[ June 30, 298 AC | Morning | Mountains of the Moon, Pine Forest ] The mountain wind sliced through the black pines, shredded by the needles into a sound like a widow’s continuous weeping.
More than three hundred mountain warriors wound along the narrow animal trail in a long, ragged line.
Chella of the Black Ears dropped from a high rock face as silently as an ibex and landed in front of Tyrion and Nero.
“Tin cans,” she said in a low, rough voice, pointing south.
“Twenty, maybe thirty.
Riding lowland horses.
A dozen walkers with crossbows behind them.” The air around the leaders went still.
At the words “tin cans” the breathing of the chieftains and elite fighters thickened at once.
Shagga edged half a step forward, knuckles white on his axe.
Behind Timett the Burned Men gave low, strange chuckles and began fingering the tinder at their belts.
A few Moon Brothers slipped quietly into the shadows, ready to vanish into the rocks.
Tyrion’s face tightened.
Bronn spat out the grass root he had been chewing and rested a hand on his hilt.
“Vale knights aren’t mountain bandits.
Let this lot charge them head-on and they’ll be paste under the hooves in a quarter of an hour.” “We can’t hide, and we can’t charge blind,” Nero said, eyes fixed on the direction Chella had indicated.
“They may not even be looking for us.” “Let them pass,” Tyrion murmured.
“The trial by combat already declared me innocent.
No matter how mad Lysa is, her knights have no legal right to seize a Lannister in these mountains.” “Forget it, Imp.” Bronn crushed the hope without mercy.
“You’ve got three hundred stinking mountain bandits at your back.
The moment the wind shifts those knights will smell the sheep fat on you from half a mile away.” Tyrion fell silent.
The blood debt between the Vale and the mountain clans ran deeper than any river.
Hundreds of them moving together left campfires, tracks, and dead sheep that could not be hidden.
A patrol appearing here was not strange.
The real problem was that Tywin’s son was walking among them.
If the knights realized the Imp was leading a small army of savages down the mountain, everything changed.
“We cannot wipe them out first,” Nero said, hand settling on his sword.
“That would drive the entire Vale into a frenzy.
Lord Tyrion—you go and talk.
I’ll set the fallback.
If they are only patrolling, we walk away clean.
If they want a fight, we break them and send them home.” The moment the wildlings understood he did not intend a total slaughter, restless growls rose.
Shagga’s throat rumbled.
Timett’s single eye fixed on Nero with cold intensity.
“If you want iron, keep your mouths shut.” Nero’s voice was colder than the wind.
“Charge them head-on and the horses will crush you.
If you want their armor you make the horses throw them, break their line, and let them suffocate inside their own tin shells.” He swept the leaders with a hard look.
“Everyone hide.
Anyone who charges early and gives away our position will not only receive no chainmail—I will take his head myself when the fighting ends.” Something in the tone made several chiefs’ hearts skip.
Once the assignments were given, Shagga licked his dry lips.
Timett gave a short snort and led his Burned Men into the pines on the left.
— Half an hour later the sound of iron-shod hooves on stone carried clearly through the trees.
Three knights in full-face helms, blue falcon devices on their chests, rounded the rock wall on tall warhorses.
Behind them came armored footmen leading spare mounts and a line of crossbowmen.
The narrow animal path was pure misery for heavy cavalry.
The horses snorted and tossed their heads.
Mud coated every piece of plate; thorns had torn the edges of the surcoats.
The lead knight’s visor was half raised.
His mount stopped dead the moment it cleared the rock.
Tyrion Lannister sat casually on a flat stone in the middle of the path, Bronn and Nero standing on either side with swords resting on their shoulders.
“Gods above,” the knight said, reining in hard.
“Where did these ghosts come from?
Tyrion Lannister.
Lady Lysa was certain the mountain rats had already skinned you or fed you to the shadowcats.” “Ser Donnel Waynwood, if I’m not mistaken.” Tyrion brushed dust from his boots and smiled pleasantly.
“The air in the Vale is too cold for my taste.
I was just heading down to find some Westerlands sun.
Care to join me for an ale?” Donnel’s eyes moved over the thin three-man group.
His hand drifted toward his sword.
“We are ordered to patrol the Mountains of the Moon.
We are not required to bring your head back… the trial already cleared you.
You may go.” His gaze flicked to the crossbowmen.
The tone hardened.
“But the mountain rats have lit more fires these past days and are gathering on this very path.
Lannister—did any of them try to take your gold on the way?” “Even mountain men can be reasonable,” Tyrion lied without a flicker.
“A little coin is cheaper than a life.” Donnel was only half convinced.
He had spent years dealing with these clans.
They never released a golden lamb easily—unless the lamb had offered something they could not refuse.
“You breathe too steadily when you lie, dwarf.” His eyes swept the unnaturally quiet pines on both sides.
The warhorses stamped and shifted, scenting something wrong.
“My lord!” a crossbowman shouted, pointing left.
“Pine-resin oil in the trees—and fresh tracks!” The moment shattered.
“Alert!
Form ranks!” Donnel slammed his visor down and tore his longsword free.
“Now!” Nero’s voice cut across the path at the same instant.
He did not order a massacre.
The command was precise and limited.
“Break the formation!
Scare the horses!
Disarm them!” A deep grinding roar came from the rock wall above.
