Chapter 50 47

[200 powerstones bonus chapter]

The Golden Company' Main Camp. 294 AC.

Ser Axel Arryn. Paymaster of the Golden Company.

"You understand that I cannot simply hand you the sword?" said the new Captain-General of the Golden Company, Harry Strickland, turning the arakh over in his hands with careful attention.

"Why not? I broke the Windblown. I killed Caggo. The arakh is my trophy by every law that exists."

"How much is Valyrian steel worth?" Strickland tried a different approach.

"It is beyond price."

"You're right about that. But how much gold would Tywin Lannister offer for this?"

"Half a million gold dragons."

"There you have your answer." Harry gave a satisfied nod. "I only recently took command and do not yet have the authority to settle a matter involving that kind of money. Right now I am first among equals, and the others outweigh me because every one of them has force behind him. The dimmer ones could push this toward open conflict within the company, and I cannot have that. And then there are the rules..." He began lying to my face with brazen ease, stoking the tension with deliberate care. I had to cut him off, because listening to the same performance twice was beyond my tolerance.

"I am not in the mood for this," I said flatly. It had been a long day. "What do you want?" After the mutual betrayal over the business arrangements, our relationship had settled into something purely transactional.

He had used me to build his reputation, grow his wealth, and bring the company into dependency through my goods. I had used him as a shield against the Myrish Magisters and the company's captains. The Magisters had been unhappy with the sudden consolidation of power in favor of the merchants, the captains had grumbled about being cut out of the profits, but they had endured it. All the discontent rained down on Harry as the man who had initiated the arrangement. Strickland would have been glad enough to shut down my business, but the other captains would not allow it, since my enterprise was profitable for the whole Company. In Essos, either you get used or you do the using. That was the only way of things.

Only recently had Morango's skull joined the gilded skulls of the previous captains. It was one of the Company's oldest and, if one was being honest, strangest traditions. Aegor Rivers, its first Captain-General, had commanded on his deathbed that his skull be stripped of flesh, gilded, and carried everywhere the Golden Company marched, until the day they returned to Westeros to reclaim the kingdom. His successors had done the same, and so now whenever the sellswords made camp, they raised a full ring of gilded skulls mounted on pikes, with the skull of Aegor Rivers at the center on the tallest of them.

"I want a favor. And I want you out of the company."

That was... audacious.

The Golden Company had a body of rules set down by the Founder himself and by Daemon Blackfyre. They were written plainly, without room for double interpretation, and had not been changed since the company's founding, only supplemented over time. ALL plunder was divided according to strict shares, and my share was not enough to cover the cost of a Valyrian arakh. It was precisely these rules the captains had been invoking in their bid to claim the sword.

The rules themselves were not complicated and were easy enough to follow. They covered minimum standards every soldier was expected to meet, peacetime duties, twice-weekly combat training, absolute fidelity to contracts, uniformity of armor, the regulation of commerce between soldiers, and much else besides.

And apparently every last bastard among them felt personally obliged to inform me of these rules. They had grated on my nerves so thoroughly that I was ready to kill anyone who mentioned it again. Strickland must have seen something in my eyes, because he pressed on quickly:

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain. You have become excessively... popular. You have accumulated too much power and influence. For my purposes, the company needs to be united, without opposition. As for the favor, it is a small thing, a trifle." The first part was clear enough. The second made me sharpen my attention.

"Go on." In truth, I needed to return to the Vale soon anyway. My father was not growing any younger.

"It's simple enough. What I need is..."

...

One of the central goals I had set for myself upon arriving in Essos was obtaining a Valyrian sword. It had been an obsession. After long work, considerable expense, and no small expenditure of energy, all I had managed to acquire was a small knife of the noble metal. Then word reached me that one of the Windblown's captains carried a Valyrian steel arakh. Almost half a year of quiet maneuvering later, the Tattered Prince took a risky contract. By that point I had prepared thoroughly. And now the sword was in my hands, but trouble had come from a direction I had not expected.

