Khal Drogo bared his teeth in the smile of a well-fed hrakkar as he cleaned the blood from his arakh. The smoke-colored Valyrian steel had sheared through Khal Jhovago's ribs and cleft him to the breastbone with no more effort than it would have taken to open his belly, somewhat to Drogo's surprise. Cutting through a man's rib cage was difficult even at the best of times, given the way they formed a protective cage around his organs. Not for the first time he gave thanks to the god that it had accepted the belt he had taken from the Qohori as a sacrifice instead of demanding the blade.
He would have been willing to give it up, of course, but the shaman had advised him to keep the blade. The god, the old man had claimed, meant to make Drogo the arakh of his people, that he might put fear in the livers of their enemies and lead the People to glory. As such, he had explained, when loot was taken from the enemy Drogo should claim only weapons and armor, leaving gold and silver and other valuables for his riders. Thus he could show the god that he adhered to its will regarding his destiny, and show the People the depth of his devotion to the struggle for their greatness.
Khal Jhovago had doubted that devotion, enough so to challenge him to single combat between their khalasars. Now Jhovago was food for worms, along with his bloodriders who had tried to avenge his death, and his khaleesi would warm Drogo's bed tonight before she went to the dosh khaleen. Drogo licked his lips slightly; Jhovago's khaleesi had a name for beauty. Tomorrow morning Jhovago's khalasar would join his, the riders pledging arakh and bow, and together they would ride against the walkers. But not west, not yet. Drogo had seen how many walkers there were, in the years before the wars; even those along the great river alone numbered almost as many as the whole of the people, and while the wars and his destruction of Qohor had doubtless reduced those numbers, the cities of Volantis and Braavos and Pentos and Lys had not been so harrowed by war, and the inhabitants of those cities were many. Even if they all stood in line and waited for Drogo and his warriors to cut their throats, Drogo's whole khalasar would collapse from exhaustion before the killing was even halfway done. No, Drogo would need more warriors, which meant that he would need to bring more khalasars under his banner. Which meant in turn that he would need to fight more battles like this one, or else persuade the khals who doubted him that it would be better to be a ko in his horde, with the right to claim a share of the loot of the rich cities of the coast, than a corpse feeding worms and beetles. The khals whose khalasars primarily roamed the plains would be most difficult, as it had become the way for them to pass leadership of the khalasar to their eldest son rather than to he that proved the strongest, but they would swear, lest he cut out their tongues and hamstrings and leave them for the jackals. And then he would need the food to feed them, and the weapons to arm them.
He knew where he would find the food. The Lhazareen had always been a people made to be the prey of any who befell them, but Drogo had another use for them than as slaves. Mutton was not as healthful as horse, or gazelle or antelope, but a man could live on it if he had to. If the Lhazar could be made to drive sheep to Vaes Dothrak, there to be slaughtered and the meat dried, then they could live free, knowing that failing to provide the necessary number of sheep would see the raids begin again. Omber would be another source of food, when he told the princes of that kingdom of weaklings that their gifts would go to him alone and no other khal. The weapons would be more difficult, but there too he had an idea. The Ibbenese might cower behind their walls, but they relied on the land outside it for the plants that fed them. The threat of those lands being torched, with worse to come when their walls were breached and the riders let loose in the hole they cowered in, would see the forges of New Ibbish produce arakhs and arrowheads for the horde that Drogo would assemble. They might even produce armor as well, if they could make a steel dress that a man could move in and that would not exhaust the horse that had to carry it.
Drogo's smile took on an edge of anticipation. His plans would take years to come to fruition, but the People could be patient at need; did it not take years to raise and train a horse before it was ready for battle? With the lamb men and the grass men feeding his horde and the hairy men arming it, he would be poised to sweep over the walkers like fire over the plains. And where a grass fire passed, nothing survived in its wake. So it would be with the walkers. He had sworn it, when he went up the Mother of Mountains to stand at the edge of the Womb of the World and commune with the horse god. Such an oath, sworn in such a place, could not go unkept. Neither the god, nor he himself, would allow it.
XXX
Ser Justan Osgrey sipped from his canteen, cast a glance around to make sure that none of the soldiers under his command were within earshot, and grimaced. "That was too close," he told his co-commander. "Too damned close by half. If your horse-holders had been a few seconds slower even once, or if my men's horses had lost their wind an hour earlier . . ."
