The Muir knight spurred his horse forward.
As he drew close, he caught sight of Brynden Tully and recognized him. The cruel expression vanished from his face, replaced instantly by the careful deference of a man who knows when to adjust his manners.
He put away the bow. He swung down from the saddle and walked quickly toward the Blackfish, stopping to deliver a correct and formal knight's bow.
"Ser Brynden Tully! My respects!"
The Blackfish's face was dark. He glanced down at the body in the road, then back at the knight.
"What is happening here?"
The knight straightened. His manner was still respectful, but underneath it ran a kind of matter-of-fact callousness.
He pointed his riding crop at the trembling refugees.
"These people are serfs of House Muir who attempted to flee the domain without leave."
"Under the law of the realm, a lord has the right to deal with escaped serfs as he sees fit. They have been sentenced to death, and that sentence is being carried out."
Death.
The word struck like a funeral bell.
The people kneeling in the road collapsed entirely. They stopped looking at the bodies on the ground and threw themselves forward, prostrating toward the knight, toward the Blackfish, toward Solomon, their faces smeared with mud and tears, voices breaking with each word.
"Ser, please — mercy!! We only want to live!!"
"We are Lord Lege's smallfolk!! We only wanted to reach our families in the Vale!!"
"We are not escaped serfs!!"
"We will give up everything we have!!"
"Please, Ser — please let us go."
Septon Meribald was shaking with rage. His walking staff beat against the ground in hard, unsteady strokes. His dog, sensing its master's fury, went on barking without pause.
He pointed the staff at the knight, the wood trembling in his grip, his voice cracking under the weight of his anger.
"How can you do this?! Where is your knightly oath?!"
His question rang out loud and raw.
"You swore before the Seven to protect the weak and show mercy to the helpless!! Where is the Seven's compassion now?!!"
The knight captain looked at him the way a man looks at a stone in the road.
He answered without inflection. "Law is law, Barefoot Brother."
"We are only carrying out the law."
The Blackfish's jaw tightened. He looked toward Solomon, already preparing to tell him they were leaving. The knight was stating plain fact.
This was a rule that had held in Westeros for a thousand years. A lord had the absolute power of life and death over his own smallfolk. No outside party could interfere. No one.
This was an internal matter of House Muir, protected under the law of the realm.
Brynden drew a slow breath and turned to bring the confrontation to a close.
"We should go, young man —"
The words hadn't finished leaving his mouth before Solomon moved.
No hesitation. He swung down from his horse.
His boot heels struck the gravel path — a sharp, clean sound.
He walked straight toward the refugees kneeling in the road, leaving the Blackfish's caution and the Muir knight's cold stare behind him without a backward glance.
A sharp, nameless alarm rang in Brynden's chest.
Solomon paid no attention to the soldiers. He didn't look at them. He walked to Septon Meribald and took hold of the old man's arm, steadying him where he stood shaking with anger.
Then he looked at the knight who had followed him over, his eyes as still and even as deep water.
"Ser. What would it take to release them?"
The question was so direct, so entirely out of place with everything that was happening, that the Muir knight looked at Solomon the way one looks at a child who doesn't understand how the world works.
He didn't know who this young man was. He took him for some attendant of the Blackfish's.
A contemptuous smile spread across his face. His tone took on the particular relish of someone who has no reason to be kind.
"Release them?"
He pointed his riding crop at the sky, then at his own sword hilt.
"Unless the Seven themselves come down and work a miracle... or—"
He stretched the word out, letting his eyes move slowly across the scene, savoring the despair in every direction.
"Trial by combat."
He said it and laughed first. The soldiers behind him laughed after. A group of commoners, a huddle of runaway serfs — what right did they have to demand trial by combat? And who in the world would champion them? It was as absurd as asking the King to shine their boots.
Solomon listened. He gave a small, quiet nod.
He opened his mouth. His voice was not loud. But it landed in the middle of every person present like a hammer striking iron.
"Then trial by combat it is."
Laughter, weeping, the wind in the trees — every sound vanished at once.
The mountain road went absolutely silent. Every person there seemed to have been struck still by some invisible force, looking at Solomon with expressions that could not process what they had just heard. Time stopped.
The smile on the Muir knight's face froze solid.
He blinked. As though he hadn't quite caught it.
"What did you say?"
Solomon drew the Myrish blade and planted it point-down in the ground in front of him, both hands resting on the crossguard. He repeated himself with exact clarity.
"Trial by combat."
The knight's confusion lasted only a moment before something else replaced it — astonishment, then the particular helpless hilarity of a man who has heard the most ridiculous thing of his life. He bent double laughing. His soldiers laughed with him.
He pointed at Solomon, then at himself.
"You? You want to fight me?! Ha!! Hahaha!!"
"Are you a noble? Are you a knight? You — some attendant — want to fight me in trial by combat?! Over a handful of escaped serfs?!"
The Blackfish's face had passed beyond the range that could be described as ashen. Has this young idiot forgotten entirely that we came here to negotiate with House Muir? Is this how you negotiate?
Solomon's riders did not laugh.
They went taut in the same instant — bodies tensed, hands closing on weapons, eyes sharp on the Muir soldiers across the road, waiting in perfect readiness for the order to charge. The air filled with something that had no name but that everyone there could feel.
The refugees kneeling in the road lifted their heads in slow, bewildered confusion, tears still drying on their faces. They didn't know who this man was. But they knew his banner. A spark — small and fragile as a flame in a gale, but real — flickered alive somewhere in the ruin of their hope.
There was something about the young man who had simply stepped forward and declared he would fight for them — even though he didn't look like any kind of warrior — that lit a tiny light in that absolute, airless dark.
Septon Meribald recovered his senses first.
He stepped forward, placing himself between Solomon and the knight.
"Lord Solomon, I am grateful for your courage."
"But..." He hesitated. "You are not a knight. You do not hold the standing to represent the Church and conduct a trial by combat in the name of the Faith."
He had assumed Solomon intended to act as champion for the Faith itself — the only framework available to him that made any logical sense. He had simply never in his life witnessed a lord volunteering to champion a group of destitute refugees in a personal capacity.
At the sound of the name, the knight's laughter subsided.
He narrowed his eyes and studied Solomon.
"Solomon?"
He turned the name over, and then something in his memory caught.
The wild hilarity drained from his face, replaced by something colder and sharper.
"You're the Black Lion?"
The name landed on the soldiers behind him like a physical thing. The laughter stopped. Hands tightened on grips. In the Vale, that name carried weight.
The knight recalibrated.
He was no longer looking at a minor attendant. He was looking at a lord of significantly higher standing than himself.
"Black Lion." His voice had evened out. "The Barefoot Brother is correct. You are not an ordained knight. You cannot represent him — you cannot stand as champion for the Faith in a formal trial by combat."
To champion a septon of the Seven was to stand as an agent of the Faith itself. Only a knighted man could assume that role. The Sons of the Warrior — the militant order of the Faith — had once filled it, but they were long gone, dissolved into history.
Solomon looked at the old septon and the knight with an expression that neither of them could quite read.
He spoke quietly.
"When did I say I was representing the Faith?"
Septon Meribald blinked.
The knight blinked.
The Blackfish blinked.
Not for the Faith — then for whom? Surely not actually for the refugees themselves. Surely no lord had ever actually done that.
Solomon extended his hand and pointed at the people kneeling in the road.
"I represent these people."