Elmar stepped up as I charged, taking the center position in their line that spanned the width of the hallway, four knights in full plate bracketing their lord.
The math was simple and ugly. Eight men in mail against five in steel. Gaps existed in plate armor, but finding them in the middle of a brawl was a different proposition than in a training yard back in Tarth.
With Elmar in front of me, every fiber of me wanted to drive my blade into his throat, to feel it punch through mail and flesh and end this. But I was no fool.
Before I could close on his lord, the knight next to Elmar stepped forward, angling to strike me down from the side.
I didn't flinch. I kept my own blade pointed high, tip aimed at Elmar's visor as if I meant to run him straight through. And the knight must have taken my lack of reaction to mean I hadn't seen him coming.
He overextended. Committed to his swing before confirming I'd missed it, certain he'd caught me blind, arm sweeping down in a diagonal cut that would open me up from collar to hip.
At the last moment I pivoted back on my heel.
The blade carved air a hand's width in front of my chest with a low hiss. Close enough that I felt the wind of it brush my chest through the mail. Before the knight could recover his balance, I was already moving. Went low, driving forward beneath his guard. My sword thrust up with everything I had, aiming for the gap under his arm where the pauldron ended and only mail protected the armpit.
The blade punched through and I felt the resistance give way. Flesh. Bone. The knight gasped, a wet, choking sound that bubbled in his throat. His sword clattered to the stone floor.
Twisting the hilt, I tried to wrench my blade free, pulling at it hard, but it was stuck fast. Caught in mail rings and the suction of the wound.
By then Elmar was already swinging at me. I quickly let go of the hilt. Had no choice. His strike came fast for a man his age, and I gave ground, backpedaling, using the dead knight's falling body as a half-second of cover while I got my feet under me. The sword stayed where it was, buried somewhere it wouldn't come out without effort.
To both sides, my men crashed into the line of knights. Steel rang against steel in the narrow space, the noise bouncing back from the walls until it was nearly disorienting. Someone screamed. More than one roared. The hallway erupted into chaos, bodies pressing together, no room to maneuver.
Through the gap where the dead knight had stood, Jack and Codin slipped past. I caught a glimpse of them taking the stairs two at a time, their footfalls swallowed by the noise.
I watched them go and felt the wrongness of it settle in my gut. I shouldn't have ordered them up. Two men. Two of the best I had here. With them, we might've overwhelmed them quickly, drowned them in numbers. My lads were taught to fight cautiously against better armored enemies, but that didn't guarantee success. Two more fighters might have saved some of their lives.
It was a stupid decision, but my mother was up there. And all I could think about is Lord Elmar having orders for her to be dealt with should he fall in battle. I couldn't have that. She came first. She had to come first, even if that calculus ended with some of these men bleeding out on stone, or with me joining them.
A sword skittered across the stone floor, spinning, and stopped at my feet.
"Pick up the blade, Tarth," Elmar Whitehead said.
He'd kicked it. The dead knight's sword, fallen from his cold fingers. I stared down at it, then up at him. His breath came heavy inside his helm. Blood dripped from the body between us, pooling dark on the floor.
I didn't understand Elmar Whitehead. Why play at honor now, after all this? After kidnapping my mother, cutting off her finger, sending it to my father like some trophy? After threatening to destroy everything my house had built?
Still, I bent and picked up the sword. The grip was warm from the dead man's hand. I hefted it, testing the balance. Well-made. The blade caught the torchlight as I brought it up.
Whatever honor impulse he was having now, none of it mattered. All Elmar Whitehead represented was the last obstacle standing between myself and my mother.
As I faced him, my eyes flicked to the fighting around us. My men were holding, though it wouldn't last long. In the cramped hallway, the knights' plate armor gave them too much advantage if the fight drew on. Every exchange cost us. A cut that would fell one of my men glanced harmlessly off steel.
The quickest way to spare my men's lives now was to bring down their lord. The knights would either lose heart when he fell, or I would be free to join the fight myself and turn the tide.
I thought of many words I wanted to say to Elmar Whitehead as I advanced. Accusations. Curses. Questions about how a man could do this to a woman he'd known since she was a girl. But I settled on silence instead.
I would speak with my sword.
He parried my first strike cleanly. The impact jarred up my arm, and Elmar struck back immediately, no hesitation, swinging his shield arm around in a tight arc. I leaned back from it, feeling the rush of air as the steel boss passed inches from my face. His sword followed, a low cut aimed at my legs.
