"Winter is coming aye, well, it isn't coming out here, is it?" Lon of the lion's paw jested, with just the scant edge of a mud brown precipice to hold him grounded against the freeness of the hills that crowned Wayfarer's Rest's Valley, or so it seemed to Wat Whitesmile. Those whitened hills were leagues from them, and as pointed with jagged rock as they were lain with snow, and yet the giddy not-yet a man, not-still a boy appeared weightless and liable to fall into them. He hooted and jumped dangerously thought Wat, but then Lon was Lon the Lucky also, a veteran of every Lannister and victory and only the near defeats to hear it from the boy's own mouth. Wat Whitesmile meanwhile was unsure on his feet and wobbly of gaze, as he struggled to finish mounting the last strips of a narrow, sharp but still squat path to a far lesser peak that gave perfect viewing of the Rest's grasslands; nor was he helped by the laced courtly sandals he wore as he put his foot to another slippery rock.
The felt of his precious shoes – a gift from Lady Joanna herself - was stripped and ruined, the heels scuffed and tearing. The decision to plow the Tully kitchen maid who sold herself for firewood and a half dozen other basic goods one last time, for not a copper to Wat though he liked to remind himself, seemed less sensible than securing his baggage – travelling boots included – after they had reached their first day on the march, let alone their twelfth. The young soldier was right though, for even behind their newest encampment snow hadn't fallen as heavily on them as it did on the western marches of Riverrun, now long and slow days behind them, swallowed in what he had caught more than just his newest maid call Robb's Revenge. At the worst they had been caught before the bridge the locals called the Nestingwood for a day, unable to drag or push the high born's carriages across.
After threatening the miserable locals with open swords, they had ropes and stakes and with it the ability to slide the carriages forward over the slippery bridge. Once the snow had lessened along the road, it had been more sudden torrents of rain that had kept the snow from the low places they had traveled; but it brought a slickness to the ground that muddied and drenched them, and Wat wasn't one to be grateful to it for the lack of the Young Wolf's apparent reprisal.
"The wolves came before here. They made the same soft impact." Another soldier said. He knew the voice, Gleeton he was sure, and he knew more still of Prester's men already. Campfires and ale were the best distractions on the roads, for Wat had traveled too many times with just his shirt and his skin, hard bread and water; before he was the Whitesmile.
Unhappily, the supplies were coming in ever shorter supply on the march. This far into the war even the soldiers drink ration was cut a swill a night, and his alongside. The spare boots provided by an applauding Sergeant over campfire two days past would take longer to break in than the time he expected to be trampling across country, given their toughness, even if he only had to bear them while hanging from Lady Sybil's carriage for the most.
The most was not all, for only the seven knew there was only so much pandering he could accept or provide to Dull Dolor the driver, and then he was marching himself up or down the troop to sing, chant, or recite.
Fussing, Wat finally grasped roots and made to pull himself atop the half-man ascent.
"What were the words to Castamere's favourite song my lads?" He had questioned the helmets, war horses, bucklers and lances that enveloped him and his toe bleeding boots. "The new ones to add to the rest!"
"Winter and wolves have come, and not dared to stay that long! Fearful of another Castamere!" Not a very good addition, and didn't work in rhythm, but the enthusiasm kept Wat warm underneath his still heavy travelling cloak.
"Where is your proud wolf, your dead king or his beast? Not down in Castamere, but dead all the same!" But they quiet they lie all the same…it sounded somewhat better.
"A coat of gold, a coat of ice, a lion still has claws, a wolf no head! And there the same, the waters rise for the proud lord Castamere!" Better…much better thought Wat.
Pulling himself up finally by roots and with irritation, Wat met Forley Prester at the ascent by gaze immediately with an undignified fussing as he stood. He'd came to learn that the knight had the sharpest eyes in the company, if not the country; save the hawks and falcons of the westerlands near to them. Not piercing, beautiful, or exceptional in a way, anyway, but keen. The man stood ready for battle in his bull emblazoned surcoat, greaves and the rest.
"Singer. Are you from Wayfarer's rest? Perhaps a wayward son looking to glimpse a look at a missed home?" Prester asked. His armoured men only turned to take Wat in suspiciously for a moment but then relaxed. Thin and consciously graceful, more than he ever seemed lithe, he was below their interest as a threat or a comrade. They didn't move to encircle him, or step a foot his way.
"I admit I do not know where my first home was Milord," Wat replied and lied. "But it was in the west. I count all the westerlands as my home, and all courts my bed within it. It's lords and ladies like a family…I like to think of my trade is my payment for being raised a true son of the gold." Wat imagined that was as cloying as Lady Sybil's first sugary courtesy had plied Sir Prester's way, and which he had repaid in a distant courtesy. He was a Prester, not a Westerling was the answer…or a Spicer.
The knight smiled wanly in return, the days sun dying behind his broad, creased face. Wat was sure he looked ridiculous, attempting witticisms while he resisted the urge to scrub muck from his hands. His men were all a little rain drenched. Their boots were slick and muddy. They were mucky men however seven help them, while Wat was a graceful courtly man, fit to stand beside a lord or treat with a knight.
"That's a shame. It would have been poetic to have you steal a glance at a forgotten home." Sir Prester replied. "Not it seems that you're interrupting my surveying of our route to your home… all of them. Not surprising with all the laxity around here."
It was a rebuke, but with no irritation. Wat chuckled as he thought he was obliged to at the witticism all the same. Yet Forley Prester didn't seem to know the casual irritation of the Westerman lords all the same it seemed. It was a pleasant mannerism, and while Wat was sometimes more than a little cynical about many things…that is to say nearly all things when he was tired with himself and honest; but he found he liked Prester's assuredness, and was glad of his lack of lordly scolding.
Wat knew his place after all, be it in the beds of common folk, between a wife and a daughter as the fancy struck him; or amongst the lords and ladies who provided him with hearth and wine, and only wanted him to prove his heart's desire as the sweetest singer in all of Westeros. He wasn't to be found in the field of battle, or even in a tavern brawl. He liked soldiers as his friends, as he liked smart lords who were charged to lead like Presley too.
"Forgive me my lord, but aren't we home or near enough now. Safe?" Prester had already turned away on himself to survey the Rest and it's surrounds. Approaching Wat saw it now also: an ancient and tall white castle with twisting high white walls meandering around it, built in the age of heroes and sitting abreast on a curve of the red fork, at its rear surrounded by gardens, graves and illustrious tombs that were the stuff of heroes, restrained by great natural woods joining crags that offered both beauty and sanctuary; and in years after its highest fame stretching through it's outer walls far along red fork towards the road that joined westerman to rivermen for near all trade and travel.
Wat knew that within those thick and high bleached white walls and behind the single strong gate, the castles outer extent was surrounded on all sides by brown homes, brown fields, brown fences and shit smeared brown faces that he imagined would smell as they had on their first travel from the west. It had been as such on their way east just off the river road on the opposing bank into those white slopes, and he saw no reason for its disposition to improve on the way back west. Yet it was safe.
