Incident at Far PortHex was nineteen when the Companions went to Far Port. The desert, and Rhys, far behind him. More than two years in service to the mercenary company, two years since he squired for House Martell. Four years as squire to his cousiin had little impact on the young Hextall's romantic view of a soldier's life. He had loved his mother, and most of all the time she spent telling him stories. Clever mice outwitting the cocky desert fox. The imperious raptor flying high above it's unsuspecting prey. The desert mouse come to live in a castle of cats. He loved all the stories because his mother told them. But most of all he had loved the stories of the knights. Noble battles, daring missions, last minute rescues. And all filled with shiny silver armour, magic swords, and enchanted young noble women. Four years of polishing armour, feeding and mucking the horses, sharpening swords and all the petty duties of a squire. Four years of inventing excuses for his cousin's late arrival at drill practice. Four years of negotiating with whores and scrounging for contraband to fill his master cousin's table, and still Hex loved the songs of knights on campaigns. The poems of last stands and dragons barely defeated. Less than a year in service to Vargo Hoat's Brave Companions cured the young dornishman of his illusions. There would be no poems of the Bloody Mummers. The Mummers came to Far Port in strength. Their exact provenance was known only to Vargo Hoat, who did not accompany the troop. The stories of Hoat in victory were plentiful, virtually unknown to be present in defeat. The privates took this as proof of Hoat's tactical genius, that he could turn the tide of any battle with a sudden cunning manouever. The officers, Hex among them, knew it spoke more to the general's strategic mind. Their great leader would not risk attending at a certain rout. Instead of the Mummer's king, their lord had sent a jester to command the siege. Shagwell the Mad, as Hex referred to their field commander. Though only under his breath. And in dornish. While punishment handed out by Hoat was swift and brutal for transgressions great and small, Shagwell was an artist of humiliation and pain. The jester was as likely to turn on a pampered protege as an actual malcontent. Shagwell told the officers that the Brave Companions had been hired by a kindly lord to liberate a town under his protection from conquest by the Iron Men. The Iron Men had attacked in the dark of night, a cowardly attack against a peaceful ocean village port. The sailors had occupied the village for more than a month when the Companions marched, and Shagwell assured the officers that their enemy would be dull witted and slovenly, unprepared for conflict with a disciplined force. A tale which Hex instantly rejected, and cautioned the archers under his command to expect heavy resistance from a disciplined enemy. And to view with caution any locals they "liberated" along the way. During the march north, Hex traded with the locals. Gathering both fresh food for his men and information. Scrounging and bartering are social activities, with their own etiquette and pace. Hex often found the price of goods improved with a few minutes of conversation or a cool pint. Hex learned that the "kindly lord" was barely removed from his mother's breast. The actual power, and gold enough to hire the Companions, was the lord's hand. A conniving man, nicknamed The Blade. The Hand himself said the nickname for his slight frame, that he was blade thin. The farmers that traded with Hex said the name arose from what the Hand was likely to leave in your back, should you be unfortunate enough to meet him in person. Siege favours the attacker. While the defenders are trapped behind their walls, the attacker is free to live off the country. After four years with the Brave Companions, and service in sieges without number, Hex had it reduced to a smiple formula. Hex would factor in the town's population, food and water supplies, the sieging force's supply lines, the size and distance of relief forces. The young dornishman regularly won bets with his accuarate predicttions for the end of a siege, betiing not only the victor but the day and hour of their victory. Far Port played havoc with Hex's calculations. Normally the seige force could effectively isolate a town from it's supply of food and water, for wherever the Companions went they controlled the bloody ground. But the Iron Men ruled the waves. Dragon prowed ships sailed with impunity to re-supply the townsfolk and their "captors." Shagwell tasked both Hex's archers and squads of foot soldiers led by a young blade named Thelbane to harry the supply ships. The steep rocky shore prevented the Companions from gaining position on the sailors without exposing themselves to withering fire from the town. The town itself was well fortified. The city walls reinforced with fresh timber and ringed with watch towers manned by archers. The Companions had not been assigned proper seige equipment, no battering rams with top shielding, no catapults of any real effect. Far Port, or the Iron Men, had burned fields of crops and cleared trees to create a killing ground radiating out from the city walls on every side not already denied to the Companions by shoreline. The surrounding rural population had not embraced the Brave Companions