Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 9: The Pack Divides

Voices moved in the dark.

Tom heard them before he knew he was Tom.

They came soft and broken, as if spoken through water or wool. One was low. One was sharp. One dragged at the ends of words the way men did when they were tired past sense. He tried to follow them and found no words there, only sounds.

He could not see.

For a moment that did not trouble him. The dark was simple. The dark asked nothing. Then his chest hitched.

He coughed.

Pain opened under his ribs and across his face. It ran bright and hot through places he had not known could hurt. His mouth filled with the taste of old blood. He coughed again and someone near him cursed.

"He's awake."

Hands came at him.

Tom flinched, or tried to. His body gave only a weak jerk. Fingers caught at cloth around his head. Knots were worked loose. Something stuck to his cheek pulled free, and pain flashed white behind the dark.

"Easy," a voice said. "Easy, Tom. It's us."

The bandages lifted.

Light struck him like a blow.

Tom shut his eyes against it, though one of them had hardly opened at all. The other wept until the room blurred. Shapes leaned over him. A roof beam. A hanging cloth. A window with pale day beyond it. Faces, too close and too worried.

Willam was there, with a bandage around his forearm and his hair hacked short on one side where fire or steel had taken it. Pate stood behind him, thin face pinched tight. Donnel had his cap in both hands and kept twisting it until the wool groaned. Osric sat near the foot of the bed with his leg stretched stiff before him.

The bed was wrong.

That was the first thing Tom understood clearly.

It was too soft. Too wide. The coverlet beneath his hands was thick and clean, not rough wool but something smooth enough to shame a man's fingers. There were carved posts around him and dark curtains tied back with cords. A painted raven watched from a shield on the wall. The air smelled of rushes, smoke, boiled herbs, and old stone.

Not a tent.

Not a wagon.

Not mud.

"Where?" he tried to ask.

Only a scrape came out.

Willam put a cup to his mouth. "Small sip."

Tom drank. Water ran down the side of his chin. He hated that more than he should have.

"Raventree Hall," Willam said. "Inside. A bed fit for some lord's soft backside."

Donnel made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not died so quickly.

Tom swallowed. His tongue felt too large for his mouth. "Won?"

"Aye," Pate said.

No one smiled.

Tom looked at them one by one, trying to count what was missing. The room moved when he turned his head. His stomach lurched. He shut his eye until the walls stopped breathing.

"Jory," he said.

Willam's face changed.

That was answer enough for a heartbeat, and Tom felt the dark reach for him again.

"Alive," Willam said quickly. Too quickly. "He's alive."

Tom opened his eye.

"Where?"

"Other room. Maester has him wrapped like winter stores. Ribs broke. Arm broke. Skull cracked, mayhaps. They say he should have died."

"He does not listen well," Pate said.

This time Donnel's laugh came, small and wet.

Tom tried to hold the shape of that. Alive. Jory was alive. Broken, but alive. The word sat in him like a coal hidden under ash.

"Harwyn," Tom said.

No one answered quickly.

"Dead," Willam said, because Willam had never learned to walk around a thing. "Took the big man long enough for you to come back to yourself. He died before they cleared the yard."

Tom stared at the painted raven on the shield.

Harwyn Tallhart had been a lord's man. He had ridden with better folk and eaten at better fires. He had called Tom captain without making sport of it. He had stepped between Tom and death because Tom had been too full of old fear to lift his own hand.

"He saved me," Tom said.

"Aye," Willam said. "Him and Jory both."

The room settled into silence.

Tom waited for grief to come as it ought. It did not come clean. It came mixed with shame, with pain, with the memory of iron above him and the red lion swimming on a breastplate. He remembered being empty. He remembered moving as if some colder man had worn his skin.

He remembered the sword coming down.

"The big one?" he asked.

Pate glanced toward the door. "Dead."

"Who?"

"Blackwood archers," Pate said. "Three of them from atop the wall. The big man had his sword raised over you, and they put three arrows into him. One through the throat. Two under the arm where your sword had opened him."

Tom tried to picture it and could not. The last thing in him was the downward point of a sword. Everything after belonged to other men.

