[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 50: JOFFREY XIII (Locked) (Patreon)

The river mist still clung low to the reeds of the Blackwater when the first smiths’ hammers began to ring in the armorer’s row outside the King’s Gate. Two-wheeled dray carts rumbled across the turf, dumping loads of dry river sand over the dark, dried patches where men and horses had bled the afternoon before.

Fifty thousand spectators had left their refuse behind—trampled rushes, greasy mutton bones, and cracked clay jugs—yet the lanes were already being swept clear. Commander Bywater’s gold cloaks patrolled the perimeter palisades in pairs, their mail coats clinking softly beneath heavy gold mantles. They moved with the steady tread of men whose wages were paid on time in clean coin from the newly minted bank ledgers.

Inside the competitors' yard, the crowded press of thirty-two knights had shrunk to four.

A pair of hired castle armorers in stained hide aprons worked over my gear chest, rubbing beef tallow into the leather buckles of my greaves and checking the iron rivets along the rim of the bevor. I had ended Harrold’s drudgery in the dirt. The lesson had been driven home to Lady Waynwood and Bronze Yohn yesterday; dragging it out further would make it look like petty malice rather than the firm hand of a prince.

The young Lord of the Eyrie stood beside the mounting block in clean green-and-white wool, checking the heads of my remaining lances with a squinting eye.

"The morning fog got into the wood, Your Grace," Harrold said, turning an ash pole in his hands. "Feels heavy. Sits damp in the grip."

"Take a dry cloth to the leather," I told him, stepping onto the boardwalk. "Wipe it down to the bare wood."

"Aye, my Prince," he muttered, taking up a scrap of dry linen from the bench.

Behind him, Tommen had laid out my arming cap and padded gambeson across an oak trestle, smoothing the quilted wool with serious, careful hands. Bran Stark stood beside Brimstone’s stall, leaning against the timber partition with his fingers buried in the stallion’s black mane. The brute had snapped at two grooms before dawn, but he merely huffed warm breath against the boy’s sleeve, chewing lazily on his iron bit.

"He’s quiet today," Bran said, looking up as I walked over. "My brother Robb always said if a horse won't look at you, he's thinking of bolting. But this one's just waiting."

"He knows the work," I said, running a flat hand down the stallion’s shoulder.

I checked the girth myself, tugging the double straps beneath his belly until the leather creaked tight against the hide. The high-cantle war saddle was bolted deep over his spine, solid oak wrapped in boiled hide, the steel bands along the front pommel cold beneath my fingers.

A dozen paces past our awning, near the edge of the merchant tents, the lending pavilion of the Royal Bank was already surrounded.

Moredo Rogare sat behind a trestle table covered in green baize, flanked by three clerks whose quills scratched rhythmically against thick sheets of vellum. The men waiting before the table were not the realm’s great lords, but the lesser sort—landed knights and younger sons from the Crownlands and the Riverlands whose purses had run dry before their pride did.

I recognized the surcoat of an old knight from the Red Fork who had lost his destrier and his silver-inlaid harness to Balon Swann on the third pass yesterday. The man stood bareheaded in the dirt, his face pale and hollow, pressing his signet ring into a dollop of hot green wax.

He had no four hundred dragons to ransom his horse and plate back from Swann’s squires. If he rode home stripped of his harness, he would be a laughingstock to his smallfolk and a beggar to his liege lord. So he signed. Rogare’s clerks handed over the silver to pay the ransom on the spot, and in return, the Crown took a registered lien on the tithes of the man’s watermill and two leagues of riverbank timber.

No blood spilled, no castles besieged, and no grievance that could ever be brought before the King’s courts. He was merely paying his debts with our coin. When the interest mounted and a bad winter came, the mill and the trees would belong to the Crown’s demesne without a sword leaving its sheath.

A heavy, uneven tread sounded on the wooden planks behind me.

Ser Lyle Crakehall strode beneath the awning, his squire trailing two paces back. The Strongboar looked stiff through the ribs where Garlan Tyrell had taken him out of the saddle, but he had combed the dirt from his beard and wore a fresh surcoat of brindled wool. He carried a heavy bull-hide purse in his left hand, his square jaw clamped tight in an uncomfortable scowl.

By rights of the lists, a knight unhorsed in the preliminary heats owed his mount and armor to the man who broke him. Though Garlan had thrown him in the official bracket, Crakehall’s earlier pass against my household men had left an uncollected forfeit from yesterday morning.

