Chương 45

Jaime Lannister Jaime could not help his jaw dropping as he watched Ser Galad of Dunstonbury dancing between the five remaining knights. Two had died faster than he could blink. He had never seen a man move like that—so decidedly, so sure of every step, so rightful in every swing of the sword.

The woodsman knight had crossed the sand to Ser Mandon Moore in less time than it took to draw breath, and Mandon—Mandon, who Jaime knew was one of the finest swordsmen in the Kingsguard, however unpleasant a man—had fallen with a precise thrust to the throat that had been so quick Jaime almost missed it.

Then Ser Balman Byrch, that tall fool with his greatsword, had charged in from behind and been beheaded with a maneuver that involved Ser Galad jumping on the man's blade, springing upward, and using the leverage to take the head off in a clean slash. To Jaime's surprise, and to the surprise of many in the stands who had gasped and shouted and pointed at it, Ser Galad was not wielding the Valyrian steel blade Nightfall. Only regular castle-forged steel.

As if to inform the realm he needed no tricks or fancy swords to do what he was about to do. Somehow, Jaime found he liked the man despite himself, though he was wise enough not to say those words out loud. Not with his sister standing beside him in her crimson fury, and his father on the other side of the empty throne, watching the proceedings with the stone-faced control he had perfected over decades.

Cersei hissed as Ser Meryn Trant almost scored a cut against the Reach knight, a desperate swing that should have caught Galad across the shoulder. But the man glided away like a dancer, his footwork carrying him just beyond reach, his sword slashing out in the same motion to parry a strike from Ser Boros Blount on the other side. The five remaining knights had tried to maintain their formation after the first two fell. They had attempted to close in together, to use their numbers properly.

But Galad would not let them. He moved constantly, always shifting position, always forcing them to break ranks to keep up with him. When one came too close, he punished them. When two tried to flank him, he was already somewhere else. None dared step too close after Ser Boros Blount got a nasty cut on his overextended leg. The Woodsman had let Blount come at him with a clumsy thrust, sidestepped at the last moment, and opened the back of the kingsguard's knee with a precise downward slash.

Blount now hobbled around the courtyard like a wounded dog, shying away from the thick of the fighting but still skulking around the edges, hoping perhaps to land a coward's blow when Ser Galad was distracted by the others. An angry heat bloomed in Jaime's chest at the sight. How far had the institution of the Kingsguard fallen if men like Boros Blount and Meryn Trant donned the white cloak? Ser Gerold Hightower would have spat upon them. Ser Arthur Dayne would have wept.

"These fools," Cersei snapped beside him, her voice low and venomous.

"Why don't they kill him already?" Jaime caught his father shooting her a glare, a small flicker of expression that meant his sister had said something foolish. Tywin Lannister did not answer the question, only turned back to the courtyard with his stone face firmly in place. His father was not quite gifted with a sword like Jaime was, Jaime knew, but Lord Tywin had seen plenty of fighting in his time. The Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion. The Ninepenny Kings. The Sack of King's Landing, however ignobly.

He had seen enough to know exactly why the seven men below had not yet killed Ser Galad.

"Because they cannot," Jaime said quietly.

"What?" Cersei turned to him, her green eyes flashing.

"It's seven against one!"

"Was seven against one," he corrected.

"Now it's five." Gasps rang out in the stands at that moment as Galad's blade flickered out and back, scoring a deep wound across Ser Benedict Broom's upper chest where his breastplate met his pauldron. The old Lannister master-at-arms fell to his knees, then to his side, blood spreading rapidly across his armor and into the sand beneath. Some scattered cheers came from the Reachmen's section. Jaime looked back down and could not help the trace of amusement that coated his voice.

"Four now. Seems Ser Benedict Broom was a shame to the name of Lannister."

"He was no Lannister," Lord Tywin grated out, his voice low and dangerous.

"He was your master-at-arms." Tywin glared.

"Who we will say was ill-liked and went against my orders to join this folly. Do you two hear me?" Jaime shrugged, but his sister fumed beside him at the implication.

"You can't mean to let this go, father?" Cersei's voice carried real disbelief.

"After everything—""It is done, Cersei." Tywin did not look at her. He continued to watch the fighting below with that same impassive expression, but his hands had tightened on the arms of his chair.

"You are blind if you cannot see it."

"You're admitting defeat?"

"It is not a defeat." Tywin's jaw worked once.

