ironfeather (ironfeather) wrote in usurper, @ 2011-12-27 00:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! house lannister, ! house martell, ! house targaryen, jaime lannister, lewyn martell, rhaegar targaryen, wenda the white fawn |
jaime lannister & wenda the white fawn
who: jaime lannister, wenda the white fawn, rhaegar targaryen & lewyn martell
where: the red keep. then, the kingswood
when: back in king's landing
what: a survivor of the massacre of the kingswood brotherhood has a price to extract
What rankled the most on nights such as these was not the manic note in the King’s laughter nor the way his watery purple eyes tended to linger on his youngest knight as the flames leapt high -- as though considering the time it would take for the (miraculously, very ordinary) fire to eat through metal and white cloak to touch the flesh beneath -- but how the snivelling little pyromancers, with their own nervous laughs and eerily steady hands, were suddenly granted his protection as they were escorted from the Keep’s main grounds.
This Rossart, the strangest of all of the Guild’s men, offended Jaime the most. He had seen him send Aerys into the keenest of frenzies with only the merest hints of suggestion -- a poisonous creature, this man, whose very hand, as it slid up Jaime’s as the knight stopped before the awaiting carriage to signal that his care of him ended here, made his skin crawl.
Lions do not fear worms. But if Aerys fancied himself a dragon, then Rossart was a wyrm, a repulsively fearsome beast from ancient times. No good could come of his association with the ruler of Westeros.
As he turned to cut through the training grounds, deserted at this late hour, Jaime shook out his hand. I care not. This Mad King can associate with whom he pleases. I do not care.
A sparse copse of trees -- their branches brave enough to offer but slight cover during the day when the grounds were full of sweating and armoured men -- littered the southernmost corner of the grounds. Beneath the center tree and beneath a snowy cowl, there stood a figure whose bow was immediately nocked.
Look at him. The new boy knight who does not know fear.
Her smile caught in the moonlight as she stepped forward and let an arrow fly, aiming for the weak joint in the armor that connected shoulder and breast plate.
Familiarity with white cloaks in the dead of night was what betrayed him. This, for one sliver of a moment before mind took over instinct, could have been a brother -- if not Arthur, then Lewyn or Jonothor -- for no one else dared to wear such a stark lack of colour in such a place. And then that moment passed and recognition hit him almost as hard as the arrow -- the Brotherhood’s very own white fawn, one of the few who had not been counted amidst the overwhelming number of the dead fallen at the feet of Arthur and his men --
The blow sent him back by a full and staggered step, the wind knocked out of him more readily than the pain that shot through his chest.
A wheeze -- “Survived then, bitch?” -- as one hand dropped to the hilt of his sword whilst the other wrapped itself around the arrow.
“Survived. Thrived. The Kingswood is my mother; I have need of no other.” A pause. “But I have not risen so high as you, Ser.” There was another arrow, this one aimed for his throat as behind the fletching she gave him one of her most alluring smiles.
“Come forward, white knight.”
Her words pulled a pained chuckle from him, one which was chased by a strangled grunt of discomfort as he broke the arrow off with one hard snap of his wrist, leaving the head embedded in his flesh while the rest of it was dropped onto the ground. Instead of obliging her, he then jerked his shoulder in a shrug, head canted in an inquisitive angle. “Some mother. You look spare, Wenda my sweet.”
She could not help but laugh for he spoke (more or less) the truth; food was scarce, even if the cover was generous and rich with unseen warmth. “I remember how you looked, when you crossed swords with my brothers, I’d have sworn you shat in your smallclothes.” The arrow, however, did not waver.
“Walk toward me or I will spill your life’s blood for no purpose.”
“And if I do, you will find purpose?” A snort, even as he pushed one foot forward, a vague smile inching across his cheeks. “I suppose I’m glad to be thought of at all -- though in my smallclothes, Wenda? I’m shocked.”
