Six days after the High Septon met with the King, the High Septon sent word to the King that he wished to speak with him at the Great Sept of Baelor and the next day the King went forth from the Red Keep. He went armed, of course, but otherwise his dress was entirely peaceable; shirt, trousers, tunic, boots, and gloves, all in black with the red three-headed dragon badge of his house on his breast and the simple gold circlet that served as his crown on his head.
His escort, on the other hand, was not nearly so pacifically dressed. On either side of him rode two Kingsguard knights in full plate armor, the famous white cloaks thrown back over their right shoulders so as not to impede their sword arms. With them rode the Master of Laws, the Master of Coin, the Lord Marshal, and a clutch of young gentlemen of the Court (sons and nephews of courtiers or lords and knights who were visiting the Court) who had accepted the King's invitation to ride with him. All of these were also in full armor; the Lord Marshal's helm, cleverly engraved and etched so that it seemed to be the face of a snarling wolf, aroused particular comment. With them also was a figure wrapped in a cloak that covered him from head to foot, eliciting all manner of rumors. An eavesdropper, listening to the crowd, would have heard men and women swear that the cloaked man was a wizard from the east, a shadowbinder from far Asshai, a demon from beyond the Wall, perhaps even the notorious Winter Soldier. Who could say for sure when none could clearly see his face?
Behind the King and his bodyguards came the first of the small army that had been mustered in King's Landing. The Royal Corps of Guides had the lead, four companies of horse and six of foot, their jacks and open-faced sallet helms augmented with pauldrons, vambraces, greaves, and gorgets, all of dulled steel that wouldn't reflect the light. The horsemen of the Guides carried light lances in addition to their swords, and one troop of Dornishmen had short horseman's bows sheathed at the cantle of their saddles. The infantry of the Guides carried longbows and short swords and bucklers, or in place of the sword carried a war hammer or a hand-axe. A keen-eyed observer may have noticed the second son of the Lord Marshal at the head of his troop, but he would have had to look closely; people who are dressed all in a certain way all tend to look alike at a distance.
Behind the Guides came the Royal Marines. These men, in their brigandines, kettle helmets, vambraces, greaves, and pauldrons, gave an impression of armored beetles as they marched down the Street of Dragons with their short glaives at shoulder arms and their cutlasses hanging at their belts. There was substantial applause for these men as they marched by; the Royal Marines had been at the forefront of the taking of the Stepstones and the regimental banner carried before them proudly bore the battle honors Bloodstone, Grey Gallows, and Stepstones 299-300.
Behind the Marines was the contingent from the City Watch, hard-handed and harder-eyed men who in the usual course of events patrolled Flea Bottom. Their helmets were battered, their ring-mail scored with the bright lines left by knife strokes, and their gold cloaks were stained and slightly ragged, but the pale light of the winter sun glinted off the edges of the spear heads, the hilts of their short swords and weighted batons were shiny with use, and they did not march as much as swagger down the street. They were proud men, but a man who patrolled the labyrinth of Flea Bottom earned such pride quickly, or he just as quickly earned a plot of land six feet long by three feet wide by six feet deep, courtesy of His Grace's Government.
Last in the line of march came the King's Landing Regiment, which earned cheers from their neighbors on the sides of the street. These men, in their full-sleeved mail hauberks, nasal helmets, and greaves, were citizens of King's Landing who devoted four days a month and a sennight a year to training with spear, short sword, and buckler, ready for the call to stand with their neighbors and defend their city. Their presence in the column of soldiery marching behind the King made some of the more richly dressed men in the crowd smile slowly, as men who began to see an answer to a difficult riddle, and nod approvingly, while others, not so restrained by the perceived need to maintain a dignified presence, began to shout bloodthirsty suggestions.
When the King's cavalcade arrived before the Great Sept of Baelor, they found themselves presented with a great crowd of sparrows, all armed and drawn up by troops with banners depicting the red seven-pointed star in great profusion throughout. The King and his immediate retinue halted just inside the entrance to the plaza before the Great Sept and there they waited as the men behind them slowly shook themselves out of column of march and into line of battle. The two royal regiments were closest to the King, of course, the Guides infantry on his right and the Marines on his left while the City Watch was drawn up to the left of the Marines and the King's Landing Regiment fell in on the right of the Guides. The Guides cavalry waited behind the wall of infantry in line of companies, horse and rider eerily still.
As the last squad of infantrymen stamped to a halt, the Lord Marshal was seen to hold his hand out to his side, provoking a rippling shout of "GROOOOUND . . . ARMS!" from the underofficers that brought the butts of twenty-eight hundred spears and glaives thudding to the cobblestones. The young gentlemen of the Court who had accompanied the King dismounted and, at a command from the Lord Marshal, went to stand in front of the bowmen of the Guides in a loose line of steel figures, each at double arm's length from his neighbors so that they were close enough to support each other while still leaving each other room to ply their weapons and let the archers behind them shoot between them. Someone watching these young men closely would most likely have noticed two young men in particular, one wearing the direwolf of the Starks on his surcoat and the other the crowned stag of the Baratheons, who placed themselves in the center of the line; the deference the other young gentlemen showed them would almost certainly have marked them out as leaders. But they would have been overshadowed entirely by the man who threw off the cloak that had concealed his form from all eyes on the ride from the Red Keep to reveal a tall man with a left arm made of what could only be described as animate metal. The Winter Soldier, the Warrior Incarnate, the Iron Fist of the North, was at the King's side.
