Chapter 8: To the Pyre

Brynden

In the dark of dawn Brynden awoke. There was no moon, but hundreds of torches glinted red amongst polished steel and helm. Roose Bolton leant against the wooden bars of the cage, brooding over the chains that bound him, and regarding Brynden with his cold, dead eyes.

"Quite the quarters, Lord Bolton." Brynden was not surprised when no reply came. If he was being honest to himself, the man was poor company through and through. But boredom in this cold was worse, so Brynden tried again, trying to ignore the iron binding his wrists and legs, and his bruises from the road. "Are you worried for your life?"

"Not as much as your brother," Roose said after a long silence. He looked at the Lord of Riverrun, who still slept, also chained by the wrists and legs in a corner where he lay in a pile of green straw. "We are finished."

"We have had this conversation before," Brynden said.

"We should have won the battle. Ned should not have tried fighting Jon Connington in single combat. I would have brought soldiers in to do the job in a pinch, were I in his place."

"If you so strongly believe in the war against the Crown, then why were you the first to surrender your arms?"

"For the last time, Blackfish, I was not the first. But I did I have something to live for that no number of swords can win me from the grave."

"Your wife," Brynden ventured.

Bolton kept his face cold, but replied, "If I go to the Wall or the pyre, her unborn child is my House's only hope. If it survives."

"My niece Lysa almost died some months past when my brother had Maester Kym brew her some moon tea. After she revealed his ward had put a child in her, you see. She nearly died."

"There was something wrong with the drink." Roose shuffled more against the wall, clumsy from the bonds around his arms and legs.

"It was no secret my brother sent old Kym away for it," Brynden lied. There was nothing wrong with the moon tea. Hoster just gave it too late. It was great a shame Riverrun's loyal maester of thirty years had to pay the price.

Hoster shifted in the straw pile and groaned, opening his eyes. Brynden and Roose looked at him.

"The King will burn him, Blackfish. You know that as well as I do," Lord Bolton said. Hoster stared him in the eye, then down at his shackled feet. Brynden gazed out at the sunrise, feeling sick, even as the light warmed his cold skin. He knew the man was probably right.

But neither Tully brother could gather the courage to say it. Hoster looked at Brynden with the bearing of a corpse, a demeanor not even the dim could hide. looked away, feeling sick. Lord Lannister, that man of dubious honor, promised to do what he could to protect his brother, but they were going to King's Landing, where no Hand could stay the King's maddened wrath. If the death of Prince Rhaegar would not move Aerys to rage, he was not Aerys.

If escape was possible, Brynden would have tried it, but Rhaegar's host had brought cages and chains aplenty to the battlefield. There was no getting out of these, not least with the guards stationed around the cages.

One guard in now walked along the line cage-wagons bearing a lantern, Lannister livery gleaming faintly in the glow. For a moment Brynden thought he would pass, but then he turned and looked at the three prisoners, squinting.

"One of you Lord Roose Bolton?" he muttered, looking anxiously from side to side.

"That would be myself," Roose replied, pressing his face against the bars. The guard recoiled.

"That's you alright." He pulled something clinking out of his pocket, and worked it into the lock holding the cage's door closed. After some squeaks, the door opened, and the guard beckoned Roose out. For a moment Brynden considered making a run for it, but then he remembered his shackles, and the somewhat significant fact that the guard was armed. Brynden looked down at the other cages. As Roose crawled to the door and sidled through before it was closed again and locked, other prisoners watched. He could not recognize them in the dark, but he made out in the distance another cage door opening, and another man going through it with difficulty that was obvious even seven wagons away in the dark. Roose Bolton gave Brynden a questioning look as the guard led him off into the dim, where here and there men roused and pitched their tents for the day's march.

"He was right, you know." Hoster finally sat up.

"Tywin Lannister will keep his promise," Brynden replied, believing none of it. "We fought together in the War of the Ninepenny Kings."

"He would keep it if it is convenient to him. And it is not. Challenging the King's authority over my life would be too risky. And there would be much to gain from not doing it."

