Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 15: Westerlands

The road west dried under them.

Not all at once. The Riverlands did not give anything back cleanly. Mud clung in shaded ruts, and ditches still held brown water where flies gathered. But the hard crown of the road showed through in places. Dust rose when boots struck it. Grass along the banks lifted its head instead of lying drowned.

Men noticed.

They pretended not to.

Tor complained that dry roads hurt his feet in new ways. Pate said it was good for a man to have variety. Donnel asked if variety could be eaten. Willam laughed at that, then looked surprised by himself. Harl told them all to save their breath for walking, which meant he was pleased the men had breath to waste.

Tom let them talk.

He walked near the front with the grey banner furled behind him and the sun on his left shoulder. For the first time in weeks, no rain tapped his helm. No water ran down his neck. No cloak dragged heavy as chain. The world seemed sharper without mist between him and it. Fields. Hedges. Burned cottages standing black against green. Distant hills like old backs under the sky.

West.

The word had weight.

Robb was west, mayhaps. Or moving west. Or already somewhere else by now. Armies were like storms. Men spoke of them as if they sat waiting on roads, but by the time word came, the storm had often moved.

Still, west was a direction.

Tom had learned to be grateful for those.

On the third day from Harrenhal, Jory walked.

Not far.

Not well.

But he walked.

Tor made too much of not watching.

Jory swung down from the horse after midday and stood with one hand on the saddle until the pain settled into whatever place he kept it. His face went pale. His mouth tightened. He took one step, then another. The horse, freed of him, looked as relieved as any horse had ever looked.

"Do not fall," Tor said.

"Had not thought of that."

"Good. Thinking slows you."

"You would know."

Tor grinned, then looked away too quickly.

Tom slowed the column without saying why. Harl noticed. Harl noticed most things that made command inconvenient, but he said nothing. Men adjusted their pace. Willam shifted the banner to his other hand and pretended to study a bird. Pate began telling Donnel a long story about a fisherman from White Harbor who had tried to sell the same cod three times.

Jory walked half a mile.

By the end, sweat stood on his brow and his breath had gone thin. Tor brought the horse without being asked. Jory looked ready to refuse out of pride, then glanced at Tom and thought better of wasting everyone's time.

"Half a mile," Pate said. "At this rate, you will reach Robb by winter."

"Which winter?" Donnel asked.

"One of them."

Jory took the saddle again and shut his eyes for three breaths.

When he opened them, he looked less dead than he had in weeks.

That lifted men more than the sun did.

They marched for several uneventful days.

Uneventful had become a strange word.

It did not mean safe. It meant nothing had yet chosen to show teeth. Scouts moved ahead and back. Garrel vanished into hedges and returned with burrs in his sleeves. Osric ranged farther than Tom liked and came back with dry reports of cart tracks, old camps, a dead cow, a burned mill, two families hiding near a stream, and one broken spear with no owner worth finding.

They saw no lions.

They saw no Boltons.

That second absence pleased the men more than the first.

At night, they camped under trees or beside low walls. They slept badly, but badly in dry blankets, which made it nearly comfort. Harl's shoulder closed enough that he could curse with both hands again. Mikken found a loose shoe on one of the packhorses and repaired it with a nail hammered straight from a broken Lannister buckle. Willam practiced with a spear until Pate told him he looked less likely to stab himself and more likely to stab a friend.

Tom watched.

Men recovering were dangerous in a different way from men breaking. They grew careless with relief. A dry road made a man look farther. A clear sky made him forget ditches. Laughter made him think the worst might have passed.

The worst rarely announced itself honestly.

So Tom kept the watches hard.

No one thanked him.

That was fine.

On the sixth evening, Garrel and Osric came back together.

That was enough to quiet the camp before they spoke.

Tom was sitting on a fallen stone with a strip of dried beef in one hand and a map in the other. The map was mostly wrong and useful anyway. Harl crouched beside him, making ugly marks for streams they had crossed. Jory sat nearby with his bad arm out of its sling for the first time, flexing his fingers slowly. Tor sharpened his axe with unnecessary force.

Garrel came in first, low and quick. Osric followed with his bow in hand.

