The Dockside Warehouse

Alden becoming commander of a cavalry patrol caused a small stir in the Tyrell camp. Setting aside the men who had remained with Lord Mace Tyrell in King's Landing, nearly everyone who had come from Highgarden was surprised by his promotion.

Not long earlier, Alden had been demoted from knight's squire to the scouts. Now, in little more than half a month, he had become Ser Vortimer Crane's squire again and had also gained real authority as commander of a cavalry patrol. It was hard not to find that astonishing.

Those who had seen Alden's strength, however, knew that returning to Vortimer's side as squire was only a matter of time. The process was faster than expected, but the result itself did not exceed their expectations too much.

Compared with Alden becoming patrol commander, people cared more about the news that he would be forming a cavalry unit.

Both cavalry and infantry were soldiers, but the difference between them was like the difference between commoners and nobles. Infantrymen often had to prepare even their own weapons. Cavalrymen, by contrast, received horses, armor, and weapons from House Tyrell, not to mention better pay and treatment.

So when word spread that Alden was forming a cavalry patrol, many men came to him of their own accord, hoping to join.

Faced with this, Alden did not put on airs. He directly chose ten men from among the guards and used the selection authority Vortimer had given him in only a few minutes, giving no one a chance to bribe him.

Quite a few men privately called him foolish for failing to use such a fine opportunity to earn money. Some who were not chosen also questioned whether the men he selected were qualified. Every man Alden chose had gone hunting with him in the kingswood. They were all hunters by background and skilled archers, but the problem was that none of them knew how to ride. They had no foundation for becoming cavalry.

Because of that, many believed Alden had made a mistake out of inexperience. Some even waited to see him embarrass himself. Alden had been too prominent lately and had stirred resentment in certain people. Garlan and the others, however, paid the matter little attention. Perhaps to them, even if the cavalry patrol Alden formed had problems, it was a normal cost of training him.

Alden himself had no intention of explaining. After choosing his men, he took them that very day to draw equipment and horses, then began teaching them to ride on a quiet patch of open ground away from the Lion Gate.

After training, he spent his own money to take his men drinking in taverns by the docks near the Mud Gate. In only a few days, his relationship with them improved considerably.

With Lord Tywin Lannister's arrival, the feast for Prince Joffrey, the king's heir, began as scheduled. Garlan, Vortimer, and the others went early to House Tyrell's temporary residence in the city so that they could attend the Red Keep feast with Lord Mace Tyrell.

With the restraints above them gone, the men in camp relaxed a great deal. Many even ran over to the tourney grounds to watch the excitement.

The formal tourney would not begin until the next day, but many hedge knights and free riders from different places had already gathered on the field. Most had no fame, no holdings, and no noble employer. They could only use the tourney to win renown and find a suitable lord.

By comparison, Alden was already doing well. He had smoothly become Vortimer's squire, received Garlan Tyrell's attention, and joined House Tyrell. As long as no accident occurred, he would surely become a Tyrell knight in the future. If he then gained merit in war, becoming a landed knight would not be impossible.

But not every knight who came for the tourney was seeking a chance at fame. Some had come entirely for the rich prize.

At tourneys held elsewhere, a champion's purse of ten thousand gold dragons was already impressive. Robert Baratheon, however, loved martial contests and adored tourneys. In the years since his coronation, he had held three: one after he took the throne, one for his wedding to Lord Tywin's daughter Cersei, and one when Cersei became pregnant. In each of those tourneys, the champion's purse had reached twenty thousand gold dragons, while the second- and third-place prizes and other awards were also generous.

This tourney, celebrating the birth of an heir to the Baratheon dynasty, had been announced months earlier. The champion's purse publicly declared for it reached an astonishing fifty thousand gold dragons. Such a vast reward drew not only knights from Westeros, but knights from Essos as well, all hastening toward King's Landing.

Someone had counted more than a thousand knights participating in this King's Landing tourney. That did not include archers and warriors entered in the archery contest or the melee. If they were counted as well, the number would double. Because of that, some claimed this tourney would surpass every tourney ever held in Westeros.

So many warriors pouring into King's Landing posed a severe challenge to the city's order. The City Watch of King's Landing had only a little more than a thousand men. It could not possibly watch so many experienced fighters. The Hand of the King, Lord Arryn, therefore ordered that all tournament entrants be forbidden from entering the city itself. They had to live outside the walls, throwing the trouble entirely beyond the city.

When so many energetic warriors were packed together, conflict was inevitable. Every day, disputes broke out beyond the King's Gate and in the poor districts along the Blackwater Rush. Brawls and killings were common.

The work of the City Watch was to arrive after the fighting ended, collect the bodies, and confiscate whatever coin or goods remained on them as fines. If someone claimed a corpse, they paid to take it away. If no one claimed it, the body was thrown into the Blackwater Rush to drift down into Blackwater Bay and feed the fish.

At first, the conflicts in the poor districts were limited to ordinary fighters. Over the past two days, however, the fighting on the tourney grounds had become conflict between knights.

Before the formal contests, knights needed to inspect the field. In particular, they had to measure its width and length with their own steps according to the stride of their horses. Doing so allowed them to find the correct rhythm during a lance charge and calculate the moment to strike so they could hit an opponent accurately.

But the measuring time before the tourney began was mostly reserved for knights of great noble houses. Ordinary knights received none. So those lesser knights had to measure the field in advance before the tournament formally opened.