Desmond Marsh nodded, a grim cast to his normally sardonically amused features. "We'd have been eaten alive," he concurred. "When I find the person who first told me the Lyseni were all brothel keepers who'd never held a blade in their lives, I'll make him eat his words. That lot were soldiers, by the gods. And not sellswords, either; that was the Bright Lady on the one standard, and the other one wasn't any sellsword sigil that I've ever heard of. You think they might have copied our organization, recruiting by districts?"
Justan nodded back. "Possibly," he allowed. "And they're doing it well. A bit loose, but well-disciplined for all that. Good horsemen, too, at least those that we faced. If they had a bit less armor, we'd never have been able to outpace them the way we did. And the one time it came to handstrokes . . ." He paused, remembering the ferocity of that swirling, snarling melee when the banda of Lyseni horsemen had come out of that gully to catch his men from the side. "If they had preceded their charge with a javelin volley, or outnumbered us at all, they'd have either broken us or held us long enough for their friends to reach the fight and cut us to ribbons. How'd they do against your archers?"
Desmond let the apple in his throat flutter before lowering his canteen with a grimace. "Better than I would have thought," he admitted. "They didn't have the armor to rush us from the front, but you wouldn't have known it from how they acted. Got within ten yards of the line, once, before they finally lost heart. They had some kind of light crossbow, too, that their men could load and loose from the saddle. Not very accurate and they had to slow down to load them, from what I could see, but they didn't have to be. Bit rattling, the first time they opened up; we weren't expecting them."
"Well, we'll see if Maester Gordon can't come up with something like," Justan replied, taking a swallow from his own canteen. "In the meantime, I say we keep going back to the border as fast as we can. I don't know about you but I saw at least three smoke columns. Beacon fires, or I'm an Unsullied; I don't know about you, but the thought of getting into a fight at uneven odds doesn't appeal to me, even if we can outfight them man for man. And we won't be able to sack any plantations before that column or another one like it comes along, if that first one is anything to go by."
Desmond scowled, then nodded unwillingly. "Agreed," he spat. "When I saw that place I thought I was looking at one of our fortified villages. Moat, rampart, palisade, tower by the gate . . . Someone's been giving them ideas."
"Us, more than likely," Justan said. "We've made it work against them often enough, the past few years." He took another swallow from his canteen and corked it. "Mount up," he said. "We push on at half-pace through the night. Hour at dismounted walk, hour at mounted walk, half-hour's rest every two hours."
Desmond sucked a tooth. "Hard on the men, not giving them a night's sleep after a day like today," he noted. "Hard on the horses too, pushing them like that." Men could push themselves past the point of exhaustion, if they had to, but horses were not nearly so enduring. If you pushed them too hard they simply keeled over and died.
Justan nodded; he could feel the fatigue from a day-long running fight seeping into his bones like poison. "Harder still to let the Lyseni kill or take them," he countered, levering himself to his feet. "Both for them and the kingdom. The horses we can replace, come to that; the men, not so easily."
Desmond got to his own feet, swaying only slightly. "Plenty of time to sleep when we get home, I suppose," he said. "And a sleepless night here and there never killed anyone. At least, not as dead as an arrow in the chest or a sword in the guts. Let's get them moving again."
XXX
Captain Ser Akhollo Freeman was not a man to be easily unsettled. Neither his first life as a Dothraki or his second as a slave had been kind to people who easily lost their countenance. By the time he had entered his third life as a soldier and then bloodrider of King Robert, he had so mastered himself that he could not remember the last time he had felt anything approaching uncertainty. Admittedly, that had been helped by the fact that he had resigned himself to his likely fate years ago; King Robert was not a monarch to sit back and let his warriors do all the fighting for him, anymore than the khal his father had ridden with had been, and such men could go through bloodriders like water, if their enemies were strong and fearsome enough. The slavers might not be particularly strong or especially fearsome, but they were many, and even the mightiest of warriors could be worn down by enough lesser ones. So Akhollo had accepted that he would likely die in battle, and decided that if he died fighting for Holy Freedom and in defense of his king then it would be a death becoming a warrior. If that meant that he died young, unwed, and childless, that was also acceptable, if it meant that King Robert lived to sire a fitting heir.
Which was precisely what made the current situation unsettling.
