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The Vale, Gulltown, a little over a month ago (OOC: a few hours before the post above)
Lord Robert Arryn
Tournaments in Westeros and duels performed in the Vale under the presence of women were under the aegis of the Queen of Love and Beauty. A relatively recent custom, ever since Lady Jeyne Arryn had been crowned thus shortly after coming into her majority. It was Alyse Arryn, therefore, who was responsible for supervising the formalities attendant upon the challenge issued between her recently returned kinsman Robert Arryn and Gerold Egen.
This had been coming for a long time now, Alyse knew. Robert’s return had been far from welcomed by all. Only the Grafton and the Arryns of Gulltown had openly supported him from the first day, quickly joined by House Royce – a maternal relation, for Robert’s mother had been a sister to their lord. Those that had orbited around Lord Donnel had formed a faction, ever eager to bristle against Robert’s reign. Headed by a scion of House Egen, they were quick to criticise the new Lord of the Eyrie and his more… direct approach of ruling. Like stallions that have been given too much rein, Alyse thought, the boisterous confidants of Donnel had to be broken in once more.
Donnel, and his father Jon before him, had kept their youthful wildness focused on a plethora of tourneys. Instead, no tournaments were being held this year, as Robert had ordered them to train their lances on the Mountain Clans that had grown bold of late. Already he had ridden out, while the snows had still lain on the mountainside to check their raiding. She had spoken with him when he returned, still smelling of blood, mud and leather, and asked. Asked him why he had ordered his bannermen to tackle the Clansmen.
“They have been too long unchecked,” he had said, looking at her with an intensity that most men lacked.
“The Clansmen?” She had heard herself asking incredulously. Those savages had always been unchecked, stubbornly refusing to give up their primitive way of life and welcome civilisation. Alyse had also heard her distant cousin laugh, with a lace of scorn in his voice that never seemed to leave.
“Not them. Well, them too. I meant these pompous petty lordlings and knights. They have become accustomed to their freedoms, while it is their place to serve. They owe me their allegiance, and I intend to demand it from them if not freely given.” Robert had shrugged his broad shoulders then, and scoffed. “Besides, I have no use for striplings and untried lads. Better to send the meat to the borders, have it bloodied and then take it back when it’s seasoned.”
They had played at war for too long, and concluded knighthood meant fancy feasts, warm women and titillating tourneys. Robert had robbed them of that fantasy.
Ser Gerold Egen had been most vocal in his protests and uttered a challenge against his new bannerlord, questioning his mettle. Robert had shunned tournaments in his youth, and only participated in a handful later, in spite of them being a large part of the Vale’s culture. Aside from that accusation, Ser Gerold had called his Lord Robin. Robin. The room had gone very quiet, then, as Robert’s chair slowly scraped across the floor. Standing tall and upright he had glowered down Gerold and plainly stated that “the time for ‘Robin’ is over, Ser. I shall see you in a fortnight at Gulltown.” He had sighed and added that Gerold should “lay off the wine. We shall both feel better for it.”
Nevertheless, Alyse still had to stifle a chuckle when she remembered her kinsman calmly accepting Gerold’s challenge. Loud Gerold, arrogant Gerold. Perhaps part of it hailed from her scorning his advances.
Nevertheless, Alyse Arryn had dismissed the notion as a foolish one. A sitting lord accepting a challenge was… risky. It was not unheard of, but it was the sort of thing that made or broke a man. Should Robert lose, he would lose everything. It was not unthinkable for him to be forced to abdicate in favour of a more ‘suitable’ candidate. While he had won over most of the Vale’s houses, the knighthood in itself still had a way to go adapting to his authority.
What had surprised Alyse, was that Robert had sought her out the evening of the challenge to ask her about Ser Gerold. As ever when in a room with him, she felt unsettled, aware he was observing everything. Robert noticed things. He noticed a great deal, a truth the court had come to acknowledge quickly the past year. “I have no idea,” she had said in response to her prognostic, reclining prettily on an upholstered divan in a room overlooking the valley. “I cannot decide because I do not know how well you fight. I do know that Gerold would not be speaking for that ruffian clique if he would not be very good indeed.”
Ser Raymar Royce, one of Robert’s maternal cousins and childhood friend, had also been present, contributing that, “Gerold? He is good.” He poured an early glass of wine, which – considering Robert’s opinion on such a habit because of his own brother’s history – was perhaps unwise. “So is Robert.”
“What weapons shall I allow?” Alyse, in her formal capacity could set some rules. “I could easily-”
Robert had interrupted her, shaking his head quickly. “No point. He uses what he wants, so do I. He thinks he is playing a game, no matter what arms he will learn ‘t is not.”
