Solomon reined his horse in and looked back.
The column stretched behind him like a grey serpent moving across the plain. The soldiers marched with their spoils at their belts, faces bright with the particular satisfaction of men going home rich. They were heading back toward the Lion's Den.
There was one anomaly among them: Brynden Tully, riding at his leisure, mixed into the middle of the column without ceremony, claiming — entirely straight-faced — that they happened to be heading in the same direction.
Solomon felt a sudden sense of recognition. I'm fairly certain I've done this to someone else before.
The Blackfish seemed to notice the look. He brought his horse up alongside Solomon.
"Don't look at me like that, young man."
"We genuinely are heading the same way."
His tone carried a thread of dry amusement.
"And I really am doing you a favor."
Solomon kept his eyes on the road ahead, his expression unreadable.
"I have a feeling," Brynden said, "that you are going to cause a great deal of trouble for your family name, Solomon."
"So you had better come with me — bring a handful of men, skip going straight back to the Lion's Den, and take a detour into the Vale. Have a proper conversation with the Muirs."
He used his riding crop to indicate the mountain range to the east.
"I will go as the intermediary personally. Negotiate it out for you."
Solomon pulled up and turned the idea over. It did not take long.
"That is a reasonable suggestion, Ser."
The Vale boundary dispute was genuinely different from an internal Riverlands matter, as the Blackfish had said. And having the Blackfish acting as go-between would cut through a considerable amount that would otherwise need to be untangled by force or prolonged correspondence.
He wheeled his horse and rode back down the column, leaving orders for Lushen and Olivier to take the main force and escort the ransom gold and war spoils back to the Lion's Den ahead of him. Then he took Brin and twenty riders and turned east, onto the road that led toward the Vale.
The terrain shifted quickly. The flat ground gave way to mountain tracks, and the tracks grew steeper by the mile. The horses' hooves rang sharp on loose stone.
The Blackfish seemed to come alive the closer they drew to the mountains. His interest climbed with every league.
He brought his horse up beside Solomon again and resumed what Solomon had begun to recognize as a persistent, low-grade campaign.
"The Vale has a great many fine young men, Solomon. Old blood, every one of them — proper knights, all honor."
His tone was that of a merchant presenting a particularly attractive inventory.
"Younger sons of noble houses. A fair number of hedge knights as well. Strong men. Brave and loyal."
"All they lack is opportunity. A lord willing to grant them land."
Solomon said nothing. But he did not interrupt, and he listened.
"I know most of them personally, or know enough about them. You should understand — Vale knights take chivalry and honor as their highest principles."
"Give them land, and they will swear to you without hesitation. They will serve your house faithfully across generations."
Solomon finally spoke. His voice was perfectly level.
"Why would they follow me?"
The Blackfish laughed.
"You may not realize this, but you are well-known in the Vale. Very well-known."
"The mountain clans call you the Black Lion. Because of you, they no longer dare raid the Riverlands. You have become a name used to frighten children in the wildling camps. Young Vale knights hold you up as a model."
He paused, as if drawing something from memory.
"There was, at one point, a plan. Lord Jon Arryn was going to mobilize the younger sons and hedge knights of the Vale houses to join your campaign against the mountain clans."
"It was only shelved because the Ironborn situation proved more complicated than anticipated."
The Blackfish looked at Solomon.
"Your record against the wildlings, your reputation as it stands now — that is more than enough to draw their sworn loyalty. And not only them. Sons of the great houses who hold no inheritance rights — they would come too, if you put out the word that you were looking for followers."
"Everyone knows that you stand high in Lord Jon Arryn's regard."
"And Lord Jon is deeply beloved in the Vale."
A faint smile crossed Solomon's face. He turned and looked at the Blackfish.
"Have any of them bled for me?"
The Blackfish's smile went rigid.
Solomon's voice remained even. It landed in the conversation the way a stone lands in a still pond.
"Why would I grant land in my domain to men who have not yet done a single thing for me?"
