36 Chapter 35

Want to read ahead of the chapters here? Consider supporting me and get access to up 10+ advanced chapters: patreón.com/theliarspath

xxxx

Kevan I

It had only been a day after the first letter that the second one came. Had it been from anyone else, Kevan Lannister would have dismissed it entirely as a delusional maester's mistake, but the handwriting and the crimson signet ring at the bottom confirmed it was from Tywin.

The first one had been beyond strange on its own. Send Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, and his freeriders to clean up bandits in Dorne, of all places. Kevan had almost laughed when he read it, and even Dorna thought he'd come down with something when she caught him shaking in his solar. Tywin might as well have ordered he sent a headsman and a chopping block with them.

Still, he signed and sent the bird to Clegane's Keep that morning, and got an answer the next day by whichever poor maester got saddled with that castle. Ser Gregor and his men had promptly gone their merry way. As a son of the Rock, Kevan believed that every Lannister had a duty towards their vassals, but he had to admit he was happy that a man like the Mountain would finally get his just end.

The second one was a different matter entirely. He knew Tywin planned to appoint him as his successor as Hand of the King the moment he heard Jaime was coming back to Casterly Rock to assume his place as his brother's heir.

Kevan was tired of the marching and the scheming and the wars, and of burying his son. He had no wish to leave his home, to leave Dorna and little Janei and Martyn.

But he would do it.

He was a knight, and a knight served his liege. But most importantly, he was a younger brother, and laws older than the Seven Kingdoms governed his life the moment he was born. Tywin would lead, and he would follow.

And so he said his goodbyes at the Rock's gate, to his lovely Dorna and her tearful eyes, and Janei bawling in his arms for one last hug; Martyn, tall and fair for his age, shaking his hand with a strength Kevan didn't know the lad had in him, and even Gemma seemed more emotional than usual.

It all felt like he was a man marching toward the gallows.

xxxx

They'd been riding hard for near a week when Riverrun came into sight. It was the final hours of dusk, and the fine mist that hung about the three-sided castle caught the golden-red light of the fading sun like a net and spit it back in a thousand different shades of crimson and rose, peach and amber.

Kevan reigned in his charger and stopped atop a hill overlooking the confluence of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork. Riverrun sat right where they met, with a man-made ditch cutting off access on the land side. Its walls rose straight out of the water, made of red sandstone and mounted by crenelated battlements; a half-dozen narrow towers stuck out from behind the walls like a crown of swords. Over the ramparts of the river-bound castle, two flags flew high and proud in the wind, as if in open defiance of what stood surrounding them. The leaping silver trout of House Tully and the running grey wolf of House Stark.

"My Lord?" Ser Jason rode up beside him. Kevan was no lord, only a knight in his brother's service, but he'd grown tired of correcting the man every time. He knew it was out of respect more than anything.

Ser Jason Hill was one of the fifty knights and a hundred mounted spearmen that formed his retinue for this… expedition. He'd sent another hundred and fifty knights and three hundred Lannister spearmen to the capital before he left, to wait for his arrival there.

"Will we stop at the siege, my lord?" the knight asked when he kept silent.

Siege? Is that what this is? Kevan looked down across the rolling plains around the castle, to the hundreds and hundreds of ratty tents scattered haphazardly over the muck and mud. There were no lines set or pickets placed around the three camps, and no ditches were dug in the perimeters. Above them all, tiny banners with the twin towers of Frey hung sodden and limp in the air.

The Blackfish must look outside his walls everyday and laugh, Kevan thought. They'll not make a man like Ser Brynden Tully dip his banners with as pitiful a showing as this.

"No," he finally said. "We'll skirt off the River Road here, then take it back a half-days away. If they don't have scouts spotting us here, they won't have them ten miles east either. Our own charge takes precedence. I'll inform Lord Tywin of the… ill state of the siege in another opportunity." He turned his horse back and rode south, away from the road. The column of Lannister men followed him, their brown, inconspicuous cloaks blowing in the breeze.

For the next four days, Kevan and his retinue rode across the burnt out husk that was once the Riverlands. Whole villages laid pillaged and abandoned, with corpses still littering their streets. Where once were endless fields of golden grain, the soil now was grey and charred and dead. All the barns and farmhouses they came upon had been reduced to ashes. And when they reached Riverbend, they had to leave the road due to the constant stream of ragged-dressed refugees clogging the road.

Before they fled the busy road, Kevan saw a young woman by the roadside, no older than sixteen, with a child hanging on either hip. She was all skin and bones, and what was left of her was being suckled out of her teats by her brood. He'd left her a silver stag before turning his horse off into the brush.

Duty. That was the word he repeated to himself, day and night after that. Duty. All he'd done was out of duty for his brother and his family. A man cannot be ashamed of that—should not be ashamed of that.

Yet for four days, when Kevan Lannister laid at his cot at night, his dreams were haunted by women and children wearing scrawny, charred suits of skin.

On the fifth day, they made camp an hour's ride north of the Inn at the Crossroads. Tywin had not seen fit to inform him how he knew they would be passing this way, nor when exactly it would happen. He only told him to be there and wait until it happened. He'd gotten stranger commands in his over forty years of serving his brother; this one wouldn't be any different.

He would sit and camp and wait, until Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark came out of wherever they were hiding and into the clutches of the lion.