They had been following the tracks since before dawn. Aeghal's backside had long since begun to ache from the saddle, though he would sooner have swallowed his tongue than said so aloud. Forty of them in all, himself included. This was not the first time he had ridden out with the scouts, though the count had grown familiar enough that he had lost track of which number this made. His father held that the sooner they became men, the better.
He rode beside Rhaegal, on the horse he had chosen for himself when it was still a foal and named Blizzard. A fine animal — grey-coated, with a long, sweeping mane. Its colour matched Aeghal's hair almost exactly.
"Twenty minutes!" Lord Kaelverion called. "We rest here."
Aeghal eased himself down from Blizzard and tied the horse to a nearby tree where it could reach the grass. Then he dropped onto a fallen log beside Rhaegal.
"I could eat a wolf," Rhaegal said.
"Tell me about it. I haven't had a bite since dawn. I nearly took a mouthful out of the saddle."
The smell of fried bacon and bread drifted through the cold air.
"Here." Rhaegal held out a strip of bacon.
Aeghal wrinkled his nose and waved it away.
"I always forget," Rhaegal said, leaning back.
The wind picked up.
"Foul week for it!" one of the soldiers called out. The gust that followed was sharp enough to set the horses whinnying and shifting on their feet.
"How far do we ride today, Father?" Rhaegal asked.
"Until we catch them," Kaelverion said. "We must. These raiders have burned enough villages. As for the King..." He let the sentence go unfinished. Rhaegal knew what his father had meant to say. Aeghal listened in silence.
At that moment Ser Harlon Cerwyn came riding back with a handful of men, returning from the forward scout.
"They're close, my lord," Ser Harlon called. "By the tracks, I'd say they have less than half an hour on us."
"Then we ride. Everyone — mount up!"
The camp dissolved into motion, boots and cloaks and the clatter of weapons, and within moments they were back in the saddle and moving.
An hour's hard riding brought them in sight of a great column of black smoke.
"The village is burning!" the soldiers cried.
A small settlement — a day's ride from Dragonhold — was engulfed in flame. They could hear screaming in the distance. People fleeing in every direction.
As Aeghal took in the sight, a part of him wished he were anywhere else. Wished he were home at Dragonhold, sparring with Rhaegal in the yard with wooden swords, Ser Harlon watching and pretending not to be entertained. Even the first time his father had taken them to witness a sentence carried out in the King's name had been better than this — and that had not been easy either. He had been eight years old then, and he remembered it clearly. They had set out at dawn, just as today. Rhaegal, his father, Ser Harlon, Ser Roderik, Ser Olly, Alaric Stark — his Father's foster son, and more than a dozen men besides.
Aeghal had been tense the entire ride, afraid he would shame himself with his reaction. The prisoner had been kept in a small cage of a cell, his wrists and ankles bound, stripped to the skin. Rhaegal had been certain he was a southern soldier, sworn to the Thief King, Rhazkaris Celtigar. Every time Aeghal thought of raiders, anger rose in him like heat.
But the prisoner had not looked like a sworn soldier. He had looked like a beaten, desperate peasant fighting to stay alive. A long, thin, white-bearded old man — more hair than flesh. His bones pushed against his skin. His wounds had begun to fester, and flies crawled over them despite the bitter cold. He shook. When they removed the rag from his mouth, he begged them to take his head quickly.
Kaelverion had been raised in the household of the Starks of Winterfell, and he passed sentence in the manner of that House: the one who pronounced the judgment would carry it out. So it was Kaelverion himself who took up Winterflame. He stood straight-backed, the Valyrian steel blade in hand — spell-forged, its edge as keen as the day it was made, the layered work of the smith's hammer still visible in the pattern of the metal. Grey had begun to thread its way through his father's carefully kept beard and long brown hair. His indigo eyes held a look of cold, hard purpose. It unsettled Aeghal — how much grimmer his father was away from home. He had left the warm-eyed father behind at Dragonhold, and brought out the Lord of House Targaryen instead, a man before whom every other man in the yard stood a little straighter.
Aeghal could not recall the questioning precisely. Words were exchanged, answers given — he had not caught most of them. His father murmured something to Ser Harlon. Ser Harlon passed the order on. Moments later, two guards walked the prisoner to a tree stump. His father had never looked so grim. Aeghal could see it in his eyes — that this was duty, nothing more and nothing less. His father stripped off his rabbit-fur glove and handed it to Ser Edric. The prisoner knelt. His head was pressed to the wood. Kaelverion stepped forward and offered him the right of last words. The old man only muttered that he had been made to do it. That they would have killed his family otherwise.
Aeghal's eyes stung. He blinked quickly and looked away before anyone could see.
Kaelverion took his place beside the kneeling man, touched the blade of Winterflame to the earth, bowed his head, and spoke the sentence:
"In the name of Cregan of House Stark, second of his name, King of the First Men, Lord of the North, and Defender of the Realm — I, Kaelverion of House Targaryen, Lord of Dragonhold, Lord of the Targaryens and of the Dragons — do condemn you to die."
"Don't look away," Rhaegal said quietly. "You will have to grow used to it."
In a single, unhurried motion, Kaelverion brought Winterflame down. The blade passed through flesh and bone the way a knife passes through butter. The head struck the ground and rolled until it came to rest against a soldier's boot. Blood spread everywhere, and the smell of it rose sharp into the cold air. His father wiped the blade clean and returned it to its scabbard. The body twitched — once, twice — and Aeghal flinched, though Rhaegal had warned him it would happen. Old Maester Landor had always said it was the soul taking its leave of the flesh. Aeghal knew better now. Landor was the Grand Maester of Winterfell and the Realm since his father was just a child. They say there is no wiser man in the Realm than him.
