Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 12: Swift Defeat

The enemy camp sat north of the old quarry like a knife laid beside a wound.

Tom saw it first through wet leaves and grey moonlight.

He lay on his belly between Garrel and Osric, cloak pulled dark over his shoulders, cheek pressed into cold mud. Below them the land dropped toward the quarry pit, a black half circle cut into the earth. Rainwater shone at its bottom. Broken stone lay in heaps around it, pale where moonlight found edges. Beyond the pit, the enemy had made camp in a wide hollow between low ridges and thin trees.

Not bandits.

No matter what colors they hid, no matter what they called themselves, this was no bandit camp.

Wagons stood in a line near the western edge. Horses were picketed beneath the trees. Cook fires had been banked low, but there were too many of them for a raiding band. Men slept in rows under canvas, old cloaks, stolen blankets, and anything else that kept rain away. Spears leaned together in stacked bundles. Shields lay near them, dark circles and ovals in the grass. Three wooden watchtowers rose above the camp, rough things made from felled trunks and quarry planks, one near the wagons, one by the south road, one on the eastern ridge.

Each tower held two archers.

Tom counted them twice.

"Pickets?" he breathed.

Garrel pointed.

Tom followed the line of his finger. A man stood near the south road with a spear and a cloak wrapped high around his face. Another leaned under a tree east of the quarry, half hidden by trunk and shadow. Two more moved together near the horses, speaking too softly to hear.

"Lazy," Osric whispered.

"Tired," Garrel said.

"Same thing if a knife finds you."

Tom looked past the towers to the ground.

The camp had only one clean road in, from the south and west where old carts had carried stone away years before. The quarry pit blocked much of the north side. The eastern ridge was steep but not impossible. The western trees were thick enough for men to creep close, if those men were patient and did not wear half a kitchen on their backs.

"How many?" Tom asked.

Osric was quiet for a long while.

That was why Tom trusted his count.

"More than a hundred," Osric said. "Less than two."

"Useful."

"One hundred and eighty, mayhaps, with the men sleeping under wagons. Could be two hundred if some are in the trees."

Tom's jaw tightened.

Nearly all of them, then. Denys had not lied much.

"Defenses?"

"Towers," Garrel said. "Pickets. Quarry on one side. Ridge on the other. Men. Close sleeping too close to weapons."

"No ditch," Osric said.

"No wall."

"No need if no one knows they are here."

Tom watched the south tower. One archer stood with his bow in hand, looking toward nothing. The other sat with his back against the rail and his chin on his chest.

Men trusted height. It made them foolish in a different direction.

"We go," Tom whispered.

They crept back the way they had come.

That was slower than coming forward. Coming forward, a man thought about what he might learn. Going back, he thought about every twig under his palm, every patch of mud that might suck at a boot, every cough trapped in his throat. Twice Tom froze because a picket shifted. Once Osric put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him flat as a man walked near enough that Tom smelled onions on his breath.

The man pissed against a tree, sighed, and went back toward the fires.

Tom waited until he was gone.

Garrel's grin flashed once in the dark.

Tom did not grin back.

They reached their own camp just before the moon slid behind cloud.

Their camp lay southwest of the quarry, tucked into a fold between two low ridges where old hazel and alder hid men from the road. No fires burned. No horse was allowed to stamp twice without a hand on its nose. Harl's men had arrived in the afternoon, wet and sour and glad to see something worth hating. Rafe had come near dusk with twelve fewer arrows than he wanted and three more wounded than he liked.

Near eighty men again.

Not quite.

Tom had learned to hate counting that way.

The council gathered beneath a slanted piece of canvas tied between trees. Rain tapped on it softly. Harl crouched over the mud map with a stick. Rafe lay on one elbow, marking the streams and cart road from memory. Jory sat wrapped in a cloak, pale around the mouth but watchful. Tor hovered behind him as if daring the night to make his brother worse. Pate, Donnel, Osric, Garrel, Willam, and two of Rafe's scouts stood close enough to hear.

Tom drew the quarry pit with his finger.

"Camp here. Quarry north. Wagons west. Horses here. Towers south, east, west. Pickets thin."

