Chapter 10
Part II

Do you think your blindness keeps you safe?

It does not.

You do not see your death even when it stands before your eyes…

but I… see… you…

"No," Noro said as the letters traced themselves into his thoughts like brands blazing with fire, "I can see."

An army charged towards a man, brothers in arms, hardened and battle-tested, bright with resolve, their horses' hooves pounding, arakhs gleaming and arrows raining before them. They did not stand a chance. He knew what was coming.

Noro tried to call upon them to halt, to move aside, to change their minds. Somehow he found that he could not. He knew the words to say and his mouth would not say them. It was as if he were a prisoner in a world that was not his own.

The khalasar came closer, as he knew they would, and they failed, as he knew they would. Men and horses shrieked and sizzled before the spear of bright white light that swept around and dealt them fiery demise. Noro cast a glance at Jhatho's face, hard with resolve, and from his friend's courage he drew strength. Hopeless though he knew it was, he yelled a war-cry, daring to wonder whether this time it might be different…

It was not. His horse reared against the reins, threw him and fled for fear of the fire, as he knew it would, and he fell, as he knew he would. Then the world darkened as a tall terrible thing in the shape of a man stood over him.

He knew what would come next.

"No," Noro sobbed, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, whatever I did I'm sorry, please stop, please, please no, please no, no no no no NOOOOOO…"

The red hand reached, fingers curling like claws, straight for Noro's heart…

Darkness.

Blessed darkness. It was more comfortable than light. If he could not see anything, he could not see the terror of the monster that was coming for him.

Noro took short sharp daggerlike breaths, inside his sleeping roll, inside his ger, wrapped up warm and tight. He was alive. He was safe. He was drenched with sweat. He placed a hand on his heart, noting the galloping march of his heartbeat and reassuring himself it was still there.

When the pounding of his heart had calmed a little, he poked his head outside. No wonder the ger was so dark. It was early in the morning. The sun's first rays had not yet risen over the horizon in the east.

Ko Noro did not think he could get back to sleep, and did not think he wanted to. There was naught to do, then, but prepare himself.

Noro dressed, armoured and armed himself and was still up an hour before the sun was. In the cool of night he stood around and spoke with other warriors. There were more of them awake at this hour than he would have expected. He supposed that others were as nervous about the battle to come today as he was.

Khal Jhatho awoke two hours after Noro did, content and well-rested. When he emerged from his tent he was almost trembling with energy, yet with a certain stillness nonetheless, like a great hrakkar of the plains, tail twitching as it prepared itself to pounce.

He saw Noro. "I should have known you would awaken before me, blood of my blood," the khal said with a rueful laugh. "You put me to shame."

"Never," Noro protested, but Jhatho dismissed it with laughter.

"Fear not," Jhatho said. "I take it that you have broken your fast?"

"I have," said Noro. He had needed it.

Jhatho looked closely at him. "Are you sure you are well?" he asked quietly. "Blood of my blood, forgive me, but you seem haggard."

"I am well," Noro said quickly.

"Are you sure?"

"I am very well. I only have… cares, for the battle," Noro lied through his teeth. He would not tell Jhatho it was his dreams that had so perturbed him. That was a weakness in him. It was shameful for a man to burden other men with his weaknesses; a man should shoulder them himself. He was a man grown, a ko in a khalasar. He could not bear to make his old friend treat him like a child.

"I see," Jhatho said softly. "I will not pester you. I ask you only to remember: the Great Stallion does not honour men who do not fear death. They are lackwit madmen. He honours men who feel fear in their bones and stand in spite of it."

"I know," Noro said, taking a shuddering deep breath. Then, on an impulse: "We will do you proud today, blood of my blood. Be not afraid."

Jhatho smiled. "I know you will."

Jhatho rose and gathered the men of the khalasar. He promised courage and honour and golden glory. It was easy to be swept up in his confidence, and by the end of that speech Noro felt like a proud man again.

He could not have picked a better khal. He could not have picked a better friend.

The sellsword captains and commanders came to speak to the khal. Badohin M'nar was at the head of them. They made final discussions, dispositions, battle plans. The hirelings of Braavos were near. They had caught up at last. There would be no escaping them.

