Jaime
After they'd tossed a lit torch into yet another guardroom full of dead and shut the door, Jaime let himself sit. Casterly Rock can wait, he told himself. Deep Den must needs be cleared out of dead to be a proper refuge for us while we reconnoiter. Few enough of them would make the Rock as it stood, and Jaime tried to keep the fact that a long length of the goldroad stood between them and their goal out of his mind. The road itself is laced with webs, most like, and the mountains themselves filled with wintry monsters.
"This badger den is deeply dug. At least the fancy twats will find themselves well sheltered from the wind." Bronn said as they returned to the castle's hall. "All while we find out just how we're going to keep going west." Not for the first time, a possibility occurred to Jaime.
"Westermen have lived in these mountains a long time. No doubt countless barrows dot them from here to the western foothills, undisturbed as the one we found." Bronn frowned.
"Your brother was always trying the same horseshit. Tempting me with gold, even gold free for the taking, won't make me any more eager to risk my hide." Jaime shrugged.
"There wouldn't even be much digging to do. You saw the warrens and tunnels those spiders made-"
"I did, and I'd sooner keep above ground where at least I have room to swing a sword."
"Do you figure your chances are better out in the wind and snow with beasts like that white cat on the prowl? Besides, the mountains proper are like to be filled with walls of webs." Bronn was not moved. "They live below, yes, but they hunt above. They'll not expect us to come from beneath." When they were reunited with the charmingly named Shitmouth, Jaime was surprised by the last of the Mountain's men's opinion.
"Well, we saw the measure of them at last, ain't we?" he said, brushing dirt out of his beard. "Now the scare's gone out of us, it's easier to go about whatever needs doing. So it's cold. Some snow-witch twat with her tits near out and bouncing for all to see's the culprit. Bah. Some monster. If I wasn't so cold I'd have laughed to shitting myself at the sight of her. And those dead men? I've got tougher hairs on my arse." Jaime could find no fault in the man's words save their characteristic foulness, still pondering them when Matthos Seaworth rejoined the lot. Lord Renfred had taken charge of the officers that remained in Jaime's absence while Varys made further inquiries of the Reachmen fit to answer.
"Had an easy time of it, did you?" Bronn asked Seaworth grumpily. He shrugged.
"You were the lot who saw fit to clear out the barracks and the sept. One or the other was like to be the first place someone who lived here would run to when the Others came, it stands to reason that's where their fodder would mass in greatest numbers."
Jaime found Freglyn and Joss Stilwood taking turns trying to rub feeling back into the Rowan girl's hands, whichever of them not at it running off to pinch some more cloth to wrap her in. She was no more conscious than when he'd last seen her. Unfit to stand, and never mind the long walk to Casterly Rock. The prospect that the fittest few among them would have to form an advance party grew more apparent by the hour. Too bad the Others killed all the Lyddens, he reflected grimly. With all the tunnels before us, we could do with more badgers and fewer flowers. The Reachmen were who he had, though, and the order that any men among them fit to fight report for assembly he gave accordingly. The knight he'd met before introduced himself as Ser Nychelis, one of Old Oak's sword swords and preeminent among the men assembled.
"A few strong backs, a few deft fingers, but swinging swords and loosing arrows get you only so far." He told Jaime.
"Further than nowhere." Jaime replied, bidding them arm and armor themselves as well as they could from Deep Den's newly fodder-free armory. While the rest plundered the good steel, Jaime informed his own men of what was in store.
"I suppose you'll be wanting me to come along, then?" Seaworth asked, as if there were any alternative. "You can see better in the dark than the rest of us put together." Jaime told him, knowing better than to tell him to name his price. Honor can't be bought, he mused, especially stiffened further by pride. What good was any promise of his, anyway? The lot of us may die at any moment. He took Bronn as well, deciding that knights born low as Bronn of the Blackwater were fit to the task. And he's a better killer than anyone here. Freglyn might have been better afoot than Rogyr but like most horse thieves, he had a good sense for when it was time to run. And Freglyn's bow is no use undeground.
"Once I had only common wolves to worry about. They could smell a tired horse, or a scared one. Now it's snowy white lions and horse-sized spiders…"
"To tell it true, I'm keener on finding more lion barrows. We never got our gold from riding with Ser, but turns out even dead Lannisters pay their debts!" Shitmouth chortled.
"What's your real name, by the way? Should we reach the Rock, I'm not going to have someone named Shitmouth in my party. My aunt would laugh herself out of her bodice."
"Eh?" The man looked mystified, as if it were a formality he never anticipated. "Er, well, my uncle called me Dewys."
"Then Dewys it is. I'm not blind to the dangers that we may face on our little stroll, so here's something to keep it sweet." He kept his tone low, so that all the rest didn't hear. "There's a knighthood in this for each of you if you survive." Even in the dark days that had come to haunt Westeros, the prospect of rising high served well to motivate men born to nothing. Better Ser Dewys of Casterly Rock than Shitmouth.
They left Deep Den at dawn (or the closest they could figure), each man bundled up to keep out the cold.
"What if we find Lannisport a frozen ruin and the shores teeming with dead?" Seaworth asked when they passed out of sight of the castle gates.
"Casterly Rock's got a rather commanding view of the coast. Even if the bridge from the mainland into the castle proper is lost to us, all you need do is reach the water. You'll find one of the sea caves eventually. Worn into the base by thousands of years' worth of waves, or so my maester told me. Then rouse the men within and start wreaking havoc on the bridge, the better for us to pass." And beyond the bridge, the Lion's Mouth, where twenty riders can pass abreast. He'd been hopeless at learning the castle's history, to Father's great disappointment. It didn't take long for Tyrion to know the lot of it by memory, sure as he knew the names of the dragons. What would Father have done in the days that have come?
"You'd best get your head out of the clouds, my lord." Ser Nychelis said. "It would never do to be caught unawares." Why, ser, if only you had been with me in the riverlands, there might never have been a Whispering Wood. They stuck to the shelter of the walls where they could, the goldroad winding through the western mountains with sheer stone hemming them in on both sides. There were other towers cut into the face of the rocks, but even the ones not layered with webs they dared not explore. The light is precious and we have miles to go, Jaime reasoned, and who knows what garrisons those towers now. Too soon the shadows began to lengthen down the rocky walls, Jaime's call to halt for the day putting them halfway to where he hoped they'd reach.
