Brynden IV

His sisters had become livelier after the first few nights on the road. Gwen and Mya had grown, it seemed, or their faces were so thin they looked older. Brynden didn't see much of them at Darry, so maybe they really had changed, in appearance. It was a certainty they had changed in temperament.

Brynden accepted that change was inevitable. As young as they were, though, he hoped the horrors hadn't broken them.

They'd nearly broken him.

It was strange, though. Of all the changes, their warmth towards him didn't seem to. They were still distant, and even in a small pillowed cart, upholstered brown and black of the Darry colors, bored nearly stiff from the monotony of the scenery of the wood through the curtained windows, neither Gwen nor Mya had many words for him.

Its as if I'm a reminder of that night.

In me, they see the horrors of the monsters that took their illusion of safety.

The monsters that made me a hero.

And not that they needed to, but Brynden didn't even remember either of them ever thanking him.

They were safer, though, flanked with the Darry men, led by the young Dickon Darry, and the King's Guard Knight Ser Uthor Bulwer. Dickon seemed fine enough a young man to Brynden. He wasn't anything more than cordial with the boy, but neither was he anything less. He had a noble look to him, despite his obvious youth, but he wasn't an incapable boy either. To see him lead his men, atop his horse in his armor, he looked every bit a Lord should, to Brynden at least, and he even made enough time for them to rest. In shifts, of course, the other men keeping guard, but it made for slower progress.

Brynden was ready to be rid of these woods, this road, and all his time before. He was ready for King's Landing, and whatever awaited him there.

The first night, he didn't sleep, which was an odd sort of comfort. Brynden feared what awaited him beyond the veil of distant dreams, but he also feared what lurked in the dark depths of the dense wood to either side. So, it was not much more of a comfort to be awake, the windows of the cart open to the black air, no glass, no bars, just open, for whatever nameless, faceless threats creeping, cracking, clicking and clacking stalked them mercilessly.

He wasn't sure there was a threat that stalked them, but neither was he sure there wasn't.

The second night, he fared worse, both more afraid, and more asleep.

The third night he dreamt, and he shivered in his arrangement of blankets and pillows, not from a chill, but from fear.

As his eyes fought to close, and his mind drifted to sleep, he remembered the whispering of the woods, the harsh, hushed tongue of the Old Gods, and the noises from that night before the attack.

Before the flames.

Had he seen it? Had he seen what was to come?

Was his curse of vivid night terrors something more?

As the dark slipped in, a morphing tangible void of smoke and something thicker, through the open windows in the cart, cut like turrets, a sharp dangerous point at their tops.

It spread, the darkness, and began to reach out, like the shapes of talons, vague to his eye, but vivid in his mind and somewhere that sank deeper within him.

It rushed him, whatever the darkness was, in a jolt, nearly rocking him from his nest of softness onto the hard cold floor of the cart. The limbs lashed at him, wrapped around him, and gave him to the quiet.

A still cool pool beneath as he hovered

Black, but wet, smothered, covered his feet as he lowered

Ankles to knees, colder still, thicker yet, everywhere no hint of color

Black. Like the crow. Like the shape of his foe.

His bow. The man cast black with shadow.

His heart, black. Those eyes, glaring still.

Was him or was me who'd be killed.

Was him or was me who'd be killed.

The thrum of the string, the thing, missing. Missing left of the man

Again, and again, until it hit and then

Then

The fall.

His body had sunk through the thickness of the black.

Brynden had seen the attack that night clearly as he sank. He felt the air and the heat of the flames. He squinted in the orange glare as if it burned, and felt the brush scrape by him as he moved.

The world was slow, and the sounds were all muffled, but this was as real as when he lived it before and was living it again.

He dropped to his knees, as he did in life, and when his head bent, his eyes closed.

They opened to the sands of Dorne.

Brynden raised his arm to block out the intense white from the sky, the rippling scorch off the amber sand, and the horizon bare in every direction. Before him, wraiths, as if conjured from the dust in the air, swirled into the formation of Blackwood men, the Tree and Birds on each and every surcoat.

A harp began playing a song of his House.