Harl grunted. "Too many for a straight rush."

"Too many for any rush," Rafe said.

Tor leaned over the map. "Still less than three armies."

"That your measure now?" Jory asked.

"It keeps my spirits high."

"Then lower them," Tom said.

Tor looked at him and shut his mouth.

Tom put stones where the towers stood. "If those archers are awake when we move, they cut us apart before we reach the tents."

"Then they do not wake," Garrel said.

Every eye turned to him.

Garrel's smile did not change, but it grew smaller. "What, is it?"

Osric looked toward the dark where the enemy camp lay. "Tower ladders?"

"Rope and pegs," Garrel said. "Rough. Quiet if a man knows hands from feet."

"You offering?" Harl asked.

"I am saying it can be done."

"That was not the question."

Garrel shrugged. "Aye."

Tom looked at Osric.

"I can climb," Osric said. "I dislike it."

"Good," Harl said. "Fear makes the fingers honest."

Rafe tapped the western tower stone. "If our men take their places, they can loose down into the camp when it starts."

"Or shout if seen," Jory said.

"If seen, the camp wakes anyway."

Tom listened.

The plan came together like a bad wall built from useful stones.

Three towers. Two men each. Six enemy archers to kill without noise. Six of Tom's scouts and bowmen to replace them. Garrel for the western tower. Osric for the south. Rafe picked a Blackwood archer named Lyle for the east, a narrow man with quiet hands and no habit of talking when afraid. Each would take one climber and one bowman. Knives first. Bows after.

"Pitch," Donnel said suddenly.

Tom looked at him.

"The jars," Donnel said. "From the wagon we found two days back. Clay jars. Pitch inside. Bad pitch, but pitch."

Mikken had saved them because Mikken saved anything that might later become useful or annoying.

"How many?" Tom asked.

"Eight," Donnel said. "Mayhaps nine if Pate did not break one."

Pate looked offended. "I broke nothing worth counting."

Rafe's eyes sharpened. "Banked fires in camp. Throw pitch into those when the horn sounds."

"No horn," Tom said.

"When what sounds, then?"

Tom looked at the map.

"When the towers loose."

Harl showed his teeth. "Better."

The canvas stirred as someone pushed in from outside.

Lew stood there, one hand braced on a spear, thigh bandaged thick beneath his cloak. He was not supposed to be walking. That had not stopped him long enough to matter.

"Scout," he said.

Behind him, a boy no older than Willam ducked under the canvas. He belonged to Harl, a narrow-faced runner called Edwyn Nail. He was breathing hard enough that every man under the canvas went still.

"Speak," Tom said.

"Men moving," Edwyn gasped. "From the camp. A column. South road, then east fork."

Rafe sat up. "How many?"

"Fifty. Mayhaps sixty. Wagons too. Headed southeast."

"Harrenhal," Jory said.

The name settled into the wet air.

Harrenhal was ruin, but ruin with walls enough to hold an army's shadow.

"Did they see you?" Harl asked.

Edwyn shook his head.

"You sure?"

"No."

Honest answer.

Tom looked at the mud map. One hundred and eighty, mayhaps. Less a third. One hundred and twenty. One hundred and thirty. Still more than Tom had, but not by enough to make the plan madness.

Mayhaps only foolish.

"Our camp is southwest," Rafe said. "If they take the east fork, they pass clear."

"If," Harl said.

Tom pointed at Osric. "Two scouts. Confirm the column. Track them until you know they are southeast and not curving back."

Osric nodded.

"Take Garrel."

Garrel's smile vanished. "I am for the tower."

"You are for what I say first."

For a heartbeat Tom thought he might argue.

He did not.

"Aye."

"Go now," Tom said. "No fighting. No cleverness. See them clear, then come back."

Garrel touched two fingers to his brow and vanished with Osric into rain.

The council waited.

That was the longest hour of the night.

Men checked straps that had already been checked. Mikken wrapped cloth around buckles. Pate handed out the pitch jars, each wrapped in old sacking to keep clay from clinking against clay. Rafe chose the bowmen for the towers and made them repeat the signal until they hated him. Harl walked the line and told men where to stand, where to fall back, where to die if dying became necessary.

