A Vow Without Honor

The Journey

Glancing to the side, she noticed Jaime looking curiously at her.

"What?" she asked. It was the first she had spoken in nearly a day, she realized.

"You can cook."

Myra snorted. "I'm a woman, aren't I?"

She could practically hear Jaime's eye roll as he went back to skinning the rabbit. "Ladies of great houses don't learn how to cook little animals on rocks."

"This one did."

And then it was back to silence.

She wondered if it would be like this the entire way; she wasn't exactly attention starved, but their journey could very well take weeks, and the silence would eventually eat away at her. What few conversations she'd held with the man, however, had been out of some sort of necessity. Jaime Lannister was not the kind of man one just struck up casual conversation with. What would they talk about anyway? How their families hated one another? How they were currently killing one another?

How he'd pushed her brother from the broken tower?

Myra sighed, flipping the rabbit over as Jaime added his. She could not think about that now. Whatever past crimes Jaime had committed, they had to mean nothing to her, or they would never survive the journey together.

The lone wolf dies...

But could a wolf survive with a lion?

A twig snapped.

Jaime was up in an instant, sword half drawn. Instinctively, Myra moved behind him, waiting for whatever order he would give her. This was his element, after all.

But both found themselves relaxing ever so slightly as the origin of the noise presented itself.

It was a horse.

This creature, however, was far from relaxed. It was saddled, the bags pierced with arrows. A few more were lodged in its flank. Its ears were flat against its head, eyes wide, nostrils flaring with the smallest flecks of blood on the skin. The horse had been running, hard. If they were lucky, wherever it had gotten those wounds was miles away from them.

But Myra was slowly beginning to understand that whatever sort of luck surrounded her and Jaime was far from the good kind.

When Jaime dared to take a step forward, the creature bolted. They watched it gallop into the distant trees and disappear.

"Put out the fire," Jaime whispered, hand still on the hilt of his sword as he began to watch the surrounding area warily. "We have to go."

Having learned not to hesitate back on Dragonstone, Myra immediately dropped to her knees and began to shovel dirt onto their fire with her hands, ignoring how their food was suddenly bathed in the stuff. Still, she grabbed a handful as they all but ran from the area. A bit of dirt in her food was better than an empty stomach.

It was midday when Jaime and Myra finally relaxed. They had doubled back on their path a few times just in case, and were now steadily heading north once more.

Myra vaguely recalled looking at a map of the area once, Crackclaw Point it had been called, when she studied with Maester Luwin. It had seemed such a small peninsula at the time, but the further they traveled with nothing but forest to greet them, the more Myra was aware of how large the world truly was. It made the journey from Winterfell feel like the blink of an eye in comparison.

She supposed this wasn't what her mother had been referring to when she encouraged her to travel south.

Gods, she hoped her mother got back to Winterfell. She hoped she wasn't alone to worry about her children and husband; she hoped Bran could get a smile from her and Rickon could distract her with all his antics.