Chapter 8: Chapter 8: Blood in the Sand
Now was the hour.
Everything had been placed as carefully as it could be. My soldiers and the men of House Velaryon lay in wait beyond the dunes, hidden behind ridges, broken stone, and the torn remains of old ships half-buried in the sand. Somewhere above or beyond my sight, Laenor Velaryon waited with Seasmoke, ready to strike once the Crabfeeder’s men committed themselves fully. The trap had been prepared.
All that remained was for me to walk into it first.
I approached the dunes alone, feeling the sand gather lightly around my greaves with each step. The wind brushed across my cheeks and dragged strands of silver-white hair against my face. In the distance, seagulls cried above the shore, their voices thin and ugly over the low rush of waves. It was strange how ordinary the world sounded when I was walking toward what might be my death.
Truthfully, I was petrified.
Vaemond Velaryon had been right about one thing. This was madness. Only a madman would follow through with a plan this close to suicide, and yet there I was, moving deeper into the killing ground with World Breaker at my side and fear sitting cold beneath my ribs.
As I approached the caves, men began to appear. Some gathered at the cave mouths, half-hidden in shadow. Others took position along the ridges, watching me from above with bows, spears, and rusted blades in hand.
Their armour was mismatched and ugly, some pieces stolen, some broken, and some so old that it seemed impossible they still held together. A few looked too clean to be common pirates, while others looked exactly as I had imagined men under the Crabfeeder would look: ragged, sunburnt, hungry, and cruel.
Behind them, deeper in the darkness, I could see a shadowed figure watching. I did not need to be told who it was.
The Crabfeeder.
I chose a low mound of sand and climbed onto it. It was not impressive, but it raised me enough to make me clearly visible. My hands were shaking by then, and my breathing had become fast and uneven. I tried to calm myself, tried to force air slowly into my lungs, but my body would not obey. Every instinct screamed at me to turn and run.
I remained where I was.
Hundreds of eyes watched me from the caves and ridges. Some of the men shouted things I did not fully hear. Others laughed. A few seemed confused, as if they could not decide whether I was brave, stupid, or bait too obvious to trust. My purpose remained clear, even if my body wanted nothing to do with it.
Slowly, I drew World Breaker from its scabbard.
The dark Valyrian steel glistened beneath the sun, rippling patterns moving across the blade like smoke trapped inside metal. It was beautiful in a way that felt almost obscene here, surrounded by sand, blood, and men waiting to kill me. I held the sword in both open palms and lowered myself to one knee, offering the blade forward in a gesture of surrender.
Just as Daemon had done in the show.
For a moment, no one moved.
The silence stretched too long. I could feel my heart hammering against my breastplate, each beat loud enough that I wondered if the men in the caves could hear it. Part of me expected arrows to fall immediately, to punch through gaps in my armour and end this foolish second life before the trap had even begun. Seconds passed. Then more.
Nothing happened. The shaking in my hands worsened. Had I failed? Had the plan fallen apart before it could begin? Had I walked into the dunes only to throw away my new life for nothing?
Then half a dozen men began to approach.
They came slowly at first, spread out and cautious. Their weapons looked more like rusted cleavers than proper swords, though I knew well enough that ugly steel could kill as easily as polished steel. One man carried an axe with a chipped head. Another had a spear whose point looked bent. A third grinned at me as he came closer, showing broken teeth beneath cracked lips.
I breathed through my nose, trying not to let them see me hyperventilating. Each step they took made my heart race faster.
By the time the first man came within striking distance, I was no longer certain I could go through with it. It was one thing to plan violence. It was another to kneel in the sand and watch a living man step close enough for you to end him.
Before my mind could decide, my body moved. My fingers closed around World Breaker’s hilt. I rose in one sharp motion, turned my shoulders, and swung.
The blade passed through the first man’s neck as if his flesh and bone were little more than wet cloth. His head separated cleanly from his body and struck the sand before the rest of him had fully collapsed. Blood sprayed across the ground, dark and sudden, and for one horrifying heartbeat, all I could do was stare.
I had killed him. I had killed a man as easily as breathing. It was wrong. It was so very wrong. But the others were already moving.
The second attacker charged with his sword raised above his head, screaming as he came. I stepped aside before the blow could fall, World Breaker sliding forward almost on instinct. The point punched through his chest, and I felt the resistance of flesh, muscle, and bone through the hilt. His scream broke into a wet gasp as I pulled the blade free.
The third and fourth tried to flank me from either side while I was occupied. World Breaker caught the strike from my right, steel ringing against steel, while I kicked the other man hard enough to send him stumbling back down the mound. I turned with the motion, parried the next attack, and opened the third man from chest to lower abdomen with a single brutal cut.
The fourth had barely regained his footing when the fifth and sixth rushed me together. After that, thought became difficult.
My body moved as if possessed. A block here. A step back. A twist of the wrist. A dodge beneath a clumsy swing. World Breaker answered every movement with terrifying ease, and Othorion’s instincts carried me where Heinrich Adler would have frozen. I could hear my own breathing inside my helm, harsh and uneven, but my hands did not hesitate.
Within moments, six men lay dead around me. I had no time to understand what that meant. A shout rose from the ridges. Then the arrows came.
They fell around me in a sudden black rain, striking the sand with sharp hisses and dull thuds. I threw myself down as one arrow glanced off my pauldron and another buried itself near my leg. My hand closed around a fallen shield, its wood cracked and its leather grip slick with blood, and I hauled it up just as another arrow struck against it.
Then I ran.
The dunes erupted with movement behind me. Men shouted from the caves, and dozens began rushing across the sand, drawn out by anger, greed, or the simple desire to watch me die. The plan was working, though that knowledge brought little comfort while arrows chased me across open ground.
One arrow deflected from my armour with a metallic snap. Another found a gap near my upper back and drove through with a burst of pain so sharp that my stride nearly broke. I stumbled, teeth clenched, and the world flashed white for half a heartbeat.
Othorion knew this pain. Heinrich did not.
The Heinrich Adler part of me writhed beneath it, horrified by the unnatural sensation of being pierced. Every instinct begged me to fall, to curl inward, to clutch at the wound and scream. But the body kept moving, and somehow I moved with it.
I could not falter now.
Ahead stood the broken remains of an old ship, its ribs jutting from the sand like the bones of some dead beast. I made for it as more arrows hissed past me. By the time I threw myself into its partial cover, my breath came ragged and hard, and sweat ran cold beneath my armour.
I turned to face the men charging after me.
Two of them hurled small axes before the others closed the distance. I caught both against the shield, but the impact split the battered wood almost in half. The shield hung uselessly from my arm for a moment before I tore it free and cast it aside.
Now I had only World Breaker.
The first attacker reached me with a spear. I knocked the point aside and cut him down before he could recover. The second came too close, and I drove my pommel into his face before opening his throat. The third tried to strike low, perhaps hoping to find the gap beneath my armour, but I stepped into him and buried World Breaker beneath his ribs.
Three more dead in less than thirty seconds. Still, the waves kept coming.
More men poured from the caves now, too many to count properly. A dozen became several dozen. Several dozen became more. Across the dunes, the Crabfeeder’s forces surged forward, drawn by the sight of me standing alone among their dead. I could not tell exactly how many had emerged, but it had to be at least a couple hundred.
Enough to spring the trap. Enough to kill me if the trap came too late.
I tightened my grip on World Breaker and backed deeper into the broken ship’s shadow, blood dripping from the blade and pain burning in my back with every breath. The fear was still there, sharper than ever, but something else had joined it now.
I had killed.
I had survived the first rush.
Now I had to live long enough for the dragons to come.
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