Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 3: Shadows and Wolves

The next day gave them nothing.

No burned inn. No hanging septon. No bandits wearing stolen lions and scratched-out wolves. No broken wagons, fallen walls, frightened children, or old women with curses in both hands. Only road, mud, and the long grey patience of the Riverlands.

Tom should have been grateful.

He was, in part. His ribs still ached from helping raise the house wall, and the wound along his scalp had crusted beneath his hair. His body had begun to feel less like a ruined thing and more like a badly mended tool. Useful, if handled carefully. Dangerous, if trusted too much.

The men were quieter than before.

Not grim. Not exactly. Only tired in the way men grew tired when danger did not come but might. The silence of an empty road could fray a man worse than shouting. At least shouting told you where to look.

Cley ranged ahead, muttering at every crow and puddle as if each had personally failed him. Pate walked near the wagon ruts, humming some harbor tune beneath his breath, his maimed hand tucked through a strap on his pack. Eddyn Marsh kept to the left side of the road, spear in hand, eyes moving from ditch to tree to field. Ronnel of Flint's Finger carried Willam's pack again, though Willam had given up protesting.

Tom let his pace slow until the rest of the men came even with him.

There were five he had not yet taken proper measure of. That shamed him a little. They had bled beside him, buried men beside him, followed him west, and still parts of them remained no more than faces and names.

The first was Benjen Holt, called Ben by everyone except himself. He was a long-limbed man from near Deepwood Motte, with a brown beard that grew in patches and eyes too gentle for the knife at his belt. Before the war, he had kept goats for a cousin who owned more rocks than grass. He had a habit of speaking to animals as if they were stubborn children, and to children as if they were honored guests.

He had also killed two men at the burned inn.

Tom had seen it. Ben's hands had shaken after, but not during.

Beside him walked Osric Snow, a bastard from the Rills. He was lean, dark-haired, and sour-faced, with a nose that had been broken badly and set worse. He said little unless insulted, which Tor considered an invitation rather than a warning. Osric carried a hunting bow wrapped in oiled cloth and a short sword with a cracked grip. He had been one of the few men able to loose arrows after the Green Fork, though fever had taken him hard in the widow's hovel.

He watched everything.

Tom trusted men who watched everything more than men who smiled at everything.

The third was Mikken Slate, a stonemason's son from the lands east of Barrowton. He was broad through the chest but slow in speech, as though every word had to be shaped before he set it loose. His hair was black, his skin wind-roughened, and his hands were square enough to look made from the same stone his father had worked. He carried a maul instead of a sword.

"Never liked blades," Mikken had told Tom when asked.

"Why?"

"Too thin."

Tor had laughed at that for half a mile.

The fourth was Garrel Reed, though he was no crannogman despite the name. He came from a poor holding near the Saltspear, where the land was wet enough to teach caution but not wet enough to teach magic, as he put it. Garrel was small, wiry, and quick-footed, with pale eyes and mud-colored hair cut close to his head. He carried more knives than seemed sensible and could vanish into reeds so completely that even Cley admitted, grudgingly, that the man had "some use."

Garrel smiled too often.

Eddyn said that was common in men who expected the world to try to kill them.

The last was Donnel Hill, who was not a northman by birth.

That had come out only the night before, when Tor had asked why a man with a Westerlands bastard name was marching with Stark men instead of lions. Donnel had answered by pulling his tunic aside and showing the old brand on his shoulder: a punishment mark, half-healed over years of weather and muscle.

"Lannister man gave me that," he said.

No one asked more.

Donnel had been born near the Golden Tooth, run north after some trouble he did not name, and found work hauling timber near Ironrath. He was thick-necked, bald but for a fringe of yellow hair, and strong enough to lift one end of a cart by himself. He spoke with a westerman's edge and cursed like a man who had learned early that gods were poor listeners.

Tom had watched some of the others look at him sideways after learning where he was born.

Donnel seemed used to it.

By midday, the road bent along a line of low hills. To the south, a stream ran through rushes and thin willows. To the north, the fields rose in long, damp folds, green in places where fire had not found them. Once, they saw smoke far ahead, but it proved to be only a charcoal pit burning under a clay mound. No men tended it. No men tended anything.

"Too quiet by half," Cley said for the third time.

Tor groaned. "If I die today, I hope it's before the fourth."

Cley gave him a sour look. "You'll hear the fourth first. I'll make sure."

"Comforting."

Pate looked toward the sky. "Quiet can be a mercy."

"Quiet is how a throat gets opened in fog," said Osric.

"That too."

Tom listened to them and let the talk run. Words kept men awake. Words reminded them they were more than sore feet and old wounds.

They stopped once to drink from the stream. Garrel tested the bank first and declared it firm enough, which meant only Willam sank to one knee in mud. Ron pulled him out by the back of his collar while Tor offered solemn instruction on the proper way to avoid drowning in six inches of water.

Willam, to his credit, only threw mud at him.

