Chapter 20: The Tournament
The tournament in King's Landing began under summer heat and the roar of an entire city pretending it had gathered for honor instead of blood and gambling. The first day belonged to the joust. Dust rose from the lists, hooves struck the ground like drums, and riders in bright armor charged at one another with heavy lances while the crowd shouted itself hoarse. Splintered wood flew through the air, unhorsed knights rolled in the dirt, and the victors raised broken lances to receive applause from people who would have screamed just as loudly if both men had died.
Arthur watched one round and lost interest.
There was skill in it, he would admit that much. Timing, balance, courage, and the ability to remain sitting on a horse while another armed fool tried to turn your chest into broken furniture. Still, the pattern was too rigid for him. Charge, impact, fall, cheer, repeat. It was knightly romance reduced to a very expensive accident with banners.
Ena, unfortunately, had more patience for it.
She watched with bright eyes, especially when Ser Loras Tyrell entered the lists. The Knight of Flowers rode like a song had been made flesh just to annoy uglier men. His armor was ornate, his posture elegant, and his charges clean enough to make half the stands sigh. Even Ena, who usually looked at pretty men the way she looked at suspicious mushrooms, watched him a little too closely.
"What?" Arthur asked. "Taken with him?"
Ena's face reddened at once. "Nonsense. I was admiring his skill."
"His skill," Arthur repeated, dragging the words just enough to deserve violence.
Ena tried to kick his shin. Arthur moved aside, and the two of them began bickering at the edge of the stands until several spectators hissed at them to be quiet. King's Landing had room for murder, treason, and open sewage, but apparently not for two people arguing during a tourney. Civilization remained a fragile lie.
In the final, Loras fell from his horse and yielded the championship to Sandor Clegane. The result caused a wave of noise through the stands. Some called it chivalry. Others called it theatre. Arthur watched Loras rise, bow with perfect calm, and leave under applause.
"Hypocritical," Arthur said.
"You do not understand," Ena replied softly, her eyes following the golden-haired knight.
"Fine. I do not understand."
"You rarely do."
Arthur chose peace, mostly because the melee was coming.
The rules for the melee were simple enough for even nobles to understand. All registered teams and individual fighters entered the arena together. Weapons were blunted or wrapped, though that did not make them gentle. The fight would continue until only one team remained standing or until everyone else surrendered. In other words, a very large tavern brawl with better witnesses and prize money.
The arena was enclosed by wooden fences in the middle of the tourney grounds, its floor covered in sand. More than forty teams entered, totaling over five hundred men. Some were knights in fine armor with squires at their backs. Others were sellsword bands, hedge knights, freeriders, household guards, and a few groups of rough warriors with styles too strange to belong to any court.
The Battanian team had twenty-six fighters: Arthur, eight Clan Warriors, six Raiders, and eleven Volunteers. They wore uniform woodland-style leather armor, carried cloth-wrapped axes, wooden shields, and spears, and looked plain compared to all the polished steel around them. Arthur preferred that. Men often underestimated what did not shine.
The horn sounded.
The melee began.
At first, the arena broke into small fights. A few arrogant knights tried to clear the field with their squires and were immediately swallowed by larger groups. Sellswords betrayed temporary allies within minutes. Men shouted house names, curses, prayers, and threats no one had time to understand. The field became a mess of shields, limbs, dust, and dull impacts.
The Battanian Rangers did not rush in.
At Arthur's signal, they formed a tight circular formation, back to back, and moved slowly toward the edge of the arena. They avoided the central chaos and let other men waste strength proving bravery to strangers. The crowd preferred men who charged loudly. Arthur preferred men who won.
"Clear stragglers first," he ordered. "Do not touch the hard targets yet."
They moved like a fish skimming the edge of a whirlpool. Whenever a small group separated, tired, injured, or poorly formed, the Battanians struck. Three or four men would break out, hammer joints with wooden axes, smash shields into faces, hook legs, trip opponents with spear shafts, and drag them down before retreating into formation again. They never stayed long enough for another team to trap them.
It was efficient.
It was also ugly enough to offend the stands.
"Cowards!"
"Fight properly!"
"Mountain rats!"
Arthur ignored them. War was not a performance, and victory did not become less useful because fools disliked its face.
As time passed, the number of fighters in the arena collapsed. Men lay groaning in the sand. A few crawled away. Others were dragged out by attendants. Only a dozen teams remained standing, most of them bruised, tired, and bleeding from the nose or mouth. The Battanian Rangers, having avoided pointless struggles, still had most of their strength.
Arthur pointed toward the northeast side of the arena. "That team of knights."
The group he chose had about fifteen men, the best gear still on the field and the coordination to match it. They were likely squires and household men of some great lord, trained together and confident after breaking several weaker teams. They were resting near the center, using the chaos as a shield.
"Clan Warriors, hold them from the front. Raiders, strike the flanks. Volunteers, with me. We hit the rear."
The order was given.
The Battanians moved like wolves.
The Clan Warriors advanced in rows of three, shields raised, wooden axes swinging in short arcs. They crashed into the knights from the front. The Raiders threw blunted short spears from the sides, hard enough to stagger men even through armor. Arthur led the Volunteers around the rear and struck before the knightly squad could turn properly.
The team fell into confusion. They had expected a frontal fight. Instead, they found shields pressing from one side, spear shafts striking from another, and Volunteers smashing knees, elbows, wrists, and backs with the cheerful dishonor of men who had no interest in dying beautifully. Trips, shield bashes, low kicks, hooks behind the ankles, and blunt strikes to armor gaps did the work.
"Foul!" someone shouted from the stands. "They are kicking below the belt!"
The referee remained expressionless. The rules forbade lethal strikes. They did not forbid humiliating ones. An oversight, perhaps. Arthur believed in using the legal stupidity of others while it lasted.
The knightly squad fell one by one. The leader lasted longest, his sword moving well despite the pressure, but three Clan Warriors eventually pinned him with shields and forced him down. Arthur crouched before him, axe resting near the man's throat.
"Yield?"
The knight clenched his jaw. He looked at the men around him, the shields pressing down, the axe at his neck, and the rest of his team groaning in the sand.
"I yield."
After that, the rest was only cleanup. Some teams tried to unite against the Battanians, but they were already too tired and too few. The Rangers moved with cold efficiency, striking, withdrawing, surrounding, and dropping opponents one by one. Two hours after the melee began, only the twenty-six men from Battania remained standing.
For a moment, the arena was silent.
Then the stands exploded with curses.
"Rigged!"
"Shameless bastards!"
"I came to watch knights, not gutter fighting!"
Arthur brushed sand from his sleeve and walked to the center of the field. The master of ceremonies looked as if he had bitten into rotten fruit, but he still had to hand over the sash of victory and the wooden box containing the bill of exchange for twenty thousand gold dragons.
"Congratulations," the man forced out.
"Thank you," Arthur said, smiling just enough to make it worse.
He led the Battanian Rangers out under a rain of hisses, curses, and furious glares. Behind them, men were already shouting that the melee rules had to be changed before the next tournament. Arthur considered that a compliment. Men only changed rules when someone else learned to win by them.