NOVEL NEXT Chapter 102 :The Sept of Dust
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The road curved eastward, and by the third day the sprawl of Stoney Sept rose against the hills—a town of smoke, noise, and weary faces. Where Harrenhal had been ruin and ash, Stoney Sept still pulsed with life, though frayed at the edges.
Arthur rode in at dusk. The air smelled of bread ovens and tanner's pits. Chickens darted underfoot, and the clatter of a smith's hammer rang over the square. For all the bustle, there was unease in the air, a tension woven through the noise like an invisible thread.
Near the sept, a crowd pressed close around a scaffold. The square reeked of sweat and fear. Mothers clutched children tight; men whispered with jaws clenched.
On the platform, five bound men stood, their ankles raw from rope. The eldest, hair gone silver, lifted his chin and shouted, voice hoarse but fierce:
"We were soldiers of the crown! Sent to war and cast aside. We begged bread, and you call us thieves? You starve us, then you hang us?"
The bailiff, squat and red-faced, stepped forward, his tone sharp as a lash. "You stole from townsfolk. The penalty is death."
A woman cried out. "They're boys, most of 'em! My Tom marched south with Lord Tully's levy. Came home with nothing but scars!"
The bailiff barked over her. "War or no war, law is law. Bread stolen is bread denied. You'd have us all thieves, then?"
The condemned shifted uneasily. One of the youngest, barely more than a child, whispered, "Ser… I only took crusts. I was hungry."
Arthur had already seen them before the scaffold was raised. He'd watched them in the gaol yard, pale and hollow, and pressed bread into their shackled hands while the guards laughed at the charity. The boys had eaten as if it were the first meal in weeks.
Now, standing with nooses round their necks, their eyes darted through the crowd until they found him. The smallest mouthed words too soft for any but Arthur to read: thank you.
The bailiff raised his hand. "The penalty—"
The lever fell.
Ropes snapped taut—yet two ropes came loose, dropping the youngest gasping to the ground.
The crowd erupted, half in shock, half in awe.
Arthur's voice, low but clear, cut through. "The Seven saved them."
It was not shouted, but carried nonetheless, as though the square itself bore the words onward. Heads turned, eyes widening at the hooded figure.
"The Seven spared them!" a man cried, seizing on the words.
Another took it up: "Spared!"
The bailiff turned crimson. "Bind them again! It was clumsy rope-work!"
"No!" shouted a woman, clutching her rosary. "The Stranger turned his hand aside! Let them go!"
The executioner, pale and trembling, looked to Arthur and then the ropes. He stammered, "It is… it is the will of the gods!"
The crowd roared now, pressing forward. The bailiff's voice was swallowed by the swell. "Mercy! Mercy!" the people cried.
The two boys lay stunned, chests heaving, the rope burns fresh on their necks. When they looked up, it was Arthur's hood they sought.
By the time the mob surged onto the scaffold, Arthur was gone.
By torchlight he found a stable. His horse, lathered from the road, stamped impatiently as the hostler brought oats and clean straw. Arthur rubbed its neck until the beast's breath slowed.
At a nearby stall, a boy lingered. His throat bore the raw red mark of the rope, his face streaked with grime.
"Ser…" the boy whispered. "Thank you, ser. For the bread."
Arthur turned his head slightly.
The boy swallowed. "It was you, wasn't it? You said it. 'The Seven saved me.'"
Arthur's voice was quiet, almost gentle. "The Seven spared you."
Tears welled in the boy's eyes. He bowed his head. "Then may the Seven keep you, lord. Always."
Arthur paid the hostler for feed, dried meat, a flask of oil, salted pork, and oatcakes enough for the road. When he turned, the boy was still staring, as though in the presence of something more than flesh.
Arthur walked into the night without another word.
Later, as he left Stoney Sept behind, the bells tolled vespers. Their mournful notes drifted across the hills, mingling with memory: Harrenhal's black stones twisted by dragonfire, and the scaffold's rope creaking against wood. Both told the same truth: the realm was fraying.
Harrenhal spoke of ruin and predation. Stoney Sept showed another wound—men abandoned, boys left to starve.
One realm, two faces of the same decay.
By dawn, the tale had already spread in alehouses.
Inside the Stone Cup, men crowded the trestles, mugs thumping.
"I saw it with mine own eyes," a smith declared. "The rope broke, and the hooded one said the Seven spared them. Gods take me if it weren't a miracle."
"Nay," another countered. "He bribed the hangman."
"You're a fool," spat a woman. "The words came from him, and the gods answered. Did you not hear the bells?"
The spared boy sat in silence at a corner bench, hands clasped. At last, he spoke, steady and sure. "He gave us bread when we starved. He gave us mercy when none would. He said the Seven saved us—and so they did."
The tavern hushed. For a long breath, no one argued.
Then someone murmured, "The hooded lord."
Others echoed it. Louder. Stronger.
"The hooded lord! The hooded lord!"
And thus the name was bound to the tale, carried on lips and ale-stained songs, swelling with each retelling.
But not all voices drank to the legend.
That same morning, in the sept's chamber where his ink froze in the chill, the bailiff of Stoney Sept sat hunched over parchment. His hand shook with anger as he wrote, the words scratching furiously beneath his quill.
To Lord Lefford, rightful lord of this town,
I write with grievance most urgent. Yesterday, justice was defied before the very steps of the Seven. Five men convicted of theft were brought to sentence, but by devil's luck—or sorcery—the nooses of two broke clean, witnessed by near half the town.
A cloaked stranger stood amongst the crowd. He gave coin to the hangman, I swear it, and when the ropes broke he declared before all: "The Seven spared them." The mob, like sheep, followed his words. They pressed me back, crying mercy, till the executioner himself trembled and refused to bind the boys again.
This figure has left Stoney Sept, but already songs call him the hooded lord. He stirs unrest. The people look to him, not crown or law. Such a man—if man he be—threatens order itself.
I beg your lordship's counsel. Should word reach King's Landing, I fear the crown will think me complicit. Yet I swear upon my honor, I upheld law. It was this rider, and the crowd's madness, that overthrew justice.
Your servant in duty,
Ser Cley Morton, Bailiff of Stoney Sept
The bailiff sanded the ink, sealed the parchment with trembling wax, and handed it off to a courier bound for the lord's hall.