Ignorance very often kills.
– Game of Thrones
*
“Move along…” Another barred door swung open with a groaning creak before Arthur.
The boy stepped inside, and the door slammed shut behind him with a heavy metallic clang.
This time no one shoved him.
The guard was different, and so was the cell.
It was even smaller than the last one, though it possessed a single advantage: a narrow window set just beneath the ceiling, through which a dim shaft of light filtered.
Here Arthur was completely alone.
After the agitated guards discovered the body, his newfound companions had been dragged away for questioning.
No one believed that a skinny, half-starved boy could have killed a grown man, much less a Dothraki.
The very same Dothraki who, in a dockside tavern, had beaten two men to death with his bare hands after they mocked the visiting “barbarian.”
Strictly speaking, the man had not been a true Dothraki.
He was a native of Tyrosh who had hired himself out as an oarsman aboard a merchant galley.
Seeing an actual Dothraki in Westeros was rarer than seeing a living dragon.
The horse lords despised the “great water,” considering salt water poisonous because horses could not drink it.
Thus the man who had found his way to Westeros as the result of some distant raid had only been half Dothraki.
Not that anyone cared.
Certainly not the townsfolk, the guards, or the man himself.
Once the door slammed shut, Arthur was left alone with uncertainty and dread.
For the first few hours he paced the damp cell like a trapped beast, expecting men to come for him at any moment and drag him to the headsman.
Or straight to the block.
Though he could only dream of a block.
Beheading was for nobles.
A commoner convicted of murder was more likely to receive a yard of hempen rope.
If fortune smiled upon him and recruiters from the Night’s Watch happened to be in King’s Landing, there was always the Wall.
Arthur did not want to die.
Several times he leapt toward the tiny window, making futile attempts to escape.
He lacked only a few inches.
Time passed.
No one came.
At some point something inside him simply burned itself out.
Sharp despair gave way to exhaustion and emptiness.
Sinking onto the cold stone floor, Arthur buried his face in his hands while the damp wind howled through the iron bars overhead.
Yet even in that grim stillness he found no refuge.
The moment he closed his eyes, glowing symbols flared before his inner vision.
They flickered and shifted, forming chains of words, sentences, and strange figures.
Some he could decipher.
Others remained utterly incomprehensible.
Neither prayers nor curses could banish them.
The symbols had first appeared after he entered the hall of dragon bones, and ever since they had haunted him without respite.
Whether he looked at another person or merely shut his eyes, the strange writing always returned.
At last, exhausted from struggling against his apparent madness, Arthur decided to focus on the symbols themselves and try to understand them.
The orphanage had taught its children a little reading and arithmetic.
Not out of kindness, but to replenish the endless ranks of pale scribes who spent their lives copying holy texts.
Arthur could read, after a fashion.
Or at least he thought he could.
Yet these lines seemed devoid of meaning.
[ Name: Arthur Snow
Level: 2
Physical Strength: 1
Agility: 3
Health: 58 (of 100)
Mind: 1
Endurance: 2
Magic: 0.09 (of 100)
Magical Power: 1
Luck: 2 ]
Below those came unfamiliar words and symbols that meant absolutely nothing to him.
Yet his gaze lingered on two lines he had already seen before.
“Family Ability Unlocked: Rage.
Increases Strength Attributes by 100%.
Consumes Magic.
Cooldown Time: 39 Minutes.”
“You Have Gained a Level.
Your Level Is 2.
Free Attribute Points: 1.
Assign…”
Arthur did not understand all the words, but he was beginning to realize that these visions were not merely products of his imagination or the result of a blow to the head.
At once the cheerful face of Koloviv, the stablemaster’s helper, rose in his memory.
The poor fool could barely string two words together, and one of his eyes wandered terribly.
If he saw strange visions, he could no longer tell anyone about them.
No, this was something else.
“Perhaps the Seven have blessed me,” Snow thought with cautious hope.
“Yes…
a sign.
A gift from the gods.
The Seven rarely reveal their will to mortals, but perhaps they have chosen to notice me.”
He studied the words more closely, searching for any mention of the gods.
The septons taught that blessings took many forms.
The Smith granted strength of hand.
The Maiden offered protection.
The Crone bestowed wisdom.
Perhaps these mysterious lines were a gift from the Father.
Or perhaps the Warrior had kindled battle-fire within him, rewarding him with strange knowledge of himself.
Yet if that were true, why did he feel no holy awe?
Why did fear tighten around his heart instead?
Arthur searched desperately for some sign of sacred origin.
Perhaps there would be a prayer hidden among the words.
Perhaps symbols like those carved upon the altars.
Perhaps the Seven had chosen him for some great purpose.
