Year 299 AC/8 ABY
Storm's End, The Stormlands
The candle had burned low by the time the first horn sang across the camp. Jon barely heard it. He had been awake for an hour already, the parchment spread across the camp table, a stub of charcoal moving steadily between his fingers. He had drawn out the opposition's probable formation twice, erased the second attempt with his thumb, and was halfway through a third when Ghost lifted his head from the corner. The direwolf's red eyes found the tent flap and went still.
But Jon kept writing.
The positions were straightforward enough, once you stripped the ceremony away. Seven men on a field, some mounted, some not. The only real unknown was Heartsbane. He had known about it since the previous night, when Tarly sheathed the blade. The empty scabbard at his hip said enough.
He drew a line across the parchment, then another, before laying the charcoal aside.
The flap opened, letting in morning air and the scents of horses and woodsmoke. Han Solo strode in, carrying the borrowed longsword over one shoulder as if it were a plank he had not yet decided where to place. His eyes went to the parchment, then to Jon, then back to the sword.
"You're holding that wrong," Jon said, not looking up at Han.
Han gave the sword a disdainful once-over. "Feels like a piece of sharpened iron that's antsy to take my toes off," he drawled, shifting his grip and tilting the blade. The sword swung lazily. "Kid, I told you, I don't do swords."
"Your job is survival, nothing more," Jon said, his eyes still fixed on the parchment. He drew a small circle with his finger, indicating where the charge would cross. "In the thick of battle, rely on the skills that kept you alive in worse places than this. And that sword? It's just a prop." He glanced up momentarily. "Your true weapon is the element of surprise. They don't know how you fight, and that's your advantage."
Han's eyes moved from the blade to Jon, a glimmer of understanding crossing his face.
"Finally, an honest assessment," Han said.
Jon's mouth twitched in a ghost of a dry smile, nodded, letting his attention already drifting back to the parchment.
Ghost's gaze followed Chewbacca as the Wookiee crossed to the far pole, his broad shoulders turning to fit through the entrance. There, he settled with the war hammer laid across his knees, the morning light catching the iron head.
Brienne, armored and grim-faced, took up a position near the entrance, her hand resting on her sword hilt. Alyn arrived next, pale but standing tall, shield in hand, and gave Jon a silent nod. Oberyn Martell sauntered in, the last of the early arrivals, oiling his spear with a look of open enjoyment as he scanned the tent before settling into a chair. Loras followed, wearing the colors of the dead king's Rainbow Guard, his expression unreadable.
Jon rolled up the parchment and set it on the table. He looked at each of them in turn.
"Lady Olenna is coming," Jon said. "Listen, then do as I tell you."
No one challenged him, yet Oberyn's brow lifted high, demanding an answer: how in the seven hells did Jon know that for certain?
Olenna strode in purposefully, her cane leading the way as two guards took up positions outside without being told. Settling into the chair at the table's head, she folded her spotted hands over the cane's pommel and surveyed the assembled rag-tag group.
"Now then," Olenna said. "let's see what you've learned."
She began running a mental inventory of the opposition roster, the result of her network of spies studying how each man walked, held a cup, and directed his gaze in conversation.
"Ser Bryce Caron captains the opposition," she said. "Born and raised in the March, trained as a knight. A patient man, steady in his footing and waits for his opponents to—"
"Commit an overextension," Jon said. He set his cup down. "And he favors the high guard. Marcher training and border raids teach patience. He will be the last man to hurry."
Olenna's eyes narrowed. The old woman's appraisal shifted, her mind working to reassess her initial impression.
"Then you know about Guyard Morrigen," she said.
"Angry all of yesterday, angry last night in the tent. Men who have been running that hot for that long will lean into the first charge," Jon said, his eyes locked on Loras. "Morrigen rides for you. You will feel the lean before he closes."
Loras's eyes, which had been fixed on the tent wall, came to Jon's face.
Jon held them. "He cannot govern it. That is not a weakness for him to understand. It is one for you to use."
A barely perceptible flicker of tension rippled across Loras's face. Jon moved on.
"Ser Ronnet Connington," Olenna said.
Brienne's hand moved to her hilt before the rest of her had time to decide.
Jon registered the hand movement and made a mental note.
Jon's voice stayed level as he spoke. "It seems as if the knight has a score to settle. He'll come for Brienne on the battlefield, whether she wants it or not."
Olenna said, "Ronnet once humiliated Brienne publicly. Years past. A cruel business. He will seek her out on the field to prove the first time wasn't a fluke."
Jon's eyes flicked to Brienne, whose gaze was fixed on some distant point beyond the fabric. He waited until she looked back at him.
"Your feet touch the ground, you become one of the most dangerous person on that field," Jon said. "Stay mounted through the charge. Whatever he tries, stay mounted. After that, he will have already made his mistake by choosing to come for you."
Brienne's shoulders settled by a fraction. She gave a nod.
"Rolland Storm," Olenna said.
Caron's bastard brother. Jon considered it.
