Chapter Ten – All Men Must Serve
The Bloody Maester
"You hesitated, Jon" King Robb remarked to his brother as Ebbert on his mount stood behind them where they sat atop their horses, listening in on their conversation while their army took Harrenhal. "He was an evil man, mate. No doubts about that. You asked for his death yourself. So why the squeamishness?"
"T'wasn't squeamishness" Jon glowered, like he always did, a tall man in dark leathers and cloak, a head of dark hair and darker eyes, a man that Ebbert could tell was destined for dark and brutal things. "I had never executed a man before then, Stark" he grumbled on, explaining himself to his brother's probing questions about their behaviour in the days earlier. "I had no idea of what to say at first. I thought it was supposed to be your allotted task, not mine. Never saw myself as a headsman".
"You know how I used to call you 'Snow' and you'd call me 'Stark' when we were little?" Robb remarked absently as they watched, cocking his head to the side as he watched the Bulwer men under the command of Roren Neversleep march through the breaches in the walls in quadruple file, spears and shields angled at the defending Lannister foes within as their crossbowmen fired into the enormous keep behind them. "Well, that won't do now, won't it? Because we're both Starks. And 'brother's a word a little unwieldly in conversation, isn't it?" He looked aside to Jon and gave him a nearly childish grin. "How about I call you Snowbird? Snow shrike? Or Lark?"
"How about I smack you across the bonce?" Jon muttered, then craned his head around to look at Ebbert and all the rest of King Robb's following, his armoured and mounted bodyguards who were now all staring at this long-faced fellow in black. He cleared his throat and looked back to Harrenhal. "Your Grace" he added, and Robb chuckled aloud.
"The day is fine, the winter is mild, I'm to be married to the most beautiful woman on the face of the world, I cannot stop winning my battles, and my bratty little brother isn't allowed to be narky at me anymore" he grinned and reached down into his saddlebags to pull out his crown of swords of iron and bronze, placing it on his head. Lady Dowager Catelyn had told him that the crown hadn't fitted him very well at first, but Ebbert saw before him a man who seemed to have been born to it. "Despite everything that's happened, Jon" he looked aside to his brother and grinned even wider than before "sometimes it's good to be king". He faltered, the smile fading from his face as he looked towards the giant ruined castle of Harren the Black. "Forwards!" he called and urged his white destrier into a trot.
Ebbert remained in the back of the honour guard, holding back his horse as the lords and the warriors and that malicious giant, Greatjon Umber, passed him on their horses with malicious glares sent his way. He weathered it. He weathered it all. Pride counted for nothing, and as long as he held to the vows that he had sworn to the very bedrock of the Citadel he was invincible in spirit.
Never spill human blood.
Preserve the sanctity of knowledge.
Strive for a world for men, not monsters.
He was a Maester of the Citadel, and that meant something, something far more important than his blood had ever meant. Ludd, Torrhen and Gryff Whitehill be damned, he was a Maester. He had that surname no longer. He would not serve in their schemes unless the Citadel asked him to. For knowledge was power, and power was meant for the good of all living beings. A world for men, not monsters. Good lay in the heart of every man, and so everyman, if exposed to the right knowledge, could be saved. Wisdom, goodness, freedom – in a way they were all the same thing. If you chained yourself with knowledge and put aside all earthly desires, then you were truly free.
His teachers had called him idealistic and naïve, too dedicated to the letters of his oaths and not the spirit of them. They said that he, like untempered steel, had yet to experience the temperature of the world to cool his fire. And like untampered steel he would shatter. But they were old men, soft in their towers, given to whoring and drinking and forsaking their vows as much as any baser men.
They were not true Maesters. He was a true Maester, he and Maester Gormon, his greatest teacher. Few of the other ones had any right to carry the chains around their necks.
He had thought Qyburn worthy, once – but that man had forsaken everything his order stood for.
"Your Grace!" As King Robb and his honour guard approached the ruined walls of Harrenhal, the towers looming overhead then just as much as they had for miles when they had ridden to the castle with the Riverland contingent of the king's army, a man on horseback with a visored Northern helmet and with a black and white surcoat over his chainmail armour rode up to them from around the wall. A heavy cavalry rider from the Lordship of the Grey Cliffs, along the coast of the Shivering Sea, in service to House Karstark, the Sun in the North. "Your Grace!"
"Have you word of my sister?" King Robb wasted no time asking the rider as the man removed his helmet, and Ebbert recognised him as Darrick Overton, one of Rickard Karstark's rider captains and most loyal bannermen, with his brown hair paled and narrowed into points with copious amounts of chalk, a practice common along the Grey Cliffs and in the Grey Headlands. "News of Arya?"
"No, your Grace" the rider reported with a bow from his saddle, and Robb's face darkened. "We've searched all the ruins. We've found m'Lord Karstark's son and heir. Several other Northmen prisoners with him. But no Lady Arya".
"She'd hate having anyone call her a Lady" Robb spoke to no one at all before he nodded to the rider, who brought his horse in alongside the honour guard near the back, withers-to-withers with Rymund, the Riverlander minstrel with his lute on his back and his flute at his hip like some caricature of a knight. "You've done good work today, you Karstark and Bulwer men" the Young Wolf went on as they rode into the ruined castle proper. "We took some one hundred striped horses back in Harroway from Lannister deserters. Fiery steeds, hardy and strong. Ebbert! I want half given to Neversleep, and the other to Rickard Karstark, to do with as they please!"
"Certainly, your Grace". Ebbert had made sure that he always wore ink, quill and parchment on his body as he travelled by the warrior King's side, and he even have had a special saddle made with a leather-covered wooden plate that could be affixed to the pommel. For ease of writing, of course. The King wasn't asking him to write it down and make it so, to carry his orders onwards, but he was telling him to note things down for more appropriate times so that he did not forget his better ideas. It was certainly a good thing, having a King that never went back on his word like that. And it was all the better for Ebbert to report back to Willas and Maester Gormon with the information that he came across.
Still he was not privy to the Young Wolf's war council. He was asked to come along and carry messages, most of them sealed and thus impossible to be read by him under the scrutiny that was ever present in the camp, where he had no time or ability to reseal broken wax sigils. He only got snippets of information, but that was more than enough. By ravens sent from castles that they stopped by, by riders amongst the Riverlander servantry or nobility alike with swift horses, he got his reports sent south, to Highgarden and the Citadel.
He felt no shame in reporting on his King. Any loyalty he had to the North was secondary at best. And he needed to be watched over, counselled. Just like how Grandmaester Pycelle advised the king of the Iron Throne. Perhaps Robb Stark and his rebellion would fail in time, like how most of the Conclave saw it, but perhaps not. And Maester Gormon saw the wisdom in entertaining all options and exhausting all avenues of research. He'd be by the King's side, and slowly he'd gain the Young Wolf's trust until he could council him with certain loyalty, guide him and shepherd him towards greater wisdom and kindlier reason. Until then he'd be at the Wolf's side, reporting what he saw and heard.
