Chapter 92: The Pride — Rise and Fall.
Artos had the first wound in his side before the ladder had even finished swaying beneath him.
It was not a deep cut, but it bit hard all the same. Enough to make him clench his teeth in pain Enough to remind him words his father told him that steel did not care for names, legends, or titles. Just the one who swings and the one who get cuts.
On the wall above, men screamed and cursed and died in the dark while the battle pressed on around him, and Artos felt the blood wetting him as he fought through the pain.
He had known worse.
He told himself that even as the ache spread.
It was a small injury, nothing more. A scratch to another man. Yet he knew how wounds worked. Small ones had a way of becoming larger once the body had been asked to do too much. They slowed the hand. They dulled the foot. They made every turn a little less sharp and every blow a little less clean.
So he kept moving.
He drove his sword into a man's throat, kicked another from the battlement, and shoved himself forward through the press before any of the pain could become hesitation. His men saw it. They saw him take the hit and keep going, and that was enough to harden their own fear into something useful.
A Northman did not stop because he bled. A Northman bled and fought harder. This is the philosophy Artos has grown with.
The wall had become a slaughterhouse now.
The Sythans fought fiercely, but their defense was cracking under the weight of too many blows at once. Valen's men still hammered the front. The demons inside the hold were still cutting their way through the rear. And Artos, though wounded, was still at the center of it all.
Artos is fighting hard and with all the force he has but injuries take toll on a man and Then came the second hit.
A man lunged at him from the side with a spear and caught him across the thigh. Not enough to end him. But enough to force his leg to stiffen and his stride to shorten by a little, and that little mattered in the crush of a siege. He stumbled one step, caught himself on a broken beam, and snarled through the pain.
For one heartbeat, he felt the truth of it.
He was slower now.
He spat blood and pushed forward again.
"Move!" he shouted, cutting another man down. "Do not give them ground!"
The soldiers around him answered with a roar. They saw the blood. They saw he was wounded and still standing. That sight mattered more than any speech. A man who would not go down made other men remember they had no excuse to do so themselves.
But the pain was there now, lurking under every step. It rode his breath and followed the motion of his sword. It made his arm heavier and his leg stiffen when he turned too quickly. Artos could feel the difference at once. In another war, before blood had begun to collect in his body like memory, he would have been a storm. But injuries didn't made him less dangerous
Men could face a beast in a clean fight.
It was harder to face a wounded beast that refused to die.
Behind the struggle at the wall, Lord Sythan had already made up his mind.
He saw the front failing. He saw the rear no longer secure. He saw the pressure from both sides and the way his own men were beginning to look at one another instead of at the enemy. That was the first sign of the end. Men who look sideways are already thinking about running.
He barked orders and then stopped trusting them to be followed.
So he turned.
He and a handful of men slipped through a narrow way that few others knew. A hidden passage. Lord Sythan took it with the cold fury of a man pretending escape was strategy.
He did not look back.
He told himself that this was not flight. It was survival. It was preservation. It was a lord doing what he must to keep the line alive.
Rick saw them leaving .
He did not waste time going to Artos. He knew better. Rick has already been told if the plan .
So Rick went to him.
Waymar had been waiting already, still not having moved from the part of the plan that mattered most to him. When Rick found him, he only gave a single look and pointed.
"Screech," Rick . Rick screeched and pointed them towards the direction from which Lord Sythan is coming.
Waymar's face changed at once.
That was all he needed.
Waymar turned to his demons with a hard, sharp motion.
"After me."
They went at once, moving fast through the shadowed routes that led to where Lord Sythan believed himself safe. The irony of it was almost cruel. Sythan had chosen a way out through the bones of his own hold, and now that same way became the road to his capture.
Lord Sythan came out with confidence already weakened, then froze when he saw movement ahead of him."What are hevk are you doing here." He said very confused
Waymar was there.
The look on Sythan's face when he saw it was worth a victory feast for Waymar
"Lord Sythan," Waymar said, and there was no warmth in his voice. "You should have chosen a better road. Now now I would advise surrender but I am sure you won't listen" and just as he said that
Sythan's men reacted first, drawing steel and shouting for their lord to retreat, but retreat was already impossible. Waymar's demons came hard and fast from both sides of the passage, cutting off the narrow escape and forcing the Sythan guards into close, vicious fighting.