"He fights like Caron, but there's a hunger in him, a sharpness that Caron doesn't need anymore. It makes him a different kind of threat."
A flicker of assessment passed across Olenna's face.
"The Fossoway boy," she said. "The one who expressed his feelings about you when you rode into camp. He volunteered for this trial with considerable enthusiasm."
"By spitting," Jon said. "I remember. He volunteered out of personal hatred." Jon picked up his cup. "Men who fight angry die completely exhausted."
Olenna spoke bluntly, "The little Fossoway shite has Heartsbane."
He saw it whole, the blade, the man, the septon's voice, the rules. And the arbiter's eye on it all, holding the balance of a neutral who was neither.
"Tarly gave his family sword to the man opposing me," Jon said, "and crafted the rules so that I couldn't respond to what Valyrian steel represents on the field." He paused for a moment. "Then he took the arbiter's chair, ensuring his own rules are upheld. Tarly went to great lengths for a man who claims neutrality."
Han, who had been listening with his arms crossed, said, "Run that by me again. What makes that sword special?"
"Valyrian steel," Jon said, turning to Han. "A rare and light steel. Made with fire and blood magic, and it cuts through castle-forged weapons the way shears cut silk. Fewer than two hundred such blades exist in all the world."
"So it's a medieval lightsaber. And the man judging the trial just handed it to the other side." Han looked at the tent roof. "Charming."
Jon thought of their strategy with a slight frown, raising his cup to his lips. "They have identified their advantages," he pointed out. "But that doesn't guarantee victory."
Jon turned his attention back to the parchment and assigned the deployment roles. Every assignment catered to the psychological needs of the person receiving it.
Jon assigned lances to himself, Loras, and Oberyn for the charge. He gave Oberyn the oblique angle, knowing it required careful thought.
"How generous," Oberyn said, his smile telling Jon he understood.
Jon informed Brienne that her true value was in surviving the pass, not in winning the joust. He nodded to Alyn, assigning him the flank. Alyn would defend the position.
Jon specifically addressed Chewbacca's appearance.
"Ten thousand men will watch this trial," Jon stated. "Walk onto that field as one of my seven. Let them see exactly who stands with me. When the gods declare us innocent today, your presence on the field becomes binding precedent. Even the Faith cannot do anything."
The pavilion briefly emptied as the champions prepared to mount, leaving only Jon and Olenna.
She reached into the fold of her robe and placed a small book on the table. The leather was worn smooth at the corners from years of use. She nudged it toward Jon.
"You asked where House Tyrell stands," she said. "There."
Jon picked it up reverently.
The diary's pages revealed their age. Thin, delicate sheets bearing the fading sepia ink of a meticulous Faith-trained scribe. Jon's fingers found the marked page immediately. A prince's name. A woman's name. His mother's name.
Before the gods of the Seven Kingdoms, in lawful and willing union. The Faith's seal, pressed in wax that had crumbled over years but left its ghost in the paper. High Septon Maynard's signature, dated in the seven-pointed calendar.
Jon closed the book.
He cradled the book in both hands and inhaled slowly, three times. The weight of the proof, the ink on parchment, the septon's signature, the seal verifying Maynard's records—it all coalesced in his grip. This, he realized, was what would convince the lords in the hall. This was the proof that would silence those who called him a desperate bastard.
The weight of the evidence solidified in his grasp as he calculating its influence.
"Any maester who has studied High Septon Maynard's records could verify the hand and the mark."
Olenna's affirmation was simple. "Yes."
"Who else knows what this book contains."
"Lord Leyton. Myself. You, who carried it unknowing." She paused. "And the dead man who wrote it."
"Has Tarly seen it."
The slight compression at the corner of her mouth gave the answer before her silence could.
"If I lose today," he said. "If Caron puts me in the ground and the gods declare me guilty. What happens to that book."
It was the final measure. If Olenna swore to keep it secure, she was putting her trust in the scroll, not the man who held it in his hand.
Olenna studied Jon for a long, quiet moment. She recognized her own interrogation techniques being run perfectly back at her.
"If you lose today," Olenna said, slowly and with no evasion, "that book becomes kindling. A dead claimant's marriage certificate is a curiosity. Nothing more." Her eyes held his. "I do not invest in parchment."
His head dipped, a quick nod. The book vanished into his surcoat as if it had always been there, pressed it flat against his ribs, leather binding resting against the lightsaber hilt. Both hidden under grey Stark wool.
Olenna's eyes followed his every move, drinking in the sight of the book disappearing into his cloak.
"My grandson rides onto that field because of you," she said. "I needed to know if that was foolish."
Jon picked up his sword belt from the table and buckled it at his hip. He adjusted the hang of the scabbard until it sat where his hand would find it without searching.
"Your grandson rides onto that field because his king was murdered in front of him," Jon said. "I am simply the nearest person who intends to do something about it."
Olenna shrewd eyes studied him for a few beats before she answered.
"I know what you are capable of," she said, "Do not hesitate to use your... gifts, damn what the Faith think and it's rules."
"You need not ask," Jon said. He left.
