“B-but…”
Daeron, cornered by his son’s argument, found himself at a loss for words.
He shot Maester Sven a pleading look, but the Dragonstone-born maester only crossed his arms and shook his head.
“My lord Daeron, I believe my lord Quentyn is right.”
The maester offered his own judgment.
“House Qoherys holds its place at Harrenhal not only because of its royal blood, but because the Crown has always regarded your house as a sharp spear and a sturdy shield both.”
Quentyn pressed his advantage.
“Father, you remember what the four skulls on our family’s sigil stand for, don’t you.”
Daeron, unsteady on his feet, stumbled back a step and knocked into the maester’s desk, catching himself with a hand on his own back.
“They…
they…
they’re the four great enemies our ancestors struck down…” he stammered.
Quentyn walked over to the wall, where a battered kite shield hung, its steel rim rusted and flaking, its face pitted with the dents of morningstars, scarred by sword and axe, and marked by one enormous gash that had very nearly split the whole shield in two.
Only the flaming saltire skull sigil on its face remained clear and unmarred.
Quentyn ran his hand across the scarred face of the shield, his fingers moving from the flame to the first skull.
“This one is for our house’s founder, Jacaerys Qoherys, ‘the Dragonless Warrior.’ He struck down Prince Oberyn of the Rhoynar with his own hand during the Second Spice War.”
The boy’s hand moved to the second skull.
“Three hundred and fifty years ago, Gaemon Qoherys took the head of Valyon, dragonlord of House Belnavo, amid the chaos of the Moonless Night.
That dragonlord wasn’t mounted on his dragon at the time, but he was still a swordsman of real renown throughout the Freehold.”
Quentyn drew his hand back and looked again to his father.
“The third belongs to ‘Skullcleaver’ Ulyssar, an ambitious man who tried to split House Targaryen apart, and who died, in the end, at our own ancestor’s hand.
The last is the head of Aleus, the Pirate King, a trophy taken by our own great-great-grandfather.
It was only after that, that our family followed the Conqueror and had this sigil designed.
Do you understand now, Father?”
“Quenny…
I…”
Daeron had always been an indecisive man by nature, and his son’s words left him utterly at a loss.
But his love for that same son brought him back to his senses all the same.
“This isn’t your responsibility to carry…”
Daeron gritted his teeth.
“Valera, look after Quenny.
Sebaston, muster every knight in the castle.
I’ll put down this rebellion myself.”
Quentyn blinked in surprise.
He hadn’t expected his father to volunteer to lead the campaign himself.
“Father, you’ve never once picked up a sword in your life.”
This time it was Quentyn’s turn to try to talk his father down.
In this life and his last both, Quentyn had grown up in a genuinely warm home.
Whatever fatherly love he’d lacked in his past life, Daeron had made up for it a hundred times over in this one.
Quentyn might have been frustrated by his father’s timidity, but deep down, he still loved the man dearly.
The boy caught hold of his father.
“Practically none of the castle’s horses even know you, Father.
Are you going to have the knights carry you to the battlefield in a litter?”
Quentyn drew himself up straight and looked out at the crowd gathered below.
“I’m the right person for this, Father.
It has to be me.”
With that, without waiting for his father’s approval, Quentyn walked toward his own armor.
“Robb.
Arm me.”
It was a full suit of black steel plate, originally his grandfather Aenys Qoherys’s own.
Daeron had given it to Quentyn as a name-day gift the year he turned twelve.
Robb answered loudly and began taking the armor down from its stand.
“Wait.” Seeing that her husband could no longer stop their son from riding out, Valera rushed forward, aching with worry, leaving Robb, already struggling to lift the breastplate down, unsure what to do with himself.
“He looks just like…” Valera reached out tenderly to touch her son’s face. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“I remember Jaehaerys arming himself for battle just this way, once.”
“Mother, His Grace will bring us victory.”
Quentyn’s answer left no opening at all.
“Of course, of course.
Little Robb, let me help arm my own son.”
Robb froze on the spot, unsure what to do, and could only watch as Valera took down the mail shirt herself.
Quentyn stripped off his outer coat and pulled on the thick padded lining beneath, then lifted his head and let Valera settle the mail over him first.
Only then did the dark-haired boy come back to his senses.
“P-princess, let me handle that…”
The boy insisted on lifting the backplate himself, and together with Valera, fitted the breastplate onto Quentyn’s body.
At some point, Daeron’s own hands had joined in as well.
“Never thought my own son would embarrass me quite like this…
you really have grown up…”
Quentyn quietly felt the warmth of all three sets of hands at once.
Robb’s fingers were long and strong, practiced from years of service.
His mother’s fingers were slender and gentle, a little clumsy from lack of practice, but careful all the same.
His father’s fingers were somewhat thick and a little awkward in their movements, missing the right clasp more than once, but no less careful for it.
The boy’s armor was heavy plate steel, its smooth breastplate enameled in ink-black lacquer, a brass skull set into its very center, brass flame-patterns carved to spread outward from it like bone, running all the way down to a gilded skull worked into the belt itself.
A pair of hollow-eyed skulls guarded the boy’s shoulders, and his knee-guards, gauntlets, and hand-guard discs were all worked in the same flame-and-skull motif.
Robb draped a cloak of black and red over Quentyn’s shoulders, Daeron fastened the brass ring-chain that held it in place at the front, and Valera gently buckled the gorget around his neck.
“Good boy…” Agatha watched Quentyn stand fully armored, and for one dazed moment, seemed to see the long-dead Aenys Qoherys standing there instead.
“You’ve grown up so much…”
Quentyn tied the laces of his mail coif himself, and picked up his own dragon-winged helm, its great wings spread wide on either side, red feathers streaming from them.
“I was always going to grow up eventually, Grandmother.”
