I knelt over the grave and let the soil run through my fingers. It was still loose, darker than the earth around it. That told its own story. The hole was no weeks old, perhaps only some days. Whoever had dug it had done so in a hurry, with little care for how it looked once filled.
No stones marked it, no wood, no sign that respect was given for those underneath. I pressed my palm flat against the soil and closed my eyes for a heartbeat.
So this was where they ended up.
The quarry lay quiet around us, broken stone and old cut faces rising like the ribs of some dead beast. Scrub grass had claimed much of it over the years, thorny bushes growing where men had once hacked rock from the earth. As usual in this part of the Stormlands, the wind carried the smell of damp stone and turned earth, a pleasant scent for such a grim find.
"My lord."
Jack's voice carried from a few steps away, pitched carefully so it wouldn't travel. I opened my eyes and pushed myself to my feet, brushing dirt from my hands onto my cloak. For a moment, my knees protested. I hadn't realized how long I'd been kneeling there.
I crossed the short distance to where Jack stood with two others. They had been digging into the ground a few steps away from me, and the earth here was looser still, as if disturbed again and again. This wasn't a proper grave. Not even pretending to be one.
It was one wide pit. A ditch, meant for many. Jack stepped aside to let me see what his shovel had uncovered.
A scrap of cloth lay exposed, half-buried, soaked through with mud. I could still make out the blue and pale rose, though the colors were dulled by dirt and moisture. The fabric was torn at the edge, and the quartered sun and moon stared back at me.
House Tarth. My chest tightened, like a fist closing around my heart. I had known what we might find here, had known it from the moment Arrec's words had slipped loose the night before, but knowing a thing in the abstract was not the same as seeing it dragged from the ground.
"Mother's retinue," I said, as if to confirm it to myself.
One of my father's men knelt beside the pit. Hugh, a broad-shouldered man going bald at the temples, brushed dirt away from a face just beneath the surcoat, careful despite the circumstances. He froze, just for a heartbeat, then let out a long, slow breath.
"Marke," he said, voice cold. "Had a strange laugh, he did. Loud enough to wake the gods, some days, but he was a solid fella." Hugh glared at the ground. "Has a family back home. Two children."
I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached. I knew Marke. I remembered sparring against him countless times in the yard at Evenfall Hall, his grin always looking too wide in his mouth.
Despite being a decade older, he reminded me of Daven aboard the Fair Winds. All jokes and laughter until he spoke about his sisters, just as Marke spoke so fondly of his children, a little boy and girl. For Daven's sisters, I had sent back a letter and a purse of coins with a Lannister captain that had come to Dawnrest to pick up a shipment of marble, along with a raven to Gerion at King's Landing so he would see that it was done right.
Now there would be two more children who would receive coins instead of fathers and brothers, condolences instead of embraces. Hollow things. All of it hollow.
"Solid fella indeed," I murmured.
Lord Selwyn had handpicked him to travel with my mother along with five others. Six men who had sworn to protect her. Now, they lay stacked in a hole like spoiled meat.
And for what? Sour feelings over lost revenue? Ambitious lordlings thinking we somehow owed them our coin, jealous of our prosperity? I thought my biggest problem in this world would be mad kings and demonic fire gods and ice zombies. Real threats.
I had not even known of House Whitehead before Maester Rowen's lessons on the Stormland houses when I was a child. Anger rose in me easily at that. Anger for not being better prepared. Anger that I looked to the skies for some terrible threat by the big players when the worms next door were the real menace.
"We'll give them proper graves," I said. The words felt inadequate, but they were all I had. "They deserve better than a ditch."
No one argued despite the work it would be. We had come to the abandoned quarry early that morning, the light still pale and uncertain, mist clinging low to the ground. It had taken us hours to find the place. Jace knew its general location, but this wasn't exactly a place marked on our maps, and we didn't want to attract too much attention following the main road.
Now the sun hung higher, though clouds gathered thick and low, threatening rain. I bent and picked up a shovel with the rest of the men.
An hour passed. Perhaps more.
The work was hard and slow, and I had sweated through my shirt despite the cool air. Each thrust into the earth sent a dull ache up my arms and into my shoulders. The steady rhythm was much like practicing sword forms, almost meditative in a way, especially as we dug quietly. No one spoke unless necessary. It wasn't the place for jokes or idle talk.
Then came the bird song.
It was a simple thing to anyone else, a lilting call, natural enough in these hills. I stopped, shovel half-dug in the earth. Every man among the Companions did the same.
One of my father's men straightened, frowning, His eyes flicked upward as if searching for the bird itself. Seeing nothing, he opened his mouth to question us.
I raised a hand at once. "Quiet now," I hissed.
Seconds later, another call followed, longer this time, the notes drawn out and staggered.
Jack swore softly under his breath. The men fell silent, eyes turning to me. I could feel the shift in them, the way bodies tensed, how hands itched for the weapons that lay a few feet away.
"More than a few lads," I muttered, mind churning.
"Fifteen-man party," Jack translated for the others, his voice barely more than breath. "Ten minutes out. All mounted and with carts."
A ripple of tension ran through the group. I counted us automatically, the numbers already etched into my mind. I had nineteen men on the ground, myself included. Ten with me at the quarry, six more back at the camp with Pate and Arianne, Grey amongst them, and Jace and our so-called father back in town again, ears open for new rumors. Mostly, I wanted their eyes on the docks, watching for my lord father's arrival.
Of the ten men with me, I had three scouts posted along the road from the town, where I had expected the Whitehead guards would most likely come from. Arrec had been clear enough the night before that graves were to be dug again today.
