The dispatch rider reined in in a cloud of dust. "My lord," he threw off a salute as his foam-flecked horse lowered its head and blew gustily, "Ser Justan Osgrey begs leave to report; his column is under attack by an equal force and he is withdrawing towards the west."

Ser Lyle Crakehall nodded; he had been waiting for the shoe to drop for days now. He had felt that the raid had been going too smoothly since their third day over the border. "What manner of force, and how commanded?" he asked briskly.

"Light horse and middleweight cavalry, like the Northmen," the rider replied. "And commanded vigorously; when I left they were pressing Ser Justan closely, for all the archers could do. Ser Justan says to tell you that he will make a fighting withdrawal towards the Barrows, where he will turn and give battle."

Lyle nodded, stroking his beard with gloved fingers as he stared eastward and consulted the map in his head. The Barrows were a pair of burial mounds, allegedly occupied by anyone from two kings of the First Men from the days before their migration over the Arm of Dorne to two lovers from enemy families who had committed suicide rather than be forced apart from each other; they had given their name to the plantation that stood in their shadow. That plantation had been stormed and burned out two days ago, but the wall that had surrounded it was still intact and would be as good a place as any to make a stand. Especially if help was coming soon, and Lyle's column was only a day and a half's march southward.

He turned to his officers. "Turn the column around," he ordered. "We're going back to the Barrows. Have the light horse concentrate their scouting efforts to the east and send out dispatch riders to inform Ser Justan that we will meet him at the Barrows."

"Ser Justan sets himself up as the anvil and we play the hammer?" asked Ser Jaymes Westerling, a nephew of old Ser Elys, who had been killed at Tara.

"Or he plays the man who leads the cow into the slaughterhouse while we play the man with the mallet and the knife," Lyle replied to a round of chuckles from his officers. "Ser Ivynn, have your men take extra care to see without being seen. Be bad manners to spoil the surprise."

"Like ghosts in the wind, they'll be, my lord," Ser Ivynn Stabler said with a lupine grin; the former Pentoshi stable-slave might have started his life of arms as a groom and valet to a conroi of landless men-at-arms, but he had survived Tara and the Siege of Myr, been knighted after Narrow Run, and received the Distinguished Service Star for his actions at Novadomo. Strictly speaking he was entitled to a place in one of the Royal companies of the heavy cavalry, but Lyle judged that the light horse suited him better. The light horse companies might have been regimented and made almost respectable under King Robert's patronage, but they retained the habits that had become ingrained during their more freebooting days, and Ser Ivynn combined the judgment of a lawyer with the instincts of a goshawk, especially where slavers were concerned. When the Barrows had been stormed, the owner had made the mistake of trying to flee rather than surrender or go down fighting, and Ser Ivynn's riders had run him down within two hundred yards of the plantation's back gate. The thing that had been dragged behind their horses back to the plantation had been hardly recognizable as a human being.

"Well, let them be quiet and careful ghosts and they'll get their share of the fun," Lyle said mock-chidingly. "In the meantime, let's hop to it, gentlemen."

XXX

Ser Justan Osgrey knocked the brim of his kettle hat up so that it hung off the back of his head by the chin strap as he wiped his brow with a hand only recently freed from its gauntlet. The kettle hat was more open than most helmets, being essentially a metal bowl with a wide brim and a plated chinstrap, but it still caught the heat of the sun as well as any other helmet. The arming cap and coif didn't help that matter either.

And the day was hotter than even the sun could make it. The Lyseni cavalry that had come hammering at the flank of his column the day before yesterday had pursued him all the way to the Barrows and were now holding him in a near-siege within the walls of the sacked plantation. They had even tried scaling the wall the night after his men had gone to ground in the plantation, probably on the theory that they would be tempted to let their guard down after two days of hard fighting on the move and the security offered by the walls. Fortunately, he had seen to it that half the men had remained awake and alert on watch, and the attempted escalade had been driven back with loss. The Lyseni, balked of what was probably their last chance at an easy victory, had decided to start the day with a light bombardment; each of them, it seemed, had a goat's-foot crossbow and a plentiful supply of bolts, and had nothing better to do than to snipe at every head that poked itself above the lip of the wall.

