Guts
It had been just a week since the Band of the Hawk's Raiders and Brynden the Blackfish's knights took Castle Soapstone of Maidenpool and he was already getting restless. Luckily Gaston and Ser Brynden were handling the organization and accounting of the weapons, gold, and food in the armory and treasury. Guts was more than willing to admit that wasn't his area of expertise, but even training and managing the levied foot who would hold Soapstone still lost his interest pretty quickly. Outside of a handful of basic routines and demonstrations for three hundred men, most of did was check in on officers and make sure they were as competent as he knew they were and that the new recruits learned to strictly adhere to their schedules and order at all times.
Guts longed for battle or at the very least getting back to Riverrun to meet back up with his comrades. The Blackfish was good company and always seemed to find a way to pull out a nugget of wise advice or story out of his pocket whenever it was needed or things got seemed to get to quiet or boring, and Gaston as always could hold his liquor and own stories of back home made Guts himself somehow feel nostalgic and homesick but Guts longed to be back with everyone or at least had something to do other than teach a farmer what side of his spear to hold up. Pippin was a quiet man but it was always comforting to have him nearby, Rickett might be the most trustworthy and handy person he knew period despite how young he was, and Judeau was a man with an easy smile, a thousand clever tricks or jokes, and every man's friend. Hell Guts would have taken either Corkus or Casca as company, even they always seemed to treat him like a dog who always made a mess inside.
But he was leaving today with Brynden in any case so he had even less reason to complain about having a slow week. Gaston and Brynden's second in command would be left behind to continue training and managing the men until Lord Mooton was settled back in. More importantly, as per both Griffith's and the Brynden's orders, the men were being instructed in order to ignore Mooton's command and how to stage a mutiny if the coward surrendered again without a fight as he had just a month prior. Odds were Tywin or the Mountain wouldn't lay siege to the castle again, at least anytime soon as Tywin was preoccupied battling the Starks and the Mountain's forces were too small to siege castles anymore and was mostly raiding, but preparation for any eventuality was usually the actually deciding factor in a battle or war.
Guts was nothing more than an up jumped grunt and even he knew that. Even now out of his armor, he had two long knifes tucked away in his belt, a dagger hidden in his boot, a crossbow along with seven bolts, and of course his two handed greatsword that was almost half a foot longer than most two handed blades of the identical class. He even had trouble sleeping without a sword by his side since he was nine and found it utterly impossible to do so without at a dagger near by at least. The world was a dangerous enough place on it's own, during a war it far more dangerous than the singers would imagine haunted woods filled with giants, wyverns, trolls, grumpkins, and snarks would be in their songs.
As unprofessional of as it was for him, he was slacking off in his duties and laying on the very edge of the battlements using whetstone to sharpen and clean his sword, supporting his back on one of the white clear stone crenellations, sticking from the top of the wall and around the castle like a crown, and his feet resting on the next one over. The Soapstone was no Riverrun, and there wasn't enough room for him to completely spread out, forcing him to lay down at angle, leaving his legs way above his head, which practically touched the bottom of the wall. At night had enjoyed the cool breeze and looking up at the stars from up here, often falling asleep on the milky, smoothed but rocky floors and not his soft bed, feathered and with the quality silks reserved normally for high born guests and remembers of the household. There were no stars now twinkling in the sky in the mourning but the breeze felt fine as ever on his skin. Still his eyes and ears were poised and heard the familiar heavy beat of Gaston's steel boots hitting the floor towards him before Gaston would be able to hear Guts hymning to himself as he finished polishing his blade.
Gaston walked over to him, his boots too heavy for the casual demeanor he tried to present, with two articles of clothing in his hand, each a fine tunic more suited for nobility than anyone like them. "Hey Ser Guts, what are you doing here? Ronald had check the clerk's inspection of the armory himself and Brynden is looking all over for you. Remember you're supposed to meet up with Robb Stark and Griffith at Riverrun?"