"Men. Close ahead," Garrel said.

Tom folded the map.

"How many?"

"Thirty," Osric said. "Mayhaps thirty-two. Hard to count when they walk in the dark."

"Marching at night?" Harl asked.

"Aye."

"Direction?"

"East by the road," Garrel said. "Toward us, if they keep it."

Tor's sharpening stopped.

"Banners?" Tom asked.

"None raised," Osric said. "But shields wrapped in cloth. I saw one corner when a man shifted his pack. Badger."

Harl frowned. "Lydden."

House Lydden of the Deep Den. Westermen. Not lions, but lion-sworn. Tom knew the name only because other men had once spoken of western houses around fires where he had listened more than talked.

"They moving fast?" Tom asked.

"Trying to," Garrel said. "Tired. Not stolen, exactly wagons. Pack mules, three. Not stolen, exactly fires. Not stolen, exactly singing."

"Scouts?"

"Two ahead," Osric said. "Bad ones. Or tired ones."

Harl looked at Tom. "Could let them pass."

Tom thought of that.

Thirty men moving by night under hidden badges. No wagons. No banners. Eastward from the direction Tom meant to go. Could be messengers. Could be raiders. Could be men sent to find out why Swift had gone quiet. Could be men carrying orders that would burn another hamlet before anyone knew they had passed.

Letting them pass was always a choice.

So was owning the consequence.

"Ground?" Tom asked.

Garrel smiled.

That decided much of it.

The road bent through a narrow cut less than a mile west, where two low banks rose on either side and old beeches leaned over the track. One tree had half rotted near the root. Another stood sound but shallow in wet earth. Men with axes could bring them down across the road if they worked quickly and cursed softly.

"Ambush," Tor said.

"Block front and back," Jory said.

Tom looked at him.

Jory shrugged with one shoulder. "If you block only front, they run back. If you block back first, they know."

"So front first," Harl said. "Then back once they bunch."

"Archers high," Osric said.

"Spears behind the first tree," Pate said. "Let them think the road itself betrayed them."

Donnel stood. "I like this road."

Tom looked at the men around him.

They were tired. Still healing. Fewer than they had been. But the road was dry, their hands were steady, and the enemy did not know they were there.

"No fire," Tom said. "No shouting until I give it. We take one alive if we can."

Harl's face told him what Harl thought of if we can.

"Move."

They moved.

The tree work was slow terror.

Axes wanted to sing. Wood wanted to crack. Men wanted to breathe. Tom stood with one hand on the rotted beech and felt each bite of steel through the trunk. Mikken worked the axe because he knew how to cut without waste. Tor worked beside him and hated every careful stroke. Pate and Donnel cleared brush. Willam carried branches away. Harl watched the road west. Garrel watched everything else.

The first tree came down with a sigh too loud for Tom's liking and a crash muffled by old leaves.

Everyone froze.

No shout came from the west.

No horn.

No sudden running feet.

The second tree was not felled yet. It stood farther west, beyond the bend, ready to be cut once the Westermen passed it. That part would have to be fast. Dangerous things often did.

Tom placed the men.

Osric and three archers climbed the north bank. Garrel took two men south and disappeared behind roots. Harl held the western end with Mikken, Willam, and four spears ready for the second fall. Tor and Donnel waited near Tom behind the eastern tree with axes in hand and shields low. Jory stayed mounted beyond the western bend, not in the trap but near enough to catch runners if the world became untidy.

The road went still.

Night deepened.

The dry weather had brought stars.

Tom had nearly forgotten how many there were.

He crouched behind the fallen beech and listened.

At first there was only the small world: men breathing through noses, leather creaking, a horse shifting somewhere behind them, an owl calling once and then thinking better of it.

Then boots.

Many boots.

Low voices came with them.

Westermen, though accents blurred in the dark. Men tired past caution. A mule snorted. Someone cursed the road. Someone else told him to save curses for hills. The two forward scouts came around the bend first, shadows with spears.

They saw the tree.

One stopped.

The other stepped closer.

"What in seven hells?"

Tom waited.

