Dragonlord Chapter 174: The Imp's trap

The candles burned low as they lay together beneath soft linen sheets. The world outside was forgotten — the battles, the banners, the ambition for more land and power. In the quiet, there was only the sound of their breathing and the gentle whistle of the wind flitting past the curtain into their room.

Nymeria’s head rested on his shoulder, her fingers tracing idle circles along his chest. Her warm, nubile body pressed against his skin, providing a blanket of warmth no fur could provide in the known world.

“You don’t speak much when the world is still,” she said softly.

“I was taught that words are wind,” he murmured. “But sometimes... they fail you more when you have a beautiful woman you love in your bed.”

She laughed quietly at the praise.

“Then be silent and let me make love.” Nymeria said before planting a kiss on his chest that made him shiver in desire.

Harry turned his head, meeting her gaze in the dim light flitting past the curtain into their bed. In those dark eyes, he saw passion burn anew despite the many times they made love last night.

Harry flipped her so that Nymeria was underneath him and began to press kisses along her neck to her shoulder, but his magical senses suddenly tingled in warning.

He froze as the wards suddenly triggered, alerting him to a perceived danger.

“What?” Nymeria asked coyly.

“Something threatening is happening close to the Nimbus.” Harry said, climbing out of the bed in a jiffy and pulling his pants up.

“Stop joking and come join me in bed, Harrion.” Nymeria said with a snort, deliberately letting the silk sheet slip off her body, leaving herself nude.

But Harry remained focused on dressing himself, even though his eyes strayed a few times, and appreciating the flexibility of his lover. The sounds of clashing steel and the screams of men from outside grew louder and finally reached Nymeria’s ears.

“You were not joking!” Nymeria yelled, jumping out of the bed and putting on some clothes in a hurry.

Harry summoned the Elder Wand into his hand.

‘Accio Godkiller.’ Harry silently cast the spell.

The sword sheathed in the scabbard zoomed out of a cupboard into his open hand.

He swiftly ran out of the room and quickly climbed a flight of stairs that led to the main deck of the Nimbus. Just as he did, he was met with the scene of one of the assailants stabbing one of the crew members.

Harry’s eyes widened a fraction before a wave of destructive magic hissed out of the tip of the Elder Wand. A sickly yellow ball of destructive magic struck the enemy squarely on his head, and his head exploded in a shower of blood, gore and bones.

Five men in red-and-gold cloaks, tabards marked with the lion of Lannister, surrounded the mooring ropes. One held a torch; another tossed a clay pot of something oily onto the lower rigging, where the flames licked upward with frightening speed.

The flame repellent charm bound to the airship kept the ship immune to fire. But Harry found that the ropes used for moving goods into and out of the airship remained flammable. A clear oversight on his part as he watched the flame spread and sow discord on the deck as the burning pieces of ropes fell upon his guards.

‘Aguamenti.’ Harry jabbed his wand in the direction of the burning pile of ropes.

A powerful jet of water shot out of the tip of his wand and swept away the flames.

Harry was immediately set upon by a screaming enemy who nearly took the head off his shoulders. He luckily had the presence of mind to use a repelling charm at the last moment, which smacked away the sword from his enemy to the side before driving Godkiller forward. The man wailed in pain as his belly was slashed open. A swift stab through the throat ended the man’s misery, and he fell dead on the deck of Nimbus.

Smoke bellowed out from around him, and it was then that Harry noticed the castle nearby, where the Nimbus was parked, was burning. All around him, he could hear the clash of steel on the castle grounds.

He surged forward and slashed his sword at one of the enemy men assaulting his crew. He slammed the pommel of Godkiller into the forehead of his enemy, disorienting him.

Without missing a beat, Harry disarmed the man and knocked him out using a stunning spell.

‘I’ll need some for interrogation.’ Harry mused.

But that was not all.

There was a thin trail of smoke coming too close to the hull of the airship. This came to his notice as more of his guards poured onto the deck and began beating back the enemy.

Harry immediately rushed to the edge of the Nimbus, and his eyes widened upon seeing enemies pouring oil and lighting a fire beneath the ship.

Once again, he conjured a jet of water from the tip of his wand and doused the flames. Just as he was about to launch another spell, he let out a grunt and a searing pain flashed across his body from his shoulder.

His eyes widened when he saw that his left arm, holding Godkiller, had become flooded with his blood. He tracked the blood all the way to a bolt lodged against his shoulder.

Immediately, he placed a protective shield bubble around him.

He was just in time to erect the shield, as another bolt came straight in his general direction. It was off its mark, and the shield repelled the bolt easily, but Harry became alert to more threats. Harry tracked the bolt to its origin and used an exploding hex in the general direction. Then came the booming sound of the explosion, and Harry relaxed a little bit.

A man ran towards him with a sword raised. But that man had his head speared from behind by Nymeria.

“Harrion!” Nymeria yelled in concern as she wrenched her spear from the dead body.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Harry said with a grimace as pain flared from his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Nymeria asked worriedly.

