Jaime?

  The Rock crested the horizon like a lion on its haunches, tall enough that the clouds appeared to crown its head. Jaime remembered how it would often shimmer from the heat in the flush of summer.

  Lannisport sprawled beneath it, a sea of red and gold ringed by walls high enough to weather a dozen Gardener kings. He was relieved not to find it burned, though as they sailed into the harbor, he spied the signs of a struggle on the dromonds his lordly father had seen laid down after the Greyjoy Rebellion.

  It seemed the ironborn had tested them and been found wanting.

  It felt as if their positions had been reversed as he glanced at Tyrion. An easy smile graced his brother's lips now, where Jaime's heart flickered nervously. What displeasure their father would level them with would not compare even a whit to Cersei's fury.

  "It will be a relief to soak these tired bones in a bath," Aunt Genna sighed next to him, pulling on her braid. "If you feel the need to go gallivanting off again, do consider Oldtown instead."

  "I must disagree," Xakkhar jested in heavily accented Common. "I would not be as rich if you had."

  The captain of the Mad Parrot was a man as tall as he was wide, with skin the color of coals and a cloak of feathers around his shoulders that could pass for a sunset. He was also as mad as the name of his swan ship, having sailed them into a storm to mock the pirates haunting the Stepstones.

  The Summer Islander had grown on him in spite of almost sending them all to the Seven. He was an easy man to talk to, and had a thousand stories to distract him with, having sailed as far north as Ibben and as far east as Leng.

  It did not take long for one of their hundred cousins to recognize their procession, and soon enough one of his uncles in the city had found them also, fleshy cheeks red with drink.

  Uncle Dolt, his sister had called him once, and Jaime found himself agreeing as he blustered through their situation. It seemed that Randyll Tarly had placed the whole of the westerlands under siege.

  The news was more sour than sweet. He had hoped Renly would seek a quick victory, leaving himself open to some folly.

  "I suppose I should speak to him. My thanks, Ser Stafford."

  "We are glad to have you back, Ser Jaime. I swore to your lord father that I would defend Lannisport from the ironborn, with my dying breath if need be!"

  …It was fortunate his coz was not half as much a fool as his father. They might yet avoid a disaster.

  "I'll find a brothel to drown my sorrows in," Tyrion said when they neared the stables. "I have a reputation of iniquity to maintain, after all."

  It left him to ride with Aunt Genna and Strongboar to Casterly Rock. It swelled upon the horizon until it stood so high it swallowed the sun.

  A white cloak still trailed behind him as he traversed its gold-lined passageways.

  Finally, with a face that could have been carved from the same stone as the Rock… "You've returned."

  "It seems I've missed a war. These things happen, I suppose."

  Those gold-flecked eyes remained as humorless as a lichyard. "Rid yourself of that fool's cloak. You are a member of the Kingsguard no longer. You made certain of that when you abandoned your post."

  Despite already making his peace with it, he still found his fingers stiff in unclasping it from his shoulders. He had been a Kingsguard for more of his years than he had not.

  "In time you will serve as Lord of Casterly Rock. As for a wife…"

  He scratched at the tip of his nose awkwardly. "I believe we have this war to win first."

  He had already planned to leave it all to Tyrion or Tommen as soon as he was able anyhow.

  "A war is not won only on the field," his father cooly returned. "One of Lady Anya Waynwood's granddaughters might secure us the Vale…" he continued more thoughtfully, "but it would not be half as good a match as Princess Arianne Martell."

  Jaime snorted for the picture it painted. "Perhaps I should cut my own throat now and spare them the trouble."

  His lordly father continued as if he hadn't heard. "Prince Doran is not his younger brother. With Lord Eddard Stark draining a cup of poison near as soon as he arrived in Dorne, he might see the sense in such an arrangement. This after Renly spurned the Dornish."

  …That was new. He moistened his suddenly dry lips for it. "And why would the Martells poison honorable Lord Stark?"

  "Their motive doesn't concern me. I will send a raven to broach the idea."

  "Will we conjure up Elia Martell and her children for them also?" Jaime asked incredulously. Was his father such a fool?

  "An unfortunate tragedy. One that Ser Amory Lorch's folly has already paid for." His father stood and neared a window, staring out from it at Lannisport. "You will take twenty thousand men and make your way to Crakehall. I have already sent Ser Gregor Clegane into the Reach to test the appetites of House Rowan for this war the Tyrells are so hungry for. With any luck Lord Mathis Rowan will take chase."

  And if the Mountain That Rides so happened to meet his end in the process, a gift of his skull would be made to Prince Doran. Likely his father would make him deliver it himself.

  A plan was beginning to take root in his head. "I'll want Ser Addam Marbrand and Strongboar with me."

  He received a curt nod. "Succeed and Tarly's plan is smothered in the cradle."

