They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens
just off the high road. Tyrion was gathering deadwood while their
horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped to pick up a
splintered branch and examined it critically. “Will this do?
I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for
me.”
“A fire?” Bronn said, spitting. “Are you so
hungry to die, dwarf? Or have you taken leave of your senses? A
fire will bring the clansmen down on us from miles around. I mean
to survive this journey, Lannister.”
“And how do you hope to do that?” Tyrion asked. He
tucked the branch under his arm and poked around through the sparse
undergrowth, looking for more. His back ached from the effort of
bending; they had been riding since daybreak, when a stone-faced
Ser Lyn Corbray had ushered them through the Bloody Gate and
commanded them never to return.
“We have no chance of fighting our way back,” Bronn
said, “but two can cover more ground than ten, and attract
less notice. The fewer days we spend in these mountains, the more
like we are to reach the riverlands. Ride hard and fast, I say.
Travel by night and hole up by day, avoid the road where we can,
make no noise and light no fires.”
Tyrion Lannister sighed. “A splendid plan, Bronn. Try it,
as you like . . . and forgive me if I do not linger to bury
you.”
“You think to outlive me, dwarf?” The sellsword
grinned. He had a dark gap in his smile where the edge of Ser
Vardis Egen’s shield had cracked a tooth in half.
Tyrion shrugged. “Riding hard and fast by night is a sure
way to tumble down a mountain and crack your skull. I prefer to
make my crossing slow and easy. I know you love the taste of horse,
Bronn, but if our mounts die under us this time, we’ll be
trying to saddle shadowcats . . . and if truth be told, I think the
clans will find us no matter what we do. Their eyes are all around
us.” He swept a gloved hand over the high, wind-carved crags
that surrounded them.
Bronn grimaced. “Then we’re dead men,
Lannister.”
“If so, I prefer to die comfortable,” Tyrion
replied. “We need a fire. The nights are cold up here, and
hot food will warm our bellies and lift our spirits. Do you suppose
there’s any game to be had? Lady Lysa has kindly provided us
with a veritable feast of salt beef, hard cheese, and stale bread,
but I would hate to break a tooth so far from the nearest
maester.”
“I can find meat.” Beneath a fall of black hair,
Bronn’s dark eyes regarded Tyrion suspiciously. “I
should leave you here with your fool’s fire. If I took your
horse, I’d have twice the chance to make it through. What
would you do then, dwarf?”
“Die, most like.” Tyrion stooped to get another
stick.
“You don’t think I’d do it?”
“You’d do it in an instant, if it meant your life.
You were quick enough to silence your friend Chiggen when he caught
that arrow in his belly.” Bronn had yanked back the
man’s head by the hair and driven the point of his dirk in
under the ear, and afterward told Catelyn Stark that the other
sellsword had died of his wound.
“He was good as dead,” Bronn said, “and his
moaning was bringing them down on us. Chiggen would have done the
same for me . . . and he was no friend, only a man I rode with.
Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love
you.”
“It was your blade I needed,” Tyrion said,
“not your love.” He dumped his armful of wood on the
ground.
Bronn grinned. “You’re bold as any sellsword,
I’ll give you that. How did you know I’d take your
part?”
“Know?” Tyrion squatted awkwardly on his stunted
legs to build the fire. “I tossed the dice. Back at the inn,
you and Chiggen helped take me captive. Why? The others saw it as
their duty, for the honor of the lords they served, but not you
two. You had no lord, no duty, and precious little honor, so why
trouble to involve yourselves?” He took out his knife and
whittled some thin strips of bark off one of the sticks he’d
gathered, to serve as kindling. “Well, why do sellswords do
anything? For gold. You were thinking Lady Catelyn would reward you
for your help, perhaps even take you into her service. Here, that
should do, I hope. Do you have a flint?”
Bronn slid two fingers into the pouch at his belt and tossed
down a flint. Tyrion caught it in the air.
“My thanks,” he said. “The thing is, you did
not know the Starks. Lord Eddard is a proud, honorable, and honest
man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no doubt she would have found
a coin or two for you when this was all over, and pressed it in
your hand with a polite word and a look of distaste, but
that’s the most you could have hoped for. The Starks look for
courage and loyalty and honor in the men they choose to serve them,
and if truth be told, you and Chiggen were lowborn scum.”
Tyrion struck the flint against his dagger, trying for a spark.
Nothing.
