Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 1: From Fork to Knife

The road west was mud and memory.

Tom had thought leaving the hovel would make him feel less like a corpse. Instead, each step reminded him how near he had come to being one. His ribs throbbed beneath their bindings. His shoulder burned where the Mountain's blow had half torn the world from him. The cut on his forearm had scabbed black and ugly, and his back ached as if the tree he had struck had left roots in his bones.

Still, he walked.

Fifteen men walked with him.

They were a sorry column, if column was the word for it. Some limped. One had his arm bound across his chest. Another used a spear shaft as a crutch. Their mail was torn, their cloaks muddied, their boots half-rotted from rain and blood. They had more knives than swords, more bandages than shields, and not one horse among them.

But they were alive, and they were going west.

The widow had given them what she could: hard bread, onions, a skin of sour ale, strips of boiled linen, and a look that said she expected half of them to die before sundown. Tom had thanked her. She had only spat into the mud and told him not to make her work a waste.

Tor had laughed at that.

Jory had not.

The brothers from Bear Island walked near the front, as they had since leaving. Jory carried a long axe taken from a dead man at the hovel. Tor had a sword too fine for him and a dented helm too small, so he wore it pushed back on his head like a cooking pot.

"Road's too quiet," Jory said.

Tom looked at the trees. Wet branches leaned over the track, black against the pale sky. "Quiet's better than shouting."

"Depends who's shouting," Tor said. "Could be a girl."

"Could be a man killing a girl," Jory said.

That ended Tor's grin.

They had seen no girls. No boys either. No farmers in the fields, no old men mending fences, no women hauling water. The Riverlands had become a place of empty roads and shuttered ruins. Smoke stained the horizon in three directions. Crows rose and settled, rose and settled, fat with war.

By midday they passed the first burned field.

The grain had been put to the torch before harvest. Black stalks stood in rows like spears for dead children. Beyond them, a farmhouse sagged inward, roof gone, stones split by heat. The barn had collapsed entirely, its great beams charred and twisted. Near the well lay the body of a cow, bloated and stiff, flies thick around its eyes.

One of the northmen, a young man named Willam, crossed himself in the way of the southron gods before he remembered himself.

"Lannisters?" he asked.

"Mayhaps," said Jory.

"Or men wearing lions," Tom said.

Willam looked at him. "What difference is there?"

Tom had no answer he liked.

They moved on.

The road worsened as the day deepened. Rain had chewed it into ruts, and every rut seemed eager to catch a wounded foot. They stopped often, too often. Men drank, cursed, checked bandages, leaned against trees, and pretended they were not afraid of how weak they had become.

Tom hated the stops most of all.

When he was walking, pain had purpose. When he stopped, it became master of him. It crawled over his body and whispered soft, reasonable things. Sit. Rest. Turn back. Find a farm untouched by fire and work until the war forgets your name.

But the war had a long memory.

Near dusk they found a septon hanging from an elm.

He wore no crystal around his neck. Someone had taken it, along with his boots. His robe had been torn open, and the seven-pointed star carved into his chest was black with dried blood. Beneath him, someone had scratched a lion into the mud with a stick.

Tor stared up at the body. "That real?"

"The lion?" Jory asked.

"Aye."

Tom studied the mark. Rain had blurred its edges. It could have been a lion. It could have been a wolf, if a man wanted it to be. It could have been nothing at all.

"Real enough for whoever finds him," Tom said.

Jory grunted. "That's the point, then."

They cut the septon down.

No one suggested burying him. The earth was wet and hard, and they had no strength for digging. They laid him beneath the elm and covered his face with a torn strip of his own robe. Willam muttered a prayer. No one mocked him.

That night they slept in the shell of a mill.

Slept was too kind a word. Men dozed in shifts while others watched the road and the riverbank. Tom sat with his back against a broken grindstone, axe across his knees, listening to rain tap through holes in the roof.

