Ser Dennis Greyhead
That everything went to the Seven Hells at the most inopportune moment did not surprise Ser Dennis Greyhead a whit. On the contrary, when local bandits jumped out of the ruins with wails, rushing at them with crooked knives an elbow long, the knight experienced a sort of grim satisfaction that in the end he was right: they were, naturally, being watched and, naturally, they wanted to kill them. All this flashed as a single thought somewhere in the backyard of his mind while his body turned of itself to meet the enemy, drew the sword from the scabbard of itself, counted opponents of itself. There were two dozen of them, all as one Mantaryens: ugly, offended by all gods, lumpy, in scabs, with peeling skin, with scales—but, surprisingly, extra limbs were not observed on them, and they were built sturdily. Dennis noted with a grim smirk that they were taken seriously.
The first to fall under the blow were slaves who had lost vigilance; the eldest of them—the sworn shield still could not remember his too simple name—scarce managed to draw his sword when he found himself face to face with two opponents at once; a third took advantage of this and, deftly bypassing the Volantene from the back, drove a dagger right under the base of the skull. Another slave fell onto the dusty stony ground with a blade in his chest, however, this gave the rest time to realize what happened and gather themselves.
"What the devil!.." shouted eiks Maerys, drawing his own sword. The boy, of course, knew how to handle it, but, to speak frankly, he resembled Prince Aegon more, so the knight expected no use from him.
"Bitches!" roared the eldest of the princess-triarch's sons. "Won't be taken alive, go fuck yourselves!"
Eiks Jaegaer, by his own assurances, knew only training fights, but Dennis was calm for him—the knight managed to observe him in the arena in Volantis and on the whole his suzerain's cousin turned out to be a sensible fighter. And as for not being in a real fight... well, everything happens for the first time in life.
Steel rang quite close to his face—that was the craftsmanship of a Dornish smith meeting the creation of a gloomy Essosi genius; the steel of the blade turned out surprisingly good and did not yield; Dennis, making a simple feint, managed to deflect the opponent's hand and immediately rushed into the opened gap in his defense, slashing across the chest. The freak, covered all over with abscesses and boils, wheezed and began to fall on his back; the knight hacked at the knees, helping him fall, and immediately plunged the blade into the heart. Not too knightly, but he is not at a tournament, but protecting a suzerain. By the way, where is he?
Swearing through his teeth and mentioning the late Prince Baelon, Dennis turned his head in search of Aegon; he was soon found on some hillock—he and Vermithor stood, staring somewhere beyond the sea, and seemed not to notice what was happening at all.
"Prince!" barked the sworn shield with all his might.
"Aegon, damn you!" joined him Jaegaer, and Dennis was grateful to him—taking poor Princess Alyssa's name in vain did not befit his rank.
But three more robbers immediately approached them, and the knight had to concentrate on them. The eiks blew off half of one's lumpy head, another introduced his liver to the knightly sword, and the third they put to rest together—Jaegaer distracted his attention, and Dennis chopped off hands gripping a butcher's cleaver.
When the ser turned to the hill again, there was no Prince on it anymore, as there was no Bronze Fury either.
"Gods, into what Hell has he fallen again?" howled the knight.
And then a deafening roar filled with anger and fury rang out from the sky. Dennis barely managed to push both eikses back and barely managed to recoil himself when Vermithor flew out of low light grey clouds and breathed a stream of flame wide and straight as an arrow, incinerating both Mantaryens and Volantene slaves at once. Such bright and scorching fire, from which the air seemed to boil, the knight had never seen from Vermithor, nor from any of the dragons—and he happened to be a dragon guard too. When the dragon rushed past and banked, Dennis saw with horror that the saddle on his back was empty.
"Damn it, where..."
Scarce had he finished speaking when some red-and-white whirlwind flew into the surviving group of bandits. Wind cut by a blade whistled, steel rang against steel, slashed flesh squelched—and separate pieces of two heads and three arms rolled on the ground. Mantaryens wailed not so fiercely and bellicosely as in the beginning, and jerked to run, but only two succeeded. A dozen turned to dust from dragonfire, another five they managed to kill themselves and as many now lay dead or were about to become so.
