The gates lay behind them, twisted and broken, decorated with the bodies of n and horses in arrangents that no living thing would have chosen. Artos stood among the carnage, his borrowed sword hanging at his side, and felt sothing primal stirring in his chest. The blood-lust was fading, yes, but beneath it was sothing else—that peculiar clarity that ca when he let the wolf inside him surface, when the human and the animal rged into sothing neither quite civilized nor quite wild.
Around him, his n were moving with the grim purpose of soldiers who'd survived the unsurvivable. But there was sothing else in their movents too—a sense of dislocation, as though they couldn't quite believe they'd broken the Unsullied. The legend of the Unsullied was so thoroughly embedded in the consciousness of Essos that their defeat seed sohow unnatural, like watching the sun fail to rise or the sea flowing uphill.
Waymar approached, moving with the careful gait of a man nursing a deep gash along his ribs. Blood had soaked through the bandage soone had wrapped around him, and his movents were stiff with pain, but his eyes still burned with that fierce determination that had marked him since the beginning of this campaign.
"The n are asking what cos next," Waymar said quietly. "Half the rcenaries are looking to run—they've made their coin and they want to leave before their luck runs out. Daros is trying to hold them together, but it's thin."
Artos nodded, his eyes fixed on the castle before them. The structure rose like a challenge, three stories of stone and brass fittings, narrow windows like suspicious eyes watching them. It was formidable, designed by soone who understood siege warfare, built to withstand assault from an enemy without overwhelming nurical superiority.
"Give a mont," Artos said.
He turned away from the assembled n, moving to a relatively quiet section of the bloodstained ground, and closed his eyes. The connection to Rick had always been strange, ineffable in ways that defied explanation or logic. The bird is insufferable and Tends to enjoy his freedom in the air but is always useful when the ti counts.
The bird was sowhere above them now, riding the thermals high enough that even sharp-eyed n would take him for just another carrion eater drawn by the sll of death.
Artos opened himself to that connection, letting his consciousness slip sideways into the eagle's perspective. The shift was disorienting—suddenly his view expanded upward and outward, the ground falling away beneath him as though his body itself had beco weightless. He could feel Rick's predatory focus, the bird's keen interest in the feast of corpses below, but beneath that was the connection, the thread that bound Artos to the creature.
Look, Artos thought toward the eagle. Show the castle. Show where the weakness lies.
Rick's vision shifted, the bird's head tilting as it circled the fortress. From above, Artos could see things invisible from ground level—the way the stones were laid, the pattern of repairs and renovations that marked centuries of occupation. There, on the eastern side, was a section where the stonework was subtly different, slightly discolored. An old breach, perhaps, or a structural weak point that had been repaired but never quite properly reinforced.
And there—near the roof line on the castle's north face—was what looked like a servants' access hatch, partially obscured by decorative stonework but visible from above.
Artos pulled back from the connection, gasping as his consciousness snapped back into his own body. For a mont, the world seed flat and distant, as though he'd been living in a richer, more vivid reality and had been yanked back into mundane existence.
Orm, his scout, appeared at his elbow. "You alright, Commander? You went still as a statue for near on two minutes."
Artos said simply. "Thinking what we needed to do."
He spent the next hour explaining his plan to Waymar and the other commanders. While Daros and his rcenaries would conduct a frontal assault on the main gates—a brutal, costly operation designed to draw every Unsullied warrior to that point—a smaller force would scale the north face of the castle using climbing equipnt. They would breach through the servants' hatch, secure the upper levels, and cut off the garrison's escape routes while simultaneously pushing down from above to crush the defenders between two forces.
"It's suicide," one of the rcenary captains said flatly. "Climbing that wall exposed, carrying weapons and armor? Half of you will fall before you even reach the top."
"Half of you will die at the gates regardless," Artos replied coldly. "At least this way, the n who climb have a chance to accomplish sothing. They die taking the castle, not just dying to wear down the enemy."
As the sun began its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of copper and blood, Artos prepared the assault force. The n selected for the climbing team were the smallest and most wiry—agile n who'd learned to move through difficult terrain, n who had nothing to lose and everything to prove.
"Twenty minutes after the main assault begins," Artos told them, his voice low and carrying the weight of command. "That's when you start climbing. By the ti you reach the top, the Unsullied will be so focused on the gates that they won't even notice you until you're already inside."
