Robert slid down off his horse, limped to the nearest tree, sank to the ground with a groan, and leaned his back against the trunk.
The dark red haze he’d been fighting back for the last several minutes finally broke through, flooding everything around him.
The knight lost consciousness.
He opened his eyes and felt dizzy enough to be sick, though little came up beyond bile and spit.
“Easy, easy,” Vance’s arms came around his shoulders, helping him sit up and catch his breath.
Robert steadied a little and looked around him.
He’d been carried to a makeshift camp in a clearing.
Horses stood off to one side.
A fire burned at the center, and above it, on a spit, hung their camp kettle, filling the air with the smell of porridge and stew.
A few men sat off to the side, tending their armor and weapons.
A dozen more lay on cloaks, bandaged and still.
Some groaned quietly.
Ryger only nodded at him and clenched his jaw tighter.
“So.
How many of us are left?” Robert wiped his mustache and beard with the back of his hand.
“Forty three, right after the fight,” Vance said.
“Four died overnight,” he added, lowering his voice.
“Three more, Tristan among them, could go at any hour.
But we’re holding at thirty nine for now.
We scraped ourselves together, more or less.” “How long was I out?” “The night, and most of the morning.” “Did anyone consider chasing them further?” “We can’t manage it,” Vance said, after a pause, his voice heavy.
“The northmen took worse losses than we did, but they’re still pulling back, and every hour brings them closer to the Crownlands and whatever help waits there.
And there are too few of us left to try.” “We’ll see,” Peg said, trying to rise.
His head spun and the ground seemed determined to tilt sideways, but he caught his friend’s shoulder and managed to stay upright.
“Don’t bury us yet, Hugh.
We’ll smoke the sky a while longer.” “All right, smoker.
Don’t get ahead of yourself.
Tell me honestly, how are you?” “Well enough.
Is there anything to eat?” Robert wasn’t sure whether food would help or hurt, but hot soup, and wine especially, could only strengthen him.
He winced, feeling for the bandage on his head, and found a second one, thick and wide, wrapped around his leg, which turned out to be painful and difficult to put weight on.
He went first to Ryger and looked him over.
His friend looked poorly, sweat sticking to his skin, his breathing rough and shallow, but he was still holding on, and had no intention of letting go.
“I always heard the Rygers were forged from good steel,” Peg said, trying to raise the wounded man’s spirits.
“And I’ve heard you learned to lie well this past month,” Tristan managed, barely audible, though at least he no longer looked ready to die on the spot.
“Enough whistling.
Tell me what we do next.” “Next?” Let’s think it through.
One of the soldiers offered up his saddle, and Robert sank onto it gratefully.
He turned to Vance, working through the situation with him.
It all looked grim.
Hugh had been right; there was no sense chasing further.
“Did we send scouts out?” he asked.
“Of course.
Frog Bob and the Indomitable rode out at night, tracking the Kingslayer’s trail.” “When do you expect them back?” “I gave them a day.
They should be back by then.” “What if the northmen stop to rest?” Peg wondered aloud.
It was a tempting thought, but there was no real chance of such luck.
Steelshanks and the Kingslayer both understood well enough that danger for them would only end once they reached the Crownlands, and the deeper they rode into that territory, the safer they’d feel.
Robert ate his porridge and stewed hare with a bitter awareness that he’d failed his lord’s order.
He wouldn’t be earning that promised castle and land after all.
And Edmure, once they made it back to Riverrun, assuming they even managed that much, would hardly be pleased.
Peg pictured the reception waiting for him and winced despite himself.
He hated letting people down.
But what could a man do, when fate decided things this way?
The Kingslayer had been so close.
Damn it all.
If not for that woman, Brienne of Tarth, things might have gone entirely differently.
Peg laughed once, short and humorless, and spat off to the side.
Lady Catelyn Stark had upended their plans again, and not for the first time.
It had been her, after all, who freed the Kingslayer from Riverrun while Edmure Tully was away from the castle.
And before that, as everyone knew, she’d captured the dwarf Tyrion Lannister and hadn’t managed to hold onto him either.
That was the spark that had lit this whole war.
And afterward, Catelyn Stark had taken Brienne of Tarth into her service, and it was that very woman who had kept them from taking the Kingslayer today.
What irony.
The gods, it seemed, genuinely loved a good joke at mortal expense.
The news that Frog Bob and the Indomitable brought back only confirmed Peg’s worst fears.
The northmen and the Kingslayer had abandoned their wounded and pressed hard for the south.
Along the way, they’d fallen in with another company entirely.
“We saw a striding huntsman on their banner, ser, red on green,” Frog Bob said.
“You know whose sigil that is, don’t you?” “Lord Tarly of Horn Hill.
First in Battle, they call themselves.
Everyone knows it,” Peg said, frowning, and understood at once that they had no real choice left but to ride back to Riverrun in disgrace.
The one comfort was that Ryger seemed genuinely forged from steel, and wasn’t going to die after all.
