Balon II

Balon was out strolling through the gardens in Maegor’s Holdfast when he tasted blood in the night.

He had stopped to sit on a low stone bench near a swaying bed of primroses, so he could finally feel the wind on his skin and smell something other than the mix of dampness and anguish of Qyburn’s workshop.

Above him, the evening sky was dark and cloudless and full of stars, like black silk studded with silver moonstones. It looked soft and inviting to his touch, and he almost found himself reaching up with black-veined fingers before he caught himself.

Would he really want to stain something so beautiful with his corruption? Qyburn had already ruled out the possibility of contamination—hence Balon being allowed to walk the gardens for the night—but the idea of touching anything with his tainted hand, even something as distant and immeasurable as the very sky, sent bile rushing up his throat.

Feeling heartsick, Balon snatched his hand back to his side. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the world in black and white as it happens when the thirst gets to him, could still savor the blood he’d drank earlier in the day, and all the days prior for weeks now.

No matter how long he’d spent trying to wash it down, the taste was still there, foul and rotten to his mind, but sweet as honey to his tongue.

Just remembering it sent a pleasant thrill through his body, which was always followed by a shiver of disgust that sent maggots crawling down his spine. Was that what he had become? A blood-drinking monster like the stories of Alys Rivers from Harrenhal, who bathed in maiden’s blood to keep her youth.

For the first time in many years, Balon wanted to bring his knees up to his chest and just bawl for his long dead mother, as he did when he was a young boy scared of the shadows around every corner of his father’s castle.

Instead, he took that despair, crushed it until it could fit between two blackened fingers, then buried it in the deepest of pits in the recesses of his mind and plugged the hole with the only thing he still had. Duty. He knew couldn‘t feel sorry for himself like a child anymore. He was a knight of the Kingsguard, by the grace of King Tommen of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name.

Only children and old done men should weep feeling sorry for themselves, he thought, and I am neither.

Reaching down, Balon plucked a primrose off the ground. Ser Boros was a fool most undeserving of his white cloak, but he had the right of it when he badgered them about stopping once in a while to smell the flowers. He could already smell the flowers' sweet fragrance from where he sat, but Balon had weeks worth of dungeon stench to cleanse out of his system, so he brought the flower close to his face and inhaled.

The petals tickled the bridge of his nose, and he enjoyed the simplicity of its sweetness. But there was something else far away too, as if lingering at the edges of his senses. Pausing for a moment, Balon breathed in again, deeper, and he sensed it clearly now, stronger than the sweet primrose an inch away from his nose.

The rusty taste of blood was suddenly rich in the air, fresh and hot and still pumping, and all the other smells in the world suddenly dulled. And it wasn’t just the smells that narrowed in focus. An icy cold wave washed through Balon, like the black oil spreading through his veins. His vision turned black and white, and he felt like there was a crouched shadow-cat inside of him, hind legs taut as a bowstring, ready to snap at a moment’s notice.

The smell of blood had set off the predator within him. A sense of urgency had taken Balon, a need to move and to act on his instincts. So he took off from the gardens, following the smell of blood as a hound trailing its prey. He wore only a black and white doublet and black breeches, and he cursed himself for a fool for not even taking a sword before leaving Qyburn’s dungeon.

The castle was dark and quiet this late at night, and slipping unnoticed came easier than he remembered. He avoided any guards or servants he came across; he could smell a person’s sweat from three corridors down, hear the blood drumming in their veins, and keeping to the shadows along the halls was as natural as swinging a sword. His steps made nary a noise against the marble floor as he approached a set of stairs, his breathing no louder than the flutter of a moth’s wings.

Taking the steps two at a time, Balon arrived at the west wing of the castle. The smell of blood thickened here, and he noticed he was nearing the Tyrell apartments. The halls had been eerily quiet the closer he approached the smell of blood, so the first scream caught him off guard; it was a weak and distant thing that came and went as if carried in a gust of wind through gaps in thick doors and strong walls, but nothing seemed to escape his ears now.

Balon damned discretion and took off in a dead run, only stoppind when he saw the first dead guards after turning three corners. There were two of them, sprawled over expanding pools of blood, swords half-way out of scabbards. The sight sent a pang of hunger through him, his nose sniffing the air as if the sweetest perfume had just been sprayed near his face. Saliva pooled inside Balon’s mouth. He wanted nothing more than to stop what he was doing, drop to his knees, and lap at the hot blood staining the floor.

I’m no dog! he screamed to himself, though his knees trembled beneath him. I am a knight! A knight of the Kingsguard!

