LITMIR.BIZ

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from its center pole, where the red stallion of House Bracken reared upon its gold escutcheon. Jaime gave the order to dismount and told his men that they might mingle if they liked. “Not you two,” he said to his banner-bearers. “Stay close. This will not keep me long.” Jaime vaulted down off Honor and strode to Bracken’s tent, his sword rattling in its scabbard.

      The guards outside the tent flap exchanged an anxious look at his approach. “My lord,” said one. “Shall we announce you?”

      “I’ll announce myself.” Jaime pushed aside the flap with his golden hand and ducked inside.

      They were well and truly at it when he entered, so intent on their rutting that neither took any note of his arrival. The woman had her eyes closed. Her hands clutched the coarse brown hair on Bracken’s back. She gasped every time he drove into her. His lordship’s head was buried in her breasts, his hands locked around her hips. Jaime cleared his throat. “Lord Jonos.”

      The woman’s eyes flew open, and she gave a startled shriek. Jonos Bracken rolled off her, grabbed for his scabbard, and came up with naked steel in hand, cursing. “Seven bloody hells,” he started, “who dares—” Then he saw Jaime’s white cloak and golden breastplate. His swordpoint dropped. “Lannister?”

      “I am sorry to disturb you at your pleasure, my lord,” said Jaime, with a half-smile, “but I am in some haste. May we talk?”

      “Talk. Aye.” Lord Jonos sheathed his sword. He was not quite so tall as Jaime, but he was heavier, with thick shoulders and arms that would have made a blacksmith envious. Brown stubble covered his cheeks and chin. His eyes were brown as well, the anger in them poorly hidden. “You took me unawares, my lord. I was not told of your coming.”

      “And I seem to have prevented yours.” Jaime smiled at the woman in the bed. She had one hand over her left breast and the other between her legs, which left her right breast exposed. Her nipples were darker than Cersei’s and thrice the size. When she felt Jaime’s gaze she covered her right nipple, but that revealed her mound. “Are all camp followers so modest?” he wondered. “If a man wants to sell his turnips, he needs to set them out.”

      “You been looking at my turnips since you came in, ser.” The woman found the blanket and pulled it up high enough to cover herself to the waist, then raised one hand to push her hair back from her eyes. “And they’re not for sale, neither.”

      Jaime gave a shrug. “My apologies if I mistook you for something you’re not. My little brother has known a hundred whores, I’m sure, but I’ve only ever bedded one.”

      “She’s a prize of war.” Bracken retrieved his breeches from the floor and shook them out. “She belonged to one of Blackwood’s sworn swords till I split his head in two. Put your hands down, woman. My lord of Lannister wants a proper look at those teats.”

      Jaime ignored that. “You are putting those breeches on backwards, my lord,” he told Bracken. As Jonos cursed, the woman slipped off the bed to snatch up her scattered clothing, her fingers fluttering nervously between her breasts and cleft as she bent and turned and reached. Her efforts to conceal herself were oddly provocative, far more so than if she’d simply gone about the business naked. “Do you have a name, woman?” he asked her.

      “My mother named me Hildy, ser.” She pulled a soiled shift down over her head and shook her hair out. Her face was almost as dirty as her feet and she had enough hair between her legs to pass for Bracken’s sister, but there was something appealing about her all the same. That pug nose, her shaggy mane of hair … or the way she did a little curtsy after she had stepped into her skirt. “Have you seen my other shoe, m’lord?”

      The question seemed to vex Lord Bracken. “Am I a bloody handmaid, to fetch you shoes? Go barefoot if you must. Just go.”

      “Does that mean m’lord won’t be taking me home with him, to pray with his little wife?” Laughing, Hildy gave Jaime a brazen look. “Do you have a little wife, ser?”

      No, I have a sister. “What color is my cloak?”

      “White,” she said, “but your hand is solid gold. I like that in a man. And what is it you like in a woman, m’lord?”

      “Innocence.”

      “In a woman, I said. Not a daughter.”

      He thought of Myrcella. I will need to tell her too. The Dornishmen might not like that. Doran Martell had betrothed her to his son in the belief that she was Robert’s blood. Knots and tangles, Jaime thought, wishing he could cut through all of it with one swift stroke of his sword. “I have sworn a vow,” he told Hildy wearily.

      “No turnips for you, then,” the girl said, saucily.

      “Get out,” Lord Jonos roared at her.

      She did. But as she slipped past Jaime, clutching one shoe and a pile of her clothes, she reached down and gave his cock a squeeze through his breeches. “Hildy,” she reminded him, before she darted half-clothed from the tent.

      Hildy, Jaime mused. “And how fares your lady wife?” he asked Lord Jonos when the girl was gone.

      “How would I know? Ask her septon. When your father burned our castle, she decided the gods were punishing us. Now all she does is pray.” Jonos had finally gotten his breeches turned the right way round and was lacing them up the front. “What brings you here, my lord? The Blackfish? We heard how he escaped.”

      “Did you?” Jaime settled on a camp stool. “From the man himself, perchance?”

      “Ser Brynden knows better than to come running to me. I am fond of the man, I won’t deny that. That won’t stop me clapping him in chains if he shows his face near me or mine. He knows I’ve bent the knee. He should have done the same, but he always was a stubborn one. His brother could have told you that.”

      “Tytos Blackwood has not bent the knee,” Jaime pointed out. “Might the Blackfish seek refuge at Raventree?”

      “He might seek it, but to find it he’d need to get past my siege lines, and last I heard he hadn’t grown wings. Tytos will be needing refuge himself before much longer. They’re down to rats and roots in there. He’ll yield before the next full moon.”

      “He’ll yield before the sun goes down. I mean to offer him terms and accept him back into the king’s peace.”

      “I see.” Lord Jonos shrugged into a brown woolen tunic with the red stallion of Bracken embroidered on the front. “Will my lord take a horn of ale?”

      “No, but don’t go dry on my account.”

      Bracken filled a horn for himself, drank half of it, and wiped his mouth. “You spoke of terms. What sort of terms?”

      “The usual sort. Lord Blackwood shall be required to confess his treason and abjure his allegiance to the Starks and Tullys. He will swear solemnly before gods and men to henceforth remain a leal vassal of Harrenhal and the Iron Throne, and I will give him pardon in the king’s name. We will take a pot or two of gold, of course. The price of rebellion. I’ll claim a hostage as well, to ensure that Raventree does not rise again.”

      “His daughter,” suggested Bracken. “Blackwood has six sons, but only the one daughter. He dotes on her. A snot-nosed little creature, couldn’t be more than seven.”

      “Young, but she might serve.”

      Lord Jonos drained the last of his ale and tossed the horn aside. “What of the lands and castles we were promised?”

      “What lands were these?”

      “The east bank of the Widow’s Wash, from Crossbow Ridge to Rutting Meadow, and all the islands in the stream. Grindcorn Mill and Lord’s Mill, the ruins of Muddy Hall, the Ravishment, Battle Valley, Oldforge, the villages of Buckle, Blackbuckle, Cairns, and Claypool, and the market town at Mudgrave. Waspwood, Lorgen’s Wood, Greenhill, and Barba’s Teats. Missy’s Teats, the Blackwoods call them, but they were Barba’s first. Honeytree and all the hives. Here, I’ve marked them out if my lord would like a look.” He rooted

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