The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun
broke over the Vale of Arryn. Catelyn Stark watched the light
spread, her hands resting on the delicate carved stone of the
balustrade outside her window. Below her the world turned from
black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests.
Pale white mists rose off Alyssa’s Tears, where the ghost
waters plunged over the shoulder of the mountain to begin their
long tumble down the face of the Giant’s Lance. Catelyn could
feel the faint touch of spray on her face.
Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her
children slain, and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in
death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her
weeping watered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had
loved were buried. Alyssa had been dead six thousand years now, and
still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the valley floor far
below. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would
make when she died. “Tell me the rest of it,” she
said.
“The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock,”
Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from the room behind her. “Your
brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock, demanding that
Lord Tywin proclaim his intent, but he has had no answer. Edmure
has commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper to guard the pass below the
Golden Tooth. He vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully
land without first watering it with Lannister blood.”
Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to
lighten her mood; it seemed cruel for a day to dawn so fair and end
so foul as this one promised to. “Edmure has sent riders and
made vows,” she said, “but Edmure is not the Lord of
Riverrun. What of my lord father?”
“The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my
lady.” Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. They had grown in
white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while he was recovering
from his wounds; he looked almost himself again.
“My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun
over to Edmure unless he was very sick,” she said, worried.
“I should have been woken as soon as this bird
arrived.”
“Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep,
Maester Colemon told me.”
“I should have been woken,” she insisted.
“The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with
you after the combat,” Ser Rodrik said.
“Then she still plans to go through with this
mummer’s farce?” Catelyn grimaced. “The dwarf has
played her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to hear the
tune. Whatever happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, it is past time we
took our leave. My place is at Winterfell with my sons. If you are
strong enough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to see us
to Gulltown. We can take ship from there.”
“Another ship?” Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet
he managed not to shudder. “As you say, my lady.”
The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the
servants Lysa had given her. If she spoke to her sister before the
duel, perhaps she could change her mind, she thought as they
dressed her. Lysa’s policies varied with her moods, and her
moods changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had
grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy,
reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant.
When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them
that Tyrion Lannister wished to confess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to
have the dwarf brought to them privately, but no, nothing would do
but that her sister must make a show of him before half the Vale.
And now this . . .
“Lannister is my prisoner,” she told Ser Rodrik as
they descended the tower stairs and made their way through the
Eyrie’s cold white halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a
silvered belt. “My sister must be reminded of
that.”
At the doors to Lysa’s apartments, they met her uncle
storming out. “Going to join the fool’s
festival?” Ser Brynden snapped. “I’d tell you to
slap some sense into your sister, if I thought it would do any
good, but you’d only bruise your hand.”
“There was a bird from Riverrun,” Catelyn began,
“a letter from Edmure . . . ”
“I know, child.” The black fish that fastened his
cloak was Brynden’s only concession to ornament. “I had
to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to
take a thousand seasoned men and ride for Riverrun with all haste.
Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannot spare a thousand
swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the
Gate. Your place is here.” A gust of childish laughter
drifted through the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanced
darkly over his shoulder. “Well, I told her she could bloody
well find herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no, I am
still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall.”
Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. “Alone? You know as
well as I that you will never survive the high road. Ser Rodrik and
I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you
your thousand men. Riverrun will not fight alone.”
Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement.
“As you say. It’s the long way home, but I’m more
like to get there. I’ll wait for you below.” He went
striding off, his cloak swirling behind him.
Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the
doors to the high, nervous sound of a child’s giggles.
Lysa’s apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of
dirt and grass planted with blue flowers and ringed on all sides by
tall white towers. The builders had intended it as a godswood, but
the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter
how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a
weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass
and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there
the two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of
Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods.
Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of
sapphires and moonstones around her milk-white neck, was holding
court on the terrace overlooking the scene of the combat,
surrounded by her knights, retainers, and lords high and low. Most
of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the Vale of Arryn
by her side. From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was
a vain hope.
A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert’s
chair; there the Lord of the Eyrie sat, giggling and clapping his
hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in blue-and-white motley made two
wooden knights hack and slash at each other. Pitchers of thick
cream and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and the guests
were sipping a sweet orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups.
A fool’s festival, Brynden had called it, and small
wonder.
Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord
Hunter’s, and nibbled a blackberry from the point of Ser Lyn
Corbray’s dagger. They were the suitors who stood highest in
Lysa’s favor . . . today, at least. Catelyn would have been
hard-pressed to say which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was
even older than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and
cursed with three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than the
last. Ser Lyn was a different sort of folly; lean and handsome,
heir to an ancient but impoverished house, but vain, reckless,
hot-tempered . . . and, it was whispered, notoriously uninterested
in the intimate charms of women.
When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly
embrace and a moist kiss on the cheek. “Isn’t it a
lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the
wine, sweet sister. Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for it,
from his own cellars.”
“Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk.”
“After,” her sister promised, already beginning to
turn away from her.
“Now.” Catelyn spoke more loudly than she’d
intended. Men were turning to look. “Lysa, you cannot mean to
go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is
only food for crows. And if his champion should prevail
here—”
“Small chance of that, my lady,” Lord Hunter assured
her, patting her shoulder with a liver-spotted hand. “Ser
Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make short work of the
sellsword.”
“Will he, my lord?” Catelyn said coolly. “I
wonder.” She had seen Bronn fight on the high road; it was no
accident that he had survived the journey while other men had died.
He moved like a panther, and that ugly sword of his seemed a part
of his arm.
Lysa’s suitors were gathering around them like bees round
a blossom. “Women understand little of these things,”
Ser Morton Waynwood said. “Ser Vardis is a knight, sweet
lady. This other fellow, well, his sort are all cowards at heart.
Useful enough in a battle, with thousands of their fellows around
them, but stand them up alone and the manhood leaks right out of
them.”
“Say you have the truth of it, then,” Catelyn said
with a courtesy that made her mouth ache. “What will we gain
by the dwarf’s death? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a
fig that we gave his brother a trial before we flung him off a
mountain?”
“Behead the man,” Ser Lyn Corbray suggested.
“When the Kingslayer receives the Imp’s head, it will
be a warning to him,”
Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair.
“Lord Robert wants to see him fly,” she said, as if
that settled the matter. “And the Imp has only himself to
blame. It was he who demanded a trial by combat.”
“Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if
she’d wished to,” Lord Hunter intoned ponderously.
Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister.
“I remind you, Tyrion Lannister is my prisoner.”
“And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord
husband!” Her voice rose. “He poisoned the Hand of the
King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see him
pay!” Whirling, her skirts swinging around her, Lysa stalked
across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors
excused themselves with cool nods and trailed after her.
“Do you think he did?” Ser Rodrik asked her quietly
when they were alone again. “Murder Lord Jon, that is? The
Imp still denies it, and most fiercely . . . ”
“I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn,”
Catelyn replied, “but whether it was Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or
the queen, or all of them together, I could not begin to
say.” Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she had sent to
Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer . . . perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe
behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south.
Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sister’s letter
before reading it.
Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. “Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarf’s work, true enough. Or Cersei’s.
It’s said poison is a woman’s weapon, begging your
pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer, now . . . I have no great liking for the man, but he’s not the sort.
Too fond of the sight of blood on that golden sword of his. Was it
poison, my lady?”
Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. “How else could they make
it look a natural death?” Behind her, Lord Robert shrieked
with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the other in half,
spilling a flood of red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at
her nephew and sighed. “The boy is utterly without
discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless he is
taken away from his mother for a time.”
“His lord father agreed with you,” said a voice at
her elbow. She turned to behold Maester Colemon, a cup of wine in
his hand. “He was planning to send the boy to Dragonstone for
fostering, you know . . . oh, but I’m speaking out of
turn.” The apple of his throat bobbed anxiously beneath the
loose maester’s chain. “I fear I’ve had too much
of Lord Hunter’s excellent wine. The prospect of bloodshed
has my nerves all a-fray . . . ”
“You are mistaken, Maester,” Catelyn said. “It
was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and those arrangements were
made after the Hand’s death, without my sister’s
consent.”
The maester’s head jerked so vigorously at the end of his
absurdly long neck that he looked half a puppet himself. “No,
begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord Jon
who—”
A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls
alike broke off what they were doing and moved to the balustrade.
Below, two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister.
The Eyrie’s plump septon escorted him to the statue in the
center of the garden, a weeping woman carved in veined white
marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa.
“The bad little man,” Lord Robert said, giggling.
“Mother, can I make him fly? I want to see him
fly.”
“Later, my sweet baby,” Lysa promised him.
“Trial first,” drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, “then
execution.”
A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of
the garden. The knight was attended by two young squires, the
sellsword by the Eyrie’s master-at-arms.
Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy
plate armor over mail and padded surcoat. Large circular rondels,
enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-and-falcon sigil of House
Arryn, protected the vulnerable juncture of arm and breast. A skirt
of lobstered metal covered him from waist to midthigh, while a
solid gorget encircled his throat. Falcon’s wings sprouted
from the temples of his helm, and his visor was a pointed metal
beak with a narrow slit for vision.
Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the
knight. He wore only a shirt of black oiled ringmail over boiled
leather, a round steel halfhelm with a noseguard, and a mail coif.
High leather boots with steel shinguards gave some protection to
his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn into the fingers of his
gloves. Yet Catelyn noted that the sellsword stood half a hand
taller than his foe, with a longer reach . . . and Bronn was fifteen
years younger, if she was any judge.
They knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each
other, with Lannister between them. The septon removed a faceted
crystal sphere from the soft cloth bag at his waist. He lifted it
high above his head, and the light shattered. Rainbows danced
across the Imp’s face. In a high, solemn, singsong voice, the
septon asked the gods to look down and bear witness, to find the
truth in this man’s soul, to grant him life and freedom if he
was innocent, death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the
surrounding towers.
When the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal
and made a hasty departure. Tyrion leaned over and whispered
something in Bronn’s ear before the guardsmen led him away.
The sellsword rose laughing and brushed a blade of grass from his
knee.
Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was
fidgeting impatiently in his elevated chair. “When are they
going to fight?” he asked plaintively.
Ser Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires.
The other brought him a triangular shield almost four feet tall,
heavy oak dotted with iron studs. They strapped it to his left
forearm. When Lysa’s master-at-arms offered Bronn a similar
shield, the sellsword spat and waved it away. Three days growth of
coarse black beard covered his jaw and cheeks, but if he did not
shave it was not for want of a razor; the edge of his sword had the
dangerous glimmer of steel that had been honed every day for hours,
until it was too sharp to touch.
Ser Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire placed a
handsome double-edged longsword in his grasp. The blade was
engraved with a delicate silver tracery of a mountain sky; its
pommel was a falcon’s head, its crossguard fashioned into the
shape of wings. “I had that sword crafted for Jon in
King’s Landing,” Lysa told her guests proudly as they
watched Ser Vardis try a practice cut. “He wore it whenever
he sat the Iron Throne in King Robert’s place. Isn’t it
a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that our champion avenge
Jon with his own blade.”
The engraved silver blade was beautiful beyond a doubt, but it
seemed to Catelyn that Ser Vardis might have been more comfortable
with his own sword. Yet she said nothing; she was weary of futile
arguments with her sister.
“Make them fight!” Lord Robert called out.
Ser Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in
salute. “For the Eyrie and the Vale!”
Tyrion Lannister had been seated on a balcony across the garden,
flanked by his guards. It was to him that Bronn turned with a
cursory salute.
“They await your command,” Lady Lysa said to her
lord son.
“Fight!” the boy screamed, his arms trembling as
they clutched at his chair.
Ser Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned
to face him. Their swords rang together, once, twice, a testing.
The sellsword backed off a step. The knight came after, holding his
shield before him. He tried a slash, but Bronn jerked back, just
out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air. Bronn circled to
his right. Ser Vardis turned to follow, keeping his shield between
them. The knight pressed forward, placing each foot carefully on
the uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playing
over his lips. Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away
from him, hopping lightly over a low, moss-covered stone. Now the
sellsword circled left, away from the shield, toward the
knight’s unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his
legs, but he did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther to his
left. Ser Vardis turned in place.
“The man is craven,” Lord Hunter declared.
“Stand and fight, coward! “ Other voices echoed the
sentiment.
Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt
shake of his head. “He wants to make Ser Vardis chase him.
The weight of armor and shield will tire even the strongest
man.”
She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of
her life, had viewed half a hundred tourneys in her time, but this
was something different and deadlier: a dance where the smallest
misstep meant death. And as she watched, the memory of another duel
in another time came back to Catelyn Stark, as vivid as if it had
been yesterday.
They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that
Petyr wore only helm and breastplate and mail, he took off most of
his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor he might wear, but she
had turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon Stark,
and so it was to him that she gave her token, a pale blue handscarf
she had embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she
pressed it into his hand, she pleaded with him. “He is only a
foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would grieve
me to see him die.” And her betrothed looked at her with the
cool grey eyes of a Stark and promised to spare the boy who loved
her.
That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a
man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey
and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step,
until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds.
“Yield!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would
only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was
lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal
backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into
the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain
that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured
“Cat” as the bright blood came flowing out between his
mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that.
That was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day
she was brought before him in King’s Landing.
A fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to
leave Riverrun, but her lord father forbade her to visit him in the
tower where he lay abed. Lysa helped their maester nurse him; she
had been softer and shyer in those days. Edmure had called on him
as well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her brother had acted as
Brandon’s squire at the duel, and Littlefinger would not
forgive that. As soon as he was strong enough to be moved, Lord
Hoster Tully sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish
his healing on the Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where
he’d been born.
The ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the
present. Ser Vardis was coming hard at Bronn, driving into him with
shield and sword. The sellsword scrambled backward, checking each
blow, stepping lithely over rock and root, his eyes never leaving
his foe. He was quicker, Catelyn saw; the knight’s silvered
sword never came near to touching him, but his own ugly grey blade
hacked a notch from Ser Vardis’s shoulder plate.
The brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun
when Bronn sidestepped and slid behind the statue of the weeping
woman. Ser Vardis lunged at where he had been, striking a spark off
the pale marble of Alyssa’s thigh.
“They’re not fighting good, Mother,” the Lord
of the Eyrie complained. “I want them to fight.”