"I'll make sure that by the time the realm hears of it, the name Lannister will not even be mentioned in connection with this farce. The Kingsguard knights acted on their own initiative. Ser Amory Lorch was a fool who exceeded his orders. Ser Benedict Broom was ill-liked and went rogue. We had no hand in any of it."

"The highborn here will not forget the truth," Jaime said.

"They will," Tywin spat. Jaime did not argue further. Wisely, perhaps more than usual, his sister shut her mouth as well. Jaime knew better than to try to convince his father of anything once that tone had entered his voice. To Tywin Lannister, the truth was what he believed it to be, not what everyone else could plainly see. The Lord of Casterly Rock would simply will the narrative into existence through sheer force of personality and gold, and over time, his version would become accepted as fact.

Or at least he'd try. Jaime's attention shifted back to the fighting beneath, and what fighting it was. Ser Galad of Dunstonbury was a storm amidst the four remaining knights. He shifted sideways and slipped beneath swings, parried and blocked and slashed back in motions so fluid they seemed less like combat and more like some intricate dance choreographed in advance. Ser Amory Lorch made the mistake of trying to press an attack just then.

He came at the Woodsman with a downward chop that would have split a lesser man's helmet. Ser Galad's blade rose to meet it in what looked at first like a simple parry. But then his sword twisted in some way Jaime could not quite follow, and Amory Lorch's longsword went flying from his grip, spinning end over end before clattering to the sand a dozen paces away. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Before Lorch could react, before he could even register that his weapon was gone, Galad struck twice in rapid succession. Two piercing thrusts beneath Lorch's raised arms, finding the gaps in the armpit gussets of his armor with surgical precision. Blood spewed down both his sides, soaking through the mail and padding to spill onto the cobblestones beneath. Lorch's knees hit the ground a heartbeat later, his strength fleeing him along with his lifeblood.

He stayed upright for perhaps three more seconds, his eyes wide and disbelieving, before toppling forward onto his face. Three now. Jaime had to physically stop himself from cheering with the rest of the crowd. He felt like he was watching an expert sculptor carving his masterpiece, using men's bodies for stonework. He leaned forward now, eyes glued on the yard, his heartbeat leaping in his chest in a way it had not since—since he could not remember when. Gods, he wished he was down there in the trial.

Just so he could trade blows with such a swordsman. Just so he could see what it was truly like to face perfection with steel in hand. For perhaps the first time in his life, Jaime Lannister had to admit there was someone out there better than him with a blade in hand. Could it be true? He had to think so. Jaime himself was better than all seven of the men who had taken the field against Ser Galad, of that he had no doubt. Even injured as his leg was, he figured he could have defeated any of them in single combat.

But he also did not think he could take all seven of them at once. Not without serious injury. Likely not without dying. Ser Mandon Moore was no slouch with a sword in hand, and he had fallen before Jaime could blink. The more he watched, the more Jaime got excited. Ser Galad flowed from stance to stance, his feet always moving, always dancing across the sand. His blade shifted like it had a mind of its own, singing through the air in a beautiful song of steel and blood.

He never seemed to be where his opponents expected him. He never seemed to swing where they thought he would. Every motion led to another, every parry transitioned into an attack, every defensive movement set up an offensive opportunity. It was poetry. It was art. It was the romantic ideal of swordsmanship made flesh. Jaime felt like he was a boy again, watching Ser Gerold Hightower—the White Bull—sparring in the practice yard against Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.

He had spent hours as a young man watching those two giants of the Kingsguard go through their drills, marveling at their grace, their power, their absolute mastery of their craft. He had wanted to be like them with every fiber of his being. Had practiced for hours upon hours in pursuit of that dream. But even Ser Arthur Dayne, the greatest swordsman of his generation, perhaps of any generation… Jaime was not certain he had moved like this. This Galad of Dunstonbury was something else entirely.

Something beyond even the legends. Only men of Ser Gerold or Ser Arthur's caliber could have stood against him for any time at all, and Jaime was not entirely certain even they could have prevailed. The thought should have troubled him more than it did. But somehow, watching such mastery, Jaime found only joy in it. Like watching a great work of art come into being. Like witnessing one of those moments that bards would sing of for a thousand years. Ser Boros Blount tried to flee.

The piggy-faced kingsguard had been circling the edges of the fight, doing nothing useful, hoping perhaps to outlast his fellows and avoid Galad's notice. But as the woodsman knight finished Lorch and turned toward the remaining three, Blount apparently decided his survival lay elsewhere. He hobbled toward the edge of the courtyard on his wounded leg, his face pale with terror. Galad gave him no chance to escape.

