A Werewolf in the Court of King Harold - Prologue

Prologue

England, 1066 AD.  After the rout of the combined forces of Haraldr Hardrada of Norway and Tostig Godwinson of England at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the surviving Vikings and rebels had turned and fled back to their longboats or just run for the hills.  At the end, only a few had stood their ground – an elite group of Norse soldiers, all former Varangian Guards.  An impasse had been reached, with the few dozen remaining Varangian encircled and trapped, but Harold’s soldiers too exhausted and battle-weary to try to take the heavily armoured Norse warriors on.  Harold, ever the bold, ever the fearless, had walked through his men to face the trapped warriors, and made them a simple offer.  He would give them each six foot of English ground – a little more for the taller ones – or they would lay down their weapons and pledge fealty to him.  The Varangian were professional soldiers rather than mercenaries, but with their king dead and his army broken and fled, they were smart enough to realise that they had nothing left to fight for on that battlefield, and so they bowed the knee to King Harold II of England. 

Harold, in his wisdom, knew that if wanted them to fight for him as fiercely as they had fought for Haraldr, himself a Varangian, then he would need to earn their loyalty.  And so he offered that each of them would become a freeman of England, a ceorl, and be given a hide of land to own should they ride south with him and fight against the Normans who were preparing to set sail for England’s coast.  They had looked to their leader – not their captain, for he had died in the battle, but to the warrior considered the most senior in their ranks.  A giant of a man, nearly as sizeable as King Haraldr himself, he had removed his helmet and coif to reveal a wild mane of dirty blonde hair and beard, and had barked out in a loud and clear voice that Harold’s offer was accepted, and that he and his men would give their sword and their life for their new liege lord.  His acceptance was echoed with a roar from his men, and a palpable sense of relief from the soldiers surrounding them – no more blood would be spilled on the soil of Stamford Bridge that day.

                With little time to treat the wounded or bury the dead, Harold’s reduced forces had marched hard for the south, knowing that they had a race against time to intercept the Norman invaders.  They met just two weeks later at Hastings – tired and bloodied.  The Normans, however, were relatively fresh after their short sea voyage, and had many more archers than England’s armies.  Their cavalry, too, would enjoy a significant advantage over the mostly unmounted infantry of Harold’s army.

                The two armies met in the morning of October 14^th, when Norman scouts foiled Harold’s hopes of catching the invaders unawares.  Nonetheless, the English held the high ground to render the Norman archers largely impotent, with their shields and the landscape itself proving adequate protection.  When arrows failed, William sent forward spearmen to break the English shield wall and while the defenders had few archers to assault their attackers with, they nonetheless inflicted heavy losses on the approaching Normans with thrown spears, axes, and even simple rocks.  At last the Norman cavalry advanced to support their infantry but, still, Harold’s forces stood strong.

                As the invaders broke away and turned to regroup, a portion of Harold’s men, led by his Harold's brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, broke rank to pursue the Normans, cutting them down as they ran, only to be caught in a counterattack led by Duke William himself and his mounted bodyguard.  The English soldiers were routed, and the two Earls slain.

                After the two opposing armies regrouped in the early afternoon, William changed his tactics.  Seeing how effective his counterattack against English pursuers had been, he ordered his cavalry to attack once again, and to then feign a full retreat to draw more defenders away from the English wall.  The first time was entirely successful and the English defensive position was significantly weakened.  William commanded his men to repeat the manoeuvre, seeing that one more break might be enough to turn the battle in his favour and allow the shield wall to be stormed.  Again, the Normans charged the wall before feigning a retreat, and again English troops chased after them.

                This time, however, things did not work out quite so well for the Normans, as the leaders of their pursuit were no ordinary fyrdmen, nor even huscarls, but the Norse Varangians who had pledged themselves to Harold after Stamford Bridge.  Anticipating the Norman counterattack, the Vikings checked their pursuit and were ready for the cavalrymen to halt their retreat and turnabout.  As the Norman cavalry swung around and charged the soldiers chasing them, they found themselves immediately pelted with javelins and axes.  As the two sides clashed, the Norman knights learned first-hand the devastating effect of the six-foot-long Dane axes, as their horses were cut down from underneath them.  Within minutes, the Norman counter was over, the cavalry unit massacred while the Varangians and Englishmen still stood.

