“So we thought, at first.” Though Lady Mariya’s hair was streaked with grey, she was still a handsome woman. “The killers scattered when they left Oldstones. Lord Vypren tracked one band to Fairmarket, but lost them there. Black Walder led hounds and hunters into Hag’s Mire after the others. The peasants denied seeing them, but when questioned sharply they sang a different song. They spoke of a one-eyed man and another who wore a yellow cloak . . . and a woman, cloaked and hooded.”
“A woman?” He would have thought that the White Fawn would have taught Merrett to stay clear of outlaw wenches. “There was a woman in the Kingswood Brotherhood as well.”
“I know of her.” How not, her tone suggested, when she left her mark upon my husband? “The White Fawn was young and fair, they say. This hooded woman is neither. The peasants would have us believe that her face was torn and scarred, and her eyes terrible to look upon. They claim she led the outlaws.”
“Led them?” Jaime found that hard to believe. “Beric Dondarrion and the red priest . . .”
“. . . were not seen.” Lady Mariya sounded certain.
“Dondarrion’s dead,” said Strongboar. “The Mountain drove a knife through his eye, we have men with us who saw it.”
“That’s one tale,” said Addam Marbrand. “Others will tell you that Lord Beric can’t be killed.”
“Ser Harwyn says those tales are lies.” Lady Amerei wound a braid around her finger. “He has promised me Lord Beric’s head. He’s very gallant.” She was blushing beneath her tears.
Jaime thought back on the head he’d given to Pia. He could almost hear his little brother chuckle. Whatever became of giving women flowers? Tyrion might have asked. He would have had a few choice words for Harwyn Plumm as well, though gallant would not have been one of them. Plumm’s brothers were big, fleshy fellows with thick necks and red faces; loud and lusty, quick to laugh, quick to anger, quick to forgive. Harwyn was a different sort of Plumm; hard-eyed and taciturn, unforgiving . . . and deadly, with his hammer in his hand. A good man to command a garrison, but not a man to love. Although . . . Jaime gazed at Lady Amerei.
The serving men were bringing out the fish course, a river pike baked in a crust of herbs and crushed nuts. Lancel’s lady tasted it, approved, and commanded that the first portion be served to Jaime. As they set the fish before him, she leaned across her husband’s place to touch his golden hand. “You could kill Lord Beric, Ser Jaime. You slew the Smiley Knight. Please, my lord, I beg you, stay and help us with Lord Beric and the Hound.” Her pale fingers caressed his golden ones.
Does she think that I can feel that? “The Sword of the Morning slew the Smiling Knight, my lady. Ser Arthur Dayne, a better knight than me.” Jaime pulled back his golden fingers and turned once more to Lady Mariya. “How far did Black Walder track this hooded woman and her men?”
“His hounds picked up their scent again north of Hag’s Mire,” the older woman told him. “He swears that he was no more than half a day behind them when they vanished into the Neck.”
“Let them rot there,” declared Ser Kennos cheerfully. “If the gods are good, they’ll be swallowed up in quicksand or gobbled down by lizard-lions.”
“Or taken in by frogeaters,” said Ser Danwell Frey. “I would not put it past the crannogmen to shelter outlaws.”
“Would that it were only them,” said Lady Mariya. “Some of the river lords are hand in glove with Lord Beric’s men as well.”
“The smallfolk too,” sniffed her daughter. “Ser Harwyn says they hide them and feed them, and when he asks where they’ve gone, they lie. They lie to their own lords!”
“Have their tongues out,” urged Strongboar.
“Good luck getting answers then,” said Jaime. “If you want their help, you need to make them love you. That was how Arthur Dayne did it, when we rode against the Kingswood Brotherhood. He paid the smallfolk for the food we ate, brought their grievances to King Aerys, expanded the grazing lands around their villages, even won them the right to fell a certain number of trees each year and take a few of the king’s deer during the autumn. The forest folk had looked to Toyne to defend them, but Ser Arthur did more for them than the Brotherhood could ever hope to do, and won them to our side. After that, the rest was easy.”