More men came behind them. Three. Five. Ten. The road filled as the column bunched against the fallen beech. A man in the middle asked why they had stopped. A mule pulled at its rope. Someone said trees did not fall across roads without help.

Smart man.

Too late.

Tom lifted his hand.

West of the column, Mikken's axe bit deep into the second beech.

This one did not sigh.

It cracked like bone.

Men turned.

The tree fell across the road behind them, branches whipping into dust and leaves, closing the cut.

"Now," Tom said.

Arrows fell first.

Osric's first shot took the smart man in the throat. The second struck a mule handler through the shoulder and sent the mule screaming sideways into the press. Garrel's men loosed from the south bank. Shapes dropped. Men shouted. Shields came up too late because the shields had been wrapped for hiding, not fighting.

Tom rose with his men.

"Down weapons," he shouted. "Yield."

No one did.

Mayhaps they did not hear. Mayhaps they heard and knew what hidden badges deserved on a Riverlands road. Mayhaps men marching by night with secret shields had already chosen the sort of answer they believed in.

One of the forward scouts charged the tree.

Tor met him there.

The axe took the man's spearhead off first, then the man.

After that, the cut became killing.

The Westermen fought hard.

That surprised Tom less than it once might have. Men loyal to lesser houses still bled red and feared shame. House Lydden was no lion, but its men had teeth enough. Once the first panic broke, they made a knot around the mules, shields up, spears out, trying to push through the branches toward the east.

Tom did not let them.

He drove his shield into the branches and climbed half over the fallen trunk, cutting at hands that reached through. Donnel smashed spear shafts. Pate thrust from Tom's left, short and mean. Willam stayed behind them with a longer spear, pale but steady. Tor tried to force the gap wider by violence alone, which was Tor's answer to most carpentry.

A Lydden man with a round shield painted brown under torn cloth came over the trunk low and fast.

Tom saw the badger then.

Small. White. Half hidden.

The man slammed into him and both went down in leaves and road dust. Tom's sword arm hit a root. The man had a knife. Not long, but close was where knives wanted to live.

Tom caught the wrist with his left hand.

The blade stopped an inch from his ribs.

For one breath they stared at each other in the dark. The man's face was young under a grown beard, eyes wide, teeth bared like fear had taught him anger's shape.

"Yield," Tom said.

The man tried to headbutt him.

Tom turned enough that the blow glanced off his helm. He drove his knee up, rolled, and slammed the man's wrist against the root until the knife fell. The man reached for Tom's throat with his other hand.

Then Pate's spear went through him.

The weight left.

Tom pushed the body aside and stood.

"I said alive," he snapped.

Pate's face was hard in the starlight. "He did not."

There was no time for more.

At the western tree, Harl's line took the first men trying to climb over. Mikken's maul rose and fell. Harl fought with one arm and made it look like enough. Jory rode beyond them, cutting off two who slipped through brush, not killing at first, trying to turn them back into the trap.

One turned on him.

Jory's horse shied.

Tom saw Tor see it.

That was all the warning anyone got.

Tor crossed the road like a thrown axe, hit the man before he reached Jory's stirrup, and drove him into the bank hard enough that the earth shook loose leaves.

"Still walking?" Tor shouted.

"Still ugly?" Jory called back.

"Aye."

"Then yes."

Tom almost laughed.

Then an arrow cut past his face.

Enemy bowman.

One of the mules had gone down, and behind it a Lydden archer had freed his bow from a wrapped case. He shot again before Osric found him. The arrow took Willam in the upper arm and spun him half around.

Willam did not fall.

He looked at the shaft as if offended.

"Stay back," Tom shouted.

Willam nodded once and stayed on his feet, which was not the same thing.

Osric's arrow found the Lydden bowman through the eye.

After that, the Westermen broke.

Not fled. There was nowhere to flee cleanly. They broke into pieces. Three tried the north bank and died in roots under arrows. Four pushed west and hit Harl's spears. Two went south and vanished into brush long enough for Garrel to find them by sound. The last knot near the mules fought until Tor and Donnel went in together and made a ruin of it.

Tom shouted for yield twice more.

No one took it.

