Lyanora Stark (winterwinds) wrote in awod, @ 2009-12-15 02:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | lyanora stark, myrwin martell, week 1 |
An Experiment Gone (Slightly) Wrong
Who: Lyanora Stark, Myrwin Martell
What: Lyanora sneaking into a tavern without anyone other than herself, and a fight breaks out.
Where: Some nameless tavern
When: May 2, Late evening
Status: Closed/Log
Rating: PG13 (Violence)
This... was exciting, in a way. It smelled horrible, but it wasn't the worst she had ever come across. There were taverns on the way down to King's Landing that were little more than log cabins where they sometimes remembered to scrape the vomit and blood off the floor. Her breasts were bound tight enough to cause a nagging pain, but it had to be done. For this excursion to satisfy curiosity and just a need to know.
What did cheap ale taste like? What was it like to go some place without guards keeping you from everything and anything? Even when they knew you could defend yourself. That part was really annoying. They all acted like if she got a splinter Will would murder them. One thing she did notice was she was a lot cleaner than most of the patrons. And once tasted, the ale was awful, but she drank. And watched. And listened.
Myrwin was there with a half-dozen of his sister's men, all of whom he'd known since childhood. They were boisterous and loud - apparently one of them had just become engaged to one of the local sluts fair maidens of King's Landing. Myrwin took it to be his sacred honor to get the man royally drunk before his nuptuals.
It was only right, after all. Poor man was enjoying his last night of freedom.
Apparently, there was some sort of celebration going on. Lya stayed apart for various reasons. One, she had nothing to do with it. And two, it seemed pretty wild, even for this place. At least, that was judging from a couple of sour comments from locals about the place being taken over.
She attempted another sip of the ale, it couldn't be so bad the second time around. Indeed, it was worse, she realized as she discretely spit it back into the cup. How people could live on this was beyond her. But she understood the air of the place much more than the drinks. Her blue eyes watched everything, including a couple of surly drunks that apparently were starting to disagree with the party, unless she missed her guess there would be a fight soon. Ah yes, one of them who really did have quite an impressive girth stood and started stumbling towards the Dornish party. This might get more interesting than she had hoped.
Myrwin was more engrossed in embarrassing his man wholeheartedly than keeping an eye on the townies. They'd selected this Flea Bottom bar because his man spent most of his off-hours drinking there. He'd had to lay in a private stock of a good Dornish red along with a small keg of raki that cost him a figurative arm and a leg. Worth every copper penny, he decided somewhat drunkenly as he finished off his fourth flagon of the stuff.
Put hair on your chest, raki did.
The stumbling drunk smelled like he slept in the cheapest ale this place had to offer. Which may not have been very far from the truth. He didn't waste time with words, other than a mumbled something about his bar before lifting what truly was a very large fist and letting it fly randomly at one of the Dornish men. His being up in arms promised that his companions were too.
So this was the start of a bar fight. This was going to cause property damage. Of that Lya had very little doubt. She still couldn't see what the big deal was that made her brother's men always keep her away from these things.
Well, the first blow was dishonorable and laid the Dornishman out, but his brothers-in-arms howled in anger, grabbed mugs and chair-legs, and set-to with a vengeance. The brawl quickly spread to most of the inn's custom, the original purpose mostly forgotten. One poor man had his teeth fly like popcorn after getting smacked in the mouth with the leg of a chair and another went down, scalp bleeding profusely, after having a bottle broken over his head.
This had caught her by surprise. That a fight would explode this fast for no real reason at all, more like everyone had simply been looking for an excuse. She managed to duck to avoid being hit by a flying something and counted herself lucky for that. Her blood roared in ears and Lya grinned as she started to unsheathe Wind, her sword, standing again, trying to get in a place where she could keep an eye on the action but not have a totally open back.
One of the townies, drunk and temporarily blinded by blood in his eyes, let fly with his full bottle of booze. He was aiming for Myrwin, but his aim was so far off that the bottle came heading straight for Lyanora. Myrwin, for his part, had one man in a headlock and was gleefully introducing the man's face to his fist repeatedly.
Lya barely saw this one coming. She wasn't able to get out of the way completely, but at least it only hit her shoulder instead of her face. It was still enough to take the wind out of her. This was a different kind of fighting, that much was obvious. It was also obvious that she didn't know the rules. That didn't stop her from quickly hitting a man who was getting too close for comfort in the face with her sword in hand. Not the way she was taught to use it, but she reasoned it was just as effective.
The man she hit took it somewhat personally, and he reeked of cooked onions, beer, and rotting teeth. He grabbed for Lya with a quickness that belied his girth and his other hand curled into a fist the size of a salted ham.