The Ballad of Ol' Bloody Ben

Everyone sings of the Battles and Dances our Brave Bloody Ben fought and won

But never forget, it was him who advanced past the years of his best oldest son

For in Dorne Bloody Ben couldn't save all his men, only two ever made it back home

So he slaughtered the foes, with his blade and his bow, slicing through Dorne's blood and bone

Archers to the left!

Archers to the right!

Ben nearly slaughtered them all

But the one man he missed

Was the one that is said

To have trapped his whole House in a hole

Brynden could hear Maester Hopper answering his question from the past, "We sing the song to remind us of our limits. Bloody Ben is remembered mostly for his victories, but your grandsire's elder brother was with him in the Boneway when they ambushed his scouting party, shifting the loose rocks from above, causing a slide in the mountain that left them all buried."

"Then why remember such a sad thing?"

"Sometimes we learn better from sadness and failure. Ben was said to have killed nearly every one of the Dornish that surprised them, but in the end, all his skill, strength, and experience, couldn't stop the tricks of the last man."

"Did Ben die?"

"No, -"

The bright sand and void around crumbled and cracked beneath him. From the hot white grains, ripples opened rents in the earth, as spires of stone and rock and ground all burst to the sky like sprouting mountains.

Before him lay the mountainscape of the Boneway. The Impassable natural barrier between the main of Westeros and Dorne.

The scene summoned his heroes, Ben's Bloody Birds, the elite scouts of the age. He could see the short but stout shape of his forebear, the Great Benjicot Blackwood, before his eyes, as if he lived and breathed the same air.

The muffled voices, a bit distant at first, cleared as his sight floated nearer, taking in the image as if it were unfolding for the first time before his very eyes.

"Bone," the man he knew was his ancestor called. Bloody Ben didn't sound as gruff as Brynden imagined. He thought Ben to be of the hardest men to have lived. His voice was nearly soft.

"Aye, my Lord," the young man who replied stood straighter once called upon. He was sweating, like they all were, down to vests and breeches, stained a burnt red from the soft clay ground of the mountain path where they'd set up a makeshift camp.

There weren't many men, but his vision was clouded by an inconsistency in his sight, as if lines of his vision were loose strands of a tapestry, separating and reconnecting with the pulse of his beating heart. There was a haze of dust, a veil of the surreal, and the separating tapestry, all playing with the scene as Brynden lived it before him.

"Take my horse and ride North West to retrieve Crane, if you can find him. Return before dusk with or without him. Chicken Hawk?" Ben turned, calling out the question like it was a name.

Another young man replied, with an intentional mustache that failed to fully grow. "Yes, my Lord."

"Take my son's horse and retrieve Lucamore. He'll be easier to find. Return at dusk and no later than when we can see the first star in the sky."

"Aye, my Lord."

Both young men rode off in different directions, leaving four at the camp with Ben.

Brynden studied Ben's face. It was carved from the sort of stone they build bridges with. A hard block of chiseled limestone, withered by the years of battles and bravery, kissed red by the Dornish sun, Brynden stared at first in awe of a hero.

Like me.

As he looked more closely, he could see something that felt familiar. A tense strain in his creased forehead. A stiff flex of his brow. An intense simmer to his eyes. A clenched jaw and tight cracked lips.

Ben was afraid.

"Father," a man whispered, "What troubles you?" He was neither an old or a young man, a close cropped brown beard with his sweaty dirty brown hair down to his chin. He had kind blue eyes, and a heartwarming smile. He huddled close to Ben, as if to speak without raising his voice.

"They're here, son." Ben said. "We will not find them. This, I've come to accept, but I fear they surround us, even now, somehow out of sight, but as close a threat as I've ever faced."

The smile on the son's face turned sour. "You killed them, didn't you?"

"I killed one. The second arrow didn't down the other. Likely hit the horse, but we only found the one body. They're here. And more of them. There's never just two. We must prepare."

"What can we do to fortify this pass with just the nine of us?"

"Did I ever tell you how you were named such a shit name as Oscar, my son?" Ben asked, a forced grin cracked across his grit covered face like a tear in a parchment.