"We're closer to home, and yet farther than we should be all the same." Prester answered. "Twelve days to reach the Tooth Ser Jamie said. Here we are twelfth days in, and we've only touched the Rest. Do you know what that means singer?"
"We're behind on schedule." Wat answered. He felt annoyance creep about the side of his eyes, resting above the side of his temple. He had tempted the seven thought Wat. Lord's and ser's loved to make banal points, they loved to make their courtier's pander to their witless witticisms and obviousness's. Prester had yet to force one from him yet, until just now; but he would forgive him this once.
"And?" Wat went from irritation to concern. He wanted an actual answer. He squinted at the long shawl of trees that obscured the approach to the Tooth, itself perhaps two days at their pace, away through higher harder ground. It looked to have lain snow as hard on the climbing road that wound into the Tooth's white still mountains as it had on them just a morning after having left the sodden outskirts of Riverrun, and the less said about the Westerling's family evils the better, if they were again delayed for anytime on open road.
"And…the lady's court are fretting. It might not do well to annoy the new lord of Castamere, or be perceived in being…" The axle snapping of a carriage was not a new occurrence, or even a particularly troublesome issue. In time's past Wat had regaled ladies and courtiers, while the lord had sent for a new beaten axle across the metal workers and horse feet men that grew like hares anywhere that clothed horse feet trotted.
Sybil Westerling with her once bastard bearing daughter, the wife of the slain king traitor Robb Stark was not a woman to lull and gag on a country road. The seven had opened the skies and had equally dropped all of the tears for the dead Stark boy-king alongside his miserable snow, though Wat wouldn't sing that song.
"You could use incapable, clumsy, stupid, or ask Lady Sybil herself for what she would make of it all," Sir Prester cut in, then waved away Wat's protest and re-gripped his sword pommel, "The local prattling of bored ladies is beside the point. Nor do I think my dear cousin Garrison will send me to the wall for a carriage axle breaking. Perhaps I'll instruct you singer, and perhaps these gleeful children I call men will understand the better alongside yourself, as you all seem to have forgotten our charge."
Those gleeful children were men, hard and lean looking. Lon would tell you he held the tip of the shield wall that stood against the northern van as the camps surrounding Riverrun were swept aside by the young wolf. Gleeton and Tarbury were as aged as Prester, but both would tell Lon he only held their spears for them. Both stood either side of their commander, they had steel swords at their belts, dirks and axes too. They were so corded with muscle and painted steel that Wat could not guess where each began. They called their company the Lion's Paw, and counted themselves as the finest soldiers within the Lannister army.
"They wouldn't have lost Ser Jamie, nor gotten eaten by the wolf at Oxcross." More than one man said in their cups, in a rehearsed chant; while Prester might as well have been Jamie Lannister, whole of hand to them for the awe he inspired. And yet they were jovial and insipid with their lord. The man who 'won their war for the company'.
No. Their knight.
"I am a knight Ser." Prester had reminded Ser Lyle Crakehall, in one of the dour feasts In Riverrun before their departure. "No lands, no castles, no squalling babes or graceful wife. You can keep your satisfied honour alongside. Would I like to be the man who slew the Blackfish, or mounted the walls of Riverrun? If it got me home quicker then perhaps, but what people write of me is food for the fools, the same as the crows. I'll take hawking off the Feastfires after all this carnage. Let me have a pyke caught and fried, rather than the hard bread and cold meat from the end of Lord Edmure's tired larders. Third cousins like second sons build no legacy. I slog in the mud as much as my doltish common men do, thanking Stark all the while for pulling my horse out under me some three times. May his bones sow my lord cousins' fields."
But Robb Stark was dead now. All his kin gone too. All who had the strength of the kings of winter at least, and the men of the west were going home in victory. The rivermen too were destroyed, and each and every village and town they marched past was cinder and bone. The war was over - so all said.
"We're five days behind where I would expect us to be, if I was a man who knew how long and hard we could drag that carriage, before those Westerling ladies needed their supper and prayers." The homely, unabashedly self-assured knight said in the here and now, "That's five full days for the men who if they can catch us, have already realised they still have some hope if they were too slow at the start of the chase, or if they were already quick have five days to finish getting around us and laying their welcome."
"Like who? The soaked old Blackfish?" Lon was disbelieving. "He's shivering with a cold in some crofter's hut with a daughter he tumbled upon the time, perhaps when his member still worked, and she wasn't as dry and cold as the fish lords' fields."
"We'll be shivering quicker, see that storm capping the Tooth's teats boy? This was our last day of trading rain for snow. As for the Blackfish? The man swam the trident more times than I slung my rod, and I was as keen for fishing as that man was for pricking his lord brother by all accounts."
Prester maintained the same civility between his men as he did his Sers. Wat had failed to believe it, nor did the lord and lady Westerling like it he had heard. "The old man might be stale, that is obvious. But he was cutting down men you knew beyond the Golden Tooth just a time ago. His arm hasn't lost its strength yet, and his own river girds his person, not weakens it. My own lord father swam the Rylles rocks until the few months before he passed from the isle's pox, and he could have drowned you lot to the year past, for the strength the river gave him."
"Four hundred of the best men stands between him and his heart's desire." Said Gleeton. "I won't join others in doubting the man's vigour, but he is one man. Coats will do for the snow."
"He's one man whose garrison failed to throw him from the parapet, even after all others yielded. The household guard of a great house of Westeros, father-to-son for generations." Prester reminded them evenly. "That garrison walked free from Riverrun to a man almost. Have you forgotten the spare wolves, or the fires in the hills, or Lord Lightening?"
"The garrison walked the wrong way ser." Tarbury interrupted. "And with their sacred promise to never hoist their blades again. They're beaten dogs. Away off to that way to the Vale or farther east still. We're near the Tooth, so strong as that the young wolf didn't dare face it. As for the marcher lord? He only has taste for Frey's, and some say he's feeding crow alongside."
"You're a lot of fools." Their knight commander shook his head. "You who are my cousins first Sergeants. I'm to ask for household guard for you all, seven help me. Five days. Enough for the Blackfish to wade ashore, dry his cloak and wait for his men, and I don't think his memory has forgotten Stark's herding paths past the Tooth. Enough for those men to break free of our miserable patrols in those wolf infested pits of forests. Five days for the most stubborn man in Westeros to march his bitter sworn men behind or beyond us, slower and laden as we are with our ladies and lords. Five days for lord Beric to change his appetite if the Blackfish can stomach him."
"The Blackfish might be all you say, and I'd not agree otherwise milord." Replied Gleeton. "But his men are normal men. They don't break sacred vows for dead kings. They'll sow for Frey. Beric meanwhile won't sow for old Walder, that's for sure, but he won't let em out his sight."
"Like you would sow for Stark?" Prester asked, sharper than he intended, thought Wat. "How many men returned when Ser Steffan forced my hand to give him levys, where is Little and Long Hugh, or Wyle? Or the hundred others who fed wolf in Oxcross? Would you bend your back or catch coddle for the man who slaughtered your sers at a feast? Imagine the destruction we have done here. These men are beasts now."