There was no room for a proud defense there.
Only bodies And Only blades.
One man took a spear in the gut and folded over it. Another got his throat opened so quickly he never managed a cry. Sythan himself was dragged back by his own guard as the demons pressed in, but still he looked as prideful as ever.
He fought, They all did.
That was the thing about men who believed themselves cornered. But Waymar was relentless, and the demons with him had already tasted too much blood to stop now.
Sythan was forced to the ground.
His guard was broken around him.
And then he was taken alive, bound and held, his face twisted in disbelief and fury.
It was not how he had imagined the night ending.
Back at the wall, the battle had begun to die.
They lost shape , They lost nerve when Lord Sythan is gone and they are being pincered.
The demons from the rear had opened too many wounds in the hold. Valen's men still pressed the front, and now they could feel the enemy buckle at last.
A shout went up from somewhere inside the settlement.
Then another.
Then the kind of cry that always meant one thing in war: surrender.
Some of the Sythan men threw down their weapons.
Some ran.
Some simply froze where they stood, waiting for death or mercy and knowing they were unlikely to earn either.
Artos was still on his feet when the last real resistance near the gate started to crumble. The wound in his side had begun to throb more fiercely, and the one in his leg was making him favor the left when he moved. He felt the pain in his breathing now. He felt it in the tightening of his jaw, in the way the world seemed to sharpen and blur at once when he turned too quickly.
But he kept going.
The blood did not own him.
He climbed down from the wall and moved into the hold itself, stepping over broken men and shattered shields with the same grim purpose he had carried onto the ladder. The place was no longer a fortress in the proper sense. It was a thing being taken apart. Hall by hall. Passage by passage. Room by room.
He checked the castle himself.
Then word came that Lord Sythan had been caught.
Artos did not hurry
He found the room where they had brought him and stepped inside with all the calm of a man arriving at a debt long overdue.
Sythan looked up at him, bound and furious, but pride still sat beneath the anger like a second face. There was no hiding it now.
Artos stared at him for a long moment before speaking
"You ran like a little kid. I quite expected more from someone of your stature."
Sythan lifted his chin as best he could. "I resisted. You won't be able to understand you lowly Sellsword."
Artos gave a short, humorless laugh. "Yea, Like a sellsword won't know about a retreat"
Sythan's eyes narrowed. "You think this makes you a more than a sellsword? " Pride drooling from him
Artos took a step closer. The pain in his side answered at once, but he ignored it.
"It is war," he said. "And you have been outmatched did you really think by bribing The Sealord you will get away doing something like this."
Sythan bared his teeth. "You will pay for this. The city will not let this stand. We are a reputable family. "
Artos leaned in slightly, his voice dropping.
"The city already has seen what I would do who would come between me and my revenge. Sadly for you they don't give a hell about you ."
Lord Sythan roared " Don't tell me how to fuck boy, i have done this all my life and survived. So don't tell if city didn't give a damn about me . I am still a Noble Lord of Bravos, do you think Sealord would be happy to see that a Noble falls when elections are this close. He would be furious. So be a good dog and take me to Lord Valen. I would talk to him and discuss my release."
Artos laughed and coughed after a point due to his injuries " There is a problem with people like us. " Artos said confusing Lord Sythan.
"I am nothing like you , you lowly bastard." Sythan still the prideful man.
"People with pride , people like us . We have a flaw we are too confident in ourselves don't even think of failures and sheer confidence in our victory. " Artos said.
Lord Sythan goes silent.
Artos gave a gesture to his injuries" There wasn't a need for me to do this , we could have won without me standing in the front. But I had my pride and confidence that I will win and survive without a scratch but here i am, I won but these injuries was the price to pay. You are the same Pride told you you would win but here you are in the knees. "
That was what remained between them: not honor, not understanding, but the pride. Artos has won but had a put a lot in it to win the game of pride. Lord Sythan goes all in and lost everything in the Game of Pride. It is a cruel game that takes every thing from the people who takes part in it.
Outside, Braavos was no longer resisting in any meaningful way. The walls were broken. The rear had failed. The lord had been caught. And the Wolf, wounded but still standing, had walked through the ruin he made and claimed it as his own.
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