Chapter 2: The Avengers of Castamere
"My lord." A Manderly guardsman stepped forward, trident in hand, and dipped his head to Wyman. "The cargo ship Merry Midwife out of the Three Sisters has made port. The captain brought twelve armed men along with the cargo. They're behaving oddly — won't say much to anyone."
The guard's eyes cut briefly to Henry before he continued.
"Their shields and surcoats are white. Red Lion on them, with a forked tail. They say they've come up from the south to make good on an oath sworn before the Seven — to pledge their swords to Lord Reyne and fight in his name."
Wyman Manderly looked up from the parchment spread across his desk — recruitment rosters and supply manifests for the coming campaign — and the surprise on his broad face shifted quickly into something warmer. He reached over and clapped Henry on the arm.
"Well." He smiled, slow and genuine. "After all these years with your family gone from the south, and men still making that journey." He shook his head. "Go on, Henry. Go meet them. They came a long way."
The inner harbor berth was quiet compared to the rest of the docks.
The ship tied there was a flat-bottomed trading vessel, old and plain, her hull painted over so many times the original wood grain was a memory. Her sails were furled and sun-bleached nearly to grey, patched in half a dozen places. The figurehead at her bow had once been a laughing woman holding a fat infant by the leg — you could still tell, mostly. The woodworms had gotten to the woman's face and the child's backside, leaving both soft and pitted.
Dockhands moved between the pier and the deck in a steady rhythm, their work chants mixing with the sound of water slapping the pilings. Along the pier, twelve armored men waited — some seated on coils of rope, some standing — each with a hand resting on a sword hilt.
The port watch had formed a loose half-circle around them, spear shafts gripped, watching the strangers the way northmen tend to watch outsiders who show up carrying steel.
Henry and Willis rode on either side of Wyman Manderly's large enclosed litter — a thing of blue-green oilcloth and dark wood, wide enough to spare Wyman the indignity of being seen struggling in and out of a saddle. Behind the whole party, fifty Merman's Court guards marched in two columns, scale armor and tridents, their kit clanking in time with their steps.
The procession reached the pier's edge and stopped.
"Form up!" One of the armored men — mounted on a tall courser, sitting it well — called out the order in a voice used to being obeyed. The men on the pier moved without wasted motion: helmets buckled, shields strapped, sword belts checked and settled. Twelve men fell into a line.
Henry looked them over from horseback.
They were well-equipped. Better than well. Longswords and maces at their hips, closed helms with mail coifs underneath, half-plate layered over long-skirted chainmail. The double armor left no gap worth exploiting. Over it all they wore white sleeveless surcoats, and their shields — white leather over a fan-shaped frame with a metal rim — were strapped tight to their forearms.
On every surcoat and every shield, the same device: a Red Lion with a forked tail, fangs bared, claws out, tongue and claws picked out in gold thread against the white ground.
House Reyne. His house.
The litter rocked as Wyman worked his way out of it with practiced effort. Henry and Willis swung down from their horses.
"Seven hells," Willis said, low and appreciative, his eyes moving down the line. "Look at the kit on them. That's not a rabble — those are proper men-at-arms. Equipment like that, bearing like that —" He shook his head. "The Merman's Court guards aren't better turned out."
He wasn't wrong. To put twelve men in matching armor of that quality — the sort that suggested a smith had measured each man individually — took coin and organization. These weren't hedge knights scraping together mismatched plate. Someone had outfitted them deliberately.
Wyman stepped up beside Henry and lowered his voice. "The Reyne name still carries weight in the south. Even after all this time." He put a hand on Henry's shoulder. "War's coming, and that means opportunity. Lead these men well under Lord Stark's banner, and Eddard will reward it. A man who shows up with sworn swords and fights with honor earns his lord's attention. This is how you begin to take back what's yours."
Henry didn't answer right away. He was looking at the men.
"I won't forget that you came," he said, loud enough to carry down the line. His voice had gone a little rough at the edges, and he didn't try to fix that. "Any of you. Not the distance, not what it cost you to make this journey. I want you to know that."
He stepped toward the mounted warrior who'd called the order — the commander, clearly. His helm was different from the others: a pointed visor with a cast iron fist on the crest, fingers clenched, knuckle pointing skyward. The edges of his armor had been worked with scrolling carved detail, enough to mark him out without being showy about it.
"How did you find your way here?" Henry asked.
