Bonus - 100 Stones
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Footsteps drew near, heavy and disorderly, mingling with the clank of chains and stifled sobs.
Leading the way was Eon, a bailiff from the King's Landing dungeons, a fat, uniformed man who hurried forward with an ingratiating smile the moment he saw the Prince.
Behind him, ten jailers herded seven prisoners.
Every convict was ragged, iron fetters weighing on wrists and ankles.
Strips of cloth bound their mouths so tightly that only hoarse gasps and despairing moans escaped.
"Your Grace!" the bailiff called, trotting up to Aemond and bowing deeply.
"As ordered, the condemned are delivered… for the dragon's, er, supplementary meal."
He beamed, yet dared not look straight at the colossal creature lying nearby, whose mere breath sent hot gusts across the yard.
Aemond knew it for an ancient Valyrian custom: feed death-row felons to the dragons, teaching the beasts to see commoners as prey.
Under such tutelage, even the Dragonkeepers were no more than ants that carried food; once hungry, the very handlers who had tended the wyrms all their lives might be devoured.
Not even the Good King Jaehaerys had abolished the practice; clearly, it served a purpose.
Fear was a useful tool.
Vhagar regarded the newcomers with a low rumble in her throat.
At the sight of the dragon, the captives thrashed harder.
A bald, hulking man bucked wildly, battering a jailer with his head.
A thin youth's legs gave way; he dropped to his knees and was dragged along, the stink of loosened bowels fouling the air.
"Quiet! Hold still!" the bailiff barked, drawing the pommel of his sword and smashing it into a prisoner's shoulder with a dull thud.
"Being dragon meat is an honor, no gallows, no grave!"
One gagged captive shook his head frantically, eyes pleading like a dog at the butcher's block.
The bailiff snorted and kicked him.
"Want the Wall now? Too late. Gag him tighter!"
Aemond's face was unreadable, his violet eyes sweeping the doomed.
He took the list the bailiff offered. Crude ink recorded each crime: robbery-murder, rape, arson, assault on the Watch… all capital offenses common in King's Landing.
Calmly, he skimmed name after name until the last entry.
"Terra," female, roughly twenty, of the Stormlands.
Charges: Poaching in the Kingswood, resisting arrest, and slaying three nobles, including Lord Hayford's second son, Egmont, while assaulting officers.
Women condemned to the dragon were rare, especially when nobles had died.
Aemond looked up.
She was much smaller than the men.
Her mouth was likewise bound, dark-brown hair matted to a grime-streaked brow, her features indistinct beneath the filth.
Yet she stood straight. Beneath the manacles, her wrists were slender yet taut.
Though forced to kneel, her body was a drawn bow, eyes fixed on the ground.
Feeling the Prince's gaze, she lifted her head. She flicked her eyes from the bailiff to Aemond to Vhagar, pupils flaring with terror before she wrenched her stare away.
Blood-crusted rents showed through her torn clothes.
Vhagar, impatient for these morsels, gave a hungry growl.
Aemond pointed. "Her details."
The bailiff leaned in, voice low.
"A hard case, Your Grace. Caught her poaching deer in the Kingswood. Lord Hayford's son and two friends surprised her. The she-wolf fought back, snatched a sword, and skewered all three on the spot. Three noble throats, mind you. She knew she'd doomed herself, fled all the way to King's Landing, and tried to slip aboard a ship. The Navy spotted the fugitive."
Terra flinched at the words, then, through tangled hair, met Aemond's gaze for the first time.
He held her stare a moment, then nodded to the bailiff.
"Your Grace…?" The man rubbed his hands, ready to drive the prisoners toward Vhagar.
"Wait," Aemond said.
His eyes returned to the girl.
"Let her speak."
The bailiff hesitated. "Your Grace, such filth may offend."
"Let her speak," Aemond repeated.
At a gesture, a jailer tore the cloth from her mouth.
"Hah! Pah!"
