Within a day, Lord Blackwood set out.
He brought three men with him, skilled and utterly loyal, each worth two or three ordinary soldiers.
Ser Brock served as captain of his guard, a man whose loyalty was beyond question.
The other two served under Brock’s command and could be trusted just as fully.
Eight horses carried them, along with provisions, warm clothing, and weapons.
In truth, a party arranged this way looked nothing like ordinary travelers, but there was little to be done about that now.
Along the way, Tytos stopped first at his own home, Raventree Hall.
They had to move carefully; the roads these days carried their share of marauders, deserters, wandering septons, mad preachers, beggars, and stranger sorts still.
The castle rose above a wide, fertile valley, cut through by the Widow’s River.
Before the war, the land had been full of homes, mills, barns, gardens, and fields.
Almost none of that former abundance remained now.
Two imposing square towers guarded the main gate.
Their horses’ hooves rang out across the lowered drawbridge, and Lord Tytos winced at the stench of sewage rising from the moat below.
Many buildings crowded the grounds inside, but it was the great weirwood, its leaves red as fresh blood, that drew every eye.
It rose over one of the inner walls separating the courtyard from the grove beyond.
The tree looked enormous, and long dead, its branches bare and withered.
At dusk, hundreds of ravens gathered there, clinging to its limbs and settling in for the night.
The castle took its very name from that tree and its birds.
It was well over a thousand years old.
Lord Tytos was welcomed warmly by his wife, his children, his soldiers, and his household staff.
Brynden, his eldest son and heir, gave a full accounting of the castle’s provisions, its coin, and everything else worth knowing.
Tytos nodded with satisfaction as he listened; the boy had handled his responsibilities admirably.
That meant he could be trusted to manage everything else during his father’s long absence.
Edmure, besides, had promised not to abandon Raventree Hall, promised to look after it and lend whatever help he could.
The next morning, cold and overcast, the five riders set out.
Mist rose in long threads from the river.
Dew clung heavy to the grass.
Frogs croaked somewhere unseen.
Tytos brought Hoster with him after all.
The boy could genuinely be useful.
If he’d had only the one son, he might have kept him close and sheltered.
But with six sons, and a daughter growing besides, a father owed his children a firmer, more demanding hand.
And this journey, whatever else it brought, would temper the boy well.
Acorn Hall, seat of House Smallwood, lay relatively quiet and untroubled by the war.
Tytos knew Lord Theomar, master of that old castle with its oaken keep and stone walls, quite well.
Even so, they made camp at a roadside inn rather than risk the castle itself, careful that no one there might recognize them.
Past Stoney Sept, a small town badly scarred by the fighting, the road grew genuinely dangerous.
Lannister and Tyrell patrols had already reached this far, and an encounter with either could come at any moment.
The Brotherhood without Banners, too, stayed active along the upper reaches of the Blackwater Rush.
They found the dead everywhere, left unburied.
Some had been stripped bare, naked and mutilated, clearly tortured before the end.
Others lay whole and untouched, killed cleanly, without cruelty added on top.
The crows and wild animals, at least, never missed their share.
The small party of five crossed the Blackwater Rush, and a day later forded one of its tributaries.
Dry reeds rustled softly in the wind, which blew steadily into their faces.
Hills rose to the west, on their right, and beyond them, mist wrapped peaks streaked with snow climbed toward the sky.
The western lands began somewhere past those heights.
Every peasant they met told the same story: the Vances of Atranta had swept through a week earlier, pushing a little west of the Sept, hanging and slaughtering anyone they judged suspicious.
The Lannisters had gone quiet after that, though now they were beginning to creep back into these lands once more.
“Father, which Lannister commands here?” Hoster asked, looking around with endless fascination, seated confidently on his small pony.
He turned his head from morning until evening, marking hanged men, dead horses, freshly dug graves, wandering vagrants, all of it without a trace of fear or real surprise.
He studied the burned villages with the same open curiosity.
“Quiet now,” Lord Tytos said, cutting him off.
Several figures had appeared on the road ahead, charcoal burners by the look of their clothes.
Still, caution mattered more than conversation just now.
On this particular journey, the Lannisters posed the greatest danger of all, and whatever business brought them this way was unlikely to please Lord Tywin.
More than once they very nearly stumbled straight into someone’s patrol.
Banners flashed past in the distance, a badger, three hounds, a boar, a blue cockerel.
They would never have slipped past those encounters and the questions that came with them if Lord Blackwood hadn’t known this country like his own hand.
He guided the small party along narrow game trails, steering well clear of major roads, towns, villages, and anywhere that looked even faintly suspicious.
With each passing day the rain troubled them less, and the sun broke through the clouds more often.
The forests and fields dried out.
Blackwood was the first to shed his heavy cloak; the air beneath it had grown thick and close as a bathhouse.
They took a wide detour around the crossroads on the Golden Road, which looked far too busy for their liking.
Lord Tytos had passed this way more than once before.
A large village called Cartwheel sat at that crossroads, and the lands of the Reach properly began somewhere near here.
That meant a garrison, likely a small one, would be posted in the village.
He had little wish to learn whether it answered to the Tyrells or the Lannisters.
Day by day, bright green fields and gentle hills spread out on every side, pleasing to the eye.
