Redemption of the Dragon

Interlude · Interlude: From Red Rain to Salt

Interlude: From Red Rain to Salt

Tom woke to pain.

For a time there was nothing else. No name, no place, no past. Only pain, dull and deep, rolling through him with the slow cruelty of a tide. It lived in his ribs. It burned in his mouth. It pulsed behind his eyes, and when he tried to breathe, something inside him answered with a broken little knife.

He opened his eyes to darkness that moved.

Not torchlight, not at first. Darkness. Then a lantern swinging somewhere beyond his feet, throwing thin yellow light across beams slick with damp and a ceiling that rose and fell by inches. The world groaned around him. Wood complained. Water slapped hard against the belly of whatever held him. The air stank of salt, bilge, old vomit, rust, and men too frightened to sleep.

Tom tried to rise.

The world burst white.

Iron answered him before his body could. A chain jerked tight around his wrist, dragging him back against a wall of rough planks. The ring at his ankle bit through swollen flesh. His shoulder struck wood. Pain opened fresh and bright beneath his skin.

Someone near him breathed sharply.

"Tom?"

The voice was cracked almost past knowing.

Tom turned his head. The movement scraped fire down his neck, but he forced his eyes to find the shape in the dark. A man sat chained to the same wall, one arm bound close to his chest beneath filthy wrappings, hair hanging in his face, beard clotted dark at the jaw. His left eye was swollen half shut.

Jory.

For a heartbeat Tom did not understand why that hurt worse than the chains.

"Jory," he rasped.

Jory's mouth moved as if he meant to answer and had forgotten how. Then he shut it, swallowed, and nodded once.

Alive.

That word came first.

Then the rest began to gather behind it.

Tom looked past Jory into the hold. Shapes hunched along both walls. Some were men. Some were boys. A woman lay curled around herself beneath a sackcloth blanket, her wrists chained together. Two men whispered in a language Tom did not know. Farther off, someone prayed in the tongue of the Seven, each word shaking loose as the ship rolled.

"Where?" Tom asked.

Jory's face changed.

That was answer enough, for a moment.

"Ship," Jory said at last.

Tom shut his eyes.

The word did not fit. It should have been hovel. It should have been Riverlands. It should have been a widow with needle-sharp eyes pressing him down and telling him not to tear open her work. It should have been rain on a roof, hurt men breathing around him, the Green Fork lost and Robb Stark somewhere west with Jaime Lannister in chains.

Not ship.

Not salt.

Not iron.

He opened his eyes again. "The battle?"

Jory looked away.

Memory came.

Not all at once. In pieces.

Rain on his face. Mud beneath his cheek. Firelight broken in puddles. Music drifting from stone walls while men died outside them. Frey smiles wet as worms. Bolton cloaks pale in the dark. Cups in northern hands. Ale on the tongue. Blood at a man's eyes.

Poison, Jory had said.

Then the night had opened.

Steel at the wagons. Knives behind men too drunk or drugged to stand. Frey axes rising from welcome. Bolton spears lowered among the fires. The Twins high and closed above them. Men shouting for shields when there was no line left to shield.

Tom's fingers curled against the chain until the iron cut his skin.

"The wedding," he whispered.

Jory flinched as if the word were a hand raised against him.

The wedding.

Robb Stark inside. His mother. Greatjon. The river lords. Men with names large enough for songs and deaths large enough to change kingdoms. Tom had been outside with the common soldiers, with fires and bad ale and rain turning the ground to black sucking mud. They had laughed. Gods help them, they had laughed.

Tor had eaten half of Garrel's rescued sausage.

Tor.

Tom's breath caught.

Jory heard it. Of course he did. He had heard Tor breathe beside him all his life.

"No," Tom said, though no one had spoken.

Jory closed his good eye.

Memory struck harder.

A Frey axe coming low and mean for Jory's neck. Jory turning too slow. Tor stepping between them. The sound of steel biting into his back. Tor's face pale around the mouth, smiling anyway because he had never known when a jest was mercy and when it was cruelty.

Still ugly? he had asked.

Then the spear.

Not for Tor.

For Tom.

Tom saw it again, the Bolton point sliding out of rain and smoke, too quick, too close. He saw Tor slam into him with one shoulder and knock him into the mud. He saw the spear meant for Tom bury itself in Tor's belly. He saw Tor grab the shaft and pull the Bolton man closer, dragging death through himself because he would not let it pass him by cheaply.

Tom made a sound he did not recognize.

The chain at his wrist rattled.

