Chapter Text
The Rogue Prince.
She smelled of lavender and lemon, a delicious smell in which Jae could not help but dive. His head nestled against her delicate neck, he took a deep breath again. A sweet laugh answered him as a hand got lost in his hair.
Under his body he could feel each of her delightful curves, from her soft skin to the fleece of white gold nestled between her thighs where a welcoming humidity was found. The tips of her pink nipples were hard and several red marks provided proof of their activities a little earlier.
"I wish we could stay this way for all eternity," sighed Princess Daenerys, putting her arms around his lover's shoulders.
"And me, my love," said Jaehaerys in a muffled voice as he kissed the neck of his beloved.
“Jae,” she protested weakly, a protest that turned into a groan as Jae s mouth went to her nipples.
“Old Gods and New, I love you so much, Dany.”
“I love you too, Jae, more than anything.”
Daenerys cupped Jae's cheek and approached him. Their kiss carried the second son of the King to paradise. He put his hand on her lap and with a great gentleness he returned to exploring her curves and tasting her sweetness. His hand slipped between her thighs, the young woman gave a groan of pleasure as her hand grabbed his member and started stroking back and forth. It was his turn to moan with pleasure.
The tender memory stopped there. His wandering mind was forced to return to the dark reality. The dry air and the smell of blood and fire surrounded him like a shroud. Jae stared at his opponent. Chasing the beautiful amethyst eyes of his love from his spirit. He took a step forward and went on the attack.
Jaehaerys groaned under the effort as he pushed back the Dothraki screamer with his shield. Surprised, the savage stumbled back against the wooden railing that crackled without breaking. Unfortunately for him, the short moment of surprise turned out to be the last one as Jae thrust the tip of his sword into his chest. His enemy remained a moment bewildered, an expression that changed into agony when a twist of the wrist, Jon turned the blade in her belly, letting out a scarlet spray.
Short of breath because of the short but intense duel, the young Commander took the time to observe the situation. Dustown was in the midst of Disputed Land, a community of merchants and craftsmen who lived as best they could in what was one of the most unstable regions in the world. The little town had been stormed early in the morning, shortly before the guard was raised. The Dothraki howlers had climbed the ramparts, slaughtered the exhausted sentinels and opened the harrow, leaving the rest of the horde spilling into the city like grasshoppers.
As the Commander of the mercenary garrison, Jae had managed to have his soldiers contain most of the men in the market area at the entrance to the city. Now, after a morning of fierce fighting, the defenders were gradually fended off the looters. Alas, their enemies were ferocious and every meter gained was bloody.
Savages. Fools, confusing bravery with suicide , the rogue prince thought.
Straddling the dead Dothraki he had killed, Jaehaerys looked at Dustown with a stern expression. Chaos was the best description the young man could find. The houses whitened by the sun were in the half of the city ravaged by the fire that had broken out, the blue sky was filled with thick black smoke. The midday sun and the raging fire made the heat stifling. The fights were moved from the central avenue and the two squares to drown in the blood the narrow streets adjoining. Deprived of their horses, the ferocious Dothraki were cut to pieces without retreating, frustrating endlessly Jae. A frustration that had only increased with the failure of his mission.
The exile had wanted to join the gates of the city, wanting to lock the Dothraki between the walls and depriving them of the reinforcements of their khalasar. Unfortunately, besides being occupied by the Dothraki, the stone wall was in very bad conditions. The makeshift repairs made by Jae and his predecessors had caught fire. The last means of access was near the gates, but to reach them they would have to cross the neighborhood of the door, currently full of enemies.
“Commander!” a voice shouted behind him. “Commander!”
A group of soldiers led by a sergeant approached him, their armor was filthy and their blades were still oozing the blood of their victims. They were far from the proud look of the Westerosi knights.
"Come on, Jae! Father made us some armor." The memory floated in the Prince's mind, inconvenient but pleasant. Oh, and what armor it was, full, black with dragon carvings, on the thick breastplate the three-headed dragon of their family made of precious stone. Today the armor had to take dust in the armory of the Red Keep. Instead he now wore a blood-soaked leather armor with a mesh coat underneath.
The men in front of him wore the same equipment, rigid leather armor or brigandines, more or less decorated spaulders. Iron most often, sometimes steel if its carrier was sufficiently rich. Plate armor as for it was rare, very rare in Essos.
Jaehaerys watched the sergeant approach him. The man was wider than tall, sturdy and all-muscle. In his hands he held a falchion, dripping blood, and a round shield reinforced with iron. On his head he wore a bumpy kettle hat. His brigandine was torn in several places, leaving him to see the fine metal plate underneath.
