Disclaiming:I own none of this.
AN: Its probably lesser in quality than the last one but gosh, this chapter was so fun to write and came out so easily. Action and combat feels like a joy to write. (could use some editing) The next chapter, whenever it is uploaded will be on AO3 and spacebattles as well. Though my username will be different. See you all then.
Blood and Water Chapter 2:
The moon was hidden behind the dark walls as a small army clad in steel and leather traversed through a ragged woodland in the shadow of the town.
Edmure worried at every rustle and scrape of metal as they made their way through the queer vegetation.
We will be heard. No man is stealthy in full plate. His heart resounded in his ears, the beat thudding like great war drums, as they approached the point where the trees would offer no cover.
The thralls had answered gladly when coin was offered, and even when put to the litany of Rhymer's questions they had maintained their story. The north wall was the one most packed with men on account for how short it was and how close to the citadel. Its gatehouse tower was ugly and squat but had thick walls and battlements that could fit a score of men on either side. They would lay down a withering hail of missiles if given the opportunity.
They will not get the opportunity. Uncle was right, they will not see us in the dark.
No words were uttered but all had looked to Ser Brynden to begin. They broke cover, and a hundred and fifty men hoisted the ladders to their shoulders. Knights and squires, older pages and thralls all in the pitch black of dark began their death run. Gods willing, not a man among them tripped.
Halting at the base of the walls all in unison their ladders were laid up. The contraptions rose slowly, and from his place at the fulcrum it seemed they would make such a din as to wake all of the townspeople. But the wall was reached already. Five breaches, laid side to side would spawn a hundred knights on those walls above.
"See you at the top, Blackfish." Ser Tygett said, his voice did not boom in the dark, but echoed as his visor came down and the Golden lion helm closed its maw.
On his own ladder, Edmure held steady so that Ser Brynden could climb. Up, behind him went Clement.
I must go too, or be craven. But another man had already gone up behind Clement, and another behind him.
Edmure prayed to the warrior for courage before he too climbed the steps. He left the shaking rails in the hands of the freed thralls. His arms were burning and his breathing was strained in his helm.
He could only see through the tiny slit of his visor.
Halfway up he began to hear the din of battle. The alarm had gone up and men shouted and screamed. Edmures arms refused to do anything but climb.
Never again am I closing these helms. He thought.
He leaped between the merlons at the top of the ladder and suddenly he was in the thick of it with his knight. Later, Ser Brynden would tell him what had happened, later. A spear from an enterprising ironman had jabbed him in the face. The houndskull had deflected it well but so powerful had the blow been that his helm moved.
Clement, wonderful Clement had seen it and with deft fingers opened the strap that held the visor shut. Edmure took in gasps of breath.
The moonlight was awash here, illuminating the wallwalk with the pale glow of night. His nine years of training took hold then. Nine years of regular and diligent drill, of practice in the morning, noon and night, of sword and blade, of axe and haft, of the pallaxe and spear and of fighting in armour came back to him as the knights fought to go towards the Gatehouse tower.
A man in full plate could ignore many a blow that an unarmoured man could not. Ser Brynden knew his steel and knew it well. Edmure watched as an axe hit sparked on his blue and black breastplate before Ser Brynden's blade took the hand holding the weapon. The ironman's eyes had held rage and fear, hate had mingled with terror as he died. Edmure gave him a swift death once his master advanced past him, a blade through his heart, it was better than to bleed out slowly.
The resistance on the wall lessened as Edmure realized that the ironmen had abandoned the wallwalk to fortify the gatehouse tower. "You can hate your enemy nephew, you can scorn him and goad him, but never underestimate him."
"Uncle! Crossbows on the parapet" Edmure yelled. His voice did not carry well in battle, but the man was right in front of him. The group turned their helms and waited a heartbeat as the bolts smashed against their plate. One hit Edmure in his cuisse and splintered a thousand chips of wood into the air. That was too close. He thought. It felt as if a man had with all his force hammered every limb on his body.
We will be black, blue and purple all ove,r come morning.
"Break that door down." The lion roared. Two of his men had already taken up axes from their fallen foes and were hammering them against the door. Up above, Edmure saw the men on the battlements, there were many of them and all were loading up crossbows in a blind panic.
