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Blackfish Out Of Water by jacobk

Books » A song of Ice and Fire Rated: M, English, Adventure & Fantasy, Brynden T., Words: 96k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Apr 30, 2016 Updated: Sep 15, 2016801Chapter 1

That worst of all self indulgences, the self insert. This will be my project for blowing off steam and procrastinating on other things I should be doing. I can, as always, be swayed by audience interest.

The self being inserted here is me before I went on my ASoIaF SI reading binge a few weeks ago, so "my" knowledge is a little spotty.

ooOoo

Say one thing about the Iron Bank of Braavos, say they know how to build a waiting room. Enormous, all done up in marble, subtly elevated thrones for the bankers and simple benches for the visitor. They didn't miss a trick. Say two things about the Iron Bank, say they aren't shy about making a man wait. It had been a good hour and a half since I'd been let into the room, and there was still no sign of our hosts.

I'd occupied the time by looking out the window and admiring the wonderful view over Fantasy Ancient Greece. Even from up here it was pretty obvious how much better they had their shit together compared to King's Landing. Sometimes I wondered if they had never conquered Westeros only because they weren't quite sure the dragons were really gone. I suppose their passion for the Greek national hobby of warring with their rival cities had kept them busy, too.

Hopefully there's no Fantasy Alexander coming down the pike in one of the books I never read. There's nothing like the random self-insert experience to make you regret putting your real work ahead of your fantasy reading.

Walder Frey was hovering by my elbow. Not that Walder Frey. One of the younger ones. He was the least cunty Frey I'd been able to find, as evidenced by his ability to follow directions and keep his fucking mouth shut while we were inside the Iron Bank. The Freys as a whole were kind of a mess, but they were also one of the most powerful of House Tully's vassals. If I could turn a Frey into a decent, functional adult, that would give my brother one less thing to bitch at me about. Not that he would feel the lack.

The Iron Bank's sense of showmanship extended to the dramatic entrance. The three bank representatives entered together. They almost marched in step to their designated thrones, and sat as if on a pre-arranged signal. The one in the middle seemed to be their spokesman.

"Welcome to the Iron Bank."

His command of Westerosi common was flawless, which was a relief. I had access to dim childhood memories of learning High Valyrian and I'd been doing my best to pick up the Low Valyrian that was the common language of Essos, but it was slow going. Useful as it could be to be thought of as an uncultured barbarian, I'd rather be able to communicate clearly. Besides, they probably thought I was a barbarian anyways.

I followed his directions and took a seat on the bench.

"Ser Brynden Tully. How can we help you?"

"Perhaps we can help each other," I said. "After the recent excitement, we've got a lot of young men out west with a taste of battle who don't want to settle down to the quiet life. And perhaps one or two old men as well."

I pulled a sheaf of papers from a pocket and set it down on the table. The unnecessarily large marble table. I slid it out until it was within reach of the spokesman before continuing.

"I figure I can raise a thousand men easily enough. Take some time getting them used to working as a unit, then start hiring on as sellswords. If things go well, we can expand later."

He took a moment to page through the papers I'd handed him. He had a pretty good poker face, but I could tell he was surprised. And well he should be. This was probably the only time on this planet that the ability to put together a decent financial pitch would be worth a damn, so I'd gone all out. Startup costs, projected revenues and expenses in baseline, optimistic, and pessimistic scenarios, all the assumptions spelled out and justified. I even had a market survey comparing the fees and services offered by other sellswords, along with the implied wage paid by those who went with the Unsullied for their defensive needs. It was a nice piece of work. It was a shame that my public image demanded that I not take credit for it.

"If this is accurate, I don't see why you need money from us at all."

"I know a few things about war, but business?" I said, shrugging. "Now, if the Iron Bank takes a look at my plans and opens their vaults, I'll know my idea's worth something."

It was true, too. Just because these guys had never heard of Black-Scholes didn't mean they were stupid. They were running a multi national banking empire without so much as a calculator. They had real practical knowledge about operating a business in Essos where I only had speculation.

Of course, having the Iron Bank invested in my success would be useful in other ways. Especially if I was going to be bidding on Braavosi government contracts. It was usually considered gauche to mention that kind of thing out loud, though.

He was nodding along, so I kept going. "And while I might think I've got enough gold to see me through, one thing I've learned over the years is that things seldom go exactly to plan. Having more gold on hand can't hurt."

That was just common sense.

