Chapter 21 — "What the Lords Say"
The letter Lord Nestor Royce wrote to Lord Symond Templeton in the third month of the campaign was not a short one.
Royce was not by nature a brief correspondent. He believed that important matters deserved the weight of proper documentation and that lords who communicated in terse ravens were lords who had not fully thought through what they were communicating. His maester had learned over twenty years of service to prepare extra parchment when the lord sat down at his desk with the particular expression that meant something had genuinely engaged his attention.
He had that expression now.
My lord Templeton —
I write to you from the Bronze Gate where I have spent the past week reviewing the trade route reports from the mountain passes and I find myself in the unusual position of having exclusively good news to convey which as you know is not a condition I am accustomed to.
The summer trading figures are attached in full. I will draw your attention to the Redwater Fork numbers specifically — up forty three percent on last year, which was itself the highest figure in eleven years. The northern traverse route which was formally mapped and added to the patrol rotation in the spring is already producing results beyond what I projected when I agreed to fund its incorporation. Merchant complaints regarding clan harassment are down to a number I can count on one hand for the first time in my tenure as lord.
The Stone Crows settled three weeks ago. Terms were reasonable — land in the lower eastern approach, patrol obligations, fighter service to the Gate. The arrangement mirrors the Painted Dog settlement which as you will recall I was skeptical of when it was first proposed. I will admit that skepticism has not aged well.
The Moon Brothers are currently in negotiation. I am told the terms are proving more complicated — they are a more fractious people than the Stone Crows and have a higher opinion of their own strategic value than the situation perhaps warrants. Nevertheless I am reliably informed that an agreement will be reached before the autumn.
Three smaller clans have been handled. I will not trouble you with the details of each. The short version is that two settled and one did not and the one that did not is no longer a consideration.
I find myself in the position of having to say something I did not expect to say when this operation was proposed to me six months ago in the command chamber at the Bloody Gate by a sixteen year old boy with a axe on his back and cuts still healing on his face.
The investment argument was correct.
I have been managing the mountain clan problem for eleven years. My father managed it before me. His father before him. In that time we have spent considerable coin on campaigns that produced temporary results and then watched the problem reassemble itself the moment our attention moved elsewhere. What is happening in the passes this year is different in kind not just in degree. The clans are not being pushed back. They are being restructured. Integrated. Turned from a liability into something that resembles an asset.
I do not know what Snow is exactly. I know what he has produced.
The figures speak clearly enough. Even with the high budget of this campaign and extra gold taken by the boy. It is greatly a beneficial investment for us Vale Lords.
— Nestor Royce
He sealed it and handed it to his maester and sat back in his chair and looked at the maps on the wall for a long time.
The passes marked on them had been red for as long as he had been a lord. Expensive in coin and men and merchant goodwill year after year after year.
Several of them were no longer red.
He was a practical man.
He picked up his quill and started another letter.
---
The Blackfish found Alaric at the forward camp on a grey morning in the fourth month of the campaign.
Not at the command table. Not reviewing maps or logistics or the latest patrol reports. Sitting outside on a rock eating something from a tin plate with the unhurried manner of a man with nowhere else to be, which was not a description that fit Alaric Snow in Brynden Tully's experience but which fit him perfectly at this particular moment on this particular morning.
The Blackfish sat down on the rock beside him.
Alaric looked at him.
The Blackfish looked at the passes.
"The Stone Crows are settled," he said.
"Yes."
"The Moon Brothers will settle before autumn."
"They'll argue about the terms until the last possible moment and then settle," Alaric said. "They've already decided. They're just negotiating the dignity of the decision."
The Blackfish was quiet for a moment.
"Jon Arryn is pleased," he said.
"Good then after all he is the budget provider along with other Lords. He is happy and my pockets are full."
Another silence. The mountain wind moved through the camp. Somewhere behind them Harys was giving instructions to the morning rotation in the tone he used when he had already given the same instructions twice and was not interested in giving them a third time.
"There is something I want to offer you," the Blackfish said.
Alaric looked at him.
"A knighthood," the Blackfish said. "Jon Arryn has authorized it. Lord Royce has endorsed it. The service record justifies it several times over." He held Alaric's eyes. "Ser Alaric Snow. It would open doors that are currently closed to you."
Alaric was quiet.
He looked at the passes.
"Forget it, I ain't interested," he said shrugging
The Blackfish said nothing but is shocked. A bastard refusing a tittle is a rare thing.
"I'm from the North," Alaric said. "Knighthood is a southern thing. A Vale thing. My men follow me because of what I've done in these passes not because of a title a septon gave me." He paused. "A knight is someone the South made. I'm not sure that's what I am. I am northerner , I am my father's blood bastard or not. He stood up for Northern traditions. I won't spit in my blood doing this."
"It would give you formal standing," the Blackfish said. "Political protection. A bastard with a knighthood is harder to dismiss than a bastard without one."
"A bastard who has cleared the Vale's mountain passes in one campaign season is harder to dismiss than either," Alaric said.
The Blackfish looked at him for a long moment.
Then he looked back at the passes.
"The offer remains open," he said. "If you change your mind."
"Alaric said nothing
He went back to his food.
The Blackfish sat beside him for a moment longer than was strictly necessary and then stood and walked back toward the command table.
He wrote to Jon Arryn that evening.
The letter took three attempts to begin.
What he eventually wrote was precise and careful and said everything it needed to say and stopped exactly where it should have stopped. He had been writing letters to Jon Arryn for twenty years and he understood by now that the things left out of a letter to the Hand of the King were as important as the things left in.
He had met men like that before.
Not many. Not at sixteen.
He sealed the letter and gave it to the raven keeper and stood at the window for a long time after.
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