Trials and Tribulations of the Oathkeeper

Chapter 15: The Seed is Strong

Red Keep ― Throne room...

Daveth sat high upon the immense ancient Iron Throne forged by Aegon the Conqueror, an ironwork monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges and grotesquely twisted metal. It was, as Robert had warned him, a hellishly uncomfortable chair. The metal beneath him had grown harder by the hour, and the fanged steel behind made it impossible to lean back. Sitting next to him was Lord Petyr Baelish, Grand Maester Pycelle and the re-instated Hand of the King Lord Eddard Stark. Pycelle stirred uneasily beside him, while Littlefinger toyed with a pen. Eddard stood beside the Crown Prince, acting as Daveth's principal advisor. King Robert heard that a white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, so he invited Renly and Ser Barristan to join the king to hunt it. So Daveth sat the Iron Throne and was tasked with managing the court in his father's stead while his father was away hunting.

The petitioners clustered near the tall doors, the knights and high lords and ladies beneath the tapestries, the smallfolk in the gallery, the mailed guards in their cloaks, gold or grey: all stood. The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike tattered and bloody, their faces drawn by their fear. Daveth had never seen so many people assembled before him in misery in nine years.

"All rise," he commanded, his voice echoed throughout the Great Hall.

In ones and twos, each villager rose to their feet. One elderly needed to be helped, a young girl in bloody rags stared blankly at Ser Lucius Blackmyre, who stood by the foot of the Iron Throne in full Kingsguard armor, ready to protect and defend Daveth or the King's Hand Lord Stark if needed.

Eddard spoke up and introduced the petitioners. "This hearing concerns the accused of raiding numerous villages in the Riverlands. Joss will speak on behalf of the people wronged by this heinous act."

"You may speak."

Joss slowly approached, trembling as the old farmer held his hat close to his chest. "They burned most everything in the Riverlands, our fields, our granaries, our homes. They took our women and they took 'em again," he said as the court gasped in shock. "When they was done, they butchered them as if they was animals. They covered our children in pitch and lit them on fire."

"I keep... I used to... I used to own an alehouse, m'lord, in Sherrer, by the stone bridge," another petitioner spoke up. "The finest ale south of the Neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, my Prince. It's gone now like all the rest. They come and drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my roof, and they would have spilled my blood too, if they'd caught me. My Prince."

"They rode down my 'prentice boy," said a squat man with a smith's muscles and a bandage around his head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court, but his breeches were patched, his cloak travel-stained and dusty. "Chased him back and forth across the fields on their horses, poking at him with their lances like it was a game, them laughing and the boy stumbling and screaming till the big one pierced him clean through."

The girl craned her head up at Daveth, high above her on the throne. "They killed my mother too, Your Grace. And they... they..." Her voice trailed off, as if she had forgotten what she was about to say. She began to sob.

"At Wendish Town," spoke Ser Raymun Darry, "the people sought shelter in their holdfast, but the walls were timbered. The raiders piled straw against the wood and burnt them all alive. When the Wendish folk opened their gates to flee the fire, they shot them down with arrows as they came running out, even women with suckling babes." Judging by the look of Ser Raymun's armor, Daveth concluded he was a knight from the Riverlands in service of House Tully.

"Dreadful," murmured Eddard. "How cruel can these men be?"

"You believe it was the work of brigands?" Daveth implored.