His wailing echoed along the battlements, filled with a grief so vast it had no bottom, no shore. The garrison soldiers heard it, and one by one they looked away and bowed their heads.
Roger had broken completely. He staggered along the wall-walk, words pouring out of him in no particular order.
He had stopped caring whether his uncovered head made him a target. He simply moved in circles, repeating the same fragments over and over.
"I have no son anymore… I have no heir…"
"House Lege is finished… everything is finished…"
His grief did not last long before something darker devoured it whole.
"Solomon!! You viper crawled up from the Seven Hells!!"
His voice was wrecked, every syllable ground out as if from a wound.
"I will drink your blood!! I will eat your flesh!!"
"I will make a drinking cup from your skull!!"
He threw his head back toward the black vault of the sky, screaming curses into the dark, both eyes red as coals.
"Seven Gods!! Where are you?!"
"Why did you not protect me?! Why did you not protect my son?!"
"Are you all blind?! Are you all dead?!"
His curses grew fainter and fainter, until at last they collapsed into low, shapeless sobbing. He folded to the ground, boneless, and lay against the cold stone. He had never felt the nights in Willowbrook so long.
The morning mist was thick and wet, wrapping itself around the walls of Willowbrook's inner keep.
The Blackfish's cloak — dark, bearing the sigil of the leaping trout — felt heavier than usual in the damp air.
Beside him, Robin Lege raised his voice toward the battlements.
"I am Robin Lege!"
"Open the gate! By order of the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands — we come to mediate!"
The soldiers on the wall peered over the edge. Their eyes were full of fear and suspicion. They had been thoroughly broken, and the spears in their hands trembled.
Then Roger Lege appeared, hauling himself up by the nearest merlon, swaying badly.
His hair was matted and wild. Stubble covered his face. What had been dark hair the day before was now entirely white. He wore nothing beneath a long velvet robe, and the robe itself was streaked with stains of indeterminate origin.
He squinted down at the figures below, struggling to focus. Then a voice came from the wall — hoarse past recognition, slurred, carrying at its edges a strange and terrible smile.
"Robin?"
"What are you doing here? Come to see my tomb, have you? My dear cousin!"
He turned to find Brynden and showed his teeth.
"Blackfish. You've come to watch me die as well?"
Roger swayed violently. A soldier lunged to steady him; Roger shoved the man off with enough force to send him stumbling back three steps.
He roared down at the gate.
"Open the doors. Let these fish inside."
The soldiers on the wall did not move.
Roger Lege turned on them, spittle flying.
"Are you afraid to die?! Dying is better than living like dogs!!"
He pointed at the gate and bellowed at the open-mouthed guard below.
"I said — open the gate!! Let them in!!"
The soldiers moved too slowly. Roger's voice tore itself rawer, leaving no room for argument, no room for anything but the mad certainty behind it.
"Open. The. Gate."
The great windlass began to turn, groaning in protest.
The drawbridge of the inner keep lowered slowly. The thick oak doors parted — a crack, then wider — while the garrison watched in silent dread.
The air in the bedchamber was stale with old wine and a grief that had never left the room. The windows were shut tight. Heavy curtains held out every trace of light from the world outside.
Roger Lege was sunk into a wide armchair, a ruin of a man — hair tangled, face buried under white stubble, nothing beneath the velvet robe, the robe itself barely decent. He stared at the floor.
Brynden Tully settled onto a stool. The creak of wood in the silence was sharp as a blade.
He spoke, his voice rough and hard as a river stone.
"Lord Roger."
"Riverrun asks that you negotiate with Solomon and bring this war to an end."
He waited a beat, then continued.
"The Ironborn are raiding our coastline. The Riverlands needs to stand together, not consume itself from within."
"A large fleet of theirs is assembling at sea. No one knows where it is headed. We have lost track of it entirely."
Robin added his voice, quieter, carrying a note of genuine appeal.
"This is not surrender. It is a negotiation, my dear cousin."
"Solomon's terms are not severe."
Roger Lege did not respond. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, as if somewhere in the stone he might find everything he had lost.
Then, suddenly, he wrenched his head up. He rose from the chair. Something blazed in his eyes — not grief, not despair, but a fire that had moved beyond both.
