Chapter 2: The Serpent on the King's Road

Chapter 2: The Serpent on the King's Road

278 AC, Month of the Wolf

The world outside the rattling carriage was a constantly shifting tapestry of greens and browns. For weeks, they had traveled south, leaving the stony resilience of the northern Riverlands behind for the dense, ancient forests of the Kingswood. The journey had been a lesson in itself, a living, breathing textbook that Alaric consumed with a ravenous hunger. While his brother Martyn stared out the window with the wide-eyed wonder of a boy seeing the world for the first time, Alaric saw a complex system of resources, logistical challenges, and strategic choke points.

He had commissioned two guards from his father's meager household guard to accompany them, a decision Lord Theron had grumbled at but ultimately conceded. Ser Cregan, a man whose face was a roadmap of old battles and whose hands were permanently calloused around the hilt of a longsword, was their commander. The other was a younger man named Jory, quick with a smile and quicker with his blade, who looked upon the journey as a grand adventure. They were loyal, competent, and utterly predictable. Alaric had analyzed their psychological profiles within the first day. Cregan was motivated by duty and a deep-seated loyalty to House Blackwood; Jory by a desire for glory and the coin that came with it. Both were manageable.

The carriage, a sturdy but plain affair that spoke of their house's modest means, had become their world. It smelled of oiled leather, old books, and the faint, sweet scent of the dried apples Lady Elara had packed for them. Inside, a fragile peace reigned. Martyn would spend most of his days engrossed in a book, his brow furrowed in concentration. Alaric would appear to do the same, a heavy tome resting on his lap, but his mind was a whirlwind of activity.

<>

<>

Alaric would make a mental note, his eyes never leaving the page. He was building a comprehensive map of the Seven Kingdoms in his mind, a map that went far beyond mere geography. It was a map of power, of wealth, of influence, of weakness. Every league they traveled, every village they passed, every traveler they saw on the road was another data point, another piece of the puzzle.

Their conversations were a study in contrasts. Martyn spoke of the heroes of old, of Florian the Fool and Ser Ryam Redwyne, his voice filled with a romantic idealism that Alaric found both quaint and dangerously naive.

"Can you imagine, Alaric?" Martyn said one afternoon, looking up from a collection of songs and stories. "To be a knight of the Kingsguard? To swear an oath to protect the king, to live a life of honor and duty?"

Alaric turned a page, not looking up. "I can imagine it. I can also imagine the reality. A lifetime of servitude to the whims of a powerful, often foolish, man. You are a glorified bodyguard, a political hostage, and your 'honor' is a chain that binds you to another's will. The Targaryens, in particular, have a history of being... difficult employers. Aerys is no exception, from what the whispers on the road say."

Martyn frowned, his romantic bubble pricked. "You see the worst in everything."

"I see the truth," Alaric corrected gently, finally meeting his brother's gaze. His eyes, a deep, unsettling grey, held a coldness that belied his ten years. "And the truth is rarely as pretty as the songs. Honor is a luxury few can afford, brother. Power is the only currency that truly matters."

The conversation drifted off, leaving Martyn to ponder his brother's cynical words. Alaric returned to his book, a flicker of satisfaction in his mind. He was slowly, carefully, chipping away at Martyn's idealism. He needed his brother to be useful in the Citadel, to be a source of information, not a wide-eyed boy who would be easily shocked or manipulated by others. He needed Martyn to see the world as he did: a game to be won.

Their first major stop was the Inn at the Crossroads. It was a sprawling, chaotic place, a nexus of travelers from all corners of the kingdom. The common room was a cacophony of noise: the clang of tankards, the roar of a dozen different conversations, the mournful tune of a lute played by a musician with more enthusiasm than talent. It smelled of woodsmoke, spilled ale, and unwashed bodies.

Ser Cregan found them a table in a relatively quiet corner, his hand never straying far from the pommel of his sword. Jory stood by the door, his eyes scanning the crowd with a practiced alertness. Alaric, however, was in his element. This was a microcosm of the world, a living laboratory of human behavior.

