Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 17: Northern Acquisition

The gate shuddered again.

This time, one of the braces cracked.

The sound carried up through the stone like a bone breaking in the city's chest.

Men on the wall flinched. Some tried not to show it. Some failed openly. A boy in a guard's cap too large for his head dropped a bundle of arrows and stared at the gatehouse floor as if the fallen shafts might explain what to do next.

Below, the Ibbenese host roared.

Tom had heard battle cries before.

Northmen bellowed. Freys shrieked when courage ran thin. Arena crowds howled for blood because blood was safer when viewed from seats. The Ibbenese sound was different. It came from broad chests and thick throats, a harsh, rolling thunder built to shake courage loose before steel ever touched flesh.

It worked on some men.

Tom saw it in the defenders of Ifequevron.

Hands tightened poorly around spears. Archers forgot to nock. A man near the stair whispered a prayer too quickly, then began again because he had lost the words. The city's soldiers had armor and walls, but most had spent their lives guarding gates against smugglers, shaking coins from traders, or looking dangerous beside Lo Han's banners. They had not expected hundreds of Ibbenese warriors to come against them with stones in hand and hatred in their mouths.

Setzuko stood beside Tom, still gripping the parapet.

"If the gate falls," she said, "the market dies first."

Tom looked down.

The market square had become a mouth of panic. People fled in every direction and found every direction blocked by fear. Farmers dragged carts sideways. A woman tried to carry two children at once and nearly dropped both. Old men stumbled. Goats screamed. A pot of soup overturned in the street, steam rising around feet that did not stop.

Smallfolk.

Always the smallfolk.

Tom turned to the nearest guard captain, a narrow man with a red cord around his helm and terror carefully hidden behind anger.

"Open the gate," Tom said.

The captain stared. "Are you mad?"

Setzuko translated before Tom could answer, then added something sharp in YiTish.

The captain recoiled as if slapped.

"He says the wall will hold," Setzuko said.

"It will not."

"He says the gate must stay closed."

Tom looked down as another stone struck the outer doors. The cracked brace shifted. Dust spilled from the lintel.

"If it breaks inward, they pour through where we cannot choose the ground," he said. "If we go out, we choose the ground."

Setzuko translated.

The captain argued.

Boro leaned over him.

"Tell him," Boro said, "that I have had a long morning and am in no mood to ask twice."

Setzuko did not translate that precisely.

Whatever she said worked better.

The captain swallowed and shouted orders down the stair.

Tom turned to his own people.

"Jory, with me. Boro, Mera, Salla, Darro, Corren, Nesaro, Qavo, to the gate. The rest of you take the wall and keep arrows on their flanks. Shoot anyone trying to get around us."

"There are hundreds," Daxos said.

"Then do not miss."

Daxos gave him a thin smile. "There is our northern comfort."

Setzuko stepped closer. "My people will not follow you."

"They do not have to follow me. They only have to stand."

"They have no reason to trust you."

Tom looked over the wall again, at the market and the children and the host beyond the gate.

"Then give them one."

Setzuko held his gaze for one heartbeat.

Then she turned and shouted.

Her voice cut through the confusion like a knife through cloth. YiTish poured from her fast, hard, furious. She pointed at the gate. At the fleeing people. At the dead banners of the Lo family still hanging over the keep. Men turned toward her. Women stopped dragging crates. Guards looked up from the stair. Tom did not understand the words, but he understood what words did when they struck the right wound.

Shame.

Memory.

Home.

Setzuko was not asking them to love him.

She was reminding them what they would lose.

The gate chains began to grind.

Tom ran down the wall stair.

By the time he reached the yard before the gatehouse, Ifequevron had begun to choose.

Not bravely.

Not cleanly.

But choosing did not need beauty to matter.

Men gathered around him in uneven clusters. City guards with lacquered shields. Butchers with cleavers. Two dyers still stained blue to the elbows carrying long poles. Farmers with hay forks. A boy with a sling and no shoes. Boro rolled his shoulders and took back his axe from Tom, then looked regretfully at the cracked gate.

"I liked that lock," he said.

"You hated that lock."

"I liked hating it."

Jory tightened the strap on his shield.

"Tom."

"Aye."

"Do not do anything foolish."

Tom looked at the gate as it opened inward by handspans.

"That order is late."

"I know."

The gap widened.

Beyond it, Ibbenese warriors surged forward, surprised at first, then delighted. They had expected fear behind wood. Instead they found men coming out to meet them.

