“Reckon we’ll see actual beds, m’lord?”Lobb jogged a half-step quicker to keep up with Greg’s longer stride, the other boy’s voice still the same pure gravel and dragged vowels with weeks of meandering travel doing little to change that. “God, I fuckin’ hope so, man… I.” Greg blinked at the thought, almost sighing at the imagined feel of it. “I mean…” He cleared his throat as he nodded back at his squire. “I believe so, Lobb.”“Ain’t slept on feathers since the Brightfort, m’lord.” Lobb hopped over a patch of too-thick mud before it could suck at his boots, the regular stuff still slicking his soles with a thin layer of wet over hard-packed dirt. “And before that…”The squire frowned. “Don’t reckon I ever even thought about a bed that soft before.”Please stop reminding me of it, then. Greg just nodded over at the other boy, trying his best to not think about how many days they had left of bedrolls on hard ground before they would reach Riverrun.
From what he’d discussed with the Stark men-at-arms, they were only four days out, maybe three with good pacing and luck, but that was still too many in his book. “My mother told me Tully featherbeds are quite soft, actually.” A voice just as soft offered from behind them, Princess Sansa sounding almost hopeful. Whether it was the lack of slaughter she’d had to witness the last few miles or just his actions at the last village, the constant tremor in her words had smoothed out. “My uncle Edmure will see us properly hosted. You will not have to sleep on stones, Ser Lobb.”Not a ser. The correction almost left him, his instinctive knowledge of Westerosi rules kicking at him just a little bit. Granted, he wasn’t even a knight, so he shouldn’t even have a squire in the first place, but still…
Then again… Greg frowned for a moment. She is a princess, so she can pretty much decide who’s a knight or not, right? His frown deepened as his eyes narrowed. Or is that only Southern princesses? But House Tully is a Southern house, but…"I think the river is too loud today.”Another soft voice pulled him from his thoughts, Myrcella’s words forcing a glance back from Greg. The Lannister princess was walking beside Sansa, small hands folded neatly at her waist as she smiled forward at the space between his shoulderblades with those green fiery eyes. “It sounds like teeth.”
Teeth. Greg blinked back at her as he realized the girl wasn’t even looking at the tributary they were following, the sound of the water soft to even his ears. Huh…“Right.” He nodded back at her, unsure what to say to that and especially unsure if Myrcella was just being weird or if it was another one of those weird poem-oracle things she’d had a habit of spouting out the last few weeks of travel-time. “Thank you for that, princess. Any more… uh, context?”She blinked back at him with a smile.I’mma take that as a big fat goose-egg. And I gave this girl magic. He turned back around to keep his eyes on their path again, suppressing a shiver that had nothing at all to do with temperature. "Let’s just keep moving. We’re making good time."
Especially good.
Greg was hoping to hit Riverrun before anything else annoying happened and slowed him down any longer. Anything to get the princesses out of my hands.
He didn’t hate them or anything like that, of course.
It was just the idea of babysitting for so long that had him itchy.
Lord Veder opened his mouth to give another order when the smell had him stop, hand out automatically as a white blade flashed to life in his grip. Nostrils flared as Greg’s head tilted up to catch the… What the hell is that?Guts stopped right next to him, a massive hand settling on the slab of iron strapped to his back as his jaw tightened into a line harder than usual. “Hn.”That wasn’t a good ‘Hn’, Greg knew that much.
“M’lord?”
The lord in question didn’t turn back at Robb’s question, too focused as his eyes narrowed out into the water. “You smell that, Guts?”“Salt.” Guts grunted out. “Lots of salt.”Lots of salt. It was right, almost.
But not quite.
This was a sharp smell, something that stung at his nostrils every time they flared. Like low tide at Revere Beach. More than heavy salt, this was dead crabs, old pennies, and… and… rot.
But they weren’t anywhere near the ocean.
“Stay here and keep them back.” Two of Greg’s fingers pointed an order at Lobb, Wat, and the other men that had managed to survive this far. “Guts. You’re with me.”“When am I not?”Greg didn’t answer that grunt as they pushed through some drooping willow, the brine smell thickening further until he was tasting it more than smelling it. It didn’t take long at all for them to find where it was coming from either. “A camp?”Someone’s camp, at least.
It sat right on the riverbank; what was left of it a mess and a half.
Three tents of decently thick canvas slashed to ribbons lay partly-sunk in the mud near an overturned cooking pot, rust on its side old but not too old. Ambush, maybe? If it was, it definitely was nothing like a normal one.
For one, there were no bodies around for that. Plenty of drag marks, though.
Greg’s eyes traced the ground all the way down to the rushing brown water, the sight of wide gouges deep in the embankment slick with what had to be drying brown blood enough to tell him something.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know what exactly that something was. Okay, you do the kill and you dump the bodies in the water but leave the whole mess behind? He bent at the knees as Guts stood tall over him, dropping to get a closer look at the tracks. If you want to get rid of the evidence, you clear the whole place, right? Blue eyes flicked up to the tents again before sliding back down to the stains of blood. You don’t leave proof of a camp and you probably don’t just let all this sit here.
