Summary: Just before Stannis sailed to assault Dragonstone, Ser Willem Darry, master-at-arms of the Red Keep, with four loyal men, Viserys, Daenerys, and a wet-nurse, slipped the enclosing noose of rebel ships and sailed for the Braavosian Coast.
Oath Engraved in Bone (aSoIaF)
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Summary: Just before Stannis sailed to assault Dragonstone, Ser Willem Darry, master-at-arms of the Red Keep, with four loyal men, Viserys, Daenerys, and a wet-nurse, slipped the enclosing noose of rebel ships and sailed for the Braavosian Coast.
This is, by very nature of there being exactly one line in canon describing the escape from Dragonstone, and thus featuring Robert's Rebellion from the perspective of a Targaryen loyalist and then going to Essos, going to be extremely original character centric. However, my goal is to write believable characters, with motivations real enough that you can, perhaps, look at why they're still loyal to a dynasty headed by a man that burned one of his chief vassals to death and strangled said vassal's heir and go "hmmm." It will be in no way apologism for such barbarity, or Rhaegar's own loose interpretation of both homage and marriage vows.
Oath Engraved in Bone
One
I woke to hammering on the door of the inn I kept my room in, to avoid being seen at Court by Madking Aerys. My first thought was His Grace is cleaning the house. My hand dipped to the dagger on my sword belt and I drew steel. Then I tugged my boots on and padded to the door. I stood to one side, then undid the lock.
The door swung inwards, and I waited with bated breath. Elbert Darke stepped into my rented room, bascinet tucked beneath his arm and the armband of pink dragon against black, sitting proud on his rerebrace loudly proclaiming his allegiance to the Queen.
Darke dominated the doorway, nearly too wide at the shoulder to fit through it. Brown eyes under black hair met my own. Then he gave me a slow smile, and though it lent his face a cruel air, the tension that thrummed through me eased. Darke's face was cruel-looking, true, harsh and twisted even when he smiled, but I knew the man beneath the face, and I would trust him with my sister.
"Roland," he said. "Good, you're up. You need to dress, and then come with me fast. The King has ordered Her Grace the Queen to Dragonstone with Ser Willem, and the good Ser needs men true to fill out a retinue." He took in my disheveled appearance, the remnants of my night's meal, and the woman pulling her head beneath the pillow on the bed. He cocked an eyebrow, then grinned.
"Be about it, you bastard. Her Grace means to sail with the tide at mid-morning and be rid of this pit."
I nodded seriously, then sheathed the dagger and pulled my brown leather boots back off to accommodate my breeches of somber gray wool.
"Did she or Ser Willam say who else will be accompanying Her Grace?" I asked around a heel of bread. Shirt next, and that tucked into the breeches and then I tied them off.
"Yes," he said. "Sers Corlys Sunglass and Lyonel Staunton. His Grace the Prince Viserys will be coming with us, and our primary charge." I swallowed back my distaste at the thought of the King so much as touching the Queen, and nodded again.
"You'll have sent my baggage onto the ship for me," I asked. Elbert nodded. I smiled, for I had left the Red Keep in the middle of the night with only one change of clothing in my knapsack. "Then we'll have time for me to find something to break my fast with." I pulled my doublet on next, then began doing the buttons as I took one last glance around the rented room. The woman had been paid off the night before, I was certain I'd left nothing incriminating me of greater loyalty to the Queen than her lord husband the King, and all that remained was my sword belt and armband. I slipped the band, like Elbert's own, onto my left arm, closest to my heart, and led the way out the room, securing my belt about my waist.
The fashion in the capital then was that King's men would wear their sword belts high on the body, at the waist, the better to pull from a horse. Queen's men, like Darke, Staunton, Sunglass and I, wore them low on our hips, the better to fight on foot with. Three nights ago, Sunglass and I had cornered three King's men in an alley off the Street of Silk and left their bodies for the gold cloaks to find. I wasn't proud of killing three boys barely out of squiring, but they refused to apologise for the filthy things they had said about Queen Rhaella. Well, that and they drew steel first, but who was counting?
I gave my thanks to the inn's keeper on our way out the door, and Elbert and I emerged into the pre-dawn false light with hands to our longswords.
"A brisk morn," Elbert said.
A man stepped out of the shadows to the side leading two horses. He attempted a low bow, and Elbert grinned to see him. The man wore Darke's own livery, seven gold shields embroidered onto a black doublet. Over the man's brown eyes, his gold-colored hair was tied neatly back with a pink ribbon. In light of the political difficulties in the capital, he wore a sword and dagger at his hip, but not the way that Elbert or I wore our own— easily and as though we'd been born to it.
"But the winds from the north blow cold," the man replied. Sign and counter-sign given, Elbert took the reins of the horses and passed them to me. I greeted my own, a dark roan gelding with a fond whuff into his nose. Elbert and his man embraced for a long heartbeat, but then they broke apart.
"Go home to Twoponds," Elbert said. "If the King is sending Her Grace away with the Prince, I assume someone whispering in his ear expects the worst. I'd not have you in this city for a sack, my friend."
The man bowed low, and when his head came back up I saw tears. I looked away out of courtesy, but could still hear his words.
"Thirty years I served the Darkes in King's Landing, Ser Elbert, first your father and then you. If I'm not here, who will look after your city residence?"
I can only assume Elbert smiled sadly, for I recognized the tone. "I do not expect to be returning in the favor of the next man who holds this city, Jon, if you take my meaning. I shall meet a brave death defending Her Grace. Or I shall live out my years in exile in Essos, with the royal children and Her Grace. But I expect this might be the last we see of each other, old friend."
"Things'll happen as the gods will or don't," Jon said. "But I'll come find you in Essos if I must, just to let your dear mother know how you're settling."
I didn't hear whatever came next, for they spoke too low for me to do so. I suspect it was a whispered and heartfelt goodbye, and my heart ached that I could not bid my own mother and father goodbye. But then— I'd done so years ago, when I came to the city to be one of the Queen's household knights. Mother and father knew I'd acquit myself well, for they'd let me come. I did not think they would approve of the murdering of King's men in the dark of the night, but, well.... You don't really approve of it either, a small part of me whispered.
And it was true, I didn't. They had been barely not-boys, and the Father Above knew more barely adult men would find their deaths at the tip of my sword. It grieved me then, and it grieves me now. I remember I longed to be away from the capital, cesspit that it is, and home away to hunt the woods and pastures I'd spent my boyhood in. But the oaths of a knight wore heavy on my soul, and the oaths of a knight to a Queen were graver still.
I had begged leave from Her Grace to join Rhaegar's forces linking up with the ruins of Jon Connington's army in the Crownlands and seeking to give battle to the rebel forces, but she had refused my request and ordered I stay in the capital. And so I raked the streets with my eyes, searching for King's men looking to put two of the Queen's staunchest supporters into our graves before our gods appointed three-score and ten years passed.
I was self-aware enough, too, to understand that I had initially only been a Queen's man by grace of having been squire to Ser Bonifer Hasty who had been in love with Her Grace once. He was leading a company of knights and men-at-arms in the Riverlands with Rhaegar's army, turning his back on his liege lord Robert Baratheon. Hasty was loyal to Her Grace still, and now I was loyal to her of my own volition— half in love with her myself, I sometimes thought, and think still. But the love of a knight for the sister-wife of a Targaryen was a thing to be kept close to the heart, and mine was altogether more courtly in fashion. Her Grace had need of strong swords to defend her interests from those lickspittles of the King who would see her shut away in the Maidenvault to waste her years away, when once she had been the Light of the East and Cersei Lannister a mummer's imitation.
I handed Elbert the reins for his horse after he finished, a brindle with stripes of chestnut and gray. We swung into our saddles, and he leaned down to his man's ear. I gave Jon my own thanks after they finished speaking. King's Landing was almost pretty, in the pre-dawn dark, when I could ignore the flood of refugees running from the King's army and the rebel army in the Riverlands and seeking to move into the Crownlands. Red brick buildings for the guildhalls and wealthy trades and craftsmen, half-brick and half-timber buildings for the craftsmen, and ramshackle tenements for the poor masses.
But outside the buildings teemed the refugees. Poor, sickly, fleeing the war and armies. I frowned at the thought of the rebel army likely headed here as their primary objective. A siege would be... ruinous.
"Your squire," I began. I had no squire of my own, despite being a knight for nearly three years now. I'd never found the opportunity, and wasn't sure if I wanted that responsibility. Moreover, I was neither wealthy or high standing enough to have lordly boys clamoring to squire for me.
"What about him?" Elbert said. I frowned in concentration, trying to resume the track of my thoughts.
"Ah," I said once I'd found it. "Are we taking the squires, the rest of the lances to Dragonstone?" Elbert shook his head.
"No," he said. "Ser Darry has commanded we leave our retainers here. No squires, no archers, no men-at-arms, no pages. We're to pay the remainder of their wages and discharge them to seek service elsewhere." He left it at that, perhaps unwilling to say more. I, unwilling to question him in the midst of the streets of King's Landing, let him leave it at that. Instead I nodded. We carried on in silence for a while, and soon enough came to the gates of the Red Keep.
This is, by very nature of there being exactly one line in canon describing the escape from Dragonstone, and thus featuring Robert's Rebellion from the perspective of a Targaryen loyalist and then going to Essos, going to be extremely original character centric. However, my goal is to write believable characters, with motivations real enough that you can, perhaps, look at why they're still loyal to a dynasty headed by a man that burned one of his chief vassals to death and strangled said vassal's heir and go "hmmm." It will be in no way apologism for such barbarity, or Rhaegar's own loose interpretation of both homage and marriage vows.
Oath Engraved in Bone
One
I woke to hammering on the door of the inn I kept my room in, to avoid being seen at Court by Madking Aerys. My first thought was His Grace is cleaning the house. My hand dipped to the dagger on my sword belt and I drew steel. Then I tugged my boots on and padded to the door. I stood to one side, then undid the lock.
The door swung inwards, and I waited with bated breath. Elbert Darke stepped into my rented room, bascinet tucked beneath his arm and the armband of pink dragon against black, sitting proud on his rerebrace loudly proclaiming his allegiance to the Queen.
Darke dominated the doorway, nearly too wide at the shoulder to fit through it. Brown eyes under black hair met my own. Then he gave me a slow smile, and though it lent his face a cruel air, the tension that thrummed through me eased. Darke's face was cruel-looking, true, harsh and twisted even when he smiled, but I knew the man beneath the face, and I would trust him with my sister.
"Roland," he said. "Good, you're up. You need to dress, and then come with me fast. The King has ordered Her Grace the Queen to Dragonstone with Ser Willem, and the good Ser needs men true to fill out a retinue." He took in my disheveled appearance, the remnants of my night's meal, and the woman pulling her head beneath the pillow on the bed. He cocked an eyebrow, then grinned.
"Be about it, you bastard. Her Grace means to sail with the tide at mid-morning and be rid of this pit."
I nodded seriously, then sheathed the dagger and pulled my brown leather boots back off to accommodate my breeches of somber gray wool.
"Did she or Ser Willam say who else will be accompanying Her Grace?" I asked around a heel of bread. Shirt next, and that tucked into the breeches and then I tied them off.
"Yes," he said. "Sers Corlys Sunglass and Lyonel Staunton. His Grace the Prince Viserys will be coming with us, and our primary charge." I swallowed back my distaste at the thought of the King so much as touching the Queen, and nodded again.
"You'll have sent my baggage onto the ship for me," I asked. Elbert nodded. I smiled, for I had left the Red Keep in the middle of the night with only one change of clothing in my knapsack. "Then we'll have time for me to find something to break my fast with." I pulled my doublet on next, then began doing the buttons as I took one last glance around the rented room. The woman had been paid off the night before, I was certain I'd left nothing incriminating me of greater loyalty to the Queen than her lord husband the King, and all that remained was my sword belt and armband. I slipped the band, like Elbert's own, onto my left arm, closest to my heart, and led the way out the room, securing my belt about my waist.
The fashion in the capital then was that King's men would wear their sword belts high on the body, at the waist, the better to pull from a horse. Queen's men, like Darke, Staunton, Sunglass and I, wore them low on our hips, the better to fight on foot with. Three nights ago, Sunglass and I had cornered three King's men in an alley off the Street of Silk and left their bodies for the gold cloaks to find. I wasn't proud of killing three boys barely out of squiring, but they refused to apologise for the filthy things they had said about Queen Rhaella. Well, that and they drew steel first, but who was counting?
I gave my thanks to the inn's keeper on our way out the door, and Elbert and I emerged into the pre-dawn false light with hands to our longswords.
"A brisk morn," Elbert said.
A man stepped out of the shadows to the side leading two horses. He attempted a low bow, and Elbert grinned to see him. The man wore Darke's own livery, seven gold shields embroidered onto a black doublet. Over the man's brown eyes, his gold-colored hair was tied neatly back with a pink ribbon. In light of the political difficulties in the capital, he wore a sword and dagger at his hip, but not the way that Elbert or I wore our own— easily and as though we'd been born to it.
"But the winds from the north blow cold," the man replied. Sign and counter-sign given, Elbert took the reins of the horses and passed them to me. I greeted my own, a dark roan gelding with a fond whuff into his nose. Elbert and his man embraced for a long heartbeat, but then they broke apart.
"Go home to Twoponds," Elbert said. "If the King is sending Her Grace away with the Prince, I assume someone whispering in his ear expects the worst. I'd not have you in this city for a sack, my friend."
The man bowed low, and when his head came back up I saw tears. I looked away out of courtesy, but could still hear his words.
"Thirty years I served the Darkes in King's Landing, Ser Elbert, first your father and then you. If I'm not here, who will look after your city residence?"
I can only assume Elbert smiled sadly, for I recognized the tone. "I do not expect to be returning in the favor of the next man who holds this city, Jon, if you take my meaning. I shall meet a brave death defending Her Grace. Or I shall live out my years in exile in Essos, with the royal children and Her Grace. But I expect this might be the last we see of each other, old friend."
"Things'll happen as the gods will or don't," Jon said. "But I'll come find you in Essos if I must, just to let your dear mother know how you're settling."
I didn't hear whatever came next, for they spoke too low for me to do so. I suspect it was a whispered and heartfelt goodbye, and my heart ached that I could not bid my own mother and father goodbye. But then— I'd done so years ago, when I came to the city to be one of the Queen's household knights. Mother and father knew I'd acquit myself well, for they'd let me come. I did not think they would approve of the murdering of King's men in the dark of the night, but, well.... You don't really approve of it either, a small part of me whispered.
And it was true, I didn't. They had been barely not-boys, and the Father Above knew more barely adult men would find their deaths at the tip of my sword. It grieved me then, and it grieves me now. I remember I longed to be away from the capital, cesspit that it is, and home away to hunt the woods and pastures I'd spent my boyhood in. But the oaths of a knight wore heavy on my soul, and the oaths of a knight to a Queen were graver still.
I had begged leave from Her Grace to join Rhaegar's forces linking up with the ruins of Jon Connington's army in the Crownlands and seeking to give battle to the rebel forces, but she had refused my request and ordered I stay in the capital. And so I raked the streets with my eyes, searching for King's men looking to put two of the Queen's staunchest supporters into our graves before our gods appointed three-score and ten years passed.
I was self-aware enough, too, to understand that I had initially only been a Queen's man by grace of having been squire to Ser Bonifer Hasty who had been in love with Her Grace once. He was leading a company of knights and men-at-arms in the Riverlands with Rhaegar's army, turning his back on his liege lord Robert Baratheon. Hasty was loyal to Her Grace still, and now I was loyal to her of my own volition— half in love with her myself, I sometimes thought, and think still. But the love of a knight for the sister-wife of a Targaryen was a thing to be kept close to the heart, and mine was altogether more courtly in fashion. Her Grace had need of strong swords to defend her interests from those lickspittles of the King who would see her shut away in the Maidenvault to waste her years away, when once she had been the Light of the East and Cersei Lannister a mummer's imitation.
I handed Elbert the reins for his horse after he finished, a brindle with stripes of chestnut and gray. We swung into our saddles, and he leaned down to his man's ear. I gave Jon my own thanks after they finished speaking. King's Landing was almost pretty, in the pre-dawn dark, when I could ignore the flood of refugees running from the King's army and the rebel army in the Riverlands and seeking to move into the Crownlands. Red brick buildings for the guildhalls and wealthy trades and craftsmen, half-brick and half-timber buildings for the craftsmen, and ramshackle tenements for the poor masses.
But outside the buildings teemed the refugees. Poor, sickly, fleeing the war and armies. I frowned at the thought of the rebel army likely headed here as their primary objective. A siege would be... ruinous.
"Your squire," I began. I had no squire of my own, despite being a knight for nearly three years now. I'd never found the opportunity, and wasn't sure if I wanted that responsibility. Moreover, I was neither wealthy or high standing enough to have lordly boys clamoring to squire for me.
"What about him?" Elbert said. I frowned in concentration, trying to resume the track of my thoughts.
"Ah," I said once I'd found it. "Are we taking the squires, the rest of the lances to Dragonstone?" Elbert shook his head.
"No," he said. "Ser Darry has commanded we leave our retainers here. No squires, no archers, no men-at-arms, no pages. We're to pay the remainder of their wages and discharge them to seek service elsewhere." He left it at that, perhaps unwilling to say more. I, unwilling to question him in the midst of the streets of King's Landing, let him leave it at that. Instead I nodded. We carried on in silence for a while, and soon enough came to the gates of the Red Keep.
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II
Two
We came to the gates of the Red Keep towering against the sky just after dawn, near the middle of the Prime hour. I had been remiss in my prayers, and owed each of the Seven several, and quite a few for the Seven-as-One. I felt bad for my lack of prayer in such a trying time for my lady the Queen, but a sneer from one of the Royal man-at-arms huddled near a fire instead of up and alert angered me. He spat into the fire when he saw Elbert and I.
I went to snarl at him, but a hand on my arm from Elbert stopped me. "Peace, Roland," he said. "We mustn't give cause for offense on this day." I kept my snarls to myself, settling instead for a nod to Elbert and a sneer at the dozy man-at-arms instead. Elbert secured our entrance in the Red Keep after a discussion with the sergeant-of-the-watch. The sergeant took our horses and led us through the wicket gate after we dismounted. He took our horses to the stable, to be curried and watered before we escorted Her Grace to the ship that would carry her, and us, to Dragonstone. I went to be armored.
This hour of the morning, the only people moving about were the help, and in a branching hallway off the main one of the Red Keep, I stopped a manservant bearing a covered platter of what I assumed was some noble's breakfast.
"Sele of the day to you, good man. Got anything extra on there?" I said. The man shook his head, and I frowned. I hadn't broken my fast yet, and typically I'd have already been working at a pell for an hour or so and then eating by now. Well, it wouldn't hurt to skip breaking my evening fast. "If you could point me in the direction of Corlys Velaryon's room, I'd be obliged."
He did so, and after he'd told me I pressed a silver stag into one of his hands. "Sorry, milord," he said. "I'd bow, but—" he held up the platter of food and I smiled. Largesse was one of the chief knightly virtues, and I tried to be a good knight. Mostly. Some of the oaths I'd sworn weighed more on my conscience than one other.
"No matter," I said. "My thanks. Be about your work, man." We parted, and I passed through halls and then up two sets of spiral stairs meant to stymie attackers. Arrowslits allowed in small amounts of the dawning light, but the majority was provided by torches and candles set into sconces. I didn't envy the Targaryens their candle bill. Eventually I came to the door specified to me, knocked, and awaited the muffled "enter."
A bed with a chest at the foot of it dominated most of it, but there was a window below which was set a desk for reading or writing, and an armoire against the wall next to the door.
Corlys Velaryon and Lyonel Staunton were waiting for me and Corlys' room is where he had hidden my panoply for me before I could be killed in the night by one of the partisans of the King.
Corlys stood leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest, wearing a doublet in the sea green of his family's sigil and somber breeches of dark blue. He smiled to see me, more a grin, really, and stood properly to embrace me. We butted foreheads together gently, his silver-gold hair contrasting neatly with my own black, and the delight in his blue eyes was heart-warming.
"We expected you dead, when we'd heard nothing from you the third night after you left the Keep," Staunton said. Corlys and I broke our embrace, and then Staunton enfolded me in a hug. When we broke apart, we exchanged kisses on the cheeks in the Essosi fashion. He had spent three years with his mother's folk there, but we loved him anyway. I took in his appearance from an arm's length. Lyonel had shaved his ruddy red beard down to a neat mustache and goatee, the better to hide his puny chin, but his own green eyes were still clever and missed nothing, beneath his ruddy red-brown hair.
"Much to your delight, I'm sure," I said dryly. I grinned then, to show I'd meant no offense. "Well, now to your disappointment, here I am."
"Here you are," Corlys said. "Warrior and Stranger, but it's been tense without you here to help defend the Queen's cause."
I nodded seriously, and as Lyonel opened the chest at the foot of the bed, I undid my sword belt and then sat. While I started tugging off my boots, Corlys went on.
"His Grace takes no offense that we champion his lady wife, of course. But... Neither does he commend us for duelling the curs that impugn her honor or imply Rhaegar isn't truly his son."
"What?" I exclaimed. "Aerys allows open doubt about the paternity of his heir—"
Lyonel shook his head. Stripped to my shirt and hose, he frowned. From the chest he pulled my good arming doublet, the one kept washed and lovingly maintained by the ladies in service to the Queen.
"There is talk, and that is all it is, so far, is that Aerys means to pass over Rhaegar and the Prince Aegon both in favor of Viserys as heir," Lyonel explained. Corlys helped me tug the arming doublet on, then settled back onto the desk while I tugged the wool braes, to go beneath my leg armor, on.
"Serious talk, if my father is to be believed." Corlys said. I wanted to blaspheme, but refrained. Instead I nodded, deadly serious.
"Then perhaps we will be defending the future King of the Seven Kingdoms, too," I said. "The gods will armor and shield us only if our faith in them and each other is unbreakable."
"The war is going badly," Staunton said. "My cousin is married to a knight of the Riverlands marching with Hoster Tully, and she wrote to me to say they'd had word that the rebels expect to force a crossing of the Trident."
"Rhaegar has the scrapings of thirty thousand Crownlanders, loyalists from the Storm and Riverlands, and another ten thousand Dornishmen under command of his good-uncle," Corlys said. "My family's strength remains at sea, attempting to help pin down the Ironmen reaving the Reach. Word is the rebels are fifty or even fifty five thousand."
"Gods be good," I whispered. If even a fourth of that was knights and men-at-arms, there was a very good chance that even defending a crossing, ford or bridge, of the Trident, battle would see the only force between the rebel army and the capital annihilated. And after defeat on the field, all of the Crownlands would lay open to being scorched and burnt in the rebels' drive to the city. My home included.
I wanted to say more, make a great oath of righteous anger and vengeance, but I held my tongue. Making an oath only to see it broken by circumstance outside my control, or the will of the gods, would make me an oathbreaker, for all that it would not have been my fault. That would be folly, and so I held my tongue. It mattered not, anyway.
Elbert entered the room without knocking, shifting my thoughts away from oath-taking. He grinned to see me.
The grin lent him a devilish air, and he clapped me on the shoulder. "I've had word from that girl in the kitchens that my squire likes, you know the one, Roland. Her Grace is breaking her fast early, because of the travel, and will be allowing us to dine with her in her solar." I would remain unarmored, then, for all I'd come here to dress in steel.
Instead I turned to Corlys. "I'm sorry to impose upon you, but my baggage is in with Elbert's. May I borrow—?"
"Of course, of course," he said. "You know I don't wear your pink and black, but I think I've a suitable doublet and breeches." He turned to the armoire, threw it open, and began poking and prodding.
"Your boots are fine, of course," he said. "But you'll need two pairs of gloves, of course, one to go through your sword belt and the other to wear—" I turned to look out the window as Lyonel and Elbert began talking about the finer points of our itinerary after Her Grace had broken her fast, running a thumb along the edge of the red stonework. Some enterprising stonemason, on finishing the room, had carved in intricate detail, little wyverns. Delighted to have discovered such a marvel, I smiled, grim talk of the war momentarily forgotten.
A tap on my shoulder returned me to the room and my friends, and laid out on the bed were the promised two pairs of gloves, both of fine and supple lightly colored fawnskin. A solid dark blue, nearly black, cotton doublet with knotwork embroidery, and wool breeches of hunter green meant I'd be dressing in nearly Velaryon colors, but not quite. Enough to declare friendship of houses, I guessed, but not something so blatant as to declare, falsely, that Corlys and I were together in the fashion of man and woman.
"Well done," I told my friend. "Can I assume—?"
"Of course," Corlys said. "You helped me thrash that bastard bully of a Waters when we were squires, and next to that this is nothing at all."
"My thanks," I said. Corlys knew I'd return the favor at some point— Ser Hasty had had to take a rod to my arse more times than I cared to remember because of how often I fought with the other squires for trying to bully Corlys. He'd taken his revenge, though, once he had finally gotten his manhood's height and strength to him, and the other squires had learned fast not to try the petty tricks that could make another's life miserable.
I dressed, fast, because if the Queen was already sitting down to dine I didn't want to be the cause of her delay, and once I had pulled my sword belt tight, tucked one pair of gloves through it, and pulled the other pair onto my hands, I made sure my sword was loose in its sheath. Only the gods knew what work I'd be called upon to do today, and I wanted to be ready.
I didn't expect to be ambushed at breakfast with Her Grace, but the walls here had eyes, ears, and one could never know when they had knives. Knives or not, though, there was food to be had and the Queen set a fair table. Cheered by the prospect of a meal, I spread my arms out, presenting myself to my friends' approval.
"Quit preening," Lyonel said. I made as if to slug him in the gut, but he backed away, shaking a finger at me.
Lyonel caught my arm, then, and face serious, grimaced. "Oh no," Lyonel said. "I don't think so, friend. You need to be warned. His Grace... burned his Hand, Lord Chelsted, alive last night." My hand went to the hilt of my longsword, and I felt the anger in me. I had no need to be informed of what had happened afterwards. The King's habits were the subject of much gossip in the Keep, but Elbert's leman, a maid of the Queen, had confirmed the worst to be true.
His Grace took his lordly rights, 'twas true. The Seven-Pointed Star teaches that that cannot be rape, for a wife must submit to her husband. I have always disagreed with the Faith and Seven-Pointed Star on that topic. But the Star also teaches that a knight cannot stand idly by while a woman is harmed. Were it up to me, I know well which of the commandments I would go to the hells for breaking. Murdering a King would not have been difficult, after an actual battle. I even knew how I would do it, too: Aerys would have only one Kingsguard present during the early morning hours, and I could take Dayne himself if he did not expect me. From there the King would be child's play.
I wondered, then, as we left Corlys' room and headed for Her Grace's solar if the knight I had squired for would have been willing to do the same. I knew I wanted to, everytime I had stood in court and seen the man dribbling out his mouth and twitching on that heap of burned swords. Only fear of what would happen to Her Grace and her young son stilled my hand each time.
When at last we came to the solar door of Her Grace, Ser Willem Darry stood outside. His tabard of Darry colors and sigil, their livery, masked his coat-of-plates that nestled over his hauberk, but he wore good plate on his shoulders and arms, the better to use all of him as a weapon. The older man was nearing his mid-thirties, by my guess, and was one of the few non-Kingsguard trusted with protecting the Queen even in the Red Keep. His cool gray eyes— killer's eyes, I knew— passed over all of us, swords and daggers and armbands proclaiming our loyalty to Rhaella, and he nodded.
"She told me you'd be coming. She's inside, already waiting for you lads." He tilted his chin up, not a sneer, but something else. "If she seems ill at ease, well... Be gentle in there. Afterwards, muster and meet me at the doors to Keep in armor halfway betwixt terce and sext, and with polearms, too." We murmured our assent, and he knocked once. The knock was sharp and loud, and the "enter" that returned was assuredly Her Grace's voice.
Darry opened the door to let us through, and my friends filed in before me. Once we had all entered, Ser Willem closed the door behind us. Already seated was Her Grace the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Queen of the Andals, Rhoynar, and Firstmen, Rhaella Targaryen. Standing behind the chair to the Queen's left was Princess Elia Martell, and to the Queen's right was Prince Viserys. Elia's children were there, as well, and Rhaenys stood on her seat. I smiled at her, and she smiled shyly back. My friends and I knelt, and Elia came around the table.
"Stand, please," she said. "Goodmother and I would not have such loyal defenders kneeling when there's a meal to be had." Elia was beautiful in a slim golden dress, and only a few years older than I. Her black eyes were clever and full of warmth, and she allowed each of us to perfunctorily kiss her hand. She returned to settle Rhaenys and help with Viserys, and Rhaella took charge.
"Thank you for coming," Her Grace said. The scratches on her face and neck hadn't been hidden by powder or scarf or veil, and the redness of them angered me. The Queen's eyes were a deep indigo, almost darker than the wine-dark sea, and her hair, like woven light from the dawning sun was worn in an elaborate braid supporting the crown of rose-gold and diamonds.
"Viserys," she said. "Say hello to the knights, please." The tone was firm, though her voice was far from the usual projection of inner strength I knew it capable of being, she still commanded. The Prince ducked his head shyly, but one of the Queen's slim fingers rising from where her hands had been in her lap saw him do as bid.
"Hello, Ser Knights," the Prince said.
"Sele of the day to you, my Prince," I said. My friends echoed me, and I inclined my head to him. If his brother fell against the rebels and he became Crown Prince, then he would have a way to go to be a good king. Not far at all to be better than Aerys or Rhaegar, though.. Viserys matched the Queen's clothing: the Queen wore a dress of black with red stitching and embroidery, with pink dragons on the shoulders, while Viserys wore a doublet and breeches of red and black.
Rhaella had not stood to greet us or accept our obeisance. I could recall each instance that had happened as clear as day, and it only ever occurred the day after His Grace took his lordly dues as her husband. She did not stand because she could not. Murder writ its way through my veins and heart, and if I ever was given the chance by the gods—
"What's a night, mother?" Rhaenys asked. Her eyes were curious, and she didn't stop smiling. I breathed out, once. Anger was a sin, yes, and one I knew well. It had served me well on the battlefield, but this was not a battlefield. I breathed in again, and on the exhale tried to expel all my anger and fury through my nose.
"Knight, dear heart," Elia said to her. "There is a silent letter at the front of the word that makes it different from night. You'll learn that in lessons with the Maester, soon. Knights protect us and guard us."
I placed my own hands in my lap, clasped as though I were at prayer, and surveyed the table. The Queen set a fine one, I had to admit. She had only a light bowl of porridge with honey and butter in front of her, with a small plate of iced melons. There was a platter of bacon, cooked like she knew Corlys and I liked: crispy, as well as sausages. There were loaves of warm bread, with crocks of butter, bowls of berries and cream, honey-and-wheat cakes with almonds and walnuts baked into them. There were two carafes of wine, and then four big pitchers of small-beer and the mugs to pour them into. Corlys and Lyonel and Elbert began helping themselves, but I waited.
I wanted to say something, to let the Queen know she had but to tilt her head and I would lay the King's own head at her feet, and be damned to the consequences for myself. She looked at me, then, Her Grace, a decade and a half older than I, and she gave me a slight smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "Eat, Ser Roland," she said. I nodded once, and saw Rhaenys watching me.
I wondered what the young girl saw that made her stare at me with eyes so warm.
