Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 4: Stolen

The bell did not ring again.

That was the first thing Tom noticed.

He lay on his mat in the dark, thigh wrapped, side stitched, hand aching in time with his heart, and waited for the sound to return. It did not. The silence after it was worse than the bell had been. Bells were warnings. Silence was what followed when men decided whether warning had come too late.

Across the cell, Jory sat up.

Tom could not see him clearly. The window gave only a black square of sky and the faint red pulse of a lamp beyond the yard. But he heard the shift of cloth, the careful breath taken through pain, the old soldier's stillness that came when sleep had died all at once.

"You hear it?" Tom asked.

"Aye."

"What?"

Jory did not answer immediately.

Outside, something struck wood.

Not the wind. Not a loose shutter. A hard blow, followed by another, then a shout cut short.

Jory stood.

Tom did the same, slower. His leg protested. His side pulled against the stitches. Every wound from the arena seemed eager to remind him that surviving once did not make a man ready to survive again.

Men began shouting in the corridor.

Not the drunken, low kind of night noise that sometimes rolled through the ludis after fights. This was sharp. Awake. Afraid before it had time to pretend otherwise.

"Stay behind me," Jory said.

Tom looked at him in the dark. "You are smaller."

"You are leaking."

"So are you."

"Less."

The shouting grew louder. Boots hammered across the yard beyond the cell block. A woman's voice cried out in Tyroshi. Someone answered in Myrish. Then came a sound Tom knew too well.

Steel on steel.

The cell door was locked.

That mattered less than it had the first night.

Tom crossed to it and looked through the bars. The corridor beyond was shadow and torchlight. Men moved at the far end, shapes running past the outer arch. A guard in Vorys's colors stumbled backward into view, one hand pressed to his throat. Blood ran black between his fingers. He hit the wall, slid down, and did not rise.

Behind him came a man in red.

Not robes only. Armor beneath. A red cloak over boiled leather darkened by lamplight, a round shield painted with a black flame, a short sword in one hand. His head was shaved. His eyes were wide and bright and empty of anything Tom would have trusted.

The man stepped over the guard and shouted, "For the Lord of Light!"

More voices answered from the yard.

"R'hllor!"

The word rolled through the ludis like fire finding oil.

Jory came to the bars beside Tom. "Fanatics."

"Priests?"

"Soldiers."

"Same hand on the leash."

The red guard turned toward their cell.

Tom reached for the water jug by the door, because it was the only thing in the cell with weight. Jory picked up the stool. They had no weapons. Of course they had no weapons. Vorys had been many things, but not generous with sharp edges near sleeping property.

The red guard came closer.

Then an arrow took him under the jaw.

He struck the bars face-first, fingers catching at nothing. His sword clattered across the corridor stones. He slid down slowly, leaving a smear on the iron.

Mera appeared beyond him with a bow in hand and fury painted across her face.

"Keys," Jory said.

"Good evening to you too," she snapped.

"Keys."

"On him, mayhaps."

Tom reached through the bars and hauled the dead man close enough to search with one hand while Jory watched the corridor. The guard's belt held no keys. Only a knife.

Tom took that.

Mera cursed in Tyroshi and vanished down the corridor.

"Mera!" Tom called.

"I am looking for keys, tragic face!"

Another crash came from the yard.

This one was louder. Gate hinges. Wood splitting. Men screaming. A horse shrieked, high and terrible. Somewhere Boro roared a word Tom could not make out, though the meaning needed no translation.

The cell block erupted.

Fighters shouted from behind bars. Guards ran. Red cloaks pushed through the outer arch. Vorys's men met them in the corridor, and for a dozen heartbeats the narrow space became a butcher's throat. Short swords. Spears. Clubs. Torches knocked loose and rolling sparks across stone. Men slipping in blood. Prayers shouted like orders. Orders answered like curses.

Tom saw one of Vorys's guards take a red man through the eye with a spear, then die with a sword in his belly. Another red guard dropped to his knees, laughing as he bled, and tried to crawl forward to bite the man who had cut him.

"They are mad," Tom said.

"No," Jory said. "They are certain."

That was worse.