Prince Aegon, splattered with blood, stood among corpses, leaning firmly on both legs, and gripped his Valyrian Candle in hands. Where he managed to drop the precious weirwood scabbard remained a mystery, but Dennis dared not call out and ask something of his suzerain now. At that moment the Targaryen looked like death incarnate itself: a predatory, bloodthirsty smile froze on his face, and green eyes burned with raging fire; there was something wrong, unnatural in all this, but before the knight managed to understand what the matter was, two events happened.
Firstly, some elusive force, some fourteenth sense forced the knight to turn slightly sideways, step half a pace aside. Secondly, scarce had he done this when an arrow whistled past his cheek. Dennis had not happened to walk under arrows yet, so he reflexively recoiled further away, crouched lower and only then risked turning around.
Time slowed down, becoming viscous as treacle.
There eiks Maerys, just staring open-mouthed at his cousin, now examined an arrow sticking from his belly with sincere surprise. And here another one flew to keep it company, piercing the left shoulder. The Volantene, never understanding what happened, collapsed on the ground; Jaegaer with eyes rounded from horror rushed to him and flopped onto his knees.
"Maerys, brother, hold on, do you hear?! Do not close your eyes, look at me, brother!"
Dennis turned, but again did not see the Prince in the former place—he had already rushed to the ruins on the other side of what used to be a street, and, judging by shouts, managed to find the shooter. As a sworn shield, he should have been there, with his suzerain and doing everything for him, but he...
"For the sake of all gods, help!" Jaegaer broke into a scream, tears already flowing down his face.
Dennis spat and lowered himself before the younger eiks, arranging the blade on his knees. Much blood managed to flow from him already; the youth was now white as a sheet—it was unclear where skin ended and silvery hair began. Only eyes and lips with a trickle of blood trailing stood out on the pale face.
Dennis studied with the Prince in the Citadel of Oldtown and received a couple of silver links for medicine together with him. Greyhead did not consider himself a great healer, but here one did not need to be an Archmaester of medicine to understand the lad was fading. An arrow in the belly is already bad, and this one, by all appearances, hit the stomach too, so agony should be quite tormenting and long. However, gods are merciful in their cruelty—the second arrow pierced the upper thoracic artery, and now blood spurted out in jerks, flooding the clothes and hands of the stupidly fussing Jaegaer.
"Press here and do not let go!" commanded Dennis to the Volantene, and examined the wound carefully himself once more. If one tries, one can win time, bring a Maester... Though what, in the Seven Hells, Maesters in this god-cursed hole?!
"J... Jae... Jae..." tried to squeeze out of himself Maerys in a weak voice.
"Shh, brother, do not, do not waste strength..." whispered the other; the eiks managed to twist and wipe snot with his shoulder, after which cast a demanding "Well?!" to the knight.
Dennis, pursing lips, shook his head—nothing could be done. As if in confirmation of his verdict, Maerys inhaled raggedly a couple of times, still trying to say something, but never exhaled, and the fire of life went out in amethyst eyes. That his brother died, Jaegaer understood not immediately.
"Brother?! Maerys, do not be silent, please, Maerys!"
"My Lord..."
"Why do you sit, rascal, do something! You boasted you know how to treat people!"
"Therefore I want to say..."
"Maerys, do not close your eyes, look at me, just breathe!.."
Suddenly a hollow voice rang out:
"He died, Jaegaer."
Raising his gaze, the knight saw his suzerain. Still on two legs, with Candle drawn.
"What are you saying?!" the eiks seemed to deal with death for the first time, though after the race on the Black Walls he looked no better.
"Maerys died," repeated the Prince mercilessly.
He sat beside them, felt the pulse on the neck and, making sure his cousin was truly dead, nodded to himself and closed Maerys's eyes. Jaegaer dully shifted his gaze from the Prince to Dennis, from Dennis to his brother. Aegon meanwhile dipped his index finger into blood flowed from the cousin and drew a Valyrian glyph on the deceased's forehead; it came out not very neat, so Dennis, who never fully mastered the old writing, had to strain to recognize "death" in the crooked squiggle.
"Perzys istan, ñuqir issi," began the Prince in the High Tongue. "Aōhos ōñoso jis, aōhos rūnir sikiaks perzītsos zālilza. Aōhos morghon Balerion jiōrilza."
It finally reached Jaegaer that nothing could be done anymore, and the eiks, dropping his head on his chest, wept.
"You should not have run away, my Prince," remarked Dennis to the suzerain in an undertone, rising from his knees. "Why did you not mount Vermithor? There they would not have reached you."
