Chapter 86: Bloody Hal
The street had already turned into a graveyard of noise, steel and blood.
Artos did not wait for the enemy to settle into courage again. He didn't believe in giving chances to his enemies, He had already made his choice, The guard captain was already dead. The ambush had been exposed and somewhere in the crush of shouting and clashing steel, the rest of Glaro's men were beginning to understand that they fucked up. It's not a brawl but a fucking full blown war.
Artos felt it in the way his pulse hammered under his skin. He felt it in the weight of the sword in his hand. He felt it in the blood still hot on his face and in the terrible calm that came after the first killing, when something inside a man stopped trying to be reasonable.
"Forward," he said.
It was not loud in voice but in actions he didn't wait but charged alone as if he is Invincible and can't die.
His men heard it anyway.
The Northern Brutes surged with him, not as guards now but as wolves released from a cage. The first line of enemy men tried to hold the street, but the narrowness worked against them. There was no room to spread wide, no room to regroup when Artos and his men crashed into them like a hard northern winter.
The first man to fall had tried to step back.
That was his mistake.
One of the Brutes caught him before he could retreat, drove him against the wall, and cut him open from the ribs down. The man screamed once and folded. Another tried to raise a club, but a blade came in low and took the back of his leg. He dropped, crying out, and before he could crawl, two more Brutes were upon him.
They were not fighting to subdue.
They were fighting to paint the street red.
Artos moved through the center of it all with a pace that did not belong to a man of his size. He was fast where others were only strong. He cut down one man, turned on the next, and struck again before the second had even understood that the first was dead. His blade moved with cold precision, but his body moved like something animal, something built to kill and keep killing and kept killing and kept killing.
The enemy had expected anger.
They had not expected a monster that is infront of them. A Bloody monster
That was what made Artos dangerous. His strikes landed not just to kill, but to break like he is giving the most painful and blood spilling deaths. Hands. Knees. Throats. Faces. The places where panic enters a man's body and makes him remember he is mortal.
Waymar was at his side, and for the first time in a long while, he looked less like a young commander and more like a man forced to grow older in a single hour.
"Left!" he shouted, driving one of the enemy's flankers back with a slash that sent the man staggering into his own people.
The narrow street filled with the sounds of men crying out, steel ringing, boots slipping in fresh blood, and the heavy slam of bodies hitting stone.
The public had begun to gather at a distance.
At first they had come out of fear, then curiosity, then the sick need to see what was happening. Merchants stood in doorways with pale faces. Traders had abandoned their stalls. A woman pulled her child behind her cloak. A pair of dockworkers watched from a corner and then immediately regretted it.
This was not a riot anymore.
This was not a scuffle between hired men.
This was slaughter.
One of the enemy men tried to run.
The moment he turned, the Brutes saw it.
Three of them broke from the main clash and went after him without hesitation. They moved fast, The fleeing man got maybe six steps before one of the Northmen caught him by the collar and slammed him into a wall so hard his head cracked against the stone. He slid down, dazed, and the next blow ended him.
Another tried to scramble over a market cart.
A spear took him through the side before he could make it.
The Brutes did not let their enemies escape in clean panic. They chased them like hunters chasing wounded deer, and every man who broke and ran only created more blood when he was caught.
This was what turned the fear sharper.
It was not only the killing.
It was the pursuit. Even if they are in small numbers they are doing the hunting and not the other party.
The public began to understand that if a man ran from the Northern Brutes, the Brutes would follow.
And if they followed, they would not stop until the man stopped moving.
Artos saw it happening and said nothing. His jaw remained set, his eyes hard, his breath steady despite the violence around him. He was beyond mercy now, beyond caution, beyond the soft limits a city would have preferred from a commander in his position.
A sellsword rushed him from the right.
Artos blocked once and drove the hilt of his sword into the man's mouth, knocking out teeth. The same motion carried into a slash that opened the man's throat. Blood sprayed across the stones in a wet red fan.
