Chapter 7
Part I
The pavilion shuddered beneath a steady, heavy beat of raindrops, pounding down, loud as the drums of an army. Drop-drop-drop-drop-drop.
As was his wont, Captain Nikar spoke bluntly. "It won't work. We won't catch them by surprise."
"And why not?" Ommo Pomistis said in the same Braavosi tongue. "We've been running away for a moon's turn. They won't expect an attack now, of such audacity."
"Nevio Adarys knows his work," Nikar said with a sneer that made his face, an artwork of scars, look even uglier than usual. "The Company of the Rose might be full of fools—I don't know them well enough to say—but Adarys will be in command. Count on it. The Norvoshi would be fools to say elsewise. He'll have watchers all around his camp, all day, all night, no matter where he is, and he'll have his pikemen well-drilled to get up fast, form up and fight off an assault ahorse. Unless he's slipped a lot since I fought with him at Vardos."
Handtaker spoke softly. "He hasn't."
"Then what else do we do?" the younger captain demanded. He appealed to Handtaker. "Commander, we can't stay here. The Baure isn't enough; it's scarce even a river, just a stream into the Lesser Noyne; you can walk right across with your head above water, unless you're short as a Volantene's cock. And our men are too tired from the chase, their mood bitter from the retreat. Fight here and we give the Gallant Men and Company of the Rose exactly the battle they want."
"Any better ideas?" Nikar asked him. "Retreat north to the Hills of Norvos, better land to mount a defence, good… except that then we're not in their way any more. They march right past us and join with the Stormcrows and the rest of the Gallant Men. Then they head to the plains of Ulymos and set the landowners' precious fields aflame, avoiding all the cities, till the landowners force the Braavosi host there to come out and engage them—you know they will, they are that stupid—and get slaughtered. Then Braavos has lost the war. No, we need to hold them east. The Baure isn't ideal but the Lesser Noyne is to our east and all the lands west of us are even more open. It's the best chance we'll get."
"A night attack is a better idea than marching to our slaughter," Pomistis said defiantly. "And it will be a slaughter. The Gallant Men detachment we can face, but with the Company of the Rose too… they have twice our numbers and our men are in no condition for a hard fight."
"This is war, not counting sheep," Bloodbeard rumbled contemptuously. "They have to fight a river-crossing. We'll hold."
Pomistis drew his sword. "Who are you calling boy?"
"Enough!" Handtaker's voice cracked like a whip. "Put away your steel."
The younger man looked around. The five burly men behind Handtaker had drawn their weapons. He sheathed his sword with a mutinous look.
"You'll apologise to Bloodbeard for threatening him."
Pomistis looked even more mutinous at that, but he obeyed.
"Bloodbeard, you'll apologise to Pomistis here for that slight."
Bloodbeard was incredulous. "Commander—"
Handtaker did not say a word. He was unarmed. He was far less than Bloodbeard's bulk, strength, height and weight. His beady eyes fixed themselves on his captain.
Bloodbeard quivered. "I'm sorry."
"Excellent," Handtaker said. "The decision has been made. What remains to us is to execute it. Feran, word from the scouts?"
"They'll be upon us tomorrow afternoon," said the Myrish captain. "They're camping in Nyrelos for the night, so they'll approach us from the east-northeast. Most afoot, most armed with sword and spear, plenty of archers. About two-thousand of them are Gallant Men. A thousand Company of the Rose. The last thousand from smaller free companies."
"And do you agree with that, Sunsetlander?"
All eyes fell upon Stannis Baratheon.
"The scouts are right, this time, commander," Stannis said.
Captain Feran bristled at that, but Handtaker said simply, "You are certain?"
Stannis replied only to the commander. "As certain as if I saw it with my own eyes."
"Good," Handtaker said. "The two of you concur." He gave a warning glance to both Stannis and the Myrman.
None of the other captains dared to speak more after that, but Stannis saw their unfriendly eyes upon him. He knew he was not trusted. He had only been a man of the Company of the Cat for six years, fighting in two wars on the Rhoyne and one in the Disputed Lands, and already Handtaker had chosen to make him a captain.