"My Prince," Crakehall grunted, offering a stiff, soldier's bow. "The heralds say I owe your men three hundred gold dragons for the piebald, else the beast rots in the royal pens."

I turned from Brimstone's saddle and looked at the burly knight. The Crakehalls held the crags and passes beneath the Golden Tooth; their pikes were the backbone of the west. Bleeding a minor river lord was good business; bleeding an essential Western bannerman was foolishness.

"Keep your horse, Ser Lyle," I told him, wiping grease from my thumb with a rag. "And keep your plate. We are men of the West. You rode hard yesterday, and the ground took you only because the Tyrell boy slipped your point by half an inch. I would rather see the Strongboar mounted on a good horse under my father’s banner than take three hundred dragons from my grandfather’s own bannerman."

Crakehall blinked, his thick brow furrowing as he looked down at the purse in his fist. "The custom of the lists, my Prince—"

"A custom for strangers," I said, meeting his eyes. "Give the heralds a single silver stag to mark the tally closed. I’d rather have the Strongboar riding whole when my father calls the banners than three hundred dragons gathering dust in a chest. Go find the cooks behind the Great Sept and get some ale into those bruised ribs."

A slow, wide grin split Crakehall’s bearded face. The suspicion drained from his eyes, replaced by the simple, bone-deep loyalty of an Andal warrior who respected a prince that spoke like a soldier. He tucked the purse back into his belt and caught my forearm with a calloused hand that gripped like iron.

"You have the Old Lion’s eye and your father’s weight, my Prince," the knight rumbled, his voice thick with genuine approval. "When the west rides, Crakehall rides behind the stag."

"I know it, Ser," I replied, giving his arm a firm clap.

He laughed, cuffed Harrold Hardyng across the shoulder hard enough to rattle the boy's teeth, and marched off toward the cook tents.

I glanced up toward the high royal box.

The morning sun had burned through the grey river mist, striking the carved cedar timbers of the royal gallery. Lord Eddard Stark was already seated in the front row, his dark grey wool cloak clasped with the silver hand of his office.

Ned Stark rested his forearms on the gallery rail, his grey eyes fixed upon our awning. He had seen me waive Crakehall’s ransom. He watched Bran standing untroubled at the stallion's head, listening to my instructions without fear, and he saw the quiet order of the camp.

There was a hard, troubled stillness in his face.

For a fortnight now, the Hand had searched for the rot Jon Arryn had warned of. He had sat across from me in council, watched us cut the tourney’s ruinous budget together, and watched the Gold Cloaks keep the peace without slaughtering the smallfolk. Yet Petyr Baelish’s smuggled chest still sat in his solar, filled with frantic, poisoned accusations of Lannister murders and stolen thrones. The dead thief’s whispers had warned him of monsters, but looking down into the yard, Ned Stark saw only an heir who carried his duties with sober restraint. The contradiction was eating at him, leaving him trapped between his duty to the King and the suspicions he could neither prove nor put aside.

I held the Hand's gaze for a long beat, offering neither a smile nor a courtly bow, then turned back to the rack.

A sharp, brassy blast of horns tore through the morning air.

"First match of the semifinals!" the Master of Revels cried from the center of the lists, his voice bouncing off the timber tiers as the crowds packed the benches. "Ser Loras of House Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers! Challenging Ser Gregor of House Clegane, the Mountain That Rides!"

A roar went up from the grandstands—the highborn maidens squealing for the Reachman, while the smallfolk on the lower benches muttered under their breath at the name of the Mountain.

I walked to the front rail of the paddock, resting my hands on the wood. Harrold and Bran stepped up beside me, the Stark boy craning his neck to see past the heralds’ platform.

From the northern pen, Ser Loras trotted out into the sunlight.

He looked as though he had stepped out of a singer’s tale. His silver mail was enameled with hundreds of tiny blue forget-me-nots, and his cloak was a shimmering blanket of woven summer roses that fluttered behind him. He rode a tall, slender white mare with a coat like winter cream, her legs stepping lightly across the churned sand. She wore no heavy armor, only a headstall of green leather decorated with silver studs.

Loras walked her past the front rows, dipping his lance to the merchant girls, who tossed ribbons and flowers toward his stirrups with breathless giggles.

From the south gate came Gregor Clegane.