"Still, I have to say," he replied, "in my experience those of the Sunset Kingdoms prefer to keep their lending in the family if at all possible. I know the Riverlands suffered in the recent fighting, but I did not think it was in truly dire straits."

However delicately put, he was questioning my family's solvency. This is where I could have really sold the barbarian sucker image by getting all pissy. By the time that thought even crossed my mind, though, I had already given in to my first instinct and thrown back my head and laughed out loud.

"My brother would give me that much money and more... just as soon as I married the girl of his choice," I said. "You can consider that a surety, if you want. I consider it a last resort."

They were taken aback by the laughter, but settled down at the explanation. The spokesman glanced at his colleagues, receiving a shallow nod from each, then turned back to me.

"We'll need to take some time to decide the particulars, but I don't see any reason we can't work together," he said. I felt the knot in my stomach loosen, and gave him a nod in reply. "There was one thing in your papers, a phrase I didn't recognize. What are 'naming rights'?"

"Well, I'm going to be creating one of the finest companies of sellswords in the land here," I said, smiling. "I haven't settled on a name yet... but I thought 'the Iron Men' had a nice ring to it."

ooOoo

When I woke up and saw the stars above me, the first thing that went through my mind was: I didn't think I was out camping last night. The second thought was: by the Seven, Edmure snores fit to wake the dead.

This was not followed by an extended bout of panicking largely, I think, due to my access to Brynden Tully's memories. I remembered riding south with the levies of the Riverlands. I remembered accepting Edmure as my squire. I remembered the Battle of the Trident. I remembered arriving at King's Landing to find it already taken by the Lannisters. I remembered riding back north, shedding levies along the way, until only the men of Riverrun itself were sleeping in the woods surrounding Edmund and me.

I also remembered reading the first few books in the song of ice and fire series several years ago, and always meaning to get around to watching the tv show. I remembered that somebody had put together a handy list of facts for time travelers to memorize, and thinking that it might be a good idea to take a look at it some time. I remembered that gunpowder exploded and probably had sulfur in it. My last hands-on engineering project was the raggedy chessboard I built in shop class that my mom had pretended to admire.

Well, nobody's perfect.

All this thinking did not lead to an existential crisis. Brynden Tully wasn't really the kind of guy who was susceptible to that kind of thing. For me, personally, the situation was so far beyond what I had ever considered possible that it was hard to get worked up about the metaphysics. Besides, there was plenty going on in the regular old physical world for me to worry about.

Westeros had just finished up a civil war. The end result had been to put Robert Baratheon on the throne. While Brynden remembered Robert as quite the inspiring badass on the battlefield, what he knew of his personality was perfectly consistent with my recollection of the guy who was almost, but not quite, the complete opposite of a good king. So in fifteen-shit, maybe eighteen, I remembered Robb was full grown when the fun started-anyways, in fifteen years or so we were due for a real humdinger of another civil war, possibly followed by a zombie invasion. Or dragons. Maybe both.

The question was whether I could do anything about it. I wanted to. I could feel a real familial tie to Catelyn and Lysa that went beyond the residual affection I felt for them as characters. I'd really like for them and their kids to get through everything unmurdered and unraped.

Wait, didn't Lysa do something really fucked up? Or was I just thinking that because all the named characters did fucked up stuff? It was hard to square with my memories of her as a sweet little girl who was so kind, even to nobodies like Petyr Baelish. Shit, there was something about him, too.

Well, anyways, there were severe limits on what I could do. As the younger brother of a Lord Paramount I was reasonably high up there, socially. I could even insult Tywin Lannister to his face and not die. Probably. But exerting outright influence on the public policy of the kingdom? On the basis of vague premonitions? That was beyond me.

I could go the covert intrigue route. I knew the plotters, and some of the plans. The problem was, Brynden had always been a straightforward kind of guy. I myself might know my way around office politics, but office politics never really involved putting your life on the line, at least in my experience. Even if I didn't remember the details, I did remember that the books featured plenty of plots, counter-plots, Xanatos gambits, murders, and rapes. I was safe from that last bit-probably-but I didn't at all like my odds as some kind of spymaster.

Honestly, if you wanted to play the game of thrones properly you needed an army.

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Blackfish Out Of Water by jacobk

Books » A song of Ice and Fire Rated: M, English, Adventure & Fantasy, Brynden T., Words: 96k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Apr 30, 2016 Updated: Sep 15, 2016801Chapter 2

AN: Almost looks like a plot developing.

ooOoo

Brynden Tully was a grown-ass man. Accordingly, his instincts only reinforced my annoyance when Hoster Tully elected to pepper our welcoming feast with comments expressing his hope that I would finally settle down and get to work filling out a cadet branch of the family. What really stuck in my craw was that by the standards of our society he was being generous. He had every right to order me to marry someone of his choosing and exile me for refusal. Tolerating my defiance had cost him some face. Not enough to lead to outright rebellions or anything, but I know he had had to deal with other people testing him with bullshit after seeing him put up with mine.