"Oscar's not a shit name, father. You told me you named me after your compatriot Oscar Tully, one of 'The Lads.' I listen, father. Not always, but mostly."

"Aye, Oscar Tully. Ornery bastard, that one. Tough as dried leather and grumpier than a starving badger. I'm sorry I named you Oscar, son. It was either that, or Kermit."

"At least you didn't name me Benedict," the young man's smile returned.

"Leave your brother out of this," Ben replied.

"My Lord," a boy announced, as he came running up to them from the edge of the camp. "I saw some rocks falling just 'round that bend and that cliff there," he said, pointing just out of Brynden's sight.

"Oscar, roll up the things and make way under that cliff there. You can all be out of the sun, and have sightlines to any potential threat. I'm going to see these rocks Russel's mumblin' 'bout. If they're nothing, I'll be back in a moment. If I'm not back before dusk, wait for the rest returning, and once its dark, move to where you can camp. I'll find you."

Oscar gestured as if he were about to speak, but Ben shushed him with the wave of a hand. Brynden's throat caught, as if what he'd seen was something that meant more than the innocent moment seemed. Then, turning his head, Ben gave another stern look to the boy who ran in. The boy fell in line at once, and they all began executing their superior's command. Ben made his way to investigate the loose rocks.

Brynden followed the hero. He watched as Ben pulled his sword, only to put it back in. I suppose he's making sure its not stuck, or something. I'll try to remember to do that.

Ben crept around the corner, the harsh red rock of the crags and cliffs near as harsh as the burning sun, white hot in the open blue sky. The ground was dry, and it took great care not to crunch loudly with each step of Ben's boots, so his going was slow, and deliberate, pausing and crouching, surveying. Ben was so seasoned, moving in such an unnatural way looked as if it was normal, to him at least, or if he'd drilled surviving so often, he'd have more trouble in the halls of a castle than the battle grounds of war.

He raised his hand for shade, peering up the hilly terrain to his east. The sun's rays played games with what Brynden could see, as the haze of the heat rippled the air above the ground, and as it rose skyward toward the blinding light, the highest areas were near impossible to look at.

Ben saw something though, remaining fixed on a part of the terrain Brynden found hard to see. The tapestry began to split, strands whipping like there was a wind, a relief Brynden wished was the truth of the scene with the heat. It wasn't.

The tapestry folded.

Black.

Ben was in a tight tunnel, crawling through the red dirt in the darkness towards a faint light down in the distance. Brynden, afraid of tight spaces, felt his breathing strained. The dirt tomb encasing him felt closer, as if it were breathing in and out to suffocate him. He knew that it wasn't, it couldn't be, even in a dream.

Could it?

As he trembled more violently, he wondered if it was just him shaking, now, or the dirt tunnel still slowly closing in. Brynden cried.

He was glad Ben couldn't see him like this.

Some hero I am.

Like the worms the maesters fed to the ravens after a rain, Brynden writhed through the dark dirt behind Ben, the fear of the walls making them seem tighter and tighter in his mind. He tried to focus. Brynden tried closing his eyes to the vision before him.

The walls pulsed. Tighter and tighter. They weren't closing in on him, but they were, and all he wanted to do was not see them.

Wake you little fool! Wake!

Brynden closed his eyes, only to see the blackness was always replaced with his vision, and the hole.

He blinked, harder and harder, and each time, it only seemed like he flipped in his perception, jumping from one loop of sight to the other-side, which was inverted. He blinked over and over, until it felt as if he were falling and trapped, encased in cold hard dirt, and falling fast through the darkness.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the roots of a weirwood reached out through his throat to catch the sound, growing from his opened jaws like a spawn of the seed of the Stranger.

The tree grew above and inside, as he became the tree.

His skin, bark, and his face, the Old Face from his dreams, his nightmares, a branch growing from one eye.

He both was the tree and saw it. Lived Benjicott Blackwood's life and witnessed it from out of his body. At once, everything, ALL THINGS, became clear, and in their purest clarity, took a toll.

