Quentyn watched the prince on the dragon’s back, calm and steady.
A low growl rumbled up from Vhagar’s throat.
Beneath Baelon, the great dragon lowered her head slowly, her drooping dewlap trembling once, heat rolling in a low hiss from between her parted jaws with every breath.
Even at this distance, Quentyn could feel the scorching heat of the bronze-green beast’s breath.
He could feel, too, that the dragon’s own gaze had settled on him, and stayed there.
The instant Vhagar had dropped out of the sky, nearly every horse Quentyn had brought with him had very nearly lost its mind with terror.
Had the riders not all been skilled hands with a horse, even the still-young Robb and Hogen among them, and had Garwyn Chambers, no great horseman himself, not had a proper soldier at his side, the scene before them now would surely have looked very different.
Even so, the very knights who only moments before had trampled through the enemy camp, one against ten, now sat trembling before the dragon.
Billy Bralley couldn’t even keep a steady grip on his own bow.
Only Quentyn still met the great beast’s gaze levelly, this creature that could have swallowed him, horse and all, in a single bite.
Baelon studied Quentyn, something complicated in his eyes.
He had only just flown back to King’s Landing when his frantic son had blocked his way at the very mouth of the dragon den.
When word first reached him that armed remnants of the Faith had risen in rebellion on House Butterwell’s own lands, his first instinct had been disbelief.
Not disbelief in Daemon, of course.
Whatever foolishness Baelon knew his son capable of, he didn’t think the boy would lie to him about something like this.
It was disbelief that the Faith’s own armed strength could have stirred back to life after more than forty years of silence.
Even so, Baelon had brought the dragon egg meant for Quentyn along with him and flown straight for Harrenhal.
He hadn’t expected, when he came down to land, to find the scene now spread out before him.
Fire still raged through the camp.
Amid a sea of blood and a mountain of dead, a boy stood, longsword in hand, having already cut down the rebels’ own leader, staring straight up at his dragon.
Off in the distance, House Strong’s army still hung back, unmoving.
“Seven hells…”
Ser Merry of Merryton Vale’s legs shook beneath him, and the black birthmark on Ser Black Tom of Latch Hamlet’s face twisted into a grimace.
The same two knights who only shortly before had been mouthing off so freely now huddled among their own foot soldiers, not daring to move a muscle, casting pleading looks toward Lord Osmund Strong.
Lord Osmund himself was cut from the very same cloth, frozen just as still.
It was then that Leonor Strong suddenly broke from the ranks, spurring his horse forward.
The dark bay stallion beneath him snorted once and carried the young heir of Valianthead a few strides toward Quentyn.
At once, the two sworn knights of Harrenhal wheeled their horses to meet him, turning to face Leonor Strong and settling into a fighting stance.
Leonor reined in his mount and raised both hands, showing he carried no weapon, then swung down from the saddle.
He walked through the ring of horsemen and came to stand before Quentyn, and dropped to one knee.
“House Strong pays its respects, young Lord Quentyn.”
Quentyn gave a slight nod.
He remembered Leonor Strong well enough.
In the future he half-recalled, this same Lord Strong would go on to serve as Hand of the King, and a capable one at that; one of his two sons would sleep with Rhaenyra Targaryen and father three splendid “bastards” in the bargain, while the other would grow into a schemer to rival Littlefinger himself, or worse, one whose capacity for ruin would in time far outstrip even his.
“Your record at the Citadel shames me.
Your bearing on this battlefield humbles me no less.”
Leonor Strong ground his teeth and bowed his head.
“My father was raised in summer, and has never known winter’s frost and steel.
I beg you pardon his failure in battle.
House Strong will accept whatever punishment Harrenhal sees fit to give.”
Behind them, the great beast folded low to the ground.
Baelon unclasped his harness, seized the rope ladder along the dragon’s flank, and swung himself down in a few quick steps.
The knights parted for him at once.
Baelon walked to Quentyn’s side and clapped him on the shoulder, saying nothing.
“Harrenhal will remember Valianthead’s aid.”