"It's our lives to stumble onward in the darkness. Better we find what shelter we can and leave off at first light." The next tower they found would be where they camped, and thankfully it was one the spiders had not fancied. Still, no one was much in the mood to check the upper floor or go off down the tunnel that led into the mountain proper. They used chairs, a table, any old rubbish lying about to block it off so that nothing would come up the tunnel to find breakfast waiting for it.
"What if we win, eh?" Dewys asked him when all that could be done had been done.
"What?" Jaime asked.
"The hills are crawling with them leggy things. You're going to come back home to find this whole mountain one big nest, how are you going to get rid of 'em?"
"Dewys, before I worry about a few cobwebs, there's the small task of pushing the Others back to begin with. There's what, two dozen of us here? Crawling along this canyon floor like outlaws, some in our own bloody homeland while monsters from the north wash over it wave after wave. Let's do one thing at a time." Besides, a dragon will neatly sort out this whole mess if I cross paths with the Mother of Dragons again.
It took them days longer than Jaime accounted for, but the mountains around them began to recede and the ground began to flatten out. Halfway, he thought, and no cliff-face towers to hide in at night. No castles, no strongholds, a few unmapped hamlets at best. Dare I hope for a bit of luck?
"Bit funny nothing made for us in all that time coming out of them mountains." Dewys said as they crested a hill.
"How d'you mean?" Rogyr replied.
"Plenty of hungry nonsense rolling around up there. Nothing came at us, Other or otherwise."
"I daresay nothing was looking around in the pass because there was aught to be found." Jaime told them, spurring them on.
"We might have taken horses with us." Ser Nychelis said, grumbling a bit about an anointed knight having to plod along.
"Horses would have given us away from the offing, ser." Rogyr said at once, forgoing Jaime having to do it. "Horses is good animals, but they're runners from, not toward. The first bit of trouble would have them whinnying and knock-kneed. Might as well have rung a dinner bell for the blighters in the walls."
"What good would they have done going through the tunnels, anyway? For that matter, what horses were there in Deep Den to begin with?" Seaworth added.
"Never mind the horses we don't have. That badger hole was slim pickings compared to what's waiting in the lion's den. Gold, good steel, maybe a roast chicken or two." Bronn opined, doing his bit to keep the others moving.
"At least the road through the mountains was flat." An Oakheart archer was saying. "Now the world's gone all hilly and my knees feel full of sand." When night fell, they made do with keeping behind a knoll rather than lighting a fire. The Reachmen were vehement on this point.
"Fire might keep the chill away, but it draws every cold eye for miles around." Ser Nychelis said flatly. "Cold's no man's friend, but better it than whatever hides inside it."
"Might be we try lighting one anyhow, then dashing off to see if something goes after it?" Rogyr suggested. The horse thief spooking the horses in stable to see what sort of guards come to check on them.
"Might be whatever comes in after the fire's faster than a stableboy, though." Dewys countered. And better armed, Jaime thought. Had they stiffer resistance to offer, Jaime might have tried the bait plan, but what dragonglass they had between them had been pulled from the barrow. Small help against a bloody pack.
Nothing rushed out of the darkness all night, the eastern sky lighting as the sun crested over the mountains. They were all chilled to the bone, some having scraped half-holes into the ground to further hide from the wind, but nobody failed to rise when Jaime gave the order. More than one muttered curse rose to greet the morning with them, though. They started west, Jaime hoping to catch a glimpse of Casterly Rock peeking up over the horizon before they had to stop again. He'd just made it over another hill when the dip behind him suddenly exploded, a sharp cold body knocking men aside as it lunged from a perfectly-hidden pit. Purely on instinct he reached for his sword, heedless of the fact that he no longer wore one nor had the hand to swing it. Jaime watched the spider slam Rogyr to the ground with a wet crunch, spattering red on the frosty hillside, before disappearing back into its burrow with its prize. Men were shouting, men were sobbing, Jaime's phantom hand still fumbling uselessly for its phantom sword. The attack could not have taken half a minute. It took Bronn jostling him to snap him out of it, hoarsely shouting for order. Ignoring the great hole as best he could, he addressed those who remained.
"We'll keep atop the hillcrests and knolls." he said, louder than he intended. "There's nothing to be done, we must keep going or Rogyr will only be the first." Ser Rogyr, a tiny bit of him corrected.
"That will bring a few curious crawlies sure, eh? Hot blood fresh on the ground…" Dewys said, smelling like a latrine pit.
"Aye. We'd best get out of here and quickly. We'll lose the light if we linger much further." Jaime said, pressing on without waiting to see who'd follow. As if they had a choice. The next night saw them trapped atop a hilltop, dead men shuffling up piecemeal to ring them in. Despite them numbering near a hundred, the advance party lost not one man. A few burned hands from holding torches too long, one bad enough to get wrapped up like a bloody baker's mitt, but nothing that would last. Once the bulk of the dead had been seen to, Dewys and Ser Nychelis dragged over a straggler. "Making friends?" Jaime asked.
"Now, you jest, m'lord, but fuck me if this bugger's no westerman." Dewys said, sounding almost thoughtful.
"No, thank you." Jaime replied coolly.
"He's got the right of it, my lord. I thought he was full of it, but…well, the dead we found at Deep Den were once those who lived there. These are frostbitten bags of bones, no more, which have been dead a long time. If the Others have taken the whole of the west, we'd be seeing peasants, footmen, washerwomen. Wouldn't we?" With some trepidation, Jaime took the measure of those dead still shambling after his men. Ser Nychelis told it true, he realized. These are not new-risen dead, the furthest thing from. Indeed, some of them were so caked in ice that their movements were almost comical. One skeleton had only frost on its bones, its brittle fingers snapping as they scattered off a shield. The man carrying it drove it into the skeleton's grinning face, smashing it to bits before kicking it into one of its quick-burning fellows.
"That fire-breathing twat might have done all this for us if he'd stuck around." Bronn said, smashing a severed arm that gripped his boot with a rock.
"Well, he didn't, and there's nothing to be done for it save grow wings and get after him with all speed. Will you be handling that part, Ser Bronn?"
