As Ser Charles Costa hesitated, Jon Snow and his five riders slammed into the Bloody Mummers.
Westerosi knights favored the "couched lance" charge—a devastating but fragile maneuver where the lance was designed to shatter upon impact to prevent the rider from being unhorsed by the recoil. Once the wood splintered, a knight had to retreat for a fresh spear or draw his sword.
Aldric, having no experience with the joust, had trained his students differently. He favored the two-handed polearm style of his homeland. Jon and his men carried eight-foot pikes designed for thrusting rather than a single impact. They lacked the sheer momentum of a couched charge but offered a lethal, persistent flexibility.
The reach of the pikes told immediately. Three Mummers were skewered and pitched from their saddles in the first heartbeat of contact. However, weight of numbers soon told. The Mummers swarmed the six riders. In the chaotic swirl of steel and horseflesh, Jon and one other warrior managed to punch through the encirclement; the other four were cut down, tumbling into the mud.
Ser Charles, watching from the periphery, shook his head. "It's over," he muttered to his men. "Back to the manor! Everyone inside!" He abandoned the Golden Dawn infantry, racing for the safety of his gates.
Jon and his remaining rider circled the clearing, drawing the Mummer cavalry away from the main body of the infantry. Vargo Hoat, sensing blood, prepared to run down the footmen. But he found no opening. The Golden Dawn infantry had already snapped back into a dense Swan Wing square, a bristling forest of steel that refused to break.
Hoat cursed, wheeling his mount. He decided to finish the two escaping riders first. If he killed their commander, the rest would crumble. But as he turned his horse, his heart stuttered.
The four riders he had just cut down were standing up.
They didn't just crawl; they rose with a terrifying, purposeful speed, reclaiming their pikes and stepping back into the fray.
"How?" Hoat hissed. He distinctly remembered his horse trampling one of them into the muck.
A sudden chill raced down his spine. He looked back at the infantry square. He had seen his men land killing blows on those footmen earlier, yet they were all still there, staring at him with eyes that didn't know fear.
"Witchcraft! These are revenants!" Hoat screamed in Tyloesi, the high-pitched lisp of his voice cutting through the din. "Pull back! We fight the dead!"
With his cavalry reduced to fewer than ten men, Hoat fled into the fields. His sellswords, seeing their leader turn tail, didn't stay to argue. They spurred their horses and vanished into the treeline.
Jon's men prepared to give chase, but a sharp blast from Jon's whistle stopped them. "Let them go," Jon commanded. "They won't come back today, and we have work to do."
Jon led his men to the manor's closed gates. He looked up at Charles Costa on the battlements. "Is this your gratitude, Ser Charles? We bleed to save your home, and you bar the door?"
Charles was trembling, his face a mask of sweating confusion. He had expected the monks to be slaughtered. He had looked down on St. Maur's for years as a nest of soft, corrupt men who sold wine and played at holiness. He had felt no guilt in stealing their land.
But the accusation in Jon's eyes burned. "I... I saw you die!" Charles shouted down, his voice cracking. "I saw you cut down and trampled, yet you stand! You are not men of the Seven. You are demons crawled out of the pits!"
Jon didn't blink. Had Kevin been here, he might have ordered the gates burned. But Jon was a son of the North; he knew the value of a cold silence. He didn't defend himself. Instead, he turned his voice toward the peasants and soldiers huddled inside and out.
"My Master, the Lightbringer, was sent by the Seven to bring life to the broken!" Jon bellowed. "The brothers of St. Maur's have cast aside the old rot to embrace the Sun. From this day, any man—lord or beggar—is welcome at the monastery. Any who are sick, any who are wounded, will find the Light's mercy!"
He turned to his men. "Sunwalkers! Tend the fallen!"
The Sunwalkers broke formation, moving across the bloody field. They didn't just seek their own. They knelt beside the Costa farmers who had been used as human shields, and the militia who had been cut down by Hoat's riders.
One youth, the same one who had dreamed of trading Sunwalker scalps for gold, lay clutching his shattered shoulder. When a middle-aged Sunwalker with a graying beard knelt over him, the boy whimpered, "Please... be gentle, Ser."
"It won't be gentle," the man grunted. "The Light stings before it heals."
The Sunwalker pressed his glowing palms to the mangled flesh, whispering a prayer to Anshe. The boy screamed as a searing, itchy heat tore through his nerves, but when the light faded, his shoulder was whole.
The Sunwalker patted him on the head. "You're lucky, lad. You've lived to see a new world. Come to the monastery when you're fit. Learn how a man is meant to live."
Within minutes, every living soul on the field had been mended. They sat in the dirt, pale from blood loss but breathing. The people on the battlements watched in a deafening silence. The miracle was undeniable.
Jon kept his riders positioned before the gate, a silent guard against any "knightly" treachery. Once the work was done, he gave the order to march.
As the sun began to dip, the Golden Dawn moved north in a perfect, disciplined column, their long shadows stretching across the Costa fields.
Ser Charles watched them go, a hollow feeling in his gut. He realized he hadn't just met a new neighbor; he had insulted a power that made the Lannisters look like children playing with sticks.
"Father, what now?" his son, Ser Will, asked. Will was twenty, a knight of the tourneys who had lost his armor in his first tilt. Beside the boy called Jon Snow, he felt like a mummer in a costume.
"I don't know," Charles whispered. "Hoat's men are wolves, but these... these are lions of a different stripe. We cannot fight them."
"Then we pay the price," Will suggested. "We did not draw blood against them. You 'judged the field' poorly, perhaps, but we can fix it. They are neighbors. Neighbors need allies."
Charles looked at his son, his face sour. Judging the field? The boy was calling him a coward in polite words. But he was right.
Back at the monastery, John accepted the survivors Jon had brought back. "Aldric brought back hundreds," John laughed when Jon expressed concern about the Costa tenants following them. "What's a dozen more? We'll find them work at the lake."
For three days, the Costas were silent. No one came to stop the construction of the River-Hammer.
On the fourth day, the forge was ready. As John and the carpenters began the final tuning of the axle, a wagon approached from the Costa estate, escorted by six riders.
A brown-haired youth dismounted and knelt before John. "Brother John, I am Will Costa. My father was wounded in the pursuit of the Mummers. His leg is pierced, and the fever takes him. He begs for the mercy of the Light. If you help him, House Costa stands with St. Maur's from this day forth."
On the wagon, Ser Charles lay propped up on pillows, looking remarkably pathetic for a man of his stature. "Brother John... Commander Jon... help me," he wheezed.
John and Jon stepped to the wagon and pulled back the blanket. Beneath the bandages was a clean, two-inch puncture on his thigh.
They shared a look. The "wound" was barely a scratch, a tactical injury designed to provide a face-saving excuse for surrender.
John suppressed a smile and reached for the Light. "Of course, Ser Charles. Let the Sun mend your... 'terrible' burden."