Mera returned with keys and Tall Spear.

Tall Spear had blood down one arm and a spear in the other. Mera threw the ring at Tom hard enough that it struck the bars and nearly bounced away.

"Open fast," she said.

Tom fumbled the first key. His bad hand hated the small work. Jory took the ring from him and found the right key on the third try. The lock opened with a dull clack that sounded almost delicate beneath the killing.

They stepped into the corridor.

Tom took the dead red guard's sword. Jory took the knife, then traded it for a short blade from one of Vorys's men who no longer needed it.

"Boro?" Jory asked.

"Yard," Tall Spear said.

"Sello?"

Mera's face tightened. "Infirmary."

That could mean anything.

They ran.

The training yard had become a red-lit nightmare.

Torches burned along the walls, some in brackets, some dropped into sand. Smoke gathered under the covered gallery and rolled beneath the stars. The main gate had been battered inward. Red guards poured through it in groups, shields locked badly but bravely, each man wearing some mark of flame: painted shields, red sashes, bronze amulets, strips of crimson cloth tied around sword arms. Behind them moved priests in red robes, not fighting, not directly. They pointed, shouted, blessed, commanded. And the guards obeyed like men who had given their own fear away.

Vorys's guards held the center poorly.

They were paid men. Some were good. Some were brave. But paid men knew the weight of living. The red guards came as if dying only proved a point.

Near the well, Boro stood with an axe.

His injured leg was bound from hip to knee. The linen had gone black with fresh blood. He should not have been standing.

He was standing anyway.

Three red guards came at him.

Boro killed the first with the back of the axe, crushing the man's face before the sword could fall. The second got inside his reach and drove a blade across Boro's ribs. Boro caught the man's wrist under his arm, headbutted him, and used the axe one-handed to open the third man's thigh. The second tried to pull free. Boro bit his ear off.

Tom stared.

Jory said, "Good man."

"Mad man."

"Both."

The fighters broke from the cell block in ones and twos, grabbing whatever the dead and dying had dropped. Mera shot until the bowstring snapped, then drew knives. Tall Spear moved toward Boro. The Norvoshi with bells tattooed down his arms swung an axe in wide, brutal arcs. Men and women who had been property an hour before fought for the right to keep breathing until dawn.

Then the priests brought out Vorys.

Not all of him.

A red priest climbed onto the low stone lip beside the training yard well. He was tall and thin, with a narrow beard and a ruby at his throat. In one hand he held something by the hair.

For a moment Tom did not understand.

Then the priest threw it into the sand.

Vorys's head rolled twice and stopped face-up beneath the torchlight.

His good eye stared at nothing.

His cloudy eye shone red.

The yard changed.

Fear became fury.

Vorys had owned them. Fed them. Bought them. Sold pieces of their pain to crowds. He had not been loved. But he had been the wall that stood between one kind of cage and every other kind of hand reaching for them. The red priest had not freed them by killing him. He had declared that they belonged to someone else.

The gladiators understood that before any words could explain it.

Mera screamed.

Not grief. War.

The fighters surged.

Tom went with them because the red guards were in front of him and Jory was at his shoulder and there was no road backward. He caught a sword on his own, drove the guard into Tall Spear's point, stepped over him, and took a shield blow on the ribs that made the world flash white. Jory killed the shieldman before Tom fell. A spear grazed Tom's cheek. He answered with the dead man's shield, smashing it into the attacker's throat.

The red priest at the well shouted, "Take the marked ones alive!"

Tom heard it.

So did Jory.

"Marked?" Jory said.

"Later."

"Alive?"

"Also later."

There was no later yet.

The yard buckled under the fight. Vorys's guards began falling back toward the kitchens. Red guards pressed forward. Fighters struck at both flanks, savage but unformed. Boro limped through the middle as if the battle had insulted him personally. He took another cut across the shoulder and killed the man who gave it. Then another. Then a third who tried to strike from behind and found Boro's elbow in his teeth.

For one mad moment, it seemed the ludis might hold.

Then the opposite gate burst open.

Black poured in.

