Lohgun staggered to his feet, bloody water dripping from his body. He swayed, dizzy from both blood lose and the elation of victory. He pointed one clawed hand toward the gathered Lannisters and their prisoners; now his by right of conquest of the Mountain. He jerked his wrist back towards himself, spraying a thin sheen of gore. "Bring," he growled.
"He's not human," Kevan Lannister spluttered, loud enough for the wildling to hear over the pain pounding through his battered body like a torrent.
"BRING!" Lohgun screamed again while teetering and almost falling over. "I'm the Gods damned Badger!"
Tywin Lannister scowled, but whether it was from the loss of his henchman, his brother's outburst, or the wildling's braggadocio, no one could tell.
"Well, father?" the halfman asked, bobbing his head toward Crypt and Robett.
The scowl turned into a look of distaste. "Oh very well, deal with this, Tyrion," the Old Lion commanded, then immediately turned his horse and headed back to the north bank and his dispirited banners. The lords who had followed him to the parley dutifully turned to trot back behind him.
The halfman started his mount walking forward before issuing the surly looking guard a simple command, as if telling a dog to fetch, "Come, Bronn." The ill groomed man glowered at the back of his master and took a long time to get the prisoner's horses moving.
Lohgun tried to bury the pain and ignore the new sting that told him his body had already started healing. He stared up at the man most named 'Imp,' and saw surprisingly that Tyrion's two mismatched eyes glittered with good cheer and amusement.
"Well done, wildling," the halfman called, a friendly smile upon his face. "I warned father before we came out that if your young Robb offered a battle of champions he should refuse it, 'for surely,' I said, 'the Badger will be Winterfell's choice." Tyrion shrugged his shoulders with a definite air of 'told you so.' "Alas, I have found the smaller the man, the more he is ignored."
"How much did you win?" Lohgun rumbled through lips half grimacing and half grinning.
Tyrion's smile widened further. "Why not a copper," he complained without heat. "Tempted as I was, I felt under the circumstances that suggesting a wager where I backed you would not be beneficial for my health. The smaller the man, the more he must pay attention to niggling things like health."
"You … agghhhh …." The Badger blinked hard as he rode the edge of a sudden wave of agony. "don't seem much concerned about your br .. br .. brother."
The mismatch eyes stopped glittering for a moment as they snapped up higher to intensely bore into the pathetic figure the Kingslayer made, a handless madman endlessly muttering "Hellfire, hellfire." Tyrion sighed before beginning to speak wistfully. "Jaime … had his uses. I'll always cherish the help he gave me. But my brother became … unreliable, leaving me to fix his messes. Better he should've died cleanly than become … that."
Lohgun furrowed his eyebrows, confused by the halfman's unexpected answer. "But don't you always pay your debts?" he asked hesitantly, throwing the Lannister's unofficial motto back at Tyrion.
The halfman chuckled oddly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Oh who says I haven't?"
Willam and Robett finally arrived with their keeper.
"Ahh," drawled Tyrion. "There you are Bronn, took you long enough," he snapped impatiently, mismatched eyes crackling. A pained look passed over the guard's emotionless face, and he appeared to tug at something around his neck, hidden under a hauberk.
"Brilliant, Badger! Bloody brilliant!" Robett gushed. The heir to House Glover looked wobbly in the saddle and sported a giant egg along his hairline just above the left temple.
"Bless you Lohgun," said Willam in a hushed tone. "Any nasty wounds from your friend?"
"One or two, but you're ugly hide was worth it," the short man choked out.
"Joy."
"Joy."
"This is all very touching," the halfman said sarcastically. "But I need to get back and find out what foolishness my father plans on doing next. Alright? Good. Bronn, hand over the reins, I want to be on my way."
The Badger pointed down at the large, dark lump that was the Mountain, around and over which the Trident now flowed. "Do you want to take that back?"
"Gods no!" the halfman swore.
"Didn't you care for your father's … champion?" the wildling asked with a sneer.
Tyrion shivered. "Gregor Clegane was a monster. In fact, you're all monsters."
The guard Bronn dropped the reins he had been proffering and his hand grasped the sword at his side, "Shall I kill him?" he asked in a deep, monotone voice.
The hair on the back of Lohgun's neck bristled and he glared back at the man's cold, dead eyes. The wildling raised his claws.
"No," Tyrion said casually. "There's always tomorrow Bronn, or maybe the day after that."
An eerie light flickered from inside the collar of the man's hauberk and he let go of the hilt before stonily saying, "If you retrieve your swords, when we met, keep your left hand lower; I stab more often than I slash."
"Thanks bub, I'll try and remember that," the Badger replied drily.
Lohgun, Willam, and Robett put up as good faces as their battered bodies allowed when Robb led them from the river into the ebullient, cheering camp of Northerners and Riverlanders. But smartly, the young Lord of Winterfell and his companions took the trio straight to his pavilion beneath the Direwolf banner. Jon Snow and Ghost had charged ahead to make sure healers were already awaiting the injured men's arrival. Galbart Glover helped his brother Robett slowly dismount. The Greatjon, who had plucked Lohgun out of the Trident by the scruff of his neck to sit in front of him for the ride back, just reversed the process on his short friend; both times doing so with surprising gentleness, though accompanied with nattering that he too could have slain the Mountain and done it without getting scratched. Willam simply slid out of his saddle into the arms of Robb and Jon.
