fight like gods. asoiaf

THIRTY ONE

XXXI
LUCELLA
"news of the dog"
⚜️

News of the attack on Eddard Stark and his band of Northerners spread quickly through the walls of the Red Keep. The gossip seemed to make the air buzz with a strange sort of energy. Yet life persisted. When Lord Stark awoke, the King kept to his hunting, remaining deep within the thick of the King's wood, Sandor amongst his party. 

Lucella felt sick to the stomach. Yet again, she'd picked the scar across her eye until it was dry and flaking, threatening to scab over again. It had never looked so bad- so ugly-  or at least, not since it had been a fresh and festering wound, speaking of her life's troubles. The skin across the side of her face was inflamed, rubbed raw and blotchy. She wished she could hide it or cover it with cloth, but the scar ran deep and obvious across her face. Even a hood could not hide it. She'd rather a mask. 

The Stark girls had been no where in sight, until an assembly was called in the throne room, under the control of Lord Stark, the Hand. 

"Brigands, Lord Varys? Oh, they were brigands, beyond a doubt. Lannister brigands," came the voice of Raymun Darry. He was an angry man by nature, his steps echoing as loudly as his voice through the hall as he paced. 

The throne room was crowded with too many faces, those of the men and women begging for consideration sat in the very centre, surrounded by three knights, only one of which Lucella knew. 

"Here stand the few who remain from the holdfast of Sherrer, Lord Eddard. The rest lay dead with the people of Wendish Town and the Mummer's Ford."

"Joss. Tell the Lord Hand what happened at Sherrer."

The man stumbled out some pleasantries, appealing to a King who did not sit before him. Lord Stark wore his thoughts upon his face as if they were written for all to see. The man who spoke lived no more than a few days ride from the Red Keep, and yet could not recall the face of his ruler, and more, Eddard Stark wore his colours well. The direwolf sigil was clasped around his neck, draping the grey fabric over his shoulders.

When all was corrected, the man stumbled out a continuation. "I keep... I kept... I kept an alehouse, m'lord, in Sherrer, by the stone bridge. The finest ale south of the neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, m'lord. It's gone now like all the rest. They come and drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my roof, and they would of spilled my blood too, if they'd caught me. M'lord."

"They burnt us out. Come riding in the dark, up from the south, and fired the fields and the houses, killing them as they tried to stop them," a farmer said. "They weren't no raiders, m'lord. They had no mind to steal our stock, not these, they butchered my milk cow where she stood and left her for the flies and crows."

"What proof do you have that these were Lannisters?"

Lucella didn't need proof. What reason did these townfolk have to lie? It was the Baratheons that Ser Raymun might've been so bent against rebelling against, not the Lannisters, and Ser Karyl Vance was a sad man, with a quiet disposition, unlikely to rise up unless the occasion should demand so. Yet Lucella could not understand Lord Tywin's motivations. 

"Did they wear crimson cloaks or fly a lion banner?"

"They would be blind or stupid to do such a thing," said Ser Marq Piper. Lucella knew little of the man except that she did not like him. 

"Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my lord. They were armed with steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle axes for the butchering."

Ser Karyl pointed to an old man and told him to speak of what he knew, but Lucella didn't need any more proof of who was raiding these towns. The Lannisters were not so stupid, no, but they were cruel, from what she knew of them. Lord Tywin was an example enough. He had a song to prove it.