At first Tom thought it was smoke. Then shapes resolved beneath the torches: figures in black robes over dark mail, faces hidden behind helms shaped like goat heads. Curved horns swept back from iron brows. Some had actual skulls fixed over helmets, blackened and lacquered, goat teeth grinning above human eyes. Their shields bore a black goat picked out in white.

They came from the far end of the yard, opposite the red guards.

For half a heartbeat both sides faltered.

Then the goat-men charged.

They did not shout for a god.

That made them worse.

They moved with purpose, cutting into the red guards' rear ranks while men in plain dark hoods flowed behind them carrying ropes, clubs, and short hooked blades. Not all wore goat helms. Those who did broke the line. Those who did not looked for people, not enemies.

Tom saw one point toward him.

Then toward Jory.

"Tom," Jory said.

"I see."

The red guards turned to meet the black goat-men. The yard became three battles in one. Red against Vorys's guards. Red against goat. Fighters against anyone who came close. Priests shouting. Goat-helmed men silent. Dark-hooded men darting through gaps like men gathering dropped coin from a street fight.

One of them threw a weighted net at Mera.

She cut through half before three more descended on her. Tall Spear went to help and was driven back by a goat-helmed swordsman with a curved blade. The Norvoshi broke one man's knee and took a club to the back of the skull.

Tom and Jory tried to reach Boro.

They did not get far.

Two red guards came at Tom with spears. He turned the first aside and felt the second punch into his stitched side, not deep enough to kill, deep enough to steal breath. Jory cut the spear shaft and drove his shoulder into the attacker. Pain crossed his face, but he stayed upright.

Then the dark-hooded men were on them.

Not killing.

That was the trick.

Tom had spent the fight expecting blades, so the first club against his wrist startled him more than it hurt. The sword fell from his hand. A rope looped over his arm. He tore free, punched one man in the face hard enough to feel bone move, and took another blow behind the knee.

Jory shouted.

Tom turned and saw him beneath three men, one clinging to his sword arm, another pulling a cord around his throat from behind. Jory dropped backward, crushing the man behind him, and drove his heel into another's knee.

A red guard cut down one of the dark-hooded men reaching for Tom.

For one breath, Tom and the red guard looked at each other in shared surprise.

Then Boro's axe took the red guard through the shoulder.

"Move!" Boro roared.

Tom tried.

Something hit him in the side of the head.

The world tilted.

He kept his feet because falling felt too much like dying.

Jory reached him. Blood ran from one ear. His eyes were sharp but not steady.

"Back to back," Jory said.

"Aye."

They stood in the sand with the ludis burning around them.

Red guards ahead. Dark hoods to the right. Goat helms cutting through the left. Boro limping toward them, bleeding from half a dozen places and killing anyone foolish enough to think that mattered.

The old trainer reached them.

"You two are trouble," he said.

"You noticed now?" Jory asked.

Boro grinned red. "Slow learner."

Then the dark-hooded men threw dust into Tom's eyes.

He cursed, blind and coughing. Hands struck him. Rope caught his legs. He slashed with a knife he did not remember taking and felt it bite cloth, then flesh. Someone screamed. Someone else hit his wounded side, and the pain folded him.

Jory shouted his name.

Boro roared.

The sand came up hard.

Men swarmed him.

Tom fought them as best he could with eyes burning and breath gone. He got one hand free and drove his thumb into a man's eye. Another rope looped his wrist. A knee pinned his spine. His arms were wrenched behind him, tied fast, then tied again. He kicked until someone put a club into his calf and made the leg useless.

"Alive!" a voice snapped in a language Tom did not know, then in Myrish. "Alive, fools!"

That was almost comforting.

Not much.

A hood went over his head.

Darkness became cloth, sweat, smoke, and blood.

He was lifted.

Not gently.

Carried.

He heard Jory somewhere nearby, cursing with cold precision until a blow cut the words off. Boro's voice came farther away, louder than both.

"I will kill every goat-headed son of-"

That ended in a grunt.

Tom was thrown over someone's shoulder. The motion tore at his side. He bit back a shout and failed. Around him the fight continued, muffled by the hood and by blood pounding in his ears. Red prayers. Black silence. Screams. The crackle of fire. A gate hinge shrieking. Hooves.

