A/N: Back to Gendry again. I apologize to anyone who's a fan of his, but I just can't seem to write him. My inspiration is gone whenever I realize that I've hit a Gendry chapter. It's not that I don't like him, I just...well, I guess I'm indifferent toward him. I actually started writing this with the intention of an Arya/Gendry endgame, and then I started reading Clash of Kings before I started actually posting and...hopped on the Arya/Jaqen ship instead. Sorry, Gendrya fans. So again, I'm disappointed by this chapter, but I still had to write it because it does still factor into the overall story arc. So go ahead and read it now if you'd like. Many thanks to my beta reader (and sister) GrowlingPeanut. Reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Bethesda Softworks and George R. R. Martin. Except for Captain Lanius, who is mine.
Rating: T for minor language and violence
"Waters and Vinicius!" The man who spoke, an Imperial barely older than most of the men he was training, had declared himself to be Captain Caius Lanius, the officer in charge of the raid on Falkreath—then proceeded to announce that the other soldiers would be fighting each other to continue their training. Or, in Gendry's case, to begin.
He had spent the majority of the morning watching his fellow members of the Imperial Legion fighting one-sided battles, in which Lanius' supporters emerged victorious and their opponents left the ring bruised, bloody, and oftentimes humiliated. Now it seemed that he was destined to join the latter group.
Getting to his feet and retrieving one of the blunt training swords from beside the scuff-marked area that had been designated for their training, Gendry approached his opponent and ignored him as he made a show of rolling back his broad shoulders and cracking his thick neck.
"You ready to lose, bastard?" he taunted, his ugly face twisting into what Gendry supposed was meant to be a smile.
"When you are."
The smile turned to a snarl as he assumed an offensive stance and Gendry took defense, raising his shield up to protect his chest. Knowing full-well that Lanius was watching them both to see who would make the first move, and also knowing that to do such was a sign of weakness, Gendry rolled onto the balls of his feet and adjusted his grip on his sword, waiting for Vinicius to get impatient as he expected that he would.
Instead, the older man narrowed his eyes and looked Gendry over with a derisive stare. "Was your mother a whore, Waters? I bet I fucked her once. How old are you, eh, bastard?"
Gendry's nostrils flared, and his sword hand tightened into a fist, but he made no move forward. It was obvious that Vinicius was hoping to entice him to attack out of anger, and he refused to give him the satisfaction of succumbing to his petty taunts.
"Nineteen," he responded, one eyebrow cocked as he gave his opponent a once-over. "But I can't say I see a resemblance. Can you?" He glanced toward one of the spectators who chuckled and shook his head. Vinicius scowled.
"Stop talking and fight!" Lanius called out, his arms crossing over his chest as a frown marred his handsome—albeit, infuriatingly arrogant—features.
Now that the captain's lackey had permission, he lunged forward and struck out with an awkward blow that Gendry easily deflected. He countered with a strike of his own and hit the Imperial right in the chest, knocking him off balance and sending him reeling backward. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, Vinicius smiled with a mouth full of dirty and crooked teeth and spat in Gendry's direction.
"So the bastard can fight now, eh? But not when he was being attacked by all the scary werewolves..." The men watching laughed and the one closest to Lanius raised his hands to his mouth and howled at the sky. Vinicius sneered triumphantly. "Scared of grumpkins and snarks too, boy?"
Against his better judgment, and sick of the mockery he had become, Gendry swallowed the distance between him and his opponent with a few short strides and met the soldier's look of surprise with a flurry of ferocious blows. His sword fell hard against the other man's chest, arms, legs, head, and anywhere else that remained within arm's reach, quickly reducing him to a whimpering ball on the ground. Throwing aside his sword, Gendry delivered a savage kick to the fallen man's side and only stepped away when Lanius spoke up.
"That's enough!" The order was curt, and the captain's displeasure was obvious as Vinicius staggered to his feet and dragged himself pathetically to his commander's feet, groveling before him on his knees.
"I didn't know he was coming at me, sir! He attacked me unprepared."
Lanius looked down at the older man with blatant disgust and pushed him into the dirt with a forceful press of his boot upon the soldier's chest. "What matters is that you lost. To a bastard. And a bastard that got scared and ran away from a little girl at that." The men laughed, though a bit more uneasily this time, and Gendry felt his hand curl instinctively into a tight fist. Even if he were to be damned to Oblivion for it, killing them all would be worth it if only to erase the smug expressions from their arrogant faces.
Before he did anything else that he would later regret, Gendry turned and walked away, heading toward the training dummies on the other side of the yard and ignoring the taunts that were yelled at him as he departed. Angry and humiliated, the Imperial took out his rage on one of the straw stuffed dummies and when he heard footsteps behind him, he slashed through it with such ferocity that it burst open to pour its filling upon his boots.
Instead of the snide taunt that he expected from Captain Lanius, the voice he heard was unfamiliar, and slightly out of breath. "For what it's, worth, I believe you."
The man standing there behind him was a young Nord, about Gendry's age, perhaps a bit younger, who, with a sword in his hand, looked as ridiculous as Gregor Clegane would have with an embroidery needle. Gendry vaguely remembered watching him get beaten into the dirt by one of their fellow soldiers earlier that morning.
"Well, that isn't worth much," Gendry snapped, shoving his sword down into the dirt with enough force for it to stay upright. "If you're the only one on my side, they'll only have more reason to laugh at me." The Nord met his gaze unflinchingly, though his cheeks flushed with shame and after a moment, Gendry looked away and shuffled his feet. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's just..." He trailed off and the other man nodded in understanding.
