Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 13: Swift Answers, Swifter Decisions

By midday, the dead had been moved out of the rain.

That was the first repair.

Not the towers. Not the tents. Not the burned wagons or split rails or torn canvas flapping in the wet wind. The dead came first because living men could not make shelter with friends staring up through the mud.

Tom ordered their own laid beneath the eastern ridge, cloaks over their faces until graves could be cut. The Westermen were dragged farther north, near the quarry lip, where the ground was stony and hard and no man had strength enough to dig deep. Harl said shallow graves were still graves if stones were piled high enough.

No one argued.

After that, the camp became work.

Men who could stand hauled poles. Men who could not stand cut rope or sorted arrows or held torn canvas while others stitched it. The western watchtower had burned halfway down, its upper rails black and slick with rain. Mikken looked at it for a long while, spat, and said it was ugly but not dead. By afternoon he had three men helping him brace the legs with scavenged wagon beams.

The south tower stood mostly whole. Osric climbed it twice to check the platform, swore at every rung, and claimed the enemy had built it for goats. The eastern tower still smelled of pitch and scorched wool. Lyle sat beneath it with both hands wrapped in linen and looked proud in the quiet way of men who had done something stupid and lived.

Tents rose again.

Not prettily.

Some were striped. Some patched. Some no longer knew what color they had been before smoke, blood, and rain made them all the same dull brown. Canvas was stretched between wagons. Cloaks were tied to poles. Broken shields became windbreaks. A broad command tent with one burned side was turned, patched, and raised near the center of camp.

By dusk, men had places to sleep that were not mud.

That changed them.

Not much. Not enough to make the dead less dead or the wounded less loud. But enough that shoulders lowered. Enough that men stopped holding their cloaks tight against rain that could no longer reach them. Enough that a Blackwood archer lay under a sagging canvas sheet, looked up at its patched belly, and laughed until the man beside him told him to shut up or share the joke.

"Roof," the archer said.

The other man looked up.

Then he laughed too.

Tom heard it from beside a wagon where Pate was counting arrows into piles of straight, bent, broken, and lying.

"Lying?" Tom asked.

Pate held up an arrow with a warped shaft. "Looks straight until it leaves the bow. Then it tells you what it really is."

"Useful category."

"Most men belong in it."

Tom almost smiled.

He had forgotten how much a covering mattered. A man could sleep in rain. He could. Men had done worse since the Green Fork. But there was a difference between enduring rain and being free of it. Captured canvas, captured rope, captured blankets, captured pots. Enemy things, now theirs. The camp they had taken had killed twenty-five of his men. It would keep the rest dry.

That was a hard kind of fairness.

He found Harl by the rebuilt western tower.

The serjeant's shoulder had been bound tight, but blood had come through again in a dark spot under the cloak. He was shouting at Mikken for using a cracked beam.

"It'll hold," Mikken said.

"So does a rotten tooth until someone bites."

"Then do not bite the tower."

Harl stared at him.

Mikken stared back.

Tom left them to it.

Rafe was near the horse lines, one boot off, checking the sole as if it had betrayed him. His limp was worse now that the fight was done. Men could hide pain while steel moved. Afterward pain came to collect.

"You need a healer," Tom said.

"I need a boot that does not suck water like a drunk."

"After the boot."

"After the prisoners."

Tom looked toward the command tent.

Ser Steffon Swift sat inside it with his wrists bound before him and two spears outside the entrance. He had been given water, a strip of linen for his face, and no kindness beyond what Tom wanted seen by his own men.

"Aye," Tom said. "After the prisoners."

There was only one prisoner worth questioning.

That made the questioning simpler.

Not easier.

Tom took Jory, Harl, Rafe, Tor, and Donnel into the command tent. Pate came too with a writing board because Willam's hand still shook when asked to put down words that might matter. Willam stood outside with the guards, looking relieved and guilty about it.

The tent smelled of smoke, wet wool, blood, and the sharp vinegar stink someone had used to clean the table. A map lay pinned there with knife points. It showed poor lines and better lies: roads too straight, streams too narrow, villages marked that might already be ash.

Ser Steffon Swift sat on a chest opposite Tom.

He looked less like a prisoner now that the soot had been cleaned from his face. Younger than Tom had first thought. Not young, but not old either. Thirty, mayhaps. Fair hair cut short. A narrow nose. A mouth made for withholding. His right eye had swollen where Tor's axe haft or Donnel's elbow had found him during the taking. He held himself as if bound wrists were a temporary insult rather than his present truth.

Tom sat across from him.