Bronn snorted. “You have a bold tongue, little man. One
day someone is like to cut it out and make you eat it.”
“Everyone tells me that.” Tyrion glanced up at the
sellsword. “Did I offend you? My pardons . . . but you are
scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor, friendship, what’s
that to you? No, don’t trouble yourself, we both know the
answer. Still, you’re not stupid. Once we reached the Vale,
Lady Stark had no more need of you . . . but I did, and the one
thing the Lannisters have never lacked for is gold. When the moment
came to toss the dice, I was counting on your being smart enough to
know where your best interest lay. Happily for me, you did.”
He slammed stone and steel together again, fruitlessly.
“Here,” said Bronn, squatting, “I’ll do
it.” He took the knife and flint from Tyrion’s hands
and struck sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to
smolder.
“Well done,” Tyrion said. “Scum you may be,
but you’re undeniably useful, and with a sword in your hand
you’re almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do you want,
Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you’ll have
it.”
Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher.
“And if you die?”
“Why then, I’ll have one mourner whose grief is
sincere,” Tyrion said, grinning. “The gold ends when I
do.”
The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint
back into his pouch, and tossed Tyrion his dagger. “Fair
enough,” he said. “My sword’s yours, then . . . but don’t go looking for me to bend the knee and m’lord you
every time you take a shit. I’m no man’s
toady.”
“Nor any man’s friend,” Tyrion said.
“I’ve no doubt you’d betray me as quick as you
did Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever comes
when you’re tempted to sell me out, remember this,
Bronn—I’ll match their price, whatever it is. I like living.
And now, do you think you could do something about finding us some
supper?”
“Take care of the horses,” Bronn said, unsheathing
the long dirk he wore at his hip. He strode into the trees.
An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire
was crackling away merrily, and a haunch of a young goat was
turning above the flames, spitting and hissing. “All we lack
now is some good wine to wash down our kid,” Tyrion said.
“That, a woman, and another dozen swords,” Bronn
said. He sat cross-legged beside the fire, honing the edge of his
longsword with an oilstone. There was something strangely
reassuring about the rasping sound it made when he drew it down the
steel. “It will be full dark soon,” the sellsword
pointed out. “I’ll take first watch . . . for all the
good it will do us. It might be kinder to let them kill us in our
sleep.”
“Oh, I imagine they’ll be here long before it comes
to sleep.” The smell of the roasting meat made Tyrion’s
mouth water.
Bronn watched him across the fire. “You have a
plan,” he said flatly, with a scrape of steel on stone.
“A hope, call it,” Tyrion said. “Another toss
of the dice.”
“With our lives as the stake?”
Tyrion shrugged. “What choice do we have?” He leaned
over the fire and sawed a thin slice of meat from the kid.
“Ahhhh,” he sighed happily as he chewed. Grease ran
down his chin. “A bit tougher than I’d like, and in
want of spicing, but I’ll not complain too loudly. If I were
back at the Eyrie, I’d be dancing on a precipice in hopes of
a boiled bean.”
“And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold,”
Bronn said.
“A Lannister always pays his debts.”
Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the
leather purse. The gaoler’s eyes had gone big as boiled eggs
as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold.
“I kept the silver,” Tyrion had told him with a crooked
smile, “but you were promised the gold, and there it
is.” It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a
lifetime of abusing prisoners. “And remember what I said,
this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn’s
service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I’ll pay you
the rest of what I owe you.” With golden dragons spilling out
of both hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he
would do just that.
Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He
began to carve thick chunks of charred meat off the bone as
Tyrion hollowed out two heels of stale bread to
serve as trenchers. “If we do reach the river, what will you
do then?” the sellsword asked as he cut.
“Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a
start.” Tyrion held out his trencher, and Bronn filled it
with meat. “And then to Casterly Rock or King’s
Landing, I think. I have some questions that want answering,
concerning a certain dagger.”
The sellsword chewed and swallowed. “So you were telling
it true? It was not your knife?”
Tyrion smiled thinly. “Do I look a liar to you?”
By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and
a halfmoon was rising over the mountains. Tyrion spread his
shadowskin cloak on the ground and stretched out with his saddle
for a pillow. “Our friends are taking their sweet
time.”
“If I were them, I’d fear a trap,” Bronn said.
“Why else would we be so open, if not to lure them
in?”
Tyrion chuckled. “Then we ought to sing and send them
fleeing in terror.” He began to whistle a tune.