"I know. I've seen how they treat you. Not to say that Lanius doesn't treat everyone like that, but, he seems particularly cruel towards you."
"You don't get off much easier."
"That's just because I'm fat and I can barely hold a sword." The younger man replied bluntly with a shrug of his shoulders. "They don't like you because they see you as a threat."
Gendry frowned. It had seemed more like they hated him because he was a bastard and a craven.
"I'm Hot Pie, by the way," his companion continued, interrupting his train of thought and extending a hand. Gendry's expression must have reflected the question he was too wary to ask for fear of giving offense because the Nord nodded. "My father used to be a baker here in Solitude, and when he died, I took over the bakery for a few months before I signed up to join the Legion. Of course, the other men caught wind of that fact and...Hot Pie it was."
"And you don't mind?" Gendry asked with a hint of disbelief. Eorlund, before his death, had oft referred to him as 'the Bull' for his stubborn tendencies and he had resented the man's calling out of his fatal flaw.
"Not so much. I think it might make my pa proud to know that even as a soldier for the Imperial Legion, I'm still a baker first."
At that, Gendry smiled and he appraised the young man for a moment before nodding toward his training sword. "What say you to learning a thing or two about how to handle a blade? I can teach you if you'd like."
Hot Pie looked surprised, but nodded in acceptance when he seemed to decide that Gendry was sincere in his offer. "If you can get me to the point where I can beat one of those stupid oafs in the ring before we leave for Falkreath, I will make you the best snowberry pie that you have ever eaten; that's a promise."
Gendry laughed and extended his hand, which Hot Pie took in his own and shook with a grin. "Deal."
Removing the sword from the ground and returning it to the rack along the wall, he walked with his newfound acquaintance toward the other end of the training yard, where it was empty save a few soldiers of the same...disposition, as the man at his side.
"So what was it like, being a member of the Silver Hand?"
"The same as being a soldier of any kind, I would think," Gendry replied with a shrug. "Though we fought with silver weapons and lived between Whiterun and Windhelm."
"Surely there's more heroism in it than that. You're out there fighting werewolves for the Empire!"
Gendry laughed bitterly and glanced over at his excitable new friend. "You can still see the glory in fighting this war can't you?"
"Of course I can! What's not glorious about men like you, charging into battles with swords raised high in the air, shouting "For the Empire!"?" He punctuated his words with a charge at the nearest training dummy and then removed his arms from around the burlap sack and returned to Gendry's side with a quizzical look that begged for an answer to the question.
Gendry shook his head. "If you'd seen the things I have, you wouldn't think that way. I watched a man that I once called friend torture an innocent man, a man that I killed. The first man that I killed." His fingers absently found the ring around his neck.
Hot Pie was quiet for a moment, more out of respect than a lack of curiosity before hesitantly posing another question. "So he wasn't a werewolf?"
It makes no matter, Gendry thought bitterly. He was as much a man as I was. The impurity of his blood was no fault of his own. "By the time we were through with him, he was hardly even a man anymore," he replied solemnly. "He was completely broken." He paused for a moment. "It was my fault what happened there. The massacre. It was all because of me."
Hot Pie's eyes widened and he looked up at the man beside him. "I thought it was one of them that did it."
Gendry nodded, and not for the first time since that night, the image of Arya's face rose to his mind. She was beautiful, fierce, dangerous...and above all, she was on this earth for the sole purpose of ending his life. "Aye. She was his lover. When I killed him, she laid waste to Gallows Rock and killed everyone in her path. I only escaped because I was still in the same room as his body."
He stopped again and sighed heavily. "When I joined, I was taught that they were vicious, mindless beasts with a soul that had been claimed by the Lord of the Hunt, leaving them as nothing more than an empty shell of pain and rage, the same in human form as they were as the wolf. And I believed it. But when she fell to her knees and cried over his dead body, I realized we were wrong. We always had been. They were no more a threat to us than a child that plays at witchcraft in the streets. But now..." He smiled bitterly. "Now they are. At least, she is. Arya Stark promised not to rest until we all lie dead before her. And Gods help us, she meant it."
Hot Pie had listened to Gendry's tale with a reverent silence, but now, as her name left his lips, his features twisted into a look of horror. "Arya Stark?" At a nod of confirmation from Gendry, he exhaled heavily. "Divines...she and her sister came into my bakery once, when she still lived here with Lord Stark. I made her a loaf of bread in the shape of a wolf. She was one of them even then, wasn't she?"
Gendry cracked a smile at Hot Pie's completely hopeless expression and shrugged. "As far as we know, they're born that way. Cursed by Hircine the very moment they slip from the womb. But, they can be cured, so perhaps they can be turned willingly as well."
Hot Pie looked on the verge of nausea, but a shout from the other end of the training yard managed to keep his lunch from being expelled into the dirt.
"Alright, maggots! That's enough for today! Report to your barracks no later than sunset this evening and be back in the yard before sunup! Until you piles of shit learn how to hold a sword, you'll report to me an hour earlier each day until we're sent out. And since only one of you seems to know anything about fighting..." Lanius' eyes found Gendry's across the yard and his thin lips curved into a cruel smirk. "Each one of you will have the honor of fighting the valiant Ser Waters each day until he no longer makes an ass out of you all." Two dozen pairs of eyes turned to glare daggers at him and Lanius grinned coldly. "Dismissed!"