Chapter 14: Tourney, pt. 3

It took me two hours to track down all the corpses and take all their heads. A few of the footmen had fallen behind and stayed to guard the bodies; I made sure to kill them too. Doubtless a handful of the Lannister men had escaped, but I wasn’t worried. It had been one man against forty and the Mountain besides, and the one had triumphed.

I had two massive sacks full of heads tied to Aethon’s saddle. He wasn’t much pleased with the blood leaking onto him.

“I know, boy, I know,” I soothed him. “We’ll be back to the Keep in no time and it will all be over. You did such a great job today.”

Aethon tossed his head as if to say of course I did a great job, after all I’m the best horse!

“Yes, yes you are the best,” I said, pandering to his ego. We passed under the gatehouse to the Red Keep. I flagged down one of the Stark stablehands and after passing on my orders picked up the two sacks and walked to the Grand Hall. I could tell that the evening’s feast was still ongoing; despite being on the outs, Tywin had attended each night, sat at one end of the High Table and obviously fuming that Lord Stark was positioned in a place of greater honor.

I suspected tonight would be no different.

One of the servants noticed the dripping red and came up to ask me about it. Then he got close enough to smell the blood, and thought better of it. He blanched, took a few steps back, turned and left, his body posture hunched and fearful.

I smiled wryly. Tonight would do my reputation among the servants no favors. I suspected I’d be one of the most feared men in Westeros, once my story spread.

I walked through the doors of the Grand Hall, and into a riot of noise and laughter, the smell of food and wine heavy to my senses. Jugglers and musicians performed, the guests told stories and argued. And presiding over all of it, fat, drunk and happy, was Robert.

“Ah, there he is!” he boomed when he saw me. “Ser Odysseus! The great Odysseus, whose ideas made my dear friend Ned’s tournament so wonderful!”

Robert was having a blast with the tournament. He loved even the most common of entertainments, and was an avid fan of the wrestling, even competing himself against one of the champions. When the man threw him, he laughed, said it would have been different were battle-hammers involved, and gave the man a dozen gold dragons. The commons loved that sort of shit, and Robert loved being loved by the commons.

The man was an overgrown child, and the fact that I’d not only figured out how he could have a month of partying, but how he could do so without actually losing much money in the process meant that I was among his favorites at the moment. He also partially credited me with helping to convince him to send away his wife, and was far happier without her to nag and snipe at him; he preferred his whores anyways.

“Your Grace,” I acknowledged with a bow. Then I turned to Tywin. “Tywin Lannister. You seemed to have misplaced some of your dogs. I’m returning them to you.”

Then I reached down, pulled out Gregor’s mangled head, and tossed it into Tywin’s chest. As people began to look on in horror I reached down and upended the sacks. Dozens of heads fell out and rolled onto the floor.

The room, once so boisterous, had fallen silent.

“Now, I don’t know about you,” I said loudly, my voice carrying to all present. “But when a man sends out two score men to ambush one of the Hand’s men, while staying as guest in the Red Keep no less, I call him no man at all. I call him a traitor, an oath-breaker, a man who violates guest-right. I call him a coward, gutless for not even being present. I call him the lowest form of honor-less scum.”

Then I took off one of my gloves, and threw it into Tywin’s face hard enough to break his nose. “I’m calling you gutless, honor-less, treacherous scum, Tywin. And unless you’re totally craven, I’ll meet you on the field of honor to settle our differences in the morning.”

And then the hall erupted into pandemonium, the Lannister bannermen trying to push their way forward to their liege lord, women screaming in horror, men shouting in shock.

Robert stood up. “HOLD!” his voice thundered over the din. “THAT MEANS SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND GET YOUR ASS BACK IN YOUR SEAT!” he swore as his initial order was only partially effective.

I hadn’t taken my eyes off of Tywin. The man was shaking in fury.

Robert looked at me. “Now, Odysseus, tell me what in all the hells happened. And then I want you to explain to me why it meant tossing two score heads about my feast.”

Ah. That might have been a bit hasty, but honestly I was living my life in Westeros partially by the rule of cool. In other words, if it was ostentatious, ridiculous, overblown and cinematic, basically if it would just make a fucking badass story, I did it. To be fair, it had worked out for me so far.