The female prisoner hacked and spat a gob of blood-flecked saliva, then dragged in several gulps of sulfur-tainted air.
Hoarse yet clear, her voice carried the rough accent of the Stormlands:
"He's lying!"
She fixed the magistrate with a stare, then swung her gaze to Aemond, words tumbling out fast and fierce.
"I was deer-stalking; the Kingswood is the King's own wood, and I'll pay the forfeit! Whipping, losing a hand, I'll take it! But those highborn… they weren't out to teach me a lesson!"
A livid flush mottled her cheeks.
"They pinned me to the ground and tore my clothes! That Egmont… he pressed down on me and said he'd use his 'noble sword' to show this wild wench what a lord's mercy felt like!"
She shook with shame and rage.
"I bit him, that was self-defense! I grabbed the blade to stay alive! Three of them, all armed, I had no choice! It wasn't murder; it was survival!"
Her chest heaved as she finished, eyes locked on Aemond, searching his purple gaze for the smallest shred of hope, or even understanding.
Silence ringed the yard, except for Vhagar's impatient pawing.
The magistrate's face paled; he opened his mouth to object, but seeing the Prince stay silent, thought better of it.
Aemond studied her for several long heartbeats.
At last, he said, "Sounds as though you're a fair hunter."
He gestured toward the six other condemned prisoners, gagged and white with terror.
"I offer you a pardon. Kill them. Go free."
The magistrate held his tongue.
He had, after all, taken coin from the Earl of Hayford, who wanted the wild woman who had slain his son devoured by a dragon, bones and all.
But a Prince's command outweighed an Earl's bribe.
Terra froze.
She glanced at the bound, gagged captives, terror shining in their eyes, then back at Aemond's expressionless face.
It was a chance to live.
A struggle flickered across her dark eyes, but survival won.
The same feral grit that had let her fight beasts in the forest and outrun noble hunters blazed across her features.
"Done," she said.
Aemond gave a slight nod.
At the magistrate's signal, the jailers unshackled her wrists and ankles, though they kept blades bared and circled warily.
The other prisoners were herded onto a patch of open sand and gravel, still bound and gagged.
What followed was savage and primal.
Bloody, chaotic. Though hampered, the captives outnumbered her, and their thrashing made it hard work.
She was no knight with courtly swordplay; her craft was the forest and the wild, brutal, efficient.
Using a stone snatched from the ground… when the last convict stopped twitching beneath her stranglehold, she was nearly spent.
She sucked air, dark eyes fixed on Aemond.
He had watched without a flicker of expression until the final body fell.
He motioned to the magistrate.
"Let her go."
The man hesitated, then obeyed, ordering the guards aside.
Terra struggled to her feet. She swayed.
To everyone's surprise, the woman who had just clawed back her life did not sprint for freedom.
Instead, she dragged her battered body forward a few steps and dropped to her knees before Aemond. Forehead pressed to the cold, bloody ground.
"Your Grace…" her voice shook with exhaustion.
"I… have nowhere left. The Earl of Hayford will still hunt me."
She lifted her head, grime and blood streaking her face.
"You gave me life today, and more than today. My life is yours. Let me serve you. I can hunt, track, shoot, fight, I'm useful…"
She knew full well he might free her on a whim.
Beyond the Dragonpit waited only a slower, more shameful death at the hands of Lord Hayford's men.
Aemond liked that she had chosen; he favored the clever ones.
Trained a little, she might do well at Helaena's side as a sworn shield.
After a moment, he spoke. "Stand."
Terra shivered and forced herself upright, eyes lowered.
He turned to his squire, Garth.
"Fetch a Maester to dress her wounds and find her clean clothes. Then take her to… Riverbend Manor."
He recalled the holding his father had granted him.
Garth bowed and hurried off with the woman.
Without another glance at Terra, Aemond strode toward Vhagar.
The old dragon was already roaring, eager for the fresh corpses on the sand.
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