"Greatjon," he said.

"Gone," Willam said.

That struck harder than Tom expected. He turned his head too fast and the room bucked.

Willam caught his shoulder. "Easy."

"Gone where?"

"West," said a new voice from the doorway.

Tom looked.

A man stood there with a bowl in one hand and a folded cloth in the other. He was not one of Tom's. He was broad through the chest, with a beard gone grey at the chin and a nose that had been broken more than once. His cloak was pinned with no silver, no carved badge, no house pride beyond the plain colors of a northman who had seen too much road. A sword hung at his hip. A cudgel hung on the other side, dark from use.

He stepped in as if the room belonged to no one living.

"Name is Harl Tanner," he said. "Serjeant, by order. Lord Umber left me with thirty spears, twelve bowmen, and six lads who swear they know horses from cows. Orders also say that I was to stop you from dying and follow you after."

Tom stared at him.

"Follow me?"

"Once you can stand without spilling your wits out your ears."

Donnel's mouth twitched.

Harl Tanner set the bowl down on a little table. "Greatjon took the main strength west. Says there are no true armies left hereabouts for him to break, only scraps and teeth. Lions running in bands. Paid killers. Brave men turned hungry. He means to put his fist where the war still has bones."

"And me?"

"You get the scraps and teeth."

Tom tried to laugh. It hurt too much, so it became a cough.

Harl waited until it passed. "His words were kinder. A little. He said the lad knows what broken men look like, and broken men know him. Said you were to clean the roads behind him, gather strays worth gathering, hang what needs hanging, and keep Raventree from being gnawed after he leaves."

"I'm no lord."

"Good," Harl said. "Lords make songs of simple work. Serjeants make lists and count shovels."

Tom did not know what to say to that.

Another man appeared behind Harl, leaner and younger, with river-brown hair tied at the nape of his neck. His left cheek bore a fresh cut under the eye. He wore Blackwood colors, but his boots were patched and his belt was plain. A bowman's calluses marked the fingers of his right hand.

"Serjeant Rafe Miller," he said. "Lord Tytos sends me out of Raventree. Twenty Blackwood archers, ten spears, and five men who can mend harness if shouted at proper and paid in supper. More once he can spare them."

"Lord Tytos sends men to me?" Tom asked.

Rafe shrugged. "He says you helped give him back his hall. Says a debt's best made useful while it is still warm."

Harl snorted. "Riverlords talk prettier than they think."

"Northmen think less than they swing," Rafe said.

The two men looked at each other.

Donnel looked ready to enjoy himself.

Tom shut his eye. The room tilted slower that way. Thirty spears. Twelve bowmen. Six horse lads. Twenty archers. Ten spears. Five harness men. His own few. Near eighty, if all lived long enough to count.

Eighty men.

He had once been proud to be trusted with a dozen.

"Why me?" he asked.

Harl crossed his arms. "Because Lord Umber said so."

"That is not a reason."

"It is when he says it."

Rafe leaned against the door frame. "Lord Tytos said men followed you at the gate when older men were looking for someone else to stand first. That is a reason."

Tor came before Tom could answer.

He filled the doorway with his shoulders and stopped there, as if crossing into the room would cost him something he had not counted. His eyes were red. His hands were clean in the way hands got after a man had scrubbed and scrubbed and still felt blood on them.

"Jory?" Tom asked.

"Breathing," Tor said. "Cursing when awake. That is a good sign, they tell me."

He looked at the others, then at the bandages around Tom's head.

"You look worse than him."

"Liar."

"Aye."

Tom held his gaze.

"You stayed with him."

"Where else would I be?"

Tom had no answer for that.

Tor stepped inside at last. He did not smile. "We followed."

"Men died."

"Aye," Tor said. "They do that, with or without you."

Tom wanted to argue. He had no strength for it. The bed held him down as surely as chains.

For three days, the room was his world.