“You’re mad, dwarf,” Bronn said as he cleaned
the grease out from under his nails with his dirk.
“Where’s your love of music, Bronn?”
“If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the
singer to champion you.”
Tyrion grinned. “That would have been amusing. I can just
see him fending off Ser Vardis with his woodharp.” He resumed
his whistling. “Do you know this song?” he asked.
“You hear it here and there, in inns and
whorehouses.”
“Myrish. ‘The Seasons of My Love.’ Sweet and
sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever bedded used
to sing it, and I’ve never been able to put it out of my
head.” Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night
and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless
as truth. “I met her on a night like this,” he heard
himself saying. “Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport
when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with
two men dogging her heels, shouting threats. My brother unsheathed
his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the
girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired,
slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly
broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed . . . yet lovely.
They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I
wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods.
By the time he came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of
her, and a story. She was a crofter’s child, orphaned when
her father died of fever, on her way to . . . well, nowhere,
really.
“Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was
not often outlaws dared prey on travelers so near to Casterly Rock,
and he took it as an insult. The girl was too frightened to send
off by herself, though, so I offered to take her to the closest inn
and feed her while my brother rode back to the Rock for help.
“She was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished
two whole chickens and part of a third, and drank a flagon of wine,
talking. I was only thirteen, and the wine went to my head, I fear.
The next thing I knew, I was sharing her bed. If she was shy, I was
shyer. I’ll never know where I found the courage. When I
broke her maidenhead, she wept, but afterward she kissed me and
sang her little song, and by morning I was in love.”
“You?” Bronn’s voice was amused.
“Absurd, isn’t it?” Tyrion began to whistle
the song again. “I married her,” he finally
admitted.
“A Lannister of Casterly Rock wed to a crofter’s
daughter,” Bronn said. “How did you manage
that?”
“Oh, you’d be astonished at what a boy can make of a
few lies, fifty pieces of silver, and a drunken septon. I dared not
bring my bride home to Casterly Rock, so I set her up in a cottage
of her own, and for a fortnight we played at being man and wife.
And then the septon sobered and confessed all to my lord
father.” Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him
feel to say it, even after all these years. Perhaps he was just
tired. “That was the end of my marriage.” He sat up and
stared at the dying fire, blinking at the light.
“He sent the girl away?”
“He did better than that,” Tyrion said. “First
he made my brother tell me the truth. The girl was a whore, you
see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of
it. He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid double for a
maiden, knowing it would be my first time.
“After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the
lesson, Lord Tywin brought my wife in and gave her to his guards.
They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how many whores
command that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the
barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she had so many silvers
the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the
floor, she . . . ” The smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion
cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into
darkness. “Lord Tywin had me go last,” he said in a
quiet voice. “And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because
I was a Lannister, and worth more.”
After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on
stone as Bronn sharpened his sword. “Thirteen or thirty or
three, I would have killed the man who did that to me.”
Tyrion swung around to face him. “You may get that chance
one day. Remember what I told you. A Lannister always pays his
debts.” He yawned. “I think I will try and sleep. Wake
me if we’re about to die.”
He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The
ground was stony and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did
sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not
the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his
father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . .
“Tyrion.” Bronn’s warning was low and
urgent.
Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned
down to embers, and the shadows were creeping in all around them.
Bronn had raised himself to one knee, his sword in one hand and his
dirk in the other. Tyrion held up a hand: stay still, it said.
“Come share our fire, the night is cold,” he called out
to the creeping shadows. “I fear we’ve no wine to offer
you, but you’re welcome to some of our goat.”
All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on
metal. “Our mountain,” a voice called out from the
trees, deep and hard and unfriendly. “Our goat.”
“Your goat,” Tyrion agreed. “Who are
you?”
“When you meet your gods,” a different voice
replied, “say it was Gunthor son of Gurn of the Stone Crows
who sent you to them.” A branch cracked underfoot as he
stepped into the light; a thin man in a horned helmet, armed with a
long knife.
“And Shagga son of Dolf.” That was the first voice,
deep and deadly. A boulder shifted to their left, and stood, and
became a man. Massive and slow and strong he seemed, dressed all in
skins, with a club in his right hand and an axe in his left. He
smashed them together as he lumbered closer.
Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and
more that Tyrion forgot the instant he heard them; ten at least. A
few had swords and knives; others brandished pitchforks and scythes
and wooden spears. He waited until they were done shouting out
their names before he gave them answer. “I am Tyrion son of
Tywin, of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will gladly
pay you for the goat we ate.”
