Steel clanged against steel. Screams tore the wind. The earth drank blood without mercy.
Above the plain, the Weeping Ridge was thick with the dead—Targaryen loyalists, Blackfyre rebels, broken horses, splintered shields. Arrows jutted like thorns from corpses and hill alike, and where once the Raven's Teeth had stood in dark precision, now they were scattered, harried, locked in desperate melee. At the ridge's crest, Brynden Rivers stood half-blinded, blood streaming from the ruin that had once been his left eye.
Aegor Rivers—Bittersteel—was a whirlwind of steel and rage. His sword shimmered red with blood as he surged forward, unrelenting. Blackfyre was gone from Daemon's hand, but Bittersteel had it now, gripped tightly in his off hand, a trophy snatched from death's cradle.
"You should be dead!" Bittersteel roared as his blade crashed against Dark Sister.
"And yet here I stand," Brynden rasped, his voice hoarse with pain.
Blood streaked his pale hair. The cut across his eye was deep, blinding. He fought one-eyed now, but still he matched his brother's blows, step for step, stroke for stroke—until the weight of Bittersteel's fury drove him back, down the ridge, inch by bloody inch.
Then came the sound.
A horn. Long and loud.
And then another.
And then the ground shook.
Bittersteel froze, panting. His eyes lifted to the south, where dust rose in plumes beneath a wave of spears.
Prince Baelor Breakspear had come.
With him rode a thousand Dornish spearmen—lean, sun-kissed, and deathless—and a great host of stormlanders behind them, their banners snapping in the wind. The sun flashed upon spearpoints as the Dornish pressed forward like a bronze tide, unbreaking, unbending, and unbowed.
From the east, another thunder of hooves—Prince Maekar's vanguard, battered but unyielding, rose once more to drive home the hammer's blow. What remained of the Targaryen forces, bolstered by fresh strength, locked shields and pushed forward.
The rebel lines, now caught between the Dornish spearwall and Maekar's iron line, began to buckle.
"Do you see it now?" Brynden said through gritted teeth, blood running down his face. "It's over, Aegor."
Bittersteel looked across the field, his jaw clenched in defiance. He saw his men falter, saw the Blackfyre banners fall one by one, trampled beneath the boots of loyal men.
Yet still, he did not break.
With a savage yell, Bittersteel turned and slashed a path through the men between him and the rear. Brynden tried to follow, but his strength was spent, and his vision swam with red. He stumbled, catching himself on the shaft of a fallen spear.
Bittersteel turned only once, just before the hill sloped out of arrow-range.
"You live because the gods are cruel!" he shouted across the field. "This is not the end, Brynden. I'll come back for you. And when I do, not even your thousand eyes will see the end coming!"
Then he was gone, vanished into the rout.
The Blackfyre lines shattered. Some threw down their arms and yielded. Others fled, screaming, as Baelor's spears descended. The field echoed with the sound of defeat—the dying gasps of a cause that had flown too close to flame.
Brynden did not pursue.
He stood there, alone upon the ridge, his hand pressed to the ruin of his eye. Blood seeped through his fingers, staining the white of his sleeve.
His vision blurred, but he could still see the battlefield below—the fallen Daemon, the trampled standards, the shattered sons, the broken dreams of a would-be king.
"Let the crows feast," he muttered.
And then he sank to his knees, one eye fixed on the horizon, watching Bittersteel's shadow vanish into dust.