                The crushing failure of the cavalry ploy hit the morale of the Norman force as much as it buoyed that of Harold’s men.  The English had now seen how to handle the Norman cavalry, learning from the example of the Varangian, who were themselves experienced at fighting against mounted troops during their time serving the Byzantine Empire.  By now, the Normans had lost more than a third of their cavalry, and many of their remaining horses were exhausted or wounded, forcing the remaining knights to dismount and fight on foot.  Perhaps feeling that a failure in the next attack would lose him the battle, William then made his first real mistake of the day ordered a full charge against the English shield wall.

                With the Varangians back in the fold, the English initially braced for the charge as the Norman knights and infantry raced up the hill towards them, supported by their archers.  As the Normans closed, the soldiers at the centre of the English line fell back, drawing their enemies in and using their own tactics against them.  Their flanks then rushed inwards, crashing into the sides of the Norman charge and forcing them to fight on three fronts.  Though they took heavy losses in the opening exchanges of the risky manoeuvre, Harold’s men succeeded in sucking the momentum from the charge and quickly began to overwhelm them.  William himself was unhorsed for the third time in the battle, after a Huscarl’s axe took his horse’s head off in one swing.  On foot and in the thick of the mêlée, William showed himself to still be a skilled warrior and seasoned leader, felling many an Englishman and inspiring his men to keep fighting, even as the flanking became a full circle, and he and his men were trapped by a closing ring of English axes.

                Bodies piled up on the Sussex hill and the grass was red with the blood spilled by the time William gave up hope of a favourable outcome and signalled a surrender.  King Harold himself walked out to meet his defeated rival, the left side of his face a bloody mess after a Norman arrow came within an inch of finding its mark, instead deflecting off the bone of his eye socket.  He regarded his enemy calmly, the both of them standing tall and strong despite their injuries and exhaustion.  After some moments of hushed anticipation – interrupted only by the cries of the dying – William stabbed his sword into the ground at Harold’s feet and bowed his head.  With a nod, Harold claimed the Norman duke’s weapon and held it aloft to his men as signal that the battle was won.

William, like Olaf Haraldsson before him at Stamford Bridge, was allowed to return home with his surviving men on the promise to relinquish all claim to the English throne and to never again set foot upon English soil.  Though Harold lost an eye at Hastings he survived the battle and continued to rule England as Harold II, with the country’s Earldoms divided amongst his brothers-in-law, Morcaer of Northumbria and Eadwine of Mercia, and his younger brothers’ heirs in Kent and East Anglia.

The surviving Varangians, reduced now to barely a dozen in number, were hailed by Harold as the heroes of the day, without whose cunning and staunchness the battle may have been lost.  They settled well into the lands that Harold had granted them in Sussex, close to the site of their finest hour, and throughout the coming winter found themselves invited to many a feast at the homes of various nobles who were keen to be seen as grateful to these mighty warriors.  By the Spring, however, the shine on their victory had started to fade, and the people of England grew less welcoming of the foreigners living on their soil.  Relations were further strained by the Varangians insisting on keeping to their Pagan ways and refusing to accept the traditions of the Christian Anglo-Saxons they lived amongst.  

Game of Thrones - Tyrion's Champion

(I did have plans at some point of continuing the story arc of my OC in this, and having her feature in a few other scenes/plots from the TV show but I've never quite got round to it.  Anyway, this is my first, and to date only, fan-fic piece, featuring my assassin Talija taking the place of Oberyn Martell.  I did have another piece in the pipeline with Talija being hired to arrange for a somewhat more karmic death for Joffrey, but it veered into torture gorn so I'm probably not going to post that up xD)