“What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?”
asked the one who named himself Gunthor, who seemed to be their
chief.
“There is silver in my purse,” Tyrion told them.
“This hauberk I wear is large for me, but it should fit Conn
nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit Shagga’s mighty
hand far better than that wood-axe he holds.”
“The halfman would pay us with our own coin,” said
Conn.
“Conn speaks truly,” Gunthor said. “Your
silver is ours. Your horses are ours. Your hauberk and your
battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours too. You have
nothing to give us but your lives. How would you like to die,
Tyrion son of Tywin?”
“In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a
maiden’s mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty,”
he replied.
The huge one, Shagga, laughed first and loudest. The others
seemed less amused. “Conn, take their horses,” Gunthor
commanded. “Kill the other and seize the halfinan. He can
milk the goats and make the mothers laugh.”
Bronn sprang to his feet. “Who dies first?”
“No!” Tyrion said sharply. “Gunthor son of
Gurn, hear me. My House is rich and powerful. If the Stone Crows
will see us safely through these mountains, my lord father will
shower you with gold.”
“The gold of a lowland lord is as worthless as a
halfman’s promises,” Gunthor said.
“Half a man I may be,” Tyrion said, “yet I
have the courage to face my enemies. What do the Stone Crows do,
but hide behind rocks and shiver with fear as the knights of the
Vale ride by?”
Shagga gave a roar of anger and clashed club against axe. Jaggot
poked at Tyrion’s face with the fire-hardened point of a long
wooden spear. He did his best not to flinch. “Are these the
best weapons you could steal?” he said. “Good enough
for killing sheep, perhaps . . . if the sheep do not fight back. My
father’s smiths shit better steel.”
“Little boyman,” Shagga roared, “will you mock
my axe after I chop off your manhood and feed it to the
goats?”
But Gunthor raised a hand. “No. I would hear his words.
The mothers go hungry, and steel fills more mouths than gold. What
would you give us for your lives, Tyrion son of Tywin? Swords?
Lances? Mail?”
“All that, and more, Gunthor son of Gurn,” Tyrion
Lannister replied, smiling. “I will give you the Vale of
Arryn.”
They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens
just off the high road. Tyrion was gathering deadwood while their
horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped to pick up a
splintered branch and examined it critically. “Will this do?
I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for
me.”
“A fire?” Bronn said, spitting. “Are you so
hungry to die, dwarf? Or have you taken leave of your senses? A
fire will bring the clansmen down on us from miles around. I mean
to survive this journey, Lannister.”
“And how do you hope to do that?” Tyrion asked. He
tucked the branch under his arm and poked around through the sparse
undergrowth, looking for more. His back ached from the effort of
bending; they had been riding since daybreak, when a stone-faced
Ser Lyn Corbray had ushered them through the Bloody Gate and
commanded them never to return.
“We have no chance of fighting our way back,” Bronn
said, “but two can cover more ground than ten, and attract
less notice. The fewer days we spend in these mountains, the more
like we are to reach the riverlands. Ride hard and fast, I say.
Travel by night and hole up by day, avoid the road where we can,
make no noise and light no fires.”
Tyrion Lannister sighed. “A splendid plan, Bronn. Try it,
as you like . . . and forgive me if I do not linger to bury
you.”
“You think to outlive me, dwarf?” The sellsword
grinned. He had a dark gap in his smile where the edge of Ser
Vardis Egen’s shield had cracked a tooth in half.
Tyrion shrugged. “Riding hard and fast by night is a sure
way to tumble down a mountain and crack your skull. I prefer to
make my crossing slow and easy. I know you love the taste of horse,
Bronn, but if our mounts die under us this time, we’ll be
trying to saddle shadowcats . . . and if truth be told, I think the
clans will find us no matter what we do. Their eyes are all around
us.” He swept a gloved hand over the high, wind-carved crags
that surrounded them.
Bronn grimaced. “Then we’re dead men,
Lannister.”
“If so, I prefer to die comfortable,” Tyrion
replied. “We need a fire. The nights are cold up here, and
hot food will warm our bellies and lift our spirits. Do you suppose
there’s any game to be had? Lady Lysa has kindly provided us
with a veritable feast of salt beef, hard cheese, and stale bread,
but I would hate to break a tooth so far from the nearest
maester.”
