“On what grounds do you say that…” Tyrion stared fixedly at Soren, his voice dry and raspy, as if desperately grasping at a floating piece of driftwood, yet instinctively resisting at the same time.
“You don’t know Jaime at all…
He would never tell such a lie to me…” Just then, deep within Soren’s mind, the system’s cold notification chime rang out.
[Warning: Host detected leaking major future secrets to a core character.] [Current Causality Shift: Minor.] [Note: Changes in a core character’s cognition will cause unpredictable branching in subsequent events.
Frequently, directly, and costlessly breaking established causality may trigger worldline backlash.] [Long-term Quest Generated: Rift in the Pride.] [Phase 1 Objective: Escort Tyrion Lannister to Tywin’s military camp and ensure he retains practical influence over the Mountain Clans.] [Objective 1 Reward: Honor Points +5; Unlock One-Time Auxiliary Check: Inciteful Speech × 2.] [System Note: Due to the risk of breaking causality, a temporary reward has been granted—One-Time Auxiliary Check: Inciteful Speech (Beginner) × 1.] Soren’s eyes darkened slightly.
The system was right.
This world was not a piece of parchment for him to rewrite at will.
Every truth revealed ahead of time would make the road ahead unfamiliar.
But some seeds had to be planted now.
As long as this seed of doubt was sown, even if Soren did nothing further, Tyrion himself would chew over those memories again and again in countless late nights.
Because when Tywin Lannister sat in his command tent and fixed them with those pale golden eyes, if Tyrion were still just a son desperate for his father’s approval, everyone would be placed back onto Tywin’s chessboard without suspense.
“You’re right, my lord.” Soren looked at the firelight, his tone suddenly returning to its previous calmness and detachment, as if the person who had just dropped a bombshell wasn’t him at all.
“Perhaps Lord Tywin really was right.
Perhaps that girl truly was just a whore acting for money.” Soren didn’t continue, leaving it at that.
“Lowland scheming is poison, worse than a mountain viper’s venom.” A voice rough as muffled thunder chimed in from the other side of the fire.
Shagga, who had been patrolling nearby, had approached the campfire at some point.
The chief of the Stone Crows held his rusted greataxe.
His violent eyes were now fixed on Soren, gleaming with a rare sense of admiration.
“Halfman’s mind moves faster than a mountain fox,” Shagga pointed a thick, calloused finger at Tyrion, then swung it toward Soren.
“But your eyes are sharper than a mountain eagle’s.
Not only is your sword fast, you have the guts to rip out a lowland lord’s stinking guts right to his face.
Soren, you are a true warrior.” Shagga suddenly turned his iron axe sideways.
Not to strike.
He pressed the spine of the axe against Soren’s shoulder, his massive arm pressing down hard.
“Let me see,” Shagga grinned, exposing yellowed teeth, “if your bones are as hard as your tongue.” Bronn’s hand immediately went to his hilt.
But Soren didn’t move.
The axe head rested heavy on his shoulder, like a soaked millstone.
The strength that had just been forcibly raised to 18 points by Honor Points surged beneath his skin, his joints giving a faint crack.
It hurt.
But he didn’t bend.
Soren even raised his eyes, looking calmly at Shagga.
“If you just want to lend me your axe, I can chop firewood for you tomorrow.” Shagga stared at him for two breaths.
Then, the mountain giant burst into a loud roar of laughter.
He pulled back the axe and clapped Soren hard on the shoulder, the sheer force nearly knocking him into the fire.
“Good!
Hard tongue, hard bones.
Shagga likes it.” Shagga pounded his scar-riddled chest, then turned and stomped off toward the perimeter.
With Shagga’s blunt interruption, coupled with Soren’s unfathomable display of strength, the deadly silence around the campfire finally broke.
Tyrion closed his eyes and leaned back against the hard stone wall behind him.
His breathing gradually smoothed out, but when he opened his eyes again, there was a sharpness and turmoil usually hidden away.
