Chapter 25: The Prince's Squire
The King returned to King's Landing from the grand tourney at Lannisport, where the laurels had gone to Ser Jorah Mormont. The newly crowned champion had not presented the crown of love and beauty to any highborn lady of the court, but had turned instead to a woman of House Hightower. It was the kind of choice that men would talk about for years afterward, mostly to shake their heads at it.
On the small practice yard of Iron Fist Keep, Henry landed a clean strike with his lead-weighted training sword against his opponent's shoulder plate. The blow wasn't hard enough to injure, but it was hard enough to matter, and the blonde boy in practice armor went down into the dirt.
Joffrey Baratheon looked up from the ground with green eyes full of fury, his voice cracking somewhere between outrage and tears. "I'm going to tell my mother!"
"As you like, Your Highness." Henry stepped back and lowered the training sword. "His Majesty the King gave me my orders directly. He told me to make something of you."
It had started three weeks earlier, when Robert had returned to the Red Keep in reasonably good spirits after the tourney and made what appeared to be a genuine effort to spend time with his eldest son.
Joffrey had marked the occasion by presenting his father with a gift: a kitten, cut from the belly of its pregnant mother, laid out with what the boy apparently considered pride.
Robert's response had been immediate and volcanic. The punch knocked out two of Joffrey's milk teeth. The roar that followed it shook the rafters.
"Is that what she's been teaching you? Get away from that woman and get out of my sight. Go across the river — go to Baywood, go learn what a man is supposed to be from someone who actually knows."
By nightfall, Joffrey had been packed into a boat with an escort and sent to Iron Fist Keep. Henry had received the royal order the following morning: take the prince as his squire, train him, and if the time came, knight him. It was the kind of honor most lords would have been grateful for.
Henry had mixed feelings about it that he kept entirely to himself.
Jon Arryn, for his part, had approved of Robert's decision more quietly and for more considered reasons. He'd spent enough years watching the Lannister influence spread through the court like damp through stone — gradual, invisible until it was everywhere, and by then very difficult to remove. Joffrey on the throne meant Cersei's family at the center of power for a generation. Keeping the boy away from King's Landing, away from his mother's particular brand of instruction, while he was still young enough to be shaped by something else — that mattered. It mattered quite a lot.
The question was who to send him to. The Starks were capable men but they were Northmen, and Ned Stark had never been comfortable in the south and everyone knew it. The Tyrells kept their own counsel and had since Robert's coronation. Dorne submitted on the surface and nursed its grievances underneath. The lords of the Crownlands were mostly too entangled with Lannister money to be trusted with something like this. Stannis was the King's own brother but he was also Stannis, and putting a difficult child in Stannis Baratheon's care seemed likely to produce outcomes that nobody wanted.
Henry Reyne was close to King's Landing, held the King's favor, and had made his feelings about the Lannisters clear enough without being stupid about it. He was young, which might help or might not. He was, at minimum, unlikely to make things worse.
So here they were.
"I was trying to show my father something I'd caught," Joffrey said, still on the ground, chin up, trying to hold onto whatever dignity the dirt and tears allowed him.
"Cutting open a pregnant cat isn't hunting, Your Highness." Henry reached down, gripped the back of Joffrey's practice collar, and hauled him upright. "On your feet. I barely touched you."
"Kill him!" Joffrey twisted in his grip, voice going shrill. "Arys! Sandor! I order you to kill him right now!"
"His Majesty ordered him to train you." Sandor Clegane hadn't moved from his spot near the yard wall. His arms were crossed, his hound-helm sitting beside him on a barrel. The burned side of his face caught the morning light — the ear reduced to a black hollow, the skin tight and cracked and dark, the eye intact but surrounded by scar tissue that pulled the corner of it into a permanent, humorless expression. The good side of his face was gaunt, sharp-boned, grey eyes flat with the particular patience of a man who has stopped being surprised by anything.
Arys Oakheart, the other Kingsguard present, found something interesting to look at in the middle distance and kept looking at it. He was a handsome young knight, newly appointed to fill a vacancy left at Pyke, and he was clearly calculating whether this situation required his involvement. He concluded it did not. The white hem of his cloak swept the ground as he turned slightly away.
Henry put the dropped training sword back in Joffrey's hand. When he spoke, his voice came down a register. "Don't disgrace the Baratheon name. Your father charged into battles that would have broken other men. He didn't raise you to cry in the dirt. Come at me again."
Joffrey came at him screaming, which was about what Henry had expected. He had speed and some aggression and no technique whatsoever — his charge was wide open, committed to the wrong line. Henry stepped left, let the boy's momentum carry him past, and brought the flat of the training sword down across his back. Joffrey hit the ground face-first, eating dirt.
The Hound spoke from the wall. "He won't forget this day easily, my lord."
"Good," Henry said. "Then he'll remember what I taught him. That's the whole idea."
He walked to where Joffrey lay and waited. The boy was making sounds — something between sobbing and swearing, which was arguably progress over pure sobbing. Henry tapped the ground next to him with the tip of his sword.
"Get up. This isn't punishment. This is what training feels like before it turns into something useful." He paused. "Your father is watching how you do here. Not today — but eventually he'll ask. What do you want me to tell him?"
Joffrey got up. He was crying openly now, snot and sweat mixing with the dirt on his face, blonde hair plastered to his cheeks. But he got up, and he raised the sword, and he came at Henry again.
It wasn't much. But it was something to work with.
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