The waiting settled over Riverrun like a sickness. For two days, the army sat in the mud, staring at the southern sky for a bird that had not come. The Riverlords paced the battlements, listening to the faint, dark rumors carried on the wind. Smoke was rising in the east.
Tywin Lannister had locked his host behind the towering stone of Harrenhal, but he had opened the gates for his mad dogs. The Mountain was loose.
I lay in the oak grove, listening to the distant, bitter arguments echoing from the castle courtyard. Edmure Tully was pleading with Ned again, begging for leave to take his knights and defend his burning smallfolk. But Ned's answer remained the same.
Ned was bound by the heavy chains of the war. He had to guard the Kingslayer, hold a fractured coalition together, and secure his daughter's life. He couldn't afford to chase raiders through the woods.
But I wasn't a lord. I didn't care about any raven.
I stood, shaking the damp earth from my coat. Nymeria lifted her head, her yellow eyes questioning. I gave her a low, rumbling growl, a firm command to stay. She whined softly, dropping her snout back to her paws. She belonged with the Northern camp, a symbol for the men to rally behind. To strike the way I wanted, I needed to move faster than a direwolf could run.
I left the grove, slipping past the outer pickets before the men even realized the shadow had moved.
Once I reached the open stretch of the kingsroad, I let the furnace in my chest flare to life. The damp air around me hissed. I lowered my head, dug my claws into the packed dirt, and broke into a run.
The world narrowed. The trees flanking the road blurred into walls of solid grey and brown. The wind tore at my ears, a deafening roar that drowned out the heavy thud of my paws. I tore through the distance, burning the miles away as a blur.
By midday, the smell of rain faded, replaced by the stench of scorched bodies.
I slowed, my chest heaving, the steam rolling off my back in thick white clouds. I followed the smoke to a clearing near a bend in the river.
It used to be a village. Now it was an abattoir. The wattle-and-daub houses were engulfed in flames. Bodies lay scattered in the mud whether farmers, women, children, cut down mid-stride. A dozen men in red cloaks were dragging livestock and sacks of grain toward a line of massive warhorses.
In the center of the slaughter sat the Mountain That Rides.
Gregor Clegane.
He sat astride a stallion the size of a draft horse. A massive greatsword rested across his saddlehorn, its edge dripping red. He was watching his men work.
Then a villager, bleeding from a severed arm, tried to crawl away through the muck. Gregor didn't say a word. He simply spurred his stallion forward, raising the greatsword, intending to cleave the man in half for the sheer sport of it.
I didn't give them the mercy of a warning.
I hit the clearing like a falling star.
One of the red cloaks turned, his mouth opening to shout, but my jaws clamped down on his chest piece. The steel crumpled like parchment. I threw his broken body into the nearest burning house and kept moving.
The horses panicked first. They screamed, rearing up and snapping their tethers, terrified by the sudden, suffocating heat flooding the clearing.
Gregor wheeled his massive stallion around, hauling back on the reins. He saw me, a six-foot beast of scarred fur and glowing amber eyes, standing amidst the butchered villagers.
"Kill it!" Gregor bellowed.
Three of his men charged, raising spears and axes. I didn't slow down. I ducked beneath a spear thrust, snapping the wooden shaft with my shoulder, and drove my skull into the man's chest. Ribs shattered with a sickening crunch. I spun, catching the second man by the throat, the fire beneath my skin searing his flesh before my teeth finished the job.
Gregor didn't wait for his men to die. He drove his spurs brutally into his horse's flanks, charging me. He swung the massive greatsword in a wide, devastating arc meant to take my head off.
I dropped flat into the mud. The heavy steel whistled inches above my ears.
Before the Mountain could recover his swing, I lunged upward. I didn't aim for the armor. I slammed my full weight into the chest of his stallion. The horse screamed as its ribs caved in. The sheer force lifted the animal off its hooves, sending it crashing backward into the dirt.
Gregor Clegane was thrown from the saddle. He hit the ground with the sound of collapsing anvils.
Any normal man would have broken his neck, but the Mountain rolled, hauling his eight-foot frame upright. He gripped his greatsword with both hands, panting, his eyes burning with blind, unhinged rage beneath his helm.
He swung again, a vertical chop that could have split an oak tree.
I stepped into the swing instead of away from it. The flat of the blade glanced off my thick shoulder, tearing a gash through my fur, but I ignored the sting. I closed the distance.
My jaws clamped down on his right wrist.
Gregor roared, trying to wrench his arm free. It was useless. My teeth sank through the heavy chainmail and boiled leather, grinding against the thick bone underneath. I pushed the heat from my core straight into my mouth. The iron gauntlet began to glow a dull red.
Gregor's roar of rage turned into a shrieking wail of agony. The steel was cooking the flesh right off his hand. He dropped the greatsword, wildly beating at my head with his massive left fist, denting his own gauntlet against my skull.
I held on, the heat flaring brighter, melting the links of his armor into his skin. The smell of burning hair and roasting flesh filled the air.
With a brutal jerk of my neck, I ripped backward. The bone snapped.
Gregor collapsed to his knees, clutching the smoking, ruined stump of his arm, screaming at the grey sky. The terror had finally found him. The monster of the Lannister army was looking up at something far worse than himself.
I stood over him, the fire receding back into my chest.
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