"Ko Noro, I thought we were meant for glory," young Kammo whispered in Noro's ear. "Why are we meant to stay behind?"

"Because we are more to be trusted," Noro said dryly, leaning down to speak to the beardless young man. "The reserve is to be committed at a time later than the start of battle; that is what it means to be a reserve. Sometimes battles are going badly. If that's happening, a sellsword company left in reserve will like as not abandon the battle or switch sides as come in at the time and place they're meant to."

"But that would be treason!" said Kammo, horrified.

"Oh yes," said Noro. "Always remember, Kammo, that dragon-men are not to be trusted. They'll betray each other in an instant without a shred of remorse, and they'll betray a 'barbarian' twice as fast as that."

When the arrangements were done—a swift affair—they mounted, for all of them were ahorse, and went off eastward for the day's pursuit.

It was only an hour's pursuit to reach the enemy. The sellswords of the Company of the Cat and others had made their stand to the south of a particularly steep hill, for hills were the only obstructions to be found in this hot, dry part of the eastern Hills of Norvos. Noro guessed that they had been here all night, though he could not be sure; it was an irritating truth that no outriders had ever managed to get close to them and remain undetected to return. Oddly, there were no vultures above the field of battle, despite the large number of armed men gathering, a herald of corpses to come. He supposed they had been driven off, for in the sky he espied a trio of circling eagles.

Most of the enemy were afoot; some were with stolen horses. They had arranged a pike wall all around, clearly meant to deter the heavy armoured charges the Bright Banners were so famed for; but they did not rely solely on that, for no man could treat the Dothraki like heavy horse and survive. They also possessed walls of interlocking shields, to ward off the lethal rain of the Dothraki's dreaded horse-archery.

It was not an altogether indecent tactic, Noro considered. But he did not think that it would be enough for them. It would not be easy to be vigilant against heavy horse attacking from near and light horse attacking from afar at the same time. It seemed to him that Captain M'nar meant to hammer them with his sellsword force, then use the Dothraki to attack from an unexpected direction, crushing the outnumbered Braavosi sellswords between two different muscles of the Pact of Four.

Noro did not come close, at first. He waited behind with Jhatho in the rear, watching the rest of the battle, ready to be sent forth when Badohin M'nar chose that his reserve should be committed.

That plan bled and collapsed when M'nar did. A long black arrow bristled from the eyehole of his helmet.

"Unlucky man," Noro observed to Jhatho. "It was one shot in a thousand, to hit like that."

"It is of small account," Jhatho said, of the death of the man he had been allied with. "The Bright Banners are disciplined, company-minded; they are not the feeble retinue of some pompous lord of ancient blood. See—" he pointed— "they are already rallying around Aenio Phelaqys."

Another arrow struck, flying so fast its path could scarce be seen. It was embedded in the eye of Commander Ponat.

Noro and Jhatho exchanged glances. Noro said, "That is no luck."

"Agreed," said the khal. "It seems this is becoming interesting."

The inflection he gave the word "interesting" made Noro bark a laugh.

A third long arrow from the east pierced Commander Kandah's eye in an instant. Of opposite accuracy, a stray arrow from the battle killed one of the eagles circling above. The others trilled with alarm and jerked briefly back and forth in the sky, but did not flee. Noro paid them little heed.

Phelaqys fell next. Noro felt a chill in his heart. Whoever this bowman was, he was good, very good. No-one was that good. Like any good Dothraki-raised boy, Noro prided himself on his skill at firing a recurve bow from horseback. He was familiar with what could and could not be done in archery. Aiming for the head from afar was tricky. Aiming for the eye…?

Fully armoured, helmed men were hard to kill, else they would not be so prized. They were no easy prey for archers at a distance. Except, apparently, for this one.

With more and more of their officers slain, the sellswords were losing their good order. It was plain as day to Noro's experienced eyes. They did not flee, but there was no clear commander to react quickly when a hard knot of Company of the Cat men suddenly emerged from the enemy lines and burst through their centre. Led by a man in plate armour like that of the fabled Sunset Lands with strands of flaxen hair falling outside a damaged helm, the dense pack of Braavos's sellswords came spilling through like water in the cracks. Expensively armed and armoured, doubtless the enemy's best men, they cut deep into the host of the Pact of Four's sellswords. A good commander, on the spot, could have swiftly given the order to move some squads of men, cut off the protruding line from the rest of the enemy host and kill the isolated men who had broken through; but it seemed each squad was on its own. There was no overall commander.

