A Week Later
It was the time of evening, just an hour before the sun was about to set.
A cool breeze ruffled the flaps of hundreds upon hundreds of tents lying on a large hill in the Disputed lands. This hill came under the land occupied by Tyrosh and on it laid the camp of the sellswords company, Company of the Cat.
The company of the cat, also known as Cats, was one of the more famous companies active in Essos. It was led by a captain known as Bloodbeard, a red-bearded savage commander, who has a ferocious appetite for slaughter and enjoys both wine and women abundantly.
Five great pots were standing on big fires in the middle of the tents and behind each of the pots stood a cook with ladles in their hands.
One of the cooks looked into the pots and after seeing that it was almost cooked he nodded towards a nearby young aide who immediately ran towards a small hanging bell and began striking it with a tiny hammer in quick succession making a loud ringing noise resound throughout the camp.
The moment sound reached their ears, all the sellswords quickly stopped whatever they were doing and eagerly left their tents in groups with wooden plates and bowls in their hands.
They quickly began to line up in front of the pots, impatiently waiting for their turn to get their food. The cooks were not slow either, they filled the bowls with soup with their right hand and handed over a piece of bread with their left hand, making the line move very quickly.
Some distance from the big pots stood a smaller pot, it seemed to be filled with a much more aromatic soup with a higher quantity of meat in it. It was a pot that was placed there exclusively to serve only a limited number of higher-ranked people in the company and the normal sellswords could only look at it enviously from afar.
A fit slender man with lustrous black hair took his food from the smaller pot but instead of going towards the only wooden table there where the higher-ups sat, he roamed among the foot soldiers sitting on the ground. His eyes roved left and right as if searching for something before he finally found what he was looking for and began walking towards an isolated spot at the end of the hill.
There was only a single person sitting on the edge with a half-finished plate of soup and bread forsaken beside him. The man with rat-brown hair seemed to be lost in his thoughts and was watching the sun slowly sink over at the horizon.
"So there you are..." Oberyn greeted the short-haired man with a smile while taking a seat beside him.
"You found me..." replied Obara, Oberyn's eldest, with a sigh.
She already had the manliest of faces amongst all her sisters, so it didn't take more than a haircut to make her look like a man to fit in among the sellswords. When her father had expressed his desire to roam the Essosi wilderness, Obara had immediately expressed her wish to accompany him and Oberyn, who rarely stopped his daughters from doing anything, agreed with a few conditions.
"I did..." Oberyn nodded his head before raising his eyebrow at the half-finished food plate and asked, "You didn't finish your food today either..."
"This is not worthy of being called food!" she snorted as her mouth curled up in disgust, "This soup is just salt water with not a single piece of meat in it and this bread is even harder and drier than a piece of rock. Not even dogs would eat this shit..."
"My dear daughter, didn't I teach you that life is all about compromises..."
"Ugh! I don't want to hear about it, especially from you," she said while glaring enviously at the plate in his hands, "Why do I get to eat such repulsive fare while you can indulge in that meat-filled soup."
"That is of course, because I am the best fighter in this company and they know it," her father replied with an arrogant smirk. "So you can get the same fare if you can somehow beat me..."
"Che!" Obara clicked her tongue and turned her head away with a disgruntled look on her face, "Why are we even here, anyway."
"To have fun... and get some battle experience, along the way," he replied while taking a piece of bread and dipping it into the soup.
"What experience?! We have been here in this trash company for more than three months now, and have only been in two battles, and they too were nothing more than skirmishes. All we ever do is eat, train and guard... I would have gotten a lot more experience fighting bandits back home than here..."
"Why, Obara, do I hear a hint of defeat in your tone? Don't tell me you want to go back so soon. Because I clearly seem to remember someone insisting that they could handle all the hardships that would come their way without complaining a single time, and now you want to give up just because the food is bad..."
"I am not giving up!" Obara retorted angrily, "I just don't want to fucking waste my time lazing away with these excuses of warriors who are too afraid to get into an actual battle."
"Fine..." Oberyn sighed before taking a long sip of his soup, "If it bothers you so much, I guess we can leave this company and move to another one... The Second Sons, perhaps, I hear they regularly get into battles—" midway through his sentence, Oberyn abruptly stopped with his eyes widened in shock before he suddenly turned to the side and spit out everything that was in his mouth.
"What? What happened?" she asked in an alarmed tone as she saw her father coughing and spitting as much of his food as he could.
Oberyn didn't immediately reply, instead, he once again picked up the bowl of soup and placed it under his nose.
He closed his eyes and smelled the soup for a whole minute before his eyes opened with a grim look. He threw his bowl away and did the same with his daughter's abandoned bowl but got the same result.
"W-What are you doing father?"
Oberyn still didn't reply, he just silently turned his head towards the camps and took a long pondering look at the huge pots that were almost empty by now after having served most of the company.
Oberyn stayed in that position and thought for quite a while before he shook his head with a sigh and stood up. "We need to go, Obara!" he said and immediately began walking towards the camps.
"Wha—Wait!" Obara quickly jumped up and followed after her father and tried to match his brisk pace, "What happened exactly? Why are you in such a hurry?"
"There's no time to explain," Oberyn said in a low tone, his eyes scanning left to right as if expecting enemies to jump out of the shadows at any moment, "I need you to go get your things from camp, and meet me at the stables as soon as you can,"
"But—"
"Now!" he growled with a scary look before leaving her behind without waiting for her answer.
