After saying goodbye to the girl.
Titus got down to business.
He had Bowen escort the people from Blackmont out of the castle.
With Maester Greg, the master-at-arms David Robinson, and Parker, the captain of the guard, he returned to the East Study in the Main Keep.
"Captain Parker! Ser Robinson!"
Titus called out in a low voice. A light seemed to kindle in his previously calm blue eyes, like flames suddenly leaping in a cold night.
"Give the orders at once. Have the grooms prepare our forty fastest horses. No riding horses-I want Highgarden warhorses, every last one!
Have two squads of guards prepare to travel, with our sturdiest tents and enough dry provisions. And have the smith check my armor and my mount's horseshoes... In two days... no, one. We move in one day, for the Stormlands!"
The captain of the guard and the castle's master-at-arms acknowledged his orders in turn and left the Earl's study to carry them out.
Maester Greg, who remained in the study, sounded somewhat hesitant:
"My lord, do you intend to visit Nightsong directly?"
"Of course..."
Titus had already folded the letter casually and slipped it back into its envelope. The broken nightingale emblem of House Caron remained on its wax seal.
Crumbs of sealing wax still clung to his fingertips.
"...I smell schemes and intrigue... A knight who died not at bare hands, but of typhoid fever? Ha ha, what an interesting way to die."
Titus gave a quiet, cold laugh. When he spoke of Starpike's "next-door neighbor," his voice grew somewhat urgent:
"Earl Byron Caron has always treated me well... We won't wait until tomorrow! I don't want to wait any longer. Maester Greg, sorry for the trouble, but tell Parker and the others to hurry and prepare to leave at once! Before sunset today, I intend to be at Nightsong as a 'guest.'"
Maester Greg bowed slightly, turned, and left the study, heading downstairs to relay the message.
As soon as the Earl's new orders went out, the castle's servants quickly busied themselves.
From the stables came the sound of hooves pawing the ground;
from the kitchens drifted the aroma of dry provisions and meat being prepared;
in the armory, the smith's hammer rang out again and again, its echoes unceasing...
Outside the study on Starpike's eastern side lay a large, spacious terrace.
Alone, Titus walked to one side of the terrace and gazed toward the towering, cliff-like wall of stone around the perimeter, then at the circular plaza that sank like a bowl before the castle and the buildings arranged at varying heights around it.
The wind from above stirred the orange flag bearing three castles beside the terrace, making it snap and flutter.
As Titus saw it, Starpike was unlike most castles in the Reach, which simply stood on a high hillside chosen for its commanding view.
The southern side of this circular city-the "wall" facing the Red Mountains and Dorne-was not a man-made structure, but a naturally curved mountainside.
Of course, over thousands of years, successive Earls of Starpike had already artificially "transformed" some of the overly natural, gently sloping terrain that hindered defense into steep, precipitous slopes.
That such a city had been built on this prized site, with its advantageous terrain and enormous savings in building materials, was entirely thanks to House Peake's ancestor, the first "Peake" in history. One night, he had seen a meteor fall from the sky, followed it all the way here, and decided to make his home where it had landed.
Titus had speculated that the original landscape of the Starpike region must have been an especially massive mountain of bedrock exposed aboveground.
A direct strike from that meteor from beyond the heavens had cracked and caved in the mountain's center, creating the terrain that existed today.
On reflection, the origin legend of House Dayne in Dorne seemed much the same as his own family's-
their ancestors had both observed a falling meteor, then built a castle and established their line at the "fated place" where its crater lay.
The difference was that the Daynes' Starfall stood on an island near the mouth of the Torrentine, while Starpike occupied the center of a hollow ring of stone mountains blasted out by the impact-or, rather, a valley.
Nor had House Peake forged the core of its fallen meteor into a renowned ancestral sword, as House Dayne had.
Their family histories were even less comparable.
As far as Titus knew, the two oldest houses on this continent were the Hightowers of Oldtown and the Daynes of Starfall.
Both traced their histories as far back as the Dawn Age ten thousand years ago, utterly eclipsing the other ancient noble houses whose millennia-long histories began in the Age of Heroes.
His thoughts wandering somewhat, Titus could not help laughing when his gaze reached the four enormous stone heads on the distant, curving rock wall, which looked like something out of Hokage Rock.
He felt that House Peake's predecessors had been rather fond of building wonders.
The first head on the rock face, counting from the left, was none other than the "First Peake" Titus had just been thinking about.
Like many ancient noble houses of the Reach, House Peake could trace its bloodline back to the legendary Garth Greenhand.
This Peake, whose given name became his surname, was the second son of Florys "the Fox," daughter of Garth Greenhand, and the founder of both Starpike and the family's history.
Because he had lived so long ago, his features were the least distinct of the four statues. It was only just possible to make out a remarkable, imposing man with a resolute face.
Second came the celebrated Emmerick Peake, "The Avenger."
Earl Elyric had excelled in both civil and military affairs. He had distinguished himself in warfare and was also an exceedingly rare master architect and engineer.
The Avenger had first led his two younger brothers, Urrathon "Shieldbreaker" and Blaquay "Siegebreaker," in wiping out a hostile power northwest of Starpike. He had seized that family's lands-what was now the domain of Whitegrove-and expanded House Peake's territory.
Afterward, he had brought home enormous stone blocks dismantled from the enemy's castle to build the outer walls of the recently founded Starpike, filling the gap in the valley on the northern side of the rock wall... the breach blasted open by the meteor.
In his later years, Elyric had even recaptured the wild spirit of his youth, leading his seven sons in a "blitzkrieg" raid. Within half a day, they had crossed the Red Mountains and stormed Blackmont and High Hermitage in succession, driving straight toward the island where Starfall, the seat of the main Dayne line, stood.
Had crossing the river not taken so much time, allowing the Dornish lords of the central region to send reinforcements in time, the whole of western Dorne might now have borne the name "Peake."
For the efficiency of this campaign, later generations had admiringly dubbed Emmerick Peake "the swiftest in the Reach," praising the speed and ferocity with which he fought.
The third stone head depicted Lorimar Peake.
For as long as records had existed, House Peake and House Manderly had been a famous pair of bitter enemies in the Reach.
The original cause could no longer be determined. Titus believed it had most likely arisen from their struggle over the fertile lands south of the Mander River.
Garwin the Gardener III, "the Fat," had once secured the submission of both by mediating their dispute, but the two houses had not made peace.
Like the Blackwoods and Brackens, those sworn enemies of the Riverlands, the Peakes and Manderlys had often ignored their liege lord and openly gone to war.
The most famous instance had occurred over a thousand years ago, toward the end of Garth X's reign:
With Garth X old and failing and without male descendants, the Peakes and Manderlys, each of whom had married a princess of the Reach, had fought fiercely over the succession, plunging the Reach into ten years of civil war.
During that time, men from the Westerlands, Stormlands, and Dorne had taken the opportunity to invade the Reach, and the enemy had burned Highgarden.
In the end, it had taken Highgarden's steward, Osmon Tyrell, joining forces with forty houses of the Reach to save House Gardener's rule. The allied army of the Reach had first driven out the invaders, then defeated the rebellious Peakes and Manderlys.
Yet that brief peace had not lasted long.
A thousand years before Aegon's Conquest.
Lorimar Peake, then Earl of Starpike, had found his moment of glory.
Starpike's Presidents' Mountain:
Before you continue