Night had fallen hard, smothering the world in black velvet shadow. A pale sliver of moon drifted through clouds above the jagged spine of the Mountains of the Moon, silvering the cold waters of the small lake where Tiber made his camp. He sat cross-legged beside the flickering embers of a fire nearly dead, the heat barely enough to chase off the chill that rolled down from the heights above.
His sword lay across his lap, and he worked at it methodically—slow strokes with the oiled cloth, edge to hilt, again and again. The steel gleamed beneath his touch, catching the firelight like lightning caught in a bottle.
He glanced up at the towering peaks ahead. Somewhere beyond those stone teeth, the Burned Men waited—savages who carved their faces with flame and worshipped pain. Somewhere up there was their chieftain, the target of his mission, the mark for the blade he polished.
But how?
He couldn't simply walk into their camp and bury his sword in the chief's neck. Even a fool would expect some kind of guard. Tiber had thought of disguises, of poisons, of lighting their damned tents ablaze and hacking through the smoke. None of it seemed likely to work. He wasn't a shadow or a sorcerer. Just a man with a sword and a cause.
Then he remembered one of the books Ser Rickon had given him. Traditions of the Mountain Tribes of the Vale, written by some maester who'd likely never smelled a campfire, let alone seen a mountain man. But one thing stuck in his mind—duels. According to the book, the mountain clans held to a brutal code: if one was challenged, they had to answer. To refuse was weakness. To refuse was shame.
Could it work? Could he challenge the chieftain and make the old ways work in his favor?
Or was it just ink and foolish hope?
Tiber sheathed his blade, the leather-wrapped grip snug against his palm. He stood and doused the last embers of his fire with lake water. The hiss echoed into the dark. Time to move.
He packed light—just his sword at his hip, bow slung across his back, and a small quiver of arrows on his opposite side. Then he slipped into the shadows of the mountain.
Hours passed. The paths were steep, broken, treacherous. Loose stone slid beneath his boots. The wind howled through narrow cuts in the rock like wolves calling to each other across the peaks.
Eventually, he found them.
A fire, small but steady, burned in a hollow behind a rise of stone. Around it, four or five mountain men slept like wolves curled in a den. Their armor was scavenged leather, their weapons rough-forged iron. Around their necks dangled grisly trophies—strings of ears, hacked from the fallen. Black Ears, Tiber realized.
He waited, watching. Only one of them was awake, patrolling with lazy steps, bored and half-drunk.
Tiber slid his bow free and notched an arrow. He exhaled. When the sentry turned to walk toward the woods, away from the camp, Tiber loosed. The arrow whispered through the night and buried itself deep in the back of the man's skull. He fell like a sack of grain.
Tiber was already moving.
Sword in hand, he slid into the camp, stepping between the sleeping forms like a shadow. The second man didn't even stir before the blade kissed his throat. The third gave a soft grunt—then silence. The fourth he spared.
Tiber knelt beside the last man, still snoring, reeking of unwashed skin and old meat. He pressed a hand over the man's mouth and laid the edge of his blade against his throat. The man's eyes flew open, wide with fear and rage.
"Whoreson!" the man spat in the guttural tongue of the mountain clans.
Tiber's lips curled. "Son of a whore," he replied—in the same tongue.
The man froze. His confusion flickered into panic. "You speak our words?"
Tiber said nothing.
"Where are the Burned Men?" he growled.
The man sneered and said nothing.
Tiber didn't hesitate. With a clean stroke, he sliced off the man's right ear. Blood poured down his neck as he screamed into Tiber's palm.
"Next is the other ear," Tiber whispered. "Then your cock."
The man whimpered, then spat, "I don't know. But… there's a larger camp not far from here. Black Ears. One of the warriors—Ulf the Broad—he knows the position of all the camps. All of them."
Tiber knocked him unconscious with a blow to the temple.
Forty minutes later, he crouched in the brush above the camp.
It was much larger—at least two dozen tents, a central fire pit, men with axes and bows walking patrols. This wasn't a warband. It was a war camp. Most were awake, laughing, sharpening blades, tossing bones. If Ulf the Broad was here, he'd be in the largest tent, near the fire.
Tiber moved like mist. Down the slope. Past the rocks. Between shadows. He slipped behind a tent, past a dozing guard—
"Hey!"
Steel rasped from a scabbard.
Tiber turned and drove his sword through the man's gut, ripping it free in a spray of blood. The man collapsed—but the camp was already moving.
Shouts rose. Blades gleamed. Tiber stood still, surrounded.
They came at him.
He moved fast. Cut through a throat. Parried an axe, drove his sword through an eye. Blood soaked his arms, his chest. Another man swung at him with a spiked club. Tiber ducked and opened his belly. Intestines spilled to the dirt. Screams filled the air.
He fought like an animal. Like a knight trained by a man who knew what real war was.
And then—
A roar.
Ulf the Broad emerged from the largest tent. A giant of a man, shirtless, muscles thick as tree trunks, wielding a warhammer taller than a child. His face was a ruin of old scars and bone.
He charged.
Tiber turned, blade ready—
The hammer caught him across the face.
Bone cracked.
Darkness swallowed him.