Redemption of the Dragon

Act 1 – Survival · Chapter 6: Ravens to Roost

Dawn came thin and red.

Tom had heard men call such light beautiful before. Men who had slept in beds, mayhaps. Men who had seen red clouds from castle windows and thought of songs, wine, and pretty girls with ribbons in their hair.

On a battlefield, red dawn looked like warning.

The hollow woke without voices.

That frightened Tom more than shouting would have. Men buckled belts in silence. They tied straps, checked knots, lifted shields, and touched edges to whetstones with small careful strokes. Horses stamped beyond the trees, their breath pale in the cold. Somewhere a man retched quietly and tried to make it sound like coughing.

Tor noticed anyway.

"That's one way to empty yourself before a fight," he murmured.

Jory did not look up from tightening the leather around his wrist. "Do not start."

"I had not begun."

"You are always beginning."

Tor considered that. "A fair charge."

Tom put on his helm.

It changed the world at once. Sound went duller. The morning narrowed. The leather inside smelled of old sweat and iron, not his own yet, though soon enough it would be. He fastened the strap beneath his chin with fingers that did not feel quite steady and told himself no one could see.

Jory saw.

Of course he did.

"Too tight?" Jory asked.

"No."

"Good."

That was all.

Willam stood nearby with his spear in one hand and the kitchen knife at his belt. He had not drawn the knife. He kept touching it as if to make sure it had not fled in the night. Pate adjusted the leather tied around his maimed hand, trying to find a way to make shield and stump agree. Donnel Hill rolled his shoulders against the pull of his old arrow wound. Osric strung his bow without looking at anyone. Garrel Reed smiled at the dirt. Mikken Slate held his maul and stared west.

Ron was eating.

He had found a hard heel of bread somewhere and worked at it with the patience of a man chewing a cart wheel.

"Where did you get that?" Tor asked.

Ron swallowed. "Had it."

"Since when?"

"Since it was bread."

Tor opened his mouth, then closed it. "I cannot argue with that."

Cley Cerwyn came back from the trees as the last of the dark left them. His narrow face was damp with mist. He carried three arrows, all broken, and a strip of yellow cloth.

"They have archers forward," he said.

Tom took the cloth. Lannister yellow, though faded by mud and rain. "How close?"

"Close enough to be proud. Not close enough to be wise."

Harwyn Tallhart appeared from the horse lines with two men behind him carrying bundles of spare spear shafts. His face looked as it always did, which was to say carved for bad news.

"Form in ten," he said. "Tom."

Tom went with him.

The ground rose beyond the hollow in a long shoulder of earth, low enough that a man could climb it with breath to spare, high enough to hide an army from another man's eyes. Greatjon waited at the top on his black horse. Hother Umber sat to his left, helm on now, beard tucked into his gorget. Dacey Mormont was there with her bear cloak pinned tight. Maron Locke sat farther back, watching the rear even while everyone else watched forward.

Beyond them lay Raventree Hall.

Tom had expected more.

That was foolish. Castles did not become less real for lacking the shape in a boy's imagination. Still, the hall looked tired. Its dark walls rose from a low swell of ground, weathered and stubborn, with a square tower and a gatehouse scarred by smoke. The godswood stood within, or what he took for it: a great dead weirwood rising pale and leafless above the walls, its branches black with ravens.

There were hundreds of them.

They covered the dead tree like rotten fruit. More circled above the fields, crying harshly as if the living had arrived late to a feast already promised.

At the sight of them, Willam would have muttered a prayer.

Tom only breathed.

Below the castle, Lannister men had made a camp across the eastern approach. It was not a proper siege, not with towers and trenches and engines. It was a chokehold. Wagons formed rough lines. Ditches had been scratched before them. Stakes angled from the mud. Horses stood near the road. Men moved among tents and cooksmoke in red and yellow, their order too sharp for outlaws and too careless for a host that expected battle before breakfast.

"They did not think us so near," Harwyn said.

