Chương 81: The City on the Hill 2

The Son Who Would Be More I The streets of his childhood blurred by as Robin led Steve's squad towards the smoke, towards the distant sound of fighting, towards his family. The strike of horseshoes on the cobblestones was unending, ringing out through streets that should have been bustling with midday traffic. Instead there were only closed doors and barred windows, shops and homes filled with scared smallfolk hoping that the fighting wouldn't rise and swell their way.

A pack of looters were leaving a shop through a broken door, shoulders heavy with stolen goods. They bolted the moment they saw what was charging towards them, scurrying down alleys or pressing themselves against walls like the rats they were. Robin ignored them. A new pillar of smoke was rising ahead, still short of the Street of Steel, but too close to his home, close enough that his gut twisted in pain at the thought of what he might find there.

Arland and Harwin were at his shoulders, the knights grim faced, and he could feel the rest of the squad at his back. They would reach his family in time. They would. They rounded a corner, and suddenly the furor of fighting was so much louder. Fresh blood wet the ground as a scrum of men struggled in the street ahead, two groups fighting and dying as they took up half the road. Robin leaned back and his mount read his intentions, scrambling to a stop.

He took it all in at a glance, the Dornish spearmen and the soldiers of the unknown House they fought.

"Those are Crownland men," Arland said, disbelieving, as he came to a hard stop beside him.

"House Rosby." A man choked and dropped as a spear took him through the armpit.

"This is why the fighting is spreading," Harwin said. His mount quivered under him, barely holding itself back from charging into the fight. Going through them would take longer than going around, risk injury that would slow them down even further. Robin was already turning his mount; there was an alley a short way back wide enough for them that would lead to a side street that would come out on the other side of the fighting. Hugo and Roger were the first to follow, but the others were right behind them.

The alley and side street rushed by, and so did the corpses in red armour laying in the road beyond. Forward they charged, and now the streets weren't so empty, nor the fighting so distant. The roar of the massive melee that could only be the main of the fighting rose from their right, from the direction of the walls, and Robin tried to pick a path that arced to their left to keep their distance, but he could only veer so far.

Here and there they saw soldiers and looters, and once they had to charge through a group that were fighting over a bolt of cloth. Robin couldn't have said which army they were from, or even if they were smallfolk or soldier. He was only counting the turns until they would finally reach the street his family lived on, and all the while, the sound of battle grew closer. Men in Lannister red and Martell orange fought in the street ahead of them. There was no quick way around them.

"Through!" Robin shouted, his voice cracking with the weight of his six and ten years. There was no hesitation as Hugo and Artys took the lead, the two big men levelling their spears at the skirmish blocking their way. The two men who had been farmers only a year ago ploughed through the men-at-arms, the rest of them following in their wake. Robin surged ahead as they left the fight behind, taking the lead again. He could see the lone tree that had somehow grown and survived at the turn to his street.

There was a corpse laying under it in the dirt - it was Old Rila, who used to watch the neighbourhood's kids. There was no time to linger on the death of the woman who he remembered pestering for stories as a child, not when he rounded the corner to see his home and the pack of soldiers trying to force their way inside.

He didn't know why they'd chosen his out of all the row, but he could see his oldest brother, Joran, laying in the street with blood on his face and a discarded forge hammer at his side, while the soldiers were dragging his goodsister Bethany out through the door, laughing at the kitchen knife she held and the screams rising from her chest. Robin rose smoothly in his saddle, arrow already put to string, and then the bowyer's son started killing.

He wasn't as good a shot from horseback as he was on foot, but he was good enough. The first arrow took the man who had Bethany's hair wrapped around his fist through the neck. His second went through the eye of the man about to bring his spear down through Joran's stomach to finish him off. His third pierced the knee of the man who had turned to see who was killing his fellows, just in time for Arland to take advantage and shatter the falling man's skull with his mace.

Harwin and Symon were right on his heels, ordained knight and once-farmer having sprung from their saddles to seemingly compete to see who could slay the most foes. By the time the rest of the squad had joined them the soldiers were all dead, and Hugo was helping Bethany up from the ground where he had pinned her, covering her body with his own.

"Joran!" Robin said, slipping from his mount to hurry to his brother.