"Riverrun."

Hoster nodded. "No doubt he wishes to give it to some cousin of his. Or that tottering goodbrother of his, Emmon Frey." He pushed himself up against the bars until his head hit the bars above. "I do not expect much mercy. Do you recall when I rejected his offer to betroth that vile dwarf in swaddling to my little Lysa? I wanted a whole man for her, not some stunted half of what she deserved. I made no secret of what I thought of it."

Brynden remembered, all too well. Jon Arryn had lost half his teeth when he wed Lysa.

"I expect no mercy," Hoster said. "Not after that. Not from a Lannister, not from the King, not from the Gods." He sank back down the bars at his back. "I should have sent Baelish away the instant he challenged Cat's betrothed to a duel. I should not have allowed that boy to sully Lysa's honor the way he did. He repaid my generosity in letting him heal in my castle, by siring a bastard on her! I should have noticed its presence in her earlier, and given her the moon tea before ending it became dangerous."

Brynden did not have the heart to denounce with harsh words what his brother had done. So he changed the subject, still troubled. "She is safely in the Vale now, at least."

"And Cat waits in Riverrun for a husband who will never return, bearing a child who will never know a father. Once Kevan Lannister finishes his business at Riverrun, my boy Edmure will be carted off to the Wall for sure, or if loyal men help him escape, he will live as a fugitive. I have led my family into disaster, Brother. Family, duty, honor. I tried to follow the words of the family, but if you look at me, do you not see a failure?"

The spring rains were merciless and the way was shod with mud. The road grudgingly led the wagon train to the capital, over seven days of unending cramps, bruises, and cold. The only consolation was the woolen cloaks they gave the brothers, of humble make at that. Brynden spent most of his time in silence, watching the countryside pass slowly by and give way to the outskirts of King's Landing, and the dirt paths give way to cobbled roads worn with ruts. There were less soldiers around than there used to, as well. Almost all of them were from the Westerlands, with some Dornishmen and others amongst them. Hoster had suggested that the army was disbanding, a sign that the remaining rebels had been crushed. But the more Brynden looked, the more he disagreed. In one day the number of soldiers escorting the prison train had more than halved. In the wake of the War of the Ninepenny Kings, the royal army had dispersed over several weeks as their paths home branched off. This was nothing like it, and Stokeworth was not a major crossroads, certainly not enough to account for something like this.

Privately he hoped enough men got away to keep up the fight. Though this was scant comfort, he thought, as the prison train passed through King's Landing in a hail of filth the smallfolk hurled their way. Robert's war in the Stormlands had for a time cut off the food shipments from the Reach, and now it seemed they were inclined to repay the interruption in full. The soldiers, even the knights did little to protect the prisoners. More than twice something large and rotten smashed against Brynden's head, though more, smaller projectiles reached him as well. Hoster was sent spitting his mouth dry upon the straw when a bloodied, foul fish was flung into his face, hard.

Brynden was almost glad when the guards let the prisoners out of the cages but not their chains, and herded them to a squat, half-round tower in the shadow of Maegor's Holdfast. A balding man fiery yellow alchemist's robes awaited them at the iron door, red vials hanging at his belt as his sleeves billowed wildly in the wind.

"Welcome to your accommodations for the coming weeks," he said, tucking loose cloth into his belt. "You will find them quite the improvement, to be sure, if I saw those wagons right!" Some laughed.

Brynden kept with his brother, who kept to the outskirts of the prisoner throng. "He is right about that, at least," he whispered into Hoster's ear.

"Who are the most important of you?" the alchemist said. And when none answered or pointed, he said, "bring them forward." Nursing his bruises, Brynden only noticed the guards when they grabbed him and his brother and threw them down before the man who'd asked.

He winced. "No need to throw them down like that. It is so pointless." He sighed, as the Tully brothers nursed their wounds at his feet. "Rugen!"

A stout, unshaven gaol stepped forward, adjusting his belt and halfhelm. "Milord?"

