He wasn't Renly, Brienne realized. Renly was dead.
Renly had been a man of twenty-one; this one was still a boy. But he looked so much like Renly had when he visited Tarth.
His jaw was broader, his brows thicker. Renly had been slender and graceful, while this boy had solid shoulders and strong arms. Dark stubble shadowed his cheeks and chin, and a coarse mass of Blackhair fell past his ears.
King Renly's hair had been the same coal black, but he always kept it clean and neat—cut short at times, left to fall over his shoulders at others, or tied back with a golden ribbon. It had never been a tangled, sweat-soaked mess.
She watched him for a while before deciding. He had Renly's eyes and hair, but not his build. Renly Great Lord had been tall and lean, not so powerfully built... nothing like his brother Robert, whose strength was famous throughout the realm.
...
"Doesn't he look like him?" Tyrion asked.
"Hm?" Brienne blinked. "Like who?"
"No one," Tyrion said with a wave. "Gendry, Arya will be glad to see you again. I saw you Hammer that fellow to death." He gestured toward Black Walder's corpse. "Are you a knight?"
"Yes, my lord." Gendry nodded. "Lord Beric knighted me."
"A shame," Tyrion sighed. "I'd hoped to do it myself. It should have been my honor."
...
They cleaned the battlefield as best they could, took Black Walder's head, rested for half a day, then set out again for Seagard.
"I never thought you'd come to help us," Brienne said. "Bandits saved us." She and Thoros rode at Tyrion's sides, with Podrick, Edric, and Gendry following behind, horses abreast.
"Lady Stoneheart won't be pleased," Tyrion said.
"She's changed. She's not like Beric," Thoros replied. "Ruthless vengeance, endless killing. She'll sacrifice anyone to bring down a Frey. We're tired of living like this."
"And yet you call yourselves righteous," Tyrion said.
"Singers love to tell stories about good men framed by schemers and driven into the woods," Thoros said, "but most outlaws are just looters, nothing like the Lightning King. They're bad men—greedy, malicious, contemptuous of the gods, caring only for themselves."
"Next to them, the so-called Brotherhood deserves a little pity, dangerous as they are. They were once simple folk who'd never gone a mile from home until the Lord's call came. Off they marched beneath his splendid banners, wearing ragged shoes and tattered clothes, and carrying whatever weapons they had—scythes, sharpened hoes, or crude Hammers made by tying stones to sticks with leather straps."
"Brothers, fathers, friends all left together. They'd heard ballads and tales and set out full of excitement, dreaming of wonders, riches, and glory. War seemed a grand adventure, the kind most men could only dream of." Thoros paused. "Then they tasted war."
"For some, a taste was enough to break them. Others endured, year after year, through more battles than they could count. But even a man who survived his hundredth fight might fall apart in his hundred-and-first. A younger brother watching the elder die. A father losing a son. A friend with his belly split by an axe, trying to hold his guts inside."
They were exhausted—exhausted by endless war, exhausted by Lady Stoneheart's vengeance. All they wanted now was for it to end, so they could return to peace.
"They saw the lord who had led them into battle cut down, and another lord loudly declaring that they now belonged to him. Their wounds had barely begun to heal when fresh ones were added. They were never fed enough; their shoes fell apart during endless marches, their clothes rotted into strips, and many fell sick from drinking filthy water, fouling their own trousers as they lost control of their bodies."
"If they wanted new boots, or warmer cloaks, or rusted half-helmets, they had to take them off corpses. Before long, they started stealing from the living as well. Across the war-torn lands, they met common folk just like the ones they themselves had once been. They stole from them—petty thefts at first, then slaughtering cattle and sheep—and from there it was only a single step to carrying off a peasant's daughter."
"One day, when they looked around and realized that all their friends and kin were gone, that strangers surrounded them, and the banners overhead were no longer ones they recognized, they found themselves lost, with no idea where they were or how to return home. They fought for a Lord who didn't know their names, who only shouted orders with pompous authority: form ranks, pick up your spears, sickles, and sharpened hoes, hold the line. And then the knights came—horsemen encased in iron, their faces unseen, their charge filling the world with the thunder of hooves and steel..."
Thoros rambled on, as if singing a ballad.
"Some ran at once, or crawled away over corpses after the fighting, or slipped out of camp in the dead of night to hide. By then, any sense of home was gone. Kings, lords, and gods meant less to him than a piece of rotten meat—at least meat could keep him alive another day—or a bag of cheap wine that might drown his fear for a little while. A peasant lives never knowing what tomorrow brings, never knowing where the next meal will come from, living like a beast instead of a man."
A heavy silence settled over the small group after he finished.
It stretched on and on until Brienne finally asked Thoros, "Old priest, tell me, how old were you when you first went to war?"
"Ah, about the same age as this boy of yours," Thoros said, pointing at Pod. "Truth be told, I was too young for war, but I'm from Myr, and Myr breeds mercenaries. My brothers went, so I wouldn't be left behind. A neighbor said I could serve as his squire, but he wasn't a knight—just a kitchen helper at an inn, using a butcher's knife stolen from the kitchen as a weapon. He died on the Stepstones without ever truly swinging a sword. A fever took him and another lad from my village. Another died under a Warhammer, his skull split in two. His friend was hanged for rape."
"You speak of the War of the Ninepenny Kings?" Tyrion asked. Prince Duncan had said nine crowns sold for nine halfpennies.
"They named it that, but I saw no kings, and I earned no halfpennies. It was just a war."
"Lady Stoneheart wishes to see you, Blackfish, and her daughters." After they rode a while longer, Thoros added, "The land is scarred, the peasants' blood is spent. End this quickly."