AN: This should've come yesterday but I scrapped the latter half of it in my final revision and was only able to finish it today after work.

Chapter 31

Galad

Across the ruined common room, Sandor Clegane drove the last of his opponents down into the splintered wreck of a table, one great fist rising and falling. Galad's hand did not go to the sword at his hip. There were no knives out among the brawlers, no bystanders being drawn into the fray, no innocent throat in reach of harm. No need to add a weapon to the chaos.

He simply stepped further inside. Ben and Garlan filed in behind him, and the pair of them drew up short at the chaos before them, boots crunching on broken crockery.

Garlan's breath caught. "That's—"

"Ser Sandor Clegane," Galad said, loud enough for the man to hear.

The big man whipped around at the sound of his name, fist still raised above a bruised and bleeding face. His dark eyes found Galad across the room and narrowed to slits.

"You," he spat.

"Clegane?" Ben had his sword half out of its scabbard before Galad laid a hand on his wrist to still it. The sergeant shot him a hard look. "D'you know who his brother is, ser?" he hissed, low and urgent. "The Mountain that Rides. He tried to kill you in the melee."

"So I recall." Galad did not take his eyes off Clegane. He recalled, too, being warned of Ser Gregor the very night before that melee, warned by this very man, whose ruined face had loomed out of a torchlit corridor in Casterly Rock. "But I judge a man by his own deeds, not his brother's. Well met once again, ser. I hope—"

"Stop calling me that." Clegane's growl came from somewhere deep in his chest. "I'm no bloody knight."

"Truly?" Garlan blurted. "Is that why you didn't take part in the trial?"

That only made the man scowl more. "Why the fuck have you got a little boy trailing after you?"

"He's my squire," Galad said.

"Maybe he really isn't a knight," Garlan whispered, half to himself.

"Fucking knights." Clegane spat the words like a curse. He released the collar of the unconscious man he'd been holding and let him drop, then rose to his full height. He was huge, a head taller than Galad, at the least, with the shoulders of a plow ox and forearms corded thick with muscle beneath the scars. "I've been looking for you, Woodsman."

"Not to punch me into an inn's table, I hope."

Clegane spared a disdainful glance at the groaning bodies strewn around his boots. "Fuckers lost at dice and tried to fight it out when I collected what they owed me."

"They picked a fight with you?" Galad raised an eyebrow. He could think of few worse notions than starting a brawl with a man that size in the close quarters of an ale-soaked common room. "That seems very…"

"They're stupid cunts."

Ben chortled despite himself. "One way to put it."

Galad had to allow the truth of that. Crossing to the counter where the man there had been joined now by a matronly woman wringing her apron between her hands, he reached into his coin purse and counted out a handful of silver into her palm.

"For the damages to your fair inn, my lady. And for good meals and two rooms for the night, if you can spare them."

"At once, ser knight." The woman bobbed a curtsy, the coins vanishing into her apron.

"I don't need your charity, pretty boy," Sandor said behind him.

Galad shrugged without turning. "I'm repaying a favor I owed, nothing more." He faced the big man again. "Though I confess I'm curious why you'd come so far to find me."

He remembered Garlan's report from the eve of the trial, that the Mountain's brother had walked away from Lannister service entirely rather than take up a sword against Galad in the courtyard. What Galad had never understood was the why of it. A man did not abandon a lifetime's position, and cross half the realm afterward, without a reason gnawing at him.

Beneath the mass of scar and burned flesh and the wet black cracks that seamed one side of his face, Sandor Clegane's eyes flashed with something raw.

"Fight me."

He looked back at the angry man. Was that it? Galad could not entirely hide his disappointment. 

Starting toward the man, he walked straight at Sandor—and kept walking, right up close, close enough that Sandor's hand jerked toward the greatsword slung at his back and half-drew it before Galad passed him by entirely and crossed the common room to settle onto a bench at an empty table.

Ben and Garlan trailed after him, Ben throwing wary glances back over his shoulder at the giant.

Another growl rolled across the room. "Look at me."

"I am looking, Sandor." Galad's violet eyes had not left him. "But I cannot give you what you want."

Sandor took a step forward, the floorboards protesting under his weight. "The fuck do you know about what I want. You don't. You don't fucking know."

