3: Horse Shit
My mother and I would be riding for Storm's End, while my father glowered darkly that I had "better impress Lord Stannis and stay gone" and planned to hold the castle and shove off parenting of my siblings on the castle staff. It hurt to leave young Dickon and Talla, but my father's glowers had grown more pronounced of late, and I did not wish him to get any ideas about ending up with "a more preferable heir" by happening upon me while I tramped the hills around Horn Hill and the village below it.
As the days wound closer to our departure, there were many tearful remonstrances between me and my new siblings. They were good kids, and I promised to write if I was accepted anywhere as a page.
As I was meant to show off to my best, it meant new outfits, an ensemble, and all the gear I could stuff into wicker horse and mule panniers.
Yeah, eat your heart out you Diagon Alley shopping-trip-wanting motherfuckers. The clothes were pretty cash and had the striding Tarly huntsman embossed everywhere so if we got attacked on the road I might be held for ransom instead of being killed, assuming anyone got past my personal man-at-arms, a lanky, villainous-looking cove who cleaned his filthy fingernails with a well-used dirk and went by the name of Easy Pate.
And while Randy said I could commission anything from the smith I liked as a Legally Sanctioned Weapon for my 8-year-old ass to carry, I requested a custom cooking trousseau from the castle smith instead, and then took a look through our armories. Westeros had a history that ran in the thousands of years, but it looked like weapons technology had stalled around 1450 or so, minus anything with guns, and it wasn't like I was going to try and invent them. For one, I was the aristocracy, and for Two, I wasn't an engineer or materials scientist and had no desire to blow myself up.
So, finally after a bit of searching through dusty armories, I found something that looked like a cinquedea.
My weapon of choice had a short, broad blade as wide as a grown man's hand with several fullers to lighten it, and a handle that molded nicely to my hand. It cleaned up nicely and the new edge and fresh scabbard put a smile on my asshole father's face.
It fell about as soon as he saw my eyes light up as the smith laid out as close as I could get to good cooking kit.
But that's not important. There was the mandatory Tarly Skinning knife and bone saw for hunting trips, but I ALSO had a wicked-sharp chef's knife, some large wooden spoons, a specially serrated bread knife, and some lovely paring and carving knives for all my aspirational page duties. The brass-capped pomander I had turned into an impromptu spice-cellar had eight flip up lids and a host of tiny measuring spoons.
I might die from tainted meat or salmonella-ridden eggs, but I wasn't going to die from lack of seasoning.
Plus I figured it might be nice to have some dried, powdered dornishh peppers on hand in case anyone needed a peck of pocket peppers. To the eyes.
Eat your heart out, Dale Gribble.
There was just one problem: Storm's end meant riding.
And riding meant horses.
Horses love me, shut up.
(Note: Horses did not, in fact, love me)
Here's the most valuable thing I've learned about Westeros in my few months living there: At the heart of every Westerosi Knight, Master or Man-at-arms lies a Horse Girl. Capitalized. And not just any Horse Girl, but the one with the custom shirt who brings the same battered plastic horsie to the first day of middle school after declaring war on the Wolf Girl. Each one will negotiate an intermittent truce with Dolphin Girl to gain a temporary ally before generally growing into relatively chill if somewhat loopy adults who would rather you didn't remember the sort of shit they pulled, but whose epic struggles did give me a helpful primer to young me for Westerosi Politics.
Fuck, I'd take mediating the Bracken/Blackwood feud over dealing with middle school girl politics. The only solution to that is to stay well away from that and pray they don't notice you. I suppose they could be worse. They could be bronies.
Unfortunately, look past the shiny swords and the gleaming plate armor and mail, forget about the Seven Oils and the vigils and the vows and the constant training, and you realize that the horse is one of the most critical parts about being a Knight. The horse provides mobility, mechanical advantage, and hitting power, and I hated every single one of the stupid fragile tall hairy fuckers.