The newest member of House Baratheon of Myr was being presented to Court, and Akhollo was standing not six feet away, both as dictated by his duty and as granted by his king's regard for him as a comrade. King Robert was always a sight to behold, but today even more so than usual. He wore only his usual subdued finery, but the sheer joy and fatherly pride seemed to have made him swell even taller, and the expansive mood he had been in since Grand Maester Antony and Doctor Marino had first admitted him to the birthing chamber two sennights ago had only improved since. It helped that the labor had gone well and smoothly, and both the Queen and the child were in excellent health; the child, Akhollo knew, already seemed to have her father's lungs.
The child being presented to the Court with great ceremony and greater festivity was a daughter, yes, but that meant less than it would have on the plains. The fact that King Robert now had a legitimate heir had done a great deal to ease the nagging fear that the Kingdom would revert to Stannis of Westeros, or become the fief of Renly. Stannis might be a worthy king in his own right, but he had been as much rival as ally, and the Reformists could not forget how closely Stannis had tied the Iron Throne to the Great Sept of Baelor. And Renly was not just a boy still, if a boy approaching the threshold of manhood, but a boy who was being groomed to become a ko of his brother Stannis. The thought of becoming a mere appendage of the Seven Kingdoms, especially an appendage that would be subject to the Great Sept, had not sat well with anyone; even the Baelorites had looked askance at the idea of pledging fealty to a man who had yet to defeat the slavers in battle.
And Akhollo doubted that the traditional objection to a female heir would be much concern. The Andals had a tradition of warrior women; did not Lady Mormont wear armor and fight in the first rank with Lord Stark's bloodriders? Were not so many of the Royal Army's scouts women, and possessed of courage and prowess that only fools and the blind would dispute? And had not King Robert already said that he would teach all his children everything he knew of rulership and war, without distinction? Even if he had no sons by Queen Serina, he would not allow his daughter to grow up as the sort of weak and sheltered thing that other Andals were content to make of their daughters. And even if Princess Cassana never took the field, she would have to learn to fight well enough to defend herself against assassins. The Brotherhood would fight to the death for her, as they would for any scion of the royal line, but they were still mortal, and so imperfect.
The problem that arose was that little Cassana's birth meant that Akhollo's mission had been accomplished, to some degree. King Robert finally had a legitimate heir of his body, and one strong enough that there was every likelihood that she would live to adulthood, if the gods willed it so. Grand Maester Antony and Doctor Marino had declared that there was nothing that would prevent Queen Serina from bearing more children in the future. If the current warm peace continued, then it was unlikely that King Robert would take the field again; kings led armies, not raiding parties. And if King Robert did not take the field, then Akhollo would not either; his oath forbade him from leaving his king's side for so long. All of which meant that, for the first time, Akhollo was being forced to contemplate the possibility of dying of sickness or old age, rather than at the hands of an enemy. His liver immediately rebelled at the thought; there was no honor to dying in bed, even if you considered sickness an enemy. In that much, at least, he was still Dothraki, even if his name was cursed among the People as a traitor. He shrugged in the privacy of his mind; he owed the People nothing, not when his father and his khal had been killed and he sold into slavery by another khal. He had learned to hate the man who condemned him to the life of a field hand, and by extension to hate the way of life that encouraged a man to sentence his own people to the cruelties of the slavers.
It was in those years that he had learned to consider himself a dead man walking, in order to bear the shame of the brand and the pain of the lash. He had let every blow and insult he had suffered embed itself in his soul, until the day came when he could repay them as befitting. But not in some foolish gesture of defiance that would end in his death. No, Akhollo had decided even then that he would not die before he made his name a thing of terror to the slavers, and he could not do that if he died a nameless slave. He could live a hundred lifetimes, he knew, and not be able to repay King Robert for the chance to fulfill that long-ago pledge to any god that would hear him. In this life, he repaid by turning his back on his former people. It was the tramp of the Legion on the march that was the beat of his heart now, not the rumble of the hooves of the khalasar, and it was the battle songs of Holy Freedom that were the music of his soul, not the drunken chants of vain conquest that he remembered from his childhood. He had fought with all his strength at Tara, when Khal Zirqo had threatened to destroy all that King Robert had built, and when the dead were disposed of his grief had all been for his fallen brothers of the Legion, not for any of the slain riders.
