Sharp Point
The ships came into Sharp Point in a line that took most of the morning to finish arriving.
Duran Bar Emmon stood at the rail of the lead galley and watched his own harbor fill up with hulls, and Alric watched him do it.
The boy had the look of a man who had never seen his own home from the outside before and was not sure how to feel about it.
Maester Wendell was waiting on the quay with a dozen men behind him, chain gleaming, robes flapping in the wind coming off the water.
He was younger than Cressen and looked as though he had spent most of the night making certain nothing would go wrong today.
“My lord ” He bowed low to Alric and Duran.
“My lord. Welcome home Lord Duran.”
“Maester.” Duran came down the plank first and clasped the man’s arm before he could bow again.
“How bad is it?”
Wendell’s mouth twitched.
“The kitchens are adequate, the cellars are better than adequate, and I have put lord’s men in the east barracks because the west roof is still an open question. Beyond that, nothing that will embarrass us.”
“Then it is not bad at all,” Alric said, stepping down after him.
“Cressen would have given me lectures of complaints by now.”
“Maester Cressen has had rather more to complain about lately, my lord, from what I hear.”
Alric laughed, and the tension went out of the quay all at once.
“Please, My Lord.
I have prepared a feast for your arrival.
Let us go and enjoy the feasts
Alric and Duran nodded at that and followed Maester Wendell to enjoy thier feasts.
The feast was not a feast so much as a great deal of food put in front of a great many men who had been on ships.
Sharp Point’s hall was small, honest stone, nothing like the grand dragon-carvings of Dragonstone.
But it is good Alric enjoyed it
Alric is enjoying his feast and especially his drinks and drinking his wine.
“Ser Willem, What do you think House Massey. It seems they are but aware of our forces here. They have been carefully in thier response so far ”
Willem set down his cup.
“My lord. I think they will concede, like you said they are careful but I also think they are more confident also. They are the biggest among Minor Houses almost comparable to a Major House. So they think they will get easier time ”
Alric scoffs ” I don’t care what he thinks.
If he does not open the gate and Offer his reparations and interests.
Then I want you to bring him to heel.” Alric’s voice carrying more authority.
“Whatever it takes and Whatever the consequences.”
Willem nodded slowly.
“Ofcourse My Lord ”
Duran had been listening from Alric’s other side.
He put his cup down.
“I think they will open it,” Duran said.
“They already took a loss from Us already. So he would be more careful and already knows we have more forces and ofcourse more than enough will to really fight them”
Duran sips his drink and continued the explanation further ” He was looking to expand his influence and power in these Lands.
But when you sent Ser Willem they back down and When Ser Kenneth arrived, it was a final nail in coffin.”
Alric nodded and understand the situation more clearly.
“Speaking of him.Where is he? Is he now too arrogant to greet me now ” although his words may be cold but his expression and voice are on a pleasant side.
The hall did not go quiet.
But the men closest to them — Sharp Point men, garrison men, men who had been at this castle all year — stopped moving.
Wendell looked into his cup.
“In the forest, my lord,” Ser Willem said.
“Where he generally is, Training men to thier bones or what He prefers calling it.”
Alric laughed ” Oh really And what do the men call it?”
Ser Willem considered his answer for slightly too long, and very serious.
Even Lord Duran is gulping down hard.
“There are several names for it, my lord. None of them are respectful and all of them are quiet. But the most popular and simple name is Hell, My Lord” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Well, I will it myself then” Alric said smiling.
With Ser Willem nodding.
Lord Duran with a nervous smile ” I think I need to be here.
Several work needs to be done.
Right Wendell?” trying to avoid visiting that place.
The ride out took an hour, north along a cart track that stopped being a cart track after the first mile.
Alric took Ser Willem and six men.
Nobody talked much.
The country here was thin soil and hard pine, the kind of forest that grew on rock because nothing else would, and the further in they went the more the wood seemed to have been used for something.
There were rope lines strung between trunks at chest height.
Stretches of ground churned to black mud in perfect rectangles.
They heard the camp before they saw it.
This was a low, steady, working sound.
Feet.
Breath.
The dull knock of blunt steel on padded wood, over and over, in time.
They were in lines and lines of men— fighting lines, shields locked, moving forward six paces and back six paces across the churned mud while a man at the flank counted the beat with a stick against a shield rim.
Their spear points came down together and came up together.
When the line went back, the mud came up over their ankles and they went back anyway.
