LYLE

Storm-torn waters beset them through the night. The fishermen and their wives were bailing nigh endlessly. As weary as he was, Lyle could not recall much of it. Cocooned in scraggly wool, he drifted in and out of awareness while thunder bellowed its fury and walls of dark water rose broad and bruising out of the sea, flinging the fishing boat back and forth. It was as if the gods themselves sought to deny them. More than once the boat was close to turning over; Lyle gazed straight into the frenzied sea until the boat came crashing down the other side with a terrific jolt.

As if from a great distance, Lyle heard the howling rush of wind and water, shouts of angry panicked voices… and a jarring crack mere feet from his ear, a shock like shattered bone. From half-consciousness he jerked fully awake. Jagged spurs of wood protruded from the small extended family's fishing boat. Swept upon the shallows, its back had been broken.

His first thought was of Prince Tommen. He almost wept with relief when he glimpsed green eyes on a small face in the starlight, amidst a gaggle of the fishermen's children. The boy lives. Mayhaps it was not all for naught, after all.

The three fishermen dragged Lyle ashore. It was a cool wet morning, before dawn. Both of his legs and his arms and his back were covered with small cuts and bruised and swollen with the strain he had imposed on them. The fishermen took away the wool that they had put about him when he had been pulled from the cold water, clutching the prince with the last of his strength, a step away from death. The cold pierced him like a sword. He trembled. I must be strong, Lyle told himself, willing himself to be silent… and yet he moaned in reflexive protest when they dumped his shivering body on the damp rocky beach, none too gently. He could not stop himself from making the sound. The shame was almost as cruel as the cold.

Someone opened Lyle's own cloak, still sodden from his swim in the Narrow Sea. By the silver starlight, Lyle's blinking eyes faintly made out the figure of a bearded man above him, rummaging roughly around his body. The fisherman found the bag tied to Lyle's belt, the bag with everything he owned except the clothes on his back and his scabbard and sword, and undid the knots with nimble fingers. "Done," he called. He stood, holding the bag, and he and his family began to walk away.

"You can't do that!" A voice he knew. Prince Tommen's.

"Why not?" One of the fishwives, a woman with a voice as sharp as flint. "Your pa swore us that gold. It's ours now."

"You wouldn't have any gold, if not for us," said Tommen. "Just a little. Please. We need to eat. You can't leave us here, penniless."

"Bad luck for you, bald boy," the fishwife mocked. She kept walking away, with her husband and kin.

Lyle's face twisted with anger. "Stop that!" He pushed himself to his feet, right hand falling to his side to grasp the hilt of his sword. His strained legs loosed a spurt of pain that roared through his body; they suddenly gave way. Lyle toppled over on the wet rocks and hit the ground.

Scornful laughter rang out above him, unseen but heard keenly. He heard footsteps, too: footsteps receding.

A small voice said, "You ought give him something, pa."

"Shut up 'bout what you don't know," another of the fishermen told him curtly. Lyle recognised the voice; this was the one whose hair was more grey than brown, the one who had dived in and fetched him from the water. "That gold's our safety, lad. The Mother has smiled on us. We'll have a great big house in the city all for ourselves, what with horses and servants to call ours and all that, and beef for the table, and feather-beds to sleep on."

"We'll still do that with a bit less," the little boy said. "There's so much gold here, we won't need the silver. Look at him, pa," he appealed. "He can't even stand."

"The Seven-Pointed Star says the Father remembers them what are kind to needful folk," the bearded fisherman pointed out.

The eldest fisherman turned back, with poor grace. "Very well," he grumbled. "You can have a little bit of our silver and copper."

"And—" Lyle croaked. My cloak. Not the one on me, my old cloak.

"What now," said one of the other fishwives, "you ungrateful bastard?"

You only did it because you wanted the gold, Lyle thought. Else you would not be leaving us here, now, alone and unprotected.