Between the rhythm of company life and the relatively comfortable years in Myr, I had forgotten that my comrades were sellswords who chased profit. They wanted the sword taken from me and placed on "neutral" ground until an owner could be declared. For those proposals they were sent to the Seven Hells in terms that left no ambiguity. Only my reputation and the four hundred men personally loyal to me kept the dispute from becoming a physical one.

Strickland himself had chosen to step back from the conflict and watch the theater of it. Only when the tension within the company crossed a critical threshold did the Captain-General deign to intervene. He proposed holding a tournament, with the sword as the prize. He chose his words well, leaving the others no graceful way to refuse: "Only the finest warrior in the Golden Company has the right to a Valyrian Arakh."

Marq, Franklin, Maar, and Balak understood that I was the strongest and insisted on a free-for-all, the five of us fighting each other all at once. I was twenty years old now. The days of being constrained by a child's body were long behind me. Even had there been twice as many of them, the victory would still have been mine.

After my victory the open discontent fell silent, and the captains did not raise the matter again. Not out of any nobility, but out of understanding that it was pointless. They had publicly agreed to the terms of the tournament and lost. Their own men would not have understood any further complaint.

It cost me a fair sum to have a master smith in Qohor reforge the arakh into a slender two-handed sword. The sword was made to my specifications and bore a close resemblance to the Sword of Kings, Aranrúth though with a gilded hilt. It was one of the relics of Númenor, an embodiment of the royal authority of my line, and stood on equal footing with Narsil, Orcrist, Glamdring, and Ringil. In the hands of one who knew how to wield it, it could grant a strength that rivaled the Maiar themselves, though I had not inherited that sword, as I was not from the direct Royal family.

I named this sword Golden Wing, in honor of the Company and my House.

A month later I was urgently summoned to the command tent, with promises of entertainment.

...

The entire senior leadership of the Golden Company was assembled inside. A small but well-supplied feast was underway. Captains were eating, drinking, and selecting the most appealing women from the available company. I observed all of it, and at last someone noticed I had arrived.

Strickland and Marq raised their cups in greeting. The others offered a brief nod. I took the seat that had been set aside for me, to the left hand of the Captain-General. Lately I had had little time for the company's internal politics. I had been transferring my capital, preparing replacements, purchasing supplies, writing letters home, and negotiating arrangements on all sides. Doing everything necessary so that in two years I could leave the company without leaving a wound behind.

My plan was to return to Westeros within two years and establish formations modeled on the Dúnedain of the North, for the purpose of clearing the Vale of its wildlings. I would not tolerate mountain clansmen running roughshod through my lands and killing what was mine. Preliminary talks with the Vale's lords were already underway, and no one had raised any objection to my initiative.

And in the middle of all this pressing work, I was being pulled away to a feast? Feasts in the company were hardly rare. I would have called them a regular occurrence. But this one they had pressed me to attend with unusual insistence. I had come, and yet for some reason no one was in any hurry to explain why all the captains had been gathered. When I asked directly, Harry said nothing, only smiled with an air of mystery.

Something is off. I can feel the trap springing, I thought to myself, as I calmly sipped my favorite wine and let my gaze drift to a lovely woman of Valyrian descent.

"Harry, if we are gathered here only to eat, I am leaving." My patience had given out. I rose and moved toward the exit. Fifteen minutes had passed and nothing had happened.

"Axel, wait. We are here for a genuinely important reason." He placed a particular weight on the word important. "So please sit down. I promise the occasion will not disappoint you."

"Tch." I sat back down. If Strickland was certain, then it was true.

Five minutes later an aged Dornishman entered the tent and announced in a carrying voice:

"Before you stands King Viserys of House Targaryen. Third of His Name. King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm."

And with that, Viserys Targaryen walked into the tent in the flesh.

This is going to be interesting.

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