Kal's heart carried a faint edge of urgency as he urged his horse into a furious charge. Yet the enemy, seeing him approach, neither dropped to their knees nor fled. Instead, they dared to rally their formation and prepare to resist.
Two Lannister-armored knights came at him from either side, angled like the arms of a chair, their blades flashing as they aimed for his neck.
Kal met them head-on, lifting his long arms, and with a single, almost casual swing, brought his hammer down.
The hammer traced a sweeping arc through the air.
The knight on his right, horse and rider together, became in an instant a grotesque painting—flesh, blood, and shattered bone thrown together into a surrealist canvas by the hammer's stroke.
Even the warhorse beneath him was smashed clean in half, crashing into the mud with a dull thud, lying still as if it were nothing more than the broken frame for that gruesome work of art.
Kal spared not a moment for mourning.
For right behind him came the next opponent.
After crushing the enemy on his right, at the very instant he was about to pass the knight on his left, Kal raised his fist straight into the oncoming blade.
With a single punch, he shattered the longsword that had been hacking toward his neck. In the same motion, he shot out his hand and clamped tightly around the knight's throat.
As their horses crossed, Kal gave a slight heave upward. The man's neck snapped, and with one hand Kal tore him from the saddle, armor and all, yanking the entire corpse clean off the horse.
Two down.
Staring at the two more riders still charging at him from behind, a savage grin curled beneath the stag-horn helm.
And as those knights watched in horror—as though beholding a god or demon—Kal simply lifted the armored corpse in his grasp and hurled it backward like a boulder toward one of them.
Seeing his comrade's body flying straight at him, the knight instinctively yanked his reins, desperate to slow down and veer aside.
But the effort was doomed from the start.
A looming shadow filled his vision, and the corpse slammed into his face.
Crunch!—a sickening sound, bones shattering beneath the impact.
The knight went limp at once, collapsing from the saddle, though his boots caught in the stirrups left him to be dragged mercilessly by his own panicked horse.
Kal spared him no glance. He did not believe anyone could survive a broken neck, a dozen crushed bones, and then being hauled along the ground by a terrified warhorse.
Unless that man were himself.
In the span of only a few breaths, four charging riders had been cut down until only one remained.
The last knight, realizing that by sheer luck he had lagged behind and thus survived, grew frantic. With a look of sheer terror, he wrenched his reins aside, trying to flee from the monster before him.
But reality is rarely so kind.
The moment he made his decision and began to slow, while his horse still struggled against its own momentum, Kal closed the distance.
As they met, Kal drew his gilded longsword in a sudden backhand slash.
In a single pass—
A round head soared into the air.
The decapitated body, still astride the horse, lurched forward a few more steps before collapsing stiffly to the ground.
Kal gave his sword a sharp flick, sending droplets of blood flying from the blade.
With warhammer in one hand and sword in the other, his gaze turned dark and menacing as it locked upon the enemies ahead.
Beneath him, Fawkes seemed to sense his master's intent. Without the slightest hesitation, the warhorse quickened its pace once more.
...
The shock caused when Kal Stone cut down four enemies in just two exchanges, each in a different way, left not only the Westerlands cavalry dumbfounded.
Jon Snow, who had mustered his courage to charge in right behind Kal, witnessed everything from an even clearer, almost detached third-person perspective.
For a fleeting moment, Jon wondered if the fearless, unstoppable warrior before him was even human at all.
After all, what kind of monster could smash a man and his horse to pieces with a single hammer blow, sending blood and flesh flying everywhere?
Then, in the very next instant, as Kal crossed paths with another rider, he not only shattered the man's weapon with one punch, but even hauled the man up and used him as a weapon.
Jon stared, dazed, as Ser Kal hurled the fully armored knight as though he were no heavier than a pebble, flinging him at least ten meters away.
Once again Jon questioned whether Kal had trained him too harshly and he was in fact trapped in some nightmare.
Because what he saw next was that same armored knight, flung through the air, slamming into another cavalryman with a force so brutally real it crushed the man into a heap of pulp.
Without so much as a sound, the broken body flopped limply, dragged along the ground by its warhorse as it passed right by Jon.
Jon swore he had not misseen it: the man's neck was bent into several unnatural angles, and half of his shoulder and chest had collapsed inward into a sunken cavity.
As for the last cavalryman, the one whose head had been cleaved off with a single stroke of the sword—his death almost seemed the most "unbelievable" of all.
