Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 21: City of Monsters

Mantarys rose from the black hills like something that had survived being buried and resented the living for noticing.

Tom saw it first through heat shimmer.

At a distance, the city might have been impressive.

High walls. Dark towers. Old Valyrian stone fused with newer masonry in uneven layers. Smoke rising in careful lines from within. A road of cracked black stone ran toward its main gate, broad enough for wagons, armies, and pride. The hills around it had been cut open by mines and quarries. Terraces clung to slopes where thin crops struggled under dust.

Then they drew closer.

Impressive became cruel.

The fields outside the walls were brown where they should have been green. Irrigation ditches sat low. Work sheds stood locked. Three villages lay in sight of the city and all three looked hungry. People watched Tom's column pass from doorways and dry stone walls, faces hollow, hands empty. Children did not run after the horses. Dogs did not bark. Even fear seemed to have spent itself here and settled into the dust.

The march from Oros had been uneventful.

Tom no longer trusted uneventful.

Behind him rode the men he had chosen because he trusted them least.

The Ghiscari marched well. Better than many would have. Shields in line, spears upright, steps even despite the heat. The scarred-eye veteran, whose name Tom had finally learned was Hazghan, held the front of their file with the watchfulness of a man who understood command even when no one had formally given it.

The sellswords marched differently.

Loose. Talkative. Calculating. They laughed too loudly when they wanted to seem unconcerned, complained too little when they wanted to seem disciplined, and watched Frostfyre too often when they thought Tom was not looking.

The pit fighters were easiest to understand.

Boro hated the city on sight.

"That place needs hitting," he said.

Mera, riding beside him, looked at the walls. "Which part?"

"All parts."

Jory came up on Tom's right, shield across his back, face hard.

"You see the villages?"

"Aye."

"Then we are not early."

Tom looked at the main gate.

"No."

They were expected.

Mantarys had closed itself before them.

The main gates were shut, ironbound and black, tall enough to make men below feel like insects if they were inclined toward poetry or fear. The walls were lined with crossbowmen in dark leather and dull metal caps. Not a nervous levy. Not entirely. Some held their weapons with the lazy confidence of men accustomed to killing from safety. Others looked too young and too hungry to know whether they guarded the city or the masters who had locked food inside it.

Atop the gatehouse stood four men.

The masters of Mantarys had chosen visibility with care.

One was enormously fat, wrapped in black silk embroidered with red thread, his cheeks powdered to hide veins beneath the skin. One was long and narrow, bald, with a jeweled collar resting at his throat like a polished shackle. One had grey-green skin mottled along the jaw and wore a mask over the lower half of his face, though his eyes smiled enough for all of it. The fourth was smaller than the others, hunched and bright-eyed, with hands covered in rings and a cloak lined in pale fur despite the heat.

Bodyguards stood behind them.

Crossbowmen stood beside them.

The four looked down on Tom's force as if judging livestock.

Tom rode forward until Jory hissed a warning.

He stopped just outside easy crossbow range.

"Masters of Mantarys!" Tom shouted.

The fat one lifted a hand to his ear theatrically.

Tom hated him immediately.

"Open your gates. I come in the name of the good people of this city, who suffer under your hoarded grain and your fear."

Laughter rolled along the gatehouse.

Not from the crossbowmen.

From the masters.

The narrow bald man leaned over the parapet. "The good people of this city eat when we feed them, work when we command them, and suffer when they deserve instruction."

Mera muttered, "I have changed my mind. Boro may hit all parts."

Tom kept his eyes on the masters.

"Open the gates."

The masked one spread his hands. "So stern. So northern. So very far from your snows."

"And yet here."

The hunched master gave a high laugh. "Here with sellswords, broken slaves, and Ghiscari dogs. We tremble."

Hazghan's scarred eye did not move.

Tom wondered whether the man understood enough of the insult.

He suspected he did.

"We offer a game," said the fat master.

Jory's hand tightened on his reins.

Tom said nothing.

"You speak for suffering peasants, yes? For hungry mouths? For the noble little worms below our walls?" The fat master smiled. "Let the worms have a champion, then. Best ours in single combat, and we open the gate."

"You will allow entry?"

"With honor."

Boro laughed once, low and ugly. "He does not know the word."

Jory leaned close. "Trap."

"Aye."

"Then do not step into it."

Tom looked at the walls.

Crossbows. Closed gates. Hungry villages behind him. Grain somewhere inside, locked under guard while children grew quiet outside the walls.

