Chapter 92

No matter from where you looked at it, this was one hell of a gamble, and you had trouble understanding how the Arryns had managed to cultivate enough trust that these people were essentially willing to bet the lives of their loved ones on their decision. You had apparently traveled too far and too often, since their trust was something you never had the chance to experience as you traveled between Westeros and Essos together with your old master. To universally trust into one's governing body to such an extent was and would likely forever more remain beyond your ability to comprehend, as you had learned far too much about human nature for such trust to ever form.

The closest you got when it came to genuinely trusting people would be your old master as he had been one of the pillars of your admittedly short life for years, but even so you were unable to truly comprehend blind trust like that. It would have required that you ignored the flaws of the people and the world around you, which was out of the question as that sounded an awful lot like deluding yourself, it was as simple as that. But you supposed you would find out how this wholesome madness would turn out, since you would for the foreseeable future still be stuck in the Vale with time to spare.

Though that being said, you still had the urge to help them out, as the madness that was their trust in the Arryns wasn't nearly enough to cancel out their conviction to prevail even if they had to live in poverty while the worst in their midst grew stronger and stronger. Their plan was decent since the good Lord Arryn was apparently one of the true paragons of the realm even if it would have normally been pure madness to blindly plan on the virtues of others, but since you were the one they wanted to use, this massive gamble was unexpectedly sympathetic.

You couldn't really describe why, but the boldness of Nora's populace simply resonated with you as they trudged through their misery, unaware that they had practically already won, despite stumbling in the dark for nine tenths of their plan. It was of course still a problem that a simple letter of your lord had done this much damage by accident to the lands he wished to hold some day, but since House Palno's lord turned out to be that incompetent you couldn't imagine the Lannisters and your master would end up seeing what happened as a negative.

Well, it was not like what you thought about how your liege saw this mess meant much, since your common sense was of course extremely unreliable when it came to his thoughts. Mayhaps he would simply be overjoyed that he got rid of a useless vassal before Lord Palno had managed to do real damage to House Lannister's future property. Or just as likely was that he could be annoyed to no end that a mistake such as this had managed to leave Casterly Rock in the first place, since he felt like a bit of a perfectionist with how he tended to use everything he managed to get his hands on.

But leaving your liege and his reaction for later, you found yourself quite annoyed that you couldn't fix the madness that had claimed Nora as long as their plan still required House Arryn's interference as anything but complete failure would have likely resulted in little more than a slap on the wrist for House Palno. The rule of House Arryn no matter how much trust the populace might have had in them was after all quite flawed, as anyone that wasn't blinded could tell by the countless host of the Mountain Clans that should have been dealt with centuries ago.

Good intentions and virtuous rule were great and all, but no matter how great the ruler, the simple fact was that there was no victory to be had as even the best effort of the greatest ruler could only ever balance out the bad and suppress the symptoms. It was a simple fact that the Arryns and the lords of the Vale had apparently forgotten, as if they actually thought that the struggle of good against bad that humanity had always fought with itself could simply be pushed into the far future indefinitely.

Their folly made you honestly wonder just how many more Lord Palnos were still out there, as House Arryn's legendary tendency to stubbornly endure a thousand cuts over taking action once would have naturally invited even further unprecedented incompetence like this, since the Arryns only ever moved when they smelled evil. It was ridiculous that you had to watch as Nora ripped itself apart just so that someone, namely you, would bother to tell the Arryns to come down from their castle to deal with something that was simply just bad for once.

Normally it would have sounded sane to only act once you had something evil to oppose, like the raids and invasions by the Mountain Clans that filled the valleys of the Vale with blood, but you never understood what good it was to oppose something evil if the bad was left ignored. Like such incompetent nobles that were left to do as they pleased just because they could hardly ever be defined as evil, no matter how often the description of bad in all its forms could have been applied to how they ruled their lands.

To the Arryns and the great lords of the Vale, something that couldn't be classified as evil was simply below their dignity to deal with, absolute madness. But only the representative of another Great House would ever dare to open up that particularly dusty chest of theirs, so you honestly didn't even know who you could have blamed for remaining quiet, since you wouldn't have said anything either. Although the worst part was that this dignity of theirs apparently also meant that they had an extremely hard time asking others for their aid, which as things stood was why your lord was so taken aback by the troops of the Starks and Baratheons.

In essence, the lords of the Vale had somehow managed to make sure that they suffered attrition from every corner of their lands throughout literal centuries while they never once moved against the population of the Mountain Clans in earnest, all because of their misguided pride and principles. You never bought into the praise you heard from the Lannister sympathisers as Tywin Lannister still managed the realm, but since the Vale was drenched in blood in nigh complete diplomatic isolation while its lords thought about whitewashing their castles you found that you understood where they had come from when they praised the Rock's golden gauntlet.