I learned two things on the ride to Riverrun.
First, horses were the enemy.
Second, anyone who described riding as graceful or freeing had either never actually sat on a horse for more than ten minutes or had been born with a spine made of iron.
I had never liked horses much to begin with. That dislike dated back to an incident involving a pony, a sugar cube, and a near-fatal betrayal of trust. I had been five at the time, and after being assured—repeatedly—that horses only kicked if you stood behind them, I had very sensibly approached from the side.
The little bastard had turned, looked me dead in the eye, and planted both hooves in my chest anyway.
I still maintained that it had been personal.
So when I say my first proper ride felt miserable, understand that I say it as a man speaking from experience. Or, more accurately, as a seven-year-old boy whose backside had been tenderized into meat by several days in a saddle.
Every jolt of the horse's gait rattled up through my spine. Every dip in the road felt like a personal insult. My legs ached from clinging on, my shoulders were stiff, and my arse had gone from numb to bruised to some strange, transcendent state beyond pain where it felt like it no longer belonged to me at all. Flies buzzed around us in lazy swarms, drawn by the horses, and I nearly choked on the damned things more than once when one flew straight into my mouth.
The roads of the Riverlands were not, as it turned out, designed for comfort.
The knights found my suffering deeply amusing.
"You'll get used to it," Damon called back at one point, sounding far too cheerful for a man who wasn't currently being beaten to death by a saddle.
"I'd rather walk," I muttered.
"You say that now," one of the other men-at-arms laughed, "but give it another day and your legs won't work either."
Wonderful. A whole new frontier of misery to look forward to.
Still, even I had to admit the ride had its moments.
The Riverlands were beautiful in a way my little corner of the crossroads had never quite managed to be. We passed broad green fields stitched together by hedgerows and little streams, patches of forest where sunlight spilled through the leaves in bright gold shafts, and villages tucked close to the roads like children hiding behind their mother's skirts. Farmers looked up as we rode by, some raising a hand in greeting when they saw Damon's colors, others simply stepping aside and keeping their heads down.
I watched everything.
I had spent seven years mostly within sight of my parents' inn, and while travelers had brought me stories, stories were not the same as seeing a place with your own eyes. Every mile we rode, Westeros felt a little less like a setting I knew from a television screen and a little more like a real world—vast, living, and entirely unconcerned with whether I was ready for it.
By the time Riverrun came into view, I was dusty, sore, and beginning to suspect that my legs would never forgive me.
Then I saw it, and for a little while I forgot all about my suffering.
Riverrun rose from the land like something out of a story.
I had known, in an abstract sort of way, that it would be impressive. It was the seat of House Tully, after all—one of the great strongholds of the Riverlands, home to Lord Hoster Tully himself. But knowing that and seeing it were two very different things.
The castle stood where the Tumblestone and Red Fork met, its walls of pale stone rising from the riverbanks in strong, elegant lines. Towers climbed into the sky, capped with steep blue roofs that gleamed in the sunlight like polished enamel. From a distance, the whole place looked almost serene, more noble than warlike, until you noticed the thickness of the walls, the arrow slits, the gatehouse, and the way the rivers themselves had been turned into part of the castle's defense.
Riverrun wasn't just beautiful.
It was clever.
As we approached, I saw the outer moat Damon had mentioned before, the long stretch of water and earth designed to cut attackers off from the walls. The bridge leading toward the gate was mostly packed dirt and timber, sturdy enough for wagons and horses but narrow enough that a charging force would bottleneck if the defenders wanted it to. Ahead of us loomed the great gate itself, built of thick red wood reinforced with iron bands and heavy bolts.
For a moment I just stared.
Compared to the inn where I had grown up, Riverrun might as well have been another world.
"Close your mouth, boy," Damon said dryly from beside me. "You'll swallow a fly."
I snapped it shut at once and glared at him. "I'm appreciating the architecture."
"You're gawking."
"Appreciating," I repeated with dignity.
He laughed under his breath, then gestured toward the castle with one hand as we rode.
"Riverrun," he said, as if announcing something sacred. "Seat of House Tully. Strong walls, a good garrison, and enough stores to hold out through a long siege if it comes to that. You saw the moat. In times of war they can flood the surrounding land and turn the place into an island. Makes it difficult for an army to approach and worse for them to leave."
I looked back toward the rivers and the low ground surrounding the castle, imagining it swallowed by rising water. It was an ugly thought, but an effective one.
"So if someone attacks," I said, "they have to fight their way across a narrow approach while archers shoot at them from the walls?"
Damon gave me an approving look. "Aye. And if they somehow reach the gates, they still have the castle itself to contend with. Riverrun's never been an easy nut to crack."
I frowned. "Did you just compare the ancestral seat of your liege lord to a nut?"
"It's a very impressive nut."
I snorted despite myself.
