Trial of War
No matter how much he tried, Naruto could not relax in the saddle. He was a better rider than he had been a year ago, and significantly better than his first attempts in the far east, but he still preferred jumping through trees to cross large distance.
Unfortunately, that was out of the question when the entire point was staying close to a slow-moving carriage.
So he sat on his sore arse and tried to keep his mind from wandering to the flat roof of the carriage right in front of him. He had half a mind to lay down there and have his horse walk beside him. It looked more comfortable by the day.
It was one of the things Naruto was still getting used to about being weakened as he was. He'd never really worried about anything but the most extreme of fights managing to exhaust him, much less for the feeling to continue for more than a day.
But now here he was, with an undercurrent of tiredness dragging at his muscles and bones after rushing through the entire Stormlands to get north in any reasonable time frame. He might have pushed himself a bit more than he should have when skipping out on as much sleep as he had.
If he was honest with himself, he'd never considered what a difference it really made.
Their company carried on down the kingsroad, trying to gain as much distance from the capital as possible. They would reach the Wendwater in a few days, entering back into the Stormlands, but the possibility of pursuit still prodded at the back of everyone's minds.
Naruto had done what he could to delay that very same possibility while he had remained in the capital, sowing confusion and doubts without attracting too much attention to himself and his efforts, before racing to catch up with the Dornish company.
Whether it had made a real difference or not was hard for him to tell, but Naruto did know that an escort of fifty armed men would give anyone but the most dedicated of pursuers pause.
Elia remained convinced that they would come, for her and her children, eventually.
Who 'they' were, she could not say with confidence, but she continued to insist on the fastest possible pace, urging them south and closer to the sheltering Red Mountains on the border of Dorne.
Her guard of Dornishmen did not complain, their loyalty unwavering, even if a few had let traces of dissatisfaction show when reminded of the battles they were not fighting instead of being guards for their princess.
Naruto heard the horses approaching from the rear of the column, and a quick glance was enough to see the two returning outriders that had been scouting their rear. He stopped with a touch of the reins, watching the road as they approached.
Something had to have happened for those men to return now.
Judging by their haste, it wasn't something good.
They continued at a hard pace until they reached the back of the column, where they slowed just enough to shuffle between the other riders and wagons on the towards the middle, where the Princess and her most important knights had their place.
Naruto watched the road for a moment longer, waiting for anything else to come into view. Four riders were scouting towards both ends of the road, for pursuit or any potential obstacles in their path, and only half of them coming now could mean a few different things.
When no one appeared on the horizon, he spurred his sand stead towards the gathering of knights and soldiers.
"—much as a hundred men, all ahorse." The speaker was a young man, breathing nearly as heavily as his horse as he gave his report to Ser Gerard, the Dornish knight in charge of Princess Elia's guard. "They've set a hard pace, but they are still some miles behind us."
"Who are they?"
"They were flying no banners, Ser."
A bead of silence followed that statement, and the three Dornishmen exchanged a hard glance.
"Any wagons? Or carts? Supplies beyond what every man is carrying for themselves?" Ser Gerold asked with a frown that pulled at his scar. The old Kingsguard was always found next to the carriage holding the Princess and her children, even when they stopped to rest for the night.
"None we could see at a distance. They had only just come into sight when we rushed to return and bring word."
"And unlikely in any case, if they are truly pushing that hard to catch up." Ser Gerard worried his reins between gloved fingers, thinking. "And you say they are making haste?"
"Like a hunted beast, Ser. They'll kill their horses or themselves if they keep this up, I'd wager."
"Brigands?" the other outrider offered almost hopefully.
Ser Gerard shook his head. "Too many men for that, and far too many horses. If this were some offshoot of the Kingswood Brotherhood or the like, they'd do what they can to keep well away from us. And they're not deserters either, this close to the capital. Likely, it is as the Princess fears. These are men come to do butcher's work, though I cannot say on whose orders."
Naruto could see the question on the faces of the two outriders, and it seemed like only the strange fear of being named a coward kept them from speaking.
"Even if we tried, we won't outrun them without abandoning both our supplies and the carriage. One, we might do without, with some discomfort, but leaving both is out of the question," Ser Gerold cut in, clearly seeing the same thing. "There is no use in running, and if not stopped they will reach us long before nightfall."
"That makes things very simple then," Naruto said, including himself in the conversation. He laid a casual hand on the pommel of his sword, his horse trotting along with the others. "We fight. Either right here, or wherever suits us best."
The two knights exchanged a quiet glance while the outriders waited for their decision. Ser Gerold inclined his head to the escort's official leader.
"True enough," the Dornish knight agreed. "No matter our pursuer's identities, we cannot cling to false hope." Ser Gerard gave a smile both cocky and sardonic. "There is no proper sand here, to draw a line in, but we'll make do with earth. We stand."
Orders were given after that, and men rode to find a suitable location. Less than two hours later, with the sun passed its zenith, the time had come.
As had been announced, the riders flew no banners. They came into sight in a disorderly column, far from the tight lines of the Dornish army he had led to the capital months ago.
The Kingswood was a dense forest, only broken up by the stretches of ground on both sides of the wide road they were travelling down, and it allowed no room for outmanoeuvring without taking a significant detour. When you were travelling in a large group or cared about sticking close together, anyway.
Naruto checked his weapons for a final time, before turning his gaze back towards the road. Their pursuers were getting closer, slowly gaining details. And there really were a lot of them.
A hundred was so easy to say and even to think about, especially if you had your own vague hundred to match them with in plans and on maps. Looking at them, seeing them ride your way with mean horses and even meaner steel, was quite a bit different.
His muscles tingled with a strange, restless energy whose cause he could not identify. Not fear, at least Naruto didn't think so, even with the hairs at the back of his neck standing on end. The possibility that it was excitement made his stomach do an odd flip.
Rolling his shoulders to quieten the tingling and his thoughts, he turned to his left.
