It was a quiet morning when Domeric was meant to depart the Bloody Gates.
It reminded him of the day he departed Barrowton, and the tearstained goodbye he shared with his aunt after four years spent fostering under her. She was a lady in every sense of the word, and with no husband at her side, she often had to be twice as cold as to not be undermined, but he was the last thing that remained of her sister, and in those stables with the grey northern sky above them and the chilly mist nibbling at their skin, she allowed herself some tears as she held him.
He had with him now the same escort that followed him from Borrowton, together they had crossed the neck, traveled through the Riverlands and scaled the Mountains of the Moon even under arrow fire from the distant peaks. Now, after months on the road and at the Gates, they could finally make the final stretch towards Redfort.
My father could have chosen a less violent kingdom to send me too…
But then again, he would not trade his time with Mya and Jon for anything. He had never had siblings to call his own and most other children were too terrified of his father or aunt to grow close to him. That loneliness had been suffocating at times, to be with no company but his own thoughts, no conversation beyond the polite and no laughs but at poor jokes made by men far too old for him to consider companions.
The month spent with Mya and Jon seemed almost fantastical in contrast, the conversations would stretch for hours, smiles would dot their faces when they saw him and they took the effort to make many small gestured that meant much to him, even the short time he had spent around them had breathed into him a life he had never known.
Is that why father sent me to the Redfort? To a lord with three sons near my age.He suddenly wondered and stopped in his tracks at the thought.Had father noticed my solemness and cared enough to send me away for my own sake?He would have never imagined a man as cold as him capable of that, but perhaps it had been his aunt who pushed it.
He shook the though from his head and lifted the last of his saddle bags onto his shoulder, his leg still aching under him as he did, then he headed towards the stables. Stables which were much busier than they had been when he had arrived, now they were home to countless travelers and caravans, free to comfortably traverse the roads of the Vale with the threat of the mountain clans put to bed.
Our battle and the scar I now bear played a role in that, however small.
The majority of the credit still laid at the feet of Robar Royce and his band, it was them who took victory after victory across every corner of the Vale, they shattered countless raiding bands under the mass of their heavy cavalry and saved dozens of villages from being reduced to rubble. Many a knight who had gone to accompany the Royce now returned as triumphant heroes, their tongues heavy with deeds accomplished and their noses raised as high as crown princes, while the men and women of the Gates treated them with near reverence and awe.
But Domeric too had fought and bled for the Vale, as the ache in his leg was quick to remind him. He had known violence and death since he was old enough to walk, when his father had taken him to oversee the execution of a pirate captain caught along their eastern shore. As the rope tightened around the man's neck, the bright, mischievous look in the man's emerald eyes had slowly extinguished. Domeric still remembered it now, more than a decade later. He doubted that would change even a century later.
But the battle fought in the mines had left him with a dozen more eyes of every color and shape to remember, and a scale of violence he had never known in any execution or torture he had seen. He could still hear the pounding blood in his ears, still feel the mania of battle at the tips of his fingers, and the rush of death when the spear pierced his leg.And that was a minor skirmish of forty men, done and dusted in a few minutes, an all-encompassing battle of thousands that rages for hours is unimaginable.
He had been one of the very few injured, but most everyone else fighting besides him had walked away unscathed, while opposite them had laid thirty dead, a feat he could claim only minor credit for.
No, that was entirely due to having Jon on their side. Their spars over the month they spent together had betrayed the bastard's skill, and Jon trained even further for hours nearly every day at the mines, but Domeric could have never imagined the slaughter he was capable of. Every stroke of his sword left a body in its wake, every step he took had aggressive intent behind it that none of the clansmen could match, and he did not stop until the entire raiding band laid dead at his feet.
Come to think of it, it was a Bolton, a half Stark and Arryn men at arms fighting side by side.Some millennia ago we would been killing each other.
"Domeric!" he heard a feminine voice cry out behind him and turned in time to see a head of raven black hair colliding against his chest and two arms wrapping around his back. In any other circumstance, he would have worried about dirtying a lady given how unclean his traveling leathers were, but he knew Mya cared little for that and so he returned the hug in kind. "I am going to miss you."
