Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 7: Caged Lions

The dead had to be moved before the camp could be made.

That was the first truth of the afternoon.

Not glory. Not victory. Not Raventree Hall's black banners snapping from the walls while northmen cheered below them. Dead men lay where tents should go. Dead horses blocked wagon tracks. Broken shields, arrows, torn cloaks, spilled grain, and Lannister bodies made the eastern field into a thing that had to be cleared by hand before any man could pretend the battle was over.

Tom helped carry Ron.

He should not have.

His ribs hated him for it. His shoulder burned. His legs felt hollow, and his hands still shook from the fight. But when Pate took Ron beneath the arms and Mikken reached for his legs, Tom stepped in before anyone could tell him not to.

Ron was heavy.

Of course he was.

Even dead, the man seemed determined to make the world work for every inch it took from him. They carried him to a low place beneath an ash tree beyond the ditch, where Cley already lay wrapped in a cloak too clean to belong to him. Willam walked beside them with Ron's axe held against his chest like something holy. Tor followed in silence.

No one knew what to do with that.

Jory watched his brother and said nothing. That seemed the only kindness left.

They laid Ron beside Cley.

For a moment, the two bodies looked wrong together. Cley narrow and sharp even beneath cloth, Ron broad enough that the cloak failed him at shoulder and boot both. Men who had stood different in life should have looked different in death. They did not. The cloth made them into shapes. Names had to do the rest.

"We bury them before dark," Tom said.

Pate looked toward the walls. Crossbow bolts still jutted from the gate timbers. Smoke leaked from behind the battlements. Lannister men moved in glimpses above the outer curtain, red and yellow between stone teeth.

"If dark waits," he said.

Tom had no answer.

The camp rose anyway.

Greatjon Umber's army made a hard ring around Raventree's eastern gate, beyond easy bowshot but close enough that the lions inside could count them if fear made them careful. Wagons were dragged into lines. Horse pickets were set near the north rise. Fires were kindled low. Wounded men groaned in a row beneath stolen canvas while Blackwood women and boys came out under truce flags to help carry water, linen, and more grief than they had arms for.

The Blackwoods did not cheer now.

They had cheered when the field broke. Men did such things when blood was still high. But once the smoke thinned and the bodies became particular, joy shrank. Tom saw Tytos Blackwood at the base of the gatehouse speaking with Harwyn beneath a white scrap tied to a spear. The young Blackwood kept looking back over his shoulder at the walls as if afraid the stones might lie.

The Lannisters had not taken the whole hall.

That was the talk that ran through camp, passed from scout to serjeant, from archer to cook, from men who knew nothing to men who knew less. They had taken the outer gate after some treachery or night assault. They held the gatehouse, the outer yard, and a stretch of wall. The Blackwoods still held the inner hall, the rookery tower, the godswood, and enough high places for Tytos to rain death into the field that morning.

Raventree Hall was not freed.

It was split.

A house with lions in its teeth.

Greatjon did not like divided things.

"I do not care how they got inside," he roared after the first council. "I care that they remain there. That offends me."

"Many things offend you," Dacey Mormont said.

"Aye," Greatjon said. "And see how busy that keeps me."

Tom stood near the council ring with mud drying on his boots and Ron's blood still dark in the seams of his gloves. No one had told him to come. No one had told him to leave. That was becoming worse than either.

Harwyn Tallhart had a map scratched into the dirt with a broken arrow. It was poor as maps went, but better than Tom could have drawn. Gate. Yard. Wall. Stables. Inner lane. Blackwood hold. Lannister pockets. Possible doors. Bad angles. Worse angles.

"The portcullis is down," Harwyn said. "Gate barred behind it, likely braced. Crossbowmen above. Murder holes if the gatehouse was built by anyone with wit."

"Blackwood men can loose from the inner wall," Tytos said. He stood with one arm bound from wrist to elbow, blood seeping through fresh linen. His face was pale but steady. "Not cleanly. The angle is poor. If your men reach the gate, we can make the wall dangerous for the lions, not empty."

"Dangerous is enough," Greatjon said.

Maron Locke crouched near the dirt map. "Fire?"