The command tents bustled with activity as Jon made his way through the outer corridors, only to find Margaery standing there in a stark mourning black, hair drawn taut and neck bare of jewels.
Without hesitation, she stepped forward and reached up and adjusted his gorget, tightening the leather strap on the left side where it had worked loose under the vambrace. Her fingers worked steadily, pressing the strap into the buckle and cinching it down until the steel sat squarely against his mail.
She stepped back and looked at him.
"I want you back in one piece," she said.
Jon met her eyes. Servants and guards rushed continuously past them in the corridor. Anyone overhearing their exchange would simply think a young man was thanking a noble lady for her small kindness.
"You have earned a wolf's favor, my lady," he said quietly, "and I trust you know what that commitment means."
Margaery went stock-still, her eyes flashing open as the weight of his words knitted into place. Her delicate composure frayed, revealing the keen mind beneath. The memory of Highgarden flashed through her thoughts - his refusal of her token, his insistence that a wolf's favor must be earned, not laced with hollow praise. Now, on the eve of a trial that would decide lives, he was placing his trust in her hands. He was counting on her to understand the staggering weight of this commitment, this bond he was forging with her on the precipice of battle.
Lifting her chin, her eyes hardened with fierce resolve as she walked down the corridor without a backward glance. Jon watched her retreat for a single breath and then turned toward the trial grounds.
-----------------------------------------------
As Jon and his champions neared the field, the camp swelled with ten thousand voices rumbling and clamoring against the perimeter's edge.
Loras led the way, with Jon a step behind. Brienne and Oberyn flanked him, and Han followed at a half-pace, borrowed sword slung awkwardly. The crowd made way for Chewbacca more readily than for the horses, and Ghost trotted at Jon's side, white fur gleaming in the pale morning light.
Jon thought about the joust at Highgarden. The miss he had chosen, the fall he had taken. Every moment since where he had folded himself smaller, ridden inside the bastard's name like a coat he had outgrown.
With each step, the diary dug into his ribs, a physical reminder of the lives that had led him to this moment. His uncle's deception, Master Luke's unwavering faith, his mother's dying wish, and Rhaegar's ill-fated choices all weighed upon him, shaping the man he had become. The ghosts of those who brought him here walked beside him, their legacies intertwined with his own.
Jon carried all of their ghosts onto this field.
Han came up on his left.
"These theatrics here," Han remarked, "seem a bit much. Back home, if someone had a grudge, they'd just shoot you in a cantina and be done with it by morning."
Oberyn matched their stride on the opposite flank, keeping their pace effortlessly. "Ah, so civilized. It seems they turn everything into one grand show around here."
Without turning, Loras, who was ahead by three paces, said, "Save your breath for the field."
The easy banter faded, the air cooling as no one attempted to revive it.
Jon looked on as Leia and Margaery stood side by side, two powerful women from vastly different worlds united in purpose. Leia's hand rested protectively on her swollen belly as Margaery's eyes tracked his every move.
Han's stride faltered as he reached the rope.
Leia's gaze zeroed in on the sword, her tone unwavering. "You're not holding it right. Have you applied any of the techniques I showed you last night?"
"Listen, I can't snap my fingers and become a master swordsman, literally overnight. How are you feeling?"
"The kids aren't giving me a moment's peace." She adjusted his bottom hand, guiding his pinky finger beneath the pommel. "They'll need a father with all his fingers intact."
Han looked at her hand on his, then at the roundness of her belly under the cloak, where his babies were growing into real people, day by day.
"I'll bring all ten back," he said. "Might be missing some dignity."
"That was gone before we landed on this planet."
Han's mouth met her forehead in a soft kiss, and she allowed it. In that brief pause, the rest of the world faded, leaving only the two of them in a bubble of shared silence.
Then Han turned and walked onto the field, and Leia's hand went back to her belly.
Ghost couldn't keep up with Jon's destination. Seven champions, that was the Faith's requirement. He reached into the direwolf's ruff, feeling Ghost press against his touch, red eyes fluttering shut for a heartbeat. Then Jon lightly pushed Ghost to Leia and faced the field.
The septon, in his pristine white robes, and Lord Tarly with his empty scabbard stood waiting in the arena, ready to witness the trial and bestow judgment. Across the expanse of torn grass, seven opposing men sat atop armored warhorses. Ser Bryce Caron held the center position. The morning light made the rippled steel on his back look like frozen smoke.
He walked onto the field.
The young septon stepped forward into the center of the churned earth. His walked to the center, carrying a heavy scroll of parchment in hands that trembled visibly. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the text, deliberately avoiding the massive, fur-covered shape of Chewbacca standing at Jon's back.
The field was hemmed in by a sea of armor, ten thousand strong. The sheer mass of bodies swallowed the ambient sounds of the wind and the distant sea. Only the stamp of an armored warhorse or the clatter of a shield broke the heavy, expectant quiet.
The septon cleared his throat and unrolled the parchment. He pitched his voice to reach the surrounding ranks, fighting the nervous waver in his tone.
