Chapter 82 — The Price of Victory

Midday light reached the quarry floor while Black Armor soldiers turned a battlefield into five separate burdens: wounded, prisoners, weapons, horses, and dead. The surrendered men were counted in groups of ten and kept near the white lane. Officers went under separate guard. Healers treated urgency rather than colors once every blade had been removed.

Lyman knelt in mud with another man's blood along one sleeve. "Elton made me do it," he said. "He promised land, recognition, weapons. I was only the knife."

"He did not put one hundred and fifty men across the boundary without your consent," Arlan said.

"The spring was ours. He said Storm's End would support me."

That was the difficult part because Elton's sealed letter promised mediation and a loan, both lawful things. The invasion lived in spoken terms, delivered stores, Lyman's own ultimatum, and what he had ordered after three chances to withdraw.

Rodrick questioned the captured intermediary apart from Lyman. The man carried a Caron remount token, seven-stag payment bundles, and boots marked by the violet dye used in the Rainwood yard. He claimed to be a horse buyer. Three Tauha officers separately remembered him correcting their march time and telling Lyman which accusation should reach Storm's End if FireStorm resisted. None had heard Elton give him that task.

"Separate custody," Arlan ordered. "Record who speaks with him. Do not put a conclusion into the questions."

Wayne brought the completed field inventory. Thirty-seven Tauha dead and one hundred and thirteen prisoners accounted for the invading force. FireStorm had lost no one. The two recorded injuries were minor: a wrenched hip from the first shield collision and a scalp cut beside Bor's failed barricade.

Captured supplies added one hundred and twenty usable steel weapons, eighty-seven sets of leather armor, twenty-three warhorses, and the campaign provisions. Many weapon marks had been filed away, but three spear sockets retained a Nightsong armory stamp beneath the wood. Tauha's stable book, taken from its baggage clerk rather than a corpse, showed twenty horses arriving together two days before the muster. The clerk knew the driver and not the patron.

No object proved the entire bargain. The objects agreed with men who had each seen part of it.

The cost of keeping one hundred and thirteen people alive began before FireStorm left the canyon. They needed water, bandages, food, rope, guards, and space on a road narrowed by the broken barricade. Cade divided prisoners so no escort file faced a mass larger than it could control. Brienne placed surrendered officers where their men could see they remained alive. Bor repaired the western wheel far enough for the wounded wagons to pass.

Morton sent two carts from FireStorm after Wayne's first runner reached him. They carried oat bread, waterskins, spare cord, and every clean strip the infirmary could spare. The food was not enough for generosity: wounded men received full portions, the rest half until the gate. Tauha officers ate the same ration in view of their soldiers. A richer plate for Lyman would imply rank still purchased a different captivity; starving him would make every surrender promise suspect.

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The dead required separate wagons. Arlan would not mix bodies beneath captured armor or allow useful harness cut from men before the neutral knight completed his count. Tauha soldiers identified kin where they could. Unknown faces received a board with the place found and marks on clothing. Returning thirty-seven dead to families would cost horses and time after the living were secured, but leaving them in an anonymous trench would hand Elton another grievance ready-made.

Arlan addressed the Black Armor soldiers only after those tasks were moving. "Every participating soldier receives double pay and two gold dragons. The two injured men receive five dragons each, full pay through recovery, and household support."

The cheer echoed once between the rocks. Cade ended it with work. Pride did not carry prisoners or reset an axle.

Rodrick began the account for Storm's End with Lyman's demand, the old water agreements, the witnessed offers of arbitration, the place where the boundary was crossed, and the field count. Payment bundles, armory marks, stable entries, and separate testimony followed. The captured intermediary's denial went into the record beside them.

He used three tables in the quarry. One held objects beneath stones against the wind; one received witnesses separately; the third listed custody. When a spear socket moved from Wayne's hand to a cloth packet, both names and the hour followed it. When the baggage clerk identified his stable book, a Tauha captain watched him mark the page. The procedure slowed departure, but every delay happened where the neutral observers could see why.

Lyman demanded to speak privately with Arlan. He offered the fifty dragons still at Tauha, names of men in Elton's service, and a public surrender of the spring if he were released before reaching FireStorm. Arlan refused the private meeting and made him repeat the offer before Rodrick and the neutral knight. Lyman knew no full payment route; his bargain revealed fear and the location of coin, not a missing master order.

"No claim that Elton wrote an invasion order," Rodrick said.

"No need," Arlan answered. "Write what moved because someone paid for it."

The return took twice the time of the outward march. Wayne counted groups at every halt; water went first to the wounded, and one surrendering soldier warned of a loose binding before three companions could use it to run. Brienne recorded his name. The corridor had created decisions that continued after the weapons were gone.

Villagers met the column before FireStorm's gate. Their cheers grew when they saw the Black Armor Army intact and faltered when the Tauha dead wagons followed. Victory carried both sights through the same entrance.

The inner yard had to become a prison before dark. Cade strung rope lines between store posts, placed latrine buckets downwind, and assigned relief watches so the same fifty men did not guard all night after fighting. Families evacuated from the west lost their temporary sleeping space and moved into the kiln sheds. Children watched prisoners receive bread from stores they had helped carry. The battle had protected the holding and crowded every protected person closer together.

Arlan allowed no feast that night. Lyman had invaded after public warning, but he remained a hereditary lord of the Stormlands. The intermediary was a Caron man only by converging marks and witnesses. At first light, both would face a hearing in which someone was permitted to dispute the account before sentence.

Prisoners slept beneath three open-sided sheds with fires outside the rope line. Their own captains assigned places, while Black Armor guards counted at each change of watch. Rodrick prohibited questions after dark; exhausted men would agree to anything for sleep and deny it by morning. Lyman received a separate room with a barred shutter, the captured intermediary another, and neither learned what the other had said.

In the hall, Arlan read the reward total beside the grain remaining. Double pay could be met. Feeding one hundred and thirteen men for months would cost more than the battle rewards before a pick struck ore. Victory had produced labor, evidence, and obligations in the same afternoon.