But for all that, he could not ignore the fact that he could not reconcile himself to the thought of dying in bed, surrounded by the trophies of his victories. The blood of the Dothraki still flowed in him, even if he had turned his back on the People and the Great Grass Sea, and with that blood flowed the knowledge that the only worthy death was to be found with your teeth in the enemy's throat. Moreover, he had to consider how the royal family would be protected after he was dead. By the time Princess Cassana was of an age to rule, if the gods willed that she should take the throne, he would be past forty, old enough to start slowing as the battering of his previous years began to take effect. He didn't need to look any further than Ser Brynden Tully to be reminded that even the greatest warrior could not defeat time and old age. The thought that he would one day be incapable of fulfilling his oaths was . . . not quite unthinkable, but certainly one that his mind shrank from. There would have to be someone to take up his sword and wield it with the same ferocity and loyalty that he had shown, and while he had every faith in his brothers of the Legion, he knew that the men of later days would not feel the same depth of attachment to the dynasty that he did. They had not fought at Tara, or stormed the walls of Myr, or destroyed Tyrosh, or stood at Novadomo, where King Robert had earned the loyalty of his soldiers by fighting at their side. And even if those future legionaries were made of the same metal as he and his brothers were, who was to say that they would be forged to the same temper?
No, he decided, it would have to be his son that took up his sword; a son trained from his first steps to carry the banner of freedom against its enemies. Which presented another problem; to the best of his knowledge he had no sons. He had not lacked for the company of women in the past, but he had never considered becoming a father. His own father had died in battle, and he had been unwilling to subject a child of his to the pain he had felt. He might be reconciled to his fate, but a child would not be, and by the time that child was old enough to understand there had been every possibility that he would have already died.
But, he told himself sternly, things had changed. He might fulfill his oath to Robert, but someone would have to swear an oath to Cassana, and keep it as he had done. He would, he decided as he stood beside the throne watching the lords of the kingdom come forward to make their bows, seek Robert's permission to marry, and father a son as swiftly as he might. And he would make that son a living shield to defend the Princess and any siblings she might have against every foe. Free, but Loyal were the words he had chosen when Robert had made him a knight, and he would make them true.
XXX
For a man who had been so close to the center of power of one of the richest states in the world, he certainly didn't look like it at first glance, Syrio Forel reflected as he considered his apartment.
It was a small suite in a neighborhood respectable enough to be moderately expensive, consisting of a bedroom and a sitting room with a small hearth. The furnishings were solidly made but not fine, the wardrobe held the only four suits of clothing he owned (three for everyday, one for formal occasions) besides his fencing leathers, and the floor was plain wood with what looked like only one coat of varnish; as little as could be gotten away with, considering how damp an environment Braavos was. The most expensive thing in it, he was quite sure, was his sword and dagger, both masterpieces of the bladesmith's craft that would command the monthly rent of the apartment three or four times over, despite their lack of decoration.
He shrugged to himself. It was hardly luxurious, but then again, he wasn't in the market for luxury. He did not mean to be here for any length of time, after all.
It was tradition that a new Sealord chose a new First Sword, the reasoning being that a man who had been as closely connected to his charge as the First Sword had to be should not be asked to transfer that depth of fealty at the drop of a hat. In addition, Syrio suspected, it was probably feared that if the new Sealord had been an opponent of the previous, and had come to power by ousting them, then the temptation on the part of the First Sword to avenge their principal's downfall would prove overpowering. It was a baseless fear, in his case, as he did not much care about Solazzo one way or the other, but better to be safe than sorry, he supposed.
The difficulty was that, for the first time in more than two decades, he found himself at a loose end. For most of his life he had been focused on improving his swordcraft, and then he had spent ten years as Sealord Antaryon's First Sword. It had been a heady experience for a relatively young man from a moderately wealthy merchant family whose prior experience of the halls of power had always come at three or four steps remove, and it had broadened his horizons considerably. At the same time, however, it also narrowed his options for what to do next. A First Sword might leave the office behind him when his principal's successor was elected, but he still bore the title, after a fashion, and was expected to comport himself accordingly. Which rather shut the door on resuming the life he had led before his selection as First Sword, which was that of a freelance bravo with no greater goal than fame and fortune. Nor would he resume that life even if it was open to him; he knew too much of the world, now.
Nor did the traditional career of the former First Sword, that of swordmaster to the sons of magisters and wealthy merchants and tradesmen, appeal. Doubtless there were worthy specimens among such younkers, but many of them were not much more than better-fed bravos in more expensive clothing. Sifting through so much chaff in search of one or two kernels of good wheat would be not simply thankless, but unimaginably dull.