Guts hopped up and towards Gaston, singing his sword around his back and grabbing each set of clothes with each of his hands. "Just got tired of breathing in dusty air of the dungeons and libraries. What the hell are these?" Guts asked, pulling each one up to closer to his face to inspect. "This one hear on the left fits in, really nice silk. The deep blue is nice on the eyes but this one looks like you carried it with you from all the way out of Midland. It doesn't matter how nice the linen is, it's sticking out of the collars and sleeves isn't in vogue here from what I can tell. Did you find this in Lord Mooton's quarters? Tully will give you hell..."
Gaston just shook his head and laughed, a little sheepishly. "Nah I made both actually."
"Really? Both look great! I thought this was just some over priced outfit they got from a snobbish flop in Essos or King's Landing….but that's just because of how fancy it looks." Guts said whistling. "You're pretty damn good with both a lance and needle."
"Thanks...actually that was why I signed up with the Band of the Hawk. I was apprentice tailor in Vritannis back before I signed up with Griffith." Gaston said
"What made you give it up and become a sellsword?" Guts asked, a good natured grin spreading across his face. He had known Gaston for the better part of three years and still didn't that about him, though he had long hazarded a guess his second in command was not a career solider type.
"Because I didn't want to be an apprentice or even a journeyman tailor, I wanted to own my practice or even shop in the city. Mayhaps even have nobility or even merchant princes like the Free Cities be my private clientele. My boss though was going to leave the business to his daughter and her husband, and it was a small shop and that girl was a miser, always pinching pennies. While the old man would have kept me on until I finished learning my trade at the very least, she was going to kick me out the door he retired. Knew which way the wind was blowing and I decided not to fight it, a week after I found out the old man's plans I wished him well, then looked for a line of work I could make a lot of coin in fast as possible and signed on with the Band of the Hawk. Man it's funny, Griffith didn't pay well at all in the beginning and told possible recruit he could off of his literal soapbox that if we signed up it was going to be for bloody battles and the long haul, his whole pitch was something I told myself I'd avoid at all costs, but ten minutes after hearing him speak I signed my name to his register soon as I could."
"I think I'm the only one whose arm Griffith had to twist to join up."
Gaston erupted into a fit of laughter so bad he couldn't breathe, his knees buckling and causing him drop to the floor. His face even swelled a bit and went purple as a grape, before he finally got had control of himself. Gaston had to almost beat him off to stop Guts from hoisting him up from his back and squeezing him he was so concerned. All the while Gaston seemed bemused, chuckling even as he rose and wiping a tear from his eye as he did so. Guts himself only cocked a grin at the very end of his fit, only prompting Gaston to erupt in a fresh but less passionate burst of giggles.
How soon had it taken for him to take his future best friend ambushing him and beating him into submission in total stride? Hell, if he was going to be honest, Guts looked back on the day Griffith broke his arm in two with a deep sense of nostalgia and whimsy now. He had murdered and betrayed men for far less previously, Guts remembered all too well. He had once broken a man's jaw for simply patting him on the shoulder, a couple months prior to meeting Griffith. 'I want you,' Griffith told h him simply, innocently and naively enough that Guts at the time was more than sure the only place Griffith had really wanted him was the bedroom. Honestly everything about Griffith should have resulted in Guts hating the man to his core and to either or both of their deaths, Guts being the most likely one in to wind up in a grave. Now Griffith was his best friend, if not his brother. His brilliance in both battle and off it, and his noble yet down to earth demeanor drew Guts like the rest of the two and half thousand men he had brought in. A torch in the darkness of the world, both leading and warming them together with his brilliant light and his fiery ambition.
