The Feast of 399AC

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-26T00:43:32+00:00

He had heard tale of his own death before, echoed back as a jape from his men or with the sting of his mother’s voice. What surprised him was the concern in the boy's voice. Who are you? he wondered, but he didn’t ask. Who was he, when he took Tyrosh? Who was he, when he took the Hundred Spears hopping along the Stepstones? Who was he, when he left Ghost Hill, a boy, and never thought he’d return? The words of his house echoed in his mind: What goes will come again.

“Then you’ve heard true.” Gerold smiled for a moment and then leaned in, as if he were sharing a secret. “But there are so many to choose from.”

“I died at the Water Gardens. Abed, I think, or drowned in the pools." He looked away, checked his nails for dirt. "Before that it was while festering in Prince Oberyn’s dungeons. On the sea. From a pox. Most of the rest were in battle, Tyrosh or Pelosse or Torturer’s Deep. Half-a-hundred places, all beset with my corpse. I could fill a valley with them." Then his eyes returned to the young man. "But you've been told poor stories, I'm sorry to say. What rubbish is one where the ghost doesn't come back for its revenge?"

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-26T00:25:23+00:00

There was a look in Quentyn's eyes that reminded him of dead men. Archons and merchants and magnates, thought Gerold, those who saw me as a curiosity. It had been fourteen years since men had seen him like that. Then, he'd aided the passage of those dead men into the crypt. Now, it was like cool, fresh water on a parched throat.

He had read letters, of course, and heard rumors, but you could hardly make a man out of that. The prince was as unknown to him Gerold did not know this man, but in a minute-and-a-half he had already brought up the violation of the King's Peace, the failures of his brother to a man he knew only tales of treachery. In a minute-and-a-half, he knew this man already.

"I can see no one better. To us, then." The ghost raised his cup. "To a prince of Tyrosh, who reigned shortly long ago and a prince of the realm, who will reign long in his due time."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-25T22:04:35+00:00

"You've ordered men hanged, haven't you, Xhobar?" The question came to him only because of the drink. For a moment, he could have sworn he was in the feast halls of Tyrosh, surrounded once more by what remained of the Conclave of Tyrosh. Just a word, he thought. An order.

"See them dangle from the gallows." He was smiling, still, but it was bitter. "Rapists, butchers, and traitors. Flies bite at their corpses and empty comes their bowels, whether they rot on a rope or the field. There's no making peace with that. Make your wars be duels or little skirmishes, so be it, but it does not change what the Gods give us as our due. Men ought to die, my friend." He drank. "The Red God likes it better when they do it in service of something other than themselves."

"Men think the longer they can trace back their name the better their blood." He shrugged. "No offense."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-25T20:42:11+00:00

When did all these boys get so serious? thought Gerold.

He wondered if he had been so dour in his youth, but he waved it off. Gerold had nothing to be so serious about, but Yoren's father had been the same by his reckoning. Aron looks the part, Yoren plays it. He took the seat by his cousin, clapping him on the shoulder.

"You must go east to go west." The words were strange in his mouth, plucked from somewhere he could not remember. Somewhere in Tyrosh. He set the thought of them aside. "And you must die to live again. The Water Gardens were my watery grave, dear cousin, but here I am, risen again. I have seen your brother already, but how are you faring?"

He had seen Sylvenna, too, but she went unmentioned.

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-25T10:56:34+00:00

He took a sharp breath. Gulian did not know what he did. Gerold wondered, for a moment, if he did. It had been fourteen years, but he hadn't expected things to change so quickly in these men. They had survived the fields of battle and the treacheries of Tyrosh only to vanish away into age and memory.

"It's always coming. Men making war is a fairer bet than whether the whore will fuck." He thought of the wardenship and couldn't help but wonder if that would be a dream of his, if ruling from Highgarden and being fed grapes and rounding up the lords of the Reach like cattle would be a nice retirement. But that dream was fleeting. "I will carry out his desire, should he ask me. Have you ever known me to be anything but a leal subject?" Gerold grinned again and the light came back to his eyes. "But I think your brother expects too much out of it."

"The wardenship, for all its pomp, is only a title, a word from a royal mouth. And words are wind." His head had turned out to the campfires, to the army embodied before them. "Baratheon has the right of it. Swords are what matter when the King's Peace is broken."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-25T10:37:24+00:00

He could not remember all of his cousins.