No one spoke for a moment.

Rain tapped on canvas.

"You have questions,." Ser Steffon said.

"Aye."

"Ask them."

Tom looked at Pate. Pate touched charcoal to board.

"How many forces like yours remain in this part of the Riverlands?"

Ser Steffon smiled faintly. "This part, Captain? Men draw borders differently when they are frightened."

Harl stepped forward.

Tom lifted one hand.

Harl stopped.

Ser Steffon saw it. His smile thinned.

"The largest was mine," he said.

"Was," Tor said.

Steffon's eyes moved to him. "Plainly."

"Others?"

"Smaller. Ten here. Twenty there. Men from houses that owe the Rock. Men who lost banners and found knives. Men who were told the Riverlands should not heal while Lord Tywin had other work."

"Names," Rafe said.

"House Jast. Drox. Lefford remnants. A few Vikary men, if any survived your ropes. Some Swyft men who would rather no one spell their name aloud. Lesser knights. Men with cousins and debts."

Pate's charcoal scratched.

Tom watched Steffon's face. "Where?"

"Moving."

"Where?"

"If I knew every rat hole, I would have used better men."

Donnel made a low sound.

Steffon looked at him without flinching.

"You were ordered to hide colors," Tom said.

"Yes."

"Burn food."

"Yes."

"Spoil wells. Kill ravens. Empty roads."

"Yes."

"Kill smallfolk?"

Steffon leaned back as far as bound wrists allowed. "Smallfolk die when roads are emptied."

Tor moved.

This time Tom did not lift his hand. He spoke.

"Stand still."

Tor stood still.

The command in his own voice surprised Tom less than it once would have. It did not come loud. It did not need to.

Steffon's eyes returned to him.

"You disapprove," the knight said.

"I understand."

That made the tent colder.

Steffon's mouth tightened.

"Do you?"

"Aye," Tom said. "A dead mule starves a family. A burned roof moves them to the sept. A dead raven blinds a lord. A spoiled well kills longer than a sword. You were not raiding. You were making wounds that rot."

No one spoke.

Steffon looked at him for a long time. "You are educated poorly."

"Aye."

"But not stupid."

"No."

Rafe's mouth twitched once.

Tom tapped the map. "The column that left before we struck. It went southeast."

Steffon said nothing.

"Harrenhal," Jory said.

Still nothing.

Harl leaned over the table. "We can ask with your fingers."

"You can,." Steffon said. "And if you take enough, I will tell you Lord Tywin himself is hiding in a duck pond if I think it will make you stop."

Harl grunted. "Honest, at least."

Tom looked at the map again. "Why Harrenhal?"

Steffon glanced at the knife points holding the parchment flat.

There.

Small.

But there.

"Word came," Tom said. "Northern siege."

Steffon looked up.

Rafe breathed out through his nose.

"Whose word?" Tom asked.

"Riders from the south,." Steffon said after a moment. "Not mine. Orders came sealed, then burned. Harrenhal expected northern movement. A siege, mayhaps. A probe. Men inside asked for more bodies."

"How many went?"

"Fifty-seven when they left. Three wagons. Twelve horses fit for road. Two not fit but taken."

"Commander?"

"Ser Addam Lychester."

Pate wrote the name slowly.

"House?" Tom asked.

"No house worth your appendix,." Steffon said.

Pate looked up.

Tom did not know why that felt strange.

"Sworn to?"

"To whoever keeps him fed. At present, men who hold Harrenhal for the lion."

Jory shifted in his chair. Pain or thought. Mayhaps both.

"How soon would they reach it?"

"Depends on road, fear, and wheels. Two days if hard. Three if mud remembers them."

"And if we leave now?" Harl asked.

Steffon's eyes went to him. "With your wounded? You will bury more before you see the towers."

"Not what I asked."

"No,." Steffon said. "It is what matters."

The answer hung there because it was true.

Tom hated true things spoken by enemies. They still had weight.

He asked more.

For an hour, mayhaps two, they took what answers they could. Names of hamlets already stripped. Roads watched. Wells spoiled. Runners sent. Lesser captains. Supplies. A hidden cache by a burned mill that Rafe marked with one sharp nod. The shape of fear left behind by men who planned to move like smoke until someone else had to hold the land they ruined.

Steffon gave some answers freely.

Others came only when Tom showed what he already knew.

None came when Tor threatened pain.

That, too, was useful to know.

At the end, Tom stood.

"What will you do with me?" Steffon asked.

Tom looked at him.

"Decide."

"Swiftly?"

The knight almost smiled at his own name.