Gaston eventually recovered from his second round of laughter and looked up at Guts seriously as he grabbing both, his smile changing into that of an innkeeper or smith in the middle of a business proposition, sincere but with a very self centered purpose. "I can understand your worries about a Midlands or a general Mur subcontinent look….but I think it highlighting your...foreignness...might actually favor you. Everyone knows you're an adventurer mercenary, but you bring with you our dignity, our honor, hell our majesty. You'd look like an exotic savior not a sellsword barbarian. Not to exotic though."
"Yeah I just noticed the detail of the trousers looks more like a tunic," Guts said. "There still is a jacket and the silks are going to make me look puffed up."
"Yes, perfect to accent you. To draw eyes on you like nobodies business. All eyes will be on you, seeing something in person most of them have never seen out of a book. The pants will make more palpable and relatable to Westerosi fashion norms."
"Uh-huh, I think that would better for someone like Griffith. I'm just a grunt and I totally look the part of thug or barbarian."
"Don't say that Ser Guts. You're a high ranking officer of the Raiders and a Westerosi landed knight of the Riverlands to boot. You're going to be excepted at these function almost as much as Commander Griffith now. People like Lord Jason Mallister or Ser Marq Piper are going to think less of him unless you show up at these meetings and in style if possible. By God, Walder Frey openly hates Griffith and you with all the black bile he can muster. The last time Griffith rode to the Twins, Casca claims he was barely containing a fit and did nothing but spit venom and insults at the Commander. He wants nothing more than for Griffith to sit quietly at those war council meetings or even him kicked out of the Band all together. Lord Frey can't stand a foreign common born man like him raising so quickly."
"That's just his way. Edmure says the old man is just curmudgeonly old fart. He tried to marry off one of his daughters to Griffith and begged the us to take two of his grandsons as squires. If Frey really hated us, why we got saddled with Hoster Frey and Duncan Waters? That kid Duncan might not be to fight worth a shit but he's strong enough to carry my arms and quick enough about putting it on me. From what Griffith says, Hoster pretty bright and helpful even if he's spoiled and nasty to the core."
"Because Griffith is a lord of a large estate now and one of the principal bannermen of the Tullys; all the captains in the band and you are all knights now and are moving up in the world now. When the war's over it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if you all ended up petty lords or more, especially with how far Griffith has come in such a short time. He'll probably end up with Harrenhal as his seat when we win this war for King Stark...or you know." Gaston said, suddenly calming himself down and coming to a stop and letting the sentence trail off and Guts finish it himself. Griffith wanted to be more than a lord, even a lord with such a rich and power a seat then Darry or even Harrenhal would grant him. Everyone in the Band knew this to some degree, from the high ranking officers who were told it in person by the man or from it trinkeling down the rank and file. But than again Griffith wasn't the type of man to truly stab Robb Stark in the back or harm the child king unprovoked even. "In any case Walder Frey isn't idiotic or that hidebound. It's cold as hell in White Harbor and a lot of sailors don't like the waters there, but there's money in it. He hopes he fails, but will ride the waves if he succeeds."
"Well in any case if you want to be sure when in court, just wear the second suit I gave you. A long of simple bold colors but if you notice some gold patterns hidden in there. It fits the sequence and…," Gaston continued trying to take away the previous outfit, only for Guts to pull it above his head and out of Gaston's reach, while giving him an amused smile.
"Now it's alright I trust you and it sounds like they love it. Hell I love it and even if they don't, you're still right for making this." Guts said, helping Gatson with the other outfit and draping the one more fitting his home country over his back, walking past his second in command and offering raising in his arm as a good bye after he had almost completely exited the parapets and entered the dark, shadowy innards of the walls.
As Guts made it out down onto the actual grounds and outside of Soapstone white stone interiors, he noted just how much of the battlefields he had fought on had begun to overlap and mingle together in a great gray fog in his memory. Outside of the glamour and artistry of it's exterior it didn't much stand out in his mind and even then not so much, at the end of the day it there were dozens if not castles whose shell was designed to be aesthetically pleasing, Soapstone was still a primarily a military fortification and when you walked through it's skeleton, any veteran would be able to tell it just from it's layout and feel.