There was more than a hunger for a fight in the man's voice, Galad could hear it plainly. Some deeper thing, ragged and raw and unhealed, dressed up in the language of steel because that was the only language the man had ever been given to speak it in.

"Perhaps I don't," he said. "But I've been on the roads for weeks now, and I'll be on them a few more. We spar every evening when we make camp, and every morning before we take the road again. You may join us for a day, if you wish, and I will fight you then. Tomorrow we rest half a day, so we'll spar only in the evening. Does that suit you?"

Sandor watched him through slitted eyes, his jaw locked so hard the muscles stood out in his cheek. Then he gave a single sharp nod, turned on his heel with a grunt, and stalked out of the common room into the night.

Around them, the other patrons who had been watching for the next brawl either let out a breath of relief or drifted back to their own cups now that the spectacle had come to nothing.

"What was that?" Garlan asked.

Ben leaned in. "Do you think that's wise, ser? Letting him follow us like this? It's possible the Lannisters sent him after you."

"It's possible," Galad agreed with a nod. "It's also possible Sandor Clegane is a man much like us."

Ben tilted his head. "Dashing companions saving maidens and children from wicked bandits?"

Garlan laughed, and Galad smiled despite himself.

"I'm serious, ser," Ben pressed. "He could be an assassin sent to put a knife in you."

"Would that assassins had the habit of demanding a fair fight of their marks," he said. "Does he strike you as the sort to murder us in our sleep?"

"I believe he's the sort to cripple four men over a game of dice.” Ben gestured at the men only now beginning to peel themselves off the floor.

"That he might well be. But an assassin?" Galad shook his head. "No. I think not. I think he's just…" he trailed off, frowning.

"Just what, ser?" Garlan asked.

Galad was quiet a moment. "I'm not certain, Garlan. And I think he isn't certain himself, either."

The innkeeper returned then, bearing their supper on a broad wooden tray. She named herself Masha Heddle as she laid it out, a great crusty loaf still warm from the oven, a wedge of hard yellow cheese, a dish of stewed onions and a platter of mutton chops charred at the edges and running with juice, and a jug of dark brown ale to wash it all down. Simple fare, but honest and hot, and after a week of trail biscuit and whatever Galad could snare, it might as well have been a feast at Highgarden.

Masha lingered by their table, thanking Galad again for the silver, and pressing on them that it had not been the giant's fault, as she called Sandor. The four he'd thrashed were known rascals in these parts, she said, cheats and bullies her inn would be glad to see the back of.

The three of them ate their fill and then some, calling for a second helping and then a third. Ben, for his part, drank rather more ale than was strictly wise, and by the time the common room had filled again with the evening's custom he had climbed up onto a bench to deliver a booming, only slightly slurred rendition of "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" to the whole house. The patrons stamped and clapped along, roaring the chorus back at him, while Garlan whooped himself hoarse and Galad found himself applauding the performance along with the rest.

xxx

He slept well that night, sharing his room with his squire. Garlan took the smaller cot in the corner and was snoring inside a minute.

Waking up early as was his habit, he let the other two sleep on a while longer while he prepared for the day, buying more supplies from Masha Heddle in the grey light before the common room filled. Dried meat, hard bread, a sack of oats for the horses, a skin of the inn's good ale. They still had stores from Riverrun, but it was always good to have more than one needed.

When he asked as she counted his coin, she told him that business from the Vale had been brisk of late. That was a hopeful sign, she said, for it meant the Knights of the Vale were out riding the High Road again, keeping the clansmen off the passes and the merchants' throats intact.

He saw no sign of Sandor Clegane when he broke his fast alone in the common room. Nor later, when the sun stood a few hours near its noon height and Ben and Garlan saw to the horses in the stable yard.

But an hour east of the inn, with the towering Mountains of the Moon already looming grey and vast on the horizon before them, they found the man waiting at the roadside alongside his great courser.

"I hope this is not your notion of an ambush," Galad said as they rode up.

"No bloody ambush, Woodsman. I want the fight you promised, is all." Sandor eyed the road ahead of them. "You going up into the Vale?"

"Indeed. To the Bloody Gate, and beyond it."