A warhorn blew. There was a hearty cheer, and the enemy's reserve ran from behind the main battle lines, going to the south of the army and then turning north to pin down the Pact of Four's host. It appeared that the Braavosi sellswords meant to slice the army of the Pact of Four's sellswords in two and then surround both pieces, caught between the hill, the men of the breakthrough, and now the men of the reserve.

The khal saw it as soon as Noro did. He could not be faulted in clarity of thought; realisation of the enemy's intent came to him immediately. He turned, and there was a light in his eyes. "Men of the plains!" he cried. "Men of my khalasar! Horselords, friends, followers! This is our hour!"

Jhatho put his lips to a gold-banded horn and called a great note, long and low and loud. A hundred other horns rang out behind him, and the host of the Dothraki charged.

Noro rode at Jhatho's side, as he always had and always meant to. Their charge thundered across the plain, wondrous to behold. Noro leant forward on his horse, cold wind whistling in his ears, blowing back his hair, streaming straight into his face. Hundreds of his fellows rode beside him, bellowing their war-cries.

They circled around the great number of sellswords on their own side who were still to the east of them, in front of them, between them and the enemy host. They wheeled south of the rest of the battle, just as the enemy had done, and searched for an enemy that must be somewhere to the east of them. They sought out the Braavosi reserve that had so boldly ventured out like a long tentacle, stretching itself too thin, too far away from the main strength of the Braavosi army, eager to slice it off and crush it. When they passed south of their own army's rear that had been blocking their sight, they found a man.

Even on horseback as he was, wind rushing in his ears, Noro blinked in sheer disbelief.

Not an army. A man. A single man, standing against them.

Behind him, the Braavosi reserve was battling against the Pact of Four's host. But he was just a man.

A tall, broad-shouldered man. A man in steel plate armour. A man in a surcoat of featureless black. A man with his back to the rising sun, dark against the dawn.

Pure fear screamed through every inch of Noro's body as if he had dived face-first into a lake of icy water. He knew this. He knew how this ended. He knew. He knew. He knew. He knew…

"You do not know the power that you are meddling with," a low voice boomed in Braavosi. "I am Stannis of House Baratheon, and if you are no utter fool then you know what I did at Nyrelos. Flee from me and I will not pursue you. Flee from me and I will allow you to live."

The fear threatened to overwhelm him… but then Jhatho laughed. It was loud and clear and pure and golden like the peal of a bell, and the sound broke the bonds that the sight of the lone figure had placed upon him.

It is not like the dreams, he told himself. Those were dreams. This is real.

"Confident, for one man against hundreds," shouted Jhatho, not slowing in his charge. "I tell you—do not cast aside your life. You know we will win this battle, no matter how great a warrior you are; we are too many; you are too few. I offer you the chance to surrender."

Quietly, Baratheon put down the two weapons he held: a great bow, coloured like burnt gold, and a thin black spear longer than a man was tall. It was like no spear Noro knew of; when it caught the light he realised that was no wood, even the haft; the whole thing was pure iron. Then—still out of range of arrows—Baratheon pulled off one gauntlet. With the other hand he picked up the long spear again and slashed deeply into his own hand.

Pale light blazed upon the spear where blood fell. Even as far away as he was, Noro had to resist the urge to throw a hand in front of his eyes. The white fire shone unfathomably bright, as bright as staring straight into the sun. As he wounded himself Baratheon had collapsed to both knees and howled in pain, and a great gash had opened on his palm. It poured forth blood—much of it onto the spear, which made the fire swell, and much of it onto the ground.

The hand was red and dripping.

Memories of what that hand had done to him dozens of times came rushing back, and Noro fought to stay focused and to ignore it. This is not a nightmare. This cannot be a nightmare. I am awake. I am awake. I am awake. I am awake.

Coldly, as if he had not just inflicted such a wound upon himself, Baratheon rose to his feet and put back on his gauntlet.