"If I had wings I'd be long shot of these hills of yours, you golden cunt. Barrows, you tell me. Full of dead kings' gold." He spat.
"As I recall, you interrupted me before I could finish. There are likely riches aplenty waiting to be pillaged from the Hall of Heroes at Casterly Rock. Proper riches, mind you, and not the trinkets of some hill-chieftain dead a thousand years."
Casterly Rock was no more than a nub at first, a shoot among the bushes and hedges that were the close hills. Before long though it began to grow, until it towered over everything around it even at a distance. Bronn gave a whistle when at last they stopped, taking up on a berm to have a clear view of the shoreline ahead and the bridge that led to the Lion's Mouth.
"No wonder you're all such smug fuckers." Bronn said, looking straight up. "I'd be too, if I lived here." Jaime ignored him, looking for any trace of anybody. Before them stood as great a castle as existed in the Seven Kingdoms, yet there was nobody to be seen. No guards on the bridge, no fisherfolk wandering the beaches, no covered wagons going to or from Lannisport down the way. Looks like we're going to have to do some fishing of our own.
"You'd best go now, Seaworth. Before the sun sets and whatever happens around here at night gets underway." Jaime said. The man's scarred skin flushed red, as ever it did when he was incensed. Well, too fucking bad, Jaime thought. It's not my job to make you happy. He left a few minutes later, going down the hill as quickly and quietly as he could manage. Jaime was reminded of a squirrel who'd perched at the side of the kingsroad on Robert Baratheon's journey north, debating whether it was quick enough to make it across without Cersei's wheelhouse crushing it. Then he was gone, lost in the gray-green waves that lapped against the shore. Jaime sat on the berm out of sight of the beach, groaning. Nothing to do now but wait for him to return. Rather than loiter or sleep the light away, they dug in the best they could manage.
"Cold's not even the worst of it. It's the fucking wind." Jaime heard someone say. "Once when I was a lad, my pa told me something like a sword's only sharp when it's swung at your face."
"The fuck is that lot of shit supposed to mean?" Bronn said from the next hole over.
"Ask my pa. Was drunk as oft as sober, might have been what took him off that bloody rooftop into the street. Just me and my sister then, and her half a babe. Been years since I seen her last, I wonder what became of her." I wonder if I'll be asked the same of mine. Was there anything to say but the truth? I never shied away from killing Aerys. Hells, I sat on his throne and waited while his blood stained the floor. Why should I lie about Cersei? If anyone was going to ask, it would be his aunt. The woman's been married to a matchstick for half a century, and a Frey matchstick at that. To think, the man's mother was a Royce. Somewhere in his mind a voice that sounded like Tyrion's buzzed on about Emmon Frey very possibly being the head of his house, if the rumors Jaime had heard of the riverlands were true. And Emmon is no cleverer than his sons. The whole lot of them had best rip the towers off their jerkins before they show their beardless faces at Winterfell. At some point he fell asleep, the Aunt Genna of his dreams pinching his ear so hard he snapped awake, the whole side of his face stinging. Seaworth's puckered face stared down at him.
"Fuck me, don't do that again. You're hard enough to look at as is, let alone wake up to." Seaworth was unamused.
"There's no waiting for dawn to move." he said, voice low. "We've got a big problem."
Jaime's head felt fit to burst. Another weed of Cersei's own planting, threatening to strangle us all. After Seaworth told him what lay in wait, they roused the rest of the men so they could hear it for themselves.
"It appears Euron Greyjoy has taken up in Casterly Rock. Cersei had sent a raven telling the castellan to let him in, so let him in he did. Once past the gate, his reavers turned the place into a bloody ruin, those westermen lucky to be on the upper levels closing themselves off from the ironmens' reach. Now the lot of them are waiting for winter to pass, for those above to starve, and just as an aside, this blackguard's got his own kin bound to a black stone, working some fell rite to try and hatch a dragon egg." I'd like the dead men back, please.
"So what the fuck are we supposed to do about any of it? We can't get in the way Seaworth did, the ironmen are likely watching the bridge and the gate beyond it must be shut besides-"
"You can't, they are, and it is." Seaworth, waved Bronn's words away. "There are a lot of ironmen, he must have taken a good part of the isles' fleet along for the ride."
"You seem cheerier than I've ever seen you, Seaworth." Jaime commented, feeling no such jubilance.
"That stupid pirate has no idea what he's got in there."
"No shit, dragons are naught to be trifled with-"
"Not the egg, the stone. I was confounded for a way we were supposed to clean up this mess, and then I saw it."
"How's a stone we don't have going to help us clear the Rock of ironmen?"
"I daresay, as a Lannister of Casterly Rock, you've heard tales of mermaids in the bay and the Sunset Sea beyond?"
"I heard tales of Others too, and just now they have us flat beneath their feet."
"There's more than mermaids in the deeps of the world, my lord. Such they are that they have little and less interest in what goes on in the open air, but one thing they care deeply about is the very black stone that this pirate's got his niece lashed to. In particular, all that they can get of it. The way they see things it belongs to them, many leagues beneath the sea. Ironmen or no ironmen, Crow's Eye or no Crow's Eye, they will take it back." Jaime felt a shiver sneak up his spine.
"Have you got a plan in mind, then?"
"Aye, and one you'll follow to the letter if you don't want to meet a very nasty end."
The lot of them made their way down the hill, trying to keep the bridge in sight with only the moon to go by.
"You need fighting men for when you make Winterfell, so the more we take alive the better. It will go better if the reavers are caught unawares, so take care not to be seen." Then he went for the water to go start whatever nonsense he had brewing in that burned head of his. The rest of them moved slowly over the bridge, not daring to light a torch. Voices echoed from within the Lion's Mouth, hard and worn, but the words were so distorted Jaime couldn't tell what was being said. Any closer and they may see us, Jaime thought. Still too far to matter when the time comes, he answered himself. Besides, they're likely drunk and bored, they'll miss a few shifting shadows for a certainty. The Lion's Mouth was a massive cavern with room for an army, but it led to several much smaller fortified iron gates. All comings and goings were recorded, at least in more pleasant times, so that the Lannisters of Casterly Rock knew always what and who was coming in and going out. Tonight the gates were closed to a one with nary a man to be seen outside them.
"You think we could get a shambler to try the bridge?" someone asked from above.