"A shite idea if ever I heard one." He hawked and spat into the dust, then hauled himself up onto his big horse. "So be it. I'll beat you into a pulp tonight, and be shut of these gods-cursed mountains by the morrow."

Galad clicked his tongue and urged his mare onward. "If you say so."

The others fell in behind him.

"Five stags on Ser Galad to take it," Ben murmured, sidling his horse up alongside Garlan's. "You in?"

Garlan gave the sergeant a flat look. "I'm Ser Galad's squire. Why in the name of the Seven would I bet against him?"

Ben shrugged. "I dunno. Suppose I've got to bet against someone, seeing as I already know how it ends."

"And I don't?" 

Ben snickered.

That, it seemed, was enough to sour Sandor's mood, and the big man kicked his horse ahead and rode apart from them the rest of the day.

xxx

The sun was starting to dip low behind them when Galad took stock of the road ahead.

By his reckoning they had a couple of hours of riding left before true dusk. Enough, if they pressed the pace, to reach the Bloody Gate with the last thin light of the day to see them along the road. Masha Heddle had spoken of knights out on patrol, but Galad had seen none all day, only the odd traveler and a few merchant trains rumbling the other way. The grim reputation of the High Road weighed on him enough that he had no wish to camp along it in the open unless he had no other choice.

It also occurred to him that this meant Sandor's fight would keep until morning, unless the man cared to trade blows by torchlight in the courtyard of the Gate.

He nudged his mare up alongside Clegane's courser, meaning to tell him as much.

"The fuck's that?" Sandor blurted before he could speak.

Galad followed his gaze.

They had just rounded a bend where the road widened against a steep rockface that rose sheer on the right. Ahead, in the wider stretch, a large covered wagon sat canted and unmoving against the rock. Broken stone lay scattered all around it, chunks of grey rock the size of a man's head and larger, spilled down from the heights above. 

Near the front of the wagon an old man knelt over a horse that lay thrashing and whinnying on its side in the dirt, while an old woman stood a little apart, one hand clamped on the shoulder of a girl of perhaps ten years.

The three of them looked up at the sound of hooves. Apprehension was quick to flood the old couple's faces. 

Coming up from behind, Ben and Garlan drew rein beside them.

"Clansmen?" Ben asked at once, hand dropping to his hilt.

"Rockslide," Galad said. Two horses still stood in the wagon's traces, but the whole vehicle listed forward at a bad angle. A glance told him the rest. "Took their front right wheel with it."

The old woman drew the girl closer as they approached, shifting to stand half a pace behind the old man.

"Well met!" Galad called, raising an open hand as they came near.

The old man rose stiffly from beside the fallen horse, his eyes moving over each of them in turn and lingering longest, and most warily, on the scarred bulk of Sandor Clegane. "Well met, sers. Might you be Knights of the Vale? On patrol?"

“They’re not,” the girl said suddenly, startling the old woman.

"The girl is right," Galad said. "We’re only travelers, passing through on the road east. But you look to be in some trouble. Do you need help?"

The old man hesitated, then some of the tension went out of his shoulders. "If you're kind enough to give it, ser, I'd not say no. Though I'll be honest with you, I can't promise you any coin for the trouble."

Galad glanced back at his companions. 

"Will we reach the Gate before sunset, if we stop here?" Garlan asked quietly, casting a look up the darkening road toward where the Bloody Gate waited some hours off.

"No," he said. "But neither will they. Should we leave them to camp the High Road alone, an old man and an old woman and a child?"

The squire smiled up at him, quickly understanding. "No, ser."

Then Garlan swung down from the saddle, and Ben with him, the two of them moving at once to take the horses and see to the making of a camp.

"The fuck are you doing, Woodsman?" Sandor growled. "You promised me a fight tonight."

Galad turned to face him, and for a moment he only looked at the man, at the ruined half of his face, where the scar tissue seemed almost to throb and pulse in the low light. It did not look comfortable. How much pain, he wondered, did Sandor Clegane carry with him from one waking moment to the next? 

He looked between the big man and the broken wagon. They’d need to lift the wagon first, to change the wheel. 