Men came and went around him. A maester with white hair and cold fingers changed the dressings on his face. A silent boy brought broth, then porridge, then bread soaked soft in gravy. Tor came from Jory's room when he could be dragged from it and left again before anyone could ask him to stay. Willam carried messages because he could not bear to sit still. Pate learned the names of every corridor within twenty paces and still looked lost in all of them.

Jory did not come.

That told Tom more than words.

On the fourth day, he stood.

It took Harl on one side and Tor on the other to make it happen. His legs shook like wet rope. His face throbbed beneath new bandages. One eye saw well enough. The other opened to a slit and gave him only light and ache.

"There," Harl said. "A captain again."

Tom spat blood into a bowl.

"A newborn calf," Tor said.

"Calves stand quicker."

"Calves have softer heads."

Tom would have smiled if his mouth had not been split.

They took him to Jory that afternoon.

Jory lay in a smaller bed with his chest wrapped tight and his left arm bound to a board. One side of his face was yellow and black. His breath came shallow, each one measured as if counted by a miser. Tor stopped at the door.

For a moment he looked younger than Tom had ever seen him.

Jory opened his good eye. "Took you long enough."

Tor made a sound in his throat and went to him.

Tom stood in the doorway, holding the frame because the floor wanted to shift.

"You look ill," Jory said to him.

"You look dead."

"I have been told I am too stubborn."

"Aye."

Jory's eye moved to Tor. "Still hovering?"

"Still ugly?"

"Aye."

"Then we both keep our posts."

Jory's mouth moved. It might have been a smile.

Tom looked from one brother to the other and felt some hard place in him ease without softening. They were not leaving Jory behind. He knew that before any man spoke it. Greatjon could go west with half the north and all the thunder of his name. Tom's little pack would wait for its wounded, because if they began leaving one another in beds and graves before they must, there would be nothing left worth leading.

The pack divides, he thought.

Not this pack.

Greatjon had taken the great strength west. The mounted lords, the heavy horse, the banners, the noise and iron and big men's voices. They had gone where armies went. Tom and his remained in the broken place after them, small and sore and stubborn, learning the work left behind when songs rode away.

Harwyn would not rise.

But Jory would.

Tom would see to it.

Training began before Tom was ready.

That was Harl's doing.

"Waiting makes men soft," he said.

"I am already soft," Tom told him on the fifth morning, when standing in the yard made sweat run cold down his back.

"Then we have saved time."

The yard within Raventree's walls still bore scars. Broken stone had been cleared from the gate. Burn marks striped the hard-packed earth. New boards patched old damage along the stables. The dead had been buried beyond the walls, Blackwood and northman beneath one wind, Lannister farther out where no one had wanted them close.

Tom saw the place where Jory had fallen.

He saw it before he meant to.

His breath caught.

The yard narrowed. Smoke that was no longer there seemed to crawl along the ground. A red lion flashed in the corner of his eye.

Then Tom breathed out.

The red lion was not there. Gregor Clegane was not there. The big man in plate was dead in the mud because three arrows had found the gaps Tom and Jory and Harwyn had bought with blood.

Tom set his feet.

Someone struck him in the chest with two fingers.

Tom blinked.

An old man stood before him.

He was shorter than Harl, narrow as a fence post, with white hair cut close to his skull and a beard trimmed to a point. His left ear was missing. His right hand held a blunted sword. The tip rested lightly against Tom's breastbone.

"Dead," the old man said.

Tom looked down at the blunted point, then back at the old man's face.

"Not yet," Tom said.

The old man's brows rose.

Harl stood nearby with his arms folded. Rafe Miller watched from the shade with half his archers.

"Ser Halmon Greaves," Harl said. "Master-at-arms here since before your father's beard knew what it wanted. Lord Tytos says he is the best blade left in the hall."

"Best temper too," Rafe said.

Ser Halmon did not look at either of them. "Hold your sword."

Tom looked down.

Someone had put a practice sword in his hand. He had hardly noticed.

"I use an axe," Tom said.

"You used an axe. It broke."

"I will get another."

"It will break too, if the gods are bored. Hold your sword."

Tom held it.

Badly, it seemed, because Ser Halmon slapped his knuckles with the flat of his blade.

Pain jumped up Tom's arm.