That I caught on my blade and deflected, then kicked out with my front leg in the same motion.
Elmar grunted. The blow rocked him back half a step, but that was all.
My foot connected with his chest. It was like kicking a mountain. He barely moved, just absorbed it with a grunt, and I was the one whose leg rang from the impact. Something about connecting with two hundred pounds of armored man doesn't go the way your body expects.
He came forward, and the man was strong. Much older than any man I had ever fought, and the weight behind his swings made my teeth knock together when I caught them wrong. He hammered down in a rhythm that forced me back a step, then another, the reverberations crawling up my forearms. He was trying to tire me or drive me into a wall.
He was good. I'd known he would be by reputation. But he wasn't Areo Hotah, and I wasn't fifteen anymore. I'd been growing into my body recently, filling out in ways I hadn't in my previous life. Standing as tall as my father now, a couple inches shy of six and a half feet. Bulkier through the shoulders and chest, muscle layered over the frame I'd built through years of relentless training.
So I matched him, putting my own weight behind my swings, and felt the exchanges shift. He was strong. As was I, and faster.
I parried his next overhand strike, the force of it shivering down my arms. Then my blade flicked up like a viper, aiming for the narrow slit of his visor—a trick I'd learned sparring with Oberyn Martell in Sunspear, meant to make your opponent flinch more than actually trying to thread the needle.
Elmar jerked his head to the side at the last second. My blade scraped across his full-faced helm instead, steel shrieking against steel. It left a bright scratch in the dark metal but didn't penetrate. He'd been fast. Faster than a man his age in full plate had any right to be.
I knew then I couldn't win this in a contest of blades. Eventually, yes, but not quickly enough. Not in time to join my men before more of them died. The old man was good enough to protect the spots his armor didn't cover, disciplined enough not to give me openings.
As Elmar swung his head back, recovering from the near-miss, I made my choice. When his next strike came, I let go of the sword instead of meeting his swing.
Behind the visor, Elmar's eyes widened, confusion flickering there for just a heartbeat. The lack of impact must've caught him off guard. I used that to close the distance.
Ducking under the swing and hitting him from the side, I drove my shoulder into his ribs, arms wrapping around his torso. One hand hooked under his sword arm, the other clamping against his body.
He went rigid with surprise, the word "what—" starting somewhere in his chest.
Before he could finish the word, I was heaving.
My feet were set wide, heels pushing against the floor, legs screaming with effort. Every muscle in my body engaged at once. The barrel-chested lord—armor and all, easily three hundred pounds of man and steel—left the ground.
All I could think about was my mother. Trapped in a cell in this gods-damned tower. My sister, threatened with marriage to a boy to seal our house's destruction. My father receiving a box with his wife's severed finger inside. Our name dragged through the mud. House Tarth reduced to nothing.
A deep roar filled the hallway. I only realized it was coming from my own mouth when I was already driving Elmar Whitehead up and over my head, and then down, muscles burning, back arching, and the crash when steel met stone rang off every wall in the hallway like a church bell struck with a sledgehammer.
I ended half on the ground myself, my back screaming from the effort, but I didn't let myself think. Just rolled, scrambling, putting myself above the stunned lord.
Elmar let out a wheezing gasp. All the air had been driven from his lungs on impact. His chest heaved uselessly, trying to draw breath that wouldn't come.
His sword had slipped from his fingers when he hit, skittering away across the floor. When he weakly tried to swing his strapped shield at me, I caught it with both hands and wrenched it away. The straps tore. I brought it up and bashed it down against his helmet. Once. Twice.
His head lolled back after the second impact, movements sluggish. He was out of the fight. Dazed.
I threw the shield aside and it clattered against the wall. Reaching behind my back with trembling hands, I pulled out my dagger. The blade came free smooth and cold.
With one hand, I wrenched the visor of his helm up. It resisted for a moment, then gave way with a screech of metal. Elmar's face appeared beneath—gray-bearded, lined with age, eyes unfocused. Blood ran from his nose.
A growl tore from my throat. The shining tip of my dagger hovered inches from his eye. Ready to slip into the socket. Into the brain. To end this. For what he did to my mother. What he wanted to do to my sister, my house.
"Father!"
It was a child's voice.