Tyrion’s Champion

A Game of Thrones Fan-Fic

                Tyrion sat on the cold, uncomfortable stone bench and stared unblinking into the darkness.  Tomorrow, at noon, his fate would be decided in a trial-by-combat.  If the Gods judged him to be innocent, his champion would win.  If not, both he and his champion would die.  The slight, almost trifling issue with that was that his accuser, his own sister, had chosen Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane as her champion, a man aptly appellated for his size and indomitability.  Tyrion, meanwhile, had no champion.  His brother, Jaime, once renowned as the greatest swordsman in the realm, could not hope to stand a chance against Clegane since losing his right hand to Roose Bolton’s men.  His only other hope had been his erstwhile bodyguard and friend, Bronn, but Cersei has seen to it that Bronn, whose true loyalty was only to money, had been suitably paid off to not fight for Tyrion.  In truth, Tyrion could not find it in himself to blame the man; a life of luxury and comfort as a minor lord, or almost certain death at the hands of Gregor Clegane.  A man would have to be insane to even need to think about it.  There was, he supposed, the slight possibility one of his three judges, Prince Oberyn of House Martell, might volunteer.  The man was certainly full of confidence in his abilities, and had more than a small axe to grind when it came to Gregor Clegane and Tywin Lannister.  The issue there was Oberyn’s hatred of all who bore the Lannister name, which included Tyrion himself.  Did Oberyn hate Clegane enough to stand by Tyrion instead?  The odds were not favourable.  And that left Tyrion looking at facing Clegane himself.  Well, at least that would save them having to bother with executing him after the trial.  Once the Mountain had finished with him, they probably wouldn’t even need to bury him, they could just wash the ground down and sluice his remains into the gutter. 

Midday.  Less than twelve hours away by his estimations.  Still, the parts of his life that hadn’t been filled with torment and misery hadn’t been too bad, he supposed.  And he had plenty of fond memories to look back on.  Now if only he could recall some of them...

                “Lord Tyrion.”  The voice, from out of the darkness behind him, damn near made him soil his breeches.  Jumping to his feet – a short journey for one of his height – Tyrion turned to stare into the darkness, his eyes wide and his pulse racing.

                “I don’t want to sound unoriginal, but who’s there?”  He tried to keep the tremor out of his voice with his usual facade of sarcastic bravado, and almost succeeded.

                “A friend,” replied the unseen speaker.  Their voice had an odd quality to it, almost as if its owner’s mouth were not fully accustomed to forming the sounds that made speech.  It was an odd thought, and Tyrion wondered why it had occurred to him, while at the same time fervently wishing that it had not.

                “Friends do not sneak up on each other in the dark...” Observed the Imp, squinting into the impenetrable shadows of his cell.

                “And enemies who sneak up on you in the dark do not politely announce themselves.”

                “A fair observation.  Speak then, friend.”  He could just about make out a shadow fractionally darker than those that surrounded it.  Man-height or thereabouts, so still considerably larger than he.

                “Some hours from now, you shall seek to prove your innocence in a trial-by-combat.  Your accuser’s champion is a man who has yet to be bested in combat.  While you yourself have no champion to defend your claim, and so will certainly die.”  There was a slight rumbling to the shadow’s voice.  Almost like someone rolling their Rs, but somehow doing so with every syllable.

                “Yes, thank you for reminding me.  I will admit that this night was going so peacefully and pleasantly that I had actually quite forgotten about my fate.”  His words dripped with their usual sarcasm, a weapon he could wield as skilfully as his brother cou-, as his brother used to be able to wield a sword.

                “There are few men in the Seven Kingdoms who could hope to face Gregor Clegane and live.  Fewer still who could hope to actually defeat him.”

                “Again, a timely remi-“

                “Fortunately for you,” the voice continued, ignoring Tyrion’s interjection, “I am no man, and at noon I shall slay the Mountain.”  There was silence for some moments as Tyrion tried to process this new and rather unexpected information.

                “Why?” He managed, eventually.

                “Because I am a deadlier fighter than he.”

                “No, I mean why would you risk your life for me?  For my, ha, innocence?  I don’t even know who you are!”  There was a slight movement in the shadows; did the figure just shrug?

                “There are some whose interest is solely in protecting the realm.  There are even some who consider your continued drawing of breath to be beneficial to this goal.  It is for them, and for their money, that I shall fight in your name.”

                “Ah, so perhaps again my life is to be saved by a mercenary who champions me!  My, Fate truly does have a sense for the dramatic.  But who... what are you?”  His nerves, already frayed, were shredded yet further by the shadow’s voice, and by the whole mysteriousness of it.  This was no time for games!  Tyrion waited, but there was no answer forthcoming and, though his eyes strained, he now could not make out even the hint of a deeper shadow amongst the darkness of his cell.

