"Y-yes, commander!" Morfydd answered at once, then spurred his horse forward to relay orders to the n.
Beside him, however, Barristan frowned, unease written on his face.
"Ser Lance…"
He hesitated for a mont before finally speaking. "It's true Denys Darklyn betrayed the crown, but… is it not too cruel to wipe out both House Darklyn and House Hollard in their entirety? Perhaps executing the chief culprits would be punishnt enough."
"Chief culprits?" Lance shot him a sidelong glance and gave a derisive snort. "Take that argunt to the king."
With that, he dismissed the Kingsguard with silence.
He could more or less guess what Barristan was thinking. After all, exterminating an entire family was rare even in Westerosi history. The great houses of the realm had been bound in a web of blood ties for thousands of years. Nearly every family could trace so kinship to another, even if only faintly. Which ant that, however grave the cri, complete eradication was almost never carried out—at the very least, a bloodline was spared.
The last great extermination had been over a decade ago, when Lord Tywin Lannister ordered House Reyne drowned in the mines of Castare. That massacre gave birth to the famous ballad The Rains of Castare. From then on, Tywin had no need to send an army to chastise rebellious vassals; he rely dispatched a bard to perform the song beneath their roof. One verse was enough to break their defiance. The effect of annihilation spoke for itself.
As for Aerys, Lance doubted the king thought so far ahead. More likely it was simple spite, the lingering rage of being imprisoned for half a year in darkness and humiliation. But in truth, such vengeance also served a purpose: Duskendale's blood would beco a warning to all who might dare defy royal authority.
If Barristan's view prevailed—kill only a handful of ringleaders and call it justice—then what would stop others from "testing" the king's safety in the future? Was the punishnt for abducting a king to be so lenient? Should every petty lord take turns "tying him up for fun"?
In Lance's mind, for the King of the Seven Kingdoms to have been caged and mocked by a re landed lord was humiliation beyond bearing. The fact that Aerys had not ordered a complete sack of the town already showed restraint. Had it been Lance himself, escaping with the king's life and standing in a position of strength, he would hardly have upheld lofty moral principles.
After all, in his previous life he had belonged to a great nation where strength was virtue and bloodshed in war was routine. To grind an enemy into the earth was nothing unusual—rely standard procedure.
…
"Ahh…" Barristan could only sigh helplessly as Lance spurred his horse and rode away.
He was no saint himself. As a veteran of countless battles, his hands were already stained with more blood than the combined mbers of House Darklyn and House Hollard could ever spill. True, not on the sa scale as Lance's past life—where the fall of night itself brought the death of millions—but still, enough.
And he understood the simple truth: rcy to one's enemies was cruelty to oneself.
Yet he could not help but feel a pang of regret. For the fall of a house ant its na would vanish from the continent. "Darklyn" and "Hollard" would beco nothing more than entries in the annals of history—both their monts of glory and their humiliations alike.
House Darklyn especially had once shone bright in Targaryen history. In two centuries of Targaryen rule, they had produced no fewer than seven Kingsguard knights—a number unmatched by any other house in Westeros. Among them was Ser Robin Darklyn, the "Dark Robin," one of the very first mbers chosen by Queen Visenya Targaryen for her brother, King Aegon I, when he founded the Kingsguard.
And now, that sa house fad for loyalty and iron discipline was condemned for treason, to be eradicated by the very Kingsguard they had so often served.
Fate could be bitterly ironic.
…
As Lance and Barristan pressed forward, a commotion suddenly drew their attention.
Lance looked up and saw nearly a hundred Targaryen soldiers surrounding a small house, shouting furiously within.
"You bastards—robbers, murderers, rapists!"
"Hand over the killer, or I'll bring this matter before His Grace himself!"
The voice made Lance frown. It sounded all too familiar.
He spurred his horse forward and peered into the crowd from above. Sure enough—it was old Ser Reveray Rykker.
"Shut your mouth!"
In the center stood a knight clad in black steel, his voice dripping with arrogance. He brandished his blade at Reveray, barking insults. Unlike the common soldiers, his armor was distinctive—dragon-scale ridges crested his helm like horns, the pauldrons flaring outward like wings, and layered black steel scales covered his back. This was no ordinary knight; his appearance scread elite.
"We've already explained, Ser Rickard mistook her for a commoner!" the knight sneered, showing not a shred of respect to the minor Lord before him.
He then pulled two golden dragons from his cloak and flung them in Reveray's face with a contemptuous flick of the wrist.
"Here—Ser Rickard's compensation for your wife. Take it and stop wasting our ti, Lord Reveray! We have the king's orders to carry out."
"Get that filthy money away from !" Reveray roared, his longsword raised in outrage.
"Unless you can bring Vanessa back from the grave, hand over the bastard who killed her! I'll skin him alive and hang his hide on Duskendale's walls!"
"She was eight months pregnant! And that animal still laid hands on her!"
Behind him, three of his household knights stood tense, fury burning in their eyes. If not for the sheer difference in numbers, they would already have charged to their lord's side.
The black knight's face twitched. Sweat trickled down his brow as he silently cursed Ser Rickard a hundred tis over. Bedding a woman was one thing—but bedding a nobleman's wife was suicide. And to murder her afterward, heavy with child? Madness. Worse still, the husband had walked in on the cri. Had the black knight not arrived in ti, Rickard would already be cooling in his own blood.
"My lord… perhaps we can…"
One of his retainers stepped close and whispered urgently in his ear. The knight's eyes flickered, then narrowed with malice. A cruel smile curved across his lips.
He raised his sword high and bellowed to his n:
"These traitors are Darklyn collaborators!"
"By order of His Grace, all who consorted with House Darklyn are to be executed without rcy!"
"Kill them all!"
Reveray's face went pale. "Wait! I stand with the king! I helped His Grace escape last night—you can ask him yourself!"
But his protests were drowned beneath the thundering boots and the gleam of steel. The Targaryen soldiers, their eyes bloodshot and weapons flashing, advanced like a tide of iron.
A wave of despair crashed over Reveray's heart. Was this how his house would end? A lifeti of loyalty to the Targaryens, risking everything to help the king flee, only to be destroyed by the king's own soldiers?
He let out a bitter laugh. "Heh…"
Gripping his longsword tighter, he resolved to cut down at least one or two before he fell. But just as the black tide closed in, a streak of white suddenly appeared among the dark steel—gleaming robes and armor, dazzlingly bright against the sea of black.
A white cloak.
A Kingsguard.
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