Kermytt

They rode out beneath a dark sky. Banners hung limp in the heavy air, the reds and blues and greens turned to grey and grey and grey. The vanguard was fifty strong, riding mounts taller than any man and as broad as bulls. In their arms were lances and standards half again their own height. Grim faces, half hidden behind grey beards and mustaches of oiled brown, resembled carved stone. Kermytt rode with them, those proud knights of the House Tully. He had been deemed old enough to saddle a horse alongside the men, with his twelfth nameday now come and gone accompanied with as much fanfare as he could have expected it to garner. Twelve years of life, enough for a boy to ride out as part of his family's call to arms.

His father had been the same age when he first mounted a palfrey with the intent to see the will of House Tully made writ, a truth that seemed to have encouraged him to demand that the stablemaster saddle Kermytt's horse. Yet where Kermytt was to squire for his great-grandfather, the lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Riverlands in fealty to the King on the Iron Throne, his father Eylmar had instead served under the lord of Stone Hedge, Gregor Bracken. The same man that they now rode to face. Kermytt had been told that the bond between knight and squire was one that lasted a lifetime, as strong as one between blood relatives, and yet Eylmar did not seem to have such a powerful connection with his old tutor. At least not to the eyes of his son.

While the other knights spoke softly of Gregor's renown with a lance, and the squires muttered about how he had not problem in satisfying his lady wife given that he must be descended from the horse that reared proudly upon his family sigil, it was Eylmar who had voiced his disdain for the lord of Stone Hedge's grievance with Blackwood. He had called the man a brute, a scourge on the king's peace in the lands watered by the three rivers of the Trident. While Grovarr refused to entertain his eldest grandson's remarks, it did not stop him from calling together his household when Blackwood's message for aid came by raven. Nor did his open claim that Blackwood had instigated the fighting stop him from sending forth for his knights to make themselves to Riverrun, armed and readied to answer the call to battle. Though his mother had promised that Bracken wouldn't dare take the field against his liegelord, the youth could not help but hug her tightly whenever his father spoke of what he was riding towards.

His mother waved them off as was her duty, standing proud atop the battlements with her daughters close by her side. Eleanor, not yet ten, copied her mother all the way down to the faint smile playing on her lips. It was a look that Lady Lysa had often worn when Eylmar rode off to the royal court, or on business to the other lords of the realm at the behest of his lord grandfather. It was the same twitch of the lips that Kermytt himself had worn, when he used to stand and watch the men ride off in service to his family. Minisa on the other hand gave no sign that she had learned to follow her mother's lead, offering her brother and the men about him an expression that could easily have been apathy or sorrow. Kermytt waved back, but if any of the women saw him they gave him a sign that he could not make out.

His father, relegated to serving as castellan in the absence of his grandfather the lord, did not join his wife and daughters in bidding the men farewell. Instead he had watched them leave from the far corner of the courtyard, neither smiling when his son mounted his horse without difficulty nor when the company of Tully men-at-arms began to file out of the castle limits. Kermytt liked to think that he had stayed to watch them all go, whispering a prayer for their safe return. He will have turned away the first chance he got, his thoughts told him, mocking. Elymar was not a man with the patience to wait beneath dark clouds when he could be inside by a blazing hearth.

Despite the urgency by which the men had piled out of Riverrun the pace they set northward was nothing but comfortable. Grovarr, for all of his desire to make the trip in person, was a man too old for the pains that came with a hard ride. He should have sent father in his place, Kermytt reasoned at the end of the first day's ride. Every time the lord groaned in his saddle the youth glanced over, fearful. It would be easy enough for him to fall from his mount, cringing against whatever pains an elder suffered after a lifetime of hardship as liege for the quarrelsome riverfolk. If his great grandfather fell, Kermytt did not think that he would be able to get back up. At least not with any sort of speed.

Yet the lord of Riverrun did not fall from his mount. Not on the first day, when they passed through the woods and sharp valleys that sheltered the streams which flowed into the Tumblestone. And not on the second, when they reached the first rolling hills of Blackwood Vale and the beginning of Blackwood's domain. He even managed to keep his back straight as the miles piled on, seemingly comfortable of the chainmail and heavy cloak he demanded that cover him at every moment. Though Kermytt had to pass the family colours to another squire after his muscles turned to lead, his old lord let no complaint slip from between his open lips.

