The open ground in the Darry camp where the trial by combat had been set was already packed shoulder to shoulder.
Darry’s vassals, knights and their squires, and common soldiers filled the space.
They muttered to one another in low voices, every eye fixed on the small group of figures in the center of the field.
Most looks held curiosity.
More than a few held open confusion.
They wanted to see where this young Stinkfort knight had found the nerve to challenge the well-known Ser Jocelyn to a fight to the death.
“Hey… why the hell is Lord Solomon doing this?” one soldier whispered to his companion.
They had both taken a liking to the young noble.
Another answered just as quietly, “Nobles treat their house’s honor like life itself.
Like something out of a singer’s tale.
Poor little lord.” On the far side of the crowd, Ser Jocelyn—too fat to move easily—was being helped into his clothes by his squires.
Per the agreement, he wore no armor.
In his mind, he didn’t need plate to deal with one half-grown boy and two farmers.
Ser Jocelyn’s cold eyes flicked toward Solomon’s small group standing quietly nearby.
The corner of his mouth pulled into a cruel curve.
He took the bright, freshly polished longsword his squire offered.
The blade caught the sunlight and threw back a hard, cold gleam.
“What a fool,” he muttered, voice thick with contempt.
In his eyes, Solomon’s fate was already sealed.
Right here, right now, this ignorant little noble would die.
He intended to play with him first—let him suffer like a cat playing with a mouse before the end.
He had never expected Solomon to declare a trial by combat and hand him a legal chance to kill a knight.
Even a minor one.
Even a hereditary lord of a tiny patch of marsh.
Ser Ronald strode quickly to Solomon’s side, face still tight with displeasure, voice low and urgent.
“Ser Solomon.
Last chance.
Withdraw now and this can still end.
We can put it behind us.” Solomon looked at him calmly and shook his head.
“Thank you for the offer, Ser Ronald.” “I’ve made my decision.” Ser Ronald let out a heavy breath.
He said nothing more and stepped aside.
There was no point.
The boy had already chosen.
Ser Ronald was already preparing himself to send Solomon’s head home to whatever was left of House Stinkfort.
An old man in a plain septon’s robe walked slowly into the center of the field.
He was the army’s septon, here to preside over and witness the trial by combat.
His aged voice carried across the murmuring crowd with a grave, solemn weight.
The noise died almost at once.
“Today, Ser Solomon Stinkfort of Stinkfort and Ser Jocelyn Buck of Darry will settle their honor and their guilt by the sword.” “The blades are the hands of the gods.
The one who lives is proven innocent.” “The Seven bear witness.
Life and death are decided by steel.” “Let the Father judge you both fairly.” “Begin!” The septon gestured for both sides to advance.
Solomon and Ser Jocelyn faced each other across five meters of open ground.
Ser Jocelyn lifted his chin, looking down his nose at Solomon, voice loud and arrogant.
“I, Ser Jocelyn Buck of Darry!” Solomon’s voice was quieter, but it carried clearly to every ear.
“I, Ser Solomon Stinkfort, stand here to judge your crimes.” No more words were spoken.
Both men stepped back and moved to the marked positions at opposite ends of the field, thirty meters apart.
Luden and Rosslyn gripped the fine longswords Lord Raymond had given them.
Their palms were slick with sweat.
They stood tense at Solomon’s sides.
Ser Jocelyn rolled his thick neck.
The joints popped loudly.
He spoke to his two squires without looking at them.
“You two stay right where you are.
Today I’m killing these three fools myself.” The moment the words left his mouth, Ser Jocelyn let out a furious roar and exploded forward, sword raised, charging straight at Solomon like a maddened boar.
“Lord Solomon!” Luden and Rosslyn shouted, starting forward on instinct.
“Stand down.” Solomon’s voice was quiet but carried an authority that stopped them cold.
They froze where they stood, forced to watch the heavy, charging figure close the distance.
More than a few soldiers in the crowd squeezed their eyes shut.
They couldn’t bear to watch what was about to happen.
In their minds, the slender young man was about to lose his head.
The killing was seconds away.
But just as Ser Jocelyn’s sword came screaming down toward Solomon’s skull— A piercing, pig-like scream tore through the camp.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” Eyes flew open.
What they saw made every man draw in a sharp breath.
Ser Jocelyn was staggering backward, right wrist gone, blood fountaining from the stump.
His hand and half his forearm lay on the mud a few feet away.
Solomon stood exactly where he had been, Myrish longsword angled toward the ground, a few bright drops of blood on the steel.
Those who had seen it clearly would later swear the movement had been faster than thought—elegant, almost like a dance, with no wasted strength and yet completely lethal.
“My hand!
My hand!” Ser Jocelyn shrieked, eyes wide with disbelief and agony.
He had never imagined this.
Not this fast.
Pain nearly dropped him, but years of fighting kept him moving on raw instinct.
