12 Farewells (1)
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[William's POV]
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When I turned 6 (ten moons ago), my father gifted me a bow at my request...
As I asked, there was nothing special about it, neither by its shape nor by the wood with which it was made, apart from making sure that my bow was adapted to my morphology, no other guidelines were given for its manufacture.
The reasoning behind this choice for simplicity was simple; it would be counterproductive to use a bow that didn't match my abilities, therefore, I and my inexistant archery skills deserved a basic one.
Thinking that his son's interest in the art of killing had become more concrete, my father being the good parent that he was, began to train me himself, a help that I welcomed with great enthusiasm since the scene of Hoster's funeral in the series was proof that my father's talent wasn't limited to his renowed swordsmanship.
[I'm assuming that you are aware of what scene I'm talking about.]
Due to the knowledge I had of archery from my former world, I had in my memory all the known types of aiming coming from it as well as their weak and strong points, I knew which placement to adopt according to the shot I had to make, I knew how to react to wind fluctuations, in short, I had the theoretical potential to become at least a remarkable archer...
One might think that this knowledge would be a source of overconfidence for me, but I was aware that there was a world between the words 'knowing' and 'doing' in this discipline, and knowing in advance everything I had to take into account to properly shoot a fucking arrow was precisely what made me realize how much I needed my father and his experience to learn archery.
My father was the most methodical person I knew whether it was in this world or the former one, behind all his gestures there was a certain precision, whether it was for a banal action or not, so even before I found myself under his teaching, I had the strong intuition that I would quickly progress with his help...
This intuition turned out to be true (without any real surprise on my part)...
I learned a lot from him and he also learned a bit from me.
I had several concerns before getting into it, such as how to constantly keep a perfect posture as well as how to stay as stable as possible before shooting an arrow, I hadn't expressed these concerns to my father beforehand and yet he identified them only after 8 shots (maybe even less than that but I'm taking as a reference the exact moment when he interpellated me on these things)...
Having the habit of learning everything on my own, or with the help of Maestre Corwyn, but in any case not from my father, I didn't know what exactly to expect from his 'learning method' (other than that it would be effective) and I was amazed at how good he could be as a teacher.
In order to give me confidence my father first mentioned the positive points in what he had just observed, such as the fact that I seemed to have already determined which one of my eyes was my directing one, as well as the placement of my two hands, which was quite good according to him...
I thought that after these few words of encouragement he was going to follow up by throwing at my face everything I had done wrong since I myself was aware that the list of my mistakes was long, but instead of that he only corrected my leg placement before asking me to train while taking this adjustment into account until this way of positioning my legs became natural...
My infallible memory strongly helping me not to repeat the same mistakes and enabling me to keep in mind what I was doing well, my father was very quickly satisfied with what he was seeing me do and in the same way that we corrected the placement of my legs (figuratively speaking, a skilled archer could tell that it wasn't perfect, or even excellent), we then dealt with each of my other flaws one by one.
From a total beginner unable to put an arrow in the 1 meter diameter straw target he was practicing on (in other words, Bran in the first episode of Game of Thrones), I became in the span of two moons an archer who wouldn't miss his target as long as it was less than 25 meters away from him and bigger than a watermelon...
Nevertheless, I was far from being satisfied with my level and I was hoping that with my father's assistance, some time and effort, I would become much better...
However, overnight I could no longer rely on one of these 3 things.
At the dawn of a promising morning, while I was warming up and waiting for my father to arrive to work on my breathing with him (a very important aspect of archery), he arrived in the courtyard of the castle with a wooden sword in one of his hand...
I was looking at him approaching me with a confused look on my face, not understanding what was going on, then he threw the wooden sword at my feet and said 'give up' with a dry tone and a sharp gaze that was leaving no room for negotiation...
I understood it instantly, my father wasn't implicitly telling me that I was a mediocre archer and that I should better dedicate myself only to swordsmanship in the hope to have any talent in it, no, if he reacted so violently it meant two things; he had guessed what was the reason why I wanted to progress quickly in archery and he greatly disapproved.
