Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Are You Going to Sing When I Hit You?
The Kingsroad smelled of horse manure, wet wool, and the rotting desperation of men who had nowhere left to go.
Gendry kept his head down, his heavy boots sinking into the ruts left by Yoren’s cart. His shoulders ached, not from the walking, but from the sudden, hollow absence of the hammer. For five years, the anvil had been his anchor. The heat of the forge, the rhythmic clang-clang-clang of the steel, the smell of coal smoke—that was a world that made sense.
If you hit iron hard enough, it shaped itself to your will. If you treated it right, it didn't betray you. People, though? People were a bad batch of slag.
He glanced sideways at the rabble walking around him. Gutter-rats from Flea Bottom, thieves who had traded their ears for a black cloak, and a couple of rapists from the cells down in the Red Keep who still looked at the shadows like they were looking for a throat to squeeze. Master Mott had sold him to Yoren for a handful of silver and a promise that he’d be useful at the Wall. Gendry hadn't asked for the black. He didn't know anything about the Wall, except that it was cold, far away, and filled with the same kind of crap he’d spent his whole life trying to avoid in King's Landing.
A sharp, grating laugh cut through the heavy thud of marching boots.
"Look at the little lordling," Lommy snickered, his voice like a rusted hinge. "Where’d you find that toothpick? Did you pry it out of a dead man's fingers?"
Gendry didn't stop walking, but his eyes shifted. A few paces ahead, Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie had cornered the new kid—the skinny, sour-faced little brat who had joined them at the last minute. The boy was tiny, his clothes a size too big, looking like an unwashed urchin who had crawled out from under a dock. Hot Pie gave the kid a heavy shove, sending him stumbling back into the dirt.
"Give it here," Hot Pie demanded, his fat face twisting into a bully’s grin. "A bit of tin like that ain't for a brat like you. I bet you stole it."
The kid scrambled up, his face instantly crimson with a wild, animal fury. He didn't burst into tears, he didn't run. Instead, his hand flew to the hilt of the ridiculously thin sword at his hip. His knuckles were white.
"Get away from me," the kid hissed, his voice cracking but sharp enough to cut wood.
"Touch me again and I’ll put a hole in you."
Lommy laughed louder, stepping closer to box the boy in. "Ooh, he's a fierce one. Going to prick us with your needle, Lumpyhead?"
Gendry felt a familiar, heavy heat rising in his chest. It wasn't his business. Master Mott had always told him to mind his own business, keep his mouth shut, and work the bellows.
But Gendry hated bullies. He’d spent his childhood dodging men twice his size in the alleys of Flea Bottom, and he knew the look on Hot Pie’s face all too well. It was the look of boys who only started fights when they knew they'd win.
Without a word, Gendry adjusted the heavy pack on his shoulders and stepped out of the line of march.
He didn't yell. He didn't need to. He just walked straight into the space between them, his massive frame completely blotting out the afternoon sun from Lommy’s face. At seventeen, Gendry was already built like an oak trunk, his chest and arms thick from years of lifting heavy iron and stoking the fires. He loomed over the two older boys, his shadow swallowing them both.
Lommy’s laugh died instantly in his throat. Hot Pie froze, blinking up at Gendry’s broad, dark-browed glare.
"I’ve been hitting the anvil for the last five years," Gendry said. His voice was low, flat, and carried the heavy, unyielding weight of a dropping hammer. He didn't raise his fists; he just stood there, imposing his frame, letting them feel the sheer physical certainty of what would happen if he moved. "When I hit the steel, it sings. Are you going to sing when I hit you?"
Hot Pie swallowed hard, his fat cheeks twitching. He looked at Gendry’s thick wrists, then at Lommy, and took a slow, careful step backward. "We... we were just messing about," he muttered, eyes darting down the road toward where Yoren was riding.
"Get moving," Gendry told them, his tone completely devoid of patience.
Lommy didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Hot Pie’s sleeve, and the two of them scurried back into the middle of the herd, suddenly very interested in their own boots.