He closed the distance in three swift strides, his sword flashing once, and Ser Boros Blount fell with a wound across the back of his neck that severed his spine. The kingsguard was dead before he hit the sand. Two now. Just Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Owen Inchfield. Meryn Trant did what Jaime had half-expected him to do from the start. The wretched man dropped his sword. The castle-forged steel rang against the cobblestones as it fell, and Trant opened his mouth to speak.

"I yie—" But Ser Galad did not let him. The woodsman flew in like an eagle stooping on its prey, faster than thought, faster than mercy. His sword came around in a clean horizontal strike, and Ser Meryn Trant's silence was sealed forever as his head separated from his shoulders. The body fell like a ragdoll discarded by a careless child. Jaime felt a small, fierce satisfaction at that. Trant had deserved no better. Less, perhaps.

In a fit of mad rage, the last man standing, Ser Owen Inchfield from the Reach, roared and bullrushed Ser Galad, the sound more animal than human, as if he meant to frighten his opponent more than actually fight him. It ended with a whimper. One slash from Galad's sword took Owen's right arm at the elbow, severing it cleanly through the gap in the armor. The arm flew through the air still clutching his sword and landed in the sand several paces away.

Owen made a small, broken sound and stumbled forward, his stump fountaining blood. The next slash gave him a mercy Jaime did not think any of these seven deserved. Galad's sword punched through the face-plate of Owen's helmet, ending him quickly. His body fell beside the others, joining the carnage spread across the courtyard. Seven men dead. Just like that, the trial was over. And without Inchfield's incessant yelling, a hushed silence fell across the courtyard.

Standing stock-still in the royal box, Jaime scanned the faces around him. His sister's stunned horror, her mouth slightly open, her green eyes wide with disbelief and rage warring against each other. Her hand gripped the railing of the box so tightly her knuckles had gone white. His father's dead quiet. Tywin Lannister's face revealed nothing, but Jaime had grown up reading the subtle signs of his father's moods. The tightness around his eyes. The set of his jaw. The way his fingers had stilled on the chair's arm.

His father was furious. Furious in that cold, controlled way that meant terrible things would happen to certain people in the weeks and months ahead. But those things would happen quietly, behind closed doors, far from public view. Lord Tywin would not lash out now. Beneath them in the stands, the men and women of the realm stared quietly in a moment of complete disbelief. Jaime almost found that comforting. For some reason, something in him wanted to know that others were as stunned as he was.

Wanted to confirm that he had not hallucinated what he had just seen, some fever-dream brought on by his wounded leg or too much wine. That one man had truly just slaughtered seven anointed knights like a butcher would his sheep. Then the spell broke and the crowd erupted. Men jumped up from their seats, fists pumping the air, voices raised in shouts and cheers that echoed off the stone walls of Casterly Rock.

Women cried out and gasped, some clutching at their husbands or fathers, others standing alone and screaming openly. Some called out Ser Galad's name with a reverence usually reserved for lovers or gods. Lord Mace Tyrell was bellowing something incoherent and triumphant. Lord Randyll Tarly stood rigid as a statue with his arms crossed, but Jaime thought he could see satisfaction in the harsh lines of the man's face. Young Margaery Tyrell was crying with relief, her face buried in her brother Willas's shoulder.

Others around them wept openly, even grown men, even hardened knights who had seen battle, as if they had just witnessed the Warrior himself come to earth to dispense the Father's justice. Perhaps they had witnessed exactly that, Jaime thought. What else could explain a man fighting like this? He did not know. Not truly. He had spent his life around the greatest swordsmen of the realm, had trained with them and against them. He had thought he understood the limits of what was possible with a blade in a man's hand.

He had been wrong. Down in the courtyard, Ser Galad of Dunstonbury stood alone amidst seven corpses. Blood spattered his armor and stained the sword in his hand. He breathed evenly, showing no sign of exertion. His violet eyes scanned the stands once, perhaps looking for someone specific, perhaps simply taking in the reaction of the realm to what he had done. Then he sheathed the sword and walked calmly toward where his young squire stood holding Nightfall.

The boy met him halfway, and he took back his Valyrian blade with the same easy motion a man might use to reclaim a hat from a servant. Just like that, the Woodsman Knight walked away from the slaughter he had wrought, and Jaime Lannister knew one thing for sure. He would never forget Ser Galad's Trial of Seven. Neither would the Seven Kingdoms.