Chapter 7: Old Grudges and Buried Secrets
Most of the rescued villagers were in rags, hollow-eyed, moving with the careful deliberateness of people still processing what had happened to them. Henry had his men distribute a portion of the captured rations — ironborn travel bread and dried meat, nothing worth eating by choice, but food was food.
The villagers took it with shaking hands, thanked him in the way people thank you when they're too exhausted for proper words, and helped each other back onto the road toward home. After everything that had been done to them, what they wanted most was to see what remained of the places they'd come from.
Henry split his force at the river. He took the cavalry north along the bank of the Saltspear on horseback, while Maewyn loaded the sailors and the bulk of the captured loot onto the ironborn longship and pushed upstream. They agreed to meet in Barrowton before nightfall.
The march passed without incident. No sign of more raiders. By evening, both groups came into Barrowton within an hour of each other, the longship drawing stares from the walls as it came upriver with a Reyne banner flying from the mast where an ironborn kraken had been that morning.
The meeting hall of Barrowton's keep was warm enough from the hearth, but the warmth didn't reach the atmosphere in the room.
The woman in the high seat was tall and pale, composed in the particular way of people who have learned to hold themselves very still so that what's underneath doesn't show. She was perhaps twenty-seven, dressed in dark wool, her brown hair pinned in a widow's knot at the back of her head. There were lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes that shouldn't have been there yet at her age — the kind left by years of tension held in the same expression.
Lady Barbrey Dustin looked at Henry across the hall and said, without warmth but without hostility either, "You cleared them out entirely?"
Henry had already shed his armor and changed into plain riding clothes. A dark-haired page brought bread and salt on a wooden tray. Henry ate, passed his sword to the page, and answered. "Yes, my Lady. The raiders were from Blacktide Isle, led by a man named Belon Blacktyde. None survived. We've taken their ship and confirmed no others are hiding in the area."
Something in her expression eased, though not much. "Thank you, Lord Henry. Sit down." She waited until he had settled into the chair beside hers before adding, "I owe you for this. Though I'll note that Eddard sent only you."
"I lead my own cavalry, my Lady. Lord Stark assigned me specifically to clear the western coast while the main host rides south. It's where I can be most useful."
"If Brandon were alive, he would have come himself." The words came out quietly, with an edge underneath them that had been honed by years of use. "Brandon would never have left his people's villages to burn while he marched every able sword south to answer a king's call, and then sent a small party to deal with the aftermath." She stopped herself and looked at Henry directly. "Forgive me. That isn't aimed at you."
"I know, my Lady."
She studied him for a moment. The sharpness in her eyes softened by a degree. "What do you need?"
"Supplies, access to a blacksmith, and whatever men you can spare." Henry kept it straightforward. "The prisoners told me Blacktide Isle is nearly undefended — Belon Blacktyde took every fighting man he had on this raid. I intend to take the longship across and hit the island before they have any idea what's happened."
Lady Dustin was quiet for a moment. "You'd take that kind of risk for Eddard Stark's people."
It wasn't quite a question. Henry chose not to correct the framing.
"Your father." She shifted slightly. "He died in the Rebellion, I was told. Was he brought home properly?"
"He died at the Battle of the Bells. Lord Wyman Manderly saw to it that his remains were returned to White Harbor. He's buried in the Snowy Sept there."
She nodded slowly. "At least he died for Wyman Manderly. Not for Eddard." When she said the name, there was nothing respectful in it — just the particular flatness of someone who has spent years deciding exactly how they feel about a person and arrived at a settled answer. "My husband Willam died for Eddard Stark. At the Tower of Joy, in the Red Mountains, a thousand leagues from home."
Her gaze went distant. Not the unfocused distance of someone losing the thread — the sharp, specific distance of someone looking at something they've looked at many times.
"He came home as bones in a saddlebag." Her voice stayed even, which made it worse. "Eddard Stark brought back Willam's horse — his good horse, the one Willam loved — because he needed something to carry his sister's body north. Lyanna. He used my husband's horse to bring back Lyanna Stark, and he left Willam's bones in a cairn in the mountains." A pause. "Then he came here and told me, with a straight face, that he was grateful for House Dustin's sacrifice. He returned the horse afterward. Generous of him."
She pressed her lips together. Her jaw was tight.
"Willam promised me he'd come back." She said it quietly, almost to herself. Then she blinked and the distance closed. She looked at Henry again, and something like embarrassment crossed her face — or the nearest thing to it she allowed herself. "Forgive me. You've ridden hard, killed men today, and here I am making you sit through a widow's grievances by the fire." A thin, humorless smile. "There isn't much else to do in Barrowton this time of year."
"There's nothing to forgive, my Lady."
She straightened in her seat. "The soldiers. All my men rode south with Eddard — I have barely enough left to keep order here, and I won't strip that down further." She held up a hand before he could respond. "But you can recruit from the villages around Barrowton freely, with my authority behind you. I have no spare equipment to offer, so you'll need to arm them yourself. And the smiths in town will see to your weapons and gear at no charge, for as long as you need them." She rose slightly, signaling the end of the meeting. "Rest your men here tonight. You'll be no use to anyone exhausted."
"That's more than enough, my Lady. Thank you." Henry stood and dipped his head.
The dark-haired page who'd brought the bread and salt materialized at his elbow and gestured toward the corridor. "I'll show you to your chambers, my lord."
The boy led him through Barrowton's stone corridors at a trot, clearly one of those children for whom walking is a failure of ambition. He was around ten, Henry guessed — black hair to his shoulders, pale skin, with an energy about him that seemed slightly at odds with the somber keep around him.
"My lord," the boy said, after they'd turned the second corner, "when you came through the gate, I was watching from the tower. I saw the longship." He looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide. "That ship could carry two hundred men. Did you really kill all of them?"
"My men did most of it," Henry said. "Close to a hundred of us."
The boy stopped walking entirely and turned around. "Could I be your squire?" He said it with the directness of someone who has been thinking about this since the longship came through the gate and has decided there's no point in not asking. "I'm old enough. I'll have to go back to the Dreadfort soon, and I'd rather—" He caught himself and straightened up, making an effort at formality. "My name is Domeric Bolton. Son of Lord Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort."
Henry kept his expression easy. Roose Bolton's son. He'd filed that name somewhere in the back of his memory and hadn't expected to find it here — a bright-eyed ten-year-old who moved like he was always slightly in a hurry and looked at a captured ironborn longship with uncomplicated wonder.
Nothing about Domeric Bolton resembled his father. Henry wasn't sure what to do with that.
What he did know was that his own situation made the question simple to answer. "I haven't been knighted yet," he said. "A man who isn't a knight can't take a squire. That's how it works."
Domeric's face fell. He turned back around and resumed leading the way, shoulders dropped.
It lasted about thirty seconds.
"But you will be," the boy said, with complete confidence, looking back again. "After what you did today — when you catch up with the King's army and the other knights hear about it, someone will knight you. They'd have to." A beat. "And then you could take me."
"If that day comes," Henry said, "and if your father gives his consent — then yes."
Domeric's face split into a grin that looked nothing at all like Roose Bolton, and his pace quickened another notch down the corridor, as if the conversation had given him somewhere to be.
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