Rogues

by George R. R. Martin

  Graham let out a huge sigh. “That was a near miss. Can you imagine what would happen if the azzie came for Martin?”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, imagining the trouble that would come if an officer of the Crown’s Law was assaulted here in town.

  The smith’s prentice looked around at him, “What about Jessom’s family?” he asked, plainly worried. “Will Martin come after them?”

  The men at the bar shook their head in concert. “Martin is crazy,” Old Cob said. “But he’s not that sort. Not to go after a woman or her wee ones.”

  “I heard he punched the tinker because he was making some advances on young Jenna,” Graham said.

  “There’s truth to that,” Old Cob said softly. “I saw it.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at him, surprised. They’d known Cob all their lives and had heard all his stories. Even the most boring of them had been trotted out three or four times over the long years. The thought that he might have held something back was … well … it was almost unthinkable.

  “He was getting all handsy with young Jenna,” Cob said, not looking up from his beer. “And she was younger still back then, mind you.” He paused for a moment, then sighed. “But I was still old, and … well … I knew that tinker would give me a hiding if I tried to stop him. I could see that plain enough on his face.” The old man sighed. “I ain’t proud of that.”

  Cob looked up with a vicious little grin. “Then Martin came round the corner,” he said. “This was off behind the old Cooper’s place, remember? And Martin looked at the fellow, and at Jenna, who wasn’t crying or nothing, but she obviously wasn’t happy either. And the tinker has hold of her wrist …”

  Cob shook his head. “When he hit him. It was like a hammer hitting a ham. Knocked him right out into the street. Ten feet, give or take. Then Martin eyed Jenna, who was crying just a bit then. More surprised than anything. And Martin stuck the boot in him. Just once. Not as hard as he could, either. I could tell he was just settling up accounts in his head. Like he was a moneylender shimming up one side of his scale.”

  “That fellow wasn’t any kind of proper tinker,” Jake said. “I remember him.”

  “And I heard things about that priest,” Graham added.

  A few of the others nodded wordlessly.

  “What if Jessom comes back?” the smith’s prentice asked. “I heard some folk get drunk and take the coin, then turn all cowardly and jump the rail when they sober up.”

  Everyone seemed to consider that. It wasn’t a hard thought for any of them. A band of the king’s guard had come through town only last month and posted a notice, announcing a reward for deserters.

  “Tehlu anyway,” Shep said grimly into his nearly empty mug. “Wouldn’t that be a great royal pisser of a mess?”

  “Jessom’s not coming back,” Bast said dismissively. His voice had such a note of certainty that everyone turned to eye him curiously.

  Bast tore off a piece of bread and put it in his mouth before he realized he was the center of attention. He swallowed awkwardly and made a broad gesture with both hands. “What?” he asked them, laughing. “Would you come back, knowing Martin was waiting?”

  There was a chorus of negative grunts and shaken heads.

  “You have to be a special kind of stupid to wreck up Martin’s still,” Old Cob said.

  “Maybe eight years will be enough for Martin to cool down a bit,” Shep said.

  “Not likely,” Jake said.

  Later, after the customers were gone, Bast and the innkeeper sat down in the kitchen, making their own dinner from the remainder of the stew and half a loaf of bread.

  “So what did you learn today, Bast?” the innkeeper asked.

  Bast grinned widely. “Today, Reshi, I found out where Emberlee takes her bath!”

  The innkeeper cocked his head thoughtfully. “Emberlee? The Alards’ daughter?”

  “Emberlee Ashton!” Bast threw his arms up into the air and made an exasperated noise. “She’s only the third prettiest girl in twenty miles, Reshi!”

  “Ah,” the innkeeper said, an honest smile flickering across his face for the first time that day. “You’ll have to point her out to me.”

  Bast grinned. “I’ll take you there tomorrow,” he said eagerly. “I don’t know if she takes a bath every day, but it’s worth the gamble. She’s sweet as cream and broad of beam.” His smile grew to wicked proportions. “She’s a milkmaid, Reshi,” he said the last with heavy emphasis. “A milkmaid.”

