“Maester Theomore speaks truly,” said Lord Wyman. “He is wise in all such matters, and has always given me good counsel.”
“A trueborn son comes before a brother,” Davos agreed, “but Tommen-called-Baratheon is bastard-born, as his brother Joffrey was before him. They were sired by the Kingslayer, in defiance of all the laws of gods and men.”
Another of the Freys spoke up. “He speaks treason with his own lips, my lord. Stannis took his thieving fingers. You should take his lying tongue.”
“Take his head, rather,” suggested Ser Jared. “Or let him meet me on the field of honor.”
“What would a Frey know of honor?” Davos threw back.
Four of the Freys started forward until Lord Wyman halted them with an upraised hand. “Step back, my friends. I will hear him out before I … before I deal with him.”
“Can you offer any proof of this incest, ser?” Maester Theomore asked, folding his soft hands atop his belly.
Edric Storm, thought Davos, but I sent him far away across the narrow sea, to keep him safe from Melisandre’s fires. “You have the word of Stannis Baratheon that all I’ve said is true.”
“Words are wind,” said the young woman behind Lord Wyman’s high seat, the handsome one with the long brown braid. “And men will lie to get their way, as any maid could tell you.”
“Proof requires more than some lord’s unsupported word,” declared Maester Theomore. “Stannis Baratheon would not be the first man who ever lied to win a throne.”
The pink woman pointed a plump finger down at Davos. “We want no part of any treason, you. We are good people in White Harbor, lawful, loyal people. Pour no more poison in our ears, or my good-father will send you to the Wolf’s Den.”
How have I offended this one? “Might I have the honor of my lady’s name?”
The pink woman gave an angry sniff and let the maester answer. “The Lady Leona is wife to Lord Wyman’s son Ser Wylis, presently a captive of the Lannisters.”
She speaks from fear. If White Harbor should declare for Stannis, her husband would answer with his life. How can I ask Lord Wyman to condemn his son to death? What would I do in his place if Devan were a hostage? “My lord,” said Davos, “I pray no harm will come to your son, or to any man of White Harbor.”
“Another lie,” said Lady Leona from her stool.
Davos thought it best to ignore her. “When Robb Stark took up arms against the bastard Joffrey-called-Baratheon, White Harbor marched with him. Lord Stark has fallen, but his war goes on.”
“Robb Stark was my liege lord,” said Lord Wyman. “Who is this man Stannis? Why does he trouble us? He never felt the need to journey north before, as best I can recall. Yet he turns up now, a beaten cur with his helm in his hand, begging for alms.”
“He came to save the realm, my lord,” Davos insisted. “To defend your lands against the ironborn and the wildlings.”
Next to the high seat, Ser Marlon Manderly gave a snort of disdain. “It has been centuries since White Harbor has seen any wildlings, and the ironmen have never troubled this coast. Does Lord Stannis propose to defend us from snarks and dragons too?”
Laughter swept the Merman’s Court, but at Lord Wyman’s feet, Lady Leona began to sob. “Ironmen from the isles, wildlings from beyond the Wall … and now this traitor lord with his outlaws, rebels, and sorcerers.” She pointed a finger at Davos. “We have heard of your red witch, oh yes. She would turn us against the Seven to bow before a fire demon!”
Davos had no love for the red priestess, but he dare not let Lady Leona go unanswered. “Lady Melisandre is a priestess of the red god. Queen Selyse has adopted her faith, along with many others, but more of His Grace’s followers still worship the Seven. Myself among them.” He prayed no one would ask him to explain about the sept at Dragonstone or the godswood at Storm’s End. If they ask, I must needs tell them. Stannis would not have me lie.
“The Seven defend White Harbor,” Lady Leona declared. “We do not fear your red queen or her god. Let her send what spells she will. The prayers of godly men will shield us against evil.”