                Morning came and, with it, Tyrion’s jailer with breakfast.  He did not eat it; how could he think of something as inconsequential as his stomach when he was set to lose his head in just a handful of hours?  It seemed not long after that the jailer returned, this time with a pair of Goldcloak guards.  Tyrion knew what this meant – he stood up, slowly, and presented his wrists that they might be clapped in irons, thinking to himself how pointless it seemed to chain one as physically helpless as he.  Were they expecting him to wrest the sword from a guard and fight his way to freedom?  No, this would be at his father’s insistence, just another opportunity to humiliate him.

                As the guards walked him out to the courtyard, somebody cried from a cell,

                “Gods be with you!” Tyrion could not think of a single god he would wish to be with him right now.  They were all vicious cunts as far as he was concerned.  As he walked, his life drifted before him.  How similar these moments were to when he had been dragged out into the court of Lady Arryn, accused by Catelyn Stark of attempting to have her son assassinated.  That time, Bronn had stood up and declared that he would fight for Tyrion, and the canny hired-sword had despatched Lady Arryn’s champion with surprising, almost contemptuous ease.  However, Ser Vardis Egen had been but a normal man.  A competent knight and swordsman who was nonetheless blinkered by honour and made soft by peace.  Gregor Clegane had no such limitations.

                As he was led around the corner of the broad stairs down to the arena, he got his first proper glimpse of his mysterious champion.  They were more like Ser Loras than Ser Clegane, being not more than a few heads taller than Tyrion himself, and slightly built.  They also seemed almost devoid of armour, clad in leathers and with a cowled tunic under their jerkin, its stiff leather hood hiding their head and face from him.  What he could see, sticking out of the back of the figure’s breeches, was what looked for all the world to be a tail.  Black, slender and furred like a cat’s, and slowly flicking back and forth as its owner stood waiting.  To the figure’s right was a table bearing a collection of weapons and other fighting implements, and beside that his champion’s squire.  The squire, at least, seemed somewhat normal, though Tyrion did not recognise the sigil upon his vest, nor could he even tell rightly what it was.  As Tyrion approached, his guards stopped a few yards before the sheltered table, blocking his escape should be decide to try to run, not that he would be even close to stupid enough to try.  Ahead of him, his champion turned and presented a face almost completely obscured from view by the hood and its shadows.  What little he could see was covered by a loose-fitting cloth mask, so that all Tyrion had to go on was a pair of eyes.  A pair of pale green eyes, their irises slits rather than circles.  He approached warily, still remembering the voice he’d heard the night before.

                “I take it that it was you to whom I spoke earlier, then?”  The figure nodded, then turned back to check through their spread of weapons.  “I see you aren’t bothering with armour...”  It was clear in his tone that he did not feel this to be a particularly smart move.

                “The only armour I need is the air between his sword and me, Lord Tyrion.”  Tyrion shivered as his champion spoke.  There was something deeply unsettling about, yes he was sure of it now, her voice.  He may not have seen a face, but the leathers did not much conceal a general shape that suggested their wearer to be female.  Either that or a slender man with some very unusual chest muscles.

                “You seem very sure that there will be air between you and his sword.  Clegane may be big and he may be called ‘The Mountain’ but do not presume him to be slow.” He warned.

                “I presume nothing, Lord Tyrion.  I know Clegane well, and have seen him fight many times.  I know his strengths, and his weaknesses.  He relies heavily on striking terror into the hearts of his foes, but a composed enemy would note that his technique is awkward and that, even with his great strength, his sword’s momentum is not easily reversed.”

                “Oh good, so you’re going to dance around him and then tickle him to death. I am relieved to hear you have a plan.  You are aware he is wearing full plate armour, yes?” The hooded figure half-turned to regard Tyrion out of the corner of one eye, then resumed checking through her weaponry; none of which looked to Tyrion’s eye to be capable of doing much to inconvenience such a massive and heavily-protected foe.  To their left, high up in the royal enclosure and far from the risk of being splattered with blood following a particularly violent decapitation, sat Tyrion’s immediate family.  His sister looked smug, as ever, his father cold and calculating, and his brother more than a touch worried.  Of them all, Jaime was the only one who’d ever had time for him, and hence the only one of them he had time for in return.  Cersei and Tywin could go drown for all he cared.  His attention was brought back to the immediate events as the master of ceremonies announced that battle would soon commence.  Tyrion barely heard the words through the sudden pounding of his heart and the rush of his blood in his ears.  Ahead of him, his champion paused for a moment before taking up her weapons and donning them quickly but calmly.  Across the arena Clegane rose to his feet like an avalanche in reverse, and slammed down the visor of his helmet.

