Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 10: Too Many Arrows

The first bandits Tom hunted were gone before he reached them.

He knew it from the smoke.

It rose thin and grey beyond a stand of willows, too weak for a fresh burning and too straight for a cooking fire. Men who camped with full bellies made careless smoke. Men who ran from soldiers stamped out flames with boots and curses and left only the last breath of heat behind.

Tom raised his hand.

Eighty men stopped badly.

Not all at once. Never all at once. The front halted, the middle shuffled into them, the rear cursed because they could not see why. A horse stamped. Someone's spear butt knocked against a shield. Leather creaked. Mail whispered. One of the Blackwood bowmen coughed into his sleeve, and the sound seemed loud enough to wake half the Riverlands.

Tom kept his hand raised until the noise died.

Then he pointed.

Garrel went first.

He slipped through the willows with two Blackwood scouts and vanished into the pale leaves. The rest waited on the road, boots in mud up to the welt, shoulders bent under a wet wind that smelled of ashes and old rain.

Jory sat his horse beside Tom, one arm still strapped close beneath his cloak. He hated the horse. The horse hated him with equal discipline.

"Cold camp," Jory said.

"Aye."

"How cold?"

Tom looked at the smoke again. "Too cold."

Harl Tanner spat into the mud. "Could still be men hiding."

"Could be," Rafe Miller said. "Could be my aunt hiding too. She liked willows."

Harl looked at him. "Your aunt carry a sword?"

"Only when married."

No one laughed loudly. That was something.

Garrel came back with mud to his knees and anger on his face.

"Gone," he said.

Tom lowered his hand.

They found the camp beyond the willows.

Five fire pits. A torn blanket. Fish bones. Hoof prints churned near the stream and boot marks beyond them, many going in, many going out, none waiting to be killed. A strip of red cloth had caught on a thorn bush. Not Lannister crimson. Just red cloth, once part of someone's sleeve or wife's dress or stolen banner. There was dried blood on a flat stone, but not enough to tell whose.

Pate crouched by one fire and held his palm above the ashes.

"Half a day," he said.

Rafe shook his head. "Less. Morning rain cooled it."

"Then they saw us."

"Everyone sees us," Harl said. "We are eighty men and a baggage cart. We do not creep. We arrive."

Tom looked at the prints in the mud.

They were not deep. Not from heavy men burdened with loot. The camp had been light, quick, ready to move. Men who expected to run.

"Which way?" he asked.

Garrel pointed toward the stream. "Crossed there. Spread after. Mayhaps north. Mayhaps east."

"Mayhaps into smoke," Harl said.

Tom walked to the stream. The water ran brown and fast around stones slick with moss. On the far bank, reeds had been bent by boots, then brushed back with care. Too much care. The men they hunted were not fools.

"How many?"

"Twelve," Garrel said. "Mayhaps fifteen."

Eighty men stood behind Tom, waiting to be aimed at twelve.

Too many arrows, he thought, and did not yet know what the thought meant.

They followed the clearest trail until it became three trails, then five, then nothing.

By midday, the rain came harder.

By dusk, the men were wet, hungry, and no closer to killing anyone.

They made camp near a low ridge with the road below and trees behind. Harl wanted the carts in the center. Rafe wanted bowmen up the slope. Jory wanted no fires. Tor wanted fires and meat and a bandit foolish enough to object.

Tom listened to all of them.

Then he put the carts in the center, sent bowmen up the slope, allowed three shielded fires low in pits, and told Tor he could object to the next man who complained aloud.

"That is not what I meant," Tor said.

"It is what I heard."

Tor showed his teeth. "Command has made you wicked."

"Wet," Tom said. "Mostly wet."

Men heard that. A few smiled into their cloaks.

That mattered more than Tom had once understood.

A captain did not need to make men happy. Harl had taught him that much in one morning. Happy men were rare and often drunk. But a captain had to keep them from sinking too far into the mud inside their own skulls. Men could march wet. Men could sleep cold. Men could eat thin stew and call it worse names than it deserved. What they could not do for long was feel useless.

So Tom gave them use.