"I will command the reserves," Handtaker said, "and I'll commit them wherever the line seems particularly weak. The line must be held, all along the river. It will delay them and make them more vulnerable to us but the Baure isn't deep enough to stop them on its own, not at this point in its course. We must be ready to counter wherever they try to cross. They go north, we do. Is that understood?"
"Yes, commander," the captains of the Company of the Cat said in unison.
"Lorumis, the centre is yours. Bloodbeard, you'll take our right flank, in the south. Gemilio, the left, the north. The rest of you will be disposed as follows—"
He listed captains who would serve with their men under Captain Lorumis's command, and that of Captain Zometemis whom men called Bloodbeard, and that of Captain Nikar.
Finally he named the captains of the reserves, and half-way among them he said, "Sunsetlander, your men will watch over the captives."
The captives. Stannis saw Bloodbeard, Feran and several others smile. There was not a less prestigious post that could be granted.
"Yes, commander."
He allowed nothing of what he felt to show upon his face.
In his place in the reserves, behind the left flank of Handtaker's host, Stannis briefly raised his visor to wipe a hand across the sweat upon his brow. Again. He was roasting in his armour. Stormlander-born, he did not think he would ever be accustomed to Essosi summers.
Stannis stood atop a small mound that he had ordered his men to make, his eyes, dark as the deep sea, fixed in the east. The Company of the Cat stood nearer, on what had been green grass, turned to mud by the boots of sellswords. Beyond them, the river Baure flowed with its surface below the level of most of the ground, in a little valley it had carved across the land in ages past, when it must have been deeper. South went those waters, shallow now, though hundreds of feet wide, from their source somewhere in the western Hills of Norvos to their joining with the Lesser Noyne. Stannis knew the commander meant to make use of that valley's slope here on its left side, as best he could, to slow down the enemy and make them vulnerable.
Yet that slope was neither steep nor high. He did not think that it would be enough.
Across the river, shields shining in the sunlight, marching in good order, came the detachment of Gallant Men and the lesser free companies that marched beside them in service to Norvos. So great a free company were the Gallant Men that they had eight-thousand sellswords as a whole. In contrast, the Company of the Cat had only three-thousand at full strength, and they were not at full strength now. Handtaker had tasked Captain Tyleo Anastis with leading a thousand of his men away, to fight a campaign further south.
They had never been meant to face such a great force, not in the sure-sounding pronouncements of the war councils, where hardened sellswords had to pretend to respect the wisdom of preening Braavosi fools who had never seen war from the comfort of their manses. The Braavosi have got too greedy, Stannis thought, drunk on the victories they never saw, the victories we won for them by our sweat and blood. If Braavos had accepted its gains and made peace half a year past, there would not have come that dreadful day when the Iron Shields were shattered at the gates of Norvos, the day when everything changed.
Today it will change again.
Stannis hefted the longbow he had taken from the corpse of a Summer Islander he had slain, wrought of the wood peculiar to those isles. Men said the bows of the Summer Isles were better than those of Westerosi make, even those of yew or weirwood, lesser only than dragonbone. Stannis did not disbelieve them. With a motion smooth as silk, he plucked a long and narrow-headed arrow from the quiver at his belt and put it to the bow.
He pulled back the bowstring so far and so hard that his fingers screamed at him. He gazed upon the Gallant Men and Company of the Rose men with four assessing eyes, an action as familiar to him as breathing now, and judged his shot.
He wondered what would become of him if he failed on this day. Would he be taken captive, when the sellswords bought by Norvos overran those bought by Braavos and destroyed the Company of the Cat? Would he die in battle? Would he be executed here, or in Norvos? Would they try to ransom him from his brother? He hoped not; Robert would laugh and tell the bearded priests he would not pay a copper, and Stannis could not bear to suffer that indignity. Better to die and be done with it.