“I’m an outlaw, not a knight. And that white cloak is wasted on you.” Taking a step forward to meet him -- just outside of the reach of his sword -- she nodded. “Put that thing on the ground. You’re coming with me.”
“Ah, you want to frolic on a bed of heather.” A curt nod as he spoke, words accompanied by a movement that suggested he would obey her in relinquishing his sword.
-- but his sword was part of him, and no number of threats would pull it from his reach. “If you want a tumble, Wenda, just say so --” his last words a hiss of effort as he pressed forward to wrap his hand, slick with his own blood, around the nocked arrow.
“I want a talk.” The pressure upon the string slackened, even as she surged forward to let the steel head tickle his neck. “Are you amenable to a talk? Maybe a tumble.” I want vengeance. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little thing like me.”
Wenda’s fine column of a neck was likewise given his attentions: a hard hand and the press of a dagger. When he spoke, it was with care -- he was conscious of the arrow’s hard little head and the proximity of his jugular -- but there was no softness to it: “We’ll talk here. And perhaps, when we’ve finished our conversation, I’ll let you go back to your stinking forest instead of finishing the job we failed to complete last time.”
“Is this known as an impasse, ser?” Letting the bow fall, the dagger at her waist was pressed into his gut -- “For I think that I still have the upper hand. Drop your weapons and turn around.”
Her hand pressed more tightly against his neck to prick the soft skin -- “I haven’t a care as to my own life, This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.”
Black anger flared, but Jaime’s only apparent response was a chuckle. “Sweet lady, you make it sound as though I have personally wronged you.” But, after a beat, the dagger was indeed dropped, breath drawn with some measure of acknowledged pain as his gaze dropped down to take in her own blade.
“Come, Wenda, this is getting very dry, very fast. If you’re going to act -- act.” One armoured foot was brought heavily against her instep.
“You have.”
The soft leather of her boots were no match for his steel and though she began to fall, the hand that held the arrow was prised upon his breastplate to bring him down with her. She twisted as she fell, attempting to pin him upon the ground with his neck between her knees.
For the first time since he’d donned the white, Jaime cursed the bulk of it all, the damned white armour that an outlaw such as Wenda could nimbly make work for her. Just he could make the vulnerable softness of her body bend to his will -- in this case, as she occluded the full range of his vision with her cowled frame, a fist dressed in gauntlets that was thrown into her belly.
His fist pummeled her breath from her and she collapsed forward, her thumbs now exerting pressure upon those lovely emerald eyes. “Jaime --” came out stilted, the syllables half formed before she rose to the balls of her feet, pulling him with her before she sacrificed one hand to press a dagger at the back of his throat.
“Darling boy. Give in. I haven’t the slightest intention of killing you.”
His vision swam with the remembered pressure of her thumbs, sight blurred and briefly useless and utterly unneeded to figure out just what it was that she had pressed into his neck. A fatal promise in the metal kiss of her blade.
“Maiming me, then,” he said through a crooked smile. “Come on, forest bitch, I know you want revenge of some sort.”
“Carry me with you.” There was a moment and then, a hard and wet kiss pressed against his mouth. She took a deep breath and moved swiftly behind him, using a cord at her belt to tie his hands.
“Up, up, up. Let’s have a look at you.”
“Oh--” Laughter through the stab of pain that seemed to shoot across each rib as his chest expanded for air. “I’d almost forgotten that this is how you like to play.” A brief strain of muscle as he tested the strength of her knots. Strong. “-- come back here and let me kiss you properly.”
“Play?” But she grinned behind him, hauling up on his ropes to bring all his sodding white bulk to his feet. “You’ll get another kiss if you play nice.” The slackened cord was looped through her hand as she took a few steps and then gave him a good, hard tug.
“How’re your charges, Ser? Let’s have a proper conversation. We’re as good as old friends, we are.”
