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CaveLeather (9$) [ July 3, 298 AC | Morning | First Baggage Train Patrol Battalion ] The air inside the tent was thick enough to choke on.
Nero sat on the wooden chair.
At the edge of his vision three illusory cards slowly turned over.
[Select one of the following three random white cards.
Validity: 10 days.] [A: Survival Card — Lungs of Burden (White): Slightly reduces the sluggishness caused by injuries and illness.] [B: Skill Card — Tongue of the Abandoned Pawn (White): When speaking with marginalized people such as wounded soldiers, criminals, and savages, initial trust is slightly increased and it becomes easier to trigger their sense of crisis.] [C: Perception Card — Whispers in the Wind (White): Enhances long-distance hearing while in a non-combat state.] Outside the tent Cliff’s intermittent muffled groans continued.
Nero’s gaze locked onto option B.
“Select B.
Replace Staff Fighting.” A staff could break a soldier’s wrist.
What he needed now was a tongue that could bind abandoned pawns and Mountain Clans together.
[Temporary entry Tongue of the Abandoned Pawn (White) equipped.
Current entry slots: 4/4.] A faint chill had just swept across his throat when a furious roar exploded outside the tent.
“Move!
Shagga, son of Dolf, wants to see Nero!” The curtain was ripped open by a massive force.
Cold wind poured in, thick with the pungent scent of blood and mutton.
Shagga crashed into the tent.
The leather armor across his chest had been slashed open; a gruesome gash still held a rusted iron shard embedded in the exposed flesh.
Behind him Timett carried a dripping short axe, his single eye dark and cold.
Chella stood with arms crossed, face like stone, though her beast-like eyes were already measuring Nero.
Outside, a dozen Mountain Clans warriors wrapped in dirty bandages waited in silence.
They had come to collect a debt—the debt of that enormous, empty promise.
“The Half-man is gone.” Chella spoke first.
Her voice scraped like a knife on bone.
“The red cloaks told us that from today the free men of the mountains take orders from the knight named Marbrand.
Without his command we cannot leave the camp, and we cannot take our own spoils.” Shagga slammed a broken steel sword onto the table.
“He gives Shagga this!
Junk that cannot even cut sheepskin!” Timett laughed softly.
“We have killed for the Half-man.
We have bled for you.
The Burned Men do not guard wagons for strange flatlanders.” The air in the tent dropped to freezing.
Roland Leyton instinctively gripped his sword hilt.
Gawen looked as if he wanted to crawl inside the parchment itself.
Nero looked at the mountain folk.
They were no longer simply useful savages.
That was why the debt weighed so heavily.
Shagga stared at him fixedly.
“Nero.
Does the Half-man’s promise still count?” [Warning: High-risk commitment node detected.
Inducing the mountain folk to launch indiscriminate looting will cause a significant decrease in Honor.] Cold red text flickered across Nero’s retina.
He met Shagga’s gaze.
His voice remained perfectly steady.
“It counts.” Shagga’s eyes brightened for a moment.
Chella sneered.
“He’s gone.
How can it count?” “He went to King’s Landing to sit in the chair that can issue commands.
As long as he lives, the promise of the Vale of Arryn is not empty talk.” Nero let the subtle resonance of Tongue of the Abandoned Pawn carry his words deeper.
“So you must also stay alive.
Dead men cannot collect debts.” The sentence made Shagga close his mouth.
Chella narrowed her eyes.
At that moment a young warrior with a fresh knife wound on his left cheek pushed forward from behind Shagga.
“I am Kaan.
Gonso was my brother.” The young man’s teeth were clenched; his eyes were terrifyingly red.
“That flatlander with the boar sigil killed him and took his axe.
You told Shagga not to act.
You said he could not die in vain… Then when will he not die in vain?” Nero looked at him and was silent for a breath.
“Not today.” Kaan’s hand tightened on his knife.
Fury rose at once in his eyes.
Nero did not waste words.
“If you return to the mountains now you will steal a few sheep and then be driven back into the stone crevices by the knights of the Vale to starve.
If you want the Vale of Arryn you must first learn the rules of the flatlanders.” He stared at the leaders inside the tent.
“Killing Crakehall today is a private vendetta.
It is mutiny.
It hands him a legitimate reason to slaughter every one of you.
When he reaches out again to steal military rations or sell routes to the enemy, and you kill him then—that is military law.” Kaan froze.
Chella watched Nero’s straight back.
The curve of her mouth softened a fraction.
She discovered she liked the ruthlessness in this lowlander a little.
Timett lightly licked the blood on his axe blade.
“The lowlanders’ grudges must also be written into the ledger first?” “Yes,” Nero said.
“Write it clearly.
Calculate it properly.
Then take it back with interest.” Shagga stared at Nero for a long time.
Finally he bared his coarse yellow teeth.
“Shagga still wants to hack him now.” “I know,” Nero answered calmly.
“But dead men cannot collect debts.” Shagga snorted heavily.
At last he threw the broken sword onto the ground and picked up his battle-axe.
Chella turned to the clansmen behind her.
Her voice was cold.
“The Black Ears will follow me to Marbrand.
