“The Pentoshi did what?”
As he listened to his assistant’s report a second time, Brandon Stark wondered what in all the hells kind of bugworm had squirmed its way up the cheesemonger’s arse and whatever passed for a cunt on his perfumed cockless paramour. Even without his hard-won ability to read the patterns, the signs he could see in this sudden eruption of tensions
ostensibly between Braavos and Pentos – the
deliberate warning signs – were plain to see for anyone familiar with either of those swindlers. Which was increasingly many people these days, now that the pair were secure enough in their wealth, contacts and blackmail to openly peddle their ‘repossessed’ wares and otherwise cultivate their reputation as people of wealth and taste. Wealth especially. Still, even knowing how blatant the two had grown in casting their net throughout the Free Cities, this was beyond the pale. A sudden string of thefts, mutinies or pirate attacks on ships known to sail under any business openly affiliated with the Company. Inexplicable reticence or outright mistrust by their latest prospective trade partners. Rental depos and granaries burned, looted or littered with dead
little mice. Swaths of their underworld contacts dead in canals or alleys, all ‘found’ with precious gems on them. Some so precious that even the most desperate street urchin knew better than to expect anything besides a knife to the kidney over.
He grimly accepted and opened the bag of collected ‘recompense.’ Amethyst, tourmaline, emerald, green pearl, jade, jet, onyx, opal, ruby, sapphire and slit yellow tiger's eye, they were all there. Even a black diamond. It sat there on top of the rest, taunting him with its promise of ill will and unfinished business.
“Thank you, Byam.” Brandon was glad for the age and experience that let him keep the ice inside him from cracking where others could see. All seventy-four years of it. “Take the rest of the day off. Go to your lady.”
“She’s no lady, my dame,” the young man grinned. “She’s a goddess, she is.”
“I appreciate the attempt at levity, my boy.” The young man ducked his head bashfully at his failure to lift his spirits. Seeing him act so contrite, one could almost forget he was a knight, sellsail and Captain-adventurer that regularly braved all the five seas. “Tell your goddess what you just told me and let her know I’ll be by later to talk.”
Byam Flint, formerly of Widow’s Watch, nodded and left, ordering the gates locked and barred behind him.
Brandon Stark waited for the knight to leave, then left his office for his private chambers on the second floor of the manse. Blue Petal Manor was a lofty edifice that his enterprising predecessors had bought piecemeal, and then built up into the closest thing to a bridge castle that could be found in Braavos. It was rooted in fully-appointed, walled houses on both banks of the Green Canal and had two stories. Its size served to give his private balcony a broad, sweeping view of the Secret City. One could see half-way to the lagoon to the west on a clear day, insofar as Braavos even had clear days. As far as the Palace of Truth as well, to the east, where voting took place. He had no interest in any of that today, however. He closed the doors to his balcony, pulled down all the blinds and went to lie back on his bed. He needed peace, quiet and time away from his aching joints. Time enough for the ice cap containing his black, roiling rage to firm back up, never mind everything else on his mind that he didn’t have it in him to worry about lest his heart give away right there. He was not a young man anymore, to roar and rage, let alone go out digging worms out of their pits and splitting guts open from dust to dawn and dusk again on the battlefield. He had duties. Responsibilities. New orders from his King that had only just reached him a scant month prior. Orders that had sent
him sending orders of his own as well, practically emptying Blue Petal Manor of the many farmers, traders, sailors, sellswords and everyone else who could be spared to help realign their various interests. He’d been so shocked at the time. So thrilled. So hopeful. He’d felt so alive after so very long not stepping foot on the earth of his homeland. Now he wondered if the orders had come too late, or if his own actions since then were what caused… whatever this was.
For a moment, he let himself succumb to the weight of the thankless task he’d borne for so many decades. Then he took a deep breath and collected himself.
He was Brandon of House Stark, son of Artos the Implacable, nephew of Rodrik the Wandering Wolf, Prince in Exile of the Kingdom of Winter. And he would see this handled. He
would see this handled. He would see this handled carefully. Calmly. So calmly that he’d not keel over from a sudden fit of apoplexy the next time someone came charging in, screaming that his last remaining goodson or nephews or grandson or all of them had decided to follow his brother and daughters and sons into d-
“Uncle?” Came the strong voice of Osrick on the heels of the front doors smashing open. “Uncle! Are you home? Byam said you were!”