"Again."

So began the days.

They were not many, but they stretched long.

In the morning, Harl taught him to count men, not as names but as bellies, boots, spearheads, blankets, tempers, and lies. Men who said they could march twenty miles could march twelve. Men who said their feet were sound were hiding rot between the toes. Men who gambled early would steal late. A dull spear was not a small thing. A missing cookpot could stop a column as surely as a broken bridge.

"Eighty men is not eighty swords," Harl told him. "It is eighty mouths, eighty sets of feet, eighty fools who piss when you need them marching and sleep when you need them watching."

"You make command sound a joy."

"Command is finding the least foolish place for foolish men to stand."

In the afternoons, Rafe Miller took him to the wall and showed him roads.

Not maps at first. Roads.

The north road where Lannister foragers had been seen two days past. The burned mill by the stream. The hamlets that had paid lion men in bread and daughters and would now spit on any armed stranger from fear if not hatred. The copse where bowmen could vanish. The ford where carts sank if loaded wrong. The farms that would need seed more than justice.

"Bandits rarely name themselves bandits," Rafe said. "They'll say they were hungry. They'll say lions made them do it. Some tell truth. Some tell enough truth to hide the rest."

"How do I know which is which?"

"You listen. Then you search their packs."

At dusk, Ser Halmon hurt him.

Not cruelly.

That might have been easier.

The old master-at-arms made Tom move until his bruises burned and his breath came thin. He made him fight with sword, axe, shield, dagger, empty hand. He made him face men larger than him and men quicker than him. He made Harl put on a heavy breastplate and walk at Tom in silence.

The first time, the old fear rose.

Tom felt it coming the way a man feels a storm in broken bones. The red lion. The horse at the Green Fork. Gregor Clegane through rain and blood, too large to be a man. The gate yard. The sword. Jory falling sideways.

His hands went cold.

His feet did not root.

He stepped left.

Harl's blunted sword came down where his head had been. Tom struck the man's knee with the flat of his own blade, not hard enough, not clean enough, but moving.

Ser Halmon rapped him across the ribs for leaving his shoulder open.

"Again," the old man said.

Again, the fear rose.

Again, Tom moved.

It did not leave him. That was the thing he learned. Fear did not die because a man killed one shape of it. It waited, changed helm, changed voice, changed hands. But the big man in plate had taught Tom something Gregor Clegane had not. Monsters bled in the gaps. Strong men leaned too long on strength. Fear could fill a man until there seemed no room left for anything else, and still a foot could move. A hand could lift. A point could find an opening.

At dusk, Ser Halmon lowered his practice blade and studied him.

"Fear is weather," the old man said. "Rain falls. Wind blows. You do not kill it. You choose where to put your feet while it happens."

Tom spat into the dirt. "Then I need better feet."

Ser Halmon showed him his missing ear. "You need the ones you have. Again."

Tom almost thanked him before the pain took the breath from him.

His own men trained too.

Tor fought as if every practice bout was an argument he meant to win by breaking the other man's jaw. Willam learned to carry a shield without looking surprised by its weight. Pate proved better with a spear than any man who complained so much had a right to be. Eddyn made friends with the Blackwood bowmen by losing at dice and remembering who cheated. Osric limped but drilled the new men harder than Harl did. Mikken repaired helms, straps, buckles, pride, and anything else set before him, though pride took longest. Garrel stopped shaking when asked to stand watch alone. Donnel sang under his breath until Harl threatened to assign him to the horse lads.

They were fewer than they had been.

They looked it.

At supper, men from Last Hearth and Raventree glanced toward Tom's table, then away, then back again. The tale had grown while Tom slept. In one telling he had killed the armored lion barehanded. In another he had died and stood up again. Someone said he had dueled the man for an hour while both armies watched. Someone else said the old gods had emptied him out and filled him with snow.

Tom hated all of it.

"Let them talk," Harl said when Tom complained.

"It is lies."

"Mostly."

"That does not trouble you?"

"Truth feeds a man once. A useful lie can feed him for a march."

Rafe Miller looked up from his stew. "Careful. That sounded almost clever."

