Whether to slow Rodney's pursuit or simply out of sheer, malicious cruelty, the Skagosi set fires to the thatched roofs of Lone Bridge before they fled.
As the militia waded ashore, the lucky survivors wailed, scrambling to drag their wounded kin and meager belongings from the burning homes.
Rodney's face turned the color of iron. He pointed to a veteran with a shield. "You! Take thirty levies. Stay and fight the fire. The rest of you, with me!"
The "levies" were the poorly armed farmers. Rodney had brought them for numbers, but now, forced to choose between saving his subjects and hunting the raiders, he split his host.
Thirty men stayed behind. The remaining hundred and twenty, led by the armored veterans and the cavalry, plunged into the woods after the pirates.
A thirty-minute head start was not enough for the Skagosi. Weighed down by plundered grain, stolen silver, and captive women, they were slow. The militia caught the stragglers quickly, cutting them down in the brush without mercy.
When Rodney and his outriders finally caught the main host, the Skagosi had stopped running. They had formed a battle line at the base of a densely wooded, sloping hill.
Wary of a trap or hidden archers, Rodney halted his advance. He waited for the infantry to catch up.
"Form ranks!" Rodney bellowed.
The veterans moved with practiced efficiency, forming a three-deep phalanx. Nine archers stood in the front. Behind them, a dozen men locked their round shields together. The third rank consisted of spearmen, resting their ash shafts on the shoulders of the men in front, creating a bristling wall of iron.
The peasant levies gathered chaotically on the flanks, raising their pitchforks and axes, shouting insults to build their courage.
Aldric evaluated the Northern formation. It's disciplined, but far too thin. A heavy charge will break the center.
He didn't offer unsolicited tactical advice to a Westerosi lord. He grabbed Kevin by the shoulder and pulled him to the seam between the disciplined veterans and the chaotic levies. They would act as an independent wedge.
"Archers, nock!" Rodney commanded.
Bowstrings creaked.
"Draw!"
"Loose!"
A deadly hiss filled the air. A volley of feathered shafts arced toward the trees.
The Skagosi formation was narrower and deeper than the militia's. The arrows rained down, but most thumped harmlessly into the overlapping, hide-covered shields of the wildling front line.
The Northmen couldn't see if they had drawn blood. They only saw the dense block of Skagosi advancing with a steady, terrifying, rhythmic stomp, crushing the underbrush.
There were only fifty raiders left, but they hit the thin militia line like a boulder dropped into a stream.
The Skagosi vanguard roared, using their broad, heavy shields to smash aside the probing spears of the militia. Behind the shield-bearers, a dozen massive wildlings wielding two-handed great axes vaulted forward. They brought the heavy iron down on the militia's shields. The sound of splintering wood and cracking bone echoed across the hill.
In an instant, the center of the veteran phalanx buckled.
As the main lines clashed, a detachment of fifteen lightly armored Skagosi broke off from the rear, flanking wide to hit the noisy, unorganized peasant levies.
The result was immediate. The forty-odd farmers scattered like a flock of terrified sheep, dropping their pitchforks and running blindly into the woods.
If the flank routed completely, the detached Skagosi would wheel around and hit the veteran phalanx from behind. A double envelopment. Total slaughter.
By the time Rodney could ride to Winterfell for reinforcements, the coast would be entirely depopulated.
Aldric's pupils contracted. He tightened his grip on his ash spear. "Stay close, Kevin!"
Because Aldric wore gleaming, epic-tier golden plate but possessed no horse, the Skagosi hadn't known what to make of him. They had initially ignored him. But as the levies broke, Aldric and Kevin stood alone, blocking the flanking detachment's path.
Four raiders broke off to deal with the giant.
The fastest was a wildling in rusted ringmail, wielding a rusted sword and a heavy wooden buckler.
Aldric didn't hesitate. He thrust his spear with blinding speed, aiming straight for the man's face.
The raider reacted like a veteran, raising his buckler to deflect the spearpoint, intending to step inside the guard and gut Aldric. It was the standard counter for a swordsman facing a spear.
The tactic was sound. The execution was fatal.
Aldric's spear slammed into the buckler with the force of a battering ram, staggering the man backward. Before the raider could recover his balance, a second spearhead flashed from Aldric's shadow.
Kevin's thrust was clean. The iron point punched through the rusted ringmail and sank deep into the raider's gut.
Kevin twisted the shaft violently. The raider dropped his sword, blood bubbling past his lips, his eyes wide with shock. Kevin ripped the spear free, and the man collapsed.
"Move!" Aldric roared, stepping over the dying man.
Master and apprentice fought as a singular unit. Aldric used his immense strength and reach to batter aside shields and break guards, and Kevin followed up with lethal, precise thrusts.
They carved through the flanking detachment, but the sheer numbers began to slow them down. A knot of five Skagosi locked their shields, bracing against Aldric's heavy blows.
Suddenly, a handful of levies—those brave or desperate enough not to run—rallied to Aldric's side, raising their axes.
"With me!" Aldric bellowed, his voice carrying over the din. He dropped his shoulder and charged directly into the shield wall.