"It would have been full dark by the time we reached the Bloody Gate,” Galad said, “and your fight would have kept until morning regardless. But if we camp here tonight, and you lend your strength to that lifting, we might have daylight enough left over for a fight after. What say you?"

Sandor scowled at him for a long moment. Then he cursed under his breath and began to dismount.

Smiling, Galad did the same, save only for the cursing. He turned back to the old man, who had been watching the exchange with plain unease.

"No coin needed, good man. I am called Galad. Ser Galad of Dunstonbury. These are my companions—Ben, Garlan, and Sandor." He nodded to each in turn.

Mercifully, the name seemed to mean nothing to the old man. "Well met, ser. I'm Hugh, a peddler by trade. That's my wife Maris, there. And this, uh, this is our granddaughter. Mya." He sat a weathered hand over the girl’s head.

The old woman held the child a little tighter, though she managed a polite smile. Galad did not fault her for the mistrust. Three unknown men and a scarred giant, come upon an old couple and a young girl alone in the wild… That was a scene that ended badly more often than not, and never more so than on this road of all roads in the Seven Kingdoms.

Little Mya, for her part, shook herself out from beneath her grandfather’s hand far enough to fix Galad with a long and deeply suspicious stare. Then, all at once, her face split into a grin and she gave him a cheerful little wave.

He waved back just as cheerfully, now more than ever glad that they had stopped to help the stranded peddlers.

xxx

The sun was still just poking above the western sky when the last of the work was done.

The old couple had no coin to give, as promised, but Maris swore by a turnip-and-rabbit stew that would fill their bellies better than any lord’s feast, and she was already tending it now over a huge black pot that hung above a crackling fire. The girl Mya bounced at her side, unable to keep still for more than a breath together. She had not stopped since Galad told them the party would camp here for the night, and that she might watch the sparring if she wished.

There had been grim work first. The horse the rockslide had crippled was beyond any saving, its foreleg shattered, and Galad had put the poor beast down with a single clean stroke while Hugh turned Mya's face away. Then all the men had set their shoulders to the wagon together and heaved it up long enough for the old man to knock out the ruined wheel from the thankfully intact axle and fit the spare in its place.

Ben had suggested afterward that they might hitch a couple of their own horses to the wagon and still make the Bloody Gate before dusk. But there was only the one place on the pulling harness empty, and even so the laden wagon would crawl along far slower than horsemen could ride. They would never reach the Gate before nightfall. They would only find themselves caught out on some unready stretch of open road when the dark came down.

So Galad had settled the matter. They would camp here.

It was as good a place for it as the High Road offered. Once they had hauled the wagon a few yards back into a natural alcove on the rockface, the sheer wall rose at their backs too steep for any man to climb down on that side, and any rockslide would roll over the hanging shelf above them instead of crashing over their bedrolls in the night. They’d have only one side of the road to worry over.

That left only the matter of Sandor Clegane slowly growing impatient.

And so it was that, as the last light thinned in the west, Galad found himself standing in a rough square scratched into the packed earth beside the wagon, facing the huge scarred man across it. They held real swords, not the blunted practice blades Galad used for his usual bouts with Ben and Garlan. Sandor had insisted on live steel and would hear nothing else. Galad made certain, at least, to take up Ben's longsword rather than draw Nightfall.

He did not truly think the man meant to kill him. It seemed more that Sandor Clegane thought that a wooden sword was a child's toy and an insult besides. 

Galad could certainly be wrong about that, but he did not intend to give the man the opening to prove it either way.

Mya had planted herself between Ben and Garlan the moment the square was drawn, bouncing on her toes, and Garlan was already crouched down beside her, pointing out stances and footwork as he warmed up, just as thrilled. Even old Hugh and Maris had set aside their work to watch, though they looked rather more frightened for Galad than excited by the prospect.

"Ready?" Galad asked, turning Ben's longsword in his hand to test its balance.

Sandor’s eyes narrowed to slits above the ruin of his face, dark and angry in the firelight.

"Show it to me, Woodsman," he growled out, then charged.

So Galad did.

The greatsword came down in a great overhead arc, six feet of steel driven by shoulders that could shame a bear. A lesser man would have tried to meet that blow head-on and had his arms shattered for the trouble. Galad did not meet it. He turned it, Ben's longsword rising to catch the greatsword along its flat and guide it sliding past, so that all Sandor's tremendous strength buried itself in the empty air and the packed earth beyond.

