Willem and Martyn Lannister Story Chapter 3
"To me, soccer is so much more than a ball and two goals, it connects people from all corners of the world."
Anonymous
"Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs."
Proverbs 10:12 (NIV)
Jill and Peter befriend Willem and Martyn Lannister during their time at the Stone Mill. Meanwhile, Gregor Clegane receives a secret letter from a Frey spy at the Tully-Stark headquarters at Riverrun, setting off a chain reaction that influences later events. For this story, I have decided to give Gregor Clegane a Point of View scene to explain how he escapes Edmure Tully's forces prior to the Battle of the Stone Mill. The TV series doesn't give a lot of details so I decided to make some artistic licenses. I also decided to have Pretty Pia make a cameo appearance.
Willem, Martyn, and any recognisable Game of Thrones character, location, etc. rightfully belongs to George R.R. Martin and HBO. Feel free to read and review. I decided to have my characters play football because that game originated during the Middle Ages and Game of Thrones is set in a medieval fantasy world.
Martyn's POV: Peace in the Midst of War
It was a cool, breezy day on the western banks of the Red Fork of the Trident, a long winding river which flowed from the Bay of Crabs down into the heart of the Riverlands. The Stone Mill was a small, abandoned castle which lay several miles to the south of Riverrun, the headquarters of the Lannister and Tully forces in the Riverlands. It bordered the Westerlands, the heartland of the Lannisters. The Swyft-Lannister-Clegane host under Ser Roger Swyft and Ser Gregor Clegane had set up a garrison on the shores of the Red Fork opposite the Stone Mill. The river was linked by an ancient stone bridge which predated the Targaryen conquest of Westeros by several centuries. Sers Roger Swyft and Gregor Clegane had set up their headquarters within the abandoned castle. However, most of the Lannister forces were camped outside the castle on the western side of the river.
Martyn, his brother Willem, and their new-found friends Jill and Peter were playing a game of football near the banks of the Stone Mill. The sandy banks and the grass outside the Stone Mile were littered with mud puddles from a recent downfall. But that did not deter the four children from going out to play. Martyn was covered from head to foot in mud. He, Willem, Jill, and Peter were playing against a group of other squires and servant boys. In a game of football, it did not matter whether you were highborn, baseborn, or a smallfolk. The only thing that mattered was getting the ball back to your goal post.
For the purposes of this game, two banners had been fashioned into improvised goal posts. One bore the golden lion of House Lannister while the other bore the blue bantam of House Swyft. Martyn could see that Jill was a tomboy. Unlike other girls, she enjoyed getting all dirty and liked playing boy's games like football. Her dress and face were splattered in brown mud. Tonight, they would all be needing a hot bath. Jill was very different from his younger sister Janei even though they were about the same age. Like their mother Dorna, Janei liked to sew, tinker with flowers, and could not stand the sight of mud let alone blood.
"Do you thing that the Gods made a mistake?," joked Martin "Maybe, the storks delivered the wrong babies to mine and your parents."
"Don't be silly, babies don't come from storks," retorted Jill "I was only six when I watched my mum give birth to my brother Peter. It was all messy and there was blood everywhere. And my Mum screamed like hell but was happy when it was all over."
At that point, Douglas, a House Clegane servant, grabbed the ball from Willem and raced back to his goal post. However, he was tackled by Peter, who despite his small size, managed to trip the older boy over. Despite only being four, Peter was as sleek and fast as a rabbit. Douglas fell face-first into a mud puddle and dropped the ball. Howard, a House Swyft servant, then grabbed the ball and ran back to Martyn's goal post. By dusk, the game had ended in draw of 2 – 2 between House Swyft/Lannister and House Clegane.
The four companions walked back to the Stone Mill. The stony white walls of the ancient castle loomed over them. Like many castles, the Stone Mill was surrounded by a muddy moat. Uncle Roger and his men had managed to repair the draw-bridge. A new set of chains had been installed and the wood had been given a fresh coat of oil. Yellow, candle lights illuminated the castle's windows. Upon arriving at the courtyard behind the kitchen, the four friends were greeted by Pretty Pia, who was aghast at their filthy state.
"Jill, where have you been?," said Pia sternly "The masters have ordered a fresh set of cheese and butter. Me and the other servants were looking all over the place for you! And look at the state of your clothes! They're all filthy."