For the umpteenth time, Brandon Stark thanked his ancestors for the thick stone blocks and high walls. He was not as thankful for the promptness of the servants that oh so efficiently directed his nephew to find him.
“Uncle, Byam said you were-ah, there you are! I bring news!” He’s not dead, he’s not dead, he’s not dead- “That news being, of course, that your grandson continues to be a complete moron.”
“He’s still not dead then?”
“Apparently not. Though not for lack of trying. Do we have any secret magic stores that could turn back time to before my girl popped out her little Dabron? Because I’m seriously reconsidering this whole grandchildren business!”
“Where is he? Which courtesan’s honor was he protecting this time? And how ready is he for my latest, all too futile lecture on the merits of not being a brash imbecile ready to cross blades with every bravo this side of Lys?”
“Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, Lady Flint is tending to him now, and not hardly.”
“Wonderful.” He wasn’t dead. Not dead. Not dead like the others, thank whatever god had seen to it, even if they never seemed to be doing anything else!
“I heard you were headed to the Flints anyway?”
“Where and how did you hear?”
“Never fear, uncle, you needn’t ‘reconsider Byam’s usefulness’ or any such rot, we were both behind his wife’s closed doors.”
Times like this made him want to share the true mission with more people. But then he reminded himself that the secrecy of home and kin was the only thing that had consistently served them well, all of them, as opposed to the morass of treachery, hardship and worthless ‘compromise’ that came with every other risk they’d ever taken. It meant they had to establish their own, internal channels of management and leadership once their families and enterprises expanded enough beyond a mere sellsword company. But it also protected them from the attentions of the fleeting powers of this land, and the factionalism so prevalent in the Free Cities and elsewhere. Especially when combined with constant flow of new blood from home in the form of third sons and daughters and other scions noble and small alike, come down from the North to seek their fortune. There were other reasons why they’d never openly declared their goals and nature as well, reasons that the Blackfyres had proven justified repeatedly. Ultimately, Essos was rich in many kinds of coin, but honor wasn’t among them.
Neither was good sense, he despaired internally when he walked in on his grandson later. In fact, Essos was so lacking in sense that it had become its own leech! “You stupid boy! Look at you! Split open from hip to neck! I told you this would happen one day! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Next time
he’ll be drinking from the Moon Pool, mark my words.”
Brandon Stark felt a sharp throb in his neck. “There won’t be a next time, you stupid boy!”
Rodrik Stark looked up from his bandages, aghast. “Grandfather! You can’t lose your wits now! Don’t you realise what such a snub would do to the cause?” On second thought, maybe he’d shared the true mission with too
many people. “You’re telling me to turn down a challenge by the First Sword of Braavos!”
“Oh, that was
not the First Sword of Braavos!”
“He damn well will be.”
“I’m sure,” sneered Brandon Stark at what had to be the dumbest spawn’s spawn that House Stark had ever been cursed with since the cravenly brood of Torrhen the Kneeler, on both sides of the sea! “Just like the one before. And the one before him. And the ten before that!”
“Ah, but
they didn’t beat me!”
Brandon smacked him. And when the impudent rascal only grinned wider, he threw his hands in the air and left him in Osrick’s hands while he went to speak with Dame Flint for his own peace of mind. He never imagined he would be discussing the greatest threat to the Cause while considering it a
boon to his peace of mind, but there it was.
The Dame Bessara Flint nee Reyaan took one look at him and immediately started fussing over him, seating him in her husband’s chair at the head of the table, bringing a basin of hot water to soak his aching feet, and insisting he have a warm meal when he admitted to not having broken his fast even once that day. Brandon ruefully accepted her care and gratefully partook of the shrimp and persimonn soup. He gladly accepted the sardines also, fried crisp in pepper oil and served so hot they burned his fingers. He mopped up the leftover oil with a chunk of bread torn off the end of Bessara’s evening loaf of olive bread and washed it all down with a cup of watered wine, savoring the tastes and the smells, the rough feel of the crust beneath his fingers, the slickness of the oil as he pinched it out of his beard, the sting of the hot pepper when it got into his cracked wisdom teeth. Hear, smell, taste, feel, pain he reminded himself. There were many ways to know you still lived, even for those like him who had outlived so very many he shouldn’t have.