And as they entered the first courtyard of Harrenhal he saw the scene of a slaughter.
"Clear out the Lannister dead towards the eastern parts of the castle!" Robb Stark, being a practical sort, hardly seemed to notice how the dead littered the walls all around them, urged into makeshift hurdles and pens and cages and left there by defenders now dead. He did stare at them, but his voice wasted no time grieving, shouting commands to the left and right. "Have them thrown into ditches for the carrion! Owen, Smalljon, Dacey, Patrek, Darrick – each of you gather up some men and divide the castle amongst yourselves. Find survivors, and if there're none to be found, bring the corpses here for burial. Deep burial. We're to fortify this place, and we can't have the rot seep into the waters around these parts".
"Aye, your Grace!" they saluted and turned their horses about, setting off through the camp even as the Bulwer men and Karstark riders cheered at the arrival of their king. Robb would have led the charge on Harrenhal himself had both old Rickard Karstark and Roren Neversleep begged of him to lead the attack, independent of one another. Rickard's sole surviving son and heir had been a prisoner within those ruined walls, and the Bulwer commander had said something about trees and dreams that made King Robb accept his request instantly. He allowed the two to share command. It was a gargantuan fortress, after all, and the Lannisters hadn't left behind enough loyal men to protect it all. Ebbert knew that King Robb would not make the same mistake.
"Marq, take some soldiers of yours to the castle's armoury" King Robb said as he dismounted alongside his brother and made a motion for their horses to be taken away and stabled, to which the rest of his honour guard and escort did the same. Ebbert too, who followed close to Young King. To do his duty, of course – to all of his masters. "The archers are running out of arrows, and we're short on fletchers. Lyra" he looked to one of the newest additions to his honour guard, the third daughter of Maege Mormont who was far less supple and far moodier than her eldest sister. "Account for our losses and gains. Vances, Rymund – have the camp marked up and set, and set the pages and squires to find less wet and drafty chambers in the towers for the wounded".
"He really has gotten good at this" Greatjon, standing beside Jon Stark, the White Wolf in black, muttered as he watched the Young Wolf command the warriors around him like a veteran of a dozen wars five times his age would have. "I knew he had it in him. Gods, lad, if it doesn't feel good to be a free man fighting for a king that is his own". Ebbert knew that there was no love lost between his former family and the Umbers, and so he tried not to hold the Greatjon's insults and confrontational behaviour against him. Tried.
"War's a game that Robb's always understood" Jon noted back, Ebbert quietly moving up to stand behind them to listen in, knowing that every shred of information could turn out to be vital in the greater scheme of things. "The only lessons he ever cared about from Maester Luwin. Of course, I didn't listen to those at all. Have you ever seen Robb with a lance, Lord Umber?" he wondered, to which the Greatjon shook his head. "I could match him in swordplay, outshoot him with the longbow, but I could never knock him out of the saddle. Though half of it is due to his stupid bloody horse, no doubt".
"You jealous of him?" Umber asked, and Jon grew silent at the question. "You must've been. A Snow among the Starks, almost the same age as the one always meant to rule but always passed over, unfavoured. Are you still?"
"No" Jon answered at last, and Ebbert puzzled at his words. "I was. I used to be. Robb was the one who was good with girls, the one who everyone loved, the one to inherit, the one to bear the name. All I ever wanted was a keep and a name to call my own. And he's given me both. Everything I have now I owe to him. So no, he's my brother – and my King. The only thing I have towards him is loyalty". He pasued and gave a shadow of a smirk as King Robb, finally done with all his barking and booming, turned back to them. "And the occasional urge to twat him across the bonce".
"Which you don't get to" King Robb shook his head and made right for the three of them, pushing past Jon and Greatjon. He glanced back at his brother and tapped his crown with the tip of his finger, as if to indicate just why that was again, before he looked to the makeshift cells along the walls of the next courtyard over. "No word of Arya" he bit down on his words as Ebbert and the two lords followed him. "I've sent patrols. I even sent Harwyn leading them. All over the Riverlands, searching every village, road and path for her and Joffrey's disloyal dog. And yet nothing. Four days since Harroway, and still nothing".
"She'll turn up soon, Robb" Jon assured his brother. "You've offered five hundred gold dragons and a Lordship to whomever returns her to us. Which Lordship would that be, by the way?" he asked as they turned a corner and saw more cells and yet more dead men, the bands under Smalljon already hard at work cleaning the corpses away. "You've only got so much land".
"Much of the North is empty – stony land, good to build and sow on if you can clear away all the rocks" Robb told him, glaring at the walls, looking like he wanted the Lannister defenders to come back to life just so he could kill them all over again. "But I was thinking of Oldstones. The walls are all but gone, but the land is good and the castle foundations still stand. It's near the headwaters of the Blue Fork, and it's not too far from Ironman's Bay. Could help to foster trade-" he quieted and reached up to rub his eyes. He often did that. A sign of stress, perhaps?
One of the cells had been set aside. He saw that then, a dark and broken dungeon half bared to the light of the sky above, its fallen walls replaced with crude iron bars and bands bolted to the walls, and men, dead and dying, were strapped to its walls, left to starve and rot by uncaring guards. It had to be two dozen men in there. Now corpses, left to rot by the few brave and loyal Westerlander men who still guarded Harrenhal now in death, let their stink fill it. By the entrance a Lannister man lay slumped, Bulwer quarrels protruding from his punctured red breastplate, a strange sword fallen from his hand. Ebbert picked it up. It was a broadsword, like any other, and like almost all finer Westerland blades it had a gilded guard and pommel, but the guard was short, barely covering the hand on either side if one held it. Ebbert brought it with him as they entered the cell, marvelling at the forgework, focused until Greatjon spoke. "This one's alive". He looked up.
And stopped dead in the middle of his step.
"Water…" an old man, dried out and gaunt but still alive, whispered where he was shackled to the wall, his grey robes soiled and stinking around him, but those fatherly blue eyes – eyes that was as much a lie as anything else that monster had ever said – were still the same as the day that Ebbert had last seen him. "Water… please…"
"Get away from him" Ebbert said as Greatjon and the White Wolf made to unshackle that monster of a man. "He deserves what he has gotten, and a thousand times more than this". The looked to him, wondering, suspicious still yet not moving for the shackled man. "His name is Qyburn. He used to be a Maester – until his rank was stripped from him. He would have lost his life for his crimes, had he not escaped Lord Hightower's justice".
"This fellow here? He looks kind, like someone's uncle or grandfather, and he's dying". King Robb turned his eyes to him, glaring fiercely, winter blue eyes gleaming. "Explain yourself, Maester. Now".