He sent Mikken to check every spearhead and hammer loose rivets while light remained. He put Osric with the younger Blackwood archers and told him to teach them how northmen watched tree lines. He ordered Willam to help Rafe mark the streams and cart tracks they had crossed, because Willam remembered little things when fear did not shake them out of him. Pate and Donnel counted food. Tor took six men to bring in deadfall for morning. Jory, who could not yet swing an axe without opening himself, sat beside Tom and made a list of names that Harl pretended not to watch.

"Lists now," Jory said.

"Harl says they are what serjeants make instead of songs."

"Harl is a grim singer."

"Aye."

Across the camp, Harl Tanner shouted at a man for setting wet socks too close to flame.

Tom watched the men move. Not happily. Not lightly. But moving.

Better than brooding.

The next morning, they found the hamlet.

It had no name left on the road marker. The board had burned and the post leaned like a tired man. Six cottages stood near a muddy yard and a little sept with its door hanging broken from one hinge. Three cottages still smoked. Chickens wandered through ash. A dead mule lay by a cart with its harness cut away.

No people came out.

Tom stopped the column before the yard.

"No one takes anything," he said.

The order moved down the line. Some men looked offended that it needed saying. Others looked away too fast.

Tom saw both.

He sent Rafe's bowmen around the far side and Harl's spears through the center. He went to the sept himself with Jory, Tor, and Pate.

They found the villagers under the floor.

Not dead.

That was something.

The trap door lay beneath a loose rush mat near the altar. A child's breathing gave them away, small and fast in the dark below. Tor lifted the boards, and three spear points thrust up at once.

"Easy," Tom said.

The points shook.

There were nine people in the hollow under the sept. Two old women. A man with one hand. Four children. A girl no older than Willam with a butcher knife clutched so hard her fingers had gone white. A boy with one eye swollen shut and blood dried under his nose.

"We are not lions," Tom said.

The girl stared at his mail, his sword, his bandaged face.

"Wolves, then."

Tom could not argue.

Pate set his spear down first. Tor gave him a look and then did the same. Jory stayed back, still and quiet, because quiet was sometimes kinder than comfort.

"Who did this?" Tom asked.

"Men," the one-handed villager said.

"How many?"

"Enough."

"Banners?"

The man laughed. It was an ugly sound in the dark. "Banners are for men with lords watching."

Tom crouched by the opening. Pain pulled at his side. He ignored it.

"Which way?"

No answer.

He looked at the children. At the girl with the knife. At the old women who had seen too many armed men asking questions after ruin.

"We have food," Tom said. "Not much. Some."

"Food buys lies," the girl said.

"Then keep the lies and take the food."

Her mouth tightened.

They gave the villagers two sacks of oats, salt fish enough for a day, and three blankets from men who complained only after they were far enough away that the villagers could not hear.

Tom let them complain.

Then he made them help raise one cottage roof before they left.

That drew worse complaints.

"Bandits will be gone a week by now," one of Harl's northmen muttered.

Tom turned.

The man had a square beard and a split lip. His name was Cossen, Tom thought. Or Cossar. Harl would know. The man looked suddenly sorry to have been heard.

"Aye," Tom said.

That surprised him.

"They will be gone," Tom said louder. "So we leave these folk with a hole in the roof and cold rain on children because we are angry at men who ran faster than us?"

No one answered.

Tom picked up a beam with his good hand and shoulder.

Tor took the other end without being asked.

After that, men moved.

It took two hours. The roof they left behind was poor work, patched with scorched boards and pride bruised thinner than the wood. It would keep rain off for a night or two. Mayhaps three.

When they marched again, the villagers watched from the sept door.

The girl still held the knife.

She did not lower it.

Tom found he was glad.

They missed the pillagers again that evening.

This time by sight.

Osric saw movement on a far rise just before sundown, shapes against a red sky. Men with packs. One horse. Mayhaps two. They were there for three breaths, then gone down the other side.

Tom sent Garrel, Osric, and four Blackwood bowmen ahead.

He followed with the column as fast as men could move after a long day.

Too slow.