We passed beneath the shadow of the gatehouse and into the outer yard, and suddenly the castle swallowed us whole.
Inside, Riverrun was a storm of movement. Men-at-arms crossed the yard in groups of two and three, spears over their shoulders. Stableboys ran to take horses. Servants hurried from one building to another carrying baskets, folded linens, casks of ale, and bundles of firewood. Somewhere nearby a blacksmith hammered glowing metal on an anvil, each strike ringing through the air like a bell. The smell hit me next: horse, leather, smoke, steel, and the faint wet scent of river water carried on the breeze.
It was louder than the inn, busier than the inn, and somehow more ordered despite all the chaos.
This was what a great house looked like from the inside.
I sat a little straighter on the horse, trying very hard not to look like the awestruck peasant child I absolutely was.
A groom helped me down at last, and the moment my feet hit the ground I nearly collapsed. My legs had forgotten how to be legs. Damon caught me by the shoulder before I could disgrace myself face-first in the mud.
"Steady," he said, with all the sympathy of a man who had absolutely enjoyed every second of my suffering.
"I hate horses," I informed him.
"They hate you too, from the look of it."
I considered kicking him in the shin and decided against it only because I was now technically under his service and felt that assaulting one's future knight-master on the first day was probably frowned upon.
Probably.
We handed the horses over to the stableboys and crossed the yard on foot. Damon moved through the castle with the ease of someone who had visited often enough to know where he was going, and I trotted along beside him, trying not to stare at every single thing we passed.
I failed.
Riverrun's inner keep was even grander than the walls outside. The stone underfoot had been worn smooth by generations of boots. Tapestries hung from the corridors, some faded with age, others bright with the red-and-blue colors of House Tully. Guards stood watch at doors and intersections, mail glinting in the torchlight, trout sigils stitched across surcoats and cloaks.
Everywhere I looked, I saw reminders that this was a noble world and I was very much not born to it.
Servants bowed to Damon as he passed. A steward nodded respectfully and asked after Lord Vypren's health. A pair of young pages in neat livery glanced at me curiously, clearly trying to place the muddy child trailing after a noble heir.
I resisted the urge to smooth down my tunic. It wouldn't have helped. I was still wearing road dust, and no amount of pretending would make me look like anything other than what I was.
A smallfolk boy stepping into a castle full of people who had been taught from birth how to move, speak, and exist in places like this.
Gods, I was going to embarrass myself terribly.
Damon either noticed my silence or guessed at it.
"Relax," he said as we climbed a short set of stairs. "No one's going to throw you back out the gate for having dirt on your boots."
"That's not especially comforting."
"It should be. Half the boys who come here smell worse than you do after a week on the road."
"That's somehow less comforting."
He smirked but didn't answer.
At last we were led into a solar on the upper floor of the keep, where the noise of the yard faded behind thick stone walls and heavy doors. The room was warm, lit by afternoon sun streaming through tall windows. Shelves lined one wall, stacked with ledgers and scrolls. A carved table stood near the hearth, and beside it, looking over a spread of parchment, stood a man I recognized at once.
Lord Hoster Tully.
He was younger than the version I remembered from the show, though not yet old in the frail sense. His hair was a deep brown touched with red, his skin pale, his face lined not with weakness but with the wear of rule. He had the look of a man who had spent years making decisions that shaped the lives of thousands and had long ago accepted that none of them would be simple.
When Damon entered, Hoster looked up.
His eyes settled on me almost immediately.
They were sharp eyes. Experienced eyes. The kind that had measured lords, knights, merchants, and liars for decades and learned something useful from all of them.
For the first time since arriving at Riverrun, I felt truly small.
Damon stepped forward and bowed his head. "My lord, thank you for seeing us."
"Damon," Hoster said, voice rich and even. "Your father told me that you'd be arriving. I trust the road was kind to you."
"As kind as roads ever are."
Hoster's gaze shifted back to me. "And this is the boy?"
Boy.
Fair enough. I was, in fact, a boy.
Damon placed a hand lightly on my shoulder and nudged me forward.
"This is Talion, son of Edward and Bessie of the Crossroads Inn," he said. "The one I wrote of."
Wrote of?
That was news to me.
I stepped forward quickly, remembered at the last possible second that I was in front of a great lord, and dropped to one knee so fast I nearly lost my balance.
"Talion, my lord," I said, staring dutifully at the floor. "It is an honor."
There was a brief silence.
Then Hoster Tully chuckled.
It wasn't mocking, exactly, but there was amusement in it.
"Lift your head, boy," he said. "I'd like to see the face of the child who beat Damon Vypren with a stick, a handful of dirt, and apparently no sense of self-preservation."
I looked up in horror.
Damon, the traitor, had the decency to look only mildly ashamed.
Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun, was smiling at me.
And just like that, I knew with dreadful certainty that my life had become far more complicated.