“I’m fine. Focus on the fight.” Harry shouted back while casting a numbing charm on his left arm, followed by a healing charm that slowed his blood loss at least for the time being.

Nymeria stood by his side and defended him with her spear while he slowly secured Godkiller in its sheath on his belt. He struggled handling the sword with his one good arm, but somehow he managed despite the phantom pains he was feeling, even with his magic numbing the wounded shoulder.

Two more enemies appeared before Nymeria, who was already engaged in battle. So, Harry cut through the first attacker with a cutting curse, which struck the throat. After a spray of blood from the neck, the enemy fell dead on the floor. The second enemy found himself unable to move as Harry attacked with a body-binding curse.

The man fell flat on the deck like a plank of wood.

“Do not kill them.” Harry warned when he saw Nymeria readying her spear to deliver them a swift death. “I need to know what they know. I want the one who planned all of this.”

Nymeria nodded in understanding. She remained by his side and inspected the wound on his shoulder while he tentatively allowed the shield bubble to cover protectively over his lover as well.

“It’s a crossbow bolt,” Nymeria muttered under her breath as she studied the bolt lodged in his shoulder.

“How bad is it?” Harry asked, lighting the tip of his wand with light and holding it against his shoulder.

“I can’t say for sure. But it’s not punching through your heart or near the area. That’s a relief.” Nymeria said.

“Can you pull it out?” Harry asked with a wince.

Nymeria just nodded and carefully wrapped her fingers around the bolt.

“You ready?” she asked, her dark eyes looking searchingly into his own.

Harry took a deep breath and nodded.

She pulled the bolt back with lightning speed, making Harry grunt in pain. Once the bolt left his shoulder, the blood started to flow more, but Harry pressed the Elder Wand against the wound and started muttering a long incantation. He began binding healing charms around the wound. As the healing charms set in, the ruptured tissue inside the wound slowly knitted itself back together, giving him a momentary respite as the bleeding slowed down.

However, the wound remained open, and he felt dull pain in his shoulder. It was not entirely healed, and Harry suspected his shoulder bone had fractured under the force of the crossbow bolt.

The pain he felt became dull as his eyes remained set on the burning castle and the fires that were spreading inside Lannisport.

His eyes became hard and resolved to end this farce once and for all.

He raised the Elder Wand straight to the morning sky and let a bolt of blue magic fly. The spell exploded into bright sparks in the sky, followed immediately by dark clouds gathering above the city.

Lightning crackled across the darkening sky, followed by heavy rain pouring down on the city.

“Did you just make it rain?” Nymeria asked, looking incredulously at him before shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be this surprised. You’re the one who does the impossible as easily as breathing.”  

The guards posted inside the Nimbus finally subdued the last of the assailants. Only when that confirmation reached him did Harry allow himself to be taken inside the Nimbus to be healed.

As the healers carefully stitched his wound closed, Harry remained staring at the ceiling with several thoughts swirling in his head. The most prominent of which was that it was the first time he had been this severely injured since he reincarnated. The fact that he had gone on so long without sustaining a major injury or even a common cold once he was reborn in this world had made him assume he remained mortal.

But the fact that his shoulder bone was not resetting itself even after an hour, and the wound was somehow not knitting itself together, made him realise he was, for all intents and purposes, mortal.

‘At least, this body is most likely mortal.’ Harry corrected in his mind as he stared at the ceiling of his room.

The wound was more or less a confirmation, but he still had to wait for his seventeenth birthday to say for sure, which was several months away. It was the age of majority for a wizard, where the magic inside a wizard’s body undergoes a dynamic resurgence and settles at its prime. The Hallows remained bound to his soul, but he had to be sure they would not turn his body immortal like the last time.

Keeping aside his doubts about his body’s immortality, he thought about the fact that he had gone lax in personal security. When he was a helpless child in Winterfell, he had resorted to rune-enforced wards to weed out any possible assassins. It had worked splendidly as well, and that was how he gained the current spy network.

But he could now see that the reclamation of the Elder Wand undoubtedly gave him a false sense of security.

‘Somewhere along that way, I convinced myself of my invulnerability because of my magical power.’ Harry admitted with a thoughtful frown. ‘This cannot continue. I’ll have to make some changes.’

His assumption that normal weapons were incapable of harming him was proven false with this incident. The chances of a lucky arrow or a crossbow bolt claiming his life were now as real as day and night. With that realisation came ideas to prevent such crude weapons from ever harming his mortal body.

‘Shield hats or maybe enchanted clothes might do the trick.’ Harry mused.

He spent the day resting in bed, thoughts churning in his mind about all the possible ways he could realistically ensure his personal safety.

*******

The next day, Harry insisted on taking stock of what had happened and seeing whether the interrogation of the prisoners had yielded any results.

Despite the protests of Nymeria, he walked into the holding cells inside the Nimbus. After the battle yesterday, the prisoners were dragged to the lower hold and tied to stout wooden chairs bolted to the floor.

Harry entered with Nymeria in tow, with his left arm in a sling.