There was a lull in the melee. All around him men lay dead or dying from the initial offense and Edmure heard the crossbows release into the men on the ladders. Among the ironmen lay one of Ser Bryndens outriders, the old veteran of the stepstones had a hole where most of his nose and eye would have been. A spear blow through the open faced bascinet. May the Stranger guide you to the afterlife.
With a crack the door's hinges were finally broken and the Lion, bowled through head-first into the breach. Edmure saw as he advanced upon two axemen, quicker than any man his size ought to, avoiding their blows and gutting one through his long mail with a sword strike so precisely and so violently that it wrenched him bodily from the floor. He wrestled the other one into the ground.
Edmure held his longsword in a half grip, when he entered through the battered door, he faced an armoured youth who sought to trip Clement with a long voulge. One over-extension and Edmure saw his chance. A viper strike taking powered from core of his body aimed at and struck his enemy's throat. Through mail and cloth the castleforged steel went in, and Edmure felt the satisfaction and disgust of the crumpling body of a dead foe.
"Be quick,be efficient and be sure move on." His uncle's words in training came to him.
And so Edmure did. The knights at his back were streaming in now, and he followed the black helm of his uncle up the torchlit steps into the open air of the tower battlements. The throng of ironmen here were less armored but not any bit less dangerous. They tried to form a wall, interlocking iron rimmed shields so that oak and iron may guard what armor could not.
"Don't wade in lads, they have short swords thatll nick you in all your joints. Watch this." Ser Brynden said. He half-sworded his long four feet blade, using it like an axe to pry away one unexpecting reaver's shield. Clement had found a spear with a wicked sharp tip that glistened in the torchlight and struck the man through his unprotected chest. And so the carnage began anew.
By the time they had cleared the tower of all enemies, none taken for prisoner, all the men from beneath the walls had made it up and Ser Jarmon had given the signal for advancing to Ser Ryger so far away. Edmure waited alongside his knight, offering him wine from a pouch he carried.
The enameled blues, blacks and reds on the harness that were pristine this morning when the squires had polished it now bore a dozen small marks and three great dents where heavy axes had struck the man.
Clement's blue and pink tabard had been torn asunder but the steel underneath had taken no extensive bruising. His lower greaves however had taken a nasty dent.
"I was tripped by some billhook or other instrument" He told Edmure sheepishly when he gestured to it.
"I suppose that I have to thank you for helping with my helmet at the start, loathed as I am to do so." You need not look so embarrassed Clement. Edmure thought. He sat, cleaning the sword his lord father had given him. It still held the wonderful edge of a pristine blade though it now been baptized in blood more than once.
"We could have had our visors off the whole time, I counted what? … two volleys in that whole fight?"
"They were taking shots at the ladders. You were here with Ser Brynden so you didn't see. Many men lost their grip."
"That is the cost of an Escalade lads." Ser Brynden said, grimly. He offered the wine to another knight and Edmure was slightly annoyed. He gestured at the pile of men wearing goat sashes – "- and that is the cost of resisting. I suppose I will have more examples to show you by dawns light."
"For now rest, and can someone fetch me something to eat." Garth, one of the archers brought pilfered hard cheese and Donnel, an outrider had with him sausages packed away in his brigantine. Best not think about that. Edmure gladly ate it and drank a swig of the tough ale that had been put up in the tower.
You will question why I chose to stop our momentum. The truth is we were very lucky. There was much resistance here but above all we caught them by surprise. We have lost very few men in a risky gamble and I will not lose more fighting in confusion in that maze of streets down there. He gestured from atop between the merlons at the hundreds of slate-roofed houses below them.
"Ordered fighting is what we shall do. From house to house with our better armor and arms we will drive their soldiers to the very shores of their cursed sea." He stood up, "If they turn sail and flee, then Stannis can catch them, They will never fight a westerosi if they can avoid it. We have put the fear of the sword arm of the Warrior into them."
Men who were listening nodded, and then a cheer rose up., "THE WARRIOR! THE WARRIOR! ROBERT KING! ROBERT KING! ROBERT KING!"
"I cannot afford this Blackfish." Ser Tygett began. He looked half a wraith now, his bronze and gold hair was free of his helm and the green of his eyes held a malicious edge. His golden armor was brown with drying blood and gore. "Those ironborn will take anything they can carry with them and sail off or worse, burn it down behind them."