They were assembled in a line of horses and riders that spanned the entire road, with himself positioned at the very edge of the right flank. The rider next to him was the only man he had personally known to any significant degree before this had all started.
Dorien looked as he had the last time they had seen each other, when Naruto had been given command of him and a scattering of others to clear the way for the Dornish host as it moved north to the capital.
Still with that same deceptively dull look in his blue eyes and a solid cast to his tanned features, but the older man had distractedly adjusted his gauntlets four times in the last minute, gaze locked on the approaching foe.
"Copper for your thoughts?"
Dorien glanced his way, his spear shouldered, and stopped halfway through tugging the steel closer to his skin for a fifth time. "A few stars at least. Though they're a handful of silver stags if you want to hear them all now." He nodded at the approaching riders. "Only so much time left for talking and desertion doesn't pay very well."
"Only the most important one then." Naruto gave an easy smile. "There's still enough time for that, and a prayer afterwards if you're so inclined."
Dorien took his spear in hand and rested it on his thigh, tip pointed skyward. He slouched in his saddle and watched the road for a few quiet moments, and just when Naruto thought the Dornishmen had no intention of actually giving him an answer, Dorien cracked a small grin and said, "It turns out, I should have stuck to being an outrider. That would have meant avoiding all this trouble."
Naruto snickered. All those weeks stuck together and listening to Dorien roughly cajole the twins into behaving, and this was the first time he had heard an attempt at humour from the other man. "I admit guard duty has never not escalated for me."
"Warn a man about problems like that, next time around."
Down the road, the approaching riders slowed, and then came to a stop entirely. They began to assemble into a line of their own, though it lacked the same sense for order and direction.
Ser Gerard's command to prepare, passed down the line from man to man, drew their attention away from any further attempts at conversation. It was time for battle.
Naruto watched as the others raised their spears in response to the commands. Of the riders assembled on the road, he was the only one without one. With no proper lances being brought, spears were next best thing for a charge, even if they were a bit shorter, but he had no training with either and no wish to try for the first time now.
Frankly, none of their foes stood a chance against him either way.
Unsheathing his sword, Naruto waited for the signal.
Ser Gerard made his horse stand on its hindquarters, rising above the heads of his men. "Forward!" Visors slammed shut, and thirty-five horses were spurred into a canter. "For Dorne!"
A few paces and the men they were facing began moving as well, riding to meet them.
Naruto left a foot of distance between him and Dorien's horse even as he kept pace with the charge. Which wasn't how this would usually work, but even with the title he wasn't really a knight when it came to fighting. Better that he played to his own strengths without disrupting his allies.
They drew closer and closer, details flooding in with every pounding of hooves. One of the riders, heading the opposing charge and sat astride a fearsomely large steed, was noticeably bigger than the rest.
Even recalling Harrenhal's melee and the final battle with the imposing Royce lord, he thought this man was even larger, dwarfing the riders at his sides by a significant margin.
Any further deliberations of that nature were abandoned shortly, with only the final yards remaining between both sides. He focused on the men mirroring his own position at the outer wing of the charge and leaned forward in the saddle, almost hugging his horse's neck.
Closer and closer the two charges came, horses snorting with the effort and men bellowing for the inevitable clash.
Dornishmen crept through the trees on both sides of King's Road, five mounted men on the left and right with their spears in hand. Once they had a clear path for the road reins cracked and then spears were couched.
Naruto's gaze met his opposite in the coming charge.
The rustling of metal, the rumble of hooves. The Kingswood was quiet besides this battle, the game filling the forest long since leaving the area. A few crows flapped their wings in the surrounding trees, expecting the carrion to come.
Leather creaked under tight fists, twigs snapped under the weight of horses and riders, and then one of the more than a hundred men roared away his fear.
Impact.
The first rider in his way was a young man, skull cap crowning the mail coif protecting his head and swinging a flanged mace. Naruto's blade took him in the eye.
A quick slash opened the next rider's throat, and then there was chaos as horses pressed against each other and both sides engaged in a savage melee.
Keeping track of what exactly was happening was an impossibility from his position on the right flank, even from horseback, but there were plenty of foes directly in front of him to focus on instead.
A short exchange of swords and another man fell, collapsing in the saddle like a puppet with cut strings.
There were horses on both sides of him then, ridden by men intent on his death. Naruto abandoned his own mount to jump at one of them, clearing the distance in a single push and introducing an armoured kneecap to the rider's head before the man even understood what had happened.
The man tumbled from the saddle, one foot tangling in the stirrups, and then his helmet cracked against the ground and he was dragged away by his horse. Naruto was already moving on, jumping again and using the force to drive his blade through a gambeson and into flesh.
Steel slid against bone, a rib cracked, and the breath left the man in a harsh grunt. Naruto twisted and tore his blade free again. He moved onto the next man in his path.
Three more had died when he reached the end of the charge, and no one else followed to oppose his path. He turned, a quick look to take in the state of the battle around him, before choosing another man.
An orderly charge was well and good, and flanking from both sides even better, but it was still a matter of a hundred against less than half that. He got to work cutting them down.
He'd killed another two dozen by the time someone managed to impede him in any way. The man was on foot, protective plate keeping him from being ridden down by enemy or ally.
Naruto's first attack was caught on the crossguard of the man's sword and deftly forced wide to make room for a riposte. His hand shot out to grab the man by the elbow, twisting the attack away and up. The man made to headbutt him, close as they were, but he was quicker, jerking the other man to the side and off-balance.
A passing rider, lashing out with a bloody sword, forced Naruto to let go. He ducked under the first swing only to twist as he came back up, his own blade raised to pierce through the mail covering the hip. Naruto felt steel scrape over bone and pulled back again, another step away making the distance too great for retaliation.
