GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 405 - Making Your Own Decisions

Brienne frowned at the man in front of her. He looked half-mad.

His eyes were bloodshot. He stank of wine and something else , something that felt like despair.

"Jaime, you're drunk."

She didn't draw her sword. She simply stated the fact.

"I told you to draw it!"

Jaime's voice came out as a low snarl.

He didn't wait. He moved like an enraged lion, all muscle and fury, charging straight at her.

His blade tore through the cold night air with a kind of desperate finality, driving straight for her throat.

Fast. Savage. Nothing like their usual sparring.

Brienne's pupils snapped tight. She sidestepped on instinct, sword already rising to parry.

CLANG , the sound split the silence of the training yard like a hammer strike, sparks scattering into the dark. The force traveled up her blade and deadened her grip.

She hadn't steadied herself before his second strike came. Then the third. They arrived like a storm, one behind the other, no pause between them.

He had abandoned his defense entirely. Every blow was aimed at something vital.

This wasn't sparring.

This was killing.

Brienne was driven back step by step, fighting purely to survive his onslaught.

"Have you lost your mind?!"

She roared the words between parries.

He wasn't listening. His green eyes had gone somewhere else entirely. There was nothing in them now but madness.

Breaking his oath again.

Breaking his oath again.

His father's cold voice. Cersei's hollow face. Tyrion's mocking eyes. All of it surged up through him and poured out through his sword arm, wild and unstoppable.

He needed to tear something apart. This fate, this miserable cycle , he wanted to shred it to nothing.

During one brutal exchange, he put too much behind the swing and stumbled. Brienne seized it immediately, wrist turning, angling the flat of her blade to knock him back.

But Jaime did something no one could have anticipated.

He didn't retreat.

He stepped into her blade.

His shoulder took the edge full-on — SHK.

Steel bit through wool and flesh.

Warm blood soaked through his shoulder immediately.

Brienne froze.

She stared at the wound , deep enough to show bone , and at his face, which was twisted in pain but lit by something that looked almost like relief.

He wanted this.

He was trying to force her to kill him.

The moment her focus broke, Jaime drove his boot hard into her stomach.

Brienne's breath left her in a grunt. The impact sent her stumbling back several steps before she caught herself.

"Why won't you fight back?!"

He leaned on his sword, chest heaving, blood running down his arm and dripping steadily into the white snow below.

"Aren't you a knight?! Didn't you swear to serve Lin En?!"

"I'm going to go kill him right now — so why won't you kill me?!"

He screamed it at her like a wounded animal.

"Hey! Golden boy! Don't you hit my woman!"

The shout came from the battlements not far off.

Tormund Giantsbane stood up there with a massive roasted leg of lamb, watching the whole affair with considerable interest. The moment he saw Brienne take that kick, the lamb leg suddenly lost its appeal entirely.

Brienne didn't spare the wildling a glance.

She looked at Jaime. At the blood still welling from his shoulder. At the despair and agony in his eyes.

Something hot and furious ignited in her chest.

This coward.

This absolute coward — who could only escape what tormented him by destroying himself.

She tightened her grip on her sword, and in her blue eyes, those eyes that always held steadiness , anger caught and burned.

"Fine."

The word came out flat, through her teeth.

"You want to fight. Then let's fight."

She moved before she'd finished saying it.

No more defense. No more giving ground.

Her tall frame unleashed everything: speed, power, rage. Her greatsword came down in an overhead blow that carried the force of something immovable.

Jaime's expression changed.

He could feel it immediately. This was not the Brienne who had been holding him off. If the Brienne before was a fortress wall, the Brienne now was a mountain in motion.

Clang. Clang. CLANG.

The impacts came faster, heavier, each one more brutal than the last.

Jaime was driven backward, barely keeping his guard up. The wound tore wider with every movement, blood soaking down his side, but he couldn't feel it.

All he could feel was the pressure. Like the air itself was being crushed out of him.

Then Brienne stepped forward in the gap between parries and slammed her shoulder BAM into his chest.

It felt like a warhorse had run him down. Something shifted in his ribs. His sword spun out of his hand, and then the ground came up fast and the snow hit him hard.

He didn't have time to rise.

Her shadow fell over him.

Brienne came down like an angry she-bear and pinned him to the earth, straddling him, her chainmail a crushing weight on his chest.

CRACK , an open palm across his face, clean and sharp.

Jaime's ears rang.

"You coward!"

CRACK , the backhand came just as hard.

"What else do you know how to do besides tear yourself apart?!"

"Do you think if you die, everything just ends?!"

She had him by the collar. Her face, not a beautiful face, not by the standards men used, was twisted with fury and something close to grief.

Jaime looked up at her.

At those blazing blue eyes.

And he laughed.

It started low, almost soundless. Then it broke open into something he couldn't hold back.

"Ha... hahaha..."

There was nothing joyful in it. Only bitterness. Only a man mocking himself.

Tears ran hot from the corners of his eyes and mixed with the blood and dirt smeared across his face.

He'd needed that.

He'd finally been knocked back into himself.

"My father..."

The laughter cut off. He looked at her, voice gone rough.

"He sent a letter."

"He wants me... to break my oath again."

"He wants me to kill Lin En."

Brienne went still.

She stared at the man beneath her , utterly broken, the darkness in his eyes absolute , and felt something like a storm move through her chest.

She had known something was wrong with him. She hadn't imagined the truth would be this ugly, or this cruel.

Her duty was clear. As a member of the Kingsguard, she should bind him right now and bring him before Lin En.

But she looked at him, and she remembered something else. A fireplace. A man sitting with his back to her, his voice quiet, telling her a truth the world had gotten wrong for years.

You are not the Kingslayer.

She remembered saying those words to him.

The silence stretched.

Slowly, Brienne released her grip.

She rose and stood over him, looking down from her full height. The pale moonlight drew her shadow long across the snow.

"I won't tell anyone about this."

Jaime stared up at her.

Brienne didn't look at him again. She retrieved her sword, turned, and walked into the dark.

At the edge of the shadows, she stopped. She didn't turn around.

"Jaime Lannister."

"Your honor was won back by you. Not given by anyone. Not granted. Won."

"You've already reclaimed it. Don't bury it again."

She walked on, and the night swallowed her.

The training yard was empty now, except for him.

Jaime lay in the cold snow and let the wind move over him. It cut through cloth and skin alike, but he didn't move.

He raised his hand slowly and looked at the crescent moon hanging in the black sky.

Yes.

Why? Why should a single letter from that man be enough to make him destroy, with his own hands, everything he had clawed back?

Why should someone else's word decide what his life was worth?

Jaime sat up, slowly. He looked at his hands, bloodied and shaking, and in his green eyes, something that had gone dark began, carefully, to light again.

This time, the choice would be his.

➤ Next: Dragonbinder