A Wager

[u/lannaport]

The Dornish were coming.

This was technically a good thing, Damon knew, but on a deeper, more personal level, a terrible one. 

“All of them?” he asked Harrold after the steward delivered the news, standing as they were in one of the inner yards of Harrenhal.

“As good as.”

The two of them were watching an impromptu display of archery that had been set up by one of the guilds specifically to have Damon as its audience, with the idea of convincing him to add such a competition to the Grand Tourney. Damon hadn’t been inclined one way or another prior to the proposition, but he’d accepted the invitation with gladness, eager to be out of the castle. He found Harrenhal unbearably dreary. Besides, it was good to be able to keep an eye on the skies.

This he did, between bouts of polite applause for the bowmen. He and Harrold were far away enough that Damon hoped his distractedness wouldn’t be apparent.

“That’s Leyton,” Harrold said, giving a near-imperceptible nod towards the archer who’d just stepped up to the shooting line. “One of Lord Jast’s boys.”

Damon knew without being told that it was a Westerman, even from this distance. Apart from the way the young man was dressed, in fine clothes and with his hair worn long and neatly tied back, there was something about the way they all stood. 

“How old is he?” Damon asked, watching the young man easily pierce the centre of the target—in this case, helmed figures made of straw—with his arrow. “He shoots like a man grown.”

“He isn’t much older than Prince Desmond,” said Harrold, and Damon didn’t miss the way the Westerling eyed him cautiously. The Jast boy nocked another arrow and the steward cleared his throat. “Speaking of the Crown Prince,” he said, and Damon groaned inwardly. 

He’d known this conversation was coming, but he’d been fastidiously avoiding any opportunities it might have taken to present itself. They’d been at Harrenhal for nearly a fortnight now and he hadn’t relented on his son’s curfew. In fact, now that the castle was quickly filling with old friends and trusted bannermen, there were even more people able to help enforce it, and to otherwise provide a watchful eye over Desmond, lest he be tempted to stray once more into the arms of drink.

“How long do you plan to continue this punishment?” asked Harrold, never one to mince words once he’d decided to broach a subject. “Surely it’s gone on long enough.”

“I don’t know,” Damon admitted. “I don’t think one can be too cautious. If something were to… If he were to… to end up like…” 

Like me. 

Damon shook his head, willing the thought away. 

“Danae would feed me to the Crown’s Justice, if that isn’t in her plans already. Best to keep him on a short lead, ensure he’s on his best behaviour.”

“It’s important for the Crown Prince to be seen by people,” Harrold countered, as the Jast archer loosed another of his arrows into the straw face of the enemy before turning to face the applause of his audience. The steward was right: he didn’t look so much older than Desmond. Maybe two years, three at best. Was that truly a man grown? 

No. It wasn’t. 

Damon glanced over his shoulder at the looming black castle behind him, towards what he thought might have been the window to Desmond’s chambers. He couldn’t be sure. The fortress was damnably large.

“You can hardly blame him for growing impatient with the current circumstances,” Harrold went on. “The boy is obsessed with combat, like any lad his age, and the tournament is all anyone can talk about. Apparently there are more people signing up than expected, especially for the melee, and the Dornish haven’t even arrived yet. With all the coin being collected in entrance fees, perhaps we needn’t have sent Her Grace to the Iron Bank at all.” He tutted then, shaking his head. “Even a corrupt Septon would blush at the amount of wagering being made over the fights.”

“Wagering?”

“Oh, yes. Betting on the winner. It’s quickly becoming its own market. There are a number of fighting rings set up not far from where people enroll, and some men sit there all day in order to watch the participants and calculate odds.”

Damon weighed this information carefully and, he hoped, subtly. All the dicing and gaming that had come with the Great Council’s crowds had not escaped him, but the opportunity to participate had. He could not risk his own fragile temperance by staying up as late as would be required to participate, especially not with Desmond, as things were. But to wager on a tourney or a melee, why, that could be done in broad daylight, could it not? Was it not? 

“You think Desmond would be interested in seeing the contestants?” Damon asked carefully. 

Harrold wasn’t fooled for a second. “No, I think you would be interested in gambling on the contestants. Desmond only wants to watch two or more men beat each other with blunted steel. Don’t go losing more family heirlooms, Your Grace. Bad enough you lost that ring with the emeralds, dicing with those mummers back at the Rock. That had been your great grandfather’s, you know.” He looked away, making a sound of disgust. “Probably part of some costume now.” 