As she spoke, Pia tried to hide her broken teeth with her right hand. A week ago, there had been a drunken brawl between the Swyft men and the Mountain's soldiers. During the fight, the Mountain in a drunken fit of rage had smashed Pretty Pia's face with his mail fist, breaking her nose and knocking out half her teeth. A quick-thinking maester had managed to salvage some of Pia's teeth and soak it in milk. Through some obscure arts, he had managed to reattach some of her teeth.
For all her looseness, Pia was like a big sister to them. Jill had developed a good woring relationship with the servant girl and had learnt a great deal about making butter and cheese. Jill's new job at the buttery meant waking up at the crack of dawn to milk cows. While it was hardwork, Jill and the other servant girls were rewarded with three meals a day. This was the payment rendered for their services.
After washing the mud and filth off at a nearby well, they entered the bath house at Stone Mill. The Stone Mill's bath house was much smaller than the one Martyn had encountered at Harrenhal. The Harrenhal bath house had several great stone tubs that were large enough to hold six or seven people each. By contrast, the Stone Mill's bath house had only six stone tubs that were capable of holding two or three people each. Two of the tubs at the corner of the chamber had been reserved for the servant girls.
Jill headed into the furthest stone tub while Martyn, Willem, and Peter took the one nearest to the door. Martyn stripped off his wet and muddy clothes and stepped into a hot bath. There was nothing more relaxing and comforting than the warm sensation of hot water cleansing his pores and washing the dirt and sweat off his skin. That would also help to combat pimples, the bane of many youths his age.
"It may not be as nice as the baths back at Casterly Rock," said Willem "But it's sure better than bathing in a freezing, cold river."
"This is the best bath I've ever had," added Peter
For Peter, who had only grown up in a small farm, this stone tub seemed to be like a rich man's spa. Peter, like his sister Jill, had never travelled more than eight miles outside his village. He had never visited a castle before. Even though the Stone Mill was an old, crumbling ruin whose glory days had long faded, it was still majestic and fascinating for a small peasant boy who had lived all his life in a wooden hut. Like a football match, a hot bath helped to eliminate the existing class and social barriers between highborn and smallfolk. Stripped of their clothes, their bodies were all the same beneath. It did not matter whether one's father was a noble, a peasant, a labourer, or a slave.
Gregor's POV: the Secret Letter
"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Khan Noonien Singh, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Gregor Clegane's chambers lay on a high tower that overlooked the grounds of the Stone Mill and the Lannister-Swyft-Clegane camp on the western banks of the Red Fork. That evening, he had received a raven carrying a special coded message. The raven came from Riverrun, the headquarters of the Stark-Tully alliance resisting the Crown and their Lannister allies. The message was from Elmo Rivers, a bastard of Walder Frey, Lord of the Twins and the head of House Frey. House Frey was a large, sprawling house whose stronghold consisted of two keeps linking the Green Fork, called the Twins. House Frey had grown rich over the centuries by taxing those who wished to cross the Green Fork. Despite their wealth and strategic position, the other houses looked down upon them as uncouth nouveau riche.
The Freys were still nominally allied to the Starks and Tullys. However, strains had begun to emerge after Robb Stark, the King of the North, had spurned a carefully-negotiated marriage alliance with the Freys in favour of wedding Talisa Maegyr, an outsider from the Free Cities which lay across the Narrow Sea. Outraged by Robb's failure to keep his promise, the Freys had secretly made high-level contacts with the Lannisters to negotiate a new alliance; one that would unseat the Tullys and make the Freys the dominant house of the Riverlands. As Lord Twyin's "Mad Dog", Gregor was privy to these secret behind-the-scenes manoeuvres.
Gregor had received an urgent letter from Elmo Rivers, a spy working for the Lannisters who was embedded within Robb Stark's high command. With the aid of a cipher, Gregor had succeeded in decrypting the message. After about ten minutes, Gregor learnt that Edmure Tully, the uncle of King Robb, was planning to launch an attack on the Stone Mill. The Riverlanders had grown tired of the numerous raids that the Lannisters and their allies had staged on villages across the Riverlands. Gregor knew that the Riverlands were one of the two main bread baskets of Westeros, with the other being The Reach which was in the hands of the Crown's Tyrell allies. Since the stalemated fighting had brought the Riverlands to the brink of economic ruin, Edmure had decided to end the depredations of the Lannisters once and for all by attacking the Stone Mill, their main base of operations in the western Riverlands.