It struck Jory instead.

For one very still moment, everyone waited.

Jory looked down at the brown smear across his chest, then up at Willam.

"Sorry," Willam said.

Jory wiped the mud away with two fingers. "Your aim's improving."

Even Osric smiled at that.

It was the closest the day came to joy.

By dusk they found a meadow tucked between a stand of ash trees and a low ridge of stone. The grass there was wet but not flooded, and the trees gave some cover from the road. Eddyn disliked the ridge. Cley disliked the trees. Garrel disliked the stream behind them. Since no place in the Riverlands pleased all three, Tom chose the meadow.

"We keep the fire small," he said. "No songs. No shouting. Watches in pairs."

"Who first?" Jory asked.

"Cley and Garrel."

Cley spat. "I'd rather watch with the goat man."

Ben looked up from loosening his boots. "Goats know when something's creeping."

"So does Garrel," Tom said.

Garrel grinned. "Hear that? Mark the day. I've been praised."

"That was not praise," Eddyn said.

"It was close enough for me."

They ate cold oatcakes from the family with the raised wall, a strip of hard cheese, and the last of the turnips.

Tor argued that honey should be considered a weapon, since men would fight over it if given cause. Pate settled the matter by giving the jar to Tom, who passed it to Willam, who stared as if he had been handed a lordship.

"Share it," Tom said.

Willam did, carefully, scraping the tiny sweetness onto bits of oatcake with the tip of his knife.

Donnel Hill took none.

Tom noticed.

"You don't like honey?"

Donnel shrugged. "I like it well enough."

"Then take some."

"Boys need sweet things more than old bastards."

"You're not old."

"I feel old."

That, Tom understood.

When the food was gone, men settled in their cloaks. Some slept quickly. Ron snored almost at once, though he denied it whenever accused. Mikken sat with his maul across his knees, staring west as if trying to see Riverrun through the dark. Osric checked his bowstring three times before wrapping himself in his cloak.

Tom did not sleep.

He lay on his back, looking up through branches at a sky without stars. His body wanted rest, but his mind kept walking. Hullen. Edric. The bandits. The boy with the hammer. The widow's hands. Gregor Clegane's black visor turning toward him.

At the edge of camp, Cley gave a low whistle.

Not loud. Not panicked.

But every man who heard it woke as if struck.

Tom rolled to his side, hand closing on the axe beside him. Across the camp, Jory was already upright. Eddyn had his spear. Osric had his bow strung before Tom had fully found his feet.

Cley crouched near the ash trees, one hand raised.

Movement.

Tom could not see it at first. Only the dark between trunks. The meadow held its breath. The stream muttered behind them. Somewhere in the trees, a twig snapped.

Garrel slid back into camp like a shadow given bones.

"Men," he whispered.

"How many?" Tom asked.

"Can't tell. More than three. Less than twenty."

Tor's whisper came from the dark. "That narrows it beautifully."

"Quiet," Jory said.

Tom looked toward the ridge. Nothing. Toward the trees. Nothing. The dark seemed to thicken wherever he stared.

"Could be Stark men," Willam whispered.

"Could be wolves, for all the Seven care," said Donnel.

"Wolves smell better," Tor muttered.

Then the first arrow flew.

It came from the ridge, not the trees.

Benjen Holt made a small sound, almost surprise, and sat down hard beside the dying fire. For a heartbeat Tom did not understand what had happened. Then Ben's hands went to his throat, where the arrow had entered just above the collarbone.

The second arrow struck Mikken's shield with a flat crack.

"Down!" Eddyn roared.

The meadow erupted.

Men rolled, crawled, scrambled for trees and stones. Another arrow hissed past Tom's face close enough for him to feel it. Osric loosed toward the ridge, though Tom could not see what he aimed at. Someone cursed in the dark. Someone else shouted, "Lions! Lions!"

So not wolves.

Tom reached Ben, but the goat keeper's eyes were already wide and empty, staring up through the branches. Blood ran black over his beard.

No time.

Grief could wait its turn.

"To the ridge!" Tom shouted. "Close with them!"

Jory was moving before the words were done. Tor followed with a roar, sword in hand. Ron lumbered after them with his shield up, arrows thudding into the wood. Eddyn kept low, spear ready. Pate dragged Willam behind a fallen log as another shaft cut through the boy's cloak.

Tom ran.

His ribs punished him. His legs felt heavy as soaked wool. The ridge seemed farther with every step. Shapes moved above them now: men in half armor, dark cloaks, low helms. Scouts, Tom thought. Not raiders. Not starving outlaws. Too quiet until the arrows. Too disciplined in how they spread.

A Lannister man rose with a bow.

Osric's arrow took him in the mouth.

The scout vanished backward without a cry.

Tom hit the slope hard, one hand in mud, boots slipping on wet stone. A man came down to meet him with a short sword and a red cloak pinned under one pauldron. Tom caught the first cut on his axe haft. The second glanced off his shoulder and sent fire down his arm. He drove his knee into the man's belly and slammed the axe head into his face.