"And I, you, Mya." He said, a bastard she may have been, but he meant it. She pulled her head back to look up at him with the two sapphires in her eyes.The king's eyes, on the king's daughter.Her hair may have only flowed to her shoulders, her skin may have been dirty and rugged, and she may spend more time with mules than princes. But for a moment, he could imagine her in an elegant gown of charcoal black, with threads of yellow silk shimmering across her chest, and a low neckline revealing her pale skin. In his mind eye, she looked every part a princess,royaltyin every sense of the word.Not that she cares for it, of course."Thank you." He said. "For everything."
"Don't thank me, I would be dead if it wasn't for you." She said, smiling at him.
"And I, you." He said, again remembering the painful, excruciating carriage ride to the Gates with her at the driver's seat. Any small bump or thud and he may have bled out right then and there, but slow and steady she had traveled, and she delivered him alive and well to the maester's infirmary.
"Are you scared?" She asked him, a familiar impish grin crossing her face.
"Somewhat." He said honestly, "Not of the road, but… I don't enjoy change."
"I wouldn't worry." She said, walking alongside him as they entered the stables. "I think you'll flourish in the Redfort."
"Have you seen Jon?" He asked her, "I was hoping to say my farewells to him as well before I set off."
"He hasn't told you?"
"Told me what?"
"I am coming with you!" said a new voice from one of the stalls they passed, when he turned to look, he saw the freshly knighted man himself leaning against a post, his grey steed standing in the stall behind him, already ladened with saddlebags.
He stood an inch or two taller than Domeric himself, his brown hair hung loosely around his ears and blew softly in the wind. He had the same wide, confident smile about his face. It was a stark, somewhat frightening contrast to the blood-soaked warrior who rampaged in his memories.A Stark warrior of old, bastard or not, the clansmen in Willowbrook stood no chance.
Jon had been hailed in the Gates as though he had returned from Robar's band, but truth be told no deed accomplished by any of the knights accompanying the Royce could compare to his. Jon seemed to revel in the attention, as he always did, but his behavior had hardly changed, he remained the same confident, decisive man Domeric had found at the foot of that weirwood sapling in the cliffs near the Gates.
"You're coming with me? To the Redfort?" Domeric asked as the smile on the bastard's face widened. Once, Domeric had thought it dumb, and the Snow could certainly be dumb, but not in this.There is no idiocy in joy.He thought,How I will miss him and Mya.
"To the Redfort." Jon said, waving them over to join him in his stall. "But then to Gullstown proper, where I will find a ship to take me to the capital."
"What business can you have in King's Landing?" Domeric asked, he could not imagine a heathen bastard would do well in court, knighthood or not.
"Officially, I'm to deliver these reports to Lord Arryn," He said, pointing to the thick leather scroll case that was tied to his saddlebags. "He receives them by hand every year, detailed reports on the treasury of the Gates, as well as the harvests, the relations of the lords and the knights, the number of men at arms and levies at his command, how long the grain reserves would last in case of a snap winter and so on, that way, he is kept aware of the happenings in the Vale even while he is in King's Landing. Unofficially, well, look for yourself."
Jon looked around to make sure they were no eyes on them, before turning to open one of his saddlebags, he pushed aside bags of provisions, spare clothing, even pieces of his recently repaired black plate armor. Underneath that all, laid something thick and broad wrapped in a thick cloth blanket, he needed only slightly pull it aside for Domeric to see the ripple of Valyrian Steel.
"The axe head!?" Domeric asked, when Jon had returned to the Gates after Willowbrook, after Mya had her chance to yell at him and call him an idiot and hug him even as he was soaked in blood, when the maester had treated the gash on his chest and the cuts on his face, he had told them of his clash with the chieftain, and the weapon he had wielded.
Domeric had thought Jon mistook some engraved axe for Valyrian steel, but then he had shown him his broken greatsword, and the way the plate steel of his armor had been carved apart. At the time. Domeric tried to come up with some other explanation, for surely clansmen, men who were little better than wildlings, could not possess something so valuable. But then the knights had returned with stories of Robar Royce claiming a sword of Valyrian Steel from one of the clansmen bands, then Domeric had the chance to run his finger along the axe's edge and there was no denying what it was.
