Underneath their tangled branches ferns and flowers grew in profusion sword ferns, lady ferns, bellflowers and piper’s lace, evening stars and poison kisses, liverwort, lungwort, hornwort. Trees pressed close on every side, shutting out the sun hemlock and red cedars, white oaks, soldier pines that stood as tall and straight as towers, colossal sentinels, big-leaf maples, redwoods, wormtrees, even here and there a wild weirwood. Huge willows grew along the watercourses, larger than any that Arianne had ever seen, their great trunks as gnarled and twisted as an old man’s face and festooned with beards of silvery moss. Further north, the fields gave way to rolling hills and thick groves of old forest, the road dwindled to a track, and villages became less common.ĭusk found them on the fringes of the rainwood, a wet green world where brooks and rivers ran through dark forests and the ground was made of mud and rotting leaves. As yet, they had seen no signs of fighting, but all the other travelers along the rutted road seemed to be going in the other direction, and the women in the villages they passed gazed at them with wary eyes and kept their children close. By midmorning a light rain began to fall, as they were making their way north through a land of green fields and little villages. That night Arianne dispatched the first of her ravens back to Dorne, reporting to her father on all they’d seen and heard. The next morning her company set out for Mistwood, as the first rays of the rising sun were slanting through the peaked roofs and crooked alleys of the Weeping Town. Ronnet himself was said to be rushing south to avenge his brother’s death and his sister’s dishonor.

But in the aptly named Drunken Dornishman, Feathers heard men muttering that the griffin had put Red Ronnet’s brother to death and raped his maiden sister. In the Loon, Joss Hood learned that half a hundred men and boys from the Weeping Town had set off north to join Jon Connington at Griffin’s Roost, including young Ser Addam, old Lord Whitehead’s son and heir. In the Broken Shield, Daemon Sand was told that the great septry on the Holf of Men had been burned and looted by raiders from the sea, and a hundred young novices from the motherhouse on Maiden Isle carried off into slavery. Arianne sent her men into each of them, to hear what they might hear. The town was large enough to support three inns, and all their common rooms were rife with rumors. If you come on any such, mind your tongues and give the horses up.” Some will make a mark upon a paper if you ask for payment, but there’s others who would just as soon cut your belly open and pay you with a handful of your own guts. The griffin’s men seize every horse and mule they come upon. “you’ll not find better this side of Storm’s End. “They’re old, but sound,” claimed the hostler.

They had no trouble buying horses, though the cost was five times what it would have been last year. That was another lesson that her father had taken pains to teach her choose your side with care, and only if they have the chance to win. “It would be best if King’s Landing never knew we’d passed this way.” Should Lord Connington’s rebellion be put down, it would go ill for them if it was known that Dorne had sent her to treat with him and his pretender. “Guard your tongues,” Arianne warned her company as they disembarked.

The banners flapping from the town’s stout wooden walls still displayed King Tommen’s stag-and-lion, suggesting that here at least the writ of the Iron Throne might still hold sway. The Peregrine made port at the Weeping Town, where the corpse of the Young Dragon had once lingered for three days on its journey home from Dorne. All along the south coast of Cape Wrath rose crumbling stone watchtowers, raised in ancient days to give warning of Dornish raiders stealing in across the sea.

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