We're back! And a week late, at that. You know how it is.
One more POV.
The Ocean Road - 44 AC
Tyler drove his dagger into the soldier's gut and smiled.
His fellow outlaws followed suit, lashing out with staves, knives, and clubs. They fell upon the royalist procession like a pride of lions, flesh and bone rupturing, the sound filling the night. Wrenching a firm blade from his fallen victim, Tyler cut straight into a nearby throat. The tissue was soft, and it parted like water.
Tyler roared, his golden mane flying out behind him as he leapt toward the next enemy, cutting him down. Hot blood splashed his face as the body fell, landing in the dust with a thud. Ser Clarence Ruttiger, knight and Warrior's Son, smiled grimly as Tyler finished off his foe, sword rising and falling into a mash of meat.
Cries all over the road were silenced as men-at-arms were executed, their pain and fear hushed in the space of seconds. The hacking continued, as the butchers took their due. Tyler spat, trying to get the salty taste out of his mouth.
Beside him, Clarence snorted. "When will the Cruel and his Hand learn to stop sending the sheep west?"
Raucous laughter followed. "The giants and the children would sooner return than that, brother," Tyler replied. They were a fragment of the thousands who'd marched east, narrowly avoiding immolation via dragonfire. After their flight into the mountains, they'd begun preying on Targaryen patrols; for supplies, and for vengeance. Soon, Tully men began to join the dead. The Lord of Riverrun was Hand of the King, and he'd prove his worth to Maegor's regime.
Tyler's men had burned, nearly the entire century that he'd been tasked with leading. He himself had barely escaped, and had been forced to leave the bodies behind.
He and the survivors had been found by Joffrey Doggett and his some two thousand Faith Militant, a powerful force that had occupied the highlands of the west. While officially an outlaw and traitor to the crown, Joffrey had proclaimed himself Grand Captain and begun a private war against Maegor.
As the bastard of Lyman Lannister and a survivor of the Battle Beneath the God's Eye, Joffrey had taken him aside as soon as they'd made it back to camp. Tucked away into an empty lion's den, the old knight had held Tyler as he'd cried. "I failed them," Tyler had sobbed into his shoulder, "They're dead, and it's my fault."
"Nay," Joffrey had lied, "It was your father's, and King Maegor's. Your father sent you alone, without support, and expected you to succeed where the Gardeners failed. Maegor and his Dread beast killed your men."
Even if the words were false, they felt good to hear, and Tyler had sworn his immediate loyalty to the one man in the entire Seven Kingdoms who he felt was worthy of respect. The good knight had given him command over an entire brigade, sent him south to the northmarches to raid - to send a message against the Cruel. Loyalists to Maegor's reign, traitors to the Faith - they fell at the end of Tyler's sword.
In and out they had struck, flickering like a candle in, impossible to predict. Tyler had made sure to build their strength, their numbers, when he could. Half of their enemies spent time escorting prisoners, who joined them after being freed. Horses, weapons, armor - it accumulated, and by the moon's turn they resembled a proper force.
As the Warden of the West's bastard, Tyler had been trained in all sorts of disciplines, one of which was geography. He knew all the major settlements and keeps in the surrounding plains: Crakehall, Old Oak, Goldengrove, Cornfield. He knew which ones would be allies to their cause, and which ones would not hesitate to turn them over.
That is what found him and his company (which the smallfolk had taken to calling the Warrior's Pride) riding through the gates of Sting, a small holdfast on the coast of the Westerlands. It was the seat of House Lorch, and had been recently rendered a scorched ruin courtesy of Balerion the Dread.
"Prisoners inbound!" squealed out the voice of a guard, a recently recruited boy by the looks of him. House Lorch had lost most of their forces fighting for Aegon the Uncrowned, the fool, and the Blue Scorpion had been forced to use his dredges as a garrison.
Men stumbled behind Tyler's mount, blinded and gagged. The proud trout of House Tully had routed his men all those moons ago, but now it was dusty, battered. Tyler gave the cousin of Lord Tully a violent grin, and rode in.
Aubrey Lorch was present to accept the prisoners, nobles taken from a half dozen raids in the past moon. They would be anonymously ransomed to whoever cared, and the profits would pass from Aubrey to Tyler, or in the event he wasn't around to pick it up, one of Joffrey's other bands.
"How go the raids?" Asked the knight of Sting as the men sat down for a feast. Tyler and Aubrey sat at the head alongside Aubrey's pretty young wife, a Corbray of the Vale. She seemed disinterested in the conversation, and picked at her pheasant.
Tyler began to cut his steak, the most beautiful meal he'd seen in ages. "Not bad. Their numbers have begun to pick up, but our resources and experience can match it. The men are getting stronger, more skilled."
"That's good, that's good," said Aubrey, "But what about long-term? Do you plan to raid forever?"
"I'm not sure," chewed Tyler, giving it a thought.
Of course, they'd never have enough men to march. Their chances of that had died beside the God's Eye, leaving not to do but bitterly chip away at their foes. Perhaps if Tyler's father - golden lion of the Westerlands that he was - actually deigned to help them, the rebels might have a chance. But Lord Lyman would never test his claws against King Maegor, not when flame and death could so easily rain from above. Not when the forms of Balerion and Vhagar could so easily arrive over Casterly Rock. No, the mighty Warden of the West would send his tavern-born bastard instead, and feign innocence when the Cruel ordered an explanation.
His father would pay. That was all he knew.
They set out the next morning, he and his men. Three of Aubrey's men had elected to join them, bringing their numbers up to exactly two score. Tyler could do a lot with forty swords, forty bows. Mayhaps they could even strike into the Riverlands, the heart of Maegor's dominance.
No. Not yet, at least.
Tyler led another half dozen raids, striking up and down the coast. One on a Crakehall patrol, another on an Osgrey caravan moving up the Ocean Road. Battle after battle. Slaughter after slaughter.
"It doesn't end," he murmured to himself one night, gazing into the dying embers of a fire pit. The men were sprawled around him in various states of disarray, drunken and exhausted. They would be awake tomorrow, ready to follow him into another melee. Ready to buy their justice with blood.
The embers flickered, flame picking up and rising into the air before him. It was fast - faster than Tyler had seen in all his nineteen years - and it soared determinedly, as if the flames had a mind of their own. And for a brief second, two twin balls of flame that Tyler would later deny were eyes opened, gazing at the young man.
"Who…" Tyler gasped out, barely able to speak.
The voice in the flames laughed, sultry and dark.
And then the fire went out.
Things are heating up in the Westerlands. Wink, wink.
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