"Ay. I'd not sow for a man who sent dead Ser Clegane to leave me a raped wife, that if he left her alive. Can't say I'd want the wife either." Lon agreed. Wat imagined an older man might have more consideration for the bawls of his children's mother.
"Nor would I reap a cold field free of seed, which the fish men can thank our gone ser Mountain for also." Gleeton said. "And yet only the Blackfish has to honour his house. His lot left are common men. They have no need to throw their lives away for a lost cause. They could turn their swords to gold anywhere." Tarbury added.
"Or to the brotherhood and the marcher." Said Tarbury. The man was the oldest of them. He sighed and kicked a rock off the cliff. "Beg pardon ser, I know us field folk rile you something, but we only see this war from our eyes. Why fight a big lord's war for a spent man like the fish rotting away down there? Tully sat behind his walls in the war, won no battles cept that one his stream won for him. He is no Clegane, nor has one. His uncle is old and grey. Best turn outlaw and hang one of Walder's brood to watch em kick if they're ornery. It's not that hard, and common men like easy, and didn't one of them Frey's pay a hundred golden dragons for the pleasure of doing a dance for the outlaws? Common men like easy gold too, not guts and blood, especially their own."
"Like you're all common men? I thought you were the Lion's Paw?" Asked Prester, then snorted. "I've heard enough of it now that I started to believe it. You men were farm hands and stable boys before this, and now you're hardened killers; the men that might be chasing us are more dangerous still. Let me remind you of this: Blackfish or Beric, their cause is below, their last gasp at stopping us from wiping away their lands pride for all time. The army back at Riverrun has finally let its breath go, unloosed it's belts I see. Not here, not in my paw."
Lon grinned. He had told Wat himself that the man never claimed it. It brought warmth through the high winds bracing them.
"The late-night drinking amongst the watch, the outriders taking their sweet hides time to forage on a winding ride, the scuttling around the fires and not digging the stakes, it all ends now before it begins. We are a hair's breadth from going home to fields laid and homes spared. You survived the young wolf, the iron baratheon brother, and pulled the river lords from their home of a thousand and some years. Finish it with this last piece of slog. Then your war, my houses war is over. For our lord's, and for your people."
"There won't be one bent stake, or ale-eyed archer Ser." Said Tarbury, brighter.
"And if old man Blackfish tries anything past the Tooth, he'll never leave the Westerlands again." Lon added with a lop-teethed grin. The boy was easy with his smiles. "I'll rest my life on it."
"Then I'll sleep soundly." Prester nodded to them. Then held up a finger. "One more thing before I put our guest to the question. I don't care if the Blackfish has one hundred ragged men, or five hundred of the finest. We have two hundred of our own good men, and two hundred red and gold beside of various uses. Beside that we have twenty good knights, ten more scraped from the dregs of the Walder's hangers on, and fifty out riders that are lucky to have spurs let alone knighthoods, regardless of what Ser Shitcloak from the Twins says. I'll lose the Frey's and perhaps one or two discourteous sers from our brethren in the lesser companies…but not one more man from ours than necessary. Understood?"
"Understood." The three said as one.
"Good. Now singer" Prester fixed him with a look. "Why don't you tell me why you have mucked yourself up dragging yourself up that hill?"
"Could we have a moment alone ser?"
"Are you trying to toss me off this cliff singer?" Wat paled. Prester shook his head waved his men away. "Go go, before he faints… fine, wait a moment then tell me your ills, but quickly in just one moment, I only have a moment as you can see-" Prester snapped his fingers as his Sergeants descended behind, "-get that column moving now while you're listening for once. One night with the fish's old vassal and we move, winter will bloody come before we get home!"
Wat swallowed. "Why my lord, why I'm here…well it's for this…the Paw, Lon and your men. Not only do I have some new verses to the rains of Castamere," Wat made himself smile, "But I think I could make you and your fellows as famous as our new lord Golden Hand."
The man harrumphed. "I'd be very careful with that new name of yours you wish to have sticking to our lord Jamie; else you might lose your own playing hand." Prester did not say it unkindly, but he was firm in his tone. "From what I hear you are set for the Crag, and then Castamere. You can't sing in two masters hearths, and I'm a man without a pit let alone a set of walls." And yet you have the word of your cousin, a manor house that hung out onto the weary quay, sway and influence ser! A word from you is your cousin's attention…
He bit his tongue for that. Lords didn't like insolence.
"The Crag was faded ser even before the wolf took it, the castle of Castamere filled with ghosts and empty gold mines." Wat almost screeched. His panic was near naked. Why was he trusting Prester? Did he believe he would sneer like the other lords? He hadn't yet…only a little, "Sir, I am the greatest singer in the west, and I love the westerlands for their joy…but the Westerling's were of low stock even before they turned traitor…pardon me…before they were caught in the Stark shame…oh seven…I fear if I lend them my voice, to sit in court for a Spicer, no other lord, such as your cousin Garrison would ever like to hear it again, for the associations it brings. It isn't proper for me!" It all nearly came out then. The trouble with Lady Geanna's hand maid promised to the lordling, the debts in Lannisport unpaid, if even half of it reached from his Lady Lannister's lips to the other lord families of his west…he would watch Castamere rise brick by brick until his hands were spotted with age.
The war was over and won. His lady had left him and all he had was the traitor's designs to parade him like a trophy. But he was meant to go to Riverrun, and from there Kings landing with repute! No one's daughter had refused him there, no pawners chased him for his favours, he could walk into the Red Keep as an expected treat, rather than living in the gutters in Fleabottom again!
Prester smiled, but it was the lord's easy false smile. Not a gallant knight or a saviour. There was a quirk to a lord's mouth, a vacancy in their eyes that looked past him that Wat knew. Prester pitied him, but did not consider him.
"I am sorry singer," Prester said, not unkindly, "But I faced death many times since being out east, and I buried good men I knew and slaughtered good men I didn't. Alongside it all I witnessed many grim intrigues that brought low the history of our realm. I care not for fame, nor do I care to enflame Sybil Spicer and her troublesome brother, neither to speak to them about a stolen singer or a spurned daughter." Prester smiled true this time and clapped Wat roughly. He looked a cook, when he was suddenly the true honest lord again, "I'll do you the favour of taking you home unfeathered. Earn your favour and your gold for a time, then come to the quayside. Keep me from your songs, would you? I'll promise to have Lady Tarth at the river's cottage fry you coddle and pour you golden ale until you believe it's as sweet as Arbor red. Trust me, the game of thrones isn't worth it, no more than the lords who fight it are. Jamie's brood down in the Kingsland or Sybil's imitations, it's all the same."
My fate is worth only a moment of his time Wat rued.