Justan's three companies of light horse and one of mounted infantry, on the other hand, were running short of ammunition after having to spend them like water to keep the Lyseni at bay the last two days. Neither bolt nor javelin could be recovered from the field when every minute had to be used to cover the distance to the Barrows, and the light supply carts had been filled with food more than ammunition. Captain Ilryos Revyn had reported at dawn that his men had ten bolts apiece and no more; Justan had ordered that they be saved to use against any assault that tried the walls, with none to be loosed except on order. The light horse were down to their last javelins, which he had ordered reserved to use as spears. At least there was plenty of food still; the supply carts had all come through intact. And while the men were tired they were still in fine fettle otherwise; the Lyseni might have pressed them hard but they had not driven them, and a few sharp melees had taught them to keep a respectful distance. Justan might have been tempted to stand and fight it out, but Ser Brynden's orders had been to withdraw to the support of the other columns in the event that they were engaged by equal force, on the grounds that only a fool took a fight at even odds, regardless of the other respective merits of the two sides.

He glanced around the wide courtyard surrounding the manse of the plantation and smiled at what he saw. The men were dusty and battered, but there was still a spring in their step as they saw to their horses and their equipment, apparently heedless of the peril posed by overshooting Lyseni quarrels except to make jokes about the poor accuracy and volley control of the slavers; a favorite seemed to be that crossbows weren't the only weapons the Lyseni were over-hasty and inaccurate with. The sergeants and underofficers were reinforcing the mood by striding about with lazy purposefulness and having an occasional word with men who seemed to be slacking. One pair of junior lieutenants were standing in the shade of the remains of the mansion's porch, idly discussing the weather. Justan replaced the gauntlet on his hand and pulled his kettle hat forward so that it sat snugly on his head again, then resumed the posture he had taken in the center of the courtyard with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped at the small of his back. He might be a poor knight, but he was still a knight, and the spurs and belt came with obligations. Among which was not voicing the wish that the Black Lion could have come on the raid after all; a chequy lion would have to do.

Justan glanced at one of the walls as a brief squall of bolts came whickering over it and twitched his lips in a slight smile. There was a certain irony to the fact that the same walls these men's comrades in Ser Lyle's column had stormed three days ago were now a vital part of their plan for victory. His father, he suspected, would have been amused.

XXX

The dispatch rider went from a canter to a dead stop not six feet from Lyle's charger. "Ser Ivynn begs leave to report, my lord," the wiry woman said as Lyle's charger started and whickered annoyance at the courier's lighter horse, which whickered back with what Lyle would swear was superiority, "and the Lyseni made him before he was fully in position. His company is now racing to cut off the enemy retreat, but he recommends an immediate attack in order to fix the enemy until he does."

Lyle calmed his horse with a pat of his gauntleted fist and chewed his lip momentarily as he checked the angles in his head, before dismissing them with a shrug. "Nothing for it then, I suppose," he said lightly as he turned to his trumpeter. "Sound advance to contact." As the trumpeter raised his instrument and sent the two-short-one-long notes of the Royal Army's signal to attack sailing away Lyle turned to his retinue. "Helmets and lances, gentlemen," he said crisply, "and remember to not be greedy; plenty of honor on the field for everyone." The men-at-arms and knights of his household chuckled; it was a common joke in the Army that knights craved the honor of close combat like normal men craved food and would go to any lengths to acquire as much as they could get. Like most such jokes it had an element of truth to it, enough so that there were several ordinances in the King's Regulations stipulating under what circumstances knights could seek out enemies of suitable rank to engage in single combat between opposing forces. Not that Lyle considered such an event likely here; his men were not only thoroughly disciplined, but the Lyseni were unlikely to have anyone worthy of such a challenge, being only light horse.