“The Lord Commander speaks wisely,” said Lady Mariya. “We shall never be rid of these outlaws until the smallfolk come to love Lancel as much as they once loved my father and grandfather.”
Jaime glanced at his cousin’s empty place. Lancel will never win their love by praying, though.
Lady Amerei put on a pout. “Ser Jaime, I pray you, do not abandon us. My lord has need of you, and so do I. These are such fearful times. Some nights I can hardly sleep, for fear.”
“My place is with the king, my lady.”
“I’ll come,” offered Strongboar. “Once we’re done at Riverrun, I’ll be itching for another fight. Not that Beric Dondarrion is like to give me one. I recall the man from tourneys past. A comely lad in a pretty cloak, he was. Slight and callow.”
“That was before he died,” said young Ser Arwood Frey. “Death changed him, the smallfolk say. You can kill him, but he won’t stay dead. How do you fight a man like that? And there’s the Hound as well. He slew twenty men at Saltpans.”
Strongboar guffawed. “Twenty fat innkeeps, maybe. Twenty serving men pissing in their breeches. Twenty begging brothers armed with bowls. Not twenty knights. Not me.”
“There is a knight at Saltpans,” Ser Arwood insisted. “He hid behind his walls whilst Clegane and his mad dogs ravaged through his town. You have not seen the things he did, ser. I have. When the reports reached the Twins, I rode down with Harys Haigh and his brother Donnel and half a hundred men, archers and men-at-arms. We thought it was Lord Beric’s work, and hoped to find his trail. All that remains of Saltpans is the castle, and old Ser Quincy so frightened he would not open his gates, but shouted down at us from his battlements. The rest is bones and ashes. A whole town. The Hound put the buildings to the torch and the people to the sword and rode off laughing. The women . . . you would not believe what he did to some of the women. I will not speak of it at table. It made me sick to see.”
“I cried when I heard,” said Lady Amerei.
Jaime sipped his wine. “What makes you certain it was the Hound?” What they were describing sounded more like Gregor’s work than Sandor’s. Sandor had been hard and brutal, yes, but it was his big brother who was the real monster in House Clegane.
“He was seen,” Ser Arwood said. “That helm of his is not easily mistaken, nor forgotten, and there were a few who survived to tell the tale. The girl he raped, some boys who hid, a woman we found trapped beneath a blackened beam, the fisherfolk who watched the butchery from their boats . . .”
“Do not call it butchery,” Lady Mariya said softly. “That gives insult to honest butchers everywhere. Saltpans was the work of some fell beast in human skin.”
This is a time for beasts, Jaime reflected, for lions and wolves and angry dogs, for ravens and carrion crows.
“Evil work.” Strongboar filled his cup again. “Lady Mariya, Lady Amerei, your distress has moved me. You have my word, once Riverrun has fallen I shall return to hunt down the Hound and kill him for you. Dogs do not frighten me.”
This one should. Both men were large and powerful, but Sandor Clegane was much quicker, and fought with a savagery that Lyle Crakehall could not hope to match.
Lady Amerei was thrilled, however. “You are a true knight, Ser Lyle, to help a lady in distress.”
At least she did not call herself “a maiden.” Jaime reached for his cup and knocked it over. The linen tablecloth drank the wine. As the red stain spread, his companions all pretended not to notice. High table courtesy, he told himself, but it tasted just like pity. He rose abruptly. “My lady. Pray excuse me.”
Lady Amerei looked stricken. “Would you leave us? There’s venison to come, and capons stuffed with leeks and mushrooms.”
“Very fine, no doubt, but I could not eat another bite. I need to see my cousin.” Bowing, Jaime left them to their food.
Men were eating in the yard as well. The sparrows had gathered round a dozen cookfires to warm their hands against the chill of dusk and watch fat sausages spit and sizzle above the flames. There had to be a hundred of them. Useless mouths. Jaime wondered how many sausages his cousin had laid by and how he intended to feed the sparrows once they were gone. They will be eating rats by winter, unless they can get a harvest in. This late in autumn, the chances of another harvest were not good.