as liberators. They passed word of the Companions movements along, refused to sell food and hid it too well to be stolen. Hex could not make the math work. Puzzled, he blew out the stub of a candle he had been using to illuminate the small canvas tent he occupied. He stared at the calculations he had scribbled on the back of a map, traded for on the march up. Lying back on the bed he had fashioned from bartered blankets and dried rushes gathered fresh from the seaside while on patrol, the numbers began to vanish from his mind. As he finally began to surrender to sleep, Hex suddenly sat straight up. ~Limited supplies. Reinforcements too far to be any real assistance. Under equipped. No fresh food to pillage. Losing men to attrition in every exchange. Penned in by the sea and surrounded by a hostile population.~ "We're not the siegers," Hex whispered. "We're the sieged." Weeks dragged into months, with little change. Hex and Thelbane's pickets harrassed the Iron Men's landing parties, enough to keep resupplies low, not enough to starve out the town or their "captors." The separate bow and foot patrols soon fell into routines. Hex tried to fight the inevitable complacency that flowed from the mind numbing monotony that comprised daily life in the Mummer's camp. He drilled the men, held tournies amongst the archers, invented excuses for small celebrations. That changed the day the wall came down. The daily picket and harrassment of incoming supply ships had become as monotous as every other activity during the siege. The Iron Men would slide a galley into dock to unload supplies to a waiting wagon from Far Port. Axe men would stand guard on the dock while archers provided cover the ship itself. Hex and his archers loosed arrows from the high ground to the north, the distance too great for any real accuracy but unable to get closer without exposing themselves to cross fire from the village and galley. Thelbane and his ground troops stood picket to the south, unable to close without taking fire. Earlier, Thelbane's men had stood with the archers but the rocky terrain and steep incline neutralized their ability to move swiftly, reducing them to little more than standing targets to the enemy's archers. Tensions had mounted between the two separate squads of Brave Companions, and partway through the siege Hex and Thelbane had agreed to separate deployments. But the routine seemed to be as wearing on the Iron Men as the Mummers. On this day, the axe men returned to the galley before the wagon was completely loaded. The Iron archers remained at their posts, but their efficiency greatly reduced by the rocking ship. Thelbane and Hex saw the opportunity at the same time, Hex holding up his bow to catch Darcy's attention then grasping it with both hands and pushing it forward to indicate an advance by his archers towards the dock. Thelbane rasied his sword, flashing in the light, tracing a circle around his head and then pointing at the village wall to confirm his troop would make a feint towards Far Port to distract the defender's archers. As each man lead their half of the co-ordinated attack, Hex noted something odd about the men on the dock. "They seem to be in no particular rush," he said to his second in command. "Something's not quite..." As he trailed off, considering, Thelbane's men reached the outside range of the defender's bowmen. A few arrows began to fall into the ground before the infanty men. In addition to the bowmen, soldiers crowded at the top of the wall facing Thelbane jeering the Mummers as cowards and shouting encouragement to the men on the dock. As the rangers reached the flat beach and began to race across the sand towards the dock, Hex held back nocking an arrow to provide cover if needed, dividing his attention between the advance of his men and Thelbane's infantry. As the rangers reached the halfway point to the dock, the overloaded wall facing Thelbane shuddered and then collapsed. A long section of wall had fallen in one piece, exposing the village to Thelbane's troop. Without hesitation, Darcy gave the command to charge adn the infantry raced forward. ~Where are the bodies?~ Hex thought, raising his bow. ~The villagers at the top of the wall didn't fall. It's as if they knew...~ "Gods take them!" Hex cursed. Then shouting to Thelbane. "It's a trap!" The dornishman thought he saw Thelbane pause in mid-stride, but couldn't be sure. Hex's right hand drew back on the bow string, the fletching just brushing the tip of his ear as he released. The arrow arced trhough the intervening space as Hex waved his bow to signal the infantry. "Get back!" He shouted as the arrow slammed into the ground a half step before Thelbane. The infantry commander didn't spare a glance, simply snatched the arrow from the ground in passing and snapped it between his two hands. Tossing the broken shaft to the ground, he waved his sword urging the soldiers forward. As the last of the infantry passed through the gap in the wall, two sections slammed into place blocking Hex's view and sealing the infantry inside. Looking back to his own men, Hex saw that the first of his rangers had reached the wagon and were securing prisoners. The balance of his troop was still in the middle of the beach, the deep sand slowing their progress. The men on the deck had their bows out and had posted shieldmen facing