The first assault began with a roar that seed to shake the very stones of the castle. rcenaries locked shields and advanced toward the main gates, screaming challenges and insults at the Unsullied who lined the walls. Arrows ca down in a whisper of deadly intent, and n began to fall imdiately—not dramatically, not in the way of tavern tales, but simply ceasing to be, their bodies crumpling as they were struck down by projectiles they couldn't evade.
But the rcenaries were professionals, and they'd been hired for exactly this kind of work. They advanced using their shields for protection, forming a rough wedge as they approached the gates. Behind them ca a battering ram—a crude thing fashioned from a fallen tree, carried by twenty n working in concert.
The gates held at first, though splinters began to fly with each impact. Then, on the fifth blow, sothing gave way inside, and the gates swung partially open. The Unsullied didn't retreat or hesitate. They simply poured out through the opening, eting the rcenaries in a collision of shields and spears that sent n flying backward like dolls tossed by an angry child.
The fighting at the gates beca pure chaos, pure brutality. There was no room for the elegant technique that the Unsullied usually employed—the formations that made them nearly unstoppable beca liability in the crush of close combat. A rcenary captain with a good sword arm could press an Unsullied warrior back, could force him into positions where his spear couldn't be properly deployed. But then three more Unsullied would arrive to support their companion, and suddenly the rcenary was dying, his blood mixing with the dust and the bodies of other dead n.
Artos watched from a distance as his climbing team scaled the north wall. They moved like spiders across stone, using handholds and footholds that would have seed impossible to most n. One of them fell—a Skagosi nad Keldr—his body tumbling through the air and hitting the ground with a sound like at striking stone. He didn't get back up.
But the others kept climbing. Artos could feel the bloodlust rising in his chest, could feel the wolf inside him pushing toward the surface, demanding release, demanding action. The connection to Rick was still strong—he could see through the eagle's eyes as the bird circled overhead, could sense the mont when the climbing team reached the hatch and began to force it open.
"Now," Artos said to Waymar. "Now we go."
He led his contingent of Northn toward the gates in a controlled charge. They moved in a loose formation, disciplined but not rigid, moving with the kind of organized ferocity that the Unsullied hadn't quite trained for. The Unsullied expected enemy formations to break under pressure, expected discipline to fail under stress. But the Northn were different. They were savage, yes, but they were organized savagery—the kind that could drive through a line and keep pushing.
Artos himself beca sothing almost inhuman. The sword in his hands moved with terrible efficiency, finding gaps in armor that shouldn't have existed, cutting through the bronze and the flesh beneath with chanical precision. A young Unsullied warrior—probably no more than eighteen or nineteen, eunuch since childhood—tried to engage him directly. The boy was fast, skilled, trained since birth to be a perfect soldier.
Artos disemboweled him with a casual stroke. The young man's intestines spilled across the ground in a glistening rope, and his scream, keening sound that seed to cut through even the chaos of battle. He fell to his knees, trying frantically to stuff his own organs back into his body, and Artos simply stepped over him, already moving on to the next opponent.
Blood was in his mouth. He realized he'd been bitten on the lip at so point, and the copper taste of it mixed with the adrenaline to create a kind of intoxication that was almost sexual in its intensity.
Then he heard it—a scream from above, a sound of shattering wood and surprised violence. The climbing team had breached the upper levels, and the Unsullied garrison inside was suddenly facing assault from two directions at once.
The discipline of the Unsullied began to crack.Not catastrophically, not all at once, but in a thousand small ways. An officer who'd been managing the defense at the gates suddenly had to divert troops to handle the new threat on the upper levels. That diversion created a gap in the formation. The gap widened, and suddenly the Unsullied line wasn't quite so unbreakable anymore.
Artos pressed forward, his Northn following him like shadows, and suddenly they weren't fighting a disciplined military force anymore—they were slaughtering confused soldiers who were trying to reorganize under assault from impossible directions.The castle's interior beca a hellscape of violence and blood. The narrow corridors beca killing grounds where the Unsullied's formations ant nothing, where individual combat ability beca paramount. Artos moved through them like death incarnate, his sword singing through the air, his body responding to threats before his conscious mind could even register them.