He thought of Vissenya.

Come back.

He thought of his answer.

The only honest one.

"I accept," Tom shouted.

The masters smiled.

The gate opened only partway.

Not enough for men to rush through.

Enough for something to come out.

At first Tom thought it was two men walking badly together.

Then the shape stepped into the light.

The champion of Mantarys was monstrous.

Not a giant. Not wholly. But giant blood had touched him somewhere in the crooked history of his bones. He stood a head and shoulders taller than Boro and nearly twice as broad. His spine bent to one side, giving his whole body a twisted, leaning shape. One shoulder rose higher than the other. His jaw jutted forward beneath a brow thick enough to shadow his eyes. Patches of coarse hair grew along his arms and neck. Scars ran everywhere.

He carried a massive sword in one hand.

In the other, a club made from dark ironwood banded with steel.

Everyone took several steps back.

Even some of the crossbowmen shifted on the wall.

The gates shut behind him.

Jory said, "Tom."

"I know."

"No magic?"

Tom looked at Frostfyre.

"Not that I feel."

"Then use your feet."

"Kemal?"

"And every other man who hit me until I learned."

Tom dismounted.

Frostfyre came free with a sound too clean for the dust before Mantarys.

The champion watched the blade.

For a moment, something like interest moved behind his heavy eyes.

Then the fat master shouted from above, "Begin!"

The champion swung.

Tom barely lived through the first blow.

The massive sword came down with terrible speed for something so large. Tom moved aside, not enough, felt the wind of it drag at his cloak, and stumbled when the club swept for his ribs. Frostfyre caught the club near the banding. The impact rang through his arms hard enough to numb his fingers.

He retreated.

The champion followed.

Slow, yes.

But slow did not mean harmless when each step covered so much ground and each swing changed the air.

Tom circled left.

The champion turned awkwardly, favoring one leg. Tom saw it, moved toward the weakness, and nearly lost his head when the crooked body hid a quick backhand with the club. He ducked low. The club clipped his shoulder and spun him half around.

Pain flashed white.

The walls laughed.

Tom tasted blood where he had bitten his tongue.

He heard Jory shouting something.

Could not spare room for it.

The champion came again.

Sword high. Club low.

Tom gave ground and kept giving it.

Dust rose around his boots. Frostfyre met steel once and screamed. Met the club twice and bit deeper than ordinary steel should have. The champion's strength drove him back every time. Tom's arms shook. His shoulder burned. His ribs remembered too many old injuries and promised to become new ones if he misjudged even once.

He needed the man smaller.

Could not make him smaller.

So he made the weapons smaller.

The next time the club came, Tom did not fully block. He angled Frostfyre and cut across the grain below the steel band. A wedge of dark wood tore free. The champion snarled. Another exchange. Another cut. The club struck stone when Tom slipped aside, and Frostfyre came down on it with both hands.

Crack.

The sound reached the walls.

Tom smiled despite the blood in his mouth.

The champion roared and drove forward.

Tom nearly died again.

The broken club still had weight. The sword still had reach. Rage made the champion faster for three terrible breaths. Tom caught one blow badly and went to one knee. The huge sword rose over him.

Boro shouted, "Move!"

Tom rolled.

The blade hit earth where he had been and buried half its edge in packed dust.

Frostfyre flashed low.

The champion's bad leg opened at the back of the knee.

He bellowed.

Tom moved before pity could become foolishness.

Another cut to the other leg, not deep enough.

The club came around. Tom struck it again. This time Frostfyre split through the weakened wood, and the ruined head broke away, spinning into the dust.

The champion stared at the useless haft in his hand.

Tom cut his right thigh.

Then the left.

The monstrous man dropped to one knee.

The ground seemed to feel it.

His eyes found Tom's.

For the first time, Tom saw something beneath the violence.

Pain.

Not from the cuts.

Older than that.

Made, mayhaps. Bought. Fed on cruelty until cruelty was all men thought to ask of him.

Tom did not lower the sword.

"I am sorry," he said, though he doubted the man understood.

The champion tried to raise the massive blade one last time.

Tom stepped inside and swung Frostfyre with both hands.

The head fell.

Silence took the road.

Even the masters did not laugh.

Tom stood breathing hard beside the body, blood running from his lip, shoulder screaming, Frostfyre pale and red in his hands.

He looked up at the gatehouse.

"Open the gates."

The four masters stared down at him.

The fat one recovered first.

