“Marten and Jorys are dead. Carlen's still breathing, but he's bad. Everyone else has something.”
Cerran heard the report without answering at first. He had men tending the wounded and securing the prisoners, but some of his people were already beyond help. After another loss like this, he scarcely knew how he was supposed to finish the journey.
He went to the captives.
“Who sent you? Where are you from?”
Before the first man could answer, Cerran kicked him in the stomach.
“Keep quiet, will you? Think you can refuse me?”
He kicked again and again, until the prisoner lay curled around himself, vomiting blood. The next man trembled as Cerran approached.
“Please. I'll tell you anything.”
“Still keeping your mouth shut?”
The man ducked. Cerran's boot caught him beneath the jaw, twisting his head violently. He died where he fell.
The third prisoner covered his head and began to beg.
“We're northmen. We serve the bastard, Ramsay—”
“Shut up!” Perrick remained pinned to the tree, blood soaking the earth below his arm. “Want your family killed too?”
Cerran stopped.
“Ramsay? Which Ramsay?”
Oliver had been listening nearby. “Am I meant to know the name?”
“Ramsay Snow.” Cerran sat down heavily. “Roose Bolton's bastard. Lord of the Dreadfort, Roose. It's his only living son.”
He explained that Ramsay had been brought into his father's household less than two years before. Already, stories of his cruelty had spread across the North. Bolton lands lay north of their route. This was not a nameless robber they could hang and forget.
Oliver frowned. A lord's son crossing a border to attack another house's caravan might mean more than theft. Was this the beginning of a quarrel between Bolton and Hornwood? He had no desire to find himself enlisted in a private war without even knowing it.
He crouched beside Perrick.
“Why attack us? Who was the man who rode away?”
The crossbowman looked aside. He had seen enough of Oliver's fighting to keep his contempt off his face, but he offered nothing.
“Keeping your master's secrets? You think he'll reward your family if you die without speaking?” Oliver watched him. “You've been captured. Why would he believe you kept quiet? From what I'm hearing, he's not a particularly trusting or generous man. What happens to the people you leave behind when he decides you've betrayed him?”
Oliver had no idea what Ramsay intended for anyone's family. He wanted to weaken the prisoner's loyalty, or at least make him uneasy about keeping quiet.
Perrick knew his master far better than Oliver did. He thought of the games Ramsay enjoyed, and of the women in the men's families. His resistance began to shake.
“If I tell you, will you let me live?”
Oliver looked at Cerran.
The caravan master took a long time to answer.
“Tell us everything. You'll live.”
Perrick did. The idea Ramsay had conceived on a whim, the journey made by night, the chosen ground, the crossbows and the men ready to rush the road. He described the plan from beginning to end.
Oliver listened with growing distaste.
“He wasn't after the goods. He was practicing. Using us to learn how to command a fight.”
“Living toys,” Cerran said. “That's what people are to him. I've heard he hunts women in the woods. Perhaps we were something larger to try his teeth on.” He looked toward the dead attackers. “Broke a few this time.”
“What will you do? Tell Roderic? Ask Lord Halys to act?”
“I'll tell my brother. We've a station outside Hornwood, and the maester keeps a raven for messages to Redfield. When we arrive, I'll send word and see what Roderic wants.” Cerran shook his head. “I can't simply walk in and speak to Halys. Even if I could, why would he quarrel with the Boltons for us? We're worth less to men like that than their hunting dogs.”
Oliver had little reason to argue. At home, the bloodiest thing he had done was swat a mosquito feeding on him. Here, his dead already outnumbered what he could count on his fingers and toes. Lives were cheap, and he had become accustomed to spending them with alarming speed.
They freed Perrick from the tree. Cerran had the other surviving captives' throats cut.
Following the crossbowman's directions, they found seven horses tied in the woods. Whether others had broken loose or gone with Ramsay, nobody knew. The animals were a useful gain, though a poor answer to what the caravan had lost.
* * *
Hornwood should have been two days away. Cerran drove them hard enough to reach the market outside it in one.