"You see any dead wandering the beach? I told you, we saw the last of them when we tossed that Frey runt down there to lure them in." At first Jaime felt a pang of pity for his aunt. Then he remembered that given Emmon's size, they could well have meant her husband instead of one of her sons. You'll forgive me if I don't long weep, Uncle. He strained his ears; drunken ironmen weren't what he was waiting to hear but their bluster rang loud as the bells of King's Landing. A sudden unholy reek of rotting fish nearly put Jaime on his rear, the oily acridity of it half-blinding him even as shouts of alarm from behind the gate were quickly overwhelmed by a chorus of wet croaks, echoing madly in the cavern even as the slap, slap of wet, fishy feet tried its best to match it. The fighting stopped almost at once, the noise reduced to the occasional croak in the far darkness. Then suddenly the iron crossbars rose, the stench growing worse as several figures emerged, wandering around. I suppose that's the signal… Jaime thought weakly, ripping a sleeve off his outermost shirt and tying it around his nose.
"Seaworth?" he whispered; the figures seemingly unperturbed by his calling out.
"Gods, that is rancid…" Bronn muttered from behind him.
"It sounds like the ironmen at the gate are dealt with, can we get a torch lit?"
"Not unless you want a spear in the gut." Seaworth said from the gate, sounding most amused. "They're not much for bright light, or indeed much of any light at all."
"What aren't?" Ser Nychelis asked, sounding rather strained.
"Fish-heads. Man-fishes. Walking fish, whatever they're called." Jaime said, breathing as shallow as he could without keeling over.
"Piss on that, Lannister. There were fish-heads on Dragonstone and nobody lost their lunch at the smell of them."
"Born to the shallows, to the Narrow Sea. A teardrop in a puddle compared to the Sunset Sea…and the drop-offs that begin a scant few hundred feet from shore. No light down there, just endless black."
"Sounds romantic. Are you going to help us get out of this cavern or watch us stumble over each other while your smelly friends turn Greyjoy's squatters into chum?" Jaime asked, temper fraying.
"This way, then, and try not to step on their feet. They're shorter than their fellows, but with a stouter frame- and stronger bite." Gingerly Jaime inched his way forward, ignoring the quiet croaks that seemed to follow him until he reached the gate, feeling a scarred hand pull him inside.
Seaworth gave a nauseating gurgle-croak of his own, his unseen friends moving off into the depths of the Rock at once. Only when the stink in the air ceased to make Jaime lightheaded did Seaworth provide them with torches, though they burned but poorly in the dank gloom. He caught a glimpse of something slick and pale disappearing up a staircase into the officer's quarters above. After making sure none of his party had gotten lost or killed, Jaime followed Seaworth through a hellish, lightless version of his boyhood home. How many times had he heard from Lord Tywin's own mouth that Casterly Rock was inviolate? Well, Father, you never accounted for Cersei giving your fucking Rock away. Places he might have recognized were strange in the dark, the rank smell of fish hanging in the air instead of food. Dying ironmen were giving their last gurgles off in the darkness when once the place had sounded as all castles should rightly sound. Giggling maidservants, muttering guardsmen, praying devout. Of no use to Euron Greyjoy, I'm certain. Thinking on his people, he nearly walked into one of the man-fishes. It's nauseating croaking was meaningless to him, just as the answer Seaworth gave.
"He says they found some people below."
"Westermen?"
"No, he thinks they're as our squatters are."
"Ironmen who displeased the Crow's Eye."
"Ironmen, and others." Others? The fighting had ended quick as it had begun, and so Jaime let Seaworth lead him down to the cells in the depths of the Rock. "I'll need a torch to see them properly." Jaime said, before the stench of overflowing chamber pots, rotting flesh and dried blood wafted from ahead to do battle anew with the man-fishes' own stink. More croaking, the slap, slap of those still within their company heading back up. The torch Matthos lit was scarce brighter than a candle yet Jaime found himself blinking furiously all the same, trying to force the spots out of his eyes.
"Any highborn twats need saving down here?" Bronn hollered, seemingly unnerved by the quiet. A hacking cough came in answer, then a sort of grunt. Jaime went into the first cell to find it held only corpses. Septons and red-robed priests. One of the septons stirred, grunting again, thrashing wildly at the sight of Jaime. "Easy, man." he said, walking over and unshackling him. "Poor fucker's tongue was cut out." Bronn surmised, Jaime learning the truth of his words first-hand when the septon continued on in his unknowable tongueless tongue. "This one's not dead yet either, but he's not far from. Stinks of the sea near as bad as those fishy fuckers, too." Dewys said from the far end of the cell, coming over with a man who had more lank black hair hanging from his head than he had flesh on his bones. I know that hair, Jaime thought. A Greyjoy for certain. The septon could not walk and so Ser Nychelis took charge of him, carrying him as well as he was able while Jaime took the measure of the kraken.
"A bucket of water. Clean, from the docks if you must." he said. Thankfully Seaworth didn't argue, and when the cold salty water was flicked into the Greyjoy's face, his eyelids fluttered and his lips moved.
"Seven stone and barely that. I thought the ironmen were all fighters? Rapers and reavers and the like. Ser used to say when they couldn't find a woman on the mainland, they had to do with fishes' mouths and that's why they were always marauding."
"He's a drowned priest. Until he wakes up and tells us his name, though, there's not much more to be done-"
"Oh, aye?" Bronn asked, picking up the bucket and dousing the priest and Dewys both. While one spluttered and cursed, the other jerked awake, staring around dazedly.
"What is dead may never die-" he gasped. Bronn cut him off.
"-but gets the fuck back up, blue-eyed and shambling. We need the dead to stay that way just now, priest."
The next cell was little better, though free of rotting priests. The prisoners turned out to be a man leaving his last brown hairs behind with a bloody rag tied around his eyes and a twitching bone-thin woman of an age with him.
"Who are you?" Jaime asked, the man turning toward his voice though it was obvious he was in no condition to stand.
"We are Rodrik and Alannys Harlaw of Harlaw. Who are you?"
"Jaime Lannister, of the very rock in which you're trapped. Now, hold still, let's get that off you." Only when he pulled the rag away to reveal twin empty sockets did he realize the folly of blindfolding a man down in the pitch-dark. It wasn't a blindfold at all.
