Bab 86: Lothar the Fierce
5 Day - 5th Moon - 259AC
Doran staggered into his tent around noon having dealt with all the wounded. He flops onto his cot without even removing his boots.
"Too tired." He growls.
He turns and looks at the roof of his tent, an orange tarp thick enough to keep the rain at bay if it were to rain. Of course, rain is a rare occurrence in Dorne.
`I only slept for a few hours tonight...`
Memories of the battle replay in his mind, the scene of Lothar slaughtering those poor bastards keeps replaying, and Doran feels a bit nauseous.
With a grimace he turns and lies on his side.
`It's the first battle I've witnessed in this world, despite having the memories of being a healer and a past war hero... Watching people die is not something one can easily get used to, but I have to. There is a war ahead.`
Doran falls asleep with dark thoughts in his mind, his dreams filled with blood and steel.
After a few hours he is woken up by Lothar who brings him a tray of food saying that he hasn't eaten anything all day. Doran doesn't have much of an appetite but he knows his body needs fuel so he takes a couple of bites.
"Are you done? You barely ate half the stew and didn't even touch the meat. Are you alright, my prince?" Lothar looks at him with concern.
"I don't have much of an appetite, that's all. No need to worry." The prince responds with a weak smile.
Lothar looks at him intently, not seeming very convinced, though he respects the prince's privacy and drops the subject with a nod and takes the tray of food away.
`That is something I always liked about Lothar, despite being a hen mom he is very respectful and he knows when to give me space, and when he has to push.`
Those thoughts quickly fade and the image of Lothar dressed in his blue robes is replaced by the warrior from this morning. Lothar destroyed those men without hesitation and even seemed to enjoy it, Doran can't help but wonder...
`Is it the combat he enjoys so much or the act of killing?` The prince frowns and rises from his chair. `I've known him forever but there are so many things I don't know about him. The same goes for other people around me. My grandmother did not hesitate to annihilate three generations for an attack against her family, or screw an entire city. What else is she capable of? Is my mother just like her? What about my father? Will I become someone like that too? My grandmother was always my role model, I always aspired to be like her but...`
***
At sunset Doran steps out of his tent and looks around, all signs of this morning's battle are gone and the Dornishmen are minding their own business.
"Ser Loras." The prince greeted the veteran knight.
"My prince!"
"Where are the captives?" Doran wants to interrogate them, it's time to advance his mission.
"In one of the empty tents, we don't have enough wood to build cages so we just tied them with rope. There are two knights watching them."
"There is no need to waste our resources on them." Doran nods in approval. "Bring one of the prisoners to my tent, it's time to interrogate them."
"There is no need for that, my prince. We already interrogated them, they are just a bunch of scum."
Doran hardens his gaze.
"Still, take one of them to my tent."
Ser Loras sees the seriousness in his prince's eyes and quickly nods.
"As you wish."
Doran returns to his tent and sits on a chair.
His tent is a fairly large circular tent divided into two sections by a curtain. One part is destined to sleep, having a cot, his chests, a small table with a bucket of water and some decorations. The other part has a table with several chairs, it is where Doran and his most trusted staff eat and discuss anything of importance such as the routes they take and any other plans.
After a few minutes, Ser Lothar enters, followed by two knights, each holding a bruised man dressed in rags by one arm.
The man who seems two seconds away from pissing himself is nothing like what Doran expected from a criminal. He is quite skinny, bruised and dirty, Doran can smell the stench from two meters away.
`...`
"Ser Lothar, stay. You two get out." Doran speaks after a few moments of silence.
"Yes my prince!"
"What's your name?" Doran asked the bandit.
"Graham, my lord." The bandit responds trembling.
"Graham," The prince circles the man on his knees on the ground, analyzing him further. `He looks like a starving peasant...` "Where are you from?"
"F-from Tor." The bandit lies.
Doran doesn't need Legilimency to identify the lie.
"I've never been there, do you mind describing the place to me?" Doran stands in front of Graham and looks him straight in the eye.
"I-it ha- has wo- sandy houses and a street full of stalls selling goods from all over Dorne!" Graham goes into more and more detail.
At the same time that Graham makes up the description of the town, Doran uses Legilimency to read his mind. The image Doran sees when Graham thinks of his home is a fairly small village with wooden houses with thatched roofs surrounded by a plain of green grass.
Doran was on Tor just a few days ago.
