ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Tauha’s seat was a three-storey stone tower pretending to be a castle because no one in the household possessed the cruelty to call it anything else. Vines climbed its mottled walls, the gate was little more than reinforced timber, and the courtyard held soldiers whose equipment had been repaired too many times.

The holding’s villages counted fewer than a hundred households scattered through poor mountain country. Repairs were postponed because grain came first, men served in patched armor because replacement leather cost coin, and a few hundred acres of hard land did little to satisfy a lord who measured himself against Nightsong.

Lyman Tauha ate black bread hard enough to require soaking and drank cloudy ale with husks floating on the surface. He was in his thirties, lean to the point of looking ill, with quick eyes that moved constantly toward anything richer than the room around him.

His ancestors had earned their place through service to House Baratheon; the stories remained; the wealth did not. Old shields in the hall carried scars from campaigns Lyman had never seen, and his steward could recite the names of dead Tauha men more easily than the current household could count healthy warhorses. Pride had survived the decline far better than the estate itself. Lyman spent years listening to old valor recited while Rainwood officials treated his traders as insignificant and neighboring lords remembered his name only when a poor ally became convenient.

He wanted out. He wanted fertile land, a greater title, better soldiers, and the recognition that had always seemed to pass around House Tauha as though the family were a stone in the road. His steward entered the hall so quickly that Lyman almost reached for a weapon. ”My lord. An envoy from Nightsong has arrived on secret business. He says he comes from Lord Elton himself.”

Lyman stared at him. ”Elton Caron?”

”Yes, my lord.”

For a moment he assumed there had been a mistake. House Caron did not need House Tauha, and in most halls Elton would have passed Lyman with a nod, if that, yet the envoy waiting outside claimed urgent business from the most powerful lord in the southern marches.

”Bring him in.”

Lyman changed coats before the man entered.

The envoy’s silk was better than anything in Tauha’s hall, which irritated Lyman more than he wanted to admit. His own best coat had been altered twice and still pulled at one shoulder, while the stranger wore wealth casually enough that no one in Nightsong would have remembered the garment by evening. Even the messenger’s sword fittings and horse advertised a household richer than the lord receiving him. The small sealed letter in his hand looked disappointingly ordinary.

”Lord Tauha,” the envoy said after a correct but shallow bow. ”I bring an offer from Lord Elton Caron.”

Lyman read the letter once, then again more slowly. It named no land to seize and no house to remove. Elton offered to mediate the spring dispute, extend a private loan, and speak for Tauha before Storm’s End. Everything dangerous came afterward from the envoy’s mouth: western acres, richer recognition, steel, grain, horses, and a future share of trade.

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The envoy gestured, and attendants carried two chests through the door. One held samples of steel that made the spears in Tauha’s courtyard look like farm scrap; the other contained fifty gold dragons, more coin than Lyman had ever seen offered to him at one time.

”A deposit,” the envoy said.

Lyman stepped closer before stopping himself. ”And Lord Elton gives all this for what?”

”For courage.”

The word had been chosen well enough to insult him without sounding like an insult. The envoy spoke of the spring shared with FireStorm, the two Tauha men killed in the previous winter’s clash, and Arlan Ashenblade’s growing power. Each spoken promise matched the terms Elton had set: three hundred western acres, one hundred sets of steel, fifty stones of grain, twenty warhorses, richer standing before Storm’s End, and access to southern trade. The paper promised only help settling the dispute.

Lyman did not agree immediately because he knew enough to fear FireStorm. ”Ashenblade has trained men and Lord Renly’s patrol authority. If I cross the border with soldiers, Storm’s End may name me the aggressor.”

The envoy smiled. ”His Majesty is traveling through the Stormlands. Do you believe Lord Renly will abandon the king’s reception because two minor houses quarrel over a spring their grandfathers already fought about?”

”Arlan will claim Nightsong put me there.”

”Then do not carry a Caron banner.”

The answer came too quickly, but Lyman looked back at the gold.

The envoy lowered his voice. ”You can remain here another twenty years, my lord. Eat the same bread, watch Rainwood clerks take what they please, and wait outside halls until men with richer fathers remember your name. Or you can take the one chance the Stormlands have put in your hands.”

The man had found the wound and pressed it. Lyman imagined three hundred fertile acres, horsemen wearing Tauha colors, and a herald proclaiming a richer lordship recognized by Storm’s End instead of another season as a poor landed lord in the hills.

”Lord Elton will stand behind me?”

”He will mediate at Storm’s End. The loan and his good offices bear his seal.”

It was not the same answer. Lyman knew it was not the same answer, and that knowledge became the humiliation he refused to admit before a silk-clad servant. The future grew brighter each time he looked at the gold and less detailed each time he considered how many men would bleed for him to reach it.

”Tell Lord Elton I agree. House Tauha will reclaim its water rights. If Ashenblade resists, that blood is on him.”

His steward inhaled sharply. The envoy only bowed more deeply than before. Preparations began that night. The one hundred sets of steel weapons went first to Lyman’s existing retainers, whose reaction nearly convinced him he had already risen in the world, and then able-bodied men were called from the villages until his force reached one hundred and fifty.

Some had military experience; many did not. The older retainers tried to teach villagers how to keep a line while Lyman’s steward counted food twice, already aware that one hundred and fifty men consumed supplies at a rate the holding could not sustain for long without Elton’s promised grain. Lyman ordered three hurried days of drill, more to make the column resemble an army than to turn farmers into soldiers, while food was gathered and horses assigned where they would not leave the infantry behind.

His men saw the new steel and assumed some great alliance stood behind them. Few knew the full terms, and fewer considered that the fertile land they had been promised already belonged to families who would have to be driven from it before House Tauha could possess anything.

Lyman understood that part. He simply preferred the version in which victory made it irrelevant, because ambition had already done most of the arguing for him. Three days later, one hundred and fifty men crossed out of Tauha lands beneath banners proclaiming a campaign to reclaim water rights. No Caron colors accompanied them, and no Nightsong officer rode openly among the column.

The fifty gold dragons remained behind in the stone tower. To Lyman, their weight made the spoken bargain feel safer than the careful words beneath Elton’s seal. To Elton, they were merely the price of pointing a disposable knife toward FireStorm.