[June 25, 298 AC (Sunday) | 2:30 AM | Camp Deep in the Mountains of the Moon] The dead of night.
The freezing wind still stung their faces, but around the hollow, dozens of Wildlings from the Stone Crows had fanned out into a human shield.
The rusted axes and sharpened wooden spears in their hands kept the other restless smaller tribes from even daring to draw near the fire.
Tyrion, Soren, and Bronn sat gathered around the rekindled campfire.
The dancing firelight cast shifting shadows across their faces.
Tyrion took a tattered wineskin and tilted his head back, gulping down a mouthful of the sour, cloudy fermented mare’s milk inside.
It immediately sent him into a fit of harsh coughing, bringing tears to his eyes.
“Is this stuff made of horse piss?” Wiping the corners of his mouth with his sleeve, he stared across at Soren, who was using a rag to carefully wipe the blood from his blade.
“Soren,” Tyrion said, his tone buzzing with drunk excitement, “what’s inside your head is far more dangerous than the sword in your hand.” Soren sheathed his sword into its leather scabbard and tossed the bloodstained rag into the fire.
“I merely placed what both sides want most on the same set of scales.” He looked up, meeting that green eye.
“My lord, have you never thought of taking the Vale for yourself?” “I’ve thought about hauling all the gold in the world into my bedchamber,” Tyrion laughed self-deprecatingly.
“But that requires Lord Tywin’s nod.
Still, with this troupe of bodyguards, my dearest father will at least have to let me crawl into his command tent in one piece.” Bronn rubbed a newly earned silver coin between his calloused fingers.
“So you tricked those savages into becoming your personal army.
Once we reach the camp, is your old man really going to hand them steel swords?” “Of course he will.” Tyrion shrugged.
“A few thousand desperate vanguard cannon fodder charging in for the price of a few swords?
A bargain like that wouldn’t make Tywin Lannister bat an eye.” Bronn snorted.
“I knew it.
Not a word of truth comes out of you high lords’ mouths.
Dangling the Eyrie like a sweet pie in front of them, when all you want is to fool a bunch of free idiots into taking spears for you.
If you ask me, if these Wildlings had any brains, they’d take the money, head down the mountain, and find a few clean women in town for a good night.
Mixing with you lords is worse than going back home, dropping a copper or two to marry a farm girl.
At least at night you wouldn’t have to worry about your master stabbing you in the back.” The hand holding Tyrion’s skin froze midair.
The flush of the fire faded from his face, leaving an indescribable, deathly gray.
“A farm girl?” His voice dropped low, like sandpaper dragging over rock.
Bronn caught the shift in mood immediately.
“What?
Did I strike a nerve?” “No.” Tyrion lowered his head, staring intently at the small pool of murky liquor in his hand.
“Just…
reminded me of a farm girl.
Back then, I thought marrying a country girl and living a quiet, peaceful life didn’t sound so bad either.” He tilted his head back bitterly, the scheming spark in his mismatched eyes gone, replaced by a bottomless exhaustion.
“When I was thirteen, Jaime and I saved a girl on the road.
Her name was Tysha.
Black hair, eyes that curved when she smiled…
she was just a tenant farmer’s daughter.” There was only the howling wind and the crackle of burning wood.
Bronn frowned and didn’t interrupt, while Soren listened in silence—as a transmigrator, he knew the tragic end of this story.
“I thought I was in love.” Tyrion let out a short, wet laugh, his eyes reddening.
“Even a dwarf has that right, don’t they?
Especially a Lannister.
I found a drunken septon and married her in secret.
Those two weeks were the happiest of my life.
We stayed in a cottage by the sea, and she sang to me…
a Myrish ballad called ‘My Season for Loving’…” He stopped.
His Adam’s apple bobbed violently, as if he were swallowing broken glass.
“Then…
my father found out.” Tyrion gripped the skin tight, his knuckles turning white.