The air was dim, the lanterns casting long shadows.

Harry stepped before one of the prisoners — a wiry, sharp-eyed man whose head still bled from Harry’s blow with his sword’s pommel.

“Tell me who sent you,” Harry said, eyeing the three men with a cold gaze.

Only silence greeted his demand.

He thought of using a mind probe to glean the truth from these men, but he so wanted these fools to suffer. So, he held back on that, wanting to see these men broken for what they dared to do yesterday.

Harry nodded at Josera, who pressed the flat of a hot dagger against the man’s forearm. The hiss of searing flesh filled the room. The man opened his mouth, and the holding cell was filled with the man’s screams. The other two prisoners struggled against the restraints and watched with fear as one of their own got his skin burnt away.

“I’ll ask again,” Harry said softly, dangerously calm. “Who sent you?”

“I’ll never…”

That was as far as the man managed before Josera pressed another hot knife under the man’s thigh. The scream this time climbed to a higher pitch. Josera started to cut into the flesh of the man’s thigh with the hot knife, and Harry watched the man suffer in unbearable pain.

“Josera.” Harry called and nodded in the direction of one of the other prisoners who was shivering in fright at the fate of his friend.

Josera moved towards the frightened prisoner with another hot knife, spiking the man’s fear to new heights.

The prisoner gasped, shaking, sweat pouring down his face.

“Please don’t hurt me— it was the Imp! It was the Imp!”

Harry stiffened.

“Tyrion Lannister?” he asked incredulously.

“Aye,” the man panted, his eyes wild with fright. “Lord Tyrion sent us inside Lannisport and had us stay underneath the city’s drain tunnels. He said the wolves would take the bait — think the city’s theirs, think the lions are beaten.”

Harry narrowed his eyes.

“He knew Lannisport would fall and sent you ahead to set a trap?” Harry asked.

“Aye. Wanted you all relaxed. Wanted to burn your ship when your guard dropped. Then he’d strike — thought your army would abandon the Westerlands when you died,” the man said in a rush.

“That deceitful dwarf!” Nymeria cursed. “He had the gall to seek aid while spinning a story of being under house arrest.”

“That has yet to be established. They could be told to say that, or they might believe it to be the truth.” Harry said.

“Are you telling the truth?” Josera brought the hot knife close to the man’s eyes.

“Please, you have to trust me. I’m telling the truth! I’m telling the truth!” the man said, desperately straining against restraints. “Lord Tyrion himself paid us in gold.”  

But there was one way to establish the truth in his arsenal.

“Look at me and tell it true if you value your life.” Harry said harshly.

The prisoner, scared out of his mind, obeyed without delay. As the prisoner stuttered out the story of the Imp being in charge of the drains of Casterly Rock and Lannisport during Tywin Lannister’s reign and using this knowledge to craft a plan to kill him, Harry employed his legilimency skills.

He easily slipped into the prisoner’s mind and saw it all.

He saw the depth of Tyrion Lannister’s plan through the eyes of the prisoner. He realised with shock the depth of Tyrion’s mind despite the physical limitations suffered by the man. He saw the way Tyrion planted men beneath all the major keeps inside the city with pitcher oil and enough troops to lead an attack against his airship.

Harry pulled back from the mind and fell into thought. The plan was almost perfect, and it was executed nearly flawlessly. The only mistake Tyrion Lannister made was expecting Harry to choose to stay inside a castle instead of the Nimbus. He also had to appreciate Tyrion Lannister’s strategic skills to foresee his presence in the city even when Ser Axel Florent was fleeing the city with the Royal Fleet.

He stepped out of the cell after he learned what he wanted from the prisoners.

“Shall I send orders to gather the army and ready the Nimbus, my prince?” Josera asked once they were outside.

“To do what?” Harry raised an eyebrow.

“To siege Casterly Rock and punish the Lannisters for this insult and threat to your person, my prince.” said Josera.

“We are at war with the Westerlands and House Lannister. It’ll be silly of us to expect them to throw down their sword and accept defeat. I’d have been insulted if they’d surrendered without a fight.” Harry said with a chuckle.

“So, what? You’re going to let this attempt on your life go unanswered?” Nymeria asked, looking put off.

“Hardly. I think we should focus on what we came here to do.” Harry said patiently. “The plan remains the same. We remove all Lannister loyalists from Lannisport and join with the Riverlands army to capture Casterly Rock.”

“The Imp is more dangerous than we thought. Perhaps, we should revisit taking the fight to him sooner than we thought, Harrion.” Nymeria said as they moved to his room.

“Tyrion wanted us complacent. Wanted me dead. And wanted the Nimbus destroyed — because without it, we lose the skies. We lose our advantage. And he knew Casterly Rock was vulnerable with the Nimbus here.”

“So, what will you do?” Nymeria asked as she helped Harry into bed.

“I think I’ll enjoy meeting the dwarf of the Rock and look forward to seeing House Lannister crumble into irrelevance.” Harry said with a chuckle.