That cloak was exquisitely made, whitest of white, handed to him by the Lord Regent of the Seven Kingdoms when he was anointed and raised to the order of the Kingsguard. It was not just a cloak to him; it was his most prized possession, more even than the sword his father gave him. It meant recognition by the best leader of men he had ever served. It meant the highest destiny possible for a lord's second son like Lyle Crakehall. It meant the greatest achievement of his life.

No smallfolk man had a cloak like that.

He bit his tongue. "Thank you," he said instead.

The fishwife grunted. Lyle could not tell whether it was an acknowledgement. She and her family went away, and soon their footsteps were inaudible next to the noise of the raindrops.

His greatest achievement… and yet he did not doubt these fishermen would like the taste of the usurper's gold as much as Tommen's. Let them know who he was and the last son of Robert Baratheon would soon be back in King's Landing, in Lord Renly's hands.

And now he is not. Now he is free, shipwrecked on a beach in Crackclaw Point.

Lyle closed his eyes. The dark damp boulder in front of his face was all that he could see anyway. The cuts on his arms and legs tormented him, a thousand vicious thornlike pricks, from the climb up Dragonmount and the time he had dragged Prince Tommen over the seafloor to get him away from the traitors. So did the strain on his arms and legs and back. Never in his life had he borne himself so far, carrying Tommen's weight as well as his own. He had run and climbed and fought and swum for ten men, on that black day on Dragonstone, all in the desperate hope-beyond-hope that he could save the king and his family from the treachery of the usurper. He had failed them, all of them but one. But he had saved that one.

"Go," he said.

It was too much to bear. Lyle gritted his teeth—better that than to cry out—and willed his agony to fade. He rolled over onto his back. To Lyle's weary ears, the rain pounding down upon him sounded like an echo of the day he had arrived on Dragonstone, when he had brought Prince Tommen to nigh his doom. Drop-drop-drop-drop-drop.

"Get up, ser," Tommen said, somewhere above him. "You can't sleep here. It's too cold and wet, and there's no shelter from the rain. We need to go this way, away from the sea. There might be farms, and I see bushes and trees in the valleys."

"I'm not going to sleep, my prince," Lyle murmured. Such a sweet child. He almost smiled… then the slight motion of his face caused his cuts, covered with salt water, to sting, and the wave of pain that rolled over him crushed all else beneath it. "I'm dying. Go."

"I won't," said Tommen.

"I cannot go with you further," said Lyle. "Look at me, my prince. Look at me. That fisherman wasn't mistaken; I have not the strength to stand."

"You must." The boy moved to kneel over Lyle. Those green eyes were full of tears. "You're going to take me across the Narrow Sea. You promised."

"I can't."

"You'll be better."

"I'll not have time," said Lyle. "I did this to myself, for you. To save you. All of that's in vain if you don't leave me. You're safer now—not safe, but safer. You're no longer on Dragonstone, surrounded by traitors. Don't tarry for me. I'm a knight of the Kingsguard; I swore a vow; this is what I was meant for. You are the one who matters. Now that your brother is dead, you are the king by rights. The realm needs you, to have a better king than Renly. Go into the valleys, as you say. Take the copper. Take the silver. Take my sword. And go."

"Everyone says that," said Tommen angrily. "Mother said I had to go, and Cella said to go, too. Well, she went away and now she's in Dorne, when the Dornish hate us, Grandfather said so. I went away from Mother and Mother's dead, and Grandfather's dead. I had to go, and Joffy's dead, even cousin Shireen, and she was nice to me. Everybody tells me I'm prince, I'm king, I matter, I need to go. And I keep going, and people keep dying." He shook his head. "No more, ser. I'm staying with you. So you're going to have to stand."

"Fool of a child," Lyle growled… but no matter what he said, the boy proved quite immovable. So he lay there in the early hours of the morning, sodden and shivering, exhausted beyond reckoning, and yet unable to drift into the peace and quiet of his final sleep.

