Part 5: A Lion's Claws Are Sharp - Garrett
Lord Garrett
Garrett Redwyne walked through the halls of the Red Keep in silence. Here and there, blood stained the walls and floor, a darker, richer red that the brick it was splattered on. An old tapestry, probably hung since the time of Viserys I, depicting the Field of Fire, lay partially wrapped around a man missing one arm.
Garrett had been to the Red Keep only once before, as a child when his father had taken him. The old Lord Redwyne had made a point of teaching his son to sail, and of doing fealty to the King, and he had made a sailing lesson for Garrett out of delivering a gift of Arbor red to Aegon VI. Garrett remember King’s Landing as being full of life and joy and wonder, accented with fabulous blues and greens and purples. Now it was full of the dead and wounded and the soldiers who had done both the killing and the dying. The only colors that Garrett saw were mud and blood, and the Red Keep had the fortune to be blood-colored already, so one had to look twice to see there was anything but mud there.
The siege had not progressed as Garrett had intended. Though he had surrounded the city, cutting off access by land, having his fleet sail back to Casterly Rock for King Bryce had resulted in smugglers being able to reach the port, despite constructing catapults and placing them as close as he could to the port without exposing his men to fire from the archers on the wall. Still, he had choked the supplies into King’s Landing down to a trickle, and reports from the ravens his men intercepted told him that he needed only to hold and wait. The armies of Lords Lefford and Serrett had won a number of crushing victories against the men who had invaded, and even Lord Meadows had managed to persevere, despite being surrounded on all sides by the enemy.
And then one day, as they were busy hurling rocks at the walls, the Blackwater had begun to fill with sails, flying King Bryce’s Lannister lion. The King himself had been in the first longboat to reach the shore, his armor shining fiercely in the sun. He had plated it gold, just like his Uncle Jaime wore.
“Well done, Lord Garrett, well done,” the King had said to him.
“I had meant to make you a gift of the city, your Grace,” answered Garrett, bowing low, but Bryce waved a hand dismissively.
“No matter. I much prefer to fight at least one of my battles myself. It might have been faster to march straight from the Rock than to wait for your ships to return. I was kicking myself the whole time we were encamped, reading the reports that came in from the Reach.”
“I doubt you would have reached us any faster, your Grace. You might never have reached us at all, had you done that, in fact.”
Bryce gave him a hard stare for a moment, then nodded.
“Perhaps so,” he said. “Nonetheless, I’m here now, and with your men and mine, we have over fifty thousand troops to command. Have you built ladders?”
“We have, your Grace,” said Lord Garrett.
“Enough with the ‘your Grace,’” said the King. “‘My lord’ suffices.”
“But you are not a lord any longer, your Grace,” said Garrett. Bryce’s face turned dangerous, and Garrett hastily amended his last. “I mean no offence, my lord, but you are my king now.”
And then Bryce was laughing and Garrett breathed easier.
“So it is,” said the King. “So it is. At light tomorrow I mean to take this city. Have my men join yours, and we’ll strike them from every gate at once.”
In the morning, the King had ridden to the force readied outside of the Lion Gate. Garrett had joined the men there to listen to his speech, and when Bryce rode out to the front of them the light had illuminated his golden army so that he shone too brightly to stare directly at.
“He looks like one of the Gods,” Garrett had said.
“He looks like a perfect target, if you ask me,” said Benjen. Lord Garrett’s first mate had landed in the second longboat, trudging up the shore to inform him that the King had puked his newly-royal guts out over the rail for the first three days and nights at sea. The mystery of kings held no allure for Benjen, common sailor that he was.
“Men!” called Bryce. He had a voice made for the field. Garrett was close, but no so close that it would have been an easy thing for Bryce to hear him had he shouted, yet he could hear the King’s voice as clear as if he was standing next to him. “I ask you not to take this city for me, but for yourselves. I want no spoils this day but a crown, freed from Targaryen cruelty, freed from Targaryen avarice. The wealth of this city I grant to each of you. I make you a gift of it. It is yours to take, and do with as you please.”
Garrett sucked in his breath sharply as the men around him roared their support. Benjen looked up at him.
“Did he mean it, cap'n?” asked the mate.
“Yes, without a doubt,” said Garrett. “He means to give them free rein.” Bryce had just given his soldiers permission to rape, kill, and loot to their hearts’ content. Some of the people in that city were nobles, and they would expect to receive some sort of quarter when they surrendered. But Bryce had denied them with that promise. King’s Landing would be brutalized. Its buildings would be burned, its people killed, and the city emptied of all its wealth.
