A Dance with Dragons

Since I just made it up. “For ages,” he lied. “My father was wont to say it. Did you know Lord Tywin, Kem?”

“The Hand. Once I saw him riding up the hill. His men had red cloaks and little lions on their helms. I liked those helms.” His mouth tightened. “I never liked the Hand, though. He sacked the city. And then he smashed us on the Blackwater.”

“You were there?”

“With Stannis. Lord Tywin come up with Renly’s ghost and took us in the flank. I dropped my spear and ran, but at the ships this bloody knight said, ‘Where’s your spear, boy? We got no room for cravens,’ and they buggered off and left me, and thousands more besides. Later I heard how your father was sending them as fought with Stannis to the Wall, so I made my way across the narrow sea and joined up with the Second Sons.”

“Do you miss King’s Landing?”

“Some. I miss this boy, he… he was a friend of mine. And my brother, Kennet, but he died on the bridge of ships.”

“Too many good men died that day.” Tyrion’s scar was itching fiercely. He picked at it with a fingernail.

“I miss the food too,” Kem said wistfully.

“Your mother’s cooking?”

“Rats wouldn’t eat my mother’s cooking. There was this pot shop, though. No one ever made a bowl o’ brown like them. So thick you could stand your spoon up in the bowl, with chunks of this and that. You ever have yourself a bowl o’ brown, Halfman?”

“A time or two. Singer’s stew, I call it.”

“Why’s that?”

“It tastes so good it makes me want to sing.”

Kem liked that. “Singer’s stew. I’ll ask for that next time I get back to Flea Bottom. What do you miss, Halfman?”

Jaime, thought Tyrion. Shae. Tysha. My wife, I miss my wife, the wife I hardly knew. “Wine, whores, and wealth,” he answered. “Especially the wealth. Wealth will buy you wine and whores.” It will also buy you swords, and the Kems to wield them.

“Is it true the chamber pots in Casterly Rock are made of solid gold?” Kem asked him.

“You should not believe everything you hear. Especially where House Lannister is concerned.”

“They say all Lannisters are twisty snakes.”

“Snakes?” Tyrion laughed. “That sound you hear is my lord father, slithering in his grave. We are lions, or so we like to say. But it makes no matter, Kem. Step on a snake or a lion’s tail, you’ll end up just as dead.”

By then they had reached the armory, such as it was. The smith, this fabled Hammer, proved to be a freakish-looking hulk with a left arm that appeared twice as thick as his right.

“He’s drunk more than not,” Kem said. “Brown Ben lets it go, but one day we’ll get us a real armorer.”

Hammer’s apprentice was a wiry red-haired youth called Nail. Of course. What else? mused Tyrion. Hammer was sleeping off a drunk when they reached the forge, just as Kem had prophesied, but Nail had no objection to the two dwarfs clambering through the wagons. “Crap iron, most of it,” he warned them, “but you’re welcome to anything you can use.”

Under roofs of bent wood and stiffened leather, the wagon beds were heaped high with old weaponry and armor. Tyrion took one look and sighed, remembering the gleaming racks of swords and spears and halberds in the armory of the Lannisters below Casterly Rock. “This may take a while,” he declared.

“There’s sound steel here if you can find it,” a deep voice growled. “None of it is pretty, but it will stop a sword.”

A big knight stepped down from the back of a wagon, clad head to heel in company steel. His left greave did not match his right, his gorget was spotted with rust, his vambraces rich and ornate, inlaid with niello flowers. On his right hand was a gauntlet of lobstered steel, on his left a fingerless mitt of rusted mail. The nipples on his muscled breastplate had a pair of iron rings through them. His greathelm sported a ram’s horns, one of which was broken.

When he took it off, he revealed the battered face of Jorah Mormont. He looks every inch a sellsword and not at all like the half-broken thing we took from Yezzan’s cage, Tyrion reflected. His bruises had mostly faded by now, and the swelling in his face had largely subsided, so Mormont looked almost human once again… though only vaguely like himself. The demon’s mask the slavers had burned into his right cheek to mark him for a dangerous and disobedient slave would never leave him. Ser Jorah had never been what one might call a comely man. The brand had transformed his face into something frightening.

Tyrion grinned. “As long as I look prettier than you, I will be happy.” He turned to Penny. “You take that wagon. I’ll start with this one.”

“It will go faster if we look together.” She plucked up a rusted iron half-helm, giggled, and stuck it on her head. “Do I look fearsome?”

You look like a mummer girl with a pot on her head. “That’s a halfhelm. You want a greathelm.” He found one, and swapped it for the halfhelm.

“It’s too big.” Penny’s voice echoed hollowly inside the steel. “I can’t see out.” She took the helm off and flung it aside. “What’s wrong with the halfhelm?”

“It’s open-faced.” Tyrion pinched her nose. “I am fond of looking at your nose. I would rather that you kept it.”

Her eyes got big. “You like my nose?”

Oh, Seven save me. Tyrion turned away and began rooting amongst some piles of old armor toward the back of the wagon.

“Are there any other parts of me you like?” Penny asked.

Perhaps she meant that to sound playful. It sounded sad instead. “I am fond of all of your parts,” Tyrion said, in hopes of ending any further discussion of the subject, “and even fonder of mine own.”

“Why should we need armor? We’re only mummers. We just pretend to fight.”

“You pretend very well,” said Tyrion, examining a shirt of heavy iron mail so full of holes that it almost looked moth-eaten. What sort of moths eat chainmail? “Pretending to be dead is one way to survive a battle. Good armor is another.” Though there is precious little of that here, I fear. At the Green Fork, he had fought in mismatched scraps of plate from Lord Lefford’s wagons, with a spiked bucket helm that made it look as if someone had upended a slops pail over his head. This company steel was worse. Not just old and ill fitting, but dinted, cracked, and brittle. Is that dried blood, or only rust? He sniffed at it but still could not be sure.

“Here’s a crossbow.” Penny showed it to him.

Tyrion glanced at it. “I cannot use a stirrup winch. My legs are not long enough. A crank would serve me better.” Though, if truth be told, he did not want a crossbow. They took too long to reload. Even if he lurked by the latrine ditch waiting for some enemy to take a squat, the chances of his loosing more than one quarrel would not be good.

Instead he picked up a morningstar, gave it a swing, put it down again. Too heavy. He passed over a warhammer (too long), a studded mace (also too heavy), and half a dozen longswords before he found a dirk he liked, a nasty piece of steel with a triangular blade. “This might serve,” he said. The blade had a bit of rust on it, but that would only make it nastier. He found a wood-and-leather sheath that fit and slipped the dirk inside.

“A little sword for a little man?” joked Penny.

“It’s a dirk and made for a big man.” Tyrion showed her an old longsword. “This is a sword. Try it.”

Penny took it, swung it, frowned. “Too heavy.”

“Steel weighs more than wood. Chop through a man’s neck with that thing, though, and his head is not like to turn into a melon.” He took the sword back from her and inspected it more closely. “Cheap steel. And notched. Here, see? I take back what I said. You need a better blade to hack off heads.”

“I don’t want to hack off heads.”

“Nor should you. Keep your cuts below the knee. Calf, hamstring, ankle… even giants fall if you slice their feet off. Once they’re down, they’re no bigger than you.”