"We gathered at Sarsfield, south of Castamere." The man's voice was steady, the voice of someone who had rehearsed this moment and decided not to let it undo him. "Rode east by wagon road to King's Landing, then took ship from King's Landing to Sisterton in the Three Sisters. We put on the armor and the colors there — didn't see the point in hiding what we were once we'd come that far — and booked passage on a cargo ship the rest of the way." A beat. "We're ready to serve you, my lord, whenever you have need of us."
Henry stepped closer and put a hand on the man's pauldron. "You've earned some rest first, Ser."
"My lord —" The man's voice came quickly, almost interrupting. "I'm not a Ser. My name is Maewyn Sarsfield. My father is Martin Sarsfield — he was your father's man, as loyal as any the Reyne family had." He drew himself straighter in the saddle. "We didn't come for gold or titles. We came because you're the rightful lord of Castamere, and some of us haven't forgotten that."
He hesitated, then added: "The smallfolk out there — the men in the villages and on the farms around Castamere — they still raise cups to your family's memory when they think no one's looking. The women still sew Red Lion banners and keep them folded away somewhere the Lannister stewards won't find them."
Henry let the weight of that settle over him.
He knew Castamere's history as well as he knew his own name. The castle had been built atop a gold mine — most of it ran underground, into the hills, into the rock. That gold had been the lifeblood of the Reyne earldom. Because of it, his family had never needed to press their smallfolk hard. The taxes had been light enough to be almost symbolic. People had lived decently on Castamere land.
Then Tywin Lannister had come. He'd put down the Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion the way a man drowns rats — efficiently and without sentiment. He'd flooded Castamere, sealed the mines, and left them sealed. The gold stopped flowing. The taxes didn't. Every copper that had once been waived was now collected from men who could barely spare it, and anyone who objected to the arrangement was reminded, quietly, of what had happened to the last family that tested Tywin Lannister's patience.
The people of Castamere had learned to keep their heads down. To hold whatever loyalty they still felt somewhere Lannister ears couldn't find it.
"Why now?" Henry asked. He kept his tone even, careful. "The journey north in peacetime is hard enough. With war coming—"
"Ser Garbert Rutland is dead." Maewyn's voice flattened. "He held Pride Hall — or he did, as long as he drew breath. He had no heirs after Castamere. Lord Tywin wouldn't let his lady wife inherit. He means to take Pride Hall for himself, fold it into Lannister holdings directly." He paused. "Before he died, Ser Garbert sold everything he had left. He gave it all to my father with one instruction — find the men who would still bleed for House Reyne, arm them, and send them north."
He looked up at Henry. "So here we are."
"The honor is mine," Henry said. He stepped forward and gripped Maewyn's shoulder firmly. "Courage like yours makes knights, Maewyn. The knighthood catches up to the man eventually, in my experience."
Maewyn reached up and unbuckled his helm. He pulled it free, then unwound the mail coif beneath it, and a fall of shoulder-length golden curls dropped loose around a face that couldn't have been more than twenty. Green eyes, bright with something he was working hard not to show. A scatter of freckles across his cheeks that made him look younger still, though the flush of emotion currently coloring his face aged him back up.
He swung down from his horse in one motion. Stepped forward. Went to one knee.
He set his shield flat on the pier beside him, drew his sword, and laid it across the shield face-up — the old form, the proper form, the way men had sworn themselves to lords in this world for a thousand years. He looked up at Henry directly.
"My lord." His voice was clear and steady, the nerves gone or buried. "I haven't been knighted. I can't offer you a knight's oath. But I can offer you everything I have, and I swear it on the Seven." He held the gaze. "I'll fight for you. I'll keep you alive before I think of myself. I'll obey your commands on and off the field. And if the moment comes that you need a man to stand between you and what's coming, I won't flinch from it."
The eleven men behind him came off their feet and went to one knee without a word passing between them. Swords across shields, heads raised.
Henry drew his own blade. He looked down the line for a long moment, then touched the flat of the steel to Maewyn's left shoulder.
"You'll have a place under my roof. A seat at my table." He moved the blade to the right shoulder. "I'll defend your honor as you defend mine, and I'll see to your welfare as long as I'm able to." He stepped back and raised the sword.
"Fire tests gold."
Twelve voices answered him, ringing off the water and the old timber pilings of the inner harbor:
"Fire tests gold!"
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