"Here," said Bronn, squatting, "I'll do it." He took the knife and flint from Tyrion's hands and struck sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to smolder.
"Well done," Tyrion said. "Scum you may be, but you're undeniably useful, and with a sword in your hand you're almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do you want, Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you'll have it."
Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher. "And if you die?"
"Why then, I'll have one mourner whose grief is sincere," Tyrion said, grinning. "The gold ends when I do."
The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint back into his pouch, and tossed Tyrion his dagger. "Fair enough," he said. "My sword's yours, then . . . but don't go looking for me to bend the knee and m'lord you every time you take a shit. I'm no man's toady."
"Nor any man's friend," Tyrion said. "I've no doubt you'd betray me as quick as you did Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever comes when you're tempted to sell me out, remember this, Bronn - I'll match their price, whatever it is. I like living. And now, do you think you could do something about finding us some supper?"
"Take care of the horses," Bronn said, unsheathing the long dirk he wore at his hip. He strode into the trees.
An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire was crackling away merrily, and a haunch of a young goat was turning above the flames, spitting and hissing. "All we lack now is some good wine to wash down our kid," Tyrion said.
"That, a woman, and another dozen swords," Bronn said. He sat cross-legged beside the fire, honing the edge of his longsword with an oilstone. There was something strangely reassuring about the rasping sound it made when he drew it down the steel. "It will be full dark soon," the sellsword pointed out. "I'll take first watch . . . for all the good it will do us. It might be kinder to let them kill us in our sleep."
"Oh, I imagine they'll be here long before it comes to sleep." The smell of the roasting meat made Tyrion's mouth water.
Bronn watched him across the fire. "You have a plan," he said flatly, with a scrape of steel on stone.
"A hope, call it," Tyrion said. "Another toss of the dice."
"With our lives as the stake?"
Tyrion shrugged. "What choice do we have?" He leaned over the fire and sawed a thin slice of meat from the kid. "Ahhhh," he sighed happily as he chewed. Grease ran down his chin. "A bit tougher than I'd like, and in want of spicing, but I'll not complain too loudly. If I were back at the Eyrie, I'd be dancing on a precipice in hopes of a boiled bean."
"And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold," Bronn said.
"A Lannister always pays his debts."
Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse. The gaoler's eyes had gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold. "I kept the silver," Tyrion had told him with a crooked smile, "but you were promised the gold, and there it is." It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a lifetime of abusing prisoners. "And remember what I said, this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn's service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I'll pay you the rest of what I owe you." With golden dragons spilling out of both hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that.
Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He began to carve thick chunks of charred meat off the bone as Tyrion hollowed out two heels of stale bread to serve as trenchers. "If we do reach the river, what will you do then?" the sellsword asked as he cut.
"Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a start." Tyrion held out his trencher, and Bronn filled it with meat. "And then to Casterly Rock or King's Landing, I think. I have some questions that want answering, concerning a certain dagger."
The sellsword chewed and swallowed. "So you were telling it true? It was not your knife?"
Tyrion smiled thinly. "Do I look a liar to you?"
By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and a halfmoon was rising over the mountains. Tyrion spread his shadowskin cloak on the ground and stretched out with his saddle for a pillow. "Our friends are taking their sweet time."
"If I were them, I'd fear a trap," Bronn said. "Why else would we be so open, if not to lure them in?"
Tyrion chuckled. "Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror." He began to whistle a tune.
"You're mad, dwarf," Bronn said as he cleaned the grease out from under his nails with his dirk.
"Where's your love of music, Bronn?"
"If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the singer to champion you."
Tyrion grinned. "That would have been amusing. I can just see him fending off Ser Vardis with his woodharp." He resumed his whistling. "Do you know this song?" he asked.
"You hear it here and there, in inns and whorehouses."
"Myrish. 'The Seasons of My Love.' Sweet and sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I've never been able to put it out of my head." Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless as truth. "I met her on a night like this," he heard himself saying. "Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting threats. My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed . . . yet lovely. They'd torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I'd gotten a name out of her, and a story. She was a crofter's child, orphaned when her father died of fever, on her way to . . . well, nowhere, really.