“I can find meat.” Beneath a fall of black hair,
Bronn’s dark eyes regarded Tyrion suspiciously. “I
should leave you here with your fool’s fire. If I took your
horse, I’d have twice the chance to make it through. What
would you do then, dwarf?”
“Die, most like.” Tyrion stooped to get another
stick.
“You don’t think I’d do it?”
“You’d do it in an instant, if it meant your life.
You were quick enough to silence your friend Chiggen when he caught
that arrow in his belly.” Bronn had yanked back the
man’s head by the hair and driven the point of his dirk in
under the ear, and afterward told Catelyn Stark that the other
sellsword had died of his wound.
“He was good as dead,” Bronn said, “and his
moaning was bringing them down on us. Chiggen would have done the
same for me . . . and he was no friend, only a man I rode with.
Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love
you.”
“It was your blade I needed,” Tyrion said,
“not your love.” He dumped his armful of wood on the
ground.
Bronn grinned. “You’re bold as any sellsword,
I’ll give you that. How did you know I’d take your
part?”
“Know?” Tyrion squatted awkwardly on his stunted
legs to build the fire. “I tossed the dice. Back at the inn,
you and Chiggen helped take me captive. Why? The others saw it as
their duty, for the honor of the lords they served, but not you
two. You had no lord, no duty, and precious little honor, so why
trouble to involve yourselves?” He took out his knife and
whittled some thin strips of bark off one of the sticks he’d
gathered, to serve as kindling. “Well, why do sellswords do
anything? For gold. You were thinking Lady Catelyn would reward you
for your help, perhaps even take you into her service. Here, that
should do, I hope. Do you have a flint?”
Bronn slid two fingers into the pouch at his belt and tossed
down a flint. Tyrion caught it in the air.
“My thanks,” he said. “The thing is, you did
not know the Starks. Lord Eddard is a proud, honorable, and honest
man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no doubt she would have found
a coin or two for you when this was all over, and pressed it in
your hand with a polite word and a look of distaste, but
that’s the most you could have hoped for. The Starks look for
courage and loyalty and honor in the men they choose to serve them,
and if truth be told, you and Chiggen were lowborn scum.”
Tyrion struck the flint against his dagger, trying for a spark.
Nothing.
Bronn snorted. “You have a bold tongue, little man. One
day someone is like to cut it out and make you eat it.”
“Everyone tells me that.” Tyrion glanced up at the
sellsword. “Did I offend you? My pardons . . . but you are
scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor, friendship, what’s
that to you? No, don’t trouble yourself, we both know the
answer. Still, you’re not stupid. Once we reached the Vale,
Lady Stark had no more need of you . . . but I did, and the one
thing the Lannisters have never lacked for is gold. When the moment
came to toss the dice, I was counting on your being smart enough to
know where your best interest lay. Happily for me, you did.”
He slammed stone and steel together again, fruitlessly.
“Here,” said Bronn, squatting, “I’ll do
it.” He took the knife and flint from Tyrion’s hands
and struck sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to
smolder.
“Well done,” Tyrion said. “Scum you may be,
but you’re undeniably useful, and with a sword in your hand
you’re almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do you want,
Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you’ll have
it.”
Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher.
“And if you die?”
“Why then, I’ll have one mourner whose grief is
sincere,” Tyrion said, grinning. “The gold ends when I
do.”
The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint
back into his pouch, and tossed Tyrion his dagger. “Fair
enough,” he said. “My sword’s yours, then . . . but don’t go looking for me to bend the knee and m’lord you
every time you take a shit. I’m no man’s
toady.”
“Nor any man’s friend,” Tyrion said.
“I’ve no doubt you’d betray me as quick as you
did Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever comes
when you’re tempted to sell me out, remember this,
Bronn—I’ll match their price, whatever it is. I like living.
And now, do you think you could do something about finding us some
supper?”
“Take care of the horses,” Bronn said, unsheathing
the long dirk he wore at his hip. He strode into the trees.
An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire
was crackling away merrily, and a haunch of a young goat was
turning above the flames, spitting and hissing. “All we lack
now is some good wine to wash down our kid,” Tyrion said.
“That, a woman, and another dozen swords,” Bronn
said. He sat cross-legged beside the fire, honing the edge of his
longsword with an oilstone. There was something strangely
reassuring about the rasping sound it made when he drew it down the
steel. “It will be full dark soon,” the sellsword
pointed out. “I’ll take first watch . . . for all the
good it will do us. It might be kinder to let them kill us in our
sleep.”
