Chapter 10: Chapter 10: The Crab Feeder’s Demise
The cave swallowed me whole.
One moment, I was beneath the open sky with dragonfire burning across the ridges and men shouting beneath banners. The next, I was surrounded by darkness, damp stone, and the stink of blood, smoke, and rotting seaweed. The noise of the battle faded behind me, muffled by the twisting walls until it became little more than a distant rumble.
I tightened my grip on World Breaker and moved deeper.
The Crabfeeder had vanished ahead of me, swallowed by the tunnels he knew far better than I did. That should have been enough to make me stop. Every sensible part of me understood that pursuing him through a maze of caves was madness. The tunnels could lead anywhere. They could split, turn back on themselves, narrow into dead ends, or open into chambers filled with waiting men.
Yet I did not stop. The Crabfeeder could not be allowed to escape.
If he reached some hidden exit or deeper network of tunnels, the war might continue. The Velaryons would spend weeks hunting shadows, and men would keep dying on Bloodstone because I had hesitated when victory was within reach. I had walked into the dunes to draw him out, bled in the sand to make the trap work, and watched men die to close it.
I would not let him slip away now.
The tunnel bent sharply to the right. I followed, boots scraping against stone, breath loud inside my helm. The air grew hotter in places, then colder in others, as if the caves themselves were breathing through unseen cracks in the rock. Faint light filtered in through narrow openings above, but it came unevenly, casting the walls in strips of grey and black.
A shape moved ahead. I raised World Breaker just in time.
A man lunged from a side passage with a short spear, the point scraping against my breastplate before I knocked it aside. He was close enough that I could smell his breath, sour and desperate. He tried to ram me backwards into the wall, but I drove my shoulder into him first, pinning him long enough to thrust World Breaker beneath his ribs.
He died quickly, but not quietly. His scream carried through the tunnel.
A second man came almost immediately, then a third. They were not attacking in formation anymore. They were fleeing, hiding, striking from corners and cracks in the stone like rats defending a sinking ship. One swung an axe at my head from behind a bend. I ducked too slowly, and the blade glanced off my helm hard enough to set stars flashing across my vision. I answered with a cut that opened his thigh, then finished him when he fell.
Another man dropped from a ledge above, crashing into my back and driving me to one knee.
Pain tore through the wound where the arrow had struck earlier. I nearly lost World Breaker as his arm wrapped around my neck, dragging my head back. His knife scraped against the side of my helm, searching for skin. I slammed backwards into the wall once, twice, then reached up, caught his wrist, and wrenched hard enough to feel something snap. He cried out, and I threw him over my shoulder onto the stone.
I put World Breaker through his throat before he could rise. For a moment, I stood over him, breathing hard. My arms were growing heavy. That frightened me more than the ambushes.
Adrenaline could only carry a man so far. Othorion’s body was trained, hardened, and strong, but it had been fighting for too long. My armour was dented. My neck stung where blood had dried beneath the helm. My back burned. My legs ached from sand, weight, and violence. Every time I raised World Breaker, the blade felt a little heavier.
Still, I pushed on.
The caves twisted without mercy. One passage sloped downward toward the smell of seawater. Another climbed sharply through a narrow crack that forced me to turn sideways. Some tunnels were wide enough for three men to walk abreast, while others closed around me so tightly that my pauldrons scraped the walls. In places, the stone was slick beneath my boots. In others, the floor was covered in sand, bones, broken arrows, and scraps of cloth.
More than once, I lost sight of where I had come from. More than once, I wondered if I had already been led in circles.
The Crabfeeder knew these caves. That became clearer with every turn. He had not fled blindly. He had retreated through a place shaped to serve him, a maze that could break any man foolish enough to chase too quickly. Every corner could hide a blade. Every shadow could be a trap. Every distant footstep could belong to my quarry or one of the dozens of men still lurking in the dark.
Behind me, I heard Jasper shouting orders somewhere far away, his voice distorted by stone. Other men answered, but the echoes made it impossible to know how close they were. The Dread Legion had followed, but the caves scattered sound and men alike. For all I knew, Vaeron was still at the mouth, cursing my name while trying to keep the line from collapsing.