Eventually Prince Tommen stopped talking. There were bags under those pretty green eyes, and the boy was bruised and bleeding. Tommen, too, had suffered; he had been trampled by a crowd during the first moments of the massacre on Dragonstone, when the Knight of Hartford, vassal and brother to the widowed Lady Chyttering, had murdered Lord Axell Florent and ransacked Dragonsport with his sister's men and its townsfolk had fled from him; and he had come within a hair's breadth of drowning when he and Lyle had swum away from a party of Bar Emmon horsemen. And both of them had been awake with almost no respite since yesterday morning.

In time the boy could not resist falling into the embrace of sleep, his small body draped stubbornly next to Lyle, giving him some measure of warmth. Lyle, colder, wetter and in agony, found it difficult to do the same. He too eventually relented, lulled by the soft steady sound of the ocean lapping a few yards from his ears.

Lyle awoke with suddenness. He had always been a light sleeper. It was still night, the same night. It was still the black of moon. The sun was still nowhere to be seen. The ocean could still be heard lapping. Why am I so cold?

The boy by his side was gone.

"My prince," Lyle called. He struggled to stand. His arms and legs howled whenever he attempted to push on them. His neck was less exhausted than the rest of him, so he bent it forward, upward, and was able to look around.

When he saw a small pale childlike figure wading into the sea, he sighed with relief, drooping his head… then sent it bolt upright. It was dark. By starlight alone he should not have been able to see Tommen so clearly. He was pale, much too pale; his head, as bald as Tommen's, was too large; and there was a dimly visible darker shape, squirming, being dragged behind him…

Fear shot through Lyle, as sharp as pain. I am dreaming, he thought, hoped, prayed. He was in no shape to fight a man, much less some monster out of legend.

The words of the Lord Regent floated through his head. The last, best hope for the men of the west.

Lyle bent his knees, to push himself up. I must stand. His muscles shook with the effort, and went slack, like a burst bag with too much weight. The pain of pulling felt like a wolf's howl in his head, drowning out all else.

In his mind, in his memory, Ser Kevan Lannister's eyes met his own. Lyle fell to one knee and made a promise.

Again he pulled. His arms scrabbled for purchase on the wet rock. He pulled to bend his legs towards him, so that he could make himself stand. They bent, howled in protest, trembled… he pushed down against the wet rock, hard, with his hands… must stand… his backside rose from the ground…

His legs failed him. They trembled involuntarily, for a single instant losing all their strength. He fell bottom-first and hit the rocks with a wet thump. The impact set his legs afire. He had to bite his tongue hard, tasting blood, to stop himself from screaming.

The monster kept moving, onward, dragging Tommen further away.

Hot tears sprang to Lyle's eyes, born of misery and frustration and shame. Am I not a knight? He had promised Ser Kevan. No matter what you need do, no matter who you need face, come blood, come battle, come the Others from the seven hells, you will keep him safe. All that he had done to keep that oath… would it be meaningless, at the end of things?

It can't be… it can't be…

Pale, unhurried, the monster glided on… the struggling dark shape had almost disappeared into the water…

Lyle set his hands against the rock, braced his legs and pushed. The pain was white-hot and all-devouring. He screamed, long and loud; he could not stop it. Nothing else in the world existed, nothing—nothing but the pain and the oath, the iron chain pulling him to the ground and the iron chain pulling him up again.

With wonder, Lyle noticed he was standing.

Alerted by his scream, the creature turned to face him. Lyle felt faint from fear. Its huge face was scaled, white-eyed and completely noseless; it did not merely have a nose cut off, it had plainly never possessed a nose. Its mouth contained several arrays of pointed green teeth, longer than a man's and sharp as daggers. It dropped Prince Tommen in the water from its webbed hands and straightened its back. Lyle's heart skipped a beat. It was not, as he had thought, of child's stature, now that it was no longer hunched over, pulling Tommen. Far from it. Lyle was taller than almost any man he knew. This thing was taller than Lyle.