"Ser Elbert," Elia said. He paused with a slice of bread covered with honey and butter halfway into his mouth. "Her Grace's impending leaving for Dragonstone... It would do Rhaenys well to see her father's seat early, I think, and Ser Darry has agreed, but asked that I speak with you all as well. If I give my daughter into your care, gentle sers, may I be assured that she will be as safe with you as if she were in the heart of Sunspear?"
As safe with us as if she were in the heart of Sunspear. Elia had chosen her words carefully, and I caught their hidden meaning. The King does not like his Dornish looking granddaughter, and without the moderating influence of both Prince Rhaegar and Queen Rhaella... Elbert looked lost, and I elbowed him in the gut, hard.
"Your Grace," I said while he tried not to choke on his bread. "The Princess Rhaenys will be protected with our lives, if needs must. I am no great noble or lord, but I am a knight. I know what oaths I spoke, in that sept after my vigil, and I know what oaths I will die or burn in the seven hells themselves to keep." And I meant it. Accursed and damned were oathbreakers, but one of those oaths I'd made had been to protect the innocent, and another women and children.
I was a knight, yes. Knights were soldiers, and soldiers were killers. A heavy topic for breakfast, I thought, but then I tried never to lie to others or myself.
"Your candor is appreciated, Ser Roland," Rhaella said. "It will please me to be on the island of my forefathers with my son and granddaughter with us. Perhaps Viserys can begin learning the duties of a page once we arrive at the island. Would you like that, Viserys?" The boy nodded, but the face gave lie to his earnestness, in that he didn't appear eager at all.
"Your Grace," Corlys said. "The ship my father placed into my command remains, of course, at your command, if you wish it."
Rhaella nodded. "It pleases me, but it shall provide escort to the ship we take." She raised a hand and gestured with it, likely meaning to cut off whatever delicate conversation Corlys was meaning to start, and so we set to the grim business of eating in the presence of a woman that'd been brutally raped the night before. There were no words of comfort I could offer that would ease her pain, that wouldn't see my head taken for being a traitor.
So instead I watched the Queen eat. She took three bites of porridge, one bite of melon. I counted. Then she drank heavily of her wine, and as there were no servants in the solar with us, allowed me to pour for her. Lyonel, Corlys, and Elbert all ate heavily— they believed that if there was a fight to be had, they needed full bellies for the strength. I preferred to eat lightly myself, if at all, so that there'd be less I vomited up afterwards. Even over breakfast, all of us were expecting and bracing ourselves for a fight.
Who with? Was my question, but it could not be asked, and so I watched the Queen and the Queen watched my friends and her son eat. The solar was, in contrast to the Targaryen clothing worn by the royals, decorated in soft shades of green and brown, perhaps meant to be soothing. I wondered where the King's spymaster had his rats watching us from.
When, at last, most everyone had had their fill and after Rhaenys' cat Balerion the Black Dread had made an attempt at some of the cream on the table, Rhaella called the servants in to clear the remnants of breakfast away.
"Gentle sers," Elia said, standing. "Goodmother Rhaella and I thank you for coming, and I will be grieved to see such noble knights depart the city. It will be a poorer place without all of you," she said.
I hoped, as we made our goodbyes and departed to arm ourselves for later, that Elia would be well in the Keep without Rhaenys or Rhaella. I did not have a lot of time between now and when we'd depart for the ship, but if I hurried...
"Corlys, Lyonel, Elbert," I started. "If we hurry, we can..." and I laid out my thoughts.
We came to the gates of the Red Keep towering against the sky just after dawn, near the middle of the Prime hour. I had been remiss in my prayers, and owed each of the Seven several, and quite a few for the Seven-as-One. I felt bad for my lack of prayer in such a trying time for my lady the Queen, but a sneer from one of the Royal man-at-arms huddled near a fire instead of up and alert angered me. He spat into the fire when he saw Elbert and I.
I went to snarl at him, but a hand on my arm from Elbert stopped me. "Peace, Roland," he said. "We mustn't give cause for offense on this day." I kept my snarls to myself, settling instead for a nod to Elbert and a sneer at the dozy man-at-arms instead. Elbert secured our entrance in the Red Keep after a discussion with the sergeant-of-the-watch. The sergeant took our horses and led us through the wicket gate after we dismounted. He took our horses to the stable, to be curried and watered before we escorted Her Grace to the ship that would carry her, and us, to Dragonstone. I went to be armored.
This hour of the morning, the only people moving about were the help, and in a branching hallway off the main one of the Red Keep, I stopped a manservant bearing a covered platter of what I assumed was some noble's breakfast.
"Sele of the day to you, good man. Got anything extra on there?" I said. The man shook his head, and I frowned. I hadn't broken my fast yet, and typically I'd have already been working at a pell for an hour or so and then eating by now. Well, it wouldn't hurt to skip breaking my evening fast. "If you could point me in the direction of Corlys Velaryon's room, I'd be obliged."
He did so, and after he'd told me I pressed a silver stag into one of his hands. "Sorry, milord," he said. "I'd bow, but—" he held up the platter of food and I smiled. Largesse was one of the chief knightly virtues, and I tried to be a good knight. Mostly. Some of the oaths I'd sworn weighed more on my conscience than one other.
"No matter," I said. "My thanks. Be about your work, man." We parted, and I passed through halls and then up two sets of spiral stairs meant to stymie attackers. Arrowslits allowed in small amounts of the dawning light, but the majority was provided by torches and candles set into sconces. I didn't envy the Targaryens their candle bill. Eventually I came to the door specified to me, knocked, and awaited the muffled "enter."
A bed with a chest at the foot of it dominated most of it, but there was a window below which was set a desk for reading or writing, and an armoire against the wall next to the door.
Corlys Velaryon and Lyonel Staunton were waiting for me and Corlys' room is where he had hidden my panoply for me before I could be killed in the night by one of the partisans of the King.
Corlys stood leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest, wearing a doublet in the sea green of his family's sigil and somber breeches of dark blue. He smiled to see me, more a grin, really, and stood properly to embrace me. We butted foreheads together gently, his silver-gold hair contrasting neatly with my own black, and the delight in his blue eyes was heart-warming.
"We expected you dead, when we'd heard nothing from you the third night after you left the Keep," Staunton said. Corlys and I broke our embrace, and then Staunton enfolded me in a hug. When we broke apart, we exchanged kisses on the cheeks in the Essosi fashion. He had spent three years with his mother's folk there, but we loved him anyway. I took in his appearance from an arm's length. Lyonel had shaved his ruddy red beard down to a neat mustache and goatee, the better to hide his puny chin, but his own green eyes were still clever and missed nothing, beneath his ruddy red-brown hair.
"Much to your delight, I'm sure," I said dryly. I grinned then, to show I'd meant no offense. "Well, now to your disappointment, here I am."
"Here you are," Corlys said. "Warrior and Stranger, but it's been tense without you here to help defend the Queen's cause."
I nodded seriously, and as Lyonel opened the chest at the foot of the bed, I undid my sword belt and then sat. While I started tugging off my boots, Corlys went on.
"His Grace takes no offense that we champion his lady wife, of course. But... Neither does he commend us for duelling the curs that impugn her honor or imply Rhaegar isn't truly his son."
"What?" I exclaimed. "Aerys allows open doubt about the paternity of his heir—"
Lyonel shook his head. Stripped to my shirt and hose, he frowned. From the chest he pulled my good arming doublet, the one kept washed and lovingly maintained by the ladies in service to the Queen.
"There is talk, and that is all it is, so far, is that Aerys means to pass over Rhaegar and the Prince Aegon both in favor of Viserys as heir," Lyonel explained. Corlys helped me tug the arming doublet on, then settled back onto the desk while I tugged the wool braes, to go beneath my leg armor, on.
"Serious talk, if my father is to be believed." Corlys said. I wanted to blaspheme, but refrained. Instead I nodded, deadly serious.
"Then perhaps we will be defending the future King of the Seven Kingdoms, too," I said. "The gods will armor and shield us only if our faith in them and each other is unbreakable."
"The war is going badly," Staunton said. "My cousin is married to a knight of the Riverlands marching with Hoster Tully, and she wrote to me to say they'd had word that the rebels expect to force a crossing of the Trident."
"Rhaegar has the scrapings of thirty thousand Crownlanders, loyalists from the Storm and Riverlands, and another ten thousand Dornishmen under command of his good-uncle," Corlys said. "My family's strength remains at sea, attempting to help pin down the Ironmen reaving the Reach. Word is the rebels are fifty or even fifty five thousand."
"Gods be good," I whispered. If even a fourth of that was knights and men-at-arms, there was a very good chance that even defending a crossing, ford or bridge, of the Trident, battle would see the only force between the rebel army and the capital annihilated. And after defeat on the field, all of the Crownlands would lay open to being scorched and burnt in the rebels' drive to the city. My home included.
I wanted to say more, make a great oath of righteous anger and vengeance, but I held my tongue. Making an oath only to see it broken by circumstance outside my control, or the will of the gods, would make me an oathbreaker, for all that it would not have been my fault. That would be folly, and so I held my tongue. It mattered not, anyway.
Elbert entered the room without knocking, shifting my thoughts away from oath-taking. He grinned to see me.
The grin lent him a devilish air, and he clapped me on the shoulder. "I've had word from that girl in the kitchens that my squire likes, you know the one, Roland. Her Grace is breaking her fast early, because of the travel, and will be allowing us to dine with her in her solar." I would remain unarmored, then, for all I'd come here to dress in steel.
Instead I turned to Corlys. "I'm sorry to impose upon you, but my baggage is in with Elbert's. May I borrow—?"
"Of course, of course," he said. "You know I don't wear your pink and black, but I think I've a suitable doublet and breeches." He turned to the armoire, threw it open, and began poking and prodding.
"Your boots are fine, of course," he said. "But you'll need two pairs of gloves, of course, one to go through your sword belt and the other to wear—" I turned to look out the window as Lyonel and Elbert began talking about the finer points of our itinerary after Her Grace had broken her fast, running a thumb along the edge of the red stonework. Some enterprising stonemason, on finishing the room, had carved in intricate detail, little wyverns. Delighted to have discovered such a marvel, I smiled, grim talk of the war momentarily forgotten.
A tap on my shoulder returned me to the room and my friends, and laid out on the bed were the promised two pairs of gloves, both of fine and supple lightly colored fawnskin. A solid dark blue, nearly black, cotton doublet with knotwork embroidery, and wool breeches of hunter green meant I'd be dressing in nearly Velaryon colors, but not quite. Enough to declare friendship of houses, I guessed, but not something so blatant as to declare, falsely, that Corlys and I were together in the fashion of man and woman.
"Well done," I told my friend. "Can I assume—?"
"Of course," Corlys said. "You helped me thrash that bastard bully of a Waters when we were squires, and next to that this is nothing at all."
"My thanks," I said. Corlys knew I'd return the favor at some point— Ser Hasty had had to take a rod to my arse more times than I cared to remember because of how often I fought with the other squires for trying to bully Corlys. He'd taken his revenge, though, once he had finally gotten his manhood's height and strength to him, and the other squires had learned fast not to try the petty tricks that could make another's life miserable.
I dressed, fast, because if the Queen was already sitting down to dine I didn't want to be the cause of her delay, and once I had pulled my sword belt tight, tucked one pair of gloves through it, and pulled the other pair onto my hands, I made sure my sword was loose in its sheath. Only the gods knew what work I'd be called upon to do today, and I wanted to be ready.
I didn't expect to be ambushed at breakfast with Her Grace, but the walls here had eyes, ears, and one could never know when they had knives. Knives or not, though, there was food to be had and the Queen set a fair table. Cheered by the prospect of a meal, I spread my arms out, presenting myself to my friends' approval.
"Quit preening," Lyonel said. I made as if to slug him in the gut, but he backed away, shaking a finger at me.
Lyonel caught my arm, then, and face serious, grimaced. "Oh no," Lyonel said. "I don't think so, friend. You need to be warned. His Grace... burned his Hand, Lord Chelsted, alive last night." My hand went to the hilt of my longsword, and I felt the anger in me. I had no need to be informed of what had happened afterwards. The King's habits were the subject of much gossip in the Keep, but Elbert's leman, a maid of the Queen, had confirmed the worst to be true.
His Grace took his lordly rights, 'twas true. The Seven-Pointed Star teaches that that cannot be rape, for a wife must submit to her husband. I have always disagreed with the Faith and Seven-Pointed Star on that topic. But the Star also teaches that a knight cannot stand idly by while a woman is harmed. Were it up to me, I know well which of the commandments I would go to the hells for breaking. Murdering a King would not have been difficult, after an actual battle. I even knew how I would do it, too: Aerys would have only one Kingsguard present during the early morning hours, and I could take Dayne himself if he did not expect me. From there the King would be child's play.
I wondered, then, as we left Corlys' room and headed for Her Grace's solar if the knight I had squired for would have been willing to do the same. I knew I wanted to, everytime I had stood in court and seen the man dribbling out his mouth and twitching on that heap of burned swords. Only fear of what would happen to Her Grace and her young son stilled my hand each time.
When at last we came to the solar door of Her Grace, Ser Willem Darry stood outside. His tabard of Darry colors and sigil, their livery, masked his coat-of-plates that nestled over his hauberk, but he wore good plate on his shoulders and arms, the better to use all of him as a weapon. The older man was nearing his mid-thirties, by my guess, and was one of the few non-Kingsguard trusted with protecting the Queen even in the Red Keep. His cool gray eyes— killer's eyes, I knew— passed over all of us, swords and daggers and armbands proclaiming our loyalty to Rhaella, and he nodded.
"She told me you'd be coming. She's inside, already waiting for you lads." He tilted his chin up, not a sneer, but something else. "If she seems ill at ease, well... Be gentle in there. Afterwards, muster and meet me at the doors to Keep in armor halfway betwixt terce and sext, and with polearms, too." We murmured our assent, and he knocked once. The knock was sharp and loud, and the "enter" that returned was assuredly Her Grace's voice.
Darry opened the door to let us through, and my friends filed in before me. Once we had all entered, Ser Willem closed the door behind us. Already seated was Her Grace the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Queen of the Andals, Rhoynar, and Firstmen, Rhaella Targaryen. Standing behind the chair to the Queen's left was Princess Elia Martell, and to the Queen's right was Prince Viserys. Elia's children were there, as well, and Rhaenys stood on her seat. I smiled at her, and she smiled shyly back. My friends and I knelt, and Elia came around the table.
"Stand, please," she said. "Goodmother and I would not have such loyal defenders kneeling when there's a meal to be had." Elia was beautiful in a slim golden dress, and only a few years older than I. Her black eyes were clever and full of warmth, and she allowed each of us to perfunctorily kiss her hand. She returned to settle Rhaenys and help with Viserys, and Rhaella took charge.
"Thank you for coming," Her Grace said. The scratches on her face and neck hadn't been hidden by powder or scarf or veil, and the redness of them angered me. The Queen's eyes were a deep indigo, almost darker than the wine-dark sea, and her hair, like woven light from the dawning sun was worn in an elaborate braid supporting the crown of rose-gold and diamonds.
"Viserys," she said. "Say hello to the knights, please." The tone was firm, though her voice was far from the usual projection of inner strength I knew it capable of being, she still commanded. The Prince ducked his head shyly, but one of the Queen's slim fingers rising from where her hands had been in her lap saw him do as bid.
"Hello, Ser Knights," the Prince said.
"Sele of the day to you, my Prince," I said. My friends echoed me, and I inclined my head to him. If his brother fell against the rebels and he became Crown Prince, then he would have a way to go to be a good king. Not far at all to be better than Aerys or Rhaegar, though.. Viserys matched the Queen's clothing: the Queen wore a dress of black with red stitching and embroidery, with pink dragons on the shoulders, while Viserys wore a doublet and breeches of red and black.
Rhaella had not stood to greet us or accept our obeisance. I could recall each instance that had happened as clear as day, and it only ever occurred the day after His Grace took his lordly dues as her husband. She did not stand because she could not. Murder writ its way through my veins and heart, and if I ever was given the chance by the gods—
"What's a night, mother?" Rhaenys asked. Her eyes were curious, and she didn't stop smiling. I breathed out, once. Anger was a sin, yes, and one I knew well. It had served me well on the battlefield, but this was not a battlefield. I breathed in again, and on the exhale tried to expel all my anger and fury through my nose.
"Knight, dear heart," Elia said to her. "There is a silent letter at the front of the word that makes it different from night. You'll learn that in lessons with the Maester, soon. Knights protect us and guard us."
I placed my own hands in my lap, clasped as though I were at prayer, and surveyed the table. The Queen set a fine one, I had to admit. She had only a light bowl of porridge with honey and butter in front of her, with a small plate of iced melons. There was a platter of bacon, cooked like she knew Corlys and I liked: crispy, as well as sausages. There were loaves of warm bread, with crocks of butter, bowls of berries and cream, honey-and-wheat cakes with almonds and walnuts baked into them. There were two carafes of wine, and then four big pitchers of small-beer and the mugs to pour them into. Corlys and Lyonel and Elbert began helping themselves, but I waited.
I wanted to say something, to let the Queen know she had but to tilt her head and I would lay the King's own head at her feet, and be damned to the consequences for myself. She looked at me, then, Her Grace, a decade and a half older than I, and she gave me a slight smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "Eat, Ser Roland," she said. I nodded once, and saw Rhaenys watching me.
I wondered what the young girl saw that made her stare at me with eyes so warm.
"Ser Elbert," Elia said. He paused with a slice of bread covered with honey and butter halfway into his mouth. "Her Grace's impending leaving for Dragonstone... It would do Rhaenys well to see her father's seat early, I think, and Ser Darry has agreed, but asked that I speak with you all as well. If I give my daughter into your care, gentle sers, may I be assured that she will be as safe with you as if she were in the heart of Sunspear?"
As safe with us as if she were in the heart of Sunspear. Elia had chosen her words carefully, and I caught their hidden meaning. The King does not like his Dornish looking granddaughter, and without the moderating influence of both Prince Rhaegar and Queen Rhaella... Elbert looked lost, and I elbowed him in the gut, hard.
"Your Grace," I said while he tried not to choke on his bread. "The Princess Rhaenys will be protected with our lives, if needs must. I am no great noble or lord, but I am a knight. I know what oaths I spoke, in that sept after my vigil, and I know what oaths I will die or burn in the seven hells themselves to keep." And I meant it. Accursed and damned were oathbreakers, but one of those oaths I'd made had been to protect the innocent, and another women and children.
I was a knight, yes. Knights were soldiers, and soldiers were killers. A heavy topic for breakfast, I thought, but then I tried never to lie to others or myself.
"Your candor is appreciated, Ser Roland," Rhaella said. "It will please me to be on the island of my forefathers with my son and granddaughter with us. Perhaps Viserys can begin learning the duties of a page once we arrive at the island. Would you like that, Viserys?" The boy nodded, but the face gave lie to his earnestness, in that he didn't appear eager at all.
"Your Grace," Corlys said. "The ship my father placed into my command remains, of course, at your command, if you wish it."
Rhaella nodded. "It pleases me, but it shall provide escort to the ship we take." She raised a hand and gestured with it, likely meaning to cut off whatever delicate conversation Corlys was meaning to start, and so we set to the grim business of eating in the presence of a woman that'd been brutally raped the night before. There were no words of comfort I could offer that would ease her pain, that wouldn't see my head taken for being a traitor.
So instead I watched the Queen eat. She took three bites of porridge, one bite of melon. I counted. Then she drank heavily of her wine, and as there were no servants in the solar with us, allowed me to pour for her. Lyonel, Corlys, and Elbert all ate heavily— they believed that if there was a fight to be had, they needed full bellies for the strength. I preferred to eat lightly myself, if at all, so that there'd be less I vomited up afterwards. Even over breakfast, all of us were expecting and bracing ourselves for a fight.
Who with? Was my question, but it could not be asked, and so I watched the Queen and the Queen watched my friends and her son eat. The solar was, in contrast to the Targaryen clothing worn by the royals, decorated in soft shades of green and brown, perhaps meant to be soothing. I wondered where the King's spymaster had his rats watching us from.
When, at last, most everyone had had their fill and after Rhaenys' cat Balerion the Black Dread had made an attempt at some of the cream on the table, Rhaella called the servants in to clear the remnants of breakfast away.
"Gentle sers," Elia said, standing. "Goodmother Rhaella and I thank you for coming, and I will be grieved to see such noble knights depart the city. It will be a poorer place without all of you," she said.
I hoped, as we made our goodbyes and departed to arm ourselves for later, that Elia would be well in the Keep without Rhaenys or Rhaella. I did not have a lot of time between now and when we'd depart for the ship, but if I hurried...
"Corlys, Lyonel, Elbert," I started. "If we hurry, we can..." and I laid out my thoughts.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
I'm certainly enjoying the prose and the use of internal voice. For some reason its hard to really visualize the physical scenes the characters are interacting within but its hard to describe why. I'm not put off by the OCs in the least. And its certainly unbroken ground in terms of setting, at least from my experience.
I'm watching.
I'm watching.
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Thanks for the kind words and watch! And yeah, I know brevity is the soul of wit but I know description is the weakest part of my writing. Something I'm working on getting better at, frankly.
III
Three
Business seen to, we helped each other arm in the privacy of Velaryon's room. Stripped down to shirts, braies, and chausses, we carefully put away the fine clothing we'd attended the Queen, and put on our finest arming pourpoints. Corlys' was a fine fustian of sea-green. He was armed first, and we started with his sabatons. From there went greaves and cuisses, lacing to the pourpoint.
"Will my lord have the haubergeon?" Elbert asked, and Lyonel laughed. Elbert received a poke at the eye for his trouble, but Corlys nodded. We helped him pull it over his head, and then thread the laces for his breast and then the arm harness through the mail. At last came the breastplate, steel inlaid with green paint. From toes to crown, we tied the leather thongs that would secure Corlys' second skin of metal. I tightened the straps connecting his arms to his breast, until he elbowed me with his metal-clad arm.
"Gods above," he swore. "You don't need to tie me up, you prick." I gave the strap I was working on one final tug to get my point across, and then smiled as he took a few steps around the room to ensure fit and mobility.
"Going to have to lose a few pounds," he complained. "Tighter in the arse and thighs today than it was last sennight."
"Quit shoving your face with the Queen's food and you wouldn't have to get yourself back into fighting fit, Ser Piglet," Elbert told him. I agreed with the sentiment, and elbowed Lyonel.
"Or do the horizontal dance with your leman more often," I suggested slyly. Lyonel blushed from beside me, and then it was his turn to be armored. Armoring someone I loved well as a brother was a labor of love. And how could I not love these men that I had first met as a young page in the Red Keep as boys? When we had ridden together in the squires' tourney at Harrenhal, and then again under command of Elbert's father at Stoney Sept?
Lyonel and Elbert were the better riders of the four of us, and put three men each into their graves from horseback in the swirling melee that had been the fighting in that city's streets. I tried not to dwell on that fight. At last fastened Lyonel's gorget around his throat.
His armor was plain steel, but his tabard was a fine thing of silk and checkered like his family's sigil, while Elbert's own was painted a light gray— an attempt to distance himself from reminding the King or the King's supporters that the Darkes were a cadet house of Darklyn. Wise, in our opinions. And then, at last, it was my turn.
I swallowed when I looked upon my panoply once it had been laid out on the ground. Good plate, forged here in King's Landing once I had reached the final growth of my adulthood, it was painted dark gray. Three lances in blackened steel adorned the breastplate, one penetrating a heart painted in red. I ran a finger along that center lance, and looked at my friends. I was to be the darkest knight of our group, for Corlys' plate harness was painted sea-green and blue, Darke's was painted in red-and-gold, and Lyonel's unpainted.
As my friends took the pieces of my harness out and began armoring me, one piece at a time, from the toes up, I recited the oaths of a knight silently to myself, both comforting ritual and prayer to the gods.
I, Roland of House Gaunt, swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves. I swear to protect all women and children. I swear to obey my captains and my liege lady. I swear to fight bravely, and to do such tasks are needed as laid upon me, no matter how hard or humble or dangerous.
When we had finished, I stood in that dark gray plate, plaque belt buckled around my waist, sword and dagger hanging, black horsehair-crested, visored barbute held underneath an arm. My spurs jangled as I turned, and I smiled at my friends. They stood before me, armored and armed, I felt ashamed of myself in their company, these three knights, my brothers-in-arms.
"Let us attend our Queen," Elbert said. We left Corlys' room, likely for the last time, and clanked our way down through the halls of the Keep. Servants ducked to the side, away from us. King's men glared at us, no doubt wishing they had a dagger or two to put into our backs, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle in response to the knowledge that I was being watched with hostile intent. No matter, I thought. The harness of steel I wore would protect me, as surely as my faith in the Seven would as well, at least long enough to let me put the man down.
We emerged into the brightness of the mid-morning sun, light shining off the lanceheads of the Royal contingent of men-at-arms, already horsed. My friends' squires, as part of their last duties, had saddled our destriers for us. They waited next to the Queen's carriage, and as she emerged from the bulk of the Red Keep, every one not horsed went to their knees, us included.
Doing a vigil on my knees in armor was hell on them. But then, wasn't that the point? Suffering, in harness, as penance for my sins? And oh, how there were a multitude. I was not an adulterer as Elbert was, but I'd fornicated and blasphemed and killed in cold blood and not even in defense of my life. Those were my thoughts as Rhaella emerged into the morning sun, the scars of her woman's battlefield worn as proudly as my father wore his own taken in service of Aerys during the War of Ninepenny Kings.
The Queen had changed to a riding skirt of sensible and plain brown, but her own doublet and short cote were red and black, her family's colors. Unhappy as her marriage was, unpleasant as her husband was as both a man and liege, Rhaella walked the short steps from the Keep's entrance gate to the carriage waiting for her as though she commanded the destiny of the Realms of Westeros.
How could I not love her? The willpower it must have taken to walk that distance without flinching, holding the hands of Viserys and Rhaenys— I marvel at it still. She saw me, then, in my gray armor, helmet held under my arm, and nodded once. I stood, and my friends followed suit. We swung ourselves into the saddles of our destriers, the big, expensive warhorses that could carry a charge home into the face of the fiercest enemy.
My warhorse was a mean son of a bitch of pale gray color, and mane and tail of brown hair. His mane was cut as short as it could go, the better to keep an enemy from gripping it. He wore barding of mail on the chest, neck, and a spike of steel on the head, and in a loop of leather off his saddle there hung my longsword, forty inches of thin steel meant to thrust its way into another knight's soft bits. If we were to have a fight in the streets of King's Landing, no matter who against, I wanted my horse to be as mean and furious as myself.
The older squires that could not afford to be made knights even if they were capable of it handed us our lances. Pennons of the Targaryen banner in the Queen's colors flapping in the sea breeze off the coast sat beneath the points, cruelly sharp steel, and I knew we made a fine sight. Until it came time to earn our wages, and then the killing work would be done.
The Queen safely secured in the wheelhouse with son and granddaughter, Ser Darry gave a click of his tongue and we set off, Darry, Corlys, and Elbert riding ahead of the carriage with a command of ten men-at-arms, myself and Lyonel in the very trailing position, behind the carriage and ten more royal men-at-arms. I did not look behind me as we departed the Red Keep. The iron clad hooves of the warhorses rang against the cobblestones of the streets, and as we passed through the city Aegon had built, people cheered for their Queen.
I thought that perhaps we would be clear through to ship, halfway down the Hook and to the Harbor. A crossbow bolt through the side of a man-at-arms' neck disabused me of that notion, and I jerked my horse's head to face the threat.
"Get the carriage and Darry's half of the men moving, Lyonel! Half you men, with me!" I spurred my destrier savagely, kicking him forward, and he crashed straight through the stall of a fishmonger. I found the crossbowman that had killed the soldier, and didn't bother to lance him. My warhorse's spike took him trying to flee, and the sound of horses ahead of me drew my attention further down the alley.
They stood there ahorse, seven men in good harnesses of plain, undecorated steel, with barding on their horses finer than mine. I smiled, and gave my horse the spurs. I had no shield, for the Seven-that-are-One were my shield and my armor. I dropped my lance into my armpit and couched it.
"Yah! Yah!" He drove forward, my stallion, and in the heartbeat I had before the first enemy got his lance into me, I knew I had him. I let the tip of my lance droop, as though I were a novice, and in the half heartbeat my enemy thought he had me he didn't bother to watch my lance tip. I brought it up smoothly, parried his would-be killing blow, deflected it away. Mine went through his heart and out his back.
He died then, trying to— what? Kill Rhaella and Viserys and Rhaenys? I wasn't even a great jouster, merely passable, but his horse took off with my lance still in him, and so then I went to work I excelled at: swords.
I was still smiling as I drew the sword from the sheath at my hip, caught the first thrust by one of the enemies in my steel-clad free hand, and put the tip of my sword through one of his eyeslits. I was a knight, gods forgive me, and I relished in the killing I did for my lady. I still do.
Because I was, am, good at it. Because if standing vigil in harness is penance for my sins, then fighting in harness is like being shriven with no septon there to hear the venial and petty sins I committed on a daily basis, like blasphemy or lusting after the Queen's maids.
The second man died in as many heartbeats, and we were two strokes and counter-strokes into the fighting. I had friends on the way. I didn't know if the enemy did. I tilted my head to the side, and the man's blow meant for my eyeslits skidded off the side of my helm. The sound was like nothing else I'd ever heard. Where the citizens of Stoney Sept had been terrified and fled, the good burghers of King's Landing clearly thought the gods had delivered a show for them, and I heard wagers being taken even as one old crone shouted a warning.
"On your right!" She shrieked, and I rotated my sword arm up to catch most of the blow. It deflected the sword to behind me, and I left him there to try to resume his neutral stance. I made a pass with my sword to cover my head from an overhead axe-blow that would have killed me, and the crone cackled.
"Put 'em down, ser knight! Kill 'em dead!'
"Bugger off," one of my foes bellowed. They crowded my horse now, trying to drive me back into the street where they could surround me and kill me as easily as a naked man pisses. But the men-at-arms I'd detailed to follow me lent their weight to our fight by thrusting past me with their lances, and they helped me kill one man by unhorsing him and letting my destrier trample him to death underfoot.
With three of them dead and the royal men-at-arms backing me now, the last four of the foe tried to yield, perhaps hoping to be ransomed.
"Throw down your arms, gentles, and by the love of the Mother your surrender will be accepted," I said. It was a bad thing, what I did next. But I judged it necessary, and I know the gods will judge me for it. They dropped their swords.
I put mine through an eyeslit and ordered the rest of their deaths. The men-at-arms obeyed. We could have taken one or three for questioning, I suppose, but when it takes three deaths to force the other four to surrender, a man's loyalty wasn't the only thing that had been bought. Their silence had been bought, too, and torture would only make them give us what they thought we wanted to hear.
"Leave them for the good citizens," I said, and cleaned my sword on a hankerchief handed to me by one of the men that had watched us fight.
"That was well done, milord," the man simpered.
I ignored him and backed my horse out the alley, a dismal place made wretched by murder.
"Let's go," I said. We spurred our horses on, and I feared the worst. Was that a side show, meant to divide our forces and leave the Queen, her son, and granddaughter vulnerable? I knew what some men did to helpless children, and a quick murder would be a mercy.
But even as I feared the worst, prayed for the best, and tried to settle my breathing in anticipation of another fight, we could not gallop our horses. For one, the destriers would have been too slow even at a gallop. The deadliness of a charge of knights and men-at-arms came from the assembled weight of horse and men, not the speed of the destriers. For another, the city was too crammed, too tight to spur my horse bloody and so catch up to the Queen's carriage.
So we settled into a slow trot, with the brick and timber buildings of the city crowing over the road. And I seethed at the delay.