“He summoned Jaime and forced my brother to tell me the truth—that Tysha wasn’t some farm girl, but a whore Jaime had hired for a gold coin so his pitiful dwarf brother could taste what it was like to be a man.” Bronn rolled his eyes.
“Your brother treated you well.
A gold coin could buy you the finest flower in King’s Landing.” “Yes.” Tyrion’s voice was completely hollow.
“And then my father decided this ‘whore’ hadn’t followed the rules.
He handed Tysha over to the guards stationed at the tower.
A whole battalion of soldiers.
He forced me to sit there and watch.
Every soldier who mounted her had to toss her a silver coin.
By the end, coins covered the floor—more than she could hold in both hands.” Tyrion downed another large gulp of booze, the liquid dribbling down his chin and into his grimy leather collar.
“Lord Tywin told me at the end that Lannister gold isn’t earned so easily.” A dead silence fell over the three of them.
After a moment, Bronn picked up a whetstone and scraped it hard across his blade.
“Whether I was thirteen, thirty, or three, if anyone ever did that to me, I’d slaughter them.” Soren looked at Tyrion’s mismatched eyes, trembling faintly with agony.
He knew the cruel, absurd truth: Tysha was never a whore.
Tywin had forced Jaime to tell a monstrous lie.
She was a farm girl who had truly loved the dwarf, only for Tywin to destroy her in the coldest way possible—just to prove to his twisted son that “no one could ever love a monster.” Soren poked at the burning twigs, letting sparks drift up into the night wind.
He decided to speak.
“My lord,” Soren’s voice was calm and heavy, cutting through the crackling firelight.
Tyrion lifted his head sluggishly.
“Forgive my impudence, but I’ve heard another version of that story’s ending.” Soren paused, dropping the bombshell word by word: “Lord Tywin had you take her last, and then gave you a gold coin…
because a Lannister commands a different price.” Tyrion froze instantly.
Shock, confusion, fury, and the humiliation of having his old wounds ripped wide open flickered across his misshapen face in turn.
“You…” Tyrion’s voice trembled violently, as if he were looking at a ghost.
“How could you know…
How dare you…” “My lord, hear me out.” Soren met those rage-filled eyes directly.
“Men of power are used to using gold and butchering knives to weave scripts and distort reality.” The reason he picked such an inopportune moment—even risking Tyrion’s wrath to tear open this last bloody scab—was to completely shatter the dwarf’s psychological defense, forcing him to listen intently to every word that followed.
Soren’s gaze was deep as the night sky.
“Without such mind-shattering cruelty, there would have been no way to sever a thirteen-year-old boy’s romantic obsession.
Lord Tywin doesn’t need the truth; he only needs you to believe his truth.
To him, every Lannister is just a bargaining chip on the table.
Cersei, Jaime, and even you—all the same.” Soren kept his voice low, yet it rang out like a morning bell: “If Lord Tywin needed to prove that girl was in it for money…
even if she were as pure as driven snow, The Seven themselves would nod along and brand her a whore.
Let alone your underage brother.” Soren leaned forward slightly, his blazing gaze locking onto Tyrion.
“Think back carefully to when you looked into her eyes, Tyrion.
During those two weeks, when she sang to you and met your gaze…
do you really believe those were the eyes of a paid whore?” Clatter.
The wineskin slipped from Tyrion’s hand onto the ground, spilling murky fermented mare’s milk all over his boot.
His face, usually painted with cynicism and mockery, contorted violently.
His mouth hung half-open, his chest heaved, and he gasped for breath like a drowning man just pulled from deep water.
Fourteen years.
No one had ever dared make such a deduction before him.
No one had ever offered him this sliver of faint, heartbreaking hope.
He stared locked onto Soren’s eyes, trying to catch a single trace of deceit.
But Soren didn’t flinch.
Soren’s eyes were sincere and compassionate, gleaming with a wisdom that had no business belonging to a lowborn mercenary.
For a brief second…
Tyrion even felt an otherworldly, transcendent depth emanating from him.