The Mountain did not play for the crowd. He sat a massive, rawboned black stallion that looked half-mad, its eyes rolling white beneath an iron forehead plate. Gregor was encased in dull, unpolished plate thick as ditcher’s iron, the surface scarred and gouged from yesterday’s melee. In his right hand, locked firmly beneath his shoulder, he held a custom-lathed ash-wood lance turned heavy from dense heartwood, fitted with a wide leather vamplate to guard his enormous fist.

"He is too large," Bran muttered, his fingers tightening on the rail. "A man cannot break a lance that thick."

"Look at the mare's tail, Bran," I said quietly.

The boy blinked, staring across the dirt at Loras’s white horse. "The tail?"

"Look how she carries it," I told him. "Clamped tight and high, shifting her hocks every four strides. The mare is in heat."

Harrold’s head jerked toward me. "A mare in season? In the lists?"

"Against a stallion that already wants to kill anything that breathes near it," I answered. "Gregor keeps his beasts mean so they bite in the crush. A horse like that loses its mind when it catches that scent. "

The herald dropped the crimson flag.

The horns blared.

Loras urged his white mare forward, keeping his seat low and fluid, hugging the center rail with his lance couched steady.

Across the timber barrier, Gregor drove his iron spurs into his black charger. The massive horse tore through the dirt for three strides, its iron shoes thudding like hammers—and then its nose went up.

The wind brought the scent.

The black stallion’s ears flattened against its skull. It gave a high, piercing shriek that sounded like tearing metal, fighting the curb iron with sudden, vicious fury. Instead of holding the line down the barrier, the stallion began to fight its rider, tossing its head from side to side, rearing half a foot as it veered violently toward the center rail.

Gregor roared a foul curse behind his visor, hauling hard on the left rein to wrench the beast back.

The Mountain was strong enough to bend iron, but a heavy warhorse in the grip of its blood cannot be turned like a donkey. The violent wrench on the bit pulled Gregor’s left shoulder inward, throwing his chest wide and sending the heavy tip of his ash lance drifting three feet off the line.

Loras did not hesitate.

The Reachman came on in a low, tight crouch, his seat light in the irons. He ignored Gregor’s wavering ash shaft entirely, riding straight through the gap the stallion’s balk had opened.

Loras placed his blunted iron coronal dead-center on the yellow shield and the three black dogs.

The strike was clean and sharp.

Gregor’s balance was already broken from fighting his mount, and his left side was still tender from Lothor Brune’s mace the afternoon before. The concussive jar of the ash lance buckled his high cantle, using the Mountain’s own forward momentum to tear his boots clean out of the stirrup irons.

Gregor Clegane was ripped out of the saddle.

He hit the dirt with a tremendous, iron-shod crash that sent a plume of dry dust over the front rail, his massive bulk rolling twice through the sand before slamming against the timber fence.

Loras’s lance snapped cleanly at the grip. The young knight galloped past, wheeled his white mare in a tight, dancing turn, and raised the splintered stump to the roar of the galleries.

The crowd erupted, screaming his name until the awnings shook.

"He unhorsed him!" Tommen yelled, bouncing on the planks. "Joffrey, he threw the Mountain!"

"Get back from the rail, Tommen," I said, my voice cutting hard through his excitement.

Down in the sand, Gregor was not waiting for squires to help him up.

The giant pushed himself up from the mud with a guttural roar that sounded like an injured bull. He ripped his greathelm from his head and hurled the steel twenty yards into the stands, his scarred, sweating face contorted in blind, animal humiliation.

His black stallion had trotted five paces away, snorting and tossing its head.

Gregor turned, drew his massive two-handed greatsword from the scabbard at his back, and swung.

The dark steel whistled through the air. In a single, horrific stroke, the blade sheared through the horse’s neck, cutting through hide, muscle, and bone. The stallion went down with a wet, choking gurgle, thrashing once as a thick tide of hot arterial blood flooded across the pale river sand.

The cheering died instantly, choked off in a wave of gasps and terrified screams.

Gregor didn't look at the carcass. Blood splattered across his scarred grey breastplate, his eyes small and red with madness, he gripped his greatsword with both hands and turned straight toward Loras Tyrell.

Loras had trotted back toward the royal box, his visor raised, completely unaware of the iron monster coming up behind his horse's flank.

"Sword!" Gregor bellowed, his voice a ragged croak.

Before he could take three strides, a shrill whistle sounded.

The paddock hurdles swung wide, and twenty gold cloaks spilled onto the track in a tight, unbroken wall. Bywater’s men leveled their eight-foot ash halberds, locking the steel points into a bristling hedge between the giant and the Reachman.

