Matteno of Myr
They had been walking in silence, knowing their prey must be close, when the first arrow took one of Lenora's men in the heart. The sound was a soft, wet thunk, then the man fell, letting out a wheezing gasp, hands scrabbling at the shaft buried in his chest.
Before Matteno could process what was happening, another arrow punched through the mail of the man walking beside him. Cheap mail, poorly riveted, so the shaft went clean through. The man stumbled, mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled from water.
Matteno dove behind a tree. An arrow hissed past where he had been standing, thunking into a trunk behind them. Splinters exploded from the wood.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Breathing hard, he pressed his back against the bark and looked around at the men still with him.
He had brought eight. Now he counted six, including himself.
The plan had been simple. Find where the Tarth boy was hiding. Wait and watch for an opportunity. He did not know how many men the boy had with him, but according to the guards who escaped the ambush in the quarry, it did not seem to be more than a dozen. There could be more hidden in the woods, so Matteno's plan had been to avoid rushing into battle. He wanted to find their camp and strike at night while they slept.
They had tracked them from the quarry easily enough. The hounds took the scent of the many horses that had ridden off, following it through the trees without hesitation.
But when they finally found the camp, it had been empty.
The signs were there that a group of men had been present: trampled grass, the remains of a fire, horse droppings still warm. But the camp itself was abandoned. And the tracks led toward the Weeping Town.
Matteno had almost turned back, ready to return empty-handed and tell Lenora her quarry had slipped away. Then the hounds caught another scent. A smaller group. Mules and people, moving further inland.
They had followed the trail until they found the mules grazing aimlessly around a clearing. Doubling back, the hounds struggled at first to find the scent of the people, but eventually they did.
A quarter of an hour later, when the forest had grown denser, Matteno ordered the men to dismount. One horse had already been crippled, breaking his ankle in a rut. And the hounds were getting distracted by the smell of their own mounts.
So they kept following on foot.
Matteno was no expert tracker, but one of the men—the one who now lay dead with an arrow through his chest—had said there were only five people. Four men and a child, strangely enough.
For a moment, Matteno had doubted the pursuit. Why would the Tarth boy have a child with him? Were they even following the right group?
The rain of arrows had confirmed it. It matched the description the guards had given from the quarry.
If the price for the discovery was two of the eight men, then so be it.
"Fuck this shit," one of the men said. He crouched behind the next tree over, shield clutched tight to his chest. Three others hid with him, while the houndmaster and another guard pressed themselves against the trunk beside Matteno.
"We coul' turn 'round and say we found nuttin' but moss and deer shit and be done with it," another muttered.
Matteno knew men losing heart when he saw it.
"You'll be lucky the bitch lady doesn't string you up by your guts if you come back with nothing to show," Matteno said. The man who had spoken glowered at him with hateful eyes. "Or you can go back with a present so great she'll make you a knight for it. There's five of them only, and one's a child, man. So what will it be?"
The guards straightened slightly. He could see the shift in their expressions. The possibility of knighthood and glor, of being the ones to bring in Galladon of Tarth for Lady Lenora Whitehead, sparked something in them.
These men hated him, Matteno knew. But he also knew how to motivate the type. Every man wanted something. For pirates, he needed only promise them gold and loot and women, and they would rush headlong into whatever hole he pointed them at. The men in this land had the same desires, but most of all they wanted a three-letter title before their given name.
A foolish concept. But useful in times such as this.
Matteno turned to the houndmaster, who stood frozen, staring wide-eyed at the trees ahead. "Release the dogs, you whoreson!" he cried.
Insults in the Westerosi language did not have the flourish he usually preferred, but they would have to do. The fool barely spoke his own tongue as it was.
The idiot houndmaster fumbled with the leashes, then let the dogs go. "Catch, catch!" he yelled. The hounds bounded off, barking and growling and snarling, their lean bodies disappearing into the shadows.
Soon, pained cries echoed through the forest. The snarling intensified. Then screams.
"Now!" Matteno yelled, springing out from behind the tree.
The men were eager to follow. Matteno let them run ahead of him through the dense forest. He wanted only to kill the boy, not the glory of being first to charge. Two more died to arrows, shafts hissing out of the darkness. The man in front of him took one to the leg and fell screaming. Matteno scooped up the shield the man had been holding without breaking stride and put himself behind it, zigzagging through the trees, before he finally caught sight of them.
It was hard to see with only the moonlight to illuminate the forest, but he could make out shapes ahead. Three hounds lay dead in front of a man, though they had not gone down easily. The man's right leg and one arm were chewed to the bone, meat and sinew hanging in ragged strips. He held a dagger in one hand, but he was shaking badly, blood pouring from his wounds. Clearly out of the fight.
Two others were in the process of dropping bows and pulling out swords.
Matteno recognized one of them at once. A sliver of moonlight caught his face, and Matteno felt a stab of disappointment.
It was the face he'd nearly cut in two on the deck of the Tarth boy's ship. The same face he'd half-spotted back at the Broken Shield. Likely sent to the Weeping Town ahead of the boy's own arrival.
Smart lad.
Matteno had thought about the battle against the Tarth boy every damn night and day, even when he was inside Lenora. He had never run into a problem he could not solve with his sword. Losing to the boy had been like going to bed with a new woman and finding out his cock was not all that great.
He had come ready to face the boy again, to rectify that travesty or die in the attempt.
This was not his target.
Still, the man moved well. Raised his sword and shield with practiced ease. Killed a hasty guard on the first pass and maimed another one in three.
Matteno circled left, falchion held low. "Where's your master, boy?" he called.
The man did not answer. Just shifted his stance, shield up.
That bothered Matteno more than he cared to admit. Men usually talked before a fight. Boasted. Threatened. Bargained. Silence bored him, which was all the more irritating.
Feinting right, Matteno lunged. The man's shield came up to block, and Matteno's falchion rang against the steel boss. He pulled back, circled again. The man tracked him, moving smoothly despite the uneven ground.
They traded blows. Steel crashed against steel, against wood. Matteno tested his opponent's guard, probing for weaknesses. The man was good. Not as strong as Matteno. Not as fast. But his footwork was clean, his blocks economical.
Matteno pressed harder, driving forward with a flurry of cuts. The man gave ground, shield absorbing the impacts. Then he stepped on a root and stumbled slightly.
Matteno grinned and lunged.
The man dropped to one knee and swept his free hand across the ground. Dirt and leaves flew up into Matteno's face.
Matteno cursed, jerking his head back, but not fast enough. Grit stung his eyes. He blinked furiously, raising his shield by instinct.
Pain lanced through his thigh even as he jumped back.
Wincing, he looked down. A cut, shallow but long, blood already soaking through his trousers. The man had scored him while he was blind.
"That's for my brother," the man said.
Matteno's eyes widened. His vision cleared enough to see the man's face properly now. The same features. The same build. But different. Subtly so, but different.
He was not even fighting the same man from the ship.
A twin.
Matteno laughed despite himself. "I'd have the name of the man I'm about to kill," he said.
"Then you shall not have mine," the twin answered. His voice was calm, as if their fighting was nothing more than matter-of-fact. "I have not been given orders to die."
That made Matteno laugh harder. The sheer audacity of it. He wiped blood from his thigh with his free hand, then raised his falchion again. "Where's your master, then? The Tarth boy. Where is he?"
"You would be dead if he were here," the twin said simply.
Matteno felt something twist in his chest. Confusion, maybe. Or anger. He did not understand how a man could garner that kind of loyalty. How a boy—a fucking boy who had barely seen twenty namedays—could inspire men to die for him without question.
It made no sense.
Abandoning subtlety, Matteno pressed harder now, his falchion coming down in heavy, brutal arcs. The twin blocked and parried, the steel ringing loud, but Matteno was stronger, and the force of each blow drove him back step by step.
Then the twin overextended. Lunged for a thrust that left his arm exposed.
Matteno's falchion came around in a vicious arc and caught him at the elbow.
The blade bit deep. Through mail, through flesh, through bone. The twin's forearm fell away, still gripping the sword, fingers holding tight.
He screamed. A raw thing, like a wounded animal, then dropped to his knees, staring at the bleeding stump where his arm had been. Blood poured from the wound in thick pulses.
Breathing hard, Matteno took a moment to look around. The other man they had been tracking was dead, throat half-way hacked off. Of the Whitehead guards, only one survived, a squat man with a crooked nose, standing over the body of the mauled fighter.
The guard walked over, saw the twin kneeling in the dirt, and kicked him hard in the chest. The armless man toppled backward with a grunt.
"This the Tarth boy, then?" the guard asked, grinning.
Matteno looked at the guard. At the man on the ground, bleeding out, clutching the stump of his arm. A wave of disgust rose in him. .
"Fool," Matteno muttered in his mother tongue.
He swung his falchion. The guard's head came off cleanly, bouncing once before rolling into the underbrush. The body stood for a moment, then crumpled.
The forest around him seemed still for a moment, then, as if all the action it witnessed just before was a long forgotten memory. Did any of it even matter? Matteno asked himself.
Sighing, he took a step forward and knelt beside the twin, who was trying to stanch the bleeding with his remaining hand. It didn't seem to be working. Too much blood. Too fast.
"You are dying," Matteno said.
The twin did not answer. Just kept pressing his hand against the stump, his face pale and slick with sweat.
Matteno frowned. "They say you do not have slaves here in the Sunset Kingdoms, yet here you are. A slave to your master, dying for his will." He paused. "Why?"
The twin finally looked up at him. Even through the pain, he chuckled. "A Myrish sellsail, working for a minor house in a distant land, has no masters of his own?" He coughed. "Do not make me laugh, Myrman. It hurts to laugh."
Matteno's eyes narrowed. "I'm no slave, boy. No master holds me in chains. I get paid for my efforts. Can sail wherever I wish. You have no such choice."
"I choose to serve and to die for my lord," the twin said. "Happily so."
Matteno scoffed. "Die happily, will you? That's a first."
The twin shook his head slowly. "When you die one day, in whatever job you take, under whatever master you choose, can you say you will do so satisfied with your life, Myrman?" His eyes locked on Matteno's. "Will you go to the gods with a smile on your face as I will?"
He did not wait to see if the man would truly die with a smile.
And yet, he could also not bring himself to finish him off. Could not bring that end on quicker. Instead, he stood, turned, and walked back the way they had come. His leg throbbed where the twin had cut him, but he was well used to such wounds. A lifetime in the seas had brought him many a scar.
A few minutes back on the trail, he found one of the horses they had left behind, mounted it, and set off slowly into the night.
Half a day later, on a hidden cove he had previously agreed upon with his first mate, Matteno boarded his longship.
On the deck, he noted without much surprise that the magister's men were nowhere to be seen.
"Where to?" his first mate asked.
For a while, Matteno felt that same stillness he felt on the forest, only now it was to the sound of the waves lapping against the hull of his ship, of rope creaking overhead. The Weeping Town held nothing left for him; he had too many enemies in his native Myr to return there, and he could not go back to Tyrosh now, not with Adarys soon to be out for his blood.
"Pentos," he finally said. "Many a spice merchant and silk trader and cheesemonger in need of protection on the seas could hire an honest band of fellows like us, no?"
His first mate grinned and called for the crew to make ready.
Matteno stood at the prow as they pushed off, watching the coastline of Westeros fade into the distance. He touched the cut on his thigh. It would scar.
A reminder.
He wondered, briefly, if the twin had died smiling.
xxx
Lady Addison Tarth
The knight stood in front of her, his sword drawn at his side. Only instead of pointing the weapon at her, it was aimed at the two guards flanking Lenora.
"Step aside, Ser Guyard," Lenora snarled.
"I shall not," the knight answered. "I do not take my orders from you. Not today."
"Have you gone mad? I will have you thrown from my walls for this—this insolence!" Lenora's voice climbed an octave, trembling with a rage that bordered on hysteria.
The two young guards shifted their weight, their swords half-raised, uncertain whether to advance or hold.
"Lord Elmar was clear no one was to touch Lady Addison." Ser Guyard remained unmoved. "My vows are to him and to the Seven."
Lenora turned sharply to the guards behind her. Addison watched their faces shift. Youthful faces, both of them. A pair of young men-at-arms looking at the knight in his full suit of armor blocking their path and very clearly disliking their odds. One swallowed. The other's grip tightened on his sword hilt, but his eyes darted to the door as if measuring the distance.
Addison felt anger flare in her chest, hotter and more immediate than any relief. Why now? Why, after letting Lenora do all this, had he suddenly changed his mind? After seizing her, after maiming her. Only now did Elmar Whitehead grow some shame?
Was he trying to retain some shred of honor he might have left? Did he think this one act could somehow balance the scales?
She had feared the worst when the knight first came into her room. She knew well what could happen to a woman in her place, how low some men would sate themselves in their bloodlust.
Only the knight had done no such thing. In fact, he had done nothing at all. Ser Guyard had been a phantom in the corner of her room, his back to the wall, refusing to speak or even look her in the eye. When she had gathered her courage to speak to him, to ask what was happening, to question even his name, the man had not answered. Had not even looked at her.
They had shared the room like that for what felt like hours. Addison had returned to the bed eventually, her legs too unsteady to keep standing. She had pressed her good hand to her belly, feeling for the barely-there swell, and tried not to think about what would come next.
Then the bells began to toll.
Addison's heart had leapt into her throat. A spike of dread went through her so sharp it made her gasp. Was this it? Was Selwyn out there even now, fighting in the streets to get to her? Was Galladon with him?
The silent knight had not moved from his post, though his head turned toward the shuttered window for just a moment. Addison herself had not dared to look. She was afraid of what she might see. Tarth men clambering over the walls of the castle. Killing and being killed. Her family bleeding out in the dirt while she sat trapped in this room.
It hadn't taken long after that. A minute, maybe two. Then Lenora had burst through the door, her face flushed and her eyes bright with something wild. The guards came with her, swords already drawn, and Addison had not needed to guess what their intentions were. What would have happened if Ser Guyard had not been standing there.
"She must be killed now," Lenora tried again, shooting a baleful, murderous glare at Addison. "Selwyn Tarth has broken the king's peace. He attacks your lord's walls even now. And who knows where her son might be, after the slaughter he wrought in the woods."
Ser Guyard did not answer. His sword remained raised.
The silence stretched until Addison could hear her own breathing, too fast, too shallow. Her wounded hand pulsed in time with her heartbeat. The room felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in.
Then a thin scream came from somewhere down the hall. The sound cutting through the stillness like a blade. More followed. The distant ringing of battle. Steel crashing against steel, men shouting.
"They're here?" Lenora's eyes widened. "They're inside the castle?"
The guards looked uncertainly between each other. One took a half-step back toward the door. Ser Guyard shifted his weight, his helm turning as if torn between facing the doorway or keeping his eyes on the men threatening his charge.
It's Galladon, Addison thought.
Selwyn had been in the ship, so it had to be him. She knew it the way a mother knew her child was coming down with a sickness before they ever started coughing.
Her boy was smart. At times too smart for his own good, always thinking three steps ahead of everyone around him. He would have found a way into the castle. Climbed the walls, maybe, or worked some trick at the gate.
He always had strange ways of doing things, strange ideas for how to train with those young men of his back in Tarth. She had watched them sometimes from the tower windows, running through drills that looked nothing like what the other knights did.
She didn't know whether to be proud or terrified. Her throat tightened. Both, she realized. She felt both at once, tangled together so tightly she couldn't separate them. A knight he might be, but he would always be her baby.
Still, she had to trust in him. In the man she had raised.
Then more sound. Closer now. Footsteps rushing up the stairs, the heavy thud of boots on stone echoing down the short hallway outside her room.
Ser Guyard cursed beneath his breath. Then he straightened, his shoulders squaring, and turned his head toward the guards. "Will you stay here to kill a defenseless woman," he said, his voice carrying an edge now, "or will you join me in fighting for your lord?"
The guards traded uneasy glances. Their fingers tightened on their sword grips. One licked his lips.
"Do not listen to him," Lenora said. Panic bled into her voice. "I am the Lady Whitehead. The lady of this castle! My word is law here!"
"Come with me," Ser Guyard said, "if you have some speck of honor left in you."
The young guards looked almost relieved. As if someone had finally given them permission to do what they'd wanted all along. They nodded at the knight, first one and then the other, and rushed out of the room without another glance at Lenora.
Ser Guyard followed. His armor clanked as he moved, his blade still in hand.
Lenora half-ran after them, one hand reaching out. "Wait! Stop, you cannot—"
The door slammed shut in her face. The sound of the lock turning echoed through the room.
"Let me out!" Lenora screamed at the door. Beat her fists against it once, twice. "Open this door! I command you! Ser Guyard, open this door at once or I'll have you hanged, do you hear me? Hanged!" Her voice cracked on the last word.
Addison rose from the bed. Her legs trembled beneath her, weak from days of stillness and fear, but they held.
For the first time in almost a week, Addison did not feel lost. Did not feel the crushing weight of her own helplessness pressing down on her chest until she couldn't breathe.
Her husband and son were fighting outside even now. Somewhere in this castle, close enough that she could hear the clash of steel. They had come for her. Of course they had. They never would have abandoned her. Never.
She would not lie idle now that she had the chance to fight back.
She took a deep breath. Her wounded hand throbbed, a dull ache that pulsed through her arm, but she barely felt it now. Almost without thought, that hand brushed against her stomach.
Her source of strength. The thing that had kept her going when Lenora came to gloat, when the pain in her hand grew so sharp she thought she might scream. She had to live. For Selwyn and Galladon. For Arianne and Alysanne. And for the new life inside of her.
Theo, she thought, if it were a boy. Like her father.
And if it were a girl?
She had thought about it for hours, turning names over in her mind while she sat by the window and watched the light fade. She had one now.
"Brienne," she whispered. Yes. That would make a fine name for a daughter. Brienne of Tarth.
Lenora must have heard her because she turned. Her breath hitched.
Addison was already running.
She did not think. Did not plan. Just moved, hands reaching out in front of her, lunging like a shadowcat. A raw, wordless sound tore from her throat. A mother's roar.
Then she tackled Lenora to the ground and they went down together in a tangle of limbs and skirts.
xxx
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