Chapter 50 — The Narrow Pass

Brienne's greatsword met the first flight before Arlan's boots reached the ground, and she swept the blade across the space above his horse and broke two arrows outright; another struck the flat and spun into the mud. The animal reared, screaming, while Arlan pulled himself behind its shoulder and drew his own sword. "Shields!"

The four guards moved without waiting for a second command, and two round shields faced the left slope, two the right, overlapping just enough to cover the gaps while the men crouched behind them. Spears stayed low until the arrow flight began to thin.

Brienne remained outside the little wall for one dangerous breath longer, batting another shaft away from Arlan before stepping behind the shields herself.

Arlan counted flashes between the trees rather than bodies, and at least several dozen bows had fired, but the shafts came from prepared lanes instead of random positions. Whoever waited above them had scouted the pass and expected the party on this road.

That removed bandits from the list of likely explanations. "Three-man frontage when they come down," Arlan said. "Do not chase uphill. Make them enter the road."

The second flight struck harder; arrowheads hammered wood, one punching halfway through a shield before losing its force. A guard grunted when a splinter cut his cheek but kept the rim locked against his neighbor's, and another shaft struck Brienne's breastplate at an angle and skipped away into the dark. Arlan listened for the rhythm of the volleys and heard no horn or shouted timing; the archers knew their positions, but the men directing them expected surprise to do more work than discipline.

Then the bows stopped, and men came out of the trees.

More than eighty hired fighters poured down both slopes in leather, old mail, and whatever steel they had been able to buy or steal; they were better equipped than mountain raiders and far less disciplined than household men. Some carried shields, others axes or swords, and several had soot rubbed across their faces to make later identification harder.

Their captain needed none of that caution, and he was broad across the shoulders, carried a heavy axe in both hands, and shouted before his boots reached the road.

"A hundred gold dragons for Ashenblade! Kill the men. Keep the Tarth woman alive." Brienne went still beside Arlan.

The mercenary captain laughed when he saw her face. "Lord Elton was particular about that part." Whatever pain remained from Rickard's insults hardened into something colder, and Brienne stepped out of the shield line.

"Hold the road," Arlan told the guards. Three mercenaries reached her together.

The first trusted his axe against the greatsword, and he learned the difference between a heavy weapon and the person swinging it when Brienne's downward cut smashed through his guard and drove him to the ground. The second came from her injured side with a sword; she turned just enough to let the thrust scrape plate, then struck him in the throat with the shorter blade at her belt.

The third tried to retreat; Brienne's greatsword caught him before he completed the second step. Three men were down in less than three breaths, and the closest mercenaries checked their charge. The ones behind them did not, and bodies collided on the narrow road as momentum fought fear.

Arlan used the hesitation.

He entered beside Brienne rather than behind her; where her cuts forced men to give ground, he used the openings; where two opponents tried to crowd her weapon, he struck wrists, throats, and the unarmored spaces beneath arms. The pass denied the attackers the advantage their numbers promised, and only a few could reach the front at once, and the dead made the footing worse for everyone behind them.

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The four guards advanced in a compact wedge after their lord: shield, spear, sword. They had drilled the sequence often enough that fear did not erase it: one man received the blow, the second answered through the opening, and the third watched the flank until positions changed.

A mercenary tried to rush the right edge; a spear entered below his ribs before his axe completed its swing. Another caught the shaft, dragged it sideways, and exposed himself to the sword behind it.

The fight narrowed to reach, footing, and breath; men who had imagined six travelers surrounded in darkness found themselves stepping over the bodies of the first wave while trying to keep balance on sloped stone. The higher ground helped the attackers only until they came down; once they entered the road, their own numbers trapped them behind the fighters at the front.

Arlan refused to let the four guards stretch their line; every time a mercenary fell, he called the formation forward only far enough to deny the body as cover, then stopped it before anyone could be drawn uphill. Victory here depended less on killing quickly than on refusing to let eighty men become eighty simultaneous problems.

Brienne's wound opened again, and Arlan saw blood darken the cloth beneath her arm, but her pace did not slow until the mercenary captain forced his way through his own men.

"Move!" He shoved one fighter aside and charged Arlan with the axe raised above his shoulder; Brienne intercepted him. Her greatsword came horizontal between the captain and Arlan.

"You go through me."

The captain looked at the blood on her armor and smiled. "Gladly." His axe descended with enough force to break a lesser guard even through a shield; Brienne met it with both hands. Steel struck steel.

The impact drove her rear boot into the mud and tore another line of blood beneath her sleeve, but the axe stopped, and the captain's expression changed when he realized she had taken the blow without giving him the road. Brienne pushed.

He staggered back two steps, recovered, and swung again from the side; she gave ground this time, letting the axe pass in front of her breastplate before returning a short cut that bit into the leather over his shoulder. He cursed and backed away from the blade.

"Thought you wanted to be a knight," he said. "All I see is an ugly woman swinging a butcher's sword." Brienne's answer was another cut.

The captain caught it badly; his axe haft twisted in his hands, and the opening reached from his shoulder to the center of his chest. She took it.

The greatsword entered through leather and mail near the collar and drove deep enough that his next breath came out wet; he dropped the axe, tried once to hold himself upright, and collapsed across the stones. For a heartbeat the fight around him continued from habit.

Then the nearest mercenary saw his captain dead; he ran.

The collapse spread faster than the attack had, and men on the rear slope turned back toward the trees; others threw down weapons and tried to force their way through companions who had not yet understood what was happening. The four FireStorm guards widened their line and cut off the easiest retreat while Arlan and Brienne kept pressure on the center; two mercenaries tried to climb the loose stone rather than face the shield line and slid back among their own men, taking another fighter down with them.

The ambushers had chosen the pass because it could cage six riders; once their captain died, the same ground caged them. No one chased blindly into the dark, and Arlan ordered the men to close the road first, then clear the slopes by pairs once the remaining fighters had broken into smaller groups.

The last resistance ended before a quarter hour had passed from the first charge, and more than eighty attackers had entered the pass. None escaped it.

One FireStorm guard had an arrow graze his upper arm; the others carried bruises, cuts, and dented shields, but all four remained on their feet. Arlan checked each man before he allowed himself to look beyond the immediate line.

Bodies covered the narrow road and lower slopes, and broken arrows lay among pine needles, and blood ran in thin dark channels wherever the stone dipped. Brienne stood with the point of her greatsword against the earth; her breathing had become rough. Blood ran openly from beneath the bandage on her left arm.

When she saw Arlan looking, her expression changed in a way the battle had not managed to produce; she looked almost ashamed.