Chapter 86 — Three Questions

Alistair put three strips of parchment on the table the next morning. Each held one question in his narrow hand.

"Could you lawfully defend the boundary you marked? Was Lyman's execution within your authority after he was captured? What becomes of the men, goods, and land left by his defeat?" He pushed the strips toward Arlan. "If Storm's End answers those, the battle itself need not be fought again in every hall."

Brienne and Cade sat apart from Arlan as witnesses, not ornaments of his household. Rodrick kept the evidence cases closed unless Alistair asked for an item. Morton had brought the prisoner and stores ledgers, though losing one morning of his work plainly offended him.

They began with the boundary. The spring lay beside land House Ashenblade had long held, but grazing and water rights had been used by households on both sides. Renly's patrol warrant authorized Arlan to keep armed forces from crossing the southern roads; it did not allow him to claim every stream his soldiers could reach.

"I marked the old line before witnesses and offered measurement and arbitration," Arlan said. "I defended that line when Lyman crossed it. I did not annex the upper pool."

Alistair turned to the village knight, who confirmed the sequence, then to the millers' measurements. "You may have defended the existing boundary. You may not settle the water right by victory. Until Renly rules, both villages retain customary access under a joint watch. The stones will be surveyed again by one man from each house and one from Storm's End."

The arrangement placed strangers beside a resource FireStorm had just defended and prevented Arlan from collecting exclusive fees there. He accepted it.

Morton asked who would feed the joint watch and repair the measuring boards. Alistair divided the obligation by use: each village supplied one watcher and provisions on alternating days; Storm's End paid only the surveyor. If a house failed to send its man, the other could not use the absence to claim exclusive water. The rule turned a boundary victory into weeks of shared labor, exactly the sort of consequence soldiers disliked and farmers needed.

The second strip lay between them longer.

"Lyman was a landed lord taken alive," Alistair said. "Marcher custom permits severe judgment for armed invasion, but possession of a gallows does not make haste wise. Storm's End lost the chance to question him."

"Leaving him alive gave Elton a banner and Tauha time to rebuild around it," Arlan said.

"That is a reason. It is not higher authority."

Brienne described Lyman's refusal to yield until his command had broken and the challenge he gave after capture. She did not call the execution necessary. Cade testified that Lyman's survival would have complicated custody, then added that FireStorm had held one hundred and eleven other prisoners without a rescue attempt.

Alistair wrote both answers. "My report will not call the killing murder while the invasion stands. It will say you chose an irreversible punishment before asking Storm's End. In future, any captured landed lord or commissioned knight must be reported within three days and kept for Renly's judgment unless immediate escape or renewed fighting makes that impossible."

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Arlan disliked giving a distant hall time to turn a battlefield prisoner into a bargaining piece. He disliked even more the thought of Elton using his example to hang every inconvenient lesser lord in the south.

"Three days begins when?" Rodrick asked.

"When the captive is secure enough for a raven or rider to leave," Alistair said. "If weather closes the road, you record the attempt and send by another route. If the man is dying, a septon and two witnesses hear him before sentence. Necessity will still exist. It will no longer be whatever the victor says after the rope is cut."

The clause did not remove judgment from the field. It placed names and hours around the exception. Arlan accepted because the same rule would bind a stronger neighbor who captured one of his own officers.

"Write it as an obligation of my household," he said.

The captured agent raised a separate difficulty. His false identity, Caron token, payments, and conduct justified punishment for helping direct the invasion under a false identity, but executing him had also removed the one witness who might have named an intermediary under questioning. Alistair did not reverse the sentence. He entered the loss beside the rest.

On the third question, Morton opened his books. The one hundred and eleven surviving Tauha men had been sentenced to three years of labor with food, shelter, and release recorded by name. The captured weapons, armor, horses, and provisions had been taken against the cost of the invasion. No Tauha field or village had been added to FireStorm.

Alistair selected a prisoner who could not read and had Rodrick explain the terms before a Tauha captain. The man believed three years meant three harvests and might end sooner; Morton’s roll used the date of judgment. Alistair required both the calendar date and the number of months. A sentence could lengthen through careless words as easily as through cruelty.

He also required the mine overseers named before work began and prohibited prisoners from entering unsupported galleries. FireStorm could recover damages through labor, not by spending lives where a paid miner would refuse to stand.

"The labor sentences stand subject to inspection," Alistair decided. "Each man may petition Storm's End against mistreatment. House Tauha may offer ransom, but FireStorm need not accept less than the assessed damages. Captured goods remain under seal until Renly credits them against those damages. No land changes hands because Lyman died."

That cost Arlan the immediate use of twenty-three horses and much of the captured steel. It also denied Elton the claim that Blackstone Canyon had been an Ashenblade land seizure.

Alistair added two narrower notes before closing the inquiry. Brienne had sworn as Arlan's sword and champion; she had not received a knighthood he lacked authority to grant. Cade's old sentence contained enough irregularity to merit a new hearing if Renly summoned him. Arlan promised Cade would appear before Storm's End, not Nightsong, and Cade gave the same promise for himself.

For three days the white cloaks had walked wherever they wished, spoken to prisoners alone, and interrupted work whenever a count failed to match. When Alistair finally sealed his report, he carried findings that limited FireStorm as well as evidence against Elton.

At the gate, he handed Arlan copies of the temporary orders concerning the spring, prisoners, and captured stores. "Lord Renly may alter any of these. Until then, they bind you."

"Then we will follow them."

Alistair mounted. Behind him, separate packhorses carried the evidence, the witness statements, and the gifts prepared for Storm's End. FireStorm had not won every question. It had gained something more useful than a friendly verdict: a record Renly could enforce without pretending Arlan's victory placed him beyond judgment.

Copies of each temporary order remained with Morton, the prisoner captain, and the two villages at the spring. Alistair sealed them separately so no later messenger could alter one clause for a different audience. Authority left FireStorm on horseback; the limits it imposed stayed nailed beside the places where men would have to obey them.