"Good," Greatjon replied. "I hate disappointing men slowly."

Tom saw movement on the walls.

Blackwood banners. Raventree's dead tree on red, dark against the morning. Archers gathered along the battlements and near a half-ruined outer yard east of the gate. Their leader stood on the wall walk above the gatehouse, black hair loose in the wind, cloak snapping behind him.

"Tytos Blackwood," Harwyn said quietly. "Lord Blackwood's son."

The young man lifted a bow.

Not a salute. A signal.

Greatjon grinned.

"Ravens in their tree," he said. "Now we make the lions look up."

The plan came quickly, as if it had been waiting for dawn as much as the men had.

Greatjon would take the cavalry along the north fold, hidden by low ground until they could strike the Lannister horse and the camp's open flank. Hother and Dacey would ride with him. Locke would keep riders to the rear and cut off any men trying to flee east through the orchard road. Tytos Blackwood's archers would loose from the walls and the broken outer yard when the lions turned to meet the charge.

Harwyn would lead the foot down the center.

Tom would lead beside him.

Not above. Not behind.

Beside.

The word sat heavy.

"We take the wagons," Harwyn said, pointing with his sword. "Break the stakes, cross the ditch, force them back from the road. Hold discipline. Do not chase beyond the second line unless ordered. If they run for the gate, let the horse take them."

"And if they do not run?" Tom asked.

Greatjon's grin flashed beneath his beard. "Then they are kind enough to die closer."

Hother laughed.

Dacey did not.

Tom looked at the field and tried to make it smaller in his head. Ditch. Stakes. Wagons. Shields. Men. The words were pieces he could hold. Battle was too large. Battle had swallowed him once already.

"Tom," Harwyn said.

Tom looked at him.

"Your dozen keep left of my center. Use Ron's shield to get men through the stakes. Cley watches for pits. Pate and Mikken break what needs breaking. Jory holds your line. Tor…"

Harwyn stopped.

"Tor does what Tor does," Tom said.

Harwyn's mouth nearly moved. "Try to point him."

"Aye."

The captain looked down the field again. "When the horn sounds once, advance. Twice, push. Three times, hold. If you hear Greatjon shouting over all of it, assume he is pleased."

"And if he is not?"

"You will know."

Tom believed that.

He returned to his men.

They were waiting for him. That was the worst of it sometimes. Not fear. Not pain. The waiting. Their eyes found him as if he were a road marker in fog.

Tor saw his face first. "Bad?"

"Battle."

"Ah. So yes."

Tom looked over them one by one. Jory. Tor. Willam. Cley. Pate. Eddyn. Ron. Osric. Mikken. Garrel. Donnel. Eleven men who had followed him through mud, hunger, arrows, lords, and rumors. Eleven men left from the road.

"We go with Harwyn," Tom said. "Left of his center. Ron forward with the shield. Mikken and Pate behind him. Cley, you watch the ground. Osric, loose when you have sight. Garrel, if you vanish, vanish usefully."

Garrel's smile widened. "I always vanish usefully."

"No," Jory said.

"Often, then."

"Tor," Tom said.

Tor straightened with exaggerated dignity. "Point me."

"At men trying to kill us."

"A broad assignment. I accept."

Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

Then he looked at Willam.

The boy's hands were not shaking.

That seemed worse.

"Stay behind Ron until we pass the ditch," Tom said.

Willam nodded. "Aye."

"Not beside. Behind."

"I heard."

"Hear harder."

Willam swallowed. "Aye."

The horn sounded once.

The infantry moved.

At first, it was only walking.

That was the lie battle told best. Men walked because running too soon made fools and corpses. They kept shields up and spears angled. Boots pressed into wet grass. Breath smoked. Leather creaked. The line spread wider than any road Tom had ever traveled, and still it felt narrow, hemmed in by the pounding of his own heart.

The Lannisters saw them halfway down the slope.