Tom stepped through first.

The space outside the gate was not a field. It was a hard-packed slope leading down from the wall to the road, dusty and broken by old cart ruts. Good for defense if the line held. Terrible if it broke. The Ibbenese were already coming uphill, shields high, axes ready, faces painted in black streaks beneath leather helms and braided beards.

"Archers!" Setzuko screamed from the wall.

The first volley fell.

Ifequevron's archers fired from the walls and gatehouse in a ragged storm. Some shafts went wide. Some struck shields. Enough found flesh. Men stumbled in the front ranks. Ibbenese archers answered from below, short bows bending, arrows clattering against stone, punching into wood, cutting through the men too slow to duck.

Tom raised his sword.

"Hold!"

The city's line trembled.

"Hold!"

The Ibbenese came closer.

Boro planted himself to Tom's left with a grin that had no humor in it. Jory stood at his right, shield forward. Mera vanished half a step behind the front rank where men would not notice her until they were already bleeding.

The Ibbenese struck.

The first clash nearly drove the defenders back through the gate.

Tom caught an axe on his guard and felt the force bite through both arms. Jory's shield rang. Boro roared and sent a man tumbling downhill with one blow. A farmer beside Tom screamed and stabbed blindly over a shield. Someone fell underfoot. Someone else stepped into the gap before it widened.

"Hold!" Tom shouted again.

This time, the word had teeth.

The line held.

Barely.

For three breaths, the world became weight and noise. Axes hammered shields. Spears found bellies. Men slipped in blood that had not been there a moment before. Arrows hissed overhead from both directions. The gate behind them stayed open, and that mattered because it meant retreat was possible, which meant panic had somewhere to run if panic won.

Then Jory shouted from beside him.

"Protect the smallfolk!"

The words struck Tom harder than any axe.

Something opened.

Not in the sky.

Not in the earth.

In him.

The world sharpened until pain became color and breath became distance. The slope, the shields, the angle of an axe head, the weak knee of the man lunging from the left, the fear in the eyes of the dyer behind him, the child crying somewhere beneath the gatehouse arch, all of it arrived at once and became simple.

Protect.

The smallfolk.

Heat moved through his blood without burning it.

The sword in his hand felt less like steel than answer.

Tom stepped forward.

An Ibbenese axe came for his head. He was already beneath it. His blade opened the man's thigh. His shoulder struck another shield aside. He turned, cut, moved, drove, and the space before him broke. Men seemed slow. Not foolish. Not weak. Simply bound to the ordinary pace of bodies while something older and stranger carried Tom through gaps before they became gaps.

He did not think.

He did not rage.

He answered need.

The Ibbenese line folded where he touched it.

One man fell clutching his wrist. Another spun away with blood across his face. A third tried to grapple and met the hilt of Tom's sword hard enough to break teeth. Tom cut a spear shaft in two, drove the broken end into another man's throat, and kept moving. He did not always kill. There was no time to choose mercy or death as men liked to imagine choice. Some fell dead. Some fell screaming. Some crawled away because the magic, if it was magic, cared about stopping them more than ending them.

"Gods," someone shouted behind him.

"No gods!" Jory roared back. "With him!"

That saved the line.

Men who had been ready to run saw Tom drive into the Ibbenese host and found enough courage to follow in his wake. City guards surged. Farmers jabbed. Boro laughed once, wild and low, and swung his axe through a shield rim. Mera cut a man behind the knee and let him drag two others down with him.

Tom did not see them.

He saw everything.

The slope opened. The Ibbenese tried to close around him. He was not there when they did. A hooked club tore his cloak. A spear grazed his ribs. Blood ran hot down his side, mayhaps his, mayhaps not. He took a shield from one man's hands and smashed it into another's face. He drove forward until bodies lay behind him in a jagged path and the roar of the host changed.

Fear entered it.

That, too, he heard.

The magic did not last.

It never asked permission to come.

It gave no warning when it left.

One moment, Tom moved like the world had made room for him.

The next, his wounded body remembered itself all at once.

Pain returned in a rush so sharp it nearly brought him to his knees.

He staggered.

An Ibbenese warrior saw it and lunged.

Jory's shield struck the man from the side and sent him sprawling.

"Tom!"

Tom breathed.

The breath hurt.

Good.

Pain meant he was still a man.

He looked around and saw what he had done.