the village, just as they'd been drilled by Hex. The men still on the beach were a stark contrast. Most had their bows secured and shields still strapped to their backs. Without the distraction of Thelbane's men, the beach would be a killing ground for the village archers. Hex's worst thought materielized as he saw figures rise up over the village walls: bowmen. "Maiden have mercy," Hex whispered. But the village archers weren't facing outwards, they showed their back to Hex's rangers loosing barrage after barrage down into the village at Thelbane's men. Hex raced to the beach, shouting at his men to get in formation and concentrate fire at the archers visible above the walls of Far Port. As he reached the group, he pointed to the first man he saw saying. "Dump your gear. You're our runner. Get back to camp, Shagwell needs to send more men or Thelbane's lost." The young soldier had already thrown down his shield and bow, and was slipping off his pack as he asked. "How many should they send?" Hex loosed an arrow, shifting to aim again before the first struck a village archer in the back of the neck exposed under the man's helmet. "Send them all," he replied grimly. The rescue of Thelbane and the foot patrol, or at least what remained of them, cost the Mummers. It cost them in blood, and it cost them in morale. Once behind the walls, Thelbane and his men had found themselves trapped in a killing ground. The gap in the wall slammed behind them like the jaws of a bear trap, the way ahead seeded with Iron Men. Thelbane had rallied the men, trying to fight their way clear to the back gates only to find every alley blocked with rough barricades, and always the Iron Men or villagers with pole arms. And always a rain of arrows from the walls and high buildings. Hex had deployed his men as best he could to harry the town. Archers ran to the highest points on the coastal rocks to loose arrows at any available targets, the range made killing shots rare but the volume of fire denied the Iron Men and armed villagers the open ground and drove their own archers under cover. Shagwell brought the bulk of the Mummers forces to the village walls but not before Thelbane's force was reduced by half. The Mummers improvised a ram to bring down a portion of Far Port's wall, all the while taking casulaties from the village archers and boiling sea water poured over the parapets by the village's defenders. Of the Brave Companions who penetrated Far Port's wall with Thelbane perhaps one in ten escaped through the breach, half of those wounded. Thelbane himself had taken a viscious leg wound from a villager with an improvised pole arm, a heavy cleaver lashed to a long pole. Hex's men had secured the captured wagon and brought it back to the Mummer's camp, along with two villagers as prisoners. The wagon held little bounty: sail cloth, barrels of pitch and ten penny nails. The prisoners yielded no useful information, despite Hex's own interrogation. They admitted the villagers were working with the Iron Men, but Hex had guessed as much months before and took little solace in the confirmation. Tending to Thelbane's wound and Hex's interrogation delayed a formal report to Shagwell for a time but soon enough four of the made jester's pet dothraki warriors appeared to escort the two men to their commander's tent. The grim faced men kept their hands on the razor sharp arakhs at their belts, leaving no doubt as to their instructions should either Darcy or the dornishman seek further delay. Stepping into the canvas tent, Thelbane and Hex found Shagwell seemingly alone. The jester was sitting on a heavy chair behind a wooden table. The cavernous tent was lit by a single candle on the table, casting deep shadows on the sharp planes of their commander's face. Their dothraki escort remained a pace behind their charges within easy killing range but swallowed by the shadows. Shagwell considered the two men before him, leaning back in his chair he put his feet up on the table. In his right hand he held the shaft of a mace. Bouncing the head against his left hand, he finally said. "Do either of you have any reason why I shouldn't have you strung up and gutted?" The men gathered outside Shagwell's tent had heard as much, their commander not being known for quiet discourse. The answer, whatever it was, was spoken in lower tones. Strain as they might, the mixed group of foot troops and archers couldn't make out the conversation. Whatever it was, it clearly met with Shagwell's approval based on the sharp bark of laughter that came perhaps a turn of a glass after his initial query. Hextall and Thelbane offered no details, and Shagwell's dothraki honour gaurd seemed to speak no language known to the other soldiers. Within a few days, Hextall and Thelbane met with their respective officers to advise them of the Brave Companions next move: they would withdraw. The siege was to be lifted, the Companions would march home before the next full moon. Before they left Far Port, Shagwell would hold a fest to commerorate their brave service and the losses they endured. Hex himself would ride to the nearest village with silver and the goods the Companions had siezed from the Iron Men's supply ship to barter for supplies. The officers would continue to drill the men, Shagwell was a mercurial man and if he believed the Companions were slacking who