Chapter 60 — The Man at the Pass

Cade Walker looked like a man who had already decided where he intended to die.

Blood covered the left half of his torso, and the crossbow bolt had entered high in the chest and remained lodged beneath torn leather; every breath moved the broken shaft. His six companions were in little better condition, and one leaned on a sword because his leg would not take full weight, and another had tied a strip of shirt around his forearm and bled through it anyway.

The fifty men from Nightsong were fresher, and they held the road in two loose ranks with enough space for the mounted captain to move behind them. The checkpoint itself belonged to FireStorm's approaches, a stone-and-timber barrier never designed to withstand fifty attackers but useful enough to narrow how many could enter together.

Their captain waved a wanted notice from horseback. "Cade Walker, murderer, deserter, traitor. Ordered taken alive if possible; dead if necessary."

Cade ignored him, and his eyes stayed on Arlan, and his six companions did the same, but their stances showed they expected betrayal from every direction. One man had already turned his blade slightly toward Cade, not from hostility but because if Nightsong charged he intended to cover the wounded captain's blind side. "Arlan Ashenblade," the captain called. "Lord Elton's order applies to anyone who shelters him. Stand aside."

Arlan took the fresh decree from inside his coat but did not raise it like a shield. "Ser Loras has just inspected FireStorm. Lord Renly has ordered Nightsong to cease armed interference until both houses are heard."

The captain barely glanced at the seal. "I left before any such order reached the garrison."

"It has reached you now."

"My order is to bring Walker back before he reaches Storm's End." The man's hand settled on his sword. "No hearing changes that."

Several soldiers behind him looked toward one another. Elton's command and Renly's decree could no longer be mistaken for the same authority, and the captain had just chosen between them aloud.

That answer surprised Cade more than the captain, and Arlan rode closer, stopping far enough that neither side could claim he had charged. "Cade Walker. Are you carrying evidence concerning Raymond Weil's theft of border funds and sale of weapons?" The wounded man stared at him. "Who told you that?"

"A man who reads. Answer."

Cade's jaw tightened. "Yes."

The captain shouted, "He lies!"

"Then you should be delighted for him to survive long enough to prove it."

The Nightsong officer's hand went to his sword, and Arlan looked at Cade. "If I take you inside FireStorm, you submit to my judgment while you are there; you do not start private revenge. You do not disappear with evidence; you do not command my men because you once commanded somebody else's." Cade shifted the axe despite the pain. "And if your judgment is to hand me to Elton?"

"Then accepting would be a poor decision."

One of Cade's wounded men gave a breathless laugh, and the captain lost patience first.

"Enough, take them. Anyone from FireStorm who interferes shares the charge."

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Fifty men began moving, and Cade closed his eyes for a heartbeat, perhaps expecting Arlan to retreat, and instead Arlan turned his head.

"Wayne, form up."

Twenty FireStorm guards moved at once. Round shields locked in a staggered front rather than one straight line, and spears settled through the gaps, and men who had once been farmers adjusted distance by habit now, each checking the shoulder beside him rather than staring at the enemy.

The Nightsong captain hesitated. "You have twenty," he shouted. "I have fifty."

Wayne raised his shield. "Then count carefully." The first rank charged, but Arlan did not draw immediately. His first task was to read the collision: whether Wayne's line held, whether Nightsong had archers hidden farther back, and whether Cade's men would panic and force themselves through the shield wall. None did.

Three spears struck the FireStorm shields almost together, and wood cracked, boots slid, but the line did not open, and the answering thrusts came low and fast, one into a thigh, another beneath a leather skirt, the third through the gap between shield and shoulder. The attackers had expected resistance, and they had not expected a formation.

Arlan stayed behind the center long enough to see the second collision. When one attacker squeezed past the right shield, Arlan moved in, turned the man's sword with the strong of his blade, and struck the wrist hard enough to make steel fall. He returned behind the formation before the next rank arrived; a lord joining the line did not mean a lord breaking the line, and Wayne's men absorbed it, stepped half a pace, and returned steel. The three-man groups worked exactly as Cade's reputation suggested good infantry should: one shield took force, one spear answered, the third man covered the opening created by both.

The captain tried to ride around the flank; Wayne saw him and shouted. Two archers on the rear line shifted aim; one arrow struck the horse high in the foreleg, and the animal screamed and went down hard enough to throw the captain into the dirt. That broke the confidence of the men nearest him.

The fight lasted less than a quarter hour. Refugees learned to duck whenever arrows crossed the open space, then dragged their wounded farther behind the barrier. Brienne avoided killing where the flat or pommel would end a threat, but she did not risk herself to preserve men who kept attacking with live steel. Wayne's guards were less restrained once one shield split and an attacker tried to stab through the gap.

The decisive moment came when the Nightsong line tried to widen around the checkpoint, and the ground beside the road dropped into scrub and broken rock; men leaving the firm track lost the ability to keep rank. Wayne shifted one three-man group sideways rather than chasing them, forcing the attackers either back onto spear points or farther into poor footing.

Nearly half the Nightsong force lay dead or too badly wounded to continue when the captain hit the ground. No second officer restored the line. Arlan forbade pursuit beyond bowshot; turning a defensive clash into the slaughter of fleeing men beneath Elton's colors would purchase no military advantage and would make Loras's inspection look foolish. FireStorm had two men grazed by arrows and several bruised behind shields, but no dead.

Cade had watched all of it. When the last attackers reached the broken rise beyond the road, he looked at the twenty-man line as though he had forgotten his own wound.

"Who taught them that formation?"

"Several people," Arlan said. "You may become one of them."

Cade's gaze snapped back to him, and Arlan dismounted. "First I need to know whether the reputation is deserved."

"Test me."

Wayne looked at the bolt in Cade's chest. "He needs a healer." Cade broke off the protruding shaft with one hand, and the movement drained what little color remained in his face.

"Then give me a command."

Cade's six companions tried to object. One called him a stubborn bastard; another pointed out, with admirable clarity, that Rodrick would remove the bolt whether Cade impressed anybody or not.

Movement appeared on the rise. The men who had fled were not running now. They had found an older serjeant, six bows, and enough courage to threaten a withdrawal burdened with wounded. Behind Arlan, the fallen horse pinned one FireStorm guard by the leg. A litter had split, eleven injured men could not walk, and the narrow checkpoint was clogged by bodies and broken timber.

Arlan looked from the rise to Cade. "Get everyone behind the inner bend. Ours, yours, and the prisoners who can be moved. Wayne will execute your orders. You have ten breaths before those bows find their range."

Cade planted the axe head in the dirt to keep himself upright. Blood ran down his side, but his eyes moved over the road once and stopped wandering.

"Good," he said.