"In the sight of gods and men, this trial is called," the septon declared. "Seven champions stand for the prosecution. Seven champions stand for the accused. They shall answer the charges laid against the bastard of Winterfell, Jon Snow."
Jon stood unmoving as the ritual unfolded, his breaths shallow and even. The diary's presence against his ribs reminded him of the king's secret resting near his heart, a Jedi's weapon now in the hands of a Targaryen prince.
"It is charged that Jon Snow did maliciously murder King Renly Baratheon through the use of foul sorcery and dark arts," the septon read, his voice growing stronger as the familiar cadence of legal damnation took hold. "It is further charged that he brought an unnatural creature into the king's camp as an instrument of this dark purpose. The gods alone shall judge the truth of these claims."
The septon rolled the parchment slightly to reach the final stipulations. He looked up, casting his gaze directly toward Jon's side of the field.
"The laws of this combat are absolute," the septon warned. "No sorcery, no witchcraft, no unnatural means shall be employed upon this ground. Any violation of this sacred constraint renders the judgment immediately void, and the accused shall be pronounced guilty by default in the eyes of the Faith."
The small man's words echoed, seeming to linger in the very air around them.
He had known this rule was coming. Jon spent the long, cold hours before dawn turning the trap over in his mind. He pulled the current deep into himself, drawing it away from his skin, letting the vast awareness of the world shrink down until it was nothing more than a quiet pulse resting beneath his own heartbeat. He dampened his connection intentionally, doing so out of pure tactical necessity rather than any fear of discovery.
To avoid accusations of magical meddling, Jon chose to prove himself with a common blade. The dampening wasn't a retreat, but a strategic decision to secure the purest form of divine vindication — one that not even the most zealous septon could refute.
He was thinking far beyond his own survival. He was thinking about the galactic technology bleeding into their backwards world. If the gods vindicated him through blood and steel, they vindicated Chewbacca's presence on the field by proxy.The victory today established a legal precedent, sanctioning outsiders under the Faith's laws, while his lightsaber was a backup, with common iron to prove his claim.
The septon lifted his hands toward the pale morning sky to deliver the blessing.
"We pray to the Warrior for courage in the defense of truth," the septon intoned. "We pray to the Father for a just and righteous verdict. We pray to the Mother for mercy on the souls of those who will shortly meet their end."
Han adjusted his stance, the borrowed armor clanging with each shift of his weight, as he lowered his voice to a murmur meant only for his companions.
"Which one of those is for not dying?" Han muttered.
Oberyn laughed in response. "The Stranger. But we do not pray to him until after."
Jon tuned out the banter and turned his attention to the raised wooden platform erected at the edge of the field. Randyll Tarly stood at the wooden railing, serving as the supreme arbiter of the trial.
Tarly wore a standard longsword at his hip. The weapon was a common lord's sidearm, castle-forged and functional, bearing no special ornamentation. The empty space where Heartsbane usually rested spoke louder than any herald.
Tarly looked down from the platform and met Jon's eyes.
The general's hard gaze spoke volumes. Tarly had armed the best blade against the accused and systematically wrote the trial rules to box in the boy's only apparent advantage. Now, if the bastard couldn't prove his mettle, the trial would simply bury the political problem.
Jon held the older man's gaze, unwilling to look away first. He refused to retreat or show weakness, knowing that Lord Eddard Stark never lowered his eyes before any man.
When Tarly finally turned his attention to the septon, Jon shifted his focus across the churned grass to his immediate executioner.
Then Jon looked across the field at Caron.
He allowed the barest thread of the current to touch him—just enough to take the man's temperature. Caron's calm bearing, honed through countless lives taken and more to come, made him the primary threat on the battlefield, executing a task rather than seeking vengeance.
Jon appreciated the challenge. He preferred facing a man who knew precisely what he was doing over an unpredictable zealot swinging wild.
"Mount up," Jon ordered quietly.
His champions broke formation and moved to the waiting squires holding their destriers. Jon swung up into the saddle of a heavy grey gelding. The horse snorted, unsettled by the raw tension rolling off the surrounding crowd, but Jon settled the beast with a firm hand on the reins and a steady pressure from his knees.
Sam was waiting with the shield. His hands were shaking badly enough that the iron rim chattered against the leather straps.
"You look worse than I do," Jon said, sliding his arm through.
"I didn't get much sleep last night," Sam said. "But, I am not the one about to fight seven men on a field."
"Six. Estermont will be fighting his own horse for most of it."
Sam almost smiled. He handed Jon the ash lance and his mouth kept working through something he was trying to assemble.
"When the horses were led out at dawn, I noticed Caron's destrier had a slight favor to its left foreleg, especially on the second step after a turn."
Jon settled the lance butt against his stirrup. He looked at Sam properly.
"You stood in the cold since first light... counting hoofbeats?"
"I did not know what else to do," Sam said.
"That is the most useful thing anyone has told me this morning," Jon said, and meant it.
