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“Some might say a poisoned blade is dishonorable. But the point of battle is to maim and kill, the function of a blade & poison is to carry out that point. Ultimately, its not dishonor they rile against, but that their skill however great will lose against a foe who out maneuvered them.”
“But it’s a trick.”
“Is it?” He asked, leaning forward in his wheeled chair. “Let me tell you a secret. All warfare is deception. You deceive your enemy to the numbers in your army, men-at-arms, knights, squires, pikemen, bowmen, you deceive your enemy to the state of your arms and supply, you deceive. You trick. You hide your intentions, tactics, where you are and where you plan to be.”
Jon frowned and pondered the lesson. He stood to Prince Doran’s right, even sitting in his wheeled chair, the top of Jon’s head didn’t yet reach the prince’s shoulder. He knew that to take instruction from a prince of Dorne was an honor but that didn’t mean he had to like what he was being taught. He picked up painted man made of wood holding a pike, the model represented footmen. “What does a poisoned blade have to do with war? Prince Oberyn fought in single combat, but even his spear couldn’t murder an army.”
Doran turned his head slightly to the left, “couldn’t it?”
“Deception, Jon. The action is the same, you simply aren’t considering the scale. A poisoned blade might kill a handful more than a blade without, but a poisoned well? How many of the enemy troops will sicken and die before realizing the water is tainted? How many will die if you bait the grain supply with poison? If you leave tainted meat in the forests to sicken the wolves, bears, predators, until even hunting more meat won’t keep you safe.” Doran picked up a painted well, placing on the table near a hut meant to represent a village. “A poisoned blade may kill a dozen, a poisoned well can kill a hundred.”
Jon placed the little man back on the table. “But the villagers need that well. To water their livestock, their crops, even their children. What’s to stop them from drinking the water and dying along with the enemy troops?”
“Nothing.”
Jon just gapped at the prince, then realizing he must look like a fool shut his mouth so forcefully his teeth clicked. “But that’s murder!”
“All war is murder. All war is a crime. As moral individuals we can recognize that however justified our actions, those actions are still inherently wrong. But we aren’t just moral individuals, we’re princes, lords, knights, we have to push aside what we know to be wrong so that a greater goal might be achieved.” Leaning towards Jon, Doran ignored the pain in his legs so that he might catch the young man’s eyes, “as a knight and possibly a lord one day, you’ll need to poison a well to do damage to your enemy. You’ll need to steal food from smallfolk so that your own troops might eat, burn down grainers, expel useless mouths from your castle so that what food you have might last longer. You have a duty to your troops, a responsibility to your family and your house. Sometimes a moral code will only get you and those you love murdered.”
Doran’s eyes looked haunted as he spoke, and Jon wasn’t fool enough to question why. You couldn’t spend a year in Dorne without hearing what transpired when the Lannister’s took the Red Keep.
Jon’s father never spoke of the war, not in detail. He’d heard about how his lord father and companions had done battle with three King’s Guard.
One possibly his uncle.
And killed them.
How the Mad King was killed by Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. How the Lannister army had sacked King’s Landing. But as he’d begun his squireship under Ser Kyle at nine name days old, he’d been spared the details. The war with the Ironborn was the topic most brought up.
But in Dorne, they never forgot the details.
They said the princess Rhaenys was found by Lannister men hiding beneath her bed, that she’d been stabbed half a hundred times, a girl of three.
They said that the princess Elia had been found hiding with her infant son, Aegon, that Lannister men wretched the babe from her arms before smashing his body into paste against the stone wall.
They said the princess Elia, Dorne & Oberyn’s sister, had been raped by her son’s killers, before she too was butchered.
They said the mutilated bodies of those children had been wrapped in crimson Lannister cloaks, to hide the blood, and sat before the foot of the Iron Throne. That his lord Father, Eddard Stark, had cried out for justice for the killing of innocents.
They said the Robert Baratheon, the Usurper, had sneered down at those little bodies and said, “I see no innocents. Only dragonspawn.”
They said he laughed.
“Arms and armor, tactics, supply lines, the number of troops you can field. All of this is meaningless if you lack the will to act.”
Jon’s stomach twisted, Arya was twice as old as the princess Rhaenys had been, older than that little girl would ever grow to be. Would he sit quietly, calmly, and debate the merits of mass murder if Arya had been mutilated? Would poisoning wells and grain supplies be the tactics he used if Bran’s brains had been smashed against a castle wall?
Would a quiet madness burn in his eyes, as they did in Doran’s, if men raped Sansa before butchering her?
What would Jon do if the king laughed at his slaughtered kin?
“My prince?” Areo Hotah called out as he entered the solar.
Doran turned once again to Jon, and smiled as kindly as he could, eyes still black and haunted. “Run along now, Jon. The midday sun is high in the sky, and Sarella wished to meet you in the Water Garden. We’ll pick up our discussion tomorrow after you break your fast.”
And with that, the larger man, the captain of prince Doran’s guard, took hold of the handles at the back of his wheeled chair and pushed him towards the window facing his beloved blood oranges.
Jon was left looking down at the painted table, at huts meant to be villages, painted men on foot, and painted men on horse, golden stars placed at the locations of castles, wells, rivers, forests.
Jon was left looking down at Westeros, ever ready for war.