The Interception

Not long before, when House Webber's reinforcements arrived, Joel had received a raven from House Rowan. The combined forces of House Rowan and House Oakheart had routed the outlaws in Red Lake Forest. As Joel had predicted, the outlaws were moving toward Standfast, apparently intending to use the smuggling path and hide in the hills far outside Cornfield.

Whether House Rowan and House Oakheart had done it on purpose was hard to say. The outlaws had only been routed. Their casualties were not especially heavy, and their main strength remained intact. That would place tremendous pressure on Joel's force. For that reason, the raven had stated clearly that Joel's task was interception. He was to hold the outlaws near Standfast until the other forces arrived and crushed them together.

House Rowan had plainly not expected House Webber to bring nearly all its available strength in order to wash away suspicion. With those extra men, Joel had enough troops to arrange a different plan. He abandoned the idea of a forest ambush and chose a small valley on the outlaws' necessary retreat path as the battlefield, intending to destroy them in open combat.

"Take ten men and hold Sheep-Horn Crag," Joel ordered in Standfast's council hall, pointing to a clear horn-shaped mark on a rough map. "Build a signal fire. If outlaws pass there, light it and delay them as long as you can, until support reaches you."

Alden frowned. He had passed Sheep-Horn Crag while scouting the ground. It was the necessary road to the smuggling path. Only by crossing Sheep-Horn Crag could one reach the cliffside track cut into the rock.

It was a suitable place for ambush and interception, but it lay deep behind the battlefield. If nothing went wrong at the front, almost no outlaws would reach it. No outlaws meant no merit, and that naturally displeased him.

But in this setting, he could not oppose Joel's decision directly. He could only make a smaller suggestion. "I scouted that ground. It is not especially hard to defend. There is no need to assign men to me. Their ability is ordinary, and they have never worked with me. If we meet the enemy, they will only burden me. I can hold the place alone."

Everyone in the hall froze, including the Webber knights. Their eyes landed on Alden, and surprise wrote itself across their faces. They had heard men complain of having too few soldiers. This was the first time they had heard someone refuse soldiers altogether.

Joel's squires thought Alden arrogant and mad. The Webber knights, however, were curious about the common-looking man.

In truth, they had been curious from the moment Joel summoned him to the prebattle council. Everyone else in the hall was a knight, a landed man, or a squire. Alden alone was dressed like a commoner. It was difficult not to wonder about him.

Joel showed no change of expression at Alden's suggestion. He only looked at him coldly and asked, "What makes you think you can stop routed outlaws by yourself?"

"I am a hunter," Alden answered calmly. "I know how to set traps. I do not think routed outlaws will be harder to handle than a mountain bear."

Joel studied him for a moment longer. Then, without another word, he nodded and accepted the suggestion.

Now that he knew his task, Alden saw no need to remain in the council hall and prepared to leave.

At that moment, El Morrison, whom the hunter had knocked unconscious with one punch, stepped forward. "Ser Joel, I trust this hunter's ability, but he is only one man. If outlaws escape through the place he is guarding, we will have failed to wipe out those Targaryen holdouts completely. Should others hear of it, they may think we deliberately assigned one man to guard such an important point so the holdouts could flee. That could bring us no small trouble."

Joel looked at his squire a little longer than usual, a faint smile touching his mouth. Then he turned to Alden. "If anyone escapes through your post, you will be named an accomplice of the outlaws and hunted as one. Do you still mean to defend Sheep-Horn Crag alone?"

The others expected Alden to change his mind. Instead, he remained perfectly calm, smiled, nodded to Joel, and walked out of the council hall without a word.

"Stand there. You have not..." El did not understand what Alden meant and tried to call him back.

"Enough." Joel cut him off. "The matter is decided. Instead of wasting thought on such pointless people and pointless quarrels, put your minds on the battle ahead." His gaze swept across his squires, and his voice hardened into a shout. "Your families sent you to me so you could earn merit and make something of yourselves. I have no wish to send your corpses back to them. So take this seriously, every one of you. This is war, not some autumn hunt for young lords and ladies. Do you understand?"

Joel's rebuke, delivered without mercy in front of House Webber, made the air in the hall turn solemn. No one spoke. Not only were the scolded squires ashamed and angry, the Webber knights also looked uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Joel soon turned the discussion back to the battlefield arrangements, and the tension in the hall eased.

The men appeared to focus on each order he issued, yet many of them, especially those from House Webber, remained curious about Alden. Several had already decided to ask Joel's squires about him later.

By then, Alden had reached the leatherworker's corner in the logistics area. The man who had obeyed the squire's order and tried to make trouble for him the day before hurried to his feet as soon as he arrived, then took the altered armor from a rack nearby.

"The armor has been changed according to your instructions, my lord," the leatherworker said respectfully, bending at the waist. His manner was far better than before. "Please try it and see whether anything still needs improving."

Alden took the armor and examined it. The leatherworker had done more than resize it according to his request. He had also added thin iron plates to increase its protection. Alden put it on and tested his movement. The plates did not hinder him. Once the upper and lower straps were tightened, the edges overlapped and reduced the gaps, indirectly increasing the armor's defense.