The field might be adjusted after the tourney began, but for ordinary free knights, some measuring was better than none. At least it gave them peace of mind.

The problem was that the field was only so large. Nearly a thousand knights surged in at once, all trying to claim time to measure it, and no one wished to wait. Disputes naturally followed.

For the past two days, the knights on the tourney field had already staged duel after duel. Such entertainments were rare in ordinary times. Soon, idle guards from every noble camp began arriving early around the field, waiting for the show to begin.

By the time Alden and his men arrived near the grounds, they were already late. Riding practice had delayed them, and dusk was near when they reached the field. From the talk around them, they learned that more than a dozen fights had already taken place that day over the order of measuring the field. Two free knights had even died. Both were younger sons of minor nobles, but dying in King's Landing caused no ripple at all.

Although darkness had fallen, the watchers were not yet satisfied. They fetched firewood on their own and lit the braziers around the tourney ground, illuminating the whole field so that the knights who had not yet measured it could continue fighting for the chance. The spectators could keep watching as well.

After Alden reached the field, he and his men were scattered by the jostling crowd. More accurately, he used the crowd to separate himself from them deliberately.

Once he could no longer see his men, he quickly pushed free of the crowd and followed the little islands along the Blackwater Rush toward the fish market harbor outside the Mud Gate.

Over the past two days, while bringing his men here to drink, Alden had quietly learned the surroundings and found the special warehouse district at the docks.

The warehouse stood beside the Mud Gate, close against the city wall. On the other side of the wall was a City Watch station. Although a wall stood between them, if anything happened at the warehouse, the gold cloaks inside the station could move at once, circle through the gate, and reach the warehouse in only a few minutes.

This warehouse was used by great merchants to store valuable goods. Normally, their own caravan guards watched it. This time, however, the goods inside were guarded not only by caravan men but also by gold cloaks from the City Watch. That made many people curious about what exactly was stored there.

Alden was one of those curious people. In truth, ever since he heard Littlefinger discussing the smuggled goods at Todd's Pumpkin several days earlier, he had been interested in the goods Littlefinger valued so highly. He had also formed a small idea. Treating his men to drinks over the past two days had been preparation for it.

He chose to act today because once the tourney began the next day, Mace Tyrell would leave his comfortable house in the city and stay with the other great nobles in the camp outside the walls until the tourney ended. At that point, Alden would need to help guard the camp and would have no time for other matters.

Also, while Alden was curious about the goods in the warehouse, he was not the kind of person who would chase a secret at any cost. If it would not affect him, he would satisfy his curiosity. If the matter proved difficult and he was not confident he could enter and leave the warehouse without a sound, he would not risk it.

When the warehouse was first built, the builders had likely considered security. A wide open space was left around it, and torches were set in place so that the guards could clearly see whether anyone approached even at night.

The idea was good, but time changes even good designs. Later owners filled the open ground with more warehouses to increase storage capacity. The carefully arranged guard posts were abandoned. Only a wall was added around the warehouse, low enough that even a child could climb it, along with two guards at the gate and a few patrols around the grounds.

The tavern where Alden and his men had been drinking these past two days stood across the street from this warehouse. It was only a low thatched building, and a window seat there could not show what happened inside the wall. Even so, through his extraordinary hearing, Alden had identified the number of patrols inside and outside the warehouse wall and their general routes.

He had also learned the patrol times of the City Watch. Although Janos Slynt had promised Littlefinger he would protect the goods, the man had clearly not taken the matter seriously after taking payment. He had not assigned his men to guard the warehouse together with Littlefinger's people. He had merely sent a few patrols to pass nearby at irregular times.

Having worked out the patrol pattern, Alden waited in a shadowed corner outside the warehouse until the patrol for that time had passed. Then he quickly and nimbly climbed over the warehouse wall and dropped inside. Like some great cat, he rushed to the nearest warehouse corner, used uneven planks in the wall to climb easily onto the roof, and flattened himself completely against it. He crawled across the roof without a sound, like a lizard.

Alden was now nearly six and a half feet tall, and his body had grown more than twice as broad as it had been in White Village. He looked like a bear standing upright. But as Peacekeeper's combat memories fully merged into him, his agility had not weakened at all. It was far beyond an ordinary man's.

With that agility, Alden disturbed no guards before reaching the roof of Littlefinger's warehouse.

He slowly moved to the roof edge near the wall, turned over, hooked his fingers into protruding seams, set his feet on raised points, and lowered himself little by little to a high window set into the second-floor wall.

He drew his dagger, slid it into the crack of the window, and moved it left and right until he found the latch. Then he raised the latch bit by bit, opened the window smoothly, and looked inside.

A few oil lamps hung in the warehouse, leaving it dim. They likely avoided torches for fear of fire.

For safety, guards had been placed inside as well, though it made little difference. The men responsible for watching the goods were drunk. Judging from the bottles on the table, they had drunk a great deal and were sleeping soundly. The whole warehouse was filled with snoring.

Although the guards inside no longer posed a threat, Alden remained careful. He raised the wooden window slightly and squeezed his powerful body through inch by inch.

Once inside, he lowered the window a little, then grabbed the beam overhead and moved himself hand by hand to the second-floor railing. He stepped onto the sturdy rail, avoided loose boards that might make noise, and reached the area where the goods were stored.

Littlefinger had rented the entire warehouse, so Alden did not need long to find the goods.

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