"He performed vivisections" he began, staring still at that horrid old man, who's expressionless brown eyes, so seemingly warm, seemed to sneer back at him. "He drugged sailors and whores into deep sleep before he took them to his laboratory and cut them open as they lived. Cut their limbs off to see if he could make them move on their own. He experimented on children, too. Especially twins. He once opened the belly of a pregnant woman to see if the child within her could be grown within a jar". Ebbert spat at the man, hatred burning in his heart. "He profaned his chain. He profaned the sanctity of knowledge. He's a monster, a practitioner of the dark arts. A necromancer who has always strived to raise the dead to be his thralls, and he deserves only to be put to death".
The King looked at him, and then back to the monster, seeing no denial or shame in his eyes. He glanced at Greatjon and his brother, and it was the latter who then spoke. "I've seen the dead that walk" he said at last. "Horrible things, Robb. Any man who seeks to do something of that kind-"
"Aye, if it must be done... Though it sickens me to kill an old, weak man" King Robb said, with a tone to his voice that made it clear to all that he was disgusted and appalled but forsook kindness for the greater good of the world. He trusted Ebbert – but right then Ebbert couldn't care less about his trust, or the mission he had undertaken at Maester Gormon's behest. Finally he shook his head and made a face of loathing and disgust. "No. I'll have no part in this, Maester. The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword. If he's as guilty as you say you'll do it yourself".
And faced with that choice Ebbert's world crumbled around him.
Never spill human blood.
He had sworn an oath. An oath that was more precious to him than the blood in his veins and the family that had birthed him and raised him. Violence was a weakness, a symptom of a lack of knowledge. Any man with anything inside of his head knew better than to strive to harm anyone. Violence begat nothing but more violence. Death and misery and war were brothers in all things.
Preserve the sanctity of knowledge.
But Gods help him, he served a higher calling. This man, this monster, had betrayed everything the Order stood for. Everything the Conclave had hoped to build. "Gods help me" Ebbert whispered.
He did not want to do it. He did not. But he had to. Gods help him, that man deserved to die more than anyone else who had walked the face of the world.
He put that Westerlander sword through Qyburn's chest – and regretted it instantly. He regretted it with all his heart, wishing that he could turn back time, but the blood was already on his hand, staining the hem of his grey robes. "This is on you, Maester" Greatjon said aloud, and Ebbert did not care anything at all about the disgust in his voice. "'Sworn to peace', my arse".
And so they left the cell, King Robb and Greatjon and the White Wolf, and Ebbert was alone with the corpse. The corpse he had made. Gods. The sword he had taken from the dead guard clattered to the stone floor, and he flinched at the sound. He had dropped it without knowing. Qyburn's empty eyes stared at him, accusing him, and shaking he fell to his knees before that dead gaze. His hands trembled like aspen leaves, and blood spotted them. Blood, red and dark and sticky and warm but quickly cooling and turning black. Red to black. Those dead eyes stared at him. Red to black.
A world for men, not monsters.
But it was war in the world, and evil was everywhere. Red to black. Even in him. Red to black.
A world for monsters, not men.
Margaery
"So" she began slowly, her great embroidered piece of white tapestry flat with one corner laid in her lap as she looked up at Alyce Graceford from her cushioned seat in the gardens of Goldengrove. "You are with child?"
"Yes, my Lady". Alyce stared down at her slippers beneath the hem of her Highgarden gown, cheeks red with shame as she bit down on her lip. "I- I think so". She thought so? Was that not something you knew, for certain, in the very bottom core of your heart? "I haven't bled, and I have been sick al throughout the mornings when waking, and-"
"Do not fret" Cat, who had risen from her seat at the news, took the girl – no, Margaery assumed that she was a woman now, in plenty of ways most certainly – by the shoulders and urged her to calm, to which Alyce clutched at her arms like they were her only path to salvation in a dark and stormy sea. And they might very well have been. Noblemen who sired bastards were perhaps snickered at on the worst side of things, shrugged at and dismissed as merely men more commonly, but noblewomen who did? They were called slatterns and harlots, scorned and made the subjects of japes and dishonour. As if making children was somehow unnatural and sinful. As if not every living human in the world had not been born from at least some form of passion, twisted at times as it might be. "These things are sometimes hard to distinguish, and difficult to tell".
"Whose is it?" Margaery asked her handmaiden, who looked to be on the edge of tears, and Alyce physically flinched at her words. She needn't have. She was just trying to know if someone had forced themselves on her, or if it was some singer or honourless sellsword that had seduced her. "Who is the father? Do you know?" She had not meant to sound so harsh, so why had it come out that way?
"Ser Royce, my Lady" Alyce whispered back as the tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she looked so lost and frightened that Margaery felt a pang of pain in her own heart out of sympathy. "There's been no one else, my Lady. I am certain, I am-" Margaery lifted the embroidery off her lap and set it aside to rise and go embrace her lady-in-waiting, who promptly crumbled at her shoulder, sobbing. "He came back from fighting the Mountain" she went on, struggling for words. "I was so afraid for him. I shouldn't have been. He betrayed us. Betrayed you. But I was. And he told me that he was not- and I-" she managed no more.
"Do not worry, Alyce" Margaery assured her and pushed her away gently, looking deep into her eyes. "I will that everything is sorted out. Elinor, Megga, Alla" she called out to her other three ladies, and they promptly came to her side. "All of you, go back to your chambers. Brienne will escort you. Lady Catelyn and I will talk. Rest. I will handle this". They curtsied and left, followed by Brienne who bowed towards Margaery before she vanished around the bend of the colonnade in the sunny gardens of Goldengrove, heading towards the opulent guest house. When they had she let the motherly smile fall from her face and she returned to her chair to more fall down into it than gracefuly sit. "Seven that are One" she whispered and put her hand to her temple. "Her father is going to be furious". And Oren Graceford was a notoriously violent man, one of Randyll Tarly's principal commanders and cronies. She actually feared for Alyce's life.
They had arrived in Goldengrove two days hence, passing under those great towered vaults in vast walls made of yellow stone in silent awe, the entirety of House Rowan – Lord Mathis, his wife Bethany to whom Margaery was related through Grandmother, his two sons and his daughter, the eldest, and his younger brother – coming out to meet her with much pomp and circumstance. Father and Garlan were still at least a fortnight away from Goldengrove, as they were marching along with Grandmother's carriage, but until then Goldengrove and its great gilded oaken doors stood open to her and her brothers for as long as they desired to stay.
Margaery enjoyed the great golden-yellow castle. Stylish windows were scattered generously across the walls in a seemingly random pattern, for in the days that she had walked the second uppermost of its tiered gardens, gardens that jutted out from the hilltop that the castle once had been built on but now was more of a part of it in itself, she had found no reason behind their design. Old was that mighty castle, built again and again and anew every half-millennia, the Lords of House Rowan, Marshalls of the Northmarch, tracing their descent all the way back through the fog of ages to Garth Greenhand himself by his daughter, Rowan Gold-Tree. Some said that Rowan was the mother, or ancestor at least, of Lann the Clever, the founder of House Lannister.
