Chapter 129 126

The Vale. The Mountains of the Moon. 298 AC.

Elena Snow.

Sitting by the fire that evening, Elena was still shaking. Half a day had passed since the mountain men's ambush, and she could not seem to shake it loose. Not only had she taken part in a real battle and run two attackers through, but she had ended it covered in blood and filth from head to toe.

Nearly two hundred mountain men against forty Arryn guardsmen. Under ordinary circumstances the knights should have been swept away, but several factors had conspired against that outcome. Facing savages armed with stone weapons and dressed in leather, the veterans who answered them carried good steel and wore armorplate. Forty professional soldiers had turned it into a slaughter, and the mountain men had failed to press their one and only advantage: numbers. The ground had not allowed it.

Elena had watched the battle from two angles at once, through a raven's eyes from above and with her own from behind the line of fighters. There had been two main fronts. Ten men in front under Arryn, twenty at the rear under Ser Eyris Claw, captain of the Eyrie's household guard. The split had seemed strange to her at first, since the mountain men had divided roughly evenly. Surely it would have made more sense to match them? As it turned out, no. And Elena saw the reason.

She had lost count of how many times she had heard accounts of Lord Arryn's exploits, each one more impressive than the last. She had always taken them with a fair measure of skepticism. In that moment, she stopped. Arryn was not defending. There was no need, since the enemies could not manage to attack him. Every blow he struck took a life. If the mountain men were waves, the Falcon's eye was the rock they broke against.

Within five minutes of the fighting the mountain men were unconsciously trying to find someone else to face, and within ten a mob of a hundred was trembling at the presence of a steel giant, Axel stood six foot two tall, and in armor came close to two meters. Fierce savages, the kind mothers invoke to frighten disobedient children, could not bring themselves to approach a single man. This continued until a newcomer strode forward, a bold figure in iron armor carrying an enormous axe. Elena had seen a great many tall people, but three stood apart from all others: Hodor, Greatjon Umber, and Gregor Clegane called the Mountain That Rides. The warrior who stepped forward was their equal in size, the kind of man who could split a horse and not notice. After a brief exchange of words between Arryn and the savage in the tongue of the First Men, which Elena did not know but recognized well enough, the giant came charging. A second to close the distance, the enormous axe beginning its descent toward Arryn's head, and an instant before the logical conclusion, the massive body flew back with a caved-in chest.

The mountain men stood in silence. To their credit, none of them ran. They simply stood. And Elena saw the reason for their stillness. Around thirty mountain men were picking their way around both flanks and climbing the hill to take the high ground. She passed the information on in a whisper. A few quick questions followed, and Elena was ordered to take five men from Ser Eyris's group and reinforce the others on the hill. The situation left no room for argument, and she obeyed. There was a fight on the hill, in which she ran two men through and very nearly lost her head.

After the failed attempt to take the hill, the mountain men broke and ran, and the Knights of the Vale did not pursue them; they had nothing left to give. Of the forty who had fought, twenty-six survived, and every last one of them was wounded. The least injured began dressing the wounds of their less fortunate companions, and even the Falcon's eye did not stand apart from this. Snow, being the least hurt of anyone, was put to work as well. To her embarrassment, she had no knowledge of even basic medicine, and Lord Arryn taught her as they went.

It was only there, bandaging the wounded and looking at the dead, that she grasped what war truly was, and knew she never wanted any part of it again.

"You did well," Lord Arryn's voice pulled her out of her thoughts. "I did not expect that kind of direct courage from you."

"Forgive me, my lord, but I am a thorough coward and have no idea what you mean by direct courage," Elena said honestly.

"Nor will you find it written anywhere. It is my own observation." He sat down beside her and produced a wineskin. "What does courage mean to you?"

"Overcoming one's fears. The ability to not be afraid." She could tell refusal was not an option.

"Yes, fear. What unites all people is that we only feel fear when something we value is under threat: our health, the well being of those close to us, our money, our lives. Our whole existence is soaked in fear, but the important thing to understand is that people fear different things in different ways. What carries enormous weight for one person may seem trivial to another." He paused his lecture to take a drink and offered the skin to Elena; she did not decline.

"Mm! This is good, what wine is this?" For the first time she caught a genuinely surprised look on Arryn's face.

"Meereenese sweet," Axel answered automatically, then collected himself and went on. "To put it plainly, fear arises from dread of consequences, and courage is what allows us to move past it. I have known many people, and every one of them had their own fears. There was a knight once who feared no battle, but was terrified of speaking to those in power, purely because of what might follow. Amusing situation, is it not? And there was a merchant. He was deeply afraid of open conflict. In Westeros they would have called him a coward, but could a coward have maneuvered his enemies and rivals into destroying one another? One careless move, one mistake, and death. He knew it, and he risked it anyway, and he won. Tell me, Elena: that knight and that merchant, what were they? Cowards or brave men?"

It was not something she had ever thought about before.

"What I call direct courage is when a person is unafraid to face immediate consequences. Distant courage is when the consequences may only arrive after a long time." There was a logic to it somewhere, but the longer Elena listened the more she suspected Lord Arryn was not entirely of the common world. "You, without any qualification, are a brave girl."

"Nymeria Martell was always my ideal growing up, as she was for any girl who grew up on stories. But after today's fighting I understand that battles are not for me." Catching his skeptical glance at her rapier, she added, "No, I enjoy fencing and dueling well enough. But real battles are not for me."

Silence settled between them. Each sat with their own thoughts, passing the wine back and forth. If battles had once been a fairly abstract notion to her, they were abstract no longer.

Father and Robb have fought in far worse than this, came the thought, and it was not a cheerful one. Her worry for them sharpened.

"What do you dream of, Elena Snow?" Lord Arryn asked suddenly. "Most girls dream of a handsome lord who will carry them off to a great castle where she will give him a dozen children. But you are not like that."

"I want the war to end, and for my father and brother to come home, so our family can be together again."

"No, no, no, those are the natural wishes of any reasonable person. I am asking about a dream," he said, unsatisfied with an answer that was honest precisely because it was typical. "What did you dream of before the war?"

And truly, what had she? To be legitimized? To find a good knight, become his wife, and live happily ever after? Not quite a year had passed, and it felt like an entire lifetime. She was intelligent, but she was not yet wise. All her old wishes and dreams struck her now as childish and naive. But what did she actually want from life? Elena had few prospects to speak of, and the battle had knocked out any desire she might have had to follow a warrior's path.

"Do you have something in mind, my lord?" Axel Arryn would not have raised the question without an offer behind it.

"Do you know the story of a certain bastard who, through his own talents, became one of the most powerful men in history?" Understanding began to arrive slowly. "Brynden Rivers was famous for his ability to gather information. I would venture that he was a warg, and that you have the same potential."

"May I think about it?" She needed time to consider it with a clear head.

"Of course," he agreed without hesitation. "But before you do, I will add this: everything you contribute will be remembered, and in time you will be able to ask for something commensurate with that contribution. Power, money, jewels, a house, an estate, a castle. It will depend entirely on your sincerity."

And without waiting for her answer, the Falcon's eye rose and left, giving her the half-full wineskin. She did not sleep that night. Elena turned the offer over in her mind until just before dawn, when she made a decision that would change everything.