Capítulo 6: Chapter 6 The First Turtle War: (Karna's POV)

Sar Mell

I decided that now that I got quite a lot of useful materials I would make some presents for my family. Sadly, I do not know how to make a leather amour, much less how to do this, while using dragon scales instead of leather. So, I would only make dragon bone bows.

It took a while, but I have now a suitable bow for me; my mother Kunti; my younger brother Nate; my adopted father Garin; my uncle Alleras; my grandfather Arthur; my grandmother Delonne; my magic teacher, the great court mage, Joss.

I seemed to have forgotten to introduce my family. It's important to note that my father is not Garin the Great, who is not even born yet. My father was the third prince in the line of succession of a small rhoynar city-state that is not even mentioned in Asoiaf. He won in the fierce competition for my mother's hand.

The competition had eighty-five men. In it, there was first a sword tournament, a bow-making competition, and an interview by my mother herself, accompanied by my grandmother. The sword tournament had first an elimination round, where all competed with all until there were only sixty-four competitors. My father won passed this round. He lost in the round of 16.

It was a tradition for men to give bows to family members in some rhoynar cities like ours. Some rich men may give a bow to their wives as well, but they would paint a blue stripe in it. My father won this competition.

Later, he was chosen after performing well in the interview, mainly because he could answer my grandmother's fiercy questions with sincerity and my mother found him cute. She still pinches his cheeks to this day.

Joss was my cousin grandfather. All of us, except my father, have the surname Mell as it seems the Mell family was quite big. All rhoynar water mages were descendants of a royal family at some decree. This was one of the reasons that Joss, thought I could not learn water magic. Though, he also thought at the beginning that a noble like my mother should not raise a commoner like me. However, after he saw me working hard to learn magic he soften up and I gradually became closer to him, as I became his dear student.

Know returning to the present topic, I ended up tying up, with another cloth that I took from my shirt, all the bows, that I made, at my back. I have to tie the dragonless guy to a horse. And carry the rest of the remains of the giant dragon with my arms.

After getting back, I suggested to my mother that the dragon skin should be used to make armor for our family and army, and the remaining bones to make bows for our archer division. She talked my suggestion to my grandparents that implemented it. So after the local artisans were able to complete all our orders, we had an improved army with much better equipment.

In the original history, the cause of the war was the same as the death of an Old Men of River; Sar Mell would have been burned and Volon Therys would be drowned by water magic. Also, this war is the first of several wars between the Valyrian Freehold and the Rhoynar city-states.

The war would have lasted only for about a moon turn. Sadly, there was no way for me to predict when the war would start, because of the lack of details and the calendar difference between this era with the book series. These are the only details about this war that I know. With the year this war started I was able to form a chronological mental note in my head. Now, let's see history unfolding.

Now the war circumstances were different, I guess. Sar Mell would originally have a hard victory, but with my intervention I think the city was less burned, having less damage. So instead of flooding Volon Therys, we decided to attack with the army.

Volon Therys decided to have an outer field fight with Sar Mell's army.

Before Volon Therys army could even start the attack, our arches, including me, have already shouted some arrows. As a tsunami of arrows fall on the enemy, their numbers gradually started to fall. I started to accurately aim for division leaders of the enemy's army, so before Volon Therys's army could even meet ours, it had already started to see its commanding chain crumpling.

As the Volon Therys army got nearer, the archers started to give way for the cavalry unit. I mounted my horse, took my spar, and started to charge. People began to die and I got myself closer to the army center.

Until hundreds of soldiers started to gradually form a circle around me, and I began to be attacked from all directions, sometimes I killed some soldiers that easily got replenished, if not for Kavach I would already have wounds on my knees, elbow, behind my knee, and left arm.

With time, I got used to the situation and gradually started killing more soldiers than the small formation was able to supply, breaking, in a few minutes, the encirclement. The army have already started to advance, but as I was the one closer to the center two generals joined to fight me.

All the soldiers gave way for the generals to duel with me, to not trouble their general's fight. I changed my weapon to a sword and started to fight. One of the men seemed to be a valyrian with blond hair and lilac eyes. The other was a rhoynar with smooth olive skin, black hair, and dark eyes.

They were in perfect harmony in a state that make it hard to believe that they were two different people. When one was giving me an uppercut the other was attacking at my retreat rote. And this continued for a while until I got used to their rhythm. They were surely great warriors.

"What is your name young warrior." asked the valyrian general.

"My name is Karna Mell."I answered

No more words were uttered. After I finally was able to send one of them to the afterlife, I killed the other soon after. Later, I got myself closer to the commander's direction, meeting him face to face.

The commander was the city lord, he was a man with a pretty strong physique and a good fighter, though he was far from the level of his now-dead generals, so I took his head and presented it to my grandparents.

I had a harder time fighting with humans than with a dragon. To me, only strength was enough to kill a dragon. While with humans I actually have to use techniques to fight. Maybe I'm too used to holding back too much while fighting to not hurt my opponent in a spar, and I even started to move slower to not end the matches too quickly to improve at least my technique. That's something that maybe I can only train with life and death combat. Guess I still have much to improve.

I thought that I would vomit or something after killing my first enemy, but strangely I was fine. I guess my mental strength sort of improved and I could more easily accept that death was natural in war. Maybe because Volon Therys's army was mostly formed by mercenaries if it was the peasant levies that some Westeros nobles forcefully conscripted, maybe it would be harder for me.

Most valyrian colonies' armies were formed by mercenaries mostly, with exception of very big and important cities like Volantis.

After the commander was defeated, the rest of the soldiers and the third general, that was the army strategist, surrendered.

Considering that this was sort of a holy war for us, we would not even bother to give a funeral ritual to the dead soldiers of the enemy, just burn their bodies and be done with it. Though, we would give funeral rituals to our soldiers.

The Rhoynars at our time have a funeral ritual where we put our dead in a boat and let it sail at the Rhoyne river, setting the boat aflame, just like the Tully funeral ritual, but with no need for armor to be worn by the dead.

I found the two dead generals worthy warriors so I requested my grandparents to give, at least for them a funeral ritual, according to their culture, as a form of last respect for their warrior capabilities. So the valyrian general dead body was burned after a local valyrian priest made the funeral ritual. The rhoynar have his funeral ritual performed by me.

The war was won.