The scout fell.

Tom fell with him.

For a moment they clawed at one another in the mud like boys fighting in a yard. Then Tom found his knife and shoved it up beneath the man's ribs until the struggling stopped.

Above him, steel rang.

Tor was laughing again, which meant he was either winning or bleeding. Jory fought beside him against two men, his axe sweeping low, then high. Ron took a spear thrust on his shield and smashed the rim into the attacker's jaw. Eddyn drove his spear through a man's thigh and kicked him down the slope.

"Left!" Cley shouted.

Tom turned.

A scout had circled wide, knife in hand, moving toward Pate and Willam below. Garrel came out of the dark behind him and cut the man behind the knee. The scout screamed. Pate finished him with a hatchet and looked sick afterward.

More arrows flew from the ridge.

One struck Donnel Hill in the side. He grunted, broke the shaft with one hand, and kept climbing.

"Seven hells," Tor shouted. "How many of them?"

"Enough," Jory said.

Tom gained the top of the ridge and saw the answer.

Eight Lannister scouts. Mayhaps nine before Osric's arrow. Three dead now, two wounded, the rest falling back toward the far side of the ridge where the land dipped into a shallow meadow beyond. Their armor bore no bright plate, no proud lion breastplates, only boiled leather, dark mail, red thread at the seams, and badges hidden beneath cloaks. Men meant to look like shadows until they chose otherwise.

Spies.

They were not hunting Tom.

They had stumbled on him, or he on them, and now men were dying because darkness left little room for questions.

One of the scouts turned to run.

An arrow took him from the far meadow.

Not Osric's. The shaft came from the west.

The scout pitched forward.

Then the night filled with wolves.

Men burst from the far side of the meadow, dark shapes racing beneath grey banners. Northmen, armed and armored, came howling out of the dusk with swords drawn and spears lowered. At their front ran a man with a round shield painted white and grey. Behind him, archers loosed as they moved.

The remaining Lannister scouts broke.

They did not get far.

One died with a northern spear through his back. Another turned to beg and was cut down before the words found air. The last reached the edge of the trees, where a huge northman with a two-handed axe stepped from the dark and split him from shoulder to chest.

Then it was over.

The meadow steamed in the cold. Men breathed hard. Somewhere below, Willam was saying Ben's name again and again, as if the right number of times might call him back.

Tom stood on the ridge with blood on his hands and a dead man at his feet.

The Stark men turned toward him.

There were more than twenty. Maybe thirty. Archers spread along the meadow edge, arrows nocked. Spears lowered. Swords out. Tom's own men gathered close, battered and breathing hard, caught between the ridge and the new arrivals.

Tor lifted his sword slightly.

Jory put a hand on his arm.

"Don't," he said.

The man with the grey-and-white shield stepped forward. He wore a northern helm, mail dark with rain, and a cloak fastened by a brooch shaped like a running wolf. Not a lord, Tom thought. But no common footman either. A captain, or near enough.

His eyes moved over Tom's men. Their mixed weapons. Their stolen bits of armor. The yellow cloak Pate had cut into strips. Donnel Hill's westerman face. The dead Lannisters. The dead Ben.

The captain's mouth hardened.

"Drop your weapons," he said.

No one moved.

The archers drew a little tighter.

Tom felt every man behind him waiting. Tor's anger. Jory's caution. Eddyn's calculation. Osric's bow half raised and useless against so many. Ron's breath heavy behind his shield.

Tom lowered his axe.

It hurt more than he expected.

One by one, his men did the same.

The captain stepped closer. "Now speak plain, before my archers grow nervous. Who are you, and why are you creeping through these fields in dead men's steel?"

Tom looked down at Benjen Holt, lying still beside the dying fire below.

Then he looked west, toward Riverrun and Robb Stark.

"My name is Tom," he said. "From Forrester lands. These are northmen, wounded at the Green Fork and left for dead."

The captain studied him.

"And the westerman?"

Donnel Hill spat blood into the grass. "This westerman has killed more lions than you have, northman."

A few Stark men shifted at that.

The captain did not smile.

Tom kept his voice steady. "We're trying to rejoin Lord Stark."

"Many men say many things in war."

"Aye," Tom said. "And most of them are lies."

The captain's eyes narrowed. "Is that meant to comfort me?"

"No," Tom said. "It's meant to tell you I know why your bowmen haven't lowered their strings."

For a long moment, no one spoke.

The meadow held still around them. Dead lions in the grass. Dead Ben by the fire. Wolves in a ring of steel.

At last, the captain lifted one hand.

The archers did not lower their bows.

Not yet.

"Then you can tell it again," he said. "Slowly. With names."

Tom nodded.

He had thirteen men no longer.

He had twelve.

And at last, perhaps, the road had brought them to wolves.

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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.