A Feast for Dragons

What sort of hair is auburn?”
    “Browny red,” said the older man. “No, we saw her not.”
    “We saw her not, m’lady,” the younger told her. “Come, dismount,
the fish is almost done. Are you hungry?”
    She was, as it happened, but she was wary as well. Hedge
knights had an unsavory reputation. “A hedge knight and a robber knight are two
sides of the same sword,” it was said. These two do not look too dangerous. “Might I know your names, sers?”
    “I have the honor to be Ser Creighton Longbough, of whom the
singers sing,” said the big-bellied one. “You will have heard of my deeds on
the Blackwater, mayhaps. My companion is Ser Illifer the Penniless.”
    If there was a song about Creighton Longbough, it was not
one Brienne had heard. Their names meant no more to her than did their arms.
Ser Creighton’s green shield showed only a brown chief, and a deep gouge made
by some battle-axe. Ser Illifer bore gold and ermine gyronny, though everything
about him suggested that painted gold and painted ermine were the only sorts
he’d ever known. He was sixty if he was a day, his face pinched and narrow
beneath the hood of a patched roughspun mantle. Mail-clad he went, but flecks
of rust spotted the iron like freckles. Brienne stood a head taller than either
of them, and was better mounted and better armed in the bargain. If I fear
the likes of these, I had as well swap my longsword for a pair of knitting
needles.
    “I thank you, good sers,” she said. “I will gladly share
your trout.” Swinging down, Brienne unsaddled her mare and watered her before
hobbling her to graze. She stacked her arms and shield and saddlebags beneath
an elm. By then the trout was crisply done. Ser Creighton brought her a fish,
and she sat cross-legged on the ground to eat it.
    “We are bound for Duskendale, m’lady,” Longbough told her,
as he pulled apart his own trout with his fingers. “You would do well to ride
with us. The roads are perilous.”
    Brienne could have told him more about the perils of the
roads than he might have cared to know. “I thank you, ser, but I have no need
of your protection.”
    “I insist. A true knight must defend the gentler sex.”
    She touched her sword hilt. “This will defend me, ser.”
    “A sword is only as good as the man who wields it.”
    “I wield it well enough.”
    “As you will. It would not be courteous to argue with a
lady. We will see you safe to Duskendale. Three together may ride more safely
than one alone.”
    We were three when we set out from Riverrun, yet Jaime
lost his hand and Cleos Frey his life. “Your mounts could not keep up with
mine.” Ser Creighton’s brown gelding was an old swaybacked creature with rheumy
eyes, and Ser Illifer’s horse looked weedy and half-starved.
    “My steed served me well enough on the Blackwater,” Ser
Creighton insisted. “Why, I did great carnage there and won a dozen ransoms.
Was m’lady familiar with Ser Herbert Bolling? You shall never meet him now. I
slew him where he stood. When swords clash, you shall ne’er find Ser Creighton
Longbough to the rear.”
    His companion gave a dry chuckle. “Creigh, leave off. The
likes o’ her has no need for the likes o’ us.”
    “The likes of me?” Brienne was uncertain what he meant.
    Ser Illifer crooked a bony finger at her shield. Though its
paint was cracked and peeling, the device it bore showed plain: a black bat on
a field divided bendwise, silver and gold. “You bear a liar’s shield, to which
you have no right. My grandfather’s grandfather helped kill the last o’ Lothston.
None since has dared to show that bat, black as the deeds of them that bore
it.”
    The shield was the one Ser Jaime had taken from the armory
at Harrenhal. Brienne had found it in the stables with her mare, along with
much else; saddle and bridle, chainmail hauberk and visored greathelm, purses
of gold and silver and a parchment more valuable than either. “I lost mine own
shield,” she explained.
    “A true knight is the only shield a maiden needs,” declared
Ser Creighton stoutly.
    Ser Illifer paid him no mind. “A barefoot man looks for a
boot, a chilly man a cloak. But who would cloak themselves in shame? Lord Lucas
bore that bat, the Pander, and Manfryd o’ the Black Hood, his son. Why wear
such arms, I ask myself, unless your own sin is fouler still . . . and fresher. ”
He unsheathed his dagger, an ugly piece of cheap iron. “A woman freakish big
and freakish strong who