"The black cells should suffice. Put them together in one cell instead of the usual."

Rugen slowly nodded. "Ah." He frowned.

"They are brothers," the alchemist slowly said. "I have a feeling it will not remain cramped for long, anyhow." Rugen did not seem to understand. Brynden looked at his brother to see if he did, but Hoster's face remained blank. Surely he knew what that meant? Perhaps he did not care.

Rugen pulled his gloves tight and pulled them up. "Come." He pulled out a key and laboriously turned it in the lock, until something clicked and the door fell open. Hoster followed him in as fast as the chains on his feet permitted, forcing Brynden to hurry behind to keep pace as the door thudded shut behind him. Rugen grabbed a torch from the wall, and raised it to an ash-blackened iron chandelier, where candles flickered over his dull helm. Content with the flame after a brief inspection, the gaol continued down a shallow spiral staircase.

Around every corner shadows spilled, for there were no windows left to let them out. Brynden followed carefully, laying down chained foot after chained foot, anxious to avoid tripping, and running his bound hands over the wall to his right to steady himself.

Lone voices muttered in his ear, but they could as well have been the wind, for no words he could understand lingered amongst the clinking of his chains, and his brother's grim footfalls that pulled him further and further along. Down and down they slowly went, passing door after door after door.

After what seemed an eternity of careful haste, Rugen pulled out a key and thrust it suddenly left into a keyhole. A single click and the door opened with nary a squeak to tell of it. With all the ills to be said of the King, he had seen to it that the hinges in his dungeons were kept well-oiled.

Although that also meant he used them often, Brynden reflected as Rugen led him and his brother into a circular chamber, the walls lined by doors each two arms' lengths apart. Rugen moved with a quickness that bespoke a thorough knowledge of the cells, and picked immediately the door second from the entrance. Yet another key he used this time, and the door swung aside to a cell thrice as wide as the way in itself. Hoster walked right in. Brynden could make out in the dim the red glint of an iron chamber pot just before Rugen slammed the door behind them, and locked it with a click.

"... What now?" Brynden said, pressing his face to the bars in the door just in time to see the goal and his light leave the outer-chamber.

"We wait," Hoster said from somewhere at his feet, his voice parched from thirst. He coughed. "You should sit, Brother. On the way to the block I doubt they will give you a chance for rest."

"I tire of sitting all day long in a cage, and now this?" Brynden leant on the door, almost hoping that it would fall away.

"You will be far more tired more if you go that way."

"If you insist." Brynden joined him on the floor and shuffled around until he found a spot where he could lean against the wall somewhat comfortably. He found a jug of water too in his rummaging, and tucked it under his arm.

Hoster coughed. "Brynden. I know well I am a dead man... But you may yet make it out of this alive." His words rang dry and ragged breaths hacked in his throat. Brynden fumbled in the dark for the water jug and handed it to his brother. Hoster drank and his coughing subsided. He continued. "I was wrong to try to force a wife on you. It was not my choice to make."

"It is forgiven in full, brother," Brynden said. "I hold no grudge."

"Brynden, swear... Swear that my children will know I am sorry for what I did to them. I gambled away their stations, perhaps their lives also. I acted rashly, and I neglected my duties as their father. I should have stopped Baelish's duel with Brandon before it started. I gave my daughter moon tea long after it was safe to do so, and wed her to an old man with half his teeth gone, into an alliance I should never have risked with my family at stake. After my wife Minisa died, I never was with my children when they needed me, and for that, I am sorry. Cat and Edmure look up to me for all my failures, but I would not be surprised if Lysa hates me. I would not blame her."

"She does not, Hoster. If she did, I would know, and she would tell you. You have your failures but when every die is cast, you are still her father."

"A failed father. One who lost his children everything, one who knows it. I wish I could see them now and tell them how sorry I am," Hoster sobbed. "Will you tell my children that?" The darkness hid him but his anguish was plain as day.

If I do not die first, Brynden thought. He remembered Riverrun, and the times he spent with his nephew and nieces. And there was no question. "I swear it."