A Soldier Adrift: Captain Westeros

The fighting pits of Meereen prided themselves on their spectacle, and that meant doing more than simply bleeding untold numbers of slaves dry on the sands. A discerning audience demanded surprise and spontaneity, and that meant more than the classic circle of sand. Some of the most memorable fights, still spoken of years later, had involved elaborate constructions on the pit floor, such as a labyrinth for hunter and prey, or a castle in miniature. Once an arena had flooded its floor and held a naval battle, all in pursuit of ever greater spectacle to please the crowds that lusted for blood.

For Steve and his rebellious freemen, this meant that when they needed to bar the arena entrances, they were not short of material. A master stonemason, sentenced to the pits for a project whose slowness displeased his master, oversaw the barricading of three of the four main entrances, granite blocks placed with frenzied strength and desperate speed to form interlocking barriers that would break any ram used against them.

“How goes it, Mason?” Steve asked, as he arrived to check on their progress.

“This is the last,” Mason the stonemason said. He was a pillar of calm as he directed workers around him, broad shoulders speaking of his strength. “That soft handed eunuch will rue the day he condemned me here.”

“I knew you could do it,” Steve said. There were some who had doubted their ability to secure the arena after taking it, but he had asked them to trust him, and they had. Now that trust was being proven true. The last block was slotted into place, completing a wall that was likely harder to get through than the walls of the arena. “All of you, well done.”

Teeth were bared and spines straightened as free men and women heard his words.

“Are you sure you don’t want the last entrance blocked?” Mason asked, voice low.

“We need it less formidable,” Steve said. “If the slavers saw every entrance looking like this, they’d give up and try to starve us out.”

“We trust in your plan, America,” Mason said. Eyes that had held only despair when they had first met were fixed on the man who had given him hope. “We’ll see it done.”

A boy ran up panting and spoke to him, relaying a message. Steve clapped Mason on the shoulder and jogged quickly away, making for the main gate. As he passed the free men and women, many reached out to brush his arms and shoulders, as if reassuring themselves that he was real.

‘America, America, America.’ The word was muttered by those he passed, a prayer to some, a promise to others. Hundreds of freemen were busy within the arena structure, each doing their part for the plan to come.

When Steve reached the main entrance, a broad arch wide enough for four chariots to ride through, Arthor was waiting for him. The cut on his face had been seen to, and he wore a bandage around his head.

“You were right,” the Northman said. “When they saw our hostage, they pulled back and waited.”

Outside the arena, across an empty square, a growing crowd of guards gathered. There were even some nobles amongst them, most making increasingly shrill demands of them and pointing at the entrance.

Broad and deep as it was, the entrance did not lead directly to the heart of the arena. It led to an open indoor space that then split off into numerous halls that ran around the circular structure. If it were to be taken, there would be no holding out. They had to hold the entrance, or fall to whips and manacles once more.

“You’ve done well,” Steve said. Unlike the other lesser entrances, this one looked to have been blocked in a hurry, heavy palanquins and service wagons having been dragged into place in an attempt to stymie the inevitable crackdown. Perhaps ten metres of the passage had been blocked so, making it impossible for any sort of formation to force their way in. Any half-keen eye would see that it was a flawed defence, however, with enough gaps and spaces that weight of numbers would surely win the day. The only thing stopping the building force across the square from attacking was the richly dressed effeminate man in the middle of the blocked passage with a noose around his neck, standing on a donkey. The gibbet the noose hung from made clear their threat.

“They won’t wait forever,” Arthor said.

“No, just long enough for one of his enemies to give the order to retake the arena,” Steve said, “and that’s all the time we need.” He glanced up at the vaulted ceiling above, taking in the wagon wheel chandelier that hung from it. It was large enough to support a grown man, or two small women, and was shrouded in darkness.

Arthor made a sound of agreement, glancing around. Aside from the odd person scurrying across the entrance, and those staying out of sight further into the building, they were alone, but he hesitated.