Tytos shook his head. "Too much old timber near the gate tunnel. If it spreads inward, it may take our own people before it takes theirs."

Hother Umber looked disappointed. "Shame."

"For whom?" Dacey asked.

"Anyone fond of fire."

Harwyn tapped the scratched gate with the broken arrow. "Ram, then. Shields and mantlets forward. Archers keep their heads down. Infantry takes the gate. Once open, hold the throat until more men can pass."

Greatjon's eyes moved to Tom.

Tom knew before the words came.

"Your men know throats," the Greatjon said.

Tom thought of the gap by the wagons. Cley falling. Ron sitting with a spear in him, saying no.

"We know what they cost," Tom said.

For a heartbeat, Greatjon's grin did not come.

Then he nodded. Once. Almost gently, which sat strangely on him.

"Aye. So you'll not spend them foolishly."

Harwyn looked at Tom. "You and I take the ram."

Tom felt the eyes around the council shift. Mounted men. Lords. Captains. Blackwood archers. Men with horses and banners and clean names. He thought, absurdly, that Ron would have laughed to see Tom standing in the mud while lords discussed where to put him like a piece on a board.

Then he thought of Ron not laughing.

"Aye," Tom said.

Greatjon's mouth twitched. "Not milord?"

Tom looked at him.

The Greatjon barked a laugh before Tom could decide whether he had been mocked or tested. "Good. Save the manners for men too far away to hit."

The ram was made from a tree.

Not the dead weirwood. No man suggested that. Even the Umbers were not that brave or that stupid. They felled an oak beyond the south field, stripped branches, shaved the trunk enough for handholds, and capped the front with iron from a broken wagon axle. It was ugly work. Quick work. Good work, which was often the same thing in war.

Mikken helped shape it.

He did not speak much while he worked. He had not spoken much since Ron died. The maul in his hands looked smaller now, though Tom knew that was foolish. Men did not become larger by dying. They only left room behind, and the eye made mistakes trying to fill it.

Pate lashed rope around the trunk with one good hand and the maimed one bracing. His knots were neat. Too neat. He checked each twice.

"It will hold," Tom said.

Pate looked at the rope. "Aye."

"Pate."

The older man swallowed. "If it breaks at the gate, men die."

"If it holds at the gate, men die too."

Pate gave him a look then, tired and ugly with grief. "That meant to comfort me?"

"No."

"Good. It did not."

Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

They built mantlets from wagon boards and doors torn from abandoned outbuildings. The shields were crude and too heavy, but a crossbow cared less about craft than thickness. Tytos sent Blackwood carpenters to help, men with shavings in their beards and bows within arm's reach. One old man spat every time a bolt struck the outside of the wall.

"Wasteful," he muttered after the third spit.

"The bolt?" Tor asked.

"The spit."

Tor considered him with new respect.

The Lannisters shot at anything that moved too close.

They were patient with it. That made them worse. A fool on a wall loosed at shadows until his string tired. These men waited. A shield showed too high and a bolt struck. A water carrier hurried through open ground and another took him in the hip. A Blackwood boy ran for a dropped bucket and the stone beside his hand sparked where iron hit.

Osric watched the walls as if he meant to hate every man on them by name.

"Can you reach them?" Tom asked.

"Some."

"Not all."

"No one reaches all."

That sounded like wisdom. Or exhaustion. With Osric it was often both.

They buried Cley and Ron before the assault.

The graves were shallow. The ground near Raventree had roots, stones, and the stubbornness of places that had known old dead before new ones arrived. Willam said no prayer this time. He held Ron's axe while Jory spoke words for the old gods. Not many. The wind took half of them. Perhaps the trees heard the rest.

Tor placed a piece of hard bread in Ron's grave.

No one asked why.

For Cley, Garrel dropped in the strip of yellow cloth Cley had brought back before the battle.

"He found it," Garrel said.

"He found everything," Jory answered.

That was enough.

Tom stood between the graves and the walls of Raventree Hall. Crossbowmen moved above the gatehouse. Caged lions, he thought. Caged lions still had teeth.

When the horn sounded, the ram crews lifted.

