"Should we make a stop and pitch our tent now, Father," Obara asked while glancing towards the slowly darkening sky as they rode their horses through a rough rocky path amidst flatland filled with grasses.
They had left the Camp of Cats about an hour and a half ago, and while they weren't galloping at their fastest speed at the moment like they were earlier, they were still moving away from the camp at a constant pace, so Obara was sure that they should be out of the crosshairs of the battle by now and can take a rest without worrying, and besides... "It'll be night soon, Father, and I don't want to move blindly in these unfamiliar mountains."
"Just a bit more... and we'll reach a narrow gorge between valleys,"
The path that Oberyn was taking them through was somewhat of a shortcut to Myr, the nearest free city. But the path was still a relatively unknown one because the natural gorge they were about to cross was very unsuitable for an army to pass through... as it was the perfect sight for an ambush. But they could take this path without much fear as no one would bother to ambush them out here in Essos.
"So we shall camp at that canyon's entrance..." Oberyn continued distractedly as most of his mind was still back on the poison he had tasted in the camp.
The poison had just been too familiar for him to easily forget... the moment he had tasted it Oberyn had felt as if someone had taken a poison straight out of his own cabinet and then tried to feed it to him...
"Is that the Gorge you were talking about, Father," Obara asked about ten minutes later while excitedly pointing towards the rocky canyon in the distance.
She hadn't exactly had a filling dinner that day, and even though the poison had run its course through her body by now, it had still left her very weakened. So she was very relieved that they were soon going to set up camp as she wanted nothing more at that moment than to eat her fill and sleep the night off.
"Let's go then—"
"No! Wait!" Oberyn suddenly hissed while stopping his excited daughter from galloping towards their destination.
"Whoa!! What happened?"
"Look at that," he calmly replied while pointing towards a thin black cloud of smoke that was almost invisible in the impending night, "There's a fire at the entrance... someone's here before us..."
...
The shadows danced wildly behind Jon as he warmed his hands around the fire. He was sitting on a rock located at the entrance to the gorge, while Sam was a few feet behind him, humming as he fed hay to Peggy and his own horse.
Jon had made the horses use their full speed to reach this location before their target so Sam's horse was completely exhausted, but Peggy looked as if it had been nothing more than a warm-up and was still good to go.
"They are here," Jon's abrupt announcement broke the silence of the night, startling Sam out of his zone. But it only took the young Tarly a second to gather himself and he immediately dropped the feed in his hand and jogged towards his luggage.
After taking out his axe and his shield from the luggage, he strapped them in before quickly running to stand behind Jon in an alert stance. After taking a few deep breaths, he began looking vigilantly at the tall grasses surrounding the entrance, waiting for their quarry to come out.
But they didn't...come out.
A minute passed... then two... and even when five minutes passed and his hands began aching from holding the same position, not a single came out of the foliage. But just as Sam was about to open up his mouth to ask Jon about it... he spoke up.
"Why not join me, if you're already here," he shouted while casually looking towards a point in the darkness where Sam could see nothing but tall withering grasses.
But once again, no one came forward... it was as if there was no one out there and that Jon had just made an embarrassing mistake, but Sam knew that that wasn't possible, so he didn't lose his vigilance in the slightest.
"Come now, I thought we already became familiar enough with each other after the last time we met... So do we need to be so vigilant of each other once again... Prince Oberyn."
A loud snort came from the darkness before two tall silhouettes on horses came out from amidst the grasses one after the other.
Both of them had the typical Dornish looks, one was a tall fit man with snake-like eyes who was looking at Jon with a not-so-amused smile, while the other was a similarly slender but muscular "man" with rat-brown hair and was looking quite irritated. Both of them carried their spear in their hands and neither of them bothered to get off of their horses as they came into the clearing in front of Jon and Sam.
"You know them, Father?" Obara asked abruptly in a hostile tone before Oberyn could answer Jon. The Dornishwoman was quite irate at the moment that just when a good night of sleep looked so close at hand, these people appeared and ruined it for her.
"Just some acquaintances I met during my visit to Citadel," Oberyn replied without looking away from the two lads, who had grown up quite a lot since the last time he had seen them.
