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The Kingswood, 109 AC
When Princess Rhaenyra returned to their camp - if such a word can encompass the immensity of it - most of the Lords and Ladies looked at her with disgust. Ser Harwin Strong, however, was not one of those people. In fact, when he saw the Princess covered in blood, splatters of it up her jaw and nape, Harwin looked at her with admiration and respect. How could he not? True, that Dornish Kingsguard was with her, but he’d bet his last silver stag that it was the Princess of Dragonstone who slaughtered that boar with her own dagger, blooded perhaps for the first time.
His father perhaps did not appreciate how he looked at the Princess. Lyonel Strong says nothing, but with a swift look to his eldest daughter, Harwin receives an elbow in his side - Elisine’s elbows were pointier than the Iron Throne.
Princess Rhaenyra enters a royal tent set aside for her and Harwin returns to his current duty: skinning rabbits. Larys, planted next to him, returns to his current duty: relaying recent gossip to his older brother under the pretext of “intelligence”. Every so often, Maerie pipes up with more information, gleaned from those women’s salons she attends, a more informal iteration of Good Queen Alysanne’s women’s courts. Whenever their youngest sister seems to run out of information, Elisine takes over, and the chatter of his siblings feels like they’re back home at Harrenhal, all children again and sharing beds together until they inevitably nod off at ungodly hours.
Eventually, the Princess emerges, clearly bathed and clothed once more - Harwin reckons she looks even more beautiful covered in the blood of her conquest. Her entrance shocked the camp, especially those sat at the King’s table. When she disappeared into her own tent, King Viserys ordered that the boar be roasted in the embers of the bonfire from last night, still burning hot enough that most circle around the fire. Harwin fears those tables may buckle under the heft of a whole boar - the one the Princess slaughtered was no babe, but he hopes this means that none shall go hungry.
In the dew of the morning, a final feast is declared before departing for King’s Landing, a lunch with all the bounties of the forest to feed them. Aside from being outside, it is almost the same as feasts within the Red Keep, but at least this way, Harwin gets to breathe in the scent of the cedar and the oak, and not the stench of nightsoil or thrice-drunken fools starting a fight with the Goldcloaks.
Compared to court, it is a relatively informal affair, as one might be with the King and his family in their presence. Yet there remains an underlying tension between the Princess and her father. Yesterday’s strife has not been forgotten and Harwin notices that Princess Rhaenyra is constantly moving. She never lingers long in a conversation, more often than not co-opted into one by various noblewomen with opinions and airs. It’s sad.
Harwin thinks of his brother at these kinds of occasions. Instead of fluttering about like the Princess, Larys stays put. Instead of being compelled into conversation, Larys is rarely spoken to, but rather spoken of. She does have her ladies-in-waiting, Elisine and Maerie hovering somewhere nearby but Princess Rhaenyra rarely lingers long with them. Soon enough, she departs that tent. Call it chivalry, call it whatever you will, but Harwin follows.
She stands afore the smoking bonfire with the roasting boar, seemingly deep in thought, but Harwin has never been light-footed. His steps are not subtle and his presence is clearly announced before he can open his mouth.
“Might I accompany you? The boar might attack you again.”
It’s a foolish little line, but he can’t help but notice that the smallest of smiles graces the Princess’s face as he steps to her side, surprised that she can bear to stand so close to the cloying heat from the embers of the bonfire. He is of the rivers, not of the flames.
“Heaven forbid it might. I’m not accustomed to a dagger in my hand.” She says wistfully, her hand hovering by that very dagger resting at her hip. He doesn’t have the words for it, but Harwin reckons that the Princess’s outfit is reminiscent of her riding leathers, albeit in that maroon velvet that she loves to wear at court. With the cut of it and the steel at her hip, she looks dangerous and even more so knowing that only an hour ago, blood flecked her skin.
“Aye, perhaps not, but you brought down that boar,” Harwin gestures to that very thing, “Tis quite the achievement.” He thinks a kind compliment would bring a sunnier look to her face but somehow, he’s forgotten all that common sense drilled into him by his stepmother.
“An achievement you say. But you were the only one to look at me with a smile when I came back,” Princess Rhaenyra says ruefully. “They do not care for what I can do beyond whose hand I must take. They care only for my half-brother, a boy of two summers, when I am here.” She stresses.
In theory, the Strong sisters ought not talk of what the Princess says in their presence. But he loves his sisters, and they love him, and there are no secrets between them, if they ignore all the secrets that Larys hoards. They whisper that Queen Alicent Hightower is with child again. They whisper that the Hand of the King plots to have his blood on the throne, whether that be through marrying the boy of two summers to his half-sister of fourteen summers or setting aside the King’s declaration that Princess Rhaenyra follow him on the Iron Throne. They whisper that the Hand has not been successful, and so the Queen coos in her husband’s ear as they couple that a son comes before a daughter, isn’t that what your grandfather decreed? They whisper that the Queen hopes the babe in her belly is a daughter to marry to her son in the tradition of the family she married into.
“Princess, might I be honest?” Harwin asks. Her eyebrows jump, but she acquiesces. “When you came back to camp, covered in blood, I thought that you were Queen Visenya herself.”
The Princess scoffs, but Harwin can’t help but see her cheeks redden. Maybe the fire before them is roaring and the heat is quite something, but she smiles whilst looking away from him. “Careful, Ser Harwin. Were I Queen Visenya come again, perhaps I should have arrived on Syrax.”
