The fireteam moved at a fast clip, working its way down the trench lines, clearing flimsy prefab bunkers and earthwork weapon emplacements on its way to the air battery's command and control. Glaato kept in contact with the lieutenant through a two-way comlink, chattering away in Huttese as they went. Petja knew only a few words, enough to know that the Imperials had reinforcements on the way. It made sense, she thought, stepping over another set of bodies. These Imperials were clearly ill-prepared for an ambush and CQB engagements, and they were poorly entrenched. A frag grenade had nearly collapsed one of the bunkers as they cleared it, and there was panic in the ranks that made the advance easy. Soldiers walked directly into their line of fire, seemingly unaware that their defenses had been compromised.
She was fresh out of frag grenades, and eyeing a pair on the belt of her latest kill, she knelt to take them. Like the others, she'd put him down at a short enough range, but too far away to get a good look at him through her nightsights. Up close, she found he was young, and he had a tattoo under his eye. That was far from regulation in the Imperial Army. He was a conscript, she figured, possibly drafted from one of the Empire's many far flung prison complexes throughout the galaxy. He probably wanted to be here less than she did. He didn't deserve to die like this. she didn't think. He had family somewhere, she was sure, someone who would miss him. Friends too, at that. He might have been a good person, where he came from. As she finished clipping the grenades to her belt, she noticed he was still breathing, despite the blaster bolts she'd put in his stomach. She drew the vibroblade from her belt and opened his throat, and a rush of red washed over her prosthetic hand.
He didn't deserve to die like that, but you have to be realistic about these things. She caught the private, Benji, staring at her as she stood, but Glaato and the Bothan were unmoved. They pushed on together without exchanging a word.
Command and control was at the end of this last length of trench. It was the largest of the bunkers they had come to so far, though still only a single floor, and was the first with a door. Orn Da'lya brought his pack around and connected the machinery contained inside to the external control panel. Petja understood the thing was akin to an astromech in a backpack. It was a sophisticated piece of droid machinery good for slicing, and supposedly starship repair too, in a pinch. It took less than a minute for the door the give way to the slice and slide open to welcome them into the Imperial anti-air battery control center.
They poured in, shouting commands in Galactic Basic. They found four technicians stationed here, and they needed at least a couple of them alive. With the Juggernauts inbound, the lieutenant's orders were to turn the guns on the Imperials' reinforcing armor, if possible. Orn Da'lya's backpack might have been table to handle that on its own, but if they needed assistance with any part of the process they were happy to coerce the enemy. Only one of the technicians was less than compliant - the commanding officer here, it seemed. He went for the pistol at his hip but Glaato was quicker with his rifle. The other three fell in line with no issue after their commander went to ground.
They made good use of their prisoners. Glaato had lined them up against the far wall after they'd finished hard-locking the other entrances to the bunker at the rebels' behest, and from there they provided answers to Da'lya's questions. The Bothan shouted queries to them from a console across the room as he and his backpack astromech penetrated the Imperial systems. Petja didn't understand it much, she wasn't much for tech, but it seemed they had certain access codes needed to get around the system security. It only took a few more moments before Da'lya made the awaited announcement.
"We're in."
"You know what to do," Glaato answered, rifle still trained on the technicians.
"That I do," the Bothan returned, and Petja looked on as he brought the Imperial Army's laser cannons to bear.
- Petja Prevec - a human woman hailing from the planet Uslam and a member of the Signal Mountain rebels. Petja was a hand model before losing her arm in an incident involving the Empire. Her maiming has made her a grimly dogged revolutionary.
Active Short Term
- Glaato - a Kajain'sa'Nikto sergeant with the Signal Mountain Rebels. Glaato is a veteran soldier of the rebellion, having participated in the movement since its earliest combat operations. Currently leads a rebel fireteam at Signal Mountain consisting of Petja Prevec, Orn Da'lya and Benji Starr.
Petja Prevec had been a hand model once, showcasing fine rings and bracelets for Uslam’s jewelers in a dozen hoload campaigns. Now, the skeletal cybernetic piece that had replaced her left arm gripped a blaster carbine with unfeeling fingers and kept her aim stable with mechanical precision. It had only been a scant few years, but her career felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like it had been another woman’s life, even, a life taken by the Empire.
She squeezed the carbine’s trigger with her feeling fingers, and the red flashes made a corpse. Now she took lives.
This one, an Imperial grunt with helmet askew, had stumbled into view at the end of the trench. Petja’s optics were commercial grade nightsights, too crude to see clear definition, but good enough for her needs here. She could tell the enemy at sight, even if she couldn’t make out the Imperial’s look of shock as he walked into her line of fire. Maybe he hadn’t even realized. As drew closer to the body, slumped up against the trenchworks, she put another blaster bolt in his face.
“Good kill,” came the sergeant’s voice behind her. Sergeant Glaato, the leader of Petja’s four-person fireteam, was a battle-hardened veteran who carried a well-used rifle and a machete into combat. On his orders, the fireteam had filed into one of the trenches, formed a line, and advanced on their assigned target single file. Petja had taken point without any discussion. The Nikto followed close behind, the Bothan, Orn Da’lya, followed in the third position, and a fresh-faced human by the name of Benji covered their rear. Petja had expected him to panic when the blaster fire began, but he’d kept his cool so far, so far as she could tell.
They came to the end of the trench, a T-intersection. Petja would not make the same mistake the dead Imperial made. She took up her position on the right side of the trench and motioned to the left. Glaato took the position opposite her across the trench, with Orn Da’lya behind him and Private Benji behind her. On a three count, Petja and Glaato each swung into the intersection, keeping their angles tight, and she saw red.
A blaster bolt flew toward her, warming her face as it passed. She caught sight of the shooter through her optics – one of two approaching soldiers down range from her. Her feeling finger squeezed the trigger again, and she let loose a volley. The fireteam followed suit, and though the enemy tried to take cover, in a few short seconds the rebels had made two more corpses. Petja didn’t think they’d managed to take a second shot.
“Pushing,” Petja relayed to the team, and continued the planned advance to the anti-air battery with blaster level and her team close behind.
Arron and his freeriders had taken to practicing at arms in the early hours. The Westerlanders amongst whom Qosaerys had made their camp had proved a curious lot. They kept their distance, but the prying eyes and unsubtle whispers were less than welcoming.
“I think they may mislike us,” Ulrick had observed, and as short and simple a statement as it was it did seem to capture it. It was no mystery as to why. Dorne had long been the Iron Throne’s stubborn enemy, a thorn in the foot of the Seven Kingdoms for nigh on two hundred years. Yers had passed since House Martell had agreed to join the realm, but time passed had returned not one man from the dead. Arron did not doubt he stood among men and women who had lost fathers and sons over the long and bloody history of the south. To kill one foe was to make a dozen, it seemed.
Arron put it out of mind as best he could. It was a grey morning, and Ryon was the only one among them who had risen for the occasion. The White Hawk was a shadow of himself, it seemed, and as they traded thrusts with their spears, lethal heads removed, Arron found his sparring partner slow on his feet and slower at arms. Arron batted away Ryon’s efforts with easy blocks, his shield turning shaft away time and again. In sharp contrast, Ryon struggled to keep Arron at bay, gave a stride’s worth of ground each time Arron brought his spear to bear on him and then, when Arron relented and gave him space, he doubled over as if to vomit.
“Late night, was it?” Arron asked. Ryon, seemingly unable to empty the contents of his stomach, settled for spitting a thick wad of phlegm instead.
“It’s a tourney, no? I thought we were meant to have fun, eh?” Ryon answered, voice ragged and still bent over, but as Arron drew close, he sprung at him. Quicker, but not nearly quick enough, and it was nothing Arron wasn’t expecting. Arron knew better than to mistake the White Hawk for an honorable fighter.
He batted the spear aside with his shield, this time with enough force to wrench it from Ryon’s hand. Arron drove his own spear at him hard, his weight behind it. Ryon caught it on his shield, but his footing was unsound, and the force was more than enough to drive him to the ground. He tumbled back and skidded in the grass, which had been made wet and slippery by the morning dew.
“You,” Arron said, drawing over him and offering a hand to help him up, “are meant to stay sharp, like I ordered.”
“Seven hells, for what?” Ryon got to his feet, dusting himself off with his free hand. That, Arron did not know. Qosaerys had given the order to him, and he’d given the order to his freeriders in turn, but Qosaerys kept tight lipped on their purpose here. Arron hadn’t a notion as to what they might be staying sharp for, but after some months of observation he knew one thing to be true – Nycarro Qosaerys was not a man who took joy in staying sharp. If Qosaerys felt the need for as much, Arron figured there must be a bloody serious need for it. He didn’t take it for a convincing argument, though, true or not.
“We are four Dornishmen in the midst of a thousand northerners who’ve known us as the enemy for nigh on two hundred years,” Arron tried instead. “It might have been before our time, but I think it unlikely their thoughts on the matter have changed much in the past fifteen. If one of them gets it in his head to settle a score, we best be sharp enough to settle it in our favor, no? And if he brings a few friends, we all best be sharp enough to keep it even.” Ryon nodded, seeming to see the sense of it. “We stay sharp,” Arron finished. “All of us.”
“I take your meaning.”
“Good. Back to your place.”
Ryon took up his spear and they carried on, now with a bit more spirit in him. Still, some good words on staying sharp wouldn’t do much to make him sharp now, and they called it early. Ryon stalked back to their tents, as unsteady from his new bruises as he was from the drink, and Arron collected his things. It was early morning still, and the Westerlanders were slow to rise. There were but a few of them about, and none of them seemed to pay him much mind. Save for one, that is.
