The King of Winters

Chapter - 80

The air smelled of paper and dust and years. Before him, tall wooden shelves rose up into dimness, crammed with leatherbound books and huge tomes and volumes recorded by the maesters throughout the history. A faint yellow glow from the lamp lightened up the table where Andrew sat reading after a long time. He had brought only one little lamp here just enough to show him the words from the books. He did not risk bringing a torch or other thing into the library of Riverrun, preferring not to risk an open flame amidst so much old dry paper. Instead he had followed the light of the lamp, wending his way down the narrow aisles beneath barrel-vaulted ceilings.

He had been at it for a long time, passing over a dozen books and searching through a hundred pages, always watching to find something about dragons and dragonslayers. His search has not yielded any results yet, but Andrew was not in the mood to giving up. He ought to find something soon enough or risk leaving his men unguarded to the dragons of the Targaryens which still flew over the Seven Kingdoms. All those men who had followed him all the way from Winterfell, who fought with him, who bled and died for him, they all had done it on his word. Even now they were not afraid to face the terrible beasts, believing that their King would protect them the same way he had protected Winterfell.

His men called him Dragonslayer and Andrew knew that was not necessarily the truth, he knew. They took courage from his name and his actions at Winterfell and Andrew knew that he had done that with the help of Frost and Winterfell and some luck. When he had prepared himself in that night to battling a dragon, he had very little faith that it would all work. Andrew had not bothered with death or anything else. He had already lost everything he held dear and nothing else to lose. He would have died there happily as the son of King Eddard Stark and Queen Ashara Dayne, fighting his last fight against the dragons trying to avenge his family. Now though he had several thousand men under his command and Andrew had to protect them no matter what.

He had been hoping to find anything about dragons which might give him the chance to bringing them down. So far Andrew had found none. Even the Dornish who had brought down Queen Rhaenys' beast, Meraxes had never recorded how they had actually done it. He had found other stories and legends in the search however. When he had been a boy, Andrew would have no doubt loved his stories, but now he knew there was little truth in these tales and legends. He has known some of these stories he'd read today from his youth. His mother used to tell him of different stories before bed, from the Shadowchaser, to Symeon Stareyes and Serwyn of Mirrorshield and Florian the Fool and Galladon of Morne there has been dozens of stories and knightly heroes who had been his favourites.

He had only ever managed to find out about them in the library of Riverrun as well. The tales and stories of Florian, Galladon the Perfect Knight, Serwyn Mirrorshield and Symeon Stareyes. All of them just fables from the Age of Heroes. The songs and stories would not help him in any way, Andrew knew. He had learned that a long way before.

There were dragonslayers in the stories as well. Andrew remembered them from his mother's stories. There was the story if the Perfect Knight, Ser Galladon of Morne. Ser Galladon had been a champion of such valor that the Maiden herself lost her heart to him. She gave him an enchanted sword as a token of her love. The Just Maid, it was called. No common sword could stop her, nor any shield withstand her kiss. Ser Galladon bore the Just Maid proudly, but he unsheathed it only three times. The Perfect Knight was so honourable that he would not use the Maid against a mortal man, for she was so potent as to make any fight unfair. Galladon was no fool though. He might have unsheathed the Just Maid against any giant tall as a tree and mounted on mammoth. And his mother had told him that he once used the Just Maid to slay a dragon. There had even been a song about it.