My hand stopped. Breathing hard, I didn't lower the blade. Just turned my head toward the stairs, every muscle still coiled tight.
A boy stood there on the landing, small hands gripping the thick stone banisters. He was half-hiding behind them, as if the wood could protect him from what he was seeing. As if forcing himself to stand there and scream had taken every scrap of courage in his small body.
The ringing of steel carried on for a few more seconds. Then the men in the hallway began to pause, one by one. Eyes flickered between the boy and Elmar Whitehead's prone form beneath me. The fighting died to stillness, everyone frozen in tableau.
In that moment of quiet, I noticed the casualties. One of Elmar's knights lay dead, blood pooling beneath him. And two more of my men. Their bodies crumpled against the walls where they'd fallen.
Even flat on his back, Elmar's hazy eyes tracked to the boy. "Addam?" His voice came out weak, strained through his battered chest. "Damn it, boy. Why are you here?"
My eyes narrowed. Addam Whitehead. Lord Elmar's only son and heir. The one they'd meant to marry to my sister Arianne.
Just a boy. Eight summers, maybe. Nine at most. He looked gaunt and tear-streaked and pale. His eyes, shining with terror, looked at me as if seeing a monster made flesh.
I looked back at the boy, seeing him flinch yet stand his ground all the same. The dagger trembled in my hand.
I turned to the man beneath me. "Order your men to yield, Lord Elmar," I said instead. My voice came out flat. Hard as the stone beneath us.
He looked back at me. And then, slowly, a grim smile spread across his bloodied face. "You… you think I'm afraid to die, Tarth?" He coughed, wincing at the pain. "I'm a soldier. Have been since before you were born. This is as good a death as I can hope for." Another ragged breath. "But I will not yield my castle to you. Not to a boy. Go ahead and be done with it."
I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
Looked back at the boy. At Addam, who stared at me with wide, horrified eyes. Watching me prepare to kill his father. To murder the man in cold blood while he lay helpless on the ground.
My resolve solidified like a stone lodged inside my chest. Heavy enough to choke me. Cold enough to freeze my blood. But I was prepared to bear its weight. Had to be.
I pressed the dagger tighter against the skin just below Elmar's eye. Close enough to the socket that one quick thrust would do it. A bead of blood appeared where the point dimpled flesh, running down toward his ear in a thin red line.
"Then do it for your son, my lord," I said. "For if you do not yield, I shall not kill you. I will make you watch as I butcher my way through your castle. Every man, woman, and child inside these walls." I leaned closer, close enough to see my reflection in his eyes. "And I will not spare your wife. I will not spare your son. I will make you watch as I hang young Addam above your gatehouse by his own intestines for all the town to see. For all of Westeros to see what happens to those who threaten House Tarth. Then—only then—will I kill you, Elmar Whitehead."
The words tasted like ash and bile in my mouth. Like poison. But I forced them out anyway, each one a nail driven home.
"Please, Father," the boy cried. His voice broke completely now, dissolving into sobs. "Please don't die! Please!"
Beneath me, Elmar Whitehead shook. Not from pain or fear for himself. His gray eyes filled with tears that spilled down his temples into his hair. "Gods be damned," he muttered. His voice cracked, breaking like his son's. He looked at the boy one last time before he seemed to sag.
"And the gods damn you, Galladon Tarth. Damn you as my ancestors will damn me for this cowardice." He drew in a shuddering breath that rattled in his chest. "Aye. I yield. I yield my castle to you." Another breath, weaker. "I only ask that you spare the boy. Spare Addam. And spare any of my men who put down their blades."
Around us, his knights were already lowering their swords. The clatter of steel on stone echoed as they dropped their weapons. My men moved quickly, pulling out the ropes that had bound us on our way into the castle, now put to use tying the wrists of my mother's captors.
Then I heard it. Footsteps. Running. Coming down the stairs fast.
Jack appeared, breathing hard. Blood was splattered across his face in dark streaks, some of it fresh enough to still be wet. His eyes were wide.
"My lord," he said. His voice was urgent. "It's the Lady Addison."
I was moving before the words fully registered. Pushed myself up off Elmar and bounded toward the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
Behind me, I heard myself shouting back—something about watching the lord and his heir—but I was already halfway up. Jack followed, his footsteps echoing mine.
