Chapter 50: Demons Once Again
The morning sun hung low and harsh over the disputed territory, casting long shadows across the Unsullied positions. Artos stood in his stirrups, his borrowed horse tossing its head nervously beneath him, and felt something shift inside his chest. This was it. This was the moment where everything else fell away—all the doubts, all the questions about who he was and what he'd become, all the noise and confusion of the world reduced to its barest truth.
"For Victory!" he roared, his voice carrying across the assembled force. "For gold and glory and the simple truth that we are better warriors than those who oppose us!"
He raised his sword higher, feeling the weight of four hundred and fifty men at his back—a mixture of his hardened Northmen, White Harbour guards trained by Waymar, and seasoned mercenaries who'd sold their skills across half of Essos.
"We are the men who aren't afraid of anything!" Artos continued, and his voice had taken on that quality that made men follow him into hell itself. "We are the warriors who will not back down because some cockless bastards are standing in our way! For gold and glory!"
The answering roar was primal, bestial—the sound of four hundred and fifty throats crying out in unison. Even the hardened mercenaries, men who fought for coin and nothing else, seemed caught up in the fervor of it.
Artos spurred his horse forward, his blade catching the sunlight as he descended the slope toward the Unsullied encampment. Behind him, the formation moved like a living thing, trained soldiers responding to the momentum their commander had created.
The first Unsullied fell before they even knew they were under attack. Artos's archers had positioned themselves on the high ground, and as the enemy emerged bleary-eyed from their tents, arrows found their marks with whistling precision. A spear-carrier took an arrow in the throat and dropped silently, his bronze armor clanging as he fell. Another took three arrows in quick succession, his body jerking like a puppet cut from its strings before he collapsed.
But the Unsullied were trained soldiers, and training didn't disappear in the chaos of surprise. Even as men died around them, they began to organize, to form up in their disciplined ranks. Artos could see it happening—the smoothness of their response, the mechanical precision with which they moved into defensive formations.
Not going to be easy, he thought grimly. These bastards know what they're doing.
He urged his horse faster, closing the distance to the first organized line of defenders. Unsullied spears came up in unison, an array of bronze-tipped death waiting for him. Artos had fought enough to know what was coming—they would present an impenetrable wall of spears, disciplined enough to hold formation even under cavalry charge.
He swerved at the last moment, his horse responding to the shift in weight. Artos's sword flashed out, and the nearest Unsullied didn't have time to react before the blade found the hollow of his neck. Blood sprayed, black-looking in the harsh light, and the man went down. But even as Artos moved to the next target, he felt the sharp bite of a spear point against his ribs—not penetrating his armor, but hard enough to knock him sideways in the saddle.
"Fuck!" he snarled, adjusting his seat. These men were fast. Professional. They weren't the undisciplined rabble he sometimes fought against in Westeros. They were a machine, and Artos was beginning to understand just how dangerous that machine could be.
The charge began to break down as his mercenaries and soldiers clashed with the Unsullied line. What had looked like momentum from a distance became a brutal, grinding melee. Horses screamed as spears found their flanks. Men cursed in half a dozen languages as shields locked with shields and blades sang through the air.
One of the mercenaries near Artos took a spear through the thigh—not mortal, but incapacitating. He toppled from his horse with a high-pitched wail, and before he'd even hit the ground, the Unsullied had moved on to the next target. There was no hesitation, no mercy. Just professional execution.
Artos dismounted, rolling across the ground as his horse was pulled down by three Unsullied working in concert. He came up on his feet and immediately had to bring his sword up to block a spear thrust aimed at his face. The spear was slowed by his blade, but the force behind it was considerable, and Artos felt his arm absorb the shock even through the leather and steel of his armor.
Another Unsullied came at him from the left, and then another from the right. Artos pivoted, using his shield to block one spear while his sword swept up to deflect the other. But there were more behind these two, an endless tide of bronze armor and professional violence. They were coordinating their attacks, each man covering the gaps left by his companions, creating a nexus of lethality that no single swordsman should have been able to survive.
Artos took a cut on his shoulder—not deep, but enough to remind him that these men could kill him if he made mistakes. He took another on his thigh, then another on his left arm. His armor was good steel, but the Unsullied were trained in finding the gaps, the weak points where blade could find flesh.
I'm losing this, he realized with cold clarity. If I'm alone against them, they will kill me.
But he wasn't alone. Waymar appeared like an avenging angel, his sword crashing into the Unsullied on Artos's right flank. The young knight was breathing hard, blood painting his armor in darker shades of iron, but his eyes burned with fierce determination.
