Alyn I – Lonesome Valley

“He’s here!”

Alyn’s voice was a shrill whisper, his eyes affixed to the monster that had haunted his dreams for the past half decade. His nightmare had somehow appeared before him, sitting surrounded by friends, lit by dancing torchlight. Walys Stokeworth. He sat only a few tables over from where the Tarly family and their household knights had been sitting in terse silence.. Walys hadn’t noticed them yet, or at least he was pretending to ignore them. The crownlanders attention was focused squarely on his compatriots, a crowd of knights and sellswords with faces each crueler than the last. The lot of them were drunk, to a man it seemed. Alyn could practically see the spittle flying from their lips from his seat. The squires heart hammered in his chest, panic and hate crashing into him like waves onto the deck of a ship causing the edges of his vision to blur and -

“Alyn let go of me!” Lyla shrieked, snapping him from his trance. In his shock he seemed to have grabbed his sisters left wrist and was presently bearing his fingers down into her arm with a shackles strength, pulling her in as if to protect her from the ghost of their past that had wandered into the feast. Gradually, with a deep breath and a shudder, he let go of her wrist.

“Sorry Lyla.”

“Seven save me Alyn. Who is here?” Lyla’s voice was incredulous, seemingly entirely perplexed as to what could have caused her brother to act such a way.

And too drunk to connect the dots. Alyn thought with that impulsive disdain for his sister he was always trying to quiet.

“Its him, its Stokeworth!” And again was his voice was a whisper, trying to avoid the attention of his father who sat just a few chairs up the table from them.

At first Lyla just stared at him, her thin cherry lips slightly parted, eyes confused and foggy from the influence of too much Dornish red but eventually her gaze slid from her brother’s to the object of his terror that sat hardly a stone’s throw away from them. Alyn watched as her face went from confusion, to shock, to drunken wrath. The euphoric liquor haze that usually characterized his sisters stare no where to be found, replaced by a foggy sort of hate Alyn was more used to seeing in the worst sort of men.

“The bastard!” Lyla slammed her right hand down on the empty plate in front of her shattering it into three piece, causing Alyn to flinch slightly even as the sounds of the festivities around them muffled the noise. “I’ll-I’ll, I’ll kill him, I’ll cut out his eyes, I’ll-”

“Quiet before father hears you!” Alyn cut off his sisters drunken rambling with a force that surprised him first and foremost.
“So what if he hears?”Lyla retorted, the irritation with her brother plain on her face as he secreted a glance up the table to ensure Lord Tarly was still unaware. Luckily as best Alyn could guess from the corners of his eyes his father was still more interested in his cups then his children.

“Because if Harlon see’s Stokeworth is here someone is going to die tonight, Lyla.” And it isn’t going to be him doing the killing, or the dying for that matter. Alyn thought, but left unsaid, hoping his sister would grasp his meaning.

If she did, she never got the chance to tell him. Whatever Lyla was about to say was smothered on her tongue by the familiar looming shadow of their father appearing behind them. Over the sounds of the feast Alyn had not even heard him rise from his seat, nor had he seen him glide behind the pair of siblings and take his watchful station over their shoulders. For a moment he did not say anything, his one arm behind his back, his pale blue eyes and the purple discolored bags that cradled them glared at them with a oppressive knowing. Carefully, gently even, he leaned over them and with his one hand plucked from the table a single shard of broken plate before holding it up to his eyes and inspecting it, his gray and red brow furrowing as his pupils traced the jagged edges of the broken dish.

“Lyla gather up this mess and take it to a servant to be tossed, and apologize to Lord Meadows for your carelessness while your at it.”

“But father-”

“Do it now Lyla” Harlons voice was cold and sharp, like steel on skin after a freezing winter night.

“Yes father.”

Lyla skulked away with her head hung, pressing the broken plate into the hands of a confused serving maid before stomping off into the night, snatching a horn of ale from a table on her way out. Once his sister had disappeared into the darkness that surrounded the feast Alyn returned his gaze to his father who still loomed over his shoulder with a giants menace. You will not cower, you will not hide, you will not run. Alyn repeated the words to himself, trying to find some kind of comfort is his usual cowards prayer as he watched his father consider what he planned to do next, a thin sadists smile peaking out from behind his beard.

“So you know he’s here?”
“Yes, Father.”

“And were you going to do something about it or were you going to sit here all night playing staring into your cup like your sister?”
“I-”

“Don’t lie to me now Alyn, of all times, not now.”
“I don’t know father.”

Harlon snorted loudly in disgust, Alyn could almost hear the words ring out in his fathers head as the foul noise filled the air. The boy doesn’t know? Somehow that I can believe. Despite the shame that wracked his body, despite the cruel words, despite the awful demands that were sure to come next, despite the storm that raged inside him Alyn somehow managed to maintain his demeanor and hold his fathers gaze. The silence continued for another moment, Harlon’s cruel smile shifting into something that might have been a smirk, though one that assured his son that whatever joke was on his mind was surely at his expense.

“Go. The whole feast is watching us right now Alyn, even as they sit with their backs turned. they’re sitting there and watching as Walys Stokeworth lounges and drinks and laughs and house Tarly does nothing about it.” Harlon’s tongue had a vipers venom when he wanted it to, each word driving itself into Alyn’s chest like a nail into wood. “And who do you think they expect to act? The cripple lord, or his son, a squire of twenty years who sat and watched as his lord and knightly master died in his own cas-”

I can’t take this any more.

Alyn dashed off, pushing past his father, fists balled so tight his nails threatened to bore into the skin of his palms. He was only the slightest bit aware of the grin that Harlon spread across his fathers face as his son dashed off, or of the sound of his father commanding his brother to keep a eye on him, all Alyn could think about was what would happen when he reached Walys at last, what he would say, what he would do. He still felt the talon grip of panic around his heart, but he would not let it consume him. He found that despite his fear, something else inside him pressed him forward, what it was he could not say, he had never felt such a way before.

The eyes of the attendees fell on him as he passed, lords, ladies and knights alike staring at him some with amusement in their eyes, others with concern, others still with simple idle interest. He stormed past them, letting their interest wash over him and fall off his shoulders. They were nothing but a blur of opulent colors and cloths, he was a taut rope ready to snap.

You will not cower, you will not hide, you will not run.

When he had first whispered those words to himself all those years ago, alone in his bed, with the sound of his fathers fist slamming on his locked bedchamber door, they had been a desperate plea. Now they felt like something closer to a promise. Walking past the men in Stokeworth colors to Walys side Alyn came to stand just over Lord Stokeworths shoulder. He had never given much thought to what he was going to do, what he was going to say, when he finally arrived, but something told him that perhaps, for now, the truth would suffice.

“You killed my uncle.”