“Good morn, ser,” she greeted, approaching him as he took a long pull of water from his skin. She wore a dress, light blue in color, long sleeved and hemmed just short enough so that it did not drag in the dewy grass. She was older than him, but not old, and her soft features and the tumble of dark, gently curling hair caught his eye. He gave her a small nod in acknowledgment as he returned the skin to his belt, unsure of her and uncertain as to what he should say. “My daughter finds you very handsome.”
He was doubly uncertain as to what he should say to that. “You are kind,” he tried, the words coming out clumsy. “I think you flatter me twice. I am not a knight.”
“Is that so? My lord husband brought twenty of his knights with us, but I think I would trade half of them for you and your friend.”
She was a noblewoman then. “Forgive me, my lady, I mistook you,” Arron said, bowing his head in an effort at respectful deference. He was not a courtly man, but he caught his error quick enough and knew it proper to address it direct. She laughed, a sweet sound.
“You are too courteous,” she said. “Do not worry of it. I took you for a knight and you took me for a woman. Which I am, even if I have a title. Jeyne Tarbeck, of Tarbeck Hall.” She offered her hand to him, offered it up, as it were, as he stood quite tall over her now that they were close.
Arron took it, and, knowing not what she expected him to do with it, held it. “Arron Sand. Of Dorne.” He held her hand for another moment and then let it drop, entirely unsure as to how badly he was embarrassing himself in the process. In Dorne men might lock arms to greet each other, and it was proper to plant a kiss on a noblewoman’s hand if she offered it. In Pentos you might kiss a woman’s hand with your lips, or you might purse your lips first before the kiss, or you might kiss her ring instead, all according to social customs he found especially confusing. As to the customs of the Westerlands, on that front he was entirely ignorant.
“As you may have guessed, my lady, I am not a man of court,” he attempted to excuse himself.
“Is that so, Arron Sand? You do come here in the company of a courtly woman,” she said, looking to the Fowler banner. “I understand you are Lady Jynessa’s man?”
“I am head of Lady Fowler’s sworn spears, my lady,” Arron lied, just as Qosaerys had instructed.
“So, you are mayhaps not a courtly man, but a leader and a protector?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, I think my daughter may have better taste than I expected,” Lady Jeyne said. He made to say that she was flattering him, but she carried on, keeping the pace of their conversation brisk. “I had the pleasure of making Lady Fowler’s acquaintance yesterday eve, as it happens. She’s a lovely woman, very friendly.”
“She is,” Arron agreed. He found Jynessa Fowler to be as cold and dismissive as she was beautiful, if he was honest, but he needn’t mention that. “I’ve known her most my life, my lady.”
“Is that so?”
Arron scratched at his beard, thinking it over. “I’d say so, from my time at Skyreach. But I’ve known her brother longer,” he said, looking to the Fowler tents, in which direction his sparring partner had stalked off. “We were fostered together for a time there, and at Wyl.”
“Her brother? That was your partner this morning? I heard he has quite the reputation in Dorne.”
“The White Hawk of Skyreach, he’s called. Or so he calls himself, anyway.” She smirked at that. “I can’t say I know a better man with a spear, or a man quicker to use one for that matter.”
“The White Hawk? That is quite a name. I wouldn’t presume overmuch, but he seemed,” Lady Jeyne said, pausing as she seemed to search for the words, “a bit less than his reputation this morning, I thought.”
“You are charitable, my lady. I rather think you saw the man could barely stand,” Arron said with a grin. A jape at Ryon’s expense was within the bounds of comfortable conversation for him. And she laughed at it, light and polite, but an honest laugh still. “He’s had better days, still. He’s won ten duels in his time. Half of them on behalf of Lady Jynessa, as it were. Sleights against her honor and the sort.” Sleights and less, really, and he’d killed a few of those men. Another thing he needn’t mention.
“Ten duels?” Lady Jeyne asked, impressed in earnest at that, Arron thought. “I was a fair maiden in my day, I like to think, but I can’t say I’ve had a single duel fought for my honor, let alone ten.”
“Could be your knights are less gallant than my Dornishmen, my lady,” Arron suggested, “or it could be you didn’t give cause for men to challenge your honor five times over.”
“Oh, I am not so sure of that,” she said laughing. “I am my father’s youngest daughter, Arron Sand. If you ever have girls of your own, you’ll find the youngest are the most difficult by a league.”
“I’ll try for boys then, if I get to it.” Another laugh, light and sweet.
“I take it you are unwed, then?” she asked. “No beautiful woman to duel for?”
“Only Lady Fowler, my lady.” And wasn’t that true enough? When had he last been with a woman? The only other woman he’d spoken more than a few words to in a month was Black Drazenka, Qosaerys’s Captain-Admiral, and she was harder than even the ironborn sellsails.
“Well, she is quite a beautiful woman, don’t you think?” Lady Tarbeck suggested.
Another unexpected turn, but the conversation had been a list of unexpected turns, and another was no surprise. “She is considered a great beauty in Dorne.” He wasn’t sure whether he itched to leave the woman behind or to say more. She was an easy partner in conversation, even as Arron struggled to keep his tongue appropriately gracious for her, and she had such an easy manner to her it was hard to think her nobility. He was saying much, he knew, maybe too much, but when had he last had an unexpected conversation with a charming woman? And an attractive one, no less.
“And what do you think?” the noblewoman pressed on. “Is she?”
“Do I think Lady Fowler beautiful?” Arron thought it would be inappropriate to say either way. Call her beautiful but say it poorly and she might take it for a bastard’s wanton interest, but deny it and she’d think him either a liar or discourteous. And to add to it, what she getting at here? Like Ryon this morning, he found himself on entirely unsound footing.
“I think,” Arron started, and he found some carefully picked words as he thought of Jynessa’s golden head of hair, “I am more partial to darker haired women.” That seemed a way around it. The best path forward for a man faced with two poor choices was to find a third, after all.
Lady Jeyne Tarbeck, who was particularly dark of hair and noticeably so, considered him now with eyebrows raised, and there seemed something new behind her smile. Curiosity? Surprise? Surprised at his forwardness, he guessed, as he realized how she must have taken it. That third choice may have been the worst of them, it seemed. “If you don’t mind, Arron Sand,” she said, breaking what was to Arron a tense silence, “I think I’ll tell my daughter you prefer blondes.”
She stepped away then, holding his eyes for another moment more before turning entirely and walking toward the blue-and-silver pavilions of her house. He hadn’t meant it that way, surely she knew that? Still, as she walked away, he could not help but notice the shapely curve of her ass in that dress.
-
That evening, as he had each evening, he took his place in Lady Fowler’s tent. It was another of Qosaerys’s unexplained orders. Each of the Captain-General, Donnor Greyiron, Arron and Jynessa Fowler arrived at Jynessa’s tent at dusk, where they sat, talked a bit, drank more and, whenever Qosaerys decided, retired to their tents for the night. When he had asked, Qosaerys had evaded explaining himself. “How can we call ourselves Brave Companions without indulging in some measure of companionship, eh?” had been his answer. It did not satisfy him, but Arron didn’t pry.
Arron was early that night, as was typical, but not by much, and he pushed into the tent without thinking much of it. He was first to arrive, as usual.
Lady Fowler’s tent was the largest of the Companions’ encampment and well appointed. The tent itself was heavy canvas, treated to keep the rain out and warmth in during the cool autumn nights, and each side of square was adorned with hung tapestries, most of scenic landscapes and one bearing the sigil of House Fowler. There was a full canopied bed, which looked almost absurd inside the tent, a small but still full wardrobe and chests, and a round table of polished wood that could seat six. Jynessa Fowler, if estranged from her lordly father, was certainly not estranged from her lordly father’s wealth.
In the midst of the luxurious trappings, he found that he was not quite the first to arrive after all. Jynessa herself stood there in the company of one her maids, unblinking and but only halfway in her evening dress. He averted his eyes and turned about, but too late.
“Lady Jynessa. I will come back,” he said, trying – and obviously failing – to make nothing of it.
“Don’t bother, I’m done.” Arron waited until her maid had shuffled past him and out the tent, just to be sure, and then turned. He found her clothed and already pouring herself a glass of golden wine. “Are you so unmanned at the sight of a woman’s body, Arron?” she asked as she poured a second glass. “I fear for your wife, if you ever take one.”
She handed him the cup. “Not by your body,” he said. “Unmanned by your brother, maybe.” She favored him with a thin smile at that.
“I doubt it. I heard you unmanned him this morning.”
“He woke unwell,” Arron offered the excuse up.
“He woke still drunk, more like,” Jynessa retorted with a cool sharpness. Arron didn’t deny it. “I love my brother, but he is an arrogant fool. I admit I had my reservations when Lord Wyl put him in your charge, but I’ve warmed to the idea. He could use lessons in discipline and humility. It seems to me you be you might be the man for it.”
Discipline maybe, but humility was as foreign as Pentos to Ryon Sand, in Arron’s view, and entirely beyond his ability to teach. “I will do my best, my lady.” What else could he promise?
He was saved from further talk, quite suddenly, by the entrance of Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys. He was colorfully dressed, as always, blue silk cape over his left shoulder and garbed in a blood red shirt. Behind him loomed Donnor Greyiron, the grizzled ironborn dressed dourly as ever.
“I see we have already started on the wine,” he greeted them. “Is that the Arbor Gold? Let’s have that all around, please, my lady.” It was an instruction he carried out himself, and before long the four of them were sitting, drinking and hearing out Qosaerys’s war stories.
That was how it went each night. Arron was not much of a talker, Jynessa was cool and reserved, and Darron Greyiron had less interest in talk and more interest in sharpening his axe, which he did at each of these meetings. And so Arron and Jynessa, and maybe Donnor, heard Qosaerys out as he spoke over the keen scraping of Greyiron’s whetstone, providing enough comment from time to time to keep it going, though the Captain-General needed little assistance there. He seemed entirely unable to shut his mouth, in fact. Qosaerys could talk a man’s ear off and keep him at least half-entertained the whole time.