When pleasure was done, they got down to business. For all his skill in patterns, it didn’t compare to skill
and talent, and Lady Bessara had him beat in both. Though a third daughter of a fourth son, she was a testament to the worth of the bloodline and education of Keyholder families. She was also the one with consistent access to news from all their enterprises, having coordinated multiple different businesses and ships since even before she effectively took over as chief overseer of trading interests from Alyssa Karstark, Brandon’s own daughter four years dead. Aside from Bessara’s own husband Byam, who brought the news to begin with (or often became the news on his voyages, which sadly cut him off from current events for weeks and even months at a time), the Dame herself was the one likely to provide the best perspective on things.
Bessara sat next to him and worked with him to lay out the maps of the Narrow Sea, Braavos, Pentos and the Disputed Lands on the round table. Not for the first time, Brandon Stark wished someone came up with a better map instead of these hand-drawn sketches. “I’ve heard back well enough from the folk back west,” she told him. “We’re still waiting on Karhold, but Widow’s Watch and Ramsgate have already responded. They’re not enthused to be passed over for the bigger fish, but they understand public spectacle as well as the next man. Envoys have been sent to White Harbor. Lord Weyrman Manderly will hopefully read the signs and not obstruct our efforts to secure the needed storage space and berthing.”
Hopefully, she says. Well, since the scope of the Rose had deliberately been kept from most people on both sides of the sea outside the heads and heirs of the great houses, that couldn’t be helped. Torrhen’s unfaithful children be damned, but they sure had taught them all a lesson in keeping secrets. He supposed it was time to see if the lesson had been a good one or just another kind of failure from overreacting in the other direction.
Unfortunately, much like he’d feared, the best perspective was also the grimmest. Replies had yet to come from half their holdings in Andalos (hah!), and none yet from further south. They didn’t know if the new orders had reached the Company of the Rose before they deployed under their latest contract either. Which was of particular worry because said contract was against roving Dothraki in the Flatlands near Pentos, not the Disputed Lands further south. Brandon could see why his goodson and nephew had signed on it. It was not only sponsored by three Keyholders of Braavos, but also deployed them ahead of the Rose’s own (not openly affiliated) holdings near the Braavos-Pentoshi border. Braavos had secured its demesne close to home, but its need for sellsword contracts hadn’t actually dropped since the Braavos-Pentos war. If Braavos had only forced Pentos to abolish slavery and withdraw from the slave trade after their victory in in 209 AC, things either would have been different or another war would have occurred after the recovery period. But Braavos had also limited the Pentoshi military forces and prevented the city from hiring sellswords. Unfortunately, this crippled Pentos’ ability to secure its territory and act as an effective buffer state. Which made it an open sieve for any Dothraki Khal who got the idea to detour through their lands and raid Braavos from the south, instead of roving across both Norvos
and Braavos’ own border to the South-Southeast. This meant that any armed incursion into Pentoshi lands were unofficially Braavos’ problem too. A problem made worse every time they deployed their latest sellsword hires. The Pentoshi magisters always started braying about Braavos aiming to finally attempt the full armed occupation they surely must have been planning all this time.
It was an open secret that Pentos used its connections in other Free Cities as proxies to hire sellswords on their behalf. But the lack of mutual loyalty between any of the Free Cities made this a risky gamble, and not owning the contract of professional soldiers whose loyalty was already in doubt was never going to be a good idea.
And now it all seemed to have become the Rose’s problem too, Brandon thought testily. Perhaps Pentos was airing its grievance with Braavos. Perhaps the semi-cockless duo had inflamed tensions or otherwise taken advantage of things to strike at them somehow. For whatever reason Brandon couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was all just bad luck. Or perhaps nothing out of the ordinary had happened and it was just freak weather or a fallen horseshoe that had stalled the word back. For everyone. At the same time. Yes.
As the day wore down, it became clear that unknown elements were moving against even the holdings they had painstakingly rented, leased and even bought outright in some cases all the way up north, at great expense and deniability through some of their naturalised kinsmen. Even those in the Braavosi Marshes and the coast facing Lorath along the Shivering Sea. They were widely considered the most dubious long-term investments Braavos had ever seen, but were in reality their most precious agricultural projects. Sugar beets from Lhazar, black pepper from Sothoryos, red and green hot peppers from the Orange Shore, bell peppers from the Summer Islands, even sugarcane from Mantarys. Crops they had painstakingly cultivated and bred for years, even decades, in and out of glass gardens, in the hopes they would eventually turn out strains capable of surviving and even thriving in the North. A day that the farmers swore waited only for his word based on the turnout of last autumn’s final harvests. And yet, now, probing raids ostensibly by Norvosi pirates and ‘Skagosi’ seemed to have started all over the coast as well. How convenient that Braavos was caught looking southward and there were no direct interests by native Braavosi worthies in those small, out of the way regions.
