Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 19: Love is the Death of Duty

Robb Stark healed behind closed doors.

That was the first thing men knew.

The second thing they knew was that men hated closed doors.

The keep at the Crag had thick walls, narrow windows, and too many servants who learned quickly that a lowered voice was worth more than an honest one. The king had been carried inside with an arrow beneath his shoulder. By morning he had not died. By the next night he had spoken with his mother, his captains, and the maester. By the third day he had shouted at someone for trying to keep Grey Wind from the chamber.

Those facts should have been enough.

They were not.

Armies fed on bread, meat, oats, and rumor. Rumor was easiest to carry.

The first rumor said a westerman maid was changing the king's bandages.

That was nothing. Women tended wounds in every castle where men had been foolish enough to make them. Tom heard it while checking pickets beneath the outer wall and thought no more of it than he thought of rain clouds over the hills.

The second rumor said she was pretty.

That made men smile.

The third said she was young.

That made older men shake their heads with the knowledge of fools who had once been young.

The fourth said the maid stayed too long in the king's chamber.

That one moved faster.

By then, Tom had learned that rumor changed shape by rank. Common spearmen made it coarse. Camp followers made it clever. Guards made it certain. Lords made it dangerous by pretending not to hear it.

"Who is she?" Tor asked one evening while cutting a heel of bread with his knife.

"A healer," Jory said.

"All healers have names."

"So do all fools. I do not ask every one."

Tor looked at Tom. "He knows and will not tell me."

"Good," Tom said.

"You wound me."

"No. Healers do that."

Jory's mouth twitched, but his eyes went toward the keep.

Tom saw it.

The Crag sat under a pale evening, its captured banners gone and Stark grey above the gatehouse. Fires burned inside and outside the walls. Men mended gear, counted arrows, boiled shirts, gambled with pebbles, and pretended not to listen whenever anyone came from the keep.

Robb had been seen twice.

Once at a window, pale and upright, one arm bound close. Once in the yard, walking with Grey Wind beside him and a girl in soft colors behind his mother.

That had been enough to turn rumor into weather.

"Jeyne," Pate told them the next day, appearing near Tom's fire with the importance of a man carrying a full bucket.

Tor looked up. "What?"

"Her name. Jeyne Westerling."

"That sounds like a lord's daughter."

"Aye."

Jory looked at Pate. "You know this how?"

"Donnel heard a groom say it."

"Donnel knows every westerman groom now?"

"Donnel knows which ones look at him like dirt and which ones look at him like kin they dislike. This one was the second."

Tom fed a stick into the fire.

Jeyne Westerling.

The name meant little to him. Westerling meant west. West meant Lannister sworn, or near enough, unless someone with better learning corrected the shape of it. A maiden tending Robb's wound was one thing. A westerman lord's daughter was another.

"Does the king know?" Tor asked.

Jory stared at him.

Tor frowned. "What?"

"That she is in his chamber?"

"No. About the talking."

"Kings know less than men think and more than men hope," Jory said.

Tom watched the keep door open long enough for two guards to pass through.

"If he does not know," he said, "someone near him does."

"And if they do nothing?" Pate asked.

Tom did not answer.

There were doors common men did not open.

There were also fires common men were made to die beside when those doors hid the wrong thing.

The army did not sit idle while the king healed.

It could not.

Tywin Lannister was too large a shadow for idleness. A wounded king in a captured castle was still a king with enemies counting days. So the host split into teeth.

Greatjon Umber took men west and south to harry what could be harried. Dacey Mormont rode with part of the force. Maron Locke went where the roads needed doubting. Tom took his center with them, though it was no longer called center when the vanguard was broken apart and made useful elsewhere. Smalljon rode with his father and laughed at the hills. Black Walder Frey took his own men another way and left Tom grateful for distance he would not name.

Robb remained at the Crag to heal.

The queen stayed with him.

Grey Wind stayed with him.

The maiden stayed too, if rumor could be believed.

Rumor always asked to be believed.

Greatjon gave Tom no time to think on it.

"We are to bite," he said on the morning they rode out.

"Bite what, milord?" Tom asked.

Greatjon grinned down from his horse. "Everything soft."

