"They'd need to be mad to attack a force as strong as ours."

"Mad or starving." Until he had a better notion of these outlaws and their strength, Jaime was not inclined to take any risks with his defenses. "Ditched and staked," he said again, before spurring Honor toward the gate. Ser Dermot rode beside him with the royal stag and lion, and Ser Hugo Vance with the white standard of the Kingsguard. Jaime had charged Red Ronnet with the task of delivering Wylis Manderly to Maidenpool, so he would not need to look on him henceforth.

Pia rode with Jaime's squires, on the gelding Peck had found for her. "It's like some toy castle," Jaime heard her say. She's known no home but Harrenhal, he reflected. Every castle in the realm will seem small to her, except the Rock.

Josmyn Peckleton was saying the same thing. "You must not judge by Harrenhal. Black Harren built too big." Pia listened as solemnly as a girl of five being lessoned by her septa. That's all she is, a little girl in a woman's body, scarred and scared. Peck was taken with her, though. Jaime suspected that the boy had never known a woman, and Pia was still pretty enough, so long as she kept her mouth closed. There's no harm in him bedding her, I suppose, so long as she's willing.

One of the Mountain's men had tried to rape the girl at Harrenhal, and had seemed honestly perplexed when Jaime commanded Ilyn Payne to take his head off. "I had her before, a hunnerd times," he kept saying as they forced him to his knees. "A hunnerd times, m'lord. We all had her." When Ser Ilyn presented Pia with his head, she had smiled through her ruined teeth.

Darry had changed hands several times during the fighting, and its castle had been burned once and sacked at least twice, but Lancel had seemingly wasted little time setting things to rights. The castle gates were newly hung, raw oaken planks reinforced with iron studs. A new stable was going up where an older one had been put to the torch. The steps to the keep had been replaced, and the shutters on many of the windows. Blackened stones showed where the flames had licked, but time and rain would fade those.

Within the walls, crossbowmen walked the ramparts, some in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms, others in the blue and grey of House Frey. As Jaime trotted across the yard, chickens ran out from under Honor's hooves, sheep bleated, and peasants stared at him with sullen eyes. Armed peasants, he did not fail to note. Some had scythes, some staves, some hoes sharpened to cruel points. There were axes in evidence as well, and he spied several bearded men with red, seven-pointed stars sewn onto ragged, filthy tunics. More bloody sparrows. Where do they all come from?

Of his uncle Kevan he saw no sign. Nor of Lancel. Only a maester emerged to greet him, with a grey robe flapping about his skinny legs. "Lord Commander, Darry is honored by this . . . unexpected visit. You must forgive our lack of preparations. We had been given to understand that you were bound for Riverrun."

"Darry was on my way," lied Jaime. Riverrun will keep. And if perchance the siege had ended before he reached the castle, he would be spared the need to take up arms against House Tully.

Dismounting, he handed Honor to a stableboy. "Will I find my uncle here?" He did not supply a name. Ser Kevan was the only uncle he had left, the last surviving son of Tytos Lannister.

"No, my lord. Ser Kevan took his leave of us after the wedding." The maester pulled at the chain collar, as if it had grown too tight for him. "I know Lord Lancel will be pleased to see you and . . . and all your gallant knights. Though it pains me to confess that Darry cannot feed so many."

"We have our own provisions. You are?"

"Maester Ottomore, if it please my lord. Lady Amerei wished to welcome you herself, but she is seeing to the preparation of a feast in your honor. It is her hope that you and your chief knights and captains will join us at table this evening."

"A hot meal would be most welcome. The days have been cold and wet." Jaime glanced about the yard, at the bearded faces of the sparrows. Too many. And too many Freys as well. "Where will I find Hardstone?"

"We had a report of outlaws beyond the Trident. Ser Harwyn took five knights and twenty archers and went to deal with them."

"And Lord Lancel?"

"He is at his prayers. His lordship has commanded us never to disturb him when he is praying."

He and Ser Bonifer should get on well. "Very well." There would be time enough to talk with his cousin later. "Show me to my chambers and have a bath brought up."

"If it please my lord, we have put you in the Plowman's Keep. I will show you there."

"I know the way." Jaime was no stranger to this castle. He and Cersei had been guests here twice before, once on their way to Winterfell with Robert, and again on the way back to King's Landing. Though small as castles went, it was larger than an inn, with good hunting along the river. Robert Baratheon had never been never loath to impose upon the hospitality of his subjects.

The keep was much as he recalled it. "The walls are still bare," Jaime observed as the maester led him down a gallery.

"Lord Lancel hopes one day to cover them with hangings," said Ottomore. "Scenes of piety and devotion."

Piety and devotion. It was all he could do not to laugh. The walls had been bare on his first visit too. Tyrion had pointed out the squares of darker stone where tapestries had once hung. Ser Raymun could remove the hangings, but not the marks they'd left. Later, the Imp had slipped a handful of stags to one of Darry's serving men for the key to the cellar where the missing tapestries were hidden. He showed them to Jaime by the light of a candle, grinning; woven portraits of all the Targaryen kings, from the first Aegon to the second Aenys. "If I tell Robert, mayhaps he'll make me Lord of Darry," the dwarf said, chortling.