Tom was under the left side near the front with Harwyn on the right. Mikken took the rear with two Tallhart men and a broad Umber whose name Tom had not learned. Tor pressed in behind Tom with shield raised. Jory stood beside the mantlet bearers. Pate held rope. Eddyn had a spear and eyes fixed on the wall. Donnel guarded Willam without looking as though he meant to. Osric and the Blackwood archers waited back with bows angled high. Garrel was somewhere Tom did not see.

That worried him less than seeing Garrel would have.

"Walk!" Harwyn shouted.

They walked.

The ram moved like a stubborn beast between them. Heavy. Awkward. Alive only because men made it so. The first steps were easy enough. Then the ground dipped, and the whole trunk lurched against Tom's shoulder.

Pain flared white through his ribs.

He bit it down.

"Lift!" Harwyn called.

They lifted.

The mantlets moved ahead of them, four men to each crude shield, boards scraping, wheels jolting over ruts. Bolts struck almost at once. Hard knocks. Splintering wood. One punched through and stopped half a hand from a Tallhart man's face. He stared at it cross-eyed until Jory shoved the mantlet forward.

"Move," Jory said.

They moved.

The gatehouse loomed larger with every step.

It had seemed small from the field. Nothing seemed small beneath it. Stone rose above them, blackened near the murder holes, damp with old rain and new smoke. The portcullis hung before the gate like iron teeth, each spike sunk into the mud. Behind it, the gate waited: dark oak banded with iron, scarred from old wars and fresh cuts.

Men shouted above.

Lannister voices. Westerlands vowels. Harsh, angry, afraid.

Bolts fell harder.

One struck the ram and quivered near Tom's cheek. Another hammered into the Umber behind him with a sound like a fist on meat. The man grunted, staggered, then kept walking until blood ran down his sleeve.

"Still with us?" Harwyn shouted.

"Aye!" the Umber roared back. "Annoyed!"

Tor laughed once behind his shield.

The Blackwoods answered from the inner wall.

Their arrows came high over the gatehouse, not many, but enough to make the Lannisters duck where they wanted to stand. Tytos had promised dangerous, not empty. He gave them that. A crossbowman leaned too far over the parapet and took a shaft under the chin. He vanished backward. Men cheered below because men cheered anything that meant they were not next.

The ram reached the portcullis.

"Down!" Harwyn shouted.

The front bearers lowered the ram's iron-capped nose until it aimed square at the left-hand stone channel where the portcullis ran down into the arch. Men crowded close under shields, finding grips, bracing feet, cursing because there was no room to curse properly. Pate checked the rear rope with his good hand, maimed hand pressed against the trunk to steady it.

"Pate!" Tom shouted.

"Busy!"

That was all.

Something fell from above.

Not boiling oil. Singers liked oil because singers did not pay for oil. It was a stone the size of a man's head. It smashed through a mantlet and broke the shoulder of the man beneath. His scream filled the gate approach. More stones followed, then chunks of broken brick and iron scraps. Men hunched under shields. The ram crew pressed close to the wall where the angle was worse for those above.

They swung the ram back.

Not far. There was no room.

"One!" Harwyn cried.

They drove it forward.

The impact went through Tom's bones.

The gate boomed. Dust fell from the arch. Men above shouted. The ram bounced back, nearly taking Tom off his feet.

"Again!"

Back.

Forward.

Boom.

A crack ran through the stone beside the portcullis, thin and white under old soot.

"Again!"

Back.

Forward.

Boom.

A bolt struck the man beside Tom in the neck. He dropped without sound, taking his share of the ram with him. The trunk sagged. Tom stumbled. Tor lunged in from behind, shoulder under the wood.

"I'm helping," he said through clenched teeth.

"You are in the way," Harwyn snapped.

"Then push me with it."

"Again!"

Boom.

The stone channel broke.

Not all at once. It cracked, spat chips, held for one stubborn heartbeat, then burst outward in a shower of grey fragments. The portcullis jolted in its track. Men shouted because shouting was easier than believing. Another stone fell from above. Someone cursed the Seven, then the old gods, then his own mother for giving birth to him near a gate.