So, imagine you're rich, right? You've got the big houses, the hot tubs, the servants, and a variety of cars that are important to your business functions, and everything, right from the daily driver town car to the slickest Lambo or Bugatti your filthy-casual-Top-Gear-viewing butt can imagine is off to the side in a giant garage dedicated to motoring, and every single car can explode, fall apart, hang itself, or ram into your garage door of its own will. And they all hate you. And they all have to be brushed, coddled, and taken care of even if you don't want to go anywhere, and twice as much if you do.
And they all hate you.
Also they'll occasionally run into fences and die, or just fall over dead randomly and you can ring your own bells just getting into the saddle wrong. Ask me how I know.
Oh, and have I mentioned they all hate you?
I had tried to ride better, to reach out to my four-footed conveyances with apples and sweet words, and all I could think of after each session where I ended up dusty and bruised is what the fuckers would taste like, and all Randy's things I could glue down with the rest of them.
Destriers and fliers, Sand steeds and palfreys, Piebalds and Mybalds, they all hated me, and I hated them.
Get it? Mybalds? That's not actually a horse, it's another "Pate" joke. It killed with Maester Lewys. Once.
Too bad I made it almost monthly, just to hear his exhausted groan.
So after exchanging solemn salutes with my father and ignoring his hatefully evaluative glances, and tearful goodbyes with the little ones, Mother and I departed with a train of men-at-arms (Including Pate) and assorted servants and maids and hostlers to ease our passage.
I rode the only horse in our stables to at least be indifferent to me, a placid, fat mare who was mostly content to stand in fields and eat. Well. We had that in common at least, and in a fit of feigned childhood sentiment, I had renamed her Meraxes. But really it was mostly because her ass kept… draggin.
Mother had planned the trip, which took us North through Highgarden, where we would then charter river transport along the Mander, and disembarking at Fawnton before transitioning the Kingswood to Storm's End. We might encounter the rest of the Florents on the road, but it wasn't likely, so we were sure to meet them at the wedding itself.
I will say this for the Reach, it's gorgeous, pastoral to a T, and the roads were pretty good as far as roads go. We made good time through the borderlands of the Marches, and while we stayed alert for Dornish bandits, none troubled us on our journey.
I thought about the three Martell children, and I idly wondered if Doran would be as shit communicating with his two eldest as he was in the books. Or if he looked like Alexander Siddig. Or if the Sand Snakes were as flash-in-the-pan as they appeared on the show. Welp. Not much I could do about it from where I sat, across the border and part of a traditionally hated enemy group except resolve not to die of the "Bad poosey." Still.
Poor Quentyn.
As beautiful as the country was, with green fields transitioning into steeper rocky passes, I was not expecting to have such a wonderful time at each inn we stopped…in.
Fantasy McRoleplaying fans might picture an inn as a cute bed and breakfast with a few smallish rooms, and some were, mostly off rougher roads or when placed in towns, but more rural inns were fortress-towns in their own right with walls, guards, and everything from smiths to sutlers there to cater to any need a traveler could possibly have. The summer was golden, the roads were (mostly) safe, and the people were… generally kind and upbeat. Most Reacherlords not near the marches ruled with a less overtly grasping hand. Well. The ones who lasted, anyway.
This was the Long Peace of Good King Robert, bought with the blood of murdered children, dangerous, teetering loans crafted by an incel brothel owner mainlining Oneitis, and an alliance with the Lannisters which had a rapidly approaching expiration date. But traveling through the open country along peaceful roads, it was easy to see why so many people who hadn't met him (And even the ones who had) had loved that fat, drunken wastrel.
While our steward had dickered with various guides to arrange lodging, I made a beeline for the inn's kitchen, catching my Mother's face break out in a broad, affectionate smile as I ran inside without an asshole father to gainsay me.
For you see, I had smelled a taste of home in the air the instant we had arrived, as the sharp tang of horseradish paste made itself known.
It was the work of a few minutes to pass a stag to the head cook and request a cooking lesson, learning how to baste a roast and pour wine for gentlemen and lords and ladies, just as a set of small loaves I had requested finished baking. I then appropriated some of the succulent roast beef and drippings,caramelized some onions, and packed the horseradish into a pot before taking it out to our party.
