DALE
"Boy, don't just stand there like a stone statue! Take my sword and clean it!"
That hoarse voice interspersed with phlegm broke Dale's reverie. It was Jarett, an old man with a face full of scars and yellowing teeth. Jarett was the definition of a rough, annoying person lacking even a speck of mercy. If possible, Dale would love to punch that ugly face, crush his crooked nose, and tell him to shut up. However, that was impossible. Dale himself was just a scrawny boy not even twenty namedays old.
Standing on legs that ached and trembled from exhaustion, Dale approached the old man sitting leaning against a fallen tree trunk. He took Jarett's longsword, trying with all his might to ignore the pungent sour sweat smell from the man's body.
Dale returned to his previous spot, a large rock near the camp's dying fire. He sat down, took a piece of cloth rag, and began rubbing the steel blade lightly.
The sword felt very cold in his hands. Dale had only held a real sword a month ago. Before that, the sharpest things he had ever held were a sickle and his father's old bread-cutting knife. He was just a boy from a small village on the outskirts of the Riverlands, a boy who joined this chaos because of the anger burning in his chest.
He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to show that they too could change something. When those recruiters shouted in his village inn, making speeches about how the Lords had oppressed them, Dale's blood boiled. He felt called. He imagined himself as a hero, a knight who would slash greedy rulers and bring justice to the smallfolk.
However, reality apparently never went according to fairy tale expectations.
Here, in the middle of a damp forest camp filled with outcasts, he was no hero. He did not lead armies. He was only given a makeshift wooden spear with a dull iron tip, and his main duty was merely being a lowly servant: cleaning armor, brushing horses, and also polishing swords.
Dale kept rubbing the sword blade. His hands felt stiff, several blisters on his palms bursting, leaving reddish flesh that stung when touched by lubricating oil. From rubbing with force, his movements slowly began to change into just wiping aimlessly. His mind drifted away.
The glint of the increasingly clean steel sword reflected a ray of sunlight. On the metal surface, Dale saw his own face. A face dirty with earth dust. His eyes looked sunken, and his cheeks gaunt. In the background of that reflection, tall forest trees and the sky, as if confining him in a cage without bars.
Staring at his own reflection there made his stomach churn. He felt like the most useless person in the entire history of Westeros.
What would his mother think now if only the old woman knew what he had done? If his mother knew that Dale now sat among rebels, polishing weapons used to kill fellow farmers... the woman's heart would surely shatter into pieces.
She would not be proud. Dale knew that very well.
But if he returned now, running away in the middle of the night, all these sacrifices would just be in vain. He could not stand imagining returning to his village, becoming a failed loser, and returning to live under the shadows of the Lords who always belittled them. Thinking of his suffocating old life, where they were treated worse than hunting dogs, always made his heart run hot. He wanted so much to teach those Lords a lesson. He wanted them to feel the same pain. But this way... this way felt very wrong.
"Don't just daydream like a fool, Dale!"
Jarett's shout echoed again, loud and rough, thrown together with a pig thigh bone that had been gnawed clean. The bone hit Dale's shoulder, making him flinch.
"You know you will not receive your ale ration tonight if you keep working like a crippled snail!" continued Jarett, immediately met by hoarse laughter from several other men around him. "What are you thinking about, eh? A girl? Or are you imagining that milkmaid with the big arse?"
Jarett and his friends laughed even harder. They started chatting about bawdy things that made Dale's stomach even more nauseous. They talked about women as if they were just pieces of meat in the market.
Dale's heart sank. He bowed his head deeply, hiding his eyes that started to feel hot, and began rubbing the sword harder. However, his ears could not be closed. Inevitably, he listened to their conversation shifting topics.
"I got a gold necklace from our visit last time, lads."
The voice belonged to Walt, a man in his thirties who had a burly build. Dale could hear the clinking sound of small metal as Walt pulled something from the leather pouch at his waist.
"Look at this? Very shiny!" Walt boasted of his loot, holding it high to catch the light of the newly lit campfire. "Real gold, not cheap brass! Who would have thought a small house smelling of cow dung like that could have gold like this under their floorboards? They must have stolen it from someone!"
"Definitely," answered Jarett, agreeing with a dismissive tone. Dale heard the sound of a long and greedy gulp as the old man drank his ale. "That last village was very unconvincing. Their houses were very ugly, their thatched roofs already full of holes. One of the people there might have worked as a servant in their Lord's castle and then took that necklace from the drawers while their master was sleeping."
"Hah, but it seems they were not such master thieves, because this is the only valuable item I found in that whole rotten village. Very sad," Walt snorted in disappointment, weighing the necklace in his hand. "I almost burned down their entire hut just out of annoyance."