"Riverlander heard sense and mistook it for a poem."

Tom watched men watch him.

He had wanted respect once. Every lowborn boy with a blade did, whether he admitted it or not. He had wanted some captain to see him, some lord to know his name, some man to say he had done well.

Now men knew his name and it sat around his neck like chain.

Tom did not like the weight.

He stopped trying to shrug it off.

On the seventh morning, Lord Tytos Blackwood summoned him.

Tom went with Harl on one side and Rafe on the other, because both serjeants had decided he might fall over if left unattended. The hall still smelled of smoke beneath the herbs scattered on the floor. Blackwood men were repairing shutters. Women carried linens. Children peered from doorways and vanished when Tom looked their way.

Tytos Blackwood stood beneath the great dead weirwood in the yard, its pale trunk rising through the stones like a bone the earth had refused to swallow. Ravens watched from its branches, black eyes bright.

Tom bowed as well as his stiff body allowed.

"Milord."

Tytos studied him. The lord looked older than when Tom had first seen him outside the walls. Victory had not made him young.

"You should still be in bed."

"Aye, milord."

"And yet Lord Umber left you work."

"Aye, milord."

Something like amusement touched Tytos's mouth and left at once. "He has that way."

Tom said nothing.

"The main war has moved west," Tytos said. "That does not mean the Riverlands are free of it. Lannister men who cannot find their banners will find our roads. Broken sellswords will find our villages. Some of our own smallfolk will turn wolf after losing too much to lions."

Tom looked at the dead white tree.

"Lord Umber believes you can tell the difference between a frightened man and a cruel one," Tytos said.

"I do not know that I can."

"Good. Men certain of such things make poor judges."

Rafe shifted behind him.

Tytos continued. "You will not hold lands. You will not collect taxes. You will not make yourself a little lord with a little crown. You will clear roads, protect villages that will take protection, break armed bands that prey on them, and send word when you find something too large for your hand."

"Yes, milord."

"Rafe knows my lands. Harl knows Lord Umber's mind. Listen to both, especially when they disagree."

Harl grunted.

Rafe said, "Milord."

Tytos gave Tom a folded parchment sealed in black wax. "Authority, for those who need wax before sense. Do not spend it cheaply."

Tom took it. The seal felt heavier than parchment should.

"And one more thing," Tytos said.

Tom looked up.

"Do not confuse surviving with owing the dead your death."

The words landed badly.

Tom's throat tightened.

Tytos's eyes moved, just once, toward the place beyond the wall where Harwyn Tallhart lay buried among northmen and river men.

"They paid what they paid," the lord said. "You do not honor them by wasting the purchase."

Tom could not answer.

He bowed again because it was the only thing left to do.

That evening, he visited Jory.

Tor waited outside the room this time, giving them what little privacy a castle full of soldiers allowed.

Jory looked worse in candlelight. The yellow bruising had darkened, and sweat shone on his brow. Still, his good eye found Tom clearly.

"When?"

"When you can sit a horse or a wagon without dying of it."

Jory watched him.

"That may be long."

"Then we train long."

"Lord Umber left orders."

"Lord Umber left men," Tom said. "Men can wait."

Jory's mouth twitched. "Harl say that?"

"Harl said a man with cracked ribs is no use except as a warning to others."

"Kind."

"Aye."

Tom sat carefully on a stool beside the bed. "You should have let me die."

Jory closed his eye.

For a moment Tom thought he had fallen asleep.

Then Jory said, "Stupid thing to say."

Tom looked down at his hands. The knuckles were raw from practice. One thumbnail had gone black.

"Harwyn died because I froze."

"Harwyn died because a big man hit him with steel."

"Jory."

"No." Jory's voice was weak, but the word held. "You want all deaths to be yours. Too greedy."

Tom almost laughed. It came out broken.

Jory breathed through pain for a while. "At the Green Fork, did you make Clegane what he is?"

Tom's hand tightened.

"No."

"At the gate, did you make that lion swing?"

"No."

"Did you move when you could?"

Tom saw the empty place again. Distance. Weight. Reach. Angle.