No one else did.

"Aye," Tom said. "That seems to be the day for it."

They left him under guard.

Outside, evening had gone dark. The camp looked less like a battlefield now and more like a poor army trying to remember how to be an army. Fires burned where pitch had not ruined the ground. Men slept under canvas. Wounded groaned from the largest tent, where the captured table boards had become beds and shields had become splints. Someone had found a fiddle in a wagon and decided not to play it, which Tom counted as mercy.

The council met by the rebuilt south tower.

No canvas this time. The rain had thinned to mist.

Harl stood because sitting made his shoulder stiffen. Rafe sat on an upturned bucket with one boot still off. Jory sat his horse because getting down would mean getting up again. Tor leaned against the tower with his arms crossed. Pate held the writing board. Donnel watched the dark beyond the fires.

Tom told them what they already knew.

Sometimes command was only making men hear it in one piece.

"Harrenhal may be under northern siege soon," he said. "The men who left here are going to strengthen it. We are closer than Raventree. We have wounded. We have prisoners. We have one noble prisoner worth more alive than dead, for now. We have smaller raiding bands still loose behind us."

"And not enough men to solve all of it," Rafe said.

"No," Tom said.

Harl looked south. "If northern men are going to Harrenhal, we should be there."

"With what?" Rafe asked. "Half your shoulder and men who slept standing last night?"

"Aye."

"Brilliant."

"River men fear long walks."

"Northmen fear washing."

"Enough," Tom said.

They stopped.

That, too, still surprised him sometimes.

Jory looked down from his horse. "Wounded cannot march hard."

"No," Tom said.

"Prisoners slow us."

"Aye."

"Lord Tytos needs to know what Swift said."

"Aye."

Rafe looked at him then.

He understood before Tom said it.

"No," Rafe said.

Tom held his gaze.

"You know the roads back to Raventree. Your men can move wounded better than mine. Lord Tytos will trust your mouth faster than my charcoal marks. You take the prisoners, the wounded, the bodies we can send, and the message."

"My archers are needed if you are riding toward Harrenhal."

"Your archers are needed to keep thirty wounded men and one Ser Steffon Swift alive until Raventree's gates."

Rafe's jaw tightened.

"Harl goes with you?"

"No," Tom said. "Harl and the northern men come south with me."

Harl nodded once, as if the decision had already been carved into stone and Tom had only found the inscription.

"You will have what?" Rafe asked. "Thirty? Fewer?"

"Enough to reach other northmen."

"Mayhaps."

"Aye. Mayhaps."

Rafe stood too quickly and winced when his bad leg took weight.

"That is a thin plan."

"It is not a plan," Tom said. "It is a direction."

"Directions get men killed."

"So does waiting until all the choices are pretty."

Rafe looked away.

No one spoke.

The mist made halos around the fires. Men moved beyond them, carrying water, canvas, planks, bandages, grief. The camp they had taken now held them, but not for long. Tom could feel it. Comfort trying to grow roots. Shelter whispering stay. Mud drying on boots that would soon be wet again.

He could not let the men sink into it.

"We send a message to Lord Tytos," Tom said. "Everything Swift told us. Largest force broken. Smaller bands remain. Harrenhal expects northern pressure and has called for men. We are going south to join whatever northern force is there or find it if it has not yet settled."

Pate wrote.

"And if there is no northern force?" Rafe asked.

Tom looked toward the south.

"Then we find out before Swift's men do more good behind those walls."

Tor's grin came slow. "I like that answer."

"You like most answers that lead to trouble," Jory said.

"Only honest ones."

Rafe rubbed at his face with both hands.

When he lowered them, the anger had not gone. It had changed into something harder to stand against.

"You send me away," he said.

"I'm just returning what was borrowed from your lord."

"Pretty."

"True."

Rafe laughed once without humor. "You have been listening to lords."

"No," Harl said. "Lords would have used twice the words."

That almost broke the shape of it.

Almost.

The preparations began that night.

Men were split again, but differently now. Not three hunting parties. Two purposes. Rafe's Blackwood men gathered the wounded who could be moved, made litters from spear shafts and canvas, and counted prisoners twice. Ser Steffon Swift was bound more carefully than the rest, hands in front for riding, feet tied under the horse so he could not spur and run. The lesser prisoners who still lived were tied wrist to wrist in pairs.

The dead who could be returned were wrapped.

Not all could.

Tom went among them with Harl.