He didn’t like the looks of it; not the water or what it implied either.
A second later, Greg twisted back to his feet, sword up as he found something else to add to the list of what he found hard to like. What was that?
His eyes tracked forward, following the sound to what looked like a near-collapsed millhouse down the bank; the structure rotting wood that was halfway to falling over. Considering the waterwheel itself was already shattered and half in the water with green moss crawling thickly over it, he doubted the rest of the place had long to last. “Guts…”
A grunt answered him.
Greg closed the distance as Guts flanked him with Dragonslayer already out, the thing overkill for whatever was likely in there as it cast a massive shadow to match its wielder.
“Alright, whoever’s breathing in there…” Greg called out, voice slipping into the usual semi-formal projection he used for strangers. “Out right now. Unless you want me to make sure you’re not breathing in the next couple seconds.”
The only sound for a second or two was the rush of the river, before a cough broke it; a wet hack of a noise that rattled on its way out of a water-logged throat.
Wood groaned as a fallen beam fell to the side, a man crawling out into the gray light of day with his hands raised. Soaked to the bone, he stood there in rusted chainmail looking a filthy mess as seven more shuffled out behind him — each one of them looking much the same, like drowned rats shivering like they were just fished out of the river. The one in the lead blinked, wiping dirty water from his eyes as he stared at Greg’s silvery armor and glowing white blade for all of a second before a gasp left him. “Bright Lord?”He coughed again, a glob of something black hitting the mud at his feet. “Gods be good, its the Bright Lord!”"Yeah, that’s the brand." Greg blinked their way, sword lowering slowly as he counted each one of the eight in front of him. Most wore Stark colors, but a few — like the one who’d just spoken and coughed — had the merman of White Harbor stitched into their ruined cloaks. "What are you doing hiding in there? Where’s the rest of your men?"
Before the lead man could answer, a man in the back made himself heard first as he leaned against the rotting wall, a bubbling moan escaping him. Why are they… Greg’s mouth hung open as he saw two other soldiers holding him up, their hands gripping thick ropes bound tightly around the moaning man’s wrists. “What’s going on h-”“Lord Veder!”Sansa broke through the trees, her guards protesting behind her as they ran after her, the girl stopping short just in front of Greg with a torn gray tunic clenched tight in her hand. “My lord!”
Pale fingers held the cloth open to show the wolf. “These are men of my house!”“Yeah, Sansa.” He blinked at the girl, before his eyes narrowed over at Lobb with a clear warning. What’s so hard about, keep an eye on her? “I figured that much out al-”
"Princess Sansa!” The man in the lead dropped to his knee as nearly all the other men did the same, mud squelching loud enough to drown out the sound of another series of coughs among them. “Praise the gods.”“Enough kneeling.” Greg clicked his teeth. “Let me get some names.”The Manderly man raised his head to Greg again. “Harwin, m’lord. Captain of this…” He looked back at his gathered men. “What’s left of us.”“Alright, Harwin, how bout you get up?” The tip of his blade lowered even as Greg kept from dismissing it. Something about these men had his skin prickling the longer he stared at the damp bodies of each of them, their skin and clothes taking oddly long to dry. Why do they look they’ve been soaking for a week? “And you can tell me what happened to you guys while you’re at it. Lannisters?”
“No.” Harwin finally rose with his men doing the same, boots squishing with mud and water underfoot. “I mean, partly, m’lord. Lannister patrol pushed us toward the water maybe three days back. We tried to cross. A simple crossing, we thought. Safe enough.” The captain swallowed hard, throat clicking with an odd wet sound. “That’s when… when somethin’ pulled us under, m’lord. Not the sea-men. Not exactly. There was a priest in the water. Ironborn. Just... floatin' there.” “Floating there.” Gut’s words weren’t a question.“Aye, Black Lord. Chantin' too." His eyes darted toward the rushing water, a muscle jumping under his jaw. “Didn’t seem to need air. And whatever answered him… it took the rest of the boys. Dragged ‘em right down.”“Okay…” Greg blinked slowly, that much making as much sense as anything else. "But you eight made it out."
“We got out.” Harwin nodded, the man shaking where he stood. “But we brought somethin’ back with us, m’lord. Drowned Man laughed after us before he fell into the water; Drowned God’s blessing, he called it.”The bound man in the back lunged forward, letting out a gurgling shriek as he tugged against the ropes holding him.
"Hold ‘im!” Harwin’s eyes went wide as he barked. “Hold ‘im back!"
Two soldiers dragged the thrashing man screaming down into the mud as Sansa gasped at the sight, the princess stepping back while Greg moved forward. The soldier was scratching frantically at his own neck even with hands bound. Where fingernails met flesh, the skin didn’t bleed but peeled away in thick greyish flakes, thick patches of blue-green scales shining under it all.
If that wasn’t weird enough, the man’s eyes were almost black; pupils blown out and wide enough to swallow everything else.
“...what the fuck?”