Tom stopped hearing the words.

The world became three things.

Back.

Forward.

Boom.

Back.

Forward.

Boom.

His shoulder went numb. His ribs stopped being separate pains and became a single hot band around his chest. Sweat ran into his eyes. Smoke scratched his throat. The helm made his breath loud. Each strike brought the gate closer and somehow not closer at all.

"Ropes!" Harwyn shouted.

Pate was already moving.

Hooks flew under shields. Chains followed, hauled from wagons and horse teams, clattering over stone and mud. Men looped them through the twisted bars where the ram had bent iron and broken the channel loose. A Lannister spear stabbed down through the grate and took a Tallhart man in the shoulder. Donnel dragged him back. Mikken caught the chain with both hands and wrapped it once around his forearm.

"Pull together!" Harwyn shouted.

They pulled.

The first pull did nothing.

The second made the portcullis scream.

Iron tore against broken stone. The left side came free first, lurching outward so suddenly two men fell beneath it and scrambled away before the spikes could pin them. The right side held. Mikken roared and leaned back until the veins stood in his neck. Pate slipped in the mud, caught the rope again, and pulled with his whole body. Tor threw his shield aside and joined him. More men took the chain, northmen and Blackwoods together, boots digging trenches in blood-wet earth.

"Again, on my mark!" Harwyn shouted.

They hauled.

The portcullis came free.

It did not rise. It tore sideways out of its own stone throat, crashed against the arch, then fell forward with a sound that seemed to strike every tooth in Tom's head. Men scattered as iron teeth slammed into the mud.

"Gate!" Harwyn shouted.

They dragged the ram forward again and set its iron nose against the oak.

"One!"

They struck.

The gate boomed. Wood shuddered behind the broken portcullis.

"Again!"

Back.

Forward.

Boom.

Then Garrel appeared above them.

Tom had no notion how.

The small man dropped from the side stair inside the gate passage onto a Lannister holding a spear through a splintered gap in the gate. They went down together in a tangle of limbs and knife flashes. For one mad heartbeat Tom thought Garrel had fallen from the sky.

"Reed!" Tor shouted.

Garrel came up bloody and grinning. "Door's barred!"

"We know!" Harwyn roared.

"No, from inside!"

"Very helpful!"

Garrel ducked as a spear thrust past his ear. He vanished again into smoke and shadow.

The next strike cracked the bar.

Tom heard it.

Everyone heard it.

The sound changed the men.

Exhaustion became hunger. Fear became insult. The ram drew back farther than before because men found strength hidden in the promise that the next blow might matter.

"Again, on my mark!" Harwyn shouted.

They struck.

The gate broke.

Not open. Broken. One leaf split inward with a shriek of iron and wood. The bar snapped. The other leaf buckled around its hinges. The ram drove through far enough that men were pulled after it, stumbling over the torn portcullis and into the dark throat of Raventree's gatehouse.

The Lannisters were waiting.

Of course they were.

The first spear came from the left. It took the Umber in the belly and drove him backward into Tom. The second thrust went over Harwyn's shield. A third scraped Tom's helm hard enough to ring the world.

"Shields!" Harwyn shouted.

There was no room for shields.

There was barely room for breath.

They fought in the gate tunnel by inches. Northmen shoved through the broken gate. Lannisters shoved back. Crossbowmen above fired through murder holes until Blackwood arrows and Osric's bow made the openings too dangerous. Smoke from some overturned brazier gathered beneath the arch and turned every face strange.

Tom swung his axe and hit stone.

The shock tore up his arm.

He pulled back, ducked a spear, drove his shield forward, and felt someone else's weight crash against it. Tor was beside him now, laughing again, but the sound was wrong. Too high. Too breathless. Jory's axe rose beyond him. Harwyn cursed like a man trying to organize a storm.

"Push through!" Harwyn shouted. "Through!"

The tunnel spat them into the outer yard.

Light came back all at once.

So did arrows.

The outer yard of Raventree Hall was chaos shaped by walls. Stables burned near the south side, smoke climbing black against stone. Barrels had been rolled into a second barricade. Lannister men formed around it with shields locked, spears out, crossbowmen behind them and more on the wall walk above. Blackwood arrows fell from the inner side where Tytos's men had angle enough to punish the rear but not spare the front.

