The wind across the Rhoyne plain carried a scalding mist of blood and the sharp metallic bite of rust straight through the heart of the Volantene lines.
The ground had become a crimson swamp—broken spear shafts, shattered armor plates, torn scalps, and the low moans of the dying all churned together in the mud. Smoke from dying campfires mixed with battle dust, blotting out half the sky. A handful of ravens perched on the corpse piles, pecking indifferently at the meat.
Ser Jorah Mormont stood knee-deep in that sea of blood and bodies, his heavy breathing fogging the blood-spattered visor of his helm.
For most of his life he had cursed Eddard Stark—the man who had stripped him of Bear Island and driven him into exile across the Narrow Sea, turning a lord into a sellsword who lived and died by the blade.
But today, the disgraced knight had no room left in his skull for old hatreds.
The savage bloodletting had swallowed every last scrap of his strength and emotion.
Facing him were Khal Drogo's screaming warriors—hardened steppe killers burning with the fury of men who had nothing left to lose. They gave no ground. Every arakh swing carried the promise of mutual destruction.
This was no skirmish for coin, no border raid. This was a fight to the death.
"Third company—forward!" Jorah roared, voice raw as a broken bell, shouting at the hornblower beside him.
The planned moment for committing the reserves had been forced forward by the sheer ferocity of the fighting.
"Hold the line! Don't let them break through!"
The Unsullied at the very front had done their duty with their lives.
The entire eunuch legion had died almost to the last man. Their bodies were trampled into pulp by hooves and hacked into pieces by arakhs, yet they never yielded an inch. They had absorbed the first devastating Dothraki charge like a wall of flesh and steel.
Their sacrifice bought precious breathing room for Torio Hoth's Iron Shields.
The mercenary company, shields locked and spears leveled, had blunted the impact and given the Volantene city militia behind them a shield to cower behind.
These civilians—who normally shaped clay or served tables—would have been butchered like sheep if left alone against the savages. Under the protection of battle-hardened sellswords, they somehow kept the line from collapsing instantly.
But it was nowhere near enough.
The Dothraki fury was the last desperate gamble of cornered wolves.
Months of siege, hunger, the burning need for loot, the desperate need to protect their women and children in the camp behind them—and on top of it all, Varyon's public atrocity against the prisoners—every emotion had detonated at once.
They hacked, stabbed, trampled. Volantene militia fell in swathes before these born killers.
No amount of drill could turn shopkeepers into iron-hard killers in a few months.
The Dragon Claw's elite spearmen were forced into the fight far earlier than planned.
The Volantene casualties were mounting too fast, the Iron Shields too few. The entire central line was teetering on the edge of collapse.
Jorah had dismounted to fight on foot. Boots sinking into the sticky red mud, longsword in both hands, he led the Dragon Claw spearmen straight into the oncoming tide.
For most of the men in the ranks, this step forward was the road to the grave.
The Unsullied's sacrifice, the Iron Shields' stubborn stand, the militia's desperate holding action—they had not been in vain.
The Dothraki riders who reached the Dragon Claw had already had their horses' legs cut out from under them by Hoth's men and lay sprawled on the ground.
But even dismounted, these screaming warriors were lethal killing machines—and the Dragon Claw would learn that truth with their blood.
Jorah smashed his fist into a Dothraki's face; the crack of bone was audible. The savage screamed and fell, only to be finished by the spearman behind.
The gap was filled instantly by another roaring nomad.
The man's arakh flashed like lightning, aimed at Jorah's throat. At the last heartbeat a Dragon Claw spearman thrust his weapon through the bronze-skinned warrior's ribs.
Jorah stepped in and finished the kill, then pivoted to hack into the shoulder of the next attacker. Blood sprayed across his face.
There was no knightly glory here, no poetic beauty of war.
Only tens of thousands of men hacking, stabbing, clubbing one another. Blood rose past their knees, a foul soup of sweat, mud, and shredded entrails that turned the stomach.
He could already imagine the hack poets in the taverns after the battle, spinning pretty lies about honor and glory to lure fresh boys into the companies—boys who would only understand the truth when they lost limbs or watched their friends die screaming.
In a brief lull, Jorah looked up.
The Dragon Claw spearmen were still holding formation, teeth gritted, but the Dothraki had fixed their eyes on the standard-bearer… Loren Rayne.
Whether by design or savage instinct, ten nomads formed a wedge and charged straight at the banner like madmen.
Jorah saw the mortal danger at once.
The army's banner was its soul.
If the flag fell or was captured, the exhausted soldiers would break in seconds. The entire line would rout.
Sellswords knew better than anyone: no flag meant no hope. They would run faster than arrows.
Jorah had seen it happen too many times.
And today, rout meant annihilation.
Other companies might survive a rout. The Dothraki showed no mercy. They would hunt every last man down and butcher them to the last.
Thank the gods, Loren and his color guard were not far from Jorah.
The exiled Northerner carved through two attackers, opening a path to the standard.
When he reached it, four nomads were already swarming Loren. Only one spearman of the guard remained, desperately stabbing.
Worse, Dothraki archers behind the lines had opened up, and the shielded reinforcements were too far back.
Jorah had no choice but to fight alone.
The last spearman, dying, drove his weapon into an enemy horse's chest. The animal screamed and collapsed, buying Jorah a precious second.
He seized it, hacking into the nearest rider's leg. The savage aiming at Loren lost all strength, arm dropping.
Jorah's heart twisted with regret—if Longclaw, his family sword, were still at his side, he could have ended the man in one clean stroke instead of wasting these fatal seconds.
He finished the kill. The last mounted Dothraki suddenly lunged; his arakh whistled past Loren's head, missing by a hair's breadth.
Loren twisted away on pure instinct, then yanked a dagger from his belt and hurled it—street-fighter style, no knightly flourish.
The nomad never expected an armored Andal to fight like gutter scum. The blade sank into his throat and he toppled dead.
Jorah cut down the last savage still trying to rise, clearing space for Loren to fall back.
At that moment the Dragon Claw reinforcements finally arrived. Spearmen locked shields again and sealed the breach.
Jorah stepped up to the blood-soaked standard-bearer, voice low and hard.
"You all right?"
The banner had to stay up. If the flag-bearer fell, the line would shatter.
"We're going home!" Loren roared, knuckles white on the pole, the black banner with its crimson dragon claw snapping in the bloody wind. His eyes were wild, hands shaking, but he was unhurt and still full of fight. "We're going home!"
"Just keep that damned flag high!" Jorah snarled. "Higher! Don't waste a single breath!"
"Yes… ser!"
There was no more need for shouted orders.
The veteran Dragon Claw spearmen saw the banner still flying above the chaos and understood everything.
The line had not broken. The commander had not fallen. Fight to the last.
Jorah turned back toward the endless tide of bronze-skinned killers, eyes cold as winter steel behind his visor.
"Fourth company!" he bellowed, voice cutting through the roar of battle. "Forward!"
One step back today and every man here would die on this blood-soaked plain.