Chapter 12: Embers

They'd turned Flea Bottom into a funeral pyre.

The fire had started during the sack, the exact reason why unclear and unimportant. Randyll Tarly had smartly sent teams of men to contain it as best as they could when he saw the smoke billowing, eventually committing most of the loyalist force to the task once the serious fighting had died down.

The bodies of the Lannister dead, lord and levy alike, were carted to the raging bonfire that had engulfed half the slums from wherever they had died across the city. There were thousands of bodies and bodies bred disease and illness, so the men were stripped of their armor and weapons and thrown into the fire, the smell of burning flesh engulfing the already stinking city. Several septons, tougher of heart and stomach than most of their brethren, repeated death rites for hours, a communal prayer over a communal end.

The armor and swords that could be identified as belonging to lords-Brax, Falwell and Jast had been recovered already, and more were sure to be found-were set aside to be returned to the dead men's families, per the orders of King Rhaegar Targaryen. The rest-spears of levies, swords and armor of knights and retainers-were sorted and distributed among the loyalist forces, per the orders of Aelor Targaryen, Hand of the King.

King's Landing was a massive, sprawling city of thousands. Many Lannister men had used that to their advantage, discarding their weapons and armor for stolen or stripped civilian garb once it was clear the day was lost. There were dozens throughout the city, Aelor knew, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He was much more concerned with the fortress inside a fortress Tywin Lannister and his retainers had made of the Great Sept of Baelor.

The Ruthless lion had realized rather quickly that his men were too disorganized and focused on pillaging to throw Aelor and his attackers back. Instead, the Lord of Casterly Rock had rallied close to seven hundred of his men, stripped the Street of Steel for all the weapons they could carry, and pulled back to the top of Visenya's Hill. He'd charged the Mud Gate, being thrown back by infantry under Lord Cleyton Byrch, but it was soon discovered that it had been a diversion. Fishmongers Square, a maze of a market selling everything from wine to animals located just inside the Mud Gate, had been picked clean of food and drink. The bakeries along the Street of Flour were also barren, the Lions using the chaos to carry as many rations as they could to the home of the High Septon.

They'd even had the audacity to hoist a roaring lion banner over the sept. The sight of it nearly drove Aelor back into his battlerage.

"Strong shield," Renfred Rykker greeted his old friend and his squire, clasping forearms with Aelor once he'd dismounted Warrior. The Lord of Hollard Hall had taken an arrow to the shoulder during the attack but had rode on as if it wasn't there. Even now he paid no mind to the bandages wrapped around the wound, face showing not an ounce of discomfort. "You look like hell."

"Stronger sword," Aelor responded as Alaric took Warrior and his own horse towards the temporary stable. "You look worse." It wasn't true of course; Aelor's eye was a red gash and he had a knot on his head from where he'd slammed into the wall of Aegon's nursery. However bad he looked he felt even worse; his body was terribly sore from head to toe, and it had taken all he had to dismount Warrior.

"How's the face feel? It looks like it will make for an impressive scar."

"It hurts. How's the arm?"

Renfred grinned. "I don't feel a thing."

Aelor raised a skeptical eyebrow even as he brushed by Rykker into the abandoned blacksmith shop they were using as a temporary headquarters. "Really? Then why are you favoring it like a child with scrape. I've seen Rhaenys handle injuries better."

Aelor stepped into the simple, one story building that still smelled of steel and the fire of billows even after the Lannisters had cleaned it out. A table of rough wooden planks had been moved in as well as chairs of all different makes, a ramshackle headquarters if ever there was one. Several lords were huddled around it, a map of King's Landing in front of them. Flags, red for Lannister and black for Targaryen, showed the positions of men in the city. There were a few other Lion holdouts, one at the Dragonpit and another on the Street of Silk, but those were minor and being methodically overrun. Tywin was the one that mattered, so it was to Tywin Aelor had gone.

Lord Randyll Tarly, lean and beginning to bald, had been given command of the city while the Targaryen brothers had gotten reacquainted. He'd restored order quickly and capably, implementing frequent patrols that kept looting to a minimum as well as isolating the Lannister resistance. The man himself stood up straight as Aelor entered, his massive greatsword of Valyrian steel- Heartsbane- sheathed across his back. Tarly's face was grim, his jaw hard-set. "Prince Aelor," he said more in acknowledgement than greeting, hard grey eyes meeting the Prince's violet ones and holding them.

"Lord Tarly," Aelor nodded in return. "You've done an impressive job. King's Landing hasn't been this orderly in a century." Tarly nodded but said nothing, never one for pleasantries. That was fine with the Dragon of Duskendal; he was sore and tired, and wasn't in a mood to be pleasant anyway. "How long can he hold out?"