The lone figure pointed the spear, hissing and crackling with pale flame. "Once again I urge you: Flee. Flee and live. I am more merciful than my commander; I grant you this one more chance."

"Pretty trick," Jhatho roared back. "You are still a man, no matter how arrogant, not a god. You need us to flee because you can't defeat us. We are not so easily deceived."

The khal spoke again, then, less loudly, to address his people.

"Fear no maegi's lies!" he called. "The Great Stallion protects mankind from foul spells and evil spirits. Trust in Him, be true to Him and to each other, and let not evil daunt your heart."

The fear crawled over Noro like a physical thing, but he sheltered from it in the warm glow of Jhatho's resolve. Jhatho needed him to fight this monster. He would not let him down.

White flames hissed in the distance as they continued their charge.

The earth trembled beneath the pounding hooves of the Dothraki khalasar. Stannis Baratheon felt the jolt of their charge in his bones. Behind him was the clamour of battle, as his outnumbered host busied itself fighting a different foe, with their backs to him, saved from sure doom only by their courage and their greater discipline. He stood alone, the sole shield between hundreds of Dothraki warriors and every man under his command; and he was desperately afraid.

He could not kill this many. He was not capable of that. If he could let loose arrows at them from a great distance, perhaps. If he had lured them into some cunningly laid trap, perhaps. But not like this. They were getting closer and closer, on an open field, with hundreds of arrows and arakhs destined for his throat.

He had hoped the bloodfire would suffice to dismay them. That was no easy working of the art; he had used it twice in a year, and that was more than he usually would; his left arm's wound from the previous usage had still not yet recovered. Unfortunately, it had not.

Another flight of arrows rained down upon him. Stannis made an irritated gesture. The wind shifted, governed by an aspect of his thought and bound by blood sacrifice of a captive militiaman he had killed an hour ago. Most of the arrows had been well-aimed, and so most of them fell short. Some of them hit him anyway. Fortunately none of them had the luck to hit the joints between pieces of his plate armour. He wondered how long that luck would hold.

The Dothraki khal was not wrong, about one thing at least. There was one of him and hundreds of them. He was alone, with no horse to escape with, for no horse would tolerate the intense heat of the bloodfire that greenseer's blood could make. The Dothraki were most famed as horse-archers, but they were no slouches with their curved swords, either. If they got close, that would be the end of him. Not even all his armour and all his sorcerous arts would save him when they rode him down.

Their arrows rained upon him again. Stannis in his birth form cursed vilely about Dothraki horse-archery, while Stannis in the form of the air felt them tickling his wind-currents and swayed to redirect them. He could not do this for much longer. He did not have the focus. Already he had had to dismiss his eagle companions; he could not fly with them and share in their thoughts, command the winds all around him, keep control of the bloodfire, and operate his birth form, all at the same time.

The Dothraki were still getting closer.

I must do it soon, or I am a dead man walking.

Swearing, Stannis relinquished his control on the winds. One instant he was a vast dispersed consciousness, feeling every man and beast and weapon that flickered in the wind, as well as a consciousness in a man's body and a spurt of sorcerous flame; the next he was only the latter two. The shift in consciousness was disorientating. In his birth form he stumbled. The bloodfire roared out of control for a fraction of a second before he forced it back down. His thin, all-iron spear melted a little further. He feared it would not last too long. A wooden-hafted spear would have been burnt into uselessness long ago. Metal could not contain this heat for long. Nothing could.

Then, from a mind dwelling in two places, he leapt straight back to three.

While a deadly hail of Dothraki arrows showered upon his armour, Stannis Baratheon reached out beyond the confines of his thought, towards a mind much unlike his own. He grasped it and delved into the thoughts that danced and flickered within. They were simpler thoughts than his: fear, determination, obedience, threat, friend, foe, anticipation of reward.

That will not suffice. He bored in further.

There! Mate, food… he seized upon those thoughts and sent more of his own. Himself, running free in a great grass plain. Himself, eating whenever he pleased. Himself, mating with many females to call his own.

The mind that he had entered was confused, and wary. In some instinct it was aware that something was wrong. But it could not, exactly, understand what was wrong. It took in the new thoughts and…

Stannis in his birth form breathed deeply. It was done.

The intense struggle had taken seconds.