"Wha…?" Joran slurred, trying to rise. Brown hair was pasted to his forehead by blood, an enormous egg rising from the edge of his hairline where he had been struck. Bethany rushed to join them, kneeling at her husband's side, hardly looking at anyone but him. Her eyes were red rimmed, and her breath quick and shaky, but her hands were steady as she stroked at Joran's cheek.

"Son? Is that you?" Robin looked up, through the narrow doorway he was crouched beside. There was another dead soldier - red amour, they were Lannisters - in the hallway, an arrow in his chest. It wasn't one of his, and coming down the stairs inside the house with a bow at the ready, shadowed, was his father.

"Da?" He looked the same as he always had, the same muscled arms, sharp eyes, and quiet surety that he remembered. He just didn't seem quite as big as he did in his memories.

"Robin," his da said, almost disbelieving. He glanced down at Bethany, seeing the fragile hope she wore as she focused on Joran, and something eased in him. Then he looked up, seeing the armed men standing over the corpses in their street, and his guard rose again.

"Where's Ma? And Warrick?" Robin asked.

"Dale?" A few streets over, someone was screaming, their voice rising and falling without end.

"In the cellar, and on the roof," his da said. He stared at him for a moment.

"What are you-""It's not safe here," Robin said, cutting his father off for the first time in his life.

"We need to move."

"Move?" his da asked.

"Son, the war is here."

"And we have to get out of the way," Robin insisted, getting to his feet.

"Robin? That you down there?" Robin looked up to see Dale peering from over the roof's edge, bow in hand and arrow to string. His nose was as broken and ugly as ever.

"Dale. Get down from there, we have to leave."

"We can't leave, we'll be caught and cut down in the streets," his brother argued.

"The fighting hasn't reached the West Barracks yet, and if it does we can hold it. If we stay there'll just be more like them," Robin said, kicking a corpse.

"The West- you think the Gold Cloaks are going to protect us?" Dale demanded.

"The Gold Cloaks don't hold the barracks. We took it from them, and the Captain's men are holding it," Robin said.

"The Captain?"

"Lord America," Robin said proudly, his spine straightening, "my knight master." There was a quiet moment, his brother and father both giving him the same look.

"You really are a squire," his da said quietly.

"Didn't you get my letter?" Robin asked, suddenly uncertain.

"We did, son," his da said. He stepped down the stairs, approaching the doorway.

"Only…my boy, a squire. To Lord America."

"Robin," Arland said, giving him a pressing look. Robin let out a breath, nodding once.

"We need to leave, Da," he said one last time, and then he was turning to the others.

"Arland, I want these bodies hidden inside so there's no reason for any others to look twice at this street. Harwin, we need to get Joran and Bethany on a horse, and my Ma as well. I'll run, but someone else will have to give up their mount too." If he was mimicking his knight master's cadence a bit too much, no one called him on it. There was a faint smile on Arland's face as he went about his orde- his suggestions, but they wasted no time in carrying them out.

"You're giving orders to knights, son," his father said.

"My knight master sent them with me to save you, just in case," Robin said. The screaming had finally stopped, but there was a bellow of pain to replace it, and all the while the sound of battle rose in the background. Marcus Longstride, the man who taught him to shoot, his father, nodded slowly.

"Well then. I'll get your mother." In no time at all Dale was down from the roof and his Ma was out from the cellar, his little brother held protectively against her side - when she saw Robin she seized him and wrapped him in a hug tighter than he thought she was capable of, crushing little Warrick between them in the process - with Arland giving up his mount for her and Warrick, while Robin's mount bore Joran and Bethany. The bodies were hidden, and then they were leaving.

They were almost on their way when another pack of soldiers passed by the end of the street, stopping in place when they saw them. Robin, Dale, and their Da put arrows to string as one. It slowed the men, but only for a moment. Maybe it was the women, maybe it was just the horses, or maybe it was the armoured knight leading them, but they decided to try their luck. The Longstrides loosed as one, and three men fell.

Harwin and Hugo fell upon the knight when he tried to lead the charge, and the scream he let out when Hugo set about breaking his joints in the way the Captain had taught him convinced the surviving foes that they were better off fleeing. Robin ensured two more would have more pressing things to worry about than looting or raping before they could escape around the corner, and then there was no more time to waste.

They didn't venture straight for the Western Barracks, couldn't, not without risking being caught up in the spreading fighting. Instead, they made their way towards the Great Sept first. Their progress did not go unnoticed, eyes following them from behind barely cracked shutters and twitching curtains. Almost all watched in silence, but there were some who dared to approach.