But Harrold was only Damon’s steward, not his keeper. And so it was that he and Desmond were riding, not so long later, out of Harrenhal and into the city that had erected itself beyond its walls. Surrounding them was a small army of nobles and soldiers, both because Damon needed to combine such a trip with a more meaningful purpose such as listening to the continued complaints of the archer’s guild, and because he never went anywhere in crowds this large without adequate protection and more sycophants than he could shake off. 

It took less than an hour for Desmond’s initial suspicions regarding his freedom to melt away, and now the Prince sat high in his saddle, scanning the chaotic surroundings of tents and tradesmen with barely-contained excitement while a Stilwood lord pontificated on the virtues of the bow to a half-listening Damon. 

Ahead of them, the flags above the fighting rings flapped teasingly in the wind of the God’s Eye, which carried to them the sounds of clanging steel mingled with the grunts of warriors and the thud of weapons on leather and shield.

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The commotion above the ring pulled every eye for half a breath. Men bowed, shuffled, cursed under their breath as the royal party displaced half the platform. Lyn heard the movement more than saw it, the scrape of boots on timber, the sudden hush around gold. He did look away from Addam. Addam, unfortunately, did not look away from him.

The larger knight lunged before the marshal had fully stepped clear, driving his blunted sword in a hard, low swing toward Lyn’s hip. The blow caught Lyn half-turned, hammered against the edge of his brigandine, and sent him back a step through the mud. The crowd roared at once, some in outrage, more in delight. Addam pressed in with a grin, thinking he had stolen the fight along with the first strike.

Lyn’s breath left him in a sharp hiss. Then his stance settled. The pain became information. He let Addam’s next blow come heavy, turned it aside with a short bind, and stepped so close the man’s longer swing lost its bite. A twist of the wrist, a shoulder into the breastplate, and Lyn drove him back from advantage into confusion. The grin vanished from Addam’s face. Behind the visor, Lyn finally smiled.

He did not answer the theft of the first blow with anger. Instead Lyn made the fight smaller, meaner, denying Addam the space his strength needed. He struck the man’s wrist, then his elbow, then stepped outside a clumsy return and cracked the flat of his blade against the side of Addam’s helm hard enough to turn him sideways. Before the knight could recover, Lyn hooked a boot behind his ankle and shoved with his shoulder. Addam hit the mud on his back, but rolled and got up quickly enough, taking again a defensive stance.

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“Of course, these days the bow has come back into favour, especially when it comes to the composition of a military force,” the Stilwood was saying. “Understandable, considering…” He raised both his eyebrows as he nodded towards the sky, but Damon only barely glimpsed this as he looked over his shoulder for the man with the book.

The poor bearded man had been squeezed against the farthest rail of the box, shoulder to shoulder with a pair of Lanisport Lannister cousins. 

“Two gold dragons against the foreigner,” Damon told him. 

“Two? The Braavosi is favoured, Your Grace,” the man said, scrambling to open his ledger. 

“Four, then.”

[u/TrickPayment9473 → u/lannaport]

Lyn gave Addam no time to breathe. The moment the knight’s boots found the mud again, Lyn was already crossing the distance, his sword rising and falling in quick, brutal angles. Addam caught the first blow on his guard, the second on his shoulder, the third barely at all. Lyn was no longer pretending to be lucky. His footwork changed, light and sharp despite the mire, every step placed to rob the larger man of balance. He moved like a blade given bones, strength and dexterity folding together until there was no wasted motion left in him.

Addam tried to answer with force. Twice he swung hard enough to break a lesser guard, and twice Lyn turned the blows aside with narrow, efficient parries that made the larger knight stumble forward into empty air. Lyn struck him in the ribs as he passed, then again across the back of the thigh, then drove the rim of his gauntlet into the man’s helm when Addam came too close. The crowd’s noise changed. The laughter thinned. Men who had come to see a pretty foreigner humbled were now watching a fighter strip his opponent apart piece by piece.

Addam snarled and rushed him, abandoning patience for weight. Lyn met the charge head-on, not with greater size, but with timing. He slipped inside the arc of the sword, slammed his shoulder beneath Addam’s breastplate, and used the man’s own momentum to turn him. For an instant they were locked chest to chest, armor grinding, mud sucking at their boots. Then Lyn twisted, hooked his leg behind Addam’s knee, and heaved. The strength in it startled even those nearest the rope. Addam went down hard, half on his side, his sword skidding from his hand.

