Chương 5

Lady Olenna Tyrell When the whole tiresome ordeal began, Olenna Tyrell had been eating figs. They were good figs, too, plump and dark with none of that tartness she hated that gave her reflux. The only good thing to come out of this misery. Why, oh why, had the Lord Oaf of Highgarden decided on an outing today of all days? When the guards outside started bellowing something, and the word Ironborn carried clearly enough to be the only thing she could comprehend, the hens descended on her at once.

Alerie, pale like a ghost already, grasped her arm as if Olenna would be the one to protect her from those brutes. The two ladies-in-waiting fluttered like startled doves too, already speaking over one another, already deciding that upstairs was safer because it was upstairs, as if a few steps would stop the Ironborn once they made their way inside. Someone tugged at her elbow. Someone else began crying. They wanted her up the stairs. Olenna stared at them for a long moment, then clicked her tongue.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, settling more firmly into her chair.

"If they break in, what difference does it make whether I die in a bed or on a bench? At least here I won't have to climb." Her hip had been troublesome all morning. She was not about to worsen it for the sake of panic. They had tried anyway, of course. They always did. Between the four of them they had nearly managed to haul her halfway up the steps before a crash from above. Wood splintered, then a man's scream.

That sent them all shrieking back down again, and the retreat had been less dignified than the attempt. Now they huddled in the common room. Olenna and the hens, cooks with white faces and bloody hands, servants clutching one another, and a single Tyrell guard stationed by the barricaded door, sweating through his mail. The air was thick with smoke and fear and the sour tang of spilled ale. Olenna sighed. The one day— the one day —she did not have Arryk and Erryk with her.

Loyal, humorless, wonderfully dependable Arryk and Erryk, who would have formed a seven feet wall of steel and scowls between her and any fool with an axe. Instead, she had… this. A single guard whose knees were visibly considering betrayal. That and those twenty men out there who were, unfortunately, being commanded by her son. The thought alone made her shiver. Gods help us. Then the pounding at the doors stopped. For a terrible moment, the room went utterly still. Someone sobbed softly.

Olenna felt the weight of that silence settle in her chest, but she did not let that fear show. If the world had decided this was it for her, then so be it.

"They must've broken through the side gate," one of the cooks whispered.

"Quiet," Olenna snapped, though her own heart gave an unwelcome lurch. If the Ironborn had stopped trying the door, it meant they might have truly made their way inside elsewhere. If they did, there would be no warning. No time for last words. No opportunity to tell Mace— She cut that thought off sharply. Getting weepy now would do no one any good. Then, scarcely a minute later, movement at the window caught her eye.

A mustached face appeared behind the body of a dead Ironborn wedged awkwardly in the shattered frame, skewered clean through the chest by a roasting fork. Blood dripped steadily onto the sill. The face beyond it, however, was very much alive.

"Tell the men to sortie out!" the man shouted, far louder than was strictly necessary.

"Sortie out now!" Olenna winced. Did everyone insist on bellowing during crises? Had whispering gone out of fashion while she wasn't looking? The room froze. No one moved. The guard stared at the window as though the man outside had been speaking in rough Dothraki. Olenna huffed.

"Well?" she said sharply.

"Go on, then." The guard blinked at her, eyes wide, as though only just realizing she still existed. Then he lurched into motion, running around the bar and wrenching the kitchen door open just long enough to shout for Mace and the others in the backyard before slamming it shut again. Mace. Olenna snorted softly to herself. Her oaf of a son was probably puffing and preening out there, convinced that courage was something you shouted loudly enough until it appeared.

She had made herself quite clear before the fighting reached its worst: let the men do the fighting, and if you must die, then die productively. Take at least one Ironborn with you, preferably one with a sigil worth dying to. She had raised him better than this. Or perhaps not. Olenna sighed. At least Willas was not here. That thought steadied her more than she liked to admit. Willas, Garlan, Loras, Margaery. Gone on their pleasant little trek through the forest, spared this horror.

