2. Gendry

Looking back, he decided that it had all started with Brienne. He had put a spear through Biter minutes minutes before the Brotherhood patrol he'd been expecting arrived at the Inn, and next thing he knew they were escorting a barely conscious, fully armored woman to that walking nightmare, Lady Stoneheart. He'd peeled off as soon as he was sure Brienne would make it (Biter's damage was grotesque) to return to the children and the Inn, but something made him turn around. Call it instinct. Call it experience. Even though Brienne had heroically defended a strategic Brotherhood holding from the Bloody Mummers, nearly losing her own life in the process, her sword bore a Lannister sigil, and Gendry knew too well what that meant to the Lady.

And sure enough, when he'd arrived at the Brotherhood's camp, Brienne and her squire where hanging from a tree. The boy was already dead, but when Brienne saw him and screamed his name (he realized later that she'd actually said "Renly") against the choke of the rope, something in him snapped. He had cut her down with his recently forged longsword, and let his anger at Lady Stoneheart, at these men who called themselves knights, atdesolation of the Riverlands, at the pointlessness and the pain of the constant conflict, burst forth. To his surprise, instead of hanging him beside Brienne's lifeless squire, the Brotherhood had listened.

Lady Stoneheart hissed and grimaced (if it was possible for her face to become more gruesome) but at some point slunk back and shut up, becoming, for once, a true shadow. He thinks it was when he started talking about the Night's Watch, where he had been meant to end up when he left King's Landing, and how it was wrong that only bastards and theives took the black while criminals like the Brotherhood roamed the countryside. To make up for their misdeeds, all of them, himself included, should go North. There at least there was a real enemy.

After his speech Thoros bowed before the Lady and asked for her command. "Snow," she croaked. "North."

And so the Brotherhood prepared to march North. Gendry, feeling stupid and somewhat hypocritical, asked the Lady for permission to take the children South before marching North, a move he'd realized some months ago was necessary for their safety, and survival. Lady Stoneheart not only granted his request, but told him to choose a handful of men to form an escort. Gendry sheepishly asked those he knew best: Lem, Anguy, Edric. The Lady did not speak of her again, but Gendry understood that Brienne, broken, bitten, and still lying in a breathless heap under the noose, would also join their party.

—

Moving South was slow going. All in all, nearly thirty children had taken up residence at the Inn. The oldest, nearly 14, was Willow, and the youngest not yet three. The youngest children were either carried by one of the adults, or took turns riding on top of their four heavily laden horses. During the day Anguy, Lem, and Willow led the older children to hunt small game and gather what edible things they could find in the woods, and they met camp at dusk with their haul. The others had no choice but walk on the main road; the secret ways that Anguy and Lem knew were too difficult for the children to manage at any reasonable pace. At Edric's suggestion, both he and Gendry hid their weapons and adopted the rough dress of Septons of the Smith, on the hope that hostile strangers would let their innocent and impoverished party pass. Jeyne had stitched together a lumpen shift for Brienne, who now most closely resembled a rabid brown bear and only upon close inspection recognizable as a woman. She kept her face wounds wrapped with strips from an old bedsheet at the Inn; they were so gruesome that even Gendry looked away when she changed them at night.

At first Brienne was silent and Gendry worried that the death of her squire and Biter's attack had scarred more than her face. During their frequent stops (necessary to accommodate the younger children) Brienne sat silently, staring into the distance, or, at night, into the fire. They had been forced to leave most of her armor behind - it was too heavy for the laden horses, and did not fit with their devout disguise. She had raised no objection, and seemed to have even forgotten her sword until Gendry pressed it into her good hand. The other arm, splintered by Biter, was slung against her chest. The children called her names behind her back and sometimes added her to their make-believe games, draping torn bits of shirt over their eyes, but never dared approach her while she sat.

