About four hours later, when the sun was slowly heading for its zenith, the three from the Martell family began to wake up one after the other, the first one because of the noises he heard, while the other two because of the mouth-watering smell of food being cooked.
The girls slowly slumbered out of the shelter to find Oberyn and Jon sitting on rocks around the fire, discussing something with serious expressions while cooking and eating food on the side.
"Why did you not wake us?" Sarella asked as she blearily sat on her rock seat and eagerly filled her plate with the appetising stew and bread, which was still very delicious even though it was exactly the same as the previous meal. "We could have helped you cook."
"You could?" Jon asked with an amused look on his face, "And how exactly would you have done that?"
"I-I could..." Sarella looked flustered at the question, and her eyes turned to her sister, who, sadly, was too busy devouring her food to pay her sister any mind, "Well, I could have at least fetched some water, a-and Nymeria here could have hunted some game, right, Nymeria?"
"Yes, yes," The girl in question nodded perfunctorily.
"That's right, don't you dare look down on us, Jon Snow." she said as she waved her fist at him, "And besides, I also know how to roast some good meat," Sarella declared as she tore up the golden rabbit meat on her plate and put it in her mouth, "Though not as good as this..." she murmured with a pleased expression on her face.
Jon chuckled as he shook his head at the antics of the Dornish sisters, "Don't worry, your chance to contribute is here," he said as a serious look appeared on his face, "Because it is time for you to make your poison,"
"Huh? Already? But aren't we still quite far from our destination?" Sarella asked with a confused tilt of her head. "I can tell you now, Jon, that while not by much, the poison does lose its effectiveness as time passes... but surely Father must have already told you that, so why..."
"Because our plans have been brought forward," Oberyn said with a grim but somewhat expectant look in his eyes, "We are going to be launching our ambush this very evening, just after sunset."
"What?" Sarella asked with a surprised expression, and even Nymeria looked up from her food to pay attention to the conversation, "But why? Even if we were to start running this very second, we shouldn't be able to reach our destination before dark, should we? So why—Wait! Did you get their location wrong somehow, Jon?"
"Did you, Jon? Did you actually get it wrong, Jon?" Nymeria interrupted with an eager look on her face, as if just a single nod of Jon would make everything in this world right again, that the perfect little boy Jon could also make mistakes.
"Unfortunately for you, no, I did not get anything wrong," Jon replied with a roll of his eyes, "What changed is that our targets set off from their keep sooner than they had planned... for some reason, so we need to similarly change our plan to accommodate for this."
"Change how?"
"Thankfully, we are still at the top of the mountain, and we got the news about them quite early, so by simply changing the direction of our descent, we can reach the new ambush location in just a few hours."
"Oh..." Sarella nodded slowly while her sister groaned disappointedly and went back to her food, as she was no longer interested now that she knew that Jon had not, after all, made a mistake. "But how did you even get the news about their change of plans so fast?"
"...Through a raven," Jon replied with a shrug, giving her the first excuse that came to his mind.
"And how would a raven even know where to find us in the middle of—"
"Enough questions," Oberyn interrupted somewhat impatiently, "It does not matter how Jon knows; what matters is he does, so all we need to do is believe in him and get to the planning part. Understood?"
"Right, sorry," Sarella said sheepishly, as she knew that she was getting too curious about things that may involve some secrets, but she could not help herself, as the boy was just damn too mysterious.
"Alright, then here's how it is." Jon said as he sat up, "There are fifteen fighters in their party, plus two old, unarmed workers who should not pose too much of a problem. Now, I will be attacking from the back with my bow and will be the one to start the ambush. Oberyn, you will, of course, head straight for the Mountain, and the ones I can not handle will be for you girls to deal with..." Jon slowly began explaining in detail all the tactics he had prepared based on the terrain where they would be setting up the ambush.
It may seem a bit impossible from the outside for four combatants to deal with the band of fifteen warriors belonging to a notorious group such as this, in which one of them was the Mountain, someone considered to be one of the strongest men in Westeros.
But they, in fact, had quite a few things working for them; for example, they had Oberyn Martell on their side, someone whose name was always mentioned whenever a discussion about the ten best fighters in Westeros was started.
And not to mention, Jon, who, in his own humble opinion, considered himself to be at least in the top three(in the history of Westeros) when it came to using a bow, and that was when he was being modest, especially when you added in the boost his special kind of warging gave his archery abilities.
And the girls were not too shabby either, as they were regarded as elite warriors in Dorne and had been trained in the art of killing from a young age, so they should not have any problem handling two to three opponents by themselves, especially considering that they were up against men who were chosen first for their cruelty and their ability to follow any orders than their martial prowess.
Not to mention their trump card, "The poison needs to be strong enough to make them weak, but not so strong that it becomes lethal. Can you do that?" Jon said as he turned to the sisters, as Oberyn had already told him that his skills lay in increasing the potency of poison to the extreme, instead of something as subtle as this.