He can’t help but chuckle. “You say I was the only one to look at you with a smile. I can’t help but imagine what I might do seeing you on dragonback like the Conqueror come again.” Vaguely, he remembers that he’s not sweet-talking to one of the girls from the village outside Harrenhal but when he sees that smile, her true smile, Harwin knows it was worth it to make Princess Rhaenyra just that little bit happier, that twinkle in her lilac eyes back where it belongs.
“Such sweet words. I did not know Breakbones could be so charming.” She tilts her head towards him.
“I can be many things, Princess.”
Never has he been able to talk with her for so long, not with lingering eyes and sensitive ears. And of course, it comes to an end when Maerie emerges from somewhere, looking frazzled before her eyes set upon her brother. That very same brother stood quite close to the Princess of Dragonstone.
“Forgive me, Princess. Our father seeks my brother, though not for his conversation skills, I imagine.”
That godsdamned sister of his. For that, he might just release a toad into her chambers. For now, he steps back from the Princess. “With your leave, I might convince my father that I do take after him in some ways.”
She smiles, but not with her eyes, and Harwin wonders if she sees him and Maerie, her arm hooked into his elbow, and thinks of all those brothers she never got to meet and love. “You might inform him that the Crown finds your conversational skills more than passable. Perhaps I ought tell him that later.”
The three of them leave the bonfire to head inside, separating once there. Princess Rhaenyra seems to stiffen herself before stepping towards her father. Harwin can’t be sure why his own father needed him, for conversational needs or otherwise, aside from the sneaking suspicion that his father has a sixth sense when his eldest son is about to make a careless decision, like playful conversations with the Princess. Nevertheless, he gossips with his siblings and drinks his fill, occasionally wandering outside when he needs to relieve himself, until servants eventually bring the boar into the tent and serve it as the centrepiece amongst the various ambrosias splayed across the creaking table. A fine feast for a fine noon.
The boar has been cooked so the meat practically falls off the bone. Harwin plucks out the clove seeds dotting the skin and eats with the decorum expected of his station. The same cannot be said of the boy whose nameday this feast is in celebration of. Surprisingly, Prince Aegon is sat between his parents, a practical army of wet nurses cloistered around him and trying to feed the boy of two namedays. At one point, the Prince is offered some boarmeat, to which he looks excited for once. But when he goes to take a bite, Prince Aegon begins to fuss. It’s not yet a tantrum, but Harwin clearly remembers the first time he had to tell Elisine “no” (the fact that it was stopping Elisine from licking something in Auntie Alys’ chambers is something she will continue to deny). The Prince doesn’t quite scream, but it is still not pleasant on the ears. Everyone else just talks over his outburst, but Harwin is still close enough to hear their comments.
The King tries to feed his son more boarmeat, but he fails where his mother and wet nurses failed before. Surely, Harwin thinks, it would be so much simpler to just let the child eat what he wishes to. Of course, he won’t say that one out loud - Larys says he got the brawn rather than the brain, but he knows enough about how to conduct himself at court.
Prince Aegon begins to cry in earnest, pounding his fist next to the plate like some drunkard in Flea Bottom demanding more beer. Even the King himself looks uncomfortable, and his young wife looks both uncomfortable and in pain, her stomach so large Harwin could imagine her falling over with its girth.
Princess Rhaenyra opens her mouth. “Kepa, the boar is not cooked enough.”
Harwin looks down to his plate. The boar is cooked plenty enough, with some of the fat crispened and golden. It could perhaps do with some more flavours but it is certainly cooked enough.
King Viserys takes a slice, having spent the meal thus far on a diet of the liquid grape variety. He takes a mouthful and chews, longer than one would expect. To the nearest serving girl, the King requests that the boar be returned to the bonfire until blackened. Harwin would look confused, if he wasn’t working on the fact that his face, according to Maerie, was an open book. The boar is perfectly cooked as it is: the meat retains the moisture, the fat is crackling, and not a single burnt part on its body.
A few hours past the zenith of the sun, the boar returns to the table, and Harwin questions how one would be able to eat it anymore, blackened and crisp beyond usual taste. But Princess Rhaenyra takes a slice, takes a small portion between her fingers and offers them to her half-brother. Prince Aegon seems much happier and steals some of the meat the Princess had on her own plate. Interestingly, she says nothing of it, just continues to feed her half-brother as she feeds herself. The King too has multiple servings of boarmeat, and it is upon his third plateful that Harwin realises no one else in their party is eating the boarmeat, and certainly not Queen Alicent Hightower. It is only those of Targaryen blood who continue to imbibe slices of burnt boarmeat. Harwin tries to eat some, but finds it so burnt, so bitter, so tasteless that he leaves his plate with food still on it. He already expects a comment from his siblings about how Breakbones needs his strength.
The journey back to King’s Landing takes a while. He could ride his horse alongside House Strong’s wheelhouse, but the food and the sun have his eyes drooping already, and he fits himself in between Elisine and Maerie, his head lolling to rest atop Elisine’s head.
The rocking of the wheelhouse is soothing and Harwin can feel himself drift away. Not quite asleep, his thoughts wander from topic to topic, scene to scene. At one point, he thinks of three dragons, gathered around a boar. One of them, he knows to be that golden beauty Syrax. Another is gargantuan, more shadow than mass, a hulking void. The last dragon has no fixed form, but all three let loose dragonflame onto the boar until it barely resembles its former self, blackened and smoking, and dropping their jaws to feast on their meal.
He tastes burnt bitterness on his tongue before that scene dissipates in that fluidity of drowsiness, and Ser Harwin Strong finally falls asleep.