Anguy, on the other hand was a favorite. He let the little ones hang on his shoulders and pull his hair, and at night he was surrounded on all sides by sleeping children, and Lem, always close by, shared some of his popularity. At first the children were impressed with Edric because he was a lord, but they soon started calling him names just like Brienne, and despite is most fervent efforts, they never listened to anything the former squire had to say. Gendry they revered, and rushed to do whatever he told them too, no matter how tired they were at the end of the day, or how distasteful the task. He got them moving in the morning, and directed the set up of camp at night. Unconsciously the adults also began to look to him for direction, until gradually he became the unquestioned leader of the group.

Gendry had worried that Jeyne would continue to moon over him on the road (Anguy and Lem had found an opportunity to tease him about it every time they'd stopped at the Inn), but almost immediately after the start of the journey she shifted her attention to Edric. She walked as close to him as she could on the road, and she begged stories from every night after dinner and before sleep. Gendry suspected that she mainly liked to listen to his high-born accent and imagine that she might some day become the Lady of Starfall. Edric remained as stiff and proper as ever, but seemed to like the attention. Jeyne also listened compassionately to his complaints (carrying children all day long exhausted him) and vehemently scolded the children who called him names and tried to land sticks in his golden hair.

Walking tired out the children long before it tired out Gendry, who was used to long hours pounding iron in the forge. Anguy and Lem too, came in each evening exhausted from the hunt, and Jeyne and Edric were content to sit by the fire and talk in low solemn voices. Gendry, full of restless energy, started to do exercises with the longsword he had forged for himself at night, trying to remember how Arya had moved with her sticks and her tiny sword those two long years ago. Every once in a while one of the older children would remind him of her, but then he'd remember that she'd been Willow's age, and that Willow was nearly a woman. Not that it mattered, he thought, as she was dead. But even long after he'd accepted that fact with reason, he still hoped that one day she'd come wandering into the Inn as so many orphans had before her. Not that she was an orphan, technically. He shuddered to think that that thing had been Arya's mother.

After a couple nights of pathetic swiping at the air alone (that the children nonetheless watched with respect,) Brienne spoke up. "It's a sword not a hammer, boy. You won't get anywhere slicing down like that. You want to push it forward, and use the strength in your chest, not your arms, to move it."

Gendry couldn't help but stare. That was the most he'd heard Brienne say since before she had fought Biter. He adjusted his movements and looked to her for more instruction; she nodded and told him how to change his grip. It soon became a nightly ritual. At first she only observed and instructed, and Gendry did his best to comply. After a few nights she began to grudgingly show him some exercises with her left hand, borrowing his sword. "Good balance," she'd grunted, seeming somewhat surprised. Gendry felt proud; it wasn't quite a proper sword, because he'd had to scrounge for metal, but he remembered Tobho Mott's methods well.

One night, when Brienne seemed in a better mood than usual, she told him to get ready for a spar. "Practice swords would be better of course, but we haven't those, so we'll have to skip to the real thing. You can't learn to fight without doing some fighting. I'm no expert with my left, and so we should be an even match."

In their first bout, Gendry won three out of five. "You won't lose on strength boy, at least you have that," she had said after they broke, rubbing her left arm as best she could with her still broken right. "Keep at it and learn to pick up your step and you could be a contender." Gendry smiled and wiped the sweat from his hair, and winked at the children who had assembled to watch. He knew Anguy, Lem, Jeyne, and Edric were watching too as they dozed by the dying fire.

The next night they sparred again, and afterwards he spared with Edric, who, to his surprise, he beat handily. Anguy and Lem teased Edric mercilessly all the next day and that night Edric joined Gendry in his exercises, noticeably embarrassed. When he lost again and Anguy started to sing of the "Knight of the Dayne who ne'er deigned to win," Edric challenged him to a match, cheeks crimson. "Oh know, Sir Deign, I'm good enough with a bow to save my arse, I've need any of that swordplay," Anguy said, chuckling. "You young things keep along," Lem added before beginning to sing a bawdy tune.

