Chương 10

The oars of the boat dipped and rose, dipped and rose, each stroke pulling them closer to the shoreline. Galad sat near the prow with his shield across his knees and his armor bundled in cloth at his feet, and watched the island grow in the pale early light. Behind them, the fleet rode at anchor in the swell. The ships looked smaller already, their hulls dark against the water, the dawn catching the tops of their masts in red and pale gold.

The Hunter of Oldtown sat heavy amongst them, the ship that had brought him here. Ser Willam Wythers, the knight Galad would serve under during the campaign, would be joining them in the first wave into the island, while Lord Mace and the other knights and lordlings of higher station would come after they had established a beachhead. Around them, the dinghies spread out across the water in long uneven rows, dozens upon dozens of them, each loaded with men and gear.

The sound of oars was everywhere, wood creaking, water slapping at the hulls. Someone in a nearby boat coughed. Someone else muttered something Galad couldn't make out, and was hushed. He turned his attention back to the shore. The beach was wide and open in front of them, a pale grey strip against the darker mass of the island. That much was good. To the west, though, tall cliffs and ridges pressed down to the very edge of the water, cutting off any view of what lay beyond them.

To the north and east, the land beyond the sandy beach lifted into low rolling hills that stretched on into the distance. Low, but not so low a man could not lose himself behind them. Not so low you could be sure of what lay on the other side.

"We should've sent scouts ahead," Galad said.

"I don't like the look of those hills." Beside him, Lorne followed his gaze without speaking for a moment. Then he gave a short nod.

"Aye, you can hide a company of men behind them." He huffed through his nose.

"And the cliffs." He did not finish the thought. He didn't need to.

"Doesn't matter." Neral's voice came from further back in the boat. The older man-at-arms had his arms crossed over his chest, his expression the particular blankness of a man who had stopped expecting things to be done properly.

"Heard Ser Willam saying Lord Mace is scrambling now we got word of Ser Barristan already landing at Great Wyk. And Lord Tarly's already taken the first stronghold on Orkmont." He tilted his head.

"House Tyrell cannot be seen dallying, 's what he said." Lorne grunted. Galad said nothing more either. He was already on the boat. They all were. Words wouldn't alter the shape of what was coming. He turned and looked at the men behind him. Aside from the sailors crewing the boat, there were eight of them in all, including himself and Lorne, the only two who were knights. The six men-at-arms sat in pairs along the benches, their packs wedged between their feet.

Mycah caught his eye and gave him a slight raise of his chin and an easy smile. His half-brother Mors sat beside him, one hand gripping the haft of the mace on his belt, fingers opening and closing around the leather wrapping. His jaw was set. His face had gone a pale, yellowish colour in the grey morning light. It would be his first battle, Galad realized. His own first battle sat decades behind him, though if anyone asked, he'd have to say it had come only two moons ago.

Even back then, he had been able to push the pre-battle fear down, to feed it into the flame in the void until it was gone. Fear was a distraction, Gareth had taught him, and distractions got you killed as much as love and hate and all the great emotions that moved men. Now, going into battle didn't scare him at all. If anything, he felt the pull of it, a quiet and unsentimental eagerness to do something that mattered.

To act with purpose in this new world he found himself in, to lay some measure of justice down on behalf of the men and women of his little village. Mors looked up and caught him watching. His expression shifted into a scowl.

"'m fine," he said, but his face had gone from pale to actively green. His eyes widened for only a second before he lurched sideways over the gunwale and was sick, most of it catching the water but a good portion splashing down the blade of an oar held by one of the sailors. The sailor pulled his oar in and stared at it, then at Mors.

"Want to bugger me with it too while you're at it?" Mors mumbled something that might have been an apology. Mycah covered his mouth, shoulders shaking.

"Give him a break, eh, he's just nervous about his first battle."

"Not nervous," Mors said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Just haven't got me sea legs yet."

"Oh, screw off." Mycah grinned.