By the time they reached the rise, the pillagers had vanished into a maze of hedges, flooded ditches, and little tenant lanes that bent around fields gone to rot. The scouts found a dropped sack with turnips, a woman's shoe, and seven arrows bound in twine.

Rafe picked up the arrows.

"Mine," he said.

Tom looked at him.

"Blackwood fletching," Rafe said. "Taken from our dead or stores. Every thief in these lands carries a piece of someone else's war now."

Harl eyed the hedges. "We push through?"

Tom imagined it. Eighty men crashing through wet hedges in failing light. Spears catching. Bowstrings soaked. Men stumbling into ditches. Bandits hearing them from half a mile off, laughing while they slipped away or circled back.

"No."

Tor frowned. "We saw them."

"Aye."

"They are right there."

"No," Tom said. "They were right there."

Tor's jaw worked.

Jory looked at Tom, then at the hedges. "Night in that mess would cost us."

"Cost them more if we catch them," Tor said.

"If," Jory said.

Tor glared at his brother and said nothing, which meant he agreed enough to hate it.

They made camp angry.

Anger spoiled food faster than heat.

Men muttered over cook pots. A Blackwood archer said northmen marched like cattle. One of Harl's spearmen asked if river men preferred hiding because it spared them fighting. Donnel stood up slowly, which usually meant someone was about to lose teeth.

Tom stood too.

The camp quieted in pieces.

"Say it louder," he said.

The Blackwood archer stared at him.

"If a man has counsel, let him give it. If he has only insult, let him swallow it before I make him eat with the horses."

No one spoke.

The fire popped.

Tom looked from face to face. Northmen. River men. Men from islands, hills, bogs, fields, halls, and places too small for maps. Men who had buried friends. Men who had found only ashes for three days and wanted something living to blame.

"They know these roads," Tom said. "They know which farms are empty, which streams can be crossed, which hedges hide a man and which dogs bark at strangers. We do not. Not yet."

Rafe lowered his eyes to the fire. Not shame. Thought.

"So we learn," Tom said. "Every stream. Every cart path. Every village. Every name. We do not get clever because we are angry. We get patient."

"Patience does not fill graves," Harl said.

Tom looked at him.

The old serjeant's face gave away nothing.

"No," Tom said. "It keeps from digging new ones for fools."

Harl grunted.

That was almost approval.

Tom sat down again.

Men ate.

No one lost teeth.

The third miss came with rain.

It fell all morning, hard enough to flatten grass and make every cloak heavy. The road became a brown scar. The horses hated it. The men hated it more. By midday, every foot was wet. By afternoon, even Tor had stopped pretending misery was a thing he could glare into submission.

They found the wagon in a ditch.

Its wheels had been taken. The canvas cover was cut away. Grain spilled from torn sacks and swelled in the mud. A man lay beneath the axle, face down, hands tied behind his back.

Tom climbed down into the ditch before anyone could stop him.

The dead man's coat was good wool. Not rich. Good. His boots were gone.

Pate crouched beside Tom and touched the mud near the body.

"Fresh."

Tom looked up.

The rain had softened everything. Tracks blurred as he watched. Still, there were marks where men had worked at the wheels. Deep cuts in the mud where axles dropped. Hooves to the south. Boots to the west. Drag marks where sacks had been hauled.

"They split," Garrel said.

Harl cursed.

Rafe walked the ditch edge, rain running from his nose. "South trail has the horse. West trail has men carrying weight."

"Which matters more?" Jory asked.

"Horse may carry word," Harl said.

"Men with grain feed others," Rafe said.

Tor looked from one trail to the other. "We have eighty men."

Tom heard it then.

Not the words.

The shape of them.

We have eighty men.

It was how they had thought from the start. Eighty men as a strength. Eighty men as a fist. Eighty men to make broken villagers open doors and make lone bands flee before steel.

But a fist could only strike where it was.

The men they hunted were not standing still to be struck.

"Captain?" Harl said.

Tom did not answer at once.

He watched rain erase the tracks.

South. West. Mayhaps another trail hidden by the ditch water. Mayhaps men watching from trees even now, counting how long the big northern column would argue before choosing wrong.

Too many arrows.

All in one quiver.

"We follow west," Tom said.