"Including your ship? Or whatever is bolted down in the holds I suppose? Pray tell me, what more than horses can a man lose to the sea."
"Its more than horses, aye its worth more to my family than you can imagine Blackfish."
"Is it your pride? If you want to chase them off, Lannister be my guest. But I do not plan to spend the night wading through a wary town on your account."
"Has my brother even sullied our motto? Do the realms not believe that Lannisters pay their debts anymore?"
"Oh your family does pay debts, it does so with bloody interest actually." Ser Brynden was offended Edmure could see. "I would not take Lannister gold in hand if it threatened to buried me. I will not take a petty bribe by you to risk mens lives needlessly."
"Brynden, these mens lives are meant for this. It is the spoils of war. A town taken through force of arms forfeits any rights." He came closer to Ser Brynden.
"Maybe where the gold flows more freely, it is so, but we Rivermen spend our lives much more dearly Tygett."
"Come Blackfish, you were not so craven when last we met."
"Yet you remain as intelligent as the ten year old I last saw on the stepstones. It is true then, Essosi gold and Essosi whores make madmen out of us."
Ser Tygett seemed to growl and grow in presence he stepped closer to the black knight.
Edmure rose. To Edmure, all the men around seemed to be in a trance, none stirred. To Edmure the bloodlust that soaked through Tygett 'The Hungry' Lannister threatened to choke him. From the tip of his toes to the end of his fingers he was abuzz with the urge to jump in. To be between his Knight and this apparent madman.
"You draw steel here, and you die boy." Edmure froze. But all of his Uncle's men had stood. Garth and Donnel, Kenny and Levi archers and outriders and all of the Riverrun Knights. They outnumbered the foreign sellswords and westermen archers Ser Tygett had brought.
"Bah it never occurred to me." The Lannister spoke. "Why slay a fellow knight when there are still reavers yet to kill."
He dares still. Edmure's own blood had begun to boil at the audacity.
"And you pup, grip your sword any harder and you'll threaten to cut your self."
He looks at me. Edmure blinked. He looked down. Oh.
"Lord Hoster's get have some blood in them after all eh? Good."
When Ser Ryger arrived he was elated to find that the town gate was secure. "You work your miracles with the blade Brynden, as Lord Hoster does with quill and Raven. Here are all your men and horses now. I suspect we may have need of them to clear away the rabble through the streets. We can give quarter now yes?"
Ser Brynden addressed all of the men at the gate. "Quarter shall be given to those who seek it. Spare the women and the children. Those with weapons are to be dispatched as you see fit. If you see a rich Ironborn in armor, kill him. I expect discipline and those who forsake it should not expect to see the dawn."
It was slow and bloody stuff, the fighting in the streets. House to house the men went in and they left with swords bloodied and hands full of goods. Ser Brynden didn't partake and thereby neither did his squires in the main column but the archers and outriders and a fair many of the Men-at arms were game for it.
"The cost of war lad, and the cost of defiance." Ser Brynden told him as they walked down a lane where a man with a spear had been gutted. "This is the least of it. We have not been through a long siege. And our victory at the gate cost us only a few men. There would be reason to be less gentle for the men elsewise."
"I can hardly see men being less gentle Ser. And it is against women and children they turn their craft to now, not other men. What is this but the massacre of the helpless?"
"These people are not your people Edmure, they will not kneel when given the opportunity. Each of these houses is built upon the blood of a dozen Greenlanders. See how their timbers are strong and dark. Did you see a single one of these in our time here, growing strongly in the open. Do your Maesters not teach you. They have had three hundred years under a dragon dynasty to change their ways, they will now have none under the Stag. We have Mallisters among us, and westerment besides. Their people have suffered long under the tyranny of these dreaded sails. Who am I to question their rage?"
"But you knew them, during the years of peace with, Quellon Greyjoy leading them." Edmure saw a thin figure, a woman in chainmail thrown from a window. Her throat had been slit and her eyes look unseeing in her final resting place on the muddy street.
"Aye, and Quellon is dead. Every one of his brothers is a believer in the Oldways. They would see themselves as Harron the Black come again if only we allowed it."
Hareg came then, one of the northern scouts Ser Brynden had taken to during the Rebellion, in a rush. "Trouble m'lord, near fifty men, Iron men."