“There… is a point to all this, I hope?” Alyse had brazenly forayed, eliciting a laugh from Raymar. She had seen Robert engaging the question in his mind, formulating an answer. Perhaps he was surprised this was coming from her, from a woman, but Alyse well-remembered his sister, her own kinswoman Sharra. He had said she reminded him of her, he had. That was perhaps the reason why he allowed her brashness.
“This whole affair is about how we are seen in the eyes of the world. I lose too much if I am thought to be afraid of him or to be arranging things to my obvious advantage. Grateful for your concern, dear cousin, but there is no point in going through with Gerold’s challenge if I manipulate it.”
And that had been the end of it.
“He will try to cut downwards on the angle and then back across low for your knees,” Raymar said as he was tightening the drawstrings and sets of straps on his lord’s armour. These words of advice were born from concern. A concern Robert had known himself often enough.
Robert was not really concentrating though, either on the warnings or the increasing level of sound he could hear from the pavilions. When he and Ser Gerold were ready to emerge from their tents the sounds would rise to an anticipating crescendo and then fall for the ceremony of introduction – a few words of Alyse in this case –, before beginning again on a different note when the fight began. It was the same the world over. He had seen it all over Westeros, all over the Free Cities.
“He’ll have a knife in his belt and one behind his left calf,” Raymar murmured. “Beware his thrusts, they’re a diversion. He’s known for that. Keep your shield up.”
Robert really was not paying close attention, even though they meant him a world of good. The Lord of the Vale’s mind wandered shortly before battle, drifting along unexpected pathways across the years. It kept him calm, even when he remembered Sharra and all the bad blood between himself and the rest of his family. It kept him calm, until the moment before the fight began, when the feeling was akin to a muffling curtain pulled swiftly aside and he would feel all his senses converge like arrows upon the battleground.
Just now he was remembering how he had shook Donnel after Sharra’s death. How his father had merely nodded, ignoring Donnel’s blatant guilt. Robert wasn’t sure why his thoughts revisited that instance. Maybe as he grew older, saw more of the world and partook in its interactions, he was coming to understand the degree to which the Arryn men had poisoned each other.
Through a gap in the tent flap behind the heads of his squires attending on him, Robert could see the glare of sunlight, a glimpse of the dazzling colours of the pavilions and the green grass where he would be fighting soon.
He stood up, Raymar reached around his waist and buckled on the long dagger in a plain soldier’s scabbard. From the table he hefted the winged helmet and set it on his head. He then offered the round shield that would be strapped to his left forearm. Moon and falcon were painted upon it.
Robert came out into the sunshine and the green grass of the battleground, a short ride from the Gates of the Moon. Gerold Egen was the first person he saw, standing at the entrance of his own tent on the far side of the field. His house’s banner was flying behind him: a yellow sun, white crescent moon, and silver star on a blue chief, above a white field. Gerold’s shield was polished, gilded in places. Robert glanced east to check and remember the angle of the sun; that shield could blind him if his challenger used it to catch and throw back the rays of light.
Trumpets sounded, briefly, and both men turned towards the central stand as the Alyse, the Queen of Love and Beauty from the last tournament, stepped forward. “To my left,” cried she at last, her silver voice carrying over the grass and the densely packed stages, “stands Ser Gerold of House Egen, prepared to lay his life before the Seven in this matter of his honour and that of his family.” Alyse turned toward Robert. “To my other hand,” she proclaimed, poised in spite of her young age, “equally prepared to defend the honour of his name, stands Ser Robert Arryn, Lord of the Vale, answering the challenge and to prove his right of lordship before the assembled audience and upon this field where the Seven are judges of strength and worth.” Alyse took a moment’s pause, then continued. “Lord Robert has also declared that this combat freely entered into by him against Ser Gerold shall serve as a warrant for the worth of his claim. He willingly lays his life at hazard before you all in this moment of asserting his right to title and lands.”
The noise, the screams were deafening afterwards. Robert knew how to quell that sound. To bring the pavilions and stands back, like hunting dogs to heel, to what lay ahead of them now on this green grass beneath the morning sun. He wheeled the horseman’s pick around in his gauntlet and shook loose his shoulders.
The ceremony was over, the pomp dispensed with. Words were wind.
Ser Gerold drew his sword, pulled upon a clasp and let his belt drop to the ground from where it was quickly collected by an industrious squire. He was smiling before he clicked shut his helmet. The knight moved forward, light on his feet as a tumbler for all his size, for all his armour, and Robert, watching closely, saw that his first steps carried a little west. Just as he had expected. Gerold was a tall man, quick and brave. A dandy perhaps but still a trained fighter with a longing to humiliate his liege.