There were names he knew now. Too many. Lew. Cossen, whose name Harl confirmed at last. Edwyn Nail, who had brought the warning and then taken an arrow in the assault before dawn; he had died without much noise, which seemed unfair for a runner. Lyle lived, hands burned, but the Blackwood boy who climbed with him did not. Two Last Hearth men. Three Blackwood archers. A quiet man from Bear Island who had spoken only to Tor and birds.

Twenty-five dead.

The number had been smaller than the seeing.

Numbers usually were.

At the wounded tent, Rafe argued with one of his own men who insisted he could march south.

"You cannot stand," Rafe said.

"I can stand if no one watches."

"The road will watch."

"Bugger the road."

"The road has declined."

Tom left them arguing because arguing meant breathing.

Near midnight, Pate brought the message.

His writing was ugly but clear enough. Tom read every line twice. Rafe added road names. Jory added a warning about Harrenhal's garrison calling for men. Harl added nothing except a grunt when Tom asked if he could think of more.

"Lord Tytos will understand?" Tom asked Rafe.

"He will understand the words."

"And the choice?"

Rafe folded the parchment. "He may curse it."

"Will that change it?"

"No."

"Then let him curse."

Rafe sealed the message with plain wax pressed under the heel of his knife because no man had a proper seal for Tom's command.

"Ugly," he said.

"Most true things are," Harl answered.

Morning came grey, because mornings had no imagination.

The camp stirred in two directions.

Rafe's column formed on the north road. Wounded men on litters. Prisoners bound and guarded. Steffon Swift mounted under two spears, his face unreadable. Blackwood archers with fewer arrows than they wanted and more grief than they could carry neatly. A captured wagon creaked under bandages, blankets, and men too hurt to complain loudly.

Tom's men formed south of the quarry road.

Not all of them.

That was the wound in it.

Harl stood with the northmen, shoulder bound, face pale under his beard. Tor checked his axe. Jory sat his horse beside Tom, looking like a man held together by stubbornness and straps. Donnel had a new dent in his helm. Pate carried the writing board wrapped against rain. Willam held the plain grey banner Greatjon had left them. Garrel watched the trees as if the trees owed him coin. Osric had already gone ahead with two scouts because Osric hated farewells more than ambushes.

Rafe came last.

He walked without his limp for the first ten steps, then stopped pretending. His bow had been replaced with one taken from the enemy, a little too short for him. It hung across his back like an insult.

He came to Tom first.

"Do not die before Harrenhal," he said.

"I had other plans."

"Good. Keep them."

Tom held out his hand.

Rafe looked at it.

Then he ignored it and embraced him.

It was quick, hard, and awkward in armor. Rafe smelled of smoke, wet wool, and horse. Tom stiffened for half a breath, then gripped him back.

"Bring my wounded home," Tom said quietly.

"Bring my fools back from Harrenhal."

"Aye."

Rafe let him go and turned to Harl.

The two serjeants faced each other like men deciding whether to fight or spit.

"Try not to teach him too many bad habits," Rafe said.

"He had plenty before me."

Rafe embraced him too.

Harl looked offended by it, then returned it with his good arm hard enough to make Rafe grunt.

Tor was next. Rafe pointed at him first.

"You. Listen to your brother."

"Never have."

"Start."

Tor laughed and pulled him in one-armed, clapping him on the back with enough force to count as assault.

Jory got a forearm clasp because neither man trusted Jory's ribs with more. Donnel received a nod that became an embrace only because Donnel stepped forward and made it so. Pate was hugged while still holding the writing board, which left charcoal on Rafe's sleeve. Willam looked startled when Rafe pulled him close, then pleased in a way he tried to hide. Garrel endured his farewell with a grin that slipped only after Rafe turned away.

At last Rafe mounted.

For a moment, neither column moved.

The quarry camp stood behind them, patched and smoking, full of graves, canvas, and decisions already made. North lay Raventree. South lay Harrenhal, or the road to it, or another wrong choice waiting in rain.

Rafe lifted one hand.

Tom lifted his.

Then the Blackwood serjeant turned his horse north, and half their strength went with him.

Tom watched until the trees took them.

Harl came to stand beside him.

Tom looked south.

"Aye."

"You sure?"

Tom thought of Swift in bonds, of Harrenhal's black towers, of wounded men under captured canvas, of Lord Tytos reading ugly words under a dead white tree. He thought of comfort trying to root men in a camp that had cost too much blood to keep. He thought of roads, and ravens, and smallfolk hiding beneath floors because armed men made wounds that rotted.

"No," he said.

Harl grunted.

Tom set his hand on his sword.

"Move out."

The northern column turned south.

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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.