“They will, sweet baby,” his mother soothed him.
“The sellsword can’t run all day.”
Some of the lords on Lysa’s terrace were making wry jests
as they refilled their wine cups, but across the garden, Tyrion
Lannister’s mismatched eyes watched the champions dance as if
there were nothing else in the world.
Bronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still
moving left, aiming a two-handed cut at the knight’s
unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked, but clumsily, and the
sellsword’s blade flashed upward at his head. Metal rang, and
a falcon’s wing collapsed with a crunch. Ser Vardis took a
half step back to brace himself, raised his shield. Oak chips flew
as Bronn’s sword hacked at the wooden wall. The sellsword
stepped left again, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis
across the stomach, the razor edge of his blade leaving a bright
gash when it bit into the knight’s plate.
Ser Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade
descending in a savage arc. Bronn slammed it aside and danced away.
The knight crashed into the weeping woman, rocking her on her
plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward, his head turning this way
and that as he searched for his foe. The slit visor of his helm
narrowed his vision.
“Behind you, ser!” Lord Hunter shouted, too late.
Bronn brought his sword down with both hands, catching Ser Vardis
in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin lobstered metal that
protected the joint crunched. The knight grunted, turning,
wrenching his weapon up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The
swords flew at each other, and their steel song filled the garden
and rang off the white towers of the Eyrie.
“Ser Vardis is hurt,” Ser Rodrik said, his voice
grave.
Catelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the
bright finger of blood running along the knight’s forearm,
the wetness inside the elbow joint. Every parry was a little slower
and a little lower than the one before. Ser Vardis turned his side
to his foe, trying to use his shield to block instead, but Bronn
slid around him, quick as a cat. The sellsword seemed to be getting
stronger. His cuts were leaving their marks now. Deep shiny gashes
gleamed all over the knight’s armor, on his right thigh, his
beaked visor, crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the
front of his gorget. The moon-and-falcon rondel over Ser
Vardis’s right arm was sheared clean in half, hanging by its
strap. They could hear his labored breath, rattling through the air
holes in his visor.
Blind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of
the Vale could see what was happening below them, yet her sister
could not. “Enough, Ser Vardis!” Lady Lysa called down.
“Finish him now, my baby is growing tired.”
And it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his
lady’s command, even to the last. One moment he was reeling
backward, half-crouched behind his scarred shield; the next he
charged. The sudden bull rush caught Bronn off balance. Ser Vardis
crashed into him and slammed the lip of his shield into the
sellsword’s face. Almost, almost, Bronn lost his feet . . . he staggered back, tripped over a rock, and caught hold of the
weeping woman to keep his balance. Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after him, using
both hands to raise his sword. His right arm was blood from elbow
to fingers now, yet his last desperate blow would have opened Bronn
from neck to navel . . . if the sellsword had stood to receive
it.
But Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryn’s beautiful engraved
silver sword glanced off the marble elbow of the weeping woman and
snapped clean a third of the way up the blade. Bronn put his
shoulder into the statue’s back. The weathered likeness of
Alyssa Arryn tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser Vardis
Egen went down beneath her.
Bronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his
shattered rondel aside to expose the weak spot between arm and
breastplate. Ser Vardis was lying on his side, pinned beneath the
broken torso of the weeping woman. Catelyn heard the knight groan
as the sellsword lifted his blade with both hands and drove it down
and in with all his weight behind it, under the arm and through the
ribs. Ser Vardis Egen shuddered and lay still.
Silence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and
let it fall to the grass. His lip was smashed and bloody where the
shield had caught him, and his coal-black hair was soaked with
sweat. He spit out a broken tooth.
“Is it over, Mother?” the Lord of the Eyrie
asked. No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it’s only now
beginning.
“Yes,” Lysa said glumly, her voice as cold and dead
as the captain of her guard.
“Can I make the little man fly now?”
Across the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. “Not
this little man,” he said. “This little man is going
down in the turnip hoist, thank you very much.”
“You presume—” Lysa began.
“I presume that House Arryn remembers its own
words,” the Imp said. “As High as Honor.”
“You promised I could make him fly,” the Lord of the
Eyrie screamed at his mother. He began to shake.
Lady Lysa’s face was flushed with fury. “The gods
have seen fit to proclaim him innocent, child. We have no choice
but to free him.” She lifted her voice. “Guards. Take
my lord of Lannister and his . . . creature here out of my sight.
Escort them to the Bloody Gate and set them free. See that they
have horses and supplies sufficient to reach the Trident, and make
certain all their goods and weapons are returned to them. They
shall need them on the high road.”
“The high road,” Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed
herself a faint, satisfied smile. It was another sort of death
sentence, Catelyn realized. Tyrion Lannister must know that as
well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady Arryn with a mocking bow.
“As you command, my lady,” he said. “I believe we
know the way.”