“Now, Tolhys, that was an entirely different affair,” he opined as Jynessa and Arron listened, each of them several cups in by then. “I was not six months in the captain-general’s chair with the Maiden’s Men when we laid siege to that castle, and it was a hell of a task. Tolhys is a damned fortress, walls forty feet high. For every man you put inside you need a dozen to root him out, and Braghar had four hundred men in there. We spent damn near a year outside the walls, and we launched so many stones over them we ran out. We had to start bringing rocks in by ship to keep the siege going.”
He had been just about to continue when the tent flaps opened, and in stepped two men, each one cloaked and hooded, each one dripping from the light showers that had started earlier that evening. Arron, drunk as shit, if he were being honest, searched for the hilt of his sword, and finding it absent, settled to rest a hand on his dagger instead. He eased, though, as the hoods came down and Qosaerys stood to greet them. Jynessa stood as well, and Arron after her, if unsteady in his haze, but he noticed the ironborn stayed seated, content to continue applying whetstone to edge.
“Lord Tarbeck, at long last,” Qosaerys said in greeting, and Arron blinked. Surely this was not the man whose wife upon whom he had earlier made an unintended advance. “Please, I beg you join us. We were just having a thrilling conversation about my exploits across the narrow sea” Qosaerys said, indicating one of the empty chairs with one of his airy waves.
“Lord Tarbeck is my brother,” the older of the two men said, his voice like gravel. He had a light scrap of beard that poorly hid a lopsided jaw, which Arron thought looked to have been broken once or thrice. It gave the impression that he was biting down on something on the one side of his mouth, and the thicket of scars around it cut grooves in his beard, not to mention his face. If he’d ever been a handsome man, he wasn’t now, Arron guessed. “I am Ser Tarbeck, and this is my son, Axell.” He made no move to sit. Neither did his son, Axell.
“I beg your forgiveness, I am a long-standing stranger to Westerosi formalities and stylings. May I not just call you Josmyn?"
The broken jawed knight said nothing to that, instead fixing Arron with his glare. “Who are these?”
“Ah, introductions, of course. How rude of me,” Qosaerys corrected himself, unflagging in the face of someone so unreceptive to his manner. “That one is Arron Sand, captain of the Brave Companions’ new Dornish contingent.” Arron gave Tarbeck half a nod. “The mean-looking chap with the axe is Donnor Greyiron, one of my sellsail captains.” Donnor did not so much as look up. “And of course, this beautiful young woman is our host, Jynessa Fowler.” She gave an appropriate curtsy to end it on a high note. “They are my most trusted,” he said, rounding about and clapping Arron on the shoulder, “and loyal compatriots in arms.”
Ser Tarbeck didn’t respond, but gave a nod to his son, who stepped out from the tent, seemingly to leave his father to whatever his business was with a sellsword company’s leadership. Ser Tarbeck sat down then, and they followed suit. Qosaerys poured the knight a glass of Arbor Gold from the crystal carafe at the center of the table and then shifted his chair around such that, broadly speaking, Ser Tarbeck sat on one side of the table, and the Brave Companions on the other.
The knight, not lord, reached into his cloak and withdrew a small rectangular package. He placed it gently on the table before them and unwrapped it, revealing a stacked set of golden rectangles. Ingots of gold, Arron realized, trying to keep his face from showing any sense of surprise or shock. A small fortune had been set directly in front of him. Tarbeck splayed them out before them, showing there to be six.
“Three hundred dragons. As agreed.”
None of them spoke. Arron hadn’t the faintest idea what to say, and deferred, he presumed, to Qosaerys. This didn’t seem Jynessa’s line of business and Donnor never said anything, after all. “Ser Tarbeck,” Qosaerys took the lead, as expected, stroking his moustache pensively, “I do not mean to give you the impression of ingratitude, but when I say that the Brave Companions fight for gold, I fear I do not mean it quite this literally.”
Ser Tarbeck did not move a muscle in his face, but Arron felt there was a likelihood that he had, indeed, taken it as ungracious. “Is my gold no good to you?”
“Oh no, of course not! You mistake me, ser. I merely mean to say that, as we continue our business relationship, we would appreciate it if future payments could be made in a form a bit more, what is the word for it? Liquid? It does wonders for a sellsword’s morale to be able to spend his hard earned wage, and I think it unlikely I could bring this,” Qosaerys said, lifting one of the ingots in hand as if to demonstrate the impracticability of it, “down to the brothel. Make no mistake, though, we are settled up in terms of your advance on our services.”
“Good. I will hear your report now.” Clearly, this was not a man for talking.
“Right, of course, of course. Our report,” Qosaerys said, and, after spending some time with the man, Arron could well see that the Captain-General had as little a sense as to what report Ser Tarbeck was expecting as Arron did. “We have much to discuss and more. In the interest of keeping this conversation efficient, perhaps you could lead the discussion? As we are in your employ and service, we would like to be sure we are focused first and most foremostly on your most pertinent interests.”
Arron didn’t think the man so easily taken for a fool, but Tarbeck didn’t show it. “Are the Dornish spears in place?”
“I would say they are, ser. Lord Wyl has charged twenty of his knights to the Brave Companions, and, aside from the four that accompany me here today, they are currently engaged in the raising and readying of the spears at Wyl as we speak now.”
The implacable man now showed some shadow of emotion. His eyes narrowed, and he could see that he had taken to grinding his teeth as Qosaerys spoke. Arron could tell that was not the answer Ser Tarbeck was expecting. He thought it likely Qosaerys could see it as well, but the Captain-General did not let his smile flag in the face of it.
“They are,” intoned Tarbeck, slowly, “engaged in raising the spears?” Each word dripped anger, and Arron felt very aware of the dagger at his hip.
“Quite so.”
“You were meant to bring two hundred Dornish spears to lie in wait until the appointed hour, at which time they would be put to very good and critically timed use,” Tarbeck growled, violence in his voice. “This is more than unacceptable.”
If Qosaerys hadn’t expected this turn to the conversation, he did not show it. He turned it back on Tarbeck with characteristic deftness, skipping not a beat as he took a draught of Arbor Gold down and sallied forth. “Ser Tarbeck, I entreat you, I fully expected to arrive at the Port of Wyl with two hundred spears ready to be brought to bear on behalf of you and yours. Unfortunately, I found instead that Lord Wyl had not even begun to prepare them, much to my shock and dismay.”
This lie did not appear to mollify Tarbeck. “So, the responsibility is not yours, but Lord Wyl’s?”
“It is entirely Lord Wyl’s responsibility and fault,” Qosaerys agreed, seemingly more than happy to shift the blame to a party very much not present to defend himself. “I am a leader of sellswords who finds himself entirely bereft of them. You cannot believe there is a man or woman here this evening who takes greater umbrage with Lord Wyl’s failure in this matter than myself.”
Ser Tarbeck appeared to take greater umbrage than Qosaerys, Arron thought, with both Lord Wyl and the Captain-General alike. “You have put us at a considerable disadvantage and even greater danger, sellsword,” he nearly spat, grinding his teeth even more violently than before.
Qosaerys, with his usual flick of the wrist, waived the concern away. “If I may attempt to rehabilitate your view of our situation, I rather think that this inconvenience may be to our advantage.”
“And how could that possibly be?”
“We are, all of us, deep behind what are very soon to be the lines of the enemy. To our east is Grandview, to our west Harvest Hall, Fawnton to the north and Blackhaven to the south. That’s Grandison, Selmy, Cafferen and Dondarrion, if I know them rightly,” Qosaerys explained, and Arron raised his eyebrows at that. He didn’t think he could name them with that certainty. “Then, closer still than all those, are the holdfasts and keeps held by landed knights sworn to each of those houses. To put it mildly, we are surrounded, which, in my long experience as a soldier, is a rather poor place for any army.”
Tarbeck said nothing. Qosaerys clapped Arron on the shoulder then. “Ser Tarbeck, I ask that you consider thinking of my good Captain Arron’s men as not late to the party, but rather held in reserve, ready to be deployed by land or sea at your command to whichever theater suits you. These are tremendously uncertain times, as you well know, and we must bend with the flow of the river. To have that flexibility I offer you now is very much to your advantage.”
There was a long silence as Tarbeck considered the Captain-General. Whether he meant to stab him or agree with him, Arron couldn’t say. Wordlessly, he gathered the ingots up and made to stand.
“Ah,” Qosaerys interrupted him, and the knight froze, his face hardened as if to stone. “I am afraid I must ask that you leave those with us.”
“You must be mad,” Tarbeck nearly snarled, “if you think I will pay you a groat before I see a thicket of Dornish spears in my service.”
Qosaerys offered his raised hands, palms turned upward as if to showcase his defenseless earnestness. “I do not mean to be difficult, but I fear the nature of your payment was an advance, if I understood rightly. As in to say, it is paid in advance of services provided.”
Tarbeck, now red in the face with anger, seemed about ready to burst. He laid three of the ingots back down. Qosaerys’s face twisted most apologetically. “I must apologize, but I will need the full advance,” he said, emphasis on ‘full’. “Lord Wyl was as forthcoming with his payment for our service as he was with his soldiers, I fear, and so I find myself quite behind on paying the boys.” Lord Wyl had in fact paid quite handsomely and upfront, not that Arron had seen a silver stag of it.
“This is a farce.”
“Would that it were,” Qosaerys returned, and he gestured to Donnor. “Donnor is my numbers man,” he said, “and I invite you to take it up with him, but we have a pressing need for every dragon you placed on the table this evening, liquid or not.” Donnor, who did not look like the sort of man to know what a number was, had stopped sharpening his axe, and now stared intently at Tarbeck, shaft held in a white knuckled grip. Jynessa, who sat beside him, looked less than comfortable with his change in demeanor.