He gave Soren a long, searching look—this time, his eyes held not just wariness toward a strategist, but a complex gratitude for a quiet source of comfort.
“Right then.” The Halfman pulled his ragged cloak tight around himself, curled into a small ball, and soon drifted off to sleep.
…
The cold wind of the Mountains of the Moon blew all night.
The next morning, Soren wasn’t awakened by the howling of wild beasts, but by a shrill, piercing argument.
As dawn was breaking, dozens of unfamiliar Wildlings had gathered outside the cave in the Stone Crows’ camp.
They wore furs even more tattered than those of the Stone Crows, holding sharpened wooden sticks in their hands.
Standing at the front, confronting Shagga, was an extremely short, fierce woman.
Her chest was as flat as a boy’s, greasy feathers braided into her wild hair.
Most striking of all was her necklace—a string of dried, blackened human ears.
“Shagga son of Dolf, when did your tongue grow as smooth as a lowlander’s?” the woman shrieked, clutching a bone-handled hunting knife.
“You say there are free steel swords and mail here?
That they’ll give us the Eyrie?
Have you Stone Crows gone mad with hunger and started eating your own brains?” “Chella of the Black Ears, shut your filthy mouth!” Shagga roared in fury, slamming his rusted greataxe onto the ground and spraying loose gravel.
“This is the promise of the Lion Chief!
A Lannister always pays his debts!” “All I see is a dwarf!” Chella pointed into the cave without backing down an inch.
“What’s all the racket first thing in the morning?” Bronn yawned, resting one hand on his pommel as he walked to the mouth of the cave.
Looking out at the tense standoff, he raised an eyebrow.
“Looks like our Halfman lord’s fame spreads faster than the wind.” Tyrion was awakened as well.
He crawled out from beneath his ragged cloak.
His face, pale from a hangover and sleeping on hard stone, still bore lingering exhaustion.
Yet the moment he caught the subject of the argument outside, Soren acutely noticed the vulnerability, sorrow, and turmoil over the past vanish from the dwarf’s eyes—swallowed whole in an instant.
In a split second, Tyrion Lannister slipped back on his cynical mask, brimming with shrewdness and calculation.
He splashed his face with icy stream water, slapped the dust off his clothes, and waddled out of the cave on his short legs with a trademark proud smile.
“Ah, it seems my great fame has reached the Black Ears,” Tyrion said, strutting up to Chella with his hands behind his back.
“I am Tyrion, son of Tywin, and your future best friend.
Lady with the lovely necklace, would you like a real steel sword?” Chella studied him warily, not replying at once, but the green-eyed glint of the Wildlings behind her spoke volumes.
Soren leaned against the rock wall, arms crossed, watching quietly.
“These are the men you’re leading?” Bronn stepped over, nudging Tyrion’s head with his elbow.
“These savages have a devilishly odd idea that everyone has the right to speak during a council, even the women.
No matter how big or small the matter is, they argue endlessly.
Do you really expect to walk back to the Westerlands with a mob that could start fighting each other at any moment?” Soren looked at the system notification panel flashing at the edge of his vision: [Phase 1 Objective: Escort Tyrion Lannister to Tywin’s military camp and ensure he retains practical influence over the Mountain Clans.] “Savages are indeed hard to manage.” Soren lowered his arms, his gaze shifting from Chella of the Black Ears to the mountain woods further away, where even more figures from smaller tribes seemed to be gathering because of the promise of the Vale.
“In a castle, nobles argue for three days, but in the end, the king and the law lay down the ruling.
In the mountains, everyone argues with knives in hand, leaving only corpses.
You need to change this situation, my lord.” “My thoughts exactly,” Tyrion sneered.
“But before we reach Lord Tywin’s military camp,” Soren patted Bronn’s shoulder and walked toward Tyrion, who was fiercely debating the mountain tribes, “we have plenty of time to teach them how to draw their blades at a single command.” The flight through the Mountains of the Moon had officially turned into an absurd recruitment drive.
And this long mountain road leading toward iron and blood was only just beginning.