each other and shouting as they sprinted down the halls of the Red Keep.
Ser Manfred strode confidently through them like a battering ram, sending one man at arms to the ground with a quick shove when the lad didn’t get out of the way in time.
Elia and Ashara huddled closely to his broad back, the noise of clanking armor and the sense of spreading panic waking Aegon, who began to cry.
Elia hushed her son even though she knew it would do no good.
She didn’t know who was currently raising hell on the city of King’s Landing, but it didn’t really matter; if they were attacking, they either wanted Elia and her children as hostages or wanted them dead.
The Dornish Princess wasn’t overly fond of either idea.