I want to see if that flatland knight is better at lying than the Half-man.” Timett touched his empty eye socket.
“The Burned Men will go look at the iron.” He paused, then casually pointed at two young warriors with burned faces behind him.
“They are left for you.
One has a leg injury.
One has a broken brain.
Marbrand will not like them.” The two odd-looking Burned Men grinned.
Shagga also selected Kaan and three others from the Stone Crows.
“They are disobedient.
If they go with me they will just start hacking people.
So I leave them to you.” Chella thought a moment and left several wounded Black Ears and two scouts skilled at climbing trees.
In the end seventeen Mountain Clans warriors remained with Nero’s supply train.
Roland Leyton looked at the blood-scented mountain folk.
His voice was dry.
“My lord, the quartermaster’s office will not like this.” “The quartermaster’s office already does not like me.” Nero looked at the grain wagons being reorganized.
“Rotten soldiers, rotten grain, rotten accounts, rotten debts.
This is the first piece of territory Tywin left me.” The leaders prepared to leave.
When Chella passed Nero she suddenly stopped.
She reached out and took his chin in her hand, as if assessing a strong mountain beast that had just crawled out of a pit.
Her fingers were rough and smelled of leather, soot, and dried blood.
“The flatlander chieftains have tricked the mountain tribes before.
You had best not become one of them.” Chella narrowed her eyes.
There was a wild, unashamed appreciation in her gaze.
“But you spoke a little like a leader today.
Not the slick-tongued kind like the Half-man.
The kind who can make people put their knives away.” She punched his bandaged chest—neither lightly nor heavily.
“Your bones are still hard enough.” The blow made Nero’s ribs ache faintly.
Chella grinned, showing white teeth.
“Don’t die at White Willow Crossing.
The women of the Black Ears do not like seeing a good stud have his eyes pecked out by ravens.” She turned and followed her clansmen.
The blackened human-ear ornaments in her tangled hair swayed gently in the cold wind.
Nero stood where he was.
His chest still ached, but his mind glitched for a strange moment.
Shae’s appreciation had been like honey—sweet and poisonous.
Chella’s was like a punch—rude but real.
He glanced inwardly at his pathetic Charisma of 10.
With only this much he could still be judged to have “hard bones” by a female clan leader while she held his chin.
If one day he raised it to twenty or thirty, would he be dragged back to a cave and surrounded by female savages and a campfire?
Nero twitched the corner of his mouth.
Forget it.
A wagon of moldy wheat had not even left the camp yet.
He had no right to worry about that.
He put the thought away and turned toward the seventeen mountain folk who had been left behind.
“Listen.
You are not here to be coolies pushing carts.” Nero pointed at the convoy being organized.
His voice dropped, carrying a bone-chilling edge.
“Those dozen wagons on the outermost edge are filled with moldy, rotten wheat mixed with sand.
Someone wants this batch of false accounts burned at White Willow Crossing, and me buried with them.” Kaan instantly gripped the knife in his hand.
“Who is it?
Northerners?” “No.
Wild dogs hired by the ‘big men’ on our own side.” Nero’s gaze swept across the fierce, wounded soldiers.
“When we set out, the two scouts skilled at climbing trees will scatter into the woods on both sides in advance and watch the eyes along the road for me.” “The rest of you will hide inside the empty wagons in the middle of the convoy, under the tarpaulins.” The two madmen from the Burned Men grinned.
They loved work that involved hiding in the dark and stabbing people in the back.
“Remember,” Nero looked at them, “wait until the grain robbers rush out thinking they can finish the job by cutting down a few old, weak, sick, and crippled men.
Then you lift the tarpaulins.
I want the leader alive—for the accounts.
As for the iron armor they wear and the fine steel swords in their hands…” The bloodshot eyes in Kaan’s face burned brighter.
“They are all yours,” Nero said coldly.
The mountain folk’s breathing grew heavy at once.
No one understood better than they did what it meant to be bait for a hunt.
— Half an hour later the First Baggage Train Patrol Battalion officially set out.
It was an extremely comical-looking column.
At the front more than thirty creaking, broken grain wagons loaded with sandy, moldy wheat.
Walking on both sides were Westerlands soldiers who were old, weak, sick, or wounded, many leaning on wooden sticks.
But in the center of the train, inside the empty wagons covered tightly with thick tarpaulins, seventeen blood-stained Mountain Clans troublemakers with wolf eyes quietly gripped axes and broken swords, waiting for the prey to take the bait.
Gawen walked while trembling and clutching the ledger.
Roland Leyton rode an old horse with a complex expression.
“Commander, taking in these wounded and troublemakers can easily be written as ‘privately harboring bandits’ under military law.” “Then let the people who write the military law examine their own ledgers first and see if they are clean.” Nero’s voice was indifferent.
He looked at the mist ahead.
In the direction of White Willow Crossing the woods, shallows, and ruined villages lay hidden in the gray-white morning light.
The funeral young master Crakehall had prepared for him waited there.
Nero tightened the reins.
A trace of cold mockery flashed in his eyes.
Tywin had thrown him into the mud.
But he had forgotten that some things were meant to grow out of the mud.
CaveLeather (9$)