A narrow passage opened into a chamber lit by a jagged hole in the roof.
Three men waited inside.
The first loosed an arrow before I could fully enter. It struck my shoulder plate and skipped away with a shriek of metal. The second charged with a curved sword, while the third circled left with a dagger in each hand.
I moved because stopping meant dying.
World Breaker met the curved sword and bit through it halfway down the blade. The man stared in shock for the smallest instant, and that instant killed him. I cut across his chest, turned with the motion, and caught the dagger-man’s wrist before he could bury steel beneath my arm. He was fast. Too fast. His other dagger slashed at my face, missing my eye slit by less than an inch.
I slammed my helm into his nose. Cartilage broke. Blood burst over his mouth. He staggered, and I drove my sword through him.
The archer had already drawn again. I turned too late.
The arrow punched into my left side where the plates overlapped. It did not go deep, not with the armour taking most of it, but it went deep enough. Pain flared bright and hot. I stumbled, caught myself, and threw my body sideways as he reached for another arrow.
He never got the chance. World Breaker left my hand.
The sword spun once through the air and struck him point-first in the chest. The force drove him back against the wall, where he hung for a moment, gasping around the steel buried in him.
I stared, shocked by what I had done. Then I crossed the chamber, planted a boot against his stomach, and pulled the blade free.
My hands were shaking again. Not from fear this time. From exhaustion. From rage. From something worse that had begun to wake beneath both.
I kept moving.
The next tunnel climbed, and with it came more light. At first, it was only a faint glow along the stone, but then the air changed. Smoke drifted in from somewhere ahead, sharp and bitter. Heat touched my face through the helm. The sounds of battle returned, clearer now, though still distant. Steel. Shouts. A dragon’s cry somewhere above.
I was nearing the surface. A shadow moved at the end of the passage.
The Crabfeeder.
I saw him only for a moment, limping through a gap in the rock, one hand pressed against the wall to steady himself. He was faster than he looked, but not fast enough to vanish completely. He knew I was close. I could feel that in the way he moved, in the way he glanced back before disappearing through the opening.
I followed.
The passage narrowed, then rose sharply. My lungs burned. Every step felt like dragging iron through mud. More than once, my shoulder struck the stone hard enough to make pain flash through me, but I did not slow.
The tunnel ended in firelight.
I emerged onto one of the scorched ridges above Bloodstone, half-blinded by the sudden brightness. The ground was blackened where dragonfire had swept across it. Bodies lay twisted among the rocks, some burned beyond recognition, others still smoking. The air shimmered with heat, and ash drifted on the wind like grey snow.
The Crabfeeder stood near the edge of the ridge.
For the first time, I saw him clearly.
He was not the monster men had made him into, though perhaps that made him worse. His body was twisted by disease or injury, his skin marked and ruined beneath scraps of armour and cloth.
A mask covered part of his face, lending him the appearance of something inhuman, but his eyes were alive with hatred. He held a curved blade in one hand and a short axe in the other.
Behind him, the battlefield spread below.
The Dread Legion and Velaryon soldiers were driving the pirates back. Seasmoke circled above, pale and terrible against the sky. Smoke rose from the ridges where the archers had been erased. Men still fought, still died, but the shape of the battle had changed.
The Crabfeeder saw it too. He knew he was losing. That made him dangerous.
He came at me without a word.
His first strike was quick, aimed low, the curved blade sweeping toward the gap near my knee. I stepped back, barely avoiding it, and caught the follow-up axe strike on World Breaker’s edge. He did not fight like a knight or a trained sellsword. There was nothing elegant in him. His attacks were sharp, vicious, and practical, meant to cripple, bleed, and overwhelm.
But the difference in skill was clear almost immediately. If I had been fresh, I would have ended it quickly. I was not fresh. That was what made the fight ugly.
My body knew how to beat him, but my body was tired. My arms were heavy, my back burned, my side screamed where the arrow had struck, and every breath scraped inside my chest. The Crabfeeder fought like a cornered animal, and cornered animals did not need to be better than you to kill you. They only needed one mistake.