And then there was the rice. The rice they had laboured to breed some semblance of winter endurance into for literal
hundreds of years. The rice they had been partnered on with one of the dynastic YiTish merchant guilds since the very beginning. They would give half of all new harvests and new strains in exchange for funding half the enterprise, training in their cultivation, coordinating records of their parallel progress, and replenishing seed supplies from their share of the crops at cost in case of disaster. Which had proven a boon on several occasions when frostbite or plague swept their paddies wholesale. The YiTish had dreams of expanding northward into the lands of the Jogos Nhai, and this would give them a ready strain of their most fundamental crop to sustain any new adminsitration zones. Or that was the reason they agreed to share the techniques of YiTish rice farming in the beginning. Who knew why they still kept their part of the deal after everyone originally involved was dead and gone?
Unfortunately, there was a double catch to the enterprise. One, the duty to defend the crops fell entirely on them. That was already one clause in jeopardy, if the scoundrels currently moving against them within the city decided to expand into the swamps on the mainland. And two, the enterprise was too big to downplay and had to be run through the Iron Bank from the very beginning. Which meant collateral.
Significant collateral.
Never mind all the threshing, husking and polishing!
Brandon Stark looked upon the increasingly dotted map with dismay. At this rate, the only enterprise that
wasn’t suddenly in some danger were those earth apples that some scoundrels swore had come from Sothoryos. Alas, Brandon wasn’t far enough gone to buy into stories of randomly-occurring wonder crops, no matter how well the first harvests had gone. He’d spare his hopes for the soybeans instead. And even then only because the fields were on lease from House Reyaan and the masters of these oh so mysterious ‘raiders’ would be mad to tangle with the Iron Bank over
a farm of all things, even just by proxy through one of the Keyholder Houses.
He was well and truly ready to collapse by the time the lamp oil ran low. He gratefully accepted Dame Bessara’s invitation to stay the night and collapsed on the bed in their guestroom, his grandson next to him and his nephew on the floor between them and the door, sitting against the bedside with sheathed sword in hand.
As he faded, he thought of his lost son. He’d long ago decided he had most likely disappeared because someone had found out and taken exception to him flitting up and down the Arsenal of Braavos through that seagull of his. Never mind he’d never gotten around to putting anything on paper. Sometimes, though, he wondered if it might have been something more sinister that took him. Him and… and the others.
Mercifully, nothing disturbed him that night.
Then they took a serpent boat back to Blue Petal Manor only to find it locked down tighter than a chastity belt with smoke coming out of his bedroom.
His guards turned out to be as overzealous in denying entry as they were ashamed over the lack of alertness during the night. Which was Brandon’s own fault for stretching their numbers so thin that even his own sentries had to pull double shifts. Little wonder someone sufficiently determined would sneak in. Except that wasn’t what happened. Best as anyone could figure, this wasn’t an assassination attempt or whatever else. It was some no-name out to try and steal the cheesemonger’s weregild.
I was to die in a mugging, Brandon Stark thought in abject disbelief.
Not some Faceless or Sorrowful Man or some sworn foe. Just some robber.
He felt stunned. Then numb. Then he just felt furious.
“Osrick. Byam. Gather everyone. Go. Now.”
They went.
And when all the trusted gathered in the deepest recesses of Blue Petal Manor, the Prince of Winter in Exile stood before his people. Knights, sailors, bravos, merchants, sellswords, farmers, artists, pit fighters, whores and killers. He stood before them and laid things bare and gave his order.
“We are at war. Be they the most devious of enemies or the deepest depths of stupidity, we are at war. We are at war and it
vexes me. Collect our kin. Call in our favors. Purge the spies. Send out the assassins. By the time the Grey Ships come to bear us hence, I want this
finished.”
Grim nods and swift action was his answer.
“Osrick. You and Rodrik stay.”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Yes, grandfather.”
When next day dawned on the Bastard Daughter, the streets and canals flowed with red blood of decided more mixed ancestry than ever.