If so, they had already made good work of distancing themselves from that familial bond. Mathis Rowan was well-liked, prudent and honourable, and had never gotten on with Tywin Lannister, especially after the murder of Elia Martell and her children. He had publically denounced the deed, calling it abominable and black in the eyes of the Gods. But his House was rich, influential and strategically important – and more importantly, he had for a long time been an advisor to Father, and a friend to Grandfather Leyton. He was loyal to her family.
Only time would tell if he was loyal to her, though.
She had to admit that, as pretty as it was, life in Goldengrove was as dull as masonry compared to life in the bustling military court of Pinkmaiden. The Court of Wolves. In retrospect she wondered why they called it that. It made it sound perilous and treacherous, and only a few of the Northerners had even as much plotted against each other for power or political gain. They had argued, shouted, bickered and brawled, but never had they ever made to end one another, or scheme like they did in King's Landing or Highgarden. Perhaps they had a different sort of temperament, those Northerners.
Or perhaps it was due to strong and uncompromising leadership. She was given to believe the latter. Even though it lay on the edge of the Reach Goldengrove was warmer than the Riverlands, and the cold was far less biting even if the onset of Winter was making itself known, she still felt the absence by her side. She worried. And she felt very silly for it. Robb could take care of himself. He had done fine in his warring since before she had met him or even known his name. And he had Grey Wind to look after him. He would be back to her soon enough. Safe and sound of health.
Yet still she worried. Reason with herself as tough she could, he was still off to war, and she was prone to worrying about a great many things. So she immersed herself in Cat's long talks on the North, teaching her about the land that she would one day rule if all went according to the plans that they had made. The newest exercise was one of the most difficult one – trying to acquaint herself with the genealogy of the old and venerable House Stark that she would marry into. It was tedious work. She had a mind to sit Robb down after the war was over and having him learn the name of every single person with the name Tyrell to have lived since Aegon's days. See how he'd like it.
It was difficult to remember all of those assorted people, so Cat had suggested adopting a memory aid: a tapestry. It wasn't a proper tapestry, not really, as it was nothing but a large sheet of white linen cornered with grey, but meticulously she had begun to stich the names of the members of House Stark, living or dead, into it by generation, connected to each other by treads to form a family tree. All names and lines were black but for the ones denoting the Lords of Winterfell – those she stitched in gold – and she started at Robb and his siblings and worked her way backwards and upwards over the tapestry. That was what she had been working on when Alyce had requested an audience so formally. And that tapestry was what she let lie on the table beside her as she sat grumbling over the fate of Alyce Graceford and her unborn child.
"It would be easiest for her to have Ser Royce hold to his honour and marry her, forcefully if need be" Margaery muttered entirely to herself, running the tip of her finger in circles at her temple. She knew that vows sword at sword-point were not enforceable by the septons and the religious authorities, but… "Count for nothing the honour of knights. Even the bravest man becomes terrified at a wedding. Grandmother used to say that".
It was not as if the union was unfavourable for Royce. Graceford was a proud and old family, with wealth and a good name, and Alyce was Oren Graceford's only daughter. Worse it was on the Graceford side of things. Ser Robar was a second son, his house ancient but not wealthy at all in anything but swords and bronze, and Runstone, the seat of his father, was far away in the Vale of Arryn. It was likely that the union would be refused by Lord Oren – after he beat the child out of his daughter with his own two hands. There was always the chance of the two eloping, Alyce staying and rasing the child in Margaery's service while Robar remained in Robb's honour guard, or maybe the two running off to Runestone if Robb gave Royce leave to do so. Or maybe…
"Should I have her drink moon tea?" Margaery asked Cat, who had been quietly watching as she mulled over the task at hand, and she could not help but glower at the expression Cat got. "Gods, I feel like I am committing some atrocity. Would it not be murder, killing the babe within her like that? Gods – when does life begin?"
"At first breath, if the Skagosi are to be believed. The first action wilfully taken outside of the mother's body" Cat answered, reaching for her own idle embroidery – a seven pointed star on white, inside of which the names of her five children she would inscribe in a prayer for their safety and health – as she spoke. "But only the heart trees know all the things they do on Skagos. From Skagos to Sunspear, all believe different things. It is a choice that should be left to each and every woman on their own, I believe. To decide for themselves". She picked up her needle and began anew, so skilled and used to it that she needed not even look where she stitched, seeing with her fingertips instead. Margaery envied that particular skill. She had never been that good. "I could not, I think. Not if it was Ned's child". And the unspoken question hung in the air: Could you?
Honestly… she did not know. And that frightened her. "She's lost, and if I give her the choice now I think that she'd only be reduced to a panic. Perhaps when she has gathered herself. But in the event that she decides to bare the child to term" she breathed out hard, finally settling on a decision. "She will be my lady-in-waiting still. She will raise the child at Winterfell, and there the child will remain even if she returns to her father's court sometime in the future. For safety. She can be a playmate to my own children one day, and if it is a boy he can very well be a knight and sworn sword for House Stark. And if Lord Graceford disproves he go very well go choke on his precious sword, that wife-beating brute".
"If you believe that insulting one of your father's bannermen like that is prudent, Lady Margaery" Cat bent her head and kept at her stitching. "If you truly believe that…"
"One of my father's bannermen. Not mine. I will be up in Winterfell, with his bastard grandchild, and my father can very well deal with his frothing". She breathed out hard and stood from her seat, smoothing out her gown about her lap. "I will resume working on your convoluted lineage later, Cat. I will need to write letters and make arrangements. If you would excuse me?" And with Cat's nod she left the garden behind to head for the castle proper and the rookery in one of the upper towers.
The stone of the pathways through the gardens felt cold through the sole of her slippers, and as she went she felt the scabbard of Lionslayer bounce off her thigh. There was an art to fastening a sword to your girdle properly, she had discovered, and that was an art that she had far from mastered. She had asked Loras for lessons, or to at least show her a few things on how to use it properly, but her brother kept post-poning with an uncomfortable cast to his features, as if he thought that he would somehow hurt her when sparring, as if she was some fragile thing made out of ill-tempered pewter. It was silly, she thought. She would have to ask Garlan instead. He would have the same compunctions, but he, at least, would do whatever she asked.
"I loved a maid as pale as winter, with moonglow in her hair". She heard singing on the distance, and as she rounded a corner around the colonnade she saw her brother and some of his entourage sitting in the presence of a female minstrel. Bethany Redwyne was a patron of the arts, and so she filled the castle with paintings and sculptures and finery from all over Westeros, and she had taken singers and from all over the world to her side and into her service. One of the more stand-out exemplars was a Lysene singer called… Laena? Margaery was terrible with names. The troubadour was as fair as a Targaryen, with silver-gold hair in a braid that reached down to her waist and vivid violet eyes, yet she shirked dresses and gowns for britches and airy blouses. She had one of the best singing voices that Margaery had ever heard, though her lute-work and skills with the harp left a lot to be desired.