“Indeed.” Lord Wyman gave Lady Leona a pat on the shoulder. “Lord Davos, if you are a lord, I know what your so-called king would have of me. Steel and silver and a bended knee.” He shifted his weight to lean upon an elbow. “Before he was slain, Lord Tywin offered White Harbor full pardon for our support of the Young Wolf. He promised that my son would be returned to me once I paid a ransom of three thousand dragons and proved my loyalty beyond a doubt. Roose Bolton, who is named our Warden of the North, requires that I give up my claim to Lord Hornwood’s lands and castles but swears my other holdings shall remain untouched. Walder Frey, his good-father, offers one of his daughters to be my wife, and husbands for my son’s daughters here behind me. These terms seem generous to me, a good basis for a fair and lasting peace. You would have me spurn them. So I ask you, Onion Knight—what does Lord Stannis offer me in return for my allegiance?”
War and woe and the screams of burning men, Davos might have said. “The chance to do your duty,” he replied instead. That was the answer Stannis would have given Wyman Manderly. The Hand should speak with the king’s voice.
Lord Wyman sagged back in his chair. “Duty. I see.”
“White Harbor is not strong enough to stand alone. You need His Grace as much as he needs you. Together you can defeat your common enemies.”
“My lord,” said Ser Marlon, in his ornate silver armor, “will you permit me to ask a few questions of Lord Davos?”
“As you wish, cousin.” Lord Wyman closed his eyes.
Ser Marlon turned to Davos. “How many northern lords have declared for Stannis? Tell us that.”
“Arnolf Karstark has vowed to join His Grace.”
“Arnolf is no true lord, only a castellan. What castles does Lord Stannis hold at present, pray?”
“His Grace has taken the Nightfort for his seat. In the south, he holds Storm’s End and Dragonstone.”
Maester Theomore cleared his throat. “Only for the nonce. Storm’s End and Dragonstone are lightly held and must soon fall. And the Nightfort is a haunted ruin, a drear and dreadful place.”
Ser Marlon went on. “How many men can Stannis put into the field, can you tell us that? How many knights ride with him? How many bowmen, how many freeriders, how many men-at-arms?”
Too few, Davos knew. Stannis had come north with no more than fifteen hundred men … but if he told them that, his mission here was doomed. He fumbled for words and found none.
“Your silence is all the answer I require, ser. Your king brings us only enemies.” Ser Marlon turned to his lord cousin. “Your lordship asked the onion knight what Stannis offers us. Let me answer. He offers us defeat and death. He would have you mount a horse of air and give battle with a sword of wind.”
The fat lord opened his eyes slowly, as if the effort were almost too much for him. “My cousin cuts to the bone, as ever. Do you have any more to say to me, Onion Knight, or can we put an end to this mummer’s farce? I grow weary of your face.”
Davos felt a stab of despair. His Grace should have sent another man, a lord or knight or maester, someone who could speak for him without tripping on his own tongue. “Death,” he heard himself say, “there will be death, aye. Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King’s Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!”
“Yes,” piped a girl’s voice, thin and high.
It belonged to the half-grown child with the blond eyebrows and the long green braid. “They killed Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn and King Robb,” she said. “He was our king! He was brave and good, and the Freys murdered him. If Lord Stanni
s will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis.”
Manderly pulled her close. “Wylla, every time you open your mouth you make me want to send you to the silent sisters.”
“I only said—”
“We heard what you said,” said the older girl, her sister. “A child’s foolishness. Speak no ill of our friends of Frey. One of them will be your lord and husband soon.”
“No,” the girl declared, shaking her head. “I won’t. I won’t ever. They killed the king.”
Lord Wyman flushed. “You will. When the appointed day arrives, you will speak your wedding vows, else you will join the silent sisters and never speak again.”
The poor girl looked stricken. “Grandfather, please …”
“Hush, child,” said Lady Leona. “You heard your lord grandfather. Hush! You know nothing.”
“I know about the promise,” insisted the girl. “Maester Theomore, tell them! A thousand years before the Conquest, a promise was made, and oaths were sworn in the Wolf’s Den before the old gods and the new. When we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, the wolves took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. The city is built upon the land they gave us. In return we swore that we should always be their men. Stark men!”
The maester fingered the chain about his neck. “Solemn oaths were sworn to the Starks of Winterfell, aye. But Winterfell has fallen and House Stark has been extinguished.”
“That’s because they killed them all!”
Another Frey spoke up. “Lord Wyman, if I may?”
Wyman Manderly gave him a nod. “Rhaegar. We are always pleased to hear your noble counsel.”