"Fucking hell-" Dewys began behind him, Jaime cutting him off before he could get going.
"Once I was called Rodrik the Reader among my fellow ironborn. It struck the Crow's Eye as humorous to lock me in a crow cage, unable to stop the crows from coming near. His eunuchs burned whatever was left out, to make sure no corruption dulled my senses." Jaime slid his hand into Harlaw's own.
"I'll see this Crow's Eye launched from a trebuchet. Given a good wind, he'll land somewhere in Lannisport."
"It hurt something awful, but my eyes were going anyway. I had a Myrish lens on its way to me before the world turned upside down…tell, me, Ser Jaime, did you come across my niece in the labyrinth above us?" The old woman beside him, Alannys, twitched so violently Bronn lost his grip on her.
"We will." Jaime replied, in a voice that humored no other possible outcome.
"Please do. I am fond of Asha and she is so dear to her mother." Jaime turned to the woman, trying to come across as aiding.
"My lady? Are you injured?" Alannys Harlaw's mouth spasmed, opening on instinct- showing Jaime that Euron had not got around to serving her from the same plate he had his own men.
"There is nothing more Euron can do to me. He killed my husband, mutilated my brother, and my children…" she shuddered. Enough of this. Men will cease to tremble at the mention of Euron Greyjoy when a man-fish opens his belly and spills his steaming entrails on his boots. Shouting above made him snap toward the doorway, but there were no accompanying sounds of battle. Someone must have stepped on a man-fish's foot. The Harlaws did not lose interest so easily though. Alannys, bag of bones that she was, near knocking Bronn over for the second time in her rush past Jaime, shouting a name he knew so loud it bounced around the inside of his head. "Theon! THEON!"
When Jaime caught up, aided by the odd torch sputtering in a sconce here or there, he found Lady Alannys in the arms of a man he didn't recognize. I know the name, though. Ned Stark's captain of the guard called him a good lad. I threw it in his face, Jaime mused. I'll add it to the library of things I was wrong about. Sorry about that, Cassel. Greyjoy had brought an entourage of his own. A smattering of ironborn lads, a man older than Rodrik Harlaw and a rather striking girl with lively hazel eyes.
"Mother, this is Kelsie Farwynd. She's going to keep you out of trouble until I get back-" Lady Harlaw's hysterics shamed Cersei's at Joffrey's wedding, but Greyjoy was firm. "Euron must be dealt with. A curse on our house and a shadow on our name-"
"You need sail no further than the stones beneath your feet. The Crow's Eye is here, thanks to my sister."
"Where?" came the inquiry.
"Above, somewhere. No doubt treating my countrymen as gently as he has your kin."
"Can you get me up there?"
"Yes, but best be ready for a fight. A shepherd like this pirate is never without a healthy number of sheep, the better to throw in the way while he tries to make his escape- or his last stand." Jaime's call for Matthos Seaworth produced the man forthwith, likely with the help of the Rock's damnable echo.
"There are more ironmen above. Mutes, mongrels and worse."
"Like I said, sheep." Jaime said tersely. Seaworth blinked.
"Standing here's not going to get what needs doing done, Matthos." Jaime said, trying to spur the man on. Seaworth pursed his lips, nodded, and led them up the furthest of the stairs, leaving behind the lapping sounds of the waves on the hidden stony shore.
"Why would your sister ever let someone like the Crow's Eye into Casterly Rock?"
"No doubt it seemed surpassing clever to her. She never planned to leave the Red Keep anyway, what was it to her to let him roam free and reave as he would even on the shores of her birth?"
"I heard the fish-men pushed his reavers out of the Reach, it sounds like whatever kingdom he sought to build ended before it began. I hope you'll pardon me saying so, but I'm going to slap your sister starry-eyed for all the ruin she's wrought."
"Then you'd best have one of your fishy friends scour the bottom of the Blackwater. Cersei's dead." Theon Greyjoy snorted.
"Oh, well. It would have been good to get one in for Sansa and her family, but maybe when Cersei leapt from the castle ramparts-"
"She didn't jump." Jaime knew well how men talked when something they feared lay before them. They go on about anything else. "I killed her." Theon stopped in his tracks. "King's Landing had a wealth of wildfire caches just itching to be lit. She would have, but for me. Just as Aerys would have. She tried to rise when I came near, to flee or claw mine eyes out, but I didn't let her. I put my hand to her throat and held her there, as the blades opened her flesh, until she stopped trying to get up. The throne was hers, you understand, and nothing would part her from it. Killing Aerys was nothing, I've felt worse putting down a lame horse, but how was I to feel about the prospect of killing mine own flesh, the mother of my children?" Despite the bile rising freely in his throat, Jaime found he couldn't stop. "It was a choice between Aerys and the vows I'd sword or the lives of half a million people. I chose. When it came again, the choice was between a paltry twenty thousand and my other half. I chose." The man before him was gone, replaced by a wide-eyed boy. A scarred, crippled, ruined boy. Finally, he spoke.
"Iron or ice, waves or weirwood, kinslaying is forbidden."
"Did that stop your uncle from murdering your father? Or Cersei from destroying the Great Sept of Baelor with a dozen of her kin and mine inside it?" Theon Greyjoy was unmoved. "You may be missing this or that, but there is iron in you still. The Crow's Eye needs killing, there's nothing for it, but I'm scarce about to with a single hand. He's got your sister, Matthos claims, and it seems perilous certain that at least one kraken will die tonight. You're not being given a choice, Greyjoy. What more can gods expect of you?"