"Good. Very good." Alden nodded in satisfaction, then took out two more silver stags and tossed them to the man. "You did good work. A reward."

The leatherworker caught the coins hurriedly and wiped sweat from his brow.

"I need rope," Alden said. "Do you have any?"

"How thick, my lord?"

Alden showed the thickness and length with his hands.

The leatherworker immediately turned, went inside, and brought out several coils of hemp rope used for binding prisoners. "Will these do?"

"They will. Good." Alden took the ropes, tested them with a pull, and nodded. Then he took out another silver stag.

The leatherworker shook his head quickly. "No need, no need. Those are ordinary supplies. You do not need to pay."

Alden did not insist. He returned the coin to his purse, slung the ropes over his shoulder, and strode out of the castle.

Once outside, he hurried toward Sheep-Horn Crag. From what Joel had revealed during the council, the outlaws fleeing Red Lake Forest would reach the area around Standfast as early as dawn the next day. That meant Alden had only one night to set his traps.

The road was difficult at night. Even with the former owner's hunting experience and ability, Alden moved much slower than he would in daylight. It took nearly twice as long before he reached Sheep-Horn Crag.

He did not rest. As soon as he arrived, he began setting traps around the area. Fortunately, while scouting in daylight, he had already considered the possibility of outlaws passing through. He had marked suitable places in advance and gathered materials as he moved through the surrounding woods. Now he only needed to set everything according to the plan he had made.

Working alone, he continued until midnight before all the traps were finished. Along the way, he dealt with a lone wolf that tried to ambush him.

The wolf's corpse brought a small complication. Its blood drew predators. Fortunately, he dragged the body far enough away that they did not spoil the traps he had set in the woods.

The body's former owner had once hunted a mountain bear with traps, which proved how deadly those methods could be. This time, Alden added some military jungle-trap techniques he had seen on television in his old life. That not only made the traps much more lethal, it made them far harder to guard against.

Killing enemies with traps might seem less honorable than winning by the sword in open battle, but for Alden, earning merit mattered most. As for reputation, he did not need to worry about increasing it for the moment.

Bear-Hunter and Twin-Sword Master had already brought him enough fame. In fact, his name had grown beyond what his current station could bear. Too much fame would inevitably draw needless trouble, just as El Morrison's attempt to provoke him likely had.

So now he needed to do something to press that swelling reputation back down. Killing enemies with traps was one method available to him.

All of it depended, however, on whether any outlaws fleeing the battlefield would choose this smuggling path. Alden could not predict that. Joel likely could not either.

Joel had stationed him in the far rear partly to give his squires an accounting. One of those squires had been knocked unconscious in front of everyone. If Joel offered no answer at all, the families behind those six young men would likely object, more or less.

Over the past few days, Alden had seen the situation clearly. Rather than true squires to Joel, those six men were temporary placements inserted by noble families so they could earn merit in this campaign against the so-called Targaryen holdouts.

Normally, a knight and squire formed a one-to-one bond. Special cases might give a knight two or three squires. Barristan the Bold had once had three at the same time. But a man like Joel having six squires was almost unheard of.

Joel had a notable name. He was counted alongside Ser Vortimer Crane as one of the Reach's two fine swords, and Barristan the Bold had praised his skill. But his reputation spread mainly through the Reach and nearby lands, and his bastard birth kept his station from rising too high. Six squires would be considered arrogant and improper for him. Even three might be seen that way.

With Joel's intelligence, he could not have missed the drawbacks. His decision to accept all six proved he had little choice in the matter.

There was also El Morrison's skill to consider. From that alone, Alden could tell the six squires were nothing special. They were not even better than common old soldiers. At most, they had learned some formal swordplay. Bringing men like that to his side and onto a battlefield was strange in itself.

Alden did not dwell on it. Other people's arrangements were not important. What mattered was whether he could seize the opportunity before him.

After finishing the traps, he chose a hidden place as his ambush point. He gathered damp branches and built a signal fire, then prepared tinder and dry wood to light it. Only then did he sit and let time pass.

As he waited, he considered whether he could earn merit in this joint action by three lordly houses against the outlaws. In his view, being assigned to the rear, far from the main battle, did not mean merit was impossible.

If he was lucky and a fish slipped through the front line, that fish would almost certainly be important among the outlaws. Only important men would know this smuggling road, and only important men would have the strength to break out of a siege.

In that case, even without fighting on the front battlefield, he could still earn significant merit.

Time passed little by little. Around him, there was nothing but the movement of animals and wind through the trees.

Alden did not force himself to fight sleep. Instead, he controlled himself through short, regular stretches of light sleep, enough to keep his mind clear for a long watch.

Whether by good luck or bad, the sky had only just begun to pale toward dawn when fog covered the area around Sheep-Horn Crag. Then a cold mountain wind swept down from the northern slope, turning the fog into a fine, chill rain that fell through the forest. The dense mist of rain limited an ordinary man's vision.

Alden's sight could still pierce it. Through the rain, he saw black smoke rising in the distance. The battle at the front had begun.

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