Several dozen Ibbenese lay dead or wounded along the slope, scattered in a broken crescent before the gate. The defenders stared at him. The attackers stared too. Even the arrows had slowed, as if both sides had forgotten who had ordered the sky to continue killing.

Tom lifted his sword.

His voice came rough, but it carried.

"Who commands you?"

Setzuko translated from the wall.

The Ibbenese murmured among themselves.

Tom stepped forward despite Jory's hand reaching for him.

"Face me!"

This time, he did not need translation to be understood.

Four men came forward.

They were not kings.

Not lords, mayhaps, in any southern sense.

But command sat on them plainly.

The first was thick through the shoulders and bald except for a braided strip of hair down the back of his skull. His beard was divided into three iron-bound points, and his round shield bore the black mark of a tusked face.

"Thogg," Setzuko called from above. "Clan Casat."

The second had a broken nose that had healed sideways and eyes like winter flint. His armor was patched from at least five dead men, but he carried a fine axe with a silvered haft.

"Norg. Clan Gasso."

The third was taller than the others, scarred along one cheek, with two spears crossed across his back and a long knife in each hand.

"Gorn. Clan Joth."

The fourth was shorter, older, and wider than all of them, his beard white at the chin, his left ear missing. He carried no shield, only a heavy club studded with black iron.

"Norbo. Clan Thuk."

Boro made a low sound. "Those are not friendly names."

"Are any names friendly before breakfast?" Mera asked.

Tom kept his eyes on the four men.

The magic was gone.

He felt that absence like cold where fire had been. His arms shook. His ribs screamed. His head throbbed from Lo Han's helm and too little sleep and too much blood. There would be no old force moving him now.

Only skill.

Only what Kemal had beaten into him, what the arena had sharpened, what Jory had trusted, what survival had refused to let die.

"One at a time or together?" Tom asked.

Setzuko translated.

The four men looked at one another.

Thogg spat into the dirt and came first.

He struck like a falling door.

Tom gave ground at once.

No pride.

The axe passed close enough that wind touched his cheek. Thogg followed with the shield, trying to crush him backward. Tom slid to the outside, cut at the knee, found hide and hard muscle, and retreated before the answering swing took his arm. Thogg was slower than Lo Buto. Stronger than Lo Han. Harder to move than either.

So Tom did not move him.

He moved around him.

Three exchanges. Four. On the fifth, Thogg overreached by less than a handspan. Tom drove his pommel into the man's wrist, turned the axe aside, and put his blade at Thogg's throat before the larger man could recover.

Thogg froze.

Tom withdrew.

"Yield."

Setzuko's voice carried the word.

Thogg looked as if he might rather swallow his own beard.

Then he stepped back.

Norg came next without waiting.

His fine axe was fast.

Too fast.

Tom nearly paid for expecting weight where there was speed. The silver haft flashed. Pain opened across his shoulder. Jory cursed somewhere behind him, but Tom could not afford to hear it. Norg pressed, pressed again, then changed rhythm when Tom began to read him.

Clever.

Tom bled and smiled despite himself.

Norg snarled.

That was the mistake.

Anger made him honest.

Tom let the next blow glance from his guard, stepped inside the haft, and struck Norg in the face with the crossguard. The man's broken nose broke again. Before he could fall back, Tom swept his leg and put him flat in the dirt with a boot on his axe hand.

"Yield."

Norg spat blood.

Then nodded once.

Gorn did not come close.

He threw a knife.

Tom turned enough that it cut his sleeve instead of his heart.

The second knife was already coming.

Jory shouted warning too late.

Tom caught the second on his blade, more luck than art, and rushed because distance belonged to Gorn and Tom had no wish to rent space from him. Gorn drew both spears from his back with terrifying smoothness. Not two spears. Shorter than that. Heavy throwing spears, good for thrusting too.

He used them like fangs.

Tom took a cut along the thigh. Another across his forearm. He could not get inside without giving up blood. So he gave up dirt instead.

He dropped as Gorn thrust high, rolled beneath the second spear's return, and came up behind the taller man's left side. His blade stopped against the back of Gorn's neck.

"Yield."

Gorn's hands opened.

The spears fell.

Norbo came last.

He did not rush.

He walked forward with the iron-studded club resting against one shoulder and looked at Tom for a long time.

Then he spoke.

Setzuko translated after a pause. "He asks if you are man, demon, or storm."

Tom's breath came hard.

"Tell him I am tired."

Setzuko did.

Norbo laughed.

