The storm had arrived, and it was made of black iron.
Gendry swung his warhammer in a tight, efficient arc, crushing the chest of a Myrish sellsword before the man could even scream. Beside him, Longspear and the Wolf Pack veterans rode into the gap, their longswords rising and falling like the teeth of a great beast. The Myrish line, already wavering under the pressure of the "Anvil," began to disintegrate.
"Gods! It's the Hammer King!"
"The Commander of the Wolf Pack!"
The Myrish sellswords shouted in terror. Gendry was a nightmare in the saddle—towering, broad-shouldered, his deep blue eyes burning through the slits of his iron mask. The iron head of his hammer was slick with fresh blood, gleaming with a cold, predatory light that seemed to pulse with every beat of his heart.
The mercenaries were not fools. They looked at the ruins of the Meereenese champions and the Unsullied, and they decided their contracts weren't worth their lives.
"Run!" Commander Qobo screamed.
The Myrish officer didn't even try to rally his men. The moment he saw Gendry's hammer smash through his front line, his courage evaporated. Qobo turned his horse and fled, followed by his personal guard and the remaining reserves. He left the Brave Companions and the Unsullied to be swallowed by the Wolf Pack.
"Archers! Draw! Loose!" Black Billy's voice boomed from the heights.
Another volley of arrows hissed into the retreating Myrish rear. Horses collapsed, pinning their riders in the mud. Sellswords who had been safe a moment ago were suddenly fighting for their lives as the "Anvil"—the Free Army of former slaves—began to push forward, sensing the change in the tide.
Gendry didn't look at the fleeing Myrmen. His eyes were fixed on the black-and-white striped zorse at the center of the Mummer formation.
Vargo Hoat, the Goat of Qohor, realized too late that he had been abandoned. He turned his mount, his bell-laden beard jingling frantically, but Gendry was already there.
"You... you puppy-dog!" Vargo spat, his lisp wet and desperate. He swung his longsword, his movements fast and practiced from a lifetime of cruelty.
Clang.
Gendry caught the blade on his warhammer's haft and drove his horse forward, slamming his shoulder into Vargo's chest. The impact was like a landslide. Vargo reeled in his saddle, his breath leaving him in a ragged gasp.
Vargo howled, swinging wildly at Gendry's head. He was an experienced killer, a veteran of a hundred skirmishes, but he was used to fighting men who feared him. Gendry felt no fear—only a cold, surgical rage. Gendry parried a strike to his shoulder and brought the hammer down with a force that shattered Vargo's steel guard.
"The thpare! Thpare me!" Vargo lisped, his goat-headed helm falling away to reveal a gaunt, terrified face. Even a monster feels the cold when the end is near.
"The Disputed Lands are closed to you, Goat," Gendry said, his voice a low growl.
The hammer fell. It didn't just hit Vargo; it obliterated him. The iron beak punched through the Qohorik's forehead, shattering the bone and sending a spray of blood and grey matter across the mud. Vargo Hoat, the "Crippler," fell dead from his zorse before his body even knew it was over.
"THE GOAT IS DEAD!" Gendry's voice echoed like thunder across the marsh.
The surviving Mummers broke. Seeing their leader's skull crushed, the "Bloody Mummers" turned to flee, only to find themselves hemmed in by the Free Army and the Wolf Pack's heavy horse.
"You killed the Captain! You big, stupid wolf-pup!"
Shagwell the Fool emerged from the chaos, his green-and-pink motley stained with blood. He swung his triple-headed flail in a whistling blur, the spiked iron balls nearly catching Gendry's throat.
Gendry's warhammer was still stuck in the muck near Vargo's corpse. Shagwell cackled, thinking he had found an opening. He pulled a black, poisoned dagger from his belt and lunged toward a gap in Gendry's scale mail.
Gendry didn't reach for his hammer. He reached for the captured Meereenese arakh at his hip.
Sssshing.
The curved blade whistled through the air. Shagwell's laughter stopped abruptly as the arakh caught him under the chin, severing his head in a single, fluid stroke. The Jester's final joke was over.
"KILL THEM ALL!" the Wolf Pack roared.
The "Hammer" met the "Anvil." The Brave Companions were trapped in a vice of iron and hate. The Wolf Pack knights rode through them again and again, their maces and axes finishing the work the arrows had started. By the time the sun began to set over the marshes, the "Bloody Mummers" existed only as corpses in the dirt.
"Surrender!"
"We yield! We yield!"
The Myrish sellswords threw down their swords, kneeling in the bloody mud. They had come for gold, but they had found only the storm.
Gendry stood over the field, his chest heaving, his warhammer back in his hand. He looked at the survivors, then at the black goat banner lying in the muck.
The war for the Disputed Lands had truly begun.