A Dance With Dragons

anything you can use.”
    Under roofs of bent wood and stiffened leather, the wagon beds were heaped high with old weaponry and armor. Tyrion took one look and sighed, remembering the gleaming racks of swords and spears and halberds in the armory of the Lannisters below Casterly Rock. “This may take a while,” he declared.
    “There’s sound steel here if you can find it,” a deep voice growled. “None of it is pretty, but it will stop a sword.”
    A big knight stepped down from the back of a wagon, clad head to heel in company steel. His left greave did not match his right, his gorget was spotted with rust, his vambraces rich and ornate, inlaid with niello flowers. On his right hand was a gauntlet of lobstered steel, on his left a fingerless mitt of rusted mail. The nipples on his muscled breastplate had a pair of iron rings through them. His greathelm sported a ram’s horns, one of which was broken.
    When he took it off, he revealed the battered face of Jorah Mormont. He looks every inch a sellsword and not at all like the half-broken thing we took from Yezzan’s cage , Tyrion reflected. His bruises had mostly faded by now, and the swelling in his face had largely subsided, so Mormont looked almost human once again … though only vaguely like himself. The demon’s mask the slavers had burned into his right cheek to mark him for a dangerous and disobedient slave would never leave him. Ser Jorah had never been what one might call a comely man. The brand had transformed his face into something frightening.
    Tyrion grinned. “As long as I look prettier than you, I will be happy.” He turned to Penny. “You take that wagon. I’ll start with this one.”
    “It will go faster if we look together.” She plucked up a rusted iron half-helm, giggled, and stuck it on her head. “Do I look fearsome?”
    You look like a mummer girl with a pot on her head . “That’s a halfhelm. You want a greathelm.” He found one, and swapped it for the halfhelm.
    “It’s too big.” Penny’s voice echoed hollowly inside the steel. “I can’t see out.” She took the helm off and flung it aside. “What’s wrong with the halfhelm?”
    “It’s open-faced.” Tyrion pinched her nose. “I am fond of looking at your nose. I would rather that you kept it.”
    Her eyes got big. “You like my nose?”
    Oh, Seven save me. Tyrion turned away and began rooting amongst some piles of old armor toward the back of the wagon.
    “Are there any other parts of me you like?” Penny asked.
    Perhaps she meant that to sound playful. It sounded sad instead. “I am fond of all of your parts,” Tyrion said, in hopes of ending any further discussion of the subject, “and even fonder of mine own.”
    “Why should we need armor? We’re only mummers. We just pretend to fight.”
    “You pretend very well,” said Tyrion, examining a shirt of heavy iron mail so full of holes that it almost looked moth-eaten. What sort of moths eat chainmail? “Pretending to be dead is one way to survive a battle. Good armor is another.” Though there is precious little of that here, I fear. At the Green Fork, he had fought in mismatched scraps of plate from Lord Lefford’s wagons, with a spiked bucket helm that made it look as if someone had upended a slops pail over his head. This company steel was worse. Not just old and ill fitting, but dinted, cracked, and brittle. Is that dried blood, or only rust? He sniffed at it but still could not be sure.
    “Here’s a crossbow.” Penny showed it to him.
    Tyrion glanced at it. “I cannot use a stirrup winch. My legs are not long enough. A crank would serve me better.” Though, if truth be told, he did not want a crossbow. They took too long to reload. Even if he lurked by the latrine ditch waiting for some enemy to take a squat, the chances of his losing more than one quarrel would not be good.
    Instead he picked up a morningstar, gave it a swing, put it down again. Too heavy. He passed over a warhammer (too long), a studded mace (also too heavy), and half a dozen longswords before he found a dirk he liked, a nasty piece of steel with a triangular blade. “This might serve,” he said. The blade had a bit of rust on it, but that would only make it nastier. He found a wood-and-leather sheath that fit and slipped the dirk inside.
    “A little sword for a little man?” joked Penny. “It’s a dirk and made for a big man.” Tyrion showed her an old long-sword. “This is a sword. Try it.”
    Penny took