As his sight cleared: a flash of a smile and a short bark of a laugh. “I don’t play nice.” Neither do you. The pressure of her knot sent strain shooting up his arms and across his wounded chest, tightening the muscle in his jaw as he briefly grit his teeth. “Right.”
As Jaime staggered to his feet, she made a sharp turn to enter the forest. Beneath the dense cover, the mottled moonlight picked out the colourless aspect of their dress to burnish them a darkened shade of Targaryen silver. The cowl was pushed back to reveal Wenda’s youth and a darker lining -- “How long did it take Simon and the Smiling Knight to finish their twitching?”
Her fingertips brushed against the straps upon his breastplate, unbuckling them to let the heavy metal plate fall from his chest.
“Better. You’re getting big.”
Before he could offer a rejoinder about how size had never been an issue: that suppressed sound of pain as the protective pressure of his plate was removed and the arrow, still buried in the angle of his chest, moved an almost imperceptible degree.
“-- long enough to distract us from the fawn’s escape.” Pausing to take in a shallow breath, he noted that he had been correct in his initial assessment -- Wenda did indeed look more spare -- but the short time between the Brotherhood’s extermination and now had done little to lessen the woman’s wild beauty. She was dangerous and he, if he wasn’t careful, was a dead man.
“And I would have done no less than them. Like your own Brotherhood, Ser, we too have our vows to one another. It is only Ulmer who I’d like to split from brains to balls to see what makes him tick.” Another copse of trees -- not too far off the road, for Wenda grew impatient with her toy -- presented themselves and she tugged Jaime within them.
She tossed the length over a high branch and used her weight as a pulley to make both limbs and cord taut before tying it off on the trunk.
“I miss them.”
Biting off a hiss as his arms were pulled up high -- “Why? They were a brotherhood, and you, a sister they would have raped had you not been armed and dangerous. As for Ulmer--” His hands, beginning to go numb as they slowly drained of blood, twisted into fists. “Find him on the Wall. Shear your hair and bind that chest of yours and maybe you’ll be enough of a brother to join him there.”
“You still don’t understand our purpose, Jaime.” With arms crossed, she walked around to face him -- “We protected the smallfolk from your royal greediness. They loved us until your Sword of the Morning was smart enough to understand the disparity and made the royal folk pay for what they took.”
And her face grew two angry red splotches -- “There was never a rape. Never.” Her fingertip pressed into the right underside of his weeping wound.
Though his face went white with pain and his toes curled in his boots, little more than his previous strangled sound of pain was permitted to escape his clenched teeth. And when he could breathe again: “The Smiling Knight was insane. It would’ve happened. If not for Ser Arthur.”
“If not for Ser Arthur,” she mocked, pursuing her lips in an impression of just what she thought of Jaime’s regard for the Sword of the Morning. “If your Ser Arthur dueled him without that nasty sword, he would have won and you’d be dead in a shallow grave beneath a tree …”
Wenda’s cruelty brought itself to bear as she grasped the broken shaft of the arrow and pulled it from Jaime’s body with a grunt. No neat, tidy holes for this boy. With the bloody arrowhead, she cut through the padding and the tunic beneath, making neat work of the linen before giving his naked chest a hearty slap.
“Be less pretty, Jaime.”
Ser Arthur would not dirty the air with curses, but curse Jaime did as wood and metal were ripped out from the grip of skin and muscle and bone. White pain edged his vision, and so he shut his eyes, forcing himself to think of gold instead. Gold like Cersei’s hair in my hands-- “Such,” he bit out, striking out with a leg, “such a sore loser, Wenda.”
“Still just levelling the field, Jaime.” A neat leap backward kept her out of the radius of his kicking leg as she gave the back of his tunic the same treatment. A rip of padding and linen and there was the clean and unblemished back of a boy who had been too coddled. A boy who had too much. A boy too bright --
“I lost my branding iron. Did you see my mark on Merrett Frey’s arse? It’s too bad I can’t give you one to match.”