The size of the fist was disturbing to say the least, Lya thought in the second or so she actually had to think. The hulking drunk managed to grab her chest as she attempted to 'twirl' out of the way, a fencing move for a fencing situation. Fist fights were alien to her, which was a bit of an oversight in coming here, she realized. There wasn't any time to cry about that now, it was sink or swim and all she had was her sword in one hand, nothing in the other and a giant fist flying not more than an inch past her face.
Much too close for comfort. But she was more concerned about the hand on her chest, "Let me go, cur."
The cur just grinned and wound up for another swing. Unfortunately for him he never got a chance to take it as a tankard of ale smashed into his skull, knocking him and spreading bad ale everywhere. Myrwin, still holding the ruins of the tankard, let them drop as he grinned at Lya. "Might want to put your pretty toy away, boy." he said before he himself got sucker-punched and dropped to his knees.
"Oh yes," Lya muttered, "Because everyone else is doing so much better without it," but she did take the second to put Wind away, trying to figure out what to do with all this chaos. Getting to the door was out of the question. A hit from behind had the floor rushing up to meet her, though she was still conscious, but it stung and left her rattled. She managed to block her fall with her hands and rolled over to try to see who had hit her with what, her hair falling out of it's tight braid.
Myrwin staggered to his feet, palpating his skull to make sure nothing was fractured. Finding nothing but smooth bone under his fingers, he tore the leg off a chair and came to his feet swinging. He missed, but he made the other man back off a tad, which is really all he wanted. "You picked the wrong time to stop in and have a drink, boy." Myrwin said, reaching down to pull the other fellow up by his braid. He had to be a boy - his was the most hairless face Myrwin could recall seeing in quite some time.
The 'boy' let out a very feminine sounding cry. That hurt a lot. After the shock of the blow, the burning sensation of the pulling hair was enough to bring tears to her eyes, "Let me go!" she demanded.
"Gods be good. A wench?" he said with a boggled look. What the hell was a wench doing here wearing a -sword-? Least that explained the hairless face. "Get back to your father, girl." he said, shoving her at the door. "This is no place for you."
The shove sent her stumbling but she stayed on her feet. The look she gave him was pure black, "You have no right to tell me 'my place,'" she returned, picking up a makeshift club of broken chair before turning that simple weapon on someone running her direction, fist clenched, "And I am not a wench!"
"Prove it!" he hollered joyously as he lit into the melee with his club, clearing himself some space to move towards her. "Pretend it's a rolling pin!" he suggested as he KOed another of the rowdy and highly drunk townies with his own makeshift club.
Pretend it was... Oh, that was it. Though she had to keep another person off her using the club, she resolved that he would get a taste of it - or her sword - by the end of this fight. A rolling pin, by the Gods, Will wouldn't even make such a joke and she let him make light of her whenever they sparred. He was allowed, being her brother. "Come closer and I will prove it!"
He just grinned at that and fought his way over to where she was. His men had formed up on his flanks and were doing an excellent job of bashing their way to the taproom's front door. So far all of his men were up, although some sported injuries and one man had a very obviously broken arm. "Rally to me!" he called out to his men. "Rally to me!"
Lya tested the weight of her little club before taking out one more of the random patrons. She was never coming here again. And William was never hearing about this. Ever. Once the braying ass got close enough she'd club him too. Almost...
The braying ass got close enough, ducked her swing, then retaliated with a backswing at her head that connected with a very satisfying thump. The second thump was Lyanora Stark hitting the filthy floor of the taproom, unconscious and drooling.
--
"Welcome back." said Myrwin with great amusement as Lya swam back to consciousness. She was in an upscale room of some sort, under a thick blanket, and wearing naught but her smallclothes and the bindings she'd used to make herself look more boyish.
Her first thought, a standard 'where am I' was quickly swallowed by something a lot more important, "My clothes!" she exclaimed, sitting up so fast that she fell back down, dizzy, "What happened to my clothes?" It was hard to sound dangerous when you were extremely close to passing out again. And where did she get this violent headache?
"I had them laundered. The seamstress will be here shortly with them." he said. "Try not to get too excited - your virtue is perfectly safe." he reassured her. "You took a nasty bump on the head. Would have killed you or worse if my boys and I hadn't pulled you out."
She put a hand to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, in part to try to remember exactly how she got the 'nasty bump on the head' only to realize she really couldn't recall it at all. She remembered bits of flurried action during the bar fight and the fact that she had went out in the first place, but other than that her memory for the evening was in shambles.