Rhaegar Frey acknowledged the compliment with a bow. He was thirty, or nigh unto, round-shouldered and kettle-bellied, but richly dressed in a doublet of soft grey lambswool trimmed in cloth-of-silver. His cloak was cloth-of-silver too, lined with vair and clasped at the collar with a brooch in the shape of the twin towers. “Lady Wylla,” he said to the girl with the green braid, “loyalty is a virtue. I hope you will be as loyal to Little Walder when you are joined in wedlock. As to the Starks, that House is extinguished only in the male line. Lord Eddard’s sons are dead, but his daughters live, and the younger girl is coming north to wed brave Ramsay Bolton.”
“Ramsay Snow,” Wylla Manderly threw back.
“Have it as you will. By any name, he shall soon be wed to Arya Stark. If you would keep faith with your promise, give him your allegiance, for he shall be your Lord of Winterfell.”
“He won’t ever be my lord! He made Lady Hornwood marry him, then shut her in a dungeon and made her eat her fingers.”
A murmur of assent swept the Merman’s Court. “The maid tells it true,” declared a stocky man in white and purple, whose cloak was fastened with a pair of crossed bronze keys. “Roose Bolton’s cold and cunning, aye, but a man can deal with Roose. We’ve all known worse. But this bastard son of his … they say he’s mad and cruel, a monster.”
“They say?” Rhaegar Frey sported a silky beard and a sardonic smile. “His enemies say, aye … but it was the Young Wolf who was the monster. More beast than boy, that one, puffed up with pride and bloodlust. And he was faithless, as my lord grandfather learned to his sorrow.” He spread his hands. “I do not fault White Harbor for supporting him. My grandsire made the same grievous mistake. In all the Young Wolf’s battles, White Harbor and the Twins fought side by side beneath his banners. Robb Stark betrayed us all. He abandoned the north to the cruel mercies of the ironmen to carve out a fairer kingdom for himself along the Trident. Then he abandoned the riverlords who had risked much and more for him, breaking his marriage pact with my grandfather to wed the first western wench who caught his eye. The Young Wolf? He was a vile dog and died like one.”
The Merman’s Court had grown still. Davos could feel the chill in the air. Lord Wyman was looking down at Rhaegar as if he were a roach in need of a hard heel … yet then, abruptly, he gave a ponderous nod that set his chins to wobbling. “A dog, aye. He brought us only grief and death. A vile dog indeed. Say on.”
Rhaegar Frey went on. “Grief and death, aye … and this onion lord will bring you more with his talk of vengeance. Open your eyes, as my lord grandsire did. The War of the Five Kings is all but done. Tommen is our king, our only king. We must help him bind up the wounds of this sad war. As Robert’s trueborn son, the heir of stag and lion, the Iron Throne is his by rights.”
“Wise words, and true,” said Lord Wyman Manderly.
“They weren’t.” Wylla Manderly stamped her foot.
“Be quiet, wretched child,” scolded Lady Leona. “Young girls should be an ornament to the eye, not an ache in the ear.” She seized the girl by her braid and pulled her squealing from the hall. There went my only friend in this hall, thought Davos.
“Wylla has always been a willful child,” her sister said, by way of apology. “I fear that she will make a willful wife.”
Rhaegar shrugged. “Marriage will soften her, I have no doubt. A firm hand and a quiet word.”
“If not, there are the silent sisters.” Lord Wyman shifted in his seat. “As for you, Onion Knight, I have heard sufficient treason for one day. You would have me risk my city for a false king and a false god. You would have me sacrifice my only living son so Stannis Baratheon can plant his puckered arse upon a throne to which he has no right. I will not do it. Not for you. Not for your lord. Not for any man.” The Lord of White Harbor pushed himself to his feet. The effort brought a red flush to his neck. “You are still a smuggler, ser, come to steal my gold and blood. You would take my son’s head. I think I shall take yours instead. Guards! Seize this man!”
Before Davos could even think to move, he was surrounded by silver tridents. “My lord,” he said, “I am an envoy.”
