Chapter 83: Animalistic Rage
Artos felt the tug before anything — a pressure in the back of his mind, Rick's call sliding through . He closed his eyes and went into his zone, letting the world narrow until he could see a different image.
Images came with the pull. A narrow street. A guard shoved. Hands closing on a woman — Seraphine, his lover. He saw them clearly, and the sight set something loose inside him that had nothing to do with thought. It was rawer — a hunger for violence and blood set loose by the knowledge of who was being wronged.
"Move," he said aloud, and rose up as if pulled by a rope. His aura changed with the motion: a warrior turned animal. His men started, confused at first by the sudden shift, then certain — the commander's intent needed no speech. They followed at once, steel at their sides.
One stayed behind, quicker and wiser than the rest; he sprinted instead toward Waymar to fetch more hands, knowing a single fight could bloom into a war feeling his Comander mood. The others simply fell in step behind Artos, because where he ran, they ran.
Seraphine felt it first as fear. She had never been so humiliated in a crowd; she almost on verge of tears, insults had a way of cutting deeper than sword. The men pressed in like ants. Her guards moved to meet them, steel flashing, but the attack was planned—too many bodies arriving from the sides, blocking the path, crowding the street until escape narrowed to a thread.
A blade flashed. A Valen guard's throat was opened before he could curse. He fell, a dark red bloom across cobbles. The hired dogs laughed as one of their number seized at Seraphine, fingers greedy and rough, trying to tear cloth, rip dignity, make spectacle of a lady whose return they treated as sport.
The crowd split into easy categories: some shrank, some whispered pity, some leered with crude enjoyment. The worst one laughed the loudest.
Just as a hand lifted to strip the last hold of her garments, an eagle plunged from the sky and struck — talons raking, beak slashing.
The man screamed as one eye vanished under feather and claw. "Ahhhhhhh!" he howled, staggering back as blood and surprise mixed in a single animal wail.
Rick whipped the air with his wings, screaming as if to set every nerve below him on fire. The bird's cry was a warning and a promise: Hal is near.
Merek swore and spat, stumbling from his cocky grin. "What the hell is this bird? Where did he come from?" he barked at his men.
"That bird is Hal's," one answered, voice thin with the first true edge of fear. "That bastard's near. We should—"
"—move?" Merek sneered. "You fools. I am here." He planted himself like a butcher's block. "Do you think he can defeat me?"
The men shifted, suddenly small in their shoulders. "It's not that, commander. Hal has numbers. The Sea-Lord will—"
Merek's laugh snapped. "Sea-Lord or no, you kill the bird. You kill the bird and you finish the woman." He pointed, voice sharp.
"Do as I say."
One of them lunged blindly at Rick, a blade raised. The murderer's hand never reached its mark — a Valyrian dagger flashed and sank deep into his throat, the blade's hilt slick with blood as the man tumbled, gurgling, collapsed.
Artos arrived then, not a blur but a hard, carved thing: eyes burning, breath ragged, rage written in every muscle. He threw without ceremony — his dagger flew true and found the throat of the man who had dared lay hands on the lady. The air smelled of iron and wet stone.
Merek stepped forward with the insolence of someone who has eaten men for breakfast. "So this is Hal," he said, voice oily. "The famed commander. I've heard—"
He didn't finish.
Artos met him with a blade, not with words.
The two collided in a metal storm that quieted the crowd in a single, terrible heartbeat. Merek's sword rang against Artos' with the sound of a bell being struck for the dead.
Around them, men moved — Artos' fighting men, who had been guarding Valen stores and shops, surged in. They were few, but they fought like wolves that had been starving and smelled blood. Merek's hired beasts answered, and the street became a single, brutal machine of slashes, screams, and bone.
Artos fought like a thing unmoored from caution. Every strike carried the weight of the image he had held — Seraphine's tears, the attempted stripping — and his blows were merciless. Merek was fast and cruel, the sort bred in pit and gutter; he answered blow for blow, catch for catch. But Artos was a force of winter and hunger: he dodged a vicious slash, stepped into the space and tore a slash of his own that knocked Merek's momentum, then sank the blade into Merek's knee.
Merek screamed — a raw, animal sound — and stumbled. Artos didn't stop. He drove the knee, then his fist, into Merek's face again and again, each impact a punctuation, until the man's face hung in ruin and dark blood ran down like a bad omen.
Around them, Merek's men fell with an efficiency that made the watching street gape. Artos' men killed as if clearing brush: quick, ugly, tidy. Where Merek's crew had swaggered, they now lay splayed, choking, silent. The watchers who had earlier jeered at Seraphine now found dirt in their mouths and pity swelling at the edges of their cruelty.
This was not mercy. This was a purge of fury.
People arrived then in small clusters, misunderstanding the first moments and recoiling at the result. Some shouted, some tried to intervene — then stopped when they saw the bodies, the way the blood pooled, the way Merek's face had been crushed to something like a broken thing. The scene smelled of oil and iron and fear.
Artos stood amidst the wreckage with a face gone cold, every breath a heavy thing. Rick flapped once above, talons retracted, feathers bristled chewing the dead bodies with a joy on his face.
Seraphine, trembling, clutched at her dress where it had torn; her guards breathed hard, wounded and angry, their eyes on Artos with a new sort of reverence.
No one spoke for a long, loaded heartbeat.
Then murmurs began, small and careful: men calling for watchmen, women whispering prayers, children held back by wide-eyed mothers. The city had seen violence before, but not like this. Not like a storm that had been waiting inside a man until it found what it wanted.
Artos looked at the ruin he had made, and something animal still hummed in him — satisfaction braided with a darker hunger.
Someone nearby muttered, voice thin, "He's a monster."
Artos sheathed his blade slowly. He did not raise his head to speeches or to pleadings. He only nodded to Seraphine's remaining guards, then turned to the bodies and the ones who still drew breath.
Far off, beyond the clamor, more footsteps approached — Waymar's party, perhaps, or others rallied by the sound. The Street would empty, then fill again, and the ripple of this moment would spread.
But the brutal truth had been spoken on the cobbles: Braavos had met the North's animal, The thought of retaliation hung in the air like smoke.
Artos standing over what remained of Merek and his men, a dark thing with a steadier danger in his eyes than any had yet seen.
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