Off to the right, another block was doing something Alric had never seen: standing on a mock deck built up out of timber, four feet off the ground, with the whole thing rocking on rollers underneath while men shoved it from below.
Fighting on it.
Falling off it.
Climbing back on.
Off to the left, thirty men were rowing.
On dry land.
In a wooden frame shaped like a galley’s waist, with weighted oars, in the sun.
Alric sat his horse at the treeline and watched for a while, and did not say anything, and Ser Willem — who had known him years — recognized the look on his face as the one Alric wore when he is excited.
Then a voice came across the bowl.
It was not loud.
It simply carried, the way a bell carries.
“HOLD.”
Every man in that clearing stopped where he was.
The spear line froze mid-step, still leaning forward, shields still locked.
The men on the rocking deck grabbed for handholds.
The rowers held their oars at the top of the stroke, arms trembling, and did not put them down.
A man came walking up out of the middle of it, in a sleeveless leather jerkin gone black with old sweat, and forearms like ship’s cable.
His nose had been broken and reset badly.
There was a scar that started under his left ear and went down into his collar and did not appear to have been stitched by anyone who cared.
He was carrying a blunt sword loosely in one hand .
The man crossed the bowl at an unhurried walk.
Every head turned to follow him and no man moved a foot.
Then, ten paces from Alric’s horse, Ser Kenneth went down on one knee in the mud with his sword laid flat across it, and looked up with a face that had transformed completely.
He was smiling.
It was a wide, plain, genuinely delighted smile, and it did not look like it belonged anywhere near the rest of him.
“My lord.” His voice had gone warm.
” You could have sent word ahead and I would have had the men in something better than this.”
“Oh no Kenneth, I like this much more.” Alric a excitement bursting out of him ” For a second I was going to jump in.” He said his genuine thoughts. Get faster updates on g.com.
Kenneth’s grin widened at that.
“You look well, my lord. Taller. Have you been eating well?”
” Oh I have been eating, you know I love some squids and Get up, Kenneth.
You don’t look good down.”
Ser Kenneth got up with a smile.
Behind him, hundreds of men had not moved and were now watching this exchange with expressions that Alric would remember for a long time afterward.
Ser Willem had seen a great many things.
He had never seen a mass of hardened men go so completely silent out of pure disbelief.
They cannot understand it, he thought.
That man has taken their skin off an inch at a time since he known them.
He drowned men in a barrel to teach him how long a men can hold his breath.
And he is standing there asking whether the lord has been eating his supper.
He is a demon to them .
But now they are seeing this demon with a expression like a loyal dog.
It just make it is worse for them.
He is a demon with a master to serve?
It just seems so …
“Your hand,” Kenneth said with a anger and a question if someone needs to be cut.
Alric looked down at the bandage.
He had forgotten it.
“Ah This is nothing. no need to worry about it, Kenneth.”
“It is your right hand and it is wrapped , Ofcourse there is need to worry.” Kenneth’s had not moved.
“Who did thisto you?”
“I just a burst a bottle of wine in my hand in anger. ”
A pause.
“Ah.” Kenneth nodded once, as though this explained a great deal.
“Here I was thinking I will have a chance of sparing with you.”
“I am good enough with the left.” Alric said with a crazy smile, the excitement didn’t go away yet.
“You are going to a battle , My Lord. It’s better to rest it. No need to push yourself.” He turned before Alric could answer that.
All of the men training shocked listening to that .
No need to push yourself?
What the hell we have been doing then.
You are pushing us to our deaths you cold hearted bastard.
Now you are telling this.
They are just on brink of crying now.
Alric swung down from his horse and put his good hand on Kenneth’s shoulder, and the older man let him, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Are they ready?” Alric asked, quietly.
Kenneth turned and looked out over the bowl — at the frozen spear line, the men clinging to the rocking deck, the rowers with their arms shaking.
“For you My Lord I am always ready.” Ser Kenneth said with a pure determination and intentions to go through his words.
“They all are ready for you, my lord.” He scratched at the scar under his ear.
“And they will follow you anywhere at all, because they have already been to the worst place I could think of and you already know, how high standards I Hold.”
Alric laughed and nodded “Oh I know , I know.”
Kenneth’s grin came back, and then, mildly, he added:
“AS YOU WERE.”
Three hundred men went back to work as though they had been kicked.
OTHERWISE MINE IS THE FURY