Not that he had a shortage of options. Sealord Antaryon might have stepped down and gone into seclusion at his family's estate on the mainland, but he had offered to find Syrio a place in the government of Pentos, where he could continue to draw the pay due a servant of the Titan and eventually earn a pension and perhaps a plot of land that would allow him to marry. He had been incredibly flattered, and told the old man as much, but he had refused; he was a swordsman, not a pen-pusher, and he knew that he had neither the head nor the heart to be a cog in the mechanism of governance. And Pentos, he suspected, might prove a backwater over the next few years, even with the coup in Norvos. The true cock-pit of action was in the south, where King Robert fenced with his enemies over an ever-more-embattled borderland, and he was, at heart, a man who lived for the clang of sword on sword, whether those swords were made of steel or of thought.
Of course, it wouldn't do to become too close to the Myrish. Fighting the good fight for Holy Freedom was well and good, but he was past thirty, and he knew that he was already having to work harder than he had to maintain the height of speed and endurance he had reached in his younger years. And while he had been an exceptional duelist and bodyguard, he had never been a soldier, and he knew enough to know that it called for a completely different set of skills. One that he was too old to learn at the expense of the skills he already had.
That said, he reminded himself as he set about brewing a cup of broth, King Robert had instituted a royal bodyguard on his wedding day. And while they were all doubtless worthy men who would die for their principals as gladly as they would kill for them, they hadn't had the time to learn nearly as many tricks of the bodyguard's trade as he had, and certainly not nearly a tithe as many as his predecessors had developed. He would, he decided, give the letter that he had received from Queen Serina a second look.
XXX
The King's Landing Commandery of the Royal Order of the Crown was not what anyone would call glamorous. It was squarely built, blocky, and stood on the edge of Flea Bottom like the watchtower it resembled, albeit one only two stories high. Yet it had an undeniable aura of power, one that was only reinforced by the low wall that encircled it, the royal banner that flew from the roof, and the pair of sergeants standing guard on the gate, their poleaxes at rest arms. Neither King Stannis nor any of his works were guilty of excessive decoration, yet no one dared question the strength behind them.
The lack of ornamentation was maintained within the main dining hall, which was decorated with only a handful of hangings and a single small tapestry showing the Battle of Tyrosh. Loras had heard that another tapestry was being made to depict the Order's deeds in the Upper Mander Rebellion and a third to show Balon's Rebellion, but it took time to make such things. Meanwhile, these gifts from minor lords would have to serve to lighten the otherwise somewhat oppressive atmosphere of the hall. His lord father had warned him that few seats were as beautiful as Highgarden, but sometimes it was still a shock how barren some places could seem.
Not that his attention was on the décor. Not when there were three knights sitting at the officers' table and he and two other squires were standing ready to serve. Only hard-learned discipline kept him from snorting; as if the men at that table could be so casually defined as 'three knights'. The Masters of the three Royal Orders were no mere knights, to lumped in with others of the class that had produced them. When such men gathered over Dornish cheese and peppers, Blackwater crabs with melted butter and watercress, and Harlaw mead, the fate of kingdoms could turn on what they said. And gods knew they looked it. Loras' master, Ser Harold Jordayne, was the most genial of the three, with his tanned face habitually creased in a slight smile behind his mustachios, as if he found the world faintly amusing, but the smile did not conceal the cunning light in his eyes. Ser Jacelyn Bywater, the host of this little convocation, was more overtly pugnacious, with his lantern jaw and heavy brow giving him the look of a man with no time for obstacles and no patience to pretend otherwise. But most impressive of all, to Loras' eyes, was Ser Rickon Riverbend. The Master of the Order of the Sea, visiting the capital for the first time since his installation, looked every one of his forty-odd years, but they seemed to sit on him gracefully enough. But more than his surprising handsomeness was the air of calm, well-ordered power that seemed to hang around him, livened by what Loras would swear was tension, like some great cat surrounded by dogs. Strange that a man who occupied such a height of power should be anything approaching nervous, but then he had risen from the taint of bastardy and the poverty of a hedge knight solely on the strength of his merits. A man with such a background, who had nothing to fall back on save his courage and his prowess, Ser Harold had told him, had to be mindful of all that he said and did, lest he fall as swiftly as he had risen.