Gregor knew that if he fell into the hands of the Tullys or Starks, he was as good as dead. Many throughout the Riverlands hated him for the numerous villages he had razed to the ground, the people he had wantonly slaughtered, and the numerous women he and his men had ravished. He knew that people throughout Westeros had not simply given him the nickname "Tywin's Mad Dog" for nothing. During the Sack of Winterfell which had ended Targaryen rule over Westeros, Gregor and another Lannister bannerman, Armory Lorch, had single-handedly raped and murdered Elia Martell and both her children: her daughter Rhaenys and her infant son Aegon. Lorch had stabbed the two year old Rhaenys to death fifty times with a knife while Gregor had personally bashed Aegon against the wall. While still covered in the blood of her children, Aegon and Lorch had taken turns raping Elia. Gregor then put the Dornish princess out of her misery by hacking her in half with his sword. Gregor personally savoured every single moment of that terrible night.
Gregor's actions had drawn the outrage of both the Martells and King Robert Baratheon's Stark ally, the late Lord Eddard Stark. Ned Stark was an honourable man but he was too naïve and stupid for the back-stabbing nature of court politics at King's Landing. By uncovering Cersei and Jaime Lannisters' secret, Ned had unleashed a state of civil war throughout Westeros. Gregor personally didn't care about politics. All that he was interested was in killing and raping people for the fun of it.
Gregor Clegane decided not to share this new intelligence with Ser Roger Swyft, the castellan of the Stone Mill. The two men had a very poor relationship. Roger, all noble and self-righteous, looked down on Gregor with contempt and disdain. Roger just did not understand the exciting thrill that came with hacking to death smallfolk or taming women. He was the sort of man who insisted on playing with the "rules of war" and was unwilling to shed any blood wantonly. In the past month since they had settled down at the Stone Mill, Ser Roger had personally stopped Gregor and his men from ravishing some Riverlands girls they had taken captive during a series of raiding missions around the Red Fork. This greatly grated Gregor's ego, who savoured nothing better than his twin sports of killing and ravishing.
How dare some lord from some, small insignificant house lecture the Mountain about chivalry and honour, thought Gregor. The final straw had been a banquet last week that had descended into a drunken free-for-all brawl. An argument over prostitutes had spiralled into a full scale riot between the Mountain's men and the Swyft men. While trying to punch a cocky Swyft knight who had the audacity to accuse him publicly of murdering and raping Elia, the Mountain had accidentally punched Pretty Pia in the face, breaking the wrench's nose and knocking out half of her teeth. By the time the dust had settled in the Stone Mill's dining hall, six Swyft and four Clegane men had lost their lives. Favouring his own men, Ser Swyft had judged that the Mountain's men had started the fight and ordered the hanging of three culprits, including the scout Bogs.
Gregor did not take any slight to his men lightly and was determined to make Ser Swyft pay for this insolence. Now, the perfect opportunity had arisen to get rid of the troublesome Ser Swyft once and for all. Through Elmo Rivers, Gregor had learnt that Ser Edmure Tully was marching towards the Stone Mill with a mighty host. Thus, he decided not to inform Ser Swyft of this new intelligence. Instead, he and his men would depart for Casterly Rock tomorrow. Gregor commanded about five hundred men-at-arms while Roger Swyft commanded about a five hundred men. Gregor's plan was to abandon the Swyfts to the tender mercies of the Tullys.
Since Roger Swyft was the heir of House Swyft, his house would become extinct if he died. His older sister Dorna had married Kevan Lannister, the father of Willem and Martyn. Meanwhile, Roger had not succeeded in finding a wife to continue his line. Gregor Clegane coveted the cornfields of House Swyft, whose domain lay in the southern corner of the Westerlands. Their cornfields would provide a cash crop for the Mountain, whose finances had become tight in recent years. Clegane's Keep by contrast was a grim, forbidding place near Lannisport where barely anything could grow. Thus by plotting against the Swyfts, Gregor could kill "two birds with one stone."
Gregor smiled and stared into the half-full moon which hung in the sky like a lantern. Below the castle window, the tents shone in the distant horizon like lanterns.