To die in a faraway land… he had oft considered it. He would be dying for Braavos to subordinate Norvos and control the lands of the upper Rhoyne. Strange, for a Stormlander boy to die for the mastery of a foreign land where folk with strange names spoke in strange tongues, when it mattered so little to him…
In truth, Stannis's sympathies lay more with the Norvoshi. Every son of the Stormlands knew what it was like to lie next to a titan while trying to avoid being its vassal in all but name. The axe-guardians of the bearded priests of Norvos had fought admirably whenever they took the field, whereas Braavos's own men had not, and Braavos's war effort was faltering due to Braavosi arrogance. It did not feel right that he was fighting to make the Braavosi triumph.
No matter. Stannis had never fought for what he believed was right, else he would have gladly served King Aerys, as he would have done if the head of the rebellion had been anyone but a Baratheon. He had fought for his brother, until his brother had betrayed him, and afterward he had fought only for himself.
He let the first arrow fly. By the time the fletching cleared the bow, Stannis already knew the shot was perfect.
Nevio Adarys did not see the first man fall. He stood near the middle of his host, preferring not to hold the van, lest he move forward too easily and be blinded by a trap, nor the rear, lest he be too far from a great number of his men. As he was, his own detachment of Gallant Men were behind him, and the Company of the Rose and other small free companies stood in front. The combined host of sellswords serving Norvos stood on a muddy plain of trampled grassland beneath a clear early-afternoon sun overhead, marching westward to the river Baure, behind which stood his foes, as he had known. Only the noise of his men's boots and chatter could be heard today. Not even birdsong disturbed them; the little birds that usually thronged around these parts had fled, doubtless due to the presence of a family of eagles. All seemed as it should be, all seemed in order, until one of his captains of the van fell.
At first Nevio did not realise what had happened. There was a commotion somewhere in the van, among the Plains Lions he thought, and he leant forward and stared, looking to find the source of it. Lots of Plains Lions were huddled about something on the ground. Nevio looked for the commander of that free company, and could not see him. But Plains Lions captains were trying to restore order. Nevio saw one such captain, Hanarro Nemel, a stout burly man in full plate, muscling among the men, moving to the front, calling men to follow, to gather around him, shouting commands, moving every moment…
All of a sudden a long arrow protruded from the eyehole of his helmet, and he fell.
Nevio was an old hand at his trade. He remembered the way Captain Nemel had been facing at the moment of his fall; in an instant he calculated where the arrow must have come from—the west—and traced a line with his eyes. There had been no-one in front of him. There was only hundreds of yards of empty plain, hundreds of yards of river beyond it, and, beyond that, the Company of the Cat.
That made no sense; the arrow could not have come from there. Where had it come from? There must be a hidden enemy, mayhaps another host the scouts had failed to see.
Another arrow flew. He saw it perfectly this time, its flight unbelievably swift, an arc straight from somewhere in the enemy army to his own. It struck a captain of the Company of the Rose—also fully armoured, also moving—through the eyehole of his helmet and he fell dead at once to the ground.
That sight sent a chill deep in Nevio's heart. Impossible. Not even the longbows of the Sunset Lands had nearly such range, nor such unimaginable precision. That is no bowman.
But his foe, the monstrously-reputed Handtaker, did have a man in his free company who came from a land renowned for archery. And who, it was said, could do things that lay not in the province of man…
More arrows flew, and more men fell. Now some of them were common sellswords, not captains. There was agitation in the van, he could tell from the increasingly frantic orders being shouted. "Hold the line! Hold the line!"
Nevio made his decision in an instant. He had not thought his host was in range of enemy archery, but they were, that was plain to see now. His men would not stand here walking calmly westward, being shot at and making no reply; and he would not give orders that would not be obeyed.
"Forward!" roared Nevio at the top of his voice. "Keep order! Start the run! Forward!"
The van would start running soon in any case. He could not stop that, not with the arrows falling down upon them, haughtily disdainful even of full plate. Better not to resist that tide but to swim with it. He had to ensure his van could not be parted from the rest of his host, as was probably Handtaker's intent.