Loras would agree, except that the thought of Ser Rickon falling was laughable. The man was one of the great knights of the age, a man that the singers were already comparing to Ser Duncan the Tall. Of a certainty, what Loras had heard of his personal habits bore out the comparison; he didn't drink, didn't wench, didn't lord it over those he was set over. If anything, he seemed to comport himself as a squire entrusted with a task, expecting nothing more than acknowledgement of work well done. Loras came out of his reverie to find Ser Rickon returning his gaze and quickly glanced at the floor.
There were men, he knew, who would consider these men to lesser because they were only knights, and because the best-born of them was only a cousin of a minor house who had stood to inherit nothing in the way of land or wealth. Such men, Loras decided, were fools. These men might have been born a poor cousin of a minor lord, a bastard of a minor landed knight of no repute, and a commoner who had been raised to knighthood for service, but they commanded strong armies, held mighty fortresses, and answered to none save the King, to whom they had the right of direct access and appeal. Even now they were discussing how best to coordinate their efforts to carry out royal policy, as well as the placement of men under their command. Ser Rickon was apparently in desperate need of knights that could command a ship, Ser Jacelyn wanted to send some knights that he thought were growing soft either to Dorne or to the Isles, and Ser Harold wanted to send some overly prideful Dornish officers of his Order north, where the smallfolk would be less deferential and their comrades less inclined to indulge their pretensions. Loras knew how power worked, from listening to his father and mother and grandmother, but these were men who by all rights should have lived and died in obscurity deciding the fates of men and provinces, and planning what they would say when they were called before the Iron Throne a week from today. It was heady stuff, by any measure, but especially for him.
Loras Tyrell was a third son, and from his childhood he had known that he could not expect to inherit much beyond a stipend, a suitably fine set of armor and weapons, a horse from his father's stables, and the Tyrell name. He had never been bitter about it, he loved his brothers too much for that, but he had also known that he would always be last in his family's fortunes; if he wanted more, he would have to take it for himself. And the only proper way to do that, of course, was to earn it by courage and prowess, as a true knight did. The Kingsguard had been his dream, until the Targaryen's had fallen. Oh, he had made the maester howl when he learned the Kingsguard had been declared disbanded, chasing him through Highgarden with his toy sword and screaming that he was a liar. When he had finally calmed down and been ready to listen to his father, the revelation that the Kingsguard had brought shame upon the memory of the heroes who had worn the white cloak, that they had proven false, had been world-breaking. In that hour he had sworn to hate the last surviving Kingsguards for so defiling the laws of chivalry as to be party to kidnap and rape, like common brigands, and he had needed a new ambition to fill the hole that betrayal had left in his soul. The Stormguard had been a natural replacement, until he had joined the Order of the Sun as Ser Harold's squire. Ser Harold, and his fellow Masters, had come from nearly nothing, yet they were powers in the Seven Kingdoms that only the greatest or the most foolish would dare to cross or gainsay. He had seen with his own eyes the respect and influence that Ser Harold commanded in Dorne, from the Tower of the Sun to the markets of Planky Town. Ser Jacelyn Bywater was virtually the human incarnation of King Stannis' will in the Crownlands, the iron fist of his law and justice by land and sea. And Ser Rickon . . . Ser Rickon was the next thing to a triarch in the Iron Islands, alongside Ser Kevan Lannister and Lord Harlaw, whose banner of the scythe and seven-pointed star had replaced the Greyjoy kraken in the great hall of the Red Keep. Why would Loras want to be a mere bodyguard, minding women and children as often as the King, when he could join one of the landed Orders, rise through its ranks, become an officer that even lords had to bow and speak softly to? If men so lowly-born as these men could rise so high, why could not he, the son of Lord Tyrell, rise even higher?
His dreams were not of the Kingsguard now, or even of the Stormguard. They were of his brother knights chanting his name as he led them to victory over the rebel, the heretic, the Targaryen, and any other who threatened the King's Peace. They were of lords beneath ancient and mighty banners, even the Tyrell rose, saluting him in respect and gratitude as he rode past them to lay the tattered banners of the King's beaten enemies at his feet while the crowned stag waved triumphant over all. He might be the youngest son of House Tyrell, he swore as the Masters moved on to the subject of trade over fruit pie and wine, but he would not be the least of them.