"But sir, if you could but put a word in with your cousin-"
"My cousin is busy with his court, so I don't think I'll see him in my boat or my cups, and I swear you this singer: you'll visit his court without my leave sooner than I will attend it." Prester cut him short. His tone brooked no defiance. "-My nephew finishes his ward at Crakehall's Ser's Ser's instruction this coming turn of the year. He will have Lon, Tarbury and Gleeton, alongside twenty other veteran men who will instruct him well in his mastery of our soldiery, which doesn't consider the other ten knights of great quality my cousin can call upon. I go to the sea, and not to fish for Craken's who'll soon be dealt with by the wine merchant lords by all accounts, but for smaller, tastier fare. I bid you good luck in Castamere, perhaps you can write a deathly lull for its new lord, remind him of the fate of the old so that he minds his schemes."
Wat watched the forests of Wayfarer's Rest sway in the turning day for a short time. Some half a league away north on the winding path to the Wayfarer's lower plain was the foreword cavalry troop. Just ahead of them sheltered under a small forest he knew was a bridge resting over the pulsing Red Fork River. The troop below of Lannister men drew up from their brief lull below, pots and utensils shut away, replaced by their spears and shields. Still he could hear lady Westerling's new seneschal hurrying the household to pack up the measly breaking of fast that Wat had excused himself from. Snow touched Wat's hair, and he began to hurry descend the mountain.
Wayfarer's Rest was as it had been on the preceding trip safe, but it wasn't comfortable, nor inviting. He reflected on his fate, alive and heavy of purse in Castamere. He saw lord Vance's young family greet Ser Prester first, in the sparse courtyard in the Rest. A slight, pretty but tight mouthed lady offering the proper courtesy's behind almost dead eyes, three young daughter's and no sons.
We killed their sons Wat knew. He couldn't remember if any belonged to Karyl Vance, one of lord Lannister's newest rivermen advisers, but then he did remember a dead father. Perhaps it was better that he wasn't here. Hard looks from hard people had greeted them on the past through the high grey walls crowded by fresh and lop-built peasant homes as they entered the castle grounds.
He felt better at the thought, and for it played a little better at the obliged and short-lived hosting later that night. The conversation was dull and guarded, and no sight could be seen of the last lord Tully. Chained up in a second carriage Wat knew. Jenye Westerling the matron queen of the North ate sparsely and left to her mother's disapproval; the host family excused themselves before someone was crass enough to ask him for the Rain's of Castamere. He played it with a flourish, feeling some mad rush of anger and scorn for the rivermen as he did, prompting and directing his audience to the newest verses he had collected on the road.
Ending the night with a belly full of decent wine and more hearty than delicious food, Wat the Whitesmile attempted slept and dreamed of a chance meeting with Lord Forley at his knight-cousins quayside manor.
He woke warm in his cot, tucked under a staircase but had the queerest sensation of pure white snow enveloping him. Not quite awake, he watched guardsmen pass with snow sprinkling their cloaks, felt the chill beyond his borrowed bed wools as he extended a naked leg, and realised the crunch of foot could be heard on the steps above.
Fresh and pure and heavy on the ground, the snow had chased them from Riverrun in a night. Wat saw the courtyard from a window, appreciating despite him apprehension the nearly untrammeled beauty of the snow. But there were a people he had heard and now could see; a ragged party under long cloaks, thick and coarse, and under clothes dull and wearing worn boots besides, disturbing the perfect whiteness stomping from the outer gates. They stepped down from their plain horses bearing swords, surrounded by only a few Lannister guardsmen, while a cloak-less, armour-less Prester Forley met them hands over shoulders.
"Lions is it? I asked for the good lady of the castle. I need no babes thrown in wells, nor any feasts to be massacred. Pester me not and move aside." The lead cloak sneered the words clear enough to be heard even afar. Wat only noticed a second horse man had let a pitiful white standard drape below his horse's dirty mane and conceal itself amid the snow.
"None of my men will pester you, if you can keep that forked tongue in your head." Ser Forley replied. "You've yet to sup on salt or bread to my reckoning. I wouldn't presume that anymore fishmen blood would trouble me or my host much Ser."
"No base act troubles the lion's, on that I agree." The cloak sneered it Wat was sure.
"I warn you again to be careful." Ser Forley said. "I do not take lightly insults from bandits."
"A man of honour aye." The cloak laughed. It was bitter. "I stand ready to contest your honour ser, and all of those reavers you've brought west with you. Are you a Clegane, or a Frey in disguise perhaps, to have such vaunted honour?"
Prester, a man of courage but no apparent rancour nearly hooted with rage.
"And who are you to allege anything of me." He snarled. Wat thought he saw the knights fingers reach for a non-existent sword from his vantage. "Or to take the names of the King's Servants as outlaws, when you yourself are covered in filth."
"But what do I allege? Save reminding you of the reavers of the children you march alongside." The man went for his belt, four spears around him dropped to readiness. He removed a parchment from his belt and exposed what was only shaggy brown hair at a distance. "I come from Runvane, as its new lord. You may know of it: it was there lord Brax the old fat fool tried to match Ser Kingslayer in audacity by fording our red river. I spent a season drowning Lion's there, a nephew and a son I believe, and there I rule as the new lord Dannet."
"A lord-ha! You look you robbed the crofter's daughter of her last egg." Prester announced.
"Better to wear the shit of the field, than the gold of a house devoted to incest and murder." Dannet announced.
Prester pointed a gloved finger. "-best hope your word matches your forgeries boy. A word from a grey cloak elsewise and you hang." Wat saw nothing in the man that betrayed a hint of nervousness, but the courtyard was murderous in its aggression, all for a few words split.
Wat nor any other spoke, until Lady Vance came to the courtyard in a plush, fine embroidered grassy cloak. A young maester with a full head of hair trailed behind her. Explaining himself with Wat saw a courtly enough bow, the man explained himself at half a knee.
"My lord husband is not here ser." The lady explained in time, after the low-born maester named as Pool ran an eye over Dannett's seal approvingly. "He is in the west, seeing to his…to the safety of our house and our lands in his new lord's councils."
"New lord?" Dannett asked. Wat felt uneasy. "Is there a new lord in Riverrun. Was it a sack?"
"I do not wish to speak of courtly affairs ser. I know them not." She replied tamely. So pretty, but so boring. Wat could never love a woman without a shine to her eyes. "My lord husband will judge your claim when he returns."
"My lady" Dannett began, twisting his fist unconsciously. "Runvale was a battlefield since the first day the Kingslayer crossed the Tooth. Brax followed him with enough men to ford our rivers, and even more to float downstream to burn our mills. We have buried those that came for one task, but not the other. Bandits of no-banner now skulk from ruin to hovel still, and make more of the first as they go. Runvale protected the Rest from them-" He shot out a gloved hand to Prester, "But our strength is ended. My lord cousin is fled, dead in tankard most like, his daughter missing years, each and every brother dead in the ground fighting Westermen in years past. That parchment is from our vault: I must be declared. I can call aid only when you name me as my lord's regent at the least. I plead on behalf of my people, there are wolves in the forest of numbers not seen before not a day's ride behind me."