"It depended not on me. It is unimportant," jerked a shoulder Aegon and forcefully ran a hand over his face, trying to rub off alien blood.
"And what is important then, permit me to ask?"
"We cannot return to Mantarys. There they will try to kill us again."
"And things? Money is there, after all!"
"Firstly, is there much of that money? You yourself said Vermithor is the best treasurer. Secondly, everything has already been stolen and dragged to their stinking holes by these freaks. Slaves are dead, and everything needed is with us. Must leave."
"Where?"
"To Volantis, of course."
"Will they not try to kill us again there?" asked the knight distrustfully.
"If we act quickly and do not delay, then no. Besides..." the Prince faltered and looked at the cousins—dead and alive. "Need to return Maerys to Aunt Saera."
"We have no horses, how shall we carry him? Tie to Vermithor's saddle?"
"We shall commit him to fire," nodded Aegon decisively. "In the end, whoever says what, by blood he is a Targaryen and deserves burial in dragonfire. Attend to the body, and I shall prepare the place."
And, not waiting for an answer, the Prince turned and walked in the direction of the hill from which he descended. He walked evenly and on his own two legs, and Dennis looked after him with surprise; probably, only because of this he managed to notice how a thin trickle of blood stretched after the suzerain on the dusty ground. Blood too fresh to be alien, too hot—Dennis was ready to swear it smoked!—to be Mantaryen blood.
"My Prince?" called the knight to the suzerain. "Are you wounded?"
"Not as badly as Maerys," waved off the other, and a wild smile distorted the noticeably paled face. "Hurry."
Dennis prayed to all gods that the eiks would not hear his cousin's words, otherwise with their dragon temper there would be trouble. What came over the Prince? To joke about such things, and over a kinsman's not yet cooled body at that—how is this conceivable?! Prince Aegon, of course, was always a terrible caustic wit, injury made him so, but there must be at least some notions of propriety. And this...
Fortunately, his fears proved vain. Jaegaer sat by his brother's body just the same, not letting go of his hand; the eiks managed to master himself and now did not shake in sobs, but only sobbed occasionally. Dennis thought life was unfair to the lad: he scarce recovered from a friend's death, and here a new blow; even in childhood on Dragonstone he saw how frequent losses of loved ones broke people not so pampered and spoiled as the Volantene eiks. He needed to be distracted by something.
"My Lord," called him Dennis quietly. "My Lord, Lord Maerys must be washed. Water is needed."
"Yes..." Jaegaer's voice sounded hoarse from emotions over which he clearly tried to gain control.
"My Lord, I shall require your help—need to bring water," and also need him to finally step away from the deceased. "Could you gather flasks? There are no wells here, so will have to pour water from them."
"Y-yes... Of course."
"Very good, my Lord. Then hurry."
The knight himself was disgusted by his babying, but now it was required of him not to let the Volantene soften completely. When his own mother once fell in the kitchen and never rose again, aunts chased him and his brothers out of the house, forcing them to run now for one thing, now for another, invite a Septon (and after him—an old woman bent with years from the neighboring street), tell distant relatives, in a word, tried to occupy them with business. Their plan, of course, was good in its way, but had one significant flaw: when funeral affairs were finished, and mother's ashes scattered in the wind according to local custom, nothing shielded children from the bitterness of loss anymore.
Meanwhile, Jaegaer tore himself away from his brother's body after all, rose heavily to his feet and trudged toward things scattered in the heat of the skirmish. Surely he will have to double-check after him, thought Dennis, but this could be left for later. The sworn shield spread his cloak on the ground, added Maerys's own cloak to it and moved the body to the improvised bed. Cutting the eiks's tunics with a dagger, the knight carefully extracted the arrow from the wound on the shoulder; of course, there was no need to be cautious anymore, but "our" dead did not deserve rough treatment, especially if it was a dead dragon. Pulling the arrow from the belly, Dennis could not refrain from a squeamish grimace; he turned out right after all—the stomach was clearly hit and its contents managed to pour inside.
The eiks returned; to the knight's surprise, he managed to find a couple of waterskins with water among shoulder bags miraculously survived, which slaves managed to throw on the ground before the battle. For a full ablution by all rules this, naturally, was insufficient, but to wash off blood it should be enough. Cuts of the tunic went for rags, and the sworn shield, moistening them with water, set to the sad duty.