Shouts rose from the camp. Men ran for shields. A pot overturned near a fire. Horses screamed as grooms pulled at reins. One red-cloaked man pointed toward the ridge and kept pointing, as if the others might not notice several hundred northmen coming to murder them.

Then the first arrows came.

They fell short.

Not all.

A man two files to Tom's right spun and went down with a shaft in his thigh. Another took one in the shield and laughed too loudly. Tom heard arrows hiss into grass, thud into wood, click from mail. His own shield jerked against his arm as one struck and glanced away.

He did not remember lifting it.

"Good shield," Tor said beside him.

"Walk," Jory said.

They walked.

Blackwood horns answered from the walls.

The sound came thin at first, then stronger, joined by the harsh cry of ravens disturbed from the dead tree. They burst upward in a black cloud as Tytos Blackwood's archers loosed.

The sky became teeth.

Arrows fell into the Lannister camp from behind and above. Men who had faced the northmen now twisted toward the walls. Shields turned. Orders tangled. Tom saw one Lannister serjeant raise his sword to gather men and take a Blackwood shaft through the throat. He stood a moment longer than seemed fair, then folded.

The second horn sounded.

"Push!" Harwyn shouted.

The line quickened.

Not running. Not yet. A harder walk, shields close, spears forward, men breathing through teeth. Ron moved at Tom's left, his battered round shield held high. Arrows struck it with thick wooden knocks.

"Like rain," Ron muttered.

"Rain does not hate you," Willam said behind him.

Ron grunted. "You have not known mountain rain."

Cley called, "Pit!"

Tom stopped half a step before the ground betrayed them.

The ditch before the stakes had been covered badly with reeds and mud. A Tallhart man missed the warning and went in to his waist with a curse. Pate grabbed his collar. Mikken drove the butt of his maul into the soft edge until the cover collapsed, showing the hole for what it was. Men shifted around it, line bending.

Too slow.

The Lannisters found their first courage there.

Crossbow bolts came lower and harder from behind the wagons. One struck Pate's tied shield and spun him sideways. Another punched through the throat of the man beside Eddyn. Blood sprayed black over Eddyn's beard. He did not look at it.

"Forward!" Harwyn shouted.

Tom saw the stakes ahead. Sharpened poles angled toward them, lashed between wagon wheels and driven into mud. A good barrier, if men had time to stand behind it. Less good when arrows rained from castle walls and northern cavalry horns began to sound from the left.

Greatjon had moved.

Tom did not see the charge begin. He felt it.

The ground changed beneath his boots. A thunder came from the north fold, deep and growing, joined by screams, iron, and the wild enormous voice of Greatjon Umber roaring something no man could mistake for caution.

The Lannister horse turned too late.

Black riders burst from low mist with the giant of Umber above them, and for one heartbeat the whole field seemed to lean toward the impact.

Then they struck.

Tom had seen men die beneath horse before. He had never liked seeing it. There was no skill in the first moment of cavalry meeting men not ready for cavalry. There was weight, speed, and the terrible truth that flesh did not argue well with hooves. Lannister riders broke apart. Some tried to wheel. Some drove forward. Some simply vanished under the crash.

Hother's men hit the flank laughing.

Dacey Mormont's riders did not laugh.

They cut.

"Now!" Harwyn shouted.

Tom hit the stakes with Ron and Mikken.

Ron put his shield against the angled poles and shoved. Mikken swung the maul. Wood cracked. Pate hooked rope around a stake with his good hand and leaned back, teeth bared. Tom drove his axe into the lashing between two wagon wheels. The first cut bit rope. The second bit wood. The third jarred his shoulder so hard his vision whitened.

Tor stepped past him and killed a man over the barrier.

The Lannister had come too close with a spear, thrusting between the stakes. Tor caught the shaft under his arm, grinned at the man as if they had been introduced at a feast, and pulled. The Lannister stumbled forward. Jory's axe ended him.

"Wasteful," Tor said.

"You were slow," Jory answered.

The stakes gave.