“Oh, I imagine they’ll be here long before it comes
to sleep.” The smell of the roasting meat made Tyrion’s
mouth water.
Bronn watched him across the fire. “You have a
plan,” he said flatly, with a scrape of steel on stone.
“A hope, call it,” Tyrion said. “Another toss
of the dice.”
“With our lives as the stake?”
Tyrion shrugged. “What choice do we have?” He leaned
over the fire and sawed a thin slice of meat from the kid.
“Ahhhh,” he sighed happily as he chewed. Grease ran
down his chin. “A bit tougher than I’d like, and in
want of spicing, but I’ll not complain too loudly. If I were
back at the Eyrie, I’d be dancing on a precipice in hopes of
a boiled bean.”
“And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold,”
Bronn said.
“A Lannister always pays his debts.”
Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the
leather purse. The gaoler’s eyes had gone big as boiled eggs
as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold.
“I kept the silver,” Tyrion had told him with a crooked
smile, “but you were promised the gold, and there it
is.” It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a
lifetime of abusing prisoners. “And remember what I said,
this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn’s
service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I’ll pay you
the rest of what I owe you.” With golden dragons spilling out
of both hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he
would do just that.
Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He
began to carve thick chunks of charred meat off the bone as
Tyrion hollowed out two heels of stale bread to
serve as trenchers. “If we do reach the river, what will you
do then?” the sellsword asked as he cut.
“Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a
start.” Tyrion held out his trencher, and Bronn filled it
with meat. “And then to Casterly Rock or King’s
Landing, I think. I have some questions that want answering,
concerning a certain dagger.”
The sellsword chewed and swallowed. “So you were telling
it true? It was not your knife?”
Tyrion smiled thinly. “Do I look a liar to you?”
By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and
a halfmoon was rising over the mountains. Tyrion spread his
shadowskin cloak on the ground and stretched out with his saddle
for a pillow. “Our friends are taking their sweet
time.”
“If I were them, I’d fear a trap,” Bronn said.
“Why else would we be so open, if not to lure them
in?”
Tyrion chuckled. “Then we ought to sing and send them
fleeing in terror.” He began to whistle a tune.
“You’re mad, dwarf,” Bronn said as he cleaned
the grease out from under his nails with his dirk.
“Where’s your love of music, Bronn?”
“If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the
singer to champion you.”
Tyrion grinned. “That would have been amusing. I can just
see him fending off Ser Vardis with his woodharp.” He resumed
his whistling. “Do you know this song?” he asked.
“You hear it here and there, in inns and
whorehouses.”
“Myrish. ‘The Seasons of My Love.’ Sweet and
sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever bedded used
to sing it, and I’ve never been able to put it out of my
head.” Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night
and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless
as truth. “I met her on a night like this,” he heard
himself saying. “Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport
when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with
two men dogging her heels, shouting threats. My brother unsheathed
his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the
girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired,
slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly
broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed . . . yet lovely.
They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I
wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods.
By the time he came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of
her, and a story. She was a crofter’s child, orphaned when
her father died of fever, on her way to . . . well, nowhere,
really.
“Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was
not often outlaws dared prey on travelers so near to Casterly Rock,
and he took it as an insult. The girl was too frightened to send
off by herself, though, so I offered to take her to the closest inn
and feed her while my brother rode back to the Rock for help.
“She was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished
two whole chickens and part of a third, and drank a flagon of wine,
talking. I was only thirteen, and the wine went to my head, I fear.
The next thing I knew, I was sharing her bed. If she was shy, I was
shyer. I’ll never know where I found the courage. When I
broke her maidenhead, she wept, but afterward she kissed me and
sang her little song, and by morning I was in love.”
“You?” Bronn’s voice was amused.
“Absurd, isn’t it?” Tyrion began to whistle
the song again. “I married her,” he finally
admitted.
“A Lannister of Casterly Rock wed to a crofter’s
daughter,” Bronn said. “How did you manage
that?”
“Oh, you’d be astonished at what a boy can make of a
few lies, fifty pieces of silver, and a drunken septon. I dared not
bring my bride home to Casterly Rock, so I set her up in a cottage
of her own, and for a fortnight we played at being man and wife.
And then the septon sobered and confessed all to my lord
father.” Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him
feel to say it, even after all these years. Perhaps he was just
tired. “That was the end of my marriage.” He sat up and
stared at the dying fire, blinking at the light.