"We're unsure, my lord," said Lord Cleyton. "We have no way of knowing how much food and water he managed to steal."

"We do know he can't escape," Tarly said, pointing towards the black flags at each gate. "My men aren't letting anyone in or anyone out. The city is locked down."

Aelor stroked his beard as he stared at the map. "Seven hundred you say? That's plenty enough to put up one hell of a fight were we to storm the Sept, and they have seven towers to hide in."

"They have plenty of archers as well, Lord Hand," piped in Jon Connington, Rhaegar's protégé and lord of Griffin's Roost in the Stormlands. Aelor wasn't overly fond of Connington, finding his obsession with Aelor's brother as offputting as Rhaegar's prophecy, but as a man who was in love with his brother's wife he supposed he didn't have much room to judge. "Our skirmishers have been trading shots with them for hours."

"We have the numbers to storm it, Prince Aelor," Tarly said. "There will be heavy casualties, but they have nowhere to flee to. A few hours bloodshed and it will be over."

"As will the lives of hundreds of our men," Aelor pointed out, eyes hard. "We're going to need every man we have to fight the Rebellion's true strength."

"We can't leave a hostile force inside our city's gates," Tarly countered.

"Of course not. If we have to storm it, we storm it. But the army won't be moving out for several days anyway; we need to rest, resupply and keep the city under control from the aftermath of the attack, as well as affirm Rhaegar is king. We can at least try and think of another way."

"But Lord Hand," Connington began, "The traitors-"

"Don't have the strength to attack King's Landing." Aelor shook his head. "Scouts put Prince Oberyn a mere two days away, while Baratheon has reunited with Stark and Arryn at Riverrun just three days ago. Oberyn will beat them here with days to spare. The Lannisters gained the gates through deception; the rebels have no chance of that. They can't take King's Landing, and they won't try."

Aelor stretched, trying to work the soreness from his joints. If I do have to storm a fortress, I don't want to be slow. A sept would be a hell of a place to die. "Give me time, my lords. An opportunity will arise, and we will take it."

Loren Lannister hated sieges. He'd only been in one for two days and he already knew that.

Seven hundred men of the Westerlands were holed up in the home of the High Septon, trading arrows with Targaryen loyalists. Tywin was in the midst of a cold rage, the "council" Loren had just left just a façade for Tywin's rage. No one suggested surrender-though they surely were all thinking it-for fear of their life. So they stayed, cramped in and around a massive building for the Seven, on rationed food and wine. Loren didn't really care much about the food, though he loved it as much as any other man; it was the limited wine that was killing him.

So it had come to be that the Drunken Lion stumbled around the darkened corners and rooms of the Great Sept of Baelor, hands shaking, stomach in knots. Other soldiers avoided or openly mocked him, but Loren payed them no mind. He was in too much suffering to worry over slights. More than one had openly asked Loren how someone like him could have survived to rally to the Sept while so many other, stronger men had died.

It was a fair question. Loren didn't know either.

One second he'd been helping himself to the wine stores on the Street of… was it Sugar? Honey? Something like that. Another Lannister, one of his numerous cousins of Lannisport, had slit the baker's throat and was in the process of raping the man's daughter, but Loren had been much more invested in helping himself to the wealthy merchant's generous stores of Arbor Gold. Before either was certain what was happening, though, a big knight had burst in barking orders, loading Loren down with the wine he'd been drinking and forcing him to haul it up a hill filled with terrified peasants.

A hill. Loren hadn't climbed one of those on foot in years, and he certainly hadn't enjoyed it then.

All he wanted was a drink. Well, multiple drinks to be exact. So many drinks that he could pass out and not wake up until this war was long gone and he was back in his branch of the family's mansion back in Lannisport, surrounded by Arbor Gold that he could kill the hangover with.

Just how he worked his way into the High Septon's chamber he'd never know. The man himself, called the Tall One or Fat One or something else Loren didn't give two whits about, had been at a minor sept elsewhere in the city when the Lions invaded his home and Tywin had commandeered his chambers. Whether the Seven would frown on that Loren couldn't say, but he hadn't been familiar with them in a long time anyway. Loren began to turn, knowing that as much as he didn't want to be in the Sept at all he certainly didn't want to be in a room Tywin Lannister had claimed on his own, when his foot caught on the simple chest the High Septon used to store-well, scriptures or robes or something, Loren didn't really know-and he fell, big belly and all, to the smoothed stone floor.

He supposed it was particularly bad to curse in a sept, but curse Loren did, loudly and repeatedly. Loren lay there, stomach roiling and body shaking, wallowing in his own misery, when he saw the odd level of the floor under the High Septon's modest cot.