For a whole month he locked down Blue Petal Manor to all those not explicitly summoned and devoted himself to the task of nursing his grandson back to health. He was no maester, but he had skill enough for this, as did his servants with how many times his fool blood had gotten into a scrape. Or worse. All the while, the picture gained contours, shades and clarity with every new bit of news and person that answered his call and messages.
My sudden change in routine must have spooked them. He still had no idea what had set the cheesemonger and his bald arse boy against them. Failing all the shady elements from Myr to Lorath suddenly deciding to go after them and their disparate interests by pure coincidence, this reeked of a long-term plan turned arseways. If it were him, he’d have waited until spring when they usually re-invested most of the seeds back into the fields. Between that and the sudden elimination of everyone informed of the Rose’s true scope and purpose, the Kingdom in Exile could have been decapitated with none the wiser. Would have left their centuries of work up for easy takeover too. Who knew how long it would take for new leadership to emerge and gather the branches back together? How many branches would even be left at that point?
Instead, what was happening was the winter equivalent of going on a raiding spree to light up the fields wholesale. Wasteful, but worth it if you’ve already invested so many resources in the preparations. For whatever reason.
Essosi lunatics!
And this was just Pentos. The less said about Norvos, Tyrosh, Qohor and Volantis, the better.
Brandon wondered, briefly, if he was perhaps running the leakiest information net in the world, before dismissing the notion. He didn’t run such a loose house that he’d have missed
all the signs of poor spycraft. More likely the half-cocked duo – or their clients or patrons, if any – had uncovered whatever they uncovered about the Kingdom in Exile before his time. Why they’d have sat on the information so long was beyond him, but it was the only thing that made sense.
When he next emerged from Blue Petal Manor, he used the rarely used undercroft access to bypass the Iron Bank and Sealord’s men that had been all but camped on his doorstep for days. Then he walked into the Iron Bank itself blithe as you please, because certain statements had to be made. After all, didn’t the Keyholders and their many clients know better than to openly show ingratitude to being warned of major threats to their livelihoods? But of course they did! Like, say, the fact that Pentos had gone from appeasing the barbarian horsemen to allying with them, going so far as to strike deals with marauding Khals to problem-solve certain ‘Braavosi mercenaries.’ Could he and his be blamed for retaliating against the Pentoshi scum that tried to help them with blades drawn in the dark? Of course not! Why, he wasn’t even obliged to consult with them, but it paid to be courteous. It
paid to be courteous, isn’t that part and parcel of the Iron Bank’s reputation?
It was, they agreed, all the way up to the account manager overseeing their rice venture and the representative from Yi-Ti that she’d taken the liberty of summoning in his absence. Brandon, of course, graciously assured the ambitious woman that he was willing to forgive this breach of protocol. After all, it couldn’t be that the Iron Bank meant to take advantage of the chaos to renegotiate standing contracts with only half of the parties present. “Besides, surely you couldn’t have known this could leave our YiTish partner here in the lurch,” he told the ambitious woman and her frozen smile while representative Cheng fumed in the chair next to him. “Not when our rice breeding project has finally borne fruit! Surely not for the sake of some paltry collateral from days gone by!”
The visit to the Sealord’s Palace didn’t quite come at sword point, but ended more or less the way he expected. Brandon was banished along with all those similarly involved in the recent ‘unrest’ after being denied every last, ‘desperate’ appeal. He was to leave within a moonturn and never return on pain of death. That the Sealord’s office
still had no idea of the Rose’s true scope even though the Iron Bank did (and surely the Faceless Men as well) said a lot about the power of the current title holder to enforce his banishment. Such a shame that didn’t cover the nine tenths of his people he was in charge of. Such a shame he was taking at least six tenths of those people and leaving anyway with all their wealth. Such a shame that would upend Braavos’ economy for the next year or ten once they started to really liquidate their assets. He wondered how many outstanding contracts and debts the Iron Bank would pounce on in the ensuing chaos. On that note, he went and sold the deed to Blue Petal Manor to a certain naturalised ‘friend’ of the family with no outstanding debts, all for the positively ruinous price of one iron mark.
And if it so happened that he failed to mention the impending, sudden removal of thirty-some vessels from the sea trade? True, doing such a thing without letting anyone know in advance could really spook people, but what could he do? Age makes people forget the oddest things.
