![]() And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. "If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. "They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. "For some, that one taste is enough to break them. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound then they are the lightning lord. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. I never wanted to see half the things I've seen, and I never saw half the things I wanted to. "Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought bravely. and seven kingdoms couldn't fill the hole she left behind.
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