Part of Loren was opposed to snooping in the avatar of the Gods chambers. Another part of Loren was feeling too miserable to care about what he might find. A third part wanted to get out of that chamber as quickly as possible, before a wroth Tywin Lannister came back and decided to unleash his concealed fury on the poor alcoholic sap in his room.

And that fourth part? Well, that part of Loren was so done with life that he shoved the cot aside.

It was a trapdoor, wooden and fit into the stone of the floor, with a film of dust on top of it. Loren stared at it for a long time, not even sure he wanted to open the door. What could the High Septon keep under his cot?

It turned out to be a tunnel.

Loren went down the ladder, breaking through a plethora of spider webs. The tunnel was dark, so dark Loren couldn't make heads or tails of anything. Going back was a clear option and probably the smart thing, but this tunnel had to come out somewhere, and Loren was so desperate for a drink he'd have fought through the Seven Hells themselves for a full horn of ale. Whatever this tunnel was, he doubted it could be that bad.

And he surely wasn't going to get enough to drink in the Great Sept of Baelor.

The Drunken Lion hugged the wall, breaking through more spider webs and filth than he'd ever been through in his life, tripping and falling to the filthy wood planked floor more times than he could count. Whoever had built it clearly hadn't used it in a while, but Loren fought on, mainly because he knew he didn't want to be on the other end. I'm going somewhere there is wine, be it in this life or the next.

How long he spent in that dark tunnel Loren couldn't say, but when he finally bumped into another ladder it was all he could do to not shout for joy. The hatch above it required all of his not-so-impressive strength to shove open, as something had been pinned on top of it. But when it finally did break free with a crash, the things that hit his senses were the last thing Loren had expected. While the smells may have left for a little doubt, the sounds that were greeting his ears most certainly did not.

Loren Lannister was in a whorehouse.

It took his eyes a long while to adjust to the light after being in the dark for so long, but Loren finally managed to gather his surroundings as a store room. Foods, from sacks of potatoes to sides of dried beef, were neatly ordered in the room alongside…

Bless the Seven, could it be?

Wine, the love of his life, had been what was keeping Loren in the darkness. The Drunken Lion forgave it instantly, pulling a bottle from a case and uncorking it without so much as looking at the vintage, putting the wine to his lips and letting the alcohol pour down his parched throat.

Bliss. Utter and complete bliss.

Loren barely noticed the door to the storeroom open, barely even heard the scream or saw the exposed flesh of the naked Summer Island girl, and almost missed the sharp point of a steel sword that the burly, shirtless man the girl brought back pressed against his stomach.

"Tell Waters I found a lion," the gruff voice came, the man throwing his hand out when the girl remained cowering behind his broad back. " Go, girl." The whore ran to obey, Gruff pushing the point hard enough to make Loren understand that the alcohol, however blessed it made him feel, shouldn't be his main focus right now. While he'd been more than willing to die for just one more bottle mere minutes ago, the refreshing taste of the one he'd just downed gave him a new outlook on life. Pointedly, it made him realize he wanted to keep his.

"You been hiding here this whole time, Lannister scum?" The fully bearded man said, his chest covered in so much hair he looked very much like a bear. "Drinking up the wine to try and avoid what's comin' to ya?"

Loren held his hands up, though he didn't relinquish his grip on the neck of the bottle. "If I'd had been here that long, friend, I wouldn't be able to be talking to you right now, much less standing up straight."

Gruff snorted in slight amusement, though the press of steel didn't leave his stomach. "Fair point. But if you ain't been in there all this time, just where you been?"

Well, that was an interesting question. The truth was that'd he'd been in a sept, surrounded by men most likely hostile to the one currently pressing a sword to his stomach. Many of them were members of his family, the rest sworn to it, and all of them hadn't liked him. That being said, he was still a Lannister, and that meant he should be loyal to the other Lannister's whether they liked him or not, didn't it?

Well, that family had been planning to butcher Targaryen babes. They'd raped many women in the city and would have more if it weren't for the Targaryen Prince arriving when he did. They also had an aversion to giving a drunk the alcohol he needed to function, having pushed Loren down to a shaking, vomiting husk of the insignificant man he'd been before. But wouldn't telling this gruff bear of a man where that tunnel led and what his lords could do with that knowledge make him a traitor? Or did that make him a loyalist, since the Lannisters were technically rebels to the Iron Throne?

It all hurt too much to think of. These people had an abundance of wine, and Gruff was looking at the still open trapdoor anyway, his clearly uneducated but not necessarily stupid mind putting the pieces together slowly. Loren decided to save him the trouble.

"Let me have another bottle of wine," the Drunken Lion said, "and I'll tell you exactly where I've been."