He gave ground, then rushed forward. He slashed at my wrist, hacked at my thigh, and tried to hook his axe behind my knee to pull me down. I parried, turned, and struck back, World Breaker cutting through the edge of his shoulder guard and drawing blood. He hissed but did not fall.
He slammed into me with surprising force.
We crashed against the blackened stone. His mask was inches from my face, his breath wet and foul behind it. He tried to drive the axe into my neck, and I caught his wrist with my left hand, metal gauntlet grinding against bone. His curved blade scraped along my breastplate, searching for a weak point.
For a moment, we struggled there, locked together like beasts. Then he headbutted me.
The blow rang through my helm, and my vision flashed white. My grip loosened. The Crabfeeder tore free and drove his knee into my wounded side. Pain exploded through me, and I staggered back with a gasp.
He lunged. I parried too slowly.
His blade slipped past World Breaker and cut across my upper arm, biting through cloth and flesh where the armour did not fully cover. Blood ran warm beneath my sleeve. I stumbled, and he pressed forward, sensing weakness.
He was desperate. So was I.
The next exchange blurred into instinct. I caught the axe on my crossguard, twisted hard, and ripped it from his hand. Before he could recover, I stepped inside his reach and struck him in the face with my pommel. His mask cracked. He reeled backwards, and I followed, driving him toward the ridge’s edge.
He slashed again. This time, I was ready. World Breaker met his blade and broke it.
The Valyrian steel cut through the lesser weapon with a sound like ice splitting. The broken half spun away into the ash. The Crabfeeder stared at what remained in his hand, and for the first time, I saw something like fear in his eyes.
I did not give him time to use it. I drove my shoulder into him and knocked him to the ground.
He tried to crawl away, clawing at the scorched earth, reaching for a dagger hidden beneath his rags. I kicked his hand aside and planted my boot between his shoulders, pinning him down. He twisted beneath me, still fighting, still refusing, still hateful to the end.
Below the ridge, men had begun to notice.
The fighting slowed in pockets. Voices rose. Someone shouted my name. Another shouted that the Crabfeeder had been found. The sound spread across the battlefield, confused at first, then louder.
The Crabfeeder looked up at me. Perhaps he meant to curse me. Perhaps he meant to beg. Perhaps he meant nothing at all. I never found out.
World Breaker fell. His head came away in a single stroke.
For a moment, I stood over the body, breathing hard, staring down at what I had done. The rush of battle still thundered in my veins. My hands shook around the hilt. Blood dripped from the blade onto the blackened stone, joining the ash beneath my boots.
It was over. It should have been enough. Instead, something terrible moved through me.
I bent, seized the severed head by what remained of its hair and cloth, and lifted it. The sight of it nearly made me retch, but the battlefield roared beneath me, and the sound fed the fire still burning in my blood. I did not think. Not clearly. Not as Heinrich. Not even as the man I wanted Othorion to be.
I acted on the savage instinct of victory. I drove World Breaker through the severed head and raised the sword high above the ridge.
For one heartbeat, the world seemed to freeze. Then the Dread Legion erupted. Their roar shook the battlefield.
Velaryon soldiers joined them, shouting, cheering, pounding weapons against shields. Men who had been tired moments before found strength again. Men who had doubted now surged forward. The sight of the Crabfeeder’s head raised above Bloodstone did what dragonfire and steel had not fully done.
It broke the enemy’s spirit.
Pirates began throwing down weapons. Others fled toward the caves, only to be cut down or trapped by advancing lines. Some simply stared upward in horror, as if the death of the man they feared had stolen the will from their bodies. The battle did not end all at once, but its outcome became certain.
Below me, the Dread Legion pushed forward with renewed fury. House Velaryon’s men followed. Above them, Seasmoke circled through smoke and sunlight.
I stood on the scorched ridge with World Breaker raised high, the Crabfeeder’s head skewered upon its point, and listened as thousands of men roared my stolen name.
"Othorion! Othorion! Othorion!"
The sound should have filled me with triumph. Instead, horror curled cold inside my chest.
Because some part of me had enjoyed it.
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