Margaery had learnt from her Grandmother that minstrels made the best spies. They were given free access to a Lord's holdings with nothing but a winning smile and a tune, if they were good enough. She was loath to trust them, but her youngest brother had no such reservations. But she put that out of her mind. Gods, if only she have had her archery to focus on or Grandmother to talk to. In only-
She stopped in the middle of a doorway, the guards in white and gold giving her odd looks as she did. She smirked to herself when she realised it. There was no doubt in her mind – only strategy and authority.
Perhaps being in charge of a Kingdom was not such a difficult thing after all.
The Rhymer
Rymund exalted in his new role as the King's personal bard. Luckily for him, his liege liked very much his lyrical lyrations and lamentations on the lassitudes and licentiousnesses of one's predestined lot.
Thus was not that night's performance, however. But he was feeling a little lazy.
"And the Wolves in the Hills bowed to the Wolves of the North, and the banners flew proudly again" he sang as they sat around the campfire, resting in that ember glow that bathed them down to their very bones in warmth. Had Harren felt thus? Rymund wondered that as he stared up at the great melted towers of Harrenhal that stood titanous and defiant around them, a testament to the power of dragons and both the hubris and the determination of man. Against the night they were hardly visible, black on black but for the clear sky of stars, yet they were all around, ever present, and indomitable.
He wondered if the fires that had burnt the last King of the Rivers and Isles had felt warm and soothing first, if only for a fraction of the time it took for even the most sharp-eyed man to blink. The towers of man had melted before the Dragons, but now the Dragons were all gone and still the towers stood. A demented and twisted shadow of what they once were, perhaps, but still they stood. Perhaps one day they would be rebuilt, and the world of old come anew. The world that he saw in his dreams some times.
He let the last few notes of Wolves in the Hills ring clear from his lute before he quieted the strings with his hand. He wondered, as the Young Wolf approached the campfire again from having been to the privy by the wall, if perhaps it was time for him to set off and away towards elsewhere. He exalted in his new role and his new station in life, and knew that there was a new life for him out there should he decide to lay down his lute and pick up the brewer's trade, but perhaps he could have more. The Young Wolf had promised five hundred gold dragons and a Lordship to whomsoever brought his sister to him, hale and in healthy wholeness, and Rymund admitted that such a large sum was tempting. Very tempting.
It all depended on what the Young Wolf did next, didn't it?
Perhaps he would even spy on him, like Kevan Lannister had paid him to. Handsomely, even. A full five gold dragons, with the promise of that thrice again if he brought back something worthwhile. All he had needed to do was make his way to the Young Wolf's camp, neglect to speak of the fact that he had learned his trade playing The Rains of Castamere in Lannisport for the mighty Tywin himself, send a few messages the way of King's Landing every now and then, and he'd be richer than his wildest poverty-stricken childhood dreams. But then the Young Wolf had smashed the Lannister army, and he had said "fuck yourself and farewell" to all of them. Five gold dragons were more than well enough for him, and twenty was far from enough to die for. He hadn't sent a single message to the Lannisters, and he had bought himself a lute with what Lord Kevan had given to him in his stupid yearning for a trustworthy spy.
He called his new lute Veria. He had bought it in Riverrun from a merchant from Lys bearing musical instruments from as far away as Slaver's Bay, having been trapped there by the war and made desperate to unload as much as his merchandise as he possibly could. Veria was parcel-silvered, made from soldier pine wood with ivory inlays, and its seven courses of catgut strings when plucked produced a fairly broad range of notes if tuned correctly by its silver turners at its head. As the Young Wolf approached he idly plucked at the strings, watching him and the two other people sitting by that camp fire some ways off.
He was uncertain when it came to Jon Snow. Or, rather, Jon Stark as it was now. The man was entirely too sombre. Verily, that verisimilitude of voracious vagrancy which the winter prince had vowed himself to was very much a vagabond's verity. In all veracity, Rymund found it very vexing. Verdantly vexing, and very much so.
Whatfor was he so very despondent? Doom and gloom inked always to his brow, the furrows on his face beacons of sullenness to guide his way t'wards the furthest celestial reaches of melancholic stars. Always, ever throughout the days and the evenings, to his face a frown affixed, furious and foreboding in afearing foresight, as if he foresaw naught but fury and famine in the future of his family. Rymund thought it foolish. Foppish.
And fucking idiotic. A man should smile, and often. Life was much too grim as it was already.
"Your Grace" the boy sitting by Jon Stark's side at the fire rose at the King's arrival, but he lifted a hand and urged the boy to stay and not bow. The lad was Edric Dayne, the Boy Lord of Starfall and the Torrentine, once squire to Berric Dondarrion and now sword carrier to the King in the North. His comrade Gendry was off somewhere, doing something. Rymund did not care. He had no care in the world for some blacksmith-made-knight-made-rider for the King in the North. He was no doubt of little consequence to the greater story as a whole. And it wat that grander story that interested Rymund.
He would one day compose an epic poem about the Young Wolf. He did not much care if it was a tragedy, comedy or history piece at this point, but he would. And he would have much gladness doing it. Gods, he had never had so much fun in his life as he was by the Northerners' sides.
The Young Wolf reached up to his head and lifted the bronze and iron crown off of his hair. "I should have it padded. It would be making my hair green if it wasn't for how it rusted". The Young Wolf handed it off to his squire, who carefully wrapped it in a soft pelt taken from some manner of ungodly huge rabbit. "Every time it feels like it lightens it suddenly doubles in weight" he muttered and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Edric, go to your quarters. I'll sleep out here, under the stars. We'll wake you in the morning".
"I-" the boy looked like he was about to protest, but the two Stark brothers shared a look and the boy bowed and said "your Grace" before he did as he was bid. Obedient sort. And Rymund appreciated it. Lords and kings thought of minstrels and bards like scenery, he had discovered, fading into the background of their chambers as they schemed and played at politics. He kept idly plucking at his lute as King Stark sank down to sit on the quilts laid out around the fire beside his brother.
"He's a good lad" he noted, wryly looking after that bright-haired boy as he trundled tiredly off towards his quarters in the tower, leaving the Northerners and their stupidly thick skin to weather the winter weather. "And he's a little Lord. It will be good to have friends and allies in Dorne. And in the Reach. Did you know that Robar asked me permission to marry? As if he needed my leave to do so. I might be his master but I am not his rightful liege".
He was a good man, the King in the North. He had said that the weather was warm and the wounded and weak too many, and thus taken to sleeping outside of Harrenhal's chambers to leave his surgeons and most of his Maesters to take the misfortunate to the rooms in the ruined castle, sheltered from wind and cold. Rymund supposed that there were worse Lords he could have been serving. And he had been given an inn and land, after all – if that meant anything. Vows were made easily in war, and broken just as easily in peacetime.