The laugh made Tom like him for half a heartbeat.

Then the club came down and liking became a luxury.

Norbo fought like old roots.

Slow only until he was not. Heavy only until the angle changed. He did not waste blows. He did not chase. He let Tom move, watched the limp growing in his left leg, and began placing attacks where Tom would have to pay for every answer.

Tom's world narrowed again, but this time no magic widened it.

Only focus.

Club.

Step.

Breath.

Guard.

Pain.

Norbo feinted toward the wounded shoulder and turned the club at Tom's knee.

Tom leapt badly and landed worse. Pain flashed. The next blow caught his sword near the hilt and nearly tore it from his grip. Norbo moved in to finish it.

Tom did the foolish thing because sensible answers had all become predictable.

He slammed forward into the old man's chest.

Norbo outweighed him by half again, but surprise did what strength could not. The club had no room. Tom hooked a boot behind Norbo's heel, drove with his shoulder, and they both went down. Tom landed on top badly, lost the sword, found his knife, and pressed it beneath Norbo's beard before the old man could wrench him off.

They lay there breathing into each other's faces.

Norbo's eyes narrowed.

Then he smiled, showing three missing teeth.

He tapped the dirt twice.

Tom rolled away and staggered upright.

The slope had gone silent.

All four clan leaders stood alive.

Beaten.

Not humiliated.

That mattered.

Tom raised his sword with a hand that did not want to hold it.

"Go home," he said. "Take your wounded. Leave this city."

Setzuko translated.

The four leaders stepped back toward their men.

For a moment, it seemed enough.

Then the Ibbenese began to growl again.

Not in attack.

Not yet.

But pride was a hungry thing, and hundreds of armed men did not easily retreat because four leaders had tasted dirt. The clans shifted. Shields rose. Men looked to one another, searching for permission to remember their anger.

Tom felt the defenders behind him tense.

Jory came close.

"They are going to try again."

"Aye."

"You cannot do that again."

"No."

Boro lifted his axe. "Then we do it ugly."

The sky answered before Tom could.

A shadow swept across the slope.

Men looked up.

The dragon landed between Tom and the Ibbenese host like a falling piece of night.

The impact threw dust and loose stones outward in a ring. Tom stumbled back. Boro swore. Ibbenese warriors cried out and broke formation for the first time with true fear. The dragon's wounded wing dragged for a heartbeat, then snapped half open, red-black membrane torn and blazing in the sun. Its black scales shimmered crimson beneath, each breath showing heat in the seams of its mouth.

It lowered its head toward the clans.

And snarled.

Not loudly.

Not at first.

The sound began low, beneath hearing, a vibration in the ground and bone. Then it rose until shields trembled and horses screamed inside the city gate. Smoke curled from its jaws. Its red eyes fixed on the four leaders who had challenged Tom.

Thogg dropped his axe.

Norg followed.

Gorn's spears hit the ground together.

Norbo stared longer than the others, old pride fighting old wisdom.

Then he let the iron-studded club fall.

All four men knelt.

Behind them, the host broke into kneeling by waves.

The dragon looked back once.

At Tom.

There was no gratitude in its gaze.

No obedience.

Only recognition, mayhaps. Or warning. Or the terrible freedom of a creature that had decided, for one breath, not to burn him.

Then it leapt.

The wounded wing beat hard. Dust curled outward. Men threw up arms to shield their faces. The dragon rose badly, fiercely, and higher with every ragged stroke until it cleared the wall, circled once over Ifequevron, and vanished north into the hard blue sky.

No one moved until it was gone.

Tom turned back to the kneeling men.

His voice felt smaller after a dragon's snarl, but it carried all the same.

"You have a choice."

Setzuko translated from behind him, her voice hoarse.

"Continue as you have. Raid farms. Burn homes. Kill people who did not choose the lords above them. Spill blood until your sons inherit nothing but old hate."

The words moved through the kneeling host.

Tom looked at the four leaders.

"Or join me."

Setzuko translated that too.

The silence that followed was stranger than battle.

Thogg spoke first.

Setzuko listened, then looked at Tom.

"He says a man does not own clans because he has a sword and a beast's favor."

"Good."

She blinked. "Good?"

"He is right."

Setzuko translated. Thogg looked surprised. Norg laughed once through his broken nose and regretted it immediately.

Norbo spoke next, slower.

Setzuko's expression changed.

"They will join," she said, "if you honor their people by accepting one of their traditions."