Greatjon came through the gate like he meant to widen it by anger alone.

He was on foot now. No horse could have fit the throat. He carried a sword in one hand and an axe in the other, both bloody before Tom saw him use either. Hother came behind him. Dacey Mormont took the right with her spears. Harwyn pulled men to the left. Tom followed because the yard gave him room to know which way left was again.

"Tallhart!" Greatjon roared. "Take the stables! Tom, with him!"

"Aye!" Harwyn shouted.

Tom tried to answer.

His mouth was dry.

The infantry moved.

That was too clean a word. Men surged, tripped, shoved, recovered, killed, and kept going because stopping meant being crushed by the men behind. The first barricade loomed: barrels, wagon boards, stable doors, benches, anything heavy enough to slow death for a few moments. Lannister spears waited over it.

Mikken hit the barricade with his maul.

Wood burst.

"For Ron!" he roared.

That was the first time Tom had heard him say the name since the grave.

The line answered.

Not neatly. Not as one. But men heard grief turned into permission, and they took it. Pate drove a hooked pole into a barrel and pulled. Donnel caught a spear on his shield and broke the shaft with his boot. Willam thrust over the wreckage with both hands, face pale and empty. Eddyn kept shouting for men to mind the left. Osric shot a crossbowman off the wall and had another arrow drawn before the body struck the yard.

Tom found himself at the barricade with Harwyn.

The Tallhart captain fought like he commanded: hard, spare, without flourish. His sword cut wrists, faces, throats. Not deep if deep was not needed. Not pretty if ugly was quicker. Tom tried to match him and could not. He was too big for the narrow gap, too sore, too aware of every mistake his body wanted to make.

A Lannister climbed over the broken boards and slammed into him.

Tom fell backward into mud and straw.

The man came after him with a dagger.

Tom caught his wrist.

For a moment they were boys in a yard again, except boys did not smell of smoke, blood, and terror. The Lannister's knee drove into Tom's ribs. Pain tore through him so sharply he nearly let go. The dagger dipped toward his throat.

Donnel killed the man from behind.

The blade came through the Lannister's mouth.

He jerked once and sagged sideways.

Donnel hauled Tom up by the arm. "Not yet."

Tom stared at him.

The same words from the battle outside. The same growl. The same hand keeping him upright.

"Aye," Tom managed.

They pushed again.

The barricade failed.

Lannister men fell back across the yard toward the inner lane. Some ran. Some tried to hold. Greatjon found the ones trying to hold and made an example large enough for every man to understand. Dacey's spears took the right wall stair. Hother's Umbers drove toward the stables with wild satisfaction. Blackwood men shouted from beyond the inner yard, and for the first time the sound felt close enough to touch.

Tom began to think they might do it.

That was when the large man came out of the smoke.

He stepped from the stable shadow with a long sword in both hands and plate armor dull beneath soot. Not bright plate like singers loved. War plate. Scratched, dented, dark in the joints, broad across the chest and shoulders. A red lion had been painted on the breast, half peeled by heat. His helm was closed save for the eye slit. He was taller than the men around him by near a head, and wide enough that the yard seemed to make room against its will.

He killed the first northman with a backhand cut that split helm and skull together.

The second blow took a spear shaft in half.

Men moved away from him.

Tom saw the sword.

He saw the plate.

He saw the size.

The yard vanished.

Rain.

Mud.

The Green Fork roaring around him.

Yellow cloaks in the grey wet.

A horse screaming.

A giant in armor coming through the line as if men were reeds and he was floodwater.

Gregor Clegane.

The name did not come as a thought.

It came as a hand around his throat.

Tom could not breathe.

His ribs were broken again. His shoulder was fire. The world spun sideways, and the tree came up behind him though there was no tree in the yard, no rain, no Green Fork, no Mountain.

Only there was.

The big Lannister turned toward him.

Tom's axe hung useless in his hand.

Someone shouted his name.

He did not move.

The armored man raised his sword.

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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.