`Tor is located on the north coast of Dorne away from any rivers or lakes, the only plant life in the area is the agricultural fields. There are no plains of green grass there. The place in Graham's memories coincides with the landscape of northwest Dorne, of the Marches. If I find out where he and the other bandits are from, it can give me an important clue, even lead me directly to the architect of all this.`
"How long ago did you leave your home to join this scum?"
"Two years."
The images that pass through the bandit's mind say something else.
`One year`
"And why?"
"I- I didn't have an option mi lor`!"
The images that run through Graham's mind are quite sad, a family so hungry their cheeks are sunken, an old dilapidated shack, someone - Graham's boss - yelling at him and throwing him out of a building. Graham begging on a street, everyone ignoring him or throwing looks full of disgust and disdain. A woman - Graham's wife - resorting to selling her body in order to feed her family. Then a man - clean and well dressed - gives Graham a bag of coins and Graham leaves his home and joins a group of men not unlike himself.
`He didn't give him even a golden dragon, just a few silver coins and it was enough for Graham to become a criminal...his story is tragic, is there so much poverty in my own kingdom?`
Images flash through Doran's mind of the countless feasts at Sunspear or any other castle he visits, each serving food to feed two or three times the number of guests. Meanwhile his subjects starve and live in the most absolute poverty.
`I have to change this, I will not allow my people to suffer!`
"Graham during your time with these bandits, have you killed or raped?"
Graham's response will decide his future.
"N-no! Never my prince!"
Doran frowns and steps away from the kneeling man.
"How disappointing…" he mutters under his breath.
The images in Graham's mind contradict his words.
In a raid on a small village of just a dozen houses, Graham and four other bandits took turns raping a girl in her teens.
`His background is tragic and it appealed to my sympathy, if he had not committed such an atrocity I would have spared his life and given him a chance to start from scratch. But I could never forgive such barbarism! There are many crimes in this world that can be forgiven but rape is not one of them.`
Doran continues the interrogation for another ten minutes and then he sends Graham away and has another of the captives brought to him.
After questioning the four bandits, Doran found out that all of them were inhabitants of Dorne who had been recruited a little over a year ago by a man whose way of speaking and moving made the prince suspect that he was a knight.
All the bandits are from northern Dorne, from the Marches.
`And they were recently recruited, their activities match what one would expect from a group of bandits but there are a lot of weird things. They were recruited by someone, that's not how bandit groups are formed, no bandit leader would go to villages to recruit poor and desperate peasants...`
Unfortunately, none of the captives had much information about the leaders of the group or why they attacked his camp. But Doran did find out that they are part of the group of bandits that plague the Yronwood lands, so he knows that this attack was not random.
***
The next morning Doran gathers everyone in the center of the camp.
"Yesterday we were attacked by some evildoers who wanted our riches and our lives. The cowards attacked in the middle of the night hoping to catch us off guard. Unfortunately for them, Ser Lothar discovered them in time so we could prepare for the ambush."
The Dornishmen applaud Ser Lothar and cheer his name. To Doran's amusement the knight blushes.
"I had some of the criminals captured for questioning. We learned little about them but enough to know that they are the worst scum. Murderers, rapists and thieves. These men committed crimes that neither gods nor men can forgive. Ser Loras! "
The veteran knight and two others carry a log of wood to the center of the circle where all the members of Doran's group are gathered.
"For their crimes, I, Doran Nymeros Martell, in the name of Aegon of House Targaryen, the fifth of his name, king of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm; sentence them to death!"
The bandits, bound and gagged, are dragged by some knights. The first of them, Graham, is brought to the center. They forced him to rest his head on the hard black wood. Ser Lothar unsheathed his sword and passed the scabbard to Fred, who had become his page.
Lothar's sword was made of shiny, gleaming steel, with the sunlight reflecting off it it seemed made of light. It has some engraved runes making it more deadly than it already was.
Lothar raised his sword above his head and lopped off the bandit's head with a firm blow. Blood, red as Dornish wine, splashed across the arid ground. The knights, servants and squires cheered and cheered as if they had just seen a spectacle and not an execution.
Doran showed no emotion, watching everything with a neutral face. The prince waved his hand and some knights removed the corpse and replaced it with another one of the bandits.
After finishing the executions, Doran commanded everyone to collect everything, they would leave in a few hours.
`Yronwood, there I will find the answers to my questions.`
***
"Many say that Ser Lothar the Fierce is as much the Prince`s executioner as he is his protector." -Lord Tywin Lannister, 280AC.
***
NOTE: My internet decided to vanish… Fortunately it finally came back!
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