The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun
broke over the Vale of Arryn. Catelyn Stark watched the light
spread, her hands resting on the delicate carved stone of the
balustrade outside her window. Below her the world turned from
black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests.
Pale white mists rose off Alyssa’s Tears, where the ghost
waters plunged over the shoulder of the mountain to begin their
long tumble down the face of the Giant’s Lance. Catelyn could
feel the faint touch of spray on her face.
Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her
children slain, and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in
death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her
weeping watered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had
loved were buried. Alyssa had been dead six thousand years now, and
still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the valley floor far
below. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would
make when she died. “Tell me the rest of it,” she
said.
“The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock,”
Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from the room behind her. “Your
brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock, demanding that
Lord Tywin proclaim his intent, but he has had no answer. Edmure
has commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper to guard the pass below the
Golden Tooth. He vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully
land without first watering it with Lannister blood.”
Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to
lighten her mood; it seemed cruel for a day to dawn so fair and end
so foul as this one promised to. “Edmure has sent riders and
made vows,” she said, “but Edmure is not the Lord of
Riverrun. What of my lord father?”
“The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my
lady.” Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. They had grown in
white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while he was recovering
from his wounds; he looked almost himself again.
“My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun
over to Edmure unless he was very sick,” she said, worried.
“I should have been woken as soon as this bird
arrived.”
“Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep,
Maester Colemon told me.”
“I should have been woken,” she insisted.
“The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with
you after the combat,” Ser Rodrik said.
“Then she still plans to go through with this
mummer’s farce?” Catelyn grimaced. “The dwarf has
played her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to hear the
tune. Whatever happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, it is past time we
took our leave. My place is at Winterfell with my sons. If you are
strong enough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to see us
to Gulltown. We can take ship from there.”
“Another ship?” Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet
he managed not to shudder. “As you say, my lady.”
The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the
servants Lysa had given her. If she spoke to her sister before the
duel, perhaps she could change her mind, she thought as they
dressed her. Lysa’s policies varied with her moods, and her
moods changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had
grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy,
reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant.
When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them
that Tyrion Lannister wished to confess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to
have the dwarf brought to them privately, but no, nothing would do
but that her sister must make a show of him before half the Vale.
And now this . . .
“Lannister is my prisoner,” she told Ser Rodrik as
they descended the tower stairs and made their way through the
Eyrie’s cold white halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a
silvered belt. “My sister must be reminded of
that.”
At the doors to Lysa’s apartments, they met her uncle
storming out. “Going to join the fool’s
festival?” Ser Brynden snapped. “I’d tell you to
slap some sense into your sister, if I thought it would do any
good, but you’d only bruise your hand.”
“There was a bird from Riverrun,” Catelyn began,
“a letter from Edmure . . . ”
“I know, child.” The black fish that fastened his
cloak was Brynden’s only concession to ornament. “I had
to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to
take a thousand seasoned men and ride for Riverrun with all haste.
Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannot spare a thousand
swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the
Gate. Your place is here.” A gust of childish laughter
drifted through the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanced
darkly over his shoulder. “Well, I told her she could bloody
well find herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no, I am
still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall.”
Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. “Alone? You know as
well as I that you will never survive the high road. Ser Rodrik and
I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you
your thousand men. Riverrun will not fight alone.”
Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement.
“As you say. It’s the long way home, but I’m more
like to get there. I’ll wait for you below.” He went
striding off, his cloak swirling behind him.
Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the
doors to the high, nervous sound of a child’s giggles.
Lysa’s apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of
dirt and grass planted with blue flowers and ringed on all sides by
tall white towers. The builders had intended it as a godswood, but
the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter
how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a
weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass
and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there
the two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of
Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods.
Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of
sapphires and moonstones around her milk-white neck, was holding
court on the terrace overlooking the scene of the combat,
surrounded by her knights, retainers, and lords high and low. Most
of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the Vale of Arryn
by her side. From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was
a vain hope.
A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert’s
chair; there the Lord of the Eyrie sat, giggling and clapping his
hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in blue-and-white motley made two
wooden knights hack and slash at each other. Pitchers of thick
cream and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and the guests
were sipping a sweet orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups.
A fool’s festival, Brynden had called it, and small
wonder.
Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord
Hunter’s, and nibbled a blackberry from the point of Ser Lyn
Corbray’s dagger. They were the suitors who stood highest in
Lysa’s favor . . . today, at least. Catelyn would have been
hard-pressed to say which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was
even older than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and
cursed with three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than the
last. Ser Lyn was a different sort of folly; lean and handsome,
heir to an ancient but impoverished house, but vain, reckless,
hot-tempered . . . and, it was whispered, notoriously uninterested
in the intimate charms of women.
When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly
embrace and a moist kiss on the cheek. “Isn’t it a
lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the
wine, sweet sister. Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for it,
from his own cellars.”
“Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk.”
“After,” her sister promised, already beginning to
turn away from her.
“Now.” Catelyn spoke more loudly than she’d
intended. Men were turning to look. “Lysa, you cannot mean to
go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is
only food for crows. And if his champion should prevail
here—”
“Small chance of that, my lady,” Lord Hunter assured
her, patting her shoulder with a liver-spotted hand. “Ser
Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make short work of the
sellsword.”
“Will he, my lord?” Catelyn said coolly. “I
wonder.” She had seen Bronn fight on the high road; it was no
accident that he had survived the journey while other men had died.
He moved like a panther, and that ugly sword of his seemed a part
of his arm.
Lysa’s suitors were gathering around them like bees round
a blossom. “Women understand little of these things,”
Ser Morton Waynwood said. “Ser Vardis is a knight, sweet
lady. This other fellow, well, his sort are all cowards at heart.
Useful enough in a battle, with thousands of their fellows around
them, but stand them up alone and the manhood leaks right out of
them.”
“Say you have the truth of it, then,” Catelyn said
with a courtesy that made her mouth ache. “What will we gain
by the dwarf’s death? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a
fig that we gave his brother a trial before we flung him off a
mountain?”
“Behead the man,” Ser Lyn Corbray suggested.
“When the Kingslayer receives the Imp’s head, it will
be a warning to him,”
Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair.
“Lord Robert wants to see him fly,” she said, as if
that settled the matter. “And the Imp has only himself to
blame. It was he who demanded a trial by combat.”
“Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if
she’d wished to,” Lord Hunter intoned ponderously.
Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister.
“I remind you, Tyrion Lannister is my prisoner.”
“And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord
husband!” Her voice rose. “He poisoned the Hand of the
King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see him
pay!” Whirling, her skirts swinging around her, Lysa stalked
across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors
excused themselves with cool nods and trailed after her.
“Do you think he did?” Ser Rodrik asked her quietly
when they were alone again. “Murder Lord Jon, that is? The
Imp still denies it, and most fiercely . . . ”
“I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn,”
Catelyn replied, “but whether it was Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or
the queen, or all of them together, I could not begin to
say.” Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she had sent to
Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer . . . perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe
behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south.
Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sister’s letter
before reading it.
Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. “Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarf’s work, true enough. Or Cersei’s.
It’s said poison is a woman’s weapon, begging your
pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer, now . . . I have no great liking for the man, but he’s not the sort.
Too fond of the sight of blood on that golden sword of his. Was it
poison, my lady?”
Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. “How else could they make
it look a natural death?” Behind her, Lord Robert shrieked
with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the other in half,
spilling a flood of red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at
her nephew and sighed. “The boy is utterly without
discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless he is
taken away from his mother for a time.”
“His lord father agreed with you,” said a voice at
her elbow. She turned to behold Maester Colemon, a cup of wine in
his hand. “He was planning to send the boy to Dragonstone for
fostering, you know . . . oh, but I’m speaking out of
turn.” The apple of his throat bobbed anxiously beneath the
loose maester’s chain. “I fear I’ve had too much
of Lord Hunter’s excellent wine. The prospect of bloodshed
has my nerves all a-fray . . . ”
“You are mistaken, Maester,” Catelyn said. “It
was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and those arrangements were
made after the Hand’s death, without my sister’s
consent.”
The maester’s head jerked so vigorously at the end of his
absurdly long neck that he looked half a puppet himself. “No,
begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord Jon
who—”
A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls
alike broke off what they were doing and moved to the balustrade.
Below, two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister.
The Eyrie’s plump septon escorted him to the statue in the
center of the garden, a weeping woman carved in veined white
marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa.
“The bad little man,” Lord Robert said, giggling.
“Mother, can I make him fly? I want to see him
fly.”
“Later, my sweet baby,” Lysa promised him.
“Trial first,” drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, “then
execution.”
A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of
the garden. The knight was attended by two young squires, the
sellsword by the Eyrie’s master-at-arms.
Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy
plate armor over mail and padded surcoat. Large circular rondels,
enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-and-falcon sigil of House
Arryn, protected the vulnerable juncture of arm and breast. A skirt
of lobstered metal covered him from waist to midthigh, while a
solid gorget encircled his throat. Falcon’s wings sprouted
from the temples of his helm, and his visor was a pointed metal
beak with a narrow slit for vision.
Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the
knight. He wore only a shirt of black oiled ringmail over boiled
leather, a round steel halfhelm with a noseguard, and a mail coif.
High leather boots with steel shinguards gave some protection to
his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn into the fingers of his
gloves. Yet Catelyn noted that the sellsword stood half a hand
taller than his foe, with a longer reach . . . and Bronn was fifteen
years younger, if she was any judge.
They knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each
other, with Lannister between them. The septon removed a faceted
crystal sphere from the soft cloth bag at his waist. He lifted it
high above his head, and the light shattered. Rainbows danced
across the Imp’s face. In a high, solemn, singsong voice, the
septon asked the gods to look down and bear witness, to find the
truth in this man’s soul, to grant him life and freedom if he
was innocent, death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the
surrounding towers.
When the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal
and made a hasty departure. Tyrion leaned over and whispered
something in Bronn’s ear before the guardsmen led him away.
The sellsword rose laughing and brushed a blade of grass from his
knee.
Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was
fidgeting impatiently in his elevated chair. “When are they
going to fight?” he asked plaintively.
Ser Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires.
The other brought him a triangular shield almost four feet tall,
heavy oak dotted with iron studs. They strapped it to his left
forearm. When Lysa’s master-at-arms offered Bronn a similar
shield, the sellsword spat and waved it away. Three days growth of
coarse black beard covered his jaw and cheeks, but if he did not
shave it was not for want of a razor; the edge of his sword had the
dangerous glimmer of steel that had been honed every day for hours,
until it was too sharp to touch.
Ser Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire placed a
handsome double-edged longsword in his grasp. The blade was
engraved with a delicate silver tracery of a mountain sky; its
pommel was a falcon’s head, its crossguard fashioned into the
shape of wings. “I had that sword crafted for Jon in
King’s Landing,” Lysa told her guests proudly as they
watched Ser Vardis try a practice cut. “He wore it whenever
he sat the Iron Throne in King Robert’s place. Isn’t it
a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that our champion avenge
Jon with his own blade.”
The engraved silver blade was beautiful beyond a doubt, but it
seemed to Catelyn that Ser Vardis might have been more comfortable
with his own sword. Yet she said nothing; she was weary of futile
arguments with her sister.
“Make them fight!” Lord Robert called out.
Ser Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in
salute. “For the Eyrie and the Vale!”
Tyrion Lannister had been seated on a balcony across the garden,
flanked by his guards. It was to him that Bronn turned with a
cursory salute.
“They await your command,” Lady Lysa said to her
lord son.
“Fight!” the boy screamed, his arms trembling as
they clutched at his chair.
Ser Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned
to face him. Their swords rang together, once, twice, a testing.
The sellsword backed off a step. The knight came after, holding his
shield before him. He tried a slash, but Bronn jerked back, just
out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air. Bronn circled to
his right. Ser Vardis turned to follow, keeping his shield between
them. The knight pressed forward, placing each foot carefully on
the uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playing
over his lips. Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away
from him, hopping lightly over a low, moss-covered stone. Now the
sellsword circled left, away from the shield, toward the
knight’s unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his
legs, but he did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther to his
left. Ser Vardis turned in place.
“The man is craven,” Lord Hunter declared.
“Stand and fight, coward! “ Other voices echoed the
sentiment.
Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt
shake of his head. “He wants to make Ser Vardis chase him.
The weight of armor and shield will tire even the strongest
man.”
She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of
her life, had viewed half a hundred tourneys in her time, but this
was something different and deadlier: a dance where the smallest
misstep meant death. And as she watched, the memory of another duel
in another time came back to Catelyn Stark, as vivid as if it had
been yesterday.
They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that
Petyr wore only helm and breastplate and mail, he took off most of
his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor he might wear, but she
had turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon Stark,
and so it was to him that she gave her token, a pale blue handscarf
she had embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she
pressed it into his hand, she pleaded with him. “He is only a
foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would grieve
me to see him die.” And her betrothed looked at her with the
cool grey eyes of a Stark and promised to spare the boy who loved
her.
That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a
man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey
and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step,
until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds.
“Yield!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would
only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was
lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal
backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into
the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain
that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured
“Cat” as the bright blood came flowing out between his
mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that.
That was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day
she was brought before him in King’s Landing.
A fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to
leave Riverrun, but her lord father forbade her to visit him in the
tower where he lay abed. Lysa helped their maester nurse him; she
had been softer and shyer in those days. Edmure had called on him
as well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her brother had acted as
Brandon’s squire at the duel, and Littlefinger would not
forgive that. As soon as he was strong enough to be moved, Lord
Hoster Tully sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish
his healing on the Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where
he’d been born.
The ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the
present. Ser Vardis was coming hard at Bronn, driving into him with
shield and sword. The sellsword scrambled backward, checking each
blow, stepping lithely over rock and root, his eyes never leaving
his foe. He was quicker, Catelyn saw; the knight’s silvered
sword never came near to touching him, but his own ugly grey blade
hacked a notch from Ser Vardis’s shoulder plate.
The brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun
when Bronn sidestepped and slid behind the statue of the weeping
woman. Ser Vardis lunged at where he had been, striking a spark off
the pale marble of Alyssa’s thigh.
“They’re not fighting good, Mother,” the Lord
of the Eyrie complained. “I want them to fight.”