And in any event, things were now moving too rapidly for such a challenge and combat to take place. The two cavalry companies under his command were now trotting up the low ridge separating the column from the Barrows, with the Legion company jogging along behind them with a clatter of armor and shields. As the column crested the ridge, the sight that greeted them made Lyle grin like a wolf faced with a lame deer. The Lyseni had evidently failed to breach the wall around the plantation, and a significant number of them had already moved to intercept Ser Ivynn's light horse. The rest of the Lyseni, it seemed, had only now realized the pickle they were in, with the wall to their front, an enemy force of equal number and heavier equipment in their rear, and zero time to decide what to do about it. As Lyle watched, the Lyseni companies became a muddle of disorder, while the men on the edges began to stream away in what looked for all the world like panicked flight. "General attack!" he roared at his trumpeter. "Sound the charge, man!"

It was a significant gamble, he knew, but almost all of the dice had already landed in his favor. His light horse were on the enemy flank and moving to cut off their retreat. His heavy cavalry might be slower off the mark than the enemy, but they would be very nearly as fast once they were at speed. He had heavy infantry following behind to support in case the enemy managed to survive the shock of his men-at-arms. The enemy was disordered and liable to panic at the next shock. And unless he missed his guess, Ser Justan Osgrey would even now be ordering his men to mount up and sortie, which would be the final blow to the enemy's cohesion. And as the cavalry's chargers lumbered into the canter and the lances swung down, Lyle saw through the rapidly rising dust that the Lyseni nearest the wall were suddenly recoiling away from it. He laughed aloud, shaking his lance in the air with joy at his enemy's downfall. The Lyseni might have proven to be apter students at war than anyone could guess, but even the Legion could not recover from such disorder. Not with mere seconds left before the swords started swinging. "We've got them now, boys!" he exulted. "At them!"

"None so Fierce!" his men chorused as they closed their visors.

XXX

Ser Ivynn Stabler could not help a gleeful laugh as he blocked a frantic blow and swung the edge of his falchion into the Lyseni trooper's face, dropping the slaver into the dust to scrabble at the ruin of his eyes. He might not have been able to completely cut off the retreat of the Lyseni light horse, but he thought he had timed his turn into their fleeing ranks beautifully. A few hundreds might escape, but hundreds more had become so much meat on the chopping block for the Royal Army, either pinned against the Barrows or caught here in the base of the valley. And both the slavers and Ivynn's light horse knew that asking or giving quarter was not in the cards. Even if it was the custom for cavalry in hot pursuit to give quarter, a fifth of Ivynn's troopers were former slaves, and their comrades had absorbed their attitudes towards their former masters.

Attitudes that Ivynn did his level best to encourage. Anyone who wanted could see the scars around his neck from the collar and the ones on his back from the lash, even if they couldn't see the scars on his soul from watching his sisters be sold to a brothel and his elder brother to a quicksilver mine; he knew his brother was dead, no one survived more than three years in a quicksilver mine, and he suspected his sisters had either died or been moved beyond even King Robert's reach years ago. He had sworn on the day he was freed that for every hair on the heads of his sisters and brother he would take a slaver's life in vengeance, and by his reckoning he had a long way to go yet before that vow was fulfilled

So he spurred his horse ever deeper into the Lyseni ranks, his falchion rising and falling like a butcher's cleaver as he hacked at the slavers. Some of them might escape, but these would not. Not with four hundred Myrish light horse in their midst like wolves among sheep. In a melee such as this only the enemy's horses would be spared, and that because King Robert had made it a policy of his government to pay a bounty for captured horses; the royal stud farm had been started with the surviving war horses of the Sunset Company and a handful of studs imported at reportedly hideous expense, but it was always in search of new bloodstock. Ivynn struggled to retain enough awareness to maintain his judgement of the situation; it had been drilled into him time and again that only a fool pressed an advantage beyond its worth. The Kingdom of Myr might be better able to absorb losses than its enemies, but it would not do to take unnecessary losses by stretching his company too far and too thinly. At the same time, it behooved him to do all the damage he could to the slavers and his men were currently smiting them hip and thigh, as a septon would say. A few minutes more, he decided as his falchion hacked through a Lyseni trooper's neck, and he would sound the recall.

