Original subtitles

BROTHER RAY: The War of the Ninepenny Kings, they called it.

-But l never saw a king, or earned a penny. -(HORSE WHlNNYlNG)

After the war ended, l heard it all started

when an exiled royal bastard raised an army of sellswords,

and the rightful king sent his own army to stop an invasion.

Sounds simple the way the maesters tell it.

But an army isn't like a dog that comes when you whistle.

The king calls on great lords, who call on lesser lords,

who send out their captains to round up all the peasant men

on the land the lord claims to own.

lf the lord is wise and generous,

his new soldiers are given steel swords and wooden shields to fight his battles.

Most of our army fought with sharp sticks.

Singers still sing of the valiant heroes made in the war,

Ser Brynden Tully the Blackfish,

Ser Tywin Lannister and Prince Aerys Targaryen,

Ser Barristan Selmy the Bold, who slew the bastard pretender

-and ended the war at a stroke. -(SWORDS CLANKlNG)

But the king whose crown we were defending never came.

He mattered too much, l suppose.

His Hand commanded the crown's armies

and died valiantly in his son's arms.

Or so the singers say.

l never saw that either.

l did see the soldiers when they came to our village.

They declared l was too young to fight,

but my brothers and friends were all going, and l wouldn't be left behind.

My oldest brother said l could be his squire,

though he wasn't a knight, just a pot boy armed with a stolen kitchen knife.

He'd never need it.

l saw him collapse on the march from fever, along with many from our village.

l saw our shoes fall apart on the road, our clothes rot off our bodies,

and half of us shitting our beds from the sickness and fear.

And then we got to the war.

ln the Stepstones,

l saw a mace cave in my last brother's head.

l saw the lord who led us there cut down,

and some other lord shouting that we were his now.

One day l looked around and realized all my friends and kin were gone.

l was fighting beside strangers under a banner l'd never seen.

Didn't know where l was, or how to get home.

When a lord rode up shouting at us to form ranks with our scythes and hoes,

l couldn't remember which side l was on.

Then the knights came down on us, faceless men, all in steel.

The thunder of their charge filled the world.

l closed my eyes.

Years later, after the war had faded into songs,

-l opened them again. -(BlRDS CHlRPlNG)

And saw what l had done, and what l had become in the war and since.

l went looking for a way back home.

l know l'll never reach it.

But that doesn't mean l don't need a guide.