Edric continued to lose (although Gendry did let him win a few times, when it seemed like his morale was fading) and Brienne, while improving considerably herself with her left, did not improve as fast as Gendry. Brienne and Edric also joined Gendry's exercises, Brienne first with her left arm, and then slowly with her right as it began to heal. Their group of three was swelled by ten or so of the older children, although if Gendry caught any of them dragging behind the next day he'd send them to bed the next night before practice began.

After sparring, Gendry finally worked up the courage to ask what he'd been wanting to ask every since he'd seen her draw her weapon to fight the Brave Companions at the Inn. "This is my old master's work, alright," he told Brienne after examining the blade. "You can see it where the blade connects to the hilt, he always notches it just so. His signature, you could say." The bade was well-made but eerie, embedded with unnatural ripples of red and black. "I've never seen him make a sword like this however. He likes clean blades - this isn't his style. But the steel… it's Valryian, isn't it? I've never seen it this close."

Brienne nodded. "It and another were forged from the Greatsword of House Stark. Her name is Oathkeeper," Brienne croaked. "But my oath is broken. I promised Lady Catlyn that I would find her daughters, but that monster has no daughters. They are dead, wherever they are, or should hope they are dead, and my oath is dead with them."

Gendry looked at her, and she turned away from his burning blue eyes to look at the fire. "I knew Arya. We all did," he said, motioning at the other men, nodding off across the fire. "She was… brave. She was young, she made mistakes, and she was stupid sometimes —" he chuckled, remembering her in the acorn dress and her attempts to fight various members of the Brotherhood, including himself — "but she was brave, and she had a good heart. If she were alive, she wouldn't be mother, at least, I hope not. Her sister… I never met her, but I'm sure she'd be the same. If I find her — Arya — if I find either of them, I would keep them safe."

Gendry looked at Brienne, and if he hadn't known her better he'd have thought she was crying.

"Take it," she said. "Give me your sword. Take Oathkeeper. My oath is broken."

On the other side of the fire, Lem began to hum:

"And how she smiled and how she laughed,

The maiden of the tree

She spun away and said to him,

'No featherbed for me

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love

and me your forest lass.'"

—

They encountered surprisingly few people on the road south to King's Landing. About once a day a family fleeing the war-torn Riverlands, carrying as many of their possessions as they could, passed their crawling children's parade. Some of them looked hungrily at the the four laden horses, often sporting the leftovers of last night's kill, but no one tried to take it, and many thanked Gendry and Edric for performing such a pious deed. One farmwife was moved to tears at the sight of the children, and kissed Gendry's false Septon's cloak, crying that he was a great man. Her daughter mummured that her little brother had recently died, and dragged her mother back to the old farmer husband and their donkey.

The most tense encounter on the first leg of their journey was with a four Sparrows who were riding from the Saltpans to King's Landing. Their leader looked suspicously at Brienne and Edric, who despite two weeks on the road and a roughspun cowl still looked like a high born. But after taking a second look at Gendry's bulk and hefty smith's arm, and at the hordes of children, decided whatever this band was wasn't worth their trouble. A few days later a liveried troupe of soldiers rode up the road on some sort of crown business (although given the anarchy in the Riverlands, Gendry couldn't imagine what) and halted briefly at their group. Gendry had only gotten halfway through his false story when one of the children tugged at the soldier's boot and said "Plase sir, somting to eat? My belly's hungry." The soldier gave the child a look of disgust and motioned to his soldiers to ride on.

It was true, the children were hungry. There was barely enough food to be found at the Inn at the Crossroads, and on the road it was even worse. Mealtimes became a point of tension, where the adults fought to make sure the neediest children were fed, as well as the hunters, who needed their strength to bring more to the table the next night. Despite their best efforts, every night a handful of children went without food, and even Gendry could feel himself getting weaker. It wasn't long before a couple of children fell sick. They buried the first, a four year old girl who'd been called Mary, just off the road near Antlers.