That proved near enough to the plan.

They burned no villages that yielded.

Greatjon was loud, hard, and fond of terror, but he was not a fool with good supplies in front of him. Grain was taken under tokens when it could be. Horses were taken if fit. Smithies were stripped of nails, shoes, hinges, and any iron that could march away. Lannister storehouses burned. Bridges were cut after northern men crossed and before western riders could follow. Ravens died in cages. Mines that could not be held were fouled, braced badly, or left with enough damage to make work slow and expensive.

The west began to hate them properly.

That meant they were doing harm.

Days loosened into weeks.

Weeks lost edges and became months.

Tom learned the color of western dust. He learned the sound of dry grass under tired boots. He learned which valleys hid horses and which hills hid men who thought themselves clever because they knew one goat path their grandfathers had known before them. He learned that rich lands could starve if the right roads were pinched and the right storehouses emptied.

He learned that victory could feel like work no one finished.

There were fights.

Many.

Most were too small for songs and too large for the men killed in them.

A watchtower taken before dawn. A convoy scattered near a dry stream. Twelve riders trapped between Dacey's horsemen and Tom's shields. A mine guard bribed badly enough that Garrel found the coin in his boot after Osric found the lie in his face. Three days chasing smoke. Four days seeing nothing. A week of sleeping in armor because Maron had said the road was too quiet and Greatjon had laughed, then doubled the watches anyway.

Maron had been right.

The westermen came at moonrise with wrapped hooves and knives.

They found northern men awake.

That was the whole battle, near enough.

Afterward Tor told Maron he had a miserable gift.

Maron said, "It keeps fools alive."

"Does it?"

"Some."

"Can you aim it?"

Maron looked at him until Tor wandered off to bother someone easier.

Tom's own command changed in small ways.

Men stopped looking for him before doing what he had taught them. That had pleased him once. Now it was necessary. Serjeants shifted files without asking. Bowmen found banks. Shield men counted paces. Runners learned which captains needed few words and which needed three times as many because noble pride had to be walked around like a sleeping dog.

Jory kept lists until wax tablets gave way to scraps and scraps became rolls tied against rain.

Tor kept Tom alive in ways Tom noticed and ways he likely did not.

Some nights Harl sat at their fire. Some nights Pate. Once Donnel, who said little and watched the western hills as if old ghosts there might recognize him. Willam had grown leaner, quieter, and better with a spear. Mikken repaired a cracked wagon wheel using stolen braces from a lord's wine press and looked pleased as a septon at prayer.

Osric and Garrel came and went like bad thoughts.

Garrel returned one dawn with mud to his elbows and a grin split by dried blood.

"Brax men ahead," he said.

Tom looked up from a map that had already lied twice. "How many?"

"Enough to be interesting."

Jory sighed. "That is not a number."

"No. But it is true."

Osric came in behind him, sour and damp. "Forty riders. Mayhaps more. Foot behind them. A banner with a purple unicorn."

"House Brax," Jory said.

Tor blinked. "A unicorn?"

"Aye."

"On purpose?"

Garrel's grin widened. "Apparently."

Tom ignored them. "Commander?"

"Ser Flement Brax," Osric said. "Heard one of his men name him. Young voice. Old enough armor."

Greatjon liked the news.

He liked most news that could be struck with steel.

The Brax force held a road between two low ridges, moving east with packhorses and a confidence Tom disliked. Confidence meant either ignorance or reason. Scouts found the reason before noon. Another party waited a mile back, hidden badly in scrub, meant to fall on anyone chasing the first too eagerly.

"Trap," Jory said.

"Small one," Harl said.

"Still has teeth."

Greatjon laughed when Tom explained it. "Then we break both jaws."

He gave the work to Dacey, Tom, and two Umber captains who took insult at the word careful but obeyed it after Greatjon used louder words of his own.

The fight lasted less than an hour.

It felt longer because traps always did. Men could know the shape and still feel the pull. The first Brax riders showed themselves bright and brave on the road, purple unicorn snapping in the wind, daring pursuit as if northern blood had no patience in it.

Greatjon's men gave them enough of a chase to make the play believable.

