Chapter 136: DemonWolf, or of the Trident
Artos crossed the blood-soaked ground toward his son, boots sinking into earth churned red and thick with what remained of Bronn's body. He stopped a few paces from where Bjorn stood, chest still heaving, blood dried dark and cracking across his face.
He did not plan to offer much praise. Bjorn had not expected any, not truly, though some small, buried part of him had hoped for it anyway.
But then Artos spoke the words that would make any son happiest.
"You made me proud today, son," Artos said, his voice low, meant only for Bjorn. "You made our ancestors proud. You made the Old Gods proud today. You have proved yourself worthy of your ancestors. You have proved to them that you are a wolf."
He said it while keeping a hand on Bjorn's shoulder.
Bjorn's brow furrowed slightly, though happiness showed plainly in his face. His father had finally acknowledged him. He had told him that he was proud of him. Nothing could have been a more important moment for a son.
Bjorn did not know how to react. He could not cry before the crowd, so he held himself back. But hearing those words from his father made him feel euphoric.
Though he was still uncertain about the latter. What proof could his father possibly have of something so vast and unprovable?
Then Artos's gaze lifted past his shoulder, toward the sky above the grounds, where a great black shape had begun circling low over the ruin of Bronn's corpse.
The bird descended in slow, unhurried spirals, wings wide and ragged at the edges, old in a way that unsettled anyone who looked too closely at it. It landed atop what remained of Bronn's chest and began to feed, utterly indifferent to the thousands of watching eyes, the howling Skagosi, and the horrified southern lords pressing handkerchiefs to their mouths.
"Rick," Artos said, something complicated moving behind his voice.
The bird paused mid-feed, one dark eye rolling toward the sound of his name. For a moment, Artos allowed himself to believe the old bond had not frayed entirely.
He stepped closer, slow and careful, the way a man approaches something he loves and fears losing in equal measure.
"It's been a long time, old friend."
The raven's wings snapped open, and it launched itself skyward without so much as a backward glance, climbing hard and fast until it vanished into the grey overcast above the Red Keep's towers.
Artos exhaled, something between a laugh and a sigh escaping him.
"Still angry, old friend," he muttered, mostly to himself. "It seems time is near."
Bjorn watched the exchange with quiet, careful attention, filing it away among the dozens of unanswered questions he had learned not to ask his father directly.
"What was that?"
"I told you the story of Rick, right?" Artos whispered.
Bjorn nodded.
"This is proof that the Old Gods accepted the offering. They are pleased with you. But my friend is still filled with anger, because a debt remains," Artos said simply. "One I still owe. The gods we worship are cruel, but they are not unfair."
That only confused Bjorn further.
"What do you mean, Father?" Bjorn asked.
Artos shook his head. "Come. The realm has waited long enough for its verdict. This can wait. You will understand one day."
While they spoke, the stands had a life of their own.
The grounds had gone from horrified silence to restless, uneasy murmuring. The fear displayed among the assembled lords and ladies was not subtle in the least.
Lord Tyrell had gone pale enough that a maester hovered near him, uncertain whether the lord required attention. Several lesser lords had simply stopped watching altogether, their eyes fixed on their hands or the middle distance, unwilling to look again at the head Bjorn had raised or the blood he had drunk.
Even among the hardened knights and soldiers present—men who had seen war and death in every ugly form it came—there was a particular quality to the silence. Something beyond ordinary battlefield brutality had been witnessed that day.
Even the Demon of the Trident himself had been shocked into horror by the gore shown before the realm.
It took Robert the better part of several long minutes to regain enough composure to finally speak. He had been too stunned to announce the result, but at last he forced himself to stand.
"The trial," Robert said, clearing his throat once, then twice, "has reached its conclusion."
His eyes flicked briefly toward Bjorn, standing blood-painted and utterly unbothered near the center of the grounds. Something passed over Robert's face that might have been fear, might have been grim respect, or might simply have been exhaustion from the weight of everything that day had already demanded of him.
"The gods have spoken. Bjorn Stark has overcome the trial and proved himself innocent of the charges laid against him, in the sight of gods, judges, and the assembled lords of this realm. The gods have spoken their will, and Bjorn Stark stands here breathing before us. The man is declared innocent."
A ripple moved through the crowd—not celebration, not quite, but something like release. The particular exhale of people who had watched something they did not fully understand finally reach its end.
Prince Oberyn was the first among the judges to speak. He swirled the last of his wine, his expression shifted from idle amusement to something sharper.
"I've watched men die in a hundred different ways across a hundred different yards," he said, loud enough to carry. "I have never watched anything quite like that."
He did not sound disapproving. He sounded fascinated, and faintly unsettled by his own fascination.
Lord Edmure Tully said nothing for a long moment, staring at the ruin of Bronn's body as servants carried it away, too frightened to look directly at it.
"Gods be good," he finally muttered, more to himself than anyone listening.
He was not in the right state of mind to say anything else.
At last, he believed the stories his uncle and father had told him about the DemonWolf. He could see Bjorn in those stories.
Tywin's composure had returned by the time anyone dared glance his way again. But the careful blankness of his expression did little to hide the calculations clearly moving behind it.
His champion was dead. His coin had been spent for nothing. Whatever plans he had laid for the trial had just been buried beneath a display of savagery that had rattled every lord in those stands far more thoroughly than any legal argument could have.
Ser Barristan Selmy, standing near the king as he always did, said little. Still, the tightness around his eyes suggested the old knight had found the display more troubling than he cared to admit aloud.
He sighed in defeat.
"May the gods have their mercy," he muttered.
Grand Maester Marwyn, seated among the judges, watched with an expression closer to scholarly fascination than horror—the same look he had worn over Gregor Clegane's ruined body weeks earlier. It was the look of a man cataloguing something rare and dangerous rather than simply reacting to it.
The son is not far from the father, Marwyn thought. The potential in their abilities—and their magic—is very close. It seems I need to watch both if I am to discover the truth.
Among the smallfolk pressed along the grounds' outer edges, the reaction split cleanly down a different line. Some recoiled, whispering prayers and crossing themselves against ill fortune. Others watched with wide-eyed, hungry fascination, the same fascination that had always followed stories of northern savagery.
Those stories had just been proven true in the bloodiest way imaginable.
It was Sansa, seated among the Northern lords, who found herself answering quiet, careful questions from the ladies around her—questions about her cousin, about her uncle, about whether this was truly how things were done beyond the Neck.
She answered what she could, though even she was uncertain how to explain something she had only half understood until seeing it happen.
Robb stood near the grounds' edge, arms crossed, his expression carefully neutral. Yet something in the set of his jaw suggested he was already considering what that day would mean for how the realm saw House Stark going forward.
Loras stood beside him, quieter than usual. He glanced occasionally toward Bjorn with an expression mixing old friendship and a new, uneasy awareness of exactly what his friend was capable of.
Among the lords who had traveled specifically to witness the trial, the comparisons began almost immediately. They moved from stand to stand in low, careful whispers.
"The boy fights like his father," one lord muttered to another, close enough for Robb to overhear. "That savagery. That anger underneath it, waiting for the right moment."
"Worse than his father, some might say," came the reply. "I do not think even he was versed in savagery like this. Drinking human blood? I do not know what Lord Artos is thinking."
"Maybe," a third voice said. "But do you think he could do it without his father's support? Did you not see the ritual before the fight? I think…" He hesitated. "Whatever comes next, I doubt it will be gentler."
Yor, seated among the Skagosi delegation, had said nothing throughout the entire trial. Her face had remained unreadable. Yet the fierce, complicated pride breaking through her expression as Bjorn walked from the grounds spoke louder than any words could have.
Stig placed a hand upon her shoulder, saying nothing, simply allowing the moment to be what it was.
Eddard watched his nephew with an expression mixing pride, unease, and something close to grief—the grief of a man realizing that the world his family was building had become one shaped increasingly by fear rather than diplomacy, however necessary that fear might prove to be.
Even Cersei, still visibly shaken, found something to say once her composure returned. She murmured low to one of her ladies.
"That family breeds monsters," she said. "And calls it honor. They are savage beings, nothing else."
The words carried further than she intended. More than one nearby lord found himself privately agreeing, though none dared say so aloud while Skagosi warriors stood close enough to hear.
The grounds had barely finished clearing Bronn's remains when the heralds' trumpets sounded again, sharp and sudden, announcing the day's second and final trial.
Gregor Clegane was led out. His ruined, waxen face remained utterly without expression, while the low growl of his breathing carried even to the stands.
Whatever remained of the man he had once been had been buried weeks earlier beneath Marwyn's forbidden work. What walked into the ring now was something closer to a monster than a human.
Though it was not very far from Gregor's original self.
The Mountain had always been a monster through and through. This had simply made him a bigger one.
Artos walked out to meet him from the opposite end of the grounds. The murmur that rippled through the crowd now carried a different quality entirely—confusion, mostly, edged with disbelief.
He carried no sword.
Instead, resting easily across one shoulder, was a warhammer—heavy, brutal, and completely unlike the weapon the DemonWolf was known for. He was known for his ferocious style with a sword.
A hammer was not the DemonWolf's style.
It was the weapon of the Demon of the Trident.
Robert's eyebrows rose sharply at the sight, and even the assembled judges exchanged brief, startled glances.
Artos rolled his shoulder once, testing the hammer's balance with the ease of a man far more familiar with it than anyone watching had ever known.
"Something new," Oberyn murmured to Eddard Stark beside him, dark eyes bright with renewed interest despite everything the day had already shown him. "Do you know anything about this, my lord? I begged your brother for this trial, but now he comes with a hammer. Is he even serious about this duel?"
Lord Eddard Stark himself looked confused, but he did not worry much.
"I do not know Artos's plan," Eddard said. "But I will not worry about him. It does not matter which weapon he uses. I can tell you that you will be satisfied. I know how much you want to hurt Gregor Clegane. This may be better for that. After all, it will hurt him the most this way."
The answer surprised Oberyn. He had not expected such words from Lord Eddard Stark.
Across the grounds, Gregor Clegane's ruined throat released a low, guttural sound that might once have been laughter.
The second trial of the day began to take shape beneath a sky already heavy with the weight of everything that had come before it.
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