The men of the free companies serving Norvos broke into a run. Their sergeants shouted orders, keeping them in line, preserving discipline, making sure they would smash into the Company of the Cat like a single hammer instead of a shower of pinpricks. His host grew faster like a boulder rolling down a hill, the hard work of the sergeants paying off and welding the host into a whole, ready to smash into their foes and win their way across the river.
The foremost of his ranks made it to the east bank of the Baure. He watched them walk down the gentle slope of the river valley, not even needing to climb, and rush into the water with their weapons at the ready. Now they were close enough that a whole hail of arrows fell upon them, but they moved forward in defiance of it. Their faces were hot with wrath.
Handtaker's men on the west bank lowered their spears and pikes, pointing.
Running at the head with vengeance in their hearts, the Plains Lions scrambled out of the river and up the slope and crashed into the enemy centre. There was a hideous screech of steel. The foe fought from above on the slope, jabbing at them with polearms, trying to press them back into the river Baure. The foremost men in the Company of the Rose, a little way behind, joined them. Other free companies struck at the Company of the Cat's northern and southern flanks, and others went further north or south than that, seeking to draw away Braavos's sellswords' reserves and pull out the Braavosi lines so that the greater numbers of Norvos's sellswords on this day could tell. If all went well, the Company of the Cat's lines would be spread thin enough to make some place weak enough for his reserves—who had stayed back, not charging with the rest—to punch through.
Now Nevio's own men—in the middle of his host, well behind those foremost ranks—made it to the river. The mud squelched beneath his armoured legs as he ran, and even on this hot summer's day the water was a shock of cold.
He ran on. The water level rose, covering his feet, his lower legs, his legs, his hips, his belly, his chest. The arrows of his foes pelted him now, and many of his men—for not all could afford full plate—fell screaming, their blood colouring the water.
Grimly resolute, in the reddening Baure, Nevio ran on.
The centre! His men were winning there. Nevio had fought many battles and his experienced eye could already see it now. His sellswords had struck the enemy centre with tremendous force and the Company of the Cat men there were being pushed away from the bank. Many had perished, but more were coming to replenish them, scrambling out of the river.
The centre is buckling!
Even as the water crawled up to Nevio's neck, in the deepest part of the Baure, he could not restrain a shout of exultation. The weary Company of the Cat men, exhausted by the long pursuit westward that had taken them here, were breaking under the fury of his van, unable to restrain them. Now Plains Lions and Company of the Rose men were fighting not in the river valley but on level ground, rising out of the river Baure like the merling hosts of legend.
A tall, thin enemy captain was shouting commands. It availed him little. Nevio saw his men push forward, encouraged by their comrades, more arriving every minute. The men acted as if they were the reserve, ignoring the less vulnerable flanks and piling into the centre where they could climb to level ground…
A rushing noise from the north filled Nevio's ears.
He did not recognise it, he ignored it, he pushed onward, onward, onward… he had not even committed the reserve yet and victory was already within his grasp…
"The river!" somebody was shouting, no, not somebody, everybody, someone was bodily shaking him, "the river, the river, the river—"
Nevio looked to the north.
Upstream on the Baure, a howling wall of water rolled towards him. Where he stood, the Baure was slow-flowing, shallow and calm; but upstream it was a terrible torrent of monstrous size. Further upstream yet, where the river bent, it looked shallower than it was here, as if it were being emptied; and all its water bore down on him, fast and huge and rising, rising, rising, rising…
In an instant he understood. The van was on the west bank, fighting the Company of the Cat. The reserves were on the east bank, not yet having crossed the river. And the middle of his host was still in the water.
Nevio's heart leapt into his mouth as his army's cries of triumph turned to terror. "Get out!" he yelled as loudly as he could. "To the west, to the east, I don't care, just get out of the river! Get out! Get out!"
It was no use. The roar of the approaching wall of water, high over their heads, was so earth-shakingly vast that it drowned out his voice. Almost no-one but himself could hear him. Nevio Adarys screamed a scream that was swallowed up and silenced by the raging river as it swept his host away.