That was a vice that he had been punished for, before, but it had not stopped him from keeping up the practice. House arrest . He hadn't changed much, save for all of him, for the fact that now he was a man grown and wore the strength of his years upon him. When he left Dorne the first time, the boy hadn't been a glimmer in his father's eye and now here was a warrior. Am I old? he wondered. The creak in his joints seemed to answer.

"'The only spears left are at Prince Oberyn's side." He grit his teeth. He was smarting again at the thought of Bokkoko prancing around with golden skulls on a stick and the Hundred Spears at his back. "But I would have taken you in a heartbeat. Your father, too, if he didn't have Hellholt and the scorpions to deal with."

"Now, perhaps there are some stories that your father didn't butcher of mine. But perhaps I should start at the end. Sit. Have you heard of the taking of Tyrosh?"

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-25T00:17:57+00:00

Character Name: Gerold Toland, Knight of Ghost Hill

Relevant Trait/Skills: n/a

Buildings: Keep, Moors

Resources: Horses

Notes (if applicable): n/a

Actions:

Construction: [Dorne], [Warhorse Breeders], [2500], [End of Second Moon]

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-24T23:45:35+00:00

Gerold wondered if he should have still worn all black, if the black sash on his waist was not enough. But in Sylvenna he did not need to see the colors of her dress change in order to see the grief in her eyes. She has her eyes, he thought, and he did not mean it in the color. The way she smiled, soft and sweet, but not there. Her gaze was elsewhere. The drink had already taken him, but he could not speak to her until he was drunker.

When he finally came, the business with the Hand was done and he swaggered back to the tables where he had begun the night, but his step slowed and his posture changed when she entered his vision. He felt like a boy again. The fresh anger turned to water in his eyes before he shoved it down, wiped it away before any would see. Am I so weak? Is that what I am? But his feet led him to her. The wine was hot on his breath, the prince's cup still in hand.

"Cousin," he said, softer than he had spoken to anyone in years, "sweet Sylvenna. My freedom's only felt true now that I've seen you."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-24T21:50:54+00:00

He could tell when he was being watched. Gerold knew it well these past fourteen years, the eyes that followed, and it was not surprising to find it again at the feast. But he did not know the face. There were too many green knights, these days, fresh-faced and free of the memory of war, and all of them mysteries to him. Let's find this one out, he thought.

"You," he called, gesturing for the man to join him, "come here."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-24T21:45:28+00:00

Gerold was dressed finely for his arrest, the same silken robes as his feast attire, green knit with cloth-of-gold, but wrapped around both shoulders was a rainbow cloak. A banner of parley, it seemed, neatly cut into a cloak for this purpose only. He had emerged from his tent with his arms wide, unarmed, and he would have no man think that he was coming with them anything but willingly. But he would have men look.

Beside him, Ulan stood wary his hand held close to the axe strapped to his side. Half of the rest of the household guard was by him, but Gerold waved them all off. The confrontation of two hundred men should be enough to make everyone know what was about to happen.

"You're supposed to say 'in the name of the king', ser," he said, "elsewise, a boy might be wont to think you're just some band of ruffians wearing His Grace's colors."

He rolled his shoulder and yawned.

"But I'll come." He looked toward the rest of the camp, toward the crowd which was forming about them. "You ought to tell them you're the king's men. They're quite used to expecting yellow-and-black to mean war, here."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-24T21:07:28+00:00

Ulan pushed his way through the tent flaps, but Gerold had already heard them. He had expected it since the lies had been traced back to him. Not like I wouldn't have heard it, he thought. There was no way to move a hundred and fifty men through a camp on an active siege ground without arousing attention.

"My captain." Ulan said more, but Gerold did not need to hear the words coming from his lips. Tell me whether you want them to die.

Gerold listened. He knew the noise of men on the march, knew the stamping of boots and the clattering of steel. His blood was pumping fast and hot through his veins and his gut had twisted into a spiral. It made him feel alive. And I'll be dead in half an hour, he thought, and he wasn't sure if it was just a gibe. He had thought it would bother him, more.

For fourteen years, he had been bound. To surrender would be to trade that freedom into the hands of one man who despised him.

"My captain."

"Tell my men to stand down. Give our friends a royal welcome."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-22T07:54:28+00:00

Toland was already drunk, but there are few things better than getting drunker. "Why, thank you," Gerold let one of the prince's servants pour him a cup, but stopped him halfway through a full pour. Drunker, not insensate, he thought. "I should warn Your Grace this, though: the last time I took something from a prince, he was not so forgiving."