From the first moment that their company passed into it, Blackwood Vale did not live up to its name. No trees grew in the soil, not black or red or white. Instead there were farms and crofts and villages. Crops grew where oaks had once spread their roots, and buildings of mud and wood rose where branches once reached out to touch the sky. Kermytt had never seen the vale before, had no reason or chance to. And now as he rode through it at the head of four hundred men, armed and armoured and dragging banners some seemed to hope would soon fly over a battlefield, he could not see the charm in the valley slopes or the simple beauty of its green hills. I want to go home, he found himself musing as they stopped to build camp beneath the failing light that signaled the end to the third day of their march. I do not like this place.

He kept his misgivings to himself, however. At any rate, no one would be willing to listen to the whining of a Tully as if he were a child.

"Grandson."

Grovarr did not have the look of someone who was wishing to be somewhere else. No, he looked like a man whose real home was the pavillion drawn up by the river's edge, dreaming of the battle that was to come with dawn's first light. Pointing towards the stream that had found itself host to the Tully's horses, the Lord of Riverrun led his grandson's firstborn to a spot apart from their camp.

Neither spoke for a minute, the lord seemingly satisfied with taking in the soft-running waters they had commandeered for their own use.

"Why are we riding to Raventree?"

The question took young Kermytt off guard, his answer a questioning look. It sounded so genuine, as if his grand sire had truly forgotten why they were not behind the familiar walls of their home.

"Blackwood and Bracken," his father's grandfather further explained. "I could have called on them to answer me at Riverrun, where even they would not dare to draw a sword at my ruling. Why do we ride to them instead?"

For a moment it seemed that Grovarr was going to tell him. Then he sighed instead, allowing a quiet to settle at the end of his words.

"I," Kermytt did not know the answer. "To show them that we rule over more than Riverrun?"

Grovarr nodded, apparently satisfied with the young boy's answer. "If a Lord does not show himself to his subjects, they will forget why it is that they owe them fealty. And when they forget the reasons for the why, well, only blood can ensue."

Kermytt nodded, though he did not understand. His family ruled because the Conqueror had commanded it from the back of Balerion, the dragon remembered to most only as the Black Dread. No one had forgotten what came of those who defied the dragons and their masters. The beasts were flame made mortal, wild in action and desire save if bonded to a Targaryen, the only men that had the power to command a dragon as others rode horses. Each of the beasts were equal to a thousand knights and devoid of the failings that drove one man to slay another. Such was their power that only a single had ever been slain in battle, a fact that the Iron Throne was careful to remind their subjects.

"Men do not readily accept difficult truths," Grovarr added after another pause. "That their power has a ceiling beyond which they can not grasp. We are going to remind these men that their power stops where I will. The alternative leads us down a path that would see everything we hold dear taken from us."

"I understand," the young boy said, feeling blood rising to his cheeks. "But will Bracken agree?"

The question seemed to amuse his grandsire. "You have been listening to your father when he is in his cups," he replied with a laugh. "Bracken is not the problem. A prideful man sure, but can you name any man who is not? He is loyal, violent yes, but Lord Gregor has never given me a cause to question his integrity." The lord of Riverrun shifted his weight. "It is the Blackwoods who have a history of being open in their disagreement with my leadership. They love to hate Stone Hedge, and I have little to offer in place of such emotion."

Before Kermytt could think of something wise to say in reply, one of Tully's knights announced his presence. Much like the other veteran warriors Grovarr had bound to his command, Ser Roland was tall and broad, with a face that never seemed far away from a scowl. Little Will had told him that Ser Roland was a bastard's son, born to a smith's wife and raised by a pack of feral dogs in the woods around Pinkmaiden after she left him in the woods to die. Yet now he wore served as a sworn sword and ruled over an estate as a knight in his own right. And despite his rumoured foster parents, Kermytt had not heard any of Roland's fellow knights say a word against him.

"My lord, a rider has arrived at the command of Lord Bracken. It seems Lord Gregor is willing to meet to hear your judgement."

"Well then," Lord Tully declared with a passing glance at his great-grandson. "Let us see if we can't settle this without more bloodshed."