Sandor recovered with startling speed for a man his size, hauling the huge blade back around one-handed in a sweeping cut at Galad's ribs. Galad parried that too, then the backswing that followed it, giving a half-step of ground with each so the force bled away into nothing.

Then, quick as a snake striking twice, Galad flicked the flat of his blade across the side of Sandor's head, a stinging slap of steel against the man's temple, and before Sandor could so much as flinch, he brought it down again across the big man's wrist.

Sandor grunted in pain and surprise. His fingers spasmed open. The greatsword tumbled from his grip, and he dropped to one knee in the dirt.

For a moment the only sound was the crackle of Maris's cookfire and Mya's small delighted gasp.

Then Sandor snatched his blade up off the ground and surged back to his feet with a growl.

"Again."

They came together once more, and Galad took the measure of the man properly this time. Sandor Clegane was skilled. More skilled, in truth, than his monster of a brother had been. There was a real swordsman buried beneath all that rage. His footwork was sound, his balance good, and for so vast a man he was shockingly quick, the greatsword flowing between one hand and two as the moment demanded. In a cold and even temper, Galad thought, Sandor Clegane might best nine knights in ten across the Seven Kingdoms.

But the anger undid him. It was the same flaw that had undone Ser Gregor in the melee, the fury that lent power to each stroke also blinded the man to the openings it left behind. Every swing came with too much hate behind it, and hate made a man predictable.

"Show me more!" Sandor bellowed, hammering at Galad's guard, blow after ringing blow. "Show me how you did it! Show me how you brought him down!"

Galad frowned behind his blade.

How you brought him down. So that was it, then, he thought, though he did not let the screaming rattle him. 

He turned aside the next furious cut, feinted a counterstrike high—and when Sandor shifted to cover it, Galad dashed in low, inside the greatsword's long reach where the big man could not bring it to bear. His boot caught the inside of Sandor's knee and buckled it, and as the giant lurched down off-balance, Galad drove an elbow across his jaw.

Sandor Clegane hit the packed earth with a thud that Galad felt through his boots.

Mya whooped again, while Garlan let out a sympathetic hiss between his teeth.

Groaning, Sandor pushed himself up. He swayed on his feet, blood at the corner of his mouth. "Again."

Galad hesitated only for a moment. Then he nodded. Sandor Clegane did not seem a man who would thank anyone for pity, and to spare him now would be its own kind of insult.

Block. Sidestep. Sweep the legs from under him. Sandor went down.

"Again."

Parry once. Parry twice. Bat the greatsword wide and drive a kick into the man's stomach, folding him around it, then a fist across his face to lay him out. Sandor went down.

"Again!"

Thrice more he came, and thrice more he fell. By the ninth time, Galad barely had to move. Sandor's charge was slow now, his strike weak and wild, and Galad turned it aside almost gently and simply put the flat of his hand against the giant's chest and shoved. Clegane toppled backward into the dirt, and this time he did not rise.

Crossing the little square on the earth, Galad knelt beside him. Up close, in the firelight, he saw something he had not marked before. Beneath the ruin of scar and the perpetual scowl, Sandor Clegane was young. Younger than Galad would ever have guessed. Perhaps no older than Galad himself was now, in this life. 

Sandor glared up at him, bitter and breathing hard.

"If it is your brother you mean to defeat one day," Galad said quietly, "then you will never do it by fighting as he fights. Anger is his strength, and it will always be his strength, and it will always be greater than yours. You must find another. Find something worth fighting for that is not rage. Not resentment. Or you will only ever be a smaller, weaker echo of the very thing you hate."

Sandor's dark eyes went wide.

But the words did not soothe him. They seemed instead to feed the fire. "The fuck do you know about any of that?" His voice cracked with fury. "You don't know a bloody thing about my life. About what he did. You don't know anything."

"I don't," Galad allowed. He thought he had gathered enough of the pieces to guess at the whole, but he did not say so. "But it is a long way from here to where I'm going. And I would be glad to hear about it one day, if you cared to tell it."