Gendry let out a long, slow breath, the tension leaving his shoulders. He turned around, expecting the skinny kid to be shaking, or at least to offer a miserable, sniffling word of thanks.
Instead, the boy was standing there with his spine perfectly straight, his chin tilted up defiantly. He was dusting off his dirt-streaked jerkin with sharp, angry slaps of his small hands. His grey eyes were as hard and cold as flint, glaring up at Gendry like Gendry was the one who had shoved him.
"Are you alright?" Gendry asked, looking down at the narrow shoulders.
The kid met his gaze squarely, his mouth set in a hard, stubborn line. "Yes. Thank you," he said shortly. Then, he tilted his nose up a fraction higher, his voice dripping with a fierce, absurd pride. "I don't need saving, though."
Gendry stared at him for a second, caught entirely off guard. The kid was barely big enough to reach his chest, his wrists were like twigs, and he’d just been a second away from getting his face rubbed in the mud—yet here he was, puffing out his chest like a lordling in a courtyard.
A sudden, faint amusement tugged at the corner of Gendry’s mouth, cutting through his bitter mood. Oh, he thought to himself, watching the boy turn on his heel and march ahead down the road with a ridiculous, stiff-legged stride. So he's also funny.
For the first time since leaving King's Landing, Gendry didn't feel entirely miserable.
As the weeks dragged on, the Kingsroad grew wilder, the trees taller, and the nights colder.
The easy camaraderie of the city gave way to a suspicious, watchful silence among the recruits. But Gendry found his eyes drifting toward the little fellow named Arry more than he cared to admit.
The kid was an anomaly, a piece of iron that didn't match the rest of Yoren’s scrap heap.
Gendry watched him during the midday rests.
When Yoren called a halt and the boys collapsed in a sweaty, cursing heap to pass around the salt beef and stale bread, Arry always vanished. He would take his meager ration and slip away to the absolute perimeter of the camp, sitting with his back against a thick trunk, his knees pulled up to his chest. He ate with his head down, keeping a fierce, sour face pulled over his features like a mask.
One evening, Gendry was sitting by the cart, sharpening a chipped knife on a whetstone. He watched Arry drag his bedroll away from the communal fire. The other boys huddled together for warmth, their snores and foul language filling the dark, but Arry set his blanket far out into the brush, almost lost in the shadows of the trees.
He doesn't trust a soul, Gendry thought, the whetstone scraping rhythmically against the steel. Not a single one of us. It was smart of him. In Gendry’s experience, trusting people only got you traded away.
It wasn't just the distance, though. There were other things. The kid never took his heavy woolen cap off, even when the afternoon sun was baking the road. And Gendry had noticed, with a strange sort of amusement, that nobody had ever seen Arry take a piss.
Whenever the urge took the other boys, they’d just step to the side of the road, laughing and shouting over their shoulders. But Arry would wait until the camp was settled, or sneak so deep into the woods that Yoren would have to bellow his name to bring him back.
He was a strange, prickly little creature, always carrying that fierce, silent anger. But later that night, long after the fire had died down to a bed of glowing red embers, the silence of the forest changed. Gendry was awake, staring up at the canopy of leaves, his mind bitterly wandering back to the forge, wondering if Master Mott had already replaced him with some other idiot to work the bellows.
Through the quiet, a faint, ragged sound reached his ears.
Gendry sat up slightly, resting his elbow on his bedroll. He listened, his breath catching. It was coming from the edge of the woods, where the kid had laid his blanket. It was a tiny, muffled sound—the unmistakable, desperate sound of a child crying into a rough wool blanket, trying with every ounce of his strength to choke back the sobs so the camp wouldn't hear.
Gendry stared into the dark where the small shape was curled up tightly into a ball. The fierce, sharp-tongued boy who didn't need saving was gone, replaced by a miserable, terrified child weeping in the dark.
The sound twisted something heavy and uncomfortable in Gendry’s chest. He closed his eyes, lying back down on his rough cloak, stubborn and annoyed by how much it bothered him. He couldn't fix it, and he couldn't hit it with a hammer. He just had to lie there and listen to it until sleep finally came.