Tom went among them too.

He spoke little. A hand on Willam's shoulder. A nod to Lew when the man cursed his thigh and took a place in the rear line anyway. A word to Donnel about keeping the right from folding. A pause beside Jory, who had both hands on his reins and pain hidden poorly beneath his eyes.

"You stay with the reserve," Tom said.

"I know."

"You do not ride into the camp unless I call."

"I know."

"Tor stays with you."

"He will hate that."

"Aye."

Jory looked at him. "Good."

Tom almost smiled.

Tor did not.

"I am not a nursemaid," he said when Tom told him.

"No," Tom said. "You are worse tempered and less gentle."

"Then put me where that helps."

"I am."

Tor looked past him to Jory.

That ended the argument.

Osric and Garrel returned with mud to their waists and breath white in the dark.

"Clear," Osric said. "Column took the east fork. Wagons slow. No sign they turned."

"Count?"

"Near sixty," Garrel said. "More horses than sense. They did not move like scouts."

"Camp?"

"Smaller," Osric said. "Still awake in pieces from the column moving."

Tom looked east.

The sky there was black, but black did not last. Dawn would come whether men were ready or not.

"One hour before first light," he said. "We move."

No one cheered.

Good.

The scouts left first.

Garrel took the west tower after all. Osric took the south. Lyle took the east. Each pair carried knives, bows, and one small jar of pitch wrapped against the chest. They went without farewell, six shadows swallowed by darker trees.

Tom waited until the count in his head reached two hundred.

Then he led the army.

Army was too grand a word for it. It was seventy-nine men moving through wet trees with shields blackened by mud and breath held behind teeth. Harl led the left, down toward the wagons. Rafe led the right toward the horses and eastern tents. Tom took the center with Pate, Donnel, Willam, and men who had followed him long enough to know his silence.

The quarry pit opened on their left, black water at its bottom catching no light. The camp lay ahead, dull shapes and low fires. A horse lifted its head. Somewhere a man coughed and spat. Somewhere another laughed softly at the end of a dream.

Tom looked up.

The south tower was a black shape against cloud.

For a moment nothing moved.

Then an arrow fell from it.

It struck the nearest fire with a hiss.

Another arrow fell from the west tower. Then the east.

A clay jar dropped after it.

The fire swallowed pitch and woke screaming.

Flame leapt up bright and sudden, running across spilled blackness like a living thing. A man sleeping near it rolled into fire and came up shrieking. Another jar burst against a wagon wheel and sent burning pitch crawling beneath the axle. Horses screamed. Men shouted. Canvas caught. Shadows tore apart.

The towers loosed again.

This time they shot men.

"Now," Tom said.

His line rose from the dark and ran.

Not screaming.

That came later.

The first enemy Tom reached was half dressed, shield in one hand and no sword in the other. Tom hit him with his own shield and sent him backward into a tent rope. Pate drove a spear through him before he untangled. Donnel smashed another man across the jaw with his maul. Willam cut a rope and dropped burning canvas over two men trying to crawl out beneath it.

Then the camp woke properly.

The enemy were not fools once awake.

Men found shields. Men found spears. Men formed around a wagon where a serjeant with a harsh voice shouted them into line. Rafe's bowmen shot into them from the right, but the line held long enough to kill the first northman who reached it. Tom saw the man go down with a spear in his belly and no sound at all.

One dead.

The count began before Tom wanted it.

He shoved forward.

"Center," he shouted. "With me."

Pate came. Donnel came. Willam came because Willam always did now, even when fear made him pale. Three Blackwood spears came too. They struck the forming line before it remembered how to be a wall.

Tom's sword found a wrist. His shield took a spear. He stepped inside, cut low, pushed high, moved because stillness killed. The serjeant shouted again. Donnel's maul struck the man's helm and made the shout into a broken clang.

The line bent.

Harl's men hit the wagons.

That was louder.