It wasn't even like I was against getting married in principle. Brynden's continued refusal had resulted in some pretty decent negotiating leverage. It was tempting to find a sweet young thing with vast tracts of land and get busy living like a lord. The problem was that doing so would mean giving up most of my ability to influence the outside world.

Don't get me wrong: Brynden Tully had a reputation. When he talked, people listened. It actually kind of weirded me out at first. If I took on a lordship somewhere, though, I'd be limited to talking about local issues. To be fair, I would always be part of my brother's inner circle. That was valuable in the Riverlands, but carried only so much weight in the greater realm. I could live a perfectly comfortable life that way right up until the moment of the dragon zombie civil war invasion.

I could try and get down to King's Landing, but I had a really hard time imagining myself earning the king's trust. It wasn't like he would do anything about my future knowledge if I sent it to him in an anonymous letter. I could picture it now: "Dear Robert: Cersei is fucking her brother. The pretty one. Also, Littlefinger is robbing you blind. GL & HF!" Yeah, spy versus spy wasn't going to be my scene.

Holy shit, Littlefinger! That was Edmure's stupid nickname for the Baelish kid. That hit me with some Keyser Soze level cognitive dissonance. It was hard to reconcile Brynden's memories of the sweet romantic young man with the mastermind behind ninety percent of what had gone wrong in fictional Westeros. Add another name to the list of people I wouldn't mind seeing come down with a bad case of death. This one I might be able to do something about.

Anyway, Hoster wasn't as clever as he thought he was and was probably rather more annoying than he thought he was being. Sadly, that was nothing new for Brynden. A part of me might have sympathized with "The Late" Lord Frey's eventual decision to slaughter as many of Hoster's descendants as he could manage, but I was able to grit my teeth, put on a smile, and focus on enjoying the food.

As was our custom, I met with Hoster the next morning in his solar. It was a chance to talk business without my brother feeling the need to play for the crowd.

"So, we've won," Hoster said, once we'd each settled down with our refreshments. "The Lannisters have joined the cause and Ned Stark is even now marching to relieve the siege at Storm's End. Mace Tyrell won't fight for long in a losing cause."

"Yes," I replied. "Victory."

I put a bit of an ironic inflection on the last word, which drew a sharp glance from Hoster. I was surprised at his harsh reaction until a bit of reflection reminded me that Brynden Tully's second favorite hobby as a young man had been to use precisely that tone of voice when fucking with his brother.

"Are you so displeased with peace, then? Surely the burden of avoiding marriage rests easier on your shoulders than war?"

He was probably expecting praise for his foresight in marrying his daughters off to two of the rising powers in the realm. And, hey, more power to him. I don't care who your allies are, throwing in with a rebel alliance to battle a three hundred year old dynasty-and winning!-that's pretty impressive. Still, what was family for if not to help keep your ego in check? He had plenty of people at his court who were more than capable of blowing smoke up his ass.

"Peace is sweet, aye. And we are well rid of Aerys's madness. Still, three things trouble me," I said, as I began ticking them off on my fingers. "The Lannisters are cunts. The Dornish are a bunch of angry cunts. And the Targaryens are fucking furious cunts."

Hoster wore a wry grin at my choice of language, but he didn't dismiss my concerns out of hand. "Take them in turn, then. I would have liked Tywin to join our side sooner, but you can only expect so much when his heir is held hostage."

"Sure, and then he decided to make up for his delay with cruelty. The sack of King's Landing was vicious. Accomplished by betrayal, too. Tywin's son decided to honor his oath to the Kingsguard by killing the king," I said, then paused and took a drink. "And I'm fairly certain it was Tywin's men that killed Elia Martell and her children. It was messy."

"Tywin Lannister is a hard man," Hoster said, his gaze level. "Sometimes hard times call for hard men."

By the Seven, I was going to have to have the hard men making hard decisions conversation in real life. This really is a grimdark world. I doubted Hoster would be so sanguine when Tywin was making those hard decisions about his own grandkids, but that was nothing more than wild speculation right now. All I could do was make my point and move on.