Wagons.

He was thrown into one.

Wood struck his shoulder. Other bodies struck him. Someone landed across his legs and hissed in pain. The wagon rocked as more were tossed in: one, two, three, too many to count by touch and breath alone.

"Jory," Tom said through the hood.

"Here."

Close.

Alive.

Tom let himself breathe once.

"Boro?"

"Here," came Boro's voice from farther back. "Unfortunately."

"You tied?"

"No, I am lounging."

Jory gave a ragged little laugh.

The wagon lurched.

Men shouted outside. Horses screamed and then moved. Wheels hit stone, then sand, then stone again. The yard noise fell behind them but did not fade cleanly. The fight followed for several streets in broken bursts. Hooves behind. Men running. Metal striking. A red guard shouting for R'hllor. A goat-helmed man dying without a sound Tom could hear.

The wagon turned hard.

Someone slammed into Tom's ribs.

He tasted blood.

"Where?" he asked.

"No idea," Jory said.

"Who?"

"Also no idea."

Boro shifted somewhere behind them. "Black Goat."

"What?"

"Qohorik god. Or sellswords playing at him. Helmets give it away."

"You know them?"

"I know ugly things when they wear horns."

The wagon sped up.

Behind them, the sounds of pursuit thinned.

Not gone.

Thinned.

That was enough for whoever had taken them. The wagons did not stop. They rattled through Myrish streets, out through some gate that opened too slowly and closed too fast, and into a night road where the stones gave way to harder earth. Tom could smell fields beyond the hood. Dust. Dry grass. Horse sweat. Smoke still clinging to his own skin.

No one slept.

Not at first.

Hands bound behind backs made every mile a lesson. The hood turned breath hot and foul. Wounds stiffened. Ropes tightened as bodies shifted. One of the other fighters moaned in a language Tom did not know until Boro told him to save air or die with an audience of annoyed men.

"Kind," Jory muttered.

"Truthful," Boro said.

"You can be both."

"Sounds expensive."

Tom closed his eyes under the hood.

The dark did not change.

Day came as heat.

The hood was pulled away near noon.

Light struck hard. Tom blinked, eyes raw from dust and smoke. They had stopped in a hollow between low hills. Dry scrub. Pale road. Wagons drawn close. Men in black hoods moved among them with water skins. Goat-helmed guards stood farther out, watching the ridges. There were fewer than had entered the ludis. Many fewer.

Tom looked for red.

None.

He looked for Jory.

Jory sat three bodies away, hands bound, face bruised, one eye darkening. He gave the smallest nod.

Boro lay near the wagon tail with his leg bound badly and his mouth set worse. Mera sat upright beside him, wrists tied, face split at the cheek, eyes murderous. Tall Spear was in another wagon. The Norvoshi too, if the tattooed arm Tom glimpsed over a sideboard was his. Sello was not there.

"Water," one of the hooded men said in Myrish.

He held a skin to Tom's mouth.

Tom drank because pride had no use if thirst killed him before answers arrived.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The man moved to Jory without answering.

"Where are you taking us?"

No answer.

Boro spat dust. "Polite lot."

One goat-helmed guard turned his head.

Boro smiled at him with bloody teeth.

"Ugly helm."

The guard said nothing.

That unnerved Tom more than insult would have.

They traveled again before the sun dipped.

The first day was road, dust, thirst, and pain. The second was worse because the body began to understand no kindness had been delayed, only omitted. They were fed flatbread hard enough to scrape the mouth and watered just often enough to keep them useful. At night, the wagons stopped in shallow places off the road. Guards kept watch without song or dice. The hooded men spoke little. The goat-helmed ones spoke less.

No one explained.

That became its own torment.

Tom counted turns when he could. The sun through the wagon slats. The slope of the road. The smell of water when they crossed a stream. The stars when the hood slipped enough to see sky. North had a feel, even in a land he did not know. So did east, after two days under the same sun.

On the second evening, Jory shifted close enough to speak without the nearest guard hearing easily.

"We were going northeast."

Tom looked at him.

Jory's face was swollen and grey with fatigue, but his eyes were clear.

"You sure?"