“Yes, Your Grace,” I replied. “A few hours ago, a servant came to tell me that some Stark guardsmen had beaten a lordling for insulting Lord Stark. This was a ruse. On my way to the location, the servant darted off down an alley and I found myself faced with the Mountain backed by some two score men. They had surrounded me and had crossbowmen on the roofs.” A lot of the more martially competent men were looking at me, incredulous that I had escaped such an encirclement.

“They weren’t wearing colors, of course, but the Mountain’s stature is rather recognizable,” I said sarcastically. Then I corrected myself with a sharp smile. “Was rather recognizable, I should say.”

I paused a moment to let that fact sink in. The Mountain, the most dread warrior in all of Westeros, was dead. “I had my bow and arrows at hand, as per usual, and so shot the horses of some of the men blocking my retreat. Aethon, my horse, managed to jump over the mess that left. And then it was a chase through the city where I shot down my pursuers one by one until only the Mountain was left.” People were listening intently.

“And then I killed him,” I said simply, a wide and wolfish smile on my face. “And then I went and I chopped off his head, and went back and hacked off the heads of every other man that tried to kill me tonight. And I brought them to the man responsible, so that he could know what outcome his actions wrought. And so that I could take the price of the debt he now owes me in full.

“Forty times he tried to kill me tonight. Forty times he failed. But unlike Tywin, I’m not incompetent. When I go against him, I’ll only need the once.”

A man sitting among a group of Westerland lords spoke up. “There is no proof that Lord Lannister sent Gregor Clegane after you!”

I laughed. “Please. We all know he wouldn’t have moved without his master’s order. Or are you really that weak, Tywin? I crippled your Hound. My dog killed your son. Do you mean to tell me you’re so weak, so pathetic and toothless that you didn’t even try and get vengeance?” I saw it, the moment he snapped.

“So what if I did!” he shouted. “You were the one that made us enemies, Odysseus. Without cause, you crippled Sandor Clegane, the Prince’s Sworn Shield. After a wolf savaged Prince Joffrey, my grandson, you used it as an excuse to kill my son Jaime. Since then you have seen my daughter removed from court, the prince sent to foster not with me, a former Hand, but with Stannis Baratheon. So if anyone here is a traitor it’s you. So what if I sent my men against you? I’d do it again. But I won’t need to. I’ll meet you tomorrow, and I’ll show you the difference between a true warrior and some horse-archer.”

I shook my head. “You Lannisters are so used to ruling over others, pushing them around, you can’t even recognize reality. Your Hound insulted the Starks in their own castle. Your grandson had thought to cut down Arya Stark, an eleven year old girl, for the great crime of fighting with sticks. If you want to blame someone for that, and for the fight that ended in Ser Jaime’s death, look to your bitch of a daughter. It was her poisonous words that made Prince Joffrey think that was acceptable, her twisted desire for vengeance that saw Jaime fight a trial by combat over killing a wolf guilty of nothing but protecting her mistress.

“No,” I corrected myself. “Blame yourself. Blame yourself for whatever broken mentality you have, the mentality you infected your children with, that as Lannisters you are somehow above the rest of the Kingdom. But blame yourself quickly, because by this time tomorrow you’ll be burning in the hells where you belong.”

The next morning, we met for the last time.

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“You’re a fucking madman, you know,” Jon Snow told me as he helped me finish getting my armor on. He had really been loosening up under my guidance. “No one else would think to bring down one of the Great Houses by themselves like this.”

I shook my head. “It’s not a question of thinking to do something. It’s a question of is this necessary, and then how do I do it? The queen hated the Starks. I could see it the moment she came to Winterfell. The Lannisters were too powerful at court, too set against your father. So I had to break them. And so I did. It’s as simple as that.”

He looked at me askance. “Easy for you to say. A normal man wouldn’t find it so possible.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I replied. “Even without my special advantages I could have done it. It just would have been harder, taken longer. Humans are weaker than animals. Our health is less robust, our bodies weaker and slower, our senses duller. But we can think. And a single thinking man can achieve anything. Granted, that doesn’t mean they will. But it means that they can try, that they can take the shot. That’s all there is to it, Jon. You need to recognize that you intend to do something. Then you have to figure out a way how to do it. Then you just need to get off your ass and carry out the plan.”

He laughed. “You make it sound so simple.”

I chuckled as well. “The hardest things always are. But in half an hour, Tywin will be dead. The king will fine them millions of dragons, wiping out the majority of the national debt, and burden them with enough taxes that they’ll be hard pressed to maintain their influence in the Westerlands, let alone make more trouble for us in King’s Landing. I’ll have won.”

“Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re loyal to my father?” he asked, only half joking.

I smiled. “Lord Stark is worthy of my loyalty,” I said simply. “Now come on. Time to show the rest of the world that even the great Tywin Lannister bleeds red.”

I left the tent where I had been preparing. Jon followed behind me as I walked out onto the Tourney Field. The stands were full of spectators as the word of the upcoming fight had spread. It wasn’t every day they saw the Mountainslayer go up against a Lord Paramount.

I stood twenty meters away from Tywin as Robert announced the fight. I channeled Blue, and cast Thought Acceleration and improved my combat precognition. I channeled Green, improving my strength. And I channeled Red, boosting my speed.

Tywin and I closed the distance between us. I was moving slowly, normally, my spear pointed towards him.

Then he was close enough, and I lunged. I batted away his too-slow block and with a shriek of cut metal, crunch of shattered bone and squelch of torn flesh drove my spear through his helmet, his skull and out the other side.

I stepped forwards, braced my foot against his body, and with a twist of my hands and push of the foot freed my spear.

Tywin’s corpse fell onto the sand, and the crowd went wild.

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That afternoon Tyrion Lannister searched me out. He was accompanied by a half-dozen men who bristled at my presence.

Tyrion laughed at them. “Go on, give us time to talk,” he ordered. “I doubt you’d accomplish much if Ser Odysseus wanted me dead anyways.”

After they moved back a bit he looked up at me seriously. “I doubt you were expecting to see another Lannister so soon, Ser Odysseus,” he said with a self-mocking smile. “But before I go back to Casterly Rock, I just wanted to say you’ll have no trouble from me. It’s no secret that I hated my father, and I don’t blame you for his death. But for all his faults, my brother was always kind to me, so neither will you have any friendship.”

I looked down at him, then nodded. “That’s fair. Keep to your lands, Lord Lannister, leave the Starks be, and you’ll have no trouble from me.”

“A truce, then?” he asked.

“A truce,” I replied. I stretched out my hand, and he shook it.

“I bet my father is rolling in his grave,” he muttered as he left, his vigilant guards once more surrounding him.

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Halfway through the tournament was the Great Fair. And the event deserved the capitalization. Thousands of foreign and local merchants, tens of thousands of craftsmen, all hawking their wares. Back in the middle ages, it was hard to find items from far away. A single long trading loop might take more than a year, and lose one in three ships to bad luck, bad weather, and bad men. The Great Fair brought all that, all the wondrous animals and foods and plants, the fabrics and clothing, the toys and curios, to one place.

Then there were the areas less concerned with individual extravagances, and more concerned with general business. Wool, timber, iron, and dozens of other commodities factors were all in one place with the greatest concentration of other powerful merchants and lords that they did business with. Massive supply contracts were signed, bets made that could make or break fortunes depending on how different products would perform.

Of course, it wasn’t just for the wealthier merchants to profit. The greatest part of the fair was for employment. Tens of thousands of craftsmen, armorers, skilled laborers, farmers and servants tried to attract the attention of lords or wealthy knights. The land-owners, for their part, went about with lists of what their territories lacked, picking up a scribe here, a smith there, a dozen unlucky farmers to help expand the fields.

And all of it, all of it, paying money to the Crown. Daily fees for merchants that ranged from silvers to golds depending on location and size of the plot. Some even owed a part of their income. Even those who were just part of the employment fair had to pay a fee once they were hired.

And in the middle of this fair was my most profitable undertaking yet; the sale of treasury bills and bonds. It happened on the third day. At the same time that Lord Manderly was organizing the auction for the most powerful and wealthy, smaller bills and bonds were available in other locations for those of more meagre means.

I loved watching the face of the Iron Bank representative, the dawning realization that no longer would the Seven Kingdoms be paying so much when borrowing money. I was surprised at how popular the 20-year bonds turned out to be, considering that all too many of the visitors wouldn’t live to see the money. I guess the nobles were used to thinking in long term for things like that, with most of their increases in profits coming from agricultural development. We offered a 2x payout on the twenty year term if they let the interest ride; that may sound like a lot, until you realize that it’s only a little over 3.5% annual interest. Compared to the 12.5% the treasury was paying previously, it was a massive improvement.

All in all, we sold about three million nine hundred thousand dragons of bills and bonds. There was enough of a surplus after paying back all its outstanding debt for the Iron Throne to open its own bank. On my advice, it would be focused on small business loans and agricultural credit.