Sensible children, for once, assuming they had the wit to turn back at the first sign of smoke and do what Tyrells had always done best: retreat, regroup, and endure. The family could survive losses. It could not survive stupidity. A wonder they had survived this long with Mace at the helm, truly. A hushed voice cut through her thoughts.

"That's Lorne," one of the servants whispered, peering toward the window.

"He was with Lord Willas." Olenna's heart stopped. Frozen in absolute cold for a second, as if someone had reached inside her chest and seized. Alerie whipped around, fear flooding her face anew.

"What?" she demanded.

"Are you certain?" The servant nodded, trembling.

"Yes, my lady. Him an' Ben. They went with the little lord." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Olenna closed her eyes and exhaled slowly through her nose. No, no. It couldn't be. Had Willas truly chosen this moment to inherit his father's worst instincts? Had he decided that heroics were finally in order, that two men and a middling squire against Ironborn reavers was a gamble worth taking? Clever boy, thoughtful boy. Foolish boy, if so.

If he was out there now, behind the Ironborn lines, then there was nothing Olenna could do. No sharp word could reach him. No threat, no counsel, no withering look. She reached for a date and popped it into her mouth. It was sticky and sweet, heavy on the tongue. Good for digestion, the maester claimed. She chewed thoughtfully. If things went badly—if the doors gave way and the axes came down—then at least she would leave the Ironborn something to remember her by. A final, fragrant gift.

She would not smell of roses then. She always hated roses anyway. xxx They knew the sortie succeeded because the noise changed. The fighting had rung through the inn for what felt like hours, every impact reverberating through the stone and wood until her head throbbed in time with it. If the Ironborn did not kill her with sword or axe, they would do it with noise.

Then the cheers burst out from the men, rolling through the common room like a physical thing, setting cups rattling and making several of the servants gasp as if struck. Olenna winced and brought a hand to her temple. More shouting followed the cheers, only this time it was not the incoherent warcries boys like to scream out when they were poking each other with sharp sticks until one burst like a wineskin. It was men calling orders, others crying out as they fled or fell or thanked the gods.

It was all very dramatic. And over it all, unmistakable as a storm breaking, Mace's thunderous voice. Of course he was shouting. Inside, the hens dissolved into tears and laughter in equal measure. One of the cooks seized a servant girl by the shoulders and kissed her with such fervor that the girl nearly folded in half, knocking over a stool in the process. Someone clapped. Someone prayed aloud. Someone else laughed hysterically. Olenna watched it all with a faint curl to her lip.

They cheered as though they had swung the swords, she thought, as though their little prayers and songs could be heard outside while men bled and died and shat themselves. When Alerie moved to embrace her, eyes bright and wet, Olenna waved her away without looking.

"Enough flapping," she muttered. A few minutes later, the door at the back of the kitchen opened, and Mace Tyrell strode into the common room as if making an entrance at a feast. He was smiling broadly, chest puffed, hair only slightly mussed. Sweat darkened his doublet beneath the arms and along the breast, but otherwise his clothes were pristine. So he had not fought. Good. Even in armor, he would have been more obstruction than advantage.

Though, Olenna supposed, he might have managed to fill the narrow gate all by himself if the Ironborn had tried to squeeze past him. There were uses for such a prodigious bulk. What caught her attention was that he was not alone. Behind him came Lorne, the guard who was meant to be with the children. And beside Lorne, a young man Olenna did not recognize. One glance told her that he had seen real fighting.

Blood streaked his face and neck, dried dark against his skin, and his clothes bore the same marks, though they were torn nowhere. His sword, interestingly enough, was clean. Very interesting. He was handsome, too, strikingly so. Tall, dark-haired, built like a knight despite his obvious youth, face all sharp angles as if carved from a block of pale marble. Olenna had seen beautiful men in her time.