The Blackfish opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He had not anticipated this. The simplicity of it — the near bluntness — was outside his frame of reference entirely. In his view, this was a situation where everyone should win: Solomon gains loyal, capable Vale knights; those young men gain the land and future they have dreamed of. But Solomon's logic sat entirely outside that calculus.
After a long pause, the Blackfish shook his head.
"Young man. You are genuinely difficult to talk to."
"Think the way you're thinking, and the nobility of Westeros will push you to the margins until you don't have an inch of ground to stand on."
Solomon shrugged.
"I want loyalty and capability. Oaths and bloodlines are of no use to me."
His gaze drifted back toward the riders behind him. He did not believe these battle-hardened commoner cavalrymen — given equal equipment — would be any lesser than well-bred younger sons. Brin least of all.
"Those who bleed for me earn the right to share in the land."
The Blackfish let out a long, slow breath. He looked at Solomon with an expression that had too many things in it to name.
"You don't believe in oaths?"
Solomon did not answer directly.
He turned in the saddle, and the sun caught the line of his profile cleanly.
"Ser Blackfish — why was the Targaryen dynasty overthrown?"
The color left Brynden Tully's face.
It happened fast — as if someone had drawn a whip across it.
He wrenched his reins. The horse lurched sideways with a startled cry.
He pointed at Solomon. His hand was shaking. In the end, only one word came out.
"You—!!"
A second later he drove his heels in hard, and the horse bolted forward, carrying him ahead of the column, leaving Solomon and everyone else behind.
Brynden Tully rode alone at the front from that point on. Solomon followed in silence at the rear. Neither of them spoke. Brin made the occasional quiet report; otherwise the mood in the column went flat.
They crested a ridge, and as they came around the bend in the mountain track, the sound reached them first — a woman crying, and a man's voice, rough and contemptuous, cutting through it.
The Blackfish brought his horse up short immediately. A lifetime in the field had sharpened something in him into pure reflex. He raised his hand, signaling the column to slow, and they drifted forward quietly.
Around the corner, the scene became visible, and the entire column stopped.
A large group of ragged, hollow-faced people had been penned against the roadside by a mounted knight and a dozen foot soldiers. These people wore the look of refugees — gaunt, terrified, their few bundled belongings scattered on the ground, being turned out and rifled through by the soldiers.
Thirteen bodies hung from the trees. A woman clutching an infant was sobbing. Three more lay in the road, blood spreading dark and wide beneath them, clearly dead for some time. Another woman knelt wailing beside the corpses — and was knocked to the ground by a sharp stroke of the knight's riding crop.
Standing between the knight and the refugees was an old man in a worn brown septon's robe. Barefoot. A dog barking at his heel. A donkey standing patiently behind him.
Solomon recognized him without needing to see the face.
Meribald.
The old septon's voice was rough with exhaustion, but it was steady.
"Ser."
"You swore oaths before the Seven to protect the innocent. Does the Seven's mercy not extend to letting these poor souls live?"
The knight's armor bore a white shield trimmed in brown with three spearheads at the center — the blazon of House Muir of the Vale.
He looked down at the old septon from horseback, his expression thick with contempt.
"Move aside, Barefoot Brother. Mind your own affairs."
"These people are serfs fleeing their lord's domain. I am enforcing the law of the realm."
At that moment, someone among the refugees spotted Solomon's banner.
A man — face caked with road dust, every bone showing — erupted out of whatever was left of his strength. He wrenched free of a soldier's grip and came scrambling forward across the ground, half-running, half-crawling toward Solomon's horse.
He ran and screamed at the same time, his voice tearing out of him.
"Lord Solomon's army!! Save us!! Save us, please!!"
The sound bounced off the mountain walls, full of a hope so desperate it had nowhere else to go.
"We are Lord Lege's smallfolk!! You gave us food!! You escorted us out of the territory!! You told us we could go to our families!!"
The Muir knight saw the breakaway. Something hard and instant moved into his eyes. Without a moment's hesitation, he took a short bow from the attendant beside him.
He drew it.
He aimed at the running man's back.
The arrow split the air.
It went through his chest.
The man's screaming stopped.
He fell forward and sprawled in the dust at Solomon's horse's feet.
The blood soaked into the ground fast.
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