Thankfully, no thick clouds veiled the sky that night, or Darean would never have dared to gallop without any light.
If his horse stumbled on the battlefield, he would be in grave danger.
The camp where over a hundred people huddled together was not large. Otherwise, the arrows the attackers loosed so casually could never have reached Darean in its center.
Riding south along the edge of the camp, Darean soon spotted thirty or forty figures locked in combat beneath the moonlight.
The ambush had indeed caught Clyson and the others off guard at first.
They had stationed themselves on the four sides of the camp. There were slightly more men to the south, but still only seven.
A guard from a smith's family at the Hightower was ambushed by enemies creeping out of the woods. The poor lad had his throat slit without making a sound.
Just then, however, a fellow guard who knew him came looking for him and ran straight into the thugs, who had returned to shore to sow chaos under cover of darkness.
Nearly thirty pairs of murky eyes brimmed with vicious malice and undisguised greed for the nearby camp.
They had set their sights on Darean and his people long ago.
Before they even set foot on this land.
Burning down the little village that had stood here had merely been a way to leave this young lord of the Hightower isolated and without local support.
Some people wanted him dead, and eight hundred Gold Dragons was enough for these bandits from Dorne's Sulphur River to stake everything they had.
The sheep of the Green Lands were no match for them!
The guard they had spotted was no stranger to bloodshed. He did not wet or soil himself in terror; he assessed the situation and knew that even with three heads and six arms, he could not withstand thirty men surrounding him.
So he turned and ran, shouting at the top of his lungs to warn the entire camp of the attack.
Startled into alertness, Clyson and the others immediately realized something was wrong.
Knowing how much Darean valued his subjects, Clyson immediately ordered them to move north, away from the battlefield.
He could hardly be blamed. The Reach had enjoyed a dozen or so years of peace, and, far removed from war, he had no idea what consequences this would bring.
Joined by the guards rushing over, they met their enemies with more than a dozen steel swords.
"Illumine the Way!"
Shouting their house words, the guards formed a thin defensive line, holding fast at the camp's southern edge.
The arrows whistling toward them could do nothing to their armor, owing to the weak bows and poor-quality arrowheads.
These men also knew that armored tin cans like them were difficult to handle, so they never closed for hand-to-hand combat, instead using their spears to steadily wear down the guards' stamina.
They even split off a few men to feign circling around them and attacking the camp, leaving Clyson and the others scrambling to respond.
Heavy infantry excelled at positional warfare, but that required tightly packed formations and an offensive stance, launching massed charges.
Once forced onto the defensive, the drain on their stamina from the weight immediately became apparent.
Had they been free to fight without restraint and reverse the roles of attacker and defender, these twenty or thirty lightly armored pirates would have been dead long ago.
People were not made of iron. Under normal circumstances, anyone would struggle physically after swinging weapons for even ten minutes without rest under such a heavy load.
By the time Darean reached the battlefield, he found his own troops surrounded by opponents whose equipment was clearly inferior.
Although their heavy armor had kept these scum's weapons from inflicting fatal wounds so far.
With spears constantly thrusting at them, their deaths here were only a matter of time.
Damn it, this is trouble.
Gritting his teeth, knowing he could not afford to lose his meager resources here, Darean grabbed the hand crossbow from his saddlebag, deftly cocked it on horseback, and fired at a man on the perimeter.
The original owner of this body had been a political idiot who devoted all his energy to swords, bows, and riding.
Now that had proved an enormous help.
The bolt whistled out and pierced the right side of the man's chest before anyone could react.
Although it did not kill him outright, the backflow of blood had already blocked his windpipe. Death was only a matter of time.
His piercing screams rang out for only a few seconds before falling silent.
The sudden turn immediately alerted the pirates, and their leader promptly ordered:
"You lot, take your spears and stop that rider! There's only one of him!"
In the darkness, even with moonlight, they had no idea who Darean was, though they would not have recognized this young lord of the Hightower anyway.
The guards trapped in the middle were not stupid enough to shout anything that would expose Darean's identity.
Darean frowned deeply at the seven or eight men charging toward him with spears that countered cavalry.
He no longer had time to leisurely cock his hand crossbow again.
There had only been that one chance for a surprise attack.
He flung the hand crossbow far away and took hold of his longsword, engraved with the White Tower emblem.
I have to find a way to kill a few. Pirates aren't regular soldiers. Their morale will crumble quickly, as long as I make them bleed enough.
The black warhorse gave a long neigh and charged toward the nearest man with its rider.
Narrowly avoiding the spearhead that swept past his right arm, the steel blade traced a deadly arc of light beneath the moon and bit precisely into the man's carotid artery.
Horse and man passed each other, and warm blood splashed over the dusky green grasses of the Reach.
Another life was lost.
He had thought that losing one of their own would frighten these reckless spearmen into hanging back.
Yet, for some reason, Darean saw little fear in their eyes. Most of what he saw was something called greed.
With no time to think further, Darean ducked beneath a sweeping blow whistling toward his back and urged his horse swiftly away.
But riding at night was a risk after all. Before he had gone more than a few paces, he suddenly lost his balance, and both he and his horse tripped and fell.
The Essos warhorse's leg bones stood up to the test, but Darean, scrambling to his feet, no longer had time to mount.
He gave the horse a hard smack on the rump to send it quickly away. Darean had no wish for someone to ride it in a charge against him.
"Six more. Damn it, I have to be careful."
His heartbeat reached its peak, and the sparse magic in his surroundings gathered around Darean, yet it was like a dammed flood crest, unable to find an outlet.
His brow twitched violently. Six dull gray spears were already thrusting before his eyes.
However formidable a longsword might be, at a time like this he could only parry left and right, danger pressing in at every turn.
Driven back to the edge of the stream with nowhere left to retreat, Darean, beaten onto the defensive, finally felt his anger overwhelm his fear.
Thinking they could finally finish off this troublesome opponent, all six pirates wore cruel expressions.
Yet the man before them suddenly abandoned his defensive stance and slashed his blade straight at their spearheads.
With it came an elegant greeting in a language they had never heard:
"Die, you scum!"
The surging magic's dull-witted master had finally found it an outlet, and it flooded into the gleaming bastard sword.
Unable to understand the reason for his sudden madness, the spearmen instinctively raised their spearheads.
Yet, one breath later, a thunderous boom rang across the nighttime battlefield.
When everyone turned their eyes toward it, they froze on the spot.
All six spearheads had been blasted to pieces by an unknown force. Darean's stroke had sheared straight through the fire-hardened wooden shafts.
Coldly watching those six bewildered faces, the young knight closed in, his blade dancing as he raised a bloody storm.
Spell: Force of Sharpness.
Break!
Before you continue