Business seen to, we helped each other arm in the privacy of Velaryon's room. Stripped down to shirts, braies, and chausses, we carefully put away the fine clothing we'd attended the Queen, and put on our finest arming pourpoints. Corlys' was a fine fustian of sea-green. He was armed first, and we started with his sabatons. From there went greaves and cuisses, lacing to the pourpoint.
"Will my lord have the haubergeon?" Elbert asked, and Lyonel laughed. Elbert received a poke at the eye for his trouble, but Corlys nodded. We helped him pull it over his head, and then thread the laces for his breast and then the arm harness through the mail. At last came the breastplate, steel inlaid with green paint. From toes to crown, we tied the leather thongs that would secure Corlys' second skin of metal. I tightened the straps connecting his arms to his breast, until he elbowed me with his metal-clad arm.
"Gods above," he swore. "You don't need to tie me up, you prick." I gave the strap I was working on one final tug to get my point across, and then smiled as he took a few steps around the room to ensure fit and mobility.
"Going to have to lose a few pounds," he complained. "Tighter in the arse and thighs today than it was last sennight."
"Quit shoving your face with the Queen's food and you wouldn't have to get yourself back into fighting fit, Ser Piglet," Elbert told him. I agreed with the sentiment, and elbowed Lyonel.
"Or do the horizontal dance with your leman more often," I suggested slyly. Lyonel blushed from beside me, and then it was his turn to be armored. Armoring someone I loved well as a brother was a labor of love. And how could I not love these men that I had first met as a young page in the Red Keep as boys? When we had ridden together in the squires' tourney at Harrenhal, and then again under command of Elbert's father at Stoney Sept?
Lyonel and Elbert were the better riders of the four of us, and put three men each into their graves from horseback in the swirling melee that had been the fighting in that city's streets. I tried not to dwell on that fight. At last fastened Lyonel's gorget around his throat.
His armor was plain steel, but his tabard was a fine thing of silk and checkered like his family's sigil, while Elbert's own was painted a light gray— an attempt to distance himself from reminding the King or the King's supporters that the Darkes were a cadet house of Darklyn. Wise, in our opinions. And then, at last, it was my turn.
I swallowed when I looked upon my panoply once it had been laid out on the ground. Good plate, forged here in King's Landing once I had reached the final growth of my adulthood, it was painted dark gray. Three lances in blackened steel adorned the breastplate, one penetrating a heart painted in red. I ran a finger along that center lance, and looked at my friends. I was to be the darkest knight of our group, for Corlys' plate harness was painted sea-green and blue, Darke's was painted in red-and-gold, and Lyonel's unpainted.
As my friends took the pieces of my harness out and began armoring me, one piece at a time, from the toes up, I recited the oaths of a knight silently to myself, both comforting ritual and prayer to the gods.
I, Roland of House Gaunt, swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves. I swear to protect all women and children. I swear to obey my captains and my liege lady. I swear to fight bravely, and to do such tasks are needed as laid upon me, no matter how hard or humble or dangerous.
When we had finished, I stood in that dark gray plate, plaque belt buckled around my waist, sword and dagger hanging, black horsehair-crested, visored barbute held underneath an arm. My spurs jangled as I turned, and I smiled at my friends. They stood before me, armored and armed, I felt ashamed of myself in their company, these three knights, my brothers-in-arms.
"Let us attend our Queen," Elbert said. We left Corlys' room, likely for the last time, and clanked our way down through the halls of the Keep. Servants ducked to the side, away from us. King's men glared at us, no doubt wishing they had a dagger or two to put into our backs, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle in response to the knowledge that I was being watched with hostile intent. No matter, I thought. The harness of steel I wore would protect me, as surely as my faith in the Seven would as well, at least long enough to let me put the man down.
We emerged into the brightness of the mid-morning sun, light shining off the lanceheads of the Royal contingent of men-at-arms, already horsed. My friends' squires, as part of their last duties, had saddled our destriers for us. They waited next to the Queen's carriage, and as she emerged from the bulk of the Red Keep, every one not horsed went to their knees, us included.
Doing a vigil on my knees in armor was hell on them. But then, wasn't that the point? Suffering, in harness, as penance for my sins? And oh, how there were a multitude. I was not an adulterer as Elbert was, but I'd fornicated and blasphemed and killed in cold blood and not even in defense of my life. Those were my thoughts as Rhaella emerged into the morning sun, the scars of her woman's battlefield worn as proudly as my father wore his own taken in service of Aerys during the War of Ninepenny Kings.
The Queen had changed to a riding skirt of sensible and plain brown, but her own doublet and short cote were red and black, her family's colors. Unhappy as her marriage was, unpleasant as her husband was as both a man and liege, Rhaella walked the short steps from the Keep's entrance gate to the carriage waiting for her as though she commanded the destiny of the Realms of Westeros.
How could I not love her? The willpower it must have taken to walk that distance without flinching, holding the hands of Viserys and Rhaenys— I marvel at it still. She saw me, then, in my gray armor, helmet held under my arm, and nodded once. I stood, and my friends followed suit. We swung ourselves into the saddles of our destriers, the big, expensive warhorses that could carry a charge home into the face of the fiercest enemy.
My warhorse was a mean son of a bitch of pale gray color, and mane and tail of brown hair. His mane was cut as short as it could go, the better to keep an enemy from gripping it. He wore barding of mail on the chest, neck, and a spike of steel on the head, and in a loop of leather off his saddle there hung my longsword, forty inches of thin steel meant to thrust its way into another knight's soft bits. If we were to have a fight in the streets of King's Landing, no matter who against, I wanted my horse to be as mean and furious as myself.
The older squires that could not afford to be made knights even if they were capable of it handed us our lances. Pennons of the Targaryen banner in the Queen's colors flapping in the sea breeze off the coast sat beneath the points, cruelly sharp steel, and I knew we made a fine sight. Until it came time to earn our wages, and then the killing work would be done.
The Queen safely secured in the wheelhouse with son and granddaughter, Ser Darry gave a click of his tongue and we set off, Darry, Corlys, and Elbert riding ahead of the carriage with a command of ten men-at-arms, myself and Lyonel in the very trailing position, behind the carriage and ten more royal men-at-arms. I did not look behind me as we departed the Red Keep. The iron clad hooves of the warhorses rang against the cobblestones of the streets, and as we passed through the city Aegon had built, people cheered for their Queen.
I thought that perhaps we would be clear through to ship, halfway down the Hook and to the Harbor. A crossbow bolt through the side of a man-at-arms' neck disabused me of that notion, and I jerked my horse's head to face the threat.
"Get the carriage and Darry's half of the men moving, Lyonel! Half you men, with me!" I spurred my destrier savagely, kicking him forward, and he crashed straight through the stall of a fishmonger. I found the crossbowman that had killed the soldier, and didn't bother to lance him. My warhorse's spike took him trying to flee, and the sound of horses ahead of me drew my attention further down the alley.
They stood there ahorse, seven men in good harnesses of plain, undecorated steel, with barding on their horses finer than mine. I smiled, and gave my horse the spurs. I had no shield, for the Seven-that-are-One were my shield and my armor. I dropped my lance into my armpit and couched it.
"Yah! Yah!" He drove forward, my stallion, and in the heartbeat I had before the first enemy got his lance into me, I knew I had him. I let the tip of my lance droop, as though I were a novice, and in the half heartbeat my enemy thought he had me he didn't bother to watch my lance tip. I brought it up smoothly, parried his would-be killing blow, deflected it away. Mine went through his heart and out his back.
He died then, trying to— what? Kill Rhaella and Viserys and Rhaenys? I wasn't even a great jouster, merely passable, but his horse took off with my lance still in him, and so then I went to work I excelled at: swords.
I was still smiling as I drew the sword from the sheath at my hip, caught the first thrust by one of the enemies in my steel-clad free hand, and put the tip of my sword through one of his eyeslits. I was a knight, gods forgive me, and I relished in the killing I did for my lady. I still do.
Because I was, am, good at it. Because if standing vigil in harness is penance for my sins, then fighting in harness is like being shriven with no septon there to hear the venial and petty sins I committed on a daily basis, like blasphemy or lusting after the Queen's maids.
The second man died in as many heartbeats, and we were two strokes and counter-strokes into the fighting. I had friends on the way. I didn't know if the enemy did. I tilted my head to the side, and the man's blow meant for my eyeslits skidded off the side of my helm. The sound was like nothing else I'd ever heard. Where the citizens of Stoney Sept had been terrified and fled, the good burghers of King's Landing clearly thought the gods had delivered a show for them, and I heard wagers being taken even as one old crone shouted a warning.
"On your right!" She shrieked, and I rotated my sword arm up to catch most of the blow. It deflected the sword to behind me, and I left him there to try to resume his neutral stance. I made a pass with my sword to cover my head from an overhead axe-blow that would have killed me, and the crone cackled.
"Put 'em down, ser knight! Kill 'em dead!'
"Bugger off," one of my foes bellowed. They crowded my horse now, trying to drive me back into the street where they could surround me and kill me as easily as a naked man pisses. But the men-at-arms I'd detailed to follow me lent their weight to our fight by thrusting past me with their lances, and they helped me kill one man by unhorsing him and letting my destrier trample him to death underfoot.
With three of them dead and the royal men-at-arms backing me now, the last four of the foe tried to yield, perhaps hoping to be ransomed.
"Throw down your arms, gentles, and by the love of the Mother your surrender will be accepted," I said. It was a bad thing, what I did next. But I judged it necessary, and I know the gods will judge me for it. They dropped their swords.
I put mine through an eyeslit and ordered the rest of their deaths. The men-at-arms obeyed. We could have taken one or three for questioning, I suppose, but when it takes three deaths to force the other four to surrender, a man's loyalty wasn't the only thing that had been bought. Their silence had been bought, too, and torture would only make them give us what they thought we wanted to hear.
"Leave them for the good citizens," I said, and cleaned my sword on a hankerchief handed to me by one of the men that had watched us fight.
"That was well done, milord," the man simpered.
I ignored him and backed my horse out the alley, a dismal place made wretched by murder.
"Let's go," I said. We spurred our horses on, and I feared the worst. Was that a side show, meant to divide our forces and leave the Queen, her son, and granddaughter vulnerable? I knew what some men did to helpless children, and a quick murder would be a mercy.
But even as I feared the worst, prayed for the best, and tried to settle my breathing in anticipation of another fight, we could not gallop our horses. For one, the destriers would have been too slow even at a gallop. The deadliness of a charge of knights and men-at-arms came from the assembled weight of horse and men, not the speed of the destriers. For another, the city was too crammed, too tight to spur my horse bloody and so catch up to the Queen's carriage.
So we settled into a slow trot, with the brick and timber buildings of the city crowing over the road. And I seethed at the delay.
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IV
Four
I bitterly resented every delay on our way to the port; each self-important carter, every aggravating stallholder. One of the men-at-arms bellowed for them to clear the way. He went largely ignored, and then he and his companions began laying about with their sheathed swords and distributing bruises for our way to finally, gradually, clear.
We could still only trot, though. It was necessary in order to save our horses for a charge in case the rest of our party were engaged. As we forced our way through the throngs of smallfolk, fishmongers, street-walking whores, and sailors, we came to the Mud Gate.Through the open gate I could hear the clamor of a crowd. I could also hear fighting.
"Come on," I yelled. "Yah!" I gave my destrier the spurs, hard, and he went forward willingly, eager to hit his full stride. The crowd parted as the warhorse worked his way up to a gallop, and the fighting came into sight. More foes in undecorated armor and without livery, and my friends fought for their lives and the Queen's.
The Harbor stretched out ahead of me. I saw the wharf the Queen's carriage was making for. Four men rode in pursuit, gaining on it, while the rest of them fought my friends. I drew my longsword, the killing sword, all forty inches of cold steel, and gave the warhorse his head.
I slammed into the rear of the melee and killed one man by using my arming sword's guard as a pick, driving it through the back of his helmet. I left it there and drew the longsword from its scabbard on my horse. I stood in my stirrups. Then threw myself into the side of a knight turning to face me. I knew he was a knight by his plaque belt and gilded spurs, but he died badly.
He died badly and not bravely, begging for his life as I landed atop him and then we wrestled. I managed to stand, and one hand held halfway up the length of my sword, drove it through his open visor. He jerked under me, his death throes, and I stood.
"Good to see you, Roland!" Lyonel called. He and Corlys were back to back, both with sword and shield. Elbert fought three men at once, poleaxe keeping them at a distance, and Ser Darry had placed himself on the gangplank, blocking the way to the war galley as the Queen walked sedately up it, shepherding the children up to the ship.
Ignore your liege lady, I told myself. You have a knight's work to do. And I did. The war galley was long and lean, with two masts and several Targaryen pennons fluttering in the breeze coming off the Blackwater Bay. A smaller flag draped off a staff coming off the rear of the ship again in the Targaryen colors, and I must now confess to you that ships have never been my strong suit. I learned, of course— eventually.
The bay glittered in the sun, bright and shining. It was, in fact, a clear, beautiful morning. The kind of spring morning that I'd have spent a-horse on my father's lands, collecting rents, helping repair thatched roofs in need of it, chopping firewood for the widows and old mothers on our lands. I have always enjoyed the quieter aspects of holding land. You wonder why. Why should you not? Knights are men of blood, men of arms. Even if we dressed ourselves in armor, claimed we were better than the smallfolk, burned their homes in our wars, stole their crops, killed them, the truth is...
We weren't. I have stood, with men of no birth of note, men not born to arms, trained from boyhood to arms, men not expected to die as a man of arms, and all of them were as courageous in the fighting as the knights. Birth matters only in that some of us are born with more obligations than others, and my birth meant that my obligation was to fight.
Born and trained to it, like a destrier.
So I fought: for my brothers-in-arms and my Queen, and my Queen's son and granddaughter who could not fight. One man turned from each fight, Corlys and Lyonel back-to-back, and Elbert. They split, one moving to my left and the other my right. Both moved only a pace or two. Without a prearranged signal, and wordlessly, they swept in at me.
I stepped back, and let their thrusts slide harmlessly into the air. They tangled swords, and I smiled inside my helm. I stepped forward, caught the wild swordswing from the foe on the right, and brought my blade up to deflect. His sword went off the line of attack, off to my right, and I thrust. I caught him under the armpit, straight into the heart. Blood bubbled from the air-holes in his helm, and he went to his knees.
His friend came at me with the speed of a striking snake, but I was faster. I brought my dagger up, just enough to catch the blade. They bonded, longsword and dagger. My foe tried to overpower me with his greater leverage.
I smiled still. I worked my left arm in a wide circle, let him think he had me with it, and dropped my dagger. I brought my hand up, gripped my longsword halfway up the blade, and drove the guard like a pick through his helm's wrought face. He staggered backwards, and with the leisure of a man that lingered over a meal at an inn, I killed him like I had killed his fellow just a few heartbeats ago. Longsword fighting at close range was all about leverage, and gripping my sword halfway up the blade gave me all the leverage in the world, to thrust or cave in helmets using the guard as a pick.
Elbert caved his last foe's head in with the pick part of his poleaxe, and we swept like a rising tide into the men fighting Corlys and Lyonel. My friends went first up the gangplank, and I covered them as the royal men-at-arms pulled away to return to the Red Keep. Their mission had been to see the Queen onto the ship. That was done— why should they stay? I won't say they were the worst sort of soldiers, but I was not inclined charitably to them at any cost.
Two men opposed me, as I shuffled my way backwards up the gangplank. I could not see behind me, could barely see in front of me, and could barely hear. One of my foes had a poleaxe, and was standing behind his compatriot with a sword. They made a play for my face with the spear-point of the poleaxe, in concert with the sword going low. I gambled, and parried the poleaxe thrust.
I heard a yell.
"Duck!"
I ducked. Overhead, I did not hear or feel them, but they produced results all the same: arrows, launched from the war galley's contingent of archers, and into the teeth of the foes. None of the arrows did any visible injury, but several ricocheted wildly off the foes' breastplates. I stood back to my full height, and went at them. We swashed swords for three strokes and counter strokes.
Then the enemy with the sword made his mistake. The ship needed to leave, and my being on the gangplank was delaying it. My foremost enemy made a bad cover, and I put the tip of my sword into the gap between the tassets of his breastplate and his left cuisse, into his thigh. He stepped backwards to try and give himself a heartbeat to breathe.
And in that heartbeat I made my play. I drove forward, shoulder lowered, and knocked the three of us into the water below the gangplank. We all sank, cool sea water sliding into the gaps in my armor, and—
Can you picture it? Three men in plate harness, sinking to the floor of the river, grappling and still trying to kill each other even as our chests strained and our brains screamed for air? I thought I'd die down there, and I was determined to send them to hell ahead of me.
I struggled against the man-at-arms with the sword, breastplate to breastplate, swords locked, and knew I had perhaps ten heartbeats to kill him before his fellow came around my side and killed me.
We reached the river floor, and the gods were with me. He landed badly, unevenly on a rock, and I slid my swordpoint fast as an adder under his aventail and into his throat. Blood stained the water, and I turned my head fast, searching for the other man. Something slammed into my helm, and I went to a knee, dazed.
It also burst the air from my lungs, and I knew I would die. Water rushed to fill the space in my lungs, and the thing I remembered most about it is that it tasted disgusting. I was going to die drowning in filth.
I tried to power myself back to my feet, but the water in my lungs and the blow to my head conspired against me. I managed to twist around, wrap an arm around my last foe's legs, and tripped him. My world darkened, and I feared the hell that awaited me.
But I'd died well, hadn't I? Defending my lady, sending my enemies to the Stranger ahead of me. And that was all that could be asked of a knight.
I bitterly resented every delay on our way to the port; each self-important carter, every aggravating stallholder. One of the men-at-arms bellowed for them to clear the way. He went largely ignored, and then he and his companions began laying about with their sheathed swords and distributing bruises for our way to finally, gradually, clear.
We could still only trot, though. It was necessary in order to save our horses for a charge in case the rest of our party were engaged. As we forced our way through the throngs of smallfolk, fishmongers, street-walking whores, and sailors, we came to the Mud Gate.Through the open gate I could hear the clamor of a crowd. I could also hear fighting.
"Come on," I yelled. "Yah!" I gave my destrier the spurs, hard, and he went forward willingly, eager to hit his full stride. The crowd parted as the warhorse worked his way up to a gallop, and the fighting came into sight. More foes in undecorated armor and without livery, and my friends fought for their lives and the Queen's.
The Harbor stretched out ahead of me. I saw the wharf the Queen's carriage was making for. Four men rode in pursuit, gaining on it, while the rest of them fought my friends. I drew my longsword, the killing sword, all forty inches of cold steel, and gave the warhorse his head.
I slammed into the rear of the melee and killed one man by using my arming sword's guard as a pick, driving it through the back of his helmet. I left it there and drew the longsword from its scabbard on my horse. I stood in my stirrups. Then threw myself into the side of a knight turning to face me. I knew he was a knight by his plaque belt and gilded spurs, but he died badly.
He died badly and not bravely, begging for his life as I landed atop him and then we wrestled. I managed to stand, and one hand held halfway up the length of my sword, drove it through his open visor. He jerked under me, his death throes, and I stood.
"Good to see you, Roland!" Lyonel called. He and Corlys were back to back, both with sword and shield. Elbert fought three men at once, poleaxe keeping them at a distance, and Ser Darry had placed himself on the gangplank, blocking the way to the war galley as the Queen walked sedately up it, shepherding the children up to the ship.
Ignore your liege lady, I told myself. You have a knight's work to do. And I did. The war galley was long and lean, with two masts and several Targaryen pennons fluttering in the breeze coming off the Blackwater Bay. A smaller flag draped off a staff coming off the rear of the ship again in the Targaryen colors, and I must now confess to you that ships have never been my strong suit. I learned, of course— eventually.
The bay glittered in the sun, bright and shining. It was, in fact, a clear, beautiful morning. The kind of spring morning that I'd have spent a-horse on my father's lands, collecting rents, helping repair thatched roofs in need of it, chopping firewood for the widows and old mothers on our lands. I have always enjoyed the quieter aspects of holding land. You wonder why. Why should you not? Knights are men of blood, men of arms. Even if we dressed ourselves in armor, claimed we were better than the smallfolk, burned their homes in our wars, stole their crops, killed them, the truth is...
We weren't. I have stood, with men of no birth of note, men not born to arms, trained from boyhood to arms, men not expected to die as a man of arms, and all of them were as courageous in the fighting as the knights. Birth matters only in that some of us are born with more obligations than others, and my birth meant that my obligation was to fight.
Born and trained to it, like a destrier.
So I fought: for my brothers-in-arms and my Queen, and my Queen's son and granddaughter who could not fight. One man turned from each fight, Corlys and Lyonel back-to-back, and Elbert. They split, one moving to my left and the other my right. Both moved only a pace or two. Without a prearranged signal, and wordlessly, they swept in at me.
I stepped back, and let their thrusts slide harmlessly into the air. They tangled swords, and I smiled inside my helm. I stepped forward, caught the wild swordswing from the foe on the right, and brought my blade up to deflect. His sword went off the line of attack, off to my right, and I thrust. I caught him under the armpit, straight into the heart. Blood bubbled from the air-holes in his helm, and he went to his knees.
His friend came at me with the speed of a striking snake, but I was faster. I brought my dagger up, just enough to catch the blade. They bonded, longsword and dagger. My foe tried to overpower me with his greater leverage.
I smiled still. I worked my left arm in a wide circle, let him think he had me with it, and dropped my dagger. I brought my hand up, gripped my longsword halfway up the blade, and drove the guard like a pick through his helm's wrought face. He staggered backwards, and with the leisure of a man that lingered over a meal at an inn, I killed him like I had killed his fellow just a few heartbeats ago. Longsword fighting at close range was all about leverage, and gripping my sword halfway up the blade gave me all the leverage in the world, to thrust or cave in helmets using the guard as a pick.
Elbert caved his last foe's head in with the pick part of his poleaxe, and we swept like a rising tide into the men fighting Corlys and Lyonel. My friends went first up the gangplank, and I covered them as the royal men-at-arms pulled away to return to the Red Keep. Their mission had been to see the Queen onto the ship. That was done— why should they stay? I won't say they were the worst sort of soldiers, but I was not inclined charitably to them at any cost.
Two men opposed me, as I shuffled my way backwards up the gangplank. I could not see behind me, could barely see in front of me, and could barely hear. One of my foes had a poleaxe, and was standing behind his compatriot with a sword. They made a play for my face with the spear-point of the poleaxe, in concert with the sword going low. I gambled, and parried the poleaxe thrust.
I heard a yell.
"Duck!"
I ducked. Overhead, I did not hear or feel them, but they produced results all the same: arrows, launched from the war galley's contingent of archers, and into the teeth of the foes. None of the arrows did any visible injury, but several ricocheted wildly off the foes' breastplates. I stood back to my full height, and went at them. We swashed swords for three strokes and counter strokes.
Then the enemy with the sword made his mistake. The ship needed to leave, and my being on the gangplank was delaying it. My foremost enemy made a bad cover, and I put the tip of my sword into the gap between the tassets of his breastplate and his left cuisse, into his thigh. He stepped backwards to try and give himself a heartbeat to breathe.
And in that heartbeat I made my play. I drove forward, shoulder lowered, and knocked the three of us into the water below the gangplank. We all sank, cool sea water sliding into the gaps in my armor, and—
Can you picture it? Three men in plate harness, sinking to the floor of the river, grappling and still trying to kill each other even as our chests strained and our brains screamed for air? I thought I'd die down there, and I was determined to send them to hell ahead of me.
I struggled against the man-at-arms with the sword, breastplate to breastplate, swords locked, and knew I had perhaps ten heartbeats to kill him before his fellow came around my side and killed me.
We reached the river floor, and the gods were with me. He landed badly, unevenly on a rock, and I slid my swordpoint fast as an adder under his aventail and into his throat. Blood stained the water, and I turned my head fast, searching for the other man. Something slammed into my helm, and I went to a knee, dazed.
It also burst the air from my lungs, and I knew I would die. Water rushed to fill the space in my lungs, and the thing I remembered most about it is that it tasted disgusting. I was going to die drowning in filth.
I tried to power myself back to my feet, but the water in my lungs and the blow to my head conspired against me. I managed to twist around, wrap an arm around my last foe's legs, and tripped him. My world darkened, and I feared the hell that awaited me.
But I'd died well, hadn't I? Defending my lady, sending my enemies to the Stranger ahead of me. And that was all that could be asked of a knight.
Five
I came back to the world on a pallet of blankets on the deck of a ship. I kept my eyes closed, kept my breathing even. The last thing I remembered was— drowning to death in the filth of the river outside of King's Landing, and grappling an enemy beneath the water.
The sounds of a ship filtered to me: sailors' calls, the chant of the rowers keeping time, the officers issuing orders. More, too: seagulls calling, the creak of the ship's hull. The air smelled of clean salt sea, with none of the oppressive stench of King's Landing.
And below it all, murmured prayers to the Mother and Warrior. Rhaella's voice was not strong, and I wondered how long she had been at my side. Viserys' voice followed along beside her, less sure of his prayer and words. Shouts from further down the deck interrupted the Queen and her son. My hand went to the sword that was usually belted at my hip, and I found it was not there. I searched next for my dagger, and that, too, was gone.
No matter, I thought, and opened my eyes. I was, am, a knight. If I must kill with my fists then I will. I tried to stand, to defend my lady, but a hand on my chest stopped me. Rhaella and her son were on their knees for the act of praying, and I admired her for her piety.
"It's well, Ser Roland," my lady said. "Your friends Corlys and Elbert are practicing their art, to the admiration of the ship's crew."
I nodded, and tried to speak. I let out a croak. No words came out, and the Prince himself handed me a goblet of watered wine at his mother's direction. I drank it off in one long swallow, and the Prince took the drinking vessel from me.
Rhaella wore a slim sea-green dress, and a bracelet and arm rings of gold. Her crown, too. Viserys was dressed in breeches of dark blue, and a somber doublet of red, with black stitching and embroidery. Both of them watched me, but then a smaller head crowned with dark ringlets came up from between them.
"Ser Roland's awake, grandmother," Rhaenys said.
"I see that, dear heart," the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms said. Rhaenys ignored her grandmother's admonitions and climbed onto my sword-arm.
"Grandmother said," she told me with all the seriousness a three year old could muster, "that you're a knight and knights protect princesses."
"I am, Princess," I told her. Her dark eyes watched me, seeing— what? I still do not know, but she saw something in me. Perhaps the knight I could be, a man of deep faith and piety, courageous as a lion and fierce as a wolf. A man like the knight I'd squired for, and let down every day of my life that I lay with loose women, blasphemed, and killed men out of hand because it was easier than taking their surrenders.
I was, in truth, not a good knight. Oh, I wasn't the mad dog that some lords kept leashed for the worst sort of butchery, but neither was I the paragons of chivalry that Sers Bonifer and Barristan Selmy were. But Rhaenys sat on my arm that sunny afternoon at sea, and I think perhaps she saw the knight I wanted to be.
"Leave off Ser Roland, my dove," Rhaella told her granddaughter. Rhaenys left my arm and wrapped her arms around Rhaella. I sat up.
"How is it I come to be on the ship, Your Grace?" I should have been dead. A knight, in armor, on the river floor? I should've drowned and rotted there for all eternity.
"I commanded the ship's crew rescue you, Ser. One of the sailors went in after you, and they pulled you up using the pulley system for the sails." An act of courage and skill, then. I made to stand, and when the Queen tried to stop me, I laid my hand on her own.
"I must give this man my thanks," I rasped. "It was an act of skill and daring, and I would see him rewarded."
"Oh, Roland." Rhaella said. Then, to Viserys and Rhaenys: "Go see Ser Darry, my lambs." Viserys gathered his niece's hand in his own and they went off down the deck, seeking the bear of a knight.
I managed to get to my knees, and the Queen took my hands in her own. "Viserys has begun learning the trade of a knight," she began. "From your brothers-in-arms. But they say, and Ser Darry concurs, that you are the best sword among them. If this exile is as long as I fear perhaps it might be, then it is my command you teach my son the strokes of the sword and other arms as may be advantageous for a Prince of the realm to learn."
Her eyes were deadly serious, and I thought of the boy that had previously been sheltered from the worst of his father's excesses. Then I thought of the army bearing down on the city of King's Landing, and Aerys' madness. It seemed to me then that it wasn't just swordsmanship Her Grace desired me to teach her son, but.... How to be a man, and a good one, at that.
I nearly laughed then. Surely Her Grace was not so hoodwinked as to think me a good man. But there was no amusement, no jape, in her face. Only the fading marks of her bastard of a husband and that son of a bitch my king. I nodded, instead.
"I won't beat him," I told her. "My knight beat me when I behaved poorly. But the gods know I deserved every strapping I got, and every morning shovelling dung out the stables, and some beatings I probably didn't get. But your lad's a Prince."
"You mistake me, Ser Roland," Rhaella said. "If Viserys errs so badly or behaves rudely enough to warrant it, strap him. I do not mean for you to merely teach him: the Prince must squire for a knight if he is to command. That is how it is, yes? The finest of lords learn humility and obedience as pages and squires, so they might thusly better command men?"
I nodded, then smiled. "Yes, my Queen. But the One-as-Seven know I wasn't particularly humble and obedient as a squire of nine years, let alone sixteen." The Queen laughed, amused by what I'd said. I examined the words in my head, trying to find where I had offered a joke or witticism. She laid a hand on my arm, and I wanted to promise her the world.
Instead I settled for pouring myself more watered wine from the skin laying next to me. Rhaella Targaryen took a careful glance around us for a heartbeat, and then her face relaxed from the stolid mask I was so used to her wearing.
She appeared weary and more than a trifle scared, and I laid my other hand atop hers. Oh, it was bold, and Aerys would've had my head could he but have seen. She swallowed, once.
"The ship's barber said you nearly died, of drowning and the stabbing your final enemy tried to give you under the water. He missed your kidneys, I was told, by a mere inch."
I wanted to say something, reassure her, anything. I could not, for what could I have said? No foe's dagger would find me, no enemy's sword touch me? Lies. I'd been stabbed in front of her— well. Not quite, but... And I had taken a thrust of a sword into my gauntlet at Stoney Sept, from some enterprising Riverlander looking to force me to yield and so take me for ransom.
"A knight is supposed to be as courageous as a lion," I said finally.
Rhaella's eyes darkened with anger. "I need the knights loyal to me alive," she said. "I have two children I must think of." Then she laid her free hand atop her stomach. Nothing showed— it couldn't have, it'd be far too soon.
"If the Mother blesses me, perhaps I shall kindle. The King had me the night before we left," she said matter of factly. I did not tell her I knew. I pretended that the breakfast she'd fed us just the day before had been entirely normal.
I risked my own glance around, then lowered my voice. "If you'd have me rid you of a husband, gentle lady, you need but nod your head. I can take ship back as soon as we reach the island."
Oh, the words were treason of the worst sort, but Aerys was a man of the worst sort, and my life forfeit if ever it came to anyone's knowledge. I marvel at it still, that Rhaella shook her head.
"Braver than a lion," she said. Her eyes were angry no longer. And then she closed them and sighed. "Brave as a dragon, perhaps, and skilled in arms enough to be foolish. No," my Queen said to me. "I charge you with a quest harder than any other. You, Ser Roland, will help secure my son's rule. Teach him what it is to be a knight." I noted, very carefully, that she did not specify which son.