Jory's voice came thin. "He saved you."

"Aye."

"He saved me first."

"Aye."

Jory opened his eye. There was nothing clean in it. No tears. No fury bright enough to be useful. Only a hollow thing that looked too old for him.

"He kept doing it," Jory said.

Tom remembered Tor still standing when no man should have stood. Bent around the spear. Axe wound black across his back. Knife in hand. A Frey man seeing him and choosing another road through the slaughter. Tor taking one step toward Jory.

Then another spear had struck him in the throat.

Tom had tried to shout.

Nothing had come out but blood.

He looked down at himself. Someone had stripped him of mail, boots, belt, knife, and honor. His tunic was stiff with old blood. Rough bandages crossed his ribs and shoulder, but they were dirty and carelessly tied, not a healer's work so much as a butcher's pause between cuts. His left wrist was swollen purple beneath the manacle. His right hand throbbed where a boot had crushed it in the mud.

"How long?" he asked.

Jory's mouth tightened. "Since?"

Since Tor. Since the wedding. Since the North broke under music. Since trust became a knife with a guest right's smile.

"Since I woke."

"You woke once before. Screamed. They hit you quiet."

Tom touched his tongue to a split in his lip. "Who?"

"Sailors. Frey men at first. Then not Frey."

The ship rolled. Wood groaned. Somewhere above, boots crossed the deck in a quick patter, followed by a man's curse and the creak of rope under strain.

"Where are they taking us?"

Jory did not answer.

The lantern swung wider. Light touched his face and made the bruises there look black.

"Jory."

"I do not know."

It was the truth. It was also not all of it.

Tom leaned his head back against the planks. He listened to the hold. Chains. Breathing. Water. A child's whimper smothered against cloth. The ship's belly was a low dark world, and every sound inside it belonged to someone who had lost something too large to name.

Above, a hatch opened.

Light spilled down in a hard square.

Men stirred. Chains scraped. The praying stopped.

A boy climbed down the ladder with a bucket in one hand and a bundle of hard bread tucked under his arm. Not a boy, perhaps. Fifteen. Sixteen. Young enough that the soft places had not yet been beaten from his face, though he was working hard at hiding them. His hair was brown and damp from spray. He wore a sailor's knife at his belt too large for his hand.

Behind him, a broader man shouted something down in a language Tom did not know.

The boy answered, then dropped lightly to the deckboards of the hold.

"Water," he said in the common tongue, though the word came round and strange in his mouth. "Quietly, or no water."

No one moved quickly. Chains taught slowness.

The boy began at the far wall, dipping a cup into the bucket and holding it to cracked mouths. Some cursed him. Some blessed him. He did not answer either. When he reached Tom, he hesitated.

Tom saw recognition then. Not of him. Of his size. His wounds. The northern look of him, maybe. Or only the way Jory had gone still beside him.

"You awake," the boy said.

"So it seems."

The boy held out the cup.

Tom looked at it. His throat ached badly enough to make pride feel foolish. He drank. The water was warm and tasted of barrel wood, but it was water, and for three swallows it was the finest thing in the world.

The boy gave Jory the cup next.

Jory drank less.

"Where are we?" Tom asked.

The boy glanced toward the hatch.

"Sea."

Jory gave a sound that might have been a laugh if laughter had died badly. "Clever lad."

The boy's ears reddened. "Narrow Sea, and not kind today."

"Going where?"

No answer.

Tom shifted, and the chain at his wrist scraped along the wall. "I asked going where."

The boy looked at Tom's hand, at the swelling, at the blood dried under his nails. He looked young again.

"Myr," he said.

The word meant little to Tom at first. A place across the water. One of the Free Cities. Fine lenses. Fine carpets. Men in taverns had spoken of Myr the way poor men spoke of everything far away, as if distance itself made a place rich.

Jory understood sooner.

"No," he said.

The boy flinched.

"What happens in Myr?" Tom asked, though he already knew something had changed in the hold. Men nearby had stopped pretending not to listen.

The boy swallowed. "Auction."

The chain went cold around Tom's wrist.

"What auction?"

The boy looked miserable now, and angry that misery had found him where anyone could see. "You know. Men in chains always know."

Tom reached for him without thinking.

Iron stopped him short.

The boy stumbled back anyway, spilling water across the boards. His hand went to his knife.

Jory leaned forward as far as his chains allowed. "Who sold us?"

The boy's eyes flicked to him.

"Who?" Jory said again, and there was enough of the old Jory in it that the nearest prisoners shrank from the word.