The first man's sword slid over the steel plates of his brigandine, barely cutting into the yellow cloth covering the outside as he spun away. Naruto's elbow crashed into the side of the helmet; a blow that almost made the man drop all on its own. He grabbed the closest arm again, raising it as he completed his turn, and stabbed through mail and cloth, steel sinking into the armpit beneath.
His opponent wavered, balance and strength fleeing his body with every beat of his heart. Naruto turned away, intent on moving on.
He did a quick survey of the surrounding fighting, hoping for a glimpse of Dorien or even Ser Gerard. He found neither.
There was a new noise behind him, joining the cacophony of men and steel, and Naruto's senses screamed a warning at him.
He spun, tried to step away and almost stumbled from being held, and he could only make out curving, U-shaped iron before the force hammered into his face.
In his peripherals the man he had just killed died with a spluttering, bubbly breath, the grip on Naruto's foot losing any remaining strength.
The sky was clear and blue, streaked with white and grey splotches of different shapes and sizes. Maybe there would be rain later.
Naruto's awareness faded in and out, slowly shifting and changing. He thought he was lying on his back. He could not grasp why that was, or why he should do anything to change it. His body did not much feel like moving either.
The light was too bright for him, the sun glaring down, but he did not manage to close his eyes, only enduring the flashing pain.
A vibration from beneath tickled his limbs, sudden and then even again, close and then far away, so far in fact that there was no point even worrying.
Somehow, that thought felt strange to him, alien even, but he could not say why.
His ears popped and sound returned, too loud by far and yet not loud enough to make out any of it. High metallic notes and deeper ones that were the very opposite, both reached him.
Soon, they quieted. There was rustling, a sense of movement all around him, and then the shadows that had been surrounding his vision solidified into clear black shapes above him, looking down at him.
People, his mind told him now, these were people, moving around and grabbing and tugging at him. And they weren't his friends either. Instincts kicked in after that but trying to think on why and how and where only hurt.
One of his hands reached and came up empty, not finding what it had sought at his belt. That made something new rise inside him. A twist of anger, but not quite that. There was something like sadness there, and loss, but also pride and a small thing that whispered the trouble of being unknowingly disarmed.
Shaking his head brought a little clarity, though he had to grit his teeth against the rattling.
One of the shadows split in his vision, long and thin and becoming an arm, coming towards him, and his hands snapped up, a twist of his core raising his torso.
Something cracked. Someone screamed.
Naruto was forced to his knees by four burly bruisers after being dragged away, arms twisted behind his back so he couldn't fight back and break any more limbs. He'd gotten three before they'd overwhelmed him, at least he thought so.
His vision swam at the edges and his skull ached fiercely. He could barely think straight, and breathing was a painful torment.
Half a dozen Dornishmen were being handled similarly right in front of him, most of them bloodied and hurt in some way. He didn't think any of them were currently dying. Maybe all the others had, or some had managed to escape, but some kind of rescue seemed unlikely to him. Why was hard to gather when his thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm.
A man stepped between him and the other captives, blocking his view with the black steel of his breastplate.
"That would be all of 'em who can still stand, Ser," said a voice from the side.
"Good, good." The knight's dark, close-set eyes took in all the gathered men before lingering on him. "Who is he?"
One of the bruisers stepped onto Naruto's calf and dug his heel in painfully.
He grunted into gritted teeth and ignored the knight to give the man behind him his meanest glare. It earned him a gauntleted fist to the jaw.
His mouth seemed filled with blood, and his tongue prodded a tooth that felt almost like it had cracked from the blow before he raised his head again. His nose burned.
Naruto couldn't really make out faces like this, and he didn't recognise the wavering image his eyes did supply him either. Whoever this knight was, they had not met before.
"You're no Dornishman, that is clear. Who then?"
Naruto ignored the words, the edges of a plan forming in his mind. He wasn't sure whether it was a good one yet, but it was the only thing he could currently manage anyway. His gaze turned to the Dornishmen and he gave what felt like a very bloody smile. "Stay low."
He barely made out who he thought was Dorien nodding his head, before a fist cracked the back of his head for the defiance. He tasted earth and mud and gravel, mixing with the iron bitterness of blood still dominating his mouth.
Naruto ignored the pain and discomfort, focus turned solely inward. What chakra he had access to was right there, just below the surface, but every attempt to grasp it had the energy slipping through his fingers like water. He closed his eyes, blocking out everything else, every unnecessary distraction fading away until they were barely even there anymore.
He didn't stop, reaching again and again, until he could finally grasp the chakra for what he intended.
His skull was pounding, aching against the effort he was exerting, but chakra was there, changing and sharpening under his will.
Maybe it was just his addled mind, but Naruto thought he remembered his old lessons on chakra, though Iruka's voice from the academy, usually half-ignored or barely able to penetrate his sleeping mind, and Jiraiya's deeper timbre from years later were mixing into an entirely new sound now, recalling vague, almost discarded shards of knowledge and echoing them around the inside of his too tight skull.
The hands were easiest, especially the fingers and your palms, and the sole of your foot wasn't much harder to manage either, once you applied yourself a little. Every other part of your body was sluggish in comparison, harder to expel chakra from, and harder yet to keep control of it while you did.
Right now, hands and feet didn't help him much, tied and held down and too far away from what he wanted anyway. He'd have to make do with sluggish. He only had the one shot anyway. Better make it count.
Naruto felt the hands on his arms, grabbing at him, pushing him to the ground and holding him there, and that feeling was his guide.
Chakra flowed, sputtering and uneven at first, but flowing, to his wrists, his forearms, up along the elbows to the edge of his shoulders, even to the back of his neck. It was wind already, only leashed by an effort of control that made something tight in his head burst under the pressure. His hands were fisted, the only thing keeping his mind on the task anymore.
He sat up as far as the hands on him allowed, kneeling in the mud with the same knight still looking down on him and expecting an answer. For a moment, his eyes cleared, and he could make out the black manticore proudly marking the man's breastplate.