Can you beat goodness and piety, faith and mercy, courage and wisdom, into a boy of seven? No. I knew that, for I'd been a right little shit at seven and my father never despaired of strapping me when he thought I'd been too free with my tongue or loose with my chores. As I'd grown to manhood, the beatings had come less often. Stopped, altogether, once I had killed my first man as a squire of fifteen riding with Ser Hasty to help clear highwaymen from the King's roads, and I went home hardly at all, with months between trips.
I think perhaps my father did truly love me, but did not know how to display it or try to guide me to being virtuous without the beatings. It says, after all, in the Seven Pointed Star, that if you spare the rod or strap, you spoil the child.
But I promise you this: if I'd been Aerys' father, I'd have fucking drowned him like the runt of a litter and tried again.
Perhaps that is uncharitable to King Jaehaerys. He could not have known his son would go stark-raving fucking mad, but he'd allowed Rhaella to be forced into a terribly unhappy marriage, and so she'd suffered under her husband and brother's hand. Hasty might have forgiven Jaehaerys, but we did not speak often of his doomed love of our Queen. I thought then, as a young man of four-and-twenty, and still do, that the realm would have bled far, far less, had Aerys taken Joanna Lannister or Lyarra Stark or such to wife instead of his wife. Certainly Rhaella would likely have been less unhappy. The gods did not often fashion men into monsters such as Aerys, and typically they had some purpose for it. That I cannot speak to, for I am not the One-that-is-Seven.
But there, on the deck of a war galley heading towards the ancestral stronghold of the Targaryen dynasty, the Queen of Westeros charged a knight, her knight, with one of the most impossible tasks I'd ever be given. How do you forge a boy into a King worthy of the trust placed in him by the people? King, Lord Protector, the divinely chosen ruler of the land.
The Queen interrupted my thoughts, perhaps sensing how terrified I truly was of the prospect.
"Who do you think sent those men after us?"
"Not your husband, Your Grace," I replied instantly. That I could be certain of. "Aerys is mad, more mad than a dog with rabies, but he's canny enough still to know that having his Queen taken, or worse, on the streets of his capital is folly. No, not the King."
She poured another cup of watered wine for me, and I hid my frown in it. "If not Aerys," I thought aloud. "Robert Baratheon's father, Steffon, was popular in the city before his— before the shipwreck, yes?"
Rhaella nodded. "Happier times," she said.
"The Baratheons might still have men inclined to them in that city," I mused. "More, your husband's feud with the former Hand Lannister might have provided the impetus for Lannister to attempt such a gambit. And coup that would be for the rebels, I promise you that, My Queen."
"There was a time," Rhaella said sadly. "When Tywin and I had some affection for each other, and I thought perhaps..."
I committed treason and laid my hand on her own. "I understand," I said. "Happier times, yes?"
She nodded. "So the Lannisters or Baratheons, you think?"
"Yes, Your Grace." Very carefully, I patted her hand once, and then removed my own. She cast her eyes downwards, and I leaned back onto the make-shift pallet of blankets. "They died easily, perhaps too easily, to be knights of any measure or worth," I continued.
"I think, perhaps," I said. "Perhaps they were not knights but wore the accoutrements of such to misdirect suspicion. It's something I'd have done, were I the opposition. His hand was badly played, though, and they did not account for my friends."
"Could footpads have slain the men-at-arms they did so handily, Ser?" I shrugged, poured myself more wine.
"Maybe," I allowed. "With surprise and force of violence. Elements I prefer to employ myself, you understand." I did not think the Queen cared for a technical discussion of the aspects of leverage and grappling as they related to killing another man in a good steel harness, but certainly I knew she would understand leverage and grappling as they pertained to politics.
"They do have their uses," Rhaella said with a smile. "As exemplified by yourself. I do not think anyone expected you to tackle your foes off the gangplank yesterday morning, Roland Gaunt."
"If I were a wagering man, Your Grace," I said. "I'd lay odds on it being Lannister through hired men so there's no possibility of finding a direct connection back to him, or Baratheon partisans hoping to assist the rebels."
Then I took a glance around, and seeing no one around us still, with only Darry at a respectful and out of earshot distance, gave Her Grace my full attention. I leaned in close to the Queen. I hadn't meant to tell anyone, really, but I felt she needed the good cheer it might provide.
"I've paid some of the rougher sort in the city to keep an ear out for the army getting close. It is my intention to try to bring your grandson away from the city, should I return prior to the rebels investing it in a siege."
"The danger would be too great," Rhaella said. I shook my head.
"Too great for a large party capable of being tracked from Dragonstone, My Queen. I know little of ships, but Corlys, who I'd trust with my life, is half-ship himself. He can bring me into and out of the city at night in a small craft, and if the gods are smiling upon us, we'll bring little Aegon out." Or die trying, I didn't need to add.
"You shan't go," Rhaella commanded. "Viserys and Rhaenys can ill afford for three-fifths of the swords sworn to their defense to go haring off for my grandson. No," she said sadly. "We will entrust Aegon's care to Ser Lannister and the gods."
And what staunch defenders they are, I thought. A boy of fifteen and the gods? The Seven'd be hard-pressed to keep Jaime Lannister safe in a sack, one of the best swords I'd ever seen, let alone an infant.
I bowed my head. "As you command, Your Grace." And oh, how I admired the strength that it must have taken to order such.
I came back to the world on a pallet of blankets on the deck of a ship. I kept my eyes closed, kept my breathing even. The last thing I remembered was— drowning to death in the filth of the river outside of King's Landing, and grappling an enemy beneath the water.
The sounds of a ship filtered to me: sailors' calls, the chant of the rowers keeping time, the officers issuing orders. More, too: seagulls calling, the creak of the ship's hull. The air smelled of clean salt sea, with none of the oppressive stench of King's Landing.
And below it all, murmured prayers to the Mother and Warrior. Rhaella's voice was not strong, and I wondered how long she had been at my side. Viserys' voice followed along beside her, less sure of his prayer and words. Shouts from further down the deck interrupted the Queen and her son. My hand went to the sword that was usually belted at my hip, and I found it was not there. I searched next for my dagger, and that, too, was gone.
No matter, I thought, and opened my eyes. I was, am, a knight. If I must kill with my fists then I will. I tried to stand, to defend my lady, but a hand on my chest stopped me. Rhaella and her son were on their knees for the act of praying, and I admired her for her piety.
"It's well, Ser Roland," my lady said. "Your friends Corlys and Elbert are practicing their art, to the admiration of the ship's crew."
I nodded, and tried to speak. I let out a croak. No words came out, and the Prince himself handed me a goblet of watered wine at his mother's direction. I drank it off in one long swallow, and the Prince took the drinking vessel from me.
Rhaella wore a slim sea-green dress, and a bracelet and arm rings of gold. Her crown, too. Viserys was dressed in breeches of dark blue, and a somber doublet of red, with black stitching and embroidery. Both of them watched me, but then a smaller head crowned with dark ringlets came up from between them.
"Ser Roland's awake, grandmother," Rhaenys said.
"I see that, dear heart," the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms said. Rhaenys ignored her grandmother's admonitions and climbed onto my sword-arm.
"Grandmother said," she told me with all the seriousness a three year old could muster, "that you're a knight and knights protect princesses."
"I am, Princess," I told her. Her dark eyes watched me, seeing— what? I still do not know, but she saw something in me. Perhaps the knight I could be, a man of deep faith and piety, courageous as a lion and fierce as a wolf. A man like the knight I'd squired for, and let down every day of my life that I lay with loose women, blasphemed, and killed men out of hand because it was easier than taking their surrenders.
I was, in truth, not a good knight. Oh, I wasn't the mad dog that some lords kept leashed for the worst sort of butchery, but neither was I the paragons of chivalry that Sers Bonifer and Barristan Selmy were. But Rhaenys sat on my arm that sunny afternoon at sea, and I think perhaps she saw the knight I wanted to be.
"Leave off Ser Roland, my dove," Rhaella told her granddaughter. Rhaenys left my arm and wrapped her arms around Rhaella. I sat up.
"How is it I come to be on the ship, Your Grace?" I should have been dead. A knight, in armor, on the river floor? I should've drowned and rotted there for all eternity.
"I commanded the ship's crew rescue you, Ser. One of the sailors went in after you, and they pulled you up using the pulley system for the sails." An act of courage and skill, then. I made to stand, and when the Queen tried to stop me, I laid my hand on her own.
"I must give this man my thanks," I rasped. "It was an act of skill and daring, and I would see him rewarded."
"Oh, Roland." Rhaella said. Then, to Viserys and Rhaenys: "Go see Ser Darry, my lambs." Viserys gathered his niece's hand in his own and they went off down the deck, seeking the bear of a knight.
I managed to get to my knees, and the Queen took my hands in her own. "Viserys has begun learning the trade of a knight," she began. "From your brothers-in-arms. But they say, and Ser Darry concurs, that you are the best sword among them. If this exile is as long as I fear perhaps it might be, then it is my command you teach my son the strokes of the sword and other arms as may be advantageous for a Prince of the realm to learn."
Her eyes were deadly serious, and I thought of the boy that had previously been sheltered from the worst of his father's excesses. Then I thought of the army bearing down on the city of King's Landing, and Aerys' madness. It seemed to me then that it wasn't just swordsmanship Her Grace desired me to teach her son, but.... How to be a man, and a good one, at that.
I nearly laughed then. Surely Her Grace was not so hoodwinked as to think me a good man. But there was no amusement, no jape, in her face. Only the fading marks of her bastard of a husband and that son of a bitch my king. I nodded, instead.
"I won't beat him," I told her. "My knight beat me when I behaved poorly. But the gods know I deserved every strapping I got, and every morning shovelling dung out the stables, and some beatings I probably didn't get. But your lad's a Prince."
"You mistake me, Ser Roland," Rhaella said. "If Viserys errs so badly or behaves rudely enough to warrant it, strap him. I do not mean for you to merely teach him: the Prince must squire for a knight if he is to command. That is how it is, yes? The finest of lords learn humility and obedience as pages and squires, so they might thusly better command men?"
I nodded, then smiled. "Yes, my Queen. But the One-as-Seven know I wasn't particularly humble and obedient as a squire of nine years, let alone sixteen." The Queen laughed, amused by what I'd said. I examined the words in my head, trying to find where I had offered a joke or witticism. She laid a hand on my arm, and I wanted to promise her the world.
Instead I settled for pouring myself more watered wine from the skin laying next to me. Rhaella Targaryen took a careful glance around us for a heartbeat, and then her face relaxed from the stolid mask I was so used to her wearing.
She appeared weary and more than a trifle scared, and I laid my other hand atop hers. Oh, it was bold, and Aerys would've had my head could he but have seen. She swallowed, once.
"The ship's barber said you nearly died, of drowning and the stabbing your final enemy tried to give you under the water. He missed your kidneys, I was told, by a mere inch."
I wanted to say something, reassure her, anything. I could not, for what could I have said? No foe's dagger would find me, no enemy's sword touch me? Lies. I'd been stabbed in front of her— well. Not quite, but... And I had taken a thrust of a sword into my gauntlet at Stoney Sept, from some enterprising Riverlander looking to force me to yield and so take me for ransom.
"A knight is supposed to be as courageous as a lion," I said finally.
Rhaella's eyes darkened with anger. "I need the knights loyal to me alive," she said. "I have two children I must think of." Then she laid her free hand atop her stomach. Nothing showed— it couldn't have, it'd be far too soon.
"If the Mother blesses me, perhaps I shall kindle. The King had me the night before we left," she said matter of factly. I did not tell her I knew. I pretended that the breakfast she'd fed us just the day before had been entirely normal.
I risked my own glance around, then lowered my voice. "If you'd have me rid you of a husband, gentle lady, you need but nod your head. I can take ship back as soon as we reach the island."
Oh, the words were treason of the worst sort, but Aerys was a man of the worst sort, and my life forfeit if ever it came to anyone's knowledge. I marvel at it still, that Rhaella shook her head.
"Braver than a lion," she said. Her eyes were angry no longer. And then she closed them and sighed. "Brave as a dragon, perhaps, and skilled in arms enough to be foolish. No," my Queen said to me. "I charge you with a quest harder than any other. You, Ser Roland, will help secure my son's rule. Teach him what it is to be a knight." I noted, very carefully, that she did not specify which son.
Can you beat goodness and piety, faith and mercy, courage and wisdom, into a boy of seven? No. I knew that, for I'd been a right little shit at seven and my father never despaired of strapping me when he thought I'd been too free with my tongue or loose with my chores. As I'd grown to manhood, the beatings had come less often. Stopped, altogether, once I had killed my first man as a squire of fifteen riding with Ser Hasty to help clear highwaymen from the King's roads, and I went home hardly at all, with months between trips.
I think perhaps my father did truly love me, but did not know how to display it or try to guide me to being virtuous without the beatings. It says, after all, in the Seven Pointed Star, that if you spare the rod or strap, you spoil the child.
But I promise you this: if I'd been Aerys' father, I'd have fucking drowned him like the runt of a litter and tried again.
Perhaps that is uncharitable to King Jaehaerys. He could not have known his son would go stark-raving fucking mad, but he'd allowed Rhaella to be forced into a terribly unhappy marriage, and so she'd suffered under her husband and brother's hand. Hasty might have forgiven Jaehaerys, but we did not speak often of his doomed love of our Queen. I thought then, as a young man of four-and-twenty, and still do, that the realm would have bled far, far less, had Aerys taken Joanna Lannister or Lyarra Stark or such to wife instead of his wife. Certainly Rhaella would likely have been less unhappy. The gods did not often fashion men into monsters such as Aerys, and typically they had some purpose for it. That I cannot speak to, for I am not the One-that-is-Seven.
But there, on the deck of a war galley heading towards the ancestral stronghold of the Targaryen dynasty, the Queen of Westeros charged a knight, her knight, with one of the most impossible tasks I'd ever be given. How do you forge a boy into a King worthy of the trust placed in him by the people? King, Lord Protector, the divinely chosen ruler of the land.
The Queen interrupted my thoughts, perhaps sensing how terrified I truly was of the prospect.
"Who do you think sent those men after us?"
"Not your husband, Your Grace," I replied instantly. That I could be certain of. "Aerys is mad, more mad than a dog with rabies, but he's canny enough still to know that having his Queen taken, or worse, on the streets of his capital is folly. No, not the King."
She poured another cup of watered wine for me, and I hid my frown in it. "If not Aerys," I thought aloud. "Robert Baratheon's father, Steffon, was popular in the city before his— before the shipwreck, yes?"
Rhaella nodded. "Happier times," she said.
"The Baratheons might still have men inclined to them in that city," I mused. "More, your husband's feud with the former Hand Lannister might have provided the impetus for Lannister to attempt such a gambit. And coup that would be for the rebels, I promise you that, My Queen."
"There was a time," Rhaella said sadly. "When Tywin and I had some affection for each other, and I thought perhaps..."
I committed treason and laid my hand on her own. "I understand," I said. "Happier times, yes?"
She nodded. "So the Lannisters or Baratheons, you think?"
"Yes, Your Grace." Very carefully, I patted her hand once, and then removed my own. She cast her eyes downwards, and I leaned back onto the make-shift pallet of blankets. "They died easily, perhaps too easily, to be knights of any measure or worth," I continued.
"I think, perhaps," I said. "Perhaps they were not knights but wore the accoutrements of such to misdirect suspicion. It's something I'd have done, were I the opposition. His hand was badly played, though, and they did not account for my friends."
"Could footpads have slain the men-at-arms they did so handily, Ser?" I shrugged, poured myself more wine.
"Maybe," I allowed. "With surprise and force of violence. Elements I prefer to employ myself, you understand." I did not think the Queen cared for a technical discussion of the aspects of leverage and grappling as they related to killing another man in a good steel harness, but certainly I knew she would understand leverage and grappling as they pertained to politics.
"They do have their uses," Rhaella said with a smile. "As exemplified by yourself. I do not think anyone expected you to tackle your foes off the gangplank yesterday morning, Roland Gaunt."
"If I were a wagering man, Your Grace," I said. "I'd lay odds on it being Lannister through hired men so there's no possibility of finding a direct connection back to him, or Baratheon partisans hoping to assist the rebels."
Then I took a glance around, and seeing no one around us still, with only Darry at a respectful and out of earshot distance, gave Her Grace my full attention. I leaned in close to the Queen. I hadn't meant to tell anyone, really, but I felt she needed the good cheer it might provide.
"I've paid some of the rougher sort in the city to keep an ear out for the army getting close. It is my intention to try to bring your grandson away from the city, should I return prior to the rebels investing it in a siege."
"The danger would be too great," Rhaella said. I shook my head.
"Too great for a large party capable of being tracked from Dragonstone, My Queen. I know little of ships, but Corlys, who I'd trust with my life, is half-ship himself. He can bring me into and out of the city at night in a small craft, and if the gods are smiling upon us, we'll bring little Aegon out." Or die trying, I didn't need to add.
"You shan't go," Rhaella commanded. "Viserys and Rhaenys can ill afford for three-fifths of the swords sworn to their defense to go haring off for my grandson. No," she said sadly. "We will entrust Aegon's care to Ser Lannister and the gods."
And what staunch defenders they are, I thought. A boy of fifteen and the gods? The Seven'd be hard-pressed to keep Jaime Lannister safe in a sack, one of the best swords I'd ever seen, let alone an infant.
I bowed my head. "As you command, Your Grace." And oh, how I admired the strength that it must have taken to order such.
Thanks. I'm really not sure what I could be doing to attract more readers or commenters, but them's the breaks. Like I said at the start, there's not a whole lot in canon to go off for the characterization of these men, which just means there's more room for me to flex and try to make them real, both as men and as knights.
- Pronouns
- male
Got to say I am really enjoying this fic. Its an entirely new direction from any of the other ASOIAF fic that I have read. It also does an excellent job of humanizing the main characters so far. Far too many fic's drift off and try making their characters some sort of example of perfection. Usually to the works detriment. But no this one is giving me vibes of that time long ago when I first read The Three Musketeers. I love having characters with blatant and obvious flaws of character. Great job mano.
VI
Six
I poked my finger through the rent in the mail that supposedly protected the gaps of the front and back of my breast.
"Hmmm," Corlys said from above me. "How's your stab wound?"
"Bloody fine," Elbert said from opposite Corlys. They, and Lyonel, stood around me in a triangle as I sat on the deck of the ship, poking and prodding through my harness. The leather thongs would all need to be replaced, but the warship's commander of marines had ordered two of them to get the armor proper into a barrel of sand they carried for the purpose of scrubbing away rust on armor. They'd rolled it up and down the deck, competing to make a game of it while I sat, drank wine, and watched.
"Care to test me with swords, then?" I asked Elbert.
"Not particularly at the moment," he said. I smiled.
"Then be silent while your betters are about the business of being a knight." And being a knight was a business, make no mistake. Being captured or losing the harness would have ruined me, and my family. I could not afford to pay a ransom for myself and the armor, and nor could they. On the contrary, a rich ransom taken on the field at Stoney Sept could have seen me rich as a Castamere, before that family had ceased to exist courtesy of the King's former Hand. I knew Corlys might have stood my ransom for me, but I would not have asked. That was a debt I did not want between us, if it came to pass, and I'd rather die in the cells beneath a Northern or Vale lord's keep than see my family into penury or lean on Corlys for that kind of money.
"'Betters,' he says!" Elbert mimicked me. "I'll show you 'better,' just let me seat a horse," he griped.
"So you can take his head off at his shoulders?" Lyonel laughed. "No, Roland's too clever to be taken in by that. Try something else, prick."
"Speaking of pricks," Corlys said with a smile. "I bet Roland's looking forward to tumbling one of those dragonseed girls on the island, with hair as white as the driven snow."
I shrugged, and lifted my sabatons to light to examine the job that had been done on them by the ship's marines.
"I can't blame him," Elbert said. "Gods know I am."
I replaced my sabatons on the deck, stood, and then carefully bundled my armor into my trunk, stowed outside the captain's small cabin. I stretched my back with gentility, unwilling to reopen the stitching done to the wound— by the Queen herself, I'd been informed by Lyonel, his eyes wide at the time.
'And a neater job I've not seen, save on the stockings I'm wearing now,' he'd said. So, I thought. So.
I lifted my sword belt, and the sword that had been recovered from the riverbed by that same enterprising sailor, and picked my way over to the captain. He was a rangy man, with tow-colored hair and brown eyebrows, a weather beaten face and clear, green eyes. He left the tiller of the ship to his mate, and turned to me.
"Good fortune of the morning to you, Ser Knight," he said respectfully. I bowed to him.
"Good morning," I replied. "Do you have room on your crew for another marine?"
"Asking for yourself or one of your friends, eh, lad?"
I shook my head. "Not for me, master," I told him. "Your sailor that saved me— I'd like to do him a good turn, and if he will not accept knighthood, then pay for a breast and gauntlets at least, that will see you accept him as a marine."
The captain's teeth were rotting out of his head, and so he avoided showing them when he smiled, but he did smile. "You won't need to," he said, then spat darkly colored juice over the side of the ship.
"Our Queen, gods bless'er," he said piously, then made the sign of the seven-pointed star, "she's promised to see his harness paid for herself, and I've promised I'll see him onto my mate's ship Dragon's Fury. Hundred-forty oars, she is. Flagship of the squadron at Dragonstone, and Captain Longwaters is one of the finest captains I know."
"I see," I said. And I did. I nodded. "Thank you for your time, captain."
"No, ser knight," he said. "Thank you. My marines weren't in harness, you see, and if they'd gotten onto the ship those bastards could've been worse than a shark after a legless man, if you catch my meaning. Tackling two sons of bitches into water, in harness? One of the bravest things I've seen a man do. You're lucky I had a lad that can dive deep." He turned to return to the tiller, but then paused. As an afterthought, he added: "One of the stupidest, too."
It was at that, I agreed. Honestly, I should have been dead. The gods looked out for drunks, children, and fools, they said. I was neither a drunk nor a child, so a fool it must be. Still, I silently promised myself I'd not be taking my chances with that kind of thing again.
"Roland!" Corlys called. I turned, and he was holding Rhaenys, with Viserys following. "Our Prince and Princess wanted to see you up and about after your lying about in bed all yesterday, and so I have granted their wish." He grinned at me, and Rhaenys dug her hands into his hair.
"As you can see, my Prince, Princess," he continued. "Ser Roland Gaunt continues to be lazy and avail himself of the gracious hospitality of the Queen."
"Ser Roland's brave," Rhaenys told Corlys matter-of-factly.
"Is he fast with a sword?" Viserys asked. Elbert knelt beside the Prince. Lyonel was taking a turn on the oars, and soon it'd be Elbert and Corlys' turn while Lyonel took a rest.
"One of the fastest I've seen, my Prince," Elbert said. "He's a good friend and a brave warrior."
"Soldier," I interrupted. "Warriors are the killers of the mountain clans out of the North and Vale, the Ironborn berserkers. Brave men, courageous to a fault, though. And they don't know discretion. Their job is fighting. Mine's killing," I said.
"I see," Viserys said. Privately, I thought he didn't quite see at all.
***
We arrived at Dragonstone the island a while before noon on the day of the Mother's Birthing, and the ship's crew backed the war galley into the wharf area with as neat a skill and precision as any concentrated cavalry charge I've seen. The day was cool and clear, with not a cloud in sight. No ungainly descent into beach sand off the side of a warship's hull for our Queen, however. She and the royal children were met on the wharf by a small company of royal men-at-arms, men in good harness and Targaryen surcoats one and all. Each man of the twenty-one held a poleaxe upright, using an arm across the chest to brace it, and every poleaxe's buttspike thump'd into the wood of the wharf seven times, on the Queen's stepping onto the wharf.
I was the only one of the Queen's five knights not in harness, and I wanted to curse the wound I'd taken. Rhaella had insisted, though. I carried Rhaenys down the gangplank onto the wharf, while the Queen held Viserys' hand. We were followed by my friends and Ser Willem. Rhaenys had her arms wrapped around my neck, and the Princess was near as light as a bird.
"All right there, Your Grace?" I asked her. She laughed and nodded while Rhaella conducted the business of greeting our escort.
"I wish to go to the closest sept," Rhaella was saying. "We must give thanks to the gods for our safe journey across the sea, and pray for my lord husband and my son, Rhaegar, commanding the loyal forces against the wicked rebels."
The commander of the guard agreed, and off we set for the docktown's sept. The island's main port itself was neat and tidy, with sturdy red-and-gray brick buildings. The road, too, was brick, and the folk were clean and well dressed. They gave the appearance of a well-off town, and all of them cheered to see Rhaella.
She accepted their shouted well-wishes and greetings with gracious waves and nods, and Rhaenys waved wildly from her perch in my arm. The sept, when we arrived, was a seven-sided affair constructed of flagstone and brick, with a seven-pointed star topping a statue outside. There was a small green space in front of the sept, and the guards remained outside. Rhaella ordered my friends and I in with her and the children, and we followed.
The sept was brightly lit— stained glass windows let in the light, and they were set in each wall. The sun's light came through the image of the Warrior in bright mail, and Rhaella smiled to see it. The townspeople pressed into the sept behind us, and my friends and I formed a wall of steel between the royals and the townspeople.
"We must give thanks to the Warrior," she declared, and the people murmured behind her. The septon was a cheerful, portly fellow with ruddy hair and watery blue eyes, and he smiled broadly.
"A tad impromptu," he said happily, "but the Warrior's one face of the Seven I know knights are always happy to say a prayer to!"
"I would especially like to commend to the Warrior the knights in my service," Rhaella said. "Their courage and dedication in these trying times is a salve to my heart."
The septon led the prayers to the Warrior, then the Mother, considering it was a feast day to Her. After those two, prayers to the rest of the Seven followed. The catechism of religion and ritual of being enveloped in the embrace of the septry was—
Familiar and warm. That is the only way to describe that stone sept on Dragonstone, comfortable, an embrace. For all my slacking at prayers, at devotionals, I truly loved the gods. I stood my vigil while the Queen prayed, and I felt sticky and wet on my side. Ah, I thought. I had reopened the wound around Rhaella's stitching, perhaps from the carrying of Rhaenys. So perhaps the familiar and warm sensation I'd been feeling had been my bleeding slowly.
It was sore, but not overly painful— like a rock in a boot, and so I bore the pain. Bore the pain, and thought about the pain mothers the world over go through in the birthing of their children— an intentional aspect of the Mother's feast days, I was later told. I suspect that it is an intentional aspect meant to make kings and soldiers think twice before putting some mother's son into their graves early, and forever. Not that I ever did so as a callous youth of twenty-four, so sure I knew right from wrong and could dispense it with the sword at my belt as easily as a man spits.
When at last the prayers finished, the Queen allowed herself to be secured firmly in a hired carriage with her son and granddaughter. The men-at-arms mounted their horses, and my friends mounted the extra rounceys brought down from the castle. I remained in the sept, and the septon returned to find me having taken residence in the confessional.
He took his station on the other side of the confessional booth, and made the star.
"What may I help you with, son?" I judged the septon to be nearly twice my age, and so I let the man calling me 'son' pass without comment.
"I have sinned, septon," I told the priest. He made the sign of the star again, and then to my surprise smiled.
"Haven't we all? But tell me what these grievous sins are, that weigh so heavily on you." I remained silent for a moment, in contemplation. I decided then, that I'd skip the fornication and lustful thoughts. Those were, at their heart, venial sins that could be remedied with proper contemplation of the gods and my role in their plan for us. Instead I dumped the cartload on him.
"I have had treasonous thoughts, master." He remained silent, for a heart-beat or thirty. It was a tactic, one that Ser Hasty had often employed on me in my squiring. Wise to it, I too, kept silent. Finally:
"What kind of treasonous thoughts?"
"I have desired to kill the rightfully anointed and true King of Westeros," I said. "I've burned for it, like I have burned to touch a woman. I've thought about how easy it would be," I sneered. "One stroke of the sword, and I would rid the realm of a madman and monster. But the gods have a plan, don't they? One they fashioned Aerys for, as surely as they crafted me to knighthood? What, then, is the plan?"
The septon sighed.
"Who can know?" he asked me. "Oh, I know what most people want to hear: the godhead is there, the gods have infinite wisdom and love for their children. We believe not because it is easy, Ser, but because it is hard. The demons of the East would have us believe in them as gods, for they pass their tricks off as miracles."
He paused, for a moment, and then nodded as if having something confirmed.
"No, ser knight, you committed no treason. You did not lay with your liege's wife, or take the King's life. Thought turns to action often enough, but you have mastered yourself thus far. Who is better, the Star asks us. The man who has been tempted yet triumphs, or the man who knows no temptation to sin, and thus is never tested by the god? No, ser knight, you will have no contrition from me. Murderous thought turned to murder is sin, but the desire itself is not."
We spoke at length for a while longer, but some things must be kept between a person and their confessor. I still say prayers for that septon, all these years later, and I hope he was a good man. All too often those charged with being better fall far too short.
I poked my finger through the rent in the mail that supposedly protected the gaps of the front and back of my breast.
"Hmmm," Corlys said from above me. "How's your stab wound?"
"Bloody fine," Elbert said from opposite Corlys. They, and Lyonel, stood around me in a triangle as I sat on the deck of the ship, poking and prodding through my harness. The leather thongs would all need to be replaced, but the warship's commander of marines had ordered two of them to get the armor proper into a barrel of sand they carried for the purpose of scrubbing away rust on armor. They'd rolled it up and down the deck, competing to make a game of it while I sat, drank wine, and watched.
"Care to test me with swords, then?" I asked Elbert.
"Not particularly at the moment," he said. I smiled.
"Then be silent while your betters are about the business of being a knight." And being a knight was a business, make no mistake. Being captured or losing the harness would have ruined me, and my family. I could not afford to pay a ransom for myself and the armor, and nor could they. On the contrary, a rich ransom taken on the field at Stoney Sept could have seen me rich as a Castamere, before that family had ceased to exist courtesy of the King's former Hand. I knew Corlys might have stood my ransom for me, but I would not have asked. That was a debt I did not want between us, if it came to pass, and I'd rather die in the cells beneath a Northern or Vale lord's keep than see my family into penury or lean on Corlys for that kind of money.
"'Betters,' he says!" Elbert mimicked me. "I'll show you 'better,' just let me seat a horse," he griped.
"So you can take his head off at his shoulders?" Lyonel laughed. "No, Roland's too clever to be taken in by that. Try something else, prick."
"Speaking of pricks," Corlys said with a smile. "I bet Roland's looking forward to tumbling one of those dragonseed girls on the island, with hair as white as the driven snow."
I shrugged, and lifted my sabatons to light to examine the job that had been done on them by the ship's marines.
"I can't blame him," Elbert said. "Gods know I am."
I replaced my sabatons on the deck, stood, and then carefully bundled my armor into my trunk, stowed outside the captain's small cabin. I stretched my back with gentility, unwilling to reopen the stitching done to the wound— by the Queen herself, I'd been informed by Lyonel, his eyes wide at the time.
'And a neater job I've not seen, save on the stockings I'm wearing now,' he'd said. So, I thought. So.
I lifted my sword belt, and the sword that had been recovered from the riverbed by that same enterprising sailor, and picked my way over to the captain. He was a rangy man, with tow-colored hair and brown eyebrows, a weather beaten face and clear, green eyes. He left the tiller of the ship to his mate, and turned to me.
"Good fortune of the morning to you, Ser Knight," he said respectfully. I bowed to him.
"Good morning," I replied. "Do you have room on your crew for another marine?"
"Asking for yourself or one of your friends, eh, lad?"