The gate to the hall was solid oak, running out of gaps dug out of the stone to reinforce it further when in place. The fish-men swarmed upon it, waves crashing down on a rock, but their spears were of little help, their teeth still less. They parted when men with axes joined them, rivermen, westermen, ironmen, making quick work of the wood. Jaime gave Theon's shoulder a last grip before he squeezed through, finding the hall fallen into near ruin. His eyes swam with the reek of sweat and urine, reminded bizarrely both of his cell at Riverrun and Cersei's bedchamber in the Red Keep. Ghosts, he though grimly. They don't haunt places, they haunt people. Something stirred feebly in the center of the room, far from the last flickering gasps of light the torches could give. Just as he caught a glimpse of a black stone table, a whole mob of ghastly mongrels surged down from the stairs and out from the halls. He head the gate behind him splinter and fly wide, fish-men flooding the hall in their turn. The mongrels and ironmen brandished torches and carried steel, but for every croaker blinded by the flames or laid open by a swung axe four more were ready with slashing claws and needle teeth. Jaime saw one lose an arm to a boarding axe before catching a spear in the gut only to swing out with the arm that remained it, catching a man by the throat and spilling him as a butcher would a chicken. Slow to bleed, he thought queasily, eyes locked on the still-twitching limb. Slow to die. Indeed, despite their mounting losses it seemed the fish-men were of no mind to withdraw. Any poor bastard unlucky enough to go down under their frenzied attacks was at once ringed in fish-flesh, every one fighting to fill its maw with hot meat. One of the men, a brute the size of the Mountain with a belly like a boulder had the snapping things hanging off his arms by their teeth, limbs flailing wildly in an attempt to bring him down. More than once Jaime was knocked off his feet, shoved away from the slaughter by a scaly arm or cruelly-clawed foot. The fish-men swarmed over the black stone like bees 'round a hive, those close enough to it pushing hard as their short stout bodies could manage.
"Ser Jaime!" someone called over the noise, and he turned to see Seaworth waiting at the bottom of one of the stairs. Slipping on the blood-slicked floor Jaime made to follow, eager to leave the feeding frenzy behind before it ran out of mongrels and mutes to devour.
That was something I could have done without seeing. Battle was battle, with Jaime himself no stranger to blood, but what was happening in the hall was senseless.
"I told you they wanted the black stone." Seaworth said on seeing Jaime's face.
"Why?" "Because it's theirs. A gift from the gods in their bulging eyes, or such gods as they revere-" Their climb had taken them up to a smaller room, its lone occupant lying splayed out on the floor. Living or dead, Jaime could not say. With the same black hair as the drowned priest. When prodded the body gave a groan, making Jaime breathe a bit easier.
"The wrong twin came calling, it seems." Euron Greyjoy's voice echoed out form the darkness.
"Seaworth?" Jaime asked.
"He's-" Just as his head turned, a quarrel took him in the eye and he collapsed on top of the captive.
"There, now we can talk uninterrupted, kingslayer to kingslayer." He stepped out of the darkness, looking less human by the moment to Jaime's eyes. Or was that a trick of the failing torch in his hand? "It would have been quite the boon to have Cersei on hand. Whose babe was it, by the way? She told me it was mine, of course. I suppose she told you it was yours? It could have been any man's, in the end. That wench opened her legs more than she opened her mouth, I scarce went an hour without wondering if cutting out her wagging tongue would finally instill some sense in her. As for the other lions…" Greyjoy laughed then, a sound like nothing human. "Golden sheep, I call them. All men are sheep in the end, don't you think? Take my brothers. Balon, so hardheaded it was a wonder he didn't have a ram's horns. Victarion, the great dim brute, who thought himself the perfect man to sit the Seastone Chair. He wore plate, don't you know, because he didn't fear drowning. I wonder if his faith held as Iron Victory went down in that storm? Aeron you've met, broken and babbling, with seawater soaking into his brain. Your dwarf may have eaten his way out of your mother and put a quarrel in your father's balls, but at least he could think his way out of a bloody bucket on his head in the end. Would that the gods had put his mind in Cersei's head." Jaime let him talk, only half-listening. The frenzy will follow me up the stairs, he thought. They will smell Seaworth's blood- or mine. Greyjoy seemed almost disappointed. "Has someone beat me to that tongue of yours? Here we stand, with me having stolen your Rock out from under you as your Lann the Clever stole it from the Casterlys. If nothing else, your forbears must be rather cross just now."
"It's not my Rock." Jaime blurted, louder than perhaps was needed. Loud enough to hide the sounds of fishy feet encircling us. "When a man joins the Kingsguard, he puts his family behind him." At this, Greyjoy laughed again.
"Some kings! A fat sot, a vicious wastrel, a fumbling puppet. If not yours, then whose? The kinslaying dwarf's? Even I know a when a jape is in poor taste. The dragon queen can decree what she likes, the maesters can prattle about blood claims. The westermen will never have him. Not now, not ever." A shadow behind Greyjoy grew closer, reaching for a candlestick on the table. He saw it not, his blue eye locked on Jaime.
"This can't be that easy." Jaime said, in stark disbelief.
Too late did Euron Greyjoy see the shadow at his back. The candlestick took him square across the jaw and Jaime heard teeth scatter across the floor. Every dull, meaty thud of the gold against the Crow's Eye's skull echoed as his crowing did. At last, warped from the force of the blows and slick with blood and brains, the candlestick slipped from its wielder's grasp.
"Theon." Jaime said. The sounds of fists on flesh began, the last twitches of Euron, Third of His Name long since stopped. The fish-men, he noticed, made no attempt to interfere, their huge eyes locked on the Greyjoys. The other one shifted, the sister, shuddering violently. Where Jaime's words failed, this succeeded, Theon letting Euron's corpse fall from the fingers and teeth that remained him with a splat.
"Asha." His voice was a hoarse rasp, breathless and exhausted. He picked her up, brow furrowed. "Something's wrong." he said. Really? Whatever is it? Jaime didn't much fancy the prospect of being beaten to death though, and so left he arrow unloosed.
"Kingslayer, light." Jaime duly lit the torches, letting the fish-men rend the Crow's Eye limb from limb before retreating back down to the water. Theon held his sister near, listening for breath. Jaime hissed at the sight of her leg, replaced by a length of wood.
"Is she-"
"Her lips are blue, she's not getting any air." That didn't seem the case to Jaime, who watched the woman twitch quite heartily and even give the odd gurgle. "Bring her down where there's light proper, we'll get her seen to." he told Theon, who despite his missing fingers, needed no aid in carrying her down the stairs. Asha, Jaime remembered. Asha is her name. He made to follow, only stopping when an orange flicker in the hearth caught his eye. He got closer, wondering if Euron's mutes had served as a distraction long enough to for him to light a fire in the hearth. Instead, a sliver of orange glowed out from a bulge in the grey-black of the soot and ash. But for the scat heat of the torches, this place is cold. Fumbling one-handed in the dark, he soon found his hand on something round and heavy, its surface rounded and scaled. Gracelessly he flipped it out of the ashes, coughing heavily as he scooped it up under one arm. Now what, he thought darkly, balancing it in the light of the torch for a look proper. The dragon egg was orange flecked with silver, stars as they appeared during the orange of sunset. Uhh… he thought, too stunned to manage anything more.