"Actually, in Westeros Silent Sisters do this," he explained to Jaegaer frozen behind his shoulder—he should not stew in his own thoughts. "Well, you know, my Lord, novices of the Faith of the Seven. They wash the dead, bring them to order, prepare for burial, somewhere even dig graves themselves. They are called Silent because they take a vow of silence—grief loves silence, so Septons say about them. Besides, this is the only order of the Faith dedicated to the Stranger, and it is not customary to pray to him. Prince Aegon, of course, has his own opinion on this score, well he always has one on any occasion. They also say about Silent Sisters that they are silent because their tongues are torn out, without a tongue one cannot talk, right?"
Dennis recalled everything known to him about Silent Sisters, all truths and falsehoods, just not to be silent. Silence is grief, grief is commemoration, and they have no time for this, mercenaries could return, incite the city rabble to riot, and then it will not seem little to them. Of course, in relation to Lord Maerys this is not too respectful, he is a grandson of the Old King after all, but nothing to be done. The lot of the living is to remember the dead, but for this one must survive first. And with this there could be problems.
Water truly sufficed only to remove blood and wipe the deceased's face; the surprised-suffering expression on it was somehow smoothed out; the eiks did not look peaceful, it seemed he fell asleep in a bad mood and now frowned through sleep.
Soon the Prince returned to them; the suzerain walked with the uncertain, staggering gait of a man who had too much at the table, and a couple of times it seemed to Dennis he would fall.
"Finished? Good. Wrap him up, we carry him to the hill," he commanded. There was barely more color in Aegon's face than in his late cousin's face; everything in him somehow sharpened, became prickly and unnatural.
"I shall carry," clarified the knight just in case, though there was no one else really. The Prince himself barely moved his legs, though literally just now flew in battle like Vermithor himself, and help from Jaegaer was not to be expected.
In such a small procession they ascended the hillock, which for some reason so pleased the Prince and his dragon—the Bronze Fury did not want to get off it at all. Aegon nodded toward a black stone slab protruding from local ruins by a foot and a half, and the knight obediently moved the eiks wrapped in an improvised shroud onto it and pushed closer to the center.
"D-does... does one not need... wood? Or something like that?" suddenly showed concern eiks Jaegaer.
"Dragonfire needs not," shook his head his cousin and picked up something from the ground which Dennis at first took for a stone, and then for a dragon egg. The Prince separated one half from the other and demonstrated to the sworn shield. "I found an urn. Just like on Dragonstone, yes?"
He only told about the family crypt, but Dennis himself saw stone eggs in which Targaryens carried the ashes of their dead. So, this too was a tradition of the Old Freehold. They bade farewell to the eiks in turn: Aegon was brief—bending to the deceased, he whispered something to him and immediately pulled away; Dennis bared his sword and knelt; Jaegaer stood before his brother for several minutes in silence, and then kissed him on the forehead and let himself be led away. Turning to face Maerys, the Prince repeated the words of the funeral prayer, and then commanded Vermithor:
"Dracarys!"
The dragon readily breathed a powerful stream of flame, and fire in the blink of an eye hid both the body formerly being a Volantene eiks, and the slab on which it lay. When flame roared together with the dragon, tears began to choke Jaegaer again, and he turned away. Dennis, on the contrary, not averting his gaze, looked at the funeral pyre until he was pulled by the sleeve.
"Listen to me, Dennis," spoke the Prince in the same hoarse voice. "When the fire goes out, sweep the ashes into the urn. Understood?"
"Yes, my Prince," he is no fool, understands what needs to be done. Only why does the suzerain not want to do this himself? It is his relative burning.
"Listen further. When you do this, approach the head of the slab and take three more steps straight. There will be a hole in the floor, a crawlspace into catacombs."
"Three steps from the slab and catacombs."
"I want you to climb in there and bring out everything that can be carried, whole or in parts. Let Jaegaer help you, then attach it to the saddle."
"Good, my Prince," nodded Dennis confusedly. "Bring out absolutely everything?"
"Yes. As if we are robbing the damn Iron Bank," were it not for circumstances, one could have chuckled at the joke, but the Prince, it seems, was not up to laughter. He looked completely ill.
"I shall do this, my Prince, but not before I examine you."
The Prince opened his mouth, surely intending to object or order not to engage in nonsense, when suddenly his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed as if cut down, right into the sworn shield's arms.
"Excellent, simply wonderful," muttered Dennis, dragging Aegon further from the fire flame. "How else could this have ended."
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