"You were fine the whole trip over. Just admit—""Enough." Lorne's voice was flat. The brothers went quiet.

"No more jokes. We're at war now." Galad was already looking at the beach as it slowly got closer and closer, until they were close enough the sailors rowing them in called out. They lifted the oars clear of the water, and as the boat ground forward on the sand, men began going over the sides without waiting to be told. He followed suit, the water hitting him mid-thigh and the cold of it snapping through him like a blow.

He hadn't expected it, but he did the only thing a soldier could do, gritting his teeth, tucking his pack higher against his back, and pushing forward, boots finding uneven purchase on the sand below. All around him, knights and men-at-arms were doing the same, dropping into the water and wading in, the surface breaking and churning white around their legs.

More boats were coming in behind them, dozens of them, with men pouring over the sides into the shallows in long staggered lines even as the first boats were already rowing back toward the ships. Beside him, Mors went down to one knee as his footing gave. He almost dropped his pack before Galad caught him under the arm and hauled him up. Lorne took the other side, and together they kept him moving until the water dropped to his ankles and then to nothing, and they stepped up onto wet sand.

"Wet boots," Neral said from ahead of them, stepping clear of the tide line.

"Great way to start a campaign, that." A few men around him gave a ragged laugh. Galad couldn't help a small smile as well. War was a nasty thing, but there was a brotherhood that could only be borne of that shared struggle that he had missed from his past life. Wet and already getting cold in the early morning chill, his first steps on dry sand felt like relief. Ahead of them, the beach sloped upward, gradual at first and then more steeply, until the pale sand gave way to dry, patchy grass at the berm.

He was one of the first men fully out of the water across the stretch of shore. Behind him, more soldiers came streaming up from the boats, an uneven tide of men and equipment, some already bent over with their hands on their knees, breathing hard as if they'd waded through a battlefield and not a few feet of water. Others, wiser, were already shaking the water from their hands and reaching for their armor.

Working quickly, Galad began pulling his own mail hauberk over his head first, then the rest, with Mors moved around behind him without being asked and began working the buckles on his chest piece. The young man was still breathing too fast but he managed to keep his hands steady enough to tie off the plate. To his left, Mycah was doing the same for Lorne, who stood still as a post. He was halfway through fastening the last of it when something at the corner of his eye made him stop. He turned and looked.

Nothing moved. The beach stretched out in both directions. The tide line ran above them, that dark wet stripe where the water came at high mark. The berm beyond it was thick with flotsam, broken planks and scraps of rope and tattered sail cloth heaped in long windblown piles. Beyond the berm, the grass began, dry and patchy, scattered with clumps and irregularities in the ground. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He frowned.

Was he growing crazy or did the clumps look wrong? The earth too dark, as if freshly dug.

"Where's Ser Willam?" he asked. He heard shrugs more than he saw them. Neral tilted his head back toward the water.

"Old coot's probably taking a piss somewhere in the shallows." A few men laughed.

"We need a scouting party up that slope now," Galad said. The words came out quieter than he intended. His eyes had not left the berm.

"See something?" Lorne said, moving to his shoulder. The hairs along the back of his neck rose. Before he reached inward for the oneness, one of the piles of sail cloth moved. His eyes widened.

"Shields!" The word tore out of him. He had his own up before the echo finished.

"Shields up! Shields up!" For one frozen moment the beach was still. Then the berm erupted. Men came up out of the ground like the dead rising. Tarps and sail cloth thrown back, the loose sand piled above them scattering. Others kicked up from shallow pits beneath the clumps in the earth, or stood from behind piled driftwood, or simply rose from where they had lain flat behind the dry grass. Ironborn, fifty or sixty of them spread along the ridge of the berm, and every man among them was holding a bow.

