“That pair of lying bastards!
It’s my fault, my lord—my fault for not watching over your lady mother!
All my fault!” Solomon’s voice was quiet but steady.
“Where are they now?” Old Niken looked at him through red-rimmed eyes.
“They’re still outside, my lord.
On their knees in the mud.
They’ve been there since the day we heard you were alive.
They’re too terrified to stand.” Solomon sat with the words for a moment.
The two farmers hadn’t meant to lie.
As far as they knew, he really had been dead on that beach.
And they were two of the last strong men left on his land.
Killing them wouldn’t bring his mother back.
It would only leave Stinkfort even weaker than it already was.
“Bring them in,” he said.
Old Niken hesitated, then bowed and shuffled out.
A few minutes later the old man returned with two men in tattered homespun.
Their faces were streaked with dirt and tears.
The moment they saw Solomon sitting upright in the bed, both of them dropped to their knees so hard the stone floor thudded.
They pressed their foreheads to the ground and shook.
“Lord Solomon!
Lord Solomon, we deserve to die!
We deserve to die!
We carried the wrong word and it killed your lady mother!” One of them was almost wailing.
“We thought you were gone too, my lord!
We truly did!
We never meant to deceive you—please, have mercy!
Please spare us!” The other man kept his face to the floor, voice cracking.
“We beg you, Lord Solomon—forgive us!
Don’t send us to the headsman!
Our families have nowhere else to go!” Solomon studied them.
They were terrified down to the bone.
He could smell the fear on them, sharp and sour.
In his old life he had never been anyone important.
The highest rank he’d ever held was class monitor in primary school, the kid who collected homework for the teacher.
Now he was sitting in a crumbling tower with two grown men groveling at his feet, waiting for him to decide whether they lived or died.
He drew a slow breath and made his voice as firm as he could manage.
“Get up.” They didn’t move.
They just kept knocking their heads against the stone.
“You foolishly carried false news,” Solomon said, voice flat.
“Because of you, my family is gone.
My mother is dead.
You deserve death for that.” Both men went corpse-pale.
One of them made a thin, broken sound in his throat.
Solomon let the silence stretch.
“But the dead don’t come back just because I spill more blood.
Executing you won’t give my father his life, or my brothers theirs, or my mother hers.
All it would do is leave two more widows and a handful of fatherless children on land that already can’t feed the people who are left.” He looked down at them.
“From this day forward, you are no longer farmers.” The words hit them like a blow.
Both men jerked their heads up, eyes wide with fresh terror.
They thought he was about to banish them.
They slammed their foreheads back to the floor.
“Please, my lord—don’t cast us out!
We’re your people!
If we leave Stinkfort we’ll starve!
Our wives and children will starve!
Please—!” “Listen to me.” Solomon’s voice rose, sharp and commanding.
It echoed off the damp stone walls.
“You came back from that slaughter when better men didn’t.
Maybe the Seven spared you for a reason.
My father and brothers died for this family’s honor.
I won’t throw away the only two strong men left to me just to satisfy pride.” He took a step closer.
The floor was cold under his bare feet.
“From this moment, your duty changes.
You will guard me.
You will guard this tower.
You will stand between Stinkfort and whatever comes for it—until the day I no longer need you, or until the day you die doing it.” The two men stared up at him like he had spoken in tongues.
Then the realization sank in.
They weren’t being punished.
They were being raised.
From dirt-poor farmers to the personal guards of their lord.
One of them started crying in earnest—great, shaking sobs of relief.
The other man pressed his face to Solomon’s feet and kissed the hem of the blanket.
“Seven save you, Lord Solomon,” the first man choked out.
“We’ll guard you with our lives.
We swear it.
On the Seven, on our wives, on our children—we’ll die before we let harm reach you.” Solomon looked down at them and felt the weight of it settle in his chest.
He had no idea if this was the right choice.
He only knew he needed men who would fight for him, not against him.
And these two had already survived the worst the ironmen could throw at them.
He turned to Old Niken.
“Take them downstairs.
Find them whatever decent mail or boiled leather we still have.
Give them swords or spears—whatever’s left that isn’t completely useless.
They’re my guards now.” Old Niken’s eyes were bright.
He bowed low, deeper than before.
“Yes, my lord.” There was pride in the old man’s voice.
Solomon had woken up to a ruined house and a dead family, and in less than an hour he had already made a decision that could either save them or doom them.
Old Niken didn’t know if mercy was wisdom or weakness.
But he knew his young lord was trying.
When the three of them had gone, Solomon was alone again.
His body still felt weak, but his mind was clearer than it had been since he woke.
He walked slowly to the narrow window and looked out over the marshes.
Frogs croaked.
Night birds called.
The reeds hissed and swayed in the wind.
It should have been peaceful.
Instead his stomach twisted.
The Greyjoy Rebellion was happening now.
In roughly ten years the real storm would come—the one that would tear Westeros apart.
The War of the Five Kings.
The Riverlands would be the battlefield where every army marched, burned, and looted.
Riverrun, the Twins, Harrenhal—every keep and village between them would be fought over again and again.
Stinkfort sat right on the lower Green Fork, near the crossroads.
Too small to matter.
Too weak to defend itself.
Whoever won would have no reason to spare it, and whoever lost would have no reason to protect it.
He had no army.
No gold.
No powerful friends.
Run to Essos?
He’d be sold into slavery before he reached the first free city.
Throw in with Daenerys Targaryen?
She was still across the Narrow Sea, and her road to Westeros was long and bloody.
He didn’t have the years to wait.
Back the Starks or the Tullys?
They would lose.
Badly.
Side with the Lannisters?
They were ruthless.
They would use a minor Riverlands knight like him as fodder—exactly the way they used the mountain clans and the Mountain himself to burn the Riverlands black.
He had nothing.
No modern knowledge that could build guns or printing presses or anything that would change the balance of power.
All he had was the memory of a story he had read once, and the knowledge that in roughly a decade this land would become a slaughterhouse.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he whispered.
The night answered with wind and frogs and the endless rustle of reeds.
He was still breathing.
He had the full memories of two lives and the knowledge of what was coming.
That was more than most men ever got.
It had to be enough.
Solomon Stinkfort stood at the window until the sky began to pale.
When the first gray light touched the marshes, the fear in his chest had not gone away.
But something else had taken root beside it—small, stubborn, and burning.
He was not going to die quietly in this rotting tower.
Not if he could help it.