Across from him, Tor chewed a piece of hard bread as if it had personally insulted him.

"You were at Ironrath?" Tor asked.

Tom glanced over. "Sometimes."

"Sworn sword?"

"No."

"Guard?"

"Sometimes."

"That's a lot of sometimes."

"I worked fields. Helped at the forge. Patrolled when they needed bodies. Stood watch when the garrison was thin."

Tor nodded as if this made perfect sense. "So a farmer, smith, and soldier."

"None of them very good."

"You lived through the Green Fork."

"So did you."

"Aye," Tor said. "That makes us either good or hard to kill."

Jory spoke from the dark. "Or lucky."

Tor leaned back. "He always says that when he wants to sound clever."

"I say it when fools mistake breathing for skill."

Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

By the second day, the land grew worse.

They passed cottages with doors hanging open. A child's doll lay facedown in the mud, one cloth arm burned away. At another farm, the orchard had been cut down tree by tree. Not burned. Cut. Whoever had done it had taken the time. The stumps stood pale and raw in the rain.

"That's hatred," Jory said.

Tom looked at the ruined trees. "No. That's a message."

"To who?"

"To anyone thinking of coming home."

They found the first living smallfolk near noon.

An old man and two girls hid beneath a cart in a ditch, shivering under sacks that stank of turnips. One girl had a bruise across her cheek. The other clutched a kitchen knife in both hands and pointed it at Tom until her arm shook.

"We're northmen," Tom said.

The old man laughed once, without humor. "So were three of them, by their telling."

Tor's face darkened. "Three of who?"

The old man looked past them, up the road. "Men at the fork-road. Took our mule. Took my son's boots off his corpse. Said we could keep the girls if we gave them food next time."

"How many?" Jory asked.

"Eight. Ten. A dozen. Hard to count men when you're trying not to look at them."

"What colors?" Tom asked.

"Some red. Some yellow. One had a wolf on his shield, but he'd scratched its face off."

The girl with the knife lowered it a little.

"They come from the battlefield?" Tom asked.

The old man nodded. "Where else would there be so much to steal?"

Tom looked west.

The others looked at him.

He felt it again, that weight he had felt when Jory first said they would follow. Command was not a crown or a fine cloak. It was men waiting to see which fear you chose.

"We go around," said a northman named Hullen. He was older than most, with a beard gone white at the chin and a spear wound still leaking through his bandage. "We're wounded. They're not. We've no horses, no shields worth the name, and half our blades are stolen from corpses."

"They'll keep at it," Tor said.

"Aye," Hullen snapped. "And if they kill us, they'll keep at it with our boots."

No one spoke for a moment.

Rain ticked against the cart.

Tom looked at the old man. "Where?"

The old man swallowed. "Road forks by a burned inn. One track west, one south. They've made camp there."

Hullen cursed under his breath.

Tom crouched, and his ribs punished him for it. He kept his face still until the pain passed.

"You know another way west?" he asked.

The old man nodded slowly. "A deer path through the alder grove. Comes out above the inn."

Jory's eyes sharpened.

Tor grinned, but there was no mirth in it now. "That sounds less dull."

Hullen stared at Tom. "You'll get men killed, lad."

Tom looked back at him. "Mayhaps."

"We should be finding Stark."

"We are."

"By fighting every thief from here to Riverrun?"

"No." Tom stood. "By choosing which ones we can't leave behind us."

Hullen's mouth tightened. For a heartbeat Tom thought the man might refuse him. He would have had the right. Every man there could still choose home, or the woods, or his own road.

But Hullen only spat. "Then we do it proper."

They left the old man with bread and a knife better than the one the girl carried. Tom wished he had more to give. Wishes were cheap. Steel cost more.

The deer path was narrow, wet, and mean. Branches clawed at their faces. Roots hid beneath leaves and tried to twist ankles. Twice they had to stop for men to breathe through pain. The second time, Tom leaned against a tree and tasted blood in his mouth.