No, it was what was happening outside in the courtyard that interested him now. When the Raiders and the Blackfish's knights had found Maidenpool proper, it had the streets had been totally empty. When you walked down the streets one could hear whispers and shuffling from inside some of the huts buried, or warehouses, or even the local sept but when you walked in them more times than not you'd see nothing and no one. Some of Brynden's men had confided in Guts that it felt as if they infiltrated Harrenhal and were hearing the moans of the haunted castle's ghosts from it's thick scorched black stone walls. Ghosts themselves were nonsense, even in the Seven Kingdoms' most famous haunted castle, they all had to know they had been holed up in their cellars, hole's in the ground, and attics. But now, while it wasn't full, the town wasn't just occupied with soldiers and the smiths, healers, and camp followers who shadowed them. Merchants, vendors, beggars, farmers, masons, and even mother's with their babes now continued their business. 'Such was the reputation of the Band of the Hawk,' Guts thought 'even civilians surviving a battlefield could open their hearts and trust us.'
In the field new pavilions and tents bearing the sigils and arms of the winged white sword of the Band of the Hawk, the leaping silver and black fish of House Tully and Bryden's personal coat of arms, the twin keeps of Frey's, the dead weirwood tree surrounded by of a murder of crows of the Blackwood, and a couple more here and there of large and small noble houses Guts had yet to remember despite all of Griffith's, Casca's, and now Brynden's help. By them soldiers polished their armor and weapons, sat near one another on the ground gambling with one another with dice and card, some sat on chests or rolled up bedmats and finally having breakfast, and others formed lines to the three standing black table wear the banner of Band of the Hawk hung above them where three scarred older veterans dispensed their pay and took log of their loot they had taken in the sack of the castle.
The camp followers and the support staff themselves were busy with their own work. Guts saw a half dozen women ranging from fourteen to fifty washing with wet soapy rags and then beating dirty rugs, clothes covered in night soil, and dark stained bedmats with stiff, hard wooden paddles. Others washed pots and pans or worked red, meaty bubbling stews and creamy soups filled with hardy vegetables like skinned potatoes, squashes, turnips, and carrots. A septon from Pinkmaiden and a priest the Band had picked up from Midlands both administered new bandages, hopeful happy prayers, and salves for the injured and solemn prayers and last rites for those who lay dying in their tents. Smiths brought their work from the interior of the castle and from their tents, displaying it on racks for the quartermasters to examine and pick up, or bring out repaired old weapons and armors for them to gather. Two of three apprentice were barked orders by sergeants and ran across the grounds and through the narrow passages in between tents to gather discarded heavy used or outright damaged weapons to bring back to their masters or the journeymen black smiths to work in their fires.
All the while, ordinary smallfolk were about their business or even engaging with the soldiers. A group of small children played knights and wildlings with sticks and wooden swords, an older one of Gut's Raiders, a married man whose own boys were now holed up in Riverrun, joining them and now faking his death after a squat little blonde boy slapped him softly in the back with a freshly ripped off branch. Two women in their early twenties or very late teens teased a young Blackwood knight, who grinned nervously and seemed to be working up a nice sweat. Vendors hawked fresh tomatoes they had stashed and loaves of bread to fellow citizens of Maidenpool or the occupying members of the army who strolled near their line of vision. All the while many of Tully's men gawked at this, shocked at the reaction the peasants had to occupying and mostly foreign force.
A group of women had gathered around Guts, as he made it to the middle of the courtyard, serenading him with love songs, praise and offering flirtation ranging from the innocuous to the downright raunchy. The comments on his strong jaw, high cheekbones, and large manly muscles had always been tiresome and outright uncomfortable to him but now they were tiresome as well. Guts had if the lowborn ladies were interested in his look or his newly granted knighthood but he had very little interest in bedroom actives with any sex, his previous experience nasty enough for him. After a few polite nods and noncommittal courtesies to the ladies, he switched to grunts and snarls when they didn't take the hint and part from his way.