I shook my head. "Not for me, master," I told him. "Your sailor that saved me— I'd like to do him a good turn, and if he will not accept knighthood, then pay for a breast and gauntlets at least, that will see you accept him as a marine."
The captain's teeth were rotting out of his head, and so he avoided showing them when he smiled, but he did smile. "You won't need to," he said, then spat darkly colored juice over the side of the ship.
"Our Queen, gods bless'er," he said piously, then made the sign of the seven-pointed star, "she's promised to see his harness paid for herself, and I've promised I'll see him onto my mate's ship Dragon's Fury. Hundred-forty oars, she is. Flagship of the squadron at Dragonstone, and Captain Longwaters is one of the finest captains I know."
"I see," I said. And I did. I nodded. "Thank you for your time, captain."
"No, ser knight," he said. "Thank you. My marines weren't in harness, you see, and if they'd gotten onto the ship those bastards could've been worse than a shark after a legless man, if you catch my meaning. Tackling two sons of bitches into water, in harness? One of the bravest things I've seen a man do. You're lucky I had a lad that can dive deep." He turned to return to the tiller, but then paused. As an afterthought, he added: "One of the stupidest, too."
It was at that, I agreed. Honestly, I should have been dead. The gods looked out for drunks, children, and fools, they said. I was neither a drunk nor a child, so a fool it must be. Still, I silently promised myself I'd not be taking my chances with that kind of thing again.
"Roland!" Corlys called. I turned, and he was holding Rhaenys, with Viserys following. "Our Prince and Princess wanted to see you up and about after your lying about in bed all yesterday, and so I have granted their wish." He grinned at me, and Rhaenys dug her hands into his hair.
"As you can see, my Prince, Princess," he continued. "Ser Roland Gaunt continues to be lazy and avail himself of the gracious hospitality of the Queen."
"Ser Roland's brave," Rhaenys told Corlys matter-of-factly.
"Is he fast with a sword?" Viserys asked. Elbert knelt beside the Prince. Lyonel was taking a turn on the oars, and soon it'd be Elbert and Corlys' turn while Lyonel took a rest.
"One of the fastest I've seen, my Prince," Elbert said. "He's a good friend and a brave warrior."
"Soldier," I interrupted. "Warriors are the killers of the mountain clans out of the North and Vale, the Ironborn berserkers. Brave men, courageous to a fault, though. And they don't know discretion. Their job is fighting. Mine's killing," I said.
"I see," Viserys said. Privately, I thought he didn't quite see at all.
***
We arrived at Dragonstone the island a while before noon on the day of the Mother's Birthing, and the ship's crew backed the war galley into the wharf area with as neat a skill and precision as any concentrated cavalry charge I've seen. The day was cool and clear, with not a cloud in sight. No ungainly descent into beach sand off the side of a warship's hull for our Queen, however. She and the royal children were met on the wharf by a small company of royal men-at-arms, men in good harness and Targaryen surcoats one and all. Each man of the twenty-one held a poleaxe upright, using an arm across the chest to brace it, and every poleaxe's buttspike thump'd into the wood of the wharf seven times, on the Queen's stepping onto the wharf.
I was the only one of the Queen's five knights not in harness, and I wanted to curse the wound I'd taken. Rhaella had insisted, though. I carried Rhaenys down the gangplank onto the wharf, while the Queen held Viserys' hand. We were followed by my friends and Ser Willem. Rhaenys had her arms wrapped around my neck, and the Princess was near as light as a bird.
"All right there, Your Grace?" I asked her. She laughed and nodded while Rhaella conducted the business of greeting our escort.
"I wish to go to the closest sept," Rhaella was saying. "We must give thanks to the gods for our safe journey across the sea, and pray for my lord husband and my son, Rhaegar, commanding the loyal forces against the wicked rebels."
The commander of the guard agreed, and off we set for the docktown's sept. The island's main port itself was neat and tidy, with sturdy red-and-gray brick buildings. The road, too, was brick, and the folk were clean and well dressed. They gave the appearance of a well-off town, and all of them cheered to see Rhaella.
She accepted their shouted well-wishes and greetings with gracious waves and nods, and Rhaenys waved wildly from her perch in my arm. The sept, when we arrived, was a seven-sided affair constructed of flagstone and brick, with a seven-pointed star topping a statue outside. There was a small green space in front of the sept, and the guards remained outside. Rhaella ordered my friends and I in with her and the children, and we followed.
The sept was brightly lit— stained glass windows let in the light, and they were set in each wall. The sun's light came through the image of the Warrior in bright mail, and Rhaella smiled to see it. The townspeople pressed into the sept behind us, and my friends and I formed a wall of steel between the royals and the townspeople.
"We must give thanks to the Warrior," she declared, and the people murmured behind her. The septon was a cheerful, portly fellow with ruddy hair and watery blue eyes, and he smiled broadly.
"A tad impromptu," he said happily, "but the Warrior's one face of the Seven I know knights are always happy to say a prayer to!"
"I would especially like to commend to the Warrior the knights in my service," Rhaella said. "Their courage and dedication in these trying times is a salve to my heart."
The septon led the prayers to the Warrior, then the Mother, considering it was a feast day to Her. After those two, prayers to the rest of the Seven followed. The catechism of religion and ritual of being enveloped in the embrace of the septry was—
Familiar and warm. That is the only way to describe that stone sept on Dragonstone, comfortable, an embrace. For all my slacking at prayers, at devotionals, I truly loved the gods. I stood my vigil while the Queen prayed, and I felt sticky and wet on my side. Ah, I thought. I had reopened the wound around Rhaella's stitching, perhaps from the carrying of Rhaenys. So perhaps the familiar and warm sensation I'd been feeling had been my bleeding slowly.
It was sore, but not overly painful— like a rock in a boot, and so I bore the pain. Bore the pain, and thought about the pain mothers the world over go through in the birthing of their children— an intentional aspect of the Mother's feast days, I was later told. I suspect that it is an intentional aspect meant to make kings and soldiers think twice before putting some mother's son into their graves early, and forever. Not that I ever did so as a callous youth of twenty-four, so sure I knew right from wrong and could dispense it with the sword at my belt as easily as a man spits.
When at last the prayers finished, the Queen allowed herself to be secured firmly in a hired carriage with her son and granddaughter. The men-at-arms mounted their horses, and my friends mounted the extra rounceys brought down from the castle. I remained in the sept, and the septon returned to find me having taken residence in the confessional.
He took his station on the other side of the confessional booth, and made the star.
"What may I help you with, son?" I judged the septon to be nearly twice my age, and so I let the man calling me 'son' pass without comment.
"I have sinned, septon," I told the priest. He made the sign of the star again, and then to my surprise smiled.
"Haven't we all? But tell me what these grievous sins are, that weigh so heavily on you." I remained silent for a moment, in contemplation. I decided then, that I'd skip the fornication and lustful thoughts. Those were, at their heart, venial sins that could be remedied with proper contemplation of the gods and my role in their plan for us. Instead I dumped the cartload on him.
"I have had treasonous thoughts, master." He remained silent, for a heart-beat or thirty. It was a tactic, one that Ser Hasty had often employed on me in my squiring. Wise to it, I too, kept silent. Finally:
"What kind of treasonous thoughts?"
"I have desired to kill the rightfully anointed and true King of Westeros," I said. "I've burned for it, like I have burned to touch a woman. I've thought about how easy it would be," I sneered. "One stroke of the sword, and I would rid the realm of a madman and monster. But the gods have a plan, don't they? One they fashioned Aerys for, as surely as they crafted me to knighthood? What, then, is the plan?"
The septon sighed.
"Who can know?" he asked me. "Oh, I know what most people want to hear: the godhead is there, the gods have infinite wisdom and love for their children. We believe not because it is easy, Ser, but because it is hard. The demons of the East would have us believe in them as gods, for they pass their tricks off as miracles."
He paused, for a moment, and then nodded as if having something confirmed.
"No, ser knight, you committed no treason. You did not lay with your liege's wife, or take the King's life. Thought turns to action often enough, but you have mastered yourself thus far. Who is better, the Star asks us. The man who has been tempted yet triumphs, or the man who knows no temptation to sin, and thus is never tested by the god? No, ser knight, you will have no contrition from me. Murderous thought turned to murder is sin, but the desire itself is not."
We spoke at length for a while longer, but some things must be kept between a person and their confessor. I still say prayers for that septon, all these years later, and I hope he was a good man. All too often those charged with being better fall far too short.
Its an interesting story with good OCs so far. I'm impressed with how well they blend in without feeling out of place. So obviously the survival of Rheanys and the support that Roland and his friend will eventually provide to the Targaryens in exile will create a very different future in terms of character development and perhaps political as well. Will
Rhaella survive?(don't have to answer) And its always intriguing seeing a character dealing with their spirituality and right and wrong.
Rhaella survive?(don't have to answer) And its always intriguing seeing a character dealing with their spirituality and right and wrong.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
This is very well written, which makes for an interesting read. I do wonder what the plan is for the story's future development, however - it is honestly not very clear it this is meant to merely be a sort of character exploration of a loyalist knight's life in Westeros, or if there is a greater plot intended to eventually intersect with the canon Westerosi cast.
Thank you! Yeah, Roland is a knight, and one of the things a knight is taught is loyalty to their liege and obedience to their captains. What happens when they go cross-wise to each other? When the knight knows he's a killer and that's what he was raised for, but finds no particular pleasure in killing? Those are some of the questions I set out to answer when writing this.
Thank you! I'm planning on having a greater plot, but the nature of starting this early before canon means I'll eventually have to have either a girthy timeskip or a lot of smaller ones.
VII
Seven
It was not my first time on the island of Dragonstone. Last I had come, six years ago, it had been with Ser Hasty, still his squire. He had been named a witness in a legal case brought against one of the minor lords. The lord was barely better than a hedge knight with land, in truth, and Hasty would have ignored the summons had Rhaella not spoken with him in favor of it. So to Dragonstone we had gone, and now, years later, to Dragonstone I returned. A knight in my own right, and a knight charged with the care and guidance of a boy soon to become a man.
The island was remarkably fertile; perhaps a byproduct of the ancient, dead volcano it sat on. The fields and small farming villages that spread across the land created a patchwork of green orchards, brown wheat, green vegetable fields, green pasturage for animals. It was well-ordered and neat, and I saw no signs of the usual boundary disputes and disorder brought about by a long-absent lord.
I rode a rouncey, with the young Princess Rhaenys in front of me holding the reins while I directed the horse with my knees, and held her secure in front of me. I was unarmored and unhelmed, though I had a hauberk of mail and my helm bundled behind me. On Dragonstone, though, that ancient fastness of the Targaryens, that was a mere precaution. We followed the Queen, riding in a dark brown skirt and red shirt. Her white hair streamed behind her, and Ser Darry led a pony that the Prince sat.
At a crossroads where the road we followed intersected with the road we meant to take, the Queen reined up her horse, bringing us to a halt. Smiling broadly, she turned to us. Whispers that the Queen surrounded herself with eligible bachelors, all young, all handsome, had reached me from King's Landing. As Rhaenys tried to fiddle with the pommel of my sword, I thought that the Queen herself had had that same word. But she'd laughed gaily when I'd brought it up, and so I let the matter settle. I had brooded on it, of course, because those rumors were the kind that might see us all a head shorter, but Aerys couldn't reach across the bay and snatch us all up. Yet I brooded still, for the Lord Whisperer might very well have men of his own on the island.
Rhaella had settled into running the affairs of Dragonstone like she'd been born to it, and where there had been minor strife or disorder before, she had ordered it. She sat on that ancient throne of black rock shaped with dragonfire in the Great Hall of the keep, in judgement of each case brought to her to hear, and she pronounced justice and rule. Some of Rhaegar's men, like the steward and master of the stable had attempted to resist Rhaella's usurpation of her son's role as Prince of the island.
I'd paid them visits in the night, after she had expressed her impatience with their attempts to stonewall her taking over the rule of the island— "until such time as my son returns," Rhaella had said, eyes sharp. After my visit, they'd muttered apologies through bloody mouths and blackened eyes.
I smiled, satisfied with a job done well, and rubbed at the bruises on my knuckles. Now we were a month and a half into our stay on the island, and the Queen had not yet begun to show a pregnancy. But she thought she was, and this might well prove her last chance to ride a horse astride it. So we'd gone out, so Rhaella could ride, and she could demonstrate to her son and granddaughter the value in showing their smallfolk the faces of their rulers.
Miles off, across the water that we could see from up the slope of the island, thunderclouds gathered and looked set to batter the island with a storm later, in the night. Three of the Prince's falconers rode with us, in case the Queen wanted to do some hawking, and Rhaenys seemed at turns fascinated with the huge golden eagle that was the Queen's due.
The eagle's fierce eyes watched Rhaenys, perhaps thinking it might find a morsel of its own should the chance arise, and I smiled.
Rhaenys watched the eagle, hands gripping the reins of our horse. "Ser," she said like it was part of my name. "Where do birds that big come from?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. There are falcons and hawks native to Westeros, and I've hawked with a tiercel often enough, but yon bird is a big bast- big one, isn't it?"
The Princess nodded, seriously, and reached up to try to tug at the braids of my hair. I let her, and watched the eagle. And, out of the corner of my eye, watched the Queen watch us.
We had, apparently, stopped to let a party of smallfolk leading a cart full of hay. Rhaenys' attention turned to that, and I leaned over to Prince Viserys.
"There's more to being a knight than sitting a horse well," I told him. "Which you do, by the by, and a credit to your riding master, that is, young Prince."
"Thank you, Ser," he acknowledged. "What else is there, though?"
"Fighting well," I said. "But more importantly, knowing when and why to fight. Keeping the sword sheathed is as much a decision, and oftentimes a better one than to draw it. I drew steel the day we took ship for this island in the defense of your mother, the Queen, yourself, and your niece." I left out, conveniently, that I'd also left three men loyal to the King dead in a street near the Street of Silk. Why? Because they'd insulted the Queen in my and Elbert's hearing and then refused to apologize.
"I will," I emphasized, "draw my sword to fulfill the oaths of a knight, but there might come a time when you are sorely tested by those oaths, and must come to decide which ones you value more highly. Loyalty and obedience? Protecting the innocent, a woman?"
I did not think that Viserys would be a bad King, or a monster the likes of his father, but it would do him no favors if I slackened in my vigilance.
"I will," I told him, "endeavor with all my utmost to instruct and teach you in accordance with your mother's wishes. That includes the reasons a knight may, may not, need to draw his sword."
"I think I understand," Viserys said.
I nodded at him. "There is a philosopher among the septons that wrote 'he who knows how little he understands is wisest.' Ask questions, my Prince," I suggested. "I'm certainly not afraid to admit when I do not know things."
He sat his pony, thought for a short while. "Why did we stop for the smallfolk?"
I smiled in approval. "We're about business today," I said. "Your Queen mother intends to ride to the small village of Celston, and sit in judgement of a legal case. Murder," I added as an aside cheerfully. "But the business of that court will wait on her pleasure, while those smallfolk are about business, too. Their reeve might take it amiss if they're delayed, and the Queen allowing them to pass means that they won't be." As I spoke, the topic of our discussion removed their hats at seeing the Queen, and bowed very, very low. They continued on their way, though, without having to stop and kneel. Corlys said something to Rhaella that made her laugh, and Viserys' eyes lit up.
"You're all much nicer to Mother than Father is," the boy said.
I didn't say anything to that. Rhaenys had fallen asleep, it seemed. Viserys didn't ask me any more questions that ride, but I think perhaps he was trying to turnover my words in his head, and reconcile the words I'd spoken and the actions I'd taken with what he'd seen of his father.
It's not often discussed now, but Aerys was a knight. Maybe all our kings ought to have been.
~*~
Rhaella spoke with us after we received word of the Sack. The men I'd paid, the boat I'd had Corlys lay in for us.... For naught. Rhaella had conducted none of the business of ruling for a week. It was seven days I spent pacing the curtain wall of the castle, staring across the water, and butchering pells in the keep's arming yard. I had wanted to try to rescue an innocent woman and babe, but Tywin Lannister's forces had moved too fast for me to make my play.
So for seven nights, too, I had prayed in the keep's sept and lit candles to the Mother and Father.
"The Maester has confirmed it," Rhaella told us. The moon shone in through the window to the lord's solar, helping add to the light from the candles and the fireplace. Her son and granddaughter were safely in bed in the room over, in Rhaella's own chambers. It was a small group, assembled in that solar decorated with rich hardwoods and a tapestry depicting the Conquest.
"I am," she continued, "by the grace of the Mother and Father, pregnant once more." Silence descended following Rhaella's pronouncement. Darry was the first to congratulate the Queen, then Corlys, then Elbert, and then Lyonel. I stayed seated, and silent. Rhaella looked at me, raised an eyebrow.
"Your Grace is no coward," I said. And I spoke slowly, tired from my nights of prayer, unwilling to be sharp with a lady who'd had nothing but sharpness and cruelty from her husband. "But it is my belief that events will conspire against us, and the island will, eventually, become unsafe."
"Roland's no coward, Your Grace," Elbert vouched. "Your carrying is a blessing, no doubt, but... I believe he's right, my Queen. And the rebels are likely building ships to contest with the Royal Fleet."
"Three yards on the East coast of the realm," Corlys said.
I stood up, when he spoke. I clasped my hands behind my back, and strode to the window. "Gull Town, White Harbor, King's Landing. Three yards, only one of which has traditionally built hulls for warships. Four if they're buying from the Braavosi Arsenal, and the Arsenal can put together a warship a day. I do not know the Usurper, or his Hand, so I don't know how likely it is that they would buy from Braavos. But a fleet is dangerous only so long as it exists, and they can put more hulls in the water than we can expand the fleet."
I turned back to the group and leaned against the sill of the window.
"What would you suggest, Ser Velaryon?" That was Darry, eyes lidded half-closed, but still sharp.
"Pay off the Royal Fleet with what we have here on the island," he said. "They served loyally, did their utmost, but asking them to die for a cause on the backfoot would be folly, when we might prevail upon them in the future. All of us take ship as the Queen and children's defenders, to the East. We might find a welcome in Braavos, even if the Arsenal was selling warships to the Usurper. Politics is different from business, after all."
"Whatever we do," I said. "Whatever we do, the King is dead. His misrule was cruel, and the realm suffered for it. If we go into exile across the Narrow Sea, I mean to make my oath to a Targaryen. To a Queen."
"There's never been a Queen that ruled in her own right, Roland, you simpleminded dolt," Lyonel said.
"There've been ladies that have ruled in their own right," I snarled. "Precedent can be damned— there's never been a Queen exiled by an upstart cousin from a bastard line of her family, either, has there? The Prince is a boy of eight, and Rhaenys three years. You mean to make the King a boy of eight, that still crawls into bed with his mother after a nightmare?"
"Be silent, Roland Gaunt," Rhaella said. I shut my mouth. She stayed seated. I went to stand before her. She exchanged a glance with Darry. I wondered what she thought, that I'd so easily piss on the tradition and precedent of the succession customs of the Iron Throne. I drew my sword. The other swords in the room came out, and Darry watched me with narrowed eyes.
"Her Grace has consigned the defense of herself, her son, granddaughter, and unborn child to us," I said. "She has consigned the defense of her realm and titles, her lands and rights, to us." I tossed my sword to the Queen's feet, and it clattered there on the stone of the solar's floor. "I will die for them, if that is what the gods have writ of my life, but I will die in exercise of the defense the Queen Rhaella has charged me with."
"A touch dramatic," Darry growled. "But you're a damned fool if you think that the rest of us wouldn't, Gaunt."
"Dramatic, yes," Corlys said. Then he shrugged, and stroked his mustache. "Roland is correct on a point or two, though. Her Grace is the last adult Targaryen. The line of succession remains unbroken were she to declare herself Queen Regnant, as Viserys is her oldest remaining child. And even then, were the worst to happen... Rhaenys is a spare, should the worst come to happen and Your Grace and your son pass before us from this world and into the next."
"If I am to be Queen ruling," Rhaella interrupted. She stood. "Then a council must be selected, though it governs nothing for me at the moment. That could change. Ser Willem, will you be the Hand?"
"I will, Your Grace," he said solemnly.
She nodded, and then turned to my friends.
"Ser Corlys, then to you will pass the cup of Lord Admiral and Master of Ships, and Treasurer, too. Ser Elbert, you shall be Our Master of Whisperers. Ser Lyonel shall be the Chief Justiciar."
I swallowed. There remained only the Kingsguard and Maester, and I certainly wasn't qualified to be either. Oh, I was a dab hand with the lance, and I could exchange sword strokes with most of the realm and give a good accounting of myself, but the likes of Ser Barristan Selmy or Arthur Dayne would see my gutting in three heartbeats, perhaps four if I'd had a good night's sleep.
"Kneel, Ser Roland." I knelt. Rhaella scooped up my sword from where it lay on the ground, and pressed it into my hands, tip down. "The Kingsguard is an old and honorable institution," the Queen said.
"But what remains of it is now in service to the Usurper Baratheon, and so it is no true Kingsguard. I will, at a later date, name a guard from those who remain loyal. For now, though: Ser Roland Gaunt, I, Rhaella Targaryen, First of Her Name, name you Lord Protector of Westeros and the Iron Throne, for there is no Westeros if there is no Iron Throne. To you shall pass all matters martial and to you, especially, I charge with the defense of my person, and that of my son and granddaughter."
I bowed my head, and wept.
~*~
In the sept, at noon, Rhaella was anointed with the seven oils, crowned again, and into her hands was placed a scepter topped with the Targaryen three-headed dragon. The goldsmith in the port town on the island had labored all sennight to finish it in time, and it had been delivered about an hour before the appointed hour for the coronation. Queen Rhaella Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, etc, etc, was crowned in the port sept on the island of Dragonstone, three weeks after the death of her husband, King Aerys, and a month and two weeks after the death of her eldest son, Rhaegar.
The sept was a picture of lights: candles, open windows at noon, jam-packed. Rhaella had knelt in vigil the night before after fasting all day, and we had sat in prayer and vigil with her. The procession had started at the sept in the keep, and then proceeded down to the port. The crowd lining the route had cheered, of course. The septon I had spoken with the first day we'd arrived performed the ceremony for Her Grace, and after Rhaella was crowned, she, in turn, formally invested Viserys as Prince of Dragonstone.
We knelt, and made our oaths.
Rhaella took no oaths from the men native to the island: the town's mayor, and the men wealthy enough to own arms and harness. After sitting for a while at the feast laid on by the town fathers, and a meandering conversation discussing nothing of note, the mayor shoved his chair back from the tables. He leaned closer to the Queen to speak with her.
"An excellent, if modest, ceremony, Your Grace," he said. "If it pleases you, though, perhaps we might have the chance to discuss matters of import?"
"I shall allow it," Rhaella said.
"Surely your coronation means you intend to contest the Usurper in the Red Keep, and we are all very invested in your cause," the mayor said. "However, surely you do not mean to contest Dragonstone, island or keep? You have but five knights sworn to your cause..." he trailed off, perhaps unwilling to impugn the prowess of my friends, Darry, or I.
Rhaella snorted. "My knightage is true, courageous and worthy of their knighthoods. But I know folly, and 'twould be a folly to fight for the island with five knights and what force of arms may be mustered from the island and garrison. More, I would not subject the people of the island or those who call the keep home to a sack by the Usurper's fiends."
"Then Your Grace intends... What? To surrender?"
"Never," Rhaella near-hissed. "I will not leave for my son or granddaughter an inheritance of surrender. We cannot contest the realm through force of arms at the moment. So what, I ask you. There are other means, and there are yet friends I might prevail upon when the time presents itself. This is a momentary setback, and I have decided a course for the continuance of both the Struggle, and the Targaryen dynasty."
Rhaella was lying. She'd named me her Lord Protector, and by nature of that position, I would have been party to any decision she would have made about leaving Dragonstone, and where we would be going. I could only wonder why.
It was not my first time on the island of Dragonstone. Last I had come, six years ago, it had been with Ser Hasty, still his squire. He had been named a witness in a legal case brought against one of the minor lords. The lord was barely better than a hedge knight with land, in truth, and Hasty would have ignored the summons had Rhaella not spoken with him in favor of it. So to Dragonstone we had gone, and now, years later, to Dragonstone I returned. A knight in my own right, and a knight charged with the care and guidance of a boy soon to become a man.
The island was remarkably fertile; perhaps a byproduct of the ancient, dead volcano it sat on. The fields and small farming villages that spread across the land created a patchwork of green orchards, brown wheat, green vegetable fields, green pasturage for animals. It was well-ordered and neat, and I saw no signs of the usual boundary disputes and disorder brought about by a long-absent lord.
I rode a rouncey, with the young Princess Rhaenys in front of me holding the reins while I directed the horse with my knees, and held her secure in front of me. I was unarmored and unhelmed, though I had a hauberk of mail and my helm bundled behind me. On Dragonstone, though, that ancient fastness of the Targaryens, that was a mere precaution. We followed the Queen, riding in a dark brown skirt and red shirt. Her white hair streamed behind her, and Ser Darry led a pony that the Prince sat.
At a crossroads where the road we followed intersected with the road we meant to take, the Queen reined up her horse, bringing us to a halt. Smiling broadly, she turned to us. Whispers that the Queen surrounded herself with eligible bachelors, all young, all handsome, had reached me from King's Landing. As Rhaenys tried to fiddle with the pommel of my sword, I thought that the Queen herself had had that same word. But she'd laughed gaily when I'd brought it up, and so I let the matter settle. I had brooded on it, of course, because those rumors were the kind that might see us all a head shorter, but Aerys couldn't reach across the bay and snatch us all up. Yet I brooded still, for the Lord Whisperer might very well have men of his own on the island.
Rhaella had settled into running the affairs of Dragonstone like she'd been born to it, and where there had been minor strife or disorder before, she had ordered it. She sat on that ancient throne of black rock shaped with dragonfire in the Great Hall of the keep, in judgement of each case brought to her to hear, and she pronounced justice and rule. Some of Rhaegar's men, like the steward and master of the stable had attempted to resist Rhaella's usurpation of her son's role as Prince of the island.
I'd paid them visits in the night, after she had expressed her impatience with their attempts to stonewall her taking over the rule of the island— "until such time as my son returns," Rhaella had said, eyes sharp. After my visit, they'd muttered apologies through bloody mouths and blackened eyes.
I smiled, satisfied with a job done well, and rubbed at the bruises on my knuckles. Now we were a month and a half into our stay on the island, and the Queen had not yet begun to show a pregnancy. But she thought she was, and this might well prove her last chance to ride a horse astride it. So we'd gone out, so Rhaella could ride, and she could demonstrate to her son and granddaughter the value in showing their smallfolk the faces of their rulers.
Miles off, across the water that we could see from up the slope of the island, thunderclouds gathered and looked set to batter the island with a storm later, in the night. Three of the Prince's falconers rode with us, in case the Queen wanted to do some hawking, and Rhaenys seemed at turns fascinated with the huge golden eagle that was the Queen's due.
The eagle's fierce eyes watched Rhaenys, perhaps thinking it might find a morsel of its own should the chance arise, and I smiled.
Rhaenys watched the eagle, hands gripping the reins of our horse. "Ser," she said like it was part of my name. "Where do birds that big come from?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. There are falcons and hawks native to Westeros, and I've hawked with a tiercel often enough, but yon bird is a big bast- big one, isn't it?"
The Princess nodded, seriously, and reached up to try to tug at the braids of my hair. I let her, and watched the eagle. And, out of the corner of my eye, watched the Queen watch us.
We had, apparently, stopped to let a party of smallfolk leading a cart full of hay. Rhaenys' attention turned to that, and I leaned over to Prince Viserys.
"There's more to being a knight than sitting a horse well," I told him. "Which you do, by the by, and a credit to your riding master, that is, young Prince."
"Thank you, Ser," he acknowledged. "What else is there, though?"
"Fighting well," I said. "But more importantly, knowing when and why to fight. Keeping the sword sheathed is as much a decision, and oftentimes a better one than to draw it. I drew steel the day we took ship for this island in the defense of your mother, the Queen, yourself, and your niece." I left out, conveniently, that I'd also left three men loyal to the King dead in a street near the Street of Silk. Why? Because they'd insulted the Queen in my and Elbert's hearing and then refused to apologize.
"I will," I emphasized, "draw my sword to fulfill the oaths of a knight, but there might come a time when you are sorely tested by those oaths, and must come to decide which ones you value more highly. Loyalty and obedience? Protecting the innocent, a woman?"
I did not think that Viserys would be a bad King, or a monster the likes of his father, but it would do him no favors if I slackened in my vigilance.
"I will," I told him, "endeavor with all my utmost to instruct and teach you in accordance with your mother's wishes. That includes the reasons a knight may, may not, need to draw his sword."
"I think I understand," Viserys said.
I nodded at him. "There is a philosopher among the septons that wrote 'he who knows how little he understands is wisest.' Ask questions, my Prince," I suggested. "I'm certainly not afraid to admit when I do not know things."
He sat his pony, thought for a short while. "Why did we stop for the smallfolk?"
I smiled in approval. "We're about business today," I said. "Your Queen mother intends to ride to the small village of Celston, and sit in judgement of a legal case. Murder," I added as an aside cheerfully. "But the business of that court will wait on her pleasure, while those smallfolk are about business, too. Their reeve might take it amiss if they're delayed, and the Queen allowing them to pass means that they won't be." As I spoke, the topic of our discussion removed their hats at seeing the Queen, and bowed very, very low. They continued on their way, though, without having to stop and kneel. Corlys said something to Rhaella that made her laugh, and Viserys' eyes lit up.
"You're all much nicer to Mother than Father is," the boy said.
I didn't say anything to that. Rhaenys had fallen asleep, it seemed. Viserys didn't ask me any more questions that ride, but I think perhaps he was trying to turnover my words in his head, and reconcile the words I'd spoken and the actions I'd taken with what he'd seen of his father.
It's not often discussed now, but Aerys was a knight. Maybe all our kings ought to have been.
~*~
Rhaella spoke with us after we received word of the Sack. The men I'd paid, the boat I'd had Corlys lay in for us.... For naught. Rhaella had conducted none of the business of ruling for a week. It was seven days I spent pacing the curtain wall of the castle, staring across the water, and butchering pells in the keep's arming yard. I had wanted to try to rescue an innocent woman and babe, but Tywin Lannister's forces had moved too fast for me to make my play.
So for seven nights, too, I had prayed in the keep's sept and lit candles to the Mother and Father.
"The Maester has confirmed it," Rhaella told us. The moon shone in through the window to the lord's solar, helping add to the light from the candles and the fireplace. Her son and granddaughter were safely in bed in the room over, in Rhaella's own chambers. It was a small group, assembled in that solar decorated with rich hardwoods and a tapestry depicting the Conquest.
"I am," she continued, "by the grace of the Mother and Father, pregnant once more." Silence descended following Rhaella's pronouncement. Darry was the first to congratulate the Queen, then Corlys, then Elbert, and then Lyonel. I stayed seated, and silent. Rhaella looked at me, raised an eyebrow.
"Your Grace is no coward," I said. And I spoke slowly, tired from my nights of prayer, unwilling to be sharp with a lady who'd had nothing but sharpness and cruelty from her husband. "But it is my belief that events will conspire against us, and the island will, eventually, become unsafe."
"Roland's no coward, Your Grace," Elbert vouched. "Your carrying is a blessing, no doubt, but... I believe he's right, my Queen. And the rebels are likely building ships to contest with the Royal Fleet."
"Three yards on the East coast of the realm," Corlys said.
