The Wizard of Fury Chapter 34

A wide field of short stalks of grass and wildflowers was illuminated by the sun high in the sky. It hadn’t rained in days, leaving the dirt cracked beneath the heavy footfalls of dozens of knights dressed in heavy mail. The tiered seating erected around the field was filled with nobles and smallfolk alike, both groups being carefully segregated into different sections. Regardless of that though, both groups roared with approval as the knights divided themselves into two distinct groups.

King Robert’s love for battles dominated the overarching theme for the tournament. At his insistence, the participants in the melee would be divided based upon geographical region. The North, Vale, Riverlands, Westerlands, Dorne, Reach, Stormlands, Crownlands, and Iron Islands would all form their own armies of knights, some mounted and some not. It was a simple bracket system where one region would be pitted against another. As the two smallest regions, the Crownlands and Iron Islands would compete first, thereby allowing a proper eight-team bracket to be drawn up.

Harry strode forward, surrounded by men less familiar to him than those he normally stood alongside. Although House Baratheon is from the Stormlands, when King Robert made Stannis the Lord of Dragonstone, he technically made him a part of the Crownlands. That didn’t stop the noble houses of the Stormlands from respecting Stannis and maintaining close ties with him though, and they often visited Dragonstone and paid respect to the man who should’ve been their liege lord had Robert not chosen to give Storm’s End over to Renly.

Harry drew his blunted blade. Everyone was stuck wielding dulled weapons so that no one could easily be cut, but that didn’t mean that injury couldn’t occur. No thrusts were allowed, but that wouldn’t prevent a powerful swing from breaking bones if one struck at just the right spot.

Ser Balman Byrch, Lord Monford Velaryon, and Ser Osmund Kettleblack stood nearby, each chattering about as they readied themselves. Harry eyed them warily. Ser Balman looked more likely to keel over from exhaustion before he could make a single swing of his sword. Lord Monford and Ser Osmund seemed much more strong and capable, but he didn’t like how casually they were taking this.

Across the way, the ironborn were taking up a rough formation.

It didn’t feel like so long ago that Harry had been taken captive by Euron Greyjoy, a man who was still exiled from Westeros. He’d given him the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead here—something that he just couldn’t seem to be rid of—and would’ve killed him given the choice.

He wondered how many of these men had been in the great hall of Pyke when Euron had dragged Harry in and thrown him before Balon Greyjoy, the Lord of the Iron Islands, who didn’t even bother to show his face here. How many had sneered and laughed at him? How many still did?

His blood was beginning to boil as drums sounded from the sidelines. Glancing over, he saw his father sitting up in the stands near the king. A few rows down, Margaery was squeezed in between her brothers. She was too far away for him to see if she was smiling at him, but he liked to think that she was. She’d witness him fighting back against those who’d wronged him as a child.

Ser Gilbert Farring, a strong, clever knight who’d spent time at Dragonstone a few years back, had previously volunteered to take up the task of drawing up battle plans for the melee. Many of the knights there had looked to Harry to see if he approved, given his status as the nephew of the king, and Harry had merely nodded and allowed the man to plan whatever he may.

“Remember!” Ser Gilbert called from the back of his horse as he trotted along in front of the knights. “You all have your assignments! Stick to them, and the battle is ours! We will represent our king with the bravery of the Crownlands. May the Warrior bless your weapons and give you strength!”

There was a roar in reply. A weak one, Harry thought to himself. Nearly a quarter of the men here weren’t in fighting shape; they’d only come for glory and valor or because they were expected to. They’d either run or surrender by the time the real fighting got started.

Thankfully, Ser Gilbert seemed to recognise that as well as he made sure to spread those men out enough that they wouldn’t cause any of his plans to fail.

“Look at them, unarmoured as they are,” Lord Monford commented dismissively as he stared down the ironborn in the distance. “It’s a wonder that they even bothered to show up for this.”

“I suspect that they’re just happy to take a crack at any mainlanders they can get their hands on,” Harry told the man with a dark tone.

“Yes, yes, everyone knows their lust for violence. But it seems a shame for them to appear before us like this. It won’t make for much of a contest.”

“Better for us to distinguish ourselves from them,” Ser Osmund replied. He stood a head taller than Harry and Lord Monford and had all of the eagerness of a lowborn knight eager to make his mark, but Harry didn’t like the cruel smile on his lips. He seemed the type to enjoy violence.

“Many of them will be surprisingly quick and deft with whatever weapons they bring in,” Harry pointed out, remembering from experience. “But once our horsemen clear through theirs and then flank their lines, the battle will be ours. We merely need to withstand their initial onslaught to win.”