"Well?"
Naruto smiled again, knowing somehow there was nothing pleasant about it. He opened his hands and let his control go.
Wind tore from him, guided only far enough to lash out at those still holding him and not himself. That was all he managed.
Screams behind him, and the horrible sounds of shorn limbs, but Naruto was already moving. He was on his feet, his knees threatening to buckle and then barely holding his sudden weight, and then the hilt of the knight's sword was in his hand.
He pulled the weapon free – chakra racing down the edge and twisting again into the familiar patterns of wind – and stabbed forward and up in one blurring motion. Through steel and padding, the blade pierced throat and jaw and into the skull.
Naruto jerked up on the handle, cleaving through the chin and face until the blade was parallel to the ground and then tore it out to the side, lengthening and sharpening in the same moment.
One sweep, feet twisting with the circular motion as he turned, and then he came to a stop, blade just barely resting against the left side of the knight's ruined face.
The Kingswood was quiet, a slow, drawn-out second of silence and stillness passing him by with a calm exhale. Then his pulse was thunder in his temples, crushing inward, and the world resumed its everlasting track forward.
Cra-Crack
Trees that had grown for decades groaned their complaints to the surroundings. They slid and then crashed to the ground, felled by an immaterial blade unmatched by even the greatest of smiths, and the corpses dropped in the very same way.
Armour made of steel and iron had no more resisted him than that made of bark, all of it parted along a single line. The flesh and bone beneath were no matter at all.
Naruto closed his eyes.
His hand lowered to his side and then the sword slipped from numb fingers. One of his forearms was burning with cuts where his control had failed and the wind had carved into his own flesh as well. He staggered, calf tweaking strangely below him, before he caught himself again, shaking out the leg and keeping his feet under him.
He smelled blood, so much blood. Death and blood all around him.
Naruto opened his eyes, head tipped back to take in the sky, clear and calm and peaceful even if his vision was still swimming. He reached up, recalling the time Jiraiya's had first shown him how to do this for himself, and set his nose back into its proper place. That first breath in was equal parts burning agony and sweet relief.
Behind him a horse released a scream-like neighing, soon joined by others still standing in that direction, jerking on reins clutched in a corpse's gauntleted hand. The kneeling Dornishmen had been struck to silence, but now he could hear the insistent, desperate struggle with their restraints start up again.
His cut had been tilted slightly, higher behind him and lower in front where nearly all of the hunters had been gathered. No one standing was still alive.
Naruto surveyed the surroundings, taking in the carnage. He firmed his jaw and turned around.
His Valyrian steel dagger laid in the carved up remains of one of the bruisers, the plain sheath scored with a single clean cut on one side and bloodied by the surrounding corpse. The blade inside was unblemished, not even nicked by his rough, barely controlled winds. He returned it to his belt.
The Dornishmen watched him carefully, never uttering a single word as he stepped around them and beckoned them to hold still while he cut their bindings.
They stood, rubbing feeling back into legs and wrists, keeping a distance and never letting him out of sight. After a short exchange of quiet yet sharp words, Dorien joined him, right arm held close to his chest, the steel around his elbow bloodied and bent.
They watched the woods to the west, or at least Naruto did. The unchanging scenery made it easier for his mind, numbing the aching to a dull throb he could almost push away entirely.
"You might wish to bandage those. Finding a Maester out here will be trouble."
Naruto glanced to the side, before following Dorien's gaze to his arms. His wind had cut through clothing and armour, leaving the left bare from the elbow down, revealing the lacerated flesh beneath, and the right covered with only the slashed and tattered remains of his arming doublet and armour.
He moved his fingers, tightening them into fists to test the pain and mobility. Blood flowed down his forearm in gentle crimson rivulets, pushed from the cuts by the movement of muscles, but everything moved as it did normally. He would be fine, eventually, and his skull was the far more immediate concern. It felt like someone had stuck a branding iron into his face. "It's not as bad as it looks."
Dorien gave a simple nod. Still cradling his right arm, he tried to move his hand as well, only to immediately stop, a spasm of pain in the lines of his neck and jaw. There was a bitter edge to his voice. "That big knight of theirs, he tore right through us. Snapped a spear with one hand when I saw him through the fighting, before forcing a breach and riding off due south." He nodded at the field of corpses at their back. "Seeing that, I imagine you did much the same to them."
"Something like it," Naruto agreed. Blood was pounding in his skull again, slowing his thoughts, making his mind a sluggish mess. "Some of them got through then?"
"That giant one and some others, five maybe six. There aren't enough horses for all of us to catch back up with the Princess, not until we have gathered those that ran off anyway." He sighed, the skin tight around his eyes. "I mislike leaving matters to Ser Gerold. No matter his white cloak, age and injury will take their toll on the best of knights."
One of Naruto's hands came to rest on the hilt of his dagger, the leather wound around the sorcerous steel a cool comfort. "I'll take care of it." The pounding in his skull receded slightly, allowing him to focus on the nagging thought bothering him since the beginning of this conversation. "You have no questions?"
"Some," Dorien admitted. "But those can be asked another time, when there is some measure of safety. Your answers will not change anything now no matter what they are." The older soldier nodded first at his arm and then his face. "You bleed the same as I, which I assume means you die just the same as well, even if you'd take more people with you to face the Stranger."
Naruto could not help but chuckle, though the sound echoed strangely between his ears. "Something like that." He shook out his legs, a cut in his calf he had not noticed before smarting but doing no more than that. "I'll let you handle everything here."
"Of course."
Naruto made for the road, stumbling and catching himself again until he finally adjusted and found his stride. Once he reached the road he gained speed, heading south. It wasn't until a minute of running later that he trusted his legs enough to take to the trees.
The trees he passed were a blur of bark and branches at the edge of his vision, and his gaze only on what lay ahead.
