Chapter 26: Cloaks at Odds
The hundred-man cavalry company had been divided into ten squads of ten, each assigned a patrol zone along the northern bank of the Blackwater Rush. They rode in rotation, dawn to dusk, watching the river.
Elon was not a typical recruit. Most of Maewyn's new men were farmers and woodsmen, capable enough but green. Elon had spent seven years across the Narrow Sea as a sellsword — the Disputed Lands, mostly, with a season in the Basilisk Isles that he didn't talk about much. His footwork with a blade was the kind that only comes from fighting people who were genuinely trying to kill you, and Maewyn had recognized it immediately.
The explosive temper that had gotten Elon drummed out of his last company — a lieutenant whose nose he'd broken over a dice game — was a liability Maewyn had decided he could manage. He'd promoted Elon to squad leader on the spot and dealt with the temper problem by giving him enough responsibility that he stayed busy.
That afternoon, Elon was leading his nine men at a walk along the bank, the horses picking their way over the wet shingle of the tidal flats. The afternoon sun came through the sparse canopy in broken pieces. Elon had been midway through a story about a siege outside Myr when he stopped, held up a fist, and the whole column went still.
Oars. The muffled rhythm of someone trying not to be heard. And underneath it, voices kept low, and the sound of hulls grounding on mud.
He signaled a dismount. The men tied their horses back in the tree line, leveled their spears, and followed him into the reeds.
What they found on the other side of the reeds made the whole squad go tight.
Three flat-bottomed river boats were grounded on the bank. A dozen girls were being driven out of the covered cabins — most of them young, fourteen or fifteen at most, with the features and coloring of women from across the Narrow Sea. Four men with whips and curved blades at their hips were pushing them ashore, laying the lash across anyone who stumbled or slowed.
On each girl's left cheek was a small teardrop tattoo — the mark of a Volantene pleasure slave. Elon had been to Volantis. He knew exactly what it meant.
Standing on the bank watching it all were twelve Gold Cloaks, hands resting on their sword hilts, eyes moving over the tree line. They weren't interfering. They weren't even pretending to look uncomfortable. They were there to make sure nobody else interfered.
One of the traders — a heavyset man with a florid, jowled face — raised his whip and brought it down hard across the back of a girl who'd stumbled in the mud. She made a sound that she tried to swallow. A red welt rose through the tear in her dress.
"Keep moving! You'll thank us when you're settled in at the establishment. No more sleeping in filth. Good work, good food—"
"Stop." Elon stepped out of the reeds.
His nine men came out behind him, spears leveled, spreading into a wide crescent that curved around both the traders and the Gold Cloaks before anyone had time to react properly.
The jowled trader recovered first. His eyes moved across the white surcoats with the red lion, and something shifted in his expression — a quick calculation — before he settled back into bluster.
The Gold Cloak commander stepped in front of him. He was a one-eyed man with a scar that ran from his brow to his jaw, and he carried himself like someone accustomed to being obeyed. He drew his shortsword and pointed it at Elon.
"Back off. City Watch business. You've got no authority here."
"Blackwater River Guard," Elon said. He kept his voice flat and deliberate, the way he'd learned to speak when he wanted a man to understand he wasn't being theatrical. "Established by Lord Reyne under direct royal warrant. We patrol this bank. Suppression of smuggling is specifically in our remit." He looked past the one-eyed man to the girls on the shore. "Slavery is outlawed in the Seven Kingdoms. Every one of those women needs to be released, and every one of you needs to come with us."
"Slavery!" The jowled trader pushed forward, pulling folded parchment from inside his coat and waving it. "These women came to King's Landing freely! Their villages were starving — we offered them work, legitimate employment at a respectable establishment. They signed contracts. Thumb-sealed. All legal." He thrust the parchments toward Elon. "See for yourself."
Elon took them, scanned the cramped writing and the smeared prints, and looked up. He turned to the nearest girl — the one with the clearest tattoo — and made his voice as quiet as he could manage.
"You don't have to be afraid. Did they bring you here against your will?"
A flicker of something moved across her face. She opened her mouth. The jowled trader shifted a half-step toward her, and whatever the look he gave her contained, it closed her back down completely. She dropped her eyes and gripped the hem of her dress and said nothing.
"The tattoos," Elon said, turning back to the trader. "Explain the tattoos."
"A custom from their homeland—"
"I've been to Volantis." Elon looked at the one-eyed Gold Cloak. "I know what that mark means."
The one-eyed man changed his approach. He sheathed the shortsword and spread his hands, his tone dropping into something almost collegial.
"Look. Lord Reyne's men. I've heard of you. No offense meant — we got off wrong." He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "The establishment these women are going to operates under the personal protection of Commander Slynt. The City Watch has an arrangement. You understand how these things work." He glanced at the spears around him. "Janos Slynt commands ten thousand men in this city. A man who breaks that arrangement tends to find his life gets complicated. The Commander's a hospitable man — I'm sure he'd be glad to visit Lord Reyne personally and sort out any misunderstanding."
The name worked on several of the squad members the way it was meant to. Elon heard someone behind him shift their footing. A couple of spears dipped without their owners seeming to notice.
Janos Slynt had a reputation that had reached even the small towns along the Blackwater — a man who had built his position by putting the right coins in the right hands and who required his officers to keep him supplied with more of the same. His friends prospered. The people who crossed him tended to have accidents.
Elon stood there for a moment, looking at the one-eyed man and the boats and the girls standing in the mud waiting to see what happened to them.
One of his men — Perrick, from a village outside Greyhelmet, who had never been farther from home than King's Landing before this year — spoke up quietly. "Captain. Your call."
Elon exhaled through his nose. Then he drew his sword.
"Right," he said. "Here's my answer to Janos Slynt: I don't care. I genuinely don't." He pointed the blade at the one-eyed corporal. "A commander who skims his own men's wages and sells their loyalty to slave traders doesn't get to use their name as a threat. You want a fight, we'll have a fight."
The one-eyed man's face hardened. He drew. The Gold Cloaks on either side drew with him. The traders pulled their curved blades. Someone on the trader's side cracked a whip.
It was over fast.
The River Guard's training showed in the first exchange. They were equipped properly — brigandine over padded jacks, cavalry swords with real reach — and they moved like men who'd spent the past month being drilled into something cohesive. The Gold Cloaks were more numerous, but most of them had gotten their posts through connections rather than ability, and their strengths ran toward collecting bribes and breaking up tavern fights, not standing in a real line against men who knew what they were doing.
Elon put the one-eyed corporal on his back foot within three exchanges, slipped inside a thrust, and laid his blade across the man's thigh hard enough to open the chainmail and drop him to a knee. Two of Elon's men worked in tandem against a pair of Gold Cloaks — shield up to absorb, sword arm following through while the shield held the defenders busy. The traders were worse fighters than the Gold Cloaks. One of them tried to use his whip and lost the hand he used it with.
When the last man stopped fighting, Elon had his squad bind the traders and the Gold Cloaks together and sit them on the bank.
He walked the line of girls — gave them water, told them plainly that they were not going back on those boats — and then turned back to his men.
"Get them to Iron Fist Keep. Lord Reyne decides what happens next." He looked at the three boats grounded on the bank. "And there's a ship somewhere in Blackwater Bay that these boats came out of. Find Corlen. Tell him to take the Nightwalker and go looking."
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