Lyle drew his sword, took two unsteady steps forward and pointed his own sword straight at the monster's face.

"I know not what you are," he rasped, gripping the sword in his right hand. It felt as heavy as a horse. "But I am a sworn brother of the Kingsguard, guarding my king, and be you beast or demon from the seven hells, youwillrun."

The monster regarded him with its unfathomable white eyes. Lyle saw his own death reflected in them; he knew he was in no fit state to survive if they made a fight of it. Every second was an act of will to stay up. Lyle trembled, holding off hot agony, holding up cold steel. Then, in a single, elegant, wholly deliberate motion, it drew from its side a long thin thing so black that Lyle could scarce see it in the night, a weapon blacker than the darkness.

Despairing, his exhausted back and legs struggling to support his weight, knowing he was doomed, Lyle stepped forward—

—and the monster stumbled. Something small had struck it from behind; Lyle caught sight of a small dark form. The tall pale thing recovered its footing and turned with shocking swiftness, twisting its back all the way around, black sword flying—

Lyle half-threw himself, half-fell forward and thrust his sword all the way through that wet white neck.

A fountain of green blood gushed out all over his hand; then there was water in his eyes, his mouth, his nose.

Someone heaved him out. Lyle spluttered, gasping air. He looked up and saw a face he knew.

"My prince…"

"We aren't safe here," Tommen said. "We're going."

He took hold of Lyle and pulled with all his strength. Lyle saw the strain on the prince's sweating face, but Tommen made no remark of it. Without complaint, Tommen dragged Lyle with all his strength, inland, as far as he was able.

They made it a hundred yards from the shoreline, to a tree to recline under. All the wood to be found was greenwood, so they had no fire. Lyle slumped against the tree and surrendered to sleep.

The next thing Lyle was aware of was a hand rifling through his pockets. He was no deep sleeper. Immediately his eyes snapped open.

"Oh my," a voice said, in a tone of mild surprise. "A live one."

Peering down at him was a thin, grubby, mousy-haired, disreputable-looking little man, wearing a patched brown coat.

"You meant to rob me," Lyle said, putting a hand on his sword.

The grubby man shrugged, unrepentant, though somewhat nervous. "I thought you're a dead 'un," he said. "Pardon my sayin' so, you ain't lookin' too far from it, big fellow. Normally the flies don't gather on livin' men, you take my meanin'."

Lyle was irritated to discover that the little man was right; there were, indeed, flies all around him. Gods, what a dank disgusting miserable place.

Tommen stirred, hearing voices, and caught sight of Lyle and the grubby little man. "Father? Who's this?"

"Why, old Jon o' the Patches, that would be me," the grubby little man said. "And if you'll forgive me, I need to be looking around."

Jon o' the Patches took his leave, and wandered back towards the shoreline, where a pair of horses with a cart were waiting. Now, in broad daylight, it was hard to believe that he had seen what he had seen last night.

In a voice that could have strangled a cat, the grubby man was singing. "Laughed, laughed the maid, she put the flower in his hair—"

The grubby man got on his cart and set the horses towards a spot far in the distance. Lyle's eyes strained to make it out. He sat up—he was pleased to discover that was getting less painful—to look at it more clearly; and…

"That's a shipwreck," Lyle said incredulously. "You're robbing their dead, too."

"'Course I am." If Jon o' the Patches felt a shred of remorse, he concealed it superbly. "Their coin, well, it won't be doin' them no good, will it? Nor their wares. Plenty of 'em are rich Gulltowners, merchants, not penniless arses like you two. Lots of the wrecks wash up here. Why shouldn't they give an old man an honest living, I asks you?"

Lyle thought to reply, then thought again, more carefully.

"They should," he called. He withdrew a coin. "How would you like to earn a silver stag?"

At the mention of that last word, the grubby little man's face turned back to them. He stopped the horses. "A stag, you say?"