                “W-wait!” Cried Tyrion as his champion started to walk out into the field of battle, “I don’t even know your name!  How can I cheer you on in your public suicide if I don’t know your name?”  She paused and looked back over one shoulder to face him.

                “Talija,” came the brief reply, before she looked out to her opponent and walked into the blazing noonday sunlight.  The crowd roared as Gregor Clegane stomped out onto the sand-dusted floor of the arena, his greatsword held easily in one massive hand and the sunlight glinting off his battle-worn armour.  As the roar subsided, a murmur replaced it once the crowd saw who, or what, Clegane faced.  Tail twitching, Talija calmly took her position in the circle.  Sword and dagger slung across her back and pouches strapped to her thighs, she stood with an iron-bound stave held casually across her shoulder.  Opposite her, Clegane roared furiously, pounding his breastplate with one gauntleted hand while stabbing the air with the sword in his other.  Tyrion’s champion slid her fighting stave down from her shoulder and held it lightly in both hands as she moved into a half-crouched fighting stance, looking like she was preparing for a friendly tournament duel rather than a vicious fight to the death.  All for the sake of a ‘half-man’ she didn’t even know, or at least who she’d never met; of that much Tyrion could be certain.  He’d have remembered meeting a woman with a tail.

                The gong was struck and the crowd held its breath, while Tyrion was sure his heart stopped beating for a moment.  Sword at the ready, the Mountain moved first, striding towards his opponent with murder in his heart.  Talija moved as well, stepping away from the edge of the arena before beginning to slowly circle Clegane, keeping him firmly in her sights as she sidled around till they had switched sides, with Clegane moving to match her.  They both hesitated then, each waiting to see who would seek to strike first, each trying to get a measure of their enemy’s confidence.  The crowd, however, did not have long to wait, as Clegane’s lust for violence overruled any sense of caution and he charged the much smaller figure before him, cleaving the air with five feet of sharpened steel in a sideways swing that would surely have cleft her in two had she been slow on her feet.  But slow she was not, and Tyrion’s champion nimbly ducked under the scything blade before leaping up again in the opposite direction to Clegane’s attack, forcing him to turn awkwardly to face her again.  As he brought his sword up for another go she lunged inside of his reach, stabbing forward with her stave to catch the knight a glancing, inconsequential blow to the side of his helm before she darted on past, pirouetting to face his back,

                True to Tyrion’s word, the Mountain was faster than his size and moniker suggested and he came around with a rising, two-handed swing of his sword that ploughed straight through his opponent’s staff as she held it protectively before her, the hardened, reinforced wood parting like a mere stick under the edge of Clegane’s mighty weapon.  For her part, Talija was quick to react, somersaulting backwards out of the reach of a follow-up attack and using the two parts of her stave as improvised javelins, hurling one then the other towards her foe.  Clegane barely reacted as the wooden missiles bounced off his armour.  Sharpened though they were from being bisected, they were still twigs against his steel plate.  He laughed, then.  A loud, deep, and unmistakably unpleasant laugh as he saw his opponent disarmed and impotent.  Crouching, Talija reached to the flat pouch on her right leg, flicking it open to reveal a set of four metal darts.  With a blur, she launched the first at the approaching Clegane; it struck his helmet with an audible clang, missing his eye-slit by inches.  Another one was let fly and the knight raised his arm protectively, laughing again as the tiny weapon bounced harmlessly off his gauntlet.  Talija hesitated, then threw another dart towards the oncoming Mountain, a moment later throwing a small object from the pouch on her other leg.  Again, Clegane parried the dart with his forearm, roaring with laughter now, only to be cut short a moment later as the second object, a small glass globe, smashed against the corner of his eyeslit, exploding into fragments that glittered in the noonday sunlight.  The gargantuan knight’s roar of dismissal turned into one of pain as the razor-sharp shards of glass showered his face, along with the liquid contents of the globe.  Where that colourless liquid touched his skin the knight’s face blistered and steamed, and the roaring continued.  He shook his head mightily, sparkling glass splinters and now-muddied acid droplets flying from his helm and face.  He tore his helmet from his head, casting it towards his enemy before trying to scrub the vitriol from his skin with a mailed hand.   Talija side-stepped the blindly thrown helm and it bounced on towards her squire, catching him mildly on the leg and making him stagger for a moment.