Her own Targaryen betrothed, Daeron, had been easy on the eyes, if lacking in every quality that made a man worth keeping. But this one… This one had the eyes of the Targaryens, a dashing purple, with nothing of that Valyrian foppishness she had come to despise. In her youth, Olenna reflected dryly, she would not have minded being seized and folded over with a kiss by such a young man. When Mace and Alerie finally disentangled themselves, she spoke.

"Very well, Mace," she said.

"Enough of that now. Is it done?" Mace beamed as if she had asked him whether the sun had risen.

"Yes, mother! The battle is over. We have come out victorious against fearful odds. The Battle of the Flower Hearth—yes, I can already hear the songs." Olenna suppressed a groan.

"And it would not have been possible without our hero here," Mace continued, gesturing grandly at the young man.

"Truly?" Alerie asked in that thin, fluttering voice of hers. Olenna rolled her eyes. Gods, but the woman could be dull at times. Which was most of them, unfortunately.

"Yes, my love, truly," Mace said.

"This young man fought like the legends of old. I saw him cut down five men in seconds before he took on the Ironborn captain, and what a duel that was."

"Yes, yes, marvelous," Olenna cut in, annoyed.

"But where is Willas?" The room stilled again.

"And Garlan," she went on, eyes narrowing, "and Loras and Margaery. Were they not supposed to be with you, man?" Her gaze snapped to Lorne, who stiffened as if bracing for a blow.

"Well? Out with it," she demanded. What followed was, Olenna decided, a fantastical tale, even by Reachman standards, despite how taciturn the teller sounded. Lorne spoke of meeting this young man in the forest, a simple woodsman by his account, of a sudden Ironborn attack at the man's home, of a desperate flight toward the village. He told of Galad the woodsman convincing Willas to take the children and flee toward Highgarden.

Of the fight outside the inn, of charges and countercharges, of Ironborn falling like wheat before a scythe. By the time he finished, the small crowd had gathered closer, whispering and gasping, eyes fixed on Galad as though he might sprout wings at any moment. Alerie and the hens descended upon him with thanks and praise, one bold girl even pressing a kiss to each of his cheeks. The young man himself accepted it all without flinching or blushing. That, Olenna noted, was the strangest thing of all.

No nervous fidgeting. No false modesty. He stood there in bloodied silence, face composed as a lacquered mask. Battle shock, perhaps. Some men went oddly still after fighting, as though their souls had not yet caught up with their bodies. Mace spoke again.

"I have already sent men up the road for the children," he said.

"Another thing we must thank you for, young man. Truly, your deeds are worthy of song." Olenna felt a familiar tightening behind her eyes.

"Not song," Mace corrected himself, warming to the sound of his own voice.

"Knighthood. Lordship, in fact." There it was. His eyes gleamed with a light Olenna did not like at all.

"Dustonbury stands empty," he went on.

"A castle in need of a noble lord. And after today, I would be hard-pressed to name a more noble man than you, young Galad. Kneel, swear me your oaths, and I will make you Lord of Dustonbury here and—""Mace." Her voice cut through the room without her needing to raise it. Her son froze as if she had struck him, and Olenna fixed him with a glare he had known since childhood, one that promised consequences.

"We will speak of rewards later," she said coldly.

"I am sure the young man is terribly weary after such an ordeal. Are you not, boy?" She said it to test him, to needle him. Galad the woodsman merely inclined his head, neither eager nor offended.

"See?" Olenna continued.

"He can barely speak. We can discuss awarding him knighthood—" she put sharp emphasis on the word, "—when we are safely behind the walls of Highgarden." Her word was final. Mace blustered and puffed, but she had already dismissed him. Her attention remained on the young man standing quietly in the dim light of the common room. Hero or not, Olenna Tyrell thought, she would not be handing out lordships to the first woodsman who proved adept with a sharp stick.

But she would very much like to know where he had learned to wield it.