"I thought the blackfish had laid claim to it." Domeric said, but Jon waved him off.
"He only did that to protect me from any opportunists, both within the Gates and on the road ahead, better they do not know that I travel with the worth of castles in my bags." Jon said, "They say one of the only men in the known world who can reforge Valyrian steel is found on the Street of Steel in King's Landing, and as nice as an axe is, I am far better with a sword."
With Valyrian steel in his hand, I almost feel mournful for his enemies.Domeric said, and a man of Jon's birth with his personality was sure to make many more enemies.At least he does not count me among them.
"I have something to ask of you on your trip." Mya said, averting her gaze and tapping her foot against the ground. "If you are to go the Red Keep to meet with Lord Arryn…"
"Yes, Mya?" Jon said. "Tell me."
"If you happen to cross paths with the King… just give him this letter, will you?" She said, producing a rolled parchment from her pockets to both Jon and Domeric's widening eyes. "Tell him it's from his daughter, but if you don't find him..."
"I will find him." Jon said, his voice carrying the same authoritative tone he had back in the mines. "Robert Baratheon will read what you've written him, you have my word on that."
Domeric saw a hint of tears welling up in her eyes, before she smirked them off and leapt into his arms in an embrace. He could relate to Jon through their shared homeland, he could relate to Mya through their shared interest in animal handling, but the bond of bastardy they shared was reserved only for the two of them.
"Stay safe, alright?" She said, then pulled her head from his chest and turned to Domeric. "Both of you."
"I can take care of myself in the Redfort." Domeric said, smiling at the gesture. "But the Red Keep… my aunt always had a distain for the south, but Aegon's city and the Red Keep in its center she always held in extreme contempt, her and my father both actually."
"Mine father as well, Brynden too." Jon said, sighing. "They say it is a pit of vipers and sycophants, two-faced reprobates and self-interested cowards without an honest soul for miles. I am comfortable with steel in my hand and raging monsters before me, but liars and mummers, malice hidden away beneath false smiles…"
"Is out of your league." Domeric concluded the sentence for him. "Just be smart, agree to nothing anyone says,nothing, not any scheme not for any gold not any kind of proposition, just deliver what you must to the Red Keep, get your new sword and get out."
"If the letter puts you in more danger, you need not deliver it." Mya suggested, but Jon only shook his head.
"No, no I will deliver it, I must go there for Lord Arryn's reports in either case." He said, sighing. "I will just keep an out and stay safe."
"And don't get into trouble for anyone sake." Mya said. "I know you're strong, I know you like to defend people, but you said yourself, your strength does nothing against the weight of politics."
"Aye." He said, the smile returning to his face once more. "Now come, we must be off."
Sometime later, after he had saddled his horse and loaded his saddlebags, he rode up besides Jon and waved goodbye to Mya once more, then headed to the gates of the castle where their retainers awaited them.
"You were right to ignore me." Domeric said, ridding up beside him.
"What do you mean?" Jon said, curiously raising an eyebrow.
"To rush Willowbrook against my advice." He said. "You saved hundreds, earned yourself a knighthood, Valyrian Steel... I had thought it suicide."
What was it he told me before he left? A second of hesitation is paid for in a pound of flesh?All his life, both his father and his aunt had taught him both caution and foresight, to think and plan and account for every little thing before acting,the foolish burn bright for a day but it is the wise who endure the centuries. Were his father's words, and they served him well all his life, but now he found himself wondering.
"You're an intelligent man Domeric, very intelligent. You were more responsible for the mine's success than I was, and I would like to think I learned from you the value of prudence, which may prove invaluable in King's Landing." Jon said, nodding his head to him even as Domeric's pale cheeks flushed. "But when the moment comes, and it will come to you again Bolton, of this I am sure, when it comes trust in yourself, do not hesitate and seize it."
At that Jon trotted ahead, waving an arm at the retainers, and leaving Domeric to swear a solemn vow to no one but himself.
I will.