"We can, but why?" Sarella asked as she shared a bewildered look with her sister, "I know for sure that you are not naive enough to think that killing someone with poison is honourless, so what reason could there be to not go straight for the kill and use a non-lethal poison?"
"That... was actually not my request," Jon answered with a simple shrug, "It is your father's?"
"Eh?" "What?!"
The girls shouted simultaneously as their heads snapped to look at Oberyn with strange expressions on their faces, as if unable to believe that their father was even capable of showing something like mercy to his enemies.
"I don't mind killing the rest of them with poison, just not those two," Oberyn answered in a low voice, his eyes staring deeply into the fire as if he was seeing his enemies' faces, "Those two, I want them alive,"
All three of them knew who the people Oberyn was talking about were, as there were few people in the world he wanted to kill more than those two animals.
Sarella's eyes immediately widened in comprehension as she realised what her father wanted to do, but Nymeria still looked confused, as she asked, "But why the hell do you want to leave them alive when—"
"Because death... would be a mercy to those beasts," Oberyn whispered in a dead calm voice, "It would be too quick, too easy. I have waited decades for this moment, and I am not going to let them leave so easily. I deserve more than that, the people of Dorne deserve more than that," his voice was so full of supressed rage it began to tremble, "I am going to take them to back to Dorne so that they can answer for their crimes, and I will prolong their suffering as long as humanely possible,"
Oberyn has such a menacing expression on his face that it even made his daughters flinch for a moment.
Jon cleared his throat, "You get it now, right?" Jon asked the girls, who immediately nodded their heads, "Good. Now, since we shall only have one chance to use this poison on them, you need to be very accurate about its potency, and tell me exactly how much I need to put in their food."
"Um, I can do that," Sarella nodded her head with a thoughtful look on her face, "I just need to know in which dish you are going to mix the poison in?"
"Probably something like a curry or a stew," Jon replied with a frown, "I guess it depends on their dinner, but as long as they make any kind of soup, then I will have no trouble getting the poison in it."
"And how would you even manage—Ah, sorry," Sarella stopped herself from asking at the last moment, "Right, no questions," she murmured with a shake of her head.
"But father, even if we somehow managed to capture them alive, how are we going to bring them all the way back to Dorne?" Nymeria asked with a confused look on her face.
"I don't know." Oberyn replied with a shake of his head, "You would need to ask Jon about that, as he was the one who promised me this very thing when we first met in Essos... in return for a few business concessions from Dorne."
While Sarella was puzzled about what kind of concession her father had promised Jon and if he had even consulted Prince Doran about it, Nymeria was more curious about how exactly someone was supposed to move a person as big as the Mountain across two borders.
"Ah, don't worry, the preparations for that are already in place," Jon replied to the curious questions in the girls' eyes, "So all you need to do is prepare the poison and we can set off immediately."
"Fine, then," Sarella said with a sigh as she stood up and went towards her luggage to take out a specially prepared leather pouch, "Hm, I have here with me some monkshood, dried oleander, Folxglove essence, some sandsnake venom, and..."
"Monkshood and Foxglove should be too poisonous to be usable," Nymeria muttered as she came to kneel beside her sister, "I think it will be better for us to mix some night amber vine powder with some sun-bleached olea..."
"Hm, Night amber can cause dizziness and tunnel vision, while Olea induces slurred speech and slow reflexes, so they are fine, and if we add some drops of red scorpion venom to induce paralysis and shaky hands, then..."
"That would be fine too, but we would need to dilute the mixture to not cause heart failure..."
The girls enthusiastically discussed all kinds of poisonous ingredients with each other, and just the names of some of them made Jon's skin tingle in discomfort. Then and there, the boy promised himself that he would stay away from these dangerous girls in the future.
About half an hour later, after some intense crushing, boiling and mixing, the girls had managed to produce a small vial of a thick purple liquid that looked deadly just from a single glance.
"Here," Sarella said as she handed the vial to Jon, "Now, remember, the number of drops is essential for this to work correctly, you will need exactly two drops of this for every litre of stew or soup or whatever they are drinking, understand?"
"Understood." Jon nodded seriously as he gingerly placed the vial in a small cloth bag and pulled on its strings to close it up, and then, without another glance at them, Jon stood up and disappeared into the forest with no explanation.
The three of them only had to wait for about five minutes before Jon reappeared with a satisfied look on his face, "It's done. The poison has been sent."
'Was there really a raven hidden somewhere in there?' Sarella mused as she looked at the part of the forest Jon had come out of with an intrigued look on her face, 'And how in seven hells did he even manage to get a spy inside the Mountain's group?'
"We should be on our way then," Oberyn grunted as he stood up and picked up his spear, "The sooner we get there, the more time we have to prepare."
"You are right," Jon said with a nod, as the four of them gathered their luggage and, after putting out the fire, started climbing down the mountain towards their ambush location, "Let's go hunt the Mountain."
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