“Speak your mind,” Steve said.

“Madzi mo Loq,” Arthor said. He jerked his head towards the man standing on the donkey. “I wasn’t expecting that from you, with how much time your speeches spent on being better than them.”

“Rising above is important,” Steve said, “but sparing his like is only another injustice done to their victims. I’d rather a court with a judge and a trial, but we all know his guilt.”

Arthor stared at him, blue eyes intent. “Every soul in this city is guilty in some way.”

“In some way,” Steve allowed. “Now isn’t the time to sit down and draw that line though. Seeing the owner of the arena hanged should get our point across, and we’ve got proof of his guilt, rather than just assumptions based on their status.”

“Be easier just to kill them all,” Arthor said, looking back out to the square. Yet more armed men had gathered, and a party of riders thundered up to join them.

“Would it?” Steve asked. “What do we do after we’ve killed every slave owner in the city?”

Arthor sighed. “You asked this at every secret meeting for a month.”

“Well, I was asking the crowd then, and you were always at my back, so I’m asking you now,” Steve said, lips quirked in a faint smile.

“We starve, the other cities march on us, we fight, we die,” the Northman said, as if reciting an oft repeated lesson.

“This isn’t just another short lived slave rebellion,” Steve said, serious once more. “This is the start of a new era for the entire Bay.”

“Yes, the Harpy’s Pit, once an exclusive venue for nobles, now a proud nation of freed slaves,” Arthor said dryly.

“Today the pit, tomorrow the city,” Steve said. He watched as the newly arrived riders outside the arena barked orders, slowly gaining control over the guards.

“This will be a good death,” Arthor said. He sounded content.

Steve side eyed him. “You planning on laying down to die, Arthor?”

“No, I plan to kill every whoreson out there, seduce the daughter of a Great Master for a wife, and die an old greybeard on a warm beach,” Arthor said. “But those whoresons get a say in that too.”

The guards outside began to form up, a wall of shields and spears.

“Join the others, tell them it’s time,” Steve said.

Arthor slipped away into the shadows, leaving Steve alone in the entranceway, unarmed and unarmoured. He watched, unconcerned, as spears beat against shields in an attempt at intimidation, the shield wall advancing in lockstep across the square. They could see him over the makeshift barricades, and his calmness seemed to infuriate the nobles driving them forwards. Faster they came, their steps echoing, and he could feel the vibrations in the ground. In the upper level of one of the buildings along the square, he saw a girl peeking through curtains at it all.

It was a shame that a child would see this, but then it was a shame about many things that happened to children in this godforsaken city.

The first rank of guards reached the barricades, and their orderly lines immediately began to grow cramped, as those behind were slow to stop, pressing against those in front. Through the gaps they came, their shields unwieldy as they picked their way through. The once ordered formation was now a mob in the square, and isolated individuals in the entranceway.

Steve began to pick his way through the barricade from the other end, and he slapped the donkey on its hindquarters as he passed it, startling the animal. Madzi mo Loq, owner of the Harpy’s Pit and architect of the sick amusements that took place there, began to choke and gurgle as he swung in place, noose tight and grasping. Steve ignored him, coming to a stop in a small area of open space in the middle of the blocked zone, only a few metres across. He waited, breathing evenly.

The first guard to reach him seemed less focused on the one man to block his way, as he emerged into the small space, than on whatever ambush or trap was surely waiting. He died unknowing, skull shattered under Steve’s fist as he was pulled in by his spear. The second and third fared no better.

There was a brutish arrogance in the first to come, Steve noticed. They had come expecting to slaughter an unorganised slave uprising, with only the near hysterical accounts of those few who had escaped the arena to inform them. They died easily, sure that there was some trick, or blades waiting in the shadows. Those who came after, the ones who stepped over their corpses, were more wary of their singular foe. It did not save them.