And while Jon, following behind Kal, was doubting his very sense of reality—
Kal had already spurred his horse straight into the midst of the cavalry troop ahead, which still numbered at least thirty.
The soldiers, clad in the Lannisters' traditional colors of armor, did not react by resisting when they saw the monster charge into their ranks. Their first instinct was to flee.
They were neither blind nor fools.
They had seen Ser Gregor Clegane, the "Mountain," before. They had watched with their own eyes how he killed.
And the monster before them was simply another "Mountain."
How could they possibly find the courage to fight back?
Even the cavalry captain, who earlier had commanded with confidence, when he saw Kal dispatch the four men he had sent out in such an utterly overwhelming, almost fantastical manner—he was the very first to react.
Without the slightest hesitation, he yanked hard on his reins, wheeling his horse around, desperate to flee this accursed place like a madman.
'As long as his horse isn't faster than mine, I'll make it out alive!'
'Even if he is the 'Mountain,' it makes no difference!'
That single thought filled his mind as he frantically sought to escape this living hell.
He didn't even care to use his whip on the beloved warhorse he usually doted upon. Instead, he drew his sword and stabbed its sharp blade into the horse's rump, leaving a shallow wound just to drive it faster.
Yet as he fled for his life, screams of agony erupted all around him from behind.
From the very moment Kal's charge broke into the cavalry formation—
He had no interest whatsoever in telling one man from another.
His left hand swung the gilded longsword that had once belonged to the Kingslayer, using the very blade that had slit a king's throat to lop off heads one by one.
And in his right hand, the hammer shattered the air, ripping through the breeze with thunderous roars—each strike smashing down upon anyone in reach.
Unlike the longsword's precision, the warhammer in Kal's grip moved in great sweeping arcs.
Anything that met the head of that hammer—whether armored soldier, warhorse, or even the nearby houses' walls and beams—was reduced to rubble beneath the sound of rending thunder.
Blood spraying.
Bones splintering.
Entrails squirming.
Under each stroke of sword and hammer they scattered like droplets in a storm, drenching Kal from head to toe.
Even the antlers on his helm now bore a grisly ornament: half a shattered heart, lodged by chance at the branching curve.
It was a mere fragment, flung free when Kal had smashed in a man's chest and ripped his hammer loose.
At this moment, rampaging through the ranks, Kal was like some primeval beast, a monstrous giant-king out of Westerosi legends and songs.
In but an instant, he trampled upon more lives within the reach of his destruction than anyone could fathom.
But reality was no fantasy game, where a single swing could send hundreds of soldiers flying into the air.
Even with Kal's speed and ruthless efficiency, when the carnage was done, no more than a dozen had fallen by his hands.
Most of the Westerlands cavalry, seizing the moment while their comrades died in front of them, followed their captain's lead. They wheeled their horses and fled in a desperate rout.
So when Kal dug a lump of flesh out from the seam of his helmet and lifted his gaze—
All he saw were corpses littering the ground in ruin. The rest, fewer than twenty, were fleeing in every direction out of the village.
"Jon!"
"S—Ser Kal!"
At hearing the voice of the Stranger's herald upon the earth call his name, Jon Snow nearly lost his grip on his sword.
Snapping out of his daze, he swallowed hard, throat bobbing, his breath coming fast and panicked as he stared at the blood-drenched giant before him.
"I'll chase the ones who ran. Finish off the ones still breathing!"
"Also—before I return, gather the surviving villagers in this place and tally their losses!"
"And once you're sure there are still survivors, have them send someone to Oldstones to summon our troops here!"
Kal wasted no time nor hesitation. Seeing the fleeing soldiers, he made his decision in an instant.
He could not allow the broken remnants to live. If spared, these Westerlands soldiers would surely continue their atrocities in the Riverlands just to cling to life.
So they had to die.
And he could not possibly take Jon along for the chase. Though Jon had indeed gained considerable combat ability under his training, that was no reason to throw him into danger.
After all, it was very likely this boy had never even seen blood before.
Oh no, that wasn't right—surely it wasn't his first time. At the very least, Eddard Stark had always liked to have his sons watch when he swung the sword.
But what Kal was certain of was this: Jon had never killed a man.
At least not while Kal was watching. He would never allow Jon, who had yet to stain his hands with blood, to kill.
And besides, there was no rush. The larger battlefield still awaited him.
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