"Yes," Lyle said, holding (a flattering impression of) King Robert's face up for inspection. "You see, we want to reach a town at the coast. We could walk and look for ourselves, but it would be easier not to."

When he had so little of his strength, he did not wish to wander Crackclaw Point alone, for fear of the pale things from the sea.

There was a greedy glint in Jon o' the Patches' eyes. "Oh don't you fret," he crooned, "you'll be in the best of care. But you see, I fear, without my help, you won't know at all where to go."

The rest was haggling.

Soon enough, after spending some of what little was left of their coin, Lyle and Tommen were bumping up and down on a rickety cart, on their way to what their guide promised was the biggest town for miles around. They passed through bogs and pine woodlands, taking winding paths around the hills, meandering in narrow passes, weaving through the shallow rainy hills and dark wet wooded valleys that seemed to comprise the whole of Crackclaw Point. Flies were everywhere; people were sparse; and it was always either raining or about to be raining.

Their guide spent much of the journey regaling them with tales of the Crackclaws. "We're of the blood of the First Men," he began, "not them Andals. The others sucked their cocks, but we beat them off. They ain't as tough as us; they sure as shit didn't know how to live here. They stuck to their pretty meadows and left the dangerous lands to us."

He continued in that vein. To hear Jon o' the Patches tell it, one would have thought that Crackclaw Point was the most desired land in all the world, eagerly pursued since ancient times by all its neighbours: the Mooton kings from Maidenpool, the Darklyn kings from the Dun Fort, and the Durrandon kings from Storm's End.

The latter were especially persistent, and especially despised. "Them stormlanders been killin' us since before even the Andals came," Jon o' the Patches said, "and we been killin' them back, as they deserve. Why, there's this one time—" And he proceeded to relate, in detail, the story of King Durran the Fat, who had been fooled and defeated by the cunning Lord Yorick Pyne of Shadydell.

"—and the Storm King blundered right in," Jon o' the Patches ended enthusiastically. "They charged into the valley, the one what with Lord Yorick's arches waitin', and they killed all of 'em. An' Yorick brought the stormlander up to him, in chains, and the Storm King said, 'You got this victory, but we'll get more victories. Crackclaw will be ours, unless all your heirs are as wise as you.' And y'know what Lord Yorick said? 'Crackclaw will be ours, as long as all your heirs are as damn great fools as you'." He laughed heartily. "And so they were!"

Prince Tommen said, "Isn't it bad to say that? Father said House Durrandon were—were the family of the king."

"The king? Here's what I think o' the king and the old king and all their kind." Jon o' the Patches spat onto the ground twice. "There's to Renly Baratheon and there's to Joffrey Baratheon. None of 'em are kings worth a damn. No stormlander usurper is our king, here in Crackclaw. We remember." He said those last words very proudly.

Late that evening, they reached the town they had been promised, a squat widespread place without walls, spread out from its centre at a wide hilltop. Truth be told, it was more like a village than a town. It had only a single inn and only a single sept, both of them wooden.

Lyle was thinking of a meal and a warm bed first and foremost, looking through the window to one of the beds in the Red Wing inn, but his charge seemed to have had higher hopes. "How will we get a ship here?" Tommen despaired. "It doesn't even have a shore!"

"Why should it?" said Jon o' the Patches. "Crackclaws don't build no towns on the shore, never—only walled castles."

He gave no explanation. Regardless, Lyle suspected he knew.

To Lyle's considerable surprise, for all his grave-robbing and nigh-treasonous blabber, Jon o' the Patches did indeed deliver them to the inn without incident. Lyle had not expected that. He had spent the whole journey without his hand ever straying far from the hilt of his sword.

A strange thought, that even in these treason-blighted days one could be too distrustful.

He gave the mousy-haired, grubby little man the silver he had promised. "As I swore," he told him.

The little man clasped his hand solemnly. "As you did."