Jory watched him but said nothing.

Good man, Tom thought.

The burned inn came into view as the light began to fail.

It had once been a two-story building beside the fork, with stables and a low stone wall around the yard. Now half the roof was gone, and the upper floor leaned drunkenly over the road. The sign had burned too badly to read. In the yard, a fire burned inside a ring of stones. Men sat around it drinking from a skin and passing a helm between them as if it were a bowl.

Tom counted eleven.

Perhaps twelve. One lay sleeping beneath a wagon.

The old man had spoken true. Their armor told no clean story. One wore a Lannister breastplate too large for him, the red enamel chipped and blackened. Another had a yellow cloak over boiled leather. A third wore a northern halfhelm with a broken nasal guard. There were bits of mail, bits of plate, a shield painted with no sigil at all, and one fine sword that had likely never belonged to the hand holding it.

Deserters, outlaws, broken men. The war had many names for the same rot.

Near the stable wall, three corpses lay stripped to their smallclothes.

One of the bandits kicked at a body and laughed.

Tom felt the men behind him change. It was a small thing: breath held, grips tightened, boots settling in mud. Fear did not leave them. It became something else.

Jory leaned close. "Four with bows. Two near the wagon. One by the south road. Rest at the fire."

"We take the bows first," Tom said.

Tor's grin came like a blade leaving a sheath. "I'll take two."

"You'll take one quietly."

"I hate quietly."

"I know."

They waited until the sky dimmed further.

Then they moved.

Jory went left with four men, slipping along the broken wall. Tor went right with three, low through the ditch, sword in hand. Tom took the center with Hullen and the rest, using the road itself because sometimes the bold way was the last thing men expected from the wounded.

The first bowman died without sound, Jory's hand clamped over his mouth and a knife under his ribs.

The second turned too soon.

He shouted, "Wolf-"

Tor hit him like a thrown stone. They crashed into the mud together. The bowman screamed once before Tor's dagger found his throat.

Then all was motion.

Tom ran.

Pain tore through him, hot and immediate, but he ran anyway. A man at the fire lurched up with a spear. Tom knocked it aside with his axe haft and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. It hurt Tom more than it should have. The bandit stumbled. Hullen finished him with a thrust through the belly.

"Northmen!" someone shouted.

A sword came at Tom's head. He ducked badly, too slow, and felt the blade scrape his scalp. Warm blood ran into his eyebrow. He swung his axe in answer. The first blow struck mail. The second found the man's knee. The bandit went down shrieking.

Tom left him there.

Around the fire, the yard became a butcher's mess of smoke and rain and steel. Men slipped in the mud. Blades glanced from stolen armor. Someone screamed for mercy. Someone else screamed for his mother.

Jory fought like winter: quiet, certain, without wasted motion. His axe rose and fell, and men moved away from him if they were wise.

Tor fought like a hearth fire kicked apart. He laughed once as he took a cut across the cheek, then smashed his forehead into the man who had given it to him.

Willam killed a bandit with the kitchen knife the girl had refused to give up until Tom traded for it. He looked astonished afterward, as if he had not known knives could do what knives were made to do.

Then the sleeping man beneath the wagon woke.

He came out with a crossbow.

"Down!" Tom shouted.

The bolt took Hullen in the chest.

The old northman looked surprised. He sat down hard in the mud, hands closing around the shaft. Tom saw his mouth move, but no sound came.

The crossbowman fumbled to reload.

Tom's axe left his hand before he knew he had thrown it.

It turned once in the air and struck the man haft-first in the face. Not a killing blow, but enough. He reeled backward. Jory reached him before he recovered and opened his throat.

Tom turned back to Hullen.

The old man was still sitting. Blood bubbled at his lips now.

"Proper," Hullen whispered.

Tom knelt beside him. "Aye."

"Did we?"

Tom looked around.

