5: River Shit

The grain barge was more than just a floaty box piled high with a massive pile of grain. In fact, it was more of a ship than a barge, if a flatter-bottomed one.

It was a massive sort of tramp freighter that plied up and down the Mander, stopping at towns along the way. It didn't draw too much water, and was wide along with it, using broad sails and oars to propel it, and prominent fore and after-castles to defend it from river pirates (unseen since the Rebellion) and Ironborn (unseen since their rebellion) so petty merchants frequently bought passage and cargo room on board for smaller items and slept with their wares, while the well-to-do (us) hired everything from comfortable cabins to stabling for our horses.

And the horses hated it because they had to be swung aboard by means of a sling and crane. Only Meraxes wasn't bothered, but she wasn't bothered by much, so I tried to take things in stride like my horse.

Still, with a Great Lady and a lordling aboard, the barge guards were more than attentive, even though I still privately considered the odds of Olenna hiring one or two to ensure that some sort of "accident" would befall us even though I had done my best to play fat, dumb, and affable while there.

I'd done some small boat sailing, along with river rafting and kayaking in my prior life and our Master at Arms made sure I could swim in this one, but nothing I had done came close to just… floating in a leisurely fashion down the river. The closest description I could reach for comparison were the bygone days of Mississippi River steamboats, stacked like a wedding cake with stacks billowing woodsmoke into the air and a boiler able to explode at the drop of a hat. At least I didn't have to worry about that. Instead, I just worked on my courtesies (And dancing) with mother, trained with Easy Pate, and tried to get my river legs.

I may or may not have cadged a crossbow and a large bag of bolts from the barge guards with the help of a silver stag or two, and a promise to add some honey to the grain porridge that was constantly on the boil for breakfasts, and I may or may not have shot at river debris and tie-up poles as we came in, to test my vision and acuity just a bit more. I had been more than acceptable with sporting clays back when I had my glasses, and I figured out that within about forty or fifty yards, I could compute the drop of the shot against the drift of the boat and actually connect with what I wanted to. Most of the time. Even then the sharp recoil meant I had to brace the large bow on a nearby barrel to avoid losing the bow overboard with the twang and snap of firing the damn thing, even though it wasn't anywhere close to as peppy as the old bolt guns I'd had time behind.

Note to self. Try for some kind of lever action-spanned crossbow. With a rifle stock.

Still, there was fuck-all else to do stuck in the soggy surrender of river travel, and for a couple of hours I gave myself over to the meditative metronymics of repetative action.

I may or may not have been picturing Randyll Tarly's face on every piece of flotsam I took a whack at, and everyone gave me a bit of a wide berth while I worked out whatever angry malaise had taken me over. Well. Everyone except my mother of course.

Skirts rustling with a silken swish parted the crowds of men like the bow wave of a battleship, and even Easy Pate took a few steps back, before withdrawing at a savage jerk of mother's head.

"Hello, Mother." I said sunnily as I thunked a bolt into an errant barrel-top downriver and made to reload.

Mother's brow arched suspiciously "Are you quite well, Samwell?"

"Just thinking, Mother. Highgarden was all a bit much," I said, extra nervously, "They were all very nice and welcoming to us, but there was something… I don't know Mother. It was all very crowded and constant with all the talking and servants everywhere."

I could practically see the words "TEACHABLE MOMENT" grave themselves on Mother's forehead, and with a twirl of a hand she bade me continue.

"They were very nice?" I said, sandbaggingly haltingly and in deliberate discomfort.

Melessa Tarly pursed her lips and delivered her lesson, "Samwell darling, I shouldn't think that nice means they care one way or another what actually happens to us as long as someone near our demense gives them their money and men."

"Lady Olenna seemed very… Intense, but once I talked to her a bit."

"Lady Olenna has had more people killed than you'll have hot meals if you should live to be seven and seventy." said Mother, coldly.

"Does she want to kill us, Mother?"

Mother looked at me sadly "Oh Samwell, probably not right now, but that could change in the future. Most of the Reach does not view the Tyrells as the legitimate Lords Paramount, so they have zealously, and some would say jealously guarded their power, which lacks the absolute establishment of that of the ancient Starks or Arryns."

"So part of why Lord Mace gives so many feasts and tourneys is to get his lords to like him more?"

"Part of it sweetling," she said, wrinkling her nose playfully "And it's a weak man indeed who needs to be liked, or strives as hard as Lord Mace, but I suppose he needs to have something to lay claim to after your father claimed what faint glory there was in the Rebellion while he sat on his rump failing to bring Lord Stannis to heel."

I wrinkled my brow, looked even more nervous, loaded a giant verbal ballista and let fly, "Father doesn't like me very much, does he?"

She stared at me with an astonished, adult gaze, cut to the quick, and gave me the only answer she could.

"No he does not. But I do, and Talla does, and Dickon, we all love you."

"If father thinks me too weak to do my duties and Lord Stannis does as well, and father will not let me go to the Citadel or the Faith, what will he do mother? Will he sell me off to slavers, or just take me hunting one day and tell you I tripped and fell on my own knife?"

"If your father breathes so much as a " mother said, "I swear to you he will not live long to ensure or enjoy his new succession plan, I will be more vigilant, and mayhaps," She paused significantly, he will trip and fall on his own knife in our bedchamber of an evening."

"Mother," I said quietly, "I love you all too, but you shouldn't have to kill anybody. Least of all Fa-Father. Least of all for me. Suppose I do not want Horn Hill? I fear I am not made for it."

"Nonsense," She said with affection,

"W-would you be proud of me if my path takes me elsewhere though? If I found something that…"

"Oh Samwell," Mother said, placing a reassuring arm around my shoulders, and drawing me to her side, "I am already proud of you. Rest assured you will have a place wherever we are, and your idiot father can lump it."

As the wide grain barge wound its way along the wider Mander River we stood there watching the banks go by, and I glowed with the simple sensation befitting the eight year old I very much wasn't, of finally feeling, even a little bit, like I belonged.