Ser Cassian Puntalarga

Cassian was born in Salobre, a fishing village where children learn to throw a harpoon before they learn to read.

His father used to say that a good spear is not measured by how much it weighs, but by how far it reaches. Cassian took him at his word.

At sixteen he could hit a gull in flight from the end of the pier. At eighteen, a storm took his father's boat with his father in it. Cassian was on the shore, harpoon in hand, and could not reach.

It was the last time anything was out of his reach.

He joined the Order of the Dawn with a spear he had lengthened by two spans himself. The instructors laughed. They stopped laughing at the first training session.

Since then they call him Puntalarga, "Longpoint". He does not find it funny, but he bears it patiently.

He never fights in the front line. He fights right behind it, over the shoulder of whoever stands in front. When a brother of the Order raises a sword, Cassian has already measured the distance.

Ser Aldric says he is the slowest knight in the Order. Cassian says he has no need to run: the spear gets there first.

He is thirty-eight years old and has only one habit: counting how many steps lie between him and each of his own.

So there is never again someone he cannot reach.