“Let every man who survives this battle know that he shall forever have a place at my feast table,” continued Bryce. “Should he come to the Rock and one of my guards should challenge him, he need only bare the scars he’ll earn this day and say ‘I was there, in King’s Landing, with Bryce Lannister, the day we gained our freedom,’ and he shall be welcomed as friend in my hall!”
“If he keeps that promise, he’ll be dead or bankrupt or both in three days,” said Benjen. Garrett smiled. It was a good promise, though Benjen did indeed have the right of it. Few of these men, if they survived the assault on the walls, would ever sup with King Bryce. They would be refused at his gate by the guards, scars or no. Bryce might make a public show of being outraged at that, but he also might not. Still, you had to win your men's respect. Garrett had done it by trimming sail with them, by showing that even he could still crew a ship if he had to. Bryce did it by promising a place at his side come peacetime.
"Come now! And help me take a kingdom!" roared Bryce. The men-at-arms roared back at him, and as one they ran forward, the ladders rushing to the fore. They had cruel hooks on their tops, fashioned mostly from farm implements and the spare halberd Garrett had had available to him. The defenders might be able to push them off, but sooner or later some of the men would reach the walls and they outnumbered the defenders enough that victory felt assured. Still, Garrett had traded his boiled leather and axe for a proper sword and a metal breastplate over a mail coat.
And, sure enough, when it came time to scale the walls, Garrett was glad he'd worn it. As he crested the ladder, a man with the Targaryen dragon on his leather doublet had struck him in the head with a mace. Garrett's half-helm had absorbed most of the blow as he'd went sprawling to the ground, his sword clattering away from him over the stone. He rolled over and, still slightly dazed, looked up into the eyes of his attacker as the man raised his mace for the killing blow.
Benjen's axe bit into the man's right shoulder, half-separating the arm from the body. The Targaryen man screamed and tried to turn, but Benjen held him in place with the axe for a moment, causing the wound to widen with the fellow's struggle. Then Benjen pulled the axe loose. The maceman screamed more at this, and fell to his knees, clutching at the gaping wound, his right arm hanging useless.
Benjen buried the axe in the man's face.
His mate bent and picked up Garrett's fallen sword, handing it to him.
"You dropped this, cap'n," he said, grinning. That grin would be forever seared into Garrett's memory.
The arrow had come from a nearby watchtower, fired by one of the gold cloaks that had been pressed into service there. Garrett had never seen it coming, only saw Benjen's grip on the sword hilt slacken, then looked up to see his mate had sprouted a foot of feathered rod from the middle of his neck. Benjen's grin had mixed with one of anguish and surprise, so that he seemed to be horrified and confused that he was laughing. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead coughed a spray of blood that hit Garrett in the face. And then he had toppled onto his liege. The world had seemed to dim then.
When he'd woken, it was on the wagon for the wounded. The man next to him was dead, that was for sure, but they had assured him that it was the wounded wagon. Benjen's body had not been there. He could hear the screams of the city in agony as the looting began. Behind him was Maegor's Holdfast, and when some old maester, that someone said had been the Grand Maester once, had judged him fit to walk, he'd been allowed to walk into it, to find the King in the Throne Room.
And Bryce was there. He sat on the Iron Throne, his gilded armor protecting him as he, unlike the Targaryen kings who had sat there, was able to recline. Below him stood King Rhaegar II Targaryen, with his White Cloaks in attendance. Lord Commander Vance, who had been named after Ser Steffon had been killed. And there was old drunk Ser Jaime Lannister, who had still managed to survive where men half his age had failed, still wearing his own gold armor, though his had tarnished and did not shine quite as brightly as his nephew's.
"Sign it," said Bryce, growling down to Rhaegar.
"And you'll agree to its terms?" asked Rhaegar meekly.
"I'm more concerned about you agreeing," said Bryce. "I hardly know which dead Targaryen King you'll be next. One month it's Baelor the Blessed, the next it's Aegon the Conqueror. Maybe you'll be Daemon Blackfyre tomorrow. And how can I expect a bastard to keep his promises?"
"You'll agree to its terms?" asked Rhaegar again. He did not look like a Targaryen. His Valyrian blood had been diluted by two generations of Dornish wives and he took after them more than he did Aegon VI.
"Yes," said Bryce. "After my men have had their way with your sweet city, it will be returned to you. You shall renounce all claim to dominion over the Reach and the Westerlands, and shall recognize me as sole sovereign of the Kingdom of the Rock, and the lawful claim of my heirs to the same. And then you shall get this precious throne back." One gauntleted finger scratched at an exposed sword blade in Aegon's Chair. "So sign it."
And Rhaegar signed. Bryce smiled, and he looked over the crowd.
"After all," he said. "I'm only keeping it warm for you."