Sandor frowned up at him, conflicted, thrown off his stride by the offer. "Where," he said at last. "Where is it you're going, then?"

Galad shrugged. "I don't know. That's rather the point of it."

He rose, and left Sandor Clegane lying there in the dirt beneath the darkening sky.

xxx

He took the first watch that night, Hugh the second, and Ben the last.

But there was no sign of clansmen in the dark, and no dagger came for Galad in his sleep. Sandor Clegane had simply dragged himself closer to the rockface, wrapped his cloak about his great shoulders, and slept. He was a patchwork of fresh bruises come morning, purpling along his jaw and his temple and his wrist, but he said nothing of it as they broke camp and set out again alongside the wagon, which now had one of their own packhorses hitched into the traces to help draw it along.

They all rode mostly in silence.

All except Mya.

The girl could no more hold her tongue than the sun could hold itself from rising. From her perch on the wagon's bench she peppered them all with questions the whole morning long. Where were they from and where were they going, had they truly fought in battles and did they like to climb mountains, what did the sea look like and was it truly bigger than the biggest lake and bigger than the whole Vale? 

Galad found it charming. She had all of Margaery Tyrell's boundless curiosity and none of the highborn caution that had already, even at seven, begun to shape the little Tyrell girl's every word. Mya simply asked what she wished to know and trusted the world to answer her.

By mid-morning, the Bloody Gate came into view.

It was less a castle than a fortification grown into the mountains themselves. Two great watchtowers of grey stone flanked the road where the pass narrowed to a bottleneck barely wide enough for a dozen men to ride abreast, and between them a curtain wall spanned the gap, its gate of iron-bound oak set deep beneath a murder-hole gallery. Ballistae and scorpions crouched atop the towers. It was said no army in six thousand years had ever forced the Bloody Gate, and looking on it now, Galad believed it. Ten thousand men could break themselves against that pass and gain nothing but a valley floor carpeted with their dead. The stones themselves had drunk enough blood to earn the place its name.

A company of mounted knights rode out from the gate to meet them on the road, perhaps a dozen strong, and at their head came a knight whose cloak was quartered in the blue and red of House Tully. At his shoulder gleamed a brooch wrought of gold and black obsidian, worked in the shape of a leaping fish.

"That's the Blackfish," Garlan breathed, half-rising in his stirrups with excitement.

"Who would pass the Bloody Gate?" the Knight of the Gate called, his voice booming off the stone walls of the pass.

By every custom of the Seven Kingdoms a squire ranked beneath his knight, and so for all that Garlan was a son of Highgarden, it was Galad who held the highest station among their small party. He nudged his mare a few steps forward, Garlan falling in just behind him.

"I am Ser Galad of Dunstonbury."

He was not surprised to hear the murmur that ran through the ranked Vale knights at the name. The Blackfish silenced it with a single raised hand.

"We came upon this family of peddlers on the road below," Galad went on. "Left stranded by a rockslide that took a wheel and a horse from them both."

"It's true, ser," Hugh said from the wagon's bench, ducking his grey head. "We meant to trade at the Gates of the Moon, and Gulltown after, mayhaps. The good knight and his companions stopped to help us with the wagon."

Ser Brynden lifted his visor. Beneath the shadow of his helm, Galad saw a pair of blue eyes gleaming, the same clear river-blue as Edmure's.

"You're a long way from Lannisport, ser." The old knight's gaze was measuring. "What business brings a man like you to the Vale?"

"I was invited by Lord Yohn Royce of Runestone, where I mean to travel next." Galad paused. "And for another reason besides, Ser Brynden."

Reaching inside his coat, he drew out the letter that had ridden against his chest since Riverrun and walked his mare closer to the old knight. The man frowned at the movement, then frowned again when held the folded parchment out across the space between them.

"I come from Riverrun, ser. And I carry word from your lord brother."

That stopped the old knight cold.

"Hoster?" Ser Brynden looked at the letter as though Galad offered him a serpent. His frown only deepened. "Is this some jape, ser?"

"No jape, Ser Brynden," Garlan put in quickly. "I'm Garlan Tyrell, Ser Galad's squire. We've been guests at Riverrun these past two weeks, after helping Lord Edmure hunt down bandits in the south."