Steve tore a spear from the hands of a foe, and used it to run through two men at once. The maze of the barricade allowed no more than four or five men to reach him at a time, and those after them were often close behind, to their detriment. The stone soon grew slick with blood, and each man to pick their way through to him soon learnt what the dead already knew. This was no beaten down slave pushed past their last rope, no bait for beasts raging against their fate. This was a killer, and they had come to him with bared steel.

The mob outside looked to be organising themselves again, so Steve threw his spear into them, killing three men and wounding two more. Those in the hall tried to take advantage, but they may as well have been moving through molasses next to him. He took one by the neck and snapped it with a squeeze as he headbutted another, and kicked a third back into the man behind him. As the corpses piled up, the paths that had been deliberately left in the barricade began to be blocked, and some guards looked to scale over instead of walk through. Steve took exception to their efforts, stealing another spear and piercing the heart of the first to clamber up. He killed the next two to try as well, and the guards decided that keeping to the ground was the best course of action, even as they were hindered and slowed by their shields and spears.

It only took another minute for the corpses to completely block the way, clogging the warren with dead flesh and the scent of gore. The mob still pressed onwards, but they were stuck in place by their fellows and the cramp of the barricades, no matter how fiercely the nobles outside exhorted them. They began to try to clamber over the barricades once more, now their only option to press on.

Wiping his hand free of blood, Steve brought his fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. Above, on the chandelier, there was movement. There was a lip to the hall ceiling, a facade that blocked the chandelier from view from outside, leaving the ceiling murky and smoke blackened from the candles that usually sat in the wheel. There were no candles today, but in the wake of Steve’s whistle, a wick was lit.

So focused were the guards on the pale man blocking their way, they did not see the clay pot that was thrown from above. It soared towards the mob of men outside, almost clipping the edge of the facade, and broke over one man’s head. As it did, it exploded.

Heat and shrapnel burst amongst the tightly packed men, cooking them in their armour and shredding those near it. Another pot was thrown, and Steve caught a whiff of the pitch and naphtha inside, before it too exploded, killing those lucky enough to be right next to it outright. Those unlucky enough to be further away were maimed for life, scorched to the bone or pierced by shrapnel. The quickest thinkers amongst them looked up just in time to see a third pot slung towards them.

Steve gave a second whistle, quicker and sharper. Knives emerged from the barricade, from the palanquins and wagons, slitting throats and rising up to stab deep into groins as the men and women who had been hidden revealed themselves. Some were hidden inside litters, others under or in wagons, but all were hungry for justice and revenge. Taken completely by surprise, those in the killing field of the barricade were dealt with swiftly, and the burnt and shellshocked mob outside broke and ran under the barrage from above.

As the freemen realised that victory was theirs, cheers rose as they screamed and hollered at the fleeing guards and their noble masters, watching aghast from outside. They were not the only spectators. The girl peeking through the curtain from before had been joined by an older woman with a metal collar around her neck, and many of the other buildings had people watching through their windows, a range of horror and blankness on display. The moment in time stretched out, and all could feel it was on a precipice.

Over the corpses and blood slicked stone, Steve walked, threading through the barricade to approach the square, until he stood on the scorched earth just outside. The slavers watched him, not the largest or the tallest they had ever seen, but a giant still as he surveyed all before him. Despite the ratty trousers and blood splatters across his body, he looked every inch a king.

At his back free men and women emerged, knives and swords and spears clenched in tight fists, all of them bloody. They met the stares of the surviving guards and impotently furious nobles without flinching. There was only silence. But then:

“LIBERTY!” Steve roared, raising his fist.

“DEATH!”

Every single freeman with him answered his call, and their voices shook the square.

Steve turned and showed the so-called great masters his back, returning to the arena. Those with him followed suit, many pausing only to spit towards the nobles. Those outside watched as the shadow of the entrance hall swallowed them, and in that moment they knew fear.