Ser Josmyn Tarbeck all but slammed the ingots down on the table and stormed out of the tent.
Qosaerys, unbothered, took another pull of Arbor Gold from his glass. “I think that went rather well,” he said, and he took up one of the six golden slates and pressed it into Arron’s hand. “For your valuable contribution this evening, you have my thanks and my gold.”
Arron, who had said nothing, took it from him. Being generously compensated for doing nothing was the way the Brave Companions did business, after all, and he was feeling more and more like one of them every day.
Arron Sand has a pleasant conversation with Lady Jeyne Tarbeck. Later, Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys, Arron and Jynessa Fowler meet with one Ser Josmyn Tarbeck, their employer, and are well compensated for failing to deliver two hundred Dornish spears to Summerhall.
“It’s fine,” Addison huffed in return, keeping her frown even as a sense of satisfaction bloomed in her chest and urged her to smile at this small victory. It was the first words they had spoken to each other in days, and Addison was pleased she was not first to break the tense silence that had fallen between them.
After speaking with her mother those few days back, Addison and her uncle had tracked down her lord father’s hunting party, where they found them just finished and making ready the prizes they’d taken from the woods. Alyx had taken a rabbit herself, shooting it through with an arrow from horseback. It was all the talk of the party as they made ready to return to the procession, and Addison, mindful of her lady mother’s request to make a lady out of her sister, had thought it the wrong message.
She scolded Alyx. Hunting was unladylike, and handling a dead animal was doubly so and also disgusting, she instructed. Alyx, who had slung the dead rabbit over the back of her horse as one would a deer, seized it up and thrust the dead thing in Addison’s face. Addison screamed, Alyx laughed, Addison called Alyx a cunt, Alyx told Addison that such language was unladylike, and Addison would have slapped that stupid smile off Alyx's face if their father hadn’t seized her by the wrist and led her away for an undeserved scolding of her own.
It would have ended there, if Alyx had not slipped the dead rabbit under Addison’s pillow later that evening.
“I’m sorry too,” Addison said, even though she wasn’t. The rabbit’s blood had soaked through the pillow and ruined it, and it had been her favorite.
“For what?” Alyx asked.
“For calling you that word.”
“What word?”
Addison exhaled sharply. Alyx was always teasing and ever difficult. “You know what word,” she urged, loathe to repeat it. It was an unladylike word to call someone, as Alyx had said, even if she’d only said it to make fun of her.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” Addison said, feeling suddenly hot around the collar. Then, after a long moment, she said very quietly, “cunt.”
“Oh. That word.” As if Alyx hadn’t known it all along.
Addison said nothing and folded her arms deeper than they already were folded. She made an effort to change the topic, after a moment. Take control of the conversation. That was how it was done. “Who are they?” she asked, nodding to the odd collection of travelers who had made their encampment just south of House Tarbeck’s tents. House Tarbeck had arrived at Summerhall yesterday, and their lord father and his men had set up the tented encampment they would call home during the tourney in the midst of those of the other Westerland houses. They had raised the Tarbeck colors and greeted their fellow Lannister bannerman with good humor. It was a pleasure to see many of those lords again for the first time in months, if not years.
But this morning they found themselves joined by a newly arrived and curious collection of neighbors.
“I’m not sure,” Alyx answered, considering the banner fluttering above the largest tent. A blue bird on silver, a falcon or a hawk of some kind, Addison thought. She knew her heraldry, could name any house in the Westerlands, but this wasn’t a Westerlands house that she knew of, even if they had set up camp in their midst. And then there were the people making camp there, who were an odder sight still than the hooded bird on the banner.
Dark and olive skinned, shouting at and calling to each other in a language Addison didn’t understand, if it even was a single language. Were they from the Free Cities then? She saw that one of them, an older man with a full moustache and a colorful waist-length cape, wore a long, slender blade at his hip, a sword like nothing Addison had seen before. But the two men he spoke to looked not just like Westerlanders, but like Lannisters, one with golden blonde hair, the other sandy.
They weren’t Westerlanders, though, she could tell. They had rougher, sharper features, and one looked like he’d spent half a year on the docks baking in the sun. He had a wiry scrabble of sandy facial hair, not a well maintained and styled beard but rough and coarse. His eyes were fair and gentle, his jaw was sharp and hard, and he was tall as anything, taller than any man in her father’s court, she thought. He was listening attentively to Slender Sword with an intensely thoughtful look to his face, lean arms folded. Corded muscle worked under the skin of a forearm as he flexed idly through the conversation’s course.
“You’re staring, Addison Tarbeck,” Alyx interrupted with an accusatory jeer, and the tingle in Addison’s cheeks turned hot.
“And who are you to blame her, Alyx Tarbeck?” It was a crisp interjection, and the two sisters turned around in time with one another to find their lady mother, hands on her hips and wearing an all-too-satisfied smirk on her face. “I suppose I now know just the sort of thing that brings you two to talking again,” she observed, eyes flitting in the direction of the two blonde men.
“I apologized,” Alyx defended herself.
“I did too,” Addison defended herself harder, not to be outdone.
“Always a competition, the two of you. I would tell the both of you to settle it at the tilts if I wasn’t half-scared you might give it an honest try,” Lady Jeyne answered, and Addison felt the tension melt away into an honest smile she very much didn’t want to show her sister. “But I am glad to hear it. I need a word with your sister, Alyx. Run along and find something to make yourself useful, and keep away from the pillows in my absence.”
Alyx did so with a haughty huff, and Addison was left alone with her mother.
Alone was maybe not the word for it. High noon in the shadow of Summerhall was busy as a city to Addison’s eyes. The sheer number of people going about their days was astonishing. Addison had gone with her father to Lannisport a few times, and King’s Landing once when she was a girl, but much of her time and more was spent in the country. Tarbeck Hall had its residents, and the largest towns that fell within her father’s fief were no small affairs, but Addison was surely not used to such crowded company. Alyx was like to find it exciting, but it filled Addison with a constant, harrying sense of unease, almost as though the milieu was like to a wasp hovering by her ear.
“Walk with me, darling.” Lady Jeyne offered her hands to Addison, palms facing up. Addison took them and allowed herself to be led.
“What is it, mother?” Addison asked as they walked. Lady Jeyne was leading her away from the Tarbecks’ queer new neighbors and toward Summerhall, and Addison’s eyes were everywhere but her mother, even as she spoke to her. All around them the crowds continued to press. There was ever someone selling something, someone calling for someone, one child chasing another, a man with wandering eyes, a distant relation with whom she wished to avoid speaking, and more, all of them less than a stride or two away, if not in arm’s length. And as she looked up she found even the sky to be crowded. Everywhere were the banners, the lion of Lannister, the boar of Crakehall, that yellow point the Leffords intended to be a mountain but which Addison thought looked more like a triangle than anything. She was vaguely aware her mother was saying something even as her thoughts wandered.
“…and there’s the Lefford boy, just a few years your senior. I saw him this morning when I spoke with Lord Lefford, and if you liked the look of that Dornishman I think you might take kindly to him.”
“A Dornishman?” Addison asked, interests suddenly piqued. She’d never met a Dornishman. She’d met her mother’s maidservant Sarella, of course, who was Dornish, but she wasn’t from Dorne in the proper sense, merely born of a distant Tarbeck cousin who’d made some unladylike decisions while touring the Stormlands.
Lady Jeyne pursed her lips, but Addison saw a hint of a smile in it. “Addison Tarbeck,” she said, using Addison’s full name as she was wont to do in the course of a reproachment, “I am overjoyed that Dorne has joined the Seven Kingdoms and I am confident Lord Fowler and his kin are loyal subjects of the crown, but please do not expect to marry one of them until I am long dead and buried.”
“That is not what I meant, mother,” Addison answered, but she wasn’t sure what she did or didn’t mean, if she were honest. “I was just curious.”
“And why can you never be curious about what I have on offer? You are my daughter and my dearest friend, Addison, and I can tell whenever we discuss it the prospects barely interest you.” They walked on in silence, and Addison looked down for a change, rather than all around all at once as she was wont. She could hear the frustration in her mother’s voice, and it was not the frustrated note of an exasperated mother, but of a person. Of someone not unlike herself. She felt a wave of self-consciousness roll through her then. It must be hard, she imagined, being a mother. Especially being a mother to one girl who shoots rabbits from horseback and another who takes no interest in her marriage prospects. She felt suddenly small.
“I am sorry, mother. You must think me ungrateful.”
“No, not ungrateful.” Addison’s mother sighed, and a pregnant pause settled between them as she seemed to find the words. “I daresay” she continued, the words coming slow as that bawdy smile crept back onto her face, “you will understand it better when you are the one trying to convince your daughter to marry the ugly son of a bloody idiot like Jon Lefford.”
“Mother!” Addison said, a note of mirthful shock in her voice, and she leaned in close to her lady mother Tarbeck.
“What?” Addison’s mother asked, all innocence as she drew Addison in with an arm and kissed her forehead. “What kind of mother lies to her daughter? As if Lord Lefford’s son looks half so good as that Dornishman, I’m ashamed I even suggested it. The boy looks like Alyx’s rabbit.”
They were both laughing then. “I promise,” Lady Jeyne said, “we will find you a match that suits you. Truly.”
Teenaged Tarbeck sisters Addison and Alyx continue their ongoing feud. They take notice of an odd assortment of Dornishmen making camp by House Tarbeck’s tourney ground encampment. Lady Jeyne Tarbeck counsels her daughter on her marital prospects, but makes little headway there.