Quentyn nodded to Baelon and said, his face giving nothing away:
“But House Qoherys rewards merit, and punishes fault, in equal measure.
House Strong marched of its own accord to relieve a fellow bannerman, and that deserves reward.
But it marched without its liege lord’s leave, and its defeat followed from that alone.
The boy lifted his dragon-jawed visor and looked toward Lord Osmund Strong, still standing off in the distance.
Ser Sebaston Mudd, drenched head to foot in blood, spurred his horse forward at once.
He drew a deep breath and bellowed: “Osmund Strong, since when in the seven hells did you hand your lordship over to your own whelp?
Get yourself over here, and quick about it.”
Quentyn could feel it plainly: charging a sleeping enemy camp with heavy horse wasn’t, perhaps, the kind of fight a true knight would call honorable.
And yet, after a victory this complete, this satisfying, the eyes of the knights and the hastily armed young fishermen he’d brought with him had all taken on something like open admiration when they looked at him now.
Even the sworn knights who’d known him for years looked at him now with real conviction in their eyes.
Only Ser Sebaston, who had watched him grow up from a boy, still looked at him with nothing but plain affection.
Only then did Lord Osmund Strong seem to wake from his own daze.
He tumbled off his horse, half-falling, and staggered his way toward Quentyn.
The knights at his side, Ser Black Tom with half his face marked black, and the sharp-tongued Ser Merry alike, had no choice but to dismount as well and drop to one knee.
Having run rather too far to get there, Lord Osmund arrived before Quentyn gasping hard for breath.
“Young Lord Quentyn.
Leonor’s word is my own.”
Lord Osmund hauled himself up, dropped to one knee, and spoke, his voice shaking slightly.
“House Strong will always be Qoherys’s own loyal hound.”
“Very good.”
Quentyn nodded.
“As reward for marching to the field, I’ll see to it that Lord Butterwell pays a widow’s price for your fallen soldiers, and makes House Strong whole for its losses.
I trust he’ll be glad enough to spend the gold to help the neighbor who came to his own aid.
Wouldn’t you say so, Lord Brynden?”
Lord Brynden Butterwell, who had only just opened his own gates and come hurrying up with his knights, swung down from his horse at once.
He glanced toward Prince Baelon, but the prince only narrowed his eyes, the very picture of a man with no stake in the matter.
Lord Brynden had no choice but to drop to one knee himself.
“House Butterwell will pay three gold dragons for every fallen soldier…”
Three gold dragons.
Quentyn ran the figure quickly through his own reckoning of prices.
Three gold dragons, in the Riverlands as they stood now, could buy a decent broken horse, or a pair of cattle.
Enough, on its own, to leave a common farmer comfortably well-off.
“…and a hundred gold dragons in payment to House Strong.
House Butterwell will also present three hundred gold dragons to Harrenhal…”
Lord Brynden Butterwell winced visibly at the sum.
Wealthy and well-established as his own house was, even for him, laying out very nearly five hundred gold dragons all at once was no small matter.
Quentyn found himself marveling once again, privately, at just how strange the original story’s own sense of economics had always seemed.
The more familiar he grew with the true value of coin in this world, the more he found himself doubting how anyone had ever arrived at a figure like fifty thousand gold dragons for a tourney’s grand prize, back in the era of the main story.
As far as he knew, even the crown’s own treasury took in no more than two hundred thousand gold dragons a year, and once you set aside the bulk of that, coming from minting fees and customs duties, what the crown actually collected in taxes from its lords and landed nobles across the realm came to something closer to fifty thousand gold dragons.
Still, whatever the truth of it, for a House Qoherys whose own coffers currently sat all but empty, House Butterwell’s three hundred gold dragons would go a very long way.
Raising dairy cattle really does pay well, Quentyn thought to himself, with an inward sigh, though nothing of it showed on his face.
He went on:
“But House Butterwell allowed brigands to run rampant on its own lands, and House Strong marched carelessly, without its liege lord’s leave, beyond its own borders.
Your Grace’s Prince, I believe neither of those charges is a light one, wouldn’t you agree?”
