Chapter 37: The Children's Quarrel
The mist had not burned off by the time the training ground filled up.
It lay low against Winterfell's walls, softening the edges of the arrow towers, turning the yard into something half-dreamed.
Cold enough that breath showed, cold enough that standing still for any length of time became its own discomfort. None of the young spectators seemed to care. They had packed the rails on three sides of the training ground with the particular energy of people who have identified entertainment and intend to extract everything from it.
In the center of the yard, Bran Stark and Prince Tommen faced each other in their practice armor.
The padding was thorough. Winterfell's master-at-arms did not believe in half measures when it came to protecting children from themselves, and both boys had been wrapped from throat to knee in boiled leather and quilted linen until the effect was less warrior than something you'd find in a storage room.
Tommen, who was generously built to begin with, had become genuinely spherical. He held his practice sword with both hands and the expression of a boy who was not entirely certain how he had ended up here.
Bran looked considerably more comfortable. He was quick for his age, and the padding slowed him less than it slowed Tommen, which was not something Ser Rodrik had planned for but was also not something Ser Rodrik appeared displeased about.
The master-at-arms of Winterfell stood to one side with his arms crossed and the particular expression of a man who has spent his professional life preventing injury to children and has developed a finely calibrated sense of when it is and isn't about to happen. His grey whiskers were impressive enough to have their own reputation. He watched the two boys with the steady attention of someone ready to step in but not yet required to.
He gave the signal.
They went at it.
The crowd sorted itself the way crowds always do when there is a clear contest and two clear sides.
The northern contingent — Stark men, Winterfell guards, the boys who trained in this yard every morning — cheered for Bran with the comfortable partisanship of people on home ground. The southern contingent — Gold Cloaks, Crownlands knights, the attendants who had made the long road north with the royal column — made encouraging noises for Tommen with slightly less certainty, since Tommen was not, as yet, inspiring great confidence.
Tommen was working hard. His sword arm moved with genuine effort. Most of what it hit was air.
Bran, using footwork that Ser Rodrik had been teaching him since he could walk, kept outside Tommen's range and made him turn for it. When Tommen overextended — and he did, twice in the first minute — Bran adjusted and made him pay for it in small ways, nothing decisive, just the accumulation of small advantages that good footwork produces.
Robb Stark had pressed to the front of the northern side and was providing his brother with running commentary at a volume that served no one but himself.
"He's winded! Don't let him catch his breath — use the shield!"
Bran heard him. He shifted his weight, planted his leading foot, and drove his shield into Tommen's chest with both arms behind it.
Tommen went down.
He hit the packed earth of the training ground with the particular totality of someone who had lost the argument with gravity and knew it. His sword bounced free and rolled. He lay on his back with his arms and legs moving in the manner of a man trying to find purchase that wasn't there, the padded armor making righting himself a geometric problem with no obvious solution.
The northern side erupted.
Several of the Gold Cloaks turned away, which was the most generous thing they could have done given the circumstances. A few of the Crownlands knights studied the middle distance with scholarly attention. The laughter was not cruel, exactly — Tommen was unhurt and the situation was objectively comic — but it was loud.
Bran stood over him and raised his practice sword.
"Enough!" Joffrey came through the crowd at a pace just short of running, his voice cutting across the noise. He crossed to Tommen and got an arm under his brother and hauled him to his feet with the focused practicality of an older sibling who has done this before. When Tommen was upright and breathing, Joffrey turned to Bran.
"He was already down," Joffrey said. The reproach in his voice was real, not performance. "What were you going to do with it?"
Bran lowered his sword without particular embarrassment. He had been about to tap the shoulder — the conventional signal — but hadn't gotten there yet.
"Enough," Ser Rodrik said, with the authority of a man who does not need to raise his voice. "Bran, that's done. Get your armor off." He looked at the guards on the northern side. "Someone help him."
Several men peeled away from the rail and set to work on Bran's straps. On the other side, Joffrey had already started on Tommen's buckles, talking quietly to his brother while he worked. Tommen's face was red — not hurt, but the particular color of a boy who has been laughed at in public and is working out whether he minds.
Ser Rodrik looked around the training ground with the expression of a man making a calculation.
"Robb. Prince Joffrey." He nodded to each in turn. "Either of you interested in a round? Work off the morning."