Harl did not believe in quiet once killing began. His northmen crashed into the western camp with axes and round shields, driving men back between burning wheels. One wagon tipped. A horse tore free and dragged its picket rope through fire, scattering men from both sides. Someone screamed Harl's name as a curse or prayer. Harl answered with words too foul for either.

The west tower kept shooting.

Garrel was up there, Tom thought. Garrel and one of Rafe's bowmen, arrows falling into men who tried to rally behind the wagons. Good. Still alive then.

A horn sounded.

Enemy horn.

Short. Ragged. Cut off.

Rafe's right struck the horses.

Not the horses themselves. Never that if it could be helped. Rafe's men cut picket ropes and drove the beasts sideways into the eastern tents, turning order into hooves and canvas. Blackwood arrows came low and fast. The eastern tower shot down into the confusion until a man below realized the tower was no longer his and threw a spear up at it. He missed.

Lyle did not.

The spear thrower fell with an arrow through his chest.

For a while, the plan worked.

That was the most dangerous thing about plans.

Men believed them when they worked.

Tom pushed through smoke and fire and found the enemy center harder than it should have been. Thirty men had gathered near a broad tent with a striped roof. Their shields were mismatched, but their boots moved together. A man in a dark cloak stood behind them with no helm on, sword bare, shouting orders that cut through panic cleanly.

"There," Jory called from behind.

Tom turned.

Jory had not stayed with the reserve.

Of course he had not.

He sat his horse twenty paces back, Tor beside him, pointing toward the dark-cloaked man.

"Commander," Jory shouted.

Tom looked again.

The man in the cloak saw him.

Their eyes met across smoke.

The commander lifted his sword, not in salute. In order.

His line came forward.

The battle changed.

Steel struck like rain on stone. Tom's center staggered. A spear took Lew in the throat before the Blackwood man could boast about his thigh again. Pate went down to one knee with a cut across his scalp. Willam dragged him back and nearly lost an ear for it. Donnel killed the man who tried.

Tom found himself against a shield taller than most doors.

The man behind it had a yellow beard and shoulders like an ox. He drove forward, not striking at first, only pushing, using weight the way a mill used water. Tom gave ground one step, then another. Behind him someone fell. No room.

Distance.

Weight.

Reach.

Angle.

Tom dropped his shield low and hooked the rim under the big man's shield edge. He lifted with his legs, not arms. Ser Halmon would have slapped him if he did otherwise. The shield rose just enough. Tom put his sword under it and into the man's thigh.

The big man roared.

Tom shoved him sideways into Donnel.

Donnel did not miss gifts.

The maul came down.

Tom moved on.

"Push left," he shouted. "Left. Cut them from the tent."

He did not know if men heard.

Some did.

Enough did.

Harl saw the same thing from the west and drove inward, axes biting into the flank of the commander's line. Rafe's bowmen shot over low shields, arrows hissing through smoke. One struck Tom's own man in the back by mistake. He went down cursing river archers, then did not rise.

No clean victories.

Not against men who had woken.

The enemy began to give ground toward the quarry.

That was bad.

A desperate man with stone at his back might fight harder. A desperate man with a dark pit behind him might drag others down.

"Do not drive them north," Tom shouted. "East. East."

Rafe heard. His horn gave two low calls from the right.

Men shifted.

Slowly.

Too slowly.

The commander saw it too.

He tried to break south.

For one fierce moment, he nearly did. His line tightened around him and struck through Tom's center like an axe through rotten wood. Three men died before Tom understood the shape of it. Another fell screaming with his hand gone. The commander moved inside the wedge, face calm in firelight, sword red halfway to the hilt.

Tom stepped into his path.

Not alone.

Never alone, not now.

Donnel stood on his right. Pate, bleeding from the head, on his left. Willam behind with a spear in both hands. Tor came from nowhere, axe swinging. Jory shouted something Tom did not hear.

The commander's first blow nearly took Tom's head.

Tom caught it on his shield and felt the wood split under iron. The second came low. He turned it with his sword and lost feeling in two fingers. The man was fast. Not large like the armored Lannister. Not monstrous like Clegane in memory. Fast, clean, trained. A knight, mayhaps, or near enough that the difference mattered only to songs.

Tom did not try to match him.