Moving forward himself, Robert found what he was looking for. His small round shield resting on his left forearm allowed his fingers to be fee. Thus, he held his weapon with his left hand, stooped and hurled a lump of earth squarely at Ser Gerold. At the gleaming shield in particular. The knight stopped, surprised, leaving enough time to rattle another dulling handful of dirt against the shield before Robert straightened and took proper hold of his war hammer.
Ser Gerold Egen was no longer smiling. It was Robert who grinned maliciously now. “Too shiny a toy, Ser. By Day or Night,” he said in mockery of the Egen words. “I’ll have it cleaned afterwards, but tell me. How many men have you blinded with it like the coward you are?”
“I wonder,” said Ser Gerold after a short silence, his voice thickened by passion, “if you have any idea of how much pleasure your humiliating defeat will bring me.”
“I probably do. Now use that blade you carry.”
Ser Gerold was good indeed. More than able, sorely provoked. The first strike, as Raymar had predicted, was a downward angled slash on his backhand. Robert parried smoothly, guiding it short of his body but then was only barely quick enough – even with the anticipation – to block the vicious return sweep. The impact of arms was enough to numb his wrist. Ser Gerold was strong, and his reactions were even quicker than Robert had guessed they would be.
Robert twisted, dropped and parried trusting his reflexes and instinct, the skills he had painstakingly acquired over the years during combat. Still, Ser Gerold pressed on, pushed him back and managed to slide his blade past Robert’s defence. He deflected most of it with his small round shield, but was cut.
He felt a searing pain in his left shoulder, where Gerold’s swordpoint had pierced the mail. The crowd howled deep and low. “Now that is pretty. Throw some mud on it like the peasant you are. You seem to enjoy digging in the ground.”
Ser Gerold Egen had offended not only him, but his house. With all its shortcomings, House Arryn was still one of the noblest ones in existence. Robert thought of the long lineage he was a part of, and with that his anger was upon him. The old, familiar, frightening demon that could come to him in battle or the bedroom.
“Spare your breath,” he said thickly and surged up to engage the other man. There were no words then, not any more. No space for words, no breath, only the rapid chittering and clattering of metal on metal, the heavy clangs when sword or pick hit shield. Gerold’s thigh was gashed, but so was Robert’s calf. So far he had not been crippled by any blow, still on his feet. By then it had become clear to Gerold and Robert. Ceremony had truly gone. The shadow of death was here, the Stranger’s breath in their necks.
Some things about fighting Robert had had to teach himself, or learn from his brother at those rare intervals when he was not out and would consent to give him a lesson. He had learned quite a few years later than most young men in the Vale, after the fire. The greater part of his martial education had come in the field, in Essos, in war and fighting the Clansmen. The life of a wartime knight, of a sword-for-hire was dangerous and he had been far too green, too callow to expect to walk away alive. It had been his way of escaping Sharra’s death and his family’s stifling presence.
He had enough scars as badges of remembrance, each lessons learned in the craft of killing and surviving. In any case, Robert proceeded to force Gerold to use his shield again and again, to lift it high against forehand blows aimed towards shoulder and head. With each warded blow in upward defence, Ser Gerold’s wound would be forced open more and his battered arm and side would grow weaker. It was straightforward, routine.
But he was fooled. Gerold brought to bear his reserves of speed and strength, tackled his lord and almost threw him to the ground. Then he bashed Robert with his shield, teeth-jarring hard. Thrusting his sword, Gerold succeeded in tipping over Lord Arryn and wanted to come in for the kill. Robert though, had no intention of dying easily and flung his round shield like a disk at his opponent’s shins. It bounced of the plates, but allowed for enough time for him to draw the poniard from his scabbard and jam it into Gerold’s sword arm. He went limp, and Robert followed up with another stab in the side, where the plate showed chainmail underneath. Two quick jabs in the ribs, swift punches with steel at the end.
“Yield,” Ser Gerold Egen gurgled. “I Yield! I Yield!” He started screeching but it devolved quickly into just wet sounds. “Y-y-y…”
An unfortunate death, but not unnecessary. Unexpected, definitely but not unacceptable or dishonourable. So passed Ser Gerold Egen, as a message, as proof. Mortality had been made harshly manifest that day with a man broken and bleeding on that green patch of grass. He had paid for his defiance, for his cock-sureness and served as a stamp of Lord Robert’s willingness to go to all lengths. There were some who would claim it was murder, but it was not. A fight to the death was hardly new, and tested a man’s courage and the powers behind him.
Robert would later put the battered, dented armour on display in the throne room of the Eyrie. It lined the round wall together with other suits, but those were meticulous, pristine. At times, mostly in the waking hours, he came there to look at it. To trace his fingers along the edge of the hole where his horseman’s pick had punctured the thick steel. To remind himself as much as to remind his bannermen and subjects.