His face was a horror to see, a nose broken more times than one could count, his whole left side was covered with scars that a surgeon had badly stitched. The salt and pepper beard was sprayed with blood. His blue eyes shone with joy. This man was born for war. The sergeant was called Noros, affectionately nicknamed by the troop the Thirsty, but not for his descent into the taverns. He was a boorish, bloodthirsty, but reliable man, a sergeant who had a heavy hand when he had to, without abusing his power over men of rank.
The faces of the men beside Noros were dark and bitter, but to Jae’s relief a dark resolution shone in their eyes.
“Sergeant Noros, soldiers,” Jae nodded.
"Captain Asher is sending us reinforcements, so what are your orders, Commander?" Sergeant Noros asked impatiently.
Before Jae could answer, the screams grew louder, and when he turned his head he saw a group of Dothraki run in their direction with their arakhs in their hands.
“In formation, shield!” Jae shouted.
Immediately, the soldiers surrounded him, forming a wall of shields taking all the width of the walkway.
The shock was brutal, the Dothraki trying to break their training by brute force. The shock pulled back their line although he held good. The raiders screamed and swore in their tongue, hitting or throwing themselves against the shields with ruthless fury.
In the back of the mercenaries’ formation, the soldiers who had not taken position tried to hold them as much as they could. But the stone slabs, bloodied by the preceding fight, were slippery under their boots. Finally, one of the men stumbled on a corpse, taking with him the men beside him in his fall. The line was broken. The Dothraki seized the opportunity as their formation broke, the savages shouting with joy.
Carried away by the man next to him, Jon found himself on the ground, but luckily he managed to keep his sword in hand. He just had the time to get up to parry a sudden blow that would have killed him. With a deft movement of his arakh, the Dothraki managed to break Jaehaerys’'s guard. The second blow did not come, however, as the sergeant took advantage of the opportunity to plant his falchion in the rider's back.
The exile Westerosi did not have time to thank the veteran, he was barely back on his feet when two Dothraki attacked him. Jaehaerys kneeled abruptly while raising his bulwarks over his head. Holding back tears of pain as his knee pads banged his leg, he buried his sword under the belt of the copper-skinned warrior, who shrieked in pain. In a second movement his shield-hand lowered, the sharp point crashing into the foot of the second rider. Surprisingly, he knelt down trying to remove the tip of the shield from his foot. His hands slid and opened on the sharp edges of the Prince's kite-shaped shield. Leaving the sword in the body of the first, the prince crushed his metal-covered fistl in the crotch of his victim, then, as he collapsed, Jae hit his face. Once, twice and a third time, leaving only a bloody ruin where his features had been.
Despite the pain on his knee, Jaehaerys got up, pulling his sword from the body of the young swarthy warrior. The other Dothraki stood in the meanwhile, his face turned into a pulp, his eyes shining with hatred and rage. Jae did not give him time to attack him again, however, with a quick swing of his sword he opened the barbarian's throat, his blood spurting, staining him.
Jae gave a furious scream as he went to meet another Dothraki, in a movement from the bottom to the top of his shield he pushed aside the arakh. In the process, Jae took a horizontal blow. The thread of his sword, so carefully sharpened, cut the rough leather without difficulty and disemboweled the tender flesh of the belly. The howler fell to his knees, in a pathetic attempt he tried to hold his pouring gut. Without mercy, Jae hit the man with his shield, sending the animal on the ground as he took his last breath.
Around him, he could see that all the Dothraki had been killed. Of the eleven men who had joined him, eight had survived, although three were seriously injured. Sergeant Noros had a wild smile, looking almost happy.
"A handsome massacre, sir," the sergeant shouted, slapping Jae's shoulder.
the prince merely shook his head, not taking pleasure in the massacre although he knew perfectly well that it was necessary.
It had been one of the most valuable lessons his father and then Uncle Brandon had taught him. Sometimes violence was necessary. Often, too often, it was the only way.
“The path to the guardhouse is blocked, the bridge is collapsed,” informed Jae.
His announcement was followed by a series of expletives. In spite of all that happened, the news did not particularly surprise the men, the walls were not at their first attacks. The disputed Lands bore their names well and despite their riches had not known stability and peace for four hundred years. Dustown, his little bastion and forge were prime targets for everyone. It had been three months since Jae had been sent here to defend it. And it was already the fourth assault on the small town.
If he was honest with himself, the assaults and protection of the city had prevented Jae from sinking into the most total depression. Stuck in a pocket of his armor rested a letter the words of which had been as painful as a dagger in the back.
.
It was the first time an army had managed to cross the walls, and to his great shame he could only blame himself. Three days later, he was shown lax with his men, his mind drifting more and more on the letter. But it was too late to complain.
Jaehaerys sighed, it was useless now to think about that damned letter.
How Ser Jaime would make fun of me , thought the Prince fondly, thinking of the Lannister.