Baelon raised an eyebrow.
“I would.”
Both Lord Osmund’s and Lord Brynden’s faces went pale for a moment.
“But House Strong’s merit balances its fault, so I’ll levy only a fine.” Quentyn turned his gaze to Lord Osmund.
Lord Osmund let out a long breath of relief.
Unlike House Qoherys, whose coffers ran thin from the constant costs of repairing and maintaining Harrenhal and developing its lands, House Strong was old and wealthy, and gold was no scarce thing to them.
“House Strong will pay two hundred gold dragons, and ask Lord Daeron’s forgiveness.”
“My father will grant it, Lord Osmund.” The corner of Quentyn’s mouth curved up slightly.
These old, established noble houses were all wealthier than House Qoherys by far, and yet when it came time to actually pay out their coin, they always dragged their feet.
Getting gold out of them was harder than getting a sphinx to stop posing riddles.
That sum alone was enough to arm fifty knights, each needing no more than a single warhorse, and enough, too, to bring House Qoherys, already saving considerably now that the Wailing Tower and the Widow’s Tower stood properly repaired, that much closer to real prosperity.
“As for you, Lord Brynden, your own charge is to hunt down what remains of the brigands as swiftly as you can.
Consider it your penance.
Understood?”
“Understood, understood.” Lord Brynden said, meek and hurried.
Only then did Quentyn nod, satisfied.
He’d just turned to say something further when a hand came to rest on his shoulder.
“Quentyn Qoherys.”
Quentyn turned, puzzled, to find Baelon looking at him with nothing but satisfaction, and something like real pride, in his eyes.
“You’re not yet a knight, if I recall.”
A knight?
A flicker of understanding shot through Quentyn’s mind at once.
He pulled off his helm without a moment’s hesitation and dropped to one knee.
“Not yet, my prince.”
“Your deeds today have proven your courage and your fearlessness well enough, Quentyn Qoherys.
Will you become a knight of the Seven Kingdoms?”
Baelon drew his Valyrian steel blade, Dark Sister, and laid it across Quentyn’s shoulder.
“Of course.”
Quentyn answered without hesitation.
He had already worked this much out well before he’d set out on this battle he’d been so certain of winning.
Daemon would surely go to Baelon for aid, and if Jaehaerys himself didn’t come, then it would be Baelon who did.
This victory, once won, would be the very thing to earn him a knighthood of his own.
To be dubbed a knight by the Prince of Dragonstone himself: that was the kind of honor singers would carry into song.
“Very good.”
The knights around them dismounted at once and pulled off their own helms.
Even Vhagar seemed to catch some scent on the air, and slowly lifted her head, a low, rumbling growl rolling up from her throat.
“Quentyn Qoherys, in the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.”
Baelon touched the flat of the blade lightly to Quentyn’s right shoulder.
“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.”
The blade moved to his left shoulder.
“In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the weak and the innocent.”
Baelon’s sword-hand was steady, and around them the whole camp had fallen silent.
“In the name of the Maiden, I charge you to protect all women and children.”
“In the name of the Smith, I charge you to lend your strength to those who have need of it.”
Dark Sister moved once more to his left shoulder.
“In the name of the Crone, I charge you to carry her light into every place where darkness runs unchecked.”
The blade touched his right shoulder one final time.
The knights around them stood in dead silence; the squires not yet knighted watched on, their faces full of open envy.
“In the name of the Stranger, I charge you to hold to this oath so long as you draw breath.”
Baelon sheathed Dark Sister, and closed the sevenfold oath with a smile.
“The seven vows are spoken.
Rise, Ser Quentyn Qoherys, the youngest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Go and write your own legend with that sword of yours.”
Quentyn rose slowly to his feet, and the moment he stood straight and tall, every knight, every squire, every young fisherman, even the foot soldiers of House Strong, broke into a roar of cheering.
The sound rose in wave after wave, but every voice called out one name, and one name only.
“Quentyn!”
The cheering slowly died away, and Quentyn turned to look back at his own company.
“Garwyn Chambers.
Come here.”