He didn't care about taking a hit. His Lightbringer armor could deflect anything short of a ballista bolt. He shattered the wildling formation, absorbing two axe blows to the chest plate without flinching. As the Skagosi stumbled back, the rallied levies swarmed them.
Not far away, Harry Hornwood was riding down his own men. The young lord's sword was bloody as he slashed at the fleeing farmers.
"Turn back!" Harry screamed. "Fight, you cowards! Deserters hang!"
Faced with execution by their lord or the chance to survive behind the golden giant, the routed levies slowly turned back to the fight.
The skirmish devolved into a chaotic, bloody melee.
The veteran phalanx had shattered, but the heavy armor of the core fighters kept them alive. The battle was a grinding contest of attrition. Twenty Skagosi remained, fighting with the savage desperation of cornered animals. Rodney's forces were exhausted, fighting in small, isolated pockets.
Suddenly, the crowd parted.
A massive Skagosi chieftain, standing nearly seven feet tall, wearing a horned iron helm and thick bear furs, locked eyes with Aldric. The giant held a heavy, bearded axe in each hand.
Aldric's spear shaft had splintered minutes ago. He tossed the broken wood aside, reached over his shoulder, and drew the Serpent's Striker.
The chieftain charged, moving with terrifying speed for his size. He swung the twin axes in a continuous, fluid windmill of steel.
Aldric didn't meet the massive kinetic force head-on. He gave ground, stepping backward smoothly, and thrust the longsword at the chieftain's exposed throat.
The giant deflected the blade with his left axe and lunged. Aldric sidestepped, bringing his sword around in a heavy, sweeping arc aimed at the man's ribs.
Clang.
The blade hit hard, but it didn't cut flesh. Beneath the bear fur, the chieftain wore a thick breastplate of solid steel.
Both men had abandoned shields in favor of maximum offensive damage. They clashed with volcanic intensity, their duel clearing a wide circle on the battlefield as both militia and wildlings backed away.
Aldric was faster, relying on his flawless footwork and the superior balance of his sword. He dodged the heavy, sweeping axes, striking back with precision. But the chieftain was a force of nature. He absorbed Aldric's lighter blows, constantly pressing forward, his twin axes threatening to dismember the paladin if a single parry failed.
The duel raged. Aldric's epic plate absorbed grazing blows that would have cleaved a normal man in two. The chieftain's crude iron armor was denting and failing under Aldric's relentless strikes, slowing the giant down.
Then, the chieftain made a mistake.
He stepped backward to wind up a massive, two-handed downward chop. His heel caught on something soft and unyielding.
A corpse.
The giant stumbled, his balance broken for a fraction of a second.
It was all Aldric needed. He surged forward, raising his left arm to absorb the falling axe blow with his thick golden pauldron. The axe sparked and glanced off. Aldric pivoted, gripping the Serpent's Striker with both hands, and drove it diagonally through the gap in the chieftain's neck armor.
The blade sheared through bone and chainmail. The chieftain's head and right shoulder separated from his torso, hitting the mud with a heavy, wet thud.
Silence fell over the clearing.
The remaining Skagosi stared at their fallen leader. Panic broke their resolve. They dropped their weapons and fled into the deep woods.
"Run them down!" Rodney commanded, spurring his destrier forward with his remaining guards. "Leave none alive!"
Aldric didn't join the pursuit. He drove his sword into the dirt and sat down heavily, resting his forearms on the crossguard, his chest heaving.
He looked at the corpse that had tripped the chieftain. Half the face had been crushed by the giant's boot, but the ragged clothes and the missing teeth on the intact side of the jaw were unmistakable.
It was Ivan the Fool.
Aldric stared at the boy. The promise of a piece of cured meat had brought him here, to die in the mud to trip a wildling.
"Ser..."
Kevin limped over, his face smeared with blood and dirt. He was clutching his left shoulder tightly.
"Master," Aldric corrected softly, not looking away from Ivan. "How bad is the shoulder?"
"A hammer blow," Kevin winced. "It aches, but it's not broken."
"Sit down," Aldric said. "Rest."
Around them, the victorious militia was moving through the dead. If they found a wounded Northman, they dragged him to the healers. If they found a wounded Skagosi, they slit his throat and stripped his corpse of anything valuable.
Aldric realized the looters were stripping men he had killed.
"Kevin," Aldric said, his voice flat. "Get up. Take your sword. Cut the heads off the men we killed. Gather their gear. Do not let anyone else claim our bounties."
Kevin stared at him, his face twisting in revulsion. "Cut their heads? Now?"
"We get paid by the head," Aldric said coldly. "If you can't carry them all, hire someone to help."
Kevin swallowed hard. "Can... can I ask Ivan the Fool to help?"
Aldric pointed to the crushed body a few feet away. "Ivan isn't helping anyone anymore."
Kevin followed the finger. He stared at the ruined face of the boy he had joked with hours ago. He didn't say a word. He drew Aellie, turned his back, and walked toward the nearest dead wildling.
The sun set over the treeline, bleeding red across the sky, matching the mud beneath their boots.