The Prince led his group, together they descended from the wall, joining the open-air mass grave that had become the market district. All around them bodies lay everywhere, the walls were splashed with blood and the flames devoured the buildings. The dirt roads had taken the color of blood. To his great sadness, the vast majority of bodies belonged to men and women that were disarmed, or worse, to children who had been massacred without mercy.
It was not the first carnage that the Prince saw, yet each time his heart filled with pain and sorrow. Without him wanting it, a memory floated in his mind. A memory of a time when the two young heir Princes were having fun, thinking that the battlefield was a glorious place to be. How much they were wrong.
He remembered not having understood his father's words when he had put his hands on their shoulder and looked at them both with his sad but loving gaze.
“Oh, my little ones. You are wrong, there is no glory in a battlefield. Never. I pray that you will never know the horror of war.”
Beside his father's soft voice, Jae heard the cold, stern voice of his grandfather, Lord Rickard.
“But, yes, you have to fight, win.”
The Prince blinked his eyes and drove away the sad memory of a happier hour. He would avenge these useless deaths, he promised himself.
Jaehaerys led his small group to the square facing the little portico leading to the Door district. The big square was black with bodies. The houses that adjoined her had been transformed into a makeshift infirmary, from which Jae could hear the screams of the wounded and dying.
“Jaehaerys!” called his second, another Westerosi exile just like him.
"Asher," said Jae, relieved to see that his countryman was still alive.
The young Northerners had been exiled by his lord father for the same thing as Jae... he loved the wrong person.
No, Jae does not think about her now, the young man corrected himself. He ignored the pain that hugged his heart as he remembered her naked body against his, her scent and laughter.
To escape from the memory was as difficult as it was painful, but he did it all the same. Concentrating on his mate while handing him a bottle of wine cut in the water. Grimacing to the taste, he drank with gratitude.
"The Khal is preparing an assault," Asher told him, picking it up.
The young Commander was not surprised by the news. The defenders were exhausted by the morning fight. An attack could completely break their defenses, no doubt for good. The Dothraki did not have the means to pierce the defenses of the bastion, but the rest of the city and the arsenals would undoubtedly be looted, the civilians raped and abducted.
Jae nodded, resolute. If the Khal wanted a fight, Jae would offer it to him.
"Well, if we kill him, the horde will break down on itself," Jae commented. “Soldiers! Formation!”
His order was resumed by the other sergeants and the Black Company began to move. In the middle of the formation the black banner of the Company floated in the wind, vestige of the time when the Black Company was a Elite Legion of the Valyrian Freehold.
Swords clear, the soldiers began to advance in the acrid smoke. Only the crackling of the fires and the unbearable sounds of bells that the Dothraki wore in their hair could be heard. Jae could see the detrimental effect of the strident sounds the soldiers intended to come to their meetings. Jae, on the other hand, did not get on his nerves. He was eager to stop this noise once and for all!
"Their bells get on my nerves," he said in a low voice without addressing anyone in particular. His sentence, however, had the beneficial effect of amusing his men.
"I'm going to hear their fucking bells for days after the victory," complained a man next to him.
“I'll stick this fucking bells up their asses!” bellowed the voice of the bloodthirsty sergeant who saved his life on the ramparts.
All other remarks were suddenly drowned in the cacophony of screams that the Dothraki let out all at the same time. Jae could hear the shrill shrieks of the Dothraki coming closer and closer and getting stronger with each step. It was their chance, however, the debris, the fire and the bodies prevented the Dothraki from being able to take advantage of their greater strength forcing them to fight on foot.
Finally, the smoke cleared up a little, leaving at last a glimpse of the shadows of their enemies. For a moment the two groups silently watched each other, almost surprised to find themselves face to face in the middle of the paved square.
“Charge!” the Rogue Prince shouted.
In a single voice the mercenaries screamed as they launched the assault, their cries surpassing the screams that the Dothraki sent them in response.
“To death!”
“Show no mercy!”
Driven by his momentum, Jae brutally hit a Dothraki in the face with his shield, while his sword fell on the shoulder of a second, sinking cruelly into his flesh. With a furious kick, Jae chased his opponent to free his sword. Beside him, one of his companions cut off the head of a howler with his axe before the arakh of another cracked his skull.
All around him, the fighting was raging. Soon the pavement became slippery because of the blood.
A blow caught Jae by surprise. A powerful punch of a great Dothraki warrior who broke his nose, making him see stars for a short time. It were only the hard-won reflexes after training with the Kingsguard’s knights who saved the Prince. Rolling on the side, he avoided the blow to his throat.
Disarmed, the exile searched for a weapon, before finally falling on a Morgenstern of coarse iron. Rearmed, Jae turned to face his attacker. He parried the next with his shield, the Dothraki vociferating in his tongue. With a vicious blow, he pushed aside the shield, leaving Jae unprotected. The savage took his arakh with both hands, a cruel smile on his lip, and slashed his weapon at Jaehaerys.