Not too much.

Just enough.

The hidden Brax party rose from the scrub when they thought the northern line had stretched.

Tom's shields were waiting behind a low fold of earth.

"Up," he said.

The line rose.

Arrows came over them from Osric's bowmen and Dacey's riders struck the rear before the westermen understood that their trap had been measured and found shallow. The road filled with noise, dust, hooves, and men realizing too late that courage did not make a plan good.

Ser Flement Brax fought well.

That mattered.

Tom saw him near the banner, a tall man with pale hair under a crested helm, sword bright and shield marked with the unicorn. He rallied men twice. Once when the hidden party began to fold. Once when Dacey's riders broke into their flank. He killed an Umber man with a clean thrust and nearly cut Garrel down when Garrel came too close with a knife and too much joy.

Tor took offense at that.

The two did not meet properly. Battle kept moving them apart. But Tor remembered an insult done to a friend the way other men remembered debts.

In the end, it was not a duel that took Flement Brax.

It was weight.

Shields pressed. Spears hemmed. His horse went down screaming under two arrows and a spear cut. Brax fell clear, rose, and found four northern points aimed at him before his feet were set. He looked for space and found none.

"Yield," Tom called.

Brax looked at him.

For a moment Tom thought pride would kill him.

Then the westerman looked past Tom and saw Greatjon Umber riding through the dust like a siege tower with teeth.

Ser Flement Brax dropped his sword.

"Wise," Tor said.

Brax lifted his chin. "To whom do I yield?"

Tom considered saying his own name.

It would have been true.

It also would have made the next hour tedious.

"To Lord Umber," Tom said.

Greatjon arrived in time to hear it and boomed a laugh. "Do you now? Good. Saves me the trouble of knocking sense into that fine helm."

Brax's jaw tightened.

He was bound properly.

Not gently. Properly.

The dead were counted. The wounded sorted. The captured gear stripped. Greatjon looked over Ser Flement as if judging a horse for purchase.

"Worth ransom," he said.

"Aye, milord," Tom said.

"Or holding."

"Aye."

"You want him?"

Tom looked at the prisoner.

Flement Brax stood straight despite dust, blood, and two Umber men who would have happily helped him fall. He watched the northern camp with hatred kept behind his teeth.

"No, milord."

Greatjon grinned. "No taste for unicorns?"

"No place to keep one."

The laugh rolled over the road and made even some prisoners flinch.

Brax went with Greatjon's guard.

By evening, the purple banner had been folded, the road cleared, and the west had lost another small certainty.

So the months passed.

Victories gathered behind them like stones in a sack.

Heavy, useful, and never enough.

Word from Robb came in pieces. His wound healed. He rode again. He had left the Crag. He had married.

That last word did not arrive like a raven.

It arrived like a cough men tried to hide.

Married.

Not to the Frey girl promised.

To Jeyne Westerling.

The westerman maiden.

Tom heard it from Harl, who had heard it from an Umber rider, who had heard it from a man who had seen Greatjon's face when the news came.

"Is it true?" Willam asked.

No one answered quickly.

That was answer enough.

Tor looked at Jory.

Jory looked at the fire.

Pate rubbed at the scar under his chin. Donnel muttered something in a westerman curse. Mikken kept sharpening a nail as if it had wronged him personally.

Tom thought of the closed doors at the Crag.

Of rumor moving faster than orders.

Of Robb Stark standing in a field and making an army move like one hand.

Of a young king pale in torchlight with an arrow under his shoulder and a direwolf guarding the threshold.

"What does it mean?" Willam asked.

Jory answered because Tom did not.

"It means Walder Frey was promised a king and did not get one."

Tor grimaced. "That old man will not like being made a fool."

"No," Harl said. "Old men who own bridges rarely do."

Tom stared into the fire until the wood became shapes and then stopped being anything at all.

Robb had won battles by seeing what men needed before they knew they needed it. Speed. Mercy. Harshness. Tokens for grain. A captain from smallfolk because smallfolk had to see one. He had heard truths other lords would have smoothed away.

And still.

A man could be wise on roads and foolish behind doors.

Tom hated the thought the moment it formed.