  "Where is our lord of Tarly anyhow?"

  "At Deep Den, where I will meet him. Ser Baelor Hightower and his brothers besiege the Golden Tooth."

  If he could threaten Oldtown perhaps…

  "And the Vale? I only trust Littlefinger not to betray us so long as it is convenient for him to remain in our good graces."

  "Lord Grafton has him well in hand," his father dismissed.

  Jaime did not know how much he believed that. He left his white cloak abandoned on the stones when he went to find his sweet sister.

  It did not take him long to catch Cersei lording over her ladies-in-waiting, though he only recognized two of them, one a Kenning of Kayce and the other a Serrett.

  His sister swiftly sent him a glare that could curdle milk as she commanded her ladies out.

  "You should have stayed in Braavos," she hissed.

  The sunlight from the window seemed to tangle in her curls, and her eyes were beautiful despite how they tried to spear him.

  "And miss the chance to thumb my nose at Renly?"

  His words only turned her mood more stormy. "You would be more fit as Moon Boy's replacement than the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard."

  "I fear I'm not even a knight of the Kingsguard any longer, sister."

  Her eyes narrowed. "I should be Lord of Casterly Rock, not you. I have ever been the eldest, the most suited."

  He shrugged his shoulders not unlike a cat. "If you want to convince Father, I won't fight you."

  She still frowned at him. The way she had when they were children.

  "You were safe and sound in King's Landing," he defended. "How was I to know your fat fool of a husband would find himself at the bottom of the narrow sea?"

  "If not for my… for Solomon, Renly would have taken us all. Will I have been safe and sound then, Jaime? You were always supposed to stay by my side."

  The hurt in her voice tugged at his heartstrings, but it was not as if she had been fair with him… "Who was it that spurned the other moon after moon?"

  His sister came to him a storm of skirts. "Stannis already suspected. You would have seen us all shorter by a head."

  "That never stopped us before," he sullenly replied.

  Her eyes reminded him of wildfire as she stared up at him. A part of him wanted to claim her poutful lips, his fingers twitching to tug at the laces of her crimson-and-jadestone gown, but she was as like to bite his tongue in a mood as this.

  "I'm here now, Cersei. We've enemies enough."

  A smile so sweet graced her lips for it. "You are right. Joff needs you. Robert's brothers will not rest until they see all our heads decorating a spike."

  He still could not help but see it all as folly. While they fought and bled over a throne, they had a scheming eunuch and a murderous coin-counter moving them all like pieces on a cyvasse board. And the gods only knew what the sorcerer and sorceress had in mind for them…

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Renly's kingdom cannot stand without the Tyrells," he argued instead, "and the Tyrells cannot stand if the Reach is in chaos."

  All easier said than done, he knew. For all they held the advantage in soldiery, their levies more disciplined and armed and armored in the best Lannister gold can buy, there was no escaping the simple truth that Randyll Tarly had two men for every one of theirs.

  His father was not so much a fool as he was desperate when he thought to involve the Martells…

  "I trust you to see it done, Jaime."

  He stirred his attentions back on Cersei, her nails toying with his arm. But something wasn't right. He was not new to her moods shifting like a leaf in the wind, and yet…

  He was too much of a coward to confront her, he found. He pulled away instead, avoiding her eyes. "I suppose I should prepare."

  He almost fled after the words.

  In the morn, he paused for a breath to glance at a mirror, his white cloak replaced with one in rich crimson. His armor was beaten gold near the same color as his hair, a snarling lion decorating the breastplate.

  His father had also insisted he take a squire, but he felt no rush for it. He was hardly an example of chivalry…

  He soon stirred himself to action. With him went ten thousand foot and seven thousand horse. His other three thousand foot were currently besieged in Crakehall.

  By the seventh night on the march, their scouts and outriders had painted them a picture. A force of thirty five thousand Reachmen besieged Crakehall, nine thousand of those mounted. Yet his father's intuition had proven correct. Lord Mathis Rowan had taken more than half of that nine thousand to hunt the Mountain down some days back.

  They made camp in the boarswood to Crakehall's east that night, to shelter from the winds as much as guard them from prying eyes as his war council poured over maps.

  "Break the siege and the Lord of Goldengrove will command a tourney troupe more than an army," Strongboar argued, not that he expected otherwise. It was Crakehall men besieged behind Crakehall's high walls.

  "And if we break ourselves on it instead?" Ser Addam asked, his hair redder under the torchlight. "They have twenty five thousand foot still, and plenty horse with which to inform Lord Rowan."

  "And they will have dug in," Ser Forley Prestor added, his surcoat bearing a bloody bull's head and his helmet bearing horns.

  It was fortunate that his lord father had spared him too many prickly lords. Another sennight would have passed 'fore they agreed to a plan.