"It's one thing for a man to do what he must," I said, shaking my head. "It's another thing entirely when an animal slips its leash and runs wild. Especially if he provoked a war with the Dornish."

"The Dornish have always been a thorn in the side of the Iron Throne. Still, they've never shown much taste for conquest," Hoster said. "I'm inclined to let Robert and Jon worry about keeping them in line. I'm curious, though, what troubles you about the Targaryens? They must be a spent force, now, mother and child holed up on Dragonstone."

"The dragons fled on ships, yes. They say to Dragonstone, but I don't see why they'd stop there. Why not continue on? I'd wager they're halfway to Qarth by now. There's plenty of men in Essos who fight for coin, and the Targaryens were never short of gold."

"Surely you don't think a sellsword army could overcome the men of Westeros."

I shrugged. "It wouldn't have to overcome all of them. Just put a credible host in the field and wait for everybody with a grievance to rise up and join the restoration. Even if they lose they could still make a bloody mess of things."

Hoster didn't say anything, so I continued. "We've both heard the mummers' tales and spies' whispers, but there are scant few sober military accounts of Essosi fighting prowess. With your blessing, I will tour Essos and return with a report of just what kind of army a wealthy Targaryen could piece together, and what we'd need to do to stop it."

ooOoo

It wasn't quite as simple as that, of course. I had to agree to actually meet with the next girl Hoster wanted me to marry. I also had to bring along a couple of minor nobles on my trip. Lads with a taste for adventure and well out of the line of succession, not unlike myself. I suspect they were also chosen because of their unwed sisters, but I nipped that talk in the bud early in our voyage.

My brother's generosity had extended to providing a ship and crew. He'd even managed to scare up a genuine native Essosi guide to show us around and hopefully keep us from getting murdered. Either I'd really sold him on my mission, or he considered this a small price to pay not to have me kicking around Riverrun defying his orders. The ship sailed the same speed either way, so I didn't dwell on it.

We started out hitting the western shore of Essos, staying well clear of Dragonstone and working our way south. Braavos, Pentos, Myr, Tyrosh, Lys. We talked to sellswords when we could, sounded out their clients when they were available, and listened to anybody who wanted to talk. Everywhere we went, we heard the same thing. The greatest warriors on Essos were the Dothraki. The best sellswords were the Golden Company. But the scariest sons of bitches were the Unsullied.

That was why we were on our way to Astapor. Slaver's Bay was well beyond the usual Westerosi trade routes, both due to distance and due to their primary export being slaves. We picked up a navigator in Volantis to see us safely to our destination. The sailors there claimed it was an easy trip as long as you didn't do something stupid like sail into the Smoking Sea, but I felt better when the person making that kind of claim had their own life on the line as well.

Sailing around the old Valyrian peninsula was eerie enough. Whatever hell the Valyrians had called down on themselves apparently still had some vitality to it, judging by the smoke looming over their remains. My memories from the book agreed with Brynden's scraps of knowledge: the Valyrians were into some kind of awful blood magic that came back to bite them in the worst way. Even sailing in sight of that disaster was closer than I really wanted to be.

I distracted myself from the view by reviewing my notes and figures. Most of the sellswords that we'd met had been a bit underwhelming. They were solid fighters, but nothing revolutionary. They mostly followed the Westerosi model where tactics and strategy played out during the lead up to battle. Once the fight began they, like us, mostly looked to move en masse into general melee and trust in individual skill at arms to carry the day. In general I would put them as roughly equivalent to the better levees. Well-equipped, experienced infantry.

I was hoping to put some solid numbers together to replace the mixture of rumor and supposition that was our daily fare. You might think that if you woke up in a medieval society the thing you would miss most would be air travel. Or automobiles. Or toilet paper. And those things are great and sorely missed. I'd just add that you shouldn't underestimate the impact of google on your day to day life. It's incredibly frustrating to be unable to answer a simple factual question like: if you toured Essos with an infinite pot of gold, what kind of army could you put together?

I remembered that was more or less Dany's plan. Well, that plus dragons. I remembered that it had taken her a while to send her foreign hordes pouring into Westeros, but it was bound to happen eventually. The first step in getting ready for it was figuring out what exactly would be headed our way. Vaguely remembered words on a page were no substitute for the evaluating eye of a fighting man. Thus, our trip to Astrapor.

Astrapor was not a beautiful city. It had a striking style to it, to be sure, with the red brick construction and the enormous pyramids. But the architecture was lacking something. Call it grace, call it elegance, call it joie de vivre, there was something missing from Astrapor that I had gotten used to seeing in the Free Cities.

