Chương 41

The feast continued long after his refusal of the white cloak, and the hall buzzed with talk about it. Galad, to his dismay, was at the center of attention. With Lord Mace guiding him from one cluster of nobles to another, he flitted through conversation after conversation, speaking with more lords and ladies than he could remember by the time the night was halfway done. Names blurred together. Titles ran into one another. Compliments and questions came in endless streams.

Galad accepted them all with patient courtesy, deflecting personal questions when he could, answering with practiced diplomacy when he could not. He danced as well, with plenty of ladies. The musicians played stately court dances suitable for the great hall, and Galad—who had been taught such dances in his previous life—performed them with the ease of long practice despite the differing steps.

The ladies who partnered him seemed to expect a country knight clumsy on his feet, and their pleased surprise at his competence was a small amusement. Lynesse Hightower was one of those he danced with. As they moved through the figures, her hand light in his, she did not hide her disappointment at his earlier refusal.

"You truly mean to leave us all behind?" Her blue eyes held real sorrow.

"There is nothing the Reach could offer that would tempt you to stay? Nothing... or no one?" Galad understood her meaning clearly enough. She was a kind young woman, and beautiful enough to start wars. In another life, perhaps, things might have been different. But he had no intention of leading her on with false hopes.

"My lady, you do me great honor with your regard. But my heart is set on my journey, and it would be unfair of me to make any promises I cannot keep," he told her.

"I do not wish to marry any time soon, and when I do, I cannot say where my life will have taken me by then." She was quiet for several steps of the dance, processing his words. Her chin lifted slightly.

"I appreciate your honesty, ser. Most men would have lied to spare my feelings, then spared themselves the awkwardness by avoiding me entirely afterward."

"You deserve better than that."

"I do." She managed a small, sad smile.

"I wish you well on your travels, Ser Galad. Truly. May the Seven watch over you."

"And over you, my lady. May you find happiness wherever your life leads." She blinked back what might have been tears as the dance ended, then offered him a graceful curtsy before withdrawing to her family's company. The biggest surprise of the evening came when Queen Cersei Lannister approached him directly. Galad had been talking with Lord Selwyn Tarth about Tarth's daughter Brienne, who was apparently a girl of extraordinary size and martial inclination, when he saw the queen making her way across the hall.

She moved with elegant purpose, her crimson gown catching the candlelight, gold thread glinting at her throat and wrists. She stopped before him, her smile carefully arranged.

"Ser Galad. Would the great champion have time for a dance?" The musicians had just begun a slower piece, one of the gentler court dances. Galad bowed and offered his hand. To refuse would have caused a scene neither of them needed.

"It would be my honor, Your Grace." They moved onto the floor together, and Galad felt every eye in the hall turning toward them. Their last encounter had not been spoken of publicly, naturally, yet here she was, dancing with him before the entire realm. As the dance began, she spoke softly enough that only he could hear.

"I owe you an apology, ser. My behavior toward you the other evening was... unbecoming of a queen, and a wife. I had been drinking, and the strain of recent events—" She paused, her face becoming a study in genuine-seeming regret.

"I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I should not have spoken to you the way I did. I should not have... done what I did." Galad's hackles rose immediately. The woman was a good actress, he had to grant her that. The remorse in her voice would have convinced almost anyone. Gentle, sincere, just vulnerable enough to seem real. But she was arrogant to the point of stupidity if she thought he would believe it after what had truly transpired between them. She had not been drunk.

She had been calculating, manipulative, and ultimately vicious in her threats when her seduction failed. This new act was simply a different approach. She had failed to seduce him, failed to threaten him, and now she would try kindness. Or perhaps this was something else entirely—perhaps she was establishing public appearance of reconciliation for some future purpose he could not yet see. He kept his expression neutral, his voice polite but reserved as they moved through the dance figures.

"There is nothing to forgive, Your Grace. Such matters are best left in the past, where they belong." Her smile widened. Wide and full of teeth, pretty teeth, white and even, but somehow predatory in their display.