As the two brothers spoke Rymund, still idly plucking at the strings of his sweet Veria, looked past the campfire and the resting warriors towards the closest wall of the ruined tower and the shape huddled there. Maester Ebbert had, according to Greatjon at least, broken one of his Maester's vows by keeping another, and he seemed to be tormented by it. He was sitting by his leather tablet, the parchment before him blank and unmarked, the quill in his trembling fingers coated in long-since dried ink as he stared down on his hands. They were red, his hands and his lower arms where they jutted from the sleeves of his blood-splattered grey robe. Bright red and sore, as if he had been scrubbing them mercilessly, which he had. But going by his haunted look it had made no difference. He still saw red there, red of a different kind.
Good, Rymund thought. Perhaps now he can be brave. Still, one murdered old man did not make a man a fighter. "Roren's been badgering me to go out onto the Gods' Eye, to the Isle of Faces" the Young Wolf spoke quietly onto his brother. "He keeps saying that it is the place from his dreams. He says that it has to be. He thinks that the Green Men will have the answers that he seeks".
"Does he know?" came the White Wolf's voice in reply, questioning. "About Ghost and Grey Wind, I mean. Does he know what we can do? Have you told him?"
"No – only you and I know. The Tyrells know more about it than they let on, Willas especially, but as far as I know they've kept their mouths shut about it". He reached down to his wineskin and sipped of the liquid therein, red and western on his tongue. The triumph made it all the sweeter, Rymund deduced. "Not that it has stopped the bloody rumours. They all say it already. 'Warg', I hear them whisper. The Riverlanders ignore it or try to refute it, but the Northerners don't. Most even seem to think it's a good thing". He paused, chewing a little at his lip before he went on. "When was your first time?"
"When I first walked in Ghost's skin?" Jon clarified, and the Young Wolf nodded. "North of the Wall. It happened once clearly, though a couple of times I did it by accident without even realising it. It's always been there, I think. In the back of my mind. The back of my head. These fey quiet…"
"Whispers?" Jon nodded, thankful for his brother finding the right word for him. "I hear them too. The first time it happened for me was the Battle at Pinkmaiden. I shot back into my own body when Grey Wind killed a Lannister sentry. It is terrifying, to feel the blood run down your throat and cover your lips and find- and find…"
"And find that you crave it, hunger for it" Jon expounded, the brothers two taking comfort in a shared but still horrid experience. Rymund, on the other hand, was listening intently. This he found very interesting. He knew that the mere suspicion of being a warg let to kinslaying and parents setting their children out in the woods to die in the South, but the stories of living wargs, of men who could take the shapes of beasts. He placed little importance in superstition, though he did trust the tales a great deal. The greatest of stories were the ones filled with monsters. "Sometimes it's hard to tell it apart" Jon then said. "Where the man ends and the wolf begins. Maybe we should follow Roren to the Isle. The Green Men live there, tending to the Weirwoods. They might know something about the Gods. And about shapeshifting".
"Aye" The Young Wolf nodded, blue eyes searching for dreams in the flames as he stared into the campfire. "Tomorrow we'll have answers, Jon. Tomorrow we go to the Isle of Faces". He sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I just hope that Arya is safe".
Arya
"It's called Needle" she told the Hound as she exited the Saltpans Inn after him, using a piece of red cloth to wipe down her sword and clean it of blood.
Needle. She loved that sword. Jon had given it to her, before the world had gone to shite. That Lannister deserter had carried it, and now he was dead. His name had been Polliver, and he had killed Lommy. Now his name was nothing. Perhaps "corpse".
Another name off her list. One name less to say at night.
"Needle?" Sandor Clegane was a huge man, hideously burned over one side of his face, and he was as bad company as he was ugly. She had learned that since the day he had accompanied her from the Hollow Hill, saying that he would take her to her aunt Lysa in the Vale and turn her in for a Lady's ransom. He snorted at her words and lifted the wineskin he had taken from one of the now dead men in the tavern to his lips, drinking deeply. He sighed in relief once he had lowered it, luxuriating in the taste of good wine. "Of course you named your sword".
Arya looked up at him as she hurried up to his side as they fetched Stranger, his large and ill-tempered horse, and turned down the empty streets towards the harbour and the sole ship anchored there. It was a Braavosi galley, with a purple hull and purple sails and gold trimming around the figurehead and the front of the bow, and they thought that perhaps, only perhaps, they could convince the captain of it to make a stop in Gulltown. The Hound had a purse full of silver, taken from the Lannister deserters, for that express purpose. "Lots of people name their swords"
"Lots of cunts" Clegane answered her remark in what was half a growl as they walked down the street with Stranger in tow, and she glowered at his back. The Hound. Gregor Clegane. Joffrey's disobedient dog. She put Needle inside her belt at her hip and fingered the blade's handle.
"I hate you" she muttered the Hound's way, and meant it truly. He had killed Mycah, on Joffrey's orders, back when he had been a good dog and done as he was told. Sansa had not believed her, but she had known always that Joffrey was a lying bastard. Sansa had lied, had been his pretty little doll like she had wanted. Yet…
She did not hate her sister. She had heard Sansa's screams when Ilyn Peyne cut off Father's head. Screeching, horrified, shrill like the shattering of glass. Sansa had a pretty singing voice. When they were very little Sansa had used to sing to her as they lay huddled in the same bed. Arya had not even known that she could sound like that, so broken and full of fear and shame and shock as she heard it through the silence that followed the falling of the sword but before Sansa fainted. Sometimes she could still hear it.
Had that cry been what marked the breaking of Sansa's precious little world? When the fates finally crushed her dreams of noble knights and pretty little ladies in pretty little dresses?
Good, she thought sadly. Good. She did not want Sansa heartbroken and hurt, but winter was coming.
The winters are hard, but the Starks will endure. We always have. And Sansa needed to act like a Stark. Now, more than ever. Still Arya would have traded almost anything to have Father back by her side. If only she could turn back time, to the days before Fat Robert came to Winterfell, before everything had gone to shite. Before Father died, Sansa lied and Bran fell-
A horn blast, trumpeting out of the sparse woodlands past Saltpans outermost western houses, roused her from her thoughts, and she and the Hound both spun around to see horsemen thundering out of the trees and down the road, torches and swords and axes held high in their hands, wild cries booming out from their lips. "Fuck!" Clegane spat. "Deserters! Shit – there are no gory and pathetic cunts in the whole fucking world! They'll fuck us if we stay here!"
She neglected to mention to him that he was as much a deserter as they were. She'd gloat in that in all due time.
They had no luck at the Braavosi galleas that lay in port, the Titan's Daughter, for a swarm of people stood around it, a crowd begging and pleading to be let aboard and carried off into safety as the ropes were cut and the ship was made ready to sail. The captain of the ship, a man in opulent clothes and a friendly but frightened face, let none through. "We go only to Braavos" he told Arya where she had slinked through the crowd where Clegane struggled, much smaller and faster than him. Perhaps, she had thought, she could escape him. But still the captain would not let her through, no matter how she assured him that they had silver.
