Guest Right

When a guest eats a host’s bread and salt under his roof, guest right is made. From that moment the host may not harm the guest and the guest may not harm the host, for as long as the guest stays. It binds lord and smallfolk alike, and even outlaws keep it.

The old gods and the new both hold it sacred, and the North holds it hardest. To break it is to bring down the anger of the gods. Often a host gives his guest a gift when he leaves, and the gift marks the end of the protection.

The Nightfort keeps the tale everyone knows. The Rat Cook killed a visiting king’s son and served him to the king baked in a pie, and for it the gods made him a rat, huge and pale, that can live only on its own young. Northmen draw the moral plainly. Men kill in war, and the gods have seen that before; a guest killed under his host’s roof they do not forgive.