Chapter 39. Is she breathing?
They hit the gate from within while Kator's men struck from outside. The Frey guards were not ready for a coordinated attack. Most of them had expected drunk northmen, fleeing servants, or disordered survivors. Instead, they found Battanian axes and arrows coming from both sides. Old Wolf Warriors shot into the torches first, killing light as much as men. Volunteers rushed the gate with shields raised. Noble Youths followed, cutting down anyone who survived the first shock.
Arthur fought with a stolen sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He did not remember every man he killed. Faces blurred. Frey colors, Bolton colors, servants with knives, men in mail, men without helms. He cut what moved against him. Somewhere in that red fog, the gate opened.
Kator stood beyond it, blood across his cheek, five hundred raw recruits drawn up in rough formation behind him. They looked frightened. Good. Frightened men were still thinking.
"Chief!" Kator called.
"Retreat east," Arthur said. "Do not try to save the camp. Gather anyone fleeing who can walk. Rangers first, wounded second, supplies if already in hand. No heroics."
Kator looked past him and saw Tandon with Ena. His expression hardened, but Arthur did not stop moving. The retreat became a moving wound through darkness. Some Stark and Tully men joined them, half-armed, burned, bleeding, or stunned. A few Mallister men found the column. Most of the northern army was already lost to confusion and betrayal.
Frey riders hunted men across the fields. Bolton troops blocked roads that should have been safe. The Twins, lit with wedding fires, became a pair of stone mouths chewing through an army. Grey Wind's last howl came sometime before dawn, long and furious before it was cut short. Arthur did not look back.
They marched until sunrise, then farther. Only when the Twins had vanished behind low hills and river mist did Arthur allow the column to halt in a wooded hollow. Men collapsed where they stood. Horses trembled. The wounded were laid on cloaks. The dead were counted, though the numbers meant little. Too many were missing to count properly.
Catelyn Stark sat beneath an ash tree, silent as stone. She had not wept. Not yet. Perhaps the grief was too large to fit through human eyes. Perhaps something in her had broken so cleanly that tears could not find the crack.
Arthur laid Ena on a cloak near the stream. Her skin was pale. Too pale. Blood had dried at her lips and soaked her back. The crossbow bolts had been broken short for transport, but the heads remained inside. Removing them on the road would have killed her if she was not already dead.
If.
Arthur knelt beside her and placed two fingers against her throat.
Nothing.
He waited, and still there was nothing. The world narrowed to that small place beneath his fingertips. Beland stood behind him. Kator farther away. Tandon staring at the ground. No one spoke. Even the recruits seemed to understand that noise would be punished.
Arthur lowered his head and remained still long enough for despair to begin finding its shape.
Then the system flickered. Not a normal prompt. Not blue. Not clean. A dark red panel unfolded in his vision.
[Critical Bond Detected]
[Target: Ena Snow]
[Status: Dying]
Arthur stopped breathing.
Dying. Not dead. The word struck harder than any sword. The panel continued.
[Emergency Treatment Available]
[Requirements: 10,000 dinars. Medical supplies. Safe location. Survival probability: Low]
Arthur almost laughed. Low. The system had the emotional intelligence of a tax collector. It could have said impossible. It had not.
"Beland," Arthur said, voice flat. "Find the best healer among the attendants. Now. Kator, clear the hollow. Set guards. No fires unless hidden. Tandon, boil water. Tear clean cloth. Move."
They moved. Arthur opened the treasury and paid without thought. Ten thousand dinars vanished. The system released supplies into his inventory: needles, linen, salves, powders, knives, clamps, things too clean and precise for Westeros. Arthur took them out one by one. The healer stared, but asked no questions. Good. Questions were for people with time.
They worked through the morning. Bolts removed. Blood stopped. Wounds cleaned. Powder pressed in. Stitches made. Ena convulsed once, and Arthur had to hold her shoulders while the healer worked. She did not wake. Once, her breath stopped long enough that the healer looked at Arthur with pity.
"Continue," Arthur said.
The healer continued.
At noon, Ena breathed again. Shallow. Weak. But there.
The system updated.
[Emergency Treatment Complete]
[Status: Alive. Unconscious. Critical]
Arthur sat back slowly. His hands were covered in blood. Some of it hers. Some his. Some from men he no longer remembered killing. The system's word stayed fixed before his eyes: alive. Not safe, not healed, not promised, but alive. For that moment, Arthur held onto that single word as if the rest of the world could burn around it.
Arthur looked toward the west, where the Twins lay hidden beyond hills and betrayal. Robb Stark was dead, Grey Wind was dead, and the northern host had been butchered under guest right. The Freys had become oathbreakers, Roose Bolton had shown his face, and the war had changed shape in a single night. The Riverlands would drown in the consequences, and Newroot would not be spared unless he made it strong enough to survive the flood.
Catelyn finally made a sound then. Not a scream. Not speech. Something smaller and worse. Arthur looked at her, then at Ena's pale face. He felt the grief still waiting inside him, enormous and patient. But rage stood before it, and rage had work to do.
"Gather the survivors," Arthur said. "We go to Newroot."
Beland bowed his head. "Yes, Chief."
Arthur stood with blood drying on his hands. The wolf of Battania had survived the wedding, and now it would remember.
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