Nerd In the North - Arc 6, Interlude II

"Little bitch, ye—!”

The insult fell through into a scream, all of it going past her as the axe came round. Bone stopped steel for a heartbeat, then the edge bit hard and nothing was left to hold it back.

Ash-wood shuddered hard into Mya’s palm as the scream died to nothing with the ironborn himself, the girl gripping tight to the handle of her axe.

The cut was far from clean, top half one way off down the road as the legs stood a breath longer than legs ought without the rest of a man. Hot blood and steaming guts fell as she yanked the right axe free, the whole business tumbling down into the wet.

Blood came off the head off the axe, the wet of the rain washing it free as the coastal village screamed and smoked behind her in the rain. The strip along the ditch rose to meet her as she charged forward, the next raider across bad ground doing the same. They all came fast, but this one came her way quicker with a hooked boarding axe and a bearded face already missing teeth.

“Hold fast!”  The beard roared over the hiss of the rain, sea-boots slipping in the mess of his halved crewmate. “What is dead may ne-”

His forward foot went into the churn as he swung her way.

With a grunt, Mya put her left axe through the bastard’s collarbone; head flying free with her own weight enough to finish the job. Ten and one.

Or ten and three, the count was hard to keep with all the wet; Mya’s blood up and heart pounding against the thunder. True enough, he count had failed back at the fish sheds a hundred paces back as she pushed the raiders away from the smallfolk.

“Up the track with ye!” The crack of thunder was loud overhead, close enough Mya could feel it in her bones and the meat of her chest as she yelled loud over her shoulder. “Keep left of the shale, left! And don’t dare stop at the bend!”

“Me lad!” Somebody’s wife, grey-faced and buxom with an apron on her half-torn, turned to look Mya’s way. “Me lad’s still in t—!”

“Worry bout yerself before your lad!” Thunder boomed again. “Go up!”

Three days it had been since she’d come down with mules and a boy to mind them, all because Maester Helliweg had put it into Lord Nestor’s ear that winter was coming early and the Gates hadn’t nearly enough grain to see it through.

With a portion of Gulltown’s road under mud and muck since the storms, food had to come from other places. 

Like this village and the track leading to the Gates — paths belonging more to goats than man with few guides who knew them well. 

‘Send Stone.’ Who else would they send? ‘Stone knows them.’

Aye, Stone did know them.

She also knew she’d been three hours off from leaving the village when the sails came round the point and the ironmen made landing.

“Bleedin’ witch, she is!” One made to back away, but another shoved him forward.

“Haul back an’ flank ‘er, ye bastard!”

More of them rushed her at once, moving like men used to a pitching deck with stances wide to account for the roll of the sea. None of them knew mountain stone, or steep inclines. To put too much weight on wet shale was to go down with it.

"Mind t'sky," one of the younger ones got out. "Rolf. Rolf. Mind t'—"

A reaver broke from the pack, Rolf screaming her way.

Mya was already past him, not even bothering to block the rusted axe coming for her. A simple jump took her to the side, the man’s weight dragging him forward. Mya took him at the hip, right axe brought down hard where his leg bore the strain of the slope.

The joint cracked with the thunder above in the black sky, the feel of it heavy and heady right under her ribs. The taste of burnt wood and sparks pushed its way up her throat and sat on her tongue as she ripped her weapon free. The wet in her hair had gone warm, blood and water both, and the hairs on her forearms stood tall under the leather.

“Biiiiiitch!”

She answered his scream with a wordless one of her own as she swung her axe high; the brutal arc catching the falling man’s chin.

“Rolf!”

She did not do anything — a simple fact she could not make anyone understand. Mychel, nor the maester, nor the septon of House Royce who attempted to pray over her. None of this was her choice, not a wish or an ask or anything else. 

She did not ask for the rage either, nor did she ask for the man she loved to be forced in the arms of another simply because of proper blood and bearing. A bastard wasn’t enough for vows.

She did not ask for the rage but the sky answered it anyway, answering her roar with a light of sky-fire at the end of her steel. The man’s head went white with lightning and the heat cooked a dead man in his own iron. Burnt hair and bitter pork overpowered the stink of churned mud and rotting fish as Mya kicked a twitching body off her axe.

"Mind t’hook!" A young raider charged her left side, swallowing his syllables in a panic, thrusting a spear. "Cut ’er down afore she sparks again!"

Again.

Months ago, she was a girl who knew where the ground gave way. Now she carried two axes and worried of her anger when the sparks would rise.

And they did.

More light struck the ground as the sky roared with her, taking the captain with it. The white tore through him and the two nearest him as what was left of the three stood a moment in the smoke, their bodies blackened and arms drawn up tight like a bird’s foot.

The rest broke and she let them.

The Stone counted twelve paces before she took off after them, both axes out as she tore downhill on wet shale.

Two more fell before the fork, one turning to make a fight of it. She liked him better for it but a brave raider was a raider still. He got his shield up for a moment, back foot set. It did nothing against the force of her, thunder booming in her grip as the ironborn went flying into the water with dead eyes.

The last one made it as far as the boats, already in the surf to his knees as he scrambled for the longship. Mya stood above him, chest going like a bellows as the rain came sideways.

Another roar and the sky did what it did.

She truly did not want it to; one running back to the Iron Islands with a mouth full of fear was worth more than one more waterlogged corpse.

Her wants did not matter.

The mast cracked under a flare of light, the whole of the sky going white. The whole of the bow shattered and the sea round the wreck churned and thickened. Soon enough, there was nothing else moving but water on the whole of the shore.

Mya slid the axes back into the loops at her belt, heavy leather holding them tight as she walked back into the town. Faces peered out from beneath smoking thatch roofs, animals stamping from fear of thunder. Her own mule string was tied by the town well, unbothered as she ran a hand down the lead mule’s wet neck, fingers in its coarse fur.

“Hey there, old girl.”

She rested her forehead against her wet shoulder as something hit her colder than the rain. I cannot stay in the Vale.

Mya had known this for moons now, six of them since the day at the Redfort where Mychel had come out into the yard unable to look at her face. Six moons since the sky above the keep had gone the color of a deep bruise for two days after, with only her knowing the truth of why.

She was no better at governing it since the start.

Fighting with it was a different matter entirely, but managing it and the rage it brought? Not nearly so much.

There’s a lord in the North. She’d heard tale of him off a Gulltown septa, then two men in the same tenday at different taverns. A white castle sprung up from the old Dreadfort led by a boy with a dragon, a boy lord who took in girls off the villages and taught them to wield the magic the gods had gifted them.

Fool’s talk. She’d believed that at first. 

Most stories like that often were.

But she had gone to the Gates' maester with what was happening to her and he had gone the color of a cloud before quickly busying himself with nothing at all. Every time she asked, he would only say he knew nothing of the sort.

North it is, then. Gulltown by boat if the season allowed, which it wouldn't much longer. Overland to the kingsroad, then, and up.

The bastard of a dead king could only sigh as the storm faded. North it is.

Mya Stone, 299 AC (Eight and Ten Years)