Chapter 87: Bloodiest Braavos
Artos stood in the middle of Bloody Street, drenched in blood from head to boot, and for a moment the whole of Braavos seemed to hesitate around him. He had always looked like a man one should not bother, but with all the blood on him, he looked downright menacing. There was not a place on his body that was not drenched in red.
He did not look like a man who had come out of a fight.
He looked like a man who had come out of a massacre he had committed himself. Blood ran down his arms, darkened his sleeves, clung to his sword, and marked the streets beneath his feet where the dead had fallen. His chest rose and fell slowly, not from fear, but from the hard rhythm of a man who had not yet allowed the killing to leave his body.
Around him, the Northern Brutes still pressed forward.
The enemy had begun to break, but the fight had not ended. Men were running, and the Brutes were chasing them down like wolves scenting blood in snow. Some were cut in the street. Some were dragged down in alleys. Some tried to turn and fight and learned too late that the North did not stop once it had chosen a target. They hunted with savage discipline, and the more the city saw it, the less it looked like a riot and the more it looked like a cleansing.
Then Myles Toyne stepped into the field.
He came in with the confidence of a man who had survived enough wars to believe he had seen every kind of violence there was.
But the moment his eyes settled on Artos, standing soaked in blood and still breathing like something predatory, Toyne understood fear, perhaps for the first time in his life.
Toyne drew steel and did not waste words.
Artos answered the same way.
The duel began in the middle of the larger battle, two men colliding while the street around them burned with noise and movement. Their blades struck hard enough to send sparks flying into the blood-wet air.
Toyne was skilled, experienced, and dangerous in the way only a true commander of sellswords could be. He knew how to feint, how to wait, how to punish overreach.
But Artos fought like a thing that no longer cared what pain cost.
He came at Toyne with force that was almost impossible to read. Not wild, not sloppy, but so aggressive that it made the pace of the duel feel wrong to anyone watching. His strikes were heavy, fast, and relentless. He drove Toyne back once, then again, and again.
"Bloody Hell," someone in the crowd whispered.
"More like Bloody Hal."
At the edges of the battlefield, Glaro saw the shape of the disaster getting worse.
At first, he had watched with tightening fury, thinking the Northern Brutes might burn themselves out if the numbers stayed enough in his favor. But then the line began to stretch. Then crack. Then bend.
He saw his men being driven backward. He saw the Brutes push harder rather than slower. He saw the street turn into a hunt.
And then he made the decision that mattered most.
"Bring more," he snapped. "They can't keep up with numbers forever."
His associates stared at him. "My lord—"
"More," Glaro repeated. "Now. If the Brutes are going to make a spectacle, then we will bury them beneath it."
More men were sent in from the nearby corners and waiting alleys. Men hired, bribed, or pulled from Sythan influence. The idea was simple: drown the Northmen in bodies until even they could not keep standing.
For a moment, it seemed like it might work.
It was working. The Northmen were relentless and did not stop fighting, but even they were being pushed back now. They stood their ground, but not without strain. They did not retreat, but the pressure was growing heavier with every wave that came in.
With even more support from the Sythans, the Northern Brutes were in trouble. They were at a disadvantage they could not fill with sheer fighting. They would need support fast, or else they would fall, regardless of how superior they were in battle or how many men their commander had already killed.
Then the Valens arrived.
And with them, hope arrived too.
Not with the same savage force as the Northern Brutes, but with enough numbers to matter. Guards, house men, merchant protectors, and men from Valen holdings who had heard enough of the street's terror to come running. They moved in on the flanks and along the back routes, cutting off enemy groups, pinning stragglers, forcing pockets of Sythan-aligned men to fight on two sides at once.
Lord Valen came among them at the head of his own force, and when he saw the street — the dead, the blood, the bodies, the fighting still tearing through Braavos — he knew the consequences of fighting in Braavosi streets. It was a line not to be crossed, but listening to what had happened to his daughter had made him stop caring.
His eyes found the place where Seraphine had stood.
His jaw tightened.
Then he saw her. His strong daughter, barely holding herself together. A man from the Northern Brutes was protecting her.
And the sight of her was enough to turn whatever restraint he had left into something colder and more terrible.
"What have they done to my daughter?" he said, his voice low and shaking with fury.
No one answered.
For him, attacking business was fair game. This was how Braavos had always worked. But attacking his daughter was another matter entirely. He would not forget Braavos for this, nor the Sythans, nor the men who had stood by and allowed it.
He stepped forward, eyes now on the bodies, the Brutes, the enemy, and finally on Artos standing soaked in blood at the heart of it all.
The battle changed again.
The Brutes became more ferocious when they saw the Valens arrive. It was as if the arrival of Valen support had given them permission to abandon all restraint. They did not merely hold the line now; they hunted in it. They chased the fleeing men harder, cut down those who stumbled, and made a performance of brutality so public and complete that even the bravest onlookers felt their stomach turn.
Men who had been sent to attack now ran from street to street only to be dragged down by wolves in human shape.