Ron bellowed and drove through the gap like a door deciding it was tired of hinges. Willam followed behind him as ordered. Tom followed because orders felt different when your own feet had to obey them.

The ditch sucked at his boots. He nearly fell. Donnel caught the back of his mail and shoved him upright.

"Not yet," Donnel growled.

"Aye."

They climbed.

The Lannisters behind the wagons were not outlaws. Tom saw that at once. They had mail, helms, discipline enough to form a ragged shield wall, fear enough to make it brittle. Their captain shouted for spears. A banner with a red lion snapped above them, muddied at the edge.

Harwyn's men struck the center.

Tom's men struck left.

There was no room for thought then.

Only pieces.

A spear point sliding past his cheek.

His axe haft cracking against a shield rim.

Jory's shoulder beside his.

Tor laughing, then cursing.

Ron roaring.

Willam screaming without words.

The stink of mud opened by boots. The heat of bodies. The hard flat sound of iron on iron. A man in yellow lunged at Tom with a sword. Tom caught it on his shield and struck low, not pretty, not clever. The axe found the man's shin. He fell forward, and Tom hit him again because fallen men still killed.

The line moved.

One step.

Then another.

Behind them, Blackwood arrows kept falling. Tytos Blackwood had his archers well in hand. They did not loose into the crush. They picked men beyond it, runners, officers, crossbowmen, fools trying to drag wagons into new position. Every time a Lannister head rose above the second line, ravens answered from the walls.

Tom understood then why men feared good archers.

You could fight a man before you.

It was harder to fight a sky that hated you.

"Left!" Cley shouted.

Tom turned.

Lannister men had found a gap between two wagons and were trying to fold around the infantry flank. Not many. Eight, mayhaps ten. Enough. Their leader wore a half-helm and carried a mace. His eyes fixed on Tom because Tom was big, because men were looking to him, because battle had taught the man where to strike.

Cley moved first.

He had no shield worth naming, only a short spear and the quick feet that had found paths through mud and dark since the road. He darted toward the gap, thrust once, and made the first man stumble. Osric loosed over his shoulder. The arrow took another in the cheek.

"Close!" Tom shouted.

Ron turned with his shield.

Too late.

The mace caught Cley at the temple.

It made a sound Tom would remember longer than he wanted to live.

Cley dropped as if someone had cut all the strings in him.

"Cley!" Willam screamed.

Tom hit the mace-man.

He did not remember crossing the distance. One moment he was behind Ron's shoulder. The next his axe was buried in the man's upper arm, caught in mail and meat. The Lannister howled and swung again. Tom took the blow on his shield. His left arm went numb from wrist to shoulder. He slammed his helm into the man's face.

That was foolish.

It worked.

The man reeled. Jory's axe took him behind the knee. Tor finished him with a thrust under the jaw.

Cley lay in the mud, eyes half open.

Tom knew.

There was no time to know.

"Close the gap!" Harwyn shouted from somewhere to the right.

Tom stepped over Cley.

That was the first death of the morning that broke something in him.

Not because Cley was better than the other dead. That would have been a lie. Men died all around them, each one the center of his own small world. But Tom knew the way Cley complained before rain. He knew the tilt of his head when he found a trail. He knew Cley had wanted to live because men who complained that much were making claims upon the future.

Tom stepped over him anyway.

The line bent and held.

Then Greatjon's cavalry hit the Lannister rear.

The camp broke.

Not all at once. Men liked to say armies broke like sticks. Tom thought they broke more like rotten cloth. A tear began in one place, widened, caught on something stubborn, then ripped suddenly so wide no hands could mend it. The Lannister horse was gone or fleeing. Their right had folded under Hother. Their left found Locke's riders where escape should have been. Dacey's spears drove prisoners and wagons apart with grim precision.

The Lannister center saw it.

Men began to run for the castle gate.

That made no sense until Tom saw the portcullis raised.

The lions held the outer gate.