“Fine by me,” Ser Osmund said. “I only hope for my skills to shine enough to win an invitation to the single combat melee.”

While the regional-team melee was the first event, it was by far from the last. The jousts would take place afterwards, followed by archery, and then the grand tourney would end with a single-combat tournament. Many knights and lords from important noble houses had already received their invitations to join this tournament—King Robert had invited Harry himself just this morning—but others needed to earn an invitation. That would require a substantial feat in this melee by proving themselves worthy through defeating a well-known knight in combat or performing some heroic feat. King Robert insisted that if this was to be the greatest tourney that Westeros had ever seen, then only the greatest fighters should partake in the single-combat melee.

“There will be plenty more opportunities,” Lord Monford pointed out. “We defeat the ironborn and then we will be on to a proper opponent this afternoon.”

The rhythmic pounding of the drums grew louder, and the first horns blared in the distance.

“Ready yourselves!” Ser Gilbert shouted as he retreated to join the rest of the cavalry.

The second horns sounded, and that was when some of the ironborn began to charge. It was comical, really; they were meant to wait for the third set of horns to sound, but evidently an entire group of them decided to get a head start. The crowd rumbled in surprise, and then the third horns sounded far earlier than they were supposed to.

A roar went up among the Crownland knights as they seized forward, charging over the grass towards their opponents. Hooves slammed into the ground as the cavalry divided into two groups and spread itself wide beyond the lines of knights, rushing along the edges of the field.

The ironborn men on horseback were far less practised than those from the Crownlands. A few showed skill in how they manoeuvred their steeds, but the group as a whole was so disjointed that it turned into a staggered series of waves that came to meet the organised Crownland knights.

The men on horseback clashed together first, just moments before the early group of ironborn reached the Crownland knights. They came charging in with a roar, wielding axes and swords and curved blades, and they clattered against the raised shields of the Crownland knights.

The chaos of battle was something impossible to ignore. Hundreds of men fighting at once led to such a cacophony of noise, sights, and smells that it could easily overwhelm one’s senses if they weren’t prepared for it. Many lesser men faltered quickly, either tripping over their own feet or breaking down in fear and collapsing backwards as the ironborn descended upon them.

Harry was not a lesser man. He raised his shield and battered away the first ironborn who dared challenge him. It was a thin older man with crooked teeth and shaved head. He came charging in and tried to bury the head of his axe in Harry’s helmet-clad face. He didn’t expect the lower point of Harry’s shield to catch him in the ribs, knocking the air from them, nor did he realise that the side of Harry’s shield smacked him upside the head until he was already falling into a crumpled heap on the ground.

When you were knocked down, you were meant to surrender. It was an honourable, chivalrous end to a fight. Then again, not all fighters were like that. Some would rise up immediately and make another attempt. Some fighters would strike downed opponents.

Harry didn’t trust the ironborn as far as he could throw them, but the man he knocked down at least had the grace to toss aside his axe and scramble away where he wouldn’t get clogged up in the mess of fighting that was still taking place.

Beside him, Lord Monford and Ser Osmund were both battling their own opponents. Two ironborn were bearing down on Lord Monford, so Harry intercepted one of their attempted strikes with his blade and twisted his arm around to disarm the unsuspecting man. With his sword out of his hands, the ironborn quickly tried to draw the hand axe at his hilt, but Harry battered the flat of his blade against the man’s hand. He howled in pain and swung wildly with his other fist. Harry twisted himself behind the protection of his shield and slammed forward with the force of his shoulder, knocking the man into the dirt.

“Come! Come to me!” Ser Osmund roared as he clashed his sword against his shield.

Despite his impressive size, his taunt attracted the attention of many of the newly arriving ironborn. They weren’t maintaining solid lines like the Crowndland knights were, which was to their detriment. Despite not truly knowing the two men at his side, he trusted them to hold their positions, allowing him to focus on what was in front of him. These ironborn fought individually more often than as a team. They were used to battling upon longships rather than on the ground. Their reaving and pillaging tactics weren't serving them well on a battlefield like this.

In the distance, the mounted knights from the Crownlands were already encircling the ironborn. Whatever cavalry the latter had was swiftly dealt with, leaving little more than the standing men to be taken care of.

“Get ready,” Ser Osmund grinned as he dug his heels into the dirt.

The main host of the ironborn forces came in full fury against the defensive lines of the Crownlands' knights. A groaning sound of sympathy came from the crowd as dozens of men clashed together, but those were swiftly replaced by cheers as the fighting got underway.