Taking control of a new beast for the first time was always arduous, and this had been more taxing than he had hoped; but it was finished now. The mind that he had pierced was too simple to understand what he was doing; it did not have a strong enough sense of self to be able to define itself to itself, and to separate itself from thoughts not of itself that were in its head. Therefore it followed the thoughts imposed by an invading mind as though they were its own. That was the key difference between skinchanging into animals and into men or women. A man, with a name, with a sense of self, with an identity, could know himself well enough to know the way he thought and thus to know what thoughts he would not have thought.

Skinchanging was a complicated matter. Efforts of mind and thought had no easy, lazy comparison to battles of fire or swords or flesh and blood. To repel the thoughts of a separate mind, one must know that they are the thoughts of a separate mind. A man or woman could do this. A beast could not.

That had been essential to the secondary plan that Stannis had had no choice but to fall back to, if he were to have any hope of leaving this battle alive. It was far from the most daunting part.

Stannis gazed back up at the khalasar.

Several hundred mounted warriors were charging at a man on foot, wielding recurve bows and wickedly sharp arakhs. They bellowed their war-cries, promising him death. He was silent. Against the immensity of the horde he could not help but feel very, very small.

He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered. Some of the Dothraki were taller and broader than he was. He had plenty of sorcerous tricks. He had exhausted all that he could use. All that was left was man against men, will against wills.

The khal shouted encouragement. The hundreds of horsemen bore down upon him. The thunder of hooves made the earth shake below his feet.

He held his spear. He yelled "Storm's End!" at the top of his voice.

And then Stannis Baratheon charged them.

An army was charging against a man. A man was charging against an army. Neither side bothered with arrows any more. They were too close. Noro had his arakh in hand.

It was like a scene from his nightmares, exactly as he had known it would be. The wind on his hair; the wind on his face; the comrades by his side; the comrades behind him; Jhatho's face bright with courage; Jhatho's face hard with resolve; him and his fellows approaching the enemy; the enemy approaching them; the morning sun in Noro's eyes; the rod of pale fire bright like the sun in the hands of the lone figure who stood against them.

How many times had he made this charge before? He knew not. But he knew the ending.

He clutched the hilt of his arakh with sweaty fingers, taking strength from the familiarity and hardness of the grip. It will not be the same. It cannot be the same. It must not be the same.

The figure of silvery steel armour and black cloth was closer every second. The far end of the iron spear in his hand was so hot that the metal was melting even as he bore it, white-hot droplets flash-freezing and hissing as they hit the ground.

The red dripping hands of Baratheon were everywhere, in his thoughts. He saw them in the earth, in the sky, in the horses of his companions. Crimson fingers, and they were reaching for him, each and every one.

No. They aren't, they aren't, they can't be.

Noro's horse was agitated. The stallion could feel the heat exuded by the snow-white fire, even from this distance, and was afraid. Noro held the reins tight and spurred it forward. It was hard when Noro himself had the same instinct as the horse. The terrible figure that he saw was exactly the figure he remembered from his nightmares.

For an instant, startlingly clearly, Noro thought he saw that Baratheon's visor was down and he looked upon the face of his tormentor, as pale and cruel as he remembered. Blue eyes as dark as the deep sea stared at his face. A voice came from everywhere and nowhere, bright and burning like a slave-brand in the flesh of his thought. I… see… you…

Noro swerved, nearly hitting another rider in blind reflexive panic. No! Was it even real? He looked again and Baratheon's visor was up. That made sense. Why would Baratheon have opened his visor in the middle of this, anyway? That would be madness. Madness… The thought of madness was like bugs crawling on his flesh. Had he gone mad? Was that it? Had he truly seen the face of the enemy, echoing the dreams, or was it a memory of the dreams? Could he tell the difference between truth and nightmare any more?

Might be he was truly mad, because in a way that thought was somehow comforting. I imagined it, he told himself. It never really happened. I'm only worried because of the dreams. Mayhaps I am mad, but I am still Jhatho's ko, I am still his friend, and I will still be at his side, now and always.