Arron had not presumed to understand the world he lived in, but he found the depths of his ignorance deeper than expected on their arrival at Wyl. Not only was House Wyl willing to listen to Qosaerys’s offer, they were eager. Arron had expected an audience at one of his cousins’ holdfasts, to secure a small but strong line of spears for the Brave Companions and their Captain-General. On stepping to dry land at the Port of Wyl, though, they were received by an honor guard which welcomed them and escorted them directly to Lord Wyl’s audience chamber. Arron did none of the talking – Qosaerys, met with the opportunity to bring his tongue to bear, gave quite the presentation to the lord and his advisors.
They walked out of Wyl with a commitment for two hundred spears and twenty Dornish knights drawn from Wyl’s holdings.
The bulk of this new force remained behind at the Port of Wyl, organizing the raising of the spears and knights under the leadership of Ser Qyle Wyl, second son to Lord Wyl. Qosaerys, with some sort of mercenary business to conduct at Summerhall, left the Brave Companions at port under Black Drazenka’s command and brought his captains, Arron and a few of the Dornish knights immediately available with him on the journey. Arron had little and less in common with his new mercenary associates, but Qosaerys gave him his pick of the knights to accompany them, and he found some old friends among the Brave Companions’ new sell-knights, as Qosaerys had come to call them.
First among those was Ser Gerold Manwoody, one of Lord Wyl’s household knights and sworn swords. He was the oldest of them, ten years Arron’s senior, and in years past had mentored the would-be knights of Lord Wyl’s court in the use of sword and spear. He was, as ever, an unsmiling, humorless man, but he was dutiful and loyal and, as Arron could attest, was good to knock a man down if it came to it. He was shorter than Arron, who had grown like a weed in the long years since he spent time at Wyl, but Gerold was broader, heavier, stouter, harder. He was not a man Arron with whom would wish to cross swords.
Second was Ryon Sand, who men called the White Hawk of Skyreach. Ryon was not a knight, but he was the best sword and spear among them all the same. Quick as a viper with a blade and more vicious still, Ryon Sand was a dangerous man who had won no less than eight duels before Arron departed for the Free Cities and two more since then. Half of those were to defend the honor of his trueborn half-sister, Jynessa Fowler, who, as Arron understood it, had kept her honor more for Ryon’s skill with a sword than for her own choices. Though Arron was a Wyl, one could confuse them for brothers. They had both been towheaded boys in their youth, and when they had sparred in the yards there had been scarce a man who could tell them apart. Arron had since grown a short and unkempt beard of wiry, sandy blonde, while Ryon seemed incapable of growing a hair below his brow, and Arron’s time at sea and east had tanned his fair skin to a coppery bronze, but they still looked alike. Arron lacked for Ryon’s easy confidence, though, and might well have smiled as often as unsmiling Ser Gerold in comparison to the White Hawk’s oft flashed grin.
Last of the three freeriders who joined Arron was Ser Ulrick Uller, an unlanded knight from Hellholt who had found employ as a household guard to Arron’s relations at the Port of Wyl. Darker in complexion than the other freeriders, which bespoke his southern Dornish heritage, he was marked with vicious scars to his face, one of which had robbed him of his left eye. Ulrick One-Eye, as men called him behind his back, had a fearsome countenance for it. Rather than wearing an eyepatch, a ball of gilded steel had been set in the empty socket. He was, to say the least, discomforting to look upon. Contrary to appearances, though, Ser Ulrick was the most likable of the group. Ser Gerold was a man of few words and Ryon was quick tempered, unforgiving and unpredictable, but Ser Ulrick, in spite of the ill turns life had taken for him, was friendly, jovial, and quick to make a good joke, and he held little against anyone.
Unless it was about his eye.
Altogether, Arron and his freeriders were a bevy of second sons, bastards and distant relations, all of them unlanded but ambitious and talented.
Arron and his new Dornish freeriders made up a third of the Brave Companions’ delegation to Summerhall, not counting a dozen servants and attendants they’d brought along. Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys rode just behind his standard bearer, who flew the black goat flag of the Brave Companions at the procession’s head, and Jon of Hull, a Westerosi hedge knight and the First Sword of the Brave Companions. His captains rode with him – there was Orratis, the captain of the Companions’ Myrish crossbow component, who Arron had never seen without a plug of sourleaf between his teeth, and beside him Votys, who hailed from Norvos and led the Brave Companions’ infantry with his great bearded axe in hand. Each of them was accompanied by their own men, one or two apiece. Yezdhan zo Yaggaz, the Yunkishman, and Oranasio, a man of Braavos, were sergeants under Votys, and Arron thought Orratis’s man was named Thoroq, but he didn’t know much more than that.
Then there was Donnor Greyiron, the grizzled seafaring veteran who claimed descent from that extinct line of ironborn kings, who was captain of the Salt Wolf, one of Qosaerys’s sellsail ships. Calder Pyke, Greyiron’s second, captained the Salt Wolf’s sister ship, Blackcap, and rode in step with him. Orratis and Votys were not unlike Qosaerys, though they did not have the same boisterous personality, but these two stood in stark contrast to the gallant sellsword captain-general. They were hard men, killers, as were their sellsail crews.
On the whole, the Brave Companions were an ugly, dirty, uncouth, hardscrabble lot, and the Dornishmen were only mildly better. At least Arron’s freeriders bore heraldry in the Westerosi style, with names and sigils of houses that carried weight in this part of the world. On the whole, it was not an easy thing to marry these men to the gallantry on display as they crested a hill and came upon the Summerhall tourney grounds.
The grounds, still at a distance, were ablaze with color and life. Flags bore lions and wolves (or maybe dogs?) and boars and other animals besides, and they flashed every color under the sun. Beneath those flags were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people milling about here and there as they made preparations, erected tents and made ready for the tourney. Arron spied what looked like the frames of a jousting arena in the works.
“Quite the show here, isn’t it?” Ryon’s voice came from behind him. “Maybe we’ll take a turn at the tilts, aye Gerold?” Gerold gave a grunt, as was typically the sum of his conversational input.
“We are not here to play at fighting,” Arron answered him, but he regretted the reproach. Was his answer too cool? Ryon Sand was a man quick to take offense, and leading men is a hard thing if the men to be led mislike the man leading them, Arron thought.
“I disagree,” Qosaerys interjected, pulling Arron from his thoughts as the Captain-General pulled on his reins so as to take into step with the Dornishmen. “I daresay we are not here, as we are not anywhere, to fight at all if we can help it.”
“So that’s the work of an honorable sellsword, is it?” Ser Ulrick asked. “To be paid to fight and then shirk from the fighting?”
“While you will find that fighting is, from time to time, unavoidable in this line of work, I would say that is the trick of it,” Qosaerys returned. “What good is gold if you are too dead to spend it, eh, Ser Uller?”
“Seems dishonorable to me,” Ser Gerold commented, looking to Arron. His face was stoic as ever, but the look made Arron uncomfortable. Ser Gerold was not a voluntary recruit to this endeavor. Where Ryon and Ulrick had come to the Brave Companions as eager recruits, Ryon for glory and danger and Ulrick for coin, Ser Gerold had been tasked with advising Arron on his leadership of the Brave Companions’ new Dornish contingent. He was Lord Wyl’s man, through and through, and as the lord’s brother Anders Wyl aged it seemed to be clear that Ser Gerold would take his position as master-at-arms of Wyl. To consort with sellswords was not his way, but again, he was dutiful and loyal, just the sort of second Arron felt he needed, if he were to be a captain of this crew. In that moment, though, Arron wondered if the knight wasn’t disappointed in him for the company he kept.
“Honor will neither fuck you nor feed you, Ser Gerold, but I do take your meaning and I salute your morality,” Qosaerys said, and Ryon barked with laughter.
“I like this company, Arron, I think I should have made for Essos with you when you left,” the White Hawk said. Arron could not say Ryon would not have made a poor sellsword, from what he had seen. He was certainly more like the Captain-General than himself.
“You would have been sorely missed at home, brother,” came a woman’s voice then. It was the voice of Jynessa Fowler, Ryon’s trueborn half-sister. She was a great beauty, blonde as a Lannister and fairer than any woman Arron had laid eyes on, he thought. She was young, a year or two Arron’s junior, but unwed still. A willful woman, she was recently estranged from her lord father’s court for refusing yet another match, as Arron had heard it, and had for the time being taken up with her bastard brother at Lord Wyl’s court while the Lord Fowler’s temper cooled.
“I am sorely missed wherever I am not. I am sure you would carry on in my absence, sister. I daresay you could quick replace me as your champion if you had need of one.”
“I like this one,” Qosaerys said of Ryon. “You’re the one they call White Hawk, eh?”
“They do.” Ryon leaned back in his sand steed’s saddle to make more prominent the hawk emblazoned on his tabard. It was not quite the symbol of House Fowler. The colors were reversed, a silver-white hawk on blue, and rather than being hooded, the hawk’s wings were fanned to suggest flight. “All across Dorne men know me as the White Hawk of Skyreach.” Arron thought he caught a smirk touch Jynessa’s lips, together with a roll of her eyes.
“Very nice,” Qosaerys complimented the White Hawk, and looked to Arron. “We need a name for you, eh? Arron Sand lacks a certain,” and he made to wave a hand, “sense of bravado to it, eh? You need a name to build a reputation around. Something with a dash of brio, if you will. Redsand, maybe, for all the blood you’ve spilled in the sandy fighting pits of Meereen. How’s that sound?”
“I’ve never been to Meereen,” Arron said, dumbly, he thought no sooner had the words left his mouth.
“Irrelevant details, my friend. Who is to say where you have or have not been, eh?” Qosaerys gave another airy wave. “I’ll make a proper sellsword of you yet, I promise.”
The Captain-General returned his eyes to the tourney grounds then, which loomed larger as they continued their approach. He was looking far into the distance, searching, Arron thought. And then he seemed to spy what he was looking for.