The last man alive was older, with a split helm and blood running down his neck. He had lost his sword and held a broken spear in both hands. Tom stood before him with his own blade low.

"Enough," Tom said.

The man looked past him at the fallen trees, the dead, the wrapped shields, the mules screaming and kicking against tangled ropes.

"Who sent you?" Tom asked.

The man smiled with red teeth.

Then he came forward.

Tom cut him down.

When the road finally quieted, the stars still burned above the beeches.

Dry night.

Clean sky.

Thirty or so Westermen dead between two fallen trees.

Tom's men had no dead.

That felt like luck wearing borrowed armor.

There were wounds. Willam's arm. A spear cut along Donnel's thigh. One of Harl's men with a broken nose. Garrel had lost a strip of ear and claimed he had never liked that part. Harl's shoulder had opened again because of course it had. Jory had stayed in the saddle, but sweat stood on his face as if he had walked ten miles.

"Count them," Tom said.

They did.

Thirty-one.

House Lydden men, or men wearing Lydden signs under cloth. Shields bore badgers. Two belt buckles. One little silver pin hidden in a purse. No letters. No sealed orders. No map worth the name. Food for three days. Coin enough for longer. Three pack mules carrying spare bowstrings, two coils of rope, a bundle of iron spikes, and six small sacks of grain.

"Not raiders," Harl said.

Tom looked at the sacks. "No."

"Scouts?" Pate asked.

"Thirty-one is too many scouts," Jory said.

"Messengers?"

"Too many for that too."

Tor wiped his axe on a dead man's cloak. "Mayhaps they were just lost."

Donnel snorted.

Tom crouched beside the older man he had killed last. He searched the man's belt again, then his boots, then the lining of his cloak. Nothing. No truth hidden in wool. No answer tucked under leather.

The dead man kept his purpose.

That annoyed Tom more than it should have.

"Bury them?" Willam asked through clenched teeth while Pate cut the arrow shaft from his arm.

Harl looked at the road. "Drag them off. Stones if we find enough. We do not dig all night for men who would not yield."

Tom nodded.

They cleared the road enough for their own use, not enough to hide what had happened. The fallen trees stayed where they were until morning. The dead were pulled into the south ditch and covered with branches and what stones men could carry. The Lydden shields were stacked. The mules were calmed, then tied near Tom's horses. Mikken claimed the iron spikes before anyone could ask why.

"Useful," he said.

"For what?" Pate asked.

"Later."

"That is not an answer."

"It is if you wait."

They made camp beyond the eastern tree, off the road but close enough to hear anything coming. No fires at first. Then one small fire after Harl said men bled worse in cold dark and Tom decided caution had already had a long meal from them.

Willam sat with his arm bound and tried not to look proud when Jory told him he had stayed upright well.

Tor fell asleep with his axe across his chest and woke twice because Pate kicked him for snoring. Garrel lay on his good ear and complained that the world sounded lopsided. Donnel cleaned his maul with slow care. Osric watched the west from the bank until Tom ordered him down.

Tom did not sleep at once.

He sat near the stacked shields and looked at the hidden badgers.

House Lefford had sent men to burn and spoil. House Swift had held a camp near the quarry. Now House Lydden men moved east by night with no banners and no answers. Smaller houses. Lesser names. All teeth of the same jaw.

West was not only a direction now.

It was a warning.

Jory lowered himself beside him with the care of a man negotiating with every bone.

"You are brooding," he said.

"Thinking."

"Same face."

Tom touched one of the wrapped shields. Cloth came away under his fingers, showing the badger beneath.

"They chose death fast."

"Some men are trained to."

"For what?"

Jory looked west.

"Mayhaps Robb knows."

"Mayhaps."

The little fire cracked behind them. Men slept or pretended to. The road lay blocked under starlight, and beyond it the west waited without explaining itself.

At last Tom stood.

"Wake me before dawn," he said.

Jory looked up. "You plan to sleep?"

"A little."

"Good."

Tom walked back to his bedroll under the trees. Dry ground beneath him. Dry cloak over him. Stars between branches instead of rain.

It should have felt peaceful.

It did not.

But for a few hours, nothing came down the road.

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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.