"Hold the line!" Bywater shouted, his voice flat and hard.

Gregor raised his greatsword, ready to hack through wood and flesh alike, when a second shadow dropped into the sand before him.

Sandor Clegane stepped between the halberds and his brother.

The Hound had his heavy broadsword drawn, holding the soot-dark steel in a two-handed grip, his burned face pulled into an ugly, sneering grin.

"Leave him be, Gregor," Sandor rasped, loud enough to carry across the dead quiet of the lists. "The tilt is done. Go back to your kennel."

Gregor roared and brought his greatsword down in a savage, overhead chop that would have split an ox in two.

Sandor didn't back away. He stepped off the line with shocking quickness, catching the blow near the hilt of his own blade with a loud, ringing screech of iron. Sparks showered into the dirt. Sandor shoved his shoulder forward, driving his heavy shield boss straight into Gregor’s bruised ribs.

Gregor grunted, stumbling back two paces as his breath caught in his throat.

"STOP THIS MADNESS!" King Robert’s voice thundered from the royal box, booming across the entire field like a crack of summer thunder.

The King was leaning so far over the rail the velvet was crushing under his belly, his face purple with fury, shaking a heavy silver flagon at the sand. "BY THE GODS, CEASE! IN THE NAME OF THE KING, SHEATHE THAT BLOODY STEEL!"

The words broke the spell.

Gregor stood frozen, his chest heaving, his small, bloodshot eyes darting from his brother’s steel to the twenty leveled halberds, and finally up to the roaring King. Slowly, the red fury in his face curdled into sullen, venomous hate.

He spat a glob of blood into the dirt beside his dead mount, shoved his greatsword back into its sheath with a violent jerk, and turned his back on the court. He pushed past two terrified squires and stomped out through the river gate without looking back.

The Master of Revels stepped onto the platform, his hands visibly shaking as he lifted his horn.

"Ser Gregor Clegane is disqualified from the field!" the herald shouted, his voice cracking before finding its strength. "Ser Loras of House Tyrell advances to the Championship!"

A ragged, hesitant cheer rippled through the stands, but the festive air was gone, replaced by the bitter, copper smell of horse blood on the wind. Grooms were already running out with canvas sheets and shovels to drag the dead beast away before the flies gathered.

I stood at the rail, watching Loras give a tight, pale smile to the crowd. The boy was waving his hand, but his eyes were darting toward the gate; he had come within an inch of being chopped to pieces in his fine flower cloak.

I turned away from the lists and walked back under the canvas awning.

"Harrold," I called out.

The boy jogged over, his face still pale from the violence. "Your Grace?"

"Go to the apothecary’s wagon behind the royal pavilion, Harrold," I said, keeping my voice low and flat. "Fetch a pot of camphor salve and clove oil—the heavy liniment used for winter stables. Bring two dry linen rags."

Harrold blinked. "The horse balm, my Prince?"

"Just fetch it," I answered, cold and direct. "Move your legs."

"At once, Your Grace," he said, turning and sprinting toward the rear of the camp.

I stepped onto the mounting block and looked down at Bran and Tommen.

"The armet, Bran," I said, resting my gauntlet against the saddle. "Ser Barristan is mounting at the north gate. The Lord Commander will not give away his line easily."

Bran stepped up onto the oak mounting block, holding my fluted armet before him with both hands. His face was pale from the sight of the butchered stallion in the lists, but his fingers did not shake as he guided the steel down over my head. The gorget plates aligned with a dry, metallic slide, and Tommen drove the brass locking pins into the collar, rapping each one with his knuckle to seat the latch.

The visor snapped shut. The roar of fifty thousand smallfolk dropped to a low, hollow vibration against the iron, and the world narrowed to a thin slit of turf, rails, and sky.

I swung my right leg over Brimstone's back. The great black horse shifted his weight once, his iron shoes biting into the paddock boards before he stood dead still beneath the weight of my plate. A page came forward, handing up the twelve-foot ash lance. The wood was cool and bare where he had wiped the river damp from the painted black-and-gold spirals. I settled the thick butt into the iron rest bolted beside my right breast, wrapped the leather reins twice around my left gauntlet, and nodded.

"Open the hurdle," I said through the breathing holes of the bevor.

The page hauled the timber gate back, and I walked the stallion out onto the sand.