Not only would the Iron Throne be making more money, but it would be improving the economy in the process. It would also be a tool to help well-behaving lords and punish ill-behaving ones. The bank paid out at a higher interest rate than the average for the Crown’s debt: 5% a year including losses compared to the 2.75% that the Crown ended up owing once all of the different debt obligations were tallied.

Between everything, the Crown went from an expected gain, before extraordinary expenses (ie, Robert), of about a half a million dragons to a much-improved eight-hundred thousand dragons in Summer years. For Winter years, the expected year-end profit went from losses of about a hundred thousand dragons to gains of about two hundred thousand.

It was a nice feeling to live in a financially stable country for once.

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The rest of the tournament was less exciting. I bonded with the grounds, picking up a White and a Red, the latter likely coming from the chaos, martial and festival spirit of the place.

I also ended up developing a contraception spell. Nymeria Sand was the second daughter of Prince Oberyn Martell. She was twenty-five, slim and slender with dark eyes, pronounced cheekbones and olive skin. Tyene Sand was her half-sister, twenty-three years old with golden hair and blue eyes. Both shared their father’s hatred for the Lannisters, and decided to show their appreciation for my successes. We shared a fortnight of wild nights together.

I knew they were trying to get their hooks into me; they even dosed me with aphrodisiacs and the like. But I was young, and they were fun and skilled at pillow-sports. I suspect I surprised them a bit, and not just in resisting their tonics. My magic gave me literally supernatural stamina and my background in the modern world and all of its vices meant I was rather more creative than most that they’d experienced. It was great while it lasted, and honestly I was twenty-one; there was just no way I was going to ignore the opportunity.

Finally, the tournament progressed to the headline events. Ser Loras Tyrell won the joust, with Ser Barristan coming in second. Loras was impressive, and still only sixteen. He chose Summerhall as his prize. It was a former Targaryen summer home located about halfway between Highgarden and Storm’s End. It was a good position for his family to have, but I noted that it also left him a lot closer to Renly’s seat. Further, it wouldn’t be unusual for the Lord Paramount to spend a lot of time visiting his friend and new bannerman... I had to applaud the move.

In an incredibly smooth PR move Loras gave a woman a flower every time he won a bout. Typically, they were white, but the one he gave Sansa was red. It was a brilliant political move. The odds were good that Sansa was going to marry someone other than Joffrey. If Loras, the youngest of the four Tyrell children, could end up married to the eldest daughter of the Lord Paramount of the North and Hand of the King, it would be a massive coup for Highgarden.

I actually favored having Sansa marry Loras’ older brother, Willas. The alliance would help the Starks greatly, especially since the Reach was rich in food which could help the North in Winter years. The Reach as a whole was extremely fertile in both Summer and Winter, and their high productivity and population meant that they could field the largest army of all the regions of Westeros. That said, their lands were softer than any of the other regions too, save perhaps the Riverlands, and their troops tended not to show the same grit and persistence of other, harsher lands.

As a note about that; regular years had winter and summer. Capital-W-S Winter and Summer were something different. I wasn’t sure if it was magic, a weird orbit, volcanic activity, or something else but Westeros, and indeed Planetos as a whole, experienced these multi-year long mini hot-ages or ice-ages. So far, they’d been having a particularly long Summer, which meant that the North had a climate similar to Southern England. During a Winter though things could get much cooler, more akin to Northern Scotland or Moscow. Famine was not uncommon in Winter, especially in the North.

Thoros of Myr, a red priest who used a flaming sword, managed to win the melee. I wanted to talk to him about his god, R’hllor, and religion; the red priests were rumored to be capable of magic, and I was interested in what I could learn from him.

When competing in the archery I barely managed to come first, narrowly edging out Anguy of the Dornish Marshes. To be fair, his skill, at least for accuracy, was better than mine. At war, the range and power of my bow would have been more telling than on the more limited competition field. Still, I cast my spells as needed, and with the time available could use Destined Shot to ensure perfect placement of every arrow.

I walked away with the thousand dragons of prize money, not that I really had any need for more money or things I wanted to buy. Still, if I had a sudden need for five hundred horses or the like I could afford it. Maybe I’d invest it; start up a paper mill and printing press. There were worse things to spend the money on.

With that, the Hand’s Tourney came to a close. And I could finally relax and work on my own projects.