Saving People Thing
Harry felt the blow upon his shield, shuddering as the steel blade slammed into the seasoned oak. He leaned back, just a fraction, before turning his shield sideways to drive the blade of his opponent away to his left. His own sword flickered out, a tongue of steel glimmering in the light of the dying sun.
The flat of the blade came to rest less than an inch from Collyn's neck.
Collyn pouted. "In battle, Ser, my armour would stop such a blow."
"Maybe," Harry allowed, stepping away. "Or maybe your squire would have forgotten to put your armour on properly and there's a gap."
"I've never let you down like that, Ser Harry."
"I was speaking hypothetically, Collyn," Harry replied, turning his back on the young squire for a moment to gaze at the Mountains of the Moon that rose, snow-capped and forbidding, up on all sides of them like a forest of jagged teeth eager to swallow whole the Vale. His company had passed the Bloody Gate two days earlier, and were now on the High Road through the Vale; a few more days would bring them to the Riverlands. A few more days would bring them out of the jaws of these mountains.
"Is something wrong, Ser Harry?" Collyn asked.
Harry glanced back him. "I told you, Collyn, my friends call me Hal."
"Is something wrong, Ser Hal?"
"Almost certainly not," Harry replied quickly. [i]The moon clans will have grown bold indeed to attack us, well armed as we are.[/i] "Still, it never hurts to be prepared." Harry whistled, and at his call Hedwig flew over from the old dead tree upon a branch of which she had made her perch to land on Harry's arm. She screeched, then bit his ear affectionately.
Harry smiled in spite of the pain. "I know, you were resting. Just take a quick look around for me, would you?"
Hedwig cocked her head to one side, and chirruped quietly. Then she took off, soaring up into the darkening dusky sky in counterpoint to the descending sun.
"You fear the wildlings, Ser?" Collyn asked.
Harry frowned. "Don't call them wildlings, Collyn; they're men, just like we are."
Collyn's expression was confused. "They're savages."
"That's just a word you give your enemies so that you can kill them with a clear conscience," Harry replied. "If someone where to conquer the Vale and drive us up into those mountains how long do you think we could maintain civilised values?"
Collyn's mouth twisted with distaste. "They raid and they kill and they-"
"And when they do those things we rightly bring justice to them," Harry said. "But I won't condemn every last one of them out of hand." He paused for a moment. "Collyn, what is it that defines a knight?"
Collyn blinked, seeming thrown by the change of subject. "Ser?"
"A knight, Collyn, what defines him?"
Collyn looked down at his feet. "His horse, Ser, and armour and lance."
"Anyone can own a horse and armour, Collyn, anyone can tilt a lance well if they practice," Harry said. "A knight is defined by his vows: defend the innocent, protect all women."
"They say that wil- they say that clan women can be right vicious, Ser," Collyn said.
Harry chuckled. "Some of them can, but amongst those mountains there will be some who are innocent, and those I will not condemn."
"Because you are a knight, Ser?"
"Because I try to be a good man," Harry replied. "But, yes, the vows help me to know what that means."
A piercing screech from the sky drew Harry's attention upwards. Hedwig was a dash of white and tawny against the blue, circling twice above the camp of the Valemen, crying out in a high piercing tone, before soaring off again above the High Road to the southwest.
"What do you think it means, Ser?" Collyn asked.
After a couple of hundred yards Hedwig turned back again, and cried out once more, before flying away. It was as if she were saying Follow me, you idiots! This way! to people too dense to get the point.
What did you see, girl? "I think it means trouble," Harry said, sheathing his sword and jogging swiftly across the camp. He had only a leather jerkin and his shield for armour and protection, but who knew what foul mischief might be perpetrated while he clad himself in mail, or how far away the villains might escape by the time he reached the scene of their crime.
"Ronnet!" he cried as he swung himself up into his horse. "Pick six men and follow me as quick as you can, the rest to remain here and guard the camp. Collyn, stay here."
"But I'm your squire!" Collyn cried. "I can-"
"You are my squire, and so I don't want to explain to your father how I got you killed," Harry replied. Or mine, for that matter.
Ronnet was the commander of the Arryn guardsmen, one of Lord Jon's oldest serving men, broad shouldered and with a grizzled auburn beard. "Wait just a moment, Ser Harry, and we can-"
Hedwig shrieked again.
"No time," Harry said. "Follow swiftly." He heard Ronnet mutter something about his 'saving people thing' as he jerked his horse back from the picket line and put knees to her, sending the destrier cantering down the High Road with Harry's sky blue cloak fluttering behind him like a banner.
Saving people thing. As though compassion were a sin, or at least a worse folly than callousness. And this, at times, from men like his lord father who were anointed knights just as he was, who had knelt before the Warrior's image, who had been anointed with the oils as kings and prophets were anointed, who sworn the sacred vows even as he had sworn. And yet they chided him, or mocked him what was worse, merely for endeavouring to live up to the vows that he had made.
In the Warrior's name, I charge you to be brave. And yet he was supposed to cower within his camp protected by the swords and spears of a score of Arryn men whilst, for all he knew, some defenceless traveller on the road fell victim to the malice of brigands or the fury of the mountain clans.
In the name of the Mother, I charge you defend the weak and innocent. Yet he should sit idle while the innocnent suffered, and tell the Mother what? That it was inconvenient to keep his oath? That he had put his own comfort and his safety first? He had sworn vows to act with honour and with chivalry in all things; not 'when he felt like it' or 'when there were no risks involved' or even 'when he had nothing better to do', but always. He was a knight, sworn and anointed, and he would not disgrace that honour by failing to live up to it.