The rain came down in sheets, staining Riverrun’s walls a bleak, unwelcoming gray.
The Tumblestone and the Red Fork had swollen so high they threatened to break their banks at any moment, drowning the low meadows and cropland along their courses.
Wet clay squelched under the horses’ hooves.
Every stitch of clothing had gone dark with mud and soaked through to the skin.
The men dreamed of a warm hearth and a tub of hot water; it had been more than three weeks since any of them had properly washed.
In Riverrun’s courtyard they were met by Lord Karyl Vance.
He looked over the returning column, frowning when he failed to spot the Kingslayer among them.
He read the answer in their downcast faces well enough without asking, and simply led Peg inside.
Grooms hurried to see to the horses.
Servants moved among the soldiers, tending to their needs.
“I’m sorry, Lord Tully.
I couldn’t take the Kingslayer,” Peg admitted bitterly, once he’d been brought before him.
Lord Edmure Tully, looking older and grimmer than Robert remembered, stared at him in silence.
His eyes held no anger, no threat, and yet Robert felt his own confidence falter under that gaze.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot and coughed into his fist to cover it.
“He was within arm’s reach, my lord, but we couldn’t hold him.
And I lost fifty two men doing it.” “Tell it all, ser,” Karyl said, taking a seat beside Edmure.
“From the very start.” Robert took a deep breath.
Whatever the failure, he believed, firmly, that he’d done everything within his power.
His conscience was clear.
Mostly clear.
Tully and Vance questioned him at length that evening.
Robert heard no word of blame or displeasure from either of them, though that hardly eased the sting of having let his lord down.
It struck him as strange, too, how calmly the two of them received the news of Bolton’s betrayal.
It was one thing to suspect it, as Lord Tully himself had suspected before ever sending him after the Kingslayer, and quite another to have every dark assumption confirmed outright.
And yet neither man seemed surprised, almost as if they’d expected exactly this.
When at last he was dismissed, Robert felt a real weight lift from his shoulders.
Lord Tully had once seemed like a far simpler man to him, less imposing, less commanding.
He’d gotten along easily enough with the old Edmure.
With the man this war had made of him, that easy familiarity no longer quite worked the same way.
First, the knight allowed himself the pleasure of a hot bath.
Only after washing properly and dressing in clean clothes did he make his way down to Riverrun’s Great Hall.
Some two hundred people dined there that night.
Voices stayed low, the occasional joke passed between neighbors, but the mood in the hall could hardly be called festive.
By now, most everyone had likely heard of Peg’s failure, and what it meant for them.
The war continued, and a hostage as valuable as Jaime Lannister would have served them well.
Peg, Vance, and Ryger took seats at the high table, not beside Lord Edmure but near its far end.
Beside them sat the stocky Lymond Goodbrook, a man they’d known for years.
It was he who filled them in on the latest news.
“Every northman’s gone from Riverrun by now.
Likely reached the Twins already,” Goodbrook said, tearing a hunk of bread apart with his hands.
It turned out Lord Edmure had quarreled sharply with his nephew, King Robb Stark, and Peg soon gathered that the Riverlands were no longer tributaries or vassals of the North, but equal allies in their own right.
The news landed like a balm; plenty of river lords had chafed under their subordinate standing for a long while now, and the change in status struck a real chord in the hall.
Among other things, Lothar Frey, his bastard brother, and their men remained honored hostages within the castle.
Not far outside Riverrun, the Brave Companions, who had arrived two days earlier, sat camped and waiting.
They weren’t permitted inside the walls, and no one seemed to know yet what would become of them.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Goodbrook said, glancing between them with an unreadable expression before letting his eyes settle, briefly, on Ryger.
His face turned entirely serious.
“Picture this, Robert.
The Blackfish tried to overthrow Lord Edmure.” “Get out of here!” Peg didn’t believe it for a moment, though he knew Lymond well enough to know the man wouldn’t joke about something like that.
“I’ll let you cut off my finger if I’m lying.
But it didn’t work.” “And where’s Ser Brynden now?” Vance asked.
Peg felt an unease settle over him.
Edmure Tully’s uncle had earned the name Blackfish for the dark fish on his personal coat of arms, and everyone knew him for one of the finest commanders in all Westeros.
And here it was, times already hard enough, and news like this to turn a man’s head.
All they needed now was for the Tullys to start warring among themselves.
“In a cell.
Seems serious enough,” Lymond answered, taking a long pull of his wine.
“He wasn’t alone in it, was he?” Tristan Ryger leaned forward over the table.
“Why isn’t my father here?
Is he well?” “I hate to be the one to say it, but you’ll hear it soon enough,” Goodbrook sighed.
“Your father backed the Blackfish, Tris.
He’s under guard as well now.” “Damn it,” Ryger swore, then caught himself, catching sight of Lord Tully’s watchful gaze fixed on them, the torchlight dancing in his eyes.
com/Hezzario