“They will, sweet baby,” his mother soothed him.
“The sellsword can’t run all day.”
Some of the lords on Lysa’s terrace were making wry jests
as they refilled their wine cups, but across the garden, Tyrion
Lannister’s mismatched eyes watched the champions dance as if
there were nothing else in the world.
Bronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still
moving left, aiming a two-handed cut at the knight’s
unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked, but clumsily, and the
sellsword’s blade flashed upward at his head. Metal rang, and
a falcon’s wing collapsed with a crunch. Ser Vardis took a
half step back to brace himself, raised his shield. Oak chips flew
as Bronn’s sword hacked at the wooden wall. The sellsword
stepped left again, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis
across the stomach, the razor edge of his blade leaving a bright
gash when it bit into the knight’s plate.
Ser Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade
descending in a savage arc. Bronn slammed it aside and danced away.
The knight crashed into the weeping woman, rocking her on her
plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward, his head turning this way
and that as he searched for his foe. The slit visor of his helm
narrowed his vision.
“Behind you, ser!” Lord Hunter shouted, too late.
Bronn brought his sword down with both hands, catching Ser Vardis
in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin lobstered metal that
protected the joint crunched. The knight grunted, turning,
wrenching his weapon up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The
swords flew at each other, and their steel song filled the garden
and rang off the white towers of the Eyrie.
“Ser Vardis is hurt,” Ser Rodrik said, his voice
grave.
Catelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the
bright finger of blood running along the knight’s forearm,
the wetness inside the elbow joint. Every parry was a little slower
and a little lower than the one before. Ser Vardis turned his side
to his foe, trying to use his shield to block instead, but Bronn
slid around him, quick as a cat. The sellsword seemed to be getting
stronger. His cuts were leaving their marks now. Deep shiny gashes
gleamed all over the knight’s armor, on his right thigh, his
beaked visor, crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the
front of his gorget. The moon-and-falcon rondel over Ser
Vardis’s right arm was sheared clean in half, hanging by its
strap. They could hear his labored breath, rattling through the air
holes in his visor.
Blind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of
the Vale could see what was happening below them, yet her sister
could not. “Enough, Ser Vardis!” Lady Lysa called down.
“Finish him now, my baby is growing tired.”
And it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his
lady’s command, even to the last. One moment he was reeling
backward, half-crouched behind his scarred shield; the next he
charged. The sudden bull rush caught Bronn off balance. Ser Vardis
crashed into him and slammed the lip of his shield into the
sellsword’s face. Almost, almost, Bronn lost his feet . . . he staggered back, tripped over a rock, and caught hold of the
weeping woman to keep his balance. Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after him, using
both hands to raise his sword. His right arm was blood from elbow
to fingers now, yet his last desperate blow would have opened Bronn
from neck to navel . . . if the sellsword had stood to receive
it.
But Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryn’s beautiful engraved
silver sword glanced off the marble elbow of the weeping woman and
snapped clean a third of the way up the blade. Bronn put his
shoulder into the statue’s back. The weathered likeness of
Alyssa Arryn tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser Vardis
Egen went down beneath her.
Bronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his
shattered rondel aside to expose the weak spot between arm and
breastplate. Ser Vardis was lying on his side, pinned beneath the
broken torso of the weeping woman. Catelyn heard the knight groan
as the sellsword lifted his blade with both hands and drove it down
and in with all his weight behind it, under the arm and through the
ribs. Ser Vardis Egen shuddered and lay still.
Silence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and
let it fall to the grass. His lip was smashed and bloody where the
shield had caught him, and his coal-black hair was soaked with
sweat. He spit out a broken tooth.
“Is it over, Mother?” the Lord of the Eyrie
asked. No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it’s only now
beginning.
“Yes,” Lysa said glumly, her voice as cold and dead
as the captain of her guard.
“Can I make the little man fly now?”
Across the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. “Not
this little man,” he said. “This little man is going
down in the turnip hoist, thank you very much.”
“You presume—” Lysa began.
“I presume that House Arryn remembers its own
words,” the Imp said. “As High as Honor.”
“You promised I could make him fly,” the Lord of the
Eyrie screamed at his mother. He began to shake.
Lady Lysa’s face was flushed with fury. “The gods
have seen fit to proclaim him innocent, child. We have no choice
but to free him.” She lifted her voice. “Guards. Take
my lord of Lannister and his . . . creature here out of my sight.
Escort them to the Bloody Gate and set them free. See that they
have horses and supplies sufficient to reach the Trident, and make
certain all their goods and weapons are returned to them. They
shall need them on the high road.”
“The high road,” Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed
herself a faint, satisfied smile. It was another sort of death
sentence, Catelyn realized. Tyrion Lannister must know that as
well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady Arryn with a mocking bow.
“As you command, my lady,” he said. “I believe we
know the way.”