"Sure enough."

"Were?"

Jory tipped his chin toward the road behind them. "Sharp turn this afternoon. South now."

Tom thought back. The long climb. The pause by a dry watchtower. Men speaking beyond the wagons. Then the hard turn, wheels grinding, horses fighting the traces before the drivers cursed them onward.

"Why?" Tom asked.

Jory's mouth tightened. "If I knew, I would sound clever."

"You usually do."

"You are concussed."

"Usually."

Jory looked toward the front wagon where the goat-helmed captain rode beside a hooded man with silver at his belt. "Northeast could be Qohor."

"And south?"

"Disputed Lands. Volantis road, mayhaps. Or nowhere good."

"That narrows it."

"I was not trying to comfort you."

"Good."

Boro, who had apparently been listening from beneath a pile of misery and bad linen, said, "South means coin."

Tom turned his head. "You know that or guess it?"

"Everything means coin."

Mera's voice came from beyond him, low and sharp. "Or blood."

Boro grunted. "Same purse, different pocket."

No one laughed.

The third day blurred into the fourth.

Or mayhaps there were only three. Tom lost count when fever came and went around the edges of his thoughts. Sometimes he saw the Twins in the wagon slats. Sometimes the lion. Once he woke certain Tor was walking beside the wagon, one hand resting on the sideboard, keeping pace as if the road were only another march west.

He knew better than to speak.

Jory watched him anyway.

"Drink," he said when water came.

"I am."

"More."

"Bossy for a man tied up."

"Experienced."

Tom drank more.

They passed villages at a distance. Farms. A burned field. A line of poplars beside a dry road. Once they hid in a stand of stunted trees while riders passed north, red cloaks bright in the sun. The goat-helmed guards crouched beneath branches with blades drawn. The hooded men covered the prisoners with canvas and held knives ready in case silence needed help.

The riders passed.

The wagons moved south again.

By then the fight in the ludis had become something almost unreal in Tom's mind. Vorys's head on sand. Red guards praying while they killed. Black goat helms flooding through smoke. The feel of ropes closing. It should have ended something. Instead it had only changed the hands holding the reins.

On the fourth night, rain came.

Not northern rain. Not cold. A warm, hard fall that turned dust to slick clay and made the wagons groan. The prisoners lifted their faces to it until the guards pulled canvas over them. Tom managed to catch water on his tongue before darkness closed.

Jory laughed once.

Small.

Startling.

"What?" Tom asked.

"Tor would complain this rain lacks effort."

Tom saw him then, too clearly: Tor in a dented helm too small, rain running down his nose, declaring the weather unworthy of Bear Island.

The ache that followed was old now.

Not smaller.

Known.

"He would be right," Tom said.

"Usually was, when insulting clouds."

The wheels rolled on.

Days in a wagon taught a man the language of axles. A loose pin clicked before it failed. A tired horse dragged the rhythm uneven. A driver hiding fear used the reins too sharply. A road near water softened the wheel-sound. A road nearing stone answered with harder strikes.

On the morning Tom thought might be the fifth, the wheels changed.

The road hardened first. Then smoothed. The wagon slowed.

Voices passed from the front to the rear, low and urgent. The goat-helmed guards adjusted their grips. One of the hooded men pulled canvas back and looked over the prisoners as if counting losses before a sale.

Tom pushed himself upright as far as tied hands allowed.

Jory was already listening.

"What?" Tom whispered.

Jory's eyes narrowed.

"Gate," he said.

Tom heard it then.

Not the open road. Not a village track. Chains. Wood. Men calling from above. Hooves slowing because drivers had no choice. Wheels grinding over fitted stone.

Boro lifted his head from the wagon floor.

"About time," he muttered.

"Know where?" Tom asked.

Boro spat blood-dark rainwater from his mouth. "No."

The wagon slowed further.

Then stopped.

Ahead, something vast creaked open.

Tom could not see past the wagon boards and canvas, could not know who had paid for them, who had taken them, or what road had decided their next cage.

But the air changed.

Cooler.

Stone-walled.

Waiting.

The wheels turned once more, slowly now, carrying them toward whatever waited inside.

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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.