<>

<>

Alaric watched the group of sellswords from beneath his lashes. They were loud, boorish, and armed to the teeth. Their leader was a big man with a tangled black beard and a cruel twist to his mouth. He and his men were drinking heavily, their eyes lingering on the modest but well-made luggage the Blackwood party had brought in.

Martyn shifted nervously in his seat. "They look like rough men, Alaric."

"They are," Alaric said calmly, taking a sip of the watered-down wine the innkeeper had brought them. "But rough men are often simple men. Predictable."

As the evening wore on, the sellswords grew louder, their jokes coarser, their stares more brazen. Ser Cregan's jaw was tight, his knuckles white where he gripped his sword. Alaric knew that if it came to a fight, Cregan and Jory were skilled enough to handle them, but violence was messy, unpredictable. It drew attention. He preferred a more elegant solution.

He waited for a lull in their raucous laughter, then leaned over to Martyn and spoke in a clear, carrying voice, just loud enough for the nearby tables to hear.

"It's a shame we had to leave the rest of our retinue at Rosby, brother. Lord Gyles was most insistent on keeping them as guests. Still, I suppose a dozen armed guards would have been conspicuous. And father was quite clear: we are to travel to Oldtown with as little fanfare as possible. He says the Sealord of Braavos is a man who values discretion above all else."

He saw the flicker of confusion in the sellsword leader's eyes. Braavos? The Sealord? The man was trying to process the information, to fit it into his simple worldview of rich nobles and easy marks.

Alaric then turned his attention to the table, picking up a silver coin from the small purse his father had given them for expenses. He tossed it in the air, catching it with a flick of his wrist.

"Still," he continued, his voice laced with a faint, almost bored arrogance, "one must have traveling money. Father was most generous. Five hundred golden dragons should be more than enough for the journey, don't you think? Though I do worry about the weight. All that gold is surprisingly heavy."

The common room had gone quiet. The sellsword leader was staring at Alaric, his mouth slightly agape. Five hundred dragons was a king's ransom, a fortune beyond his wildest dreams. But the mention of the Sealord of Braavos, the Rosby retinue, the casual way the boy spoke of such wealth… it didn't add up. It was either the ramblings of a fool, or… something else. Something more dangerous.

Alaric met the man's gaze across the room. He didn't smile. He didn't threaten. He simply held the man's gaze with his cold, grey eyes, his expression one of utter calm, of complete and total confidence. In that moment, he was not a ten-year-old boy. He was the man he had once been, a man who could destroy powerful men with a single, well-placed word.

The sellsword looked away first. He muttered something to his men, and a few minutes later, they drained their tankards and shuffled out of the inn, their bravado gone.

Ser Cregan let out a slow breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "That was... well done, my lord," he said, a note of genuine respect in his voice.

Martyn stared at his brother, his mind reeling. "What did you do?"

"I introduced a new variable into their risk-reward calculation," Alaric said, taking another sip of wine. "They saw us as a low-risk, high-reward target. I made them believe we were a high-risk, potentially nonexistent-reward target. A lie about a large retinue, a ridiculously inflated sum of money, a connection to a powerful foreign entity... it creates confusion, uncertainty. And men like that do not like uncertainty. They prefer easy prey."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Never forget this, Martyn. The most powerful weapon is not the sword, but the mind. And the best way to win a fight is to ensure it never happens in the first place."

They left the inn the next morning, the encounter already a memory. But for Martyn, it was a turning point. He began to look at his younger brother with a new, unsettling mixture of awe and fear.

Their journey took them to the outskirts of King's Landing. They did not enter the city proper; Lord Theron's instructions had been clear on that point. But they spent a day at a hostelry on the kingsroad, with the three great hills of the capital visible in the distance. The Red Keep, a squat, ugly fortress of pale red stone, dominated the skyline.