Galad heard the first shaft cut the air above him and dropped to one knee, shield braced forward and angled up. The arrow struck the wood with a hard crack and stood there, quivering. Then the volley came in full and the world became noise. The low hiss and whistle of arrows in the air and the sharp smack of them striking wood and dull against sand and the wet sounds of them striking men. Screams came fast on the heels of the first volleys, ragged and sharp and some of them cut off. He heard the sound next to him.

A meatier impact than wood. He looked. Mycah had fallen. He was on his back in the sand a foot from Galad's knee, one hand reaching for nothing, an arrow shaft through his throat. His eyes were open and very wide, staring up as if confused about his situation. His mouth opened and closed as if trying to speak, blood running from it freely, and his fingers dug once into the wet sand and went still. A scream.

Mors went down beside his brother before Galad could stop him, dropping his shield and pressing both hands against the wound as if the pressure could matter now. He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered, saying something wordless and broken under his breath. Without thinking, Galad moved, got his arm under Mors's and wrenched him sideways, putting the shield between the boy and the berm.

Lorne came in from the other side, shield raised, and together they pushed Mors back and kept him moving until he was behind the bulk of their group. Arrows came down around them, one striking the sand between Galad's feet as they moved.

"They'll kill us one by one if we stay here," Galad said, loud enough for the men around them to hear. Lorne looked back toward Mycah's body. Something moved in his face and quickly locked away. He reached down, picked up the shield that had been sitting on Mycah's gear bag, and pressed it into the Mors' hands.

"Honor thy brother," he said. Then he straightened and drew his sword, pointing it high in the air.

"With me!" Stepping forward, he broke into a run, heading straight up the slope of the beach toward the berm.

"Highgarden! Highgarden!" Galad went after him. There was no decision to it. The only way out from under an arrow storm was through the men drawing the bows, and Lorne was already five yards ahead of him and picking up speed. Bringing his shield up at an angle, he covered his face and chest and simply ran. The arrows came down in staggered waves. Sand kicked up around his boots and he heard the close hiss of a shaft going by his ear. To his left, a man stumbled and went down.

To his right, another man was running with a shaft through his shoulder and hadn't slowed. Behind him, voices picked up the call, yelling "Highgarden!" and "Tyrell!", and when he glanced back there were men all down the line scrambling to their feet and running after them, some brave or stupid enough to do so without their shields. The berm came up fast.

The Ironborn bowmen had been pulling arrows as quickly as they could draw, but they were only men, and some of them were already turning to run as they saw the line coming up the slope. Somewhere behind the berm, came the sound of a short, sharp horn, just as Galad reached the end of the beach. Vaulting over a heap of rotting timber, he came down on patchy grass, a bowman directly ahead of him scrambling to draw another arrow. Galad closed the gap in three long strides and struck a simple swing.

A head rolled sideways, but he was already moving again, as another archer turned on him, swinging his bow like a club. Parrying it easily, a low feign saw him punching through the man's guard and putting the point of his blade into his throat. Like a mummer in a play, the man sat down slowly in the grass, folding over himself until he lay with his bottoms up and his head half-buried in the grass.

A few feet away, Lorne's sword was red, and all along the ridgeline, men of the Reach crested in a ragged wave, shouting, some of them dropping to their knees to retrieve the Ironborn bows before the bodies were even cold. Galad watched a man pull an arrow from a dead man's quiver and nock it with clumsy, furious hands, shooting at the retreating archers' backs and missing wildly.

The remaining Ironborn fled in a hard, desperate run through the grassy passes between the hills, while the stragglers were cut down mercilessly by the Reachmen. A cheer went up along the berm. Long and ragged and very loud.

"Serves the fuckers right," Neral said, breathing hard, wiping blood from his hand onto his trousers. To his left, Mors knelt in the grass above a dead Ironborn man, a dagger in his fist, driving it down again and again. The man had been dead some time, but Mors did not seem to notice or care, snarling incomprehensible words with a face wet with tears. Lorne stepped over to him and got a hand under his arm.

"Enough, boy," he said, not unkindly. He pulled him back and up to his feet.

"It ain't over." He looked at Galad.

