Unwanted Publicity

By the time Alden returned to camp, it was deep into the night. The only reason he came back so late was that he had lost his way in the forest.

By rights, with his abilities, he should not have been able to get lost in a wood. Yet he had, and the whole thing had been inexplicable. It had felt as though the trees themselves were moving around him. That made him suspect Spark, the child of the forest, might have been playing a trick on him.

As for why she would do that, he could only guess that she had sensed his earlier desire for her potion in some unknown way and decided to teach him a small lesson.

Whatever the truth, Alden had suffered no harm. He had merely spent a little more strength, and on the way back he had hunted a few rabbits to feed the cub tucked against his chest.

The cub behaved itself all the way. It did not wriggle or fuss. It seemed to have decided that Alden's clothes were a sleeping bag.

With nothing else to do, Alden gave the little creature a name: Glory.

"You finally came back. I was about to send men into the forest to look for you." The scout captain hurried over after the night guards told him Alden had returned. He scolded Alden for coming back so late, but he also looked him up and down. Only when he saw no injuries did his tight expression ease.

In the captain's view, Alden could not have hunted the shadowcat. If he had, he should have had at least a few wounds, and he should have brought the carcass back with him.

"It was too dark. I lost my way in the forest," Alden said simply.

The scout captain did not bother deciding whether the explanation made sense. He clapped Alden on the shoulder. "Lord Garlan and Lord Vortimer are waiting for you in the hall tent. You had best go at once."

Alden paused for a moment. He did not ask why they were waiting. Under the scout captain's lead, he went into the waystation hall.

Several fires burned inside, driving away the damp chill of the rainy night. The nobles and knights had each found a clean place to sleep. Only a few squires remained awake, ready to answer their masters' summons at any time.

Light also flickered inside the conspicuous tent in the middle of the hall, and shadows moved across the canvas. The people inside clearly had not gone to rest.

When the attendant sitting beside the tent saw Alden, he stood at once, signaled for him to wait, and ducked inside to quietly wake Garlan and Vortimer, who had been dozing.

"Alden, come in," Vortimer said for Garlan after both of them had cleared their heads a little.

Alden lifted the flap and entered. The tent floor was covered with rugs, and rainwater ran from his clothes to the ground, leaving damp patches. He stopped at the edge of the rug so that he would not soak it further.

"Do not worry," Garlan said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I never wanted the rug laid down in the first place. They insisted, so it does not matter if it gets dirty." He looked Alden over and sounded faintly disappointed. "From the look of you, you did not catch the shadowcat."

"No. I caught up with it," Alden replied. "But I did not kill it."

"Did not kill it?" Garlan froze.

Vortimer had noticed something moving in Alden's clothes, something alive. He pointed to Alden's chest. "Is that what you gained from tracking the shadowcat?"

"Yes." Alden nodded. He took the sleeping albino shadowcat cub from his clothes and said, "This little one was given to me by its mother, the shadowcat I followed."

Garlan and Vortimer both went still. They stared at Glory, the cub in Alden's hands, for a long time without speaking.

By the next morning, the rain had stopped. The ground was still muddy, but travel was easier than the day before. As usual, the scouts moved ahead to check the road, but this time the heart of the scout party had a shadowcat cub beside him, and an exceptionally rare albino one at that.

The night before, the men who had gone hunting with Alden returned to their own units and told everyone how he had chased after the shadowcat. They also spread the misunderstanding about the ten hunting trials.

When Alden failed to return for a long time, many began to wonder whether something had happened. This was the kingswood, after all. No matter how fine Alden's swordsmanship was, he could not fully use it in such terrain. A shadowcat in a forest was far more dangerous than it was anywhere else. It could use trees and brush to approach prey without sound, then tear out a throat with claw and fang in a single strike. Even a true knight might not escape such an ambush. So when night deepened, more and more people believed the Bear-Hunter might die in the kingswood.

But Alden did come back. He returned without a scratch, and even without any sign that he had fought. The camp assumed he had failed to track the shadowcat down.

Not long after, new word spread from the waystation hall. Alden had, in fact, tracked the shadowcat and defeated it without taking a wound. He had captured it alive, but when he prepared to bring it back, he discovered that it was a female with several cubs.

When Alden had been a hunter, he had followed an unwritten rule: never take a mother with young. So he released the shadowcat. As he was about to leave, the beast blocked his way and offered him an albino cub.

At first, everyone in the camp thought whoever had spread the story was spouting nonsense. No one had ever heard of anyone taming a shadowcat, let alone of one understanding gratitude and offering a gift.

Yet when Alden came out of the hall holding an albino shadowcat cub, every face filled with shock. The way they looked at him grew more awed than before. Such things happened only in legends, and only to legendary heroes. In their minds, Alden had begun to carry a shadow of that same legend.

In truth, this was exactly the effect Alden wanted. He had deliberately hidden the child of the forest and the Faceless Man and altered the story of how he obtained Glory. Killing a shadowcat would only make people think he was a powerful hunter. Having a shadowcat offer him its cub would make them think it was the sort of thing that happened to a hero from legend.