When they'd set out from the Brotherhood camp they'd vaguely planned to bypass King's Landing and take the Roseroad west towards Highgarden and the Reach, which was still at peace and more importantly, producing food. Gendry knew too well what life if the capital was like for an orphan, and without family or a protector he guessed half of the children would be dead or worse within the year. Edric had said there was a motherhouse in Cider Hall; he hoped that when they arrived, the Septas would take the children in.

By the time they'd reached King's Landing they barely had enough gold to buy few sacks of gruel. The number of travelers on the road had doubled close to the capital, and most nights Anguy and Lem would only rejoin them after dark, so as not to arouse suspicion. At a crowded campsite Willow returned late one evening with several loaves of bread and some dried meat she'd pinched from a merchant several miles down the road. Gendry was furious. "That was stupid, Willow, stupid! When they wake up the first thing they'll do is look for who took them. We can't run! We can't hide!" Willow had cried and run to Jeyne who glared at Gendry. Sure enough in the morning the armed party of traders came stumbling angrily into camp, and Gendry gave them his best Septon's apology and begged them to accept their last silver piece as payment.

When they were clear of King's Landing Gendry began to breathe easier, although another child, a boy of five, had succumbed to a chill caught on the and was buried at the fork towards the Reach. Gendry poured his frustration, at the pace, and the lack of food, and the steadily deteriorating condition of the party into his nightly exercises. One night he swung so angrily that the nearly sheered off Edric's arm, who refused to spar for several nights after that. Some things were getting better; the weather was slightly warmer, although still unseasonably chilly for the South, and land was becoming noticeably more prosperous. Jeyne and some of the more pathetic looking children went to beg for food at any inhabited structure they came across, and where before they had usually returned with nothing, now they started to come back with a wedge of cheese, or clothful of oats, or once, an invitation to milk the farmer's three cows and stay the night in his barn.

Five days away from King's Landing they were stopped by eight armed, mounted Sparrows, the leader of whom bore the mark of the order of King's Landing, a circle and a cross branded onto his foreheads.

"Who goes there?" said the leader.

"We are refugees from the Riverlands, your holiness," said Gendry, adopting his best commoner's submissive attitude, although he knew seemed ridiculous when put on by someone of his size. "My brother and I are escorting these children to the motherhouse at Cider Hall, the Smith help us."

"Why did you not bring these children to the halls of the High Sparrow in King's Landing?" The leader asked again, eyeing the children. His high holiness is always in need of servants." He walked over to Willow and grabbed her chin, leaning over to leer at her. As he bent, Gendry saw that the mark on his foreheard was not a true brand after all, but instead a shallow cut, emphasized with some sort of dye. The two of the other men had moved to inspect the horses, that carried what little food and supplies remained to them. Several of the children started crying.

"Ha! It's a woman!" said one of the men, poking Brienne in the face as if she were a mule. He waved his friend over and said "now that's a right cow isn't it? It'd be something to fuck that, wouldn't it?" Gendry noticed, and just about the same time the Sparrow inspecting her did, that she had hidden the iron longsword in the folds of her dress. He reached inside his cowl for Oathkeeper just as she raised her sword both hands and decapitated her admirer, and then his friend. Gendry thrust Oathkeeper into the leader's stomach and whirled around to parry a blow and then disarm a fourth man; Edric, a beat behind, fumbled for his own blade in his cowl and ran bravely to encounter a fifth; instead of fighting the brave Knight however, the man fled, his four remaining companions with them.

"His Holiness, my ass," said Brienne, cradling her bad arm.

They gained three horses from the squabble and three purses of gold, taken from the leader's belt, whose Sparrow's getup had apparently proved profitable. In the next town Gendry sold two of the horses, and for the first time in weeks every child ate.