She gazed over her shoulder, at the men there now pouring out of the woods – Lannister deserters and mercenaries all – some of which she recognised as former members of the Brave Companions. She heard one of them shout, in the far distance. "Find her! Find the Stark bitch!" They were after her.
How? Why? She was being hunted, and she knew not why. There was no way out, no way home. Except for on that ship, and it only went to Braavos. Braavos.
She wasn't getting on that ship. Just like all the other people at the docks she would stay there and die to the rampaging raiders. She would never see her family again that way. And she realised what she had to do. "Wait!" she called out and reached into her pocket, pulling out a silver coin, holding it in the air, and the nervous captain turned his look to her, eyes wide and fearful in realisation. "Valar Morghulis" she said, as Jaquen H'gar had told her to. "Valar Morghulis!" The words she had not known, had not understood but come to understand, the words she had whispered into the ear of a Harrenhal guard as she slit his throat. Valar morghulis.
All men must die.
And the entire countenance of the Braavosi captain changed as he reached out and took the coin from her on dainty fingers. He bowed towards her, suddenly subservient and eager to please but also even more fearful than before. "Valar dohaeris" he said and stepped aside, showing her to the ship and the gangplank, gesturing to his men to caste loose and set sail for Braavos. Arya glanced over her shoulder at the slaughter of Saltpans and beyond, to the woods and the hills, and beyond, to Robb and her family. "I am Ternesio Terys" he informed her as he led her by the arm he lay around her back. "Your friend stays here. Only you must come. Please remember-"
"Take your hand off of her, you Braavosi fuck!" a roar burst in from behind them, the crowd breaking before that giant man in heavy armour, and Arya cursed inwardly at his persistence in not dying as the Hound seized her by the other arm and tore her away from the captain and the ship. "This one is my ransom! I go with her, or not at all!" At Terys's glare the Hound knew which it would be, and so began to pull Arya with him, away.
"Let go of me!" Arya shouted and scratched at the Hound's gauntlets, unable to draw Needle from its sheath as he pulled her along, back out of the dispersing crowd, but The Captain and five men from his crew ran after them, visibly angered, their willingness to now take her with them and fight Clegane for her passage strange to even her.
"She is coming with us" the Captain warned, and Arya tore at the arm dragging her away from her salvation, but Clegane's grip was like iron and his fingers were unyielding.
"The fuck she is" the Hound answered and lifted her up into the saddle of his great black horse, glaring all the while at the Captain of the Titan's Daughter. Arya looked up at him too – and stopped struggling. Shadows moved about his face, and it seemed to change even though it didn't. She wasn't taken aback in the slightest, but Sander certainly was. "The fuck-?!" he shouted as he lifted his sword.
"The Faceless Men want her. She is coming with us". And then there were knives. Knives everywhere. Captain Terys's face shimmered and flickered, images of demons and dragons spewing fire dancing before his face. Arya could see through the visions, like one could spot a gold coin at the bottom of a pewter cup, as she took the reins of Stranger and urged him away from the men, but Clegane seemed unable to. He cried like Sansa would have when seeing a rat, swinging his sword wildly at the approaching crewmen of that purple galleas. The face of the Captain flickered the most, though the crewmen did as well, their noses and their eyes and their lips and ears changing only, but to the Hound it seemed to seem a full and impossible transformation.
"Back!" he roared and swung his blade in a vicious arch, cleaving deep into the neck of a crewman with Tyroshi features that blinked out of existence to leave him clean-shaven and pale when he fell dead to the ground. Still they charged at him, and a burst of fire jetted from the Captain's mouth – not real fire, yet the Hound cried like it burnt. "Back! Away! Fuck you all, away with you!"
"It's a trick!" Arya shouted at him, and they faltered around him, stepping back and away from his gleaming sword. "A trick! It's not their real faces! None of it is real!" The Hound, scrambling backwards, glanced at her and saw her certainty, to which he nodded with a shudder then looked up. He stepped forth and ran his gauntleted fist into a crewman's scaled face, and the grey scale scars vanished in a blink to leave smooth cheeks and a boyish smile now crushed. "See?! It's just a trick!"
"Fucking sorcery!" The Hound growled, and spat out a tirade of curses as the quarrels, fired from crossbowmen aboard the galleas, began to whish about his head. He rushed towards Stranger, haltered only when a barbed quarrel struck him through the thigh and another dug into his side, a third lancing into his shoulder, but he crawled up into the saddle behind Arya who then urged Stranger forwards and away. "Fucking sorcery" the wounded Hound snarled and grunted at his wounds. "Fucking Faceless Men. Fucking Baratheons. Fucking Lannisters. Fucking Starks!" Behind them she heard how the Captain ordered the men to ceasefire, in the common tongue no less, that they did not want to kill their precious cargo. Why?
"What was that, back there, the things that they did?" she wondered, panting as she urged the galloping Stranger around a corner and down a street, away from the plundering bandits encroaching on their position and the harbour. "And why did they want me?!" What had giving that coin really meant? What hadn't Jaquen H'gar told her?
"Go back and ask them if you want to know, you stupid bitch!" Clegane groaned, baring his teeth against the pain that raked him. "It burns! Burns like fucking fire! Fucking assassins and their fucking poisons! Get us away from this fucking shithole-!" Stranger rounded a corner and they came out onto a burning, harrowed street, and there, as they came face-to-face with a band of five reavers, the Hound quieted. Arya recognised the men, and above all else she recognised their leader. Of course, it was easy to recognise a man without a nose.
"There they are!" Rorge was an accursed, cruel, hideous man, dangerous and murderous, and Arya had met him for the first time when he had been sitting in the same barred wheelhouse as Biter and Jaquen H'gar. He had shared a cell with the two in the black dungeons far below the Red Keep in King's Landing. Perhaps she should have known that Jaquen was just as much a monster as those two from merely that. And now he seemed to be leading the charge of these few deserters, atop his horse and in his barbed armour, alongside a dark Dornishman called Timeon, an impossibly hairy Ibbenese called Togg Joth, and Shagwell, the monster in a jester's motley. Him Arya hated most of all. She had barely recognised that before Stranger came to an abrupt stop and pranced with an angry whinny.
They both tumbled from the saddle, Arya from one way and the Hound the other, and while the Hound groaned and lay flat on his back, clutching at the quarrels protruding from his body, Arya saw the last of the reavers – a Dothraki archer with a torch in his hand, having been busy setting fire to a Cobbler's shop when they had rode by. Grinning and laughing that man, Iggo she recalled his name from Harrenhal, threw the torch through one of the upper stories of that building before he shouldered his bow and drew a savagely curved arakh from his hip, his long black braid slick with oil against his back.
