ASOIAF/Game Of Thrones: Ruler of Batannia

Arthur tapped his fingers lightly against the rough wooden table.

Perhaps this was an opportunity. If the royal party came north, so did guards, merchants, servants, wagons, retainers, and all the smaller needs that followed powerful men. Nobles always dragged work behind them, and work meant coin. The Battanian Rangers were still young, still too small to matter, but royal attention had a way of making even small names grow faster. A commission from the wrong noble might kill them. A commission from the right one might feed them for a moon.

He kept listening. The route. The size of the royal party. The expected day of arrival. What supplies Winterfell had requested. Which merchants were already raising prices. Who thought the king would hunt. Who thought the queen had brought half of Casterly Rock with her. Most of it was gossip. Gossip was not useless. It was simply truth wearing cheap perfume.

A few days later, dust rose at the far end of the Kingsroad.

Wintertown emptied itself into the streets.

The royal party was larger than rumor had promised. That was typical of kings. Even their arrivals had to be fat. The black stag of House Baratheon flew beside the crowned stag of the royal house. Crimson and gold appeared too often for Arthur's liking. Lannister colors. Supply wagons rolled over the road with a heavy rumble, loaded with chests, barrels, cloth-covered bundles, and all the comforts people brought when they feared living like everyone else. Men-at-arms rode in disciplined lines. Courtiers followed. Servants walked beside wagons. Pages struggled to look important.

At the center of the procession moved a great wheelhouse, carved and painted, its windows covered with fine silk. It looked less like a carriage and more like a small insult to everyone who had ever walked through mud. Queen Cersei Lannister was inside, or so the whispers said. Arthur believed it. The thing had the arrogance of a lion even before one saw the lioness.

Ena pulled at Arthur's sleeve and pushed forward through the crowd, eyes bright with excitement. She was still young enough to be impressed by kings. Arthur did not blame her. Power was designed to look magnificent from a distance. That was how it survived.

"Look," she whispered. "That is him. King Robert."

Arthur looked.

Robert Baratheon rode near the front on a black warhorse. He was massive, broad and heavy, with a thick black beard and a red cloak embroidered with gold. His crown sat on his head as if it had been hammered there by force rather than right. He looked like a warrior who had kept eating after the wars ended. Beside him rode Eddard Stark, leaner, quieter, wrapped in grey, his face grave beneath the northern sky. The contrast was almost too clean. A king who looked like appetite. A lord who looked like duty.

The people cheered.

Robert seemed to enjoy it.

Arthur's gaze did not linger on the king for long. He looked instead at the others. Jaime Lannister, golden and beautiful in the irritating way dangerous men often were, riding with one hand near his sword and a smile that looked too sharp to be kind. Queen Cersei behind silk, visible only in glimpses, pale and composed and colder than the North had any right to be. The royal children, young and bright and unknowingly trapped in bloodlines sharper than blades. The white cloaks of the Kingsguard, silent and watchful, not decorations but weapons polished for display.

Each one of them was a piece on the board.

Some knew it.

Some did not.

That was usually how pieces died.

The royal procession passed through Wintertown and climbed toward Winterfell under cheers and stares. Only when the last wagon vanished through the castle gates did the crowd begin to loosen. People spoke over one another, repeating what they had seen as if speaking would make it larger. The king's beard. The queen's carriage. Jaime's hair. The white cloaks. The size of the horses. The number of wagons. Men loved details when they could not touch power itself.

Ena was still excited as they walked back toward their lodging.

"You do not seem moved," she said, studying him.

"It is just a king," Arthur replied.

She stared at him as if he had insulted all seven gods at once.

"Just a king?"

"He did not give me coin. He did not hire us. He did not hand me a castle. What should I be excited about?"

"You only care about money."

"We are mercenaries," Arthur said. "If we do not care about money, what should we care about? Honor? Honor does not feed men. It does not buy axes, boots, shields, horses, arrows, or bread. Men praise honor most when someone else is paying for it."

Ena rolled her eyes, but she did not answer quickly.

Arthur spoke lightly, but his mind was elsewhere. The royal party had entered Winterfell surrounded by knights, guards, nobles, servants, and suspicion. He had hoped for some opening, some loose thread he could pull. There was none. A foreign mercenary captain with no house, no patron, and no proven name could not simply walk near the king. He could barely approach the castle gates without being remembered as a questionable stranger from the snow.

More troubling was Bran.

Arthur remembered fragments. A boy falling from a tower. Jaime and Cersei. An accident that was not an accident. The start of everything. But days passed after Robert's arrival, and no scream shook Winterfell. No boy fell. No whisper spread through Wintertown. No frantic riders came down from the castle. The calm felt wrong.

Had the story changed?

Had he remembered the timing badly?

Or had the shadows not yet moved?

Arthur disliked questions he could not act on. Since he had no way into the royal circle and no proof of anything, he turned back to what he could control: the Battanian Rangers. Men. Coin. Discipline. Reputation. If Westeros was beginning to crack, then standing too close to great lords with empty hands would only get him buried beneath the rubble.

A few days later, deep in the Wolfswood, ten Battanian Wolf Cubs moved through the trees.

They wore grey-green roughspun and leather, their faces smeared with mud and ash. They had begun as recruits, too young in the eyes and too eager in the hands. The Wolfswood had improved them. Cold did that. Hunger did too. Under Katel's command, they had learned to move quietly, read tracks, hide their shapes among trees and brush, and strike as a group rather than as boys pretending to be warriors.

The lead scout raised a hand and closed it into a fist.

Everyone stopped.