He had said it was only to be him and a few lads, but I had not expected fifteen, not to dig some graves. Why so many if our men were already dead? A counter ambush, perhaps? I shook my head. No, that made no sense. They couldn't have found out about us so easily, and they wouldn't have brought carts, nor taken the road so visibly.
More men than expected. Still, the plan remained the plan.
Our forwardmost scout sat high in a tree atop a rise along the road, a good vantage point. From there, he could see riders coming for miles. Two more scouts were staggered between him and us, close enough to pass signals swiftly. And if the fighting turned messy, they could fall on the Whitehead guards from behind once their attention fixed on the quarry.
If we could take them all out here, the castle and town would be all the more vulnerable.
I drew a slow breath, forcing my pulse to steady. It could still work. We had the advantage of surprise and stealth. I glanced once more at the ditch behind us, at the flash of white and rose half-buried in the earth. My mother's men. My people.
A grim determination settled in me. "You lot know what to do," I said, eyeing the men. "Jack and I will play bait."
There were nods all around, grim and certain. We had drilled for this. Each man knew his place.
Jack flashed me a tight grin. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
We moved quickly then, setting shovels aside for our weapons, covering the exposed bodies as best we could for now, cloaks laid gently over them. There would be time later for prayers and proper burials. Each man helped another put on their armor. Simple things, chainmail shirts and helmets.
Then the men melted into the edges of the quarry, hidden behind scrub and tree and broken stone, taking positions I had carefully chosen earlier to give us a sort of kill zone. From a distance, it would look empty and forgotten while Jack and I remained in the open.
I wiped my hands on my cloak and forced myself to let my shoulders slump, to loosen my stance. We stood with shovels in hand, digging meaninglessly on the ground.
Unlike my men, I had not put any armor on. The ring of it as I moved around could give the game away. Dangerous, aye, but I was confident enough to pull it off. I didn't expect them to have bows or crossbows in hand.
We had also tied bandanas of sorts around our mouths and noses as if to protect us from the smell of the corpses, while beneath our cloaks, hidden from sight and strapped tightly to our backs, rested our weapons. Sword for me, twin axes for Jack.
A shield rested near enough to my feet I could kick it up onto my hands, a small layer of soil covering it. As much as I could, I was ready.
Hooves reached my ears a few minutes later, distant but growing louder, along with the creaking of wooden axles on the road. I kept my eyes down, breathing slow.
The anger from earlier had dissipated by now, and I did not let it come back into my mind. Men who fought in a rage died in a rage, Lord Selwyn had taught me that early enough. Instead, I thought again of my mother, of her voice, of the way she would crack the most unladylike laughs at my stupid jokes.
These were not pirates come to raid and slave us, just young men looking for jobs like Arrec or some of my own lads. But for her, I'd be killing them all the same.
The road climbed up a small incline toward the narrow entrance of the quarry where we stood, and the riders crested the rise exactly where I had expected them to. Fifteen mounted men, shovels and picks were strapped to their packs like any other work party, while a few mules dragged along five carts behind them.
The Whitehead guards did not startle when they saw Jack and me digging at the edge of the quarry.
If anything, they relaxed.
Their horses came on at an easy amble, hooves crunching lazily over the gravel path that led off the road toward the quarry. I kept the fiction up, shovel biting into the soil with dull, heavy thuds.
"The lady must've sent them ahead," one of the guards called out. I didn't turn to look, but there was a smile in his voice. Relief, even.
Another laughed. "The gods are good once in a rare moon," he said, and a few of the others chuckled along with him.
I felt Jack stiffen beside me, felt the minute hitch in his breathing. He wasn't as practiced in this cloak and dagger business as his brother, but he kept digging too, playing his part. From where the Whiteheads approached, they would see two dirt-streaked men with shovels, cloaks damp with drizzle and sweat.
At a glance, we must have looked like hired hands trying to curry favor, eager, even, to show we'd done more than asked.
"Finally arrived, eh," I grumbled with my best workman's voice.
Jack nodded beside me, stopping his shovel to wipe the sweat off his brow. "Lazy bastards," he said with some humor.
Some of the guards chuckled at that.
Along the mouth of the quarry, we had dug several graves already, spaced regularly, the soil piled beside them in dark mounds. Cloaks and tarps covered what lay within, weighted down with stones.
The two lead guards reined in and swung down from their horses first. I heard leather stretching, mail clinking. Shit. If they were well armored, this might be tough. One of them rolled his shoulders as if glad to be off the saddle, boots crunching as he walked closer.
Then the guard saw it. He stopped short, staring at the nearest grave. His brow furrowed. He stepped closer, crouched, and reached out to tug at the edge of a tarp. A pale hand showed beneath it, fingers stiff and curled.
"No, no," he cursed, straightening abruptly. His voice rose as anger replaced confusion. "You bloody fools. Why'd you have to go an' dig the fuckers out?"
"We just did as was asked 's all," I said.
The other lead guard hadn't moved. He stood closer to his horse, one hand resting lightly on his sword hilt, eyes sweeping the quarry with slow, deliberate care. He wasn't smiling like the others. His gaze lingered on the tree line, on the broken stone walls, on the uneven ground where too many boots had passed recently.
I felt it then, that tightening in the gut before it all came crashing down, that shift in the air. And somewhere to my right, too close, there was a sharp crack. Wood snapping underfoot.
I didn't turn my head, but I saw it all the same. The suspicious guard's eyes snapping toward the sound, pupils widening. His mouth opened.
"Amb—"
The arrow took the space where his head had been a heartbeat earlier, hissing past with a sound like tearing cloth. He threw himself sideways as he shouted the word, half falling, half diving.
"Ambush!"
xxx
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