At one point, he found himself in a stairwell with four Unsullied warriors, all trying to reach him at once. The space was too narrow for them to bring their superior numbers to bear effectively, but it was also too narrow for him to escape. What followed was perhaps the most brutal and personal fight of the entire campaign.
One Unsullied ca down the stairs at him, spear leading. Artos sidestepped and drove his sword up, the blade finding the junction of neck and shoulder. Blood sprayed across the walls—so much blood that the stone seed to weep crimson. The man fell, gurgling, his eyes going wide as he realized he was dying.
The next one ca faster, trying to learn from his companion's mistake. He feinted high and thrust low, attempting to drive his spear through Artos's leg. But Artos had seen this move before, had trained against it a thousand tis. He twisted, letting the spear pass harmlessly behind him, and drove his knee up as he grabbed the weapon's shaft. There was a sickening crack as the Unsullied warrior's nose shattered under the impact, but the man didn't cry out—the training prevented that. He just fell backward, blood pouring down his face, and Artos was already engaging the next warrior.
It was brutal and terrible and absolutely necessary. By the ti those four were dead, Artos was bleeding from a dozen small cuts, his breathing was labored, and his sword arm felt like it had been replaced with sothing made of lead. But he was alive, and they were dead, and that was all that mattered.The upper levels of the castle were secured an hour after the climbing team breached them. The lower levels took longer—the Unsullied had fallen back to the cellars and storage areas, where they tried to make a final stand against impossible odds. But with Artos and his n pressing from above and Waymar leading a secondary force from the main level, the garrison was caught between hamr and anvil. They fought to the last man, because that's what they'd been trained to do, but the last man fell all the sa.
When it was finally over, when the last Unsullied had been killed. Artos found himself standing in the castle's main hall as twilight painted the world in shades of purple and grey. The ground was slick with blood—so much blood that it seed impossible that n contained such quantities of it. The walls were decorated with arterial spray in patterns that looked almost artistic in their grotesqueness. Bodies lay in heaps, many of them bearing multiple wounds, bearing the marks of how desperately they'd fought against the inevitable.
Artos was soaked in blood both his and that wasn't his, his borrowed sword shattered halfway up the blade where he'd driven it through a steel breastplate. His arms ached with a bone-deep fatigue that seed to radiate from sowhere beyond the physical.
Waymar found him there, the young knight limping slightly but still moving with purpose. "The castle is ours, Commander. The last of the resistance has been crushed. We've found the Unsullied commander's quarters—there's gold, docunts, weapons. Everything a victorious army could want.The magisters and Nobles are captured alive. They aren't that important but Important nonetheless."
Artos nodded slowly, as though registering the words took a significant effort. "Casualties?"
"Near a quarter of our force," Waymar replied. "But less than we expected given what we were facing. The n fought well. Fought hard. They've exceeded every expectation."
"The Unsullied?"
"Every one dead, Commander.The myth is destroyed."
Artos looked down at his bloody hands and felt sothing shift inside him. He'd co to Essos to escape. To find himself apart from the weight of his family na, apart from the compromises and politics that had driven him from Winterfell. Instead, he'd created sothing far more significant—a legend that would spread through the Free Cities like plague, a story that would be told and retold until it beca sothing almost supernatural. Hal (na he is using in Essos) had broken the unbreakable. The Unsullied, those legendary soldiers whose formations and discipline were supposed to make them nearly invincible defenders against any force assembled again and his ragtag collection of rcenaries and survivors.
In taverns from Braavos to Oldtown, n were already beginning to tell the story. In so versions, Hal was using sorcery. In others, he was the bastard son of so northern god. In still others, he'd been aided by dark magic and demons that ca up from beneath the earth to slaughter the Unsullied while they slept.The truth was simultaneously simpler and far more terrifying—that he was just a man, one who'd learned to channel his rage and grief into sothing that could move mountains. One who'd learned to let the wolf inside him surface, to trust his instincts and his training and his absolute refusal to accept defeat.
He was becoming sothing approaching legendary, sothing that existed more in story than in reality. And the worst part, the part that kept him awake at night even in victory, was that he could feel it happening and didn't know how to stop it.The Demon Wolf had co to Essos. And Essos, it seed, would never quite be the sa again.
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