The smell of horse blood was sharp and bitter near the center barrier. The grooms had thrown three cartloads of dry grey dirt over the dark pool where Gregor’s mount had died, but the sand was still damp and black beneath the crust. Brimstone flared his nostrils wide, catching the slaughter in the wind, but I kept the curb iron firm against his jaw, and the black beast walked through the red patch without breaking his slow, heavy stride.

At the far end of the lists, Ser Barristan Selmy waited in the northern box.

The Lord Commander sat his heavy dapple-grey destrier like a pillar of white stone. His armor was the pure white enamel of the Kingsguard, free of house sigils, beaten gold, or flower garlands. His white wool caparison fell clean to his horse's hocks, and upon his left arm hung a plain white shield. He held his twelve-foot ash lance resting upright against his right knee, his pale blue eyes looking down the barrier beneath his lifted visor.

There was no crowd-pleasing swagger in his posture, no waves to the galleries. He had ridden in the lists before my father was born, and he sat his saddle with the quiet, terrifying ease of a man for whom a joust was no grander an occasion than breaking fast.

As I drew within twenty paces of the center rail, Barristan lowered his visor. The steel plate met his gorget with a soft click. He dipped his lance coronal once in a crisp, respectful salute.

I returned the dip of the iron, then raised my eyes to the royal gallery.

My father was on his feet, his massive forearms planted wide upon the velvet-draped rail, his red face split in a broad, eager grin as he watched his son face his Lord Commander. Behind him, Lord Stark sat motionless in his grey wool cloak, his eyes fixed on the track with a severe northern stillness.

The Master of Revels raised the crimson silk high above his head.

The horn blew.

The red cloth fluttered to the sand.

I loosed the reins and touched Brimstone with my calves. The black stallion lunged forward, his hooves tearing the turf in long, thunderous bounds, gathering his two thousand pounds of muscle into the charge.

Across the painted timber fence, Barristan came on.

The dapple-grey did not leap from the mark like Jaime's courser; it built its gallop with a steady, unyielding rhythm, hugging the timber rail so close that the white wool of its trappings brushed the boards. Barristan held his ash shaft rock-steady, couching the weapon early, his four-pronged coronal locked dead on the crowned stag on my chest.

Ten paces. Five.

We met at the center line in a deafening, concussive crash.

Both lances struck true center-shield blows at the exact same heartbeat.

Barristan’s coronal hammered my shield boss with the force of a swinging timber. The shock traveled straight down the oak board, jarring my forearm and ringing through the iron lance-rest bolted to my cuirass. I drove my hips hard against the high oak cantle of the war saddle, locking my thighs against the leather swells, letting Brimstone’s massive spine take the blow. The black horse grunted through his nose, lowering his head, but his stride did not waver an inch.

At the same instant, my ash lance struck the heart of Barristan’s white shield. Both shafts exploded into a cloud of white and gold splinters that rained down across the front benches of the gallery. Barristan was rocked back against his saddle, his white cloak whipping in the draft, but the old knight’s seat was cast in iron. His heels stayed down, his knees stayed locked, and he carried past the mark unbroken.

The fifty thousand in the stands erupted in a unified roar of approval.

I wheeled Brimstone at the south gate, tossing the splintered four-foot stump of my lance to the page as the boy ran out with a fresh ash shaft.

"First pass clean," Bran called over the din, handing up the wood.

"He absorbed the center hit without blinking," I noted through my armet. "He will try to turn the second."

Across the lists, Barristan took a fresh lance from his Kingsguard squire, settling himself with unhurried focus.

The crimson silk dropped for the second tilt.

Again the horses charged, closing the distance in a rush of churned sand and drumming hooves.

Barristan came down the barrier in a lower crouch, his grey destrier holding the rail. At ten paces out, the Lord Commander shifted his left forearm three inches inward, angling the sloped face of his white shield across his breastplate like the stone glacis of a curtain wall. It was the centerline deflection he had used to turn Jaime’s lance into kindling the evening before.

I saw the angle forming in the sand.

Instead of aiming for the center boss where my point would slide off the angled wood, I dropped my lance tip two inches lower at the final stride. I aimed directly for the lower corner of his board, where the shield was strapped tightest against his forearm.

Barristan’s lance struck my left pauldron, the coronal skittering across the fluted steel with a screech of iron, stripping the black paint before snapping against the rim of my shoulder harness.

In the very same breath, my lance took the bottom rim of his white shield.