His mind drifted, knowing, and failing, becoming more than what a boy of seven could begin to handle. All things flowed in and out, in a unity of energy and feeling, of rage and of apathy, of joy and peace, of all the unique quirks of what it was to be a person, and all the unspeakable atrocities it was to be a man.

And at once, he was all. Knew all.

And couldn't begin to be anything but no one. Nothing.

Oblivion. He felt as if, part by part, he'd begin to crumble away into the void. Becoming one with everything. Becoming nothing. Just a spec on the vast loop of infinity.

Benjicott Blackwood crawled through the loose stone above him, to a crease in the darkness where the sun must have been. So, he dug, upwards, towards it. Red and black and blood and sun, all sprinkling down in a fine mist, stinging his eyes, his breathing labored, and his chest heavy.

It had all come down in a crash. It had happened much earlier, though, and as Brynden saw all, and at once, he knew what had happened maybe even before Ben did, playing out before him.

The Dornish dug tunnels. Caverns. Hosting a small force of nearly one hundred Stony Dornish, their fair freckled skin burnt and dirty in the caves, their fortress inside the mountain rather than at its peak, the largest of the caverns Ben crawled through supported by downed trees, randomly placed, and failing, by the cracks in some of the dirtier ones, they had gathered to ambush the army as it tried to pass through the valley below.

It must have been years of dust caked onto one of the breaking beams. The stone encasing it was bone dry, as dry as the desert, but the dust built up on top of it was from the congregation of so many generations of the mountain dwellers. Brynden could see every one of the million faces that had passed through these caves from as far back as man roamed, yet he could focus on not one, all flowing within him and out, painfully and intensely informing and destroying him, all within the same moment.

And every moment.

Ben became his focus. Again, before, and later.

The hero rose. From the crumbled caves and crags, he stood, now taller than the whole of the mountain before his sabotage. The largest beams weren't easy to remove or damage, not without making himself known to all within the caverns and tunnels he crept through, but Ben was able to kill the enemies he encountered in silence and with little resistance, crawling through and removing one support after another.

Each individual beam meant nothing to the whole of it.

But after twelve killings, and thrice as many or more supports removed, the entire cavern began to crumble onto itself.

Ben had accepted the trade of his own life to stop the hundred within, so he cared not of his own fate.

However, Ben couldn't have known how long he crawled through the darkness. With his warrior's spirit, and the focus of a seasoned soldier, his thoughts only on each successive task laid before him, moment to moment, it was already well into the evening, and his men had moved.

Oscar had followed the orders of his father and commander, and relocated up the mountain to an advantageous point with clear lines of sight and a natural defense in a jagged split in the rockface.

Brynden both saw the tragedy as it happened, as it had already happened, and the moments just before, from the perspective of the Stranger looking down on them, like one of the Old Gods in the motion of the still breeze, faintly breathing down on their necks.

The collapse of the caverns within, caused the rest of the mountain to fall, crumbling in a rush of red death and stone, killing all of Ben's men in an instant. As quickly as Ben had killed all the Dornish within.

He had won, but as he called out, still unaware for hours the despair that awaited him, running and breathing, his weary heart pumping, his logical mind unwilling to accept the inevitable.

His victory was paid with the lives of his Bloody Birds, his eldest son, and his will to live in the years after. Benjicott Blackwood made a similar walk back home, like the King Baelor, except it wasn't over the sands, but down the mountain. The missing scout, Aveon Crane, hadn't returned from his advance survey in the valley below until after the mountain top had come down, so he was the only survivor.

It's said he found Ben, and was told of the great battle, how Ben killed them all, but not before the treachery of the last of the Dornish to block the pass and kill every last one of Ben's party.

But as Brynden could see it happening, and as it had already happened.

The only words a nearly starved, covered in crusted red sand, Bloody Ben said to the outrider were, "They're all dead. Because of me."

The sands of Dorne beneath began to sift and sink, the scene slowly slipping away into the blank of a white void. The details all dwindled, save the broken face of the hero, looking neither at or to anything, devastated by his victory

And that victory's cost.

When it had all dissipated, down to the final grain of sand, the white became a sky, and he fell.

He couldn't perceive up or down, or any direction, but he felt himself falling towards the unknown.

