The entire skirmish had unfolded with the terrifying speed of a summer storm.
From the moment Eddard had burst from the treeline with the "Ice Warriors" to the moment he used the forbidden weight of his magic to paralyze the Reach's greatest general, only a few minutes had passed. In that heartbeat of time, the world had shifted. Eddard now sat astride his warhorse, the paralyzed Earl of Horn Hill draped over his pommel like a sack of salted grain, and the dark, smoke-patterned steel of Heartbreaker gripped firmly in his hand.
But the Reach army was not a mindless beast. While their lord had been snatched, the officers beneath the Striding Hunter banner were veterans of a hundred campaigns. They didn't panic; they reacted.
"ASSEMBLE!" "THIRD PLATOON, FRONT!" "PIKES UP!"
The commands were sharp, iron-shod echoes across the King's Road. Even without Tarly's voice, the infantry moved with a mechanical, terrifying precision. Long-handled spears and heavy oak shields snapped into place, forming dense, bristling walls of steel. They fanned out across the open ground, kicking up clouds of dust as they attempted to sweep the fields and pin the Karstark cavalry against the forest edge.
Eddard saw the pincer closing. He had his prize, and he had no intention of staying to test the thickness of Tarly's infantry squares. He glanced toward the mass of Bolton soldiers, hoping to spot the pale eyes of the Leech, but Roose Bolton had been true to his nature. The man had vanished into the center of a five-hundred-man infantry block the second the first bolt of lightning hit. He was unreachable.
"DON'T LINGER!" Eddard roared to his men. "FOLLOW THE SUNBURST!"
To clear the path for the retreat, Eddard spurred his mount into a frantic gallop, crisscrossing the gaps in the emerging enemy lines. He swung Heartbreaker with a fervor he hadn't felt with his heavy battle-axe. The Valyrian steel was a revelation. It didn't just strike; it glided.
An iron-bound shield was raised to block his path; Heartbreaker sheared through the wood and the iron rim as if they were wet parchment, taking the soldier's arm with it. A sergeant tried to thrust a spear at his horse's chest; Eddard's counter-stroke severed the ash wood shaft and the man's throat in one fluid motion. The sword didn't chip, it didn't vibrate, and even after tasting the blood of a dozen men, the blade remained as bright and pristine as the day it was forged five hundred years ago.
What a damn good sword, Eddard thought, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He gathered his riders, though a quick scan of the ranks made his stomach sink. Nearly half of the men who had charged out with him were gone, unhorsed in the initial clash or pulled down by the sheer weight of the Reach infantry. There was no time for a tally of the dead.
"BREAK OUT!"
A triple-rank of Tarly pikes blocked the road north, their points leveled like a hedgehog's spines. Before Eddard could commit his tired horses to a suicidal charge, a fresh roar erupted from the eastern woods.
"THE BROTHERHOOD!"
Beric Dondarrion and his reserve cavalry burst from the shadows, hitting the flank of the pike-wall with the force of a falling mountain. The impact shattered the Tarly formation, sending soldiers tumbling into the dirt.
"Well done, Lord Beric!" Eddard laughed, a wild, jagged sound. He guided his horse through the opening, the hooves of his mount trampling those too slow to crawl away.
They struck and vanished. Never lingering, never giving the Reach archers time to find their range. The Karstark and BWB cavalry merged into a single, blood-streaked column and galloped north, leaving behind a battlefield filled with cursing officers and the groans of the dying.
A few miles up the road, they encountered a small unit of Tyrell stragglers, men in green-and-gold surcoats who were still struggling to don their mail after hearing the distant sounds of battle. Eddard didn't even slow down. He led the charge straight through the center of their camp, leaving a trail of trampled tents and headless corpses in his wake.
After the third breakthrough, Eddard felt the fatigue finally clawing at his mind. The use of multiple [Weakness] and [Magic Arrow] spells had left his head pounding, his vision swimming with dark spots. He signaled the turn, and the entire unit plunged back into the deep, claustrophobic safety of the forest.
Inside the woods, the world slowed down. The warhorses could no longer gallop; they picked their way through thorny briars and low-hanging oak branches. Eddard shifted his vision back to Blackfeather one last time.
From the sky, he saw the chaos they had left behind. Hundreds of ragged, desperate wildlings, the Mountain Clans were surging out of the trees to scavenge the battlefield. They were stripping the dead of weapons and boots, ignoring the Tarly officers who were trying to drive them away. In the center of the road, Eddard saw Dickon Tarly surrounded by a group of agitated commanders, the boy's face pale and tear-streaked as he stared at the spot where his father had been taken. Roose Bolton stood nearby, his pale eyes watching the treeline with a cold, unreadable expression.
Suddenly, Eddard's vision went black. The [Animal Friend] duration had expired.
The sky, which had been heavy with clouds all morning, finally broke. A light, cold rain began to patter against the leaves, the sound quickly growing into a steady drumbeat.
Plop.
A large raindrop hit Eddard's visor. He looked up, feeling the shift in the air. The long summer was officially dead. The rainy, mud-slicked autumn of the Riverlands had begun.
He pulled a thick black wool cloak from his saddlebag and draped it over his shoulders, ensuring it also covered the paralyzed form of Randyll Tarly. He had bound the Earl with heavy rope, securing him to the saddle pommel with a dozen knots.
"Boy," Tarly's voice came - weak, muffled, but still carrying the authority of a man who owned a mountain. "You took a suicidal risk. You traded the lives of twenty elite riders just to snatch one old man. Do you truly think the math favors you?"
Eddard was surprised. He had expected Tarly to be silent, to be the stoic "First in Battle" martyr. Instead, the general was testing him.
"Lord Tarly," Eddard said, his voice steady as he navigated his horse around a fallen log. "You are renowned across the Seven Kingdoms. Without you, those ten thousand men behind us are just a leaderless mob. I've taken the brain out of the Lion's army. I've left your son, a boy of thirteen to deal with the mess. Do you think he'll have the heart to storm the Twins while his father hangs from the battlements?"
Tarly didn't answer immediately. He lay slumped, his breath hitching as the effects of the magic slowly began to fade from his limbs.
"Furthermore," Eddard continued, his voice rising for his men to hear, "none of my warriors are cowards. They fight for gold, yes, but they also fight for the North. Every man I lost today will be honored. Their families will never know hunger again. To me, that is a bargain I would make every day of the week."
Randyll Tarly let out a weak, raspy retort. "My son is a Tarly. He will not abandon his duty for a prisoner. He will march on your bridge, boy. He will tear down your walls and he will find your 'King' and he will do what I should have done at the Ford."
"Then let him try, Lord Tarly," Eddard said, his eyes fixed on the forest path ahead. "But he'll have to find us in the rain first."
He kicked his horse into a brisk trot. The Twins were still miles away, and he had a Valyrian sword to clean and a legend to break.
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