His left hand yanked the dagger from his belt.
He charged again, eyes bloodshot, swinging wildly like a rabid dog.
Solomon’s eyes stayed cold.
His body shifted, light and precise.
To Ser Jocelyn it looked as if the boy had vanished for a heartbeat—then reappeared on his other side.
Another flash of steel.
“Ahhhhhhh!” A worse scream than the first.
Ser Jocelyn’s left wrist was severed clean.
The dagger and the hand holding it hit the ground together.
Both arms now sprayed blood.
Ser Jocelyn’s legs gave out.
He dropped to his knees, then collapsed forward.
Solomon gave him no chance to recover.
He stepped in and drew the Myrish blade across both of Ser Jocelyn’s eyes in one smooth motion.
“My eyes!
My eyes!” Ser Jocelyn howled, clutching his face with ruined arms.
Blood poured between his fingers.
He was finished as a fighter.
But Solomon didn’t stop.
He moved behind the kneeling man like wind and made two quick, precise cuts behind each knee.
Ser Jocelyn’s legs buckled completely.
He went down hard, tendons severed.
He writhed on the bloody ground like a fish thrown onto dry land, like a pig with its throat cut, screaming in raw agony and terror.
The sound was so desperate, so horrible, that the watching vassals, knights, and soldiers felt their skin crawl.
Some of the younger soldiers turned their faces away.
They looked at Solomon with open fear.
And something close to awe.
“Too cruel,” someone muttered.
“No knightly mercy in him at all.” “By the Seven, this man will be punished by the gods.” Ser Jocelyn lay pinned by pain, still screaming for his squires.
“Malwyn!
Tobiah!
Help me!
Help me!
Get over here and help me!” His two squires stood frozen a short distance away, faces bloodless, legs shaking so hard they could barely stand.
They made no move to come forward.
Solomon watched the man thrashing on the ground with cold indifference.
He slowly raised his sword, point downward, and drove it through Ser Jocelyn’s shoulder blade deep into the earth.
The blade pinned him like an insect.
Ser Jocelyn let out a broken, animal howl and convulsed, but he could no longer move.
Solomon glanced at Luden and Rosslyn and gave a small nod.
The two men looked at each other.
Shock and fear were plain on their faces.
The Solomon they knew had always been kind to them.
They tightened their grips on their swords, roared, and charged the two terrified squires.
Solomon stayed where he was.
He understood that some roads the two farmers had to walk for themselves.
If they wanted to go further in this world, they would have to get blood on their hands.
Just like him.
In truth his own body was trembling, but he forced it still.
In Westeros, showing fear or hesitation was the fastest way to die later.
He had to live through this.
All of it.
Luden charged with a raw, wordless roar, years of swallowed humiliation pouring out of him at once.
“You dog-fucking bastards!
You dared lay hands on me!” The two squires were already broken by what they had seen.
When Luden and Rosslyn came at them like avenging demons they panicked completely.
Their sword work turned clumsy and desperate.
It took less than a minute.
Both squires were cut down.
One of them clutched a severed leg and screamed for mercy.
Luden stood over him, chest heaving, eyes red.
His sword hesitated for a heartbeat.
Then he remembered Solomon’s words.
He remembered every humiliation he had ever swallowed.
He raised the blade high and brought it down with a furious shout.
The steel split the man’s skull.
Red and white sprayed across the mud.
Luden kept hacking, again and again, venting every buried rage of his life into the corpse.
On the other side, Rosslyn had his opponent down and begging, face streaked with tears and snot.
“Please—please don’t kill me—!” Rosslyn’s sword hand shook.
He looked helplessly toward Solomon.
Solomon met his eyes with a calm, empty expression.
No anger.
No pity.
No signal either way.
Rosslyn drew a shaky breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again.
When he opened them the hesitation was gone.
Only resolve remained.
He swung.
The squire’s head came off cleanly and rolled several feet.
Ser Jocelyn, pinned to the earth by the sword through his shoulder, heard his squires’ screams cut off one after another.
He knew it was over.
Whatever was left of his will shattered.
His voice came out hoarse and broken.
“Kill me… please kill me… Ser Solomon… give me a clean end… just finish it…” Solomon walked over to him slowly and looked down at the man who had been so arrogant only minutes earlier.
Now he writhed on the bloody ground like a pig that had been bled out.
Solomon reached down, took hold of the Myrish sword’s hilt, and pulled it free from the shoulder.
Fresh blood welled up in a thick pulse.
Ser Jocelyn screamed again—raw pain, no mercy coming.
Solomon raised the bloody blade, point toward the sky, and let his gaze sweep across the silent, staring crowd.
His voice carried clearly through the stillness.
“This is what happens when you insult me.” “When you insult House Stinkfort.” “There will be no mercy.
No clean end.” “Only endless pain and torment from this day forward.”