Artos felt something shift. With Waymar beside him, the pressure eased slightly. They moved together, covering each other's gaps, creating their own small nexus of resistance.
A spear came at Artos's head, and Waymar blocked it. An Unsullied tried to circle around them, and Artos drove him back with a vicious slash that opened the man's arm.But the Unsullied kept coming. They were like iron made manifest, unyielding and precise. Artos pushed forward, forcing his body to move faster than the cuts and injuries wanted to allow. He grabbed a discarded spear from the ground, dropped his shield, and began to work the longer weapon against theirs. If they wanted to play the spear game, he'd oblige them.The fighting became a blur of thrust and parry, of bodies moving in terrible choreography. Artos felt the weight of exhaustion beginning to settle into his limbs, felt the burning in his lungs as his breath came harder and harder. Around him, his mercenaries were falling. Not spectacularly, not in dramatic fashion, but simply ceasing to be. A spear through the belly here, a blade across the throat there—the Unsullied were harvesting them like a farmer cutting wheat.
The mercenaries were starting to break. Artos could see it in the way some of them were backing away from the line, trying to move away from the killing field. They were professionals, aye, but they were also pragmatists. When the cost became too high, they left.
Artos saw the moment his advantage disappeared. He saw the realization in the eyes of the Unsullied that they were going to win this contest. Saw them begin to press harder, to make their spears sing through the air with renewed vigor.
No, he thought with sudden ferocity. No, I will not lose to this. I did not come to Essos to die to foreign soldiers in a petty territorial dispute.He opened his mouth and roared—not words, but pure animal sound. The roar of a wolf at bay, backed into a corner and deciding that it would take down as many enemies as it could before the end came.
But then, his voice cutting through the chaos like a blade: "MOVE THE DAMNED SPEARS! MOVE THE DAMNED SPEARS! DEMONS BEHIND ME—SPEARS IN HAND AND MOVE THE DAMNED SPEARS!" Artos's head snapped around.
The Northmen he'd brought from White Harbour—the survivors of the Bloody Dance, the men who'd followed him through war and exile and the slow degradation of peace—came forward like an avalanche. One of the Skagosi actually grabbed a retreating mercenary by the hair and threw him backward to clear a path. They came with whatever weapons they could find—spears scavenged from fallen Unsullied, swords, axes—and they moved with the kind of desperate fury that came from men who were tired of running, tired of compromising, tired of questioning who they were.
Waymar appeared at Artos's side and pressed a longsword into his hand. It was a beautiful weapon, steel dark with blood. Artos took it and felt something settle into his chest—a kind of terrible peace.
"For the North!" he roared, and it wasn't true anymore, but it felt true in this moment. It felt like home.He charged into the Unsullied line, his new sword bright with sudden action. Around him, his Northmen came with a sound like thunder—Bert's training in discipline mixing with their native ferocity to create something that was neither fully organized nor fully wild, but something in between that was somehow far more deadly.
The Unsullied had never faced anything quite like it. Their discipline was unshakeable, their formations perfect, their technique superior. But they had no answer for the kind of rage that came from men who had nothing left to lose. The Northmen didn't try to break the formation with force—they flowed around it like water, finding gaps, exploiting weaknesses, killing with brutal efficiency.
Artos found himself moving through the chaos with a kind of detached clarity. Here a spear-carrier overextended, and his sword opened the man's belly. There an officer tried to rally his men, and Artos took his head off with a sweep that sent blood spraying across three of his companions. He moved and killed and moved again, and his men moved with him, around him, behind him—a predator at the center of a pack.
The Unsullied began to fall back, not breaking formation so much as contracting it. They moved toward the gates of the settlement, drawing Artos and his force forward into narrower ground, higher walls, more defensible positions. But for the first time, Artos saw doubt in their eyes. Saw the recognition that the perfect machine had met something that couldn't be properly calculated.
The fighting reached a crescendo of blood and chaos. Bodies piled against the gates, and the ground became slick with the blood of men—Northern and Unsullied both. Artos drove forward, his Demons at his back, and felt the terrible exhilaration of victory waiting just beyond the next moment.
The gates lay ahead, and beyond them, the castle they'd come to seize. And Artos Stark, who had come to Essos to escape being a Stark, found himself thinking of nothing but glory and the satisfaction of conquest.
The war was far from over. But for the first time since he'd left Winterfell, Artos felt like he understood why he'd left. This. This right here. This was who he truly was.
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Sorry I Am not consistent but with my new job and all . I am really busy. They are grilling me hard and only Sundays are off so please understand the situation
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