Robb stepped forward before the sentence was finished. He had the brightness in his eyes of someone who had been standing on the sideline wanting to be in the middle of it and had just been handed the opportunity.
"Gladly."
Joffrey turned from Tommen. The anger from a moment ago hadn't fully left him, and something in Robb's immediate eagerness sharpened it rather than settling it. He walked Tommen to the rail, left him in Sandor Clegane's shadow, and came back to the center of the yard.
Then he drew his sword.
Not the practice sword. His sword — a proper blade, southern steel, the crossguard worked in a pattern Henry had chosen when he gave it to the boy.
Ser Rodrik's expression did not change, but his posture did.
"Put it away, Your Grace."
"I've been working with live steel for two years," Joffrey said. He turned the blade once in his wrist, a show of familiarity that was genuine — Henry had taught him to handle the thing, and it showed. "Ser Henry gave me this sword. I'm not going back to a practice blade."
"Nor am I," Robb said at once. His jaw had set. He was already looking past Joffrey to where the weapons were racked.
"Robb." Ser Rodrik put a hand on his shoulder, firm enough to mean something. Then he looked back at Joffrey. "Your Grace. In this yard, under my instruction, the rule is practice steel. That applies to everyone."
"And who," said a new voice from the rail, "made you the authority on what a prince does?"
Sandor Clegane stepped through the gap in the crowd onto the training ground with the ease of a man who has never thought much about whether he was welcome somewhere. He was half a foot taller than anyone else present, the burned half of his face pulling his expression into something that looked like contempt regardless of what he was feeling.
He looked at Ser Rodrik the way a large dog looks at something it's decided doesn't require much attention.
"You train boys in this yard," he said. "Is that what you're producing? Boys who can't touch live steel?"
"I train men who can defend their homes," Ser Rodrik said, without adjusting his tone by a single degree. "When their skills are ready for live steel, I'll say so."
Sandor looked at Robb. "I killed a man when I was younger than you. Not with a practice sword." He let that sit. "If you need the old man's permission to fight like a grown person, maybe you should wait another few years."
Robb's back went rigid. He turned to Ser Rodrik with the expression of someone making a decision he knew he might regret.
"Let me use real steel. I can handle him."
"No." Ser Rodrik did not soften it.
Joffrey watched Robb's face during this exchange and apparently decided he had won something. He rolled his shoulders and looked at Tommen at the rail.
"Come on," he said. "We'll leave them to their wooden swords." He affected a yawn that was slightly too studied to be convincing. "Send word when you're ready for something real, Stark. Don't wait too long — I'd hate for you to be too old to make it interesting."
Whatever Robb said in response was not measured. It was loud enough to carry to every corner of the training ground and specific enough that the adults present decided collectively to have not heard it.
The northern side came forward. The southern side came forward to meet them. The thing that had been an argument was becoming something with more mass to it, bodies finding bodies, voices layering on voices, the particular escalation of group conflict where no one individual is making a decision but the sum of all of them is moving in a direction.
The sound of hooves cut across it.
Henry came through the training ground entrance at a pace that communicated that he had assessed the situation from a distance and had views about it. His horse was a bay gelding that had learned to read his moods, and it moved through the gathering crowd with the calm of an animal that trusted its rider to have considered the matter.
Henry surveyed the yard. Joffrey near the center with his sword still drawn. Robb two strides away, coiled. Sandor at the edge of the field with his arms folded. Ser Rodrik standing in the middle of it all with the expression of a man whose authority was being tested and who had not yet decided whether to let that bother him.
Henry said nothing for a moment.
Then, evenly: "Clear the yard. Everyone who isn't training goes back inside."
It wasn't a loud voice. It had the quality of a voice that had given orders in circumstances where orders needed to be followed immediately, and something in the crowd recognized it. The spectators began to move. Slowly at first, then with the gathering momentum of people who had found something else to be doing.
Henry dismounted and handed his reins to the nearest Gold Cloak without looking at him. He walked toward the center of the yard.
"Joffrey," he said. "Sheathe it."
A beat. Then the sword went away.
Henry looked at Robb. Then at Sandor. Then at Ser Rodrik, briefly, with an expression that was not apology but was acknowledgment.
He turned back to the boys.
"Right," he said. "Let's talk about what just happened."
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
[Review Goal: 10 = +1 Chapter]
If you liked it, feel free to leave a review.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger