Chapter 11: The Mountain Clans Strike
The warning bell shattered midnight silence like an axe through bone. Kole was already moving before the last echo faded, his enhanced senses having caught the scent of smoke and distant screams moments before the alarm sounded. Two years of preparation, and now the first real test arrived like wolves sensing wounded prey.
He found Mira in the armory, already buckling on sword and shield with the fluid efficiency of someone born to warfare. Her auburn hair was braided for battle, and her green eyes held the deadly focus he'd come to associate with violence done professionally.
"Mountain clans," she reported without preamble. "Hit Winter Town hard and fast. Buildings burning, smallfolk fleeing, maybe sixty raiders."
Kole's metal sense expanded outward, cataloguing weapons throughout the castle. Iron and steel sang their locations to him—swords, axes, spearheads, the bronze bindings on shields. His Brotherhood was already assembling in the courtyard, seventeen fighters who had trained for this moment without knowing when it would come.
"Formation Delta," Kole commanded as they reached the yard. "Harwin, take point with the heavy shields. Mira, left flank with the fast cavalry. I'll take center with the assault team."
They moved like a single organism, each fighter knowing their role with the precision of clockwork. Months of unconventional training had forged them into something beyond normal guards—weapons that thought, shields that adapted, a brotherhood bound by shared loyalty to impossible ideals.
The ride to Winter Town took eight minutes through pre-dawn darkness. Kole's enhanced vision tracked their path along roads he'd memorized during countless patrols, his super-soldier reflexes automatically compensating for his mount's movements while his tactical mind processed the growing sounds of battle ahead.
Winter Town burned against the night sky like a wound in the earth.
Buildings that had stood for generations were now flame-wrapped skeletons, their timbers crackling with hungry fire that painted everything in shades of orange and red. The stench of burning thatch mixed with smoke and something worse—the metallic scent of spilled blood, the acrid smell of terror-sweat from people running for their lives.
"Seven hells," Harwin muttered, his scarred face grim in the firelight.
The raiders had struck with savage efficiency. Clansmen from the mountains beyond Winterfell's protection, grown bold with the North's armies marching south. They moved through the settlement like wolves among sheep, axes and crude swords gleaming as they cut down anyone too slow to flee.
Kole's metal sense screamed with location data. Iron weapons moving in coordinated patterns, bronze spearheads advancing on trapped civilians, steel arrowheads nocked and ready to loose. Sixty-three distinct signatures, spread throughout the burning town in groups of five to eight.
"Spread formation," Kole ordered. "Drive them toward the market square. Let them think they're winning until they're concentrated."
His Brotherhood flowed into motion with practiced precision. Harwin's heavy fighters smashed through the nearest group of raiders like a hammer through glass, their enhanced shields turning aside desperate axe blows while return strikes opened throats and severed limbs. Mira's cavalry swept around the settlement's eastern edge, driving fleeing clansmen back toward the center with the relentless efficiency of a hunting pack.
Kole himself led the assault team straight through Winter Town's burning heart.
The first group of raiders they encountered had cornered a family—a blacksmith, his wife, and two young children—against the wall of their blazing workshop. Three clansmen with notched axes and predatory grins, already arguing over who would claim which captives as thralls.
Kole's sword took the first raider's head off his shoulders before the man realized death had arrived. The second managed to raise his axe in a clumsy block that might have worked against a normal opponent. Against super-soldier reflexes and enhanced strength, it was like trying to stop a lightning bolt with parchment.
The third raider was smarter. He grabbed the blacksmith's daughter—no more than seven years old—and pressed his blade to her throat.
"Stay back, witchling! I know what you are. The stories traveled fast as wildfire. Move wrong and the girl bleeds!"
Kole stopped, hands raised in apparent surrender. His metal sense locked onto the raider's weapon—iron, low-grade, with stress fractures along the tang where poor forging had left weak points.
"Let her go," Kole said calmly. "Take me instead."
The raider laughed, showing teeth broken by years of poor nutrition and violent living. "You? I'd sooner grab a rabid wolf by the—"
Kole's power reached out and twisted. The axe blade warped like heated metal, its edge curling back on itself until it resembled a flower made of steel. The raider stared at his transformed weapon for the half-second it took Kole to cross the distance between them.