  The innkeeper shook his head, even as his own smile spread helplessly across his face. Finally he broke into a chuckle and held up his hand. “You can point her out to me sometime when she has her clothes on,” he said pointedly. “That will do nicely.”

  Bast gave a disapproving sigh. “It would do you a world of good to get out a bit, Reshi.”

  The innkeeper shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said as he poked idly at his stew.

  They ate in silence for a long while. Bast tried to think of something to say.

  “I did get the carrots, Reshi,” Bast said as he finished his stew and ladled the rest of it out of the kettle.

  “Better late than never, I suppose,” the innkeeper said his voice was listless and grey. “We’ll use them tomorrow.”

  Bast shifted in his seat, embarrassed. “I’m afraid I lost them afterwards,” he said sheepishly.

  This wrung another tired smile from the innkeeper. “Don’t worry yourself over it, Bast.” His eyes narrowed then, focusing on hand that held Bast’s spoon. “What happened to your hand?”

  Bast looked down at the knuckles of his right hand, they weren’t bloody anymore, but they were skinned rather badly.

  “I fell out of a tree,” Bast said. Not lying, but not answering the question, either. It was better not to lie outright. Even weary and dull, his master was not an easy man to fool.

  “You should be more careful, Bast,” the innkeeper said, prodding listlessly at his food. “And with as little as there is to do around here, it would be nice if you spent a little more time on your studies.”

  “I learned loads of things today, Reshi,” Bast protested.

  The innkeeper sat up, looking more attentive. “Really?” he said. “Impress me then.”

  Bast thought for a moment. “Nettie Williams found a wild hive of bees today,” he said. “And she managed to catch the queen …”

  George R. R. Martin

  Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winner George R. R. Martin, New York Times bestselling author of the landmark A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, has been called “the American Tolkien.”

  Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, George R. R. Martin made his first sale in 1971, and soon established himself as one of the most popular SF writers of the seventies. He quickly became a mainstay of the Ben Bova Analog with stories such as “With Morning Comes Mistfall,” “And Seven Times Never Kill Man,” “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” “The Storms of Windhaven” (in collaboration with Lisa Tuttle, and later expanded by them into the novel Windhaven), “Override,” and others, although he also sold to Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, Orbit, and other markets. One of his Analog stories, the striking novella “A Song for Lya,” won him his first Hugo Award, in 1974.

  By the end of the seventies, he had reached the height of his influence as a science-fiction writer and was producing his best work in that category with stories such as the famous “Sandkings,” his best-known story, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo in 1980 (he’d later win another Nebula in 1985 for his story “Portraits of His Children”), “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” which won a Hugo Award in the same year (making Martin the first author ever to receive two Hugo Awards for fiction in the same year, “Bitterblooms,” “The Stone City,” “Starlady,” and others. These stories would be collected in Sandkings, one of the strongest collections of the period. By now, he had mostly moved away from Analog although he would have a long sequence of stories about the droll interstellar advent
ures of Havalend Tuf (later collected in Tuf Voyaging) running throughout the eighties in the Stanley Schmidt Analog, as well as a few strong individual pieces such as the novella “Nightflyers”—most of his major work of the late seventies and early eighties, though, would appear in Omni. The late seventies and the eighties also saw the publication of his memorable novel Dying of the Light, his only solo SF novel, while his stories were collected in A Song for Lya, Sandkings, Songs of Stars and Shadows, Songs the Dead Men Sing, Nightflyers, and Portraits of His Children. By the beginning of the eighties, he’d moved away from SF and into the horror genre, publishing the big horror novel Fevre Dream, and winning the Bram Stoker Award for his horror story “The Pear-Shaped Man” and the World Fantasy Award for his werewolf novella “The Skin Trade.” By the end of that decade, though, the crash of the horror market and the commercial failure of his ambitious horror novel Armageddon Rag had driven him out of the print world and to a successful career in television instead, where for more than a decade he worked as story editor or producer on such shows as new Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast.