Maester Ottomore led Jaime to the top of the keep. "I trust you will be comfortable here, my lord. There is a privy, when nature calls. Your window looks out upon the godswood. The bedchamber adjoins her ladyship's, with a servant's cell between."

"These were Lord Darry's own apartments."

"Yes, my lord."

"My cousin is too kind. I did not intend to put Lancel out of his own bedchamber."

"Lord Lancel has been sleeping in the sept."

Sleeping with the Mother and the Maiden, when he has a warm wife just through that door? Jaime did not know whether to laugh or weep. Maybe he is praying for his c**k to harden. In King's Landing it had been rumored that Lancel's wounds had left him incapable. Still, he ought to have sense enough to try. His cousin's hold on his new lands would not be secure until he fathered a son on his half-Darry wife. Jaime had begun to rue the impulse that had brought him here. He gave thanks to Ottomore, reminded him about the bath, and had Peck see him out.

The lord's bedchamber had changed since his last visit, and not for the better. Old stale rushes covered the floor in place of the fine Myrish carpet that had been there previously, and all the furnishings were new and crudely made. Ser Raymun Darry's bed had been large enough to sleep six, with brown velvet draperies and oakwood posts carved with vines and leaves; Lancel's was a lumpy straw pallet, placed beneath the window where the first light of day would be sure to wake him. The other bed had no doubt been burned or smashed or stolen, but even so . . .

When the tub arrived, Little Lew pulled off Jaime's boots and helped remove his golden hand. Peck and Garrett hauled water, and Pia found him something clean to sup in. The girl glanced at him shyly as she shook his doublet out. Jaime was uncomfortably aware of the curve of hip and breast beneath her roughspun brown dress. He found himself remembering the things that Pia had whispered to him at Harrenhal, the night that Qyburn sent her to his bed. Sometimes when I'm with some man, she'd said, I close my eyes and pretend it's you on top of me.

He was grateful when the bath was deep enough to conceal his arousal. As he lowered himself into the steaming water, he recalled another bath, the one he'd shared with Brienne. He had been feverish and weak from loss of blood, and the heat had made him so dizzy he found himself saying things better left unsaid. This time he had no such excuse. Remember your vows. Pia is more fit for Tyrion's bed than yours. "Fetch me soap and a stiff brush," he told Peck. "Pia, you may leave us."

"Aye, m'lord. Thank you, m'lord." She covered her mouth when she spoke, to hide her broken teeth.

"Do you want her?" Jaime asked Peck, when she was gone.

The squire turned beet red.

"If she'll have you, take her. She'll teach you a few things you'll find useful on your wedding night, I don't doubt, and you're not like to get a bastard by her." Pia had spread her legs for half his father's army and never quickened; most like the girl was barren. "If you bed her, though, be kind to her."

"Kind, my lord? How . . . how would I . . . ?"

"Sweet words. Gentle touches. You don't want to wed her, but so long as you're abed treat her as you would your bride."

The lad nodded. "My lord, I . . . where should I take her? There's never a place to . . . to . . ."

". . . to be alone?" Jaime grinned. "We'll be at supper several hours. The straw looks lumpy, but it should serve."

Peck's eyes grew wide. "His lordship's bed?"

"You'll feel a lord yourself when you're done, if Pia knows her business." And someone ought to make some use of that miserable straw mattress.

When he descended for the feast that night, Jaime Lannister wore a doublet of red velvet slashed with cloth-of-gold, and a golden chain studded with black diamonds. He had strapped on his golden hand as well, polished to a fine bright sheen. This was no fit place to wear his whites. His duty awaited him at Riverrun; a darker need had brought him here.

Darry's great hall was great only by courtesy. Trestle tables crowded it from wall to wall, and the ceiling rafters were black with smoke. Jaime had been seated on the dais, to the right of Lancel's empty chair. "Will my cousin not be joining us for supper?" he asked as he sat down.

"My lord prefers to fast," said Lancel's wife, the Lady Amerei. "He's sick with grief for the poor High Septon." She was a long-legged, full-breasted, strapping girl of some eight-and-ten years; a healthy wench to look at her, though her pinched, chinless face reminded Jaime of his late and unlamented cousin Cleos, who had always looked somewhat like a weasel.

Fasting? He is an even bigger fool than I suspected. His cousin should be busy fathering a little weasel-faced heir on his widow instead of starving himself to death. He wondered what Ser Kevan might have had to say about his son's new fervor. Could that be the reason for his uncle's abrupt departure?

Over bowls of bean-and-bacon soup Lady Amerei told Jaime how her first husband had been slain by Ser Gregor Clegane when the Freys were still fighting for Robb Stark. "I begged him not to go, but my Pate was oh so very brave, and swore he was the man to slay that monster. He wanted to make a great name for himself."

We all do. "When I was a squire I told myself I'd be the man to slay the Smiling Knight."

"The Smiling Knight?" She sounded lost. "Who was that?"

The Mountain of my boyhood. Half as big but twice as mad.