A few of them got the message, but that only led to a more diverse group of smallfolk, singers, and merchants crowding around him as they dispersed. His private space and even his arm, was filled with flailing limbs and touchy hands waving and panting at him. Ever since that whole the Mountain Who Rides incident he noticed everywhere he went one wanted to see and touch the hero of their gossip and recent songs. Maybe that explained the women too, who wouldn't want to sleep a hero? What a song to tell the other girls, what a son or daughter to have, who blood was coursing with that of a hero. He didn't even really fight the man though, just shot him with a crossbow with four other men and drove him out of Castle Darry with his tail between his tree sized legs. In either case he could barely breathe, let alone wiggle around with those hands groping and wrangling around him, an avalanche of human flesh smothering his entire body.
Guts fist was readying to strike out, ding someone in the jaw and scare the away the mob, but a thick hoarse voice interrupted with a loud, but brief curt cough and they scurried out demurely before he had to knock someone out their ass, like a flock of pigeons. Guts looked at the dignified figure and offered another smile to a friend. He had known Brynden Tully only a couple of months but the man was the mentor figure he wanted most his life and had grown skeptical could ever exist for a man like him after the parade of men who took him in and he often had to kill to escape whatever torments or deadly trials they had stuck him in.
Tully know wore a dark gray doublet and mail gusset and breeches, wearing both the arms of House Tully and his own coat of arms. Despite being well into his fifties, he cut an intimating figure even without the armor and with it looked like he was naturally woven into it as one of many rings of mail or threads of fine fabric. His wide shoulders supported and the metal shield and long sword as easily as an an oversized sheathe His face was like lined and hard but in the way that a fine quality boot that only a lord or merchant lord could afford was. At any moment his leather face could easily crack into a warm smile that perfectly matched his smokey voice. To his men and his friends, it was the look of a favored uncle or grandfather. The snow on his mountain reddish brown hair and beard only fit perfectly with that and his rugged face. The very image of a knight, looking like more a statue that was to be stashed somewhere than right in front of him.
He looked like he was about to reprimand Guts but the way those little white rugs he called eyebrows hung above his eyes and the faint smile he had painted across his face ruined that impression quickly. "I had thought you'd remember to check on in me for my briefs before we road off to Riverrun. Does Lord Griffith like his briefing meetings filled with empty pauses and muffled barks of confusion? We most not let the Lannister's discover our secret or they'll fill their upper ranks with scatter brains and muscle heads and the war will be lost."
"Sorry about that but how are they going to be any different than yesterday's? Did Kevan die yet?" Guts asked half embarrassed and half in sarcastically.
The Blackfish snorted contemptuously. "Not yet, it's till touch or go but the Maester Gillen says his fever is starting to cool and with him lasting so long after that cut to the forehead that the odds slightly favor him living now. Though it's still a coin toss to him whether or not Ser Kevan will be feeble minded if he wakes. From there a roll of the die on how bad he'd be touched in the head if he'd be if he was. Will be be a mute, drooling on himself or will Kevan have a stutter. Will he walk around with a limp and so on, though as long he could hold a quill to paper and understand what's going on, I be more than willing than not to believe he'd still be a valuable hostage."
"Sorry, I don't know that." Guts said.
"That's why these briefings are so important. More importantly while King Robb marches back to Riverrun and prepares to connive his war council, he'll be mulling over Ser Marq Piper and Greatjon's proposal to storm Harrenhal and Lord Bolton's and Theon Greyjoy's plan to burn Lannisport and move onto to raze the entire Westerlands. Our young king has already decided waiting in the Riverlands waiting for Tywin to make his move and chasing after his raiders isn't getting us anywhere."
"Well I'm all for that and Greatjon's plan of attack. The Band of the Hawk has faced familiar odds and sieges before. We've come out on top. I know you think we strike west but I think all of us agree it's for the best to attack sooner rather later."