XXX

Adaran stepped out from behind the rock, raising his unspanned crossbow over his head in a gesture of peaceful intent. "Ho, friends!" he called to the squad of light horse that had entered the boulder-strewn field a few minutes ago, keeping his other hand well out away from his body as he did so. One of the things that had been drilled into him in Ser Gerion's household was that dead was dead, whether it was an enemy or a mistaken friend that killed you and whether it was a great battle or a worthless dust-up that they killed you in. And light cavalrymen tended to be rather free with their weapons, especially in enemy territory.

These ones reacted entirely as he expected them to, with a sudden rush and encirclement that ended with four javelins pointed at his chest while the rest of the squad scanned outwards for any threat. "Friends, are we?" said one of the horsemen in a strong Pentoshi accent. "What's your name, then?"

"Adaran Phassos, Captain, Special Branch, Office of Foreign Inquiry," Adaran replied. "If you'll let me reach into my belt pouch, I can give you my credentials."

"Like I'd trust someone I just met in enemy territory," the horseman scoffed. "Check his pouch, Cutter."

One of the horsemen returned his javelin to the bucket hanging before his left leg, dismounted, and cut Adaran's pouch off his belt with an obviously practiced flick of a long knife, stepping back out of reach before dumping the contents on the ground and kneeling to paw through them. Adaran couldn't help a grin; inconvenient as it might be, it was good to know that he was making contact with veterans, and ones canny enough not to take his accent as proof of identity. It was a rare Braavosi who served the slaver cities these days, after the Commune had so definitively placed its bets, but that simply made those that remained all the more dangerous. For one thing, they would be the sort of men who could not have expected mercy even before the Slave Wars, men who had betrayed the Commune or had fled its lands a step ahead of the Watch for crimes that would have seen them to the gallows. For another, they would be ready-made spies. Cutter rifled through the handful of silver and gold coins that Adaran had carried over the border in case bribes had become necessary, discarded Adaran's honing steel and tinderbox, then paused as he found and opened the folded piece of paper. "Can't read it, corp," he said, "but it's got the King's seal on it, plain as day."

"Give it over," the evident corporal said, keeping his javelin trained on Adaran's breast as he took the paper in his other hand. "In the King's name, do not impede the bearer of this, who is my goodbrother," he said skeptically. "If you're the King's goodbrother, then what are you doing out here?"

"Helping pave the way for you," Adaran said calmly. "Or who do you think set that grass fire two days ago?"

"That was you?" the corporal asked. "What the hells did you do that for, you mad bastard?"

"There was a company of Lyseni infantry coming on you from that side, and the fire was the quickest and easiest way we could think of to delay them," Adaran replied. "We didn't think it would get that big, but in our defense, we gauged the wind as best we could."

The corporal stared at him. "'We?'" he said coldly. "There's more of you?"

"Let me call them out," Adaran said, putting fingers to his mouth and whistling sharply. The rest of Special Branch emerged from the cover they had taken behind the rocks, with Jorro, Tychan, and Willet taking the bolts out of their crossbows and pulling the trigger levers to unspan them while Sarra's Will ostentatiously took his arrow off the string and replaced it in his arrow bag.

The corporal scowled at the way they had emerged on two sides of his squad, almost perfectly set to catch them in a raking crossfire if they didn't mind the risk of hitting Adaran. "Well," he said unhappily, "I suppose you can explain to the captain why he's been sucking smoke for three days now. You on foot?"

Adaran shook his head. "We have mounts," he said, nodding to where Hokkan was bringing the horses out of the creek bed behind them. They were bred from Dothraki steeds captured at Narrow Run and Novadomo, small but tireless, hardy, and fast. Their stubborn temperaments were considered a necessary trade-off.

The corporal's look soured even further; a fine time he would have explaining this to his sergeant, much less his lieutenant and captain. "All right, get mounted and fell in," he grumbled.

Adaran nodded and gestured to his men. "Mount up and fall in, lads," he said loudly. "And stay sharp. It's not over until we're back at Oakenshield and having a drink at Baelish's expense."

XXX

Victarion's approving look slid off his face as the lieutenant who had just finished giving his report walked down the beach to the ships, being replaced with a scowl as he surveyed the wreck of Flayer's Haven. "Six ships sunk or taken and one of the richer targets of this cruise emptied before we get here?" snarled Ragnar Crowfeeder, who was now his second since Roryn Pyke had to be left in Ironhold as its steward. "It has to be Saan."

