Blue-Wave Keep sat upon its ridge like a brooding beast of gray stone, its mottled walls a barrier between the high-born and the mud. Below, a cluster of hovels clung to the earth like discarded toy blocks, their roofs of rotting thatch shivering in the autumn gale.
House Goodbrook was not known for hospitality to strangers. The three envoys—Gal, Flores, and Brooke—found their bellies growling before the morning mist had cleared. Forbidden from the castle, they traded their last copper pennies to a weary farmwife for a loaf of hard rye bread and a swallow of well-water.
Gal, the eldest, felt the strength return to his limbs as the dry crust hit his stomach. He borrowed a sturdy bench from a local carpenter and dragged it to the center of the village square. The looming shadow of the keep's gatehouse fell across the mud, a silent threat from above.
Under a sky fractured by golden shafts of light, Gal cleared his throat. A few villagers paused, their eyes darting toward the battlements.
"Brothers! Sisters!" Gal's voice rose, cutting through the rustle of the old oak at the square's edge. "The Seven promised us Justice, but the Lords gave us the lash! They claim the land by blood and bleed you by the tax. Remember last winter? When the Lion's men raided your hearths for 'war tithes' while your children shivered in the dark? Where was their 'protection' then?"
He pointed a gnarled finger at the local septry. "They stripped the gold leaf from the Mother's statue to pay their sellswords! They buy and sell the holy offices while you crawl in the dirt. But the world has changed. The High Sparrow sits in the capital. The Lightbringer has risen at the Gods Eye! Eleven Lords have already yielded their steel to the Light. In our lands, no man's grain is stolen by a Lord's whim. Go to St. Maur's, and see the truth for yourselves!"
A ripple of unease went through the crowd. A boy tried to step forward, but his sister jerked him back, hiding him behind her skirts. The old carpenter's hands went still on his wood, his face a mask of indecision.
"Quiet, fool!" someone hissed from a doorway. "The Lord's men have ears!"
The square emptied as quickly as it had filled. A sudden gust of wind rattled the oak branches, sounding like dry laughter. Gal continued to speak to the empty air until the sun dipped below the horizon and the cold mist swallowed his shadow.
Night brought a biting frost. The three monks sought shelter at the village septry, but the doors remained barred.
"Go away," the local septon whispered through the wood. "I want no trouble with Lord Goodbrook. We have to live here after you've gone. If I open this door, the Lord will burn the roof over our heads."
They spent the night in a wood-shed, huddled together against the damp rot.
The next morning, they resumed. But the villagers now fled at their approach. Brooke dragged a large, jagged stone to the center of the road to act as a pulpit. They took turns, their voices rasping as they exposed the hypocrisy of the high-born. By noon, the word reached the solar of Blue-Wave Keep.
"This is treason!" Lady Gwyneth slammed her hand onto a silken cushion. "Monks or no, they will not incite my smallfolk!"
She summoned Ser Henry, the Master-at-Arms, and Maester Casimir. "How shall we break them?"
"A rope and a short drop," Henry grunted. "Let them preach to the crows."
"No," Casimir cautioned. "The 'Sparrows' have the Queen's ear. If we hang them, the Lightbringer will use it as a claim for war. We must be surgical."
Gwyneth's eyes thinned. "Flog them. Twenty lashes each. Give the old one, Gal, an extra ten. And break their faces so they remember how to keep their mouths shut."
Ser Henry arrived in the square with six armored men. He didn't waste words. He charged Gal, shoving the old man into the mud.
"You speak of诽谤—slander!" Henry roared. He signaled his men to break down a nearby door. They emerged dragging a heavy, scarred dining table.
"Bind the old crow," Henry commanded.
The villagers watched from behind cracked shutters, their hearts pounding. They saw Gal lashed to the table, his wrists turning raw under the hemp rope. Henry took a heavy riding whip and let it whistle through the air, delivering the first strike himself to show his men the proper depth of the cut.
The afternoon was filled with the rhythmic crack of leather on meat and the muffled groans of the faithful. The sky turned the color of a bruised plum, heavy clouds pressing down like a lead plate.
When it was over, Gal had long since lost consciousness. Flores and Brooke were ruins of shredded wool and bloody skin. The soldiers untied them and kicked them toward the village gate.
"Don't come back," Henry spat.
They crawled. By the time the moon rose over the ridge, they had covered less than two miles, leaving a trail of dark, iron-scented spots in the dirt.
A rickety wagon emerged from the dark. A bearded man, his eyes darting with terror, pulled up beside them. "Quick! My son... your brothers saved him from the flux last year with their herbs. I cannot leave you here. Get in. I'll take you to the Fisher border, but I must be back by dawn or my head is on a spike."
They hid in the back of the wagon, buried under empty grain sacks. Gal drifted in and out of a fever-dream.
"Am I... am I dead?" he wheezed as they neared the ridge of Big-Foot Mountain.
"No, Brother Gal," Flores whispered, his own voice cracking. "Hold on. Once we reach Ser Kevin, the Light will mend you."
"Why..." Gal sobbed, his eyes wet with tears. "Why did the Father spare me again? Why am I not with the others in the ash of Harrenhal?"
Flores held his hand. Gal had been a deacon at a town septry near Harrenhal when the war began. He had been away on a Naming Day rite when the Lannisters burned his home and everyone in it. He had never forgiven himself for surviving. He had taken the Seed of Light at St. Maur's, but his guilt had acted as a shroud, preventing the power from awakening. He had gone to Blue-Wave Keep seeking a martyr's end.
At the border, the wagon stopped. The driver pointed toward the ridge where the glint of Sun-Steel armor marked Kevin's camp. "Go. And speak no more of justice here. It only brings the whip."
Kevin saw them and sprinted forward, his hands already glowing with the golden aura of Solar Grace.
"Master's envoys!" Kevin cried, reaching for Gal's mangled back. "Let the Sun mend this—"
Gal's hand, surprisingly strong, clamped onto Kevin's wrist.
"No," Gal whispered, a strange, terrifying light beginning to flicker in his own mud-colored eyes. "Do not heal us, Brother Kevin. If the scars vanish, the lesson is lost. These wounds... they are our harvest. They are the proof the people need."
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