I didn't answer, instead I slowly lowered my head towards the wooden sword a few centimeters ahead of my boots...
If my father wasn't going to help me then I had very little chance of succeeding in what I was planning to do and therefore it wasn't worth the risk...
Defeated, I bent down to pick up the wooden sword and, for once, reacted as a child 'my age' would most of the time if something wasn't going his way; copious tears started flowing down my cheeks.
I was terribly sad but not mad at anyone, I knew I was in the wrong in this matter, so instead of protesting I did what my father expected of me; I gave up and drowned my sorrow by learning swordsmanship with him.
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[Brynden's POV]
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I didn't realize the impact my father's impending death had on William until it got him to do something really stupid...
I should have understood immediately what he had in mind when he suddenly announced to me that he wanted to learn archery whereas before that he had shown much more interest in learning swordsmanship, but instead it took me several moons to connect the dots; he wanted to be the one to set my father's vessel ablaze during his funeral.
[The funeral customs of House Tully decree that a deceased member is placed on a small boat among stones to make the boat heavy in the water, and driftwood, kindling and scraps of parchment to allow it to catch fire (I spared you the details of decorations). In honor of the Faith, seven men are chosen to push the funeral boat to the water. Using a flaming arrow, the boat is lit afire. The dead thus rests in the bed of the Red Fork.]
I knew that was what he was planning to do, however, I still couldn't understand what had made him believe that my brother and I would let him have his way...
Even if William was the best archer in the world, which he was very far from being, it wouldn't matter because letting him do that would amount to letting him go against the tradition of our House which dictated that it was the responsability of the new Lord of House Tully to set ablaze the vessel of the previous one during the funeral of the latter...
Several deviations from this tradition have been made throughout the history of our House but only when the new Lord in question was too young or too incompetent to be able to complete the task and since Hoster was neither, that honor belonged to him and only him.
Anyway, it didn't matter anymore, William's behavior over the past few months was a very clear sign that he had really given up...
He had thrown himself wholeheartedly into learning swordsmanship and although the beginnings were as complicated as those of archery, his margin of progress over time in comparison was even more frightening...
It was difficult in general to get an idea of a child's potential on these things, but I was very optimistic in William's case because in the long run, he always ended up excelling in everything he was attempting.
He truly was my greatest source of pride...
As well as my greatest source of concern...
William wasn't just a Tully but also a Redwyne through his mother, until recently this didn't mean much, (on our side we were occasionnally receiving Arbor gold from House Redwyne and on the other Lord Redwyne could boast of having a grandson from me; that was the extent of the relationship between our Houses) but lately this kinship had taken a more sinister turn.
[House Redwyne is one of the main noble houses sworn to the Tyrells of Highgarden. Their seat is the Arbor, an island located off the southwestern-most part of Westeros, known for making the best wines in Westeros. The Redwynes control the largest fleet in Westeros, containing two hundred warships and five times as many merchant carracks, wine cogs, trading galleys, and whalers. The sigil of House Redwyne is a burgundy grape cluster on blue, symbolizing the famed wines of the Arbor.]
The rest of my family tended to forget this, but the Queen of Thorns was born a Redwyne and thus shared the same blood as my son...
Before it wasn't something I was particularly worried about neither, however, everything changed when my House started to get outrageously wealthy since I knew it was only a matter of time before she stuck her nose into our activities and tried using William to gain some sort of control over us.
I had brought this issue several times to Hoster, but it was only now that the threat was no longer ignorable that he gave it importance...
Not long ago we received a missive by raven from Highgarden signed by Olenna Tyrell herself saying that she would be present at my father's funeral and that she would use the occasion to meet her grandnephew...
Since the imminence of my father's death wasn't supposed to be known information and that I highly doubted that the Queen of Thorns was unaware that only our most loyal bannermen were invited to the funeral, I understood all the implications (spoken or not) of her message and especially the innuendo that if I didn't want something that I would regret to happen, then this encounter between my son and her had to take place.