Jory stiffened. "What tradition?"

Gorn called something over his shoulder.

An old woman came forward from the Ibbenese ranks.

She was smaller than Tom expected and bent with age, but the warriors parted for her as if she carried a crown. Her hair was white and braided with bone beads. Her face was tattooed from brow to chin in black lines like winter branches. A pouch of tools hung from her belt. In one hand she carried a curved knife. In the other, a small bone cup.

Jory stepped between her and Tom.

"No."

Tom touched his arm.

"Move."

"You do not know what she is doing."

"No."

"That is my point."

Tom looked at the kneeling clans. At the defenders of Ifequevron watching from the wall and gate. At the farmers and dyers and boys who had taken up spears because their homes stood behind them. At the bodies between both peoples.

"If this stops them killing smallfolk, I can spare some hair."

"And if it is more than hair?"

Tom gave him a tired look.

Jory's jaw clenched.

"I hate when you become reasonable in the worst possible direction."

"I know."

Jory stepped aside, but not far.

The old shaman came to Tom and studied him from boots to brow. She smelled of smoke, salt, and bitter herbs. She said something that made Norbo smile.

"What?" Tom asked.

Setzuko's mouth twitched despite the blood on her cheek. "She says your head is badly shaped for honor, but she will do what she can."

Boro made a wounded noise. "I like her."

Tom sat on a flat stone because standing had become more ambition than wisdom.

The shaman took a fistful of hair from the left side of his head and cut it away with quick, ruthless strokes. Curls fell into the dust. More followed. The knife scraped close to his scalp. Cold air touched skin that had not felt sun in years.

Jory watched every movement like a man preparing to murder a grandmother.

Then came the needle.

Not one.

Several.

Bone and iron.

The shaman dipped them into the dark mixture in the cup and began.

Tom had known pain that tried to kill him.

This was not that.

This was pain that insisted on being noticed.

Tiny bites, again and again, along the shaved left side of his head. Lines. Curves. Points. The old woman worked with astonishing speed, stretching skin with one hand, tapping ink beneath it with the other. Blood ran warm near his ear. Someone began a low chant among the Ibbenese. Others joined. The sound rose and fell like feet marching over frozen ground.

Tom fixed his eyes on the slope beyond the gate.

On the bodies.

On the living.

When the shaman finished, she wiped blood and ink away with a strip of rough cloth, then held up a polished bit of bronze.

Tom looked.

A dragon's head stared back from the shaved side of his skull, black lines sharp against reddened skin. Not Valyrian. Not like the elegant beasts carved over Oros. This dragon was angular, tribal, all teeth, horn, and warning. Its eye curved above his temple. Its jaw followed the line above his ear. It looked less like a sigil than a challenge.

The shaman pressed two fingers to the tattoo, then to Tom's brow.

Thogg bowed his head.

The other leaders followed.

Tom stood carefully.

"Thogg of clan Casat," he said.

Setzuko translated.

Thogg looked up.

"Norg of clan Gasso. Gorn of clan Joth. Norbo of clan Thuk."

Each man lifted his head when named.

"You will return to your clans. You will gather any others who would make war here without permission, and you will subdue them."

Setzuko paused before translating, then did it anyway.

The reaction was immediate and unhappy.

Voices rose. Norg barked a protest. Gorn looked as if he would rather fight again. Thogg spat to the side. Norbo only watched Tom with old, heavy eyes.

Tom waited.

When the noise thinned, he spoke again.

"You will not raid farmers. You will not burn homes. You will not slaughter people because their lords are fools. Any clan that mistreats smallfolk answers to you first."

Setzuko translated.

"And if you fail," Tom said, "they answer to me."

That needed no translation to be understood.

The four leaders looked toward the sky where the dragon had vanished.

Then, one by one, they nodded.

Not happily.

That was fine.

Tom had never needed happy men.

Only bound ones.

The Ibbenese withdrew before midday.

Not as friends.

Not as conquered servants either.

They gathered their dead with rough tenderness, bound wounds, lifted the men who could not walk, and moved north in clan clusters beneath lowered banners. The defenders of Ifequevron watched from the wall in silence. No one cheered. Cheering would have been too simple for what had happened.

Setzuko stood beside Tom as the last of the host passed beyond the ridge.

"You realize they may obey you only until fear fades," she said.

"Fear fades slowly when it has wings."

"And when the dragon does not return?"

Tom touched the tender skin near the new tattoo and winced.