It didn't help that the city symbol was a harpy clutching a set of manacles. It was one of the uglier things I'd ever seen people voluntarily choose to represent themselves. It was also a stark reminder that this city was built on slavery. Our guide, a Braavosi named Agnolo Lasko, was visibly pale as we disembarked from the ship. I rather belatedly realized what a horrible thing I was asking him to do, and walked over to speak with him.

"We can find another translator if-"

"No."

Agnolo was a small, largely non-threatening middle-aged man, but he had steel in his spine as he stood straight and looked me in the eye. I was a bit put out by the interruption, but let him continue.

"You do this to keep slavers from coming to Riverlands, yes?"

I nodded.

"Then I will be with you. No other translator."

I gave him another nod, then turned back to my companions.

"All right, you know the drill."

Standing on the left was Walder Frey. Not the Walder Frey. Not young Walder Frey, that was somebody else. Not Black Walder. No, he was actually known within the family as "other Walder." If you let a Frey talk they can happily walk you through the family tree and just how many people would have to die for them to inherit the Twins. I didn't really care. What I knew about Walder was that he was eighteen and not a complete cunt, despite his heritage. He did have a bit of that Frey weasel face, but he was a solidly built kid and for the most part followed directions.

Next to Walder was Rodrik Lolliston. He was seventeen and more than capable of drinking me under the table, as I had discovered to my chagrin in Pentos. He claimed that his sister made the best lemon cakes in the Riverlands, a fact that I cheerfully intended to avoid verifying. Compared to Walder he was tall and a bit gangly, his open face topped with a mop of red hair. Rodrik was the kind of guy that was hard not to like.

They both had a Westerosi noble's keen sense of honor and a teenager's ability to feel slights. I had developed our little litany the second time they almost started a duel.

"Keep our fucking mouths shut," they chorused together.

"Good, you can learn," I said. I let them chuckle, then fixed them with a serious look. "The people we are going to be meeting are the absolute scum of the earth. I'd kill them myself if I could. But I can't. More to the point, if they took a notion to do it they could kill us, kill our crew, and take our ship, and nobody would do a damn thing about it. We're here to gather information for my brother. We can't get that information to him if we're chopped up in little pieces on the bottom of Slaver's bay. So don't do anything stupid."

ooOoo

After our meeting with the slaver I needed a drink, and I wasn't alone. Agnolo usually needed us to reject several of his preferred hoity toity wine bars before finding a good drinking spot, but today he led us straight to a dive that fit the mood perfectly. The kind of place where a bar fight was always on the verge of breaking out. I wouldn't mind the excuse to punch something very hard after the day we'd had.

We all sat in silence until the waitress came around with four oversized mugs of beer. I hadn't even noticed when Agnolo placed the order. The arrival of the booze jarred loose our tongues before we even had anything to drink.

"Fucking cunts," Walder said, taking hold of his mug.

"Fucking cunts," Rodrik echoed.

The bare facts of the Unsullied are horrifying enough: eunuch soldiers, trained from birth for perfect obedience and ruthlessly culled for any failure to measure up physically. At the beginning of training, each boy is given a puppy to take care of. One year later they have to strangle the puppy to death. To finish their training they go down to the slave market, purchase a newborn child, and kill it in front of its mother. Like I said, bad enough. When you top that off by watching a slave trader carve up a living man like a piece of meat while extolling the features of his product like he's selling a goddamn iPhone, there are no words. Still, I tried to find some.

"Lads," I said, picking up my mug, "after today, if anybody ever asks if you've seen true evil, you answer yes."

The hell of it was this: they were good at what they did. I recognized a phalanx when I saw one. My memories of medieval history combined with Brynden's eye for battle told a grim tale as we watched the slave trader put his group through their paces. The Unsullied would go through most of our levees like crap through a goose. That perfect discipline, amazing coordination, and sheer concentrated killing power was something that a part-time soldier just couldn't handle. Our knights and our own professional soldier types might be able to put a dent in them, but we didn't crank fighters out on a fucking conveyor belt the way the slavers did.

While I'd been spinning tales for Hoster, my main concern was the inevitable return of the dragons in the somewhat distant future. Sitting in that tavern in Astrapor, though, it finally sunk in that we had a more immediate problem. Anybody with enough money to spend could buy an army of Unsullied and instantly have the ability to raise hell up and down the Seven Kingdoms, if not conquer the whole thing outright.

Somebody really ought to do something about that.

ooOoo

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