I stood up, when he spoke. I clasped my hands behind my back, and strode to the window. "Gull Town, White Harbor, King's Landing. Three yards, only one of which has traditionally built hulls for warships. Four if they're buying from the Braavosi Arsenal, and the Arsenal can put together a warship a day. I do not know the Usurper, or his Hand, so I don't know how likely it is that they would buy from Braavos. But a fleet is dangerous only so long as it exists, and they can put more hulls in the water than we can expand the fleet."
I turned back to the group and leaned against the sill of the window.
"What would you suggest, Ser Velaryon?" That was Darry, eyes lidded half-closed, but still sharp.
"Pay off the Royal Fleet with what we have here on the island," he said. "They served loyally, did their utmost, but asking them to die for a cause on the backfoot would be folly, when we might prevail upon them in the future. All of us take ship as the Queen and children's defenders, to the East. We might find a welcome in Braavos, even if the Arsenal was selling warships to the Usurper. Politics is different from business, after all."
"Whatever we do," I said. "Whatever we do, the King is dead. His misrule was cruel, and the realm suffered for it. If we go into exile across the Narrow Sea, I mean to make my oath to a Targaryen. To a Queen."
"There's never been a Queen that ruled in her own right, Roland, you simpleminded dolt," Lyonel said.
"There've been ladies that have ruled in their own right," I snarled. "Precedent can be damned— there's never been a Queen exiled by an upstart cousin from a bastard line of her family, either, has there? The Prince is a boy of eight, and Rhaenys three years. You mean to make the King a boy of eight, that still crawls into bed with his mother after a nightmare?"
"Be silent, Roland Gaunt," Rhaella said. I shut my mouth. She stayed seated. I went to stand before her. She exchanged a glance with Darry. I wondered what she thought, that I'd so easily piss on the tradition and precedent of the succession customs of the Iron Throne. I drew my sword. The other swords in the room came out, and Darry watched me with narrowed eyes.
"Her Grace has consigned the defense of herself, her son, granddaughter, and unborn child to us," I said. "She has consigned the defense of her realm and titles, her lands and rights, to us." I tossed my sword to the Queen's feet, and it clattered there on the stone of the solar's floor. "I will die for them, if that is what the gods have writ of my life, but I will die in exercise of the defense the Queen Rhaella has charged me with."
"A touch dramatic," Darry growled. "But you're a damned fool if you think that the rest of us wouldn't, Gaunt."
"Dramatic, yes," Corlys said. Then he shrugged, and stroked his mustache. "Roland is correct on a point or two, though. Her Grace is the last adult Targaryen. The line of succession remains unbroken were she to declare herself Queen Regnant, as Viserys is her oldest remaining child. And even then, were the worst to happen... Rhaenys is a spare, should the worst come to happen and Your Grace and your son pass before us from this world and into the next."
"If I am to be Queen ruling," Rhaella interrupted. She stood. "Then a council must be selected, though it governs nothing for me at the moment. That could change. Ser Willem, will you be the Hand?"
"I will, Your Grace," he said solemnly.
She nodded, and then turned to my friends.
"Ser Corlys, then to you will pass the cup of Lord Admiral and Master of Ships, and Treasurer, too. Ser Elbert, you shall be Our Master of Whisperers. Ser Lyonel shall be the Chief Justiciar."
I swallowed. There remained only the Kingsguard and Maester, and I certainly wasn't qualified to be either. Oh, I was a dab hand with the lance, and I could exchange sword strokes with most of the realm and give a good accounting of myself, but the likes of Ser Barristan Selmy or Arthur Dayne would see my gutting in three heartbeats, perhaps four if I'd had a good night's sleep.
"Kneel, Ser Roland." I knelt. Rhaella scooped up my sword from where it lay on the ground, and pressed it into my hands, tip down. "The Kingsguard is an old and honorable institution," the Queen said.
"But what remains of it is now in service to the Usurper Baratheon, and so it is no true Kingsguard. I will, at a later date, name a guard from those who remain loyal. For now, though: Ser Roland Gaunt, I, Rhaella Targaryen, First of Her Name, name you Lord Protector of Westeros and the Iron Throne, for there is no Westeros if there is no Iron Throne. To you shall pass all matters martial and to you, especially, I charge with the defense of my person, and that of my son and granddaughter."
I bowed my head, and wept.
~*~
In the sept, at noon, Rhaella was anointed with the seven oils, crowned again, and into her hands was placed a scepter topped with the Targaryen three-headed dragon. The goldsmith in the port town on the island had labored all sennight to finish it in time, and it had been delivered about an hour before the appointed hour for the coronation. Queen Rhaella Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, etc, etc, was crowned in the port sept on the island of Dragonstone, three weeks after the death of her husband, King Aerys, and a month and two weeks after the death of her eldest son, Rhaegar.
The sept was a picture of lights: candles, open windows at noon, jam-packed. Rhaella had knelt in vigil the night before after fasting all day, and we had sat in prayer and vigil with her. The procession had started at the sept in the keep, and then proceeded down to the port. The crowd lining the route had cheered, of course. The septon I had spoken with the first day we'd arrived performed the ceremony for Her Grace, and after Rhaella was crowned, she, in turn, formally invested Viserys as Prince of Dragonstone.
We knelt, and made our oaths.
Rhaella took no oaths from the men native to the island: the town's mayor, and the men wealthy enough to own arms and harness. After sitting for a while at the feast laid on by the town fathers, and a meandering conversation discussing nothing of note, the mayor shoved his chair back from the tables. He leaned closer to the Queen to speak with her.
"An excellent, if modest, ceremony, Your Grace," he said. "If it pleases you, though, perhaps we might have the chance to discuss matters of import?"
"I shall allow it," Rhaella said.
"Surely your coronation means you intend to contest the Usurper in the Red Keep, and we are all very invested in your cause," the mayor said. "However, surely you do not mean to contest Dragonstone, island or keep? You have but five knights sworn to your cause..." he trailed off, perhaps unwilling to impugn the prowess of my friends, Darry, or I.
Rhaella snorted. "My knightage is true, courageous and worthy of their knighthoods. But I know folly, and 'twould be a folly to fight for the island with five knights and what force of arms may be mustered from the island and garrison. More, I would not subject the people of the island or those who call the keep home to a sack by the Usurper's fiends."
"Then Your Grace intends... What? To surrender?"
"Never," Rhaella near-hissed. "I will not leave for my son or granddaughter an inheritance of surrender. We cannot contest the realm through force of arms at the moment. So what, I ask you. There are other means, and there are yet friends I might prevail upon when the time presents itself. This is a momentary setback, and I have decided a course for the continuance of both the Struggle, and the Targaryen dynasty."
Rhaella was lying. She'd named me her Lord Protector, and by nature of that position, I would have been party to any decision she would have made about leaving Dragonstone, and where we would be going. I could only wonder why.
VIII
it chrismas
merr chrismas
Eight
I stood, arms crossed over my chest and watching, while Prince Viserys learned to chop wood. He glared at me now, but in ten years, when he could place a sword stroke in the same spot over, and over, and over again, he'd thank me. Dragonstone was not a cold island, for all the architecture looked like cold, dead dragons, and so sweat poured down his scrawny, princely back in rivulets. I did not smile, for that would have been rude. Once he reached closer to his full growth, likely around thirteen or fourteen, he'd move on to doing his work and running in armor. We'd not yet started with live steel, though the Prince had begged.
Rhaella watched her son, too, seated next me. She, however, was beneath the shade of an open-sided pavilion set up for her. There was a portable writing desk set up under the pavilion for her, and she was going over some sort of documentation. Her belly was just beginning to swell with the pregnancy, and I did my best not to scowl at the thought of her trying to give birth on a ship making for Essos.
Lord Protector of Westeros, I thought. I rolled the taste of the title over in my tongue, tried to think about how best I might serve the Queen in that capacity. The most pressing issue at hand, as I saw it, was the safety of the last Targaryens. Then, perhaps, trying to garner support for the black-and-red dragon banner, so that I might press the war in Rhaella's name. But how? She was nearing thirty-eight years of age, had borne seven children, two of which survived past infancy, and was pregnant with, if the gods were good, another. A marriage to her would be largely meaningless for whoever made it in order to cement that alliance.
Viserys stopped splitting pieces of wood, complaining of a splinter in his hand. I drew a line in the sand of the training yard, directly in front of Rhaella's pavilion.
"If you want to be a knight worthy of the name, boy, you'll stay on that side of the line." Rhaella looked up from my side, sharp. Her eyes narrowed, and I lifted a hand. I knelt.
"Come here," I said. Viserys came, and I took his hands in my own. "Chopping wood doesn't seem very knightly at the moment, does it?"
Viserys shook his head.
"It is, though," I told him. "It builds calluses on your hands, that you'll need when learning your swordstrokes. It builds strength in your arms and trunk, that you'll need when couching a lance at the foes opposing your mother." When in doubt, Roland, tug at the love a young boy feels for his mother. You bastard, I thought to myself. Still, though, I worked the splinter out carefully.
"The pinnacle of the mountain, knighthood, is built on a base that we're laying today, my Prince. I didn't start out being able to put my sword-tip into another man's visor in a heartbeat. Go back to chopping your wood, and when you've finished the lot, we'll go for a run down to the beach, then a swim."
The Prince did as commanded. I stood back up, and Rhaella beckoned me over.
"Your Grace," I greeted her cheerfully. "Fine day," I said, "absolutely lovely."
"How goes my son's instruction?" She asked.
I shrugged. "For a lad that's never done a day's work in his life, I'll say this for him: he's not willing to quit." The Queen nodded, and laid down her quill.
"What do you believe our best course to be, Ser?" My eyes narrowed, and I shrugged again.
"With the boy, or your dynasty?" Rhaella smiled, a thin smile, and nodded.
"Both," she said. "Give me your thoughts on both."
"Viserys first," I told her. She nodded her acceptance of my priorities, and waited for me to continue. "He's hardworking, and hasn't slackened off since our first day together. He wants to be a knight, and a knight of preux." I used the old Andal word, that was so much more than just chivalry or gallantry.
"Give him fifteen years in the care of good knights, like Corlys and Ser Willem, and Prince Viserys will be more than a killer like me. He'll be a knight worthy of the romances, the songs." I closed my eyes, and then thought for a moment. "As for the other... Clear out the vaults here, where your Rhaegar accumulated his incomes and tariffs in coin. The Royal Fleet's been paid off and dispersed, and the Usurper's fleet isn't ready to put to sea yet, last I had heard. Load as much as we can carry onto Corlys' ship, Seafyre, and let us cross the Narrow Sea to the East." I reopened my eyes.
"I have waited to make that final decision," Rhaella said. "I have waited, and finally had word from my granddaughter's uncles. Doran Martell has closed the passes to Dorne, and Oberyn Martell built a mountain of heads from the knights Robert Baratheon sent to try Dorne's strength. Doran sent word, too, of Storm's End and the siege Mace Tyrell and the Redwyne fleet laid there."
"Mace Tyrell knelt to Eddard Stark," Rhaella continued, "according to Doran. He has also said they will accept us in Sunspear if I renounce my crown and name Rhaenys Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. My granddaughter is a girl of three," she hissed. "I will not see her given into the hands of her uncles, so they might shape her into a puppet that will agree with every issue they bring her."
It seemed to me, suddenly, that Rhaella the woman was fearful of the future, and scared for her children. Rhaella the Queen was just as concerned, but with things like legitimacy, the appearance and legality of the steps she had taken and would take.
But no matter how scared of what the gods might have ordained for her, and the children... Rhaella trusted us both because there was no other choice for her, and by virtue of our impending departure from Westeros— we were inextricably bound to both Rhaella personally, and the Targaryen cause. Until we died.
"If the Queen does not wish to go to Sunspear," I said instead, "then to Sunspear we won't go." But where?
"I have had word, too, from Keyholder Mattimo Veneri of the Iron Bank," Rhaella said. "The Iron Bank has extended a promise of safe-conduct and hospitality, should I wish to avail myself of it. The Bank's word is better than iron, it's said, though my late husband made no secret of his desire to see Braavos added to the Realm."
"I have spoken with the rest of my loyal knights," Rhaella continued. "Separately. I would have your opinion, at last, before I make the final decision."
"Braavos will shelter us for a time," I said. I closed my eyes. Gods, grant me the wisdom to suss out which way is best for the Queen and the children. Five knights, against a realm. But...
"Braavos will shelter us for a time," I repeated. Then I opened them. The Queen's indigo eyes met mine. "And in Braavos, we will muster a company of soldiers. Time will yet be our ally, for uneasy will the Usurper sit on the Iron Throne while Your Grace raises a son, infant, and granddaughter close to adulthood, and men loyal to your cause make their way to us. Mace Tyrell's main strength remains intact, Dorne is closed to the Usurper, and we might yet find allies in the realms that rose against Aerys in rebellion, by prying them away from their rebellious lords."
"A company of soldiers? To do what with, Roland Gaunt?"
I smiled. "They were raised to place a black dragon on the Iron Throne," I said. "But the black dragons are dead, and the red yet lives, though in exile. The Golden Company is the best fighting force on either side of the Narrow Sea, and if I have ten years to build a second company on that pattern, knights, pikes, and longbows, from men of good Westerosi stock, we will sweep aside whatever forces the Usurper can pry from the realms." Oh, I painted a pretty picture, but I was very carefully ignoring that if even one small thing went wrong, all the rest might go very badly tits up.
Rhaella leaned back in her seat, a simple folding camp stool, and placed both her hands on her belly. "It astonishes me," she said, "that all of my knights are in agreement about going to Braavos, and yet none can provide the same answer, even separate from each other, about what we might do once there."
I turned to watch Viserys finish the last of his wood, and I smiled.
"I am Your Grace's humble servant," I told her. Then I coached the boy through stacking the wood, sharpening the hatchet he'd been using, so that it was ready for the next man or boy who would use it (him,) and then putting it away. Then I led him out of the keep's yard, and down to the waterfront.
~*~
Of the work that went into making Corlys Velaryon's Seafyre ready to ship, I will not bore you. There was shouting, and the carrying of heavy crates, and repeated instances of Queen Rhaella placating the good people of Dragonstone that we were not abandoning them, though she did not mention that five knights would be as useless in the face of a concentrated assault as teats on a boar. We were set to leave with the morning's tide, and the war galley Corlys called his own sat deep in the water, her hold filled with as many crates of bullion as could safely manage.
That was why, of course, the bell in the septry of the town began ringing well after compline but well before matins, during the night. I took the time to armor and arm myself, cursing my lack of squire the whole time.
I met the Queen, carrying Rhaenys in one arm and leading Viserys in the other hand, with Darry ahead and Elbert behind, in the passage to the cove where Seafyre waited.
Corlys and Lyonel arrived, panting, after I'd reassured myself that the Queen and children were unharmed.
"Crew— needs— time—" Corlys ground out, around great, heaving breaths. I nodded.
"Well," I said to Rhaella, "at least this means Your Grace is not abandoning Dragonstone, but rather evacuating an assault."
The passage we were in, formerly a Targaryen family secret, led to a sea cave, where the ship waited. The passage was dark, lit only by the torches Ser Willem and Elbert were carrying, and I knew that the darkness would be oppressive once they left.
"Corlys," I said. "See Her Grace, the children, and Ser Darry down to the ship, and be about your preparations. Send a sailor back up once you're ready for me to come down."
I had never fought a withdrawal, or fighting retreat at all, let alone in an oppressively dark passage leading to a sea cave in the middle of the night. There was, I thought, a first time for everything. I was not particularly looking forward to this first time.
"Roland," Ser Willem said. He clasped a gauntleted hand onto my pauldron. The metal rang loud in my ears. I turned to face back the way we had come, and drew my sword.
"The gods will favor the righteous," I said piously. But oh please don't abandon me because I like women, I prayed. In that dark pit of charnel hell that the passage would become, I'd have the advantage— it was a hands' breadth wider than my shoulders, at the narrowest point, and I thought perhaps I might be able to build a wall of corpses in front of me.
"Roland," Rhaella said. Then someone tucked something into the gap where my vambrace met my spaulder, about halfway up my upper arm. "Fight with my favor, ser knight," she said.
"Don't die," Darry said. His gruff voice reverberated, and as my friends filtered away from me, protecting our Queen, I had time to be scared.
The darkness pressed in as the torches left, and I did not even know who I would be fighting. It was now the seventh month of Rhaella's pregnancy, and we should have left the month previous, if we were to cross without unduly stressing her. She had wanted to wait, though, and so now I wondered if I would meet my death in a dank, mildewy tunnel.
I knelt, sword point down, and the handle gripped in my hands. Father, I prayed, render justice unto my soul. Mother, shelter me in your light. Warrior, lend me the strength to do what must be done. Smith, grant that I strike swift and true. Maiden, grant that I succeed in allowing Rhaella and her children to be safe. Crone, lend me the wisdom to know when to turn and run. Stranger, if I die... Guide me well.
There were other, more private prayers— prayers for my family, for my friends, the Queen. Time seemed to have no meaning in that tunnel, though eventually it seemed to me that I felt a presence behind my shoulder. I did not turn to look, for fear that cowardice would overtake me and drive me from my post.
The presence was comforting, though, and I wondered if it was the god that is seven. I was a heart-beat from opening my mouth to ask a question, when I heard it.
Footsteps, and not just any kind of footsteps: the sound of metal against rock. Sabatons, clattering against the stone of the tunnel.
"This way," a deep Stormlander's accented voice said. "They can't have gone far, or be that much ahead of us. The castle opened the gates without nary a peep of fighting." I slammed my visor shut, and stood from where I had been kneeling. Then I thought better of a decision I'd made. I sheathed my sword, and drew my dagger.
"Who comes?" I asked.
"Ser Rogar Lonmouth," the same voice said. "Who the bleeding hell are you?"
"Ser Roland Gaunt," I said. "Protector of the Realm, in the name of Her Grace, Queen Rhaella Targaryen."
"The whore's crowned herself? Bloody buggering—" I cut the man off by driving my shoulder into what I thought was his chest. He grunted, and tried to ring my helmet with his sword. I stabbed under his armpit, but my dagger skidded off of metal plate.
Fuck, I thought. He was taller than I'd realized. He hammered the pommel of his sword into my helmet. I saw stars, and my ears rang.
But if I was, am, anything, it is a killer. The Warrior lent me the timing and sent me the luck, and so my next dagger thrust, blind and unknowing, caught him in a gap in his armor. Did I get Ser Rogar in the eye slit, or slip the point between helmet and gorget and through mail?
I don't know.
But kill him I did, and his sabatons beat a tattoo against the ground as the life left his body and the man behind him came at me.
All of us were panting like bellows then, and I still do not know how many foes were in that tunnel against me. The gods love fools, though, and perhaps fighting a holding action in that tunnel made me the biggest fool in the realm.
There are men I have killed through skill, through luck, and some through misdirection and trickery. The men I fought in that tunnel are the only men I believe I slew with divine aid.
The second man came upon me, and he had foregone his sword in favor of his dagger. We grappled for five heartbeats, seeking the advantage, and it came to be that I had grasped him by the hips while he tried to drive his dagger through the back of my helm.
I lifted up, straining against his armor and weight, until finally he came off the ground, and into the ceiling of the tunnel I slammed his helmeted head. Once, twice, thrice. I threw him to the ground. I knelt to try to give him the murder stroke, when I was driven backwards by an armored knee to the helmet.
It was my turn for my helmet to bounce off the stone of the passage, and the breath was expelled from my body as another knee was driven into my breast.
The only light came from the sparks made by metal crashing against metal and stone, too brief to see anything at all by.
I thought I had swallowed my heart, my blood was pounding so hard. I feared death in that tunnel more than I feared death under water, and I bitterly regretted not having spoken with a septon recently.
I'd die, last rites not performed and my corpse left to feed rats.
Get up, I heard a voice urge me. My fingers scrabbled against the hard black stone of the volcano, seeking my dagger. I found a rock, perhaps the size and a half of my fist. One hand tried to ward away the dagger blow I knew had to be coming. The man's blade caught the gauntlet on the palm of my hand, and I struck.
I drove the rock into his helmet, over and over until he stopped moving atop me. The leather on the fingers of my gloves beneath my gauntlets grew wet and sticky.
It was blood.
"Fuck," I heard a Stormlander say. "Steff, you there?"
I very gently placed the rock back on the ground, eased my fingers around until I found a dagger.
"You think they killed each other?"
"That Roland cunt and our Steffy? Nah, Steffy is a top fighter. He's alright, gotta be."
I fought back the urge to sob, and struggled to lift the man off the top of me. Then I heard another voice. This voice sounded like an islander, a man from Dragonstone.
"I am sorry," he said, and I listened to the sounds of combat above me in the darkness. Would he kill me? Would he even know I was there?
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, the fighting stopped, and I listened to the last thud of a body hitting the ground. Then the body keeping me pinned was pulled off of me, and a hand on my breast helped me stand.
"Go," said the soldier— knight? Perhaps, I think. Whoever he was, he was courageous. "Go," he said again.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"A knight that knows his duty," he said. "Now go!" He shoved me to get me started, and so I went down, to the cove.
merr chrismas
Eight
I stood, arms crossed over my chest and watching, while Prince Viserys learned to chop wood. He glared at me now, but in ten years, when he could place a sword stroke in the same spot over, and over, and over again, he'd thank me. Dragonstone was not a cold island, for all the architecture looked like cold, dead dragons, and so sweat poured down his scrawny, princely back in rivulets. I did not smile, for that would have been rude. Once he reached closer to his full growth, likely around thirteen or fourteen, he'd move on to doing his work and running in armor. We'd not yet started with live steel, though the Prince had begged.
Rhaella watched her son, too, seated next me. She, however, was beneath the shade of an open-sided pavilion set up for her. There was a portable writing desk set up under the pavilion for her, and she was going over some sort of documentation. Her belly was just beginning to swell with the pregnancy, and I did my best not to scowl at the thought of her trying to give birth on a ship making for Essos.
Lord Protector of Westeros, I thought. I rolled the taste of the title over in my tongue, tried to think about how best I might serve the Queen in that capacity. The most pressing issue at hand, as I saw it, was the safety of the last Targaryens. Then, perhaps, trying to garner support for the black-and-red dragon banner, so that I might press the war in Rhaella's name. But how? She was nearing thirty-eight years of age, had borne seven children, two of which survived past infancy, and was pregnant with, if the gods were good, another. A marriage to her would be largely meaningless for whoever made it in order to cement that alliance.
Viserys stopped splitting pieces of wood, complaining of a splinter in his hand. I drew a line in the sand of the training yard, directly in front of Rhaella's pavilion.
"If you want to be a knight worthy of the name, boy, you'll stay on that side of the line." Rhaella looked up from my side, sharp. Her eyes narrowed, and I lifted a hand. I knelt.
"Come here," I said. Viserys came, and I took his hands in my own. "Chopping wood doesn't seem very knightly at the moment, does it?"
Viserys shook his head.
"It is, though," I told him. "It builds calluses on your hands, that you'll need when learning your swordstrokes. It builds strength in your arms and trunk, that you'll need when couching a lance at the foes opposing your mother." When in doubt, Roland, tug at the love a young boy feels for his mother. You bastard, I thought to myself. Still, though, I worked the splinter out carefully.
"The pinnacle of the mountain, knighthood, is built on a base that we're laying today, my Prince. I didn't start out being able to put my sword-tip into another man's visor in a heartbeat. Go back to chopping your wood, and when you've finished the lot, we'll go for a run down to the beach, then a swim."
The Prince did as commanded. I stood back up, and Rhaella beckoned me over.
"Your Grace," I greeted her cheerfully. "Fine day," I said, "absolutely lovely."
"How goes my son's instruction?" She asked.
I shrugged. "For a lad that's never done a day's work in his life, I'll say this for him: he's not willing to quit." The Queen nodded, and laid down her quill.
"What do you believe our best course to be, Ser?" My eyes narrowed, and I shrugged again.
"With the boy, or your dynasty?" Rhaella smiled, a thin smile, and nodded.
"Both," she said. "Give me your thoughts on both."
"Viserys first," I told her. She nodded her acceptance of my priorities, and waited for me to continue. "He's hardworking, and hasn't slackened off since our first day together. He wants to be a knight, and a knight of preux." I used the old Andal word, that was so much more than just chivalry or gallantry.
"Give him fifteen years in the care of good knights, like Corlys and Ser Willem, and Prince Viserys will be more than a killer like me. He'll be a knight worthy of the romances, the songs." I closed my eyes, and then thought for a moment. "As for the other... Clear out the vaults here, where your Rhaegar accumulated his incomes and tariffs in coin. The Royal Fleet's been paid off and dispersed, and the Usurper's fleet isn't ready to put to sea yet, last I had heard. Load as much as we can carry onto Corlys' ship, Seafyre, and let us cross the Narrow Sea to the East." I reopened my eyes.
"I have waited to make that final decision," Rhaella said. "I have waited, and finally had word from my granddaughter's uncles. Doran Martell has closed the passes to Dorne, and Oberyn Martell built a mountain of heads from the knights Robert Baratheon sent to try Dorne's strength. Doran sent word, too, of Storm's End and the siege Mace Tyrell and the Redwyne fleet laid there."
"Mace Tyrell knelt to Eddard Stark," Rhaella continued, "according to Doran. He has also said they will accept us in Sunspear if I renounce my crown and name Rhaenys Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. My granddaughter is a girl of three," she hissed. "I will not see her given into the hands of her uncles, so they might shape her into a puppet that will agree with every issue they bring her."
It seemed to me, suddenly, that Rhaella the woman was fearful of the future, and scared for her children. Rhaella the Queen was just as concerned, but with things like legitimacy, the appearance and legality of the steps she had taken and would take.
But no matter how scared of what the gods might have ordained for her, and the children... Rhaella trusted us both because there was no other choice for her, and by virtue of our impending departure from Westeros— we were inextricably bound to both Rhaella personally, and the Targaryen cause. Until we died.
"If the Queen does not wish to go to Sunspear," I said instead, "then to Sunspear we won't go." But where?
"I have had word, too, from Keyholder Mattimo Veneri of the Iron Bank," Rhaella said. "The Iron Bank has extended a promise of safe-conduct and hospitality, should I wish to avail myself of it. The Bank's word is better than iron, it's said, though my late husband made no secret of his desire to see Braavos added to the Realm."
"I have spoken with the rest of my loyal knights," Rhaella continued. "Separately. I would have your opinion, at last, before I make the final decision."
"Braavos will shelter us for a time," I said. I closed my eyes. Gods, grant me the wisdom to suss out which way is best for the Queen and the children. Five knights, against a realm. But...
"Braavos will shelter us for a time," I repeated. Then I opened them. The Queen's indigo eyes met mine. "And in Braavos, we will muster a company of soldiers. Time will yet be our ally, for uneasy will the Usurper sit on the Iron Throne while Your Grace raises a son, infant, and granddaughter close to adulthood, and men loyal to your cause make their way to us. Mace Tyrell's main strength remains intact, Dorne is closed to the Usurper, and we might yet find allies in the realms that rose against Aerys in rebellion, by prying them away from their rebellious lords."
"A company of soldiers? To do what with, Roland Gaunt?"
I smiled. "They were raised to place a black dragon on the Iron Throne," I said. "But the black dragons are dead, and the red yet lives, though in exile. The Golden Company is the best fighting force on either side of the Narrow Sea, and if I have ten years to build a second company on that pattern, knights, pikes, and longbows, from men of good Westerosi stock, we will sweep aside whatever forces the Usurper can pry from the realms." Oh, I painted a pretty picture, but I was very carefully ignoring that if even one small thing went wrong, all the rest might go very badly tits up.
Rhaella leaned back in her seat, a simple folding camp stool, and placed both her hands on her belly. "It astonishes me," she said, "that all of my knights are in agreement about going to Braavos, and yet none can provide the same answer, even separate from each other, about what we might do once there."
I turned to watch Viserys finish the last of his wood, and I smiled.
"I am Your Grace's humble servant," I told her. Then I coached the boy through stacking the wood, sharpening the hatchet he'd been using, so that it was ready for the next man or boy who would use it (him,) and then putting it away. Then I led him out of the keep's yard, and down to the waterfront.
~*~
Of the work that went into making Corlys Velaryon's Seafyre ready to ship, I will not bore you. There was shouting, and the carrying of heavy crates, and repeated instances of Queen Rhaella placating the good people of Dragonstone that we were not abandoning them, though she did not mention that five knights would be as useless in the face of a concentrated assault as teats on a boar. We were set to leave with the morning's tide, and the war galley Corlys called his own sat deep in the water, her hold filled with as many crates of bullion as could safely manage.
That was why, of course, the bell in the septry of the town began ringing well after compline but well before matins, during the night. I took the time to armor and arm myself, cursing my lack of squire the whole time.
I met the Queen, carrying Rhaenys in one arm and leading Viserys in the other hand, with Darry ahead and Elbert behind, in the passage to the cove where Seafyre waited.
Corlys and Lyonel arrived, panting, after I'd reassured myself that the Queen and children were unharmed.
"Crew— needs— time—" Corlys ground out, around great, heaving breaths. I nodded.
"Well," I said to Rhaella, "at least this means Your Grace is not abandoning Dragonstone, but rather evacuating an assault."
The passage we were in, formerly a Targaryen family secret, led to a sea cave, where the ship waited. The passage was dark, lit only by the torches Ser Willem and Elbert were carrying, and I knew that the darkness would be oppressive once they left.
"Corlys," I said. "See Her Grace, the children, and Ser Darry down to the ship, and be about your preparations. Send a sailor back up once you're ready for me to come down."
I had never fought a withdrawal, or fighting retreat at all, let alone in an oppressively dark passage leading to a sea cave in the middle of the night. There was, I thought, a first time for everything. I was not particularly looking forward to this first time.
"Roland," Ser Willem said. He clasped a gauntleted hand onto my pauldron. The metal rang loud in my ears. I turned to face back the way we had come, and drew my sword.
"The gods will favor the righteous," I said piously. But oh please don't abandon me because I like women, I prayed. In that dark pit of charnel hell that the passage would become, I'd have the advantage— it was a hands' breadth wider than my shoulders, at the narrowest point, and I thought perhaps I might be able to build a wall of corpses in front of me.
"Roland," Rhaella said. Then someone tucked something into the gap where my vambrace met my spaulder, about halfway up my upper arm. "Fight with my favor, ser knight," she said.
"Don't die," Darry said. His gruff voice reverberated, and as my friends filtered away from me, protecting our Queen, I had time to be scared.
The darkness pressed in as the torches left, and I did not even know who I would be fighting. It was now the seventh month of Rhaella's pregnancy, and we should have left the month previous, if we were to cross without unduly stressing her. She had wanted to wait, though, and so now I wondered if I would meet my death in a dank, mildewy tunnel.
I knelt, sword point down, and the handle gripped in my hands. Father, I prayed, render justice unto my soul. Mother, shelter me in your light. Warrior, lend me the strength to do what must be done. Smith, grant that I strike swift and true. Maiden, grant that I succeed in allowing Rhaella and her children to be safe. Crone, lend me the wisdom to know when to turn and run. Stranger, if I die... Guide me well.
There were other, more private prayers— prayers for my family, for my friends, the Queen. Time seemed to have no meaning in that tunnel, though eventually it seemed to me that I felt a presence behind my shoulder. I did not turn to look, for fear that cowardice would overtake me and drive me from my post.
The presence was comforting, though, and I wondered if it was the god that is seven. I was a heart-beat from opening my mouth to ask a question, when I heard it.