—

Two weeks later, nearly two months after they had set out from the Inn at the Crossroads, more than double the time it would have taken an average band of travelers, they reached Cider Hall. The motherhouse was large - one of the largest in Westeros, with a capacity for nearly one hundred sisters. The Septas were far from pleased to have another thirty mouths to feed, but their order demanded hospitality towards orphans, and they too had not been untouched by the game of thrones; many of the sisters had left for King's Landing to join the High Sparrow's movement, and they were having trouble bringing in the harvest in their fields in the back. They were also happy to have a few strong men to help with repairs and a smith to mend tools and hinges and such, and Gendry, who found he missed the forge, was happy to oblige. Edric valiantly promised to send the good sisters two chests of gold from Starfall; as he hadn't been home for more than three years, and wasn't likely to return anytime soon his promise was empty.

It was a stolen season, a strange time of peace after so many years of war. Gendry couldn't remember being so happy, spending his days in the little toolshop next to the large field of wheat, at the village forge, or sparring with Brienne. In the evenings he drank fermented cider and sang silly songs with Anguy and Lem, often joined by a few of the younger sisters who would scurry away at the sound of an approaching footstep, for fear of the High Septa. But his restlessness only grew, and with it a sense of guilt; he knew it was time to go North. When Brienne, disfigured but fully healed, announced that she was leaving for Lannisport, Gendry told Edric, Anguy and Lem to pack their things.

On their last evening, Gendry knocked on Brienne's door, a door that led to one of the sister's simple cells. The large woman was packing her few things, necessities largely acquired at Cider Hall, into her saddlebags. When Gendry entered she motioned to the stool in the corner and herself sat on the bed. Instead of sitting, Gendry carefully unbuckled his sword belt and knelt before her, offering Oathbreaker.

"My Lady, you gave me this on the road, but over the last months I have come to realize that I cannot accept such a gift. Please take it, the sword is yours."

Brienne considered him, his head bent and sword outstretched, but did not hesitate when she replied. "No, my choice was right. The sword is yours. You will return it to the North, where it belongs, and you will keep my oath better than I could."

Gendry nodded thoughtfully. He rebuckled his sword belt and sat back on the little stool.

"Do you remember…" he began hesitantly, looking out the window, "… what you said to me when we met, at the Inn, in the forge?"

"I said you were a Baratheon. One of King's Robert's bastards, I thought. Now I am sure of it."

Gendry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I knew it," he said. "I think I always knew it. When I was a boy working in Tobho Mott's shop, Jon Arryn came to visit me, and then Eddard Stark. They both died soon after. It was bad luck, I thought, to think such things. And then the gold cloaks came looking for me on the road, and I decided to stay as far away from…it…as I could. Can I do that?" He looked up at Brienne and once again she was struck by the blueness of his eyes.

Brienne shook her head slowly. "You can't escape your parentage, no matter how far you fly. You can choose to ignore it, and you can hide from it, but you can't escape from it."

"What does it mean, then?"

Brienne looked at him carefully. "It means that men will follow you. You can fight; you have your father's natural gift for war, and his charisma. But where he was rash you are constant. You are kind, like Renly" — Gendry noticed her wince slightly — "and your friends love you for it. But where he was soft you are firm. You are stubborn, like Stannis, but while he is inflexible, you can bend."

Gendry flushed. He had never heard such high praise - except perhaps from a child. The closest Arya had ever gotten to complimenting him was "stubborn." And to hear this from Brienne, who hardly ever spoke well of anyone, except for Renly, and whom Gendry had come to deeply respect over the last several months — it meant a lot.

"You can hide from your father, Gendry, but I hope you don't. Westeros needs a man like you, and the North more than anywhere." Brienne now turned away to look at the dying light through the window, and Gendry knew it was time to go.

"Thank you, my lady," he said. "For everything."

She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

**NOTES

This is the chapter that fills in what happens to Gendry between saving Brienne and the real start of this story, and because it needs to cover a lot of ground it's a bit awkward. Still a lot of important things happen to Gendry. He becomes a leader - kind of defacto - he learns to fight good - and he comes to terms a bit about his heritage. Plus Gendry / Brienne action is fun. Sorry for typos / logical errors, I wrote this whole story quickly because it needs to get out of my head!