"Where the hell could they have gone?"
Jon was feeling more than a little panicked after seeing the Clegane's Keep bereft of all of his targets, as most of his plan was dependent on having accurate knowledge of his enemy's whereabouts at all times.
If he could not find them soon... well, then, it would pour cold water on a lot of grand promises he had made.
The worst thing was that the Mountain and all his goons each had their personal horses, so unlike Jon and his band of four, they would be able to travel freely through the Kingsroad.
And if they somehow managed to gain more than a day's travel distance on them... then it may just be impossible for him to catch up to them, even if they travelled day and night.
'Calm down! They couldn't have gone far in the span of a single night,' Jon reassured himself, as he brought down his heartbeat and slowly began to guide Tweey to wander the hallways of the Mountain's keep. 'First things first, I need to gather information on when they left and which direction they went in.'
Unfortunately, unlike shown in movies and novels from his previous life, Jon did not, in fact, stumble upon two guards, 'coincidentally' discussing the happening of the previous night just so that he could opportunistically gather the relevant news in a heartbeat.
But thankfully, the sun was rising at the moment, so the workers, such as the cleaners and the stablehands, who did not live in the keep, were arriving one by one, and from their scattered conversations with the ones who were in the castle during the night, Jon managed to cobble together enough information to know what had happened.
To describe it in one word, it all came down to... bad luck.
Not many people were aware of it, but the Mountain suffers from a condition where he regularly faces sudden, blinding headaches, which are not only extremely painful but also induce a frenzy in him that is hard to calm down.
These episodes of madness make this already very cruel man even more merciless and temperamental, where in at least one third of them end with someone getting beaten to death, with victims usually being young females, or if they were not readily available, then any nearby smallfolk would do.
And unfortunately for Jon, one of these so-called episodes hit the Mountain just a few hours after sunset the previous day.
Even after brutally killing an old servant and guzzling milk of poppy like it was ale, the headache had only dulled, and sleep eluded him no matter how much he tried.
So the man, feeling sleepless, irritated and restless, decided in the middle of the night to wake everyone in the keep. He gathered them in the hall and told them that they would be leaving for their trip to Kingslanding that very hour instead of in the morning.
Now, normally, if any other noble had made an impulsive, spontaneous decision like that, then there would be a line of advisors crowding around him, who would be ready to rebuke or dissuade him by listing all the possible reasons why this was not a good idea.
But in the Clegane's keep, no such individuals were present.
Neither the Maester nor anyone else in the Mountain's employ would dare to disagree with him when he decides on something, because everyone who could or would have disagreed had already been killed a long time ago.
And since the supplies for the trip had already been gathered a few days before, and all his men had also arrived at the keep the previous day, there was no genuine reason to deny the Mountain his wish, so the men willing or not gathered in the darkness picked up their supplies, mounted their horses and took off in the middle of the night.
In fact, if you look at it from another point of view, then this decision was actually not that bad.
Because for one, they could avoid the blazing sun by travelling during the night, and since they were only going to follow the Kingsroad, there was no real danger of them getting lost even in the night, and as for animal attacks, well any living creature who dared to stumble upon this group with all their spears, swords and crossbow, was only ever going to end up in as their dinner.
But from Jon's point of view, this impulsiveness had almost put all his plans in jeopardy; thankfully, though, he had decided to check on them the first thing in the morning, so there should still be time for him to salvage the plan; otherwise, this whole trip would have turned out to be a waste.
'Go on, Tweety. Go find them.'
It had been less than twelve hours since the party took off, so Jon knew for sure that they could not have gone too far.
Sure enough, after flying for no more than ten minutes, Tweey caught sight of his targets moving slowly along the Kingsroad.
There were seventeen of them, of which fifteen were warriors riding on horses, while the last two were defenceless smallfolk.
The group was divided into two equal groups, with one leading from the front and the other guarding the rear. In the middle of the two was a cart filled with supplies being driven by two old men, who were, if Jon remembered correctly from his previous scouting, the cook and the stablehand of their party.
Leading the party was a fully armoured, massive giant sitting on his equally massive horse, the Mountain, and riding alongside him were his most sycophantic of followers, the kind of men who would not hesitate to kill a child at the Mountain's order, and most had probably done that and worse already.
Among them were Ser Amory Lorch, infamous for killing Rhaenys, Rhaegar's three-year-old daughter, Ser Rafford, also known as Raff the sweetling, a knight who was very fond of torturing small folks, Polliver, Mountain's squire, Chiswyck, a man who liked brutalising women(even more than the others) and boasting about it, and Tickler, the torturer who was famous in the books for asking prisoners the same question: "Is there gold hidden in the village?"
If someone wanted to gather the worst criminals in the whole of Westerland, then they would not have to look further than this group.
'So that's how far they had travelled, huh,' Jon thought with a frown on his face, 'Hm, looks like they have already had breakfast, so they would probably only stop for lunch now, which should be somehwere around here,' he thought as he had Tweety fly some distance ahead on the Kingsroad, 'Taking into consideration that they stop to sleep for about four to seven hours aorund midday when the sun reaches it zenith, then this should be the place where they stop for dinner,' Jon thought as his hummingbird flew for a ten more minutes before a suitable clearing appeared beside the Kingsroad.
He was calculating all this roughly based on the distance these people had covered and how far they could travel before getting hungry.
'Frost, fly up, and show me the map of the area around me,' Jon said as he switched his eye from Tweety to Frost, so that he could get an aerial view of the mountain he was on.
'Hm, so we are here... and they would reach somewhere around here at Sunset,' Jon mused as he looked at the various locations through Frost's eyes that were even better at zooming than an eagle, 'Now if we draw a straight line from here to there by cutting through the forest, then it should be possible to travel this distance in just a few hours.
Jon closed his eyes and ran through calculations again and again, taking into account every single variable from sudden detours to rain delays, and in the end, he reached a satisfying conclusion: 'Yes, it is definitely feasible as long as I keep an eye on them through Tweety.'
A few minutes later, Jon finally opened his eyes with a relieved look on his face, as a huge weight had been lifted from his heart after knowing that his plan had not completely derailed.
'I... should probably let them sleep for a few hours,' Jon thought as he looked at the peacefully sleeping faces of the three from Dorne. 'In the end, the Mountain's impulsive decision only brought him closer to us, and made our journey and his life that much shorter,'
'Ugh, I should get some shut eye too,' Jon grunted as he wearily stood up from his rock seat and went to lie down at the entrance of his shelter, 'After all, it's going to get very hectic in the night.'
Even with all his youthful exuberance and his perfectly trained physique, Jon still felt very exhausted after spending all night walking and warging.
...