Chapter 51 — The Measure of Steel

Arlan understood the look only because Brienne had explained enough of it before the ambush, and the dead did not trouble her. Being seen among them did.

She had spent years learning that people could praise a knight for killing cleanly in battle and recoil when the same strength belonged to a woman; now she stood over the mercenary captain with blood on both swords, waiting for the familiar judgment. The expectation had become a reflex: first came the fight, then the silence, then someone remembered her sex and decided the victory itself was another reason to despise her.

Arlan pointed toward a flat stone beside the road. "Sit."

Brienne blinked. "My lord?"

"Your arm is open again. Sit before you fall and make me carry you." That possibility offended her sufficiently to secure obedience.

One guard brought the small medicine roll while another checked the horses. Arlan cut away the soaked linen at Brienne's upper arm, rinsed dirt and blood with a measure of Red Sun Flame, and pressed clean cloth against the wound. She clenched her jaw when the spirit touched raw flesh but did not pull away. "Those first three," Arlan said while tightening the bandage, "were well done." Brienne stared at him.

"The axe was heavier than your sword expected," he continued. "You changed the angle before the impact reached your wrist. Then you used the short blade because the second man had already entered the greatsword's reach, and most fighters keep trying to use the weapon they planned to use. You used the one that was there."

Her eyes lowered to his hands. "You noticed that?"

"I was standing beside you."

"Men usually notice something else."

"Their loss."

He tied the linen and checked the pressure with two fingers, and the wound was ugly but not immediately dangerous; the deeper danger would be infection if they left dirt beneath the cloth for the remainder of the ride. Brienne swallowed once; the praise unsettled her more visibly than the arrow storm had. She could answer an axe, a sword, or an insult she had heard a hundred times; simple approval left her with no practiced defense. "I meant what I swore in the forest."

"Good. I dislike repeating contracts." A breath escaped her that was almost a laugh.

Arlan sat back on his heels. "You do not need me to pretend you are harmless in order to respect you. You killed men who were trying to kill us, and you held the line when arrows came down. That is what happened."

Brienne's eyes shone in the torchlight, but she did not turn away this time. "My father would tell me to put down the sword. He thinks he is protecting me when he says it. Others say worse because they enjoy saying it." She looked toward the mercenary captain's body. "I kept thinking that if I became good enough, they would have to stop."

"They won't." The bluntness surprised her. "People rarely surrender a useful cruelty because the target proves them wrong."

Stolen novel; please report.

Arlan had known men in his first life who resented skill most when it belonged to someone they despised. He rose and offered his hand. "So stop making their permission the prize." Brienne took it and stood.

"At FireStorm, if your sword fails, I will tell you. If your judgment fails, I will tell you. If you keep both, I have no use for what Rickard Weil thinks a woman should look like."

For the first time since he had met her, Brienne's smile appeared without embarrassment immediately following it. "Then I will try not to give you cause."

"That would make you unique among retainers." Wayne would have appreciated the complaint; Arlan found himself missing the man's habit of discovering practical objections immediately after every decision.

The guards had begun searching the dead by then, and they collected weapons first, then purses, papers, tokens, and anything that might identify an employer. Ordinary loot could wait; evidence could disappear beneath a boot or into a frightened man's pocket; Arlan ordered every marked item kept separate from common salvage and had one guard note where each had been found, because a token pulled from the wrong corpse would become an easy weakness once lawyers and lords began asking questions.

One guard called from the mercenary captain. "My lord." Arlan crossed the road.

A bronze token had been sewn beneath the dead captain's coat. It carried House Caron's nightingales, the sort of credential used to assure hired men that a local patron would honor payment without carrying the patron's full instructions. In the inner pocket lay a waxed account leaf rather than a confession.

The entries used initials, road markers, and divided sums. One payment had been made before the ambush. A larger amount followed confirmation that "A.A." had failed to reach Storm's End, while a separate line reserved a reward for delivering "the Tarth woman" alive. The dates matched the route and the attack. The captain also carried newly struck silver from a single Rainwood moneyer's batch and a stable chit for remounts charged to an account already connected to Auston Weil.

None of those pieces announced murder in plain words. Together with the shouted order heard by every surviving FireStorm guard, the attempt to keep Brienne alive, the Caron token, and the account tied to Auston Weil, they showed how the company had been paid and what result released the final sum. The last hand above that payment still had to be proved.

Brienne read the account leaf twice. "Is that enough?"

"Enough to force questions," Arlan said. "Answers require the witnesses and the accounts behind it."

He wrapped each item separately and had the guard keeping the notes record which corpse and pocket had produced it. The payment leaf, stable chit, coin batch, and shouted orders would have to support one another; none could carry the case alone.

The men gathered the Caron token with the account leaf and stable chit; Arlan left the rest of the dead where they had fallen; moving eighty bodies in darkness would cost time they no longer had, and Storm's End mattered more than a clean road. At first light, whoever controlled the nearest holdfast could send men to count and bury them, and for now, the bodies themselves were another witness that this had been an organized ambush rather than a chance encounter with a few outlaws.

They had just brought the horses together when new hoofbeats reached the pass, and every surviving guard turned toward the sound. "Shields," Arlan said. Brienne lifted the greatsword despite the fresh bandage. Torches appeared around the bend below them, but the riders did not spread into attack formation, and white cloaks caught the firelight first, followed by the crowned stag of House Baratheon. A dozen Storm's End men slowed when they saw the bodies; their leader reined in hard.

His eyes moved from the mercenaries to Brienne's bloody armor, then to Arlan standing beside the four FireStorm guards. "Arlan Ashenblade?"

"I am." The man exhaled as though the answer solved one problem and created another.

"Lord Renly sent us to find you. You are to ride for Storm's End without delay."

Arlan touched the document case at his side. "I was already going there."

"Then ride faster." The messenger looked once more at the dead captain and lowered his voice. "King Robert Baratheon is coming to Storm's End." For the first time that night, Arlan had no immediate answer.