Eventually, he came upon one of the supply wagons. The horses were still hitched to the front, one lucky beast grazing on the few grasses within reach. The wagon itself was abandoned, most of the supplies still inside, on account of a broken axle. Of the teamster there was no sign.
His cursory inspection also told him it was not the wagon that contained his own remaining belongings. Not that he would have likely hit much of anything with his bow as he was now.
Naruto continued further south.
The next thing he found was a corpse. It was one of the Dornishmen that had been left with Ser Gerold to escort Elia and her children while they held off any pursuit. A bloody gash in the neck and the twisted angle of the head told a sufficient story.
He encountered two additional corpses, separated by a few hundred yards each, before the actual carriage finally came into view between the trees. The sounds of fighting drifted to his ears, and he pushed himself a bit harder to reach it.
The carriage doors were open, left ajar after the safety inside had been abandoned.
Feeling a surge of panic bring a flash of cool clarity, Naruto put everything into the final bound, arms braced against branches and foliage. He emerged onto a scene of battle not unlike the one he had left behind not long ago, though the scale of death could not possibly compete.
The woods had retreated further from the road here, the foundation of what might have once been an outpost or watchtower barely visible among the tall grass and smattering of bushes. The carriage had been driven from the road near the end of the half-circle clearing, but without any of the visible damage that had marked the earlier supply wagon. The second wagon was standing at the beginning of the widening flat, still on the road and with a teamster dead from a deep gash in the torso sitting on the front, reins still in hand.
Most of the other people here were dead as well, though they had passed in a far more ordinary way than his own opponents. Yet four still stood, with a fifth only just dying with Ser Gerold's sword buried two-handed through the material protecting the groin, and a sixth nearly cut into two pieces by a sword that was taller than Naruto was. The old Kingsguard struggled back to his feet, blood streaming from him and strength fading, and faced the final foe ahead of him.
Elia was running, two large bundles clutched close to her chest and wide, fearful looks thrown over her shoulder every few steps at the armed man close behind. He caught up to her with a quick step, jerking her back by her arm and making her drop one of the bundles.
It fell, unravelling as it did, and met the ground as a thick woollen blanket with nothing inside. Elia dropped the other as well, hateful triumph written across her face even if it would be short-lived in the end. She tried to reach for a hidden stiletto barely protruding through her dress.
The man looked at his feet, grip still holding as he took in the blankets holding no royal children and raised his sword anyways.
Naruto didn't think. He couldn't right now. He had a shuriken in each hand and threw both before he had even really realised what he was doing, the wind chakra along the bladed edges merely instinct.
The metal stars curved through the air on the way to their target. The one thrown from his right took the sword hand off at the wrist, mail as protective as a layer of leaves would have been. The one from his left went slightly awry, only clipping the neck, though it made blood flow heavily either way.
Elia fumbled with her blade, tearing cloth in her haste, but her attacker was busy dying already and could not prevent her from burying the pointy piece of steel through his mail standard again and again with all a mother's strength.
Naruto landed, rolling to cushion his fall, and came to his feet again near another dead Dornishmen. Stumbling for two steps, he ran.
Ahead, the big knight and Ser Gerold had engaged each other. The White Bull was losing, badly, as he tried to match the strength of a man more than a foot taller than him swinging a blade that was similarly massive.
The sword came down without being stopped, like hammer to anvil with Ser Gerold's hasty, weakened guard. Big gauntlets twisted on the weapon, changing grip, and a strike with the crossguard had the Kingsguard stumble and fall, laid out flat on his back and too weak to rise again.
A boot stepped onto the White Bull's chest; sword brought forth with the tip pointing down right above the lip of the bevor.
Naruto threw again, a kunai palmed and hurled with all his strength, but the little blade only buried into the back of the shoulder for an inch or two before stopping, stuck without doing much. His wind had dispersed in a moment of lost control.
It did not stop the knight from leaning his weight forward, adding onto the strength of his arms. Mail rings popped, yielding under the force, and sharp steel sank into vulnerable flesh with a horrible squelching noise.
Naruto stopped half a dozen yards from the only other remaining combatant.
The big knight turned towards him, sword held to the side with one hand, blood caking the blade and dripping from the point. There were three black dogs on his tabard, the yellow colour swallowed by grime and blood. "You die next."
"No. I won't." Naruto reached for his belt. He extended his right arm forward, Valyrian steel bared in an obvious statement of intent and crossed his injured forearm over the top, with a new kunai to replace the one he had thrown. He'd never felt quite as ready for violence before.
The giant knight scrutinized him through the eye slits in his blackened greathelm. His voice rumbled from beneath the protective steel. "You're a dead man walking."
Maybe it was meant as a simple statement of fact, maybe it was intended as a promise, either way Naruto could not help but smirk sharply, feeling every little hurt and injury. "It's one of my best qualities."
He took a breath, filling his lungs with cool air, and felt for his chakra. Poor control had exhausted him more than it should have, but he still had some left to use. Certainly enough to carve away the sheltering layer of plate and get at the man beneath.
Chakra eagerly leaped down Valyrian steel, and the spell-forged metal responded in kind, smoky ripples humming with power. It went beyond even Asuma's specially forged knives. There, it had just been simple, the material reacting to the nature of his chakra and doing half the work for him. This was different.
Whatever the dragon lords of Old Valyria had truly done to create it, Valyrian steel was hungry. A wolf starved of food for months hungry. Right now, Naruto didn't much care. He'd lost his sword somewhere back with Dorien and the others and using that same hunger to maintain the blade of wind at the same length worked with almost dangerous ease.
A bit more chakra flooded his body, pushing the headache and other hurts away and enhancing his speed and strength. He ran a finger over the wrapping covering the handle of his kunai.
Naruto slid one foot back, balanced on his toes and stance lowered slightly. His eyes narrowed, reminding himself. This man and his comrades had come here to murder children in cold blood. He would feel no regret about this death. "I'll show you, what it means to face a Shinobi."
