"Sixteen years old… a war-chief?" Timett son of Timett's voice drifted, unsteady, like his mind couldn't grip the words. "Three hundred men who kneel to plows."
"Yes—yes!" another bound lowlander sobbed through the flames. "It was him! Him and those farmers!"
The fire climbed higher. The smell of burning meat rolled through the trees, and hungry throats in the Burned Men swallowed on instinct.
Timett's skull rang, as if struck by a hammer. All the running, all the frantic retreat, all the fear of a phantom host—was it all a lie?
"No!" he roared, forcing rage to drown doubt. "You are lying to Timett son of Timett!"
"Five hundred of my warriors went after them! Five hundred!" His single eye blazed. "And you tell me they were killed by farmers? I'll eat you where you hang!"
The older captive fought to keep his voice from breaking. "We don't dare lie! Send scouts—look with your own eye! See how many truly follow you!"
Timett's jaw clenched. "There were more than a hundred shadows behind us."
A third captive—already past fear, already in the grip of hatred—spat into the heat and screamed back at him.
"Coward. Stupid savage. Send your men to count the trackers! Your chiefs were drowned—drowned by Solomon's water!"
He cursed Timett with every breath the fire hadn't stolen yet, and the words cut deeper than the flames. Timett hated that word most of all—coward—because some secret place inside him whispered it might be true.
His eye flickered.
He wanted it to be true.
If it was true, then the world hadn't crushed him with an army. It had crushed him with a trick. And tricks could be answered.
"Put the fire out," Timett snapped, pointing at three of the captives—then at the one who'd insulted him. "Not him. Let him burn."
Knives cut ropes. Three men collapsed and crawled away, sobbing and choking. The fourth remained, screaming as the fire consumed the last of his defiance.
Timett jerked his chin toward the trees. "Go. Scatter. Count what follows us."
Men vanished into the brush.
The waiting felt longer than the whole march. Timett's heart beat like a drum in his throat.
Then the scouts returned—faces pale, eyes wide.
"Red Hand… it's true," one gasped. "The tracks behind us—only a few dozen. Twenty-some men."
Something inside Timett cracked.
Rage, humiliation, grief, and the taste of failure surged up together until he could barely see.
He had thrown away warriors, pride, and half a people… to flee dust and noise.
A raw sound tore from him. He drew his sword and ended the burning man with one brutal stroke—not mercy, not justice, just the need to silence the last witness to his shame.
"So-lo-mon," he said, each syllable carved out with hate. "I will take you apart. I will mount your head where I can see it every day."
The three surviving knights crawled toward him, trembling. "Let us go… Red Hand. Our message… our lord must hear it."
Timett stared at them with murder in his eye—then waved them away as if they were smoke.
"Go," he growled. "Tell your lord the Burned Men need winter food. Or we come for it."
They ran.
Far off, where the trees still allowed a clean view, Bronn lounged against a trunk like a man watching a play.
Around him sat twenty-some of Solomon's soldiers—faces and arms cut by branches, mail torn, clothes shredded into rags by the forest. They breathed hard, still paying the price of trying to keep up with a sellsword who moved through mountain timber like it was flat road.
Tommen edged closer, voice low. "Bronn… why didn't we warn those Vale knights?"
"And why did we start leaving tracks that show we're few? Won't the wildlings realize?"
Bronn glanced at him, amused. "Realize? That's the point. I want Timett to realize."
Tommen frowned. "But our job was to scare them off. Isn't it done? Why not go back?"
Bronn didn't bother explaining the whole knife-edge of it—the way panic could turn back into fury if you let it.
Instead, he gave orders.
"Send two men—fast as they can—to Deepden," he said. "Tell Solomon: the wildlings are down to about three hundred."
Tommen blinked. "Three hundred…"
Bronn's mouth curled. "If your lord hears that number, he'll gamble again. He can't help it."
He pointed off through the trees. In the distance, three Vale knights burst from the wildling column and fled at a gallop—alive, terrified, and carrying exactly the message Bronn wanted carried.
Bronn watched them go with a look that said he'd seen this kind of noble rot before.
"Lords stabbing each other in the back," he muttered. "Looks like whores fighting over customers. Stupid, and ugly."
Then he pushed off the tree, flipped his dagger once in his palm, and looked at the battered soldiers.
"Come," he said. "We're not done yet."