Jaime stood there for a full minute, staring at the egg, half-afraid it would crack open in his wobbling palm. Realizing the egg was cold as stone, he sheepishly tucked it in the crook of his right arm before heading back down the stairs, trying to look innocuous. Mind the egg, he thought madly, trying to stop himself from vomiting down the stairs and making any future ascent all the more hazardous. You ought watch yourself, Kingslayer, he thought woozily, his feet trying to run out from under him. Every man's got a limit to what he can take, and you're near to reaching yours. He found the ironmen near the waterline, Theon still cradling his sister while the others who'd chosen her over the Crow's Eye flocked around the pair of them.
"Shade of the evening." The drowned priest was saying, looking on Asha's face grimly. "The Crow's Eye drank it so often his lips had gone blue. Jaime couldn't tell one way to the other when he'd been face to face with Euron, it had been too dark, and there was certainly no way to know after his nephew had pulped his face.
"Why isn't she waking up?" Theon asked.
"He wanted blood to wake the dragon. The blood of priests, the blood of kings. I'm certain he forced so much of that foul warlocks' piss down her throat it kept her senseless- blood is blood, I daresay, and the Crow's Eye needed his cask of king's blood on hand when came the time to open it." Jaime suspected the priest had seen more of Euron's depredations than the rest of them put together, letting the matter lie. Theon would not give up so easily, even as the veins in his sisters face turned blue with whatever rot was coursing through her.
"Ser Jaime, let's get calling on your kin, yeah?" Bronn called from behind, sounding eager to leave the ironmen to their own devices. And soon, to their grief. Then Theon's head snapped to the water, dark eyes wide. He dragged his sister into the surf in a blink, the pair of them soon subsumed by the waves.
"What the fuck?" Dewys cried, though the ironmen moved not a muscle. The priest murmured something unintelligible through his beard, Theon resurfacing a long few minutes later, his sister limp as a dead fish under one arm. When he laid her on the sand, seawater dribbled from her nose and ears, bubbled up from her mouth. Theon pinched her nose shut, drew in a breath and then forced it down her throat. With a sharp jab to her ribs, Asha vomited out a foul-smelling black-blue ichor, the sludgy mess losing its luster almost instantly after contact with the salty air. Theon kept at it, the foul ichor growing more diluted with each success, until finally all that remained in his sister's lungs was seawater. Then it was just a matter of bringing the last of it up, Theon only standing when she began gasping for air under her own power. Though she remained ashen and clammy, it was a marked improvement to whatever had gone on before.
"What is dead may never die." Theon said, in between gasps of his own.
"But rises again, harder and stronger." the priest replied.
The ironborn have no more need of us. The fish-men had gone, and when Jaime and his men reached the hall upstairs, he saw the creatures had taken what they'd come for with them. A few colorful words were exchanged at the sight of the place, broken bits of furniture strewn about and blood slicking most every surface.
"What a shithole." Bronn opined.
"The Crow's Eye's been nesting here for who knows how long. Doubtless upstairs will be in better shape." If only just. The barrier that kept him ill at bay was another gate, even larger than the one below. Stone, Jaime knew. All built in stone.
"Just you take another step." One of the guardsmen at the end of the long hall called. "We'll give the salty lot of you a proper salting.
"Meantime, ask if Lady Genna would like a nice pinch of her nephew's ear. I'll wait." Jaime responded, wondering when someone would notice the dragon egg under one arm. They'll see it in the proper light, he knew. He heard his aunt from a ways off, sounding cantankerous even for her.
"What's this about my nephew? You're too tall to be Tyrion, too old to be Tyrek, too alive to be Lancel and too daft to be Jaime."
"Daft or deft, I've had my share of near-misses, Lady Frey." The gate swung up and someone approached, outlined by the warm light of the torches behind her.
"Frey this." Even as he blinked, he felt his ear catch between a prodigiously strong thumb and forefinger.
"My condolences about your husband-"
"Em did well to last so long as he did. The rains in the riverlands drove us west before the sky opened up. Daven was one lost to the rising water, and those of us as remain to be found are in no shape to do anything by lick our wounds." The situation at Deep Den bubbled up in his memory.
"When you returned, did you perchance get any ravens off before Greyjoy showed up?"
"As many as could be sent, Jaime."
"Were the Lyddens on your list?"
"Were some badgers going to drive the krakens from our shores?" At her words, he kissed her once on each cheek.
"I have a letter to write. Meaning, dear aunt, you have a letter to write. The poor bastards at Deep Den have problems enough without needing to decipher what tumbles out of any quill I hold." I can see it now, the letters hopping over one another and dancing in little circles on the page. His eyes crossed.
"How many swords hold Casterly Rock just now?" "Perhaps five thousand." Genna thought about it. "More. With Lannisport's levies, as high as eight."
"Eight thousand?"
"You did see the Rock's size, did you not, dear nephew? Your father did right by laying by such supplies as he did. This lion's den of ours is more country of its own than castle. Keeping it fed was one of the first tricks Tywin learned. But just now we need you in arm clothes, not catching your death in sodden rags. Find something to wear or I'll loose my ladies on you!"
Rather hurriedly, Jaime found a dark green doublet in a trunk that had once belonged to his uncle Tygett. The dragon egg he carefully padded with a few shirts before sliding it into a sack, gingerly making for the sounds of dinner. When he reached the lord's solar proper, he found his aunt trading jests with Dewys of all people while Bronn and the others contented themselves with eating everything the servants could find space on the table for.
"Ser Dewys, eh?" the man laughed through a mouthful of cornbread. "My lord needed only mention a bigger pair than any in the land waited at this rock and I'd have come, if just for a proper look!"
"No knight I've met has ever been so bold where pairs are concerned," Aunt Genna shot back, "and I should say it takes one to know one!"
"Where are the ironborn?"
"Setting their girl to rights, I think? Who cares? There's hot food, good wine, and your aunt's serving girls are easier on the eyes."