The ride home was quiet. Alaric Stark — his father's ward — rode alongside him in equal silence. Rhaegal drew up between them.
"How are you both faring?" the elder brother asked. "It is not a pleasant sight. But you must learn to carry it."
"I think he was innocent," Aeghal said quietly.
"He was taken at the burning of a village, with a torch in one hand and a bloodied sword in the other. It does not matter why he did it. He did it. You must understand that, little brother."
Aeghal lowered his head.
"At least he died with some dignity," Alaric said. "He did not grovel."
At that moment, the noise hit them — shouting, chaotic and sudden. Aeghal could not make out the words, but he knew from the pitch of it that something was wrong. They were riding at the front of the column with Ser Olly Talloway.
"Raiders!" The word passed from man to man like fire.
Kaelverion and Ser Olly spurred toward them.
"The column is under attack! Ride for Dragonhold — now — and wake the whole garrison. You go with Ser Olly, and you do not look back." Kaelverion reached out and touched Aeghal's face briefly. "Ride. Fast."
Aeghal and the others drove their heels in and rode as hard as they could. He twisted in the saddle and caught a glimpse of his father splitting a man in two with Winterflame.
"They'll be fine!" Rhaegal shouted over the thunder of hooves.
When they reached the burning village, the chaos was worse than anything Aeghal had imagined. Men and violated women lay dead in the streets. Houses burned to their frames.
Ser Harlon came riding past Aeghal and cut down a man who was brawling with another. Aeghal pulled up short and stood frozen, not knowing what to do. Rhaegal wheeled back to him and grabbed his shoulder.
"Stay sharp — don't die! Come on!" Rhaegal shouted above the din.
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning flesh, and underneath it all, fear. Then Aeghal and Rhaegal spotted a woman running with a child in her arms, stumbling blindly down the street.
"Come on — we help them!" Rhaegal ordered.
When they reached her, Rhaegal called for her to take his hand and hauled her up behind him. Aeghal did the same for her son. The moment the boy was up, they drove toward the edge of the village and didn't slow.
When they broke free of the streets they pulled up, dismounted, and pushed the woman and her child into the shadow of a thornbush.
"Stay here. Don't move until we come for you."
The woman nodded through her tears and pulled her son close.
When they returned to the village, the fighting was finished. The raiders were dead. Aeghal was fifteen, and he had never been to war, but nothing he had read in any book had prepared him for the difference between the word and the thing: bodies in the mud, women defiled and left where they had fallen, children's bodies still burning in the street. He walked through it all with his jaw set and his eyes forward until they found the rest of the company.
"There you are," his father said, and the relief in his voice was plain. "Do not vanish like that again. Everyone — help these people."
Aeghal and Rhaegal went back for the woman and her son and brought them into the village. All along the way, people wept over the dead or over what remained of their lives' work. Aeghal kept watching Rhaegal's face. He could see the horror there too — only Rhaegal was doing his best not to let his younger brother see it.
They spent two or three hours burying the dead and beating back the fires. By the time they were ready to leave, dark had come, and so they stopped for the night at an inn that had survived the raid — just large enough for every soldier to sleep under a roof, if uncomfortably. Aeghal could not sleep. He came downstairs and asked for a mug of ale, thinking it might help him forget.
"My mother never lets me drink ale," he thought. "But she's not here."
"You're a Targaryen," the barmaid said.
"What gives me away?" Aeghal said flatly, not looking up from his cup.
"Grey hair. Targaryen banners. And a rather handsome escort."
"Ahh. The grey hair. It always does it."
"Though yours is a little different," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Almost pale blue."
"My name is Jara." Aeghal blinked. He had not expected a barmaid to introduce herself to a stranger she had known for all of five minutes.
"Ae... Aeghal," he managed.
"What brings you this way?"
"Raiders."
"Of course."
"What does that mean?" Aeghal looked at her.
"People like you don't usually come this way," she said, with a dry look, leaning a little closer.
That made him angry. What does a simple village girl think she's doing, speaking to the King's grandson — a Targaryen — like that? The thought moved through him before he could stop it.
"Do you think it's that simple? Do you think any of this is a choice? You don't know—" He stopped.
"I don't know what?" she asked.
"I think tomorrow you'll ride on and forget all of this. And we'll still be here. It must be a fine thing, knowing you'll sleep safe tonight," she said, and there was no venom in it — only the flat, tired truth of it.
Something struck Aeghal in the chest like a fist.
"We are here so that this does not happen again," he said quietly.
"Are you? And who helps the orphans whose parents were killed tonight? Or the ones who watched everything they ever built turn to ash? Your help came too late for them."
Aeghal said nothing. He kept his voice down. He did not know what to say.
"My father died today," she said. Her voice broke on the last word.
Aeghal sat with that for a while. He watched her wipe down the cups. Then he stood.
"I'm sorry," he said.
A few minutes later he rose, bid her good night, and went back upstairs.
Jara gave a single nod. She did not speak.
When Aeghal crept back into bed and finally lay still, his thoughts would not follow him to rest. He could not stop turning Jara over in his mind — her and her father, and the weight of what she had said. He lay there a long while, wondering what he could possibly do for them.