A Dance With Dragons

he thought of “nine.” The serjeant’s fingers were stained a mottled red from the juice of the sourleaf he chewed. He put two of them into his mouth and whistled. “ Kem! Get over here, you fucking pisspot.” Kem came running. “Take Lord and Lady Imp to the wagons, have Hammer fix them up with some company steel.”
    “Hammer might be passed-out drunk,” Kem cautioned. “Piss in his face. That’ll wake him up.” Snatch turned back to Tyrion and Penny. “We never had no bloody dwarfs before, but boys we never lacked for. Sons o’ this whore or that one, little fools run off from home to have adventures, butt boys, squires, and the like. Some o’ their shit might be small enough to fit imps. It’s the shit they were wearing when they died, like as not, but I know that won’t bother fuckers fierce as you two. Nine, was it?” He shook his head and walked away.
    The Second Sons kept their company armor in six big wayns drawn up near the center of their camp. Kem led the way, swinging his spear as if it were a staff. “How does a King’s Landing lad end up with a free company?” Tyrion asked him.
    The lad gave him a wary squint. “Who told you I was from King’s Landing?”
    “No one.” Every word out of your mouth reeks of Flea Bottom. “Your wits gave you away. There’s no one clever as a Kingslander, they say.”
    That seemed to startle him. “Who says that?”
    “Everyone.” Me. “Since when?”
    Since I just made it up. “For ages,” he lied. “My father was wont to say it. Did you know Lord Tywin, Kem?”
    “The Hand. Once I saw him riding up the hill. His men had red cloaks and little lions on their helms. I liked those helms.” His mouth tightened. “I never liked the Hand, though. He sacked the city. And then he smashed us on the Blackwater.”
    “You were there?”
    “With Stannis. Lord Tywin come up with Renly’s ghost and took us in the flank. I dropped my spear and ran, but at the ships this bloody knight said, ‘Where’s your spear, boy? We got no room for cravens,’ and they buggered off and left me, and thousands more besides. Later I heard how your father was sending them as fought with Stannis to the Wall, so I made my way across the narrow sea and joined up with the Second Sons.”
    “Do you miss King’s Landing?”
    “Some. I miss this boy, he … he was a friend of mine. And my brother, Kennet, but he died on the bridge of ships.”
    “Too many good men died that day.” Tyrion’s scar was itching fiercely. He picked at it with a fingernail.
    “I miss the food too,” Kem said wistfully. “Your mother’s cooking?”
    “Rats wouldn’t eat my mother’s cooking. There was this pot shop, though. No one ever made a bowl o’ brown like them. So thick you could stand your spoon up in the bowl, with chunks of this and that. You ever have yourself a bowl o’ brown, Halfman?”
    “A time or two. Singer’s stew, I call it.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “It tastes so good it makes me want to sing.”
    Kem liked that. “Singer’s stew. I’ll ask for that next time I get back to Flea Bottom. What do you miss, Halfman?”
    Jaime , thought Tyrion. Shae. Tysha. My wife, I miss my wife, the wife I hardly knew . “Wine, whores, and wealth,” he answered. “Especially the wealth. Wealth will buy you wine and whores.” It will also buy you swords, and the Kems to wield them.
    “Is it true the chamber pots in Casterly Rock are made of solid gold?” Kem asked him.
    “You should not believe everything you hear. Especially where House Lannister is concerned.”
    “They say all Lannisters are twisty snakes.”
    “Snakes?” Tyrion laughed. “That sound you hear is my lord father, slithering in his grave. We are lions , or so we like to say. But it makes no matter, Kem. Step on a snake or a lion’s tail, you’ll end up just as dead.”
    By then they had reached the armory, such as it was. The smith, this fabled Hammer, proved to be a freakish-looking hulk with a left arm that appeared twice as thick as his right. “He’s drunk more than not,” Kem said. “Brown Ben lets it go, but one day we’ll get us a real armorer.” Hammer’s apprentice was a wiry red-haired youth called Nail. Of course. What else? mused Tyrion. Hammer was sleeping off a drunk when they reached the forge, just as Kem had prophesied, but Nail had no objection to the two dwarfs clambering through the wagons. “Crap iron, most of it,” he warned them, “but you’re welcome to