Chapter 64 — The Bone Crusher

Elton's young nephew turned in the saddle and laughed. He had more than thirty armed men around him, a crowd of refugees too frightened to interfere, and the borrowed authority of Nightsong behind every order. The combination had apparently taught him that numbers and legitimacy were the same thing.

"Who are you supposed to be?"

Arlan did not answer. "Move your men away from the house." Graeme's eyes went from Arlan to Brienne, then to the ten guards with Wayne, and recognition arrived late and did not improve his judgment. "Kill the men," he ordered. "Take the woman alive." Brienne moved first.

She came off her horse with the greatsword already in both hands, and three guards reached her together, confident enough to strike from different angles but not disciplined enough to make the attacks arrive at the same time. Brienne turned the first sword with the strong of her blade, stepped through the second man's reach, and swept the greatsword back across all three positions.

Steel rang, and one weapon spun into the dirt, and a second guard lost his grip when the impact split his palm. Brienne reversed the sword and drove the flat into a breastbone hard enough to throw the man onto his back.

Wayne formed beside the wagons. Ten FireStorm guards locked round shields into a short wall rather than spreading across the entire street. That kept the children and wagons behind them and forced Graeme's men into a narrower front, and spears emerged through the gaps.

The first attackers learned the difference between armed retainers and drilled infantry.

Graeme's men had expected individual brawls, and they tried to reach around shields, grab spear shafts, and force their way into close range one at a time. Wayne answered by rotating the front guard whenever a shield arm tired, so the line preserved strength while the attackers spent theirs. A man who slipped in the mud found three spear points waiting because the formation reacted to the gap before anyone chased the fallen body.

One sword struck a shield and slid away, and the answer went under the attacker's raised arm. Another man tried to hook a shield aside and discovered the guard beside it had already stepped into the gap. Wayne did not let his line chase men who recoiled; he kept the wall near the wagons and made Graeme's people come back if they wanted the fight.

Inside the larger ring, Bor did not charge the men nearest him. Smoke from the piled kindling had begun slipping beneath the shack's eaves, and the front door was the only opening large enough for the youngest children. He seized a rain barrel with both arms, tore it from its wooden stand, and rolled it across the kindling. Water and mud drowned the embers while the barrel came to rest sideways between the house and Graeme's men.

"Mara, the little ones first," Bor called through the doorway.

The oldest girl began passing children out. A roof brace, split by one of the stones thrown earlier, sagged across the opening. Bor put his good shoulder beneath it and raised enough weight for the line to continue beneath his arm. Two armed men reached him while he held it.

Bor accepted a slash across the forearm because releasing the beam would have dropped timber upon a child. His free hand caught the attacker's leather coat and flung the man across the flooded kindling. The second tried to reach around him; Bor kicked the overturned barrel into the man's knees and drove him down without abandoning the brace.

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The name Bone Crusher had been earned by violence. Arlan learned more from the fact that Bor let both men live rather than give up the doorway to finish either one.

Brienne did not have Bor's size, but she had control he lacked. When the flat or pommel could end an attack, she used it. When a man committed to a killing stroke, she stopped preserving him for the sake of appearance, and one guard took a cut through the upper arm and dropped his sword. Another tried to get behind her and met a backhanded strike from the shorter reach of her weapon before he could exploit the angle.

The crowd learned to move as well, and refugees dragged children away from the open ground whenever a gap appeared. A woman pulled one of Graeme's wounded men clear before he was trampled, then spat on him once he was safe, and nobody joined FireStorm's line, but terror was losing its grip.

Graeme saw it happen.

He shouted for archers, but only three men had bows and none possessed a safe lane past their own people, and one loosed anyway. The arrow struck a shield, and Wayne immediately tightened the wagons closer to the wall so the children behind them remained covered.

His men had begun the fight as an authority demonstrating punishment, and now half were down, several were backing away, and the crowd he meant to intimidate was watching him lose. He pulled his horse backward.

"My uncle is Elton Caron!"

"That explains why you expected no consequences," Arlan said. "It does not excuse what you have done."

Graeme's face changed when he recognized the name Ashenblade.

He knew FireStorm and knew Renly had already ordered Elton to stop direct harassment, and most importantly, Robert Baratheon was nearly close enough that a complaint could reach the King before anyone had time to rewrite it. "This is a misunderstanding," Graeme said.

"You stacked firewood around a shack full of children."

"The giant attacked my men first!"

The boy who had found Arlan shouted from the edge of the crowd, "They tried to take Mara!"

Several refugees answered at once, naming guards, repeating threats and the order to burn the shack. There were too many witnesses for Graeme to silence with one glare. Wayne stepped forward. "Dismount." Graeme tried one final appeal to status, then looked at Brienne and obeyed.

Wayne searched him while Graeme complained about insult, assault, and the dignity of his house. The purse contained coin from three different mints, two warehouse keys, and a tally stick notched for crates rather than wages. Rodrick compared its marks to the guards' quarrel bundles and found the same cooper's brand burned into both pieces of wood.

The objects did not explain themselves. The crowd did. A dock porter recognized one key from a storehouse Graeme used after dark; another man had loaded wrapped spearheads there, and a third had driven a cart south after being told that Nightsong's token would carry it past inspection. None knew whether Elton ordered the sales. All had heard Graeme promise his protection.

"Weapons," Rodrick said. "And perhaps smugglers. We will need the warehouse book and the men who loaded it before we can say more."

Graeme swallowed. A letter in his coat would have been easier to deny than a street full of people who had done portions of the work.

The surviving guards around him had stopped looking at FireStorm and started looking at him. Several were wounded because he had ordered them into a fight over something none of them would want described before the King. Authority borrowed from a powerful relative weakened rapidly once the relative was not physically present.

"You will take every man still capable of walking and leave this quarter; you will not return to seize people from these families. If you do, the keys, the tally, and these witnesses go before Renly and Robert."

Graeme nodded before Arlan finished. Arlan held his gaze. "Say it."

"I understand."

"Then go." Arlan pointed toward the mouth of the lane.

He left his wounded behind until one of his own guards shouted after him, and only then did he order two men back to help carry them.

The retreat was not dignified, but it was fast, and Wayne ordered his men not to jeer; men who were already leaving needed no reason to rediscover courage out of wounded pride. Brienne lowered her sword only after the last bow disappeared around the far end of the narrow muddy lane and out of sight.

Arlan watched until the last Caron man disappeared around the lane, then he turned toward the broken shack. Bor was no longer standing like a giant guarding a gate. He was kneeling in the mud so a crying little girl could reach his neck.