“He sent the girl away?”
“He did better than that,” Tyrion said. “First
he made my brother tell me the truth. The girl was a whore, you
see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of
it. He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid double for a
maiden, knowing it would be my first time.
“After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the
lesson, Lord Tywin brought my wife in and gave her to his guards.
They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how many whores
command that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the
barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she had so many silvers
the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the
floor, she . . . ” The smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion
cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into
darkness. “Lord Tywin had me go last,” he said in a
quiet voice. “And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because
I was a Lannister, and worth more.”
After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on
stone as Bronn sharpened his sword. “Thirteen or thirty or
three, I would have killed the man who did that to me.”
Tyrion swung around to face him. “You may get that chance
one day. Remember what I told you. A Lannister always pays his
debts.” He yawned. “I think I will try and sleep. Wake
me if we’re about to die.”
He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The
ground was stony and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did
sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not
the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his
father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . .
“Tyrion.” Bronn’s warning was low and
urgent.
Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned
down to embers, and the shadows were creeping in all around them.
Bronn had raised himself to one knee, his sword in one hand and his
dirk in the other. Tyrion held up a hand: stay still, it said.
“Come share our fire, the night is cold,” he called out
to the creeping shadows. “I fear we’ve no wine to offer
you, but you’re welcome to some of our goat.”
All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on
metal. “Our mountain,” a voice called out from the
trees, deep and hard and unfriendly. “Our goat.”
“Your goat,” Tyrion agreed. “Who are
you?”
“When you meet your gods,” a different voice
replied, “say it was Gunthor son of Gurn of the Stone Crows
who sent you to them.” A branch cracked underfoot as he
stepped into the light; a thin man in a horned helmet, armed with a
long knife.
“And Shagga son of Dolf.” That was the first voice,
deep and deadly. A boulder shifted to their left, and stood, and
became a man. Massive and slow and strong he seemed, dressed all in
skins, with a club in his right hand and an axe in his left. He
smashed them together as he lumbered closer.
Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and
more that Tyrion forgot the instant he heard them; ten at least. A
few had swords and knives; others brandished pitchforks and scythes
and wooden spears. He waited until they were done shouting out
their names before he gave them answer. “I am Tyrion son of
Tywin, of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will gladly
pay you for the goat we ate.”
“What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?”
asked the one who named himself Gunthor, who seemed to be their
chief.
“There is silver in my purse,” Tyrion told them.
“This hauberk I wear is large for me, but it should fit Conn
nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit Shagga’s mighty
hand far better than that wood-axe he holds.”
“The halfman would pay us with our own coin,” said
Conn.
“Conn speaks truly,” Gunthor said. “Your
silver is ours. Your horses are ours. Your hauberk and your
battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours too. You have
nothing to give us but your lives. How would you like to die,
Tyrion son of Tywin?”
“In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a
maiden’s mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty,”
he replied.
The huge one, Shagga, laughed first and loudest. The others
seemed less amused. “Conn, take their horses,” Gunthor
commanded. “Kill the other and seize the halfinan. He can
milk the goats and make the mothers laugh.”
Bronn sprang to his feet. “Who dies first?”
“No!” Tyrion said sharply. “Gunthor son of
Gurn, hear me. My House is rich and powerful. If the Stone Crows
will see us safely through these mountains, my lord father will
shower you with gold.”
“The gold of a lowland lord is as worthless as a
halfman’s promises,” Gunthor said.
“Half a man I may be,” Tyrion said, “yet I
have the courage to face my enemies. What do the Stone Crows do,
but hide behind rocks and shiver with fear as the knights of the
Vale ride by?”
Shagga gave a roar of anger and clashed club against axe. Jaggot
poked at Tyrion’s face with the fire-hardened point of a long
wooden spear. He did his best not to flinch. “Are these the
best weapons you could steal?” he said. “Good enough
for killing sheep, perhaps . . . if the sheep do not fight back. My
father’s smiths shit better steel.”
“Little boyman,” Shagga roared, “will you mock
my axe after I chop off your manhood and feed it to the
goats?”
But Gunthor raised a hand. “No. I would hear his words.
The mothers go hungry, and steel fills more mouths than gold. What
would you give us for your lives, Tyrion son of Tywin? Swords?
Lances? Mail?”
“All that, and more, Gunthor son of Gurn,” Tyrion
Lannister replied, smiling. “I will give you the Vale of
Arryn.”