From his vantage point, Jon surveyed the opposing line one last time. He did not tap into the Force. Trusting his own eyes, he combined the martial wisdom Uncle Ned had instilled in him during training in Winterfell with the keen observation skills Master Luke had drilled into him over the past year.
Caron swung himself into the saddle with confident ease. To his right sat Ser Guyard Morrigen, the man already running dangerously hot. Guyard jerked his reins repeatedly, punishing the horse's mouth for dancing sideways. The animal picked up on the rider's barely contained fury and refused to settle. Morrigen was highly lethal, but his anger made his movements sloppy and telegraphed.
Ser Rolland Storm secured his shield on Caron's left flank. The Bastard of Blackhaven looked across the field and caught Jon's eye directly.The two bastard men exchanged a heavy, complicated glance. Rolland's skill was undeniable, but his dedication to their cause felt hollow. He wielded his blade at his brother's behest, lacking any personal drive for retribution.
Further down the line, Ser Ronnet Connington locked his boots into his stirrups. He did not bother looking at Jon. Ronnet's gaze slid immediately down the Tyrell formation until it locked onto Brienne of Tarth. An ugly smile twisted Ronnet's face. He was driven entirely by a bruised ego and a years-old grudge. He would break his lance trajectory to seek her out.
Ser Elwood Fossoway sat two horses down, his gaze boring into Jon with undisguised hatred, already envisioning a reckless, proud battle ahead. At the far end, Ser Eldon Estermont sat rigid in his ornate armor, face pale as parchment. His horse, as skittish as its rider, tossed its head and bit at the reins. Estermont's anxiety would be their undoing in the first pass.
Ser Richard Buckler, a man for whom war was merely another chore, anchored the opposite flank. He sat atop his horse with the unflappable composure of an experienced soldier, his expression neutral as he reviewed his gear. In the heat of battle, he would be a dependable pillar, unmoved by the chaos around him.
Jon absorbed the tactical information and adjusted his mental map of the initial pass.
"They will break their center to hunt specific targets," Jon called out down his own line. "Hold your lanes. Let them ruin their own formation. Keep your shields tight and ride through them."
Loras lowered his visor without a word. Oberyn spun his spear once before settling it into a resting position.Han held the reins in a death grip, clearly dreading the prospect of riding straight into a wall of spears, while Chewbacca sat tall and confident atop a massive horse that looked equally terrified of the battle ahead and the hulking Wookiee perched on its back, warhammer at the ready.
"May the gods favor the just," the septon shouted, his voice cracking slightly on the final syllable. He turned and hurried hastily off the field, eager to place the thick hemp ropes between himself and the impending violence.
The trial ground emptied of all squires and attendants. Fourteen armored riders remained under the grey dawn sky.
Jon lowered his visor, the metal cage isolating him from the camp. The world narrowed to a small horizontal slit, revealing a hundred yards of torn, muddy grass and a wall of waiting steel at the far end. His breathing echoed loudly inside his helm, the smell of oiled metal and damp wool suffocating.
The jolt of cold against his spine faded as he squeezed the lance shaft, jammed his boots into the stirrups, and narrowed his focus to the razor's edge of physics hurtling toward his opponent. The rest fell away.
A single horn blast cut through the morning air. The low, mournful note stretched for five seconds, commanding absolute attention from the surrounding thousands.
When the note clipped off, silence stretched across the field for one devastating heartbeat.
Then thunder broke the earth.
The fourteen surged forward in a thunderous stampede, hooves pounding the earth and kicking up dark clods of mud as they raced toward the enemy. The heavy wooden lances dropped into their offensive locks. The roar of the animals and the clatter of steel drowned out the screaming crowd.
Jon picked his target, braced his shield shoulder behind his iron rim, and drove his horse straight into the storm.
Jon tightened his grip on the heavy ash lance. This was where the leash finally snapped.
The moment his grey gelding surged forward, something inside Jon opened wide.Propelled by instinct and honed by years of rigorous training, Jon's body moved as one with the Force's quiet hum, a deadly symphony of his own making.
Jon read the charge rather than simply surviving it.As the impact of Caron's lance hit, Jon's seat and shield arm moved in sync, automatically absorbing and redirecting the force, sending ash splinters flying into the grey sky.
Jon's eyes locked on the Marcher lord, but the Force let him see the rest. It came through that single thread of the current, like a whisper. The other hits slammed into him as jolts of pressure.
The rest of the field came through the current he had drawn nearly shut.
Left: Morrigen's overcommitted press met Loras reading it early and clean. Morrigen's signature dropped. Back up in seconds, greatsword drawn, burning hotter for the fall.
Further left: Oberyn's oblique had drawn Buckler out of position. Both stayed mounted, but Buckler's left arm registered as something gone dead.
Right: Ronnet's charge, hitting Brienne squarely, delivered a concussive impact that dropped her signature, a reminder that down and done were two different things.
Behind him: Elwood's lance had found Chewie's shoulder and departed from Elwood's grip in several pieces. Elwood's horse had formed its own opinion about the morning and acted on it.
Far right: Alyn and Rolland Storm had taken each other down at nearly the same beat, both landing with swords already in hand.