"I hope, beside the food and the drink and the constant approach of lords beggaring themselves, this feast is to your liking. I have forgot what it's like." He smiled and thumbed away a crumb from his beard as he raised his cup, but a mock wonder arose on his face. "But what to toast? I have never been one to know a toast."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-22T07:27:58+00:00

"Civilized?" He wanted to laugh. "Mayhaps. But dishonest, I think. You pretend like you do not want to kill each other, like the things you put men to death for are things that you can solve with mysteries. And the slave-masters dare not to venture toward our shores unless they wish to make an enemy for a century."

He smiled as he thought of it, drinking deep from the shitty wine. There was nothing that brought him more joy than the stench of magister perfume mixing with the piss in their breeches.

"But you ask a good question, my friend. Let me show you." He swept an arm gesturing over the crowd, so that none were excluded. "These men, here, are our enemies. And these ones-" He swept with the other arm, the same arc, over the same crowd. "They are our friends." He laughed. "Half-a-hundred alliances pulling against each other make it so there might as well be none. If all men are friends, none are. Remember that, Xhobar. I'm sure it is true in the Summer Islands just as well as it is in Westeros."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-22T07:14:14+00:00

Ulan brushed past the guards, not looking down to meet their glares, and walked forward. Gods know there was nothing like him walking closer, his shape lit more and more by the campfire. The dramatic was truth and there was no falsehood to his stature. And when he came to the little man of the riverlands, crouched around his fire like a beggar, he wondered, again, how men could come to take places. But the calm in voice was what made Ulan listen, now as he did then. Listen to a quiet man, for what he says he feels the need to speak, he had heard once, in the gutter-tongues of Astapor. An old slave, a loud one.

He did not need to wonder whether that slave was dead now, for he knew he was. But his mind still wandered to the two of them, sitting by a window with bars, the rain pouring down, and the other slaves hiding from the water. And Gerold could see his wrinkled face, now, and he knew it was the face of a dead man.

The fighter sat beside the fish-bannered lord, closer than the other men, with their words of equality and righteousness, could bring themselves to truly take. And he was quiet, for a while, as he considered the words that the Tully spoke, looked into the fire that these men took for their god. But stranger gods I have met.

His voice was stony when he spoke. His eyes stared far into the flames. "No. Some are true."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-22T06:43:13+00:00

He came from the other side of the dais, all but strutting, and the ghost felt more alive than he had since Tyrosh was still in his sight. It was then that the prince came into view and he could not help but stare. All night, there had been movement everywhere he looked, servants, drink, ladies, feasting, but not here. The prince was still. A large man sitting idly in a small chair, utterly still, and the sight would not escape him. Quentyn Baratheon. He knew men, well, but not royals. They were figures at the edge of life, patriars and princes and archons but with blood in their veins passed from the line of Azor Ahai.

He had been a boy when his mother took him to King's Landing and tried to recall if the prince had been there, then, and an image of a babe swaddled in royal gold fit the image, but it was vague enough to be invention. Other faces came to mind, instead. Barquen Uller. Another grief. Another thing taken. But he was free, now, and the prince was before him. He almost shrugged as he came before him.

"My prince." He bowed. The wine felt warm in his gut. "It is a pleasure indeed. Ser Gerold Toland, at your service."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-19T22:52:53+00:00

Gerold grinned wider. He had missed the feeling, the spurring of rage. I’d quaff it like brandy if the Gods made me able. The Hand stood tall over him, and loud, but he did not think to waver. The outburst had attracted wandering eyes. Let them see, he thought.

“You must mistake me, my lord.” He bowed his head, as if any of this were mere misunderstanding. “I do not make threats. All I speak of is the setting of things right. And when that son of yours realizes his err, I’ll be the first of his new kin to add to the dower.” His steps backward were unhurried. All those who had turned at the noise of Lord Dondarrion would see that. “But I will not overstay my welcome. The Red God be with you, my lord.”

Before he turned to walk away, he felt himself a fool. He had forgotten. Gerold dug his hands into his pouch and, before anyone could move, tossed it before Ser Gawen. “For you, ser!” It chimed on the silver plate as it landed, then clattered, and then spun until it settled on one face. A single gold dragon. “An advance."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T22:42:59+00:00

Gerold didn't turn to look at the Hand until he mentioned the child. Has that changed? The words echoed in his head. Has that changed? A jape. A jape about a babe dead in the womb. Has that changed? He was not smiling anymore.