His kunai was flying with nothing but a flick of the wrist and then he surged forward, crossing the distance in a blur. Without a cutting edge of wind, the little blade couldn't penetrate the eye slits completely, but it still lodged itself into the steel, blinding an eye one way or the other.
The knight's head jerked back with the impact, the free hand raised on instinct alone far too slow to get between helmet and projectile.
Dark, rippling steel passed beneath the folded arm, well clear of hitting anything. The forearm was split and the arm severed a few inches above the elbow by an invisible blade.
Naruto moved past his opponent, turning to carve into hips and spine and end the fight right there, but the loss of an arm did not stop the knight for long.
The big sword was brought around with surprising speed, a wide, defensive sweep ordinarily used two-handed and intended to clear entire formations, but with more than enough power to split his skull anyway.
Naruto jerked back to evade, his cut barely biting into the plate faulds, and watched the tip of the large sword fall away as it passed through his shaped winds. The cropped blade passed him by, and he attacked again with an explosive lunge.
He stabbed through plate and mail and into the kidney, far enough that the very tip of Valyrian steel came into contact with flesh and blood, and then he tore the weapon out to the side as he stepped past his opponent again, moving with the knight's attempt at turning to face him.
Another cut bit halfway into the leg, carving bone, and the following flurry of stabs littered the back plate with holes even as Naruto was retreating. Two more steps of distance and then a shallow horizontal slash while he turned, carving a line into plate, and then they faced each other again.
Naruto glanced at his dagger, trying to get a bead on the feeling he'd been getting since flowing wind down the blade. Something felt off to him, incomplete in some way.
The knight completed his swing and his leg gave out underneath him. He collapsed to a knee, though with the cut being in the thigh it would not hold for long like that. Either bone would fully crumple or the weight would deform steel enough. Blood trailed from the holes and tears in plate, darkening the metal even further, and the stump that remained of the left arm was a fountain of scarlet liquid.
Low, rasping breaths interspersed with harsh grunts of agony sounded from the greathelm, kunai still stuck in one of the eye slits.
Despite himself, Naruto felt a glimmer of sympathy tweak his heart. He didn't enjoy the pain of others and he never would. "You are dead already, from the blood loss if not infection later," he said walking forward, weapon held passively at his side. "It's a slow death and painful, so I would spare you that at least."
The knight said nothing, only looking out from that single dark eye slit.
Naruto's next step brought him nearly within arm's reach and the shortened sword came for him in a wild swing. He caught the blade by the flat, with the edge inches from his face. Naruto felt the man's strength and knew that whoever he was he had never met anyone that could match him before today.
A moment of inspiration had him adjust the flow of his chakra just slightly as he raised his dagger, half the effort handled by instinct alone and the other half eased by the spark of magic contained in the weapon, forged into the metal since its creation.
Wind flickered and then Valyrian steel began to glow, a haze of heat shimmering above the blade while it was bathed in a bare trace of red. The fire within became fire without and he felt the hilt grow hot in his palm.
Naruto's grip still held, even against the continuous yet slowly weakening attempts to free the damaged sword. He met the single eye, still forced to look up slightly. "Meet your end in peace." He braced his dagger against the side of the gorget, lines of wind tracing the edge. A tightening of his fingers, a sharp flick of the hand, and sword steel snapped. "You never really stood a chance."
Cut.
The helmeted head tumbled to the ground, bounced once among the grasses and earth, and rolled to a stop. The massive torso collapsed backwards with the lightest touch, seeping blood from a dozen smaller wounds into the earth.
Naruto smelled a whiff of cooked meat and felt sick to his stomach. He turned away, taking in the clearing, checking for anyone else still alive, and noted Elia's absence next to the bloody corpse of the man that had meant to slay her.
Movement in the carriage drew his gaze, but it was only a mother worrying over her two children abandoned in desperation and haste. No other enemy, no hidden foe or secret assassin.
It was done.
His flow of chakra ceased, only unnecessary and costly now, but he stopped short of sheathing the still glowing weapon for the moment. His headache chose to return with a vengeance, drumming against the inside of his skull.
Another quick inspection of the clearing turned up the nearest place to sit down. A piece of stone that had been part of the old foundations, and spared being taken away for its size, near the centre of the clearing suited him well enough.
Naruto carefully prodded at his nose, tracing where the skin would be blotched with red and then purple for a few days, before following the clear indent where the hoof had made its mark. It all throbbed at him in warning, cautioning against any pressure, and there would be a lot of swelling to come, but he thought nothing would likely remain by the time he finally made it to Starfall. His forearm had already mostly stopped bleeding.
He hurt all over, but he could deal with that.
By the time he noticed her again, Elia had already stepped from the carriage and left half the distance to him behind her. She stopped a few feet away, smoothing the front of her dress, and drew courtly grace around herself like a comfortable cloak, her momentary focus on the injuries on his face barely noticeable.
Naruto did not stand, pushed beyond caring about appearances.
"Are you the only survivor?"
"Half a dozen of your guard were still alive when I made my way here. They'll catch up once they have gathered the horses."
Elia paled slightly, but said nothing else for now, mulling over the information and what it made of her plans in silence.
Naruto glanced at the carriage. "Your children?"
"Unhurt," she said, tension and relief choking her voice. "Scared but unhurt. I had only hope left, when you arrived, that they would keep silent and no one would notice the compartment." Her gaze drifted to the many corpses of her supporters and allies. Ser Gerold's mess of white and silver armour, the remains of Dornish soldiers that had followed her without complaint, and finally the bloody body of her female companion, run through the heart with a sword and still in a position of brave protection at one door of the carriage. All of them loyal to the last. "But the threat to their lives remains. These men might be dead, but there will be more. There are always more men willing to accept Lannister gold."
Naruto perked up at that. He had not recognised any of the sigils he had seen, and most of the men had been entirely without one. "Why Lannister gold?"
