The morning had no competition in it.
The lists were being reconfigured for the melee, barriers repositioned, the ground checked and turned where it had compacted, the recovery area set up near the eastern fence with the maester’s tent behind it.
Workers moved across the field with the focused efficiency of people on a deadline, and the crowd that had gathered to watch had nothing to watch yet and seemed faintly annoyed about it.
Alex used the morning for squire work.
He’d learned quickly that squire work at a royal tourney was different from squire work on the road.
More of it, for one thing.
Mikal’s equipment needed more attention in one week here than in a month of normal travelling, the armor inspected daily, straps checked, weapons maintained to a standard that the road didn’t require because the road didn’t have forty men trying to knock you off a horse simultaneously.
He was returning a repaired shield strap from the armorer when he passed the practice yard.
Dayne was there again.
Same spot, same quality of movement, that particular way he had of thinking with a sword rather than drilling with one.
Three other knights were watching from across the yard, positioned carefully to look like they weren’t watching.
Alex stopped.
“You keep staring at him,” Edwyn said, materialising beside him with a piece of bread in his hand and no explanation for where he’d come from.
“He moves differently from everyone else,” Alex said.
Edwyn looked at Dayne for a moment.
The usual cheerfulness was absent.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“He does.” They watched for a moment longer.
Then moved on.
Mikal was in the competitor’s assembly area when they got back, already in his armor, doing his own checks with the systematic focus of a man who trusted nobody else’s assessment of his own equipment.
Alex went through their checklist without being asked.
Called each item.
Mikal confirmed without looking up.
“Shield strap.” “Fixed and fitted.” “Sword edge.” “Blunted properly.
Checked this morning.” “Boots.” “Tight.
No give in the left ankle.” Near the back of the assembly area Alex spotted a broad man in plain armor checking his own sword with the unhurried confidence of someone who had done this many times.
Mikal had seen him too, Alex noticed the slight change in his father’s posture, the recognition.
“Colen,” Mikal said.
Ser Colen of Greenpools looked up.
A brief nod, the shorthand of men who knew each other from a specific context and didn’t need to rebuild the acquaintance from the beginning each time.
“Mikal.” He looked at the field being prepared.
“Staying away from the Baratheon boy.” “Obviously,” Mikal said.
“And Martell.” “Obviously.” “Greyjoy’s going straight for the middle.
Madman.” “Let him,” Mikal said.
“Let everyone else deal with him first.” Colen nodded.
A pause.
“Watch each other’s backs in the early chaos?” “Until it stops making sense,” Mikal said.
“Until it stops making sense,” Colen agreed.
That was the whole negotiation.
Alex watched it happen in under a minute and filed away what an alliance between experienced men actually looked like, practical, specific, no illusions about what it was or wasn’t.
The herald’s voice carried across the entire grounds when the time came.
Alex was at the barrier by then, Edwyn beside him, close enough to the field that he could see the grass clearly and the recovery point was ten yards to his left.
The maester and two attendants were already positioned.
Alex knew what his job was if Mikal went down, over the barrier fast, get under his arm, get him moving before he became an obstacle or took another hit on the ground.
He hoped he wouldn’t need to do it.
“The melee!” the herald announced, with the particular energy reserved for the event the crowd had been anticipating most.
“Forty-three competitors enter the field.
Among them —” The crowd settled into the listening quiet of people who knew names were coming.
“Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard!” The roar was immediate and genuine.
The man beside Alex in the stands spilled his drink and didn’t notice.
“Prince Oberyn Martell of House Martell!” A different sound, curious, uncertain, the crowd not quite sure what to make of an eighteen year old Dornish prince in a melee.
A pocket of orange and red in the noble stands cheered loudly.
“Robert Baratheon, son of Lord Steffon Baratheon of Storm’s End!” Surprised murmur rippling through the crowd.
He’s young, Alex heard someone say.
How old is he?