Waymar watched him and realized with a chilling clarity that Artos was not simply winning.
He was dominating the pace of the entire battle.
The enemy could not answer quickly enough. Every time they tried to form up, the Brutes crashed through the middle. Every time they tried to pull back, they were hunted. Every time one of them thought he had found a clean path out, another northern blade appeared where there should not have been room for one.
From above the chaos, Rick circled once, his wings cutting the air. He gave a harsh cry and turned sharply, warning Artos of movement to the rear.
Artos did not need to look twice.
He swung his blade around, met the oncoming attack, and split a man from shoulder to collarbone in one brutal stroke. The body hit the stones with a sound like meat dropping from a butcher's hook.
Then he stepped forward again.
And again.
The blood was on him now in layers. On his face. On his arms. On his boots. On everywhere . Dark, slick, shining in the torchlight and afternoon glare. He looked less and less like a man with each passing minute and more like the thing people in the Westoros whispered about when children were told not to wander too far from home.
The Demonwolf.
The thought passed through more than one watching mind at once.
Myles Toyne stood farther back, where the fighting had not yet reached him, and watched with a stillness that did not match the violence unfolding before his eyes.
He had seen slaughter before. He had ordered it, paid for it, survived it. But this was different.
This was not a skirmish.
This was a message being written in blood.
Toyne's expression remained unreadable, but his eyes narrowed as he watched the Brutes cut through men who had believed their numbers would save them. He saw the public backing away. He saw the merchants turning pale. He saw fear spreading from one face to another like fire finding oil.
And he saw Artos at the center of it all.
Not merely fighting.
Owning it.
The enemy began to break.
One man dropped his sword and ran.
Another shouted for help and got none.
A third tried to pull his companion back into formation, but the man he was tugging at had already seen too much blood to stay. He broke away and fled, only to be chased into a side alley by two Brutes who looked almost pleased to run him down.
That was when the voices in the crowd changed.
It started as a whisper. Then another. Then a low, horrified murmur.
"Look at him."
"By the Gods"
"No, by the death…"
One woman pressed a hand over her mouth.
A man near the market steps backed away and muttered, "What in the name of the faceless one is he?"
Another voice answered, shaking hard, "Bloody Hal."
The words landed strangely.
Not like praise.
Not like honor.
Like fear discovering a name.
A third man, staring with wide eyes at the blood-coated figure in the middle of the street, repeated it louder.
"Bloody Hal."
Then someone else.
And someone after that.
"Bloody Hal."
The phrase spread through the crowd in rough, broken pieces, as if the city itself had found something it did not know how to describe and decided that fear would name it for now.
Artos did not look up.
He did not need to.
He stood in the center of the street while the enemy fled around him and the Northmen kept chasing them down. Blood ran from his blade to his knuckles. His chest rose and fell in slow hard breaths. The men around him were either dead, dying, or running. Nobody daring to come near him not even his own men. Only Rick in the sky near him.
Braavos had never looked so red.
A merchant near the edge of the crowd stared at the scene and whispered, "He's not human." In a almost begging tone as if he has seen death.
Another answered, voice barely there, " He's the Bloody Hal ." Says as if taking a name of a Demon.
The people of Braavos had seen a man stand in blood and not flinch, seen his men hunt down their enemies like wolves, seen the street become a slaughterhouse, and found no better name for the monster at its heart.
Artos finally lowered his blade.
Around him, the Brutes held the ground.
The surviving enemies had scattered. Some lay still in the street. Some crawled toward alleys only to find death there too. A few escaped into the wider city, but even they carried the image with them — the blood, the shouting, the crimson street, the man at the center of it all.
Toyne watched from the distance, his face hardening with something that looked very much like decision.
He had seen enough now.
Enough to know that this would not end with the street.
And in the middle of it stood Artos, blood-soaked and breathing, the first living shape of the name Braavos would come to fear.
Bloody Hal.
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