knew how the plans might change. Sworn to absolute secrecy, the officers passed the news on to only their most trusted sergeants. Who passed it on only to their most trusted enlisted men, again swearing them to absolute secrecy. Within two days there wasn't a buck private, cook, camp follower or casual trader who didn't know that the Companions were abandoning the siege following a grand party. And that the dornish Captain would travel with enough bounty to the nearest town to buy as much rich food and strong liquor as the wagon would hold and the two prisoners could carry. The night before Hex was to leave Thelbane sat alone at a low fire. The camp was quiet, the guards at their posts. Most of the men were in their tents, though a few had gathered at larger fires near the centre of camp. Thelbane had made a circuit, stopping wherever his men gathered for a quick word, sometimes a joke, sometimes a reprimand but fell ill at ease lingering for any length of time. As a younger officer Darcy had tried to ingratiate himself to the men under his command, and learned the basic call and response of the soldier's argot. How are you doing, complain about the weather or camp cooks, dress a man down for a spot of rust or an untied lace. Thelbane had picked that up readily enough. But the protracted chatter that some of the officers engaged in, like Hextall and his bloody Raiders, remained a mystery and irritant. Once past the first few sentences, the men might as well be speaking in the grunts that spewed from Shagwell's dothraki personal gaurds. Darcy knew he would pause a second too long, a smile frozen on his face, as he searched for something to say in response to a prattling inquiry about his family or plans for the future. And so he tended to stay separate from the men as often as he could. He'd picked a fire pit furthest from the others. Filling a kettle from a bucket of water he'd brought with him, he set to making a heavy tisane. As he waited for the kettle to boil, he drew a small whetstone from a pouch, added a drop of oil and set to sharpening his weapons. He knew each blade was already razor sharp and clean as a maester's virtue. But the simple repeatitive task soothed his nerves. "Mind the company?" Thelbane looked up, about to refuse but paused when he saw Hextall standing just inside the fire light. Taking the silence for acquiesence, the dornishman sat down across from Thelbane. Darcy looked at the other man for a heartbeat before he resumed his task. "You've blood on your hands," he said. The dornishman looked at Thelbane without expression, so Darcy gestured with the blade. "Your hands, you have blood on them." Hextall looked down and saw the other was right, dried blood caked under his fingernails and thick clots as far up his arms as the elbow. Hex took a cake of soap and small horse hair brush from a belt pouch, dipped them in the bucket of water and began to methodically scrub his skin. "Did you learn anything new?" Thelbane asked. "Not really," Hex answered, still scrubbing. "Only that they'd told the truth at the first. That's worth knowing, I suppose. And they've moved some of the barricades around behind the walls. I passed a sketch on to Shagwell for the good it will do. I expect they've moved them around since." "This plan of yours," Thelbane began. "Ours," Hex interjected. "Aye, ours here tonight." Thelbane said, his lips pulling back from his teeth. A smile on any other man. "And ours if it works. But yours if the Iron Men leave you a blood eagle in some field. Then it's yours to anyone who'll listen to me until the strangler's knot snugs tight." Thelbane paused to sip his tea, looking into the fire he said. "I'm surprised they said anything. The darker one at least seemed to be made of sterner stuff" The dornishman continued to look at his reflection in the bloody water. "Everybody talks, Darcy. There's no tree that won't fall to the ax, no wheat to resist the scythe." Hex cupped his hands in the bucket and used the water to scrub his bare face and again dipped his hands to pour water over his shaven scalp. "It's not the man. Were I in the punishment tent instead of them, and knew eveything that was to come, every little trick, I'd still talk." "Surely not," Thelbane said. "Not the captain of the rangers. What do the small folk call you? The Animal? Monster?" "The Beast," Hex replied simply. "The Beast and his Raiders." "Well, then, Beast." Thelbane said with a laugh under his words. "Will you have a mug of tea? We may not have the chance to drink again. As brothers." "Thank you," Hex said, waving away the offered tin cup. "But no. Tisane doesn't sit well with me at night. Eats at the stomach, makes me anxious." The dornish stared into the fire. He had visited a septon when his stomach first pained him. The man had said his stomach had begun to consume itself and prescribed a thick, milky concoction to drink whenever the dornish felt anxious. Hex had thrown the herbs into a fire later that same day, dismissing the diagnosis. But the image had stayed with him, and on his darkest nights was plagued with dreams where he was consumed from within, leaving only his shadow to carry on. And in these dreams no one around him noticed the shadow walked in his place. The dornish knew the dreams sometimes came with working the punishment tent. He had learned that trade from a