Shagga and his men shoved several massive boulders over the edge.
They smashed onto the path behind the patrol, sealing the footmen’s retreat.
At the same moment a dozen snakes of fire shot from the left-hand pines.
Timett’s Burned Men hurled burning oil-soaked burlap onto the dead leaves under the cavalry’s hooves.
Flame and thick smoke erupted.
Warhorses screamed and reared.
The tight Vale line tore apart.
“Kill!” Donnel spurred forward, lowering his lance-arm into a charge aimed straight at the man giving orders.
A trained knight always struck the head of the snake first.
Hooves thundered.
Nero did not retreat.
Black Blade Mastery rose clean and cold.
At the last possible instant he dropped low and stepped aside.
His left hand scooped a handful of dirt and gravel and flung it hard into the narrow gap of the warhorse’s visor.
The animal shrieked, blinded, and reared.
Donnel swayed violently; the heavy sword stroke went wide.
Nero moved in.
He reversed his grip and slammed the heavy iron pommel squarely into the knight’s sword wrist.
A sharp crack of dislocation.
The fine steel blade dropped.
Nero followed with a hard kick to the weak joint on the inside of the armored thigh.
Donnel toppled from the saddle and crashed into the mud.
With the commander down the fight became a one-sided harvest.
The remaining two mounted knights roared and charged through flying stones and arrows, dragging Donnel up and shoving him back onto a horse.
Donnel twisted, clutching his ruined wrist.
When he saw the three hundred armed mountain warriors rising from every side of the path, his eyes went wide with pure shock.
Scattered beasts had been shaped into an army.
“Withdraw!” he snarled through clenched teeth.
The surviving riders closed around him, smashed a bloody path open, and fled toward the Vale.
The wildlings howled and started after them.
Nero drove his sword point-first into the dirt, blocking the way.
“Do not chase a desperate foe.” “Why leave any of them alive?” Timett’s single eye burned.
“Our goal is to reach the Lannisters, not to die fighting the Vale in this mud.” Nero turned to face the mass of savages.
“They loosed crossbows and set fires.
The outposts will notice soon enough.
Kill every man and Lysa Arryn will send thousands into these mountains.
Let Donnel escape with that fear in his gut and the Vale will learn there is an army of hundreds up here.
Fear will make them lock their gates instead of hunting us.” The wildlings only half understood, but the weapons and armor scattered across the path spoke a language they knew perfectly.
Greed quickly drowned the urge to pursue.
[Ding.
Battle settlement complete.
Enemy unit with special trait (Veteran Knight: Eryn Moore) fallen in ambush.] [Kill-loot mechanism triggered.
Choose one of the following:] [Option 1: Loot the complete white trait [Armor Gap Tracking].] [Description: In close foot combat you know the weak points of cold iron armor as if they were your own.
Accuracy against unarmored gaps increased by 15%.] [Option 2: Extract the high-level potential of this specialty and obtain a green trait fragment [Armor Gap Tracking] (1/3).] [Description: Once completed, grants insight into weak points plus an “Armor Penetration” physical judgment that ignores a portion of defense.] Nero studied the panel, eyes moving once to the body of a Vale veteran crushed under one of the fallen boulders.
The system’s choice was deliberately cruel: immediate usable strength versus a slower, higher-ceiling investment.
In a world about to be torn apart by greater powers, ordinary white traits would not be enough.
He needed cards that might one day matter against monsters like the Mountain or the Hound.
[Selected: Extract green trait fragment [Armor Gap Tracking] (1/3).] The fighting was finished.
Tyrion climbed onto a boulder and watched the wildlings strip chainmail and fine steel with greedy hands.
“Remember the rule Nero set!” he called out, clapping once.
“The tribes that held position and obeyed orders get first choice of this gear!” A roar of fierce delight answered him.
The fight had cost almost nothing—only a handful of minor wounds—and the clans now owned the weapons and armor of a Vale patrol.
The painted promise of the Vale of Arryn had finally become real steel and real mail.
Nero looked at the blood on the stones and felt no relief.
“Once that knight reaches safety the Vale will know everything,” Bronn said, wiping mud from his dagger.
“He may come back with hundreds.” Tyrion did not answer at once.
He turned and stared west, past the last broken ridges of the Mountains of the Moon.
There, on the edge of the open plains, a vast sea of red campfires already glowed.
Even at this distance the outline of a great banner—golden lion on a field of crimson—was clear.
“He will not come back,” Tyrion said quietly, voice stripped of both joy and sorrow.
“Because we have already left these godsforsaken mountains.” Nero saw the same sea of fire.
Behind them the Vale was waking.
Ahead waited the suffocating weight of the Lannister lion—Tywin himself.
He thought of the green fragment still incomplete in his mind.
An ordinary Vale knight had already carried a trait worth a green-tier piece.
What color would the system assign to Jaime Lannister’s swordsmanship?
What judgment would it pass on a man like Tywin, who held the entire Westerlands in one cold hand and made both lords and kings fall silent?
There was no answer yet.
He only knew that among those red-gold fires waited things far more dangerous than any Vale knight.
Tyrion’s mouth curved into a complicated smile as he looked toward the distant camps.
He was finally returning to his brother’s side.
Whether that side was sanctuary or simply a colder, larger cage remained to be seen.