As clearly as he could see the past, he couldn't see an inch past his nose, as everything was the same, so nothing was anything else but more.

With all the knowledge and all the time of all that had ever drawn breath, even the perception of his body began to fail, convulsing wildly as if he were sick with fever, twitching in fits of extreme heat or cold. The workings of his faculties overloaded, unable to process even one thought of the infinite, falling, screaming, writhing in terror, pain, and mental anguish.

"Fly, Raven. Or are you the crow?"

Blackness descended. Bleak lashing smoke, sharp, like the pinions of a bird of prey.

Or carrion.

"Are you the crow?" A young boy Brynden's age asked, his dark hair long, unkempt, his face worn worse in mourning than even Brynden himself.

"Die, Raven," it cawed, and the white void dripped dark, like inked spilled, spreading, falling like rain, but in circles, and all at once and everywhere. Brynden couldn't breathe, the ink or tar or sludge was there, and this way. It was on and in his lungs, filling his ears, and

He was crying it

In a cold sweat, he sat up, shook violently, and retched, throwing up the little he'd been able to stomach all over the floor of the cart. It was still dark, only the torches of the horsed protectors flanking them gave even a hint of vision as the frightened boy shook his head awake.

A tear welled, seeing what he'd done, knowing he couldn't control it, fearing more what others would think of him than the terrors of the dream. Then, something he'd thought gone panged inside, as if the dream had not yet ended, and there was more to the fright than he'd yet seen.

Brynden reached around, for the wet pillows he sweated into, the cold floor of the cart as it bumped from the road, even for a rough blanket to begin cleaning his mess. They felt real. He rose from his side, the rough wood of the cart's floor on his knees authentic, and the only impediment to his sight the darkness natural this time of night.

"Brynden," he heard his sister Mya grumble. The boy was worried she'd be cross.

"Yes, sister?"

"Are you all right? I thought I heard you get sick."

"I did. A terror."

"Would you like me to light a lamp?"

Brynden's heart sank. He couldn't understand why.

The words in his throat were caught, like in the dream, but no weirwood grew from his mouth. Just the queer feeling of unease that seemed to make him want to swallow, and swallow, like the dryness was unending.

"It will be all right, my love," she said, like their mother would. He could finally breathe.

But something still felt wrong.

The cart stopped moving as soon as Mya lit the handheld lamp in their cart.

A face burst in through the door as it opened suddenly.

"Ser Bulwer!" Mya screamed.

"Ahh!" Gwen rang out, waking up in a horrendous start.

"Stay here, there's noise in the wood. I'm to investigate," the White Knight ordered, what the children truly needed an after-thought.

"Wait!" Brynden screamed, the uneasiness bubbling inside him nearly saying the word for him. "Don't go. It's like Ben. Stay. Keep us safe, here. We need you."

The boy was shaking. Brynden didn't know from what. There was a sincere fright in his tone, but also a strength. There was no room to argue his announcement. They were orders from the son of the King. And as a King's Guard, Uthor Bulwer didn't hesitate even an instant to obey them.

"Yes, your Grace."

Brynden wasn't sure he'd saved another, but neither was he certain he didn't.

Four men went into the woods to investigate the noises.

None returned.

They remained in constant motion, pressing ever on in formation the duration of the journey on the King's Road after that night. It was neither peaceful or pleasant, but none of the three children made any protest.

Brynden Rivers had never been more relieved to see the walls of a city, than when the party had finally reached its destination.

He hoped a bed would quell his dreams.

But deep down, he knew one wouldn't.

Nothing ever will.

A/N

I'd love to hear what you think. Let me know with a comment. Fave and follow, as, yea, its stupid, but it kind of means something to me, at least, and if you do, I literally message everyone that does to thank them, so if you've never checked your messages before, I've likely sent you one. lol

But honestly, what readers think helps keep the ideas fresh and working. Even if I don't necessarily agree, any engagement fuels me to write more, and for everyone that's ever even given my work a try, thank you sincerely.

More soon. I wonder what Daemon and Q are up to?

But also don't be fooled, I'm always subverting expectations

Harwin Snow