Not the hall, perhaps. Not all of it. Blackwood banners still flew. Tytos still loosed from the wall above, and Blackwood men still shouted from inside. But the Lannisters had taken the gatehouse or forced a way through its outer works. Now their broken field men ran for that stone mouth as if walls could make courage return.

"Hold discipline. Do not chase!" Harwyn shouted. "Hold the line!"

Some men did not hear.

Some heard and chose glory.

They died for both.

Crossbowmen in the gatehouse fired into the pursuing northmen. Three went down before Harwyn could drag the line back by voice alone. Tom grabbed Willam's collar as the boy started after the fleeing men.

"No!"

"They killed Cley!"

"Aye. And they'll kill you too."

Willam fought him for half a heartbeat.

Ron took one step between them and the gate. "Boy."

Willam stopped.

The word had not been loud. It did not need to be.

Then the Lannisters countered from the gate.

A knot of armored men burst out under red shields, not running now, but pushing to save their own from being cut down before the walls. Crossbowmen fired over them. The northmen nearest the ditch were scattered from the chase. Harwyn's center was still reforming. Tom saw the danger a heartbeat before the horn sounded three times.

Hold.

The word came through brass.

Hold, or the gap becomes a wound.

"Shields!" Tom shouted.

Ron lifted his.

Donnel shoved Willam down behind it. Pate dragged a loose wagon board upright. Mikken swung his maul into the first shield that reached them and shattered the painted lion across it. Jory set his feet. Tor came in beside him, grin gone now, face all blood and purpose.

The Lannister charge hit them.

Ron took the worst of it.

He always did.

The first spear struck his shield and glanced. The second drove through the wood and into his side. Ron grunted, more annoyed than afraid, and trapped the shaft against his body. The man holding it tried to pull back. Ron would not let him.

"Mine," he said.

He dropped the shield edge, hauled the spearman close by the trapped shaft, and crushed the man's face with his axe.

Then the third spear found him under the arm.

Tom saw it enter.

He wished he had not.

Ron looked down as if surprised the world had been so rude. Blood ran over his mail, dark and sudden. The Lannister tried to wrench the spear free. Ron caught the haft with both hands and held it in himself.

"No," Ron said.

Mikken roared and smashed the spearman's helm flat.

Ron went to one knee.

"Ron!" Tom shouted.

"Line," Jory snapped.

He was right.

Tom hated him for it.

They held.

The fight at the gate mouth lasted less than a minute and all of Tom's life.

Harwyn brought the center back together. Blackwood arrows hissed down into the red shields. Dacey's riders cut across the field and took the counterattack in the flank. One Lannister knight tried to rally them beneath the gate. Greatjon Umber rode into him like judgment on four legs, and the knight vanished under black horse and giant shadow.

The Lannisters broke again.

This time they did not pretend otherwise.

They fled through the gatehouse. Men shoved one another. Some threw down shields to run faster. Tytos Blackwood's archers took those who slowed. The portcullis crashed down too soon, cutting off a dozen lions still outside. Those men looked at the gate, then at the northmen, and understood which side their friends had chosen.

Tor killed one who kept his sword.

Harwyn accepted surrender from the rest.

Tom knelt beside Ron.

The big man was sitting now with his back against the broken wagon board, both hands still around the spear in his side. His face had gone grey beneath the dirt. Willam pressed cloth against the wound under his arm with both hands. Pate hovered uselessly, which was the most frightened Tom had ever seen him.

"Do not pull it," Eddyn said.

"Wasn't planning to," Ron muttered.

His voice was thick.

Tom dropped to one knee. "Ron."

Ron looked at him. His heavy brows drew together as if Tom had interrupted important work.

"We held," Ron said.

"Aye."

"Good."

Tor crouched nearby. "You're too ugly to die from that."

Ron tried to smile.

Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth.

Tor's face changed.

That was when Willam began to cry.

Not loudly. Not like a child. Worse than that. He cried while still pressing the cloth, teeth clenched, shoulders shaking, trying to hold life in with hands not made for it.