By virtue of standing next to Ser Osmund, Harry was included in fighting against the cluster of ironborn that took issue with his taunt. Two of them squeezed close to strike at Harry. One was clearly hoping to use the hook-like curve of the bottom of his axe to yank Harry’s shield away from his body to open him up to a strike from his fellow ironborn, but Harry predicted exactly what the ironborn had been about to try.

The ironborn’s aim was true as he hooked the curve of the axe over Harry’s shield, but Harry used the opportunity of his body being opened up to slash at the other ironborn readying to attack him. His blunted blade raked across the man’s forearms and then smacked down hard upon his thigh. Even though his mail protected him, the blows still stung, and he was caught in such surprise that Harry managed a quick pommel strike to the man’s temple just before bringing his blade down on the first ironborn.

“Scarhead!” An ironborn shouted.

For a moment, Harry was transported back to his time at Hogwarts, walking through the halls and hearing Draco Malfoy call him that insulting name.

The illusion was shattered the moment the man with an oaken cross over a field of blue on his shield pointed his longsword at Harry. Ironborn flowed around him like water gushing around a massive boulder in a river. He was important, Harry knew instinctively. A man of power and purpose within the ironborn. And here he was challenging Harry the way he would any he took issue with.

The Crownlands' calvary was moving in on the ironborn host from behind, distracting them and giving the Crownlands’ knights a distinct advantage. They began to press forward to meet the charging ironborn, and for every Crownland knight who went down, four of the ironborn suffered the same fate.

The battlefield turned into a systematic shuffle as the Crownlands’ knights moved forwards and the ironborn steadily closed in their ranks for safety. And through it all, that man taunted Harry.

“We’ll give you another prize, Scarhead!” The man shouted.

“Won’t that fool bloody shut it,” Ser Osmund snarled.

“That’s Steffarion Sparr, heir to House Sparr,” Lord Monford told them in a brief moment of respite. He was favouring one leg significantly and looked quite exhausted, albeit thrilled to be fighting.

House Sparr… that was a house from the island of Great Wyk, if Harry wasn’t mistaken. The very island that his father had been ordered to capture during the Greyjoy Rebellion when Harry was being held captive by the Greyjoys.

Was this just some attempt at petty revenge? Did they curse his father’s name in the Iron Islands? Did they still mock Harry for being captured as a boy?

Anger began to build in Harry’s chest, but he knew goading when he saw it. Steffarion Sparr wanted him to charge out of formation, to let himself get surrounded by ironborn in an attempt to shut him up.

Well, Harry wasn’t going to give in so easily.

He held his ground and continued to batter away any attempts his opponents made to attack him. The battle was dwindling down rapidly as more and more ironborn fell to the weapons of the Crownland knights, but that came with a set of challenges. Everyone could see the battle was nearing its end, and more than a few of Harry’s fellow knights broke ranks for one last shot at glory. As the first began to scatter, so too did more of them, and before Harry realised it, Ser Osmund and Lord Monford were gone from his side.

Steffarion had been waiting for that moment too. He’d lingered back in the centre of the cluster of ironborn. As his fellows fell around him, he found a gap in the fighting and dashed forward with impressive speed right towards Harry.

Cold steel met cold steel in a painful clash. Steffarion had lunged forward with a powerful overhead strike that Harry rushed to meet with his shield, only for the ironborn to pull back at the last moment, just out of reach of Harry’s attempted retaliatory strike with his shield, and tried to slash at Harry’s side. He brought his blade up in time to meet the blow, but it forced his sword arm close to his chest where he had less manoeuvrability.

“Euron should’ve sent you to meet the Drowned God, boy,” Steffarion spat in his face.

Harry refused to engage with the man and tried to counter by throwing his weight into Steffarion from behind his shield, but the man had clearly seen Harry try that before because he disengaged just in time to avoid the blow and then swiftly followed up with a countercut. The blunted blade bounced off of the inside of Harry’s shield as he threw himself back.

He stumbled awkwardly as he landed, and Steffarion chose to press the advantage, which was exactly what Harry expected him to do. Stabilising his feet on the ground, he feigned another stumble backwards, luring Steffarion in perfectly.

The man slashed downward with his longsword, and Harry swung wildly with his own. He clipped the inside of Steffarion’s elbow just as the man’s blade collided with Harry’s shield. The man cried out in pain, and Harry finished him by returning the blade across his chest.

Steffarion fell backwards into the dirt, and Harry stared down at him with nothing but fury in his gaze.