More importantly, he did not need to spread the tale himself. Others would do it for him, and a story told through other mouths was far more convincing than one he told on his own.

So by morning, the whole Tyrell party knew about the shadowcat. Many curious men even ran to the scouts' camp before Alden set out to see the albino cub from the story. Those who still doubted the tale lost their doubts when they saw Glory pressed close to Alden and baring teeth at everyone else.

Even so, the party was not free of envy. Most of the jealous ones were Highgarden nobles and knights traveling with the retinue. In their eyes, a man of Alden's low birth did not deserve such a legendary experience.

Because of Vortimer, they did not dare belittle Alden too obviously around Garlan. They could only cast small doubts on whether the story was true, and when Garlan asked them why they doubted it, they could not give a reason. All of it made Alden feel prickly and difficult to attack.

In the end, they could only strike at him through Glory's albino appearance. In Westeros, albino beasts were never considered auspicious. They were treated much like malformed human children, with fear and contempt. Many folk tales described albino animals as evil creatures that devoured human souls. Men who died in their jaws, the tales said, would not be guided by The Stranger but would wander between life and death until they became wicked Others.

Garlan did not believe such absurd tales. He despised neither malformed animals nor malformed people. Still, he had to consider what those around him believed.

He also did not want to punish Alden because of other men's jealousy. So when they made camp that evening, he had a servant bring Alden a collar made from a modified horse rein, making his own attitude clear.

Alden had already meant to make a collar for Glory. Apart from being unusually close to him, the cub kept the wildness of a beast toward everyone else. Even Raul had lost a small piece of flesh when it bit him by accident. Alden had no choice but to put training the shadowcat on the agenda. Until Glory was trained to his satisfaction, he would keep it restrained by collar and lead to prevent further injuries.

Glory knew nothing of the hard days waiting for it. Instead, it treated the collar Alden fastened around its neck as a gift, a toy, and amused itself with it happily.

The rest of the journey went smoothly. No more rain fell. After leaving the waystation, they spent three days traveling out of the kingswood and finally reached the end of the Roseroad. It was also where the Bronzegate Road and the kingsroad ended, three great roads gathering in one place.

Interestingly enough, this crossroads lay at the edge of the kingswood, with the Blackwater bridge behind it connecting the Reach and the crownlands. Logically, it should have been an important military point.

In reality, there was only an abandoned military camp. It had been thrown up years ago for the campaign against the Kingswood Brotherhood and deserted completely after the brotherhood was destroyed. Even after Robert Baratheon sat the Iron Throne, no new fortification was built there. The old temporary camp was simply left to rot.

The likely reason was that Robert thought the Bronzegate Road led toward Storm's End, the seat of House Baratheon. He saw no need to waste men and resources guarding the place.

When the Tyrell column reached the crossroads, however, a company emerged from the abandoned camp. There were not many of them, perhaps a hundred men. They wore black-lacquered armor and dyed golden cloaks that were eye-catching and impractical. The only practical things about them were the iron hammers at their belts and the iron-headed spears in their hands.

"Those should be the gold cloaks of King's Landing," Raul murmured as he edged closer to Alden.

Alden listened to Raul's warning while his gaze passed over the gold cloaks and settled on the man leading them.

He was tall and handsome, with thick golden hair and a pair of green eyes full of confidence. His slightly upturned, blade-like mouth made him look intensely proud. His clothing was just as striking as his face: ornate armor, a white cloak falling from his shoulders, and a beautifully decorated longsword half-hidden by the cloak, swaying faintly as his body moved.

"The Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister." With such a remarkable appearance and the lion sigil obvious on his armor, Alden identified him at once.

He was not the only one. Others in the party recognized Jaime too, but the moment they did, contempt and disgust rose almost instinctively on their faces. Even Garlan, trained as he was, could not fully hide that look.

Before the rebellion, no one could have said with certainty who the most despised knight in the Seven Kingdoms was. Every man had his own measure. After Robert's Rebellion, however, that title belonged beyond argument to Jaime Lannister. He had betrayed his vows and killed the mad king Aerys, the very man he had sworn to protect.

Jaime himself seemed long used to such contempt. In the first days after the war it might still have angered him. Now it no longer stirred him. He knew that no matter how he explained, no one would believe him. No one would even listen quietly. All he could do was keep his head high and hold on to whatever pride remained.

Yet as Jaime's gaze swept over the Tyrell soldiers before him, he found one look among all the disdain and contempt that was strangely calm, without a trace of hostility toward him. His eyes lingered on that man for a moment, then moved quickly on to Garlan Tyrell, who had come to the front of the column with Vortimer beside him.

"I have heard of you, Garlan the Gallant." Jaime guided his horse up to Garlan and looked him over with open insolence. His tone was light and mocking. "Whether you are truly gallant, I cannot say, but from the look of you, gallantry has not yet found much to attach itself to."

Jaime Lannister's casual teasing of Garlan angered the Tyrell knights and nobles. Vortimer's hand settled silently on his sword hilt.

Jaime seemed not to sense their displeasure at all. The scornful curve of his smile grew clearer, and he paid no mind to the threat Vortimer showed.

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