Shortly before my brother died, I attended the wedding of Nat who works the stables of Tri-Feather Hall. My mother disapproved enough to pronounce almost a full paragraph of disapprobation. My father was certain the bride, an assistant cook from the kitchen, must have been a former dalliance of mine. I did not disabuse him of the notion, for had he inquired further I would not have wanted to lie.
A year earlier cattle were going missing in our inland domain, and wolves had been spotted. Bastion, my paragon of a brother (may the Seven grant him peace) was chasing pirates with the house squadron, so it fell to me to hunt the wolves. Before I could assemble a party and go, one of my smarmy cousins said in the hall for all to hear how I'd need help to hunt a kindle of rabbits, much less a pack of wolves.
I dashed my tankard to the floor and with all eyes on me declared that I would go forth alone and not return until I had put a stop to Cockshaw's bovine losses. I rode off on my stallion Starshine Immaculate, leaving my father shaking his head, sure I'd return in disgrace, forsworn.
Two miserable, dirty, tick-bitten weeks later I was considering my best option might be joining the Night's Watch. When, by Gyrfalcon Pond at sunset, I spotted a pair of wolves by a copse of trees. I let loose with my trusty hunting bow, and overshot by a good fifty yards. The wind must have kicked up.
The wolves loped off, and a shout came from the trees. A young man ran out and surrendered – evidently my arrow had landed in his soup pot, and he had assumed he'd been found out. I investigated to find three cattle hidden in the trees with the young poacher. My disgrace was averted!
My joy did not last long, as I learned the youth's story. A father taken by pox, a mother destitute, the stolen beef his only hope, and now even with the cattle returned he faced two weeks in the stocks, which has left men crippled or dead before. Paternal disappointment and the jeering of my cousins seemed less significant somehow.
I offered the young man a deal. If he could take my bow and hunt the wolves down – as he was obviously skilled in the rustic arts -- we'd pin the crime on them, and I'd get the fellow an honest job to support his mother. Two days later, to my father's shock and my cousin's dismay, I entered the hall with two wolf hides after returning two of the cattle and reporting one as “likely lost to the wolves”.
I quietly got young Nat a job as a groom in our cavalry's stables and his mother dined the winter on beef.
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