The fact that the Winter Soldier was, in fact, some distance from the King both then and later was disregarded by contemporary chroniclers and later commentators. Such people love nothing more than a powerful image to capture the audience's imagination and what image was more powerful, then or later, than the greatest warrior in the world standing next to the King like a hound ready to be unleashed?
When the last man in the King's little army was in his place, and while the sparrows were still murmuring among themselves at the appearance of what they considered a demon, the King gestured and a herald spurred his horse forward a length of the royal party, blew a fanfare on his trumpet, and bellowed, "The King has come! As the High Septon has asked, the King has come to the Great Sept of Baelor! The King has come and he asks what his subjects would have of him! The King has come!"
As the echoes of the herald's shout died away, the doors of the Great Sept swung open and a strange procession came out. At their head was the High Septon, in his habitual ankle-length tunic looking more like a sweeper than the mouthpiece of the gods, save for when one looked into his granite eyes. Behind him came the Most Devout, each carrying a lighted candle, while at the High Septon's side were two sparrows, one carrying a hand bell and the other carrying an open copy of the Seven-Pointed Star. The little procession came to the front of the crowd of sparrows, parting them like a coal parting snow, and halted, barely a stone's throw away from the royal party. The High Septon stood and looked at the King for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, and then spread his arms and began to speak.
He condemned the wickedness of the King, heaped scorn upon him as the patron of pagans and the accomplice of heretics, and concluded his screed with the assertion that such actions were a mortal offense against the gods. "Wherefore," he went on, his voice now thunderous, "in the name of the all-powerful Gods, the Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Maiden, the Smith, the Crone, and the Stranger, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing on earth and in the Seven Heavens, we deprive him and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Light of the Seven, we separate him from the society of the Faith, we exclude him from the bosom of the Faith on earth and in the Heavens, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to the fires of the Seven Hells with their Lord, his demons, and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the Lord of the Seven Hells, do penance, and satisfy the Faith; we deliver him to the Lord of the Seven Hells to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."
At this the Most Devout shouted "So be it! So be it! So be it!" The High Septon then rang the bell held by the sparrow on his left, closed the copy of the Seven-Pointed Star held by the sparrow on his left, and the Most Devout snuffed out their candles by dropping them to the ground. The High Septon then folded his hands in his wide sleeves and gazed at the King with what an astute observer might call an air of expectation.
The reaction among the King's party was mixed. The Master of Coin was apparently shocked into immobility, his jaw hanging open as he stared at the High Septon. The Master of Laws was in an apparent fury, his eyes bulging as he dismounted and reached for the hilt of the greatsword strapped to his back, only to be stalled by a gesture from the King. The Lord Marshal seemed worried, looking at the King with a look of deep concern on his face. The King, by contrast, was apparently unmoved by the dramatic ceremony that had just taken place. Indeed, his only visible reaction throughout the High Septon's speech had been a nigh-imperceptible tightening of his jaw muscles. Now, the man who was only the second King on the Iron Throne to be excommunicated in the history of the Seven Kingdoms turned to his herald and nodded curtly.
The herald bowed low in the saddle, worked his mouth, spat, and blew another fanfare. "Hear ye, hear ye!" he roared, his voice shocking in the stunned silence that had settled on the plaza. "It is the command of His Grace, Aegon, the Sixth of His Name of House Targaryen, In the Sight of the Old Gods and the Light of the Seven, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, and Defender of the Faiths, that the combination of persons called the sparrows depart from King's Landing immediately! Any who disobey this command shall, by royal decree, be considered to be rebels in arms against the Iron Throne, and shall be treated as such! In the name of the King, all sparrows depart!"
The only answer from the sparrows was a torrent of abuse. They hurled insults, flourished their weapons, and chanted slogans against the King. If one could have collected all the spittle that the sparrows expectorated in that hour, wrote a noted satirist of the day, one could have floated a galley.
The King turned in the saddle to his Lord Marshal and voiced a command that, thanks to the uproar, could not be heard by any outside the King's immediate vicinity. This led to a great deal of artistic license being employed over the years, as men (and women, later) struggled to balance what was known of the King's nature (pious, humane, and well-mannered, all sources agree) against the spirit of the moment. Some got it closer than others, but who was closest is known only to the gods.
This, some persons of a precise turn of mind later remarked, was a pity, given the historical importance of that command.
Author note: Dun, dun, DUUUNNN! Explanations in the author's note of the next chapter. Thanks for reading all, and stay tuned!