[ July 3, 298 AC | Noon | White Willow Crossing Forest ] The mist in the white poplar forest did not lift with the rising sun.
Instead the canopy pressed it lower, carrying the long-rotted scent of damp leaves.
The caravan stretched like a long snake along the narrow muddy road.
Spears of the Lannister veterans kept catching in the low bushes on either side, making the whole procession stumble forward like a line of blind men walking toward their own graves.
“Whoosh—!” An abrupt, sharp hiss tore through the silence.
A Lannister veteran on the far left froze, looked down at the feathered arrow that had punched through his throat, and fell face-first into the mud without a sound.
“Ambush!” someone shrieked, voice cracking.
The cry was the signal.
A deafening war shout erupted from the thick fog on both sides of the poplar forest.
“Winter is Coming!” “For the North!
Kill the Lannister dogs!” Dozens of light cavalry on ponies and infantry carrying mismatched weapons charged out of the mist.
They wore ragged leather, carried gray-white Stark banners, and loosed arrows like a swarm of locusts toward the grain train.
The already undisciplined Lannister veterans collapsed at once.
Some threw down their spears and fled.
Others tried to crawl under the wagons.
“Protect the grain!” Nero drew his longsword and roared.
There was not a trace of panic in his eyes.
He observed the “northmen” with cold precision.
Intelligence 23 turned his mind into a rapid tactical calculator.
One glance was enough to expose a pile of clumsy flaws.
When real northerners shouted “Winter is Coming,” the words carried ice and the smell of blood.
These voices held the smoother cadence of the Westerlands coast.
The arrows were black-feathered in the northern style, yet the boots that sank into the mud left the triangular anti-slip stud marks only Westerlands smiths produced.
Most telling of all was the charge itself.
They made no attempt to cut the head or tail of the column, nor did they try to surround the fleeing guards.
They drove straight for the dozen outermost grain wagons.
Several fire arrows wrapped in oilcloth landed on those wagons.
The coarse burlap flared at once, revealing the moldy oats mixed with sand inside.
“Burn the Lannister grain!
For the Young Wolf!” the masked leader shouted with theatrical force.
“My lord!
The grain wagons are on fire!” Roland Leyton drew his short sword and reined in beside Nero, face bloodless.
“Let them burn.” Nero watched without expression.
“If they do not burn the rotten wheat on the outside, how can the account be balanced?” Roland stared.
Watching the “northmen” diligently hurl torches onto the moldy sandy grain, he felt a sudden absurdity.
When a dozen perimeter wagons were fully ablaze, the masked leader apparently decided the performance had lasted long enough.
He waved a bloodstained longsword and pointed at Nero in the center of the column and the few clerks still hiding under the wagons.
“Slaughter that commander!
Leave no survivors!” Dozens of masked infantry grinned as they crossed the mud pits and lunged toward the empty wagons in the middle of the train.
In their eyes these were helpless lambs waiting for the knife.
“That’s enough.” Nero watched the nearest enemies close to within ten paces.
The corner of his mouth curled into a cold arc.
He raised his longsword so the blade caught the firelight and roared: “Rip the covers!
Kill!” The waterproof tarps covering the supposedly empty wagons were torn away in a single motion.
A beastly roar ten times more violent than the false northern war cry exploded outward.
Seventeen figures reeking of old blood and gore—like demons crawling out of hell—leapt from the wagons straight into the enemy ranks.
Kaan led the charge.
He did not even bother with a weapon at first.
He smashed a masked man’s nose with his helmet, ripped the longsword from the man’s hand, and drove it backhanded into another enemy’s belly.
The ambushers froze in pure shock.
They had expected grain, or at most a handful of terrified laborers.
They had never imagined a pack of Mountain Clans madmen armed with battle-axes and broken swords waiting inside.
The fight flipped in an instant.
This was no longer a battle.
It was a one-sided massacre.
“Retreat!
It’s a trap!
Back to the forest!” the masked leader shouted in terror and wheeled his horse to flee.
At that exact moment two towering walls of fire erupted across the road behind the column.
The two Burned Men who had been guarding the oil wagons had already rolled several barrels onto the retreat path and then, with manic delight, dropped their torches.
“No burning the grain wagons—but we can burn the road!” one of them, half his face a ruin of scars, laughed wildly in the firelight.
The escape route was sealed by roaring flame.
In the center of the chaos an ambusher was forced under a grain wagon.
In desperation he slashed wildly and spotted Gawen still hugging the ledger and cowering beneath a wheel.
“Die!” The man raised a short knife and lunged.
Roland Leyton gritted his teeth and rushed forward, trying to parry with his short sword.
The courtly swordsmanship he had practiced in the main army was useless in the mud.
The ambusher kicked him hard in the knee.
Roland dropped with a grunt.
The short knife was already descending— Steel rang.
A black blade flashed past Roland’s ear with surgical precision and caught the knife.
Nero turned his wrist.
The edge slid down the short knife’s guard and cleanly severed four of the attacker’s fingers.
A heavy boot followed, slamming into the man’s chest and hurling him screaming into the fire.
Nero sheathed the sword without even glancing at the fingers lying in the mud.
“Grip your sword properly.” He glanced at Roland, then at Gawen, who still clutched the ledger and had clearly lost control of his bladder.
“And hold on to that false ledger.
As long as you do not let go of it, I guarantee you will not die today.” Roland climbed out of the mud, breathing hard.
He looked at Nero’s broad back and, for the first time, lowered his head of his own will.
“Yes, Commander.” The ambushers began to break.
Some still shouted in northern dialect, but when the curses came the Westerlands accent slipped through.
Roland’s expression changed as he heard it.
“That’s the accent of Lannisport.” Nero nodded once.
The slaughter ahead was nearly finished.
Kaan, moving like a fully enraged bull, dragged the masked leader and his horse into the mud together.
He raised his weapon to finish the man.
“Kaan!” Nero’s shout cut through the noise.
“Leave him alive!” Kaan’s eyes were bloodshot, chest heaving.
He remembered Gonso lying in the mud.
He remembered the stolen axe.
In the end he forced himself to reverse the blade and smashed the flat hard against the back of the man’s skull.
“Alive!” Kaan roared through clenched teeth.
“This one is alive!” Nero walked over to the leader who was struggling to rise and crouched down.
Kaan kicked the man behind the knee, forcing him to kneel.
“Northerners?” Kaan sneered.
“Do northerners smell of pig on the soles of their feet?” The captive lifted his head, mouth full of bloody foam.
“Long live Stark.” Nero ignored the slogan.
He seized the man’s boot, drew a short knife, and pried a broken iron nail from the gap in the sole.
The nail was caked in mud.
When wiped clean, a tiny wild-boar sigil was revealed.
Roland’s face went completely white.
“Pig trotters under wolf skins.” Nero lifted the rivet on the tip of the short knife, turned it in the firelight, and the corner of his mouth curved into a satisfied, cold smile.
“Roland, get ready to work.
We’re going to collect interest.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Fish_Cakery Comment and vote if you enjoyed it—it really makes me happy!
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