The Inn's cook pronounced it delectable, but I wasn't sure if he was just appeasing the rich idiot lordling, so I opted to test them on the men, the maids, and Mother. Easy Pate horked his down in five bites and drowned the spice with a tankard of ale, while I made do with some cool birch beer that offered an airy counterpoint to the meatsplosion of flavor.
Mother had seconds and I decided to take that as a compliment. Well. Chalk up one win for good old American know-how. Next, I'd have to go on the hunt for some kind of Pastrami. I bet the Stormlands had some. Animals, Salted Meat, inclement weather. They were bound to, right? What were they gonna be left with, Haggis?
It was only a couple of hundred miles to Highgarden as the raven flew, but that was in the air, and our journey took several days, as we did not wish to chance the horses, or, you know. Bruising.
What was the old joke? Oh yeah. The famed cavalry memoir: Forty Years in the Saddle, By Major Assburns.
It got less and less funny as the miles wore on.
As we went though, we stopped at various smaller inns, and I expanded my culinary repertoire, and tested out things like cheesy breadsticks and french fries on the Westerosi palate. Mother enjoyed time away from Randy and passed out a blizzard of copper stars as we passed through our lands, our guards drilled in combat, and Easy Pate and I came to an understanding. I'd try my best in the yard, and he'd tell Daddy I was "Showing very well" while I funded his tavern trips. Then he'd give me some very sage advice about when to run away and where to stick my dagger if I absolutely had to fight an armored man.
It was the start of a very productive friendship.
And then we got to Highgarden. It looked like a very expensive wedding cake.
I'm not kidding. See, I'd looked at maps and drawings, and I knew Highgarden sits next to the Mander at the intersection of the Ocean Road and the mysteriously-named Roseroad, and like most seats of the Lord Paramount, there's a walled town below it to facilitate trade and like, peasant-breeding and all the other sorts of things Lords and Ladies pretend not to concern themselves with but actually are the lifeblood of their lands.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation much?
Where was I? Oh yeah. Highgarden looks like a cake. The castle itself is massive, built on a hill adjacent to the river, and three progressively larger walls stack up to a couple of older, square keeps at its summit rumored to be from the Age of Heroes.
Given my terrible vision, If I squinted I could just imagine it as a smaller piece of confectionery ready to be cut apart and served at a feast. Mace would probably dig it.
Still, knowing the Tyrells, I imagined that the whitewashed walls hid more firing ports than I could possibly imagine, the nasty, functional mechanical artillery was tucked away under several large tea cozies, and the briar maze could be like, lit on fire when the need called for it.
We passed through the town gates, and as the well-organized City Watch had doubtless noticed our arrival were greeted by a page wearing the badge of House Tyrell who bore a gilded tray with fine white loaves, a ramekin of butter, and a cellar of flaky sea salt.
Mmmm. Snacks.
Then the Tyrell page, a straw-haired boy probably also named Pate extended a sealed missive to Mother, who delicately cracked the golden rose seal and handed it to me to read it aloud:
From the hand of Garth Tyrell, To the honorable Melessa Tarly, on behalf of Lady Olenna Tyrell, you and your son Samwell are hereby invited to join myself and assorted grandchildren for an outdoor lunch, and a tour of our private gardens.
Invited.
Look, when Olenna Luthorfucking Tyrell, The Queen of Thorns herself, aka the ornery mother of your suet pudding of a liege lord, invites you somewhere, it's not an invitation. It's a fucking summons, and you had better come correct.
Son of a bitch.
No wait, that's Mace.
So. The Grande Dame herself. Not to mention a packet of other Tiny Tyrell Terrors. Any or all of whom could take this basic bitch interaction as grounds to judge me and our family for the rest of our lives and/or have it influence them to disappear us.
And I have absolutely no idea what to do with all that. I'm driving around in an eight year old body!
Fucking Westeros.