“Orratis, Votys, you lot make your camp on that side there, and take the banner” he directed, somewhere vaguely to the right. “Greyiron, you and yours are with me. You too, Arron, together with our new Dornish compatriots.”
Qosaerys took the lead then, and the Captain-General led his selected companions to the thicket of tents and flags that marked the Westerlanders’ place in the field. Banners of red and gold dominated the town of tents that had sprung up before Summerhall’s fortified walls, together with the banners of their sworn houses. Blues and greens and yellows fluttered about, together with a notable set of blue-and-silver flags, each adorned with a similarly colored seven pointed star. Qosaerys made a point to seek those tents out, and they made their camp not twenty strides from the most southerly of them.
As the servants made to set up the Brave Companions' tents, the black goat flag conspicuously absent. Instead, at Qosaerys's instruction they flew Lady Jynessa's banner, the blue hooded hawk of House Fowler on silver. A curious choice, Arron thought. What was the Captain-General's angle here?
After securing a pledge from the Lord Wyl of Wyl for two hundred spears and a score of Dornish knights, the Brave Companions arrive at the Summerhall tourney grounds and make their camp near House Tarbeck’s tents under the banner of House Fowler. Nycarro Qosaerys brings his captains and a few of their men, and Arron leads a trio of the company’s newly recruited freeriders – Ser Gerold Manwoody, Ryon Sand and Ulrick Uller - and Lady Jynessa Fowler, daughter of Skyreach.
Addison dipped her foot in the shallow stream, and the cool water flowed over and between her outstretched toes. Jonquil, her tawny mare, stooped her head to take drink just upriver of her. She was a beautiful horse, Addison’s favorite of all her lord father’s steeds, a slender courser of three years with as sweet a temper as any creature on the Seven’s good earth. She spoke softly to the horse, resting her head to the nape of Jonquil’s neck. It was a quiet, still moment, broken only by the twittering of some bird or another in the trees above and the gentle bubbling of the brook she’d come upon in her riding.
And then there was a shout.
“Lady Addison!” the voice came loudly through the forested eaves behind her. She turned around, hand straying to the small knife she kept to hip, and but a moment later her uncle had pushed through the brush atop his steed and came out onto the clear banks of the stream. Florian, as his courser was named, brother to her own mount, wheeled about toward her. Addison relaxed her grip on the knife’s hilt walked toward him as he approached ahorse.
“I am here, mine uncle,” Addison returned as his eyes found her. “You needn’t worry, I have not met with any harm nor danger in your absence.”
Robb smiled an easy smile. Her septon-uncle was her favorite among her relations, slow to anger and quick to give forgiveness or kindness. He scolded her but out of warm love, and he was good to keep a secret, something she could not say for her snake of a sister or her brat of a brother. “I am glad of that. Seven know I worry for your safety,” he said, as his horse led him past Addison and on to Jonquil. Florian sniffed and brushed at his sister’s neck, a sweet sight.
“Seven know my father is the one who worries for my safety,” Addison returned with a sharp smile, turning to follow her uncle as Florian wandered where the horse pleased. Robb was slow to anger and also slow to concern, as it was. The Seven had blessed him with a cool head and a steady mind. “You have better sense than to wonder whether I have come to harm after but half a moment out of sight.”
“You are a better horseman than me, my lady,” Robb lied, “so I admit I did not fear overmuch. And that knife you bear, I would fear for any man who might cross blades with you, myself included.”
She let her hand drop from the dagger’s hilt, a hint of embarrassment creeping into her cheeks. He smiled at her expense, she knew. She was certainly not a better horseman than Robb Tarbeck, septon resident of Tarbeck Hall, and could certainly not cross any blade with him, long or short. Before he was a septon he was a great knight, one of the finest of the realm, so they said. A Kingsguard to be, mayhaps, though Addison found that difficult to believe. She was but a girl when Robb set down his lance and shield and did not recall much from those years, but she found it strange to reconcile the kindly septon who read to her from the Seven Pointed Star, the gentle man who listened to her confessions and woes, with the daring, dashing, violent knight the stories made him out to be.
He still did look the part, though, tall and handsome as he was, like a knight from the stories she read as a girl. But that was not proper for her to say nor think, and she flushed but a bit at the thought.
“I rather think you may be flattering me, mine uncle,” she said, wiping her wet foot in the soft grasses to dry.
“Never. I have not yet met a woman more comfortable on horseback than you, my lady.”
“Save for my sister?” Addison asked.
“Save for your sister, true, but be fair to yourself. I do wonder if Alyx was fathered by a horse rather than my brother,” Robb japed with a flashing gin, and that brought a laugh from Addison, though the music of it had a bitter tinge. Addison’s younger sister may as well have been born on a saddle, such was her talent at the reins, and Addison hated it so. Addison loved horses, and to see Alyx take to Jonquil better than herself had made Addison wroth with envy. It was not an admirable trait, and the years had softened her attitude toward her sister, but it just seemed so terribly unfair all the same. Still, though Robb loved them both, she knew, she took joy that he was not afraid to commiserate with her against Alyx.
And as it were, Alyx did not like her overmuch either. As the eldest daughter of House Tarbeck, Addison was the first expected to wed, and much and more had been made of her fair looks and womanly figure these past few years. Addison thought her sister fair enough, but Alyx was more girl than woman, and the attention given Addison on the subject had become a sore spot between them. Addison did not understand it. To be a bargaining chip in her lord father’s politics, to be bought and fucked by some lordling or another to House Tarbeck’s advantage, it was not a thing she found flattering at all, and certainly nothing for Alyx to envy.
“How much longer until Summerhall do you think?” she asked, looking to change the subject of their conversation.
“Hard to say, my lady,” Robb answered easily, dismounting as Florian stooped to drink alongside his sister, “but I think us close now. It should be no more than a few days. I reckon we could make it in a day or two if we rode ahead of the procession.”
“I would not wish to rush the journey.”
“No? You mislike the thought of a touney?” Robb asked. “It’s been some years, but when I ran the tilts I could scarcely find a lady who did not love to be and be seen there.”
“You mean you could scarcely find a lady who did not love to be and be seen there with you?”
“I am sure there were a few among them who felt as much,” Robb said, warily almost, and he indicated the white brocade doublet he wore, “but circumstances are long changed since then.” He always wore white these days, during his ministrations and outside them. He did not wear the flowing robes of a septon, though, but rather the fashionable garb of court, and he still cut a good figure. Alyx had told Addison that Robb had been a rake of a man in his day and had put many a young woman to the end of his lance before he took the white. Addison had scolded her something harsh for that wanton gossip, but there was something titillating about it.
“I am sure,” she said, intoning that she was not so sure at all, and she squeezed her drying foot back into her riding boot and made to mount up again.
“You are entirely too bold, my lady,” Robb accused, and she hid a smirk.
“I say it is one of the things I rather like most about myself.”
The procession of House Tarbeck was heralded by a dozen fluttering blue-and-silver banners bearing the seven pointed star, and it stretched quite a distance on the road to Summerhall. Robb traveled light, as a septon should, he said. His possessions took up space in but part of a single carriage. Addison wondered if he might not have been able to take all his possessions with him by horse if he so liked. Her lord father, however, took a dozen carriages and wagons to transport them, family and servants alike, and her lord uncle, Josmyn Breakjaw, least liked of the brothers Tarbeck and ever a bitter, competitive sort, took another dozen.
The Breakjaw’s two sons, each a few years older than her, were the first to greet them. Axell and Arys were wheeling around each other on horse, trading blows with practice steels by the morning light. Arys turned to give them a wave and a shout to meet them as they emerged from the wood, but as he did so, Axell took advantage of his lapse in attention and caught him under the shield with the flat of his blade. It seemed the wind was knocked from Arys then, and the man was still sputtering curses as their bout took a sudden and more violent turn.
“I hear they are to be knighted this tourney,” Addison spoke as they passed. “Your brother the Breakjaw means to have Daemon Blackfyre anoint them himself, so I hear. Pray tell, would you consider them great knights?”
“I am sure they will both serve your lord father well and true, my lady,” Robb said.
“That is not what I asked.”
“I rather think it is, my lady,” Robb answered. “What does it mean to be a great knight? To serve true and well, those are the qualities I would seek in my household knights if I were your father.” He shifted in his saddle, looking over his shoulder to view the two young men all the same. “But to your point, so as not to frustrate you, I find Arys promising, if too eager to hide behind his shield. Axell is cunning and daring but,” he assessed, giving thought to the word, “unfocused. Even reckless, I may say.”
“So you find one to be lacking for caution, and the other to be lacking for lack thereof?” Addison asked. “You seem a hard man to please, mine uncle.”
“Not at all, my lady, it is quite easy to have to too much of one or the other.”
They came then alongside her lady mother’s carriage, and Addison announced her presence with a call. The Lady Tarbeck slid the window of the carriage door open and, finding the resultant window space to be insufficient to revel in the beautiful morning’s light, she pushed the carriage door open entirely and was content to ride with it flung clear. She stood, half hanging out of the carriage now with feet perched on the edge and a hand holding the topmost edge of the frame to keep her from tumbling out and under the wheels, thin, blue-silver nightgown fluttering in the light breeze and making a show of what was a comely body after bearing three children. Addison grimaced, wondering what might become of her body after a child or two.
“My lady Jeyne,” Robb greeted her with a solemn nod. “I do fear for your safety at such a precarious angle.”
“Oh come off it, Robb, you are always fearing for my safety,” she burst with laughter. “I am not so delicate even at my age that I cannot have a bit of fun, am I, dear daughter?” Addison shook her head in answer. “Tell me, Addison mine,” her mother said, reaching out to stroke her cheek as Addison drew close on Jonquil, “where is your sister? I have asked you time and again to help me make a proper lady of that girl and I do not see that she is benefitting from your tutelage at this time.”