"Aye. I heard some word of that trouble, even up here." The Blackfish grunted. "And he asked you to carry me a letter, did he? The old bastard." Pulling off his helm entirely, he snatched the letter from Galad's hand and tore into the grey wax seal. "What's it about, then, I wonder? A scolding? Some invitation to Riverrun that'll turn out to be a wedding to a bloody Frey the moment I set foot inside the gates? Fret not, ser, I'll have a reply for you inside a moment. A single no should serve well enough."

"I do not know its contents," Galad said. "Nor are we your brother's messengers, save in this one favor. As I've said, my road takes me to Runestone and Lord Royce."

The Blackfish only grunted, hardly listening now. His eyes had begun to move across the letter, and as they moved, his manner changed. The dry humor drained from his weathered face. His heavy brows drew together, and further together still, and what had begun as irritation curdled slowly into something graver. Something troubled.

"This…" he muttered.

One of the Arryn knights leaned in. "Something amiss, ser?"

The Blackfish's fist closed around the parchment, crumpling it, before he thrust it deep into a saddlebag before any other eye could fall on it.

"Matters at home," he said flatly, in a tone that ended the question.

"My duty to your brother is discharged, then," Galad said. "May we enter the Vale, ser?"

Ser Brynden blinked, as if recalling himself, and focused once more upon them. He nodded.

"In the name of Jon Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, Warden of the East, and Hand of the King, I bid you enter freely, and I charge you to keep his peace within these mountains."

Galad inclined his head in thanks. "Do you keep ravens here at the Gate, Ser Brynden?"

"Ravens? Some few, I suppose. Why?"

"What of birds that fly to King's Landing? I have need to write a letter to King Robert."

At that, a small gasp came from the wagon behind them. Mya’s voice, Galad thought. Perhaps she wished to ask him yet more questions, now that the mention of the capital had opened up a whole new city for her curiosity. He would have to disappoint her, for he had never once set foot in King's Landing and could tell her nothing of it. Though perhaps the Blackfish might be persuaded to fill the gap.

"Not to King's Landing, no," Ser Brynden said. "We keep only birds that fly to the holdfasts hereabouts. But come, if you mean to ride for Runestone, you'll want to stop first at the Gates of the Moon, and I've a mind to ride there with you. Maester Coleman can send a bird to King's Landing on your behalf. And I've letters of my own to write now, it seems."

"Truly?" Garlan asked, unable to hide his delight at the thought of one of his heroes joining their party on the road.

"Ser Brynden?" That was the same knight who’d spoken up before. "The Gate, ser?"

The Blackfish scowled at nothing in particular. "You'll hold it in my stead, for now, Waynwood. Perhaps Lord Arryn will even see fit to name you the Knight of the Gate proper, once my own letter reaches his hand."

Galad raised an eyebrow at that. Some of the knights looked between each other, surprised.

What could a single letter from Lord Hoster contain that would move the famous Blackfish to abandon a post he had held so many years? Surely it had nothing to do with Galad himself. He had barely exchanged a dozen words with the old Lord of Riverrun in his whole two weeks beneath that roof, and Hoster had shown no true interest in him at all until Galad had let slip that his road ran east, into the Vale, through the Bloody Gate.

He turned the puzzle over as they left the shaken company of knights behind and passed through the great iron-bound gate into the Vale beyond.

On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountains fell away all at once, and a vista opened before them that stole the breath clean from Galad's chest.

The Vale of Arryn lay bathed in the morning light. It stretched away eastward to a misty horizon, a tranquil country of rich black soil and slow wide rivers, of a hundred small lakes scattered across it that caught the sun and shone like mirrors set into the green, all of it cradled and sheltered on every side by the mountains that ringed it round. Wheat and corn and barley stood high and golden in the fields below. Even in the Reach, Galad thought, he had not seen pumpkins larger nor orchards heavier with fruit than those that grew here.

They stood at the western end of the valley, where the high road crested the last of the passes and began its long winding descent to the bottomlands some two miles below. The valley was narrow here, no more than a half-day's ride across, and the northern peaks rose so near and so sheer that a man might almost imagine he could reach out and lay his palm against them.