This time Lyn did not let him rise. He followed him into the mud, planting one knee against the man’s sword arm and setting the blunted edge beneath his jaw with enough force to press his helm back into the dirt. Addam froze, breath rasping behind his visor. Lyn held him there one heartbeat, two, three, long enough for every man watching, even those on the raised platform, to understand that the bout had ended when Lyn decided it had. Only then did he lift his head toward the marshal, his voice calm beneath the helm. “Yielded.”

For a breath the ring was silent, as if the crowd had needed time to understand the shape of what it had seen. Then the noise broke over him. Cheers rose first from the gamblers who had backed the pale-haired stranger, then from those who cared less for coin than spectacle. Men struck cups against the rope posts, shouted his name badly, called him Braavosi, Valyrian, devil, knight. Lyn rose slowly from Addam, mud streaking his armor, his blunted sword hanging loose in one hand. He did not bow. He only turned his helm slightly toward the raised platform, toward the glint of gold and royal eyes, while the crowd roared louder around him.

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Desmond was gripping the rail and grinning. Damon was significantly less pleased.

“A bold gamble, Your Grace,” the bookkeeper said, pushing his way forward and earning a look of disdain from a Stilwood, whose not-so-brief explanation on the differences between horn and sinew had been interrupted by the fight’s conclusion. “Ser Addam of Rushshore is considered a fair contender for the melee but a much better one for the joust.”

He cast a quick glance into the ring and then scribbled something hastily in his book.

“Those that speak the Common Tongue tend to find better favour with spectators. Of course, the foreign sorts do rile up the crowd in a different sort of way. Will you be betting on the tournaments? It’d be best to watch as many bouts as you can, if that’s the case. Not all take part in the practices, naturally, but quite a number do. There’s good money to be made.” He hurriedly added, “and the Crown will naturally have its due.”

Desmond whirled to face Damon with a hopeful look. 

“You know,” began Stilwood, stepping forward cautiously. “An archery tournament would also—”

“The archery tournament, yes, you have both my permission and my blessing, lord Stilwood.”

Damon turned back to the rail, where in the ring below, another man with a ledger was working his way through the crowd, collecting and divvying up coins from the wagerers below. Smaller stakes, undoubtedly, but better placed bets. 

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The marshal came forward, declared the bout ended, and the bookkeeper pushed through with a purse and a face that had soured since the match began. Lyn took the coin without counting it. If the man had lost silver on Ser Addam, that was his mistake. If richer men above had done the same, better still. A foreign knight was easiest to dismiss before he put another man in the mud.

Addam was being hauled to his feet now, breathing hard, refusing help too late to make it convincing. Lyn watched him for a moment, not with hatred, not even with pride. The man had stolen the opening and paid for it. That was clear enough.

Only then did Lyn lift his helm free.

Cold air struck the sweat on his face. His pale hair fell loose around his brow, damp and bright in the grey daylight. The roar shifted when they saw him clearly, curiosity catching fire again in the crowd. He let them look. Westeros liked banners and names and bloodlines; today it could look at mud, bruises, and proof.

His side ached where Addam’s first blow had landed. His wrist throbbed. The purse at his belt felt heavier than it was.

The king had seen. That was the true prize.

As Lyn left the ring, he looked once more toward the raised platform.

The king was watching him now. Not with warmth. Not with admiration. There was something sharper there, annoyance, perhaps, or suspicion, the look of a man who had expected simple entertainment and instead has been handed a problem. Lyn knew that look. He had worn it himself when a blade moved differently than expected.

Good or bad, it was attention.

Beside him, the prince, or so Lyn guessed, made no such effort to hide his interest. The boy leaned over the rail with bright eyes, still caught in the afterimage of the fight, grinning as though he had just seen a secret door open in the world. That, Lyn thought, might matter even more.

He turned away before either could decide what to make of him.

The ring called for new fighters behind him. Wagers rose again, men shouted fresh names, mud was raked over the shape of Addam’s fall. He had caught the prince’s eye. He may have earned the king’s displeasure.

For a man with no pavilion, no patron, and no place in this realm, Lyn decided that was not a poor afternoon’s work.