  After years away, Martin made a triumphant return to the print world in 1996 with the publication in 1996 of the immensely successful fantasy novel A Game of Thrones, the start of his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. A freestanding novella taken from that work, “Blood of the Dragon,” won Martin another Hugo Award in 1997. Further books in the Song of Ice and Fire series—A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons—have made it one of the most popular, acclaimed, and bestselling series in all of modern fantasy. Recently, the books were made into an HBO TV series, Game of Thrones, which has become one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on television, and made Martin a recognizable figure well outside of the usual genre boundaries, even inspiring a satirical version of him on Saturday Night Live. Martin’s most recent books are the latest book in the Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons, a massive two-volume retrospective collection spanning the entire spectrum of his career, Dreamsongs, a novella collection, Starlady and Fast-Friend, a novel written in collaboration with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham, Hunter’s Run, and, as editor, several anthologies edited in collaboration with Gardner Dozois, including Warriors, Songs of the Dying Earth, Songs of Love and Death, Down These Strange Streets, and Dangerous Women, as well as several new volumes in his long-running Wild Cards anthology series, Wild Cards: Busted Flush and Wild Cards: Inside Straight. In 2012, Martin was given the Life Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention. A World of Ice and Fire, a comprehensive history of Westeros and the lands beyond, will be released in fall of 2014.

  Here he takes us to the turbulent land of Westeros, home to his Ice and Fire series, for the story of that swashbuckling rogue Daemon Targaryen, the Prince who never became a King—although his ambition to become one would plunge the entire world into war.

  THE ROGUE PRINCE, or, A KING’S BROTHER

  a consideration of the early life, adventures, misdeeds, and marriages of Prince Daemon Targaryen, as set down by Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Oldtown

  here transcribed by George R. R. Martin

  He was the grandson of a king, the brother of a king, husband to a queen. Two of his sons and three of his grandsons would sit the Iron Throne, but the only crown that Daemon Targaryen ever wore was the crown of the Stepstones, a meager realm he made himself with blood and steel and dragonfire, and soon abandoned.

  Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day there was not a man so admired, so beloved, and so reviled in all Westeros. He was made of light and darkness in equal parts. To some he was a hero, to others the blackest of villains. No true understanding of that most tragic bloodletting known as the Dance of the Dragons is possible without a consideration of the crucial role played before and during the conflict by this rogue prince.

  The seeds of the great conflict were sown during the last years in the long reign of the Old King, Jaehaerys I Targaryen. Of Jaehaerys himself, little need be said here, save that after the passing of his beloved wife, Good Queen Alysanne, and his son Baelon, Prince of Dragonstone—Hand of the King, and heir apparent to the Iron Throne—His Grace was but a shell of the man that he had been.

  With Prince Baelon lost to him, the Old King had to turn elsewhere for a partner in his labors. As his new Hand, he called upon Ser Otto Hightower, younger brother to Lord Hightower of Oldtown. Ser Otto brought his wife and children to court with him, and served King Jaehaerys faithfully for the years remaining to him. As the king’s strength and wits began to fail, he was oft confined to bed. Ser Otto’s fifteen-year-old daughter Alicent became his constant companion, fetching His Grace his meals, reading to him, helping him to bathe and dress himself. The Old King sometimes mistook her for one of his daughters, calling her by their names; near the end, he grew certain she was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.

  In the year 103 AC King Jaehaerys I Targaryen died in his bed as Lady Alicent was reading to him from Septon Barth’s Unnatural History. His Grace was nine-and-sixty years of age, and had reigned over the Seven Kingdoms since coming to the Iron Throne at the age of fourteen. His remains were burned in the Dragonpit, his ashes interred with Good Queen Alysanne’s beneath the Red Keep. All of Westeros mourned. Even in Dorne, where his writ had not extended, men wept and women tore their garments.