Footsteps, and not just any kind of footsteps: the sound of metal against rock. Sabatons, clattering against the stone of the tunnel.
"This way," a deep Stormlander's accented voice said. "They can't have gone far, or be that much ahead of us. The castle opened the gates without nary a peep of fighting." I slammed my visor shut, and stood from where I had been kneeling. Then I thought better of a decision I'd made. I sheathed my sword, and drew my dagger.
"Who comes?" I asked.
"Ser Rogar Lonmouth," the same voice said. "Who the bleeding hell are you?"
"Ser Roland Gaunt," I said. "Protector of the Realm, in the name of Her Grace, Queen Rhaella Targaryen."
"The whore's crowned herself? Bloody buggering—" I cut the man off by driving my shoulder into what I thought was his chest. He grunted, and tried to ring my helmet with his sword. I stabbed under his armpit, but my dagger skidded off of metal plate.
Fuck, I thought. He was taller than I'd realized. He hammered the pommel of his sword into my helmet. I saw stars, and my ears rang.
But if I was, am, anything, it is a killer. The Warrior lent me the timing and sent me the luck, and so my next dagger thrust, blind and unknowing, caught him in a gap in his armor. Did I get Ser Rogar in the eye slit, or slip the point between helmet and gorget and through mail?
I don't know.
But kill him I did, and his sabatons beat a tattoo against the ground as the life left his body and the man behind him came at me.
All of us were panting like bellows then, and I still do not know how many foes were in that tunnel against me. The gods love fools, though, and perhaps fighting a holding action in that tunnel made me the biggest fool in the realm.
There are men I have killed through skill, through luck, and some through misdirection and trickery. The men I fought in that tunnel are the only men I believe I slew with divine aid.
The second man came upon me, and he had foregone his sword in favor of his dagger. We grappled for five heartbeats, seeking the advantage, and it came to be that I had grasped him by the hips while he tried to drive his dagger through the back of my helm.
I lifted up, straining against his armor and weight, until finally he came off the ground, and into the ceiling of the tunnel I slammed his helmeted head. Once, twice, thrice. I threw him to the ground. I knelt to try to give him the murder stroke, when I was driven backwards by an armored knee to the helmet.
It was my turn for my helmet to bounce off the stone of the passage, and the breath was expelled from my body as another knee was driven into my breast.
The only light came from the sparks made by metal crashing against metal and stone, too brief to see anything at all by.
I thought I had swallowed my heart, my blood was pounding so hard. I feared death in that tunnel more than I feared death under water, and I bitterly regretted not having spoken with a septon recently.
I'd die, last rites not performed and my corpse left to feed rats.
Get up, I heard a voice urge me. My fingers scrabbled against the hard black stone of the volcano, seeking my dagger. I found a rock, perhaps the size and a half of my fist. One hand tried to ward away the dagger blow I knew had to be coming. The man's blade caught the gauntlet on the palm of my hand, and I struck.
I drove the rock into his helmet, over and over until he stopped moving atop me. The leather on the fingers of my gloves beneath my gauntlets grew wet and sticky.
It was blood.
"Fuck," I heard a Stormlander say. "Steff, you there?"
I very gently placed the rock back on the ground, eased my fingers around until I found a dagger.
"You think they killed each other?"
"That Roland cunt and our Steffy? Nah, Steffy is a top fighter. He's alright, gotta be."
I fought back the urge to sob, and struggled to lift the man off the top of me. Then I heard another voice. This voice sounded like an islander, a man from Dragonstone.
"I am sorry," he said, and I listened to the sounds of combat above me in the darkness. Would he kill me? Would he even know I was there?
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, the fighting stopped, and I listened to the last thud of a body hitting the ground. Then the body keeping me pinned was pulled off of me, and a hand on my breast helped me stand.
"Go," said the soldier— knight? Perhaps, I think. Whoever he was, he was courageous. "Go," he said again.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"A knight that knows his duty," he said. "Now go!" He shoved me to get me started, and so I went down, to the cove.
IX
Nine
I thought about closing my visor. I'd never fought a boarding action before, but with the sun beginning to drift its way to the sea off to our west, our rear, and the two ships stalking us from both north and south, Corlys had sat in silence for a moment, judging the time of day and ships' speeds. Then he'd spat.
He hadn't needed to ask me, or tell me, or anything else. I had armed, and stood at the front of the galley, poleaxe borrowed from one of Corlys' marines leaning over one shoulder. I knew the course that Corlys planned to take— turn hard to one side, try to ram one of the foes and sink them, and then turn on the other and let his increased weight of marines tell over whoever the foe might be. Their lack of flags or banners indicated nothing about what enemy we faced, he'd told me. Elbert, Darry, and Lyonel would remain with the Queen and the children, while I would lead three of Corlys' marines to try to sweep the deck of whatever ship we tangled with.
"They might," Corlys had said, "for all we know, be appropriately credentialed representatives of the Iron Bank, come to escort Her Grace."
"I sincerely doubt it," he had continued, and I'd looked away as he'd helped Lyonel arm and then exchange a swift kiss with him. I had not meant to intrude on their moment together, before this fight, but it had happened nonetheless, and so I did my best not to embarrass them.
I had started sweating inside my arming clothes, good, thick wool meant to help protect me as much as they could while also carrying as much of the weight of my armor as they could, but the weight of my harness would take a toll— eventually. Spiritually and physically, I thought. They never tell young squires about the fear and the blood.
With my helmet on and visor closed, the world around me had receded to a quieter, smaller place. I lifted a hand to my breast, where the Queen's favor was tucked close to my heart. Then someone laid a hand on my arm, and I turned my head. It was the Queen herself.
"Can you defeat them, Ser?" Her voice was soft, perhaps to not carry to where it could panic the rowers or sailors or the children.
"I don't know," I admitted. "You are the daughter of kings, and I will not lie to you. It depends. Are they pirates, looking for an easy mark? Are they sworn to the Baratheons in Westeros, looking to kill us and let the sea wash away the tale? No matter what, I know my duty. I am a knight of the Seven Kingdoms, sworn to the true Queen of those realms, and I am the son of the Lord of Kenilworth."
I will admit to you, too, that I was half-reassuring myself, as well. By the Warrior, but it is no easy thing to know you will be leading three men in harness nowhere near as good as your own onto the deck of an enemy ship, to try to clear it of men. Clear it meant killing them all, down to the rowers, if they proved foes, too.
"If they are pirates," Rhaella said, "give them no quarter. Pirates are a breed detested by all good peoples, an enemy of all men and gods-fearing people, and upon resumption of my throne, I shall entail Ser Corlys mount a campaign to clear the Stepstone Islands of them."
"As Your Grace commands," I said, and bowed my head. Then, daring, shifted the poleaxe to lean against my shoulder and placed the hand atop the Queen's own.
"If you wish to wage a war to reclaim the Iron Throne," I said through my visor. "Then I will be your man, my Queen. But if you wish to leave it behind, and raise the children in peace, I will be your man for that, too."
She lifted my visor, looked me in my eyes.
"Every day I am touched by the courage they possess, and the trust and loyalty that my knights place in me," Rhaella said. She smiled at me. "And every day, I pray that I am worthy of being the Queen you think I am. I do not know myself, yet, whether I wish to drown the Kingdoms of my fathers in blood once more, for a throne that has brought my family more grief than anything. But if we are to stay in Essos, and give up that throne, Roland, what will you do?"
I shrugged. "The gods know," I said. "I am not over-fond of my father, and my uncle Gwayne died as a knight of the Kingsguard. I am not the knight, or the man, that he was, though, and that institution holds no appeal for me. Perhaps I will turn sell-sword." The talk turned idle after that, and as we drew within a long bowshot of the first ship, the Queen took her leave.
I smiled, then, when I realized what she'd done. She had attempted to draw my thoughts away from the impending fight, given me no time to be scared, and helped remind me of what I fought for.
As the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms left my side, I slapped my visor closed. And went into another fight.
~*~
They started shooting crossbows— not bows, crossbows, at me outside their effective range. I stood there, unflinching, as the bolts bounced uselessly off my harness, only ducking when it seemed like one would hit my helmet. Image is vital, in fights, and since our world had shrunk to three ships and the men on them, my position at the front of Corlys' ship placed me firmly in the eyes of everyone in our world. Behind my helmet, I smiled.
"Roland!" Corlys called. "Fight well and don't die, you broody bastard!"
I lifted my thumb to the visor of my helmet and flicked it at him, and he grinned. The knights with the queen all called their own well-wishes, and I nodded. And then Corlys slewed the ship hard to the right, and the rowers drew on a reserve well of strength, driven on by a Velaryon promise of extra silver for them, and more importantly in the short-term, extra rations of wine. The ship bucked, and I kept my feet only by virtue of having grabbed a rope tied to the galley's prow after taking up my position.
I watched, and waited. Sensing something wrong with their prey, the ship we were now headed towards began to try to tack away, but the wind wasn't with them, or their oars fouled or— something. I don't know, I'm not a sailor. But their turn was slowed, and so rather than slamming into them broadside on, we hit their flank at an angle. I went to my knees from the collision, and then I stood up.
One man tried to jump from their ship to ours. I speared him with my poleaxe. His weight slammed the spiked butt of the weapon into the planking of the deck, and then I levered him over my shoulder and into the rowers' space to be killed by those worthies.
Then I leapt onto the pirates' ship, and was confronted by men with little armor and bad weapons: they were dressed in breeches and a few shirts, and only one man had a mail hauberk. A few had helmets, and most carried short swords or long daggers, but there were quite a few axes.
They came at me with fury and enthusiasm. They died with fury and enthusiasm. The length of my poleaxe gave me an advantage of distance, and the only blows I had to fear from them were from the men with axes.
I caught one man in the throat with the spear-blade of my poleaxe, and the bones in his spine caught on my blade. I jerked him loose, caught the axehead of another man on the metal on the shaft of my weapon, and twisted it to the side and down. It drove his axe into the wooden deck of the ship, and I twisted the shaft of my poleaxe in my hands. I brought it up, fast, and drove the spike through the bottom of his mouth and into his brain through the roof of his mouth.
A spear hit my breast, caught on the ridge meant to deflect arrows from my head and neck, and was diverted past my arm. It was a boar spear, not a war spear, and it put the man using it well within striking distance. So I punched him, in the face. It at least broke his nose and perhaps killed him, because he fell backwards, eyes unseeing.
One of his mates tried to catch him, fumbled it and wound up dropping his short sword. I killed him next, with a short cut from the axe-head on my poleaxe to his neck. He died badly, throat mangled and trying to staunch the bleeding with naught but his hands.
I fell into a pattern then, of letting them waste their strength on useless cuts or stabs, parrying or covering only those that I judged most likely to actually hurt me— namely, blows meant for my head. I trusted my harness, and I trusted the smith that had forged it on the street of steel in King's Landing.
After I'd cut my way through perhaps five or six pirates, panting, one of Corlys' marines, I believe the one named Dick, rotated spots with me. It wasn't something that we had practiced together, but we had practiced it separately, in different drill yards under different masters-of-arms, and it took the form on that ship's deck that I had practiced a thousand times with my brother and father's men.
Dick tapped me on the hip with one gauntleted hand. I twisted so that my toes were pointing to the side of the ship, and with a sideways step Dick came up so that the backs of our breasts were against each other. I rotated behind him, he rotated to the front of me, and I struggled to catch my breath as I leaned on my poleaxe. I swapped places with the third man, another marine, and finally judged myself safe enough to lift my visor.
I noticed an oar-slave, a dark complexioned man, perhaps from Sothoryos, staring at me. His eyes narrowed, and he lifted up his shackled wrists. I nodded, and slid him an axe with my foot. He took it up, and then went to work on the wood plank where his chains were bolted to the ship.
With the aid of the slaves, once freed, we cleared that deck. We cleared the other, too. The Queen had commanded no quarter for pirates.
One man, more a boy, really, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, haunts me still. He tried to surrender, threw down his weapon. I remember him because he was the youngest, and he did not have a full beard yet, and his eyes were a shade of blue that reminded me of mornings at home, riding and hawking with my sister. Of mornings spent helping bring in the harvest, or with the plowing, or making hay, or, or , or, or.
I had enough time to pause before I stabbed him in the heart, enough time to consider it, enough time to think about the faces of the men who had been in chains just heartbeats ago, who were even now helping me butcher this boy's fellows.
I still dream of the decks of those ships, awash with the blood of pirates and slaves alike. And I dream of a young man with eyes of blue that hurt to remember, and the horror on his face when he realized he was dead.
I thought about closing my visor. I'd never fought a boarding action before, but with the sun beginning to drift its way to the sea off to our west, our rear, and the two ships stalking us from both north and south, Corlys had sat in silence for a moment, judging the time of day and ships' speeds. Then he'd spat.
He hadn't needed to ask me, or tell me, or anything else. I had armed, and stood at the front of the galley, poleaxe borrowed from one of Corlys' marines leaning over one shoulder. I knew the course that Corlys planned to take— turn hard to one side, try to ram one of the foes and sink them, and then turn on the other and let his increased weight of marines tell over whoever the foe might be. Their lack of flags or banners indicated nothing about what enemy we faced, he'd told me. Elbert, Darry, and Lyonel would remain with the Queen and the children, while I would lead three of Corlys' marines to try to sweep the deck of whatever ship we tangled with.
"They might," Corlys had said, "for all we know, be appropriately credentialed representatives of the Iron Bank, come to escort Her Grace."
"I sincerely doubt it," he had continued, and I'd looked away as he'd helped Lyonel arm and then exchange a swift kiss with him. I had not meant to intrude on their moment together, before this fight, but it had happened nonetheless, and so I did my best not to embarrass them.
I had started sweating inside my arming clothes, good, thick wool meant to help protect me as much as they could while also carrying as much of the weight of my armor as they could, but the weight of my harness would take a toll— eventually. Spiritually and physically, I thought. They never tell young squires about the fear and the blood.
With my helmet on and visor closed, the world around me had receded to a quieter, smaller place. I lifted a hand to my breast, where the Queen's favor was tucked close to my heart. Then someone laid a hand on my arm, and I turned my head. It was the Queen herself.
"Can you defeat them, Ser?" Her voice was soft, perhaps to not carry to where it could panic the rowers or sailors or the children.
"I don't know," I admitted. "You are the daughter of kings, and I will not lie to you. It depends. Are they pirates, looking for an easy mark? Are they sworn to the Baratheons in Westeros, looking to kill us and let the sea wash away the tale? No matter what, I know my duty. I am a knight of the Seven Kingdoms, sworn to the true Queen of those realms, and I am the son of the Lord of Kenilworth."
I will admit to you, too, that I was half-reassuring myself, as well. By the Warrior, but it is no easy thing to know you will be leading three men in harness nowhere near as good as your own onto the deck of an enemy ship, to try to clear it of men. Clear it meant killing them all, down to the rowers, if they proved foes, too.
"If they are pirates," Rhaella said, "give them no quarter. Pirates are a breed detested by all good peoples, an enemy of all men and gods-fearing people, and upon resumption of my throne, I shall entail Ser Corlys mount a campaign to clear the Stepstone Islands of them."
"As Your Grace commands," I said, and bowed my head. Then, daring, shifted the poleaxe to lean against my shoulder and placed the hand atop the Queen's own.
"If you wish to wage a war to reclaim the Iron Throne," I said through my visor. "Then I will be your man, my Queen. But if you wish to leave it behind, and raise the children in peace, I will be your man for that, too."
She lifted my visor, looked me in my eyes.
"Every day I am touched by the courage they possess, and the trust and loyalty that my knights place in me," Rhaella said. She smiled at me. "And every day, I pray that I am worthy of being the Queen you think I am. I do not know myself, yet, whether I wish to drown the Kingdoms of my fathers in blood once more, for a throne that has brought my family more grief than anything. But if we are to stay in Essos, and give up that throne, Roland, what will you do?"
I shrugged. "The gods know," I said. "I am not over-fond of my father, and my uncle Gwayne died as a knight of the Kingsguard. I am not the knight, or the man, that he was, though, and that institution holds no appeal for me. Perhaps I will turn sell-sword." The talk turned idle after that, and as we drew within a long bowshot of the first ship, the Queen took her leave.
I smiled, then, when I realized what she'd done. She had attempted to draw my thoughts away from the impending fight, given me no time to be scared, and helped remind me of what I fought for.
As the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms left my side, I slapped my visor closed. And went into another fight.
~*~
They started shooting crossbows— not bows, crossbows, at me outside their effective range. I stood there, unflinching, as the bolts bounced uselessly off my harness, only ducking when it seemed like one would hit my helmet. Image is vital, in fights, and since our world had shrunk to three ships and the men on them, my position at the front of Corlys' ship placed me firmly in the eyes of everyone in our world. Behind my helmet, I smiled.
"Roland!" Corlys called. "Fight well and don't die, you broody bastard!"
I lifted my thumb to the visor of my helmet and flicked it at him, and he grinned. The knights with the queen all called their own well-wishes, and I nodded. And then Corlys slewed the ship hard to the right, and the rowers drew on a reserve well of strength, driven on by a Velaryon promise of extra silver for them, and more importantly in the short-term, extra rations of wine. The ship bucked, and I kept my feet only by virtue of having grabbed a rope tied to the galley's prow after taking up my position.
I watched, and waited. Sensing something wrong with their prey, the ship we were now headed towards began to try to tack away, but the wind wasn't with them, or their oars fouled or— something. I don't know, I'm not a sailor. But their turn was slowed, and so rather than slamming into them broadside on, we hit their flank at an angle. I went to my knees from the collision, and then I stood up.
One man tried to jump from their ship to ours. I speared him with my poleaxe. His weight slammed the spiked butt of the weapon into the planking of the deck, and then I levered him over my shoulder and into the rowers' space to be killed by those worthies.
Then I leapt onto the pirates' ship, and was confronted by men with little armor and bad weapons: they were dressed in breeches and a few shirts, and only one man had a mail hauberk. A few had helmets, and most carried short swords or long daggers, but there were quite a few axes.
They came at me with fury and enthusiasm. They died with fury and enthusiasm. The length of my poleaxe gave me an advantage of distance, and the only blows I had to fear from them were from the men with axes.
I caught one man in the throat with the spear-blade of my poleaxe, and the bones in his spine caught on my blade. I jerked him loose, caught the axehead of another man on the metal on the shaft of my weapon, and twisted it to the side and down. It drove his axe into the wooden deck of the ship, and I twisted the shaft of my poleaxe in my hands. I brought it up, fast, and drove the spike through the bottom of his mouth and into his brain through the roof of his mouth.
A spear hit my breast, caught on the ridge meant to deflect arrows from my head and neck, and was diverted past my arm. It was a boar spear, not a war spear, and it put the man using it well within striking distance. So I punched him, in the face. It at least broke his nose and perhaps killed him, because he fell backwards, eyes unseeing.
One of his mates tried to catch him, fumbled it and wound up dropping his short sword. I killed him next, with a short cut from the axe-head on my poleaxe to his neck. He died badly, throat mangled and trying to staunch the bleeding with naught but his hands.
I fell into a pattern then, of letting them waste their strength on useless cuts or stabs, parrying or covering only those that I judged most likely to actually hurt me— namely, blows meant for my head. I trusted my harness, and I trusted the smith that had forged it on the street of steel in King's Landing.
After I'd cut my way through perhaps five or six pirates, panting, one of Corlys' marines, I believe the one named Dick, rotated spots with me. It wasn't something that we had practiced together, but we had practiced it separately, in different drill yards under different masters-of-arms, and it took the form on that ship's deck that I had practiced a thousand times with my brother and father's men.
Dick tapped me on the hip with one gauntleted hand. I twisted so that my toes were pointing to the side of the ship, and with a sideways step Dick came up so that the backs of our breasts were against each other. I rotated behind him, he rotated to the front of me, and I struggled to catch my breath as I leaned on my poleaxe. I swapped places with the third man, another marine, and finally judged myself safe enough to lift my visor.
I noticed an oar-slave, a dark complexioned man, perhaps from Sothoryos, staring at me. His eyes narrowed, and he lifted up his shackled wrists. I nodded, and slid him an axe with my foot. He took it up, and then went to work on the wood plank where his chains were bolted to the ship.
With the aid of the slaves, once freed, we cleared that deck. We cleared the other, too. The Queen had commanded no quarter for pirates.
One man, more a boy, really, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, haunts me still. He tried to surrender, threw down his weapon. I remember him because he was the youngest, and he did not have a full beard yet, and his eyes were a shade of blue that reminded me of mornings at home, riding and hawking with my sister. Of mornings spent helping bring in the harvest, or with the plowing, or making hay, or, or , or, or.
I had enough time to pause before I stabbed him in the heart, enough time to consider it, enough time to think about the faces of the men who had been in chains just heartbeats ago, who were even now helping me butcher this boy's fellows.
I still dream of the decks of those ships, awash with the blood of pirates and slaves alike. And I dream of a young man with eyes of blue that hurt to remember, and the horror on his face when he realized he was dead.
King's Landing
Oh look an interlude
King's Landing
The King's council, notably absent the King, convened to discuss urgent news out of Braavos. The Hand, Jon Arryn, took his seat in the richly decorated chamber where that same council met, off to one side of the Throne Room. The Iron Throne itself was missing its sitter, Robert Baratheon. After Jon Arryn took his seat, the council followed suit. There was fat Wyman Manderly, the master of ships, Varys the eunuch spymaster, Kevan Lannister and his blonde beard. The last two of their number were Grand Maester Pycelle, a Lannister creature if ever there was one, Arryn suspected, and Ser Barristan Selmy, commander of the Kingsguard.
The Hand of the King laid the parchment report on the table the King's council sat at. Then he settled back into his seat, because the summer so far had been damp and gotten to his old bones.
"Rhaella Targaryen has successfully given birth to a daughter in a palazzo in Braavos," Jon Arryn said to break the silence. "She names the knight Ser Corlys Velaryon as the girl's godfather." The council made the appropriate noises of disapproval.
"Further," Arryn interrupted them, "Ser Corlys has placed his war galley at the service of their Braavosi hosts, should the city's current border conflicts with Norvos and Qohor become open warfare."
"What's the talk out of their offices, Lord Varys?" Kevan Lannister asked. No doubt he plans to report the location of the Targaryens in exile to Tywin, Jon Arryn thought disapprovingly.
"My birds have not had an easy time penetrating the security that Rhaella's own spymaster maintains," Varys said softly. Then he tittered. "But they have done it."
"So tell us what the woman means to do," Wyman Manderly said. A Northerner, and loyal to the current regime by virtue of Eddard Stark's loyalty to Robert, he was no doubt Eddard's ears and eyes in King's Landing. Neither Jon Arryn nor King Robert had been able to prevail upon Ned to stay in the city and help heal the realms after the cessation of fighting.
"There is division in that camp," Varys said. "Rhaella has not said what she wishes to do, but her knights are divided, in politics, if not the friendship they hold for each other. Ser Roland Gaunt, her Lord Protector and general, has made no secret of his willingness to muster a standing force like the Golden Company and turn sell-sword, until such time as enough funds can be raised to make an attempt at an invasion."
Lannister scowled. "Let them come," he said. "We'll cut them down and then pack the brother-fucker off to the Silent Sisters."
Ser Barristan Selmy frowned, and Arryn made a mental note to detail one of his own agents to watch the Commander of the Kingsguard.
Varys was continuing: "Ser Corlys has suggested they turn to trade and matters of commerce to acquire the necessary funds, while Sers Elbert Darke and Lyonel Staunton side with no one. Ser Darry is of a different mind, though she's made him commander of her Queensguard and Hand, both."
"Darry is a skilled knight, and excellent at arms," Barristan put in. "What is Ser Darry's opinion?"
Varys smiled again. "That they settle, peaceably, and raise the children not to seek the Iron Throne."
"Pshaw," said the Grand Maester. Pycelle leaned forward in his chair. "Surely you cannot believe that Rhaella, having crowned herself as a ruling Queen even in exile, would lay aside that same crown, and forfeit the claim her children and granddaughter have to the Iron Throne?"
Varys shrugged. "Who can know, Grand Maester? She has indicated neither one way or the other. Should we wish to... effect a change in circumstances with a knife?"
"No," Jon said. He frowned, not in anger, but in thought. "So long as they make no moves for Westeros, we will make no move towards open hostility. I have no desire to see King's Landing erupt in violence, should word of an assassination reach those guilds and tradesmen that remain loyal to Rhaella. She was not without friends, and did much for charity and alms in the city."
"So what do Rhaella's knights do while they wait for the woman to make up her mind?" Lannister asked. He settled back in his own chair, shuffled a few pieces of parchment in front of him.
"Rhaella has prevailed upon their Braavosi hosts to accept her knights as officers in the city's militia, though not the standing army," Varys explained.
"I do not see a difference between the Braavosi militia and army," Pycelle interjected.
Arryn turned his gaze upon the older man, but it was Wyman Manderly that took it upon himself to explain: "The army is small, and professional. More akin to knights here than anything else. They draw salaries against the city's treasury, provide the cores of garrisons in Pentos and the towns in the hinterlands, and are often the main striking force when campaigns take the forces of Braavos far away from their city."
"And the militia?"
"Every citizen of the city, equipped with arms as befits their station in trade and life. Companies are formed by city block or guild, and because they're tradesmen and not soldiers, only ever accompany the army as weight to make up numbers."
"So her knights are going to drink and whore themselves into early graves because the Braavosi won't recognize the natural skill and ability of a Westerosi man of arms?" Lannister asked. I don't think so, Jon Arryn thought.
Manderly shook his head.
"I don't think so," he said. Arryn wondered if the fat man's reasoning was the same as his own.
"Knights, even knights such as myself, good ser," Manderly started, "are professional men of arms. Our life is a life of arms. The former Queen's knights, for all their names were little heard before the war, proved themselves in the battles at Stoney Sept, at the fighting between that fight and the Trident, even securing the Queen's removal from King's Landing. Opposed, by I believe, your own family's men, Ser Lannister?"
Kevan's face didn't give anything away, but Arryn noted that Manderly had a very good network of informants, if he had been able to suss out the Lannister backing behind trying to have the Queen taken captive by attacking her between the Red Keep and boarding their ship.
"So the knights sworn to her cause are men of prowess, of courage and ability, even if they did not reach quite the heights of competition in tourney that your own beloved nephew Ser Jaime did, Ser Kevan. They were born and perhaps even bred to be men of war, in as much as you can breed a man like a horse, and to the warring cities of Essos we have driven them. I'm not scared of Rhaella Targaryen trying to reconquer Westeros, gentles," Wyman Manderly said.
"I'm more in fear of her knights bringing to birth in her name a new Valyrian Freehold built off of the backs of a professional army like the Golden Company, and an ever hungry gaze cast west."
King's Landing
The King's council, notably absent the King, convened to discuss urgent news out of Braavos. The Hand, Jon Arryn, took his seat in the richly decorated chamber where that same council met, off to one side of the Throne Room. The Iron Throne itself was missing its sitter, Robert Baratheon. After Jon Arryn took his seat, the council followed suit. There was fat Wyman Manderly, the master of ships, Varys the eunuch spymaster, Kevan Lannister and his blonde beard. The last two of their number were Grand Maester Pycelle, a Lannister creature if ever there was one, Arryn suspected, and Ser Barristan Selmy, commander of the Kingsguard.
The Hand of the King laid the parchment report on the table the King's council sat at. Then he settled back into his seat, because the summer so far had been damp and gotten to his old bones.
"Rhaella Targaryen has successfully given birth to a daughter in a palazzo in Braavos," Jon Arryn said to break the silence. "She names the knight Ser Corlys Velaryon as the girl's godfather." The council made the appropriate noises of disapproval.
"Further," Arryn interrupted them, "Ser Corlys has placed his war galley at the service of their Braavosi hosts, should the city's current border conflicts with Norvos and Qohor become open warfare."
"What's the talk out of their offices, Lord Varys?" Kevan Lannister asked. No doubt he plans to report the location of the Targaryens in exile to Tywin, Jon Arryn thought disapprovingly.
"My birds have not had an easy time penetrating the security that Rhaella's own spymaster maintains," Varys said softly. Then he tittered. "But they have done it."
"So tell us what the woman means to do," Wyman Manderly said. A Northerner, and loyal to the current regime by virtue of Eddard Stark's loyalty to Robert, he was no doubt Eddard's ears and eyes in King's Landing. Neither Jon Arryn nor King Robert had been able to prevail upon Ned to stay in the city and help heal the realms after the cessation of fighting.
"There is division in that camp," Varys said. "Rhaella has not said what she wishes to do, but her knights are divided, in politics, if not the friendship they hold for each other. Ser Roland Gaunt, her Lord Protector and general, has made no secret of his willingness to muster a standing force like the Golden Company and turn sell-sword, until such time as enough funds can be raised to make an attempt at an invasion."
Lannister scowled. "Let them come," he said. "We'll cut them down and then pack the brother-fucker off to the Silent Sisters."
Ser Barristan Selmy frowned, and Arryn made a mental note to detail one of his own agents to watch the Commander of the Kingsguard.
Varys was continuing: "Ser Corlys has suggested they turn to trade and matters of commerce to acquire the necessary funds, while Sers Elbert Darke and Lyonel Staunton side with no one. Ser Darry is of a different mind, though she's made him commander of her Queensguard and Hand, both."
"Darry is a skilled knight, and excellent at arms," Barristan put in. "What is Ser Darry's opinion?"
Varys smiled again. "That they settle, peaceably, and raise the children not to seek the Iron Throne."
"Pshaw," said the Grand Maester. Pycelle leaned forward in his chair. "Surely you cannot believe that Rhaella, having crowned herself as a ruling Queen even in exile, would lay aside that same crown, and forfeit the claim her children and granddaughter have to the Iron Throne?"
Varys shrugged. "Who can know, Grand Maester? She has indicated neither one way or the other. Should we wish to... effect a change in circumstances with a knife?"
"No," Jon said. He frowned, not in anger, but in thought. "So long as they make no moves for Westeros, we will make no move towards open hostility. I have no desire to see King's Landing erupt in violence, should word of an assassination reach those guilds and tradesmen that remain loyal to Rhaella. She was not without friends, and did much for charity and alms in the city."
"So what do Rhaella's knights do while they wait for the woman to make up her mind?" Lannister asked. He settled back in his own chair, shuffled a few pieces of parchment in front of him.
"Rhaella has prevailed upon their Braavosi hosts to accept her knights as officers in the city's militia, though not the standing army," Varys explained.
"I do not see a difference between the Braavosi militia and army," Pycelle interjected.
Arryn turned his gaze upon the older man, but it was Wyman Manderly that took it upon himself to explain: "The army is small, and professional. More akin to knights here than anything else. They draw salaries against the city's treasury, provide the cores of garrisons in Pentos and the towns in the hinterlands, and are often the main striking force when campaigns take the forces of Braavos far away from their city."
"And the militia?"
"Every citizen of the city, equipped with arms as befits their station in trade and life. Companies are formed by city block or guild, and because they're tradesmen and not soldiers, only ever accompany the army as weight to make up numbers."
"So her knights are going to drink and whore themselves into early graves because the Braavosi won't recognize the natural skill and ability of a Westerosi man of arms?" Lannister asked. I don't think so, Jon Arryn thought.
Manderly shook his head.
"I don't think so," he said. Arryn wondered if the fat man's reasoning was the same as his own.