"Something ain't right." Raising his gaze, Galad looked out toward the passes and the retreating Ironmen. He frowned.

"No," he said. It was too clean. A company of archers and a retreat, that was no finishing stroke. Whoever had planned this, and they had planned it, would not have set it up only to fall back at the first charge. The archers had done their work, killed men at the water line, spread panic on the beach. The question was what came next. He closed his eyes for a moment and reached inward.

Everything that was not the present, the moment, the people and the world around him, he fed to the flame one piece at a time, and he let it burn until there was nothing left but stillness. The void opened around him like a held breath. In it, he could hear the cheering very clearly, individual voices separating out from the noise. The last sounds of fighting dying away to the west. The wind off the sea. The grass moving.

And beneath his boots, very faint but steady, the grains of sand vibrating with a slight tremor in the earth. He opened his eyes.

"Horses," he said. Neral went rigid.

"Shit."

"Form up!" Lorne bellowed, turning on the celebrating men around them.

"Form up on me you whoresons! Now!" They had only just begun to cluster together when the riders came around the base of the western cliffs at a full gallop. Some three dozen of them, coming hard along the water line. They flew a half-familiar banner, one quartered with the scythe of Harlaw and a peacock upon a beige field, and they did not come up the slope toward the berm. Instead, they swept directly across the beach below.

The men still in the shallows, the men who had not run up the slope, the men sitting in the wet sand too tired to move, the scattered groups still wading in from the last boats. These men the riders went through like a blade through cloth, hacking down from their mounts as they passed, spearing through with short lances, mauling with maces and clubs. Galad watched from the berm and could do nothing. Too far away, too scattered. Some men dove clear. Others ran, diving back into the water. Most did not get up.

"Cowards," Mors cried out beside him, eyes red and burning. The horn sounded again, two short notes, and the riders did not press all the way across the beach. With a discipline that surprised Galad given what he knew of the Ironborn, they wheeled as one body and veered up the sand.

They struck a smaller clump of Reachmen who had not reached the berm, men scattering in every direction, and then they were past and running, following the archers into the same passes in the hills, the drumming of their hooves fading into the grass. Somewhere to his right, a red and white lifted above a crowd of soldiers, a grey squirrel on its face. Men pressed toward it, voices rising.

"Ser Willam' arms!" called a young man that had joined the cluster around Lorne, a comely fellow with mud on his face who had been one of the first over the berm with them. His voice carried over the beach. The banner dipped once and then swung forward, pointing toward the hills. A trumpet sounded from the group beneath it, and then that mass of men around the banner began to run toward the passes. The call spread down the line like fire in dry grass. Follow your commander. For the Reach! Tyrell! Tyrell!

Men who had been standing and breathing turned and ran. Men who had just made it up the berm turned and ran. Within moments the berm was emptying, with hundreds of men charging after a cavalry force they had watched disappear into broken ground they had never set eyes on. His mind whirling, Galad stood and watched it. The passes were narrow. The ground was unknown. The men were barely formed, barely armored, and winded from the water and the run up the beach.

A cavalry force that knew the terrain could do to them in those passes what the archers had done here, draw them in and cut them apart. That was the point of it. How could Ser Willam not see it? From the archers to the riders to the retreat, every piece of it designed to pull them off the beach and into a killing ground of Harlaw's choosing. They should hold the beach. Wait for the second wave. Consolidate their hold on the beach instead of chasing men into hills they'd never seen.

Around him, the small clump of men had not moved. Lorne. Neral. Mors, still red-eyed. A dozen others, drawn to them from other boats. Lorne looked at him. Galad let out a slow breath. He was not the commander here. He was a knight from a village with no lands and no name worth speaking of, and none of these men were his to order. Ser Willam had given a direction. The army was moving.

"You heard the orders," he said. At times, discipline in an army was more important than sound tactics. Sheathing his sword, he broke the arrow sticking on his shield and went after the bulk of the Reach forces.