Fourteen, someone else answered.
The surprise turned into something more interested.
“Victarion Greyjoy of the Iron Islands!” Uneasy murmur.
Ironborn at a mainland tourney was unusual enough that people didn’t quite know the correct reaction.
“Ser Brynden Tully — the Blackfish — of House Tully!” Solid appreciative cheer.
Well known and well liked.
“Ser Randyll Tarly of House Tarly!” Respectful acknowledgment from the sections of the crowd that knew military reputation when they heard it.
Then: “— and thirty-seven additional competitors.” The crowd’s energy dropped slightly.
Mikal was in those thirty-seven.
Alex knew it and said nothing.
Edwyn leaned close.
“Doesn’t matter how they announce you going in.
Matters how they announce you coming out.” Then the signal sounded and forty-three men entered the field simultaneously and the crowd became one enormous noise.
The first minutes were impossible to follow properly.
Alex tried and gave up and started watching specific people instead of the whole field.
Mikal and Colen had gone to the eastern edge as agreed, not engaging, repositioning, letting the centre of the field sort itself out.
Smart.
The centre was chaos, three separate clashes happening simultaneously, men already going down, a Westerlands knight backing away from something Alex couldn’t see with the specific expression of someone reconsidering their life decisions.
“Victarion Greyjoy eliminates Ser Willam Westerling!” A roar from one corner of the stands.
Edwyn winced.
“Told you.
Straight for the middle.” Robert Baratheon was the other thing you couldn’t not watch.
The size of him was wrong for his age in a way that kept catching Alex’s eye, not just tall but broad, the warhammer swinging in arcs that cleared space around him simply by existing.
He wasn’t efficient.
He was fourteen and fighting on enthusiasm and physical gifts that hadn’t been fully refined yet.
But the gifts were so considerable that efficiency almost didn’t matter.
“Prince Oberyn Martell eliminates Ser Lucion Frey — and Ser Harys Swyft!” The crowd erupted.
Alex had been watching the wrong part of the field, by the time he found Oberyn Martell both men were already down and Martell was moving again, low and fast, nothing wasted, fighting nothing like anyone else on the field.
“What did he just do?” Alex said.
“I don’t know,” Edwyn said admiringly.
“I genuinely don’t know.” An hour in, Mikal and Colen’s alliance dissolved the way Mikal had said it would, without discussion, without drama, just a look between them when the field had thinned enough that pretending otherwise was pointless.
They separated and became rivals and that was that.
Mikal found his own rhythm.
Methodical, patient, the way he did everything.
He took a cut above his eye from an elbow in a close exchange that Alex saw from the barrier and felt in his chest even from that distance.
Stayed up.
Kept moving.
“Ser Mikal — hedge knight — eliminates Ser Rolland Prester!” The herald stumbled slightly on the lack of house name.
The crowd gave a brief response, not loud, but real, the acknowledgment of people who had been watching this particular fighter survive and had noticed.
Edwyn grabbed Alex’s arm.
Said nothing.
Just grabbed it.
Then Robert Baratheon turned from finishing with someone else and Mikal was in front of him.
“Oh,” Edwyn said quietly.
It wasn’t quick.
Alex would remember that afterward, that it wasn’t quick, that Mikal made it cost something, that he took two hits that would have dropped most men and found his feet both times.
Robert was fourteen and powerful beyond reason but not yet a finished fighter and Mikal was experienced enough to make that count for something.
But the third hit didn’t leave a choice.
Mikal went to one knee.
Alex was over the barrier before the yield was finished leaving his father’s mouth.
Low, fast, under Mikal’s arm, moving him toward the maester’s tent before either of them said anything.
The maester was already stepping forward.
“Still standing,” Alex said, because it was what Mikal said.
Mikal made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Then he let the maester take his weight and didn’t argue about it.
The field kept thinning.
Alex sat beside Mikal outside the maester’s tent and watched the rest of it from there.