He hated more that it stayed.

Orders came not long after.

East.

The army was to gather and move toward the Twins. Lord Edmure Tully was to marry a Frey girl in Robb's place, and old insult would be mended with new vows, new cups, new bedding, and enough words to make men pretend pride could be fed another man's feast and call it even.

Greatjon read the order, then read it again.

That alone quieted the men near him.

"We go to the Twins," he said.

Smalljon snorted. "For a wedding?"

"Aye."

"Whose?"

"Edmure Tully's."

Smalljon stared. "That trout is marrying for the king?"

Greatjon folded the message. "Seems so."

"Will there be drink?"

"There is always drink at a wedding."

"Then mayhaps it is not all folly."

Greatjon laughed, but Tom heard less joy in it than usual.

The march east felt different from the march west.

West had been teeth.

East was memory.

They passed places they had hurt and places that had hurt them. Burned storehouses. Empty roads. Fields recovering badly. Villages that watched from behind half-open shutters. Northern garrisons left in captured holds raised hands as the columns passed. Prisoners were moved under guard. Wounded men who had healed wrong walked with sticks and tried not to slow the pace.

Ser Flement Brax went with a guarded train for a time, then was sent another way under Umber men and sealed orders. Ransom or holding. Tom never learned which. Some prisoners were like coins; a captain did not need to know whose purse they reached.

Days shortened.

Rains returned in cold, thin fits.

The Riverlands took them back with mud and grey water, as if offended that they had ever left. The roads grew softer. The villages poorer. The trees more familiar in their misery. Men who had cursed western dust began cursing river mud with the passion of old friends resuming a quarrel.

Tom found he had missed it.

Not the mud.

The knowing.

The Riverlands had taught him what war looked like when rich men's choices reached poor men's fields. The west had taught him the same lesson with better roofs. He carried both now. They sat in him like stones that could not be set down.

Robb's host gathered by degrees.

Banners joined on the road. Tully trout. Stark direwolf. Umber giant. Mormont bear. Frey towers in the distance more often than men liked. Men asked after old companions. Some answers came with smiles. Some with silence. Harl returned to Tom's fire two nights running. Pate brought a skin of ale he claimed had been given freely by a grateful farmer, which no one believed and everyone drank. Osric appeared long enough to say the road ahead was watched, then disappeared before Tor could ask by whom.

"Frey eyes," Garrel said later.

"How do you know?" Tor asked.

"They look offended when seen."

Jory looked east. "They have reason."

"So do we," Tor said.

"For what?"

"For watching back."

Tom agreed with that.

He did not like the Twins.

Some places carried themselves ahead of their stones. Men spoke of the Twins and their voices changed. A bridge made into a lordship. A lord old enough to rot and still grasping. A crossing no army could ignore unless it wished to become a story about drowned fools. A promise broken and another promised in its place.

Mayhaps the wedding would mend it.

Men said that often enough.

Mayhaps Lord Walder would take Edmure Tully for payment and smile with the few teeth he had left.

Men said that too.

Mayhaps wine and vows could cover insult if poured thickly.

No one said that near Greatjon.

The day they first saw the towers, the sky was low and iron-grey.

The Green Fork ran broad beneath them, dark with rain and distance. The Twins rose on either side of the river like two clenched fists joined by stone. Towers, walls, bridge, water. A crossing made into a threat and called a seat.

Men slowed without orders.

Not much.

Enough.

Tom walked near the front of his command with Tor on one side and Jory mounted on the other. Greatjon's banners snapped ahead. Frey outriders waited near the road, pale and damp and watching the northern column approach as if counting debts.

"There it is," Tor said.

"Aye."

"Ugly."

Jory looked at the towers. "Useful."

"Ugly things often are."

Tom said nothing.

He watched the bridge.

All roads narrowed somewhere.

Some narrowed into gates.

Some into walls.

Some into choices made months before by men who thought tomorrow would forgive them.

The column moved on toward the Twins, and the river waited beneath stone.

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Disclaimer: Frostfyre is a non-commercial fan fiction project inspired by a Realm of Thrones campaign for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. All rights to those original settings and characters remain with their respective owners.