Ron looked at him.

"Boy."

Willam bent closer.

"Behind," Ron said.

Willam's face twisted. "What?"

"You stayed behind. Good."

Willam made a sound Tom had no name for.

Ron closed his eyes.

For a moment Tom thought that was the end. Then Ron opened them again and looked past Tom toward the field, where Cley lay somewhere in the mud among men and broken stakes and trampled banners.

"Cerwyn?" Ron asked.

Tom could have lied.

He did not.

"Dead."

Ron breathed out. "Complained enough for two."

Tor gave a broken laugh.

Ron seemed satisfied by that.

His hands slipped from the spear.

Pate caught them before they fell.

The battle ended around them by pieces.

Men still screamed. Horses limped. Northmen dragged wounded friends away from the ditch. Blackwood archers called to one another from the walls. Lannister prisoners were stripped of weapons and shoved to their knees. The great dead weirwood of Raventree Hall stood above it all, white and black and crowded with ravens returning to their branches.

Ravens to roost, Tom thought.

He did not know where the words came from.

Greatjon rode across the field with blood on his beard and joy in his eyes. "Tallhart! Count them! Mormont, hold the road! Hother, stop chasing unless you mean to climb the walls on horseback!"

"I might!" Hother shouted back.

"Then find a taller horse!"

Men laughed because the Greatjon laughed, because the field was theirs, because laughter was easier than looking down.

Tom looked down.

Cley first.

They found him near the gap, half-covered in churned mud. His eyes were closed now. Jory had done that, though Tom had not seen him do it. The side of Cley's head was broken badly. There would be no words from him about rain, no complaints about roads, no sharp warning before hidden ground gave way.

Tom stood over him with mud to his ankles and blood drying on his hands.

"He saw the gap," Jory said.

"Aye."

"If he hadn't…"

"Aye."

Neither of them finished it.

Ron lay farther back beneath a cloak that did not cover his boots. They were too large for the cloth. Willam sat beside him with blood on both hands and stared at nothing. Pate had taken the spear away at last and laid Ron's axe across his chest.

Tor stood over the body a long while.

No joke came.

That frightened Tom almost as much as the silence before dawn had.

Harwyn found him there.

The Tallhart captain's face had a cut across one cheek and blood on his sleeve, not all of it his own. He looked at Ron, then at Cley, then at Tom.

"You held the gap," Harwyn said.

Tom looked toward the castle.

The Lannister banners had vanished behind the walls. Blackwood ravens flew from the dead tree and settled again. Tytos Blackwood stood above the gatehouse with bow in hand while his men shouted down to the northmen. The gate remained shut. The field was won. The hall was not yet clean.

"They ran inside," Tom said.

"Aye."

"Then it isn't done."

"No."

Across the field, Greatjon Umber lifted his sword and roared for the men to cheer.

They did.

The sound rolled over the dead and wounded, over broken wagons and trampled lions, over mud that had drunk northern blood and westerman both. It rose to the walls of Raventree Hall, where Blackwood men answered with bows raised high. Later, Tom thought, men would give this morning a name. They would call it the liberation of Raventree Hall because names liked clean edges. They would say the North broke the lions beneath the dead tree. They would remember Greatjon's charge, Tytos Blackwood's arrows, Harwyn's foot, perhaps even Tom's ragged dozen holding a gap.

They would not remember Cley complaining about rain.

They would not remember Ron asking if bread had been bread.

Tom would.

He looked at the dead tree and the living ravens, at the castle walls where beaten lions had gone to ground, and felt victory settle on his shoulders like another wet cloak.

"Tom," Harwyn said.

Tom turned.

"Gather your men."

He looked back at what remained of them.

Jory. Tor. Willam. Pate. Eddyn. Osric. Mikken. Garrel. Donnel.

Nine men.

He had counted them too quickly.

He counted again.

Nine.

The road had taken two more names, and the day was not yet done.

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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.