He made him crowded.

Donnel struck at the man's guard. Pate thrust at his knee. Willam jabbed whenever the cloak shifted. Tor tried to take his head and killed a man behind him instead when the commander ducked. The commander gave ground with skill, but ground was exactly what Tom wanted from him.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Into mud churned by horses.

The commander's boot slipped.

Tom hit him with the broken shield.

Not a fine blow.

A useful one.

The man went down on one knee.

Tor's axe rose.

"No," Tom snapped.

The axe stopped.

Barely.

Donnel kicked the commander's sword away. Pate put a spear point under his chin. Willam stood behind him breathing like a bellows.

"Yield," Tom said.

The commander looked up.

For a heartbeat Tom thought he would choose death for pride.

Then the man opened his hand.

The rest did not.

Mayhaps they did not see. Mayhaps they saw and did not care. Mayhaps they knew surrender had become too small a thing to survive the camp.

The battle went on without its head.

That made it worse for a while.

Men fought in knots. Men ran into fire rather than northmen. Men slipped into the quarry and screamed only once before black water took them. One of the towers caught fire from below, and Lyle climbed down with his sleeve burning while arrows still stuck in the rail above him. Harl took a spear through the shoulder and broke the shaft off himself because no one nearby had time. Rafe lost his bow and fought with a knife beside the horse lines, face dark with soot.

Tom killed until his arm forgot it had ever done anything else.

Then, suddenly, there were no enemies standing.

Not many sounds ended all at once. Battles did not stop like songs. They frayed. A shout here. A groan there. A man begging for water. A horse screaming until someone merciful cut its throat. Flames eating canvas. Rain hissing where pitch burned too hot to care.

Tom stood near the striped tent with half a shield on his arm and no memory of losing the other half.

The sky had gone grey.

Dawn.

He hated dawn after battle. It showed too much.

"Count," he said.

No one moved.

His voice was gone. He tried again.

"Count our dead. Gather wounded. Put out fire before it eats what we need. Strip weapons from every enemy. If any breathe, bind them."

Harl appeared through smoke, one arm hanging wrong and blood running down his fingers.

"Any besides him?" Harl asked.

Tom looked to where the commander knelt under guard, hands bound behind him, cloak torn and face streaked with soot.

"No."

Harl spat. "Then they were stubborn."

"Aye."

"So were we."

Rafe came next, limping, with no bow and two arrows tucked through his belt as if he had stolen them from death and meant to keep them. "Twenty-five dead."

Tom shut his eyes.

Names pressed at him.

Lew. Cossen or Cossar, whichever Harl would know. One of Rafe's boys who had laughed at wet socks. A northman from the Last Hearth who had shown Willam how to set a tent peg in bad ground. Men who had followed orders and found steel waiting.

"Wounded?" Tom asked.

"Thirty fit to complain," Rafe said. "Some may stop by night."

Tom opened his eyes.

Seventy-nine had gone in.

Twenty-five dead.

Thirty wounded.

Victory was a thin word for that much blood.

Tor came with a cut over one eye and anger still looking for somewhere to go. "Prisoner wants to know who commands."

Tom looked at the bound man.

"He can ask me."

They brought the commander forward.

He walked stiffly but did not stumble. His dark cloak had been fine once. Under it he wore mail good enough to turn cheap blades and a surcoat turned inside out to hide its colors. The inside had bled through where rain and sweat had worked at the cloth. Blue and white, mayhaps. A shape that might have been a bird or wing.

Tom stood before him.

For a moment neither spoke.

The man's eyes moved over Tom's bandaged face, dented helm, broken shield, muddy sword. Then over Harl, Rafe, Tor, Jory on his horse beyond them, the towers, the dead, the burned tents, the quarry full of morning mist.

"Your name," Tom said.

The man lifted his chin.

"Ser Steffon Swift."

Tom waited.

The man understood the silence. Pride tightened his mouth.

"Of House Swift," he said.

Around them, the camp smoked.

Tom looked at the dead and then back at him.

"Aye," he said. "I guessed."

Previous Chapter | Chapter List | Next Chapter

---

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.