And over them all loomed one mountain that dwarfed the rest, a jagged, colossal spire whose crown was lost entirely in a shroud of icy mist, so vast that even the mountains around it seemed to bow their heads before it. The Giant's Lance, Ser Brynden named it as they rode, three miles and more of stone climbing into the sky. Down its great western shoulder poured a ghostly torrent of falling water, and even from this distance Galad could pick out the shining silver thread of it, bright as beaten metal against the dark wet stone.

Alyssa's Tears. A waterfall that never reached the ground, but broke apart into mist long before it touched the valley floor.

For all that Lord Hoster's letter had plainly troubled him, Ser Brynden was not in so great a hurry that he cared to leave the peddler's wagon behind on the road. Galad too had no urgent appointment at any one castle over another, and so he did not mind the slower pace beside the creaking wheels. 

And this time it was not Mya who filled the miles with talk. It was Garlan who, upon discovering that the legendary Blackfish would actually deign to answer him, peppered the old knight with an endless stream of questions about knighthood and swordwork and the War of the Ninepenny Kings.

Ser Brynden bore it all with a gruff patience, and answered what he cared to answer. Though when Garlan pressed him on matters of the sword, the old knight only snorted.

"Even up at the Bloody Gate, lad, we heard tell of what your knight did in that courtyard at Casterly Rock. Seven of them, at once, and every one an anointed knight." He gave a shake of his grey head. "If it's swordwork you want teaching in, you're a fool to be asking a broken old man like me when you've got that riding not three feet from you. I'd not presume."

They rode a while in an easier quiet after that. Then the Blackfish edged his horse a little nearer to Galad's and dropped his voice so it would not carry back to the others.

"A word of warning, ser, since you've done my brother's errand and my own courtesy owes you one in turn."

"I'd welcome it," he said.

"You've a friend in Yohn Royce, and Bronze Yohn's friendship is worth having in this valley. But do not mistake one friend for many." The old knight's blue eyes were level. "You've not made yourself well loved in the Vale, whatever they may sing of you elsewhere. Lyn Corbray was a prickly, poisonous sort of man, and few enough will truly grieve him. But he was also the most famous blade the Vale could boast, their own champion, and there's no small number of lords who'll not forgive the man who struck his head from his shoulders, whatever the cause. And there are others still—" He paused. "Others who've got it into their heads that you've come east for one reason only, to lay claim to Lady Forlorn and carry a second Valyrian sword out of the Vale on your hip."

Galad nodded slowly, taking it in. Of course, things could never be so simple. And as someone who was no stranger to high politics, the pettiness that came with it did not surprise him.

"I thank you for the warning, Ser Brynden. Truly. But you may set that last fear to rest, at least. I've no interest in Lady Forlorn, nor in any second sword. One is burden enough." He looked out over the shining Vale. "If anything, I had hoped to make what peace I could with House Corbray, should the chance ever come. I took no joy in Ser Lyn's death, though I cannot say I regret it. He gave me little choice in the matter."

"Aye. So I'd heard." The Blackfish grunted, and there might have been the faintest note of approval in it. "Peace with the Corbrays. Well. That's a harder road than the one through my Gate, ser, but I'll not tell a man not to walk it."

They camped that night beneath a sky thick with stars, the great dark bulk of the Giant's Lance blotting out half the heavens to the north. They came within sight of the Gates of the Moon by noon the following day, the great stone castle that guarded the base of the mountain road, where every traveler bound for the Eyrie itself must first pass.

But before Galad could set pen to the letter he meant to send south to the king and Ser Brynden to Lord Arryn, word reached them first, carried in on the wings of ravens that had come to the Gates of the Moon ahead of them.

It seemed Galad would have his chance to make peace with House Corbray far sooner than he had dared to hope.

Lord Lyonel Corbray, the raven's message ran, would soon hold a great gathering at Heart's Home, both a funeral in the old Andal fashion for his slain brother Ser Lyn, and, on the very heels of the mourning, a wedding. Lord Corbray was to wed the Lady Loressa Lynderly, sister to his neighbor Lord Jon Lynderly of the Snakewood. And every lord and lady of note in all the Vale of Arryn, the message said, had been bidden to attend the funeral and the feast alike.