Hearing the conversation between Kevin and Lrand, Conrad's face flushed with a desperate fury. "Disarm us? Think carefully, Kevin Turner. You have sixteen riders, but I have thirteen veterans. If we draw steel, you'll find the price of our pride is higher than you want to pay!"
Kevin offered a thin, mocking smile. "Conrad, have you forgotten? Before you turned your back on the Master, I was already a Sunwalker. I may not be the Lightbringer, but I can keep a dozen men alive through a storm of arrows. Can you say the same for yours?"
The men behind Conrad shifted uneasily. They had served in the Silver Hand; they remembered the battles where no one died because Aldric walked the lines with the Light in his palms. They looked at Kevin—his eyes steady, his armor clean—and then at their own rusted mail and hollow bellies. Their morale didn't just drop; it evaporated.
Conrad, a veteran of a dozen skirmishes, felt the change in the air. "Aldric isn't here!" he barked at his men. "What are you afraid of?"
"Perhaps you should be afraid of what he's built," Kevin countered. "My Master now has over sixty Sunwalkers at St. Maur's, and the number grows with every sunrise. Every man who followed him back to the Riverlands has been granted the Solar Spark. Their families will never know the rot of wound-fever or the slow death of the winter-cough. So long as there is grain, they will live until their bones are dust. Can the Karstarks offer you that?"
"Lies!" Conrad roared, but his voice lacked conviction.
Lrand leaned forward in his saddle, his interest piqued. "Kevin, is this true?"
"Every word," Kevin confirmed. "At the monastery, the Master has perfected the Word of Anshe. It isn't just talk of 'equality' anymore; there is a strategy. A plan. Every Sunwalker is a pillar of a new world. It doesn't require noble blood or a mountain of gold—only the will to serve the cause. Isn't that better than dying for a Lord who doesn't know your name?"
Silence fell over the road. A moment later, Tormund, a pikeman in the back of the Karstark line, let his weapon clatter to the dirt.
"Tormund!" Norris shouted. "Are you a coward?"
"The Captain saved my leg when a horse crushed it at Riverrun," Tormund said, his voice weary. "I owe him my life. Parting ways is one thing, but I won't cross steel with his student. Not for a Lord who's already dead."
Another man dropped his spear. "Conrad, look at them. Unless we can crush Kevin and his friends in a heartbeat, the Light will just knit them back together. We've already lost."
One by one, the bows were unstrung and the pitchforks dropped. Conrad looked at the pile of wood and iron in the mud, then unbuckled his own belt. He threw his shield and axe down. "Kevin... for the sake of the bread we shared, see that we're treated fairly."
Kevin looked at Lrand. The outlaw leader thought for a moment. "A man without a weapon is just a traveler. We will escort you to the Lightbringer. But if you try to run or resist, the courtesy ends. Understood?"
That night, Lrand found a sheltered hollow for the camp. As the fires were lit, Kevin sat across from Conrad. The tension had faded into a grim, hollow camaraderie.
"What happened to the rest of the Silver Hand?" Kevin asked.
Conrad took a long pull from a waterskin. "Do you remember the night at Oxcross? The three men Aldric executed for the rape?"
"The fools," Kevin nodded. "What of them?"
"They were Frey men," Conrad said. "After you fled, a Frey knight found their bodies. He wanted blood. If it wasn't for Lord Rickard Karstark remembering that Aldric saved his son's life, he'd have hung the lot of us to appease the Freys. He took us into his service instead."
He sighed, the firelight catching the deep lines in his face. "Lord Rickard was fair enough, but without you and the Master, the Silver Hand was just... meat. We were common sellswords again. The Karstarks had hundreds of their own men; they didn't care for our drills or our 'Word.' We were used as the front line for every castle wall in the West."
"And Edi?" Kevin asked.
"Edi? He's too smart to die," Conrad sneered. "He and his scouts turned their cloaks the moment we reached the coast. They're serving under Torrhen Karstark now, playing at being proper soldiers. They cut themselves loose from the 'infantry' months ago."
Kevin laughed. "I thought you two were a matched pair."
"Nothing is matched in war," Conrad grumbled. "The West was easy enough. Tywin took his veterans to the Crownlands, and the green boys he left behind broke at Oxcross. We took gold mines and keeps, but the cost was high. Since we were 'The Silver Hand,' the Lords put us on the ladders first. We bled for every stone. By the time the Young Wolf ordered the retreat, half our brothers were in the ground."
"Vitaly?"
"Dead," Conrad said flatly.
Tormund leaned in, picking up the story. "No, he didn't die on the wall. He fell from a ladder at House Stockpit. Someone dumped a vat of boiling filth over him. He lingered for two days in a tent, screaming as his skin sloughed off in chunks. Finally, a Karstark sergeant cut his throat to stop the noise. It was a mercy."
Kevin felt a cold knot in his stomach. "And the girls? The medics?"
"Gone," Tormund said. "Without the Master's Grace, they were just girls with bandages. They picked up spears to survive, but in the chaos of the coastal raids, they were swarmed. None made it back."
The fire crackled. Conrad looked at the flames. "We recruited as we went, but we spent men faster than we found them. By the time the King marched back to the Trident, only the thirteen of us were left from the old guard."
Lrand, listening from the shadows, spoke up. "Robb Stark has returned to the Riverlands? With his cavalry?"
"Aye," Conrad said. "The whole host. But they didn't take Casterly Rock. The King got an arrow in the arm at the Crag and spent his time in a Westerling girl's bed instead. They say he lost his head because Winterfell was sacked by the Ironborn, but who knows the truth of a King's heart?"
Kevin frowned. "He had a pact with the Freys. A marriage."
"He broke it," Conrad shrugged. "Married the Westerling girl instead. The Freys walked out in a rage. Without their crossing, and with the King tucked away in his 'gentle nest,' the army had to retreat to Riverrun."
"And the Kingslayer?"
Conrad let out a harsh laugh. "Magic, it must have been. We get to Riverrun and find out Lady Catelyn let him go. Just opened the dungeon and sent him toward King's Landing with a woman and a cripple. Lord Rickard went mad with it. Jaime Lannister killed his sons at the Whispering Wood. He wanted vengeance, and the King's mother just... handed it away."
"What did Rickard do?"
"He murdered two Lannister boys in their cells," Conrad said. "Tion and Willem. Mere squires. And then, the 'Just' King Robb... he took Lord Rickard's head for it. Executed his most loyal vassal in the middle of a rainstorm."
Kevin went cold. "He killed his own blood? The Karstarks are Starks!"
"He's a fool," Conrad spat. "Rickard was his father's oldest friend. Now the Karstark men are deserting in droves, hunting for Jaime Lannister's head to claim the bounty Rickard set before he died. We were lucky to even get our boots on before the camp shattered. We walked from Riverrun to here because someone stole our horses while we were sleeping."
Silence smothered the camp. Morley, the local Sunwalker, spoke up, his voice hollow. "It's over. The Riverlands are lost. The North is lost."
"Aye," Kevin agreed. "The war will be over soon."
Lrand looked confused. "Why? Robb Stark still has his army. He took the West!"
"He lost his heart, Lrand," Kevin said. "My Master taught me that to win a war, you need the Heavens, the Earth, and the People. Robb Stark has lost the Earth of Winterfell, the People of the Freys, and the Heaven of his own justice. He may win a few more battles, but he has already lost the war."
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