“I’m sorry, mother, I have not seen her this morn, but we will find her,” Addison offered, looking to Robb, who nodded in agreement.
“Oh, I daresay she’s slipped away to join the hunt with your lord father, hasn’t she? I was quite content to sew a pillow in my youth,” the Lady Jeyne said, “but with that one it seems she can’t get enough of the blood and guts and gore. Mother guide me, I know not where she gets it, Robb, I do swear.” She pinched at her temples with her free hand, pausing in the midst of her stream of words. Her mother was always like this – she spoke fast and eloquently and was so clever and likable. Addison wished very much to be like her. “Now that I speak of it, Robb, do you have any of that salt pork? Your brother did try to rouse me this morn but I would not have it, and I quite slept through this morning’s meal. I swear, I think I could eat Jonquil here if I wished it.” She brushed the horse’s mane, and Jonquil gave a soft whinny, seemingly unconcerned about such a dire threat to her life.
Robb, chuckling lightly, drew closer on Florian and passed a pouch to her. “There you are lady, all yours. Should I send for Sarella?” she asked, referring to her lady mother’s principal serving woman.
“No, don’t bother her, I can certainly wait until we stop midday. Just needed something to tide me over.” Lady Jeyne set her sights on Addison then. “Now shoo, go find your sister and make a proper maiden out of her, would you?”
A burdensome request, in Addison’s view, but she would do her duty.
“Arron of Wyl,” came a jubilantly hoarse voice. The greeting was accompanied by a firm clap on the shoulder which all but took Arron’s eyes from the sea and turned him about to face Nycarro Qosaerys, famed Braavosi sellsword, Captain-General of the Brave Companions, and Arron’s commanding officer.
“It seems you have once again found your way to the prow of my ship,” Qosaerys observed, sweeping at Arron’s shoulders and straightening his shirt, as though in an effort to make him presentable for some event. “Or is it the bow?” Qosaerys asked and, seemingly satisfied with the state of Arron’s dress, set his hands to his hips, where they hung with thumbs hooked in the loop of a loose fitting belt.
“I understand the words to have the same meaning, Captain-General,” Arron answered. He stood a head taller than Qosaerys, and stood straight, like his father taught him, but somehow Arron felt smaller in the mercenary captain’s presence. The worn and weathered leather of Qosaerys’s boots and tricorn hat, the tarnished gold of the rings upon his fingers and the chain about his neck, the hard lines on his face, all these and more besides should have provided the image of a man much diminished over the years, but between an unfailingly confident smile and a swaggering gait, Captain-General Qosaerys loomed large in Arron’s view, even as Arron looked down on him now.
“Capital,” Qosaerys returned with a wave, still looming large. “Prow or bow then, whichever you prefer, I find you here once again. Have you spotted land, Arron of Wyl? Finally set sights on home? Do you now see your mother and sisters at a distance, waving from the docks of this town? How did you name it again? Willy Port, was it?”
“That would be the Port of Wyl, Captain, and no, land remains out of sight.”
“Yes, as expected, no?” Qosaerys asked with a laugh. “I believe we were all in accord that it would be some days still until we came into view of the Port of Wyl.” The mercenary pulled a flask from his belt and uncorked it, taking a lazy swallow as he turned his gaze to the horizon where, as Arron had admitted, there was nothing but sea to be seen. “Damnably empty is the ocean, eh?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Just Captain-General is fine, thank you, Arron of Wyl.” Qosaerys plugged up the flask and returned it to its holster. It was a potent spirit, Arron knew, but the mercenary didn’t show a hint of a grimace as the liquor went down. “Now, Racallio has taken a shit on the deck and in this sun, I tell you, I am not pleased with the creature. The oarsmen are distracted and I fear their strength flags in the face of the goat’s most pungent odor. But I find you here in neglect of your duties, do I not?”
“Aye, Captain-General. I will fetch a mop.”
“Seven Hells,” Qosaerys said, stopping Arron as he made to set off with a hand pressed to the Dornishman’s chest. “There really is no jesting with you eh, Arron? My friend, you are one of my Brave Companions. Cleaning shit off the deck of this ship is below your station.” Qosaerys paused, considering a thought for a moment before continuing. “And if you were planning to use a mop, I say you are likely not the man for the task. You are apt to make it worse, if anything. In my experience, you really need to hold a stiff upper lip and put your hands to work.”
Gods but Arron did not understand this man. “Understood, ser. How may I be of service?”
“You could start by taking a drink, and then following close,” Qosaerys said, offering Arron the flask from his belt as he turned and started back down the deck of the galley. “Gods but I do not understand you, Arron of Wyl. A sober man. Who would choose to live as such, eh?”
“I drink when it pleases me, Captain-General.” Arron, following Qosaerys in step, took the flask, mayhaps reluctantly, and then a swig. It was a spiced rum of some kind, and it burned going down. Arron did his best to keep his face from twisting up at the taste, but he did not think he did well at that.
“That certainly looked like it pleased you,” Qosaerys said with a knowing grin, confirming Arron’s suspicions.
“It did, ser." Arron choked his response out more than he liked and handed the flask back.
“Capital, it pleased me as well.” Qosaerys took another pull from the bottle. “To my quarters then.”
Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys’s quarters were not much to speak of. The ship, which Qosaerys had named Fair Bitch, was a galley just large enough to cross the shallow waters of the narrow sea. Her half hundred oarsmen made her swift, and her half hundred sellswords made her dangerous. Together, they also made her cramped, and the tight living conditions were reflected here, where there was but a rough driftwood table set up against the cabin’s starboard wall for dining, strategizing and relaxing alike, together with a trio of matching chairs, and a narrow cot set into the cabin’s portside wall.
And there was the goat, Racallio himself, laying next to the cot in what seemed a relaxing pose, a lazy eye half open. The animal was not quite black, but it was a near enough thing to make no difference, and at least a few of the oarsmen had strong notions on this. Arron did not understand well the tongue of Qohor and so did not know the particulars of their complaints, but it seemed a straightforward item – a black goat is a black omen, said the Qohoriks aboard the Fair Bitch, and they would not linger in the animal’s presence long if they could help it. They refused meet its eye, even.
The black goat flipped an ear as it tracked Arron’s steps with that lazy eye. Arron was not a superstitious man, and it seemed harmless enough. No harm had befallen ship or crew on the Fair Bitch’s journey as could be attributed to the beast. That is, aside from the runny shits it tended to leave on the Bitch’s deck. And Qosaerys had asked his Qohorik oars, what would they have him do with the animal? Cut its throat and toss the carcass to the sea? At that, their eyes had gone wide. To take such action would be to only further court disaster, they answered.
A pack of bloody fools, in Arron’s view, what did he know?
Qosaerys, paying Racallio the Goat no mind, eased into one of the chairs. As the mercenary captain flattened a scroll he had left on the table, Arron followed and sat across from him. He examined the paper as Qosaerys pored over it. It was a map of Westeros, or part of it, as far as Arron could tell at this angle.
“So, this is Dorne,” Qosaerys said, indicating broadly at a page which covered far more than Dorne, “and this is Wyl, eh?” Again, he pointed vaguely at the continent’s southern expanse.
“That appears right, ser.” Arron was not one for geography, but he figured it was best to agree, and the Captain-General seemed to have the right of it in a broad sense.
“And you have friends there? Lordly friends, mayhaps? Or wealthy at least?”
“A few.” It was true enough. Arron of Wyl had not set foot in Wyl itself all his life, but he had a landed cousin with whom he was close, and he had fair few relations settled in the Port of Wyl who he thought might open their doors to him should he ask. “Petty lords all, of course, none with more than a speck of a fief to name, but I do know them.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Qosaerys said. “You see, Arron of Wyl, I have been giving our journey some thought, and I daresay arriving with a company of Myrish sellswords may not give the impression we are hoping to convey.”
Qosaerys had spent precious few words on informing his crew of the plan, and nearly none on Arron specifically. They had sailed from Pentos shortly after he made his mark on the slip of paper Black Drazenka had placed in front him. A letter of engagement, she’d called it. Once he’d made the mark, she told him he’d signed and that his sword was now sworn to the company. In exchange for gold, of course, and she had given him a coin purse heavy with Westerosi, Lyseni and Pentoshi coinage right then and there.
He had gone through it quick enough with a few of the other lads who had signed on at the same time. Drink and women. He was happy to have half of it left when they set off on the sea. Had he indulged in the whores he imagined he’d have even less, but Arron wasn’t one for whores. It was far better to receive a gift freely given than to pay for the pleasure, he thought. It saved him the trouble of the cock-rot too, at that, which he understood certain of his fellow brave companions had been unfortunate enough to encounter as a result of their bawdy efforts.
“What I am looking for,” Qosaerys continued, drawing Arron’s thoughts back from sex and cock-rot, “is a stout line of Dornish spears. I had a few, you know, with the Maiden’s Men. Near a hundred of them. I can’t tell you the kind of confidence a line of Dornish spears gives an employer, and I believe we are well-positioned to take on a crew of them while we have the chance.”
“Of course, Dornish spearmen are the best in the world,” Arron said, straightening in his seat and returning to the conversation, even with a bit of pride creeping into his voice as he spoke of home.
“Eh,” Qosaerys said with a wave, “spearmen are much the same wherever you go, but Dornish spearmen do have the reputation, it must be said. Can you help me? I don’t want this batch of recruits to be some rabble we scrape off the streets – the way we found you, if you recall. Though I do not mean to cast aspersions on the quality of your character and service, as I rather like you, Arron of Wyl.”
“Thank you, ser, I would be happy to help. But I’ve never recruited for a sellsword company before. I haven’t even been part of one for more than a few fortnites.”