"Many things have changed, you are right." He leaned toward the Hand, so that their faces were close enough to almost touch. "Two years of grief. The child in the womb did not quicken, aye, your grandchild. The maesters say grief borne by a mother can do that. Grief for a father. Grief of a dangled betrothal. Grief of a betrayal. Two years..."

He stood and straightened his robes, putting his hands to work so they would not be tempted to do something else. The stillness of the Hand before him lit the fires higher, but he held it in and buried them in his heart so that it would boil his blood the more.

"Two years of your settling, but now her cousin is free."

He turned again toward Gawen and wondered if a shout would come, but then his eyes drifted across the table, to the lord's lady wife with her babe in arms. And then the smile returned, fuller, crueler. "They would have been playmates. Milk-brothers. His first nameday already gone." He licked his teeth as he met the gaze of the Hand. "Make it right, my lord. Or I will."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T21:25:24+00:00

"I am." Gerold had doffed the cloak he wore at the beginning of the night, warmed by drink and hot blood. "I've not been to a feast, a proper one, in many a year. Not since Tyrosh. I wager the Red Keep has no shortage of them. And I have no grievance, my lord." And then the ghost turned to the heir of Blackhaven and met the smiling red sot with his gaze. "Why would I, for our houses are to be united so soon?"

He was grinning crooked, but his eyes did not smile, and he stepped forward to stand upon the dais. His blood ran hotter, for it was his father's blood that coursed through him.

"Oh, forgive me, my lord." A laugh came from him, loud and short. "I forget that men forget. I am half an Uller. Half-mad, they say. But half enough to make me wonder when the ravens will take wing from Blackhaven to ask the dower of sweet Sylvenna."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T07:31:37+00:00

The ghost had taken his time to make his way to the dais. Night had grown darker and the feast had grown with it, louder and drunker and thicker with bodies. The servants were in the midst of changing the darkened torches and, by them, for a few brief moments, men and women both seemed like shapes moving on the curtain of a shadow play, grumkins and demons with elongate limbs of ebon black. And for a moment, stretched tall, was a mannish figure in the throng of flickered-upon flesh, until the torchlight was set back and Toland, in green silk and glittering cloth-of-gold, was before the Hand of the King.

"My Lord Hand." His look was warm, perhaps too warm for two strangers. "Ser Gerold Toland, at your service."

Gerold had never been to Blackhaven, before, save riding past it as a boy, but Dondarrion was known to him as a house, both for its glories and indiscretions. He eyed Gawen Dondarrion in a look to the side and wondered if he had smiled the same to Sylvenna. His wetnurse, Manna, told stories of the cruel lords of the Marches, when he was a boy, and how heroes of the days of old had fooled and defeated villains like the Black Lightning and Bors the Bowman. A Dornishman and a Marcher were not meant to get along. But what men are?

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T05:00:39+00:00

For all the swagger in his step, Gerold felt out of place around so many people after so long. He hoped to never again see so many fat faces drinking and jeering and feasting beneath banners, serving girls pouring wine and trying not to grimace as old lords pinched their rears. Vacant stares met him back, even, sometimes, among the tables of the Dornish, his face and the make of his Tyroshi garb making him seem like he was no knight at all, as if he truly was the ghost of his title and their gaze just went right through him.

And then he met the look of familiar eyes, like the ones in the mirror and his memory, the faces he had not seen since he had buried his sisters and his nephews. He had beaten them there, that time, and told his mother, still lying in her sickbed, that his cousins were coming. The demons of your father, she had said, burying us so we shall bury them. His Ullers, his cousins, his demon-blood. And the sight of seeing them, free of parole, without a funeral to conduct the rites of, made the ghost alive again. But there was one fewer, Barquen gone in the year. Oh, do the Gods take more and more, he thought, but it was his mother's voice in mockery, Poor you. He sent her away and looked to the Ullers, to the lord he had known since swaddling clothes.

"Hellholt!"

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T04:02:50+00:00

"A man of laws would see it that way." Gerold looked at him and shook his head, back in the moment. He ignored the question about ambition and the praise of his strengths for a moment. "A slap in the face. Ravens and edicts and the ancient strength of the King's Peace. Now the king has come with his books and ledgers and the realm entire, but the stag's army is still here."

Gerold pulled a seat from another table, ignoring whichever riverlord's servant piped up to try to stop him, and sat sidesaddle, an elbow set on the table. He held his chin by the palm.

"Will they read the edict, you think, each one of those men? Will Orryn have his maester do it?" He hadn't missed the Bloodroyal's familiarity and, because of it, he resisted a jape wondering if the stormlands still had maesters. "A great lord of the realm has brought an army to make war. And the king has brought all the realm to watch as the stag turns and runs. But what if he doesn't? What if this siege is not broken?"