Han registered as an absence of opposition. So obviously wrong as a mounted fighter that no one had aimed at him, and by the time the pass sorted itself out he was on the mud with the borrowed blade.
"I am never doing that again," Han shouted into the air.
Jon registered all of it in the space between heartbeats. The predator and the commander ran simultaneously. The exhilaration singing in his chest was the profound relief of finally acting as what he truly was.
Chaos scattered both lines. In a fluid motion, Jon released his boots from the stirrups and dropped to the earth below. His longsword, forged in the castle, was in his hand in an instant, ready to dictate the terrain.
Ten yards away, Caron slid from his mount, drawing Heartsbane with a fluid motion. Around them, the crowd fell silent, holding its breath.
Jon's gaze fell upon Heartsbane, and his mind sprang to assessment. The ancient blade stretched longer than his own, yet weighed far less than it should. His sword, forged in Winterfell, had proven its worth through every battle. Against Heartsbane, it would bear the cost of every clash.
With the ground melee now underway, Jon adopted the figures as his working baseline, and plunged into the fray.
Caron's sword landed with a forceful thrust at Jon's left shoulder, but he was already in motion, shifting his weight back and angling his own blade to forty-five degrees, ready to meet the attack in a shielded Soresu posture. The current at its lowest ebb fed him the shape of Caron's intent a half-beat before it resolved.
For two exchanges he gave Caron nothing. Let the man read the defense, because a man reading was not attacking edges.
On the third exchange he stepped inside the angle and struck Caron's pauldron with his pommel. A bone-check, nothing damaging. He slipped back out before the longer blade could answer.
Caron stopped and studied the problem.
In the midst of the battle, Jon realized he was taking pleasure in the exchange. It wasn't the danger that captivated him, but the skill involved. Caron was the finest swordsman he had encountered since training with Luke, and there was a purity to facing an opponent who pushed him to employ techniques he rarely used in actual combat. Each time Caron adjusted, Jon had to delve deeper into his repertoire to find moves that caught his adversary off guard.
The fourth exchange gave him his first chip.
He felt the vibration through his hilt before his eyes confirmed it. Heartsbane had scored his blade, leaving a notch near the middle. A chill ran down his spine. Four more exchanges like that and the blade would be done for.
Multiple simultaneous combats registered through Jon's dampened awareness. The Force fed him a sensory map of the torn grass.
Brienne stood her ground, steadily driving Ronnet back with her superior height and strength.
Morrigen threw himself against Chewie. The wall held.
Oberyn's misdirection continued, energy appearing one place and striking from another.
Alyn and Rolland Storm ground against each other, their blades clashing in a deadly dance. Rolland was sharper, his technique beyond Alyn's reach. But Alyn refused to see it, his Northern stubbornness as immovable as the frozen ground beneath them, not from strength, but from a stubborn refusal to accept that movement was needed.
Han and Estermont exchanges was nothing like swordplay. Irregular bursts without pattern, and Estermont had been afraid since the pavilion and still had not found the floor of it.
Then it was over for Elwood. His bladework had been sloppy since the charge, and Loras took advantage. Three short exchanges, and Elwood's overeager lunge met a counter waiting for that exact move. Pain spiked, and he collapsed.
Elwood yielded. Six against seven.
The fifth exchange happened, and Jon borrowed a combination from the Maid's deck that he hadn't tried in a real fight. It worked because it was ugly, and Caron had no answer for that. The sixth exchange gave his blade its second chip. He stopped trying to preserve the edge and converted to pommel-work, striking armor rather than meeting Heartsbane.
Loras, free of Elwood, moved to where Alyn and Rolland were locked in combat, forcing the latter to divide his attention.
Alyn dropped to one knee. Still alive without yielding.
On the right, a fight met its end. Ronnet had been running on nothing but contempt since the charge began, but Brienne was fueled by something heavier, something that wouldn't break. Her blow landed square, sending Ronnet from standing to flat on his back in an instant. He stayed there, no longer able to resist. He yielded.
Five against six.
Oberyn's work ended with a thrust through the gap at Buckler's shoulder. Buckler dropped his sword and yielded.
Four against six.
The opposition was crumbling rapidly. Caron saw it.
Caron had been at Jon's guard for three long minutes. Jon let the testing continue, his gaze sweeping the field as the numbers danced. In that moment, Caron made a hard choice. The trial was lost unless he changed the game now, right here.
Caron broke off from Jon. He pivoted hard and charged Loras.
Loras was fully engrossed in his sparring with Rolland, his attention divided between fighting and protecting his flank.
Heartsbane sheared through his castle-forged sword like rotting parchment. The top half of Loras's blade spun away into the mud. Loras stumbled backward holding a ruined hilt.
Caron reversed his swing immediately. The flat of the Valyrian blade caught Loras across the ribs. Armor dented inward with a sickening crunch. Loras went down hard.
That moment shattered Jon's tactical focus as Caron stood over the fallen knight, raising Heartsbane high for the killing blow.