"You are most gracious, ser. I am glad we understand each other."

"As am I, Your Grace." They completed the dance in silence, exchanging only the formal pleasantries the figures required. When it ended, Galad bowed properly and Cersei nodded, and they parted with all the appearance of cordial relations restored. But as he watched her glide back to her seat, Galad disliked very much what her satisfaction might mean. People like Cersei Lannister did not let go of grudges. They only buried them deeper, to be retrieved when most useful.

He retired for the night not long after, citing the day's exertions—an excuse no one could refute given what he had been through. And for the first time since taking residence in the Rock, he requested Tyrell men-at-arms to guard his door through the night. Better cautious than dead. xxx The castle still slept when Galad rode out through the great gates of Casterly Rock. Dawn had barely touched the eastern sky, the world wrapped in that grey hour before true morning.

Mist clung to the slopes of the Rock and drifted down toward the coast in pale ribbons. The guards on the gate, men who had been awake all night, merely nodded as he passed, too tired to do more than mark his departure in whatever ledger they kept of comings and goings. The horses stabled in the lower castle had been roused by the boy Galad had paid the night before to ready her, and his mare stood saddled and warm. She moved beneath him now with the easy gait of a horse glad to be free of her stall.

The road wound down the great stone bulk of the Rock in switchbacks, descending toward the coastal plain where Lannisport sprawled like a jewel along the sea. The sun rose at his left as he rode, a pale disc fighting its way through the morning haze. Galad had worn Ser Baelor Hightower's spare evening clothes the night before.

His own new garments for the final feast—commissioned at the insistence of little Margaery Tyrell and Lady Lynesse, should be ready this morning at the tailor's shop, embroidered with the tree and sunburst sigil he had finally settled upon for himself. A bird called somewhere in the scrub beside the road. The sound carried strangely in the cool morning air. Galad's mare flicked her ears at it but did not break stride.

Ahead, perhaps two hundred paces down the road, something interrupted the empty stretch of dirt and grass. A cart, mule-drawn, had stopped at the roadside. Four men stood or sat around it, looking entirely too casual for travelers who had broken down. One leaned against the cart's wooden side. Another sat on a stone, picking at his teeth. The other two stood near the mule, talking quietly. Galad slowed his mare to a walk as he approached. Something about the scene felt wrong.

He could not have said exactly what, but years of war and worse had taught him to trust such instincts. Travelers with a broken cart would be working at it, frustrated, perhaps cursing. These men looked like they were waiting. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. His hand drifted to rest near Nightfall's hilt as he drew closer. The Valyrian steel blade had been at his hip since he woke, as it always was now.

He kept his approach steady, his expression neutral, his eyes taking in every detail. The men noticed him. Their conversation ceased. They watched him approach with too much interest. Galad was about to ride past when a sound came from the back of the cart. A muffled scream. High, female. Cut short by what sounded like an open hand striking flesh. He reined in immediately. His mare came to a stop perhaps ten paces from the cart and turned, his hand now openly resting on Nightfall's hilt.

"You have one chance," he said, his voice echoing in the morning silence.

"Let the woman go. Surrender yourselves. I will see you delivered to lawful justice." The four men exchanged glances. One of them, a wiry fellow with a scar across his chin, looked at the man who seemed to be their leader, a broader man with greasy black hair tied back with a leather thong.

"He the one?" the scarred man asked. The leader studied Galad for a long moment, seeming to focus on his purple eyes.

"Looks like the one." Galad's frown deepened. The exchange made no sense. They were not surprised to see him. They were not frightened by his obvious capacity to harm them. They were... confirming his identity. Why would kidnappers on a deserted road have any idea who he was, or be waiting to confirm it? Before he could pursue the thought further, another cry came from the cart. Weaker this time.

