A few seconds earlier.
"Hear that, Nymeria?" Sarella whispered with a smirk on her face, "These idiots seemed to like our contribution to the dish very much. And someone was saying that we are completely ignorant when it comes to the art of cooking," she snorted while looking sideways at Jon who just smiled at her before focusing back on the party, his hand gripping his favourite bow while a quiver full of arrows lay beside his feet ready to be used.
"Imagine how starved they must be of the normal spices, that they need to taste our poison to feel the 'zing'," Nymeria said with a derisive snort, as if looking down on all of Westerlands, and she indeed had right to be proud in this particular instance, as Dorne was not called the capital of spices for nothing.
"I don't care about their weird tastes as long as it works in our favour," Jon murmured, his eyes flickering here and there among the men, making sure that all fifteen of their targets were consuming the poisoned soup.
"Eat! Eat! You Motherfuckers!! The more you eat, the sooner you will get to meet your makers," Nymeria cursed under her breath, with loathing spewing out of her eyes.
Their group had very clearly heard every single depraved thing these monsters were planning to do, and it rankled something deep inside them to imagine how many times these men had already done these kinds of atrocities before and gotten away with it.
It would have been very hard to control some of the more volatile members of their small team after hearing those perverse plans, if not for the fact that most of these bastards were going to die miserably in just a few minutes.
"Wait! Why is that man acting weirdly?" Oberyn suddenly asked with narrowed eyes as he noticed the squire who was attracting attention because of his behaviour.
"No way," Nymeria breathed with a stunned expression on her face, "Is the poison taking effect already? How could that be?"
"It wasn't supposed to happen so quickly, was it?" Jon asked with a tense expression on his face as his grip on his bow tightened.
"No, of course, not." Sarella said with an anxious expression on her face, "It should still take a few more minutes for the poison to take effect. None of the other are showing—Him!" she suddenly hissed as her eyes fell on the only one affected, "It must be his fault. That man is just too damn thin and light compared to the others and especially the Mountain, so the poison must have rushed straight into his blood and taken effect immediately,"
"Damn it, we should have accounted for the weight difference between them all," Nymeria cursed with a regretful expression on her face.
"And how would we have even done that, if we had diluted the poison, then it would not have affected the Mountain, so unless we give different doses to—"
"It doesn't matter now," Jon hastily interrupted the arguing sisters when he saw the thin squire they were talking about fall to the ground, alarming all the men around the fire, "All of them have already ingested the poison, so our primary objective has already been completed." Jon murmured as he slowly armed his bow, "The only thing that changed is how much of a fight these trash are going to put up before they go down." he then looked at the girls with a provocative look and asked, "You are not afraid of a little hard work, are you?"
"No chance!" "You wish!" They replied simultaneously with snorts as they too prepared their weapons and checked their armour for one last time before crouching in a ready position.
"On my signal,"
Jon said before he paused... and waited, hoping to give the poison a few extra seconds to work its magic, and it was only when he saw the word 'poison' coming out of the lips of the fallen man did he finally loosened his finger on the string.
Two arrows flew almost silently, one after the other, and it was only when they had already taken the lives of two men, who, according to Jon's earlier scouting, were far better fighters than the other, did the rest of them noticed their presence.
"Damn it!! An Ambush!"
"Go!" Jon shouted as he picked up another arrow, as the three from Dorne jumped out of the bushes, going straight at the flustered party.
While Oberyn immediately set off towards the Mountain, the girls sought targets of their own amongst the scattered men, all while the arrows continued to fly, taking two more lives.
"Four down, eleven to—correction, Five down," Jon muttered as his next arrow hit the Mountain's hand and stopped him from killing the servant, while a well-thrown knife from Sarella caught one of the panicked men off guard, taking his life, bringing their enemies down to ten.
After seeing Oberyn reach the Mountain and capture his full attention, Jon let go of his last worry and turned his bow back towards the main battle, which seemed to be heating up as the rest of the men regained their composure after the initial ambush.
After taking down an enemy with her opening shot, Sarella had just taken out her shield from behind her back when she was attacked by a particularly tricky opponent who seemed to be very skilled with his spear.
But with her short sword and her shield, as well as all the experiences that the girl had accumulated over the years training against her sister and her father, Sarella was the perfect counter to him, so there was no worry for her in this fight.
Nymeria, meanwhile, was ferociously taking on two fighters at the same time and was easily dominating the fight; and in fact, from what Jon could see, the girl should only need a short while to take down both of them.
So for the moment, it seemed that the girls had the upper hand, but that could change very quickly if the remaining six men joined their battle.
Thankfully for them, they had an archer watching their backs who wasn't going to let that happen.
The six men who were a little late in picking up their weapons were just about to join their comrades to gang up on those two Dornish sluts to teach them some manners when another one of those cursed arrows punctured through the neck of their leading fellow, scaring the shit out of them, forcing them to duck behind the first object they could find.
"Argh! Fuck!" Lorch cursed as he flinched while fearfully watching the life drain out of Chiswyck as he gurgled and futilely tried to remove the arrow in his neck, "L-Let's take out the damn archer first," he shouted at the men, hoping that one of them would take the first leap so that he could attack safely from behind but the men were not that stupid and didn't dare to come out of their hiding places.
"I said get out—ARR!!"
The rest of Lorch's reprimand got lost in screams as an arrow appeared from above the rock he was hiding behind like a silent spectre, and penetrated his thigh with unerring accuracy.
"Argh, shit!" Lorch cried as he gingerly held his leg, feeling more pain than he had felt in years, but getting injured was better than dying, so he forced himself to breathe and turned to the remaining four and persuaded them again, "Go kill him, you cowardly cunts!! He is just one weakling with a bow!!" he yelled angrily, and this time, fortunately for him, these men followed his orders after some hesitation, as they knew they had no other choice.
Jon shot a few more arrows, but this time he only injured a few, and his kill count did not increase, as the men had become smarter.
Not only had the two of them picked up shields from somewhere and were leading the other two from the front, but they were also moving erratically, with the girls always right behind them, making it a lot harder for Jon to shoot carelessly.
While Jon was a good enough archer to be able to shoot through the vitals of anyone within his or his warg's eyesight, that was only possible when they were either standing still or moving predictably, as it became a lot harder to hit the target when someone was deliberately trying to avoid being killed, as there was nothing more unpredictable than the human mind.
'Guess we are doing it the hard way,' Jon thought as he was forced to jump out of the bushes because the four men finally gotten too close for comfort, but Jon still did not let go of his bow to take out the sword at his waist, instead, he continued to shoot sporadic arrows to maintain his distance, all while evading them as if he had eyes on his back.
The reason was not that Jon could not handle these four amateurs with his sword, because he could, but that he did not want to lose the ability to use long-range attacks, as the other battlefield could change at any moment, and arrows made it much easier to intervene than a sword.
Besides, the four in front of him were already scared to the point of not resisting much, so it was very easy for Jon to split his focus and pay attention to the girls and Oberyn.
It took three more arrows before he finally managed to kill one more man who made the idiotic mistake of trying to run away with his back to him, leaving him just three fearful men who should not take him more than a dozen seconds to deal with.
'Huh, I guess this battle will be over very soon.' Jon thought with a mirthful expression on his face, before his face suddenly scrunched up in a scowl, 'Wait! Did I just raise a death flag?! Damn it!!'
///
You know where to go if you want to read ahead...*Wink*Wink*