The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he felt the cool night air against his exposed skin. But his voice contained the semblance of a sneer as he replied, “Losing your edge, Fawn. Tied up, disarmed, all but in my small-clothes? Once upon a time, you wouldn’t need me strung up like this to brand me.” A snort. “No Ulmer or Simon to help you, wench.”
“If I am, you’re giving it back to me --” with pursed lips, she unbuckled the fine leather belt from her waist and curled it in her palm. “I’ve seen boys like you with stripes across their back from their lord’s lash. Do you dance when whipped, Jaime?” A pause. “Or would you like to lead Ser Arthur to me?”
Eyes creased with pain, his smile held firm. “Whip away. Ser Arthur has more important matters to attend to than ruined and forgotten outlaws.”
“Ruined, maybe. But as you wish.”
With a straightened elbow, she took stock of the back before her and paused (switching out the ends of the belt, opting for the heavier metal buckle to connect with his flesh) before lashing out upon his back. “You won’t soon forget me.”
Not soon -- but now, now he would; now he would feel the lash with its metal bite and think of his sister and her nails, the sharp coastline above which loomed the Rock, in whose shadow they’d played as children.
“Again.”
She grinned -- “Feisty.” And the belt was again plied against his back before, retrieving the discarded arrowhead, she dug three furrows diagonally across skin and muscle.
“Again?”
No disguising the harsh sound of pain this time, Jaime’s breath coming in hard and quick through his gritted teeth. The white neck of the one he loved most became Wenda’s throat, something to be strangled and snapped. “Again.”
The blood ran in three scarlet rivulets, each one washing into the other. Wenda gave him two crossing furrows before she unsheathed the knife from her belt and walked around to set it against his throat.
“Give us a kiss.”
Panting, teeth bared -- “Here’s your kiss,” as his knee was driven into her groin, costing him the skin of his throat as it caught on the blade’s edge.
“Aw, Ja --” And as his knee met with her groin, she groaned with pain and fell onto her backside. With her knees drawn together, she rolled onto her side and then shakily stood to her feet.
“Now, I think, you’re going to die.”
“For giving you the hardest action that you’ve had in that area since Ulmer looked at you?” A breathless laugh chased his words, but his eyes, rather than dance with black amusement, were narrowed and alert, watching Wenda’s every move. She could kill him. She most likely would.
The knife which had fallen from her hands with his striking blow was given its due as she picked it up from the ground and slowly wiped it on her trousers -- “Tell that to Simon. You’ll be seeing him --”
And then, the sound of hooves on the road. She froze, turning her widened green eyes as she waited for a glimpse of the traveller. Too loud for a woodsman. Just brash enough for a noble.
Later, Jaime would deny the relief that flooded him. Now? Now, he strained against his bonds, the previous laughter transformed into a loud yell, a shout for attention that would surely get him noticed by whoever had chosen that moment -- thank the Seven -- to ride through the woods.
Of course, he would call out and she would certainly do no less. Even if the action inflamed her anger to the point of rage (could she overtake the rider on the road?), her rationality won out. With a final punch -- her fist, his gut -- she turned and fled, her chin raking her shoulder in just enough time to glimpse a thread of silver through the trees.
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen himself, a light escort his only retinue, reined in the pawing sand steed upon which he rode and immediately trampled the brush that screened Jaime from the road. And met with the sight of his father’s youngest Kingsguard, his mouth fell open in shock -- even as his face blanched colourless with anger.
His arm around Jaime’s waist and a quick flash of his knife cut the boy down.
“We found your armour, ser.”
His knees were liable to crumple beneath the weight of his own body; Jaime’s fingers went white around Rhaegar’s arm, a grimace tightening across his features as the numerous brands of Wenda’s affection pulled and gaped beneath all of this sudden movement. “Wenda from the Brotherhood,” he bit out, attempting to take a step away, as though in pursuit. We weren’t finished. “She survived. We can still catch her.”
