A Vow Without Honor

The Siege

Jaime

Despite all the comforts afforded to him on the journey west, Jaime found that he had preferred traveling through the Riverlands with Myra when they'd had little more than the clothes on their backs and only one another for company. There they had been subjected to trees more than bodies, water rather than smoke. Maidenpool had burned, but the inn had been teeming with life.

There was no life on the River Road. Darry had been the last sign of it for some days - a stay that had been mired by the presence of half a dozen Freys demanding rights to the castle and the extinguished line of House Darry - as the road twisted through more burned villages and empty fields. But as time passed, Jaime noted that the absence of life felt less due to war, but something else. Crops had been picked clean, rather than set ablaze or left to rot. Untouched homes were abandoned, and the refugees had disappeared.

The work of the Blackfish, Jaime mused. He knows how to prepare for a siege.

Of all the castles in all the realm to lay siege to, Riverrun was the worst. It was bordered by rivers on two of its three sides, and the other had a moat that Bryden Tully undoubtedly had filled. It was nearly impossible to cross to, and just as impossible to starve out, and the new Lord of the Crossing, Emmon Frey, wanted as little damage to the keep as possible. The man was his uncle by marriage - an unfortunate circumstance that no one in the family cared to remember - and though he cared little for the man's complaints, Jaime was not one to deal with the wrath of his aunt, Genna. There were few in the realm who could match his father head-on, and his aunt bested them all.

Then, of course, on top of all those complications, there was the matter of his wife, and the fact that Riverrun had been home to her mother. She'd even been born there herself, she'd told him one night. A proper siege was something he did not want her to witness, but he would do what was necessary to put Riverrun under their control. If he had to send her on ahead, so be it.

The quicker I end this war, the quicker we can forget about it.

Jaime glanced over to Myra, who looked half-asleep on her horse. He'd almost incurred her wrath earlier that morning when he attempted to wake her. She'd threatened to stab him, and he laughed.

"We still have the carriage, you know," Jaime said, leaning over.

A lazy, gray eye looked over at him. "If I have to look your brother in the eyes again, I'll throw myself under it."

For whatever reason, it made him chuckle.

He knew he would have to speak to Tyrion again, though what he would say was completely lost to him. But like most things in his life, Jaime was content to put it off until the last possible moment. Though, it should probably be before they returned home lest Tyrion remembered his old self and disappeared without a trace.

How he loved his brother, and yet the thought of him vanishing brought a sense of relief, even comfort.

The selfish Lannister. That was who he was.

It was late afternoon when they arrived at Riverrun - although the days had been growing shorter, so perhaps not as late as he thought. Jaime had not been certain of what to expect upon arrival - nothing good at least - but the encampment that stretched out before them made him grimace.

The Frey camp was a half-buried disaster, with tents scattered to the wind with no rhyme or reason to their scheme. They were gathered in clusters, poorly constructed of less-than-ideal materials. Small breezes looked to be stormy gusts as the tents shook against their wroth. Many were poorly patched together, and many more weren't put up properly to begin with. Pigs and other livestock wandered between tents, some guided by pages, other left to simply roam wild.