The brush ahead shook. A wild boar burst into the clearing, large and thick-bodied, its tusks dark with mud. It snorted, small eyes moving from shadow to shadow, sensing danger but not yet knowing where to charge. A boar was not noble prey. No bard would sing of it unless the bard had lost a bet. But a boar could open a man from thigh to belly if he grew careless. That made it worth respect.

Katel signaled.

The Wolf Cubs spread out in silence. Two moved behind to cut off its retreat. Three raised their shields at the front, and the others moved along the sides, axes ready. They had trained this. Surround, hold, strike without ruining the pelt. Complete hides sold better. There was nothing romantic about that. Coin had its own kind of poetry.

The boar lowered its head and charged.

"Now," Katel ordered.

The three in front braced behind their shields. The boar struck hard enough to drive them back, tusks scraping across wood. Two boys on the flank rushed in and slammed the backs of their axes into its ribs. The animal screamed and twisted, trying to break through the ring. The Wolf Cubs closed again, nervous but steady, shields locking it in, axes striking where Katel pointed.

"Do not cut the hide," Katel said. "Stun it. A clean skin sells higher."

The boar staggered.

Then hoofbeats sounded beyond the trees.

Voices followed.

"Your Grace, the tracks went this way. The white-tailed deer cannot be far."

"Hurry, then! I mean to take the beast myself and have it with my ale tonight."

Katel's expression changed. He gave the signal to hide. The Wolf Cubs dragged the half-conscious boar into the thicker brush and vanished as best they could, holding their breath.

A moment later, riders entered the clearing.

King Robert Baratheon came first.

He wore hunting leathers instead of royal splendor, but the man still looked too large for the world around him. A heavy warhammer rested in his hand, absurd for deer hunting, though Robert looked like the sort of man who would solve most problems by hitting them until they became smaller. Behind him came Kingsguard in white and Winterfell men, tense and watchful around their king.

Robert reined in his horse and looked around.

"Strange," he muttered. "The tracks came this way."

One of the white cloaks dismounted and inspected the ground. His eyes moved over the scuffed snow, broken brush, and dark drops of boar blood.

"Someone hunted here before us, Your Grace," he said. "Several men. The footwork looks practiced. Hunters, perhaps."

Robert narrowed his eyes and looked into the surrounding trees.

"Friends in the forest," he called, his voice booming through the clearing. "Come out. I will not blame men for hunting before me."

Katel remained still for a moment. Hiding after being noticed would only make them look like poachers or worse. He signaled the others to stay where they were, then stepped from the brush alone.

He walked forward and bowed with one hand to his chest.

"Your Grace."

Robert looked him over with interest. Katel was lean, mud-painted, and calm, wearing his wolf-eared leather cap and woodland gear. He did not tremble. That seemed to amuse the king.

"What clan are you from?" Robert asked. "I do not know that dress."

"The Battanians, Your Grace," Katel answered. "We live by the forests and hills, and we hunt where we can."

"Battanians," Robert repeated.

He glanced back toward Maester Luwin, who had accompanied the party. The old maester shook his head slightly. He did not know the name. That meant little in the North. The mountains and woods held many small clans and forgotten names. Some were real. Some were invented by men who needed the world to believe them.

Robert did not press the matter. Etiquette had never been his strongest chain.

"You hunt well," the king said. "A grown boar is no easy thing." He pointed toward the brush. "Though I might say that boar was in the path of my deer."

Katel lowered his head slightly. "The forest belongs to no man, Your Grace. If you want the boar, we will give it."

Robert stared at him.

Then he laughed.

It was loud enough to shake snow from nearby branches.

"You have a spine. Good. I will not rob hunters of their kill. The whole North would laugh at me." He turned his horse. "Come. The deer is still ahead somewhere, unless it has more sense than we do."

The king rode on with his guards, the sound of hoofbeats fading between the trees.

Only when they were gone did the Wolf Cubs emerge from hiding, dragging the stunned boar back into the clearing.

"Was that truly the king?" one of the younger recruits asked.

"Yes," Katel said.

The boy swallowed. "He spoke to you."

"He spoke to the man standing in front of him. That is all." Katel looked toward the direction the riders had gone. "Tie the boar. We return to Wintertown. No one speaks of this unless Arthur asks. A king's notice can be useful, but it can also bring trouble."

The others nodded.

They understood enough to be afraid.

That night, Katel stood before Arthur in the Battanian Rangers' temporary station and gave his report.

Arthur listened without interrupting, fingers tapping lightly against the table.

"The king saw you," Arthur said after a while. "And asked about the Battanians."

"Yes, my lord. He praised the hunt. Maester Luwin did not seem to know the name."

Arthur was silent.

That was expected. Luwin would remember the lie now. A clan no one knew, tied to a foreign mercenary leader of uncertain origin, suddenly seen hunting in the Wolfswood by the king himself. It was a small thing. Most likely too small to matter. But small things had teeth in Westeros. Arthur had learned that quickly.

Still, there was no immediate gain. No contract. No patronage. No royal favor. Only a faint impression in Robert Baratheon's mind, and Robert's mind was probably crowded with wine, hunts, old wars, and dead women.

Arthur needed tangible things.

Coin. Men. Reputation.

Those did not vanish when a king grew bored.

Before he could say more, the door opened sharply.

Ena walked in, face tense.

"Barro has been robbed."

Arthur looked up.

"How badly?"

"Badly enough that he might weep blood. The fine furs he bought after White Harbor are gone. Wolf pelts, bear pelts, the best of them. Not one left."

Arthur stood.

The king had arrived. The North was holding its breath. The old story was beginning to move.

And someone had chosen that exact moment to rob a fur merchant.

Men were wonderfully consistent.

"Let us go," Arthur said. "Before Barro tears his own shop apart looking for someone to blame."