“I swear by my dear Annie’s sly eyes, they’ve handed us a nasty piece of work,” Hugo Vance remarked, a tall, thin, pale faced knight and heir to Lord Norbert Vance of Atranta.
As he said it, he grunted with satisfaction and watered an old elm at the edge of the clearing where their column had stopped to rest.
“Easy, easy,” Robert Peg said gravely.
“Hugh, you’ll flood the whole clearing at this rate.” Vance laughed like a braying horse, laced up his breeches, and wandered back to the fire.
“I still don’t see why Edmure thought we’d find the Kingslayer at Harrenhal.” Tristan Ryger, son of Riverrun’s captain of the guard, shrugged his broad shoulders, his whole powerful frame radiating doubt.
“If the leech lord gets hold of him, he’ll molt right out of his skin and sew himself a new pink cloak.” “It’s a fine cloak, as cloaks go,” Vance said, smiling.
“Ed thinks some of the northmen are playing a game we can’t see,” Peg explained.
Tristan was a good man, loyal and handy with a sword, though cleverness had never been his strength.
“Truly?” Tristan tossed a thick branch onto the fire.
“It’s serious enough that we’re bruising our backsides on saddle leather for days on end,” Hugh said, turning to one of the soldiers.
“Fetch the meat, Dick.
How much longer do we wait?” The sun sank slowly behind the far trees, painting the countryside in strange shades of blue and violet.
Heat and the smell of burning wood rose from the fire.
Somewhere a cuckoo called, faint and distant.
Robert pulled off his boots and hung them on pegs near the flames to dry a little.
The hundred men Lord Tully had given them made camp for the night.
Horses stamped and nickered, and laughter and low talk drifted from the soldiers scattered about.
Pots hung over two other fires, their contents bubbling cheerfully and filling the air with the smell of good soup.
Ryger had already posted the watch, and now the company settled in to rest, though no one let their guard down too far.
With this many marauders, deserters, and desperate men roaming the countryside, an unwelcome encounter could find them at any moment.
Robert Peg sat on a chopping block, squinting at the smoke curling up from the fire, wiggling his bare toes, turning over in his mind what the right course of action might be.
His lord had handed them a hard task, and to his credit hadn’t dressed it up as anything less, warning plainly that the risk ran high.
A man could easily lose his head over this business.
Talk of the master of the Dreadfort and his particular habits had made its way through the whole camp.
Bolton, they said, found it no harder to kill a man than swat a fly.
But death wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a knight.
Robert had grown used to the idea of the reaper standing close at hand.
A slow, agonizing death was another matter entirely.
Watching your own skin peel away in long strips was not a fate for the faint-hearted.
A naked man has few secrets, and a flayed man has none at all, or so the foul jesters of the Dreadfort liked to say.
How was he meant to survive this, avoid provoking the leech lord, and still finish the task he’d been given?
“I don’t like any of this,” Tristan said, scratching at his chin.
“What do you mean?” Hugh asked.
“Harrenhal’s always been like this, dark and unfriendly.
Gives me the shivers every time,” he admitted, after a pause.
“I think Tris means something else,” Robert said thoughtfully, chewing on a blade of grass.
Over the past several days they had reached Harrenhal without incident, quietly enough, though men and horses alike were thoroughly worn down.
They’d had to cover far more ground than expected, and had given their quarry too great a head start.
Now three knights rode ahead, leaving the rest of the company behind.
The road broke from the forest and wound its way toward gates so enormous they seemed to defy belief.
Everything about the castle was outsized, monstrous, striking to behold.
Legend held that it had been raised by Harren the Black himself, and that on the very day the last stone was set in place, Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros with his two sisters and three enormous dragons to match it.
It was those dragons that had burned the place, melting stone and warping wall and tower alike.
Countless men had died there.
To this day, mothers across the Riverlands still frighten naughty children with tales of ghosts said to wander the grounds and nearby graveyards.
The melted castle looked like the stronghold of some dark power, or something close to it.
Even now it hadn’t lost its weight, its brooding, malevolent grandeur.
The castle had once belonged to House Whent.
Through the recent fighting it had changed hands more than once, its temporary masters burning the town of Harrenton that stood in its shadow.
Not long ago, Lord Roose Bolton and his men had made it their headquarters.
But judging by the absence of banners on the towers, the northmen appeared to have moved on.
“Something else?
What exactly, I wonder?” Vance asked.
“What are we waiting for, Robert?
Let’s go in and see what’s what.
Looks empty enough.” “No, don’t say that just yet,” Peg said.
“Something here isn’t right.” The war had taught him caution.
Once he’d been far more reckless, far quicker to trust his luck.
That had ended the day Gregor Clegane, in Lord Tywin Lannister’s service, had caught him in an ambush.
Ser Gregor’s reputation was as ugly as they came.
He killed children, raped women, burned homesteads, hanged men high and short, and took real pleasure in torment.
But he fought as well as he was cruel, like some great vicious hound that felt no pity for himself or anyone else, and there was genuine cunning behind the brutality.
That was how he’d caught them, careless and overconfident.
Many good men had said their final farewells on that nameless forest road.
Peg himself had very nearly joined them, when the Mountain’s massive, ugly blade had shattered his shield and broken his arm.
He’d gone down.
Clegane had loomed over him, a tower of steel, sword raised toward the sky.