"Please—please help me—" The voice cut off again with another sound of impact. A young woman's voice. Whatever was happening here, whatever the strangeness of the encounter, there was a girl in that cart suffering at the hands of these men. Galad had no choice in what came next. He drew Nightfall. The Valyrian steel slid free of its scabbard with a soft whisper. The rippling pattern in the blade caught the pale morning light and threw it back in shimmering arcs. The reaction was immediate.

"Shit!" the scarred man hissed, scrambling back from the cart. His hand went to a short sword at his belt.

"It's the damned fockin' Woodsman!" Another of the men, this one bald with a thick beard, pointed at Galad.

"I saw him fighting yesterday! That's his sword!"

"No one said it was him we're waiting for!" the scarred one said.

"Shut your mouths!" The leader snarled at them, drawing his own weapon—a longsword of decent quality, better than the men around him carried.

"He bleeds same as any other man. Four of us, one of him. Mind your spacing and we'll have him." They drew their weapons in a clattering chorus. Three swords and a heavy mace. Galad considered for less than a heartbeat. He could ride them down—a mounted knight against four men on foot was usually no contest, even without his particular skills. But mounted, he might let one or two escape on foot through the forest and scrub. And he needed every one of them.

There were too many questions here that demanded answers, and dead men gave none. He dismounted in a single fluid motion, landing lightly on the dirt road. His mare, well-trained, simply backed away to give him room. The leader's mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. Galad knew what the man was thinking. A foe abandoning the advantage of horse and height meant a foe who underestimated them. A foe who could be brought down by numbers. Let them think it. It meant they were less likely to run.

They spread out, trying to circle him, three to the front and one—the wiry scarred one—looking to slip behind. Galad let them think they had time to position themselves. Then he moved. He went at the leader first. Nightfall came down in a diagonal cut that the man tried to parry with his longsword. At the last second, he flicked his wrist, sliding the Valyrian steel against the common sword and striking at the wooden crossguard.

Wood, flesh, and bone parted like butter, and before the man could even register his missing fingers, Galad reversed his stroke and brought the flat of his sword across the man's temple. The leader dropped like a poleaxed ox, unconscious before he hit the ground. The other three faltered, shocked by how quickly their leader had fallen. That moment of hesitation was all Galad needed.

He pivoted, ducked beneath a clumsy mace swing, and brought Nightfall up in a precise cut that opened the mace-wielder's sword arm from wrist to elbow. Not deep enough to kill, but deep enough that the man dropped his weapon and fell back with a scream, clutching at the streaming wound. The bald one came at him with desperate fury, his sword raised overhead in a wild chop. Galad sidestepped, struck the man's blade aside with Nightfall, and kicked his legs out from under him in the same motion.

The bald man crashed onto his back. Galad's boot came down on his sword wrist with enough force to make him drop the weapon, and the pommel of Nightfall met his temple a heartbeat later. That left only the scarred man, who had circled fully behind Galad and was now charging at his back. Galad did not bother turning. He simply stepped sideways at the last instant, let the man's momentum carry him past, and brought Nightfall down on the back of his skull with the flat of the blade.

The scarred man face-planted into the dirt of the roadside and did not move. The whole encounter had taken perhaps twelve heartbeats. Breathing only slightly faster than normal, he stood amidst the dust of the road, surveying his work. Four men on the ground. Three unconscious, one bleeding but alive. None dead. He could tie them up and use the cart to take them back to Casterly Rock easily enough. He turned toward the cart, intending to free the girl and tend to her, only for a new sound to reach him. Hoofbeats.

Many hoofbeats, coming down the road from Casterly Rock at a hard gallop. Galad turned to face the approaching riders, Nightfall still bare in his hand. A company of horsemen came into view at the bend in the road, perhaps thirty of them in total. At their head rode two figures in white enameled plate—the unmistakable armor of the Kingsguard. Galad recognized them as they drew closer. Ser Meryn Trant with his sour, brutal face. Ser Mandon Moore with his strange, cold eyes.