The Reach opened before them, land of sun and open air, of wind and freedom, of peace and plenty, birdsong and heavy grain bending the stalks nearly to breaking.
Castles and inns caught the eye constantly along the road.
Crews of mowers worked wide meadows, stacking hay into great mounds.
At night, owls called from the trees.
Blackwood traveled under the name of a well off sworn knight, Tythos Gronbur, once in service to the Belmores of the Vale.
According to the story they’d built, he sought glory in battle and was making for Highgarden, where, by all accounts, gold flowed freely for skilled fighters.
So far the tale had held up well enough with everyone they’d met, and the few fellow travelers who’d shared the road with them a while.
The journey stretched on, long and slow.
Blackwood added still more distance to it by deciding to stop at Crimson Lake, an old and venerable castle belonging to the equally old House Crane.
They caught their first sight of the lake itself on a warm, sunlit day.
It stretched across half the horizon, though it was smaller by far, perhaps a fifth the size, than the God’s Eye.
The sun rode high, larks calling somewhere overhead, and the water rippled with light, throwing bright reflections in every direction.
“Wow!” Hoster let out an admiring whistle.
Ser Brock couldn’t quite suppress a chuckle, though he said nothing.
The other two riders perked up as well, sensing rest not far off, however brief it might prove.
The road wound down the hillside toward a castle built of pale gray stone, standing on a bluff above a modest town spread out around its base.
“The head of House Crane is Lord Ken.
You haven’t forgotten he’s your mother’s older brother, I hope?” Lord Blackwood asked.
“No, father, I remember.
Mother told me.
And I’ve read about the Cranes.” His son’s voice carried real indignation at the suggestion he might have forgotten.
Tytos hid a smile beneath his mustache.
“The legend says the Cranes descended from a maiden named Rose, who could take the shape of a crane and command them.
That’s the story, anyway.” “So I’ve heard,” Tytos agreed, with mock seriousness.
“The Blackwoods, back when we lived in the North, claimed similar gifts of our own.” “Really?
Then why can’t we do it now?” “Tell me, what exactly are our people known for these days?” A wide road ran through the town below.
Curious onlookers watched them pass but asked no questions.
As they rode into the shadow cast by the twin gate towers, the sun briefly lost from view, guards armed with spears and shields stopped them at the entrance.
Lord Tytos again gave his name as Gronbur of the Vale and explained he carried urgent business for the castle’s lord.
They were led inside, their horses taken by waiting servants.
Ser Brock and the two guards stayed behind with the mounts, while Tytos and his son were shown to a small chamber set aside for guests.
A few minutes later Lord Crane himself appeared, a stocky man of middling height, his short hair heavily streaked with gray.
Deep lines marked his face, which rarely showed much of a smile, and his left arm ended just above the elbow, a legacy of his part in Robert’s Rebellion.
He’d given up campaigning after that, spending the rest of his years within his own castle walls.
“Well met, kinsman.” Blackwood crossed the room from the window where he’d been standing in thought, one hand still absently stroking his mustache.
“I was told a sworn knight from the Vale had business here.” Crane’s face showed open confusion.
“A necessary fiction,” Tytos said, embracing his old friend.
Years back, hot headed and young, the two of them had very nearly come to blows over some trivial matter.
And when Tytos had first courted Aglaya, Ken’s younger sister, Ken himself had greeted the idea coolly at best.
Funny, how life turned out.
The Cranes had always run large and prolific.
Nowhere near the sprawl of the Freys, who’d become something of a byword for it, but the family had always numbered a couple dozen strong, or more.
Ken’s cousin, Ser Vortimer, now served as master at arms at Highgarden, while another cousin, Ser Parmen, had sworn his sword to King Renly Baratheon as one of his Rainbow Guard.
Where the man stood now, Tytos couldn’t say; rumor held that Parmen had landed himself in some serious trouble.
One of the Crane girls served in Margaery Tyrell’s own household, and another cousin, Denys, had married into House Florent.
The Cranes had earned their reputation as a large family many times over.
“I didn’t expect to see you, Tytos,” Ken said, gripping his shoulder.
A broad, pleased smile crossed the lord of Crimson Lake’s face before vanishing just as quickly.
“What brings you all this way?
Has something happened to Aglaya?” “She’s well.
She sends her love, and gifts besides.
But I’ve serious business with you, and not for extra ears.” “Understood,” Ken said, nodding.
“I’ll see to lunch, and then we’ll talk properly.
This business of yours, will it take two hours?
Three?” “It can wait that long.” “And who’s this with you?” “I’m Hoster, uncle,” the boy said, with a small bow of his head.
“Hoster!
Well, look how you’ve grown.
Is he your second, Tytos?” “Third.” “Ah, right, forgive me, I’d lost count a little.
Well then, Hoster, come along, let me introduce you to your cousins.
Eight or nine of them running about the castle just now,” the man said, laughing, as though not knowing the exact count of his own sons and nephews struck him as genuinely funny.
“I doubt you’ll find yourself bored.” Lunch turned out wonderfully.
Tytos took real satisfaction in surveying his many relations.
The Crane women, it seemed, bore children easily.
He hadn’t been wrong to take Aglaya as his wife all those years ago.
He’d wanted children, and children he’d gotten; Aglaya had given him seven, and every one of them had survived to adulthood.
com/Hezzario