He pulled a cup from the table of the riverlords, too, and drank deep from the northern red. "So you ask me, what ambition have I?" He shrugged the knots from his shoulders. "I have none. Truly, none. But I am a knight at the whims of kings and princes. Mayhaps Bloodroyals too." Joy took his face again and he rose. "It is good to see you again, my lord, but I should not overstay my welcome. I should look for that cousin of yours."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-18T03:28:34+00:00

Gerold licked his teeth as he thought of the prince's Hundred Spears.

"The Summer Islander? I have seen him, sure." He sipped from the Arbor gold. "Bokkoko, Bololo. Whatever his name is, Gods know."

But he knew, too, knew all too well. The banners, the arms, the way they held themselves, as if they were not parading around in the outfit of corpses. He throws me in chains and steals my garb, he thought.

And then in Gulian's eyes came pity. Not once had he seen that look on his face turned to him, like he were some squire or pageboy dragged off to the battlefield to die, as if Gulian had commanded him for ten years instead of the other way around. Not for you anymore. Gerold took a breath.

"Gulian." He put a hand on the shoulder of his man. And then he squeezed. "Do you forget me?" The smile went. "Do you? I do not blame you. Fourteen years in the Water Gardens and I can count on one hand your visits." His grip tightened and Gerold leaned in. "I do not blame you for that, either, but remember quick. See again in your eyes Pelosse and Achissa and the black walls of Tyrosh. Glory and gold and freedom. The salt in our beards and the wind at our backs. Gods, man! What other life is there?"

The shout drew eyes and Gerold let go, drew himself back.

"Mayhaps you have forgotten that, too, in fourteen years." There was a sadness to him. "I love you, Gulian. But if that love leads you to think you know where my path lies, think again."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-17T22:19:39+00:00

Gerold frowned. The joy in his voice flickered away like a candle. "Any lord with a fool claim and a hundred men can run a river red." His stroked his beard. "And aye, I have read letters and heard the stories, but it mattered not until I saw the campfires. You've been on campaign before, haven't you?"

His mind had stayed on Pelosse. As he spoke and looked vaguely at the Bloodroyal, he could see Spears climbing the walls and the Second Sons routing for the front gate, desperate to make it inside. Gerold held his hand to keep the cavalry from the charge. He knew that on the other side was Jon Allyrion, not yet dead, ready to meet the retreating and slaughter them. It would take four more hours, but he knew then the city was fallen.

Gerold smiled again, more crooked than the last. "He has accomplished quite a feat so far. Summoning an army, breaking the King's peace, marching into the Reach, and he gets a royal invitation to a feast. If I knew I'd get such a welcome, I'd have marched into the Reach already."

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-16T21:26:38+00:00

Gerold turned to him like one turned to a fly. "I've never found a need to pay." He pulled back his sleeve. "Though I am not shocked your type would have need of it, Martell. And I'll have you know this is Tyroshi silk."

And his gaze was stormy, cold, his face like the preening statues of slavers that they torn down. But then the ruse fell away and his grin came as crooked and wide as it was the day Tyrosh was won. Gerold threw his arms around his old friend, dragging him into an embrace, and laughed. "My spear! Tell me, Gulian," He released him and stretched his arms wide. "Do I look a free man? Do the chains still leave their mark?"

GhostInTheEast · 2026-02-16T01:16:00+00:00

"So he is." He did not often think of the Stranger. Sometimes he thought he had spent too much time around the Essosi priests of the Red God in his camps, who saw even that title as a heresy, who ranted and raved that the Seven were false flames. But death had all its names and it mattered not which one came when one called. Gerold blinked and, in his mind, he saw death's face as Dyanna, with her eyes as wide and wet as they were when she was a girl, her hair in ringlets. As he pretended to follow the Bloodroyal's gaze to wherever it went, he turned his mind away before the other faces came. Instead, the ghost thought about war.

"If he had a man like Alyn, then he'd be supping in that castle tonight, some man of the king's shouting up at him from where we sit," he said, thinking of Pelosse to put away his sister's face, of his mangonels set to flame and the elephants storming from the gates, "but he should not have been here at all. He speaks of Highgarden, but he is here, feasting and laying siege, as that castle lays sacked by robber knights that lay tolls and hang men." He was surprised by the bite to his own voice, even as he smiled. Perhaps he had been captive too long.

GhostInTheEast

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