Tor frowned. "The horse?"

"West."

They followed the grain carriers until the trail died on stony ground.

The horse trail was gone by then too.

That night, Tom did not sleep.

He sat beneath an oak at the edge of camp with his cloak pulled tight and listened to rain drip from bare branches. The camp breathed behind him. Men snored, muttered, coughed, turned in wet blankets. Horses shifted. A sentry whispered to another sentry and then remembered silence.

Jory came first.

Tom heard him by the careful way he walked. A healed man walked without thought. A wounded man thought with every step.

"You are brooding," Jory said.

"Thinking."

"Same face."

Tom made room on the fallen log beside him.

Jory sat slowly and hid the pain badly.

"We are too many," Tom said.

"For sleeping? Aye. Tor snores enough for twenty."

"For hunting."

Jory looked into the dark beyond the trees.

"Aye."

It helped, that he did not soften it.

"They see us coming," Tom said. "They hear us. Villages hide before they know who we are. Pillagers run before we know they are there. We spend all day finding where men were."

"That is still finding."

"Not enough."

"No."

Rain ticked against dead leaves.

"If we split," Tom said, "we can cover more ground."

"And be weaker."

"Aye."

"Small bands can be eaten."

"So can big ones, if they starve chasing shadows."

Jory looked at him then. "You have been listening to Harl."

"And Rafe."

"Dangerous."

"Aye."

Harl came next, as if named by insult.

He did not ask permission to sit. He lowered himself onto the log with a grunt and took a strip of dried meat from somewhere inside his cloak.

"Thought stinks worse than wet wool," he said.

Tom almost smiled.

Rafe arrived last, bow unstrung beneath his cloak, hair plastered to his face. "If this is a council, it is a poor one. No fire. No wine. No lord pretending not to listen."

"We split," Tom said.

The words settled among them.

Harl chewed once. Twice. "How?"

"Thirds."

Rafe went still in the way bowmen did before loosing. "Three columns?"

"Three hunts," Tom said. "Not columns. Smaller. Quiet. Each with scouts, spears, bows, and men who can talk to smallfolk without frightening them more than they must."

Harl looked offended. "All armed men frighten smallfolk."

"Then frighten them less."

Jory's mouth twitched.

Tom leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Harl takes one. North road and the farms along the stony ridge. Rafe takes one south and east through the smaller lanes, where his men know the ditches and streams. I take the middle road with ours and enough Blackwood bows to keep us honest."

"Rally point?" Rafe asked.

"Burned mill by the double willow. Three days. If one group finds more than it can bite, send a rider or smoke if no rider can pass. Two fires by day. Three by night. No hero work."

Tor's voice came from the dark. "No hero work? We are doomed."

Tom turned.

Tor stepped from behind the oak, grinning like he had been caught stealing food and planned to do it again. Donnel stood behind him. So did Pate, pretending with great dignity that he had not been listening.

"How many men are awake?" Tom asked.

"Enough," Tor said.

Harl sighed. "This is why councils have guards."

"This council has me," Tor said.

"Poor guard."

"Good axe."

Tom looked at them all. Rain shone on faces made hollow by tiredness and sharper by purpose. The frustration had not left. The anger had not gone. But it had found a shape now.

Men could bear hard roads if they believed the road led somewhere.

"At dawn," Tom said, "we divide the food, arrows, and men. No group takes all the best of anything. No group leaves without a scout who knows mud, a man who can count, and someone Harl trusts to curse properly."

"That last one will be hard," Rafe said.

"River men lack art," Harl said.

"We will suffer through."

Tom stood.

His knees were stiff. His face still ached in cold rain. Somewhere beneath bandage and scar, the old wound from the Green Fork tugged when the weather turned. None of it mattered enough to stop him.

"We have been marching like an army," he said. "Tomorrow we start hunting like men who mean to catch something."

No one cheered.

That would have been wrong for the rain, and the dark, and the dead man in the ditch.

But Harl nodded once.

Rafe looked toward the south, already measuring roads.

Jory breathed out as if a knot had loosened.

Tor rolled his shoulders and smiled at the dark.

At dawn, Tom split the arrows.

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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.