"Aye but for a different reason than you summer children do. I want our stratagems as well planned and prepared as possible while leaving as little time as possible for Tywin do so. I want that old lion to be on his feet and scrambled not poised and ready. If we let Tywin set the beat of this song and it's just going to be to the tune of The Rains of Castamere. You boys want to do so because lack patience." Brynden said, acid briefly at his nonchalance in his voice before going to more monotone as he went on the facts as he saw them, though he still found time to wag his finger at Guts. "Besides your castles on the Mura subcontinent or just Essos in general are just toy models compared to the burned carcass of Harrenhal. That includes Castle Doldery. Striking into the Westerlands and forcing Tywin out of the walls, least his armies starve, find himself broke, and have his smallfolk rebel against his lords rule is just how I want to fight him or anyone. Fear and desperation are powerful tools in war."
"Alright, alright." Guts said, though with a smile that Brynden quickly returned.
Brynden had already had his and Gut's routine horses mostly packed, leaving Guts the strangler of group. A light punishment, this embarrassment having these knights and his men, some of them younger than his eighteen years, visibly and obviously hold them up. But effective, as long as he rode with Blackfish he wouldn't took a breather to enjoy the weather when there things to do no matter how minor. They all watched as he fastened his gear, tent and bedding, and food easily on his plain brown destrier. Though no doubt they had seen how efficiently and quickly he done so in the process of this punishment, requiring no squires like the highborn or even servants to wrap up the food or fold the bed mat like his own men did. He rode much of Essos alone selling his services to new masters and he had to be there right before the fighting had started or just begun since he was ten years old, doing this alone was the one of the first skills had he mastered. A very light embarrassment indeed.
They rode out together after that, a decent sized group of eighteen men including Tully and himself. In those numbers and with fine steel the bandits and brigands that had infested the countryside and charred remains of towns would be serve as a powerful warning. Still if they ambushed them or rode down on them many of these men where pick of the litter when it came to battle or swift enough with the horse to outrun them easily. If they had ever gotten the chance to catch them unawares at all, all of the knights here, outside of Guts, knew the land by the back of their hands and made great scouts even outside of their homelands so strong with eye and how cleverly observant and knowledgeable they where with any type of terrain.
Feeling secure he had time to take his surroundings in more than an intellectual manner. The tonal shifts startled him and had feeling more than a little tense inside, a feeling he welcome as an old friend inside him as it was almost always helpful. All the of the lands where picturesque in one manner or another. Rivers or streams that were a clear almost completely translucent white or a light but bright blue as the sky; some of them wide as war elephants, others fat that twenty men could ride on horse back could ride side by side, while others ran across slightly more than his foot. In the forests, or even the plains, fudge brown bark trees and vibrant life filled green leaves glowed with thanks to the sun, while others where gnarled, scraggy old men stretching, revealing that under the brown they were nothing but soon to be dead skeletons. Leafless little things in the middle of barren earth, reminders that summer was at an end and that the years of autumn would be settling throughout the Westeros.
Though what had been the bastions of civilizations was almost entirely grim. While there had been small hold fasts and farms during the trip that had looked entirely untouched, Guts had seen no one alive there. Lifeless landscape paintings but out of a manor or castle and sprung into the real world. It was in the burned husks of villages and shattered town that looked like a windstorm had blown them down he saw life. A mother breastfeeding a long dead baby, a child poking at a long dead adult, crying and whining to them about their hunger or demands that they finally wake up. Lines of refugees either begged tried to run up to them as they galloped past demanding or begging for food, while others lined up to their usually untouched septs, as women and men in all white gown handed out old half loaves of bread to each person if they were particularly fortunate.