And besides, going to the aid of those in peril could never be the wrong thing to do.
Hedwig screamed, and this time she was answered by another scream rising upward from ground level; a woman's scream.
In the name of the Maid, I charge you to protect all women.
Harry rounded the bed, dust flying up from the hooves of his horse, to cast eyes upon the sight before him: a cart, tipped upon its side, all goods scattered across the road and the fields beyond; an old man, unmistakably dead, his head split open; a carthorse, trapped in the harness, whinnying as it struggled to free itself; and a girl with bushy brown hair, eyes wide with terror, surrounded by a dozen mountain tribesmen (and one woman that Harry could spot right away), all clad in thick furs that made them seem bigger than they already were, wearing scraps of leather and metal, with faces painted and bodies marred with patches of burned flesh.
Burned Men. Of all the luck.
Of all the clans of the Mountains of the Moon the Burned Men were by far the strongest and the cruellest. The common wisdom was that they were all born madder than a Targaryen, and given their penchant for self-mutilation Harry found it hard to disagree.
Still, the Warrior had charged him to be brave, and so Harry let out a loud war cry as he scraped his sword free from his scabbard and urged his horse forwards to fall upon the mountain men while they were unaware.
"For the Eyrie! Arryn! Arryn!" Harry howled, cutting down the first Burned Man from behind, his blade slicing into the fellow's back with a sickening crunch as blood splattered across Harry's leg and the flanks of his horse. The onward rushing progress of his destrier sent another mountain man flying backwards, howling in pain as he savaged by the hooves of Harry's well-trained steed, while Harry brought his sword down upon the head of a third Burned Man, splitting his head like an egg.
The Burned Men were turning to face him now, brandishing their crude weapons of stone and flint, howling in anger as they left the defenceless girl behind and closed instead upon the young knight, like the hunting hounds which abandon the bear cub as soon as the mother comes in view and bellows at them in her anger.
One Burned Man, braver or more foolish than the rest, made a grab for the reins of Harry's mouth, but the horse deftly stepped away and bit the clansman into the bargain, making him shriek in agony and fall back clutching at his hand. Another clansman swung a stone axe crudely at him, but Harry turned the blow with his blade and countered, opening up his enemy's face.
He didn't see the arrow coming.
Harry felt himself knocked off his horse before he felt the pain of the dart itself. One moment he was looking for his next opponent, the next he was flying from the saddle and falling towards the ground. It was only after a moment of the world twirling around him that he felt the stabbing, burning pain in his shoulder that made him wince, and a moment after that the heavy blow from the ground that made him cry out.
With howls of triumph the Burned Men fell upon him, led by the man with the stone axe and the new scar across his face, who seemed somehow to still be able to find Harry in spite of the blood that was covering his visage. He raised his axe up high. Harry rolled aside, howling as he snapped the arrow in his shoulder, but dodging the axe all the same as it buried itself in the ground. He leapt to his feet - pain had not dulled his reflexes at least - to skewer the man upon his blade.
Two more Burned Men attacked at one, with a stone club for one and a sword doubtless pilfered from some unfortunate knight or man at arms for the other.
They will not take my sword. I will break it before they do. Harry took the first blow upon his shield, though the strength behind it jarred his whole army, turning it aside to create an opening for his attack. The swordsman came at him from the other side. Harry would not call himself a great swordsman, but he had reflexes such as would make men gasp and it was his speed that saved him as he parried the strike from the unexpected quarter just in time. The two worked in tandem, keeping him on the defensive, too focussed upon staying alive to go on the attack against either one of them. Neither of them was swift enough to break his defences, but together they could keep him hopping.
Hedwig swooped out of the sky with a feral screech, her claws out as though she had spotted a fieldmouse running swiftly through the field. But it was the Burned Man with the sword that she was hunting as she clawed at his eyes and made him recoil, screaming.
Harry turned the clubman's stroke aside and opened his throat. Then he drove his blade into the swordsman's chest.
The second arrow took him in the abdomen.
Harry gasped for breath as his knees buckled beneat him, making him lean on his sword to stop from falling flat on his face on the ground. The pain. So much pain, no wonder everbody hated archers so much. Seven! Harry gasped for breath, trying to look for the next assault from the dwindling numbers of Burned Men. He could see the archer right in front of him. It was the woman, the only woman in the raiding party. She was slight, and not too tall, with copper hair and dark black paint around her eyes. She stared at him for a moment, then she turned away. They were all turning away, the surviving Burned Men running as Ronnet and his men rode into view, the clansmen fleeing into the mountains as swiftly as they had emerged.
"Ser Harry!" Ronnet cried out anxiously as he ran to Harry, kneeling before him. "Ser Harry, oh, Gods! I knew you're saving people would get you into trouble."
Despite the pain, Harry managed to smile. "Took you... long... enough." He collapsed onto his side.
The last thing he heard as the world darkened was people anxiously calling out his name.
Author's Note: He's not dead.
I decided that Harry should be a True Knight because it felt like a very Harry-ish thing to be; the fact that it nearly gets him killed also seems true to the character.
The mountain clans are going to play a substantial role in the story eventually, and since we don't get a lot of details around them I'll probably draw a lot of inspiration from the Grounders on the CW show The 100, because they kind of have the same look to them and The 100 is an awesome show all round.