Maybe they hoped for safety from a group that wasn't running amok, or maybe they were just desperate, but there were those who did more than watch. First it was an old beggar who hadn't known a roof for years, then it was a terrified mother clutching at her two young daughters, dressed like a merchant's family out for a day at the markets, but the more who joined them, the more seemed to judge they were worth the gamble.

By the time they were nearing the West Barracks, they had almost forty fearful followers, caught out in the city by ill luck or circumstance and praying that they had somehow found salvation from the horrors in store for them. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. The fortified block was where Robin remembered it, and the moment he saw it he knew that Steve's plan had gone off without trouble.

The white star banner that stood over the Barracks gates could mean nothing else. X The Boy Who Would Be a Knight I Tap tap-tap-tap. The throne room was weighed down by an oppressive silence, heavy and suffocating. Tap tap-tap-tap. Jaime stood stock still, tense and alert as he looked out over the vast and empty room. Court had slowly shrunk as the rebellion went on, as much due to the fiery spectacles it saw as the repeated news of rebel victories, but on that day it was utterly absent. Tap tap-tap-tap.

He did not shift to look at the other Kingsguard standing watch at the base of the Iron Throne. Any movement would only intensify the gaze he could feel levelled at his back. He did not need to look, anyway. He knew that Arthur would be standing just as still as he was on the other side of the throne's steps, just as alert. Tap tap-tap-tap. Jaime clenched his jaw as the endless tapping of fingernails on metal continued to ring out into the silence of the hall.

Every tap felt like it was coming from the back of his neck, and he repressed a shiver, grateful for the white cloak that concealed the bulk of his body. Tap tap-tap-tap. Ever since word had come that there was fighting at the walls, the Keep had felt like a pot set to simmering, and every confused message or conflicting report that came served only to fuel the flames.

Jaime couldn't hold back the shiver that came with the thought, reminded of the silver-haired whore who had been burnt alive for the crime of insulting the Crown only the day before. Tap tap-tap-tap. The sound of a door opening had Jaime turning on the spot, even as Arthur kept his gaze on the empty hall. Their hands didn't go to their swords - they were already there. A short moment and far too long later, a figure padded out from behind the Iron Throne.

They were a bald, plump man, his hands clasped together and half concealed by the voluminous sleeves of his robe, and Jaime's gaze followed him as he stepped silently around the throne dais to present himself to the King. Tap. Tap. Tap.

"Varys," Aerys said, staring down at his spymaster.

"Speak."

"The messages were true, Your Grace," Varys said. Something about his soft voice failed to break through the silence of the vast hall in the same way any other noise would. Aerys leaned forward, and even from the corner of his eye Jaime could see the hunger in his face.

"All of them? How?" he demanded.

"Your son met with Lord Lannister to parley, speaking of privileges and promises. Lord Oberyn cursed the Prince as a traitor for reasons unknown. Lannister forces attacked your loyal men. Dornish forces attacked both. The fighting is nearing the Street of Steel, and the rebel forces will be here before the day is out." A spasming hand gripped at the throne, a rictus of rage and fear crossing Aerys' face, but then it was hidden behind a hand at his brow.

"Leave," the king commanded. Varys bowed deeply, retreating down and off the dais before rising. He departed the same way he had come, through the private door behind the throne, and the sound of it closing behind him had a finality to it. Jaime's pulse was steady, his thoughts cold. He did not move from his post.

"So then," Aerys rasped, low and quiet, only audible because of the inescapable silence of the hall.

"It has come to this." He dragged his hand down over his face, leaving streaks of blood on his cheek and along his unkempt and overgrown beard from where he had cut himself on his throne. He rose from his seat, descending the uneven stairs heavily, one step at a time. Jaime and Arthur turned to face him, ready for orders. Still, Jaime's pulse was steady.

"My heir is a fool," Aerys murmured to himself.

"My dragons are dead." His chin began to tremble, sorrowful.

"Dorne has deserted us." The sorrow was washed away by the first cinders of rage, kindled in his eyes.

"Tywin has betrayed me." He reached the base of the throne, stopped between his Kingsguard. He paid them no attention, staring towards the end of the hall and beyond, as if he could see through to the fighting in the city." Burn them. Burn them all."

"Your Grace?" Arthur asked, face blank. Aerys seemed to return to himself, but when he looked to Arthur, there was nothing sane in his gaze.