"River men," the boy said.

"Frey?"

He did not answer.

Tom watched his face.

"Frey," Tom said.

The boy looked down.

There it was. Not spoken, but plain.

Something in Tom wanted to roar. Something in him wanted to laugh. Guest right had not ended with murder, then. The Freys had found coin in the breathing. The dead could be stripped, and the living could be sold.

"Boltons?" Jory asked.

The boy shook his head too quickly. "I do not know. I only heard. Frey men brought some. Not many alive. Captain paid in coin and salt silver. Said strong northmen sell well. Fighters sell well."

Strong northmen.

Fighters.

Tom looked at the other chained shapes in the hold and understood the word they had become.

Cargo.

The boy thrust the bread toward him as if wanting the thing finished. "Eat. Men live longer when they eat, even angry men."

"For the auction?" Tom asked.

The boy's jaw worked.

"For anything," he said.

Jory stared at him. "What is your name?"

"Lew."

"Lew what?"

"Only Lew. No house, no fine second name."

Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

The boy saw something pass over his face and mistook it. "You think that funny?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Tom thought of a crofter's hovel and a widow touching water to his lips. Where? he had asked. Riverlands, she had said. The battle? Lost. He had woken then among the almost dead and been given the shape of defeat. Four days stolen from him, and a road west waiting beyond the door.

Now he had woken among the stolen.

And the road had become the sea.

"I was just Tom once," he said.

Lew frowned as if this were a trick.

Jory's head dipped, whether from pain or grief Tom could not tell. "He still is."

The hatchman shouted again.

Lew jerked like a dog called to heel. He shoved the bread into Tom's lap, then gave Jory his share. "Quiet," he warned, though the word had lost its teeth. "Captain hears trouble, captain makes examples."

"Lew," Tom said.

The boy paused with one foot on the ladder.

"How many days to Myr?"

"Nine days, mayhaps less if the wind keeps friendly."

Nine days.

The boy climbed. The hatch closed. Darkness returned, though not entirely. The lantern still swung. The ship still breathed around them.

For a while no one spoke.

Tom held the hard bread in his good hand and felt hunger rise like shame. He broke the piece in half. One part he kept. The other he pushed along the boards toward the woman curled beneath the sackcloth. She stared at it as if it might vanish. Then she took it and hid it against her chest.

Jory watched him.

"You should eat."

"So should she."

"You are hurt worse."

"She is chained too."

Jory looked away first.

Tom chewed. The bread was old enough to fight back. It hurt his split lip and broken teeth, but he swallowed it anyway. Live longer if you eat, Lew had said. For anything.

The words settled.

Tom flexed his right hand. Pain flared up to the elbow. Two fingers moved poorly. One not at all. His ribs protested each breath. His head felt packed with wool and iron. He was chained to a ship's wall, bound for a city he had never seen, to be sold like a horse or a sword or a sack of barley.

Tor was dead.

Robb Stark was likely dead.

The North outside the Twins was ash and mud and screaming memory.

But Jory breathed beside him.

That mattered.

It did not make the grief smaller. It gave it a place to stand.

"We are not dying in Myr," Tom said.

Jory's eye shifted toward him.

"No?"

"No."

"You have a plan?"

Tom looked at the manacles. At the wall rings. At the bolts dark with rust. At the bucket Lew had left too near a post before climbing away. At the way the lantern hook swayed free each time the ship rolled hard to port. At the other prisoners listening while pretending not to.

He thought of Tor stepping between axe and brother. Between spear and friend. Between death and everyone else, again and again, until there was nothing left of him but the space he had made for others to keep breathing.

"Not yet," Tom said.

Jory's mouth moved. This time, it was almost the old shape of him. Bitter, broken, but there.

"Good. I hate dull prisons."

Tom breathed once.

It hurt.

He did it again anyway.

Above them, sailors shouted into wind. The ship creaked eastward over black water. Behind them lay rain, mud, red wedding music, and the hand Tom had not been able to reach.

Ahead lay Myr.

Auction.

Chains.

Whatever came after.

Tom leaned his head back against the wall and held himself awake as long as he could. Pain had followed him from the Green Fork to the Twins, from mud to salt, from death's maw into bondage. It whispered the same soft, reasonable things it always had.

Sleep. Yield. Be still. Let the world carry you.

But the world had carried him far enough.

Tom closed his good hand around the chain at his wrist.

Iron could break.

Men could too.

He meant to learn which would go first.

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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.