She nodded at the knight he had slain, a hard edge to her gaze. "That giant was Ser Gregor Clegane. I watched as Tywin Lannister presented him at court, stood only feet away when he knelt and Rhaegar himself touched a sword to his shoulders, and saw him rise a knight in service to House Lannister," she recounted coldly. "Lord Tywin will deny it now, but he knows well what he might have had in a man like that. And if one man was his creature, they all were."
The words seemed to echo in the empty clearing, underscored by the iron tang of blood in the air.
Eventually, Elia straightened her shoulders and wiped any trace of sadness from her features, facing him head on. "You did me a great service today. You saved my life and the lives of my children. I might no longer be a queen, but I am a Princess of Dorne still, and the mother of the crown prince. I will see these deeds and their loyalty are not forgotten."
Naruto stared at her, felt his temples throb, and sighed. "I would rather we speak plainly."
Elia frowned at him. "Whatever the state of the realm now is, my son will sit the throne eventually. A king's first supporters take a risk, and a good monarch will do well to duly recognise the effort."
"Whatever castle or lands I want, great riches, a position at court, something like that is what you mean?"
"Within reason."
"'Within reason.' That's what I thought." He shook his head and exhaled a tired breath. "You still don't understand me. The Iron Throne, being King of the Seven Kingdoms, that power and position and the power that surrounds it; it means nothing to me, it is nothing to me. You all speak of blood, of lineage and family and claims. I care for none of it. Your son is a babe, not even old enough for words, and you plan to make him king? I did not know his grandfather personally and have little praise for his father, but if anything, that heritage should mean he is held away from power until he proves to be different."
Elia's lips thinned, glimmers of venom in her dark eyes, and Naruto realised what his last words might be taken to mean.
"That… didn't come out right." He scratched his head in frustration, the small points of pressure focusing the pain away and lessening the general ache for a moment. "I'm not saying he'll go mad, or that he is somehow doomed. No one ever really is. Your son might turn out to be the greatest king ever seen for all I know." He opened his hands, hoping she would understand. "But 'might be'..." He shook his head again. "That isn't good enough for me. A leader, a ruler, they have to be more than just born. They are, or they aren't."
Venom had faded as she had listened and now Elia was no longer glaring, only watching him neutrally. There was a firm strength reflected in her delicate frame and the only trace of vulnerability was in the slightly helpless twist of her mouth. "Why then, did you help at all?"
Naruto sighed deeply, shoulders dropping under the exertions of the day. He was tired, but he knew that this was a truth best not kept in silence. Especially now. "Because your children, Aegon and Rhaenys both, are children. They are innocent. Acting to protect them from those that mean them harm, for no other reason than the blood flowing in their veins, is always the right thing to do. Being born who and what you are, that should never be a crime."
He let the words hang between them for a quiet moment, his gaze unwavering. "I also made you a promise, and I meant every word. Not you, the Princess of Dorne, or the Lady of House Martell, or even the Queen. You, Elia. I didn't make it to ingratiate myself or to get something out of it later or to hold it over your head until you regret it all. I made it because I wanted to, and I'll do what I promised to do because that is who I am."
"The world does not work that way," came the bitter defence.
"It should," Naruto countered simply, feeling some solidity return to his thoughts. "And even if it does not, I'll just have to make a place where it does."
Elia looked at him strangely, like she did not truly recognise him, like she had never before seen anything like him. Shiera had looked at him like that a few times. Then Elia laughed, sharp dry chuckles that lacked any humour, and clutched at her forehead. A few moments later she had stopped, a distant, fragile look to her expression. "You are a strange man indeed, and stranger yet to think it would be so easy."
Naruto shrugged and gave a small, confident smile. "It doesn't have to be easy, most worthwhile things aren't."
For a long time, she simply stared at him in silence, seeing someone, or maybe something else.
Then, without prompting she turned to walk towards the carriage, where her children were still hidden. Whispered words of gratitude drifted to his ears: "Thank you."
Naruto smiled to himself and closed his eyes, resting on the very edge of sleep for now. There would be work yet once Dorien and the others reached them.
But a few minutes would not hurt.
The flapping of wings was what eventually broke him from his gently drifting mind. He returned to full awareness, eyes blinking open, and noticed immediately that he was not in the same place anymore. And yet he was.
The rock under him was the same, every little bump and crack entirely identical, and yet it felt different. Lesser, somehow, not quite as real as should be.
The clearing itself was similar. The corpses were still there, the wagon and carriage with horses waiting to be led waiting right where they had been before. He even felt Elia and her children, a dim sensation of presence, hidden from sight behind painted panes of wood and upholstery. Yet at the edges of it all, where the Kingswood began again and claimed dominion, there was change.
An unfinished tapestry, the world beyond that boundary was like a washed-out painting. Lacking colour, lacking sensation, lacking presence, lacking life, even though he could see movement in the flickering, blurry trees and grasses and bushes.
Outside here, there was a storm, and he sat at its singular eye.
Overhead, the sky was darkened by a murder of crows wheeling through the air in a spiral, cawing and croaking like a cruel choir at some unseen signal. It made his headache, until now relegated to a numbing pain easily pushed to the background, spike in intensity. For whatever reason, the crows seemed to notice, their calls gaining a new vicious note.
One of the birds, bigger and stronger than its brethren, descended on black wings until it was below the treeline. It opened its claws and dropped a small round object to the ground a few feet in front of him, before rising again, wings beating against the air.
Naruto followed the animal with his eyes, watching it rejoin the spiralling flight of the others. It felt like an ill omen to him, and not only because it reminded him of Itachi's genjutsu.
His gaze dropped back down, one hand coming up to massage his temple. He didn't know what this all was, but it was getting bothersome. He made to reach inside himself, to mimic the same sensation of falling backwards while remaining motionless that would get him out of Kurama's seal, when he noticed another, new change.