Ser Brynden looked around and in his war voice, the voice that could commanded a hundred and a hundred would listen, he boomed. "Dismount. Archers loosen them up for us. Knights behind me."
Edmure knew this to be a rearguard when he saw them. Camped upon the main street that lead to the harbor they were readied. With their great axes and gleaming coats of plate and their ornate helms the arrayed men looked like the giants of old.
Rymund Goosefeather's command started the volleys. "Nock!" A score of men put their long cedar pine and ash bolts on their strings. "Draw!" All in unison men drew bows that were longer than themselves up to the ear "Loose!" The sound drummed cut through the street and screamed towards the shield bearers.
To their credit, they took a volley of arrows on their shields, then another, then another and then another still. Through it all they began a song in their queer tongue for the old gods. It sounded shrill to Edmure, a mockery of a choir that honored the Drowned God instead of the Seven who are One. Till their great painted faces were covered in the bristle of goose feathers and bodkins they stood and sang. A dozen painted shield bearers were felled by the time the archers were ordered to stop.
Into this, Ser Brynden charged his four ranks of steel clad killers. The front held polaxes, five feet of ash and oak combined with chimaera of axe, hammer and spear. They were knights to a man and killers all. Behind them stood the squires and lesser men-at arms with halberds and billhooks their helms were open faced or opened the better to see and stab. Following them stood Edmure, lance in hand ready to slip it past both Ser Brynden and Clement into unwitting foes.
It wasn't easy work and men died on both sides. Edmure saw Ser Ryger take an axe blow that hideously dented his upper canon. The man himself was knocked by the force of the blow, but his place was taken by a squire who was just as well armored.
He saw Clement strike repeatedly at the duck billed helmet of a man whose axe foiled every one of Ser Bryndens blows. He saw Jarmon Mallister and a foe locked in a steely embrace as his squire brought down a warspike time and time again over the reavers chainmail covered back. He saw a Charlton man split from shoulder to sternum, the mistletoes of his tunic dyed red with fresh blood.
He saw Iron men pried from their shields, fight on with maddening fury. They took blows no mortal man could hope to recover from, fueled as if by something preternatural to still fight on. His own thrusts felt like they hit stolid walls, there was impact, the feel of striking flesh and bone and each time the blade came back bloodied, but no men fell to Edmure in that brawl.
And then, without a word there was a break from the fighting and all pulled back. It happened, Ser Brynden said, when men on both sides were too tired to continue or simply too dead, but neither side felt they had lost.
"Clement, take up beside me. Ser Jonar, see to your wounds." Then, as we shifted our fresh men forward, to the enemy he turned, "Throw down your weapons you madmen, I tire of killing your lot and I suspect you tire of killing mine."
"Your blood only fuels us Mud-fucker. You water your fields with shit and dung, we sow ours with blood – " The reply was cut short as an archer put a feet of ash with red and black feathers above his aventail.
And then the melee recommenced.
"Do these focks really 'ave iron in their blood? Died 'arder than any boar Ive feathered, they did" an archer said once all of the enemy had been slain. He was picking through the mans fingers, relieving them from rings and gloves.
All around him men had on the faces of jackals. Men who hadn't even spilt blood in the fighting now spilt blood in the looting. Pages and squires looked more like urchins and strays. Knights looked like brigands with better armor. The reavers carried their wealth on their ships, but also on their person and were stripped bare where it seemed they were rich enough. Here, where the reavers had run to flee in their ships they left behind some of their bounty. Stolen no doubt, from septries and manors from across Ironmans bay. He wondered how many septas had been defiled, how many farms torched and how many young girls enthralled before the Ironmongers even in their flight could leave behind so much and throw away so much. Wealth gathered from the toil of thousands of peasants was now being haggled and fought over by soldiers from half a dozen realms.
Corpse pickers. Edmure held back his distaste. The spoils of war, to the glorious victors.He spit, and where his spit landed upon some poor boys brains splattered on the ground he almost hurled.
The light of the moon was overwhelmed now, by the warmth of two suns rising from the East. A dozen longships blazed upon a burning shore. Edmure reconsidered. Looking now upon the distinctly golden and red sails of a merchantman turning to smoke on the water. The spoils of war, to the lucky victors.