Vindication, when it came, was saccharine sweet and thrice as bitter. It turned out that his change in routine probably
hadn’t been the reason for the sudden escalation. That could probably be laid at the feet of his wonderful nephew the King, who’d gone and done a visit down south that quite thoroughly broke the kingdom of those Andal lunatics, and their disgusting seven-fold pretense at godliness that had no problem making exemptions from their holy word for sister-fucking abominations.
Imagine a people so disgusting, they need to make laws to make it illegal to hate them.
But now…
Bloodied maesters scattered to the five winds, humbled Andals,
child-buggering shitstain septons being killed in the streets by their own useless sheep. Each piece of news threatened to split his face.
Or would have, if not for the news on their own side of the Narrow Sea. Khals marauding all over their southernmost holdings, pillaging two thirds of their summer crops. A last ditch attempt by the ‘Skagosi’ that set a scattering of their seed granaries on fire. The Windblown fighting the Company of the Cat – again – in an area that just so happened to spill over into their stores of earth apples. Fortunately, his orders seemed to have been acted on quick enough that they’d managed to spirit away sufficient supply of all their crops to start over elsewhere.
And then there was the Company of the Rose. Their very own sellsword company, with twenty-five hundred foot and one thousand horse, altogether thirty-five hundred strong. He hoped his orders reached them before any disaster struck. And that the people on the ground interpreted his orders as ‘save what you can if you’re in the area’. Even if he technically hadn’t originally intended for the crops to be moved before winter’s end. He supposed they’d find out their ability to thrive in the North by how many of them succumbed to humidity and frostbite on the way to the mainland.
His mercurial mood lifted only when he saw the triumphant sight of their armada when passing under the Titan’s shadow.
He didn’t expect the Wolf Pack. Which, it turned out, was a common thing. The Dothraki never seemed to expect them either, or any infantry that didn’t break at the first bellowing charge of those half-naked barbarians that never saw a lance. Which, it turned out, had been the biggest blessing of them all, even if it didn’t really carry the day in the end.
Brandon Stark welcomed the disembarking Wolf Pack as heroes, but on the inside he felt as if he could drop dead and damn whatever else.
The Company of the Rose. It had been caught in a double ambush by the Bright Banners and Second Sons, who’d lured them in by ‘supplying’ themselves from the Rose’s variously owned stores across Andalos. Even now that accursed place taunted the men of the North. His orders had reached them just in time to turn them back in the nick of time. But though able to retreat in good order, losing just a handful of men, it wasn’t without wandering into a surprise raid by some now dead Khal. The chaotic, orderless, four-way disaster that followed cost them twice again those numbers and eliminated almost all of the Company’s senior leadership, and might have seen tem defeated in detail if not for the unexpected rear guard action by the Wolf Pack themselves. Tarl Ryswell. Wallace and Waller Dustin. Alan Liddle. Norton Norrey. Jon, Rod and Brandon Wull, named after him.
He was Brandon Stark, son of Artos Stark and Lysara Karstark. Father of three sons, two of whom had long since died as sellswords in the disputed lands, the third having failed to disembark after a voyage to Lys that same summer. Twin of Benjen, who’d gone looking for his vanished boy and vanished as well, his half dozen compatriots lost or found addled or not at all. And now, the list grew still. His nephew Odrick, Osrick’s twin brother. His goodson Karl Karstark, may he find again the embrace of his wife, Brandon’s own daughter. Dolman Glover, whom he’d been in talks with for a betrothal for his grandson. Gone, now, all of them like the rest. Along with everyone else in the company who knew their real purpose.
He looked inside and he felt dead.
And then he felt
livid.
To whatever hell existed with the entirety of Essos and all the vermin crawling around this dead carcass of a bygone age! At this rate those two blackguards were going to cripple the cause by sheer accident!
The rage exhausted itself like most of himself did these days.
Brandon Stark beheld the leader of the Wolf Pack sellsword company. Malyn Hornwood. Descended from Hallis Hornwood, the man who’d originally established the Wolf Pack in the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons alongside Timothy Snow. The man was of middling height, stout strength and positively ludicrous endurance on account of the way he trained his men, as he was all too boisterously regaling him without being asked.
