Aegon's gaze swept over the black-and-red ribbon beneath his lance tip, snapping in the fierce wind. Its faded colors seemed rekindled in the sunlight, blazing and dancing.
He spared it no further glance. His right arm lowered, leveling the lance, over three meters long, with his shoulder. Its tip pointed steadily ahead.
He squeezed his horse's flanks with his legs. The brown warhorse gave a long whinny and surged forward, its hooves churning as it gathered speed.
Opposite him, the towering mercenary roared as he drove his mount forward.
The pink ribbon tied to his armor fluttered absurdly. Beneath his visor, his lips spread into a vicious grin mingling contempt with cruelty.
He too leveled his lance, but its tip tilted slightly upward, aimed squarely at the vulnerable neck between Aegon's helmet and breastplate-a potentially fatal strike, nothing like the blows proper to a contest of skill.
In the stands, the nobles of Lys, whose attention had drifted in boredom, were drawn back by the suddenly tense atmosphere and the starkly different charges of the two knights. They sat a little straighter.
Some even leaned forward instinctively, their eyes following the two glints of steel racing toward each other.
Daenerys had long since forgotten to cry. Her hands clutched the edges of her threadbare cloak, her violet eyes fixed unblinkingly on the silver-haired knight with a wreath around his arm and a ribbon tied to his lance.
Beside her, it was as though a stone had dropped into Viserys's vacant gaze, stirring a faint ripple he did not even notice himself. His body leaned forward involuntarily.
Within a few dozen strides, the two warhorses reached full speed, their heavy hooves pounding the sandy ground with a rumble like muffled thunder.
Dust rose high into the air, blurring the spectators' view,