The maester worked, cleaned the cut above the eye, checked the ribs with careful hands, announced nothing broken with the neutral tone of a man who had delivered both better and worse news in the same afternoon.
Mikal watched the field with the particular expression of a man who had competed and was now simply a spectator and was making the adjustment.
The final stages were different from the chaos of the opening, slower, more deliberate, men who were still standing after two hours of this being careful about what they committed to.
Selmy was still moving with the same economy he’d started with, the frustrating consistency of someone who simply didn’t waste effort.
Tarly was clinical and unhurried.
The Blackfish was still navigating rather than charging.
Selmy won it eventually, the last man standing after Tarly went to one knee in a final exchange that the whole crowd watched without making much noise, the quality of it commanding that kind of attention.
The herald let the silence sit for one moment.
“By order of Lord Tywin Lannister — the melee standings.
First — Ser Barristan Selmy.
Second — Ser Randyll Tarly.
Third — Victarion Greyjoy.
Fourth — Robert Baratheon.
Fifth — Ser Brynden Tully, the Blackfish.
Sixth — Prince Oberyn Martell.
Seventh — Mikal, hedge knight.” The crowd applauded each name with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
When Mikal’s name was read, last, without a house, announced the same way it had been written at registration, the response was small.
But it was there.
Alex heard it clearly.
—- The feast that evening was loud with melee talk.
Robert Baratheon was near the front with his father Steffon, apparently re-enacting something from the field with considerable arm movement.
Steffon Baratheon watched his son with the expression of a man trying to maintain appropriate parental gravity and finding it genuinely difficult.
Mikal ate slowly, ribs taped, eye cleaned and closed.
Quiet but not unhappy.
The specific quiet of a man who had competed honestly and knew it.
Alex was watching the room when someone stopped beside their table.
Dark hair.
Grey eyes.
A guard two paces back at the relaxed posture of someone not anticipating trouble.
The feast hall was nearly full.
Jon Arryn was speaking with a lord across the room.
The boy was looking at the empty chair at the end of their table.
“Is anyone sitting here?” “No,” Alex said.
He sat.
Comfortable in the silence for a moment, not performing friendliness, just present.
“Your knight was in the melee,” he said.
Not a question.
“Yes,” Alex said.
“He lasted well against Robert.” A pause.
“That’s not easy.
Robert doesn’t, he doesn’t really slow down.” “No,” Alex said.
“He doesn’t.” Across the room Robert was still going with the hand gestures.
The boy beside Alex glanced over with the fond exasperation of someone who had a very specific person in their life and had developed specific patience for them.
“He’s going to talk about today for a week,” the boy said.
“Was it not worth talking about?” Alex asked.
“It was.” Simply.
Honestly.
“He just won’t stop.” Jon Arryn appeared behind him.
A brief word, the natural authority of a man whose charges moved when he moved.
The boy stood.
“Good luck to your knight in the joust,” he said to Alex.
He meant it.
That was the thing, he completely meant it, this stranger’s knight’s chances, in the straightforward way of someone who hadn’t yet learned to say things without meaning them.
He left.
Edwyn leaned over.
“You know who that was?” “No,” Alex said honestly.
“Eddard Stark.
Lord Rickard’s second son.
Fostering with Arryn up in the Eyrie.” Alex looked across the hall.
Ned Stark was already listening to something Jon Arryn was saying, attentive in the way of someone who took listening seriously as a skill worth having.
‘Huh,’ Alex thought.’Another name to remember that’ will be important during the Rebellion.’ He went back to his food.
Late evening.
Competitor’s area.
Mikal checking joust equipment by torchlight, different checklist from the melee kit, different weight, different preparation.
Alex held the torch and passed things when asked.
Mikal moved carefully around the taped ribs.
Didn’t complain about them.
“Tomorrow,” Alex said.
“Tomorrow,” Mikal agreed.
That was enough.