                Growling through the pain and panting angrily, Gregor lifted his head and regarded the tiny figure who’d managed to wound him.  The right side of his face was a ruin of bright pink, acid-melted flesh, and his eye was milky-white and unseeing.  Teeth gritted, Clegane grasped his sword with both hands and rushed Talija, bearing down on her like a landslide.  Tyrion’s champion readied herself, half-crouched again and her empty hands before her, fingers splayed.  As the Mountain began to swing that great length of steel he wielded, she sprang under the oncoming arc, diving past his plate-clad legs as they stomped towards her, and in one smooth movement drawing the dagger that was slung across the small of her back and plunging the short blade into the unprotected back of Clegane’s nearest knee.  He staggered and roared again in pain, while Talija hit the ground with both hands and rolled, springing nimbly up onto her feet and spinning to face the stricken giant.

                She was expecting to see the Queen’s champion sprawled on the floor, vanquished.  What she was not expecting was a backhand blow from his gauntleted fist that lifted her off her feet and set a couple of her teeth loose in a spray of blood and spittle.  Picking herself up from the sandy surface, Talija stood on uncertain feet, her vision swimming from the blow.  She looked up in time to see Gregor lumbering towards her, sword raised with intent of splitting her in twain, and threw herself to one side to just barely escape a killing blow.  Rolling as she hit the ground, she again staggered upright as the Mountain lunged again, the tip of his sword swinging around to slice through the air, her hood, and drawing a line across the bridge of her nose as she launched herself backwards to get out of the way.  Impossibly, the Mountain was on her again as she tried to ready herself, the dagger still in his leg slowing him down but what should have been crippling pain was drowned out by his fury and bloodlust.  Again, the knight’s greatsword whirred through the air, much to the delight of the crowd and of Cersei and Tywin in particular, and again the tailed champion just barely moved out of the way in time to avoid a mortal injury, a corner of her cowl sliced off as she ducked under the passing blade.

                Grabbing a handful of sand before Clegane’s sword could make another pass, she threw it in his face, distracting and fully blinding him for just long enough for her to dive between the great pillars of his legs.  But with blood and tears in her eyes she misjudged the gap and was caught in the ribs by the Mountain’s plated knee as he stumbled around, and ended up in a bruised heap behind him.  Rolling quickly onto her back and pushing herself up on her hand, she spied the hilt of her dagger, which still stood proud of the giant’s leg.  Still prone, she swung a booted foot at the embedded weapon, twisting it in the wound and causing the blade to shear through the ligaments around it.  As his knee exploded in red hot agony that not even he could ignore, Gregor Clegane gave out a cry that stunned the audience into silence.  He continued upright for a few seconds, blood pouring from his ruptured knee, before the useless limb collapsed under him and the Mountain came crashing down, sending up a great cloud of sand and dust.  The beast at its centre roared and thrashed, struggling to turn to face his assailant and flailing his sword about him, half-crazed with pain from the crippling injury.  Stumbling to her feet, Talija backed away hurriedly, moving out of the eye-stinging dust cloud and throwing back her ruined hood so that she could use her face scarf to mop up the blinding blood that dribbled from the shallow wound on her face.

                A great gasp of surprise went up from the crowd as Tyrion’s champion at last revealed her visage to them.  Surely this was no person, but a beast!  Her face and, indeed, her entire head, were covered in short black fur, while her ears sat atop her head, rounded and as furred as the rest of her features.  Her face was long, her nose and jaw jutting out together to form a short muzzle, and the fighter looked more feline than human, with long whiskers even jutting out from the sides of that muzzle.  Her head turned as she managed to pick out the occasional cry from the general clamour.

                “What in the Seven Hells is it?!”

“The Imp is championed by a demon!” 