Beside them rode a third knight, this one in finer steel armor of grey and gold. Older, perhaps forty, with thinning hair visible beneath his open-faced helm and a heavy moustache. His shield bore a manticore on white beneath three gold coins. The sigil of House Lorch, if he remembered the heraldry Garlan had drilled into him during the tourney correctly. Behind them came some two dozen men-at-arms in Lannister red and gold, swords at their hips, expressions hard.

The riders pulled up perhaps twenty paces from Galad. Their horses snorted and stamped, breath steaming in the cool morning air. The Lannister men spread out in a loose half-circle. Ser Meryn Trant spoke first, his voice carrying a nasal whine that grated at the ears.

"Get the girl." Galad's head turned sharply.

"What?" How did they know about a girl? Had they heard her screams? Ser Amory Lorch did not hesitate. He swung down from his horse with surprising agility for a man his size and strode toward the back of the cart. Something made Galad start forward, something about the look of the man, but the kingsguards knight rode to stop him.

"Stand where you are, ser." Ser Mandon Moore's voice was flat and cold. He and Trant had drawn their swords now. Some of the Lannister men had bows in their hands—not raised yet, but ready.

"Move and you will be cut down."

"What is the meaning of this?" Galad demanded, though even as he said the words, the cold weight of understanding was settling in his stomach. The men's strange behavior. Their confirmation of his identity. Their waiting on a road that no one should have known he would be traveling at this hour.

"We have been investigating this slaving ring for more than a week," Trant said, his thin lips curling into something approximating satisfaction.

"And imagine our surprise, ser, when our patient watch finally bore fruit this morning. Who would have thought the famous Woodsman knight, the great hero of the Iron Islands, was the one behind it all?"

"You must be mistaken, ser," Galad said, though he knew it was useless now. A brief, terrible scream came from the back of the cart, taking him by surprise. Ser Amory Lorch simply climbed back out of the cart, wiping a long dagger on a rag. He'd killed her. Plain and simple. Before he sheathed the dagger back at his side, Galad briefly saw that the blade rippled in the sun. Valyrian steel.

"Shame," Ser Amory said, spitting on the road.

"Wanted to have a go at the king's whore meself." Revulsion rose within him, but Galad understood completely what had happened then. It was a trap. Had been a trap from the moment Cersei Lannister's wide, satisfied smile had bloomed during their dance the night before. Probably from the moment he had stepped out of her chambers. The girl in the cart had been bait—and now, more importantly, she was a corpse. Evidence. A murder Galad would be accused of committing.

He looked at the four men he had brought down—men who had been waiting for him specifically, who had been told what he looked like, who had been provided with a victim to make the scene convincing. They had been told to put up a token resistance, perhaps, but most certainly to be alive when the "investigators" arrived. Witnesses to his guilt. They would tell whatever story they were paid to tell, and no one would believe a man on charges of slavery and murder over the testimony of Kingsguard knights.

The deep calm of the void was already settling over him without his conscious summoning. The world sharpened. He counted the men. Two Kingsguards in half-plate, alongside the Manticore knight. Twenty four Lannister men-at-arms. Twelve of them with bows in hand. Open road, no cover except the cart itself. His mare ten paces behind him, free but not saddled for fighting. Even unarmored, he could probably kill the two Kingsguard before the archers brought him down. Possibly Lorch as well.

But the archers would loose at the first sign of attack, and an arrow could find the gap in any guard. And even if he won, even if he cut his way through them, or even if he managed to escape into the brush, he would be a man who had killed two Kingsguard, several Lannister guardsmen, and a Lannister knight. He had no delusion that he could kill them all without at least one of them escaping to tell whatever tale the queen wanted told.

Ser Meryn Trant stepped his horse forward, his sword now resting casually across his saddle.

"You will be coming with us, false knight, on charges of slaving and murder." His thin smile widened, showing yellow teeth.

"To await the King's justice." The Lannister archers raised their bows in unison. Galad stood very still in the morning light, Nightfall in his hand, and felt the void inside him become absolute.