His face twisted.

"Close ranks," he snapped. "Kill them."

"You swore!" Jory shouted.

The gates began to close fully behind the dead champion.

Crossbows lifted along the wall.

Tom had time to understand the betrayal before the bolts came.

Not enough time to escape it.

Jory reached him first.

Shield high.

The first bolt struck with a heavy crack. The second glanced from the rim. A third punched through the upper wood and stopped a handspan from Jory's face.

"Back!" Jory roared.

Boro and two pit fighters rushed in with shields stolen from their own line. Hazghan shouted in Ghiscari, and a file of spearmen raised shields toward the wall. Bolts hammered down, snapping against wood, punching through leather, burying in dust. One man screamed behind Tom. Another fell without sound.

Tom let Jory shove him.

He hated that he needed it.

They retreated out of range by degrees, shield to shield, while the masters of Mantarys watched from above and learned nothing.

By noon, Tom's force held the road beyond crossbow reach.

By afternoon, Mantarys remained closed.

By dusk, the dead champion still lay before the gate because the masters would not open to retrieve him and Tom would not send men under the walls to drag him away.

The small boy came when the light turned red.

No one saw from where.

One moment the road beyond the camp was empty.

The next, he stood near the edge of the nearest cook fire with both hands raised and terror making him brave.

He was thin as a stick, barefoot, with dust up to his knees and hair hacked short with a dull knife. He could not have been more than ten. Maybe less. Hunger made ages difficult.

Salla drew on him before Tom said, "Wait."

The boy looked at the arrow.

Then at Tom.

"You are the man with the star sword."

The words were Valyrian, low and rough, but understandable.

Tom crouched so the boy did not have to look so high.

"I am Tom."

"There is another gate."

Jory moved closer.

"Where?"

"Other side. Smaller. For ash carts and night soil. They keep only six men. Sometimes eight. The guards drink after moonrise."

Cleyton would have asked a dozen careful questions.

Cleyton was not there.

Tom asked the only one that mattered first.

"Why tell me?"

The boy's mouth tightened in a way no child's should.

"My sister died yesterday. The grain house is full."

No one spoke.

Tom nodded once.

"Show us."

"No," Mera said immediately.

Jory said it at the same time.

Boro added, "Trap."

The boy flinched at the word.

Tom looked at him.

Small. Hungry. Terrified. Mayhaps lying. Mayhaps sent. Mayhaps hoping. Mayhaps all of those at once because cities like Mantarys taught children that truth alone did not fill a stomach.

"It may be," Tom said.

"It is," Mera said.

Jory looked toward the walls. "If you go, they kill you before you reach the gate."

"Then who?"

Boro stepped forward. "Me."

"No," Jory said.

"That was quick."

"You are quiet in the way falling stairs are quiet."

Boro considered that. "Fair enough."

Jory looked at Tom. "I will go. Boro with me. Two Ghiscari."

"You just said Boro is not quiet."

"I said he is not quiet enough to sneak a whole army through a city. He is quiet enough to kill six drunk guards if someone points him correctly."

Boro nodded. "My gifts are specific. Mostly ugly."

Hazghan stepped forward before Tom could choose the Ghiscari.

"I go," he said in rough Common.

Tom studied him.

The scarred eye. The steady posture. The way the other Ghiscari looked at him without being ordered to.

"And one more," Tom said.

Hazghan pointed to a younger man with a shaved head and a narrow beard.

"Vorro."

Vorro looked unhappy.

He came anyway.

Tom turned to the boy.

"Name?"

"Pallo."

"Pallo, if you betray them, I will be angry."

The boy swallowed.

Boro leaned down. "He is worse angry than he looks."

"No," Pallo whispered. "I hate them."

Tom believed that.

It did not mean the boy was safe.

Night settled slowly.

Mantarys lit itself from within, narrow windows and wall braziers burning like watchful eyes. The main gate remained closed. The crossbowmen shifted watches. The dead champion lay under the dark, huge and still, one hand open in the dust.

Tom waited with the main force.

Waiting was worse than fighting.

It always had been.

Jory, Boro, Hazghan, Vorro, and Pallo vanished into the broken land east of the road after moonrise. They took no horses. No armor that would ring. Boro carried a shorter axe wrapped in cloth. Jory carried sword and shield both blackened with soot. The Ghiscari carried knives and short spears.

Tom watched until the dark ate them.

Then he kept watching.

Hours passed.

The moon climbed.