A delicate little sprout, white as bone, had sprung from the blood-soaked earth.
As if only waiting for his attention, it began to grow, racing through years, even decades of growth in seconds. A seedling one moment, a sapling with a dozen crimson leaves the next, and then a proper tree, if young, branching, twisting, and rooting through the earth with every second of age.
Eventually, it stopped its unnatural growth, standing finally as a weirwood more than double his own height, the crown a covering of red leaves with pale branching fingers reaching for the edges of the clearing.
Wings flapped, and the large crow from before alighted on one of the thicker branches. Naruto noted the third eye considering him from the middle of its feathered forehead. The sight made something in his stomach tighten.
It croaked again and again, two different notes that slowly sounded more and more like two very similar words, bobbing its head left and right with every switch. "Dead. Death. Dead. Death. Dead. Death."
Naruto reached for the comfort of sorcerous steel, but did not draw the weapon, not yet. He could leave whenever he wished, he was sure.
Something changed, about the scene, about the weirwood, about everything here, and he finally noticed the uneven face carved into the white bark. The mouth was set in a grim line, tight but with little of anger about it, and the two eyes looked out at the world in judgement, even if one was nothing but a thin unseeing line spilling a heavy stream of bloody sap, while the other was opened almost too wide and wept nothing but a thin trail of crimson.
The flow of red sap strengthened, and a voice sounded from the face of bark, unfamiliar and inhuman, and not truly one voice at all, but a court of many voices melded together into a shifting tone that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "I have searched for so long a time. Finally, I see you."
Strange as Naruto felt about it, he responded to the tree. "I haven't been hiding."
The face of bark shifted subtly, the voice now more feminine than before with echo of waterfalls and rustling leaves. "And yet you evade my sight, when year, decade, century, or even millennium do not impede me. I have tracked your path on Westeros and searched for your past in the Far East, where sorcery still lives to twist my gaze awry, but I never saw. And now that I do, I find another mystery, unexplained and unexplainable. A skinchanger's mind, clearer than many a seasoned warg, and yet neither a drop of blood nor a trace of ability. None at all. Curious."
Naruto ran a finger over the pommel of his dagger, considering the words through his headache. "And what does your curiosity have to do with me?"
"Nothing," the weirwood admitted with a child's voice. "Just as nothing will matter at all, once the cold winds blow south and the dead walk Westerosi soil." Again, it changed, now an old man's sharp words rasping with accusation, and stronger somehow. "And due to you, nothing will stand in their way. Through action and inaction, the blood of dragons stains your hands."
The large crow ruffled its feathers, repeating excitedly, "Blood, blood!"
"Another way is needed, if man will remain. Mortal men cannot stand against what is to come, only true power, true might can. Dragons would have suited, but there are other ways. Ways that have been seen with more than a thousand eyes."
The branches seemed longer now, questing towards Naruto like embracing arms and throwing their shadows over his face. The mouth carved into the bark was an ominous, yawning chasm dripping sap and the voices overlapped to become something new, a melody of conflict and unity all at once.
"Come. Your strength, in recompense. As offering. Joined together we will be beyond seeing. We were, we are. In dreams we are past and present. Not only seer and dreamer, but more. Much more. Come."
Even if he was still asleep, Kurama's attention moved to the encounter, settling across the clearing like a blanket. It felt like the comfortable weight of sharp steel in your hand. The shadows retreated.
Naruto invited the old fox's presence freely, gazing at crow and tree with narrowed eyes. His skull throbbed with annoyance as much as pain. "You will get nothing of the like from me." He unsheathed Valyrian steel, the dagger held casually but ready to be used at a moment's notice. "Leave my head, seer, and don't return. Now."
The crow flapped its wings, chittering in a panic, and the face of bark and sap tightened. The branches shook, a smattering of red leaves drifting to the ground, and then it all slowly faded. Washed away by the colourless storm just within reach.
Back in the real world, the sound of hooves from the north reached his ears.
I hope you enjoyed chapter 49.
This is a big one, which wasn't at all the plan when I began writing it. After last chapter turned out so long already, I originally wanted this one to fall back into the old ~5k words range, but the content was something I wanted to cover here, so it just expanded more and more. With internships and preparing to finish my degree, things just take a lot longer.
The fall of King's Landing and subsequent killing of the royal family is a rather important event in the books, obviously. It's a great conflict between the "necessities" of lordly life in Westeros and what it means to be an honorable man, at least according to Ned. Tywin does a great job explaining it to Tyrion in, I believe, ASOS, so I won't repeat it here. Obviously, he is full of shit regarding Gregor in that passage too, but near the beginning he is square on the money when it comes to the general wisdom of their fictional society.
Doing it like this is less than ideal, but Tywin is a dedicated man. It doesn't work as a sign of loyalty in the same way, but Tywin withholds his very personal grudge with Elia in particular when speaking to Tyrion, which does play a significant role, and getting the royal children out of the way permanently has value either way. Consider also that commands take time to reach people, and there is virtually no way to reach a cavalry force on the move without simply finding them.
The Old Gods/weirwoodnet/Greenseers/Dreamers are a bit of an interesting topic in the canon and surrounding fandom. Without TWOW there are a lot of things we simply don't know yet, and the TV show obviously works with this part of the story in a very different fashion. People still aren't sure what the COTF and Bloodraven really want, or if they are even aligned in their goals, much less how the Three-eyed Crow/Raven fits into all this. The most important part about it all, for me, is that for all the power of a greenseer, there are limits to that sight. They don't know the future except for vague green dreams, and at least until Bran, they can't change the past either. They are watchers only, except for some light interference in dreams. Whether they really are a true hivemind in the Sci-Fi sense, there is something human to it all. Bloodraven, the person, certainly isn't completely gone by the time Bran finds him beyond the Wall.
Once more, thanks to my editor for looking through this and ironing out the kinks.
As always, thanks for reading and reviewing. Until next time.