"Then what will you do with that necklace?" Another man asked. Dale recognized that voice, Lyman.
"He will sell it, of course, what else? What would he keep it for?" Jarett laughed loudly. "Are you stupid? That necklace very clearly belongs to a woman! Walt cannot possibly wear it around his neck!"
"No, why would I sell it?" Walt frowned, defending himself. His tone rose slightly. "I will give it to my wife when I return home later. She always dreamed of wearing gold. She will look very beautiful and extraordinary when wearing this, I know it!"
"Well, well, you are truly a good husband, Walt!" Lyman teased with a tone laden with sarcasm and mockery. "Model husband of the year! But do you really want to do that stupidity? Think about it. With the money you can get from that gold necklace, you can hire the three best whores and have fun for a whole week without having to think about your wife's nagging!"
"That is your sad dream, Lyman, because unfortunately you do not have a wife waiting for you at home," Walt grinned, feeling victorious. "My wife is very beautiful, her hair is long and black, and she will beat any whore you can find. I don't need whores if I have her."
From the corner of his eye, Dale saw Jarett roll his eyes dramatically, as if he had just heard the most absurd joke.
"Do not overrate yourself as a pure and faithful man, Walt," sneered Jarett, "Do not act like a knight in shining armor in front of us. The proof is you joined in when we bedded that girl together in the village yesterday."
Dale's hands stopped instantly. The rubbing on the sword ceased completely.
His heart felt like it stopped beating for a beat, before then pounding at a painful speed. His breath caught in his throat. This conversation made him feel deeply uncomfortable, a disgust so thick it made him want to empty his stomach. He wanted to drop this sword, cover his ears with both hands, and run as far as possible into the darkness of the forest.
He didn't know how the event happened. He only heard it, the screams, the laughter, from those people after they finished raiding the last village.
Many houses were destroyed there. Huts were burned, and the men in this camp laughed with satisfaction watching the fire burn red in the distance, illuminating the night.
That night, they returned to camp, drinking ale as usual, and proudly, with alcohol-stinking mouths, they told in detail how they had committed that despicable act. They did it in front of the woman's own husband who had been beaten to a pulp, bleeding, and crying begging for mercy.
They said that the man was very pathetic for crying like a child, and that the man deserved it. Dale that night pretended to be asleep under his blanket, covering his head tightly, pretending not to hear.
"A man has needs on the battlefield, Jarett." Walt defended himself. "Besides, that is different! Especially when a man works risking his life eradicating evil in this land, I deserve a little prize for my entertainment!"
"A little prize, you say? Hah! You almost cried when her husband tried to bite your leg!" Lyman's laughter exploded.
The conversation continued, interspersed with rough laughter and gulps. They had no guilt. No remorse. They had changed the narrative in their own heads, justifying rape, murder, and robbery as a form of "struggle".
Dale kept listening to their chatter in silence. His body was stiff. He stared at Jarett's sword which was now clean, realizing that the blood of innocent people previously clinging to this blade could never truly be erased.
...
Dale shook his head vigorously, trying to banish the sound of Jarett's and Walt's laughter from his mind. Without saying a word, he put down the dirty rag, took his wooden spear leaning against a tree, and walked away from the campfire.
He kept stepping through the undergrowth, going deeper into the depths of the forest. Up there, the sun had started to descend past the tree line, turning the sky color into a sweep of reddish-orange. Arriving at a small clearing hidden by giant trees, Dale stopped. He took a deep breath, gripped the shaft of his spear with both hands, and began to move.
He swung the spear, thrusting it into empty air, then pulling it back. His feet stepped forward, backward, trying to imitate the movements of soldiers he had glimpsed in the past. His movements were a little better now, more powerful than a month ago, but he knew he was still very bad. The tip of his spear often wobbled, and his stances were unstable. If this were a real fight, one sword slash from a knight would be enough to split his belly.
This frustrated him; of course he was bad, he had no teacher.
Most of the people in this camp were former farmers or manual laborers like him. Although now they had swords, axes, and horses, most of them only knew basic ways to fight. Hitting with all their might, ganging up, and shouting. They were a mob of poor people, the brief training they did was merely how to hold a weapon so as not to injure oneself.
They had never experienced significant difficulties so far, because their tactic was attacking at night, robbing unguarded villages, burning, and leaving quickly before dawn. They rarely met official forces of the lords. If they saw the banners of armed forces from a distance, they would run and hide in the forest like rats.
But Dale did not want to be a rat. He kept training every day in this quiet place until sweat soaked his entire body. His logic was simple: if one day they actually faced a lord's army, he must be able to fight. If he could survive, or perhaps get lucky and kill a few armored soldiers, his status would rise.