"And yet I myself do not know where my daughter's will be, from one summer to the next ser." The lady responded, her voice quiet. She seemed to stifle a cry. "Perhaps my husband arrives back safe, only to send them west or down the Kingsroad until they are gone in years to me-" She began to weep, "-I have no strength for the world of men. My life exists within these walls. Take your anger to my husband. He is a hard but short ride away east."
Dannett nodded. "I shall my lady."
"You will not go east." Prester announced. He stepped forward and his hand went up. Around them from the wider main gates to the smaller passageways came Lannister guardsmen.
"Explain your shit for honour now ser." Dannett went for his sword, restrained pulling it after half an inch of steel had cleared its scabbard. Wat took in a breath. He glanced to spy someone to call, but saw lady Jenye watching only a few paces away from a second crevice. The girl was still and alone, watching intently. Wat couldn't turn his eyes away from her for a long moment, a pale sombre woman was a dream, rather than his wantons.
"My lords-" Began the maester, hands open and raised as he moved to separate them.
"Hear me now rivermen." Prester interrupted, he stepped forward and pushed the maester back. "I command you on behalf of your lord Vance and our lord Jamie Lannister to withhold your travel for three days. I do not detain you more than the time it takes me to remove my charge to the west. Die now if you wish, but know that you die where you could live."
Dannett laughed. "I don't know what I want to ask first: why would I ever allow myself to take the word of a Lannister dog, or what exactly have you got hidden here to forestall me telling tale off?"
"Die or live." Prester's words were final. Dannett's anger long and palpable until he drew his sword belt and tossed it at Prester's feet.
"I'll not have my men butchered today due to your lack of honour. Show me to my cell." Dannett bit out.
"You shall be confined to the castle only ser." Lady Vance said. "Let it not be said that my lord Husband abandons his bannermen, even in these times of sorrow. We have cells below."
"My Lady," Forley started. "That would not be wise."
"And yet my lord husband's father always made a point of comfort for his guests." The lord father killed by Jamie Lannister's host Wat remembered. So did Forley too for the way he quieted.
The courtyard emptied. Wat turned to face down the young wolf's widow all of a sudden. She stood but a full pace from him. Her face was a heart, her nose was as small and pleasing as her pert mouth, her hair natural tresses…
"My lady." Wat was unsure of himself, nervous and frustrated all the same. She looked at him with deep green eyes, and her skin was lovely, the line of her jaw perfecting as she became a woman full. Enough to die for, or to lose a Kingdom for he thought, unbidden. "We have not spoken…you have been indisposed…excuse me, I am to Serve at your uncle's court." Wat saw that it had been her gaunt little sister that had went on a day to present herself as Jenye the widow to Lord Lannister, of white and golf; as the girl herself was for all the talk either abed, enraged, mad with grief or surviving a hasty dose of the poppy. Talk that Sybil had spirited her away was as fanciful as the fools themselves. Yet she did not want her bashful matriarch daughter embarrassing her in front of Tywin's apparent successor.
"Yes, you are the best bard in the West, or so it is said." Her voice was detached, she studied him the way some women, some licentious women did in their cups…but it was different he knew somehow.
"You flatter me my lady." He looked over his shoulder for her mother's ladies in waiting. If he was caught consorting with the widow of the Wolf, he'd be hated by everyman north of the neck and perhaps east of the Rest. His reputation could suffer no more, nor his purse, nor his neck.
"I only tell you what I know men say. A reputation such as yours is hard earned and easy lost, where jealously and talk is rife." Jenye responded. Wat was confused. She was not a frail young girl weepy for her dead husband in her tone. She spoke as if she was lady Sybil, a woman grown, and that was not what he had heard of the foolish little girl who had given her honour to the Young Wolf so cheaply. She was even by her best accounts youthful in thought and timid in manner.
"I thank you my lady. I love to bend true tales to fond stories."
"Would you tell my story Wat Whitesmile?" He remembered another lordling's betrothed asking him that very same thing before. What could he have told of a girl who'd never walked farther than her father's gardens? If he had said those words then, he would be in Riverrun now.
"I could my lady." Wat said, had to say. "But I could not say how I would tell it." And yet he had thought of it many times. None of his attempts would she want to hear.
"I know how it will be told, and I will not have it so. It will not be a tale of how a wanton girl seduced her husband and destroyed his kingdom." Jenye the seductress said. Unable to resist the rabid wolf of the north, the brave fool of the north. "Nor will it be as some silly girl who made her husband abandon his honour." The lover fools Wat thought, beautiful and bloodthirsty, honourless and careless. "I will not be remembered as the maiden who destroyed the house of Stark. I will not allow Robb to be remembered as the man who ended his families line for a stupid little girl." Wat could sing of the price of her beauty perhaps. Was it worth Winterfell, or a thousand, thousand years of the first men's blood? No. Her voice was sure though, and it had strength he thought, but words were wind.
"How would you have the tale told my lady?" Wat asked. That you were not a foolish girl, nor now a sad one? That you did not assure your husband's destruction? That you hold no child, no power; that you will go to bed a minor lord's son or a merchant's and remembered as a curse?
Wat felt pity on her. Perhaps this was a part of her grief, to think that the north, or the realm at large would ever forget her as the fool or the whore who destroyed the young wolf, or that her Westermen would ever forget their Jenye of Oldstones; that she would not be mocked and disdained in the cups of her guests, in whatever meagre hall for she would reside in, remembering her daring wolf while her sons were mocked as children of the wolf's whore.
Now there was a bitter and beautiful beginning of a tale.
"I will be remembered as a tragic lover of the young wolf, of that I am sure. But I will be a mother of a stark lord, as fierce and as honourable as his father Robb." Jenye looked at him the way Wat of the Whiteknives of Fleabottom looked at him, in his youth. When the boy's blood was poison, and he'd hurt someone. Her face was vicious. "You will tell that story. You will go to the riverlands and rally my king's banners to his son with it, or you will die alongside the rest of my lady mother's and mines guard home."
Despite himself, Wat took a step back. She was a girl, shorter than half a head and a lady born and raised; but the way she looked at him ran Wat cold.
"I don't understand my lady. This is foolish talk." He said and felt foolish for the retreat. Still, his confusion remained. Had she gone mad in grief? "You are not pregnant, it is well known. Your husband's bannermen are surrendered. The war is done."
"Do you know my mother's grandmother? Maggy the frog." Everyone knew the tale of the witch of the east, the frog of the pond. The mad not a lady Spicer who called calamity and prophecy, and once too many times for lord Tywin to ignore by all accounts.
"Everyone knows her tale." The Spicer's were of the swamp, with lice in their hair. Their lady mother held court for the frogs. The thought of the old woman made Wat sick.
"The tales of the westermen yes. But not who Maggy was. Magahlin of Asshai." Jenye said. "My mother told me when I was a child that her grandmother could see the world through the roots of trees and the eyes of fawns. That a gift of blood to her could trick time. She knew magic and prophecy, but that was all dying, as the dragons had years ago. If magic was so powerful, why did a lord's knife not wilt at a witch's neck? It didn't save my grandmother, my mother said, and she wasn't sad when she told me."