Everything else on the field vanished. Jon's entire awareness collapsed down to a single point. Twenty feet of churned earth lay between himself and a man about to kill someone who had bled for him.
The tactical reality of the moment registered in Jon's mind instantly. The trap had been perfectly designed and flawlessly executed. Randyll Tarly would declare him guilty of witchcraft if he reached out through the Force and hurled the Marcher lord backward across the field, voiding the trial immediately. Yet, doing so would save Loras Tyrell's life, a man who had bled for him.
But Jon had built a contingency for this exact scenario before dawn. If the rules drafted by the septons permitted one enchanted weapon, they must logically permit another. A lightsaber was a sword.
The argument was merely political armor. It was not the reason Jon moved.
As Jon watched Heartsbane lift over Loras, a fundamentally Northern resolve surged within him. There was no way Ned Stark's son could stand by and let that death happen for the sake of political safety. You do not let your people die when you have the power to save them.
The decision was sealed the moment his hand moved.
Jon reached beneath his surcoat, his fingers closing around the cold metal cylinder as his thumb found the activation stud.
He ignited it.
The arena exploded with emerald light. It shattered the morning like a second dawn, bright and out of place against the pale sun. Shadows stretched backward, defying the light's natural order. In an instant, ten thousand heads turned, ten thousand faces illuminated by the unnatural glow. Eyes widened in shock, mouths agape. The light bounced off polished armor, discarded shields, and the whites of horses' eyes, reflecting the impossible color. For a moment, the entire field was bathed in a radiance that had no place in this world.
Jon crossed the twenty feet of churned earth in three immense strides. Caron brought the heavy Valyrian steel down for the killing blow. Jon swung the green blade to intercept the strike.
The lightsaber met Heartsbane with a resounding clash, the impact jarring through Jon's arms.
The green light screamed against the rippled steel, the locked edge going incandescent, sparks spitting sideways. Caron's killing blow had stopped three inches above Loras's chest armor.
Jon shoved, driving Caron back two steps. The blades separated and Jon advanced, shifting the fight's balance.
He registered Tarly's voice from the platform, sharp and carrying. He heard a word that might have been sorcery and a word that might have been warrior and the whole of it was white noise. The space between himself and Caron was very small and very bright.
Caron found his feet in a blink. Heartsbane was back in guard position before the thought had fully formed. His eyes darted to the green blade, taking in what details he could, then locked onto Jon's body, unblinking.
Jon felt him revising. It was the first time all morning he had watched Caron's certainty become something more complicated.
Jon pressed.
The anger and rage that had always hindered him, burning uncontrolled around his discipline, found its channel. Vaapad rose pure, with no bleed or heat behind the eyes. It ran straight through his feet into the mud, out through the blade in an unbroken line. He had been fighting with two separate forces—Master Luke's trained discipline and the fury of his circumstances.
The green blade met Heartsbane and Jon drove Caron back a step, then another. At the field's edge, through the closed-down current, Jon tracked what his eyes could not.
The clash of Morrigen and Chewie's attack reverberated, armor crumpling under the force. A sword arm went slack, and Morrigen's presence dimmed, retreating. Three foes remained.
Behind him, Loras's presence still guttering but suddenly purposeful. Something deliberate. Then Rolland Storm going horizontal, and Oberyn over him with the sharp finality of a spear planted through a sword arm. Storm yielded. Two remaining.
Then there was Han, a whirlwind of chaos and improvisation, exactly what was needed to shake the fear from a man who'd been trembling all night. One swift clash, a blade sinking into the muck, and someone hit the ground with a thud.
Han's voice carried across twenty feet: "Stay down, kid."
A pause. A sound, muffled by a helm, that might have been a sob. Estermont yielded, and one remained on his feet.
Jon drove Caron to the center of the field. Caron stood with Heartsbane up, feet set, breathing controlled. The rippled blade caught the green light and threw it back.
Jon stopped advancing.
"It is done, Ser Bryce," Jon declared evenly. "Yield."
Caron breathed heavily. He stared down the length of the impossible weapon humming softly in Jon's hand.
Caron's shout echoed across the field, his voice laced with the frantic desperation of a man clinging to his beliefs. "The gods have not rendered judgment here. You have defiled this hallowed ground with sorcery."
Jon fixed his gaze on the Marcher lord, letting the truth speak for itself.
"I brought a sword to answer yours."
Seven words. That's all it took to carry the weight of his argument. The entire unspoken theological debate, all of it, resided in that single sentence. Heartsbane, forged in ancient dragon fire and bound with old Valyrian blood spells, had been accepted by the Faith without a single word of protest. A weapon was a weapon, and Jon trusted the watching crowd to hear the truth beneath his statement.
Caron heard the logic land. He felt the ancient magic practically humming through the leather grip of his own sword.
A heavy, total silence fell over the center of the field.
A voice called out from the far sideline. Rolland Storm stood precariously near the ropes, clutching his bruised throat where Oberyn had pinned him.
"Brother," Rolland called out hoarsely. "Enough."