But the longer he stared, the stronger his doubts became.
Was this a blessing…
Or a curse?
Arthur was no holy man.
If the Seven truly marked their servants, why choose him?
He did not pray every day.
He swore often enough.
His thoughts concerned bread and warm places to sleep far more than matters divine.
True, he sometimes remembered the Mother when life grew particularly hard, and he occasionally begged the Stranger not to claim him too soon.
But could he honestly say he lived according to the Faith?
Could he call himself worthy of sainthood?
No.
Of course not.
Arthur sighed.
He felt no holiness within himself.
No divine power.
Only this thing hanging before him, appearing from nowhere after his visit to that cavern.
Then his eyes fell upon a single word.
One word that shattered his last illusion.
Magic: 0.09
Cold washed through him.
Sorcery.
Witchcraft.
The forbidden art spoken of only in whispers.
It could not be a gift from the Seven, for the holy did not wield magic.
Magic belonged to dragons, witches, sorcerers, and terrifying tales of skinchangers who stole bodies and looked through another man’s eyes.
Arthur began to tremble.
A primitive terror stirred deep within him.
He remembered drunken sailors speaking of evil warlocks from Qarth who could draw out a man’s soul from leagues away.
Perhaps someone had cursed him.
Perhaps someone wanted his soul.
“No.
It can’t be true.
It’s just…
madness.
Some kind of madness.”
The boy read through the lines once more.
Physical Strength: 1
Agility: 3
Health: 56 (of 100)
Mind: 1
Endurance: 2
Magic: 0.1 (of 100)
Magical Power: 1
Luck: 2
He drew a deep breath, trying to calm the trembling that gripped him.
“Seven hells…” he whispered.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he attempted once more to banish the symbols through sheer force of will.
And suddenly… This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
They vanished.
The runes and words simply disappeared, obeying his wish.
It was so easy that he stared around in bewilderment, as though trying to discover where they had fled.
Only one line remained.
“Free Attribute Points: 1.
Assign…”
When he tried to dismiss it, he felt some strange energy suddenly flow into the line marked Strength.
A warm but powerful surge swept through his body.
The sensation stunned him for a heartbeat.
Then darkness swallowed his consciousness, and he collapsed onto the cold stone floor.
“Lieutenant!”
Breathless and stumbling, a young messenger ran toward the procession escorting a subdued, somewhat battered baker.
“What is it, Willy?” the man asked with a frown, his hand instinctively settling upon the hilt of his sword.
He knew the boy well enough.
Willy often carried messages from the commander of the City Watch, Manly Stokeworth.
“Lieutenant…
you’re…
urgently summoned to a general assembly,” the boy gasped between breaths.
“In the name of the Seven, can you tell me what happened?”
The lad’s alarm had already begun to infect Humphrey, though he still could not understand the urgency.
Officers’ assemblies were hardly uncommon.
Orders from above had to be passed down somehow.
But at this hour?
And with such haste?
“Greyjoys!” the boy blurted.
“The Greyjoys attacked Lannisport!
The king’s calling the banners…
I’ve got to notify everyone…”
“Hells.”
Humphrey cursed and glanced at the suddenly brightened faces of his men.
They were already imagining themselves as gallant warriors in polished royal armor.
Promotion.
Glory.
Coin.
Honor.
A triumphant return home.
It was all written plainly upon their faces.
But Humphrey had fought in the last war as a common infantryman.
He knew the other side of war.
Blood.
Mud.
Suffering.
And the spilled entrails of friends.
In peacetime the City Watch kept order.
In wartime it became part of the royal army, leaving only a weakened force behind in King’s Landing.
And there was still that damned baker.
“You two.
Put him in the pit with the madmen.”
The lieutenant pointed at a pair of guards before setting off toward the Fat Tower, where the commanders held their meetings.
He had hoped to settle the matter tonight while the gates of the Red Keep remained open.
Fate had other plans.
Still, nothing should happen to that boy, the so-called “not-thief,” before morning.
*
Tywin Lannister stood upon a rise overlooking the burning agony of his fleet in Lannisport’s harbor.
The bitter stench of smoke mingled with the salty sea air, a fitting symbol of the humiliation before him.
And humiliation was precisely what it was.
A merchant squadron newly arrived from across the Narrow Sea with valuable cargo had been trapped within the harbor and utterly unable to resist the ironborn raid.
The waves hurled shattered timbers against the rocky shore while hungry flames devoured masts and sails.
Tywin remained silent.
His golden gaze never moved.
Yet beneath those cold eyes something dangerous seethed.
Rage.
And Wounded pride.
How dared they?
A/N:
While everyone else is waiting for updates, com / Captain_Lag (remove the spaces)