Somewhere far inside Mantarys, a bell rang twice.

Mera crouched beside Tom.

"If it is a trap, we will know soon."

"That is meant to comfort?"

"No."

"Good."

She looked at Frostfyre across his knees.

"You like it?"

"The sword?"

"No, the waiting."

Tom glanced at her.

Mera's mouth twitched.

"Aye," he said. "I like it."

"Good. I was worried it was too beautiful and not enough useful."

"It is useful."

"Then try not to get killed carrying it."

"Everyone is full of original counsel today."

The first fire appeared inside the western wall shortly before dawn.

Small.

Then larger.

Then someone screamed.

Tom stood.

On the main wall, crossbowmen turned away from the road, looking behind them. Another shout. A horn began and cut off halfway through. Men ran along the parapet toward the far side of the city.

"Mount," Tom said.

This time, no one argued.

The small gate opened unseen from the road.

They knew only because the western tower erupted into violence.

Jory's signal came next: three quick flashes of covered lantern light from the wall.

Tom raised Frostfyre.

"Forward!"

The force surged.

They did not bother with subtlety now.

The main gate still held, but the city did not. Tom led them around the wall line at a hard ride, keeping beyond crossbow range until the smaller gate came into sight. It stood open into darkness, two bodies sprawled beneath it, one guard half hanging from the wicket with his throat black in the torchlight.

Boro stood just inside the gate, waving with the casual cheer of a man greeting friends to dinner.

"Lovely night!" he shouted.

"Move!" Jory called from above.

They moved.

Tom's force poured through the smaller gate into Mantarys.

The city smelled worse than it looked.

Smoke. Waste. Metal. Sour grain. Human fear packed too tightly behind stone. Streets twisted inward through black buildings whose upper floors leaned like listeners. Doors opened and shut as Tom's men passed. Faces appeared in cracks, vanished, appeared again. Somewhere a woman sobbed. Somewhere else men shouted orders in the masters' names and found fewer men willing to obey them than they expected.

Jory had taken the nearest stair to the wall.

He, Boro, Hazghan, and Vorro had killed the gate guards, then cut their way along the wall walk toward the crossbow positions. More Ghiscari followed them now, spears moving with grim efficiency. Crossbowmen died, surrendered, or fled down interior stairs into waiting pit fighters.

Tom drove toward the guard barracks.

The fight became a series of corners.

A shield wall in a narrow lane.

Three crossbowmen in a window.

Two guards trying to rally market men who dropped their pikes as soon as Boro arrived.

A captain with a curved sword and beautiful armor who challenged Tom in the square and lasted four breaths longer than his courage deserved.

The sellswords fought well.

That troubled Tom more than if they had fought poorly.

Men who planned betrayal often made a show of loyalty first.

He saw one drag a wounded Ghiscari away from a doorway and thought mayhaps suspicion had made him unjust.

Then he saw the same man glance toward the grain hall, count guards, and calculate something not yet born.

Mantarys did not fall like a wall.

It folded like a rotten table under too much weight.

The masters' household troops discovered that hungry citizens did not love them. Doors opened behind them. Stones fell from roofs. Someone cut the harness on a wagon, sending grain barrels rolling across a street and breaking a charge before it formed. Twice, Tom's men reached storehouses to find the locks already being attacked from the inside by people with hammers, knives, and kitchen tools.

By the hour before dawn, organized resistance had broken.

By first light, the four masters had been dragged from the inner hall where they had hidden behind bodyguards, locked doors, and one another.

The fat one screamed about law.

The masked one offered money.

The hunched one threatened curses.

The bald one said nothing at all.

Tom had them chained.

Not killed.

That disappointed a great many people.

"Cells," Tom said. "Water. No knives. No visitors unless Jory allows it."

"Jory?" the fat master spat.

Tom turned.

"Aye."

That was when the sellswords moved.

It happened in the square outside the grain hall.

Tom stood with Jory, Boro, Mera, Hazghan, and a dozen others while citizens gathered under guard to receive bread, water, and orders that no man believed until food touched his hands. The sellswords had formed along the southern edge of the square. Too neat. Too quiet. Their captain, a Lysene named Varyn with silver rings in both ears, stepped forward with one hand on his sword.

"We should discuss payment," he said.

Tom looked at him.

"Later."

"Now."

Jory shifted.

Boro smiled without humor.

Varyn's men spread subtly behind him.