Jhatho was still charging, near the front of them all. His arm was high, his arakh held aloft, beauty on his face and laughter on his lips. Noro clove close to that vision of glory, drawing strength, drawing comfort, drawing warmth, drawing resolve. Every instinct in Noro's body told him he knew how this story ended; he knew they would fail, he would fall, the tall terrible figure would stand over him. He ignored them all. Jhatho needed Noro to be strong, for he was Jhatho's bloodrider and it was a weak khal who chose weak bloodriders. He would be strong for Jhatho when he could not be strong for himself.

Baratheon shifted the spear in his hands as he ran, so that he was holding it right at the base. By now, all the rest of it was making a mess of white-hot metal droplets on the ground. The iron rod he bore was long, but very thin and very light.

The foremost two riders reached the enemy.

Baratheon slashed a great arc through the air, the spear shining with pale fire. By rights it was only a light scoring on the side, a glancing blow; but wherever that dazzling white blaze touched the horses, lesser fires followed in its wake. The horses fled, neighing desperately, with their riders screaming; hungry tongues of orange flame licked greedily up their sides.

Noro's horse almost bucked him in the ferocity of its attempts to turn. It did not know what this whiteness was and it did not want to be anywhere near it. He noticed other riders having the same problem. Noro pulled the reins as hard as he had in a lifetime of horsemanship and dug his spurs in deep, eliciting an agonised neigh.

He had to do this, had to stay; only weaklings fled from battles, cowards, less than men, beneath contempt; and he was Jhatho's bloodrider; everything he did reflected on Jhatho. He saw that bright white fire and the man who had conjured it from a red dripping hand and the fear was so intense that it almost consumed him whole, but he did not let it, because he could not let it, he could not, for the one who mattered more to him than anyone else in the world ever had.

"Circle him!" Jhatho was shouting, struggling to control his own horse. "Hit him from—" the great black warhorse reared yet again, trying to flee, maddened by fire— "several directions! Surround him, then we can cut him down! Courage! There's still only one of him, we can kill him! To me, men, to me—"

Then the khal's horse reared higher than ever before, and threw Jhatho off its back.

It happened in the course of a second. Snorting, straining to avoid contact with a burning horse that had come too close to the white fire and bolted, Jhatho's black stallion rose suddenly on its rear legs as high as it could. One instant the khal was shouting orders; the next, he was on the ground, moaning with pain, while his horse galloped away.

Noro looked down upon him with utter dismay. Jhatho, strong Jhatho, swift Jhatho, always first to grasp a thing, best at war and best at horsemanship… how could Jhatho fall?

Then Baratheon lashed out again with that terrible white flame, twice: at someone to his right, at someone to his left. Horses were bucking, rearing, throwing their riders; riders were shouting, screaming, lying on the ground in pain; both were burning.

Jhatho should be there. Jhatho should be protecting them. Jhatho's confidence had reassured him, it was just a dream, a nightmare, he was being a fool, he was being unmanly, it was not going to happen as it had happened in his dream. But it was. There was no-one to stop it. No-one could. Jhatho had been wrong; reality was wrong; the nightmares were real.

Fear filled him then, fear beyond fear, fear beyond anything, fear such that he had never known in all his years. The sounds and sights sent a wagonload of memories spilling over in Noro's thoughts, all of those times he had seen this, all of those times he had seen this before, he knew this, he knew, he knew, he knew, he knew how this was going to end. Himself falling from his horse just as Jhatho had. The long black shadow passing over him. The red dripping hand that he had seen, he had actually seen it, today, the red hand that was coming to steal his soul…

He had a duty to his khal.

The old words, stark and unalterable, rushed back to memory: A khal who cannot ride is no khal.

And Noro yanked the reins hard to the right. His stallion moved with him at once, horse and rider of one mind in this, at last. Away they went, galloping as hard as a war-bred horse could gallop, fleeing from the dreams, fleeing from the great black shadow, fleeing from the fire and the blood. Other Dothraki fled too, following, in blind panic; the khal was unmanned and the ko was fleeing, and that was reason enough.

They had lost.

There is no shame in it, he thought. The khal couldn't defeat that monster. No-one could. But he could not convince another, for he could not even convince himself. He knew he was disgraced, a coward, a dog, less than a man.

He had left his khal, blood of his blood, to die.

He had left his friend to die.

He had left Jhatho to die, and even if the world would forgive him that, he would never forgive himself.