The wood did not slide. The coronal bit into the lower edge, applying a sudden, upward leverage against his left arm. My ash shaft shattered into kindling, but the upward jar snapped Barristan’s head back and jerked his left elbow into the air. His saddle leather groaned under the strain, and for a fraction of a second, his stirrup irons swung wide.

Yet forty years in the war saddle saved him. Barristan clamped his knees against the swells, twisted his torso with feline grace, and held his horse as he cleared the mark.

The grandstands were on their feet, screaming for a third pass.

I wheeled Brimstone at the north end of the track. The page ran out with my third lance, his face sweating beneath his green cap.

"Brimstone is breathing heavy, Your Grace!" the boy shouted over the clamor. "He's puffing white lather at the bit!"

I took the ash shaft, testing the balance. "Watch the stride," I told myself through the metal. "He knows the routine now. He will brace his seat."

Across the sand, Barristan brought his dapple-grey to the line. The white cloak was dusted with grey sand from our broken lances, and the destrier’s chest was flecked with sweat, but the old knight sat upright, his ash shaft resting level and deadly across his bow.

The silk fell for the third time.

The crowd’s roar peaked as the horses leaped forward.

Barristan drove his spurs in, bringing the grey down the barrier at full stretch. He kept his shield flat to his chest this time, bracing his entire frame to take a heavy, center-boss blow without giving away an angle.

I tracked the rise and fall of the grey’s white-clad shoulders through my visor slit.

Ten paces. Five paces.

Just as the grey destrier reached the peak of its forward stride—when its front hooves were off the sand and its weight was suspended in mid-air—I drove my lance hard into the breastplate rest.

I aimed straight for the center of the white board, putting Brimstone’s nineteen hands of raw momentum directly down the shaft.

The collision shook the timber palisade to its foundations.

Barristan’s coronal took my breastplate, snapping his ash shaft with a loud report, but Brimstone plowed through the impact without checking his stride.

My lance took Barristan at the exact apex of his horse's rise.

The concussive shock of two thousand pounds of charging stallion hit the Lord Commander while his own mount had no ground beneath its front feet to anchor the blow. The blunted iron bit deep into the oak shield, and the crushing kinetic energy ripped Barristan’s boots clean out of his stirrups. The high rear cantle of his war saddle bowed, the leather stitching gave way, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was lifted four inches into the air.

He flew backward over his horse’s croup, his white cloak billowing like a sail before he crashed into the sand in a clattering heap of white enamel plate.

My ash lance snapped cleanly at the eight-foot mark.

I rode past the southern mark, brought Brimstone to an easy, controlled halt, and wheeled the beast around.

The tournament grounds broke into a deafening roar that shook the very canvas of the tents. Fifty thousand men were shouting my name, hammering their tankards and stomping their boots on the wooden tiers until the dust drifted from the planks.

"THE GOLDEN STAG! THE STAG! THE STAG!"

I did not sit my saddle to take their cheers. I swung my leg over the cantle, dropped into the sand with a heavy thud of steel greaves, and walked straight through the dust to where the old knight lay.

Barristan was already pushing himself up onto one elbow, coughing river sand from his teeth. He reached up with a gauntleted hand, threw his visor open, and looked up at me as I extended my arm.

His pale blue eyes were clear, blinking against the noon sun, and a faint, dry smile touched his weathered mouth.

He took my gauntlet, and I hauled him to his feet in a single, unbroken pull.

"A heavy hit, my Prince," Barristan said, his breath rattling slightly as he clapped his hand over my forearm. "You took my mount right off the rise of his stride. I had no earth left beneath my stirrups when your point took my board."

"Your seat is the finest in the Seven Kingdoms, Ser Barristan," I replied, loud enough for the heralds to hear, offering him an honest warrior’s nod. "No man ever learned to hold a lance without studying the Lord Commander."

The white knight inclined his head in silent, dignified gratitude.

Up in the royal box, King Robert was roaring with laughter, hammering his silver tankard against the carved railing until the metal warped. Beside him, Lord Eddard Stark leaned over the rail, his grey eyes fixed upon me as I walked Barristan toward the competitors' gate, a look of profound, troubled assessment in his face.

I stepped back under the royal awning, tossing the shattered stump of my third lance to the page.

"Clear the beast," I ordered. "Give him half a bucket of spring water and walk him until he cools."

"Aye, Your Grace," the page said, taking Brimstone's reins and leading the lathered stallion toward the circular walking ring behind the tents.