Rhaegar’s grip held firm. “It is only Prince Lewyn and myself, ser. And you. I’d rather let an outlaw die in the Kingswood than watch a member of the Kingsguard bleed to death in my arms.”
As if called to a material form by speaking his name, Lewyn appeared at the prince’s elbow and unlatched his cloak to wrap around Jaime’s torn and bleeding body. “You shall ride my horse.”
A silver shake of his head. “No, he shall ride mine. I can walk.”
“No.” Muscle and sinew clawed beneath his skin in sharp definition as he summoned every remnant of strength that remained, ignoring the shallow pant of his own breath as he attempted to stand tall, albeit within Rhaegar’s steadying grasp. He would have shrunk away from soiling Lewyn’s pristine cloak, but maintaining some semblance of balance was enough of a feat. Thank you, brother.
“I cannot accept your horse, Prince Rhaegar. This -- I’ve disgraced my whites. No.”
“Ser Jaime, I order you to get on the damned horse.” With a roll of his eyes, Rhaegar began to lead the boy toward the brush that screened them from the horses and the road. “You were overtaken. This is not disgrace; we should be thoroughly disgraced in that Wenda was able to survive at all. Where did she take you?”
Lewyn’s purr -- “And how?”
There was not enough blood in his body for Jaime to effect the blush his Dornish brother had wanted to pull from him. Instead, a wet laugh that was cut through by a grunt as his fingers closed around the stirrup’s strap, tightly grasped in order to help further anchor himself to some idea of balance.
Turning his head to rest his cheek on the saddle’s well tooled leather, he replied, “Training grounds. She -- she should not’ve survived. It was I that should have killed her that day.” But the Smiling Knight turned his blade on me.
“There is where we found your sword and your breastplate, only a little further in.”
He sighed. “Heal from your wounds and we will find her. Crimes against the knights of the Kingsguard do not go unchallenged.” With a snap of the inky cloak about his shoulders, Rhaegar added his to the boy’s frame -- Far too boy, not enough man. He made a stirrup with his twined fingers as Lewyn moved behind Jaime should he fall -- “It’s time to mount up.”
Sliding his hand up so that he could grab the pommel of the saddle, Jaime’s breath went ragged as he hauled himself up, keeping a cry trapped behind gritted teeth even as every inch of him protested in a sharp chorus of pain. And when he was mounted up -- due, mostly, to the efforts of Rhaegar and Lewyn -- he pulled the cloaks around himself while twisting the reins with white fingers.
“Thank you, my prince.” Pause, before looking at Lewyn. “Brother.”
With a hand to his chest, Lewyn bent his head and stepped back for his own mount as Rhaegar’s fingertips eased around the boy’s gauntleted calf. Mistral stepped forward with a click of his tongue and a poorly executed word of Rhoynish -- “Do not blame yourself for this, Jaime.”
“Wenda the White Fawn.” The words tripped along his tongue. “She wanted revenge. Better me than Ser Arthur. Next time --” Pause for breath. “Next time I’ll finish her.”
“Better her head on a pike.” If Wenda was smart enough to ride far and fast, she would be out of their reach before he could turn about and litter the ground with the outlaws entrails. For the first moment, it seemed, as frigidity pricked at his fingertips, he understood Aerys’s need to burn the unworthy. If he could find her, she would know the taste of the pyromancer’s fruit.
He unhooked a canteen of water from his saddle and offered it to the boy.
“Are you warm enough?”
The canteen was accepted, his dominant hand (holding surprisingly steady where the rest of his body would quake) grasping it tightly. “Yes,” was a lie easily offered. The direction of Rhaegar’s thoughts was one shared, to an extent, by Jaime’s -- Aerys, his paranoia increasing with the passing of every day, would read too much into this attack upon his youngest guardian. And only the Seven knew how he would retaliate.
“All I need is a maester to stitch me up.”