"The city is taken," Varyn said. "The masters are chained. The grain is ours if we are sensible. Mantarys can pay better than Oros."

Tom felt tired down to the bone.

"Do not."

Varyn laughed.

"Pretty sword. Pretty words. But you brought men who understand the world."

He drew steel.

So did the sellswords.

They were about to attack when the Ghiscari appeared behind them.

Not rushed.

Not uncertain.

In formation.

Hazghan had not moved from Tom's side, but his men had. Quietly. Carefully. While Varyn spoke, Ghiscari spears closed the square's southern exits. Crossbows taken from the walls appeared in upper windows. Vorro stood at the far end with blood on his cheek and a look of grim satisfaction.

Varyn realized too late.

Hazghan said something in Ghiscari.

The spears came down.

The slaughter was short.

Not clean.

Slaughter never was.

Some sellswords tried to fight through. Some threw down weapons too late. Some begged in languages that did not save them. Varyn lunged for Tom, mayhaps thinking one desperate stroke could still change the tale.

Frostfyre met his blade and broke it.

Mera killed him before Tom had to.

When it ended, the square smelled of blood and spilled grain.

Tom looked at Hazghan.

The scarred-eye veteran saluted with fist to chest.

"Kemal said watch them," he said.

Tom stared.

Then he laughed once, short and disbelieving.

"Of course he did."

Hazghan's half-mouth smile returned.

By sunrise, Mantarys had changed masters.

Tom hated that thought and corrected it before it settled.

No.

Mantarys had lost masters.

That would have to do for one morning.

He stood on the steps of the grain hall while citizens filled the square below, thin faces turned upward, wary of hope and practiced in disappointment. The four masters had been taken to cells. Their household guards were disarmed. The storehouses stood open under Ghiscari guard. Bread was already being cut and weighed.

Jory stood beside him.

"No," Jory said before Tom spoke.

Tom glanced at him.

"You do not know what I was going to say."

"You are about to put me in charge."

"Aye."

"No."

"Jory."

"No."

"I need you here."

"You need me with you."

"I need both."

That stopped him.

Tom looked toward the east where the road bent away from Mantarys, toward Tolos, toward Vissenya.

The sinking feeling had begun before dawn.

It had grown with every hour.

It sat now beneath his ribs like a stone.

"Something is wrong," Tom said.

Jory's anger thinned.

"You do not know that."

"No."

"Tom."

"If I do not get to Tolos, I will never see her again."

Jory said nothing.

That was worse than if he had argued.

Tom turned to him fully.

"Hold the city. You know what matters. Mera, Boro, Salla, Darro, and the pit fighters stay as your bodyguards. The Ghiscari enforce order. Hazghan answers to you."

Hazghan, standing nearby, nodded as if this had already been decided.

Jory noticed and glared at him.

Hazghan looked untroubled.

Tom continued, "The city will receive a new government soon. Until then, everyone is fed, watered, and clothed equally. No household stores hidden. No masters' friends first. No guards shaking coins loose. No one goes without because another man has a title, a ring, or a locked door."

"And if they resist?"

"Break the locks. Not the people unless they make you."

Jory looked out over the square.

People were already whispering.

Not loudly.

But whispers moved faster than ravens when they carried wonder.

The northern man.

The champion.

The star sword.

The blade that broke steel.

The hero who came for the hungry.

Tom heard pieces of it and hated how much they needed it.

"They are telling stories," Jory said.

"Then make sure the stories come with bread."

Jory laughed despite himself.

Then the laughter vanished.

"Come back."

Tom thought of Vissenya saying the same thing.

"Hold the city," he said, because some promises had become too dangerous to speak.

He took only a small escort.

Six Ghiscari riders Hazghan insisted on sending, all mounted on fresh horses taken from the masters' stables. Tom did not waste time refusing. The horses stamped beneath them, too well-fed for a starving city.

That, too, made Tom angry.

He rode through Mantarys as the sun climbed over the walls.

Doors opened.

Faces watched.

Someone bowed.

Someone else lifted a piece of bread in both hands as if showing proof of a miracle.

By the time Tom reached the gate, the tale had already outrun him.

Not the true tale.

Never that.

The tale had sharpened itself on hunger and relief.

A hero from the cold lands.

A meteor sword.

A monster slain.

Masters chained.

Grain opened.

Tom did not look back.

The road to Tolos waited.

So did whatever dread had set its teeth in his heart.

He leaned low over his horse's neck and rode as fast as the animal could bear.

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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.