Chapter 12: Training
The air on Blacktide Isle had a particular quality to it — cold and sharp, carrying the salt of the open sea mixed with the rot of exposed seaweed at low tide. It was nothing like the clean harbor smell of White Harbor. It was older and ranker, the smell of a place that had never entirely decided between land and sea.
The army camp spread out from the walls of Blacktyde Keep in every direction, campfires enough to turn the night sky above it a pale amber. The few trees that had stood near the castle were mostly stumps now — timber for tent poles and palisade sections. The camp had swallowed the modest keep whole and expanded it several times over, wooden walls extending from the stone ones, new structure rising fast under the direction of engineers who'd done this before.
Silk pavilions marked the nobles and knights — house banners flying from the tops, camp servants moving between them with that particular combination of efficiency and invisibility that good servants develop. The soldiers' tents were canvas, row on row, and between them moved the inevitable followers that any army accumulates: sutlers, laundresses, farriers, and men whose exact purpose was unclear but who seemed always to be carrying something somewhere.
Squads of armored men moved out through the camp gates at regular intervals, bound for the ironborn villages scattered across the island. Their orders were to occupy and hold, and to bring back any ironborn they found — the prisoners would work, repairing the fortifications and hauling supplies. The ironborn Henry had taken in the keep had already been pulled from the dungeon for the same purpose, blinking in the daylight and moving with the resentful compliance of men who understand their options clearly.
Barristan Selmy ran a disciplined camp. The trenches were dug properly, the watches were regular, and nobody seemed to be testing that particular standard twice.
Corlen came back through the water gate on the second day, longships carrying the warhorses through the narrow channel — the only vessels that could manage it, the Royal Fleet's larger ships riding at anchor in the outer bay where they'd stay.
He came ashore with a grin that suggested he'd been rehearsing something.
"My lord." He swept a bow that was slightly more elaborate than the situation required. "I saw the camp and the fleet from a league out and nearly turned back. It was only my deep and abiding loyalty that brought me through the gate." He straightened up. "You can call me Loyal Corlen, if you like."
"The wounded," Henry said. "And the bodies."
The performance dropped. "Delivered," Corlen said, simply and seriously. "The villages along the river — we put in at the closest point for each family. The sailors —" He paused. "We buried them at the river mouth. Seemed right."
Henry nodded.
"Where are we going next?" Corlen asked. "The men are ready."
"We wait for the raven."
The raven could wait. Barristan Selmy, it turned out, could not be idle.
Henry had expected many things from the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Extended daily sparring sessions that left him face-down in the dirt of the training yard were not among them. And yet.
Three days. Nearly twenty bouts, one-on-one, practice swords. Henry had not touched the man. Not once. He hadn't come close to touching him. He'd landed on the ground or against the wall or on his back more times than he'd bothered counting, and each time Barristan had pulled him back up with his left hand and explained, with patience that somehow made it worse, exactly what Henry had done wrong.
The twelfth bout of this particular morning ended the same way the previous eleven had. Henry came down hard with an overhand strike, putting his full weight and strength behind it. Barristan caught it on the flat of his practice blade with a movement that looked almost lazy, redirected the force sideways, and stepped in with his shoulder. Henry went down.
He lay on his back looking at the grey Iron Islands sky for a moment.
Barristan sheathed the practice sword and looked down at him. "Your sword is not an axe, and you are not felling a tree." He said it the way he said most things — without heat, without impatience, as if the observation were simply a fact that Henry hadn't encountered yet. "You're tall and strong, stronger than most men you'll face. That is a genuine advantage. But you've built your entire approach around that advantage, and it shows. Against ordinary men, it's enough. Against anyone who knows what they're doing, they'll read every strike before it lands, they'll redirect your force rather than meet it, and you'll be exhausted by the time the real fight starts."
Henry sat up slowly. He wasn't sure who Barristan meant by "ordinary men," but he suspected the category included everyone he'd ever beaten.
Willis Manderly had trained him since he was old enough to hold a practice sword. Willis was a capable knight, a real one, blooded in actual combat. And Willis had stopped agreeing to spar with Henry alone after losing to him three times in a row the previous year. He'd taken to calling in four or five Merman's Court guards and calling it "battlefield adaptability training," which was how Willis Manderly said he didn't want to be embarrassed again.
Henry had assumed he was getting somewhere.
He was beginning to revise that assumption.
"I've only ever felt genuinely tired in training," he said, from the ground. "Never in an actual fight."
"Because you haven't met a real challenge yet." Barristan offered his left hand and pulled Henry up. Behind his back, where Henry wasn't looking, he quietly flexed his right hand — the one that had been absorbing Henry's strikes all morning. "The Manderlys trained you. They have a knightly heritage, and they take it seriously. But they've never produced a truly exceptional swordsman."
Henry retrieved his practice sword and put it back on the rack. "How do I compare to Jaime Lannister?"
Barristan considered this with the expression of a man being asked to deliver news he's not entirely sure how to calibrate. "If three of you went at him simultaneously," he said, "you would have a reasonable chance."
Henry absorbed that. "Do I have any strengths at all?"
"You hit like a bear," Barristan said. He paused. "You also move like one."
Henry opened his mouth, found no rebuttal, and closed it again.
They walked out of the training yard together and into the hall, where a servant had left ale on the table. They sat and drank slowly, Barristan with his hands folded and his eyes distant, Henry rotating his shoulder carefully to see what hurt.
"The truly dangerous blow isn't the strongest one," Barristan said, after a while. "It's the most precise one, delivered at exactly the right moment. Don't exhaust yourself in the first exchange. When your movements become rigid from fatigue, a trained eye will see your next strike before you've committed to it." He looked at Henry sideways. "You're young enough that this can still be corrected. That's something."
"Thank you," Henry said, "for the encouragement."
The corner of Barristan's mouth moved.
Maester Winston appeared in the doorway, moving quickly in the way he'd adopted since being let out of the dungeon — as if stillness might be punished. "My lord. A raven from Winterfell."
He held out the letter. Henry broke the seal and read.
Lord Eddard and King Robert were sailing from Lannisport. The landing on Pyke was imminent. Eddard acknowledged Henry's results on the western coast and left further action to his discretion — if the losses were becoming unsustainable, he was authorized to fall back to Winterfell and regroup.
Henry set the letter on the table.
"Pyke," Barristan said, reading his expression rather than the parchment. "The King will land on Great Wyk first, then Pyke. Pyke is where this ends — Balon's seat, the heart of the whole thing." He took a slow drink. "If you want Robert to know your name, you want to be at Pyke when the walls come down. Kings remember the men who stand beside them on the day the battle's won."
He glanced at Henry.
"Old Wyk first. We take the main keep there, then sail for Pyke." He set his cup down. "Unless you'd rather stay here and wait."
"I didn't come all this way to wait," Henry said.
Barristan almost smiled. "No. I didn't think so."
He raised his cup.
Henry raised his.
They drank.
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