“Are you? You came sneaking into my city like a smuggler. I say you are no lord, no knight, no envoy, only a thief and a spy, a peddler of lies and treasons. I should tear your tongue out with hot pincers and deliver you to the Dreadfort to be flayed. But the Mother is merciful, and so am I.” He beckoned to Ser Marlon. “Cousin, take this creature to the Wolf’s Den and cut off his head and hands. I want them brought to me before I sup. I shall not be able to eat a bite until I see this smuggler’s head upon a spike, with an onion shoved between his lying teeth.”
REEK
They gave him a horse and a banner, a soft woolen doublet and a warm fur cloak, and set him loose. For once, he did not stink. “Come back with that castle,” said Damon Dance-for-Me as he helped Reek climb shaking into the saddle, “or keep going and see how far you get before we catch you. He’d like that, he would.” Grinning, Damon gave the horse a lick across the rump with his whip, and the old stot whinnied and lurched into motion.
Reek did not dare to look back, for fear that Damon and Yellow Dick and Grunt and the rest were coming after him, that all of this was just another of Lord Ramsay’s japes, some cruel test to see what he would do if they gave him a horse and set him free. Do they think that I will run? The stot they had given him was a wretched thing, knock-kneed and half-starved; he could never hope to outdistance the fine horses Lord Ramsay and his hunters would be riding. And Ramsay loved nothing more than to set his girls baying on the trail of some fresh prey.
Besides, where would he run to? Behind him were the camps, crowded with Dreadfort men and those the Ryswells had brought from the Rills, with the Barrowton host between them. South of Moat Cailin, another army was coming up the causeway, an army of Boltons and Freys marching beneath the banners of the Dreadfort. East of the road lay a bleak and barren shore and a cold salt sea, to the west the swamps and bogs of the Neck, infested with serpents, lizard lions, and bog devils with their poisoned arrows.
He would not run. He could not run.
I will deliver him the castle. I will. I must.
It was a grey day, damp and misty. The wind was from the south, moist as a kiss. The ruins of Moat Cailin were visible in the
distance, threaded through with wisps of morning mist. His horse moved toward them at a walk, her hooves making faint wet squelching sounds as they pulled free of the grey-green muck.
I have come this way before. It was a dangerous thought, and he regretted it at once. “No,” he said, “no, that was some other man, that was before you knew your name.” His name was Reek. He had to remember that. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with leek.
When that other man had come this way, an army had followed close behind him, the great host of the north riding to war beneath the grey-and-white banners of House Stark. Reek rode alone, clutching a peace banner on a pinewood staff. When that other man had come this way, he had been mounted on a courser, swift and spirited. Reek rode a broken-down stot, all skin and bone and ribs, and he rode her slowly for fear he might fall off. The other man had been a good rider, but Reek was uneasy on horseback. It had been so long. He was no rider. He was not even a man. He was Lord Ramsay’s creature, lower than a dog, a worm in human skin. “You will pretend to be a prince,” Lord Ramsay told him last night, as Reek was soaking in a tub of scalding water, “but we know the truth. You’re Reek. You’ll always be Reek, no matter how sweet you smell. Your nose may lie to you. Remember your name. Remember who you are.”
“Reek,” he said. “Your Reek.”
“Do this little thing for me, and you can be my dog and eat meat every day,” Lord Ramsay promised. “You will be tempted to betray me. To run or fight or join our foes. No, quiet, I’ll not hear you deny it. Lie to me, and I’ll take your tongue. A man would turn against me in your place, but we know what you are, don’t we? Betray me if you want, it makes no matter … but count your fingers first and know the cost.”
Reek knew the cost. Seven, he thought, seven fingers. A man can make do with seven fingers. Seven is a sacred number. He remembered how much it had hurt when Lord Ramsay had commanded Skinner to lay his ring finger bare.
The air was wet and heavy, and shallow pools of water dotted the ground. Reek picked his way between them carefully, following the remnants of the log-and-plank road that Robb Stark’s vanguard had laid down across the soft ground to speed the passage of his host. Where once a mighty curtain wall had stood, only scattered stones remained, blocks of black basalt so large it must once have taken a hundred men to hoist them into place. Some had sunk so deep into the bog that only a corner showed; others lay strewn about like some god’s abandoned toys, cracked and crumbling, spotted with lichen. Last night’s rain had left the huge stones wet and glistening, and the morning sunlight made them look as if they were coated in some fine black oil.
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