It seemed these sights where getting to even the Blackfish who decided to pull his horse alongside Guts. "It's about you decide on a sigil boy. Guts of Midland might work for hedge knights but you have lands now and Edmure is set on you getting a last name as well you can pass down with it," Tully said, gazing more at Guts than at the trail ahead of them
"I think the winged sword is good enough for me. I want people to know where I come from and give it respect. My victories are Griffith's and my comrades'." Guts said, mostly continuing to stare ahead at the upcoming desolation.
"Yes, you're quite right. All the more reason to show them what you personally stand for and what you bring with you. You're not just Griffith's sword anymore. You'll raise men for him and collect his taxes, along with your own incomes. A reminder of how just powerful you are is a further hint of just how high your commander and your sellsword company has risen and that they are not to be trifled with," Brynden said almost gravely. "I know I'm not one to talk about this, but Griffith will be setting you up with a highborn wife before this is all over, it'd be best to impress her too so she doesn't write her father too many letters complaining of being stuck you."
"Let's stop here, the sun is setting and I'll not have us riding about in the night like a pack of thieves. Could get ourselves killed by our own friends." Brynden shouted aloud, all of them slowing down as soon as he made his command.
Guts had started to notice that it had been. The sky above them was now a blood red, darkness creeping in on the edges of it hoping to blot out that as well. They quickly dismounted and got about to setting camp below a woody hill and among the browning, dying leaves and bone gray ash covering the dirt. Squires and the more junior raiders gathered fire good, set up the tents, and took care of the horses while the knights and senior members hurdled drawing lots and having arguments over how guard duty shifts would be arranged and pulled out rations they would be eating tonight. The dried jerky would be tolerable and bread but somehow the mead would good going by experience with this host.
Guts went of by himself and found a nice spot of shade and warmth under a dead large dead tree that seemed to loom over everything. Two giant rotting hands sticking out of the dirt, it's bent and splintered fingers all dropped and shriveled down, but where nice enough to block what was left of the sun. Guts, took a long, deliberate brush along the tree with his left hand dropped his bedding on it with his right. The tree was decaying and it's bark was no longer hard enough to shave into his back of flesh, especially with the feathered mat, but was now just firm enough to provide shape and hold the bedding up into position. He would barely even feel the wood he bet. It was creepy looking, but as long as Guts had been wandering he had learned what sights the wild deceived you about at this point in his life and tricks on how that would work for you. Yes, he would have considered himself both lucky and clever, beating out this stuffed up nobles if he hadn't looked up and seen the three people hanging from the tree right above him.
He had just stared up into the sky looking up at them curiously when Brynden Tully once again found himself at Guts side, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. It didn't bother him at all and felt as natural as when any of the Band had done the same. Still his eyes where stuck on the bodies above.
"Come on boy. Join the rest of us by the campfire, this is no place to sleep no matter how comfy or how much you like your privacy. You can even share my squire's and my tent. Won't have to share one with that Frey boy." Brynden said. "Shame for these poor folks."
"Who do you think did it? The Lannisters, our men or some other Riverland lordling, or bandits." Guts asked calmly.
"Not much of mystery, I ordered it myself a week ago. Poachers, stealing good meat that belonged to the army." Brynden said, with only a hint of remorse and a lot of true iron conviction deep down. "Not all criminals are scum and sometimes the carrying out the sentence might not be right but just needed. We just couldn't have smallfolk stealing what we need during war times. Normally I'd take a hand and if they were starving like these folks were just place them in the stockades for an afternoon but being a soft touch to empty bellies now could lead to riots and a loss of much more life in the long term."
"I understand and I think I found my coat of arms and motto now. A tree with a hanged man and a babe at the bottom, reading 'We Shall Struggle' I think," Guts said quietly
"I didn't think this would make such a big impact on you." The Blackfish said. "I'm sure you'd be used to these sights with all the war you've seen."
"Ser, I'm not just used to seeing this, I was born under a tree bearing fruit like this." Guts said. "And was I surrounded by swords and spears the moment every day and night after I was picked from it."