"Bring me Rossart," he commanded. Arthur bowed and strode away, leaving Jaime behind. His pulse remained steady, even as Aerys fell to muttering, the words too scattered and low to be made out. Had he strained, he likely could have made them out, but there was no point, and his mind was elsewhere. There was a curious roaring in his ears, and he could not drag his gaze from the king. His sword was heavy on his hip, but he wore a white cloak. He had sworn an oath.

When Arthur returned - the man who he had admired for so long, who had knighted him - Jaime could not say how much time had passed. He was followed by another figure in a robe richly embroidered with gold thread, thick rings of emerald and gold on his fingers, and a golden brooch in the shape of a hand by his collar. Despite the gaudiness of his outfit, it could not overcome his thick, plain face, or the mess of yellow teeth that were revealed when he spoke.

"Your Grace, I have come," Rossart said.

"Is it time?" Eagerness dripped from his voice.

"Light the flames," Aerys commanded, a sudden zeal in him, and Jaime realised why his father had once followed this wretch of a man.

"Burn them. The flames of renewal will spread and purge the rot that has come to my city." His voice rose as he spoke." Burn them all!" He wore a white cloak. He had sworn an oath.

"So it shall be, Your Grace," Rossart said, bowing low. No, not an oath. Oaths.

"Dayne, you will escort my Hand, and cut down any who seek to stop him," Aerys commanded. Arthur opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He swallowed.

"Yes, Your Grace." The king began to pace at the base of his throne, seemingly dismissing them from his mind before they had even moved. Rossart was the first to turn, hurrying on his way and heading for one of the large side doors, and Arthur was forced to follow. He did not so much as look at Jaime as he went, leaving him alone with the mutterings of a mad king. Bright sunbeams shone in through the windows above the throne, and Jaime turned his gaze to the skulls that decorated the walls of the enormous hall.

Some small, some large, some enormous, they were all that was left of the true power of the Targaryens, obsidian black and gleaming in the shadows. The sound of a door closing reminded him of where he was. His pulse was steady.

"Did the Queen ever tell you of the day Princess Lucilla threatened my father?" Jaime asked. Aerys was broken from his muttering and his pacing, blinking as he looked over at Jaime, as if just reminded of his presence.

"What?" he asked. He sharpened, focusing.

"I will have a task for you, should Tywin reach the Keep. You are the only one who I trust to see it done." He blinked again.

"What did you say?"

"The Queen," Jaime said again.

"Did she ever tell you of the day Princess Lucilla threatened my father?" Aerys didn't respond for a long moment, but then he began to chortle.

"Tywin, threatened by the Dornish whore! How I wish I could have seen it."

"She told him that if he ever hurt my mother, she would see that he suffered for it," Jaime continued, as if he hadn't heard the king's words. He spoke calmly, patiently, looking over Aerys' shoulder, towards the Iron Throne.

"They were the best of friends. Princess Lucilla, my mother, Queen Rhaella." Something about the way he was talking saw a slight frown cross Aerys' face, more of confusion than anything.

"What is, I, I don't…" he trailed off as Jaime looked him in the eye, green eyes blazing.

"It is a pity no one did the same for you."

"You…no!" Aerys shrieked, backing away.

"No! I command you to-!" He tripped on the first step towards the throne, collapsing onto the staircase of melted swords. Jaime advanced, sabatons thudding with every step, implacable. He did not bother to draw his sword, didn't want to get blood on it for what he would need to do after. Aerys raised a hand, trying to ward him off, but Jaime ignored the feeble defence and seized the king by the throat with both hands. Then, he began to squeeze.

The scent of piss filled the air as Aerys soiled himself, and Jaime kept squeezing. Frail hands beat uselessly at his white armour, and Jaime kept squeezing. Horror and disbelief coloured Aerys' face as he choked and struggled, his eyes rolling back in his head, and Jaime kept squeezing. A desperate hand rose to claw at his face with gnarled nails, long and yellow, but it was batted away and still, Jaime kept squeezing.

He remembered pained cries, pleas to stop, night time visits that even deliberately stoked paranoia couldn't stop completely. The gods would have a special hell ready for the man to treat his sister so poorly. Jaime blinked, realising that the king was dead, and had been for a long minute. He came back to himself, relinquishing his grip with a sudden movement. The man who he had been forced to listen rape his wife, the Queen, his mother's friend, was dead. And he had killed him.