The fat child who couldn't stop shaking due to fear last time, was now standing tall and fit, with an axe in his while looking at Oberyn with a nervous but determined gaze. And the other one, the one who had held a dagger to his daughter's throat right in front of him and had even dared to steal from him, seemed to have grown up to become even more calm and brazen... considering that he was still casually sitting on his rock uncaring about the spears in their hands.
Of course, unlike before, he now knew who they were.
There were not many 12-year-old fat runaway nobles in the world so he only needed a few days after their encounter to find out that one of the rats was named Samwell Tarly. The other one had been an enigma to him for a while... until he got that letter from his friend Willas Tyrell asking him to find out about a young northerner bastard named Jon Snow.... and the pieces had quickly fallen into place after that.
"I am quite hurt, Prince Oberyn that you only think of us as mere acquaintances. I thought we had moved past that," Jon said with an amused smile on his face, "And besides we are now fellow Westerosi in a foreign land... so shouldn't we sit around the fire, share some stories and eat food with each—"
"I would have been delighted to do that boy if we had met on the road by a coincidence... but this is not a coincidence is it?" Oberyn looked quite calm on the surface but the tight grip he had on his spear could tell anyone that he was taking Jon a lot more seriously than the last time they met. "Because from here I stand, you two look as if you were waiting for us here... so can you tell me how that came to be?"
"Oh, that... Well, let's just say that the camp, you were part of a few hours ago, was on the opposite side of the one we were part of—"
"Ah! So you were the one behind that stunt back at the camp..." Oberyn's expression suddenly cleared as a lot of his doubts from earlier immediately went away, "It seems that you're putting that little book you stole from me to quite the use..."
"Oh, you have no idea," Jon said with a wide smile on his face, "Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to have any more of those books would you, because it would really help me a lot," Oberyn's eyebrow wildly twitched at the brazen request, "and don't worry, I will adequately compensate you this time—"
"Ugh! Can you move this along, Father!" Obara abruptly interrupted with an impatient expression while shifting uncomfortably on her horse. She had grown quite tired of this back-and-forth between her father and this arrogant boy, "Are we killing him or are we passing him by? You just need to choose one of them..."
Oberyn had no reply to his daughter's question, as he was contemplating that very same thing all along.
If the boys in front of him were just some runts of nobles from back home, then he wouldn't have hesitated so much about it... but one of them had the potential to have a very mysterious identity, which was leaving him undecided at the moment, as he couldn't be sure that this fellow wouldn't be useful in the future when the shit hit the fan... so he felt that it would be quite a waste to kill him at the moment...
"She's Obara, right? The oldest one among your daughters," Jon suddenly asked Oberyn, while turning towards the woman cosplaying as a man, "It is quite an honour to meet you—"
"How do you know who I am," Obara cut off his greeting as her eyes narrowed and her fingers tightened around the spear at the casual way the man in front of her had recognised her despite her disguise, "I don't think we've met before..."
"Well, all the prince's daughters are quite famous, aren't they?" Jon replied with a shrug, "And I have heard that the eldest daughter is the—Er—most martially inclined one among them all..."
"You wanted to say the ugliest, didn't you?" Obara asked in a menacing tone while barely fighting the impulse to just charge and skewer the wretch in front of her.
He actually was, but Jon would be quite stupid if he admitted that, "No, I wasn't." so he denied it before immediately turning towards Oberyn to get back to his goal, "What say you, Prince Oberyn? Will you care to join me at the fire and share some food... I've got a freshly caught rabbit behind me... so we can eat, talk and get to—"
"Why?" Oberyn scoffed with a sarcastic smile on his face, "So that you can try and poison me for the second time in a day?"
"That is quite the ugly accusation, Prince," Jon replied with a raised eyebrow, "I take the guest rights very seriously, so I would never even think of doing something like that. After all, I am a Northerner... not a Dornishmen who are infamous for their killing of someone under a peace banner—"
"Argh! That does it!" Obara snapped, as the last taunt finally managed to breach her patience and she abruptly pulled the reins on her horse and charged towards Jon like an arrow, her spear raised and ready to stab the annoying scoundrel.
"Obara! No!" Oberyn cried only a moment after he saw his daughter's horse take off, but it was too late... and by then all he could do was hope that she only injure and not kill him...
But what actually happened was so wildly out of his imagination that it left him shocked.
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