“Of course, of course,” Qosaerys demurred, “but think of how I must have judged your character to conclude you are the man to succeed at a task for which your experiences have ill-equipped you. Surely you see that to be a resounding endorsement of your talent, eh?”
Arron did not feel talented. Hells, he oft only followed Qosaerys’s twisting, honeyed words half-way through a sentence before getting lost in them. “I would be happy to make introductions,” he ventured, “and to speak on your behalf to my relations, but what would I tell them?”
“Fret not, my lad, your Captain-General would not send his soldiers into battle unarmed,” said the Captain-General who had indeed sent soldiers into battle unarmed on more than one occasion, Arron had heard. “I have the letter of engagement by which I hired those hundred spears from the House of Martell,” he continued, producing a rolled parchment from inside his jacket. “I will draft a new copy, with some light changes to the terms and conditions of the engagement, with the intention of hiring some number of the spears your dear relations may raise by virtue of their landed status.”
“And I will take that to my cousins?”
“Just so,” Qosaerys confirmed. “You may have noticed we have scant room for more sellswords on the Bitch, but Drazenka follows close behind with room to spare on her ship. I dare say we can take on a half hundred spears.”
“I am sure we can raise that many and more,” Arron said, thinking.
“Can we truly?”
Arron nodded. “My people – the Wyls of the Boneway – they are reavers and raiders all. My ancestors have a long and bloody history with the Stormlanders. As of late, though, we are at peace. These past fifteen years Dorne has been under the yoke of the Iron Throne. Many of my cousins chafe at that. House Wyl has always its spears to hand, but now with no one to fight,” he shrugged, “I daresay more than a few would be happy to put their arms to good use in your employ. Spears and Dornish knights alike, mayhaps. It may be we find more recruits to answer the call than you expect.”
“Ah, peace, the bane of men of action,” Qosaerys observed with that vulture’s grin, “and I daresay a woman or two of action among them as well. Never know what to do when peace breaks out, eh? Well, I am happy to be the beneficiary of the Iron Throne’s good politics.”
Qosaerys leaned back in his chair, scratching at his scabby neck and evaluating the results under his fingernail. “I say,” he continued, “if you bring me a host of Dornish knights and spears, I would have half a mind to put you at their head. A captain of my Companions.”
Arron blinked. “Captain-General, I have never led men before as such, and as I said I have only been with your company but for a short while.”
“You protest too much, Arron of Wyl,” Qosaerys said, vulture grin flashing again. “I congratulate you on your meteoric ascent, and fear not, leading men is not so hard. Do as I do between the fighting, and during the fighting, well, you’ll find there’s not much any one man can do then. Things tend to run their course once the battle lines come together.”
“Right, then,” Arron said, unsure how to proceed with this conversation. Qosaerys slid the flask across the table to him. He took it. “To your good health?”
“And then on to Summerhall,” Qosaerys confirmed, “where we might make ourselves useful to the noble lords of Westeros.”
Arron nodded and took a long pull at the spiced rum. As he did so, his eye flicked to the side. The black goat Racallio was looking at him now, and their eyes locked. The Captain-General’s animal companion gave a soft bleat, as if to acknowledge him.
Arron Sand, Captain of the Brave Companions, flying a black goat banner on the far flung battlefields of the Disputed Lands, Arron thought. What would his mother think of that?
Nycarro Qosaerys, famed sellsword and adventurer, veteran of a half dozen sieges, survivor of a half hundred field battles, and occasional pirate, now found himself to also be the most recently deposed captain-general of the Maiden's Men during the sack of Tolhorys.
Tyrosh and Myr's most recent conflict in the Disputed Lands led to the siege of the Tyroshi-held town, and Captain-General Qosaerys's brothers in arms, sellswords of honor matched only by their courage, resolved themselves against dying in defense of the town by whatever means necessary. As such, they made to unceremoniously dispose of their fearless leader by murder and open the gates to the enemy in exchange for their lives. They were successful in the second part of that plan, but Qosaerys proved a wily victim of attempted murder, and evaded not only poison and dagger but the Myrish-employed sellswords who were, in short order, on the definitively wrong side of the town's walls (from the perspective of a local resident, anyway).
Evading capture and/or death with admirable aplomb, Nycarro Qosaerys reached Pentos with the assistance of no companion save for a goat he affectionately named Racallio. There, he secured for himself a paper of engagement, signed by the Prince of Pentos himself, authorizing the recruitment of sellswords and -sails for a new mercenary company. This collection of brave companions, flying under a newly commissioned banner bearing the likeness of the aforementioned goat, would engage in honorable mercenary work across the Free Cities and the Narrow Sea, and mayhaps some revenge against that traitorous bitch Lysandra Dagareon, the usurping Captain-General of the Maiden's Men.
And so Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys came to seek new employment, and so he entered into certain Dornish entanglements.
House Wyl is one of the noble houses of Dorne, but they are not known for their status as a major house in that region. Rather, they are best known for their bitter, long-standing enmity against the marcher lords of the Stormlands. The Lord of Wyl, an elderly and ornery man, is the inheritor of this vicious feud and has stewed for long years under the yoke of the Iron Throne. The last clashes between House Wyl and the Marcher Lords of the Stormlands saw the death of his eldest son and heir in the field, and he has long dreamed of revenge against them. As the realm trends toward a divide as to the future of the Iron Throne and the crown, he has reached out and, through guile and cunning, constructed a web of contacts and alliances in the pursuit of vengeance.
To that end, Nycarro Qosaerys now sails east from Pentos in the company of one Arron Sand, a bastard of House Wyl. Arron Sand, having recently set out for Essos at the suggestion of his friends and family to win fame and influence in the Free Cities, finds himself riding the boisterous Captain-General's coattails and more, rapidly ascending to head a Dornish arm of the Brave Companions. The young Dornish warrior, no anointed knight but a skilled and deadly warrior all the same, may soon find himself a pawn in a greater game.
Key Members of the Brave Companions:
Nycarro Qosaerys, famed Braavosi sellsword and Captain-General of the Brave Companions. Racallio, Nycarro's goat.
Black Drazenka, Lyseni bedslave turned pit fighter turned sellsail, currently Captain-Admiral of the Brave Companions.
Arron Sand, a bastard of House Wyl and a newly recruited sellsword to the Brave Companions. Ryon Sand, called the White Hawk of Skyreach, a Dornish freerider. Ser Gerold Manwoody, a Dornish knight and freerider. Ser Ulrick Uller, a Dornish knight and freerider.
Nycarro Qosaerys
Age: Six and Forty.
Appearance:
In his younger days, Qosaerys may have cut quite the image of the dashing bravo. The slender water dancer's blade, the Myrish stiletto, the waxed and dyed moustache and beard, the colorful garb, the feathered hat, and the sharp, cutting grin all make for the picture, but the man himself is twenty years too old and more than sufficiently battered by life's wanton hardships and meanness. His eyes are tired, his skin is weathered by long years in the sun, his hair is thinning, and his teeth are not as a white or entirely present as they used to be.
Description & biography:
Captain-General Nycarro Qosaerys was not always Captain-General of the Maiden's Men. Before that, he joined the Company of the Cat as a crossbowman, led men as a junior captain in the Free Company, took to the seas as a sellsail on a Lyseni galley, went back to land shortly thereafter as a captain with the Men of Valor, betrayed the Men of Valor to join the Maiden's Men, and fought for years all along the way with those and other employers and companies unmentioned.
Ultimately, there is not a Free City Nycarro Qosaerys has not fought for, and only a handful he has not not betrayed in the course of his employment.
Arron Sand
Age: Twenty
Appearance:
Arron Sand is a tall man, standing an inch or two shy of six and a half feet in height, and with a lean frame that speaks to an uncanny agility. Pale green eyes, fair skin and sandy blonde hair mark him as a Stony Dornishman of strong Andal heritage. Arron rarely wears the colors of his mother's house, but he bears a ring the shape of a silver serpent on his finger, a black pearl held in its mouth.
Description & biography:
Arron Sand was born to Dorea Wyl, a cousin of the main house, and a son of House Yronwood, an anointed knight of that house. When he just a boy his father was killed in the Dornish Marches, fighting side by side with the heir to Wyl in one of the last border conflicts before Dorne was brought into the Seven Kingdoms. Arron spent much of his youth at Wyl, where he learned the use of spear and shield alongside Lord Wyl's sons from Lord Wyl's household guard and master-at-arms, where he dined at Lord Wyl's table and where he learned to kiss from Lord Wyl's two daughters.
He relocated to the Port of Wyl when his mother married in earnest after long years grieving the death of Arron's father, and Arron found a role as a sworn sword to his relations there. Even then, though, he did not evade notice as one of Lord Wyl's best men-at-arms. He had a great talent for sword and spear, moreso than any of his cohort save Ryon Sand, who men had come to call the White Hawk after winning duel after duel. Arron was less ambitious, less interested in fame and notoriety than Ryon Sand, but at the urging of Qyle Wyl, his childhood friend and now a knight of his lord father's court, he took it upon himself to travel to the Free City of Pentos and sign on with a newly formed sellsword company, the Brave Companions.
Key Members of House Wyl:
Lord Wyl, the aged lord of Wyl, a cunning and guileful man nursing a long-held grudge against the Stormlands' Marcher Lords. Ser Wyland Wyl, firstborn son of Lord Wyl, killed in a skirmish in the Dornish Marches near twenty years ago. Ser Lewyn Wyl, second son of Lord Wyl and heir to the house. Married to Carolei Dayne of House Dayne. Ser Qyle Wyl, third son of Lord Wyl and knight, pledged to the company of the Brave Companions.
Dorea Wyl, a cousin to the main line of House Wyl and Arron's mother.
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