Braavos had seen this kind of violence before.
It had not seen this kind of slaughter.
And still the duel continued.
Toyne and Hal clashed with brutal precision in the center of the chaos, each trying to outpace the other while the world around them collapsed. Toyne was beginning to feel it now — not just Hal's strength, but the pressure of the thing driving him.
Toyne blocked a heavy strike and hissed through his teeth. He had expected a commander, and a great fighter. He had expected a bloodthirsty sellsword. What he was getting was something far more dangerous: a man who had turned grief and fury into a killing style.
Then, finally, after all the chaos in Braavos, the Sealord's men arrived. Although they had promised to stay out of this, the matter had gone too far to be left alone.
They came with authority written all over them — uniforms, badges, hard faces, and the kind of expression men wore when they believed official power could still outwalk blood. They shouted for the fighting to stop.
"By order of the Sealord, cease this madness!" shouted the representative of the Sealord, a very important man and a close advisor to him.
The order went out across the street.
It reached some men.
It reached none of the Northern Brutes.
They heard it clearly, but ignored it and shrugged, focusing instead on killing the men as if it were a child crying in the background, not the Sealord's men.
For them, Artos himself had not stopped the fight. If he did not say anything, nobody had to stop until they completed the order of painting Braavos red.
That was when the Sealord's representative got angry. After all, he had not been ignored by anyone like this before. Even the Sythan party was listening, even rejoicing, but the Brutes did not even bother pretending and cut men down even more ferociously.
He shouted again, louder this time, demanding obedience, demanding the street clear, demanding the bloodshed end under the authority of Braavos itself.
"Do you hear me?" he barked. "Stand down at once! This is a direct order from the Sealord!"
The Brutes did not even look at him.
They only listened to Artos.
And since Artos had not ordered them to stop, they did not.
The Sealord's men stood there with their hands raised, frustrated to their core, feeling as if they did not even exist.
They noticed Waymar commanding them and immediately ran to him to stop this goddamn war.
"Hey, you seem to be the one commanding them to stop at this moment," the Sealord's representative said. "This is clear as day. Refusing would mean grave consequences for you and your party. Halt them, and I will talk to the Sealord personally to ease this for all of us."
Waymar stopped fighting for a second, looked at him, and made a nonchalant face.
"If you think you or even I, for that matter, can stop them, then you are a fool," he said. "And if you think I can command them to stop, then you are even more of a fool. If I tried, they would rip me apart limb from limb first. They are only sparing you right now because there are plenty of enemies left to kill. But if the numbers reduce, you will not be safe. I suggest you do not involve yourself in this."
Waymar explained it honestly, and even advised him.
"Commander Hal is occupied," he said. "If you want this to stop, he is the only man who can make it happen. His men do not take orders from anyone in war. They take orders from him only. So until Braavos is painted in blood, or the commander says otherwise, we are not going to stop. Step aside before we kill you. We do not have much patience left when killing."
The Sealord's representative turned on him in irritation.
"Then tell him to stop this madness."
Waymar's expression stayed level, though the blood and noise around him made the whole scene feel unsteady. Already, he knew the representative was a dead man walking.
"He is dueling," he said. "Go tell him yourself."
"That is no excuse."
Waymar gave him a hard look and continued fighting.
"It is the only one you are getting from me ."
The representative looked ready to explode, but there was too much happening around him to do more than bark orders and be ignored. They had gone to Lord Valen for resolution as he is native to Bravos knew the rules and consequences better.
Around them, the Northern Brutes kept moving. The Valens kept pressing in because Lord Valen was not having it after what had happened to his daughter.
Glaro's men were still trying to force a win through numbers. But the game was getting closer to even now. Valen had straightened out the numbers. Toyne was still locked in a duel that was becoming more desperate by the second.
Lord Valen watched all of it, his face pale with fury now, not fear.
Then he spoke, and when he did, it was not the voice of a careful lord.
It was the voice of a father who had seen too much.
"Hear me, you fools," he said.
The Sealord's men looked toward him.
Valen pointed toward the street, toward the blood, toward the bodies.
"My daughter was attacked in my city, and you expect me to stop this?" he said. "My house was humiliated. My people were dragged into this. How many times have I supported your Sealord only for him to switch on me the first chance he gets?"
He took another step forward.
"I do not care for your laws right now. I do not care for your warnings. If Braavos wants to call this treason, then so be it."
That made the Sealord's representative stare.
Valen did not blink.
"No one touches my blood and walks away," he said.
Around them, the Northern Brutes kept hunting.
Glaro kept sending more.
The Sealord's men kept barking orders no one was obeying.
Then, as if the city itself had not yet decided whether it wanted to survive this night, the crowd made room for the next shock.
Artos lifted his blade again.
Blood streamed from his armor, from his hands, from his face.
He stood in the center of it all like a demon made flesh, while Toyne reset his footing and the world around them continued to split open.
Braavos had not stopped the fight.
It had only learned that it was now trapped inside it.
And finally, at last, Artos brought his sword down and cleaved through Toyne.
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