He found the sept off the castle’s inner ward; a windowless, seven-sided, half-timbered building with carved wood doors and a tiled roof. Three sparrows sat upon its steps. When Jaime approached, they rose. “Where you going, m’lord?” asked one. He was the smallest of the three, but he had the biggest beard.
“Inside.”
“His lordship’s in there, praying.”
“His lordship is my cousin.”
“Well, then, m’lord,” said a different sparrow, a huge bald man with a seven-pointed star painted over one eye, “you won’t want to bother your cousin at his prayers.”
“Lord Lancel is asking the Father Above for guidance,” said the third sparrow, the beardless one. A boy, Jaime had thought, but her voice marked her for a woman, dressed in shapeless rags and a shirt of rusted mail. “He is praying for the soul of the High Septon and all the others who have died.”
“They’ll still be dead tomorrow,” Jaime told her. “The Father Above has more time than I do. Do you know who I am?”
“Some lord,” said the big man with the starry eye.
“Some cripple,” said the small one with the big beard.
“The Kingslayer,” said the woman, “but we’re no kings, just Poor Fellows, and you can’t go in unless his lordship says you can.” She hefted a spiked club, and the small man raised an axe.
The doors behind them opened. “Let my cousin pass in peace, friends,” Lancel said softly. “I have been expecting him.”
The sparrows moved aside.
Lancel looked even thinner than he had at King’s Landing. He was barefoot, and dressed in a plain, roughspun tunic of undyed wool that made him look more like a beggar than a lord. The crown of his head had been shaved smooth, but his beard had grown out a little. To call it peach fuzz would have given insult to the peach. It went queerly with the white hair around his ears.
“Cousin,” said Jaime when they were alone within the sept, “have you lost your bloody wits?”
“I prefer to say I’ve found my faith.”
“Where is your father?”
“Gone. We quarreled.” Lancel knelt before the altar of his other Father. “Will you pray with me, Jaime?”
“If I pray nicely, will the Father give me a new hand?”
“No. But the Warrior will give you courage, the Smith will lend you strength, and the Crone will give you wisdom.”
“It’s a hand I need.” The seven gods loomed above carved altars, the dark wood gleaming in the candlelight. A faint smell of incense hung in the air. “You sleep down here?”
“Each night I make my bed beneath a different altar, and the Seven send me visions.”
Baelor the Blessed once had visions too. Especially when he was fasting. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
“My faith is all the nourishment I need.”
“Faith is like porridge. Better with milk and honey.”
“I dreamed that you would come. In the dream you knew what I had done. How I’d sinned. You killed me for it.”
“You’re more like to kill yourself with all this fasting. Didn’t Baelor the Blessed fast himself onto a bier?”
“Our lives are candle flames, says The Seven-Pointed Star. Any errant puff of wind can snuff us out. Death is never far in this world, and seven hells await sinners who do not repent their sins. Pray with me, Jaime.”
“If I do, will you eat a bowl of porridge?” When his coz did not answer, Jaime sighed. “You should be sleeping with your wife, not with the Maid. You need a son with Darry blood if you want to keep this castle.”
“A pile of cold stones. I never asked for it. I never wanted it. I only wanted . . .” Lancel shuddered. “Seven save me, but I wanted to be you.”
Jaime had to laugh. “Better me than Blessed Baelor. Darry needs a lion, coz. So does your little Frey. She gets moist between the legs every time someone mentions Hardstone. If she hasn’t bedded him yet, she will soon.”
“If she loves him, I wish them joy of one another.”
“A lion shouldn’t have horns. You took the girl to wife.”
“I said some words and gave her a red cloak, but only to please Father. Marriage requires consummation. King Baelor was made to wed his sister Daena, but they never lived as man and wife, and he put her aside as soon as he was crowned.”
“The realm would have been better served if he had closed his eyes and fucked her. I know enough history to know that. In any case, you’re not like to be taken for Baelor the Blessed.”
“No,” Lancel allowed. “He was a rare spirit, pure and brave and innocent, untouched by all the evils of the world. I am a sinner, with much and more to atone for.”
Jaime put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “What do you know of sin, coz? I killed my king.”
“The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin. We are both kingslayers, ser.”