He made his way down the stairs.
Beyond the twisted door, the sworn knights living at Harrenhal had already assembled.
Besides Master-at-Arms Sebaston Mudd, there were twenty-four knights present, along with one hedge knight lodging at the castle who had come at the news as well.
Quentyn called out each knight’s name one by one, and when he reached the hedge knight bearing a winged chalice sigil, the man dropped to one knee.
“I’m Ser Edmure of Coppersplit.
Your father gave me a hearth, bread, and wine when I had nothing.
I owe him my sword, and gladly.”
“Well said, Ser Edmure.” Quentyn nodded to him.
“Thank you for your help.”
He could now count on twenty-six knights, twenty-six swords, twenty-six warhorses.
Beyond them, there was also Garwyn Chambers, and the two additional swords he’d brought.
Harrenhal kept twenty-five trained mounted squires on the family’s own payroll, eighteen of whom had very nearly completed their training.
Quentyn decided to take every one of them along, leaving the foot soldiers and crossbowmen behind to guard the castle.
Counting himself and his own two squires, that gave him fifty men-at-arms in heavy armor to take with him.
Against a band of brigands, that would be more than enough.
“My lord, please take us with you!”
Robb, eager for the fight, pulled Hogen along with him.
Hogen stayed silent as ever, but the battle-hunger burning in his eyes gave away exactly what he was feeling inside.
The boys were hungry for battle.
“Good.”
House Qoherys’s coffers might have been empty, but its armory, at least, was well stocked.
Harrenhal’s stables housed seventy warhorses and twice that number of ordinary mounts, and the storerooms held five hundred complete suits of armor, along with matching lances, longswords, and crossbows.
“Everyone, I need each of you properly armored.
Ser Edmure, you have my leave to choose any suit of armor you like from the storeroom.”
Edmure looked at Quentyn, hardly able to believe it.
“Once everyone’s ready, we set out by ship at once.” Quentyn swept his gaze across the assembled knights.
“When the moon slips behind the clouds, we’ll let those damned brigands find out firsthand just how sharp our blades really are.”
Sebaston Mudd was the first to raise an objection.
“My lord, I’d suggest we raise our banners once the sun’s up, muster the farmers and landed knights nearby, and join up with Lord Osmund’s army.
That would be the safest course.”
“But that would put the rebels on their guard.
They might set new traps, or slip off into the forest and keep operating out of reach indefinitely.
Master Sebaston, would you sleep easy with a hungry wolf lying beside your own bed?”
Quentyn didn’t reject Sebaston’s suggestion outright.
“A hunting cat out on the Dothraki Sea strikes its prey dead the instant it lets its guard down.”
Quentyn raised his steel-gauntleted hand.
“The rebels have already beaten Lord Osmund’s army twice running, and pride has already taken root in them.
Pride is the mother of every defeat.”
The boy clenched his fist sharply.
“What we want is to catch them at the very height of their pride, when they least expect it.”
Let them be trampled to mud in their sleep.
Let them crush each other underfoot in their own terror.
Let them destroy themselves in the chaos of it all.
Before the ships ever left Harrenhal, Quentyn had already set the tone for the entire battle to come.
Sebaston pressed the matter no further, and the rest of the knights bowed their heads before the glorious victory Quentyn had just painted for them.
The Blue-Eyed Maiden was far too conspicuous a ship to use, so Quentyn set it aside and requisitioned the fishing boats moored at Harrenhal’s own docks instead.
The fishermen, overjoyed simply to learn Quentyn had returned, offered their boats gladly.
More than twenty young fishermen even armed themselves with fishing spears and asked to join the fight.
Quentyn agreed.
And so twenty large fishing boats, each big enough to carry a warhorse, bore Quentyn and his company, their armor, and their mounts, setting off quietly under cover of night and lake-mist.
Lord Daeron and Princess Valera’s prayers followed them as they went.
Every man on board had something to occupy him.
Sebaston polished his longsword.
The hedge knight Edmure couldn’t stop admiring the armor he’d just been given; Quentyn had promised he could keep it outright as payment for joining the fight.
The rest of the knights either sat with their eyes closed, resting, or helped the young fishermen tend to the horses.
The only one who couldn’t seem to sit still was Garwyn Chambers, fidgeting with obvious excitement at the battle to come.
Quentyn’s own boat was the largest of the fishing fleet.
Hogen, dressed in a somewhat worn suit of plate, stood watch nearby, leaning on a long spear, while Robb worked at adjusting his own weirwood longbow.
It was a gift from Quentyn, and the boy treasured it so much he didn’t even notice the way Billy Bralley was eyeing it.
“Nice bow you’ve got there, boy.”
Billy said, with a hint of jealousy.
His own bow was an ordinary yew longbow, fine craftsmanship in its own right, but nothing next to weirwood.
Robb drew the bow carefully back to himself, saying with a note of pride, “Of course it is.
My lord Quentyn gave it to me himself.”
Billy looked ready to say something else, when he suddenly caught sight of firelight on the shore.
“Let’s see who’s better, boy.” Billy raised his own longbow.
Robb glanced at Quentyn, who opened his eyes and nodded.
The dark-haired boy rose to his feet, plucked an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it to his bow.
He and Billy had both already spotted the sentries posted on the shore.
The brigands hadn’t yet noticed the fleet, hidden as it was by the lake mist, but it wouldn’t be long before they spotted the boats suddenly appearing on the water.
An arrow flew.
Billy nocked his next one at once, and beside him, Robb loosed his own bowstring in turn.
The two of them traded shots back and forth, loosing more than a dozen arrows between them, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, both their quivers were empty.
The firelight on shore flickered once, then went still.
“It’s time.”
Quentyn put on his helm.
The dragon closed its jaws.