The last bandit had thrown down his sword and was trying to crawl away. Tor dragged him back by the ankle. Of the others, most were dead. Two were dying. One begged until Jory silenced him with the mercy of a quick blade.

"We did," Tom said.

Hullen nodded once, as if that settled some account only he could see. Then he was gone.

They found their second dead by the stable.

His name was Edric. He had been quiet on the road, quiet in the hovel, quiet even when fever took the man beside him. He had killed one outlaw before another opened his belly. Jory found him with both hands pressed to the wound, eyes fixed on the clouds.

Tom did not know what to say over him.

That was the worst of it. Not the blood. Not the torn flesh. Not the stink of loosened bowels and wet ashes. The worst was that Edric deserved words, and Tom had none.

Tor stood beside him, breathing hard. "We should burn the dead."

"All of them, ser?" Willam asked.

Tom looked at the corpses in the yard. Bandits. Northmen. Smallfolk stripped after death. Men who had worn lions, wolves, nothing.

"All of them," he said.

They worked into the dark.

They found sacks of coin, rings, boots, knives, belts, a child's carved horse, three wedding bands, and more food than the old man had owned in a year. They found a pile of shields taken from the battlefield and four northern cloaks stiff with dried blood. One bore the badge of House Glover. Another had no mark, but the stitching was northern.

Deserters or outlaws. Lions or wolves. It mattered less now.

A man who preyed on the helpless had chosen his house.

They buried Hullen and Edric beneath an ash tree behind the inn. The ground fought them, but no one complained. Jory said words for the old gods. Willam added a prayer for the Seven in a voice barely above the rain. Tom stood between the graves and felt older than he had that morning.

Fifteen had followed him from the hovel.

Thirteen would go on.

When the pyre took, smoke rose black into the night. The flames lit the burned inn, the broken road, the faces of the men who remained. No one cheered. Victory had not made them whole. It had only kept something worse from growing.

Tor came to stand beside Tom.

"You chose right," he said.

Tom watched the fire. "Two men might say different."

"They might," Tor said. "If dead men liked arguing."

Tom glanced at him.

Tor shrugged. "Hullen argued enough alive. I figure he's earned quiet."

Despite himself, Tom gave a tired breath that was almost a laugh.

Jory approached with a bundle wrapped in a yellow cloak. He dropped it at Tom's feet. Inside were boots, a mail shirt, two knives, a whetstone, and a sword belt.

"Best of what they had," Jory said. "The men think you should take first choice."

"I don't need first choice."

"They think you should take it," Jory repeated.

Tom looked past him to the others. Willam. Tor. The wounded men from the hovel. The survivors. His survivors, some small and frightened part of him whispered.

No.

Not his.

Never his.

Men were not swords to be owned, nor fields to be held, nor coins to be counted. They were men, and two were under the ash tree because he had given an order.

He picked up the whetstone.

"That," he said.

Tor laughed. "You win a fight and choose a rock."

"A sharp blade keeps a man alive longer than a fine belt."

Jory's mouth twitched. "There may be hope for you."

They shared out the rest. Food went into packs. Coin was divided, with shares set aside for Hullen and Edric, though no one knew who might ever claim them. The wedding bands Tom wrapped in cloth and kept apart. If they found the old man again, or any living soul who knew the dead, he would leave them there.

Before dawn, they left the fork behind.

The rain had stopped. Mist lay low over the road, softening the burned fields and hiding the worst of the world. For a while, walking felt almost peaceful.

Then they passed the place where the tracks divided.

South led deeper into ruin.

West led toward Riverrun, Robb Stark, and the war that had already swallowed them once.

Tom paused at the fork.

His body ached. His head throbbed where the bandit's sword had kissed him. His hands smelled of smoke and grave dirt. Behind him, thirteen men waited.

From the Green Fork to this nameless fork, the road had taken two more lives.

Tom wondered how many it would demand before the end.

Then he started west.

No one asked why.

No one needed to.

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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.