“Robert was no true king. Some might even say that a stag is a lion’s natural prey.” Jaime could feel the bones beneath his cousin’s skin . . . and something else as well. Lancel was wearing a hair shirt underneath his tunic. “What else did you do, to require so much atonement? Tell me.”
His cousin bowed his head, tears running down his cheeks.
Those tears were all the answer Jaime needed. “You killed the king,” he said, “then you fucked the queen.”
“I never . . .”
“. . . lay with my sweet sister?” Say it. Say it!
“Never spilled my seed in . . . in her . . .”
“. . . cunt?” suggested Jaime.
“. . . womb,” Lancel finished. “It is not treason unless you finish inside. I gave her comfort, after the king died. You were a captive, your father was in the field, and your brother . . . she was afraid of him, and with good reason. He made me betray her.”
“Did he?” Lancel and Ser Osmund and how many more? Was the part about Moon Boy just a gibe? “Did you force her?”
“No! I loved her. I wanted to protect her.”
You wanted to be me. His phantom fingers itched. The day his sister had come to WhiteSwordTower to beg him to renounce his vows, she had laughed after he refused her and boasted of having lied to him a thousand times. Jaime had taken that for a clumsy attempt to hurt him as he’d hurt her. It may have been the only true thing that she ever said to me.
“Do not think ill of the queen,” Lancel pleaded. “All flesh is weak, Jaime. No harm came of our sin. No . . . no bastard.”
“No. Bastards are seldom made upon the belly.” He wondered what his cousin would say if he were to confess his own sins, the three treasons Cersei had named Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella.
“I was angry with Her Grace after the battle, but the High Septon said I must forgive her.”
“You confessed your sins to His High Holiness, did you?”
“He prayed for me when I was wounded. He was a good man.”
He’s a dead man. They rang the bells for him. He wondered if his cousin had any notion what fruit his words had borne. “Lancel, you’re a bloody fool.”
“You are not wrong,” said Lancel, “but my folly is behind me, ser. I have asked the Father Above to show me the way, and he has. I am renouncing this lordship and this wife. Hardstone is welcome to the both of them, if he likes. On the morrow I will return to King’s Landing and swear my sword to the new High Septon and the Seven. I mean to take vows and join the Warrior’s
Sons.”
The boy was not making sense. “The Warrior’s Sons were proscribed three hundred years ago.”
“The new High Septon has revived them. He’s sent out a call for worthy knights to pledge their lives and swords to the service of the Seven. The Poor Fellows are to be restored as well.”
“Why would the Iron Throne allow that?” One of the early Targaryen kings had fought for years to suppress the two military orders, Jaime recalled, though he did not remember which. Maegor, perhaps, or the first Jaehaerys. Tyrion would have known.
“His High Holiness writes that King Tommen has given his consent. I will show you the letter, if you like.”
“Even if this is true . . . you are a lion of the Rock, a lord. You have a wife, a castle, lands to defend, people to protect. If the gods are good, you will have sons of your blood to follow you. Why would you throw all that away for . . . for some vow?”
“Why did you?” asked Lancel softly.
For honor, Jaime might have said. For glory. That would have been a lie, though. Honor and glory had played their parts, but most of it had been for Cersei. A laugh escaped his lips. “Is it the High Septon you’re running to, or my sweet sister? Pray on that one, coz. Pray hard.”
“Will you pray with me, Jaime?”
He glanced about the sept, at the gods. The Mother, full of mercy. The Father, stern in judgment. The Warrior, one hand upon his sword. The Stranger in the shadows, his half-human face concealed beneath a hooded mantle. I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, hiding her true face from my gaze. “Pray for me, if you like,” he told his cousin. “I’ve forgotten all the words.”
The sparrows were still fluttering about the steps when Jaime stepped back out into the night. “Thank you,” he told them. “I feel ever so much holier now.”
He went and found Ser Ilyn and a pair of swords.
The castle yard was full of eyes and ears. To escape them, they sought out Darry’s godswood. There were no sparrows there, only trees bare and brooding, their black branches scratching at the sky. A mat of dead leaves crunched beneath their feet.
A Feast for Dragons Page 80