For the next few days, Lyle stayed in his room at the Red Wing, resting and eating well and recovering his strength. It felt like a waste of money to wait, but he knew that it was necessary. Someday soon they would head to Maidenpool, the nearest large port on the mainland to here, in order to take a ship across the Narrow Sea, and he could not protect Prince Tommen on the road if he could not walk. Though still somewhat sore and strained, his arms and legs and back were in much better condition afterwards.

One evening he was standing in the inn, nursing his pint of ale and listening to the Crackclaws chatter, when a burly black-bearded man walked through the door, greeted with nods by many of the others. He sat down with a gaggle of men and started exchanging pleasantries.

"Clarence!" cried a shorter man. "It's been a while. How was business?"

"Good," the black-bearded man said. "They buy the flax. Got a great price for it."

"No wonder," the shorter man said, "what with Lord Renly wanting a fleet to help him kill his nephew. Y'know, you missed Alys's marriage."

"Alys?" said Clarence. "Gods be good, I thought she'd die a spinster."

"So did everyone," the shorter man said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "You hear this, it's a great 'un…"

They spoke more along those lines, relating the latest village gossip. Lyle ignored it, as he usually ignored whatever was spoken in this inn—his purpose here was simply to rest and recover—until he caught a turn of phrase.

"—and here's one thing you won't have heard," Clarence was telling his shorter companion.

"Which is?"

"The Imp has gone and made hisself a lord."

"You're japing," the shorter man said, astonished.

"No jape," said his big black-bearded fellow. "When I was in the next valley along, I had it from Artos, and he had it from his friend Willem, and he had it from Benjen, this man he spoke to what was tradin' up the Trident and stopped off at Crackclaw. Only a few days after Lord Tywin popped it, the Imp went and landed at Lord Tywin's army's camp, up north where the kingsroad crosses the Trident, and, what d'you know, next thing anyone knows he's goin' about callin' himself lord. Onearm, they call him now, 'cause he lost the other in the battle, an' he's Lord of Casterly Rock and Lord Regent of the realm too. All the other westerlords are doin' what he says."

"Full men, doin' whatever a dwarf says? Now there's a jape for you. What next? Sheep shearing shepherds?"

Lyle was no longer paying heed to them. Lord Tywin's son is alive. He had not imagined it, had not even dared to hope… and yet it seemed that somehow the gods had seen fit to answer prayers he had not been so presumptuous as to make.

He had thought without a shadow of a doubt that the conspirators would be successful in seizing control of Lord Tywin's host after their murder of Lord Tywin. It had seemed too well-planned, too cunning, too carefully made to look like an accident. Instead they had been thwarted, or mayhaps—he had to hope, for his brothers' sakes—they had been disrupted by Lord Tyrion's unexpected arrival and had dared not make the attempt at all. If Lord Tyrion were calling himself Lord Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, that meant he was the usurper's foe, for Renly would have no regent. And if Lord Tyrion were the usurper's foe, that meant there was still a considerable army opposing Lord Renly, loyal to the line of Robert Baratheon.

Lyle had sworn his vows as a sworn brother of the Kingsguard—now, perhaps, the last sworn brother of the Kingsguard—and Tommen was here. The fate of the rightful king rested on his shoulders. If there remained an army to fight for him, there remained a chance.

A very poor chance still, Lyle thought. A reckless hope, that Renly will fall. But he would sooner hold to a reckless hope than lead Prince Tommen into an exile without money or supporters, an exile which would doubtless be destined for a failure as pitiful as the late Viserys Targaryen's. He could not count himself as true to his oaths if he sat and did naught while the only hope of restoration was crushed under Lord Renly's iron heel. It was not enough to keep Tommen from Lord Renly's knives; he had to set right what Lord Renly had set wrong.

With more hope than he had known since the day of Lord Tywin's murder, Lyle climbed the stairs. His legs did not bother him so badly now.

"Father?" said the boy sprawled on the bed, looking up bleary-eyed at him.

Lyle closed at the door and smiled at him. "It seems," he whispered, "you are not the last of your kin after all."