Chapter 207

The Vale, Redfort.

Horton Redfort.

"This is madness! Tyranny!!!" A powerful fist slammed against the table alongside the shout. "I will not stand for this!"

Until just a moment ago, all had been calm in the study of House Redfort's head. Lord Horton Redfort, well pleased, had been tallying up the profits from his eldest son's military campaign and weighing how best to invest the newly won wealth, while his second son, Creighton, took notes on the matter, offering his own thoughts here and there. Father and son had long managed their house's affairs together, and after so many years understood one another with barely a word needed. The pleasant scene held for nearly an hour, until the castle's maester brought in a letter from Lord Axel Arryn. That was when Lord Redfort's fine mood turned sharply.

"Who does Arryn think he is?! I'LL... eh..." Five minutes later the aging lord had finally stopped raging and simply sank back into his chair.

"What's happened, Father?" Once he judged the venting had run its course, Creighton asked at once.

"At the coming feast, Lord Arryn intends to demand a 'levy' of forty percent from every man who fought in the Riverlands." The old man hissed the words, feeling the sting of it keenly.

They had fought together, bled together. Hundreds of Redfort's men would never come home again. Jasper, his heir, served as the deputy of the Falcon's Eye himself. House Redfort had won him victory after victory, and in return had gotten a knife in the back. Greed had blinded Arryn, and now he meant to claim every last spoil for himself. Their hard earned rewards, and he meant to strip them away without shame.

"That's... strange," Creighton said, settling on the mildest phrase he could manage, and passed the letter along without further comment. "The Falcon's Eye has a point, in some respects, but I'd wager this is more pretext than genuine reason." Horton shared his son's read of the matter, which only deepened his outrage.

Not content merely to rob them outright, the man was now asking them to help carry out the theft themselves. That went beyond mere insolence into something closer to madness. Even under Mad King, nothing of the sort had ever happened, and that alone said a great deal. Arryn seemed to have forgotten just whom he owed his own position to.

"What are we to do?" Creighton asked.

Since the Vale's brief civil war, the balance of power among the old houses had shifted sharply. The Royces, the Templetons, and the Redforts, three houses that had risen to the very top ranks of the region. The Royces through their kinship with the Falcon's Eye. The Templetons through becoming banner lords, already a strong house before, and their power had only grown further with the new title. The Redforts, beyond the usual privileges, had gained control of Gulltown. Desmond might not belong to the main line of the family, but he carried their name and their blood all the same. So, whatever one called it, the Vale's chief port now sat in his family's hands. The Falcon's Eye could afford to ignore nearly anyone, but not these three houses. Their whole plan would need to be built around that fact.

"I'll write back accepting, and meanwhile you write to Lord Templeton. I suspect Lord Arryn's new course won't sit well with him either."

Axel Arryn, asking House Redfort to willingly bend its neck into servitude? Never in his life. He would be the first to stand against it. But his house alone would not carry enough weight; he would need allies, though the weaker houses of the Vale were far too frightened to say a word against the Lord of the Eyrie. So allies of similar standing were called for, and that left only the Royces and the Templetons. Approaching Bronze Yohn about rebelling against his own nephew was a fool's errand, but Symond Templeton was another matter entirely; reports had it that the newly appointed banner lord had crossed swords openly with the Falcon's Eye on more than one occasion. A man like that would not shy away from standing against Arryn's destructive schemes.

It was time to teach the Falcon's Eye a lesson.