Victarion ran a thumb over the pell of his axe meditatively. "Must it?" he asked. "The Lyseni were good seamen even before these wars, and those that are still alive after eight years of fighting us, the Braavosi, and Stannis' men are either the best or the luckiest of that breed."

"The Lyseni would have landed marines to search the island for survivors," Ragnar pointed out. "Saan wouldn't have taken the risk. He was always canny, and more so ever since he sent Rackham to the stranglers. After a victory like this he would not have lingered and risked being caught with half his men on shore. Not when he knows that he can't expect mercy from any brother of the coast."

Victarion nodded. "Mayhaps," he agreed. "Which doesn't change the facts worth a damn." Flayer's Haven had been targeted as a nest of pirates who had signed articles with Lys, as part of the Fleet's initiative to complement the raid out of Oakenshield with a sweep of the Stepstones. Victarion had considered that six middle-weight galleys would be sufficient force to take and burn the place; the tower had been made of wood, not stone, and the latest word had been that only five captains used Flayer's Haven as a base, none of them commanding a ship larger than a middle-weight galley.

According to the lieutenant's report, they had walked in on a Lyseni squadron visiting the Haven. Three galleys had been taken or sunk in the sea-fight that had followed, and the other two had been deliberately grounded by their captains to allow their crews to continue the fight on the island. Of those, one man in three had been killed or taken, but the pirates and their Lyseni masters had fled the island immediately after burning the two grounded galleys to charcoal; one had hogged her keel in the run up the beach, while the other had broken a third of her scantlings. So the landed crews had taken possession of the Haven and awaited the rest of the Fleet, which had arranged to meet at Flayer's Haven after conducting their own attacks.

It was a defeat by any measure, but one that would be offset by the success of the attacks against the other three nests that had been targeted. There had been little plunder worth the time and no captain of sufficiently worthy name to carry the head of back to Myr in a bag to be mounted on a pike along the harbor mole, but six ships sunk, eight taken, and three pirate hives burned out would still make for good hearing at Court. And even if the lieutenant Victarion had just spoken to hadn't been willing to swear that he saw Lyseni banners in the squadron that had defeated him, Victarion had found other proofs that the slavers were employing pirates as sellsails, which would be another stick for Robert King to prod the Braavosi back to war with. All of which left aside the eight hundred slaves they had liberated. Some would be too broken in body and spirit to be more than beggars in Myr city's alleyways, but others had the fire that would make them good men of war. Men who would sail or march against the slavers in good time, after they had regained their health and had time to think about what they wanted to do with their freedom.

All the same, Victarion couldn't help a vague sense of dissatisfaction. He had gone this whole cruise without facing a single enemy of name or worth axe to blade. To be sure that was not supposed to be his role now and Ser Brynden had counseled him to remember as much before he sailed, but there was little glory to be found in smoking out pirates that fought like rats when cornered, and about as skillfully. Wielding a fleet as his weapon had a satisfaction of its own, but it wasn't the same as dueling a famous enemy and overcoming him by your own might and main and battle-craft, or doing so with a handful of men against a greater number of sufficiently fearsome enemies, as he had done at Tyrosh and Novadomo. And if Saan had been here, as Ragnar suggested, that made it all the more frustrating; Saan had a name that was famous from Oldtown to Meereen for wiliness and skill in battle, following in the wake of his father and grandfathers who had made the Saan name one of the most feared on the waves. He would be a foe worth killing, as the saying went.

Victarion shook the discontent out of his head. Saan would keep, unless he proved craven and ran as he had run from Tyrosh. In the meantime, the Pioneers were completing the destruction of Flayer's Haven as a developed harbor; combustibles had been piled through the tower, the huddle of buildings along the shore of the little bay, and along the piers. Once the fuses were lit, Flayer's Haven would be reduced to ash and charcoal. By then the fleet would be on its way back to Myr and they would have to keep a weather eye. Even if the Lyseni squadron that had beaten them here steered clear of them, they would still fall upon any other prey that they happened upon. Hopefully they would find something other than scraps.