“Goad me again and I’ll leave you with a scar too,” Harry warned the man.

Steffarion held his gaze angrily for several seconds before looking down and away from Harry.

Striding around the man, Harry walked back towards where the battle was coming to a close. The last few ironborn refused to surrender despite being surrounded on all sides. The crowd was cheering on the Crownland knights, and even King Robert was on his feet shouting commands like he was a battle commander again.

Then, a gasp rose up from the crowd.

Harry grunted as someone kicked out the back of his knees. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his back to find Steffarion standing above with a silver dagger in his grasp.

“This is for—”

Ser Osmund smashed a heavy blunted axe into the side of the man’s helmet. The steel bent inward, and Steffarion collapsed to the ground lifelessly.

“Fucking coward,” Ser Osmund said, kicking Steffarion in the ribs. The man made no sound.

Harry scrambled over and tried to carefully pull off Steffarion’s helmet, but it was stuck. Steffarion didn’t so much as twitch as Harry lowered his head back down to the dirt.

“He’s dead,” Harry told Ser Osmund.

“Serves the bastard right,” Ser Osmund spat. “Attacking a man after going down in a tourney is disgraceful. Just look at this.” He knelt down and picked up the discarded dagger. “Sharpened to a point. He meant to kill you.”

“Then I suppose I owe you my thanks, ser,” Harry said as he stood and offered Ser Osmund his hand.

In the minutes that followed, healers came out onto the field to take care of any of the injured. The silent sisters came out to deal with Steffarion’s corpse and the bodies of two other unfortunate knights who received unintentionally-lethal blows. Coin was paid out to any knight who’d managed to take an opponent hostage, and purses of gold were handed out to any knight whom the king deemed worthy of a reward for putting on a fine performance.

As he staggered off of the field, Harry shed his helmet and ruminated on the fight. He should’ve been prepared for some betrayal like that. The biggest point of entering into this tournament was to try to suss out the individual behind the recent attacks by leaving himself open to a potential attack. If it hadn’t been for Ser Osmund killing Steffarion before he could stab Harry in the back…

His father was waiting for him at the fence that surrounded the field.

“That was well fought, but you should’ve expected an ironborn to disregard their honour like that and try to stab you in the back,” Stannis told him bluntly with no small amount of disapproval in his tone. “You remember what they did to you, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Harry hissed.

Stannis looked away from him. “What’s done is done. King Robert was furious that the ironborn tried to attack you. He made it a point to reward the man who saved you. What is his name?”

“Ser Osmund Kettleblack,” Harry answered.

Stannis hummed. “I’ve heard little of their house. The name is familiar though. Did he fight in the Stepstones?”

“I do not know,” Harry admitted. “He seems experienced in real combat though, so it’s possible.”

“I’ll have Ser Davos ask around about him,” Stannis said. “In the meantime, you must rest. The draw for the rest of the matches has already taken place. The Crownlands is to face off against the Stormlands next.”

Harry cursed under his breath. There were a lot of men he knew who’d be fighting against him there. And plenty of other prominent fighters would be joining in too, like Ser Barristan Selmy. And his Uncle Renly.

“I’ll be—”

Before he could finish his sentence, he saw Margaery coming over as quickly as a lady could in her long skirts. She came short of embracing Harry, though it was clear that she wanted to.

“You fought so well,” Margaery gushed. She quickly turned to Stannis. “I apologise for interrupting.”

“No need,” he said brusquely. “In fact, I had need to speak with you about an important matter.”

“Is it about the dowry?” Margaery asked quickly. “My father assured me that it was a fine sum.”

“It is generous indeed,” Stannis replied. “But no. It was another matter entirely that I require your aid for.”

Margaery smiled warmly at him. “If it is within my ability, I will be sure to aid you, Lord Stannis.”

Stannis took a deep breath before speaking again. “Harry and I have been investigating certain matters pertaining to the recent bandit attacks and other events within the city. We have had limited success in our endeavours, and we are seeking aid in this. Lord Stark has promised to aid in our investigation, and I would like your family’s aid as well.”

Margaery’s expression didn’t change at all. “Of course, I’d be willing to speak to my father and grandmother about it.”

“I’d like to be there for it,” Stannis said.

“As would I,” Harry quickly said. He knew how his father could be with others. If they wanted any chance of success in this, then Harry would need to help smooth his father’s rougher edges.

“Excellent,” Margaery said, clasping her hands together. “I’ll speak to them at once.”

“Time is not on our side,” Stannis told Margaery. “The sooner our houses align, the better this will be for us all.”