A ring was ripped from a skeletal finger, coming off easily, and then Jaime was rising to stride off after Rossart. He had an oath to live up to. X The Woman Who Rides Like a Man I They found nothing in the Maidenvault save for some few terrified servants. Whatever guests the keep had held were absent, and they found no hint as to where the Princess and her children could be.

Keladry had thought it a reasonable assumption - surely, with Rhaegar going against his father, he would not leave his family living in the very same building - but the servants they questioned claimed that the Princess had never resided in the Maidenvault. From top to bottom they searched the keep, just to be sure, but all the while she was beset by the creeping feeling that something was slipping through her fingers the longer they spent searching.

Ortys and Jon returned to the hallway intersection she stood in, glaive planted, but the grimaces they wore made clear that their search of the rooms in their wing had yielded nothing. More of her squad hurried back over the next minute, none of them with better news. Ser Tymor was the last, the stout Riverlands knight shaking his head as he joined the rest.

"If the Princess is not here, we must look elsewhere," Kel said. Her grip was steady on her glaive, but the feeling of standing around doing nothing was a looming presence at the back of her mind.

"If she has gone to pray, Yorick will have her," Tymor said, the knuckles of his gauntlet tapping a tattoo on his tasset, clearly feeling the same press of inactivity that Kel was.

"I cannot think of where else she would be but the Holdfast, not with the city under siege and fighting in the streets." Left unsaid was that the Captain would have her safe if she was there.

"What if they're not here?" Maynard asked, taking off his sallet helm to rub at his prickly scalp. He had been a smith's apprentice before joining the company, but had taken well to Steve's training, and not just the physical side.

"The royals would have a bolt hole, wouldn't they?"

"Dragonstone," Kel said, thinking.

"Maybe." There would be no danger by sea save the storms, and with the coming of the rebels a clear thing…

"The Red Keep is a maze, and we cannot know they are gone. We will search-" she stopped, head turning as rapid footsteps caught her ear. Her squad mirrored her, weapons held at the ready, but there was no clamour of armour on the run, only the footsteps, and the figure that came running around the red stone hallway was not a threat, only a lowborn handmaiden. The terror in her eyes, bitten bloody lip, and tear tracks on her face all told a story, and as she saw them she froze - but only for a moment.

The instant the dusky skinned girl saw Kel, saw her glaive, she rushed forward, reaching out. Kel was already reaching in turn, moving to steady the girl as she almost crumpled to a stop before her.

"Ser Keladry," the girl said, words falling out from her quick on the heels of each other.

"Ser Yorick, the sept, they're all dead, please-""Yorick is dead?!" Keladry demanded. Around her, her squad reacted in alarm.

"No no no, the septons and septas, they're all dead, I hid, I had to hide," the girl rambled, tears coming anew. She clutched tightly at Kel's armoured arms, red eyes fixed on her own.

"Ser Yorick sent me to find you so you can help, he killed everyone in the Sept and he's going after the Princess -" she took a huge, shuddering breath, "-the Godswood, Ser Yorick said you had to follow-""Find a room and hide," Kel ordered, squeezing her shoulder. The girl nodded rapidly, tension and panic flooding from her now that her task was done, and she slipped to the side to fall against a wall, even as Kel turned to her men. They were wound tight, ready to move on her word.

"To the Godswood," she said, and they followed. No one appeared to bar their path as they ran through the Maidenvault, the run they took the halls at a comfortable thing after a year under the Captain's tender mercies. The Red Keep was a huge thing, buildings looming over each other and paths twisting and turning to make the path of an invading force harder, but they could tell where the walls to the Godswood were, and onwards they ran.

There were no guards to be seen, not on the route they followed at least, and Keladry could not help but wonder where they were. Steve had been right. Something was wrong, but there was no time to stop and think about it. In short minutes they had almost reached the main entrance to the Godswood, the gates half open and unguarded. Kel led the way, glaive held low ahead of her, ready to take the leg of any foe that might appear. None did.

The squad advanced into the Godswood, leaving behind flagstone paths and red stone buildings for a picturesque woodland that was a world apart from the heart of a dynasty under siege and a city with fighting in the streets. There was even an owl nesting in the crook of a tree, yellow eyes watching them sleepily as they strode deeper through the greenery. They found the first corpse laying amongst the roses.