"Knights, even knights such as myself, good ser," Manderly started, "are professional men of arms. Our life is a life of arms. The former Queen's knights, for all their names were little heard before the war, proved themselves in the battles at Stoney Sept, at the fighting between that fight and the Trident, even securing the Queen's removal from King's Landing. Opposed, by I believe, your own family's men, Ser Lannister?"
Kevan's face didn't give anything away, but Arryn noted that Manderly had a very good network of informants, if he had been able to suss out the Lannister backing behind trying to have the Queen taken captive by attacking her between the Red Keep and boarding their ship.
"So the knights sworn to her cause are men of prowess, of courage and ability, even if they did not reach quite the heights of competition in tourney that your own beloved nephew Ser Jaime did, Ser Kevan. They were born and perhaps even bred to be men of war, in as much as you can breed a man like a horse, and to the warring cities of Essos we have driven them. I'm not scared of Rhaella Targaryen trying to reconquer Westeros, gentles," Wyman Manderly said.
"I'm more in fear of her knights bringing to birth in her name a new Valyrian Freehold built off of the backs of a professional army like the Golden Company, and an ever hungry gaze cast west."
Ten
Six months after we arrived in Braavos, it came to pass that the guard rotation duties for one night fell to two bravos we'd hired to help fill out holes in the rota. The Queen and Darry were meeting with a representative of the Bank. I was not privy to the details of their conversation. Rhaella had met with two Keyholders of the Iron Bank after we first arrived and I had not been in that meeting either.
Did it bother me? No it did not, because I knew what Rhaella was trying to do, which was bridge the gap between 'royal refugee' and 'reconquering Queen,' or, as we didn't often whisper with each other, 'foundress of a new Valyria.'
Could Rhaella do it? Could she forge the tools necessary in Braavos to remake even a portion of the Valyrian Freehold, with only four knights and three children? That question kept me awake at night. That and the nightmares, of course. Nightmares of an infant with silver hair and dark purple eyes, his skull bashed against a stone of the Keep, nightmares of a mother's trust in a knight in dark armor being betrayed. I drank down my cup of wine, trying to duck the memories.
My friends and I were drinking in one of the empty offices on the first floor of the palazzo we had been placed in by the Iron Bank. The palazzo was built up, not out like Westerosi castles, with a facade of white-washed stucco, and blue-tiled roofing. Besides the empty offices on the ground floor there was a kitchen and a dining room where Rhaella presided over her small court. I had done absolutely no work in the office chosen as mine, with a truly beautifully carved oak desk.
Instead, my work for the past months had consisted of drilling with the militia company I'd been appointed an officer in, and working with Viserys. The prince's efforts were worth praise, but I did not let him know that. Hasty had been sparse in his own praise for me, and so I'd worked all the harder to earn it.
"The war was lost," Elbert was saying, "as soon as Aerys burned Royce, Arryn, and Mallister. Not only did he give the leading family of the North an insult that they had to respond to with war when he killed the Lord and lordling Stark, be he gave great insult to leading families of the Riverlands and Vale, too."
I finished my cup of wine off and poured myself more. I rolled my memories of the war over in my mind and thought about it.
"No," I said. "The war was over as soon as the Prince thought he could galavant off with the daughter of a high Lord, betrothed to another, and think he could get away with it. Even if the Stark girl went willingly--" and that I doubted, considering... Aerys' predilections-- "Rhaegar doomed himself and his father as soon as he crowned the girl with blue roses." Rhaegar and Aerys had deserved even worse deaths than they'd died, but I bitterly regretted not being able to ride to Elia Martell and the infant Aegon's rescue. I didn't want to think about Elia or her son. So I finished my wine, then poured another.
"Haven't you had enough, Roland?" Corlys laid a hand on my arm. I placed my own over his, and shook my head.
"Bad dreams," I said. "I've not been sleeping well. The wine helps."
Lyonel's faced turned down in a frown, and he laid his hand on my other arm. "Roland, have you considered that the wine is giving you the bad dreams? You sop, you need to stop. You worry us."
"I'm fine," I said. I grimaced, then stood. "I'm going to bed," I lied, and bade them good evening. Instead I went by the kitchen, grabbed another carafe of wine, and went straight to the roof. The bravo walking a turn on the roof nodded to me, and I went to the edge.
The city of canals spread out before me, lights reflecting off the water. Across the canal where the palazzo we stayed in was located, the Sept's candles shined.
"Ser?" I turned, and Viserys stood there, his purple eyes hooded in the dark.
"My Prince," I said, and wondered if he'd followed me up here from before the office conversation or after.
"Why does everyone dislike my father, even though he's dead?" Oh boy, I thought. Giving me the hard ones. I went to one knee, and placed the wine to the side. My sword's sheath scraped against the tiles of the roof, and I tried to think about my answer before I spoke.
Aerys had been mad, absolutely raving, and committed sins no nine year old should be party to. He'd also been the only father the boy knew, and seemed to dote on him.
Bugger, I thought.
"Your father," I said, then bit my tongue.
"Your father did things that no King should do," I tried. "There are laws of gods and men, and though it may appear to you as a Prince that there are no laws binding the conduct of a King, the laws of gods can and do. And just as important, the unwritten laws of society." I adjusted the sword at my hip, and sat down, legs crossed beneath me. The Prince mirrored me, and cocked his head, thinking.
"Unwritten laws? Like what?" It was a good question. Like what, Roland?
I grimaced. "Like-- there's no law, if I were to make love to another man's wife. But he'd be within his legal rights to challenge me to a duel for the affront to his honor. Your father, King Aerys, had several men killed that he had no legal right to kill. Nor did he have the unwritten right to it, for they'd offered him no insult save asking redress for the insult offered to Lord Stark by your brother's abduction of the Lady Lyanna."
"So why are you still loyal to Mother if Father committed such wrongs, Ser Roland?"
"Because I was never your father's knight, Princeling," I said. I thought back to the days after my vigil and knighting, when I'd searched fruitlessly for a lord to serve, and my audience in the Throne Room.
"My uncle, Gwayne Gaunt, was a Kingsguard for your father," I said. "He died defending the King at Duskendale, with seven men for seven gods killed to herald his arrival in the afterlife. And when I came to the King, as the nephew of a man whose life was sold dearly to defend the King's own, to seek service...."
No knight should be insulted so.
"The King told me 'I have no need or want for a lesser version of the uncle, when the uncle proved incapable.'"
But he didn't, Prince Viserys," I said, voice ragged and raw. "My uncle died a man, died a knight, died a Kingsguard, died a Gaunt. All I sought was to enter the King's service as a knight, as well. He didn't want me."
And I remembered a Queen with lilac eyes, haunted eyes and a bruise on her face. The torches in the Throne Room had thrown off welcome heat, that winter night after Aerys had gone to sleep, and Rhaella carried herself like a goddess. She still did, so many years and pregnancies and miscarriages and lost children later.
"Your mother wanted me," I said simply.
After that, he asked me some questions about being a good knight and King, and I answered as best I could, knowing I'd never been either a king or good knight. A good knight would've found a way to rescue Elia and Aegon, regardless of the inability.
I walked the Prince down to his room, next to the Queen's own, and bid him goodnight. After, I exchanged nods with Darry, and then went back to the roof and my snatched carafe of wine.
As I drank it, I thought of dark eyes filled with warmth and hope, trusting in four knights.
"Fuck," I said to my last cup of wine, then drank it off. I was halfway drunk, angry, and itching for a fight. I left the carafe and cup on the roof, snatched my cloak from my room, and went prowling for-- what? I didn't know, when I left the palazzo. A fight, a woman to share my bed-- something. Anything.
I found it halfway to the Moon Pool on foot, in the form of a bravo that stepped into my path, his long, thin sword drawn.
"Good evening, friend," he said. "Do you wear a sword, this fine night?"
In answer, I shifted my shoulder, changing the drape of my cloak and revealing that I wore my longsword.
"Ah," he said with a slight smile. "A Sunset Kingdomer, then. Perhaps you do not know the custom, friend, but--"
I drew my sword. Was fighting a duel with a bravo in Braavos the wisest course I could have chosen, that night? No, of course not. Did it appeal to me, angry and half-drunk as I was, feeling like I could conquer the world? Of course.
"Who is the fairest of all the ladies in the city, friend?" It was almost, almost, a ritual challenge.
"My lady and Queen," I said, and then smiled. "The Queen of Seven Kingdoms, Rhaella Targaryen."
"A bold choice," the bravo said. In the dark, I couldn't see the color of his eyes, but his hair was black, features dark, and the night lent his nose an aquiline air. There was a scar down the side of his cheek, next to his mouth, and I thought perhaps it might be a sword scar.
"But I believe the fairest of ladies is the Nightingale, and so I am afraid that we must fill the night with the song of steel."
He took his stance, sword in one hand forward of his body, shoulder facing me. The night seemed to fall silent around us. I heard, more than saw, people coming to windows and balconies to watch the duel. I watched his eyes, and he watched mine.
Something shifted, perhaps ten heartbeats later-- he decided to move, or I decided to move, or we both decided as one, in the same heartbeat, the same breath. He went for a quick lunge, aimed for my face, perhaps to end the duel quickly. I brought my sword up from the low guard it had been in, parried his thrust, and shifted to a cut, bringing my sword and forward to cut across his arm.
He jerked the arm back, but I had pinked him, and the blood reflected the moonlight darkly. The bravo stepped back, one hand held up, and sheathed his sword.
"What," I said stupidly, through the haze of anger at myself and Rhaegar and Aerys, through the drink.
"That was first blood, friend. We do not fight to the death here, unless the offense is grave. Tonight, my friend, we agree-- the most beautiful of all ladies in Braavos is Rhaella Targaryen, your Queen."
"What," I said again.
"We're done," he said. "Unless you wish to find a house of ill-repute and sample the wares of the ladies, together as friends, friend?"
"No thank you," I said. I wiped the few drops of blood off the tip of my sword with my handkerchief, then sheathed the sword. Then I started walking, but this time without an aim.
He followed me, friendly and open, smiling. "You are a knight, yes? I have seen one before, near the docks. He wore the same type of belt as you. A fine belt, indeed," he said, and gestured to my waist. I took it that he meant to refer to my plaque belt, brass plaques decorated with the arms of my house and backed onto fine velvet, one of the finest things I owned. And paid for, as a gift to me, by Rhaella Targaryen for the Feast of the Father's Judgement.
"Thank you," I said. I was thirsty, so we stamped into a taverna, where I stood a cup of wine for my new, still unnamed friend.
~OEiB~
My friends found me in the arms of a woman with dark hair, warm amber eyes, and skin an exotic shade of orange-yellow. She stretched languorously as one of them dragged me out of her bed and dunked me in a bucket of water.
I spluttered. Then I tried to wipe my face, clear the sleep from eyes. I stopped when I saw their faces. All of them, Elbert and Corlys and Lyonel all, wore grim faces. The woman, whose name I didn't know, waved me away with a hand, then rolled back over and buried her face in the pillows. I traced the curves of her body beneath the sheet with my eye, but a cough interrupted me, and I turned back to face my friends.
"Who died?" The question, meant as a joke, didn't go over well. Corlys shoved my breeches at me, while Lyonel helped me tug on my shirt. I skipped the doublet and belting on my plaque and sword-belt in favor of tucking them under my arm. I tugged my boots on at the walk, as we left the room and headed down the stairs.
We exited the taverna in a clatter, onto a street I had no memory of walking onto. A boat waited for us at the steps into the canal, and I grimaced.
"Who died?" I asked again.
"If the word we had early this morning is correct," Corlys said, his eyes hooded, "the entire Braavosi garrison of Pentos."
"The entire-- Fuck," I said. Fuck, I thought. The magisters of Braavos couldn't ignore that, and the city might very well find itself at war with Pentos once more.
"Yes," Lyonel said. He took Corlys' hand into his own. "And the only militia company, from the four we're officers in, that they're sending to help fill out numbers for the army, is yours. You've been summoned to assemble tomorrow, but Corlys will be taking his ship out as part of the Braavosi squadron looking to blockade Pentos."
"Bugger," I said.
"I plan to," Corlys said with a smile. Lyonel elbowed him in the stomach, and I smiled at the two of them. Elbert took my hand in his own.
"It's bad, in Pentos," he said. "There's talk... Worse than a sack, it's said, and the Braavosi mean to use you. I think they want to see the prowess of a knight of the Seven Kingdoms in action, both in fighting and before it begins. What you do, how you act, to see if Rhaella's claim is worth entertaining."
"Let them," I said. "They'll know my quality soon enough." I massaged my temple, trying to soothe away the hammering of smiths' hammers in my skull
After that, things happened quickly. We arrived at the small pier in the canal that adjoined the palazzo, and I was rapidly fed, scrubbed, and shaved for an audience with the Queen.
A certain informality had come into being in Rhaella's court; we'd shed blood and bled to see her and the little ones safely away from Westeros, and she seemingly had had no issue with accepting our acting as fierce, deadly uncles for her children and granddaughter. More, she had allowed a certain informality with herself. That first month, when there had been doubt she would survive the pregnancy and birth, the Queen had insisted we call her Rhaella, and become something of a friend.
Now I went into her office wearing a shirt, breeches, and lacing up my doublet as I entered.
"Roland," the Queen said. "Take a seat, Ser." I sat. She steepled her fingers before her face, resting her elbows on the desk. A crib sat next to the desk, and by the gurgling and cooing noises coming from it, I assumed it held the newest scion of the Targaryen family.
"Our gracious hosts made it a condition of your acceptance into the militia, and our stay here that you and your friends remain available for military service until such time as you join a sellsword band or the standing army." The Queen splayed her hands on the desk between us, and drew a piece of parchment from a desk drawer. She left it there, and turned her deep indigo eyes back to me.
Dark, like the wine-dark sea, and lovely as the ocean to a fisherman after he's survived a wretched storm. I could see, all too well, why Ser Hasty had been in love with her until the day I last spoke with him.
"I don't take issue--," I began, but she held up a single finger to interrupt me.
"My knights," Rhaella said, and her voice held affection and warmth for the phrase 'my knights'.
"Five knights," she said, and smiled. "Five knights against five kingdoms, if I asked it of you." Her smile disappeared. "I will not ask it of you. Not yet. But nor will I allow our gracious hosts to piss away your lives in pursuit of Braavosi foreign policy, in pursuit of Braavosi military goals, in pursuit of anything but securing my children's futures.
They're sending you to Pentos," Rhaella continued. "There is nothing I can do to change that, Roland Gaunt. Nor will I argue when you ask to take my last son with you. Viserys is to be your squire, and he will learn that there is no beauty in war. Perhaps, if I pass before the Kingdoms are retaken, and you give him your fealty as your King, he will be less eager to wage war, having seen it so early. So unlike some of our ancestors."
I nodded. "I'll keep him alive, Your Grace," I said with all the weight of a promise.
Rhaella's eyes narrowed.
"War reaps as the gods will," she said. "Do not make a promise we both know that you may not be able to keep, Roland. You will be in Pentos, yes? War can make men wealthy beyond their dreams, it's said. Ransoms of knights or lords in Westeros, magisters..." I wondered where the Queen was going, what she was going to say, when the infant Daenerys stopped cooing. Rhaella was on her feet in an instant. She stepped to the crib and leaned over, smiling.
The Queen picked up and handed the infant to me, and the girl's eyes were as wine dark as her mother's.
"We took gold from Dragonstone with us," Rhaella acknowledged. I bent my head, watched the girl child's eyes track my finger as I wiggled it in front of her nose. "But that is for more-- covert, yes? More covert expenses than funding a sellsword company. If you come back with the money, I will grant you leave to found a red dragon's Golden Company. What will you name it?"
I sat there, holding the future of the Targaryens in my arms, a girl no heavier than a helmet, with wine dark eyes and hair the color of moonlight. The girl wrapped a chubby little infant's hand around my finger and tried to pat my face with her other hand. I leaned down a little, felt her soft hand catch on the scar beneath my cheek. I closed my eyes, and thought about a woman from the desert with a husband that didn't deserve her, and their infant son.
And I thought about a Queen that had wanted me when the King had not.
"The Oathsworn," I said, and opened my eyes.
"If I cannot have the Seven Kingdoms," Rhaella said. She smiled, and it was hungry and sharp. "There is a land disputed between three cities, and several cities where the oppressed greatly outnumber their oppressors. If the Seven Kingdoms are denied to me, then I shall be Rhaella the Conqueror. And you, Roland Gaunt, will be my sword arm, and your Oathsworn my sword."
Six months after we arrived in Braavos, it came to pass that the guard rotation duties for one night fell to two bravos we'd hired to help fill out holes in the rota. The Queen and Darry were meeting with a representative of the Bank. I was not privy to the details of their conversation. Rhaella had met with two Keyholders of the Iron Bank after we first arrived and I had not been in that meeting either.
Did it bother me? No it did not, because I knew what Rhaella was trying to do, which was bridge the gap between 'royal refugee' and 'reconquering Queen,' or, as we didn't often whisper with each other, 'foundress of a new Valyria.'
Could Rhaella do it? Could she forge the tools necessary in Braavos to remake even a portion of the Valyrian Freehold, with only four knights and three children? That question kept me awake at night. That and the nightmares, of course. Nightmares of an infant with silver hair and dark purple eyes, his skull bashed against a stone of the Keep, nightmares of a mother's trust in a knight in dark armor being betrayed. I drank down my cup of wine, trying to duck the memories.
My friends and I were drinking in one of the empty offices on the first floor of the palazzo we had been placed in by the Iron Bank. The palazzo was built up, not out like Westerosi castles, with a facade of white-washed stucco, and blue-tiled roofing. Besides the empty offices on the ground floor there was a kitchen and a dining room where Rhaella presided over her small court. I had done absolutely no work in the office chosen as mine, with a truly beautifully carved oak desk.
Instead, my work for the past months had consisted of drilling with the militia company I'd been appointed an officer in, and working with Viserys. The prince's efforts were worth praise, but I did not let him know that. Hasty had been sparse in his own praise for me, and so I'd worked all the harder to earn it.
"The war was lost," Elbert was saying, "as soon as Aerys burned Royce, Arryn, and Mallister. Not only did he give the leading family of the North an insult that they had to respond to with war when he killed the Lord and lordling Stark, be he gave great insult to leading families of the Riverlands and Vale, too."
I finished my cup of wine off and poured myself more. I rolled my memories of the war over in my mind and thought about it.
"No," I said. "The war was over as soon as the Prince thought he could galavant off with the daughter of a high Lord, betrothed to another, and think he could get away with it. Even if the Stark girl went willingly--" and that I doubted, considering... Aerys' predilections-- "Rhaegar doomed himself and his father as soon as he crowned the girl with blue roses." Rhaegar and Aerys had deserved even worse deaths than they'd died, but I bitterly regretted not being able to ride to Elia Martell and the infant Aegon's rescue. I didn't want to think about Elia or her son. So I finished my wine, then poured another.
"Haven't you had enough, Roland?" Corlys laid a hand on my arm. I placed my own over his, and shook my head.
"Bad dreams," I said. "I've not been sleeping well. The wine helps."
Lyonel's faced turned down in a frown, and he laid his hand on my other arm. "Roland, have you considered that the wine is giving you the bad dreams? You sop, you need to stop. You worry us."
"I'm fine," I said. I grimaced, then stood. "I'm going to bed," I lied, and bade them good evening. Instead I went by the kitchen, grabbed another carafe of wine, and went straight to the roof. The bravo walking a turn on the roof nodded to me, and I went to the edge.
The city of canals spread out before me, lights reflecting off the water. Across the canal where the palazzo we stayed in was located, the Sept's candles shined.
"Ser?" I turned, and Viserys stood there, his purple eyes hooded in the dark.
"My Prince," I said, and wondered if he'd followed me up here from before the office conversation or after.
"Why does everyone dislike my father, even though he's dead?" Oh boy, I thought. Giving me the hard ones. I went to one knee, and placed the wine to the side. My sword's sheath scraped against the tiles of the roof, and I tried to think about my answer before I spoke.
Aerys had been mad, absolutely raving, and committed sins no nine year old should be party to. He'd also been the only father the boy knew, and seemed to dote on him.
Bugger, I thought.
"Your father," I said, then bit my tongue.
"Your father did things that no King should do," I tried. "There are laws of gods and men, and though it may appear to you as a Prince that there are no laws binding the conduct of a King, the laws of gods can and do. And just as important, the unwritten laws of society." I adjusted the sword at my hip, and sat down, legs crossed beneath me. The Prince mirrored me, and cocked his head, thinking.
"Unwritten laws? Like what?" It was a good question. Like what, Roland?
I grimaced. "Like-- there's no law, if I were to make love to another man's wife. But he'd be within his legal rights to challenge me to a duel for the affront to his honor. Your father, King Aerys, had several men killed that he had no legal right to kill. Nor did he have the unwritten right to it, for they'd offered him no insult save asking redress for the insult offered to Lord Stark by your brother's abduction of the Lady Lyanna."
"So why are you still loyal to Mother if Father committed such wrongs, Ser Roland?"
"Because I was never your father's knight, Princeling," I said. I thought back to the days after my vigil and knighting, when I'd searched fruitlessly for a lord to serve, and my audience in the Throne Room.
"My uncle, Gwayne Gaunt, was a Kingsguard for your father," I said. "He died defending the King at Duskendale, with seven men for seven gods killed to herald his arrival in the afterlife. And when I came to the King, as the nephew of a man whose life was sold dearly to defend the King's own, to seek service...."
No knight should be insulted so.
"The King told me 'I have no need or want for a lesser version of the uncle, when the uncle proved incapable.'"
But he didn't, Prince Viserys," I said, voice ragged and raw. "My uncle died a man, died a knight, died a Kingsguard, died a Gaunt. All I sought was to enter the King's service as a knight, as well. He didn't want me."
And I remembered a Queen with lilac eyes, haunted eyes and a bruise on her face. The torches in the Throne Room had thrown off welcome heat, that winter night after Aerys had gone to sleep, and Rhaella carried herself like a goddess. She still did, so many years and pregnancies and miscarriages and lost children later.
"Your mother wanted me," I said simply.
After that, he asked me some questions about being a good knight and King, and I answered as best I could, knowing I'd never been either a king or good knight. A good knight would've found a way to rescue Elia and Aegon, regardless of the inability.
I walked the Prince down to his room, next to the Queen's own, and bid him goodnight. After, I exchanged nods with Darry, and then went back to the roof and my snatched carafe of wine.
As I drank it, I thought of dark eyes filled with warmth and hope, trusting in four knights.
"Fuck," I said to my last cup of wine, then drank it off. I was halfway drunk, angry, and itching for a fight. I left the carafe and cup on the roof, snatched my cloak from my room, and went prowling for-- what? I didn't know, when I left the palazzo. A fight, a woman to share my bed-- something. Anything.
I found it halfway to the Moon Pool on foot, in the form of a bravo that stepped into my path, his long, thin sword drawn.
"Good evening, friend," he said. "Do you wear a sword, this fine night?"
In answer, I shifted my shoulder, changing the drape of my cloak and revealing that I wore my longsword.
"Ah," he said with a slight smile. "A Sunset Kingdomer, then. Perhaps you do not know the custom, friend, but--"
I drew my sword. Was fighting a duel with a bravo in Braavos the wisest course I could have chosen, that night? No, of course not. Did it appeal to me, angry and half-drunk as I was, feeling like I could conquer the world? Of course.
"Who is the fairest of all the ladies in the city, friend?" It was almost, almost, a ritual challenge.
"My lady and Queen," I said, and then smiled. "The Queen of Seven Kingdoms, Rhaella Targaryen."
"A bold choice," the bravo said. In the dark, I couldn't see the color of his eyes, but his hair was black, features dark, and the night lent his nose an aquiline air. There was a scar down the side of his cheek, next to his mouth, and I thought perhaps it might be a sword scar.
"But I believe the fairest of ladies is the Nightingale, and so I am afraid that we must fill the night with the song of steel."
He took his stance, sword in one hand forward of his body, shoulder facing me. The night seemed to fall silent around us. I heard, more than saw, people coming to windows and balconies to watch the duel. I watched his eyes, and he watched mine.
Something shifted, perhaps ten heartbeats later-- he decided to move, or I decided to move, or we both decided as one, in the same heartbeat, the same breath. He went for a quick lunge, aimed for my face, perhaps to end the duel quickly. I brought my sword up from the low guard it had been in, parried his thrust, and shifted to a cut, bringing my sword and forward to cut across his arm.
He jerked the arm back, but I had pinked him, and the blood reflected the moonlight darkly. The bravo stepped back, one hand held up, and sheathed his sword.
"What," I said stupidly, through the haze of anger at myself and Rhaegar and Aerys, through the drink.
"That was first blood, friend. We do not fight to the death here, unless the offense is grave. Tonight, my friend, we agree-- the most beautiful of all ladies in Braavos is Rhaella Targaryen, your Queen."
"What," I said again.
"We're done," he said. "Unless you wish to find a house of ill-repute and sample the wares of the ladies, together as friends, friend?"
"No thank you," I said. I wiped the few drops of blood off the tip of my sword with my handkerchief, then sheathed the sword. Then I started walking, but this time without an aim.
He followed me, friendly and open, smiling. "You are a knight, yes? I have seen one before, near the docks. He wore the same type of belt as you. A fine belt, indeed," he said, and gestured to my waist. I took it that he meant to refer to my plaque belt, brass plaques decorated with the arms of my house and backed onto fine velvet, one of the finest things I owned. And paid for, as a gift to me, by Rhaella Targaryen for the Feast of the Father's Judgement.
"Thank you," I said. I was thirsty, so we stamped into a taverna, where I stood a cup of wine for my new, still unnamed friend.
~OEiB~
My friends found me in the arms of a woman with dark hair, warm amber eyes, and skin an exotic shade of orange-yellow. She stretched languorously as one of them dragged me out of her bed and dunked me in a bucket of water.
I spluttered. Then I tried to wipe my face, clear the sleep from eyes. I stopped when I saw their faces. All of them, Elbert and Corlys and Lyonel all, wore grim faces. The woman, whose name I didn't know, waved me away with a hand, then rolled back over and buried her face in the pillows. I traced the curves of her body beneath the sheet with my eye, but a cough interrupted me, and I turned back to face my friends.
"Who died?" The question, meant as a joke, didn't go over well. Corlys shoved my breeches at me, while Lyonel helped me tug on my shirt. I skipped the doublet and belting on my plaque and sword-belt in favor of tucking them under my arm. I tugged my boots on at the walk, as we left the room and headed down the stairs.
We exited the taverna in a clatter, onto a street I had no memory of walking onto. A boat waited for us at the steps into the canal, and I grimaced.
"Who died?" I asked again.
"If the word we had early this morning is correct," Corlys said, his eyes hooded, "the entire Braavosi garrison of Pentos."
"The entire-- Fuck," I said. Fuck, I thought. The magisters of Braavos couldn't ignore that, and the city might very well find itself at war with Pentos once more.
"Yes," Lyonel said. He took Corlys' hand into his own. "And the only militia company, from the four we're officers in, that they're sending to help fill out numbers for the army, is yours. You've been summoned to assemble tomorrow, but Corlys will be taking his ship out as part of the Braavosi squadron looking to blockade Pentos."
"Bugger," I said.
"I plan to," Corlys said with a smile. Lyonel elbowed him in the stomach, and I smiled at the two of them. Elbert took my hand in his own.
"It's bad, in Pentos," he said. "There's talk... Worse than a sack, it's said, and the Braavosi mean to use you. I think they want to see the prowess of a knight of the Seven Kingdoms in action, both in fighting and before it begins. What you do, how you act, to see if Rhaella's claim is worth entertaining."
"Let them," I said. "They'll know my quality soon enough." I massaged my temple, trying to soothe away the hammering of smiths' hammers in my skull
After that, things happened quickly. We arrived at the small pier in the canal that adjoined the palazzo, and I was rapidly fed, scrubbed, and shaved for an audience with the Queen.
A certain informality had come into being in Rhaella's court; we'd shed blood and bled to see her and the little ones safely away from Westeros, and she seemingly had had no issue with accepting our acting as fierce, deadly uncles for her children and granddaughter. More, she had allowed a certain informality with herself. That first month, when there had been doubt she would survive the pregnancy and birth, the Queen had insisted we call her Rhaella, and become something of a friend.
Now I went into her office wearing a shirt, breeches, and lacing up my doublet as I entered.
"Roland," the Queen said. "Take a seat, Ser." I sat. She steepled her fingers before her face, resting her elbows on the desk. A crib sat next to the desk, and by the gurgling and cooing noises coming from it, I assumed it held the newest scion of the Targaryen family.
"Our gracious hosts made it a condition of your acceptance into the militia, and our stay here that you and your friends remain available for military service until such time as you join a sellsword band or the standing army." The Queen splayed her hands on the desk between us, and drew a piece of parchment from a desk drawer. She left it there, and turned her deep indigo eyes back to me.
Dark, like the wine-dark sea, and lovely as the ocean to a fisherman after he's survived a wretched storm. I could see, all too well, why Ser Hasty had been in love with her until the day I last spoke with him.
"I don't take issue--," I began, but she held up a single finger to interrupt me.
"My knights," Rhaella said, and her voice held affection and warmth for the phrase 'my knights'.
"Five knights," she said, and smiled. "Five knights against five kingdoms, if I asked it of you." Her smile disappeared. "I will not ask it of you. Not yet. But nor will I allow our gracious hosts to piss away your lives in pursuit of Braavosi foreign policy, in pursuit of Braavosi military goals, in pursuit of anything but securing my children's futures.
They're sending you to Pentos," Rhaella continued. "There is nothing I can do to change that, Roland Gaunt. Nor will I argue when you ask to take my last son with you. Viserys is to be your squire, and he will learn that there is no beauty in war. Perhaps, if I pass before the Kingdoms are retaken, and you give him your fealty as your King, he will be less eager to wage war, having seen it so early. So unlike some of our ancestors."
I nodded. "I'll keep him alive, Your Grace," I said with all the weight of a promise.
Rhaella's eyes narrowed.
"War reaps as the gods will," she said. "Do not make a promise we both know that you may not be able to keep, Roland. You will be in Pentos, yes? War can make men wealthy beyond their dreams, it's said. Ransoms of knights or lords in Westeros, magisters..." I wondered where the Queen was going, what she was going to say, when the infant Daenerys stopped cooing. Rhaella was on her feet in an instant. She stepped to the crib and leaned over, smiling.
The Queen picked up and handed the infant to me, and the girl's eyes were as wine dark as her mother's.
"We took gold from Dragonstone with us," Rhaella acknowledged. I bent my head, watched the girl child's eyes track my finger as I wiggled it in front of her nose. "But that is for more-- covert, yes? More covert expenses than funding a sellsword company. If you come back with the money, I will grant you leave to found a red dragon's Golden Company. What will you name it?"
I sat there, holding the future of the Targaryens in my arms, a girl no heavier than a helmet, with wine dark eyes and hair the color of moonlight. The girl wrapped a chubby little infant's hand around my finger and tried to pat my face with her other hand. I leaned down a little, felt her soft hand catch on the scar beneath my cheek. I closed my eyes, and thought about a woman from the desert with a husband that didn't deserve her, and their infant son.
And I thought about a Queen that had wanted me when the King had not.
"The Oathsworn," I said, and opened my eyes.
"If I cannot have the Seven Kingdoms," Rhaella said. She smiled, and it was hungry and sharp. "There is a land disputed between three cities, and several cities where the oppressed greatly outnumber their oppressors. If the Seven Kingdoms are denied to me, then I shall be Rhaella the Conqueror. And you, Roland Gaunt, will be my sword arm, and your Oathsworn my sword."