ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

The Blacktooth chief was still laughing when Arlan released the spear.

His left foot drove against the rough stones of the gatehouse, hips and shoulder turning through the throw in one continuous motion. Michael Watson had learned long ago that strength wasted between joints never reached the target; the spear left Arlan’s hand with every part of the weakened body aligned behind it.

The chief saw the movement too late; the hardened steel head punched through two layers of bearskin, crossed his chest, and struck the oak behind him with enough force to pin him to the trunk. His great axe slipped from his fingers and landed in the road; blood ran down the spear shaft while the raider stared at it as though the weapon had appeared inside him by sorcery.

He tried to speak. Only red froth came out. Then his head sagged.

For one breath the men outside FireStorm forgot to shout; the chief had stood more than a dozen paces from the gate, broad as an ox and wrapped in heavy hide; now his boots hung above the mud. The torch nearest him had fallen sideways, throwing light across the steel protruding from his back and the leaves shaken loose by the impact.

Inside the hall, the effect was just as sharp; the villagers had been listening for the crack of the gate and the screams that should have followed. Instead they saw the man who had killed Ser Edwyn hanging dead against an oak before he had taken a single step inside; one of the wounded defenders whispered the Seven’s names. Another pressed both hands around a spear shaft and stared through the opening as if afraid the sight would vanish if he blinked.

Arlan kept his back to the villagers. His throwing shoulder throbbed, and the muscles beneath his ribs tightened with his next breath. He measured the pain and put it aside. The remaining men were still outside the gate, hesitating; he had no time to rest.

”The chief is dead!” The cry broke whatever held the raiders still. Eight of the strongest rushed forward at once, stone axes and rusted blades lifted high, anger replacing the caution that should have followed what they had just witnessed. They expected Arlan to remain above the gatehouse. He was already moving.

Arlan slid down the inner support, landed with his knees bent, and drew the hand-and-a-half sword before the first attacker reached the opening. The gate could admit several men abreast when fully opened; Morton and the others had left it narrow enough that rage would make the raiders crowd one another.

The first man forced his shoulder through and raised a stone axe; Arlan stepped inside the swing and thrust through his throat. The new sword entered cleanly where FireStorm’s rusted blades would have snagged on bone; he turned his wrist, withdrew, and let the falling body obstruct the next man for half a heartbeat.

That was enough. The raiders had numbers, but numbers became a hindrance when every man wanted the same doorway. Arlan kept himself just beyond the threshold, where only the men at the front could reach him and the men behind could do little except shove them closer.

This content has been unlawfully taken from NovelPhoenix; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The second raider came in with a chipped sword; Arlan slipped past the cut and drove steel between two ribs, close enough to feel the man’s breath strike his cheek, and he pulled free before the corpse could catch the blade.

A third pushed over him; Arlan caught the man’s wrist with his left hand, moved off the line, and cut beneath the jaw. The fourth tried to use the confusion to stab low; Arlan shifted his rear foot, let the point pass his hip, and answered with a short thrust to the chest.

Behind the barred windows of the stone hall, someone gasped; Morton stood near the gate with a pitchfork in both hands, staring at the narrow entrance where men seemed to enter alive and collapse before taking more than two steps. The fifth raider hesitated.

The sixth struck him from behind in his haste to get through.

Arlan used the mistake. He drove the fifth backward with his shoulder, forcing both men into the gatepost, and cut the nearer throat before the second could clear his weapon. A reverse cut opened the sixth man’s neck when he finally found space; seven and eight came together.

The fever had left Arlan too weak to meet them by force, and he gave them the ground they wanted, retreating three paces into the yard and making them believe the line had broken. One accelerated. The other spread to the right; the first committed to an overhead blow.

Arlan stepped left and thrust under the descending arm; steel entered the armpit and found the chest, and he withdrew while turning toward the last man, who had already begun a wide horizontal cut. Too wide.

Arlan let the blade pass before his face, closed the distance, and drove his sword straight through the throat; the raider dropped with both hands around the steel. Arlan tore it free.

The entire exchange had taken seconds. Morton looked down at the crude hourglass beside the wall, then back at the bodies filling the gate. The fine sand had scarcely moved. Eight men had charged through. Eight men were dead.

Outside, the remaining Blacktooth raiders stared at the opening; their chief hung from the oak; eight more men lay behind the gate, several piled against one another where the entrance had forced them together. What had begun as a raid against a starving village had lost almost a quarter of its strength before anyone inside FireStorm had suffered a wound.

Several mountain men began shouting over one another. One called for fire. Another demanded they drag the dead away; a third simply backed into the men behind him. Without the chief, no voice carried enough authority to turn those reactions into a plan, and the delay allowed FireStorm’s people to understand that the enemy could be frightened too.

Arlan stepped over the nearest corpse.

His lungs burned harder than he allowed his face to show; the spear throw had pulled at muscles still weak from fever, and the rapid killing inside the gate had left a pulse of pain beneath his ribs. He changed to a two-handed grip because it required less strength from either wrist and looked toward the men beyond the wall.

They had stopped laughing. One of them took a step back. That movement mattered more than any speech. Morton saw it too. The old steward snatched up the fallen pitchfork and shouted toward the hall. ”Now!” The doors opened.

Men who had been trembling moments earlier poured into the yard with stone spears, forks, hatchets, and sharpened stakes; even the wounded came as far as their legs allowed. They had watched Arlan kill the chief and the eight men who followed him; fear had not vanished, but it had found somewhere else to point.

The Blacktooth line wavered. Arlan walked through the gate with blood on his sword and rain-dark mud on his boots. One raider turned his back. Others followed, and the line broke.