  "I must agree," Jaime soon said, his breath misting. The nights grew colder and colder. "Why not ride Lord Rowan down with our own horse? With any luck, we will catch him between the Mountain and ourselves.

  "It would leave our foot outnumbered three to one," their lord of Jast argued.

  "It would," he agreed, "though if they kept to the woods, I find it unlikely that it would stir a chase."

  He fiddled with the fastenings of his golden armor as he raked his eyes across his council. There was no protest.

  "Ser Forley, I leave our foot in your hands." Though the knight reminded him more of an innkeep, Jaime had found him a good mix of shrewd and dutiful. They were unlikely to return to a disaster this way.

  On the morrow near seven thousand horse thundered south into the Reach and then east to Goldengrove.

  He thought of his sister, her beauty resplendent under the sun, but he thought of the Black Pearl of Braavos also…

  The Huntsman?

  This war will either make an end of you, or it will turn you into a man worthy of our name. I leave it to the gods to decide which.

  Those were the words his father had left him with. Sam feared he already knew then which it would be.

  With each village they found put to the torch, its smallfolk sport for the monster they hunted, Lord Mathis had only grown more cold with anger. A quiet part of him wondered what it said about his father that the Lord of Goldengrove was still more cordial to him even as he threatened to have the Mountain fastened to a tree until the sun bleached his bones.

  They had found stragglers on the seventh. The lord in his snowy armor had seen them all gutted before they were hanged.

  Sam was only thankful he hadn't fainted again.

  They were on the monster's trail now, and pushed their mounts even harder. He had never been the most able rider, leaving his skin chapped raw in places. The armor his father had given him hardly even fit him.

  If this was war, why did any man ever sing of it so fondly? He thought himself more trapped in one of the seven hells than wrapped in glory.

  Sam had seen a hundred versions of the Mountain in his nightmares. In some he had a sword taller than him in his hands and bayed like a mad goat. In another he had the head of an aurochs or a boar, more beast than man.

  The trail led them nearer to Goldengrove, to another village some leagues from it. They passed a woman shambling aimlessly down the road from it, the dress around her thighs run red with blood.

  He found himself emptying his stomach when her dead eyes met his, his hands shaking as they thundered into a slaughterhouse. He tried not to stare at it all in favor of their quarry.

  The Mountain That Rides made a warhorse look nearer to a pony, a greatsword held in one hand and a massive oaken shield rimmed in black iron in the other. On it were the three black dogs of Clegane on a yellow field.

  The bloodshed had already begun as they smashed into some hundred of the Mountain's men. Yet the Mountain only struck his sword against his shield in challenge, and Lord Mathis answered.

  Sam did not dare get anywhere near them, but he did see the monstrous knight remove a horse's head in one blow of his sword, its rider breaking his neck on the cobblestones. Instead he tried to see as many of the smallfolk to safety as he could, all the harder when the bloodlust had taken both sides.

  The sunset had found the Mountain knee deep in corpses of friend and foe alike. Yet even his monstrous strength was flagging, and he was bleeding heavily from the rings of lances that surrounded him. All that was left of the cutthroats he commanded had barricaded themselves in the inn.

  The Lord of Goldengrove seemed content for it to continue, even as he promised to return him to the seven hells from whence he came.

  "Come and try," the Mountain rasped from under his helmet, his eyes only visible through a narrow slit. "I had hoped you would return to find your castle sacked." His laughter was a wet, rumbling thing. "I'd have raped your wife and daughter. Ripped them open for you to find."

  The disgust settled in his empty stomach like a stone. This man was an anointed knight?

  The lord spat on the stones from his destrier. "I'll remember your words when I use your skull as a chamberpot. The only honor you deserve."

  The Mountain groaned in pain as another lance found a gap in his armor.

  The festering stink of blood and guts stuck to Sam, the only escape was his memories. He thanked the gods that Horn Hill was far away from all this madness.

  It was the thunder of hooves that broke the eerie quiet, the mare under him stirring for it. The Mountain let out another laugh as he swayed on his feet.

  They turned around to see a score westerlands banners above as many knights as they had. More, perhaps. His heart swiftly began to mimic the same thunder of hooves.

  "Hold!" Lord Mathis shouted, and his captains picked up the shout. "Lances! Lances ready for—"

  He watched in horror as the lord's head burst like a grape under a hammer. Where he had found the strength to, Sam knew not, but the Mountain had thrown his monstrous shield to see it done, and then collapsed.

  The other lords and knights scrambled to restore order, but Sam saw what was about to happen. They did not have any room to maneuver, and would be crushed between the Lannister charge and the village behind them.

  Licking dry, bloody lips, he reached for his horn. One for a charge. Two for a retreat.

  They had to see this was the only way. Goldengrove was not far. They had to know it too.

  So he blew once. Twice. And then he fled.