Wat had heard that tale too. Lady Joanna's brother Tywin was spoke of with familiarity at his sister's table, but Wat saw the fear in all's eyes save lady Joanna's when they heard his name. The Renye's and Tarbeck's had not been his only victims, and Maggy had to pay her debt for the chaos and confusion she had wrought amongst the lordly and common alike.
"All my mother thought to remember was her potions, to prompt a child and a lord's hand, or to make sure a child never grows. These were useful things, and I learned some of them too then, and even now." Jenye saw the past as she spoke. There was no warmth when she spoke of her lady mother, that was clear too; nor did he understand her later words.
"Your mother used those potions to kill your child, to the Young Wolf." Wat insisted. He felt eyes and ears around him. He couldn't lose another patron, even painted up Spicer's posing as Westerling's. Flea bottom or the shit-stained gull quays of Lannisport were stark in his mind.
"Only after Robb died, and only after the comet woke the world." Jenye replied. She was remembering something, her brow furrowed. "I might have had warnings from my great mother before the wedding, but it was nothing then but dreams to me then. Before he was gone – my mother only poured me potions to make my child grow quickly and strong. Once it was sure that Robb was dead, she forced the bitter drink in my mouth the same night. But Magahlin my great mother had warned me that my child was in danger. She taught me how to save my child with the plants of the river."
Wat's skin went flush.
"My lady…you…you are not pregnant. You are thin, but healthy and hale. You do not-cannot carry a child. All of this is folly." He wanted to run and scream. She was burying him in her madness. Sybil would never let him hold a tale over her. He would disappear like the frog.
"My lady mother is not stupid. She remembered her lessons and used them many times, and those potions cannot be suffered without cost. My child is weak, and may still die. If he lives, he will be stunted and deformed, he does not grow." Her face was ugly, she sneered, then smiled. "A mockery of the kings of Winter that Robb told me off. Thanks to my lady mother who cares for me."
"Then why not let him suffer to pass without pain, if he lives at all? Your lady mother will have secured you a happy match as the price for her-" Wat caught himself, "-her price for peace. He will only be spared a crueler death, after you had known him if this child was to live." No one knew when Sybil Spicer started scheming with lord Tywin. Did she believe in the Young Wolf's cause, a spurned lower family that wanted to rise high with her daughter in the seat of high honour? Sybil never cared for anyone's cause as justice was concerned, but perhaps she saw her daughter's elevation to queen as enough to risk her family's extinction. Perhaps, some others said, that she had assisted lord Tywin long before that…perhaps as far back as her grandmother's disappearance. Had the Young Wolf had fallen victim to Maggy the Frog's potions as many lords had in the westerlands, excusing themselves as victims of the frog when caught with their paramours? Perhaps lady Sybil had only acted as she thought best once the war had turned in order to survive, but Wat was only sure that he could guess foul of some way.
"Because my great mother Magahlin taught me that life can pay for death." Jenye told him. "That I could pay for Robb's son, and that the north would survive through him.
"Whose life? My lady Jenye, you are but a girl, held amongst the best of the Westermen's armies. You cannot deliver the enemies of your dead husband to any god or gods in your imagining that would trade you for them. Nor would the lives of those that you deem enemies of your dead lord be sufficient pay; for in all the old tales, it is said true that death can pay for life, but it must be of grievous worth to the sacrificer. Lannister soldier's or Prester Forley who faced your husband are nothing to you alive or dead."
"The story you will tell will be of Jenye, the widow wolf of the king in the north, not the stupid little girl." Jenye said. "This tale will be of the girl who betrayed her husband by loving him, and who redeemed him by sacrificing all which he lost himself. My mother will pay for her schemes and betrayals with her life, as Robb's good lady mother Catelyn did, even though I love her for the woman who bore me and raised me. My own uncle who is loved by my cousins; our ladies in waiting who swaddled me and my sister together, our attendants who picked us flowers on the siege days to cheer us, our whole household and family line. Not less the Lannister soldiers, who by virtue of being born to us lord are no more or less evil that the north men who Served Robb, and who have their own loves afar, they are dear to me too." Jenye's sombre face broke, tears lined her cheeks.
Wat knew not a word to say, whether to comfort her or strike her. After a time, he said, "By what means will you accomplish this all? There is no one force that could annihilate this host, even with all the hatred of the rivermen surrounding us."
"I leave my blood on the trail, for the wolves to find me." Jenye answered, without fear of discovery, or shame. "There are hundreds of them now, as Magahlin shows me, and their fear of men lessens to all but the runts of the pack. They run night and day, but they wait for the rivermen to strike, they know that men weaken each other for them before they strike. These men are led by a vengeful ghost, amongst the reavers of Robb's betrayers; so my lady Magahlin says, who hunts for me. She stands apart from the green men who hold to different prophecies, who want to see another in my son's place and are near too. I have saw - been shown - that they will fight over the bones of our party, old friends and dear to Robb and his kin. The war is not over, and nor does winter come alone; the power of the river and its spirits come to punish all those who have made the it's children bleed, and Magahlin is their mother."
The Tooth raised above them after days of trudging in the wet snow, glittering black and silver between its arms and peaked with purest white. They had reached the mouth of the pass sometime after the sun had fallen, after Ser Forley had refused to call for a stop in the nearby village that had been Ser Clegane's first site of massacre. The moon in the sky was silver, and so bright as to let them see near and someways far.
Wat huddled under a great heap of awful old cloaks, shivering it felt to the bone atop the Westerling's carriage. All the fine fitted wools to spare were heaped atop the ladies nestled behind him in the carriage, and they had not stopped for fire in the last long day of escaping the last site of the Rest.
They would not stop either Ser Forley said, until his contingent of horsed outrider's reached past the two dark woods situated each apiece across the approach to the Tooth's crest. Wat had known the logic from Lon's flowing lips: if they got their advance guard past the most obvious point of ambush, then the garrison at Lefford could be alerted and reinforce them in a day. A bird had been dispatched to Castley Rock from the Rest, and then to the Tooth to confirm an advance guard, but Forley was tense.
He looked into the black trees and felt his insides cramp. They swayed and whined, hiding a host of terrors. To his right flank lay the blackened bones of a village filled with the ghost of rivermen, to his west the wilds of the Runvale lord far and dark and shrouded. Wat thought again to the wolf queen - tell Ser Forley, something, anything! Tell him that a young weak girl held the power of the river beside her, that her great grandmother had returned to guide her vengeance, that he must inspect the girl's body for a pregnancy powered by malice; or they would all be devoured by mythical beasts seen once in not a thousand years.
He muffled a cry. But then he remembered: Forley and his army had survived the young wolf, the iron Baratheon brother, and pulled the river lords from their home of a thousand and some years. The lion's paw was full of heroes, and he would tell their stories - or he would tell Jenye's.
The scouts and a half score of the knights met and trotted between the beginning of the woods and began to climb the slope that would carry them all home. Wat thought he would face this fear like all the others in his life; they like him would crest the will, and fall to attack the last moment.
Instead they pulled up hard just close enough to hear the lead horseman cry out, clearly but distantly, as the man slid suddenly back on the ascent not half ways atop the first crest. His horse unsteady, he whipped it forward with the flat of his blade and nearly broke a bone coming off over its shoulder all of a sudden as it leapt forward then slipped and crashed down. It half reared and attempted to run off in agitation, only for a nearby horseman to grab its bridle and steady it.
The downed man recovered and swore in embarrassment, and Wat added the curse in his own head. He watched from as more men dismounted to try the ground as it rose. He thought his heart would continue to fall further into his chest, step by unsteady step.
Wat heard a branch snap from afar, saw the lead rider recover and smack his horse only to fall again. A second man fell laughing thought some, a third and a fourth as they pulled their horses bridles. There were no horns, no cry for battle. The scout party and their knights reared their horses and turned to escape back towards the camp as arrows flew.
Wat didn't see the men who'd thrown spikes and cut the ropes to the looming trees until the dark silver trunks came crashing down, but he saw them after climbing over most of what stood after of their scouts and knights. A knight of bright yellow armour - three roses on a pale blue field – and of such prettiness in gait that Wat noted him prior for his tall helm, had turned and galloped so quickly that when he came off his horse he had slid down a dozen paces himself without turning to blunt the trauma. He did not rise soon after, nor did near as much as half the party, another plated knight and all, once they came tumbling off their mounts at speed.
Wat watched horrified but mute as near a full third of the party who remained ahorse wheeled and charged rather than fleeing as wildly as the rest. The black clad brigands who rushed from the rightmost forest engaged with hooks and nets, fell back against the mounted men, only for a second flanking party from the opposing forest to join with more spears and swords behind.
The lion's paw marched forward and presented their arms, a wall of broad shields and long spears, behind them were archers with stretched bows. Ser Forley wheeled his horse behind their lines and shouted to hold.
Ten outrider's and four knights returned from thirty and six on the count.
"Ser Forley, we must take them!" Wat didn't know the knight who called out. His armour was a black surcoat with a blue boat coasting across an orange keep. He spoke from a splint visor and looked menacing standing in his stirrups.
"Ser Humfry, are you looking to earn your ballad?" Forley questioned as he pulled his courSer roughly. Even the horse was going mad. "Here's your chance for valour. Take Ser Bane's men at arms and half the horsemen. Make for Wayfarer's Rest. Ask the maester to send another bird to House Lefford by way of Castley Rock. We are under attack."
The knight loudly soured under his visor like milk. "You want to run from the battle - are you mad ser? Knights charge and kill, they don't fly like crows. I can't take these men from their glory, or my own."
"Knights lose their heads all the same as crows do, whether in battle or if they don't obey commands." Prester replied. "We aren't here to kill the Blackfish, or whoever is holding the pass. We keep these our prisoners and ladies from them. Ride or lose your spurs."
Humfry went cursing into the dark behind them. The hoofs of his party pounded like war drums into the dark.
Time sped up around Wat. Men rushed about in full armour. The camp that had begun to plant it's tents and stakes was withered away once it's food and other stores were thrown back into wains and carts.
Another man on horseback went off against the pass, a knight shielded in his crest by the darkness to Wat's eyes rode forward beyond them and called out into the woods.
He did not hear the knights' words, but he heard the response.
"Tully Tully Tully!"
"Stark Stark Stark!"
"Tully Tully Tully!"
"Stark Stark Stark!"
Wat went to the lady's carriage. A Westerling house guard called that they should wait to rush forward if required. Lady Sybil stepped from the carriage as one able to mount a courSer and went directly to scold Ser Forley on his armoured mount. Her lord brother was in full mail and surcoat and calling orders to his guards, around him at a scant fire. Lady Jenye peered from the tent, uncaring of the lady's stooping underneath covers.
"Soon singer." She promised. "Remember the tale. The lady will know if you do not. Avoid the men, as they will not spare you."
Wat teared up. He packed a bag and looked desperately at the spare horses pitched nearby. Looking back on the carriages central in the camp, he noticed more Lannister men and those men of Ser Forley's that he recognised. They joined the Westerling lord and guards, while Edmure Tully was finally seen being pulled down from his own bearing. Wat thought for a second the lord was to be executed suddenly, only for him to be given orders to don a suit of mail and it thrown at his face.
No one knew what they could do to escape, nor did Ser Forley announce his thoughts. They all stood their uneasy for a time and watched the men in the trees atop the pass standing free. There were a hundred or more perhaps, under two standards of Tully and Stark. Under each, there was apiece a smaller standard, of Tully there was a leaping black trout on a field of blue and mud red; for Stark, a black lizard-lion on a grey-green field.
Forley sat and watched astride his horse. Sybil had been forcibly retreated by the knights' guards and was near hoisted into her carriage beside her wolf daughter.
Cold and surrounded by snow, Wat Whitesmile felt that they were at the very gates of Winterfell, as more flakes began to softly fall onto them.
All of a sudden, they heard the cries of few horsemen returning behind them, met almost flurry of arrows being loosed into them. Astride the lead horse was Ser Humfry, laggard over his mount as he touched the camps innards.
He near fell off his mount, his side was pierced by a long black arrow with a thick black feather. He told the tale like his blood was going to burst, "-Bastards, lurking across the road on either side. We pushed our horses so hard that our first rank were hung by their own pace."
"Enough of that. Dead men are dead." Prester had charged then run interrupted. Lon stood close by his knight Wat saw. "Who did this and how many?"
"Common men" Humfry spat. Then spat blood. "Proud of skinning high born they said. Our brotherhood Frey, but other fare is just as sweet. I only saw a few dozen of them crouched low like lice nearby. The man who interrogated me gave orders to go to others afar. They were moving with me as we rode, but afoot. A few hours away at least."
"Why did they send you back?" Prester asked.
"The new lord Danette wishes you to know that he sent news from Wayfarer's Rest to Castley Rock, that you are at a cautious pace and eager to avoid injury pushing too hard in the recent snow. He wanted to thank you for placing him at the Rest." Prester Forley spat. Humfry continued. "The brotherhood wish to offer you a peace. Hand over the Stark queen, her mother, uncle and lord Tully, and they will give you a day's grace to escape to the west. Otherwise, we all die."
"You said you saw a few dozen?" Forley asked. Humfry grimaced and nodded. Their knight and only salvation stood. He ground his teeth in anger, then sighed. He whispered to Gleeton and two other men before striding back and mounting his horse.
"Sergeants of the westerlands, men of honour of the grand houses of the west." He called around him as he stood. He pulled his silver-blue blade. "I won't sheath this sword until we reach the Tooth, or I won't sheath it ever again. Prepare the carriages, prepare a charge and the shieldwall. We move forward to glory! Glory for the westermen! Glory for house Lannister!"
Two hundred of good men, and two hundred red and gold beside of various uses readied themselves. Wat remembered being proud of that somehow. Beside them in a sparser troop of horse was perhaps fifteen good-to-eager knights, and twenty out riders that are lucky to have spurs let alone knighthoods. Wat did not see which knight was Ser shitcloak from the Twins.