Lya hadn't taken a blow like this since she was a child and Lyon had gotten her with a rock. That had been an entirely different situation, though. After a moment of trying to piece everything together and realizing that right now it simply wasn't going to work she sighed and then asked the next thing that came to her mind, "And my sword?"
"I'm of half a mind to keep it." he said. "But yes, I did rescue it from that taproom." he added a moment later. "When I think you're ready you'll get it back."
Lya propped herself up on her elbows, and opened her ice blue eyes to thin slits, "When you 'think I'm ready'?" she asked, "That isn't your call to make and it isn't your sword."
"Mine by right of conquest." he said with a grin that just made people want to smack it off him. But before he could get into it further a knock came on the door, revealing a serving-girl with Lya's clothes freshly laundered and folded. The serving-girl herself bore the spear-and-sun of House Martell embroidered over her heart.
That was a relief, the clothes being returned. It saved her from her first urge which had been to smack him. Smacking him, of course, would've required getting out from under the blankets, which she was not going to do unless it was to dress. If the return of her clothes was a relief, the crest of House Martell was not. Things could have been worse. She was wearing nothing with the wolf on it tonight, so she could hope to remain anonymous in that respect. A private embarrassment would be preferred to a public one.
"I fail to see the conquest here that would allow you to keep my blade," she said, turning her attention to the Martell.
"Did you not fall in combat?" he asked, settling into a nearby chair. And while she serving-girl had placed her clothes within each reach of the bed, Myrwin seemed to be entirely disinclined to give her some privacy to dress. "It's a very pretty sewing needle." he said with a smirk. "Small, made for your hand - someone went through a great deal of trouble to forge you that blade." He'd also already seen the maker's mark stamped on the blade and sussed out the city of origin.
"Yes, someone did. Which is why I would like it back," Lya said, ignoring the sewing needle remark, "Falling in combat is not the issue here, that sword is mine." She had only two things she could physically hold on to from her short time with her lover. The other being her son. She wasn't going to lose the sword because some fatheaded Dornish lord decided it was his by 'right of conquest.'
"How's your head?" he asked, holding a candle up close to her eyes so he could see if she was tracking or not. "I had our girl down in the kitchens make up some soup. It's very good. Just the thing for an aching head." he said.
"It hurts," she responded. Whatever had hit her had hit her hard. Though she was able to track the flame, having the light so close to her eyes also wasn't doing any favors, "Well, I suppose I could try it," she said, adding silently provided it isn't poisoned. Of course, to be worth the trouble of poisoning someone would have to care who she was first. Once more, the fact she hadn't advertised her identity could come in handy. "As I do indeed have a headache."
"So said my maester." he said with a shrug. "This'll warm your bones." he said, turning to get her a bowl of the aforementioned soup. It smelled strong enough to fell an aurochs, a warm spicy peppery smell. "Take it slowly." he cautioned her.
The smell alone was enough to make her second guess taking any of the soup. It brought tears to her eyes just from the scent alone. Lya could count on one hand the number of times she had had foods with something more than pepper for the spice. And even pepper was rare. She was used to salted meats and simple vegetables, though cooked well, were still flavored simply. However, her pounding head insisted she at least try it.
Even 'taking it slowly' her instant reaction was a hacking cough, a burning throat and watering eyes, "What is in that?!" she gasped.
"Good Dornish cooking." he said with a smirk, passing her something to wipe her face with. "A little taste of home." he said, taking up the second bowl for himself. "Well, not quite. We left out the snake venom." he said with a grin.
"Very considerate of you," Lya managed, still coughing as she did wipe the spice induced tears from her eyes and covered her mouth for the last of the coughing fit, "Well, the burning in my throat is almost helping me forget the pain in my head."
"Success!" he said with a grin. "Enjoy your soup, Stark." he said casually then took his own bowl and started slurping happily away at it.
"How did you...?" she trailed off and rolled her eyes, she really didn't want to know anymore than she wanted to take another bite of the soup.
"Maker's mark on the sword's tang." he said simply. "It's my business to know the weapons of war." he said. "Once I knew that, your identity was a very short distance away." he grinned.
She stared at him dumbly for a moment. That hadn't even occurred to her, that the sword was as good as wearing her colors or even writing her name across her forehead, "I see," she said slowly, "So what now?"
"What now is that you eat your soup, rest, and when you're ready to go, you walk out." he said. "You are not my hostage and we are not at war." he said. "Unless you know something I do not?" he said, eyebrow arched.
"Right now all I know is something really managed to knock me upside the head," Lya said simply, "When I leave I'm taking my sword with me."
He just smiled at that and slurped at his soup happily.