While she had been distracted by the negative reaction of the crowd, against all the odds Ser Gregor had managed to rise.  Not to his feet, but up onto his one good knee.  His other lower limb lay limply in a puddle of blood, and the knight’s face was twisted into a grotesque grimace that was equal parts fury and agony, but still he held his sword.  He grabbed one of the discarded stave halves and used it as a crude crutch to push himself up on, so that he knelt upright before his foe.  Even reduced such as he was, still he was taller than his cat-faced adversary.  Lifting his sword high, the knight let out a fearsome bellow, and was answered in kind by a bestial roar from Tyrion’s champion.  She knew, and no doubt Clegane knew, that he had but one swing left in him.  The weight of his sword would surely send him crashing to the ground and leave him vulnerable to a final strike, but that would not matter if that last swing managed to connect.  Of course, she could always just wait and hope that he bled to death before he could get himself mobile enough to threaten her.  The baying crowd made her mind up for her – she would defeat Cersei’s champion, and she would do so in combat.  The noise of her short sword being drawn from the scabbard on her back was lost in the noise of the crowd, and Talija focussed her gaze on the crippled Mountain as she readied the single-edged blade.  This was no warrior’s weapon, but the tool of an assassin, designed purely for killing rather than fighting.

The two champions glared at each other, both with their teeth bared in a snarl, while the audience fell into a hushed silence, eager to see the battle reach its climax.  Talija flipped her sword around in her hand so the un-edged side of the blade lay along her forearm.

Clegane readied his sword, half-raised and ready to strike.

Talija ran at the mountain, her boots kicking up dust and sand.

The greatsword started to swing down.

Time seemed to crawl.

“She’s going to die,” Tyrion thought to himself.  “And so will I.  Oh, look, a rhyme.”

Charging certain death, his champion dropped to her knees and slid, leaning back till her tattered hood dragged on the floor.  

Clegane’s sword cleaved the air, mere inches above her head.

A collective gasp rose from the crowd; even Jaime was on his feet.

Arm moving like a whip, Talija brought her short sword around before her, bracing it with her other hand and aiming for the lightly-armoured gap between the Mountain’s helm and collar.

Silence filled the small arena as the tip emerged from the back of the giant knight’s neck, scarlet with his blood.  Silence that continued after his enormous blade slipped from his grasp and skidded across the floor.

From where he stood, eyes dry they’d been open so long, Tyrion fancied he could hear a bubbling gurgle come from Clegane.  The enormous form of the armoured knight twitched, twice.  His makeshift crutch clattered to the ground, sounding as loud as a temple bell in the hush of the arena.

Then silence again.  Nobody dared make a sound, nor even move.  Not least Tyrion’s champion, who knelt before her defeated foe, both hands still on her sword.  It seemed as if hours passed before the master of ceremonies spoke up, his voice cracking for a moment.

“Gregor Clegane… is defeated.  The gods have judged Tyrion La-,” he paused at the sound of a strained curse from the Imp’s champion.  It was only then that Tyrion realised the reason for her holding the death-delivering pose has nothing to do with drama and everything to do with physics – she was stuck.  A murmur arose from the audience as they came to the same conclusion, and a cry of

“The Mountain yet lives!” went up from one observant citizen as the great hulking form of Gregor Clegane started to lean forward, towards his enemy.  Another curse was cut short from the much smaller fighter as weight overcame strength, and the Mountain fell on top of her.

“You know, I should have been very interested to see how they would have called it,” mused Tyrion, in between gulps of wine. “How does one interpret that, as a message from the gods, I mean?  The defending champion wins and then gets killed by the accuser’s champion’s corpse.  ‘He’s innocent but kill him anyway’?  Would they have only half-killed me?  Or perhaps some sort of re-match with fresh champions?”  Pale green eyes glared meaningfully at him but Tyrion largely ignored them.  “From an academic point of view, that is.  Obviously, I’m glad you survived getting squashed, not least because it means I survive, too.”  He took another long sip of wine before regarding his saviour in silence for a few moments.  “Do they pay you extra for that?” he continued, to Talija’s obvious exasperation.  “Some sort of ‘sorry you broke most of the bones in your body’ compensation, or is it just considered a risk of the job?”