Tearing his eyes away from the blood, Balon realized he’d been there before, escorting the king. The door at the end of the hallway was the Lady Margaery’s apartments. He could hear muffled screams and urgent whispers coming from within.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed through the primal feeling of thirst that threatened to consume him and let it invigorate him instead. He allowed the thirst to set his muscles tight, his mind racing and hungering.

He let the monster within him loose. Then he ran straight at the door, shoulder couched.

Margaery Tyrell had not yet joined the royal family, but he knew the king would unequivocally care for her safety, and Balon had no intention of letting the king down. The impact came like a dozen stinging bees all over him. Instead of crashing open the door with his bulk as he expected, the wood exploded into splinters around him, cutting at his arms and face.

Balon had a half-second to take in the room—a young girl dead on the ground and four men carrying another three girls kicking and screaming to a fend in the stonework at the far wall of the room—before there was a sword swinging his way. A black-dressed man had been watching at the door when he broke in, and it didn’t take long for him to react.

But Balon wasn’t a mere man anymore. He slipped around the sword as gracefully as a waterdancer, one gliding step to take him out of the blade’s reach, followed by another quick one to close the distance before the man could come up with a backswing.

Then his fist shot forward like a whip, aiming at the swordsman’s unguarded throat.

Blood and gore suddenly sprayed him, and Balon felt bone snapping against his closed fist as easy as if it were a writing pen. When he looked, it was blank eyes that gazed back, and the only thing keeping the man’s body standing was his own arm half-way into the neck. Ballon pulled back in a daze, letting the body drop in a heap of crimson as he stared at his blood-stained black hands.

He heard the running footsteps as clearly as he would a marching drum, but he was too startled to consciously move, and it was only the monster’s instinct within him that made him dodge the next sword.

His body folded in half until he was looking up at the gold-lined ceiling, his back almost parallel to the floor. A sharp blade cut empty air only inches above him, and Balon was grabbing his attacker by the wrist and throwing him against the wall before he even knew he was doing it.

The man hit the stone wall with a dull thud before falling lifelessly to the ground. And for a moment, the room fell into stunned silence.

Then, “Ser Balon! Hel—” the words were out before the kidnapper could clamp a hand down on Margaery’s mouth. He had her from the back near the passage in the wall, one arm going over her neck. The other two girls were in similar situations to her side. She looked at him desperately for a second, then she bit down on the fingers over her mouth until it looked as if she was feeding on the blood gushing out. The man yelped and let go, and Margaery dashed away across the room.

At the same time, Mira Forrester swung a backward heel at her kidnappers crotch. The man let her go with an umph of exhaled breath, almost dropping him to his knees. She fished for something on the leggings of her half-torn nightdress, then came up stabbing him in the stomach, once, twice, three times, before he found his strength and pushed her away.

That seemed to break the last kidnapper’s spirit. “Fuck this,” he said, then he threw Margaery’s cousin to the ground and took off toward the open passage.

The other two seemed to come to the same conclusion and fled after him, one with a bleeding hand and the other hanging limping with half his bowels out for view.

Balon didn’t mean for them to escape. Picking up the sword from the ground, he rushed after them, ignoring the northern girl as she slipped past him and went to the door, most likely to call for help.

He moved as if in a dream, his steps more leaps than anything, and the first kidnapper went down at the threshold of the tunnel, with one less arm and his throat slashed clean through. That had been the one with the three stab wounds, and the other two were already running deeper into the pitch-black passage.

He could hear their labored breathing as they ran; he could smell their fear. The light from the room reached no more than five yards inside the passage, but when Balon crossed into the darkness, his eyes could see as clear as if the moon was shining down on him.

That shadow cat inside of him growled with hunger and glee. Then he went hunting.

xxxx

When Baelon came back to the open passage, blood dripped from all his limbs, and he could barely resist the urge to lick his lips. He was so thirsty.

“Are you alright, ser?” He heard someone ask in a soft voice. In the distance, shouts and pounding footsteps approached.

Without saying a word, Balon reached for the stone slab with his black-veined hand and pulled it shut, locking himself inside before the girl on the other side could open her mouth again. When the last finger of light died, Balon felt himself slipping to the ground, the darkness of the tunnel swallowing him whole.

He grabbed the first thing on the floor he could find, an arm, he thought numbly, and brought it to his mouth, sucking the life’s blood still gushing out. The taste was as sweet and foul as he remembered, filling him with a black energy.

Energy for what? He wondered. To hunt men down some more?

Numb, he sucked on the arm again. Hot blood ran down his cheeks, or was it tears? Balon didn’t know. He just kept drinking.