With a glance, Caron took in his bastard brother Jon Snow, the six other champions poised and awaiting, and then focused back on Jon, patient and untouched by the light.
Caron reversed his grip on Heartsbane. He drove the point of the Valyrian steel deeply into the churned mud. He stepped slowly away from the hilt.
"I yield."
Jon killed the green blade, causing the hum to cease and the light to die, leaving the field entirely silent.
Jon looked at the man across from him.
"Well fought, Ser Bryce," Jon said. He turned toward Loras.
Loras was sitting up by the time Jon reached him, one hand pressed against his ribs. Brienne was already crouched beside him, one large hand steadying his back.
Jon went to one knee in the mud.
"Ribs," Loras said, before Jon could ask. "Not lungs. I know the difference."
Jon's hand found the dent in Loras's armor, pressing through the plate. One rib, maybe two, had cracked. Loras would be breathing with care for a month.
"I would have won," Loras said.
"I know," Jon said.
Han reached them. He looked at Loras, then at Jon, then at the lightsaber hilt in Jon's hand.
"I feel I should point out," Han said, "that this camp is going to have strong opinions about that blade."
"They already do," Jon said.
He helped Loras to his feet. Brienne took the knight's other arm without being asked, and Loras accepted the help without comment.
Oberyn arrived at Jon's shoulder. He was not bleeding from anything visible and his spear was clean.
"In my experience," Oberyn said, "it is best not to linger after a moment like this one."
Jon looked up at the platform.
Tarly rose, both hands gripping the railing, jaw clenched, before composing himself.
"It is done," Tarly said, and his voice carried across the field.
Jon turned his back on the platform and crossed to get Loras off the field.
Before Jon had taken two steps, the camp maester was through the rope line with two men carrying a flat board.
Jon stepped back.
The maester worked by feel along the damaged side, pressing through the dented plate. Loras bore this in silence. Loras's hand remained pressed against the plate. The maester's expression after the second press closed a question Jon had been carrying since the armor buckled inward.
When they moved to ease Loras onto the board, Jon crouched beside him.
Jon leaned close and spoke a single, quiet sentence. Only Loras heard the words. The wounded knight managed a tight, pain-laced nod before the stretcher bearers carried him away toward the medical pavilions.
They lifted the board. Jon stayed on one knee until the litter passed through the gap in the rope line and the crowd closed behind them.
He rose and walked toward the post at the field's south edge.
Alyn leaned against the post, his sword arm wrapped in a makeshift bandage, the sleeve already soaked through. His left thigh was tightly bound. He watched Jon approach through the mud, his expression unreadable as he awaited the reckoning or whatever else Jon had come to deliver.
Jon put his hand on his shoulder.
Jon delivered his message, and Alyn, a fellow man of Winterfell, absorbed it stoically. The lines around Alyn's mouth shifted, but not in a way that suggested a smile.
Jon gripped the shoulder once more. Then he turned.
Han Solo was thirty feet away, getting his forearm wrapped by a Reach field surgeon. Han cooperated with the arm held out. His eyes found Jon's before Jon had fully turned.
One nod each.
His shoulder ached from the impact, the pain creeping from his collarbone down. Beyond that, he stood firm on his feet, hands steady, breath even. The past two years of training with Luke had held true.
He looked at the field.
Around him, the crowd had split into their respective interests. The Stormland lords near the northeast post were in rapid conversation, five of them with voices tight and hands active. The Reachmen answering them were slower, more deliberate. Between both groups, two household knights stood facing different directions.
Near the rope line, two Reach septons had their heads together over a written page. A third stood apart, lips moving without sound.
None of the septons had moved to void the trial. Tarly had written the prohibition. Tarly had placed himself in the arbiter's chair. At the moment the green blade ignited over ten thousand witnesses, the man with the authority to call the trial void had watched and said nothing.
Randyll Tarly came down from the platform.
The crowd parted before he reached its edge. Tarly stopped at the center of the field.
Randyll Tarly wrapped his hand around the hilt of Heartsbane and drew it from the soil. In one swift motion, he wiped the blade clean, folding the cloth closed as the weapon gleamed anew.
He sheathed the blade.
Steel met lined leather with the sound things make when they return to their proper place, whether the campaign resolved according to plan or not. He settled the sword at his hip and straightened his hand at his side.
Tarly then turned to face the camp.
The din ebbed in fits and starts, the men closest to the field's heart falling silent first. That silence spread outward, cold seeping from stone, but it was not true quiet. The arguing, the praying, the low hum of whispers all continued. The shouting dwindled to talk, and the talk to murmurs.
Tarly spoke. His voice reached the rope lines on all four sides.
"The Trial by Seven is concluded. The accused presented seven champions. The accusers presented seven champions. The accused's champions stand."
The verdict rang out.
"The gods have spoken."
The gods' chill judgment hung heavy over the damp grass, but the throng of men gathered at the execution ground couldn't agree on what it meant.
------------------------------
If you want to read up to 10 chapters ahead and support me, here is my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FullHorizon