The old wooden door of the riverside inn gave a thin, tired creak, and a tall shape stepped through it into the noise.
The room quieted by degrees.
Men hunched over their tables, cradling clay cups of hot ale or spooning up hard bread and thin soup, turned toward the door.
The man who had entered wore armor no one in that room had ever seen the like of.
Bright silver worked over with fine gold filigree, a lion’s head in relief on each shoulder and on the belt, jaws parted, fangs bared.
Dried blood clung to its edges, some of it gone black with age, giving off a copper smell every man there knew too well.
Whoever this was, he had come from a fight, and not long ago.
A helm hid his face, but no one needed to see it.
The style was strange, but the sigil beneath the dirt was plain enough to set a room’s nerves on edge in poor light.
That, and his height, better than six feet, closer to seven.
Every man there arrived at the same thought without needing to say it aloud.
This one was dangerous.
“Lannister man,” someone muttered, low.
“Seven hells.
What’s a Lannister doing all the way out in the stormlands?”
The hall’s chatter died to the crackle of the hearth fire.
Cups stopped halfway to mouths.
A few men went stiff without meaning to.
One or two hands drifted, careful and slow, toward sword hilts.
The innkeep came forward wringing his hands, his smile stretched tight with fear he was trying hard to hide.
“M’lord.
A room for the night, or something to eat?
We’ve good ale here, and bread just out of the oven.”
The man said nothing.
His eyes moved once over the room.
Two or three dozen people, by rough count, more than a few of them armed, wearing patched leather, longswords near to hand or belted at the hip.
Every eye in the place was on him.
Under that look, most of them found somewhere else to be looking.
He crossed the room without hurry and dropped into a chair at an empty table.
Armor met wood with a heavy clunk, and the clay bowls on the table rattled from it.
He tossed down a silver coin.
“Ale.” His voice came out rough, and the accent belonged to no part of these lands.
The innkeep hurried to obey, waving the woman behind him, his wife by the look of her, forward to pour a full cup and set it down with both hands.
Then he looked at the coin on the table and his face went uncertain.
“Beg pardon, m’lord.
I don’t know this coin.”
“What, is it not silver?
Not good enough for your pisswater?” The man tilted his head, and behind the helm’s slit his eyes found the innkeep’s.
“No, no, m’lord, you mistake me!” The innkeep’s smile turned oily.
“It’s only, this coin’s too fine, bigger than any silver stag I’ve seen.
A cup of ale’s two copper stars.
This is…
too much, m’lord.”
The man’s fingers tapped once against the table.
“Too much?
Then put the rest on my account.
And while you’re at it, I’ll stand a round for everyone here.
Their supper too, on me.
That enough for you?”
He set two more coins beside the first.
The innkeep’s eyes went bright.
He nodded fast.
“More than enough, m’lord.
Enough for ale all around twice over, with hot bread and soup besides.”
“Then see to it.
And bring me whatever this place is known for.”
“At once, m’lord, at once.”
The innkeep snatched up the coins and turned to the room, raising them high.
“This good lord’s standing a round for every man here!”
The fear went out of the room the way a clenched arse lets go once the blow doesn’t come.
Cups rose.
Men who a moment before had been muttering about damned Lannisters now wore smiles turned toward the stranger, cups lifted in his honor.
“To the lord, whoever he is!” someone shouted, and the rest of the room took it up.
The innkeep and his wife rolled out a full cask of ale, and soon every table had a bowl of hot vegetable soup and a loaf of dark bread fresh from the oven.
The hall came alive around it.
For the stranger himself, the innkeep brought their finest: stewed meat and vegetables, soft bread dripping with honey, and two links of grilled sausage.
“Eat well, m’lord.
Anything else you need, you’ve only to call.”
The man nodded and, at last, lifted the helm from his head.
The gasps that followed came from every man who had marked him for a Lannister.
His hair was black.
His eyes were black.
No trace of Lannister gold anywhere on him.
Because he was no Lannister.
He was not, in truth, from this world at all.
His name was Erwin.
Back home he’d been an ordinary office worker whose evenings went to two things: World of Warcraft, and rewatching Game of Thrones for the third or fourth time.
That last night he’d been doing both at once, the show playing on one screen while he ground out the kill he’d been chasing for months on the other.
His warrior had finally won the reins to Onyxia, the black dragon every player of that game knew as the Broodmother, and he’d barely had time to grin at it before his vision went dark.
He woke in a forest wearing his character’s body.
Not a copy of it, the thing itself: the height, the face, the armor, and a half-transparent panel hanging at the edge of his sight that no one else could see, showing a level, a handful of numbers, and a single skill.
His inventory had come across with him too, every mount and trophy and stack of gold his character had ever collected.
A level one warrior with a rich man’s pack, in short, and no idea where he was standing.
Once he was certain, three times over, that this was no dream, his luck ran out fast.
Three men in rough, old-fashioned dress found him, swords drawn, and took him for some lordling’s fool of a son wandered off alone in fine clothes, easy coin for the taking.
He lived through that fight, though not by any skill of his own.
How, exactly, was a story he wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet.
Days of wandering after brought him at last to this little town on the banks of the Wendwater, to this inn.
Only then did he understand where he’d actually landed.
Not Azeroth, not the world of his game at all, but the other one.
Westeros.
By the time he reached the inn, he had already made his peace with it.
Like every man who ever found himself thrown somewhere new, Erwin decided there was no sense fighting what couldn’t be changed.
If anything, some part of him was almost pleased.
A new world, after all.
Back home he’d been nobody, just another man grinding out his days.
Here, who could say.
Maybe he’d rise higher than he ever could have there.
Maybe, if the fates were kind, he’d end up wearing a crown himself.
This world was full of knives in the dark, he knew that much from the show.
But a man dropped into it from outside had his own edge.
More gold in his pack than this world had ever minted at once, for a start.
And then there was the rest of it.
Onyxia had come across with him.
Which meant, whatever else was true, Erwin now had a dragon of his own.