Upon entering the tent, the wildling bent over to pull off his tattered mail shirt, causing the rapidly scabbing wounds on his back to crack open and release more rivulets of blood. Lohgun swayed, legs suddenly trembling, and a healer quickly grabbed a hold to shuffle him to the nearest seat. But by the time the man seeing to Lohgun actually crouched down to look at the lacerated flesh, the cuts were already closing up again. The healer snorted in amazement, while Jon, now standing in front of his mentor, shared a knowing smirk. As the Badger watched his two comrades being nursed, heated wine was poured over his injuries, which were then packed with physic herbs and secured by several layers of clean linen wrapped around his muscular, hairy torso.
Another healer briefly examined the pulsing knob on Robett Glover's head before whispering into the dazed man's ear that he needed to drain it. "Go 'head," his brother's heir muttered and before anyone could blink a small sharp blade appeared in the healer's hand to make an incision across the inflamed, blue-black swelling. Blood, pus, and serum spit out of the gash, spraying the sheepskin rugs on the floor. The release of the intense pressure caused the tall man's eyes to roll into the back of his head as he passed out; mercifully freeing him from feeling the effects of having the ugly lump pushed and prodded until only a small trickle of nearly clear fluid dribbled out of the much reduced bulge.
Robett's brother Galbart, before he and several of his banners carried the unconscious man back to their House's tents, came over to Lohgun and clapped him on top of the shoulder. "Tumbledown will always, always, have the friendship of the Deepwood."
Lohgun, distracted by watching the ministrations to Willam, only glanced up for a second and replied, "You too Sam, you too." The Badger didn't even notice the strange look he got in response.
When the bandages had been unwrapped from around Willam's head, everyone looking at the Lord of the Barrowlands had tried to stifle their gasps of shock and outrage, sympathy and revulsion.
"That pretty am I, boyos?" the blind man asked, pitching a wry lilt into his voice.
"Ohh, Willam," young Robb sobbed, unmanned.
"It's not so horrible, my lord," Willam continued, now starting to choke up. "I still have hands to hold Ryessa and the children with." He sucked in deep breath to mask the pain as the third healer picked away at the dried puss from where his eyeballs had been split near in half like over ripe fruit. "And my cock still works, just now Ryessa might have to help me aim a bit, in bed or for the slop bucket afterward," he laughed painfully.
"My lord?" the healer at last spoke.
"Yes?" Willam replied.
"The good news is that the bridge of your nose appears to be healing satisfactorily. Someone stitched it back together nicely and it doesn't look much infected," the man explained. "How is your breathing?"
"Not bad. I stopped dripping blood from it two or three days ago. I can breath through the right nostril, but the left has stayed clogged. Now tell me the evil news, alright boyo."
"Your eyeballs are badly, badly infected," the healer said. And as if to emphasize the point, at that moment a maggot wiggled out of the puss weeping slit where a pupil had once sat. "I must burn out what … what is left of both bulbs, or the corruption will spread into your brain."
No one spoke for a minute.
"Do it," Willam at last snarled.
Two pokers will placed right above the red hot coals in a brazier and the blind man drank from the milk of the poppy. Within a few minutes he began to nod off and the Greatjon lowered Willam from a seat to the floor.
"Hold his head firmly," the healer commanded. Then first he snipped away the dangling remains of his patient's eyelids. Willam didn't stir.
Heat wine was drizzled into the brutalized eye sockets. Willam moaned slightly and shifted slightly.
Another healer gestured to Jon and Tytos Blackwood and Harrion Karstark and Helman Tallhart. "Hold down his arms and chest." Fingers snapped at Wendel Manderly. "Lay across his legs."
With all in readiness, a red hot poker was brought over and very carefully the healer steadied it over the left eye before lowering it. The eyeball sizzled and crackled from the heat. Instantly the smell of burning flesh filled the air. Air blasted out of Willam's lungs; snot, dried blood, and fresh blood spewed from his nostrils. A high pitched sound started to reverberate through the tent, causing loose papers to flit about and the canvas sides of the pavilion to tremble. eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The healer withdrew the prod. He stared a moment at his work, the hollowed out burned flesh of the eye socket. Then he snapped his fingers for the second poker.
"No, no, no," Willam muttered pathetically, hardly conscious, trying to shake his head against the massive hands of Greatjon restraining him.
The superheated, oversized steel nail sank into the remnants of the right eye. Willam shuddered and buckled. The high pitched sound returned. eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! The call grew in strength and started vibrating. eeeoooeee! eeeoooeee! EEEoooEEE! EEEOOOEEE!
"Grab harder!" the healer screamed as Willam's body started pulsating and jiggling the men trying to hold him down.
Every glass bottle and glass trinket in the pavilion shattered. Lohgun clapped his hands over his ears, trying to shut out the painful, piercing cry. EEEOOOEEE! EEEOOOEEE! EEEOOOEEE!
The healer pulled the poker back and poured hot wine in the eye socket, before gently swabbing the tortured flesh. The ear clenching wail died away and Willam's tightly clenched body slumped into sweet dreamlessness.
Robb graciously surrendered his tent that night to Lohgun and Willam. Every hour or two Jon and Ghost would quietly pad into the pavilion to check on the two hurt friends. When the young man came in just before dawn, he heard the men whispering quietly about Barrowton, family, and the future. A good omen.