Alaric stood on a small rise, looking at the city, a cold, analytical light in his eyes. He could smell it from here, a faint, foul stench of sweat, smoke, and human waste that the wind carried across the Blackwater Rush.

"A million people, they say," Martyn murmured, standing beside him. "The biggest city in the world."

"A million rats in a trap," Alaric corrected. He wasn't seeing the city; he was seeing the system. A bloated, corrupt, inefficient system on the verge of collapse.

<>

<>

"They call him the Mad King, you know," Alaric said, his voice quiet. "Aerys. They say he sees enemies in every shadow, that his paranoia grows worse with each passing year. He burns men alive for his own amusement."

Martyn shivered. "That's a terrible thing to say about the king."

"It's a terrible thing to be true," Alaric replied. "That fortress," he gestured towards the Red Keep, "is not a bastion of power. It's a prison. And the man inside is both the prisoner and the warden. A system like that cannot hold. It is inherently unstable. It will collapse."

He turned away from the city, a look of cold calculation on his face. He had seen it before, in his past life. A corporation that had grown too large, too corrupt, its CEO lost in a fog of arrogance and delusion. He knew how to profit from such a collapse. He knew which pieces to short, which assets to acquire in the ensuing fire sale. The principle was the same.

The final leg of their journey took them south, into the vast, fertile expanse of the Reach. The landscape transformed. The grim, stony fields of the Riverlands gave way to rolling hills carpeted in green, to endless fields of golden wheat and vibrant flowers. The castles they saw in the distance were not the grim, practical fortresses of the north, but elegant, white-stone manors with slender towers and sprawling gardens. This was the breadbasket of Westeros, the heartland of House Tyrell, and its wealth was staggering.

Alaric's inner businessman, the ruthless tycoon who had built an empire on calculated acquisitions, looked upon the Reach with a predatory glee. This was real wealth. Not the petty, hand-to-mouth existence of his own house, but a self-perpetuating engine of prosperity.

"Look at the soil, Martyn," he said, gesturing to a field of wheat that stretched to the horizon. "It's rich, dark. The yield per acre here must be five times what we get at home. And look at the people. They're well-fed, well-clothed. This is a land of plenty."

He fell silent, his mind racing. <>

<>

He was no longer just a boy on a journey. He was a corporate analyst on a fact-finding mission. He was dissecting the Reach, breaking it down into its component parts, understanding how it worked, how its wealth was generated, and, most importantly, how it could be exploited.

Finally, after months on the road, they saw it. A city sprawling around the mouth of the Honeywine river, dominated by a single, colossal structure that seemed to scrape the heavens. The Hightower. A beacon of light and knowledge, a symbol of everything he had come here to conquer.

They had arrived in Oldtown.

As their carriage rattled through the city's clean, cobblestone streets, past bustling markets and ancient, ivy-covered buildings, Martyn was practically vibrating with excitement.

"We're here, Alaric! We're finally here! The Citadel!"

Alaric looked at his brother's shining face, at the pure, unadulterated joy in his eyes, and he felt a moment of pity for him. Martyn saw the Citadel as a sanctuary, a place of learning and enlightenment. He saw it as a vault, waiting to be plundered.

He placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Listen to me, Martyn. This place is not like home. It's a city of its own, with its own rules, its own politics. The archmaesters are as ambitious and cunning as any lord. Be careful who you trust. Observe everything. Learn not just from the books, but from the men around you. And remember," he squeezed his brother's shoulder, his voice dropping to an intense whisper, "we are Blackwoods. We are here for a reason. Not just for you to forge a chain, but for us to acquire knowledge that will make our house strong. Do you understand?"

Martyn, caught up in his brother's intensity, nodded wordlessly.

Alaric settled back into his seat, a thin, predatory smile on his lips. The journey was over. The infiltration was about to begin. The Citadel, the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world, lay before him. And he was going to strip it bare.