cheery, little Tyroshi who had been the Beast before him. The man had cautioned that the work could play on a man's mind. Some lost themselves in the tent, bloody thoughts consumed every waking moment. Others lost their taste for it, nervously twitching away their waking hours, reliving every second, only ever relaxed inside the canvas with a subject strapped down before them. Hex had killed the Tyroshi after he found the grinning little fat man in a brothel with the remains of three whores splashed across his naked body. And the septon, whatever had happened to him, Hex wondered. Not looking up from the fire, Hex asked Thelbane. "Do you remember that septon? The one with the strawberry mark?" Thelbane poured himself another mug of tisane. "Left him on a pike, I think," Thelbane said. "No, wait, I tell a lie. I took his hands when he refused to stitch up Shagwell." Darcy looked at Hextall across the fire. "Best not to dwell too much on the past, dornish. You'll need to stay sharp if our plan is to work. A good night's sleep is what you need. If the tisane isn't to your taste, how about one of the camp whores? A good woman to soothe your troubled mind." Hex looked up from the fire. "I've met many whores dear enough," The dornish replied, rubbing a finger across his thumb. "But none I'd call good." Thelbane had returned to sharpening his sword. Drawing the whetstone down the blade, Thelbane examined the edge in the fire light. "You just get me back behind those walls, dornish." he said. The flickering shadows turned his grin into a rictus. "And I'll show you a good woman." Hex drew the blade slowly down past the ear before adjusting his grip slightly and turning his attention to the throat. Two swift strokes before he dipped the blade in a bowl of warm water to clean the blade. The dornish held up a piece of polished steel to examine his work. He ran a hand down his cheek and over his shaven scalp. "Smooth as a babe," he said to himself before plunging his head into a bucket of cooling water to rinse the remaining soap from his skin. As a young squire, Hex had tried to cultivate a beard. Until he'd stood the line with a fellow sunspear who'd grown a long flowing beard, braided with beads. An enemy soldier had wrapped a fist in the man's beard and rammed his throat down on a spiked axe head. After that, the dornish had kept his face bare and required anyone under his command to do the same. And since then before each mission, he'd made shaving a ritual. After he dried his skin, he opened a small jar and splashed some of the fluid inside on his hands before running them over his face and scalp. A gift from his cousin Rhys, the mixture of apple vinegar, lavendar, sage and witch hazel tingled pleasantly and cleaned any stray nick. Once the knife was clean, Hex dried it on a deer skin cloth before stroping the blade against a leather strap. Once he was satisfied with the edge, the dornish held the blade over one of the candles lighting his tent, the tallow darkened the blade but didn't dull the cutting edge. The knife had been a gift from his older brother Sander on his sixth name day. Old even then, but forged of good steel. The top of the broad blade was slightly wider than Hex's adult finger with a strip of brass, tapering down to a parchment thin edge. The cutting edge of the blade curved up to a point with almost a half moon curve from the point back to copper strip. Hex had learned to sharpen that curve, useful for skinning animals and other less mundane activities. Brass quillons separated the blade from the handle which Hex had wrapped and re-wrapped with leather cord over the years. Hex was a man of few illusions, and he had none to spare regarding the likelihood of surviving his plan. But he would not die alone. His brother's knife, Rhys' gift, the whip he constucted in the desert under his uncle Athrek's tutelage, a small book of poetry from his mother secured under his belt. With these few things Hex would always stand with his family. The dornish ducked his head and stepped out of his tent into the chill of the pre-dawn. As he walked towards the wagon that would carry the trade goods to the nearest town, he knotted a wool cloak around his throat. The cloth was threadbare and patched, but if nothing else it would cover the garish scarlet and purple uniform he wore as a Brave Companion. A squire held the reins of a horse near the wagon. Hex put a foot to stirrup and swung up into the saddle. He took a moment to survey the wagon, the back filled with the trade goods seized from the Iron Men's ship: kegs of nails, sail cloth, tar, salt and flour. The men seated in front of the wagon received less attention, townsmen from Far Port seized with the goods in the disastrous assault on the town walls. They had each spent time with Hex in the punishment tent, and the dornish knew they didn't have the spirit to do anything other than follow orders. Hex settled himself in the saddle, and dropped a hand to check that the bow was loose in the sheath strapped to the front of the saddle and the long war hammer stapped behind. A quick glance around the camp, beginning to stir with the approach of dawn. "Onwards, lads," he said to the men in the wagon with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "An invigorating ride, one more sunset, and you'll finally see the last of the Companions." |