"Then I hope the memory lasts longer than sense."

"That is not governance."

"No. That part is yours."

Setzuko turned to him.

For once, she looked genuinely uncertain.

"Mine?"

"Lo Han is dead. Lo Buto is dead. Lo Feng fled or hides, and if she comes back, she will find no chair waiting."

"Ifequevron will not accept a foreign boy naming its ruler."

"Good. I am not naming its ruler."

"You just said–"

"I am naming a governor under the authority of the Tears for now. Someone who knows the city, knows its people, and hates the Lo family enough not to become them too quickly."

Setzuko stared.

Mera, nearby, said, "That was almost a compliment."

"It was an order," Tom said.

"Safer."

Setzuko's eyes narrowed. "You do not have the right."

Tom looked back toward the city.

The gate stood damaged but upright. The market was ruined in places. Smoke drifted from a stall that had caught fire and been put out badly. People emerged carefully from alleys, cellars, doorways, anywhere fear had tucked them away. A little girl held a chicken to her chest as if it were treasure. A dyer with one arm in a sling helped an old Ibbenese prisoner drink from a cup because grief, like mercy, sometimes ignored orders.

"No," Tom said. "I have responsibility."

Setzuko went quiet.

"Protect the smallfolk," he said. "Yours and theirs. Clear the roads of bandits. Stop Lo Feng's people from returning to old habits. Keep the farms safe. Keep the markets open. Work with the Tears riders. Send word to Oros and Elyria when you can. And watch for the dragon."

Her face changed at that last part.

"You think it will come back."

"I do not know."

"But you hope."

"Aye."

That, at least, was honest.

The eight Tears riders remained in Ifequevron.

Serra argued least, which meant she had expected it. Daxos looked resigned and immediately began asking merchants where records were kept, because some men found comfort in ledgers even after battle. Larra and Vosh took the gatehouse. Old Rovan went to inspect the road wells. Nym, Pol, and Hareth began sorting which guards had served Lo Buto out of fear, which out of coin, and which should be watched with both hands near steel.

Setzuko watched them disperse through her city with a look somewhere between gratitude and dread.

"They will report on me," she said.

"Aye."

"To you?"

"To the Tears. To Aemon, likely. To Kemal if they are wise."

"And you?"

Tom looked north again.

Empty sky.

"I am going home."

Boro snorted. "That word is doing ambitious work."

"Oros, then."

"Less ambitious. Still strange."

Jory came from the gatehouse carrying Tom's torn cloak and wearing the expression of a man who had been saving up anger carefully.

"You are bleeding in six places."

"Only six?"

"That I have found from a distance."

"Then we should leave before you find more."

Jory looked at the shaved and tattooed side of Tom's head.

"Vissenya is going to have thoughts."

Mera tilted her head. "Good ones?"

"Many," Jory said. "That is the danger."

Boro leaned closer to inspect the tattoo. "It suits him."

"It makes him look like he lost an argument with a shrine wall," Jory said.

Tom touched the tender skin again and immediately regretted it.

"It stopped a war."

"For now."

"For now is sometimes all men get."

Setzuko walked with them to the gate as afternoon stretched long across Ifequevron's damaged streets.

People watched Tom pass.

Some bowed.

Some stared at the tattoo.

Some looked afraid.

Some looked hopeful, which was worse because hope asked more than fear and forgave less.

Tom did not know what to do with any of it.

So he kept walking.

At the gate, Setzuko stopped.

"If Lo Feng lives, she will not forgive this."

"No."

"If the Ibbenese break oath, they may come worse."

"Aye."

"If the dragon returns, we may not be able to stop anyone from trying to claim it again."

Tom looked at the sky one last time.

Nothing black. Nothing crimson. No ragged wing cutting the blue. The dragon had gone wherever wild things went when men stopped putting bars between them and the world.

"Then do not claim it," he said. "Watch. Learn. Leave it free."

Setzuko nodded slowly.

Tom mounted with effort. His body hated him for it. His head throbbed. The tattoo burned. The wounds pulled. The road ahead seemed longer than the road that had brought them there, though it pointed home.

Jory rode beside him.

Boro and Mera followed.

Darro, Salla, Corren, Nesaro, and Qavo took their places around the small company that remained.

Behind them, Ifequevron stood bruised but alive.

Ahead, the road bent west through ash-colored fields.

Above, the sky stayed empty.

Tom rode toward Oros with no idea where the dragon had gone.

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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.