They marched forward as one, step-in-step. A trained staggered wedge of spears and archers in behind led them forward. Wat noticed Gleeton and a few other known men beside him marching along near the carriages and felt safer for it, themselves pushed along by Dull Dolor's whip.
Prester pumped his sword atop his armoured shoulder. The Lannister standards that had been dipped prior were hoisted up beside him. He hollered around him as he galloped to face his men, near in Stark and Tully bowshot. "Into them men. Lord Beric is too far to save Stark or Tully I think! Let us leave him pelts and blood!"
His army bellowed in the cold, went to a half pace run and halted just as abruptly to absorb a flurry of arrows as they reached their dead fellows' bodies. Too few, even Wat saw that.
They closed and met with the high ground to the enemy. Wat watched perched behind the carriage's rim, his fingers and wrists straining for the effort. There was no beauty to it, no song fodder for Wat. Swords and axes hammered against shields like it was the blacksmiths anvil. The spears slipped through the ranks and sucked the breath from men. Forley shouted as his horsemen waited trotting on the wings of the battle, as arrows flew high back and forth and thudded into the hard ground around him.
There were too few northmen, too few rivermen all of a sudden. Their desire was as hard and unyielding as the ground beneath them, but men only broke when fear overcame them. Wat remembered old black mouth Sam telling him, "Shield on spear is a patience game for the footmen. Swords is lord's work. If you don't have a big thick shield and the poor sod facing you does, then you become the poor sod being pushed into your grave." The paw would not be overcome when they had hardened men, and more of them, wider shields, and longer spears.
They were pushing them back on Forley's bellowed direction. He heaved up on his spurs as if he wanted to leap into the battle. The Lannister shield wall pushed and pushed again in two surging heaves that sent the Stark's and Tully's into the forest. Not enough arrows raining down became none as the archers retreated into the trees.
Wat remembered Queen Rhaella falling from the sky to a chance arrow, Aerion Brightflame's foolishness; or that of Maggy the Frog telling lord Renye that he would be one day be 'swimming in gold once again'. They all were part of the power of prophecy, and yet fell all the same. How many delusional widows had screamed out prophecy on the streets of Fleabottom on his childhood?
His hope lasted for as long as it took the first blasts of horn from the west woods below, not a moment after they seemed to break the enemy ranks. Then creeping out there from the shroud was a march of cavalry, unadorned but sitting atop bridled horse all the same. They held no lances, seemed no knights, but bore swords, mail and spear all the same; matching their host if Wat wasn't mistaken for numbers, if not pounds of steel.
Marching out with them were a hundred more men, garbed in mockery of the soldiers of the five kings. The colours of a hundred different houses were displayed on the worn surcoats and shields, great and small. Another hundred men came behind, and another hundred houses where shown there too Wat thought.
Pure fear gripped the camp, as a cry went up amongst the carriages and wagons so harsh around Wat that he had to cup his ears. Forley reined his horse around so fast he near lost his rings and pounded down to near where they had stalled. He called out the names of Sergeants, their mothers and orders hoarsely until his ranks, now nearly disappearing into the trees halted and turned, restraining their bloodlust enough to witness their new foe.
"Tarbury, Lon, Mouton and Yone. At the front. Push through!" He screamed. "Winnows, Blackhand Rick and Burrows. Hold them at the camp. Yellowfeather, I don't want an empty quiver."
Wat's world became small. It extended as far as his fingers, grasping what he could, from the sacks of soldier's larders to the thick ruffled collared black cat cloak from lord Westerling's own chest, left unlocked in a hurry to have him don his armour. He saw boots pried off lord Humfry, lying fevered on a wain, and took them as the man shuddered, thereafter on a half-packed tent he saw a short blade and tucked it into his belt. Around him where the soft people of the courts, held tucked away in a carriage, underneath it's spokes, or whatever place they could find; apart they all seemed to tremor, silently watched the westermen army grunt and struggle and fall as a mass of bodies. He didn't know if they saw him, if they could have remembered enough of his thievery to have him throw to the gulls. But then they were sacrifices, he knew that now. These were the lands of winter, and the soft do not survive.
Distantly now, he heard the hard charge of Forley's cavalry, and the cheer off some fools nearby. He grabbed and sneaked so that he was amongst the horses left tied to east of the camp, though north truly he guessed, if he wished to escape to his newest patron's home. He went for a horse and then felt the ground for moments, perhaps minutes. Looking up from the ground where his fruits had spilled, beyond an apple he saw men in the black armour of the freerider's that looked like lord Humfry's companions, wrestling Edmure Tully to a horse. They reined free and were riding into the near darkness, abandoning Wat to his apples. No one followed them, no one noticed in the mess. He wondered how.
He stood, picked some fruit, and heard a roar behind, atop the hill. His vision felt uncertain, as the village once burnt was basking in the grey light of the moon. He heard screams, turned to see the battle against those without banners was close to him now. Behind a train of clotted baggage, ragged men rushed the Lannister guards, meeting them still across their shield line, stepping over red snow and atop a mound made of bodies, tattered and crimson cloaked alike. He looked to the hills and saw the direwolf fluttering above all, and more men below it pouring from the trees to charge the westermen bracing there still.
Prestor Forley was no longer on his horse. His sword was not raised aloft. The lion standard was gone.
Wat thought that it suited that they remain like forever. Locked in a war of brutal combat, until the last man gasped enough air to lift their sword and extinguish the other for all time. He wondered if the seven peoples of the seven kingdoms ever befriend each other again, after such savagery had been committed by each other, to each other. He saw the faces of Dull Dolores, Lon the Lucky, thought of the shy maids to be sacrificed to the wolves, and of such pain of a sweet girl – youthful in thought and timid in manner - whose husband had been stolen from her by those she loved; of their own sacrifice, of her eternal damnation and ignominy, all for the rancour of the world to be avenged in even more slaughter.
The village no longer moved like the moons shade, but held its old burnt brittleness to his eye. It was the fields now, untended and wild, high to the chest with stalks that concealed the shapes of grey moving through them. Closer and closer, came the army of the wolves, betrayed as they crossed naked ground and held the light of the moon. Cold blue eyes, taut muscles quivering, mouths pink and salivating, they emerged onto the hard open ground until there were hundreds prowling in wait.
Wat knew then he was the only man who saw them in that moment. For they waited still, restrained even in their savage strength, unmolested by panic or attack, until a ghost of the past joined them.
Taller than most men he knew, a mouth baring teeth like daggers, muscle as knotted and thick as mail, the direwolf howled in a guttural roar that made its pack mates chorus pitiful.
Men of the west could kill wolves Wat thought. But what could kill monsters that came summoned by the vengeance of a people's land, or a dread family's ghosts? How were they meant to live free of suffering when their enemies had been driven to such fury?
They weren't meant to live of course thought Wat. How I wished I could have tasted that golden ale, how I wish the good knight Ser Forley could taste it too.
Hi, If anyone wants to offer me an edit/review critique I'd appreciate it. This is quite raw.