“It never does to be too free with your approval!” The man laughingly boasted once his men had disembarked. Surprisingly quickly too. Efficiently. The full thousand of them, men of Northern blood one and all. “No man is a true member of the Pack if he can’t handle two battles, three full days and nights of forced marches, crossing a stream once by wading and once by building a brigade, building and taking down a small fort and pitching and breaking camp no less than a dozen times, all while carrying and caring for their equipment and making sure no man is left behind.” The man smiled, slapping the chest of what was probably his second in command, man clad in lamellar armor armed with a shield and halberd. “Once your lot is back on its proper feet, might be I can get them worthy of being called proper soldiers. Provided we can still keep abreast of each other of course.” The man turned serious and leaned close. Close enough to whisper. Close enough to kill. “Tell the King we’d like to come home too.”
Brandon Stark reared back and stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.
The man pulled back as well and gestured to the strange, one-wheeled contraption being repaired nearby. “You can keep the wheelbarrows. Should be some two hundred or thereabouts. Good YiTish engineering, did you know? A baggage train with these lovelies can
almost match our pace. Probably leave you and yours in the dust though. Oh well, more motivation!”
Malyn Hornwood winked and led his men away.
“I don’t think I like that man,” Rodrik muttered.
“’Course you don’t,” Osrick grunted. “He’s a man’s man. You’re a dandy with shit endurance.”
“Fuck you, nuncle.”
“Not for all the clap in the world.”
Well.
Well!
Brandon Stark turned towards the gangplank.
“Won’t my Lord Stark be needing a cabin boy on the way?” asked the biggest, fattest dockhand he’d ever seen. “The sea won’t be leading where you thought it might.”
Brandon stopped and turned to inspect the speaker with a sudden feeling of trepidation, only for his heart to skip a beat as the man turned a silver coin over his fingers, cast in the shape of a green hand.
“… Mayhaps I might.”
Thirty-one grey ships sailed into the west. Four merchanters, six carracks, five cogs and fifteen galleys, led forth by the newly restyled Snowdrift, a double-decked dromond with three masts, two hundred oarsmen, and seventy men ready for war.
“Wonders be afoot, my lord,” said his new guest, throwing off his hood to reveal blond hair so pale it ate the snowflakes falling on it. His beard was just bushy enough to hide his second chin. “Waiting for the next one is like being teased by an unpaid whore, but damned if they don’t make you look forward to more.” There was a small, round box in the man’s hand, made of bone. He played almost obsessively with the lid, clack-clack-clack showing glimpses of a two-ended needle. “But I can see sailing’s not your passion.”
So much for hiding the sad state of his sea legs. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“No matter.” The man’s other hand came from beneath his cloak, briefly revealing green stitching shaped like a lamprey’s maw. It held a booklet of some kind. “Perhaps a spot of good reading? I hear it’s all the rage up in Winterfell these days. This here in particular seems to have caught right quick with you Braavosi.”
“’Them’ Braavosi, not ‘you.’” Brandon took it and traced its surface. It was made out of exquisitely high-quality paper covered in the neatest letters he’d ever seen, if somewhat faded. There was a drawing of a strange blob with hairs on the front. Above it were words.
Science is a clear understanding of truth, the enlightenment of reason. Below, more words. The title. It read:
On the Killing of Plagues
A Treatise on Unseen Morphons and the Use of Mold Extract as Infection Treatment: A Double-Blind, Randomised, Sugar Pill-Controlled Trial
By Lord Brandon Stark of Winterfell, Maester Qyburn, Maester Luwin and Archmaester Marwyn, with assistance by Acolytes Colemon, Rhodry and Tybald Snow.
Journal of Scientific Inquiry, Volume 1, Issue 1, published on 05.02.274 by the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning.
Brandon Stark felt a strange feeling that he decided not to look at too closely lest it be smothered along with everything else. He wouldn’t last much longer, he knew. He’d be lucky if he saw Winterfell. But as he stood atop the deck of the Northern Fleet’s flagship, bearing forth the bounty of work done over centuries and years, he decided that he didn’t really care what the half-cocked wonder duo was thinking after all. A lesser son of a lesser house under a lesser Cause might have lost all sense and dropped everything in order to swear vengeance against those two, but he had more important things to do. He’d left behind competent men and women to oversee the transition. He no longer needed constant watch by his blood to defend from murders. And he was looking forward to no longer having to fight on behalf of slavers, no matter how clean and shiny their coin.
The Essosi cunts could have their shit continent. He was going home.