At the top, I saw the bodies immediately. Three men in Whitehead colors. One was a knight, his armor dented and bloodied. Codin sat with his back against the wall, teeth gritted, one hand pressed against a wound in his arm. Blood seeped between his fingers. But he was conscious, alert. He'd live.
I didn't stop to check on him. The door to the room was already open.
My mother knelt on the floor above a corpse. The sight of her stopped me cold for a heartbeat. Her dress was torn in several places, the fabric hanging in strips. Her bare arms were covered in scratches and bruises, some fresh and bleeding, others already darkening. As if she'd fought something wild.
Her golden hair, usually so carefully kept, was disheveled and matted. Chunks of it were missing, torn out at the roots.
"I couldn't move her, m'lord," Jack said quietly behind me. "She won't speak. Won't let anyone near."
"Mother." The word came out softer than I intended. I approached slowly, hands out where she could see them. Like approaching a wounded animal backed into a corner.
Her whole body shook with silent sobs. Her shoulders jerked with each breath. She didn't seem to hear me.
I knelt on the cold stone beside her, next to the head of the corpse. A woman, her face scratched and torn. Lips split and bleeding. Deep red bruises circled her slender neck like a collar, the skin already turning purple-black. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.
"Mum." I tried again, my voice barely above a whisper. "It's me. It's Gal."
This time, her head slowly lifted. The movement was mechanical, like a puppet on strings. "Gal?" The word was choked, strangled. As if her throat had forgotten how to form sounds.
When I saw her face fully, something broke inside my chest. Tears ran in tracks down her cheeks, streaking through nail-cuts on her face. A wound on her temple still seeped, the blood matting her hair. Her left hand was wrapped in stained linen, the bandages soaked through. But it was her eyes that destroyed me. Empty. Hollowed out. Like something vital had been scooped away and only the shell remained.
Then I was gathering her into my arms, pulling her close. Held her like she would disappear again if I loosened my grip even slightly. Like some other lord would come and drag her away to some other tower in some other castle and I'd never see her again.
My breathing got choked up. My throat tightened until I could barely draw air. Something burned hot behind my eyes, blurring my vision.
Never again.
The vow formed in my mind with absolute clarity, cold and hard as forged steel.
Never again would another house think Tarth so weak, so feeble, so pathetic that they would dare threaten my mother. My father. My sisters. Anyone close to me.
Never.
I swore it as I held my mother and felt hot tears slip down my face. Swore it on everything I was and everything I'd ever been. On both my lives.
I didn't know if we stayed like that for an hour or a minute. The world narrowed to just her in my arms, shaking, and me holding on.
Then pounding footsteps rushed into the room. Heavy boots, multiple men. I was already moving, already putting myself between my mother and the door, when I saw who it was.
"Father?"
Lord Selwyn Tarth stood in the doorway. His sword slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. For a moment, I thought he would fall with it. His knees buckled, his whole body swaying. He caught himself against the doorframe.
"You're safe," he breathed. The words came out like a prayer. Like seeing his wife alive had taken every ounce of strength from his body and left him hollow.
I stepped aside.
My parents came together in an embrace that looked like drowning people clinging to driftwood. My mother cried fully now, great wracking sobs against her husband's chest. He buried his face in her ruined hair and held her like she was the only real thing left in the world.
"My lord." Jack's voice cut through after a moment.
When I looked at him, he was pointing out the small window cut into the stone wall, and my stomach clenched when I followed his gesture and saw what lay beyond.
Orange. The entire northern district of the Weeping Town burned. Flames climbed into the night sky, bright enough to turn the darkness into a hellish twilight. Smoke billowed up in massive black columns. The bells tolled endlessly, something I had tuned out during the fighting, but their sound carried even through the thick stone walls. A dirge for a funeral pyre.
Gods. How many people were dying out there right now?
xxx
Everything happened quickly after that.
Father's men swept through the castle, securing it room by room. The remaining Whitehead guards gave up without a fight, eagerly trading their swords for shovels and hammers. Anything to help stop the spread of the fire before it consumed the entire town.
People fled through the gates. Families carrying children, pulling carts loaded with whatever possessions they could grab. Heading out beyond the walls to the countryside, to anywhere that wasn't burning.
And in the confusion, even as the desperate tide of humanity flowed one direction, Pate would later tell me he rode the donkeys through the open gates toward the castle, carrying with him three very important things to me: a glass candle, a dying Jace, and my passed out sister.
xxx
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