“Well, anyway,” he continued, after receiving no further reply beyond a bale-filled glare, “Maester Pycelle has every confidence that you will be up and about in no time.  Apparently your,” the dwarf waved a hand vaguely, “inner parts are much the same as our own.”  He paused again, his gaze drifting along the bed-bound form of his victorious but battered champion, “I wonder, does that me-,” Tyrion looked up at the sound of a muffled growl, “I’m only curious from an intellectual perspective!” he insisted.  “Besides, I’ve never fucked a woman with a tail.  Now, now, don’t exert yourself or you will undo the wonderful work Pycelle has done at resetting your bones.” Talija settled back down onto her bed with a grumble, her attempt at clawing the dwarf’s face severely impeded by the broken bones of her arm.  “I would so dearly love to know what was going through your mind when you realised you lacked the necessary momentum to make him topple the other way.”  He paused again while he refilled his empty goblet.  “Though I’m fairly confident I could guess the general gist of it.”

Behind the Imp, the door to the small but comfortable chamber opened, and a stocky old man with broad, slouching shoulders lumbered in.  Tyrion had seen him before, at the arena, but hadn’t paid him much attention.  It had since become apparent that he worked with Tyrion’s furry champion, as something akin to a Maester.  He put Tyrion in mind of an ape that somebody had half-heartedly attempted to shave before shoving into roughspun robes.

“You tiring her?” said the man, giving Tyrion a look of naked contempt.

“Not at all, we’re just having a pleasant and relaxing conversation!  Isn’t that right?  See?  She’s growling with happiness!”  The man grunted as he walked over to Talija’s bedside.  “Saman, wasn’t it?” asked Tyrion.

“Saman Kine,” replied the man as he started to inspect Talija. “Saman is title. Like Maester.”

“Ah, so I should just call you Kine?”

“Not if want to live.” Said Kine, not bothering to look across to Tyrion as he examined Talija’s arm and shoulder. “Hunh.  Your Maester’s not bad with bones.  Quite good, maybe.”  Kine conceded, though he seemed reluctant to admit as much.  “Rest,” he said to the heavily bandaged champion, patting her gently on her other shoulder.

“Maybe some wine, Saman Kine?  You could stay and talk for a while.  You seem a chatty fellow.”

“Poison,” was all the Saman had to say, before he turned and left the room.

“Curious fellow, your Saman,” commented Tyrion once the door had shut.  “Acts like a Maester, looks more like someone who could twist my head off by the ears.  Tell me, is everyone you work with so… unusual looking?  Oh now, don’t roll your eyes, it’s not my fault you can’t talk right now.  Well, not directly anyway.”

Fully a week passed before Tyrion next visited his champion.  Not for a lack of trying on his part, but apparently the Saman had made it clear to the guards posted at her door that she was not to have any visitors while she recovered, particularly overly-talkative and drunken dwarfs.  And so it was that the change in her condition came as quite a surprise when he was at last allowed back to see her.

“My, you’re looking well,” commented the shortest of the Lannisters as he observed Talija seated at the small table in her room.  “A lot less… bandagey.”

“Your Maester Pycelle did a good job stabilising my injuries.  Kine did the rest.”

“Oh, so you can call him ‘Kine’ but I have to use his full title?”

“He doesn’t like you,” replied the feline woman.

“Not many do,” remarked Tyrion without hesitation.  “Mind if I join you?”  Talija shook her head in reply and extended an open hand to the chair opposite her.  Tyrion smiled and took the offered chair, after diverting to grab a bottle of wine and two goblets.  “I assume you drink, even if he doesn’t.”  She nodded, and the dwarf filled both the goblets.  “It’s good to see you again.  And I don’t mean that like, well, that, just that I didn’t get the chance to properly thank you for saving my life.  You were on milk of the poppy and I was on milk of the grape.  It was at least two days before I dared sober up, just in case I turned out to be having a particularly vivid and long dream while I was waiting to be beheaded.  So… thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

“You do not need to thank me.  I did what I was paid to do.”

“I know that, but seeing as how I don’t know who paid you, you’re the only person I can thank.  Besides, even if I’m not indebted to you I am nonetheless still immensely grateful.”  Talija gave a gracious nod, then sipped her wine in silence. 

“Um, this is awkward,” he said after a lengthy spell.  “I’m not often at a loss for words but then I’m not often sat in front of a woman with head-to-toe fur, a tail, and a cat’s head.  Well, never in fact.”