  In accordance with his own wishes, and the decision of the Great Council of 101, his grandson Viserys succeeded him, mounting the Iron Throne as King Viserys I Targaryen. At the time of his ascent, King Viserys was twenty-six years old. He had been married for a decade to a cousin, Lady Aemma of House Arryn, herself a granddaughter of the Old King and Good Queen Alysanne through her mother, the late Princess Daella (d. 82 AC). Lady Aemma had suffered several miscarriages and the death of one son in the cradle, but she had also given birth to a healthy daughter, Rhaenyra (born 97 AC). The new king and his queen both doted on the girl, their only living child.

  Viserys I Targaryen had a generous, amiable nature and was well loved by his lords and smallfolk alike. The reign of the Young King, as the commons called him upon his ascent, would be peaceful and prosperous. His Grace’s openhandedness was legendary, and the Red Keep became a place of song and splendor. King Viserys and Queen Aemma hosted many a feast and tourney, and lavished gold, offices, and honors on their many favorites.

  At the center of the merriment, cherished and adored by all, was Princess Rhaenyra, the little girl the court singers soon dubbed the Realm’s Delight. Though only six when her father came to the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra was a precocious child, bright and bold and beautiful as only one of dragon’s blood can be beautiful. At the age of seven, she became a dragonrider, taking to the sky atop the young dragon she named Syrax, after a goddess of old Valyria. At eight, like many another highborn girl, the princess was placed into service as a cupbearer … but for her own father, the king. At table, at tourney, and at court, King Viserys thereafter was seldom seen without his daughter by his side.

  Meanwhile, the tedium of rule was left largely to the king’s small council and his Hand. Ser Otto Hightower had continued in that office, serving the grandson as he had the father; an able man, all agreed, though many found him proud, brusque, and haughty. The longer he served, the more imperious Ser Otto became, it was said, and many great lords and princes came to resent his manner and envy him his access to the Iron Throne.

  The greatest of his rivals was our rogue prince: Daemon Targaryen, the king’s ambitious, impetuous younger brother.

  As charming as he was hot-tempered, Prince Daemon had earned his knight’s spurs at six-and-ten, and had been given Dark Sister by the Old King himself in recognition of his prowess. Though he had wed the Lady of Runestone in 97 AC, during the Old King’s reign, the marriage had not been a success. Prince Daemon found the Vale of Arryn boring (“In the Vale, the men fuck sheep,” he wrote. “You cannot fault
them. Their sheep are prettier than their women.”), and soon developed a mislike of his lady wife, whom he called my bronze bitch, after the runic bronze armor worn by the lords of House Royce. Upon the accession of his brother to the Iron Throne, the prince petitioned to have his marriage set aside. Viserys denied the request but did allow Daemon to return to court, where he sat on the small council, serving as master of coin from 103–104, and master of laws for half a year in 104.

  Governance bored this warrior prince, however. He did better when King Viserys made him commander of the City Watch. Finding the watchmen ill armed and clad in oddments and rags, Daemon equipped each man with dirk, short sword, and cudgel, armored them in black ringmail (with breastplates for the officers) and gave them long golden cloaks that they might wear with pride. Ever since, the men of the City Watch have been known as gold cloaks.

  Prince Daemon took eagerly to the work of the gold cloaks, and oft prowled the alleys of King’s Landing with his men. That he made the city more orderly no man could doubt, but his discipline was a brutal one. He delighted in cutting off the hands of pickpockets, gelding rapists, and slitting the noses of thieves, and slew three men in street brawls during his first year as commander. Before long, the prince was well-known in all the low places of King’s Landing. He became a familiar sight in winesinks (where he drank for free) and gambling pits (where he always left with more coin than when he entered). Though he sampled countless whores in the city’s brothels, and was said to have an especial fondness for deflowering maidens, a certain Lysene dancing girl soon became his favorite. Mysaria was the name she went by, though her rivals and enemies called her Misery, the White Worm.

  As King Viserys had no living son, Daemon regarded himself as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne and coveted the title Prince of Dragonstone, which His Grace refused to grant him … but by the end of year 105 AC, he was known to his friends as the Prince of the City and to the smallfolk as Lord Flea Bottom. Though the king did not wish Daemon to succeed him, he remained fond of his younger brother and was quick to forgive his many offenses.