"Careful where you look. More of them are mine own kin than not. See, there's a Lantell, and there my uncle Gerion's natural daughter, Joy Hill." Bronn paled, evidently having lost his appetite for soft company. All the better. Genna patted the seat at the head of the table, Jaime looking at her uncomprehendingly. Does she expect Father to sit there, as he did when I was a boy? Her smile was wide and cheerful, but her eyes told another tale. Sit the fuck down, you're embarrassing us. Awkwardly, he sat. The view is so different only a chair away, he reflected.
"Now what's this I hear about the Lyddens?" Genna asked.
"Not the Lyddens. Deep Den." Then he told her all of it. Cersei's farce-called-reign, meeting Daenerys Targaryen, the road west from the shores of Blackwater Bay. She snorted at the notion of Cersei on the throne, clapped gleefully at the news of barrows yet unplundered from before antiquity and gaped like a fish at the talk of monsters from the north. Laughter and conversation made certain that his words did not reach further than Lady Genna's hearing, so he told her about what he'd done in the throne room as well. "It was her or them, my lady," he said. "The dragon queen, the King in the North, not to mention the thousands that remained in the city, most of them at my behest. She would have burned them all, as Aerys would have. I could not let that come to pass." Age and feasts had made his aunt a doughy butterball, but there was still a hint of Father's face in her when she looked at him then.
"I should think it's been a long time since a Lannister did so much for the people." Those were not the words he expected.
"What?"
"When Aerys and your father quarreled for the first time, at issue had been your mother."
"The way I heard it told, those were only rumors."
"Hang rumor. Improprieties were taken, but as to their extent, I've no idea. Nor did your father, who did not voice an issue with his wife the morning after their wedding. Had Joanna wished, she might have sparked a war between your father and the king, one that doddering lackwit had little and less chance of winning. War would mean blood though, and she had no wish to run a red river from the Lion's Mouth to the gates of King's Landing." She put her thumb to her bottom lip. "Precious little of Joanna ever showed in Tyrion, still less in Cersei. I once told your father it was Tyrion who was most his, while you were an admixture of your sweet fool uncles. Perhaps Tywin would have taken it less ill if I had told him you were Joanna's son."
While Genna told him about receiving a raven from Cersei commanding her to open the Rock's gates to the Crow's Eye ("My bloody fool would have seen fit to ignore that order," she said) the Greyjoys reappeared, with several men in their company Jaime had not expected. The Mallisters he knew by their sigil, having fought against them in the riverlands, while the red ox of Prester and the sunbursts of Kenning were as known to him as his own house's golden lion. Riverlords and western houses, he thought. What are these doing with the Greyjoys? As Alannys aided her brother along, Theon helping his sister limp into the seat opposite Lady Genna, Jaime was briefed.
"The Others popped the Iron Islands like they were pimples. Some ice-ship, I've never seen the like, along with dozens of floating hulks in its wake, all full to the rigging with dead men." Asha said.
"We sent a good many of them back down where they belong. Killing dead men is so easy a cripple stands an honest chance." Theon chimed in before returning to his pork.
"We managed to reach Seagard then made our way south down your coast, scooping up anyone still alive to be scooped." Jaime looked from her to Theon.
"Oh, not me. We all but fucking washed up on the Lonely Light to get the Farwynds, then fucked around in the Sunset Sea awhile." He looked around. "Speaking of, a good few ships followed Sea Song south. Where might they be?"
"They're in Lannisport, no doubt enjoying a good bit of Western hospitality." Rodrik Harlaw said dryly, sniffing a chicken leg. "I bid them remain in the port so as not to give the impressing a fleet had come to raid the Rock."
"Fleet? What were you, a dozen ships strong? Less? I know a fleet proper when I see one." Genna cut in, sliding a tankard his way.
"Well, at least we'll have no shortage of ships when we sail north." Jaime said, rubbing his eyes. All sound abruptly stopped. When he opened them again, he found every face in the hall staring at him. Not much new there.
"You still mean for us to make the voyage north, my lord?" the lord of seashells asked.
"Not until the lot from Deep Den arrive. It'd be irresponsible of us to leave them behind." Jaime replied.
"That was the plan as put forth on Dragonstone. We moved like salted slugs but we got this far in the end. Now we go north, to meet the others at Winterfell." Theon said.
"Others?" Genna asked.
"Others. Northmen, reachmen, valemen. Rivermen and stormlanders, petty lords from the crownlands. Massed to fight the Others and their allies, who've proved rather spectacularly hard to contest." Jaime supplied.
"My lord, we're scarce fit-" the seashell man began again.
"Then get fit." Theon snapped. "Bind your wounds, fill your bellies, and pack every ship's hold full with supplies. We had the Rills marked for where we'd land, but the exact when and where we can figure before we leave." The Rills, Jaime thought, when a map was brought forth. A thinly-peopled stretch of coastline belonging to the Ryswells, rewarded for their loyalty to the Dreadfort with the legendary Bolton hospitality. When he remembered his words to Dewys he stood, accepting a sword from one of Terrence Kenning's men.
"A Lannister always pays his debts," Jaime said, making Bronn groan behind him, "and this is no more than your due. Rise, Ser Dewys, and try to keep a knightly tongue in that knightly head of yours."
"F-" Ser Dewys gulped. "Uh, aye, my lord." Returning to his seat, Jaime pulled the sack up from where it leaned against the table leg. He spotted Asha's eyes widen at the sight of it, though the girl held her tongue. After all, he mused, it would be rude to turn up late without a gift for our hostess. His aunt's last living son, a youth of fifteen years called "Red" Walder Frey for his Lannister ancestry and raising at the Rock, filled his Jaime's cup. Jaime stood. The other lords followed in his stead as well as they were able.
"It may be that we never reach the Rills, that whatever lurks between where we stand and where we mean to go is more than we can handle. It may be that we cannot best the Others. Until then, I say rather than until they bloody fucking well do it, the Others cannot best us. There's good wine at hand, my lords, the best in all the realms. Fill your cups, glasses, tankards, and have a drink on House Lannister." Before caution got the better of him, he raised the cup Red Walder had filled, full to the brim with Arbor gold. "Hear Me Roar!" he called, draining it in a single dizzying gulp even as its fellows crashed against each other or down upon the table in a joyous thunder.
