The King of Winters

Chapter 53

Last night he'd dreamt of Braavos again. Alone, with another boy as the only company, younger than him but much nobler. They had run together, through the different streets, house to house, racing up stairs, leaping across canals and boats, played together, as his ears rang to the sound of distant drums. Deep harsh banging and the swish of oars on water, a maddening cacophony of noise that grew ever louder until it seemed as if his head would explode.

Four years had come and gone since the day he had lost his friend, yet the sound of drums booming still tied a knot in his guts. Others might claim that their war was lost when King Eddard was dead, but the wolf had left his pup in this world so that they could be avenged. Asher had not only lost his friend that day, he had lost the hope of the entire north. If only he had brought him to the Company of the Rose he had found in Essos, justice could've been won for the King and the Queen, for every true man and honest woman who had died that day in the name of King Eddard and Queen Ashara.

"Even if we go there with this thing again, who knows if the new commander would be willing to fight," Barton was saying.

"They should. The men should yearn to return home."

"You could not expect that, Asher," Denys Snow said. "They have stayed here for years now."

"I have the reason to make them come home." Asher slapped the hilt of his long-sword with a gloved hand. "This isn't how it's supposed to end. You all followed me because everyone believed that I knew something, didn't you? And what I know is that this is going to work."

"Asher, " Edgar called loudly, above the rush of the water nearby. "It's Hunt and Roger."

So it was. Hunt looked hot and bedraggled as he made his way along the waterfront to the foot of the pier. Heat had left his face wet with sweat and red. He had the same sour look on his long face as at everytime he was sent venturing under the sun. Roger looked no better than him as well, but they were leading three horses, however, and that was all that mattered.

"Don't ever sending me out riding under the fucking Essosi sun," Ethan Hunt said, dismounting his horse briskly.

"Took you long enough," Asher asked them.

"Easy for you to say," Roger answered. "You were not the one out in the burning sun."

"Stop whining," Edgar dropped down from the rock. "As you can see we were out in the open too."

"Yeah, hear that," Barton said. "See any tent above our heads? It's just the same sun."

Hunt's horses did not please him. "Were these the best that you could find?" he complained to the knight. Ethan had been the second son of some knight in the south but that had been in the past though. They had three good horses won at pit fighting, all won from the dothraki screamers who had braids reaching their arse, but for the rest they had to turn to trade though.

"They were," said Hunt, in an irritated tone, "and you had best not ask what they cost us. Unless you wish to wait to find some dothraki for us to kill, this is what we got."

"My grandfather's guards have better horses than these," Edgar said inspecting the horses.

"That's because, Edgar," Roger said, "we are not in Westeros and no one in Essos knows how to breed fine horses like the Ryswells."

They would do, thought Asher. We're not riding into battle after all, just a ride to meet old friends. After Essos when he and his friends left the company to find Andrew, he had found it difficult to put the same trust in them as previously. If only he had brought him to them, this whole thing would've been done more quickly and easily. Almost all the men and women in the Company of the Rose knew King Eddard firsthand and likely not forget him till their end. It was during his days the Company of the Rose returned home to the north after nearly three hundred years of exile, ever since the days of King Torrhen Stark, the king who knelt, submitted his crown to Aegon the Conqueror. Only when King Eddard won the north's freedom from Rhaegar Targaryen, did the exiled northerners returned home to kneel again only to a King in the North. If only I had showed them what they were fighting for... If only I could convince them to turn west, I could get them to see it.