The thin man had not looked for a boy who would open himself first.
He could shout when the steel went into someone else.
He could not put it into his own meat.
Running from a duel was a stain that would not wash.
A sellsword who took that stain would not work again, not after a child had called him.
The four partners opened a space and left him in it.
Every face in the hall found him.
He went to the knife as if the floor were ice.
“He’s buying time.”
“He wants the boy empty first.
Shame.”
The same mouths that had used Rhaena had found a way to look clean.
They stood up and spoke as if they had always been just.
That was the shape Rhaegar wanted.
The terms were public.
He had taken a hole.
The next hole belonged to the thin man.
He dipped a shoulder and went at him fast, and set his weight as if he meant to leave the floor.
“Ha.” He was already inside the man’s reach.
He did not jump.
He folded under the fist and brought the left arm up into the groin.
A man could lose an ear before he lost that.
The thin sellsword had done this work.
He took the left wrist as if it were a cup.
“Killing you is pig-work, boy.”
They were a knot of limbs.
The man’s breath sat on Rhaegar’s face.
Then the face broke.
He looked down.
The table-knife in Rhaegar’s right hand had gone through cloth and into the heart.
Every man in the room knew what a shoulder wound did to an arm.
Grown men believed it.
A half-grown boy with a ruined shoulder was a boy with a dead right side.
The hanging arm with the knife in it had not existed until it did.
The grip on Rhaegar’s left went slack.
He pushed the body off while it still had enough in it to stand.
“Those dozen heads.
I’m sure you took them when you were the man with the block.”
He pulled the knife.
Both of the thin man’s hands on his chest did not stop the blood.
He went down staring.
“Good.”
“That’s a duel.”
“Get a cloth on the boy.”
Whether they had seen the trick or only the end, they cheered the living one.
They were glad he had not died.
Rhaena’s anger would not have left a man in that room standing.
“Threats are for men who can’t finish.” Blood on the right hand, the knife toward the lame sellsword.
“Take your dead.”
Killing felt like fear and nothing else.
Fear hard enough made the body seize: the shake, the knees, the bowels. This story is hosted at g.com.
The ones who vomited after a first man were covering a wet breeches-leg.
Lords in Westeros learned the hunt young.
Courtesy said you opened the belly yourself and gave the best of it to the man you honored and the woman you kept close.
Rhaegar had gone with Rhaena on the king’s hunts.
Gutting a deer was work.
Gutting a man, this first time, sat no heavier.
The four remaining sellswords got the thin one out under the noise.
Maids dragged Rhaegar to the kitchen in a rush.
The three white-haired soldiers cut the shirt off him, washed the blood with hot water, and made to send for Maester Naelin.
“A clean shirt.
From my chamber.” The rest of his clothes were finished.
The women went.
He put a soldier’s tunic on.
“Where?” the old man said.
Rhaegar took the iron sword.
“You saw them.
Those four will not swallow it.
Cut the root.
I move first.”
“We can’t help you.”
“Don’t go.”
“We’ll find Princess Rhaena.
She’ll put a stop to it.”
Three tempers.
The same loyalty.
All of them in his road.
Boys of eight and nine went to war in this world.
A lord’s son squires for a knight and learns the work from behind.
Knight and boy were a kind of binding.
Rhaena had never found him that place.
She had forgotten, or she would not ask.
The duel had run on his count and run short.
Rhaena slept with the light and rose with it.
The maids would be at her now, putting her into a gown.
“Tomorrow I go to Dragonstone with her.
I’ll be back tonight when I’m done.
When she comes, tell it straight.
She won’t take it out of you.” He left the kitchen at a run.
Whether the four would come back he did not know.
Call them sellswords in a hall.
Put a different coat on them and they were a robber band.
This realm had no watch on every road.
He planned for the worst of it.
Insulting royal blood cost a tongue, not a life.
Some men would spend two lives to keep a tongue.
Kill the widow and the boy and there would be no witness left to name the crime.
Rhaena, as he had her measured, would write the king.
Nights would pass in that waiting.
The king’s men would come late.
He would not take the three old soldiers.
Two strides and they had no air.
They could stand in a yard with steel and look like a garrison.
Better they watched the travelers still under the roof. Find the original chapter at g.com.
He vanished.
The little household came apart.
He used the noise and went back to his own chamber.
A blood-bar fighter did not spend fear on four men.
He would take them.
He had this besides.
He picked a hole in the wardrobe and drew out a small glass vial.
The stuff in it was thick.
Grit sat at the bottom.
He had mixed it for something to do.
Spider, fang, toad-skin, and whatever else had come to hand.
He had never tried it.
It might have gone dead in the glass.
He had wanted a lot of it.
The night was dark enough to kill in.
The stamina-bar took him through the trees for hours.
Late, on a low hill by the kingsroad, he found them.
The road was packed earth, wide enough for three wagons.
Every rider on it knew Harrenhal would feed him and put a roof over him.
There was no wagon on it now.
He closed on the fire, through thick growth, to the edge of their camp.
A heavy stick stood in the flames with clothes hung on it.
He knew the four by the cloth.
Six tents.
Five men, one of them cooling.
Six tents.
He painted the longsword from the vial, dropped his height, and went quiet to the first canvas.
A flap.
Empty.
The next.
Empty.
A dog found its voice.
A bare-chested man came out of the trees with the animal straining the rope.
Nine more followed him into the firelight.
Ten grown sellswords and a dog.
Rhaegar by himself.
The numbers were very clear.
“Heard you took a hole tonight.
My dog had the blood a long way off.
I had to beat it quiet.
That’s yours.” The scar pulled when he smiled and made a mess of the face.
The fat one had been a peacemaker in the hall.
He was not one now.
The lame sellsword came on with an axe.
“We were coming to you, boy.
You saved us the walk.”
The scar on the rope had no more talk in him.
“Cut his hands.
Feed the dog.”