"Negotiate?"
"With that bastard?"
He was on his feet in an instant, jabbing a finger at Brynden's face.
"If I hadn't sent five hundred of my soldiers to the coastal forts!! To guard Hoster's damned shoreline!! At your command!! Would Willowbrook have been so hollow?!!"
"Would my castle have had so few men to defend it?!!"
His voice climbed higher and higher, soaked in blood and accusation.
"How could that viper sail downriver and take my castle in three days?!"
His chest heaved. His face went dark red. The last words came out as a full-throated roar.
"How could my son be dead?!!"
He swung his arm and sent a candlestick crashing to the floor.
"I gave my soldiers to the Riverlands!! I gave them for the peace of this region!!"
"And you sat safe in Riverrun and watched!!"
"Now my outer keeps are gone!! My son is dead!!"
"And you come here — and ask me to negotiate with the man who killed him?!!"
Brynden showed no reaction to the disrespect directed at his liege lord and his family. He simply waited, then spoke quietly.
"Your son died on a battlefield. Furthermore, he demolished a noble lord's ancestral stronghold and desecrated his forebears."
Roger Lege let out a laugh — a sound that did not belong to a sane man.
"Well done, my son!! If it had been me!! I would have done the same!! If I'd had the chance!! I would have slaughtered every last one of his people!!"
He pointed at Brynden. Then at Robin. Then at the door — at everything beyond it, as if the gesture could indict the whole world.
"It was your House Tully that killed my son!!"
"And House Frey!! If they hadn't pushed me into it, would I ever have moved?! You are all cowards!! A pack of backstabbing, scheming gutless worms!!"
"If not for them!! Those filthy, treacherous rats!!"
His chest heaved in and out like a bellows.
"As for Solomon!!"
He ground the name out through clenched teeth, squeezing every syllable through the gaps like something poisonous.
"I, Roger Lege, will never negotiate with him."
"Only death ends this."
The light in his eyes was the light of pure destruction.
"Either he dies."
"Or I die."
Brynden Tully listened in silence. He watched the last of his patience wear away, grain by grain, and let it go. He had known countless stubborn lords in his long life, but none as far beyond reason as the man in front of him.
Roger had truly lost his mind.
Brynden said nothing further.
Robin Lege made one final attempt. His voice was low, steady, careful.
"Calm yourself, Roger. Look around you."
"What do you have left? Fewer than a hundred men — hungry, parched, exhausted."
"How many does Solomon have? A thousand, and their blood is running hot."
"Negotiation is your only way out. There is still a chance for something to be saved."
Roger Lege stared at him as if Robin had just told the funniest joke ever spoken beneath the sky. A laugh broke out of him — high, jagged, the laugh of a man who had come uncoupled from everything.
It echoed off the bare walls of the disordered chamber and felt like a cold hand on the back of the neck.
"Let him come and kill me!! Let him bring his whole army!! I will be waiting for him on the walls!!"
"House Lege has ruled this land since the First Men!! Our blood is ancient and noble!!"
"I will die on my feet before I negotiate with him!!"
He tore the longsword from his belt and levelled the point at the doorway.
"GET OUT."
"All of you. Get out."
"I don't need your pity!! I don't need charity from House Tully!!"
"If you won't help me kill Solomon—"
"Then leave. Now."
"The sword tip trembled faintly, shaking with the force of the fury behind it."
"Stay any longer, and I'll kill you all."
Brynden Tully looked at the blade pointed at him. The last warmth left his eyes entirely.
He rose from the stool slowly and straightened the old mail on his shoulders.
Every expression drained from his face, leaving nothing behind — only a cold and absolute stillness.
His voice carried no feeling whatsoever.
"Very well, Roger Lege."
"Since you have already chosen your own fate."
Brynden turned and walked toward the door. Robin and the Riverrun knights followed without a word. At the threshold, Brynden stopped. He did not fully turn back — only enough to let his voice carry into the room.
"Roger Lege."
A pause.
His gaze moved once across the chamber — the overturned candlestick, the stale wine, the curtained dark, the ruin of a man still gripping his sword in the middle of it all.
"Riverrun will remember your loyalty."
He stepped forward.
"And your end."
He did not look back again.