"Ugh!" Obara grunted in frustration but didn't dare disobey her father, and immediately began running towards her tent.
She shared a tent with three more men but they were all out eating their dinner at the moment so she thankfully didn't meet anyone when she entered.
She didn't have too much to pack as most of the money and other valuables usually stayed with Oberyn in his much bigger personal tent, so she just took the essentials such as her main weapon, a dagger, and a small bundle filled with clothes and some meat jerky before moving towards the exit.
After leaving her tent she immediately made for the stables at a quick pace. Along the way, she got many weird looks, but no one came up to her to ask why she was carrying her clothes with her.
A few minutes later she caught sight of her father standing against the fenced stables, tapping his foot impatiently, "What took you so long?" Oberyn asked in a hushed tone, before immediately jumping over the fence straight into the midst of the horses.
"I was as fast as—wait, where are the rest of your things," she exclaimed in bewilderment while following him, as she knew that he had more than a chest filled with expensive things in his tent and not just the small bundle he carried on his back.
"No time," Oberyn replied shortly while moving purposefully towards his personal horse, "You can take that one," he pointed towards a nearby horse that was a bit more robust than its neighbours.
"Y-Yes!"
"Let's go then," he said the moment Obara had mounted her horse.
They slowly cantered on their horses towards the only exit in the stables, but just as they were about to exit, a shabby smelly man suddenly jumped in front of them out of nowhere.
"Oi! Oi! When did you get in—and where the hell are you taking the horses?!" he asked angrily while spreading his arms wide to stop them from leaving.
"We are on urgent business for the commander," Oberyn replied in a stern voice while glaring at the stable hand, "Move!"
"N-No!" the man flinched a little but stood his ground, "No, the last time someone stole a horse, the commander almost castrated me, I-I won't let you go unless you can get the commander here—" his eye widened and his words abruptly stopped, courtesy of a spear that entered his neck faster than he could blink.
"Let's go," Oberyn repeated while pulling his spear out of the gurgling man, and placing it back horizontally on the horse.
Obara didn't ask any questions and just quietly followed after her father as they galloped towards the exit. She knew that if her father was ruthless enough to kill a bystander, then surely something was very wrong here.
"Who goes there!!" shouted the guard standing in front of the wooden barricades that acted as the camp's entry and exit.
"Urgent business, Commander Order!" her father repeated the same excuse, but Obara was afraid that they wouldn't be able to reply with the same method if they got caught again.
Because unlike the unarmed stable hand, there were almost five guards here, each of them armed with swords, and even if she and her father, somehow managed to deal with them, they would create enough clamour to alert the other sellswords and then they would be done for.
"I didn't get such orders," The guard answered with a confused look on his face.
"Because it's urgent, you idiot!" Oberyn barked loudly, making the guard flinch, "Here, the commander's personal letter," he said while taking a letter from his pocket and throwing it at the man.
"Um..." the guard hurriedly picked up the letter and opened it, but he was barely literate and could only read the first line with some difficulty when Oberyn shouted once again.
"Read enough?! Now, open the gates... Quickly!" He glared impatiently at the guard with his infamous viper gaze that he kept only for his enemies, making the guard flinch.
"O-Open it!" the leader ordered the other guards after a bit of hesitation, as he was quite scared of the Westerosi man and didn't want to interrupt the Commander's business now that he had gotten the letter as proof.
The moment the guards raised the wooden plank, the two horses galloped out through with their fastest speed and a few minutes later, they were no more than a small dust cloud in the distance.
"Y-You had the commander's letter?" Obara asked in a confused tone after they had gotten far enough from the camp and slowed the horses to a normal pace.
"Of course not," Oberyn replied with a scoff, "That was just your uncle's latest letter urging me to come back,"
"Oh..." Obara let out simply, trying not to show how impressed she was with her face, as her father was already quite arrogant and didn't need any big of a head, "Well... can you tell me now, what the rush was all about?"
"There was poison in the food," Oberyn said in a grim tone.
"I gathered that much," Obara replied impatiently, "But why did we have to leave immediately? We could have just found the bastards who did it and taken care of them, why did we have to run away like—"
"The poison wasn't just in my food," Oberyn interrupted his daughter calmly, "Yours was also poisoned... and so was probably everyone else's..."
"Wha—my food was poisoned?! B-But I ate almost half of that!" she burst out with a pale face.
"Don't worry. The poison wasn't fatal, just some harmless laxatives... It would just leave you powerless and with a belly ache for the next few hours, that's all..."
Obara immediately slumped on her horse in relief at the information before looking up and asking, "But then that means..."
"Yes! There's probably going to be a large-scale battle tonight," he said with a quick glance back at the calm camp in the distance.
"B-But couldn't we have alerted the others, and prepared for the enemy," she still didn't feel too good about running away like cowards. She could almost imagine getting laughed at by her sisters when they heard about it.
"It was too late by the time I found out, most of the sellswords were already halfway through their food," Oberyn shook his head, "And besides if someone went through all this trouble to poison everyone, then they most definitely had some form of surveillance over the camp to make sure nothing goes wrong, and I didn't want to spook them into attacking earlier..."
"W-Who could it have been?"
"Probably one of the other sellswords company—" Oberyn began to say but halfway through his words, he was distracted by a massive fire back in the camp, "Oh! looks like it has already started..."
"That's the food storage right..." Obara asked in a stunned voice.
"Yes, it is," Oberyn nodded grimly, "It's going to be a long and bloody night for the Cats..."
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