The man's neck snapped with a sound like breaking kindling.
"Get to the castle," Kole told the family, not stopping to watch their grateful flight. His enhanced senses were already tracking the next group of raiders, following the sound of steel on steel that marked his Brotherhood's continued advance.
The battle became a choreographed slaughter.
Everywhere Kole moved, weapons betrayed their wielders. Sword hilts grew too hot to hold. Axe heads twisted to strike their own bearers. Spearheads bent sideways, making thrusts impossible. The mountain clansmen found themselves fighting an enemy who could turn their steel against them with nothing more than focused thought.
But it was the Brotherhood that truly impressed him. Months of training against an opponent who could manipulate their equipment had forged them into fighters who adapted instantly to changing circumstances. When their swords were turned aside by his metal manipulation during practice, they'd learned to use daggers, clubs, bare hands. When their shields were magnetized to stick together, they'd developed techniques for fighting in close formation.
Now, facing enemies whose weapons could be turned against them at any moment, they fought with the fluid precision of master craftsmen. Harwin Stone dropped his sword mid-swing to grab a raider's wrist, snapping bone with mechanical efficiency before driving his knee into the man's spine. Mira flowed around an axe blow like water, her return strike opening the attacker's throat with surgical precision.
They cut through the raiders with surgical efficiency, driving the survivors toward Winter Town's market square where the trap would close.
Forty-three clansmen converged on the open space, thinking they'd found defensible ground. Instead, they'd walked into a killing ground designed by someone who could track every piece of metal they carried.
"Now," Kole whispered.
Every iron nail in the surrounding buildings responded to his call. Hundreds of them, pulled from timbers and walls by magnetic force, filling the air like a swarm of deadly insects. They struck the clustered raiders from every direction—not enough to kill most of them outright, but enough to wound, distract, and terrorize.
The Brotherhood struck while the clansmen were still stumbling, still trying to understand what had happened to them. The battle lasted less than three minutes.
When the last raider fell, Winter Town burned quietly in the pre-dawn darkness. The fire would spread—they couldn't save all the buildings—but the people were safe. Men, women, and children who would have been slaughtered or dragged back to the mountains as thralls were gathering their few possessions and preparing to shelter in Winterfell until homes could be rebuilt.
"Twenty-eight dead clansmen," Harwin reported, wiping blood from his sword. "Fifteen fled back to the mountains. Our casualties—Jeyne has a cut on her sword arm, nothing serious."
Kole nodded, his enhanced senses already tracking the fleeing raiders through the darkness. They would carry stories back to their clans—tales of the Iron Wolf who commanded steel with thought alone, who could turn weapons against their wielders with terrifying precision.
Good. Let them spread fear among the mountain clans. Let every would-be raider think twice before testing Winterfell's defenses.
But as the Brotherhood began organizing the evacuation of Winter Town's survivors, Kole felt a familiar chill between his shoulder blades. The sensation of being watched by unfriendly eyes.
He turned to scan the treeline beyond the settlement's smoking ruins. His enhanced vision pierced the pre-dawn gloom, searching for threats among the shadows.
There—a flash of movement among the pines. A rider, watching from a distance. Too far to identify, but the posture spoke of someone who'd witnessed the battle and drawn conclusions about what they'd seen.
The figure wheeled their horse and disappeared into the forest before Kole could focus on details. But the message was clear: someone had been observing, learning, reporting.
The mountain clan raid had been a test, he realized. Not just of Winterfell's defenses, but of the Iron Wolf's capabilities. Someone wanted to know exactly what kind of power they were dealing with.
"Trouble?" Mira asked, following his gaze toward the empty treeline.
"Maybe." Kole turned back toward the castle, his mind already working through implications. "Spread the word—double the patrols for the next few days. And have the maester send ravens to the nearby holds. If this was coordinated..."
He didn't finish the thought aloud, but Mira understood. If the mountain clan raid had been orchestrated by someone with larger plans, then Winterfell's enemies were closer than anyone suspected.
The ride back to the castle passed in thoughtful silence, broken only by the crackling of flames consuming what remained of Winter Town and the quiet conversations of refugees who would soon discover that survival sometimes came with a price no one expected to pay.
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