He didn't do this out of bloodlust. He did this because he wanted to be respected. He wanted his voice heard more in this camp. Right now he was just a greenhorn ordered to polish swords. But if he proved deadly, he might be able to have influence. And if he had influence, maybe... maybe he could stop people like Jarett and Walt from doing barbaric things to innocent women in the villages they attacked.
Tired. Dale's breath panted. His arm and shoulder muscles screamed for a rest.
He lowered his spear. Near the clearing, there was the sound of trickling water. Dale walked closer and found a clear small stream. Without hesitation, he stripped off his dirty clothes smelling of sweat and dust, his stained trousers, then entered the water.
The river water was very cold, piercing his skin like thousands of needles, but it was the sensation he needed. He submerged himself, feeling the freshness cover his body, washing away mud as well as sweat.
He soaked there, closing his eyes, leaning against a smooth river stone. Very comfortable. Here, far from the noise of people, he could pretend that the world was still fine. He could hear the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves, also the chirring of crickets.
However, that peace never lasted long. The orange sky slowly faded into dark blue, then pitch black. Night had fallen. The chill started to seep into his bones, and worse than that, his stomach started to rumble.
Dale got out of the river, put his dirty clothes back on with a feeling of reluctance, and shouldered his spear back to camp. The moment he arrived there, the noisy sound of rough laughter, curses, and out-of-tune singing immediately greeted him.
"Dale! Where have you been, you little brat?!" shouted a fat man in charge of supplies. "Light a big fire in the middle! Chop those woods! Quickly!"
Dale didn't argue. He was ordered, and he did it without much talk. He piled dry wood, lit it with flint, and not long after a large flame blazed, illuminating the rough faces around him.
That night was his schedule to help cook. Dale took a large black iron cauldron, hung it over the fire, and started cooking porridge. He put in abundant wheat, mixed various fresh vegetables, carrots, turnips, and onions, and poured thick meat broth from beef bones that had been boiled all day.
The aroma was very appetizing. In this camp, they never lacked food. They ate far better than when they were still farmers. They always got fresh and luxurious food ingredients again and again by seizing them from villages or merchant carts.
At least, thought Dale bitterly while stirring the cauldron with a giant wooden spoon, that was a good thing for his stomach. He hated hunger very much. The twisting pain of an empty stomach, which made the head dizzy and vision blurry, was the worst thing in the world. That desperation was what drove him here.
After the porridge was cooked, Dale distributed the food. The men thrust their wooden bowls greedily. After everyone got their share, only then did Dale take the rest for himself.
He sat on a small log near the fire, slurping his porridge. It tasted warm, savory, and very satisfying. When the atmosphere started to quiet down and only the sound of food slurping was heard, Jarett who sat not far from Dale cleared his throat loudly, attracting the attention of their small group.
"You better eat your fill and gather your strength tonight, lads," said Jarett, his voice heavy and full of anticipation. His eyes reflected the campfire light. "Tomorrow we will act again. The leader has given the order. We will launch an attack at sunset."
Several men stopped eating, staring at Jarett enthusiastically.
"Where to this time?" asked one of them.
Jarett grinned. "We will attack the nearest village from here, and... a small castle on its hills. Belonging to House Bellamont."
Whispers were immediately heard among the group. Attacking a noble's castle, even a small one, was a much bolder move than looting farmer huts.
Jarett raised his hands to calm them down. "Don't panic yet! I heard news from our scouts. The other nobles have indeed started raising banners and gathering forces to hunt us. However, it will take quite a long time for them to reach this remote territory. Meanwhile, House Bellamont is a poor nobility. Their castle is old, many of its walls are crumbling."
Jarett stared at his comrades sharply. "We need better weaponry, So, the stronger we are, the better it will be."
"Makes sense. But, how many soldiers does that Lord Bellamont have?" asked Walt, a little caution appearing on his face.
"About a hundred men, I heard," Lyman chimed in before Jarett had a chance to answer. The man laughed dismissively. "And most of them must be old men whose knees are already trembling and snot-nosed boys who have never seen blood."
A hundred, thought Dale. His heart beat a little faster.
The number of people with Dale in the camp and its surroundings now was three hundred and fifty men. If attacked with a human wave at night, those hundred unprepared castle guards would have no chance to hold out for long. Their walls would collapse by numbers.
"A hundred... hah," Walt nodded slowly, his doubts evaporating completely. His smile widened, a smirk that made his face look like a demon under the firelight. "That means tomorrow night we will feast again."
"Very fun," replied Lyman, joining in the laughter.
Their laughter exploded. Around them, other men joined in raising their cups. Dale held his bowl tightly.
...
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