"You were supposed to go to Braavos, stick girl" Rorge licked his lips as he too dismounted, along with his men, the four of them approaching the Hound who was struggling onto his knees while Iggo swaggered towards Arya. "We were supposed to make sure that happened. Drive you t'wards the ship. Now we'll just have to take you to Braavos ourselves". He lifted his axe and his shield and grinned at her. She hated him too. He was on her list. "Might as well have some fun while-"
He said no more after that. With a bellowed curse insulting their collective ancestry the Hound rose and slashed upwards, taking the four men by surprise, severing three fingers off of Shagwell's hand. Arya, taking advantage of the sudden surprise, drew Needle from her hip and whirled about like Syrio had taught her, stabbing Iggo through the heart before she withdrew the she danced back and around, away from the scuffle now going on before the cobbler's store that burned like a torch against the dying of the day in Saltpans, and the skies grew ever greyer above their heads.
Clegane has once said that he would teach her how to kill. Properly, he said. And he had been most instructive. Still, he was on her list, and so she had no inclination to help him where she stood by Iggo's cooling corpse while he fought like a man possessed. He limped, grunted, his face contorted with pain all the while from the quarrels and the poison he had suspected had coated the steel tips. Still he was a better fighter than the rest of all of them, and he clove Shagwell near in half when the mad jester charged him, though the flails the fool swung above his head streaked close by his face and made deep furrows there, bleeding in his skin.
Togg Joth and Timeon, one with a large double-sided axe and the other with a Dornish fighting spear, came at him as one, though even that was hardly enough, for he in blinding speed blocked blows from either before Timeon kicked dust off the road into his eyes. Togg's axe fell – and stuck in Clegane's armour. He cleaved its haft with a beck-edge slash before he cleaved Togg's head down to the teeth with the front edge. And when Timeon came at him for the last time he knocked the speartip aside and ran him through. But the sword stuck in the Dornishman's ribs and spine and was dragged from his hands before Rorge took his turn.
Normally the Hound was a little larger and a lot stronger than that noseless man who had become a member of the Brave Companions, all whom she had come to be familiar with during her time spent as Tywin Lannister's cup-bearer at Harrenhal, but now was not a normal time. He was wounded savagely, weighed down and weary, and Rorge was fresh and out for blood, swinging widely with his axe. They scuffled, all but wrestled, Celgane getting within the reach of Rorge's axe before the nose-less man kicked him away. Clegane stumbled backwards and came onto the creaking, bulging, burning wall of the cobbler's store with a thud. Above him the building groaned dangerously.
"You fucking cunt of a-!" the Hound roared, spittle flying from his lips, before the toppling remains of the burning cobbler's shop crashed down on him and drowned out the rest of his words in a mighty tumble. And he was gone, out of sight. Rorge, laughing as the dust settled and the rubble pouring out around his feet, mucus bursting from his nose-hole with every exhale, turned around to face Aya – who had taken up Iggo's bow and nocked a black arrow from his quiver to the string. The bow was far different from what she was used to. The draw weight was much heavier than that of an ordinary shortbow, the limbs made out of laminated bone and horn fixed and glued together instead of wood, the string out of sinew and horsehair, but it was still a bow. She knew how to use bows.
"I'll fuck you bloody! I'll rape you before I give you to the Faceless Men!" Rorge lifted his shield and ran at her, almost stumbling over the bodies of his fallen companions but managed to stand straight, and she stared at him as he came closer. Don't hold. Your eye knows where it wants the arrow to go. Anguy. Remember. Stick'em with the pointy end. Jon. All men are made of water. If you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die. Syrio.
What do we say to death? "Not today" Arya said as she, in one smooth and almost soft motion, lifted her bow, pulled the arrow to anchor beneath her chin and released. A wind pulled at her hair. She heard a far distant she-wolf's howl on it.
And Rorge crashed to the ground, her arrow jutting from that ugly hole in his face where his nose had once been. She lowered her bow, wincing at the pain on her forearm from where the bowstring had slapped against her skin on the reverb, and walked over to him, using all her strength to lift him over onto his back. The arrow had struck deep into his head, through the front of his skull, but not all through and so she pulled it out and wiped his blood and brains and mucus off the tip by the fabric of his cloak. She cast a look over at the ruins of the cobbler's shop and cocked her head to the side.
Two more names off her list. Huh. She thought that she would have been happier about that, but she just felt numb. Numb all over. It was difficult to feel anything anymore. Perhaps if she got back to Robb, to Jon, to Mother, she'd learn how to smile again.
She wasted little more time. Saltpans and her way to Braavos were dead around her, along with most of the ones that had been chasing her. And the ones who had said that they were taking her to safety. They had been using her. All of them. They had been using her to get wealth or whatever it was the Jaquen H'gar had wanted from her. These men… they could change their faces, and they worshiped Death. Perhaps death was the only actual God in the world, and all the rest was just magic and mummery, like Dondarrion's burning sword or the time Thoros had brought him back to life.
Like how she could hear Nymeria howl in her sleep, and run free and hunt men in her beloved Direwolf's skin. Magic… magic was not some strange thing. She could see past all the awe and fear.
Magic was just a different kind of sword.
She took the quiver full of arrows off of Iggo's back and strapped it to her own. She got the knives off of the others and hung them from her belt. She scoured for what food, cloaks, maps and drink she could find and shoved it all into Stranger's saddlebags. And then, with one last look at the smoking ruins of the cobbler's shop, she mounted that angry beast and turned him around, heading for the woods and away from the distant pillaging of Saltpans. The men there were looking for her, if they had ridden for Rorge. But with a head's start she'd make it to Riverrun long before they caught up with her.
Urging her horse forward she vanished into the woods, hearing the howling still in her mind.
END
A/N: I've been spelling Joffrey wrong for a hundred thousand words now. By Balder's baldspot, that is aggravating.
This chapter was hard to get out. I'm just on the precipice of better things in this story, so it took a lot of effort not to jump right to that and ignore all this set-up. But I took my time instead, and I hope that shows at least a little. Still, I am sorry for the delay. Now, on to some notes:
Until someone tells me otherwise, I will presume that Jon is a little younger than Robb. Perhaps just a little, not even a full year, but just enough to make a difference to two young boys who grew up competing with each other in almost all things.
The Maester oaths is something that I've made up myself. For drama's sake, mostly, but I've tried to keep it in line with what is written about Maesters in the books. It will pay off a lot later on, so please don't hate on it just yet. It's quite worthy of hating on, but be patient with me, please.
The Hound was cursing all the time because… because Arya brings out the worst in him? I dunno, I don't like writing him. Also, Rorge is a little more eloquent and prone to rape in my story than in cannon. But, I mean, come on. No nose? That means supervillain in most fantasy stories.
Also, the Hound is not dead. Not yet. Just like I believe that he's not dead in the books. But I do believe that he is dead, after a fashion, too. It's a whole theory thing, like with the Braavosi and the Faceless Men being after Arya. That, too, will be answered. All in good time.
I hope that you've enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.
Ta.