Bran stepped up with the silver flagon, his young face flushed with excitement. "You broke three lances against him, Joffrey! Three! Even my father said Ser Barristan was unhorsed only twice in his youth!"

"He broke three against me as well, Bran," I said, letting Tommen unpin the bevor so the cool breeze could wash the sweat from my chin. "The difference between winning and eating dirt was two inches of timber and the timing of a horse's leap. Remember that when you hold your own shield."

Tommen handed me the cup, and I drank the thin, sour vintage, feeling the grit wash from my tongue.

Across the paddock, the mood had turned sour and restless.

The stink of Gregor Clegane’s slaughtered stallion had drifted from the lists into the horse lines, carried on the warm river draft. The scent of hot horse blood on the wind was driving the beasts mad. In the second row of stalls, two heavy destriers belonging to the Stormlanders were thrashing against their pine dividers, their iron shoes kicking the planks with loud, splintering cracks. Grooms were shouting, rushing with buckets and lead ropes to secure the terrified palfreys.

I looked at Bran. "Go to the lance rack by the armorer’s tent. Fetch the two spare black-and-gold shafts Harrold set aside this morning. The ones with the dry leather wraps."

"Yes, Your Grace," the boy said eagerly, turning and jogging down the elevated timber boardwalk that ran between the lines of pavilions.

I reached down to unbuckle my sword belt, resting Stormbringer upon the trestle table.

A sudden, violent crash of splintering timber echoed from the southern pens.

"HO! CATCH HIM! GET OUT OF THE RUN!"

A chorus of panicked shrieks went up from the grooms.

Twenty yards down the line, an iron-barded reserve charger—a massive red stallion belonging to Lord Royce’s retinue—had kicked through the rotting crossbeam of its stall. The beast had gone wild from the smell of blood, snapping its thick hemp halter with a violent jerk of its thick neck. Encased in sixty pounds of ringmail barding and iron plate, the terrified stallion bolted blindly onto the main boardwalk, its heavy hooves drumming a frantic, thunderous cadence against the oak planks.

Grooms and squires scattered like quail, diving over fences and flattening themselves against tent walls.

The charger thundered straight down the narrow thoroughfare toward the royal awning, its red hide lathered in foam, its iron-shod hooves splintering the walkway boards beneath its stride.

In the center of the wooden walk stood Bran Stark.

The boy had gathered the two heavy ash lances in his arms, his back turned to the charging beast. He was twenty paces ahead of the runaway horse, directly in its path.

"Bran!" Tommen screamed, his small voice cracking with terror. "BRAN! RUN!"

The shouting grooms yelled for the boy to jump, but Bran did not move.

He froze dead in the center of the planks.

I took three rapid strides toward the rail, my hand dropping instinctively to my hip before I remembered my sword sat upon the table.

Through the dust of the yard, I saw the boy’s face.

Bran was not staring at the thundering warhorse bearing down on him. His head was tilted sharply back, his mouth hanging slack, his dark grey eyes turned milky, vacant, and completely unseeing. He stood stiff as an unstrung bow, locked in an unnatural, waking trance, deaf to the screams of the camp and the earth-shaking rumble of the hooves behind him.

Directly above him, perched upon the carved oak gallow-beam of the pavilion awning, sat a bird.

It was a raven, but no common messenger bird from Pycelle’s southern rookery. It was a massive Northern raven, its feathers an oily, iridescent blue-black that swallowed the midday glare. Amidst the screaming men, the lunging horse, and the clattering wood, the bird sat with impossible, unnatural stillness. Its head was cocked, its dark, glassy eye locked unblinkingly upon the frozen boy beneath it.

Ten yards. The red charger was three strides from crushing him into kindling.

I didn't think. There was no calculation, no ledger, no political arithmetic.

I vaulted the timber rail of the paddock, landing heavily upon the boardwalk, and lunged.

I drove off my back foot, crossing the five yards of wood in a single, desperate burst of speed, leaving the boardwalk and launching my body through the air.

I struck Bran low, wrapping my right arm around his chest and hauling him sideways with all the weight of my plate armor.

We left the wooden walkway together, tumbling through the air just as the red stallion’s massive iron shoes smashed into the planks where the boy had stood. The timber exploded into a spray of jagged splinters, the horse’s steel chest clipping the end of the ash lances Bran had held, snapping them in two with a sound like pistol shots.

We crashed heavily into the grey river dirt of the drainage ditch beside the walk.