Only a heartbeat separated Robert from death.
His whole life had flashed before his eyes as he tried, uselessly, to drag himself away across the wet grass.
He’d been lucky.
A stray arrow had struck Ser Gregor’s horse, and the animal reared and bolted sideways, hooves thundering against the ground, giving the Mountain something else to fight for a moment.
His comrades had dragged him clear of that road.
And since that day he’d grown a little wiser, shedding some of the arrogance and vanity he’d once carried so easily.
“That’s my thinking too,” Ryger agreed.
He’d never had much use for books, but he understood the practical side of soldiering well enough.
“Look at the birds circling that tower.
There are people in that castle, no question.” “It’s easy enough getting into Harrenhal.
Getting out again is another matter,” Peg decided, pulling the reins to settle his horse.
“Tristan, take two men and a bugler and ride ahead.
Call the garrison out to parley.
Tell them Lord Edmure sent us.
See what you can learn about the situation.
Keep your weapon close.
We’ll wait here and back you up if it comes to that.” “We’ll manage it,” Ryger grunted, adjusting the sling of his sword.
Robert Peg and Hugo Vance watched in silence as the small party rode farther and farther toward the castle.
The riders stopped, and moments later a bugle sounded, calling for parley.
Nothing happened for a while, long enough that Robert began to wonder whether the castle held anyone at all beyond a handful of surviving servants.
Finally, a small group rode slowly out through the great, gaping mouth of the gate.
Even from a distance it was clear the horses came in every color and size imaginable, and that the weapons and clothing on display were a strange, exotic mismatch.
They approached Ryger.
The exchange didn’t take long.
Hidden by the trees, Peg and Vance spoke in low voices, guessing at what their friend might be hearing.
At last the riders parted ways.
“Well, what’s the word, Tris?” Peg asked, as Ryger rejoined them.
“It’s a murky business,” he admitted.
“The castle’s held by the Brave Companions.
Sellswords.
You remember them, don’t you, Robert?” “Of course.” The river lords all knew of them, the Brave Companions, called the Bloody Mummers behind their backs, brought over from somewhere in Essos by Lord Tywin Lannister himself.
They were known for senseless cruelty and a taste for cheap spectacle.
At some point the sellswords had decided to switch sides, throwing in with the northmen instead.
Roose Bolton had turned them, and they’d helped him take Harrenhal in exchange.
“And the northmen?
Where are they now?” Vance couldn’t hold the question back.
“Couldn’t get a straight answer.
I spoke with someone called Pyg, at least that’s how he introduced himself,” Ryger said, grinning.
“Looks like a hog and talks around every question like one too.
Wouldn’t say a word about the state of things, only insisted that you, Robert, come speak with their commander, one Vargo Hoat.
Said he’d explain it all.” “I hope you didn’t agree to ride inside the castle.” “You wound me, Robert,” Ryger frowned.
“The meeting’s at the same place.
By the gate.” “Well then.
Let’s have it,” Peg said, settling into his saddle and riding forward to the parley.
Vargo Hoat was a tall, gaunt man with a scraggly beard hanging down to his chest.
Around his neck he wore a necklace strung with what looked like a hundred different coins.
“What’th your name, ser?” Vargo asked, reining in his horse.
Three men flanked him.
One, clearly a native of the Summer Islands, wore a fine silk coat scorched in several places and stained with grease.
Another had the look of a true Dothraki, wild and half naked despite the drizzle.
The third could only be Pyg, judging by his small, piggish eyes.
“I am Ser Robert Peg, in the service of Lord Edmure Tully.
Are you Vargo Hoat?” “Lord Hoat,” the Summer Islander corrected, an edge in his voice.
“Remember it, ser.
Or I’ll help you remember.” “Easy now,” Vance said, resting a hand on his sword hilt.
“You wouldn’t want to stain such a fine coat with blood, would you?” The Summer Islander looked Hugh over from head to foot, eyes narrowed.
The Dothraki muttered something angry in his own guttural tongue.
Pyg set his own hand to his sword hilt with theatrical menace.
Ryger tensed.
Peg understood that if he wanted to keep this from turning bloody, he’d have to act at once.
“Easy, Hugh.
My apologies, I’m a little behind on how things stand here,” the knight said quickly.
Vargo looked like a corpse dressed up and marched out of the grave, and it was hard to think of him as anything close to a lord.
Still, caution mattered more than pride just now.
“So, where might the northmen have gone, my lord?” “The northmen?
A funny questith.” Vargo’s tongue seemed to trip over itself as he spoke, the words coming out lisped and slow.
He looked thoughtful, as though weighing something.
“I hold thith cathtle by order of Lord Bolton, in the name of King Robb Stark.
What are your plans here?” “I’ve orders of my own,” Robert said, choosing his words with care.
These mercenaries clearly had minds of their own, and were waiting or scheming for something.
They’d already betrayed the Lannisters once.
What would stop them from betraying whoever came next, if the price were right?
“I’d like to speak with Lord Bolton myself, if he’s within.” The silence that followed stretched long, longer than it should have.
The mercenaries exchanged glances, in no hurry to answer.
At last Vargo spoke.
“The northmen left Harrenhal the day before yethterday,” he said finally.
“And where did they go?” “To the Twinth.
King Robb’th orderth.”
com/Hezzario