"Aye."

"Then move now. Just not without me."

Tom swallowed.

Jory's fingers shifted on the coverlet. Tom took them, awkwardly, because the hand was swollen and bruised and too warm.

"Tor will try to carry me if I walk slow."

"Then walk faster."

"Cruel."

"Aye."

Jory's eye opened a little wider. "You mean it."

Tom nodded.

"No one leaves you in this bed unless you choose it."

Jory shut his eye again. His grip tightened once around Tom's fingers, weak but certain.

"Good," he said.

More days passed.

Then more.

The war did not wait, but Tom did. Not idly. Harl made the northmen drill until their curses began to sound alike. Rafe sent scouts down the roads and brought back names, distances, burned barns, rumors of lion men hiding in orchards and broken sellswords sleeping in septs. Ser Halmon kept teaching Tom where men opened and where armor lied. Tytos sent bread, arrows, and a cart with iron-bound wheels.

Jory healed slowly and badly and with poor grace.

The first time he stood, Tor held him under one arm and threatened to break the floor if it moved beneath his brother. The first time he crossed the room, every man pretended not to watch. The first time he came into the yard, wrapped tight beneath his mail and pale as old milk, Tom said nothing of how his own chest eased at the sight.

"You look dead," Tom told him.

"Still prettier than you."

"Not hard."

Tor laughed then, a hard bark that made half the yard turn.

After that, the leaving came quickly.

The morning was grey and cold.

Raventree Hall gathered in pieces rather than ceremony. Men tightened straps, checked bowstrings, cursed damp socks, and argued over who had stolen whose whetstone. Harl Tanner had the northmen lined before the gate while he inspected boots with more suspicion than most men gave enemies. Rafe Miller counted arrows twice and then made the men count them again. Ser Halmon Greaves stood by the yard wall with his blunted sword under one arm, watching Tom as if considering one last blow.

Tom's own men waited near the front.

Tor stood with axe on shoulder, close enough to Jory to catch him and far enough to pretend he was not trying. Jory sat on a quiet horse with one arm strapped tight and his ribs bound beneath his mail. Willam carried the small banner Greatjon had left them, plain grey cloth with no sigil, because Tom had refused any better. Pate had three knives visible and likely two hidden. Eddyn joked with a Blackwood spearman until both looked less afraid. Osric leaned on his spear and pretended his leg did not hurt. Mikken checked Donnel's helm strap, then checked it again. Garrel held the reins of two packhorses and looked at every raven as if expecting it to speak ill of him.

Behind them stood the rest.

Northmen from the Last Hearth. Blackwood archers. River spears. Horse lads who looked offended by horses. Men with patched cloaks and sharpened fear. Near eighty in all, once Harl finished arguing with the count.

Near eighty under Tom.

He walked to Ser Halmon first.

The old master-at-arms held out a sword.

Not a lord's blade. Not pretty. Its grip had been rewrapped in dark leather, and the guard bore old nicks filed smooth. The scabbard was plain.

"Until you find an axe that does not shame you," Ser Halmon said.

Tom took it. "Thank you."

"Do not thank me. Use the point."

"Aye."

"And breathe."

Tom nodded.

At the gate, Tytos Blackwood waited with a few of his household. He clasped Tom's forearm, careful of the bruises.

"The roads first," he said. "Then the villages along them. Send ravens when you can. Riders when you cannot."

"Aye, milord."

"May the old gods watch you."

Tom looked back at his men.

Tor saw him looking.

Jory saw him too and gave the smallest nod.

The gate opened.

Outside, the road ran east between fields trampled by armies and rain. Beyond those fields were burned mills, hungry hamlets, lion men without lions, and men who had learned that a sword could buy bread faster than a plow.

Tom set his foot on the road.

Behind him, Harwyn lay under new earth.

Ahead, the Riverlands waited with teeth.

Tom walked anyway, and his pack followed.

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Disclaimer: Frostfyre is a non-commercial fan fiction project inspired by a Realm of Thrones campaign for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. All rights to those original settings and characters remain with their respective owners.