The breath was driven violently from my lungs as I rolled, taking the brunt of the fall on my right pauldron and hip, using my left arm to clamp Bran’s head against my arming doublet. The earth shuddered as the runaway charger galloped past, its tail whipping inches above our heads before half a dozen brawny grooms threw ropes across its neck fifty paces down the lane, wrestling the beast to a trembling halt.

A heavy cloud of grey dust settled over the ditch.

I pushed myself up onto my left elbow, coughing the dry grit from my throat, my shoulder aching where the plate had hit the hard ground.

Beneath me, Bran was shivering violently. The boy’s skin was cold as ditch ice, his small hands clutching the linen of my collar with a desperate, white-knuckled grip. His chest heaved in shallow, ragged gasps, his grey eyes wide and terrified as the trance broke and the noise of the yard rushed back into his senses.

"Joffrey..." he whispered, his teeth chattering so hard the words slurred together. "Joffrey, I... I couldn't move."

"You're whole, Bran," I said, my voice rough from the dust as I checked his arms and ribs with my gauntlet. "The horse missed you. Look at me. You're whole."

He gripped my wrist, his small fingers digging deep into the boiled leather of my vambrace. His gaze was unfocused, staring right through my cheek at something leagues away.

"He told me... fly or die, Joffrey," the boy rasped, his voice trembling with a child’s pure, bone-deep horror. "The ground was right there. It was made of bones."

A cold, sickening weight dropped into the pit of my stomach.

Fly or die.

The words were not the babble of a frightened southron child. They were the words of the coma dream—the broken tower, the falling boy, the awakening of the winged wolf.

I had saved him from the First Keep at Winterfell. I had kept him from climbing, spared him the fall, and brought him south whole and hale. And now, in the heart of King's Landing, thirty leagues from the nearest weirwood, the timeline was trying to crack the boy’s skull open in the dirt to force the sight into his mind.

I raised my head, looking up from the ditch to the oak awning beam.

The Northern raven was still there.

The bird had not flown from the crash or the shouting men. It sat upon the carved wood, its head tilted downward, its single, glassy black eye locked dead upon mine.

There was no animal stupidity in that gaze. It looked upon me with an ancient, calculating intelligence—a cold, measuring eye that had watched kings rot in the earth for a thousand years.

For three heartbeats, the sorcerer in the roots beyond the Wall and the prince in the dust of the capital stared at one another across the sunlit yard.

Then, with a slow, heavy rustle of broad blue-black wings, the raven lifted from the timber beam and vanished into the pale haze of the sky.

"Joffrey!" Tommen’s voice was frantic as he scrambled over the rail, Harrold right behind him with a dark stone pot of salve clutched in his fist. "Joffrey, are you hurt?"

I pulled Bran to his feet, keeping my hands firm on the boy's shoulders until his knees stopped shaking. I brushed the dry sand from his grey wool doublet, keeping my face a mask of iron calm.

"We are whole, Tommen," I said evenly, stepping out of the ditch and climbing back onto the wooden boardwalk.

Harrold ran forward, his chest heaving, holding the stone jar out. "I brought the camphor and the cloves, Your Grace! What happened? The Royce horse—"

"Take Bran into the pavilion," I cut him off, my voice quiet, flat, and absolute. "Sit him down. Give him hot spiced cider and do not let him leave the canopy until the lists are cleared."

Harrold saw the look in my eyes and swallowed his questions. "Aye, my Prince. Come, Bran."

The Stark boy let himself be led away, his small boots dragging through the dirt, his face still pale as bleached bone.

I turned toward Brimstone's stall, taking the stone jar of camphor salve from the rail.

My shoulder throbbed where it had struck the earth, but the ache in my muscle was nothing compared to the cold fire burning behind my eyes.

I had thought the board was laid out before me: the Royal Bank, the gold cloaks, the grain ledgers, the vipers in the south, and the wolves in the north. I had believed this game was played with coin, iron, and parchment.

Fly or die.

The Old Gods had reached into my city. Brynden Rivers was watching the stag.

I unscrewed the lid of the stone jar, the sharp, medicinal stench of crushed camphor and clove oil stinging my nostrils.

"One thing at a time," I muttered to myself, dipping two fingers into the thick white grease. "First, I break the Knight of Flowers. Then we settle with the Crow."

~~~

P.S.- Fifty chapter milestone. The next part as promised. Bloodraven is not too happy with the way things are progressing. Stay tuned!