Earlier quoted context omitted.
GRRM tends to use a bunch of unusual words pretty frequently: "dandle", "garron", "palfrey", "hauberk", "solar".
I thought in aDwD that "leal" was just yet another Kindle OCR mess-up for "loyal" until I found out it actually really is a word - an old English word for "loyal"! Goes to show... something, I guess! :)
Also, leal means loyal in spanish, that's how I knew, when I was reading that book :)