He took his remaining assistant to deal with the goods and send the message. The guards sought treatment for the wounded and looked for replacements. Oliver and Kellan, who had hoped to see something of the place, were left watching the camp. They passed the time with spear practice and archery.
Five days later, a reply arrived from Redfield. Cerran obtained an audience with Lord Halys, taking gifts and the prisoner.
Halys had Perrick hanged. He declined to accept that Lord Bolton's son had organized the attack. One man's testimony was not enough.
The terms offered for the caravan's goods were a little better than usual. The extra profit appeared to be what Cerran would receive instead of a reckoning with the Boltons.
There was little he could say. He worked for the people making the decision. Once they had resupplied and hired new guards, he took the caravan back onto the road.
This time, two mounted scouts went ahead. The men alongside the wagons wore their armor and kept their weapons ready. Another rider followed a hundred meters behind, with orders to escape and carry word if necessary.
“If the bastard sends enough men that even Ser Oliver can't stop them,” Cerran said, “Roderic should at least know what killed us.”
Oliver spent the following days in full armor, waiting in his carriage. It wasn't a comfortable prospect. He couldn't dismiss it either.
Nothing came. After several more uneventful days, the road improved beneath the wheels and the country grew more crowded. They had entered Manderly lands.
A broad, well-made road carried steady traffic. Small patrols in mail passed them, mermen displayed on their surcoats. The difference from Hornwood territory was plain. The Hornwoods depended chiefly on rents from land. The Manderlys had reason to spend money keeping trade moving.
The caravan began to relax. Unless the Boltons meant to start a much greater conflict, attacking them here would be a different proposition.
The White Knife widened as they followed it south. They stopped at a prosperous town for one last night.
“White Harbor tomorrow,” Cerran told them.
The Manderlys had come north from the Reach more than a thousand years before. A King in the North had granted them the Wolf's Den and the surrounding lands, at the mouth of the river that ran down from Lonepeak near the Wall to the Bite.
Other families had held the place before them and lost it. Pirates, slavers, and knights from the Vale had taken the old stronghold in turn, using it as a foothold from which to trouble the North. Manderly wealth had built a new city around it and made the river a route for goods and prosperity rather than invasion.
Over the centuries, White Harbor had become the fifth great port of Westeros. Trade brought money; money supported soldiers. The Manderlys' lasting loyalty to the Starks helped preserve peace, and peace let the city grow richer still.
* * *
The carriage stopped with a soft creak.
“Master. We're here.”
Oliver lifted himself against the side of the wagon. White walls rose ahead. Beyond them lay the sea, crowded with ships.
“White Harbor?”
“Yes.”
It deserved the name. Oliver looked at the walls, then at the stationary wagons.
“Why have we stopped?”
“Waiting to go in. There's another group ahead of us.”
“Wake me when we're through.”
“Cerran says they'll inspect the wagons. It might be rough.”
Oliver remembered films in which soldiers thrust bayonets into bales of hay. After a moment's consideration, he climbed forward to sit beside Kellan.
“How much have we got left?”
“Four golden dragons. Sixty-two silver deer. Some copper stars.”
Managing their earnings had become Kellan's task. Oliver trusted him and disliked the bother. That purse held what they earned together; the money from Azeroth remained separate, in Oliver's keeping.
Cerran had sold the captured horses and equipment outside Hornwood for fifteen dragons. Four had gone to Oliver for his part in the fight. The remaining eleven had been shared equally among the others, a dragon apiece. Used carefully, that could keep an ordinary household for more than half a year. They had their lives too. Nobody had complained about Oliver's larger share.
He had learned something about prices while buying food along the road. Five copper pennies bought a cup of ale or a sausage. A dragon was worth two hundred and ten silver deer, each deer fifty-six copper pennies: eleven thousand, seven hundred and sixty pennies to the dragon.
Four dragons would buy nine thousand, four hundred and eight of those cups or sausages. Whatever difficulties there were in comparing it with money back home, that was substantial purchasing power. Even eating well and spending freely along the road, he had used only thirty or forty silver deer.
A city, with goods passing through it constantly, ought to offer better prices than isolated villages for many things besides food. He began considering what they might buy.