Chapter 13: Blood and Iron at Highever’s Gate
Kerr’s world narrowed to the space of a few blood-slicked cobblestones. He fought not as a noble, but as an animal backed into a corner. His longsword was a blur, a silver arc that bit into mail and parted flesh with a terrible, wet crunching sound. He used his height, his reach, keeping the swarming Howe men at the end of his blade where their shorter weapons couldn’t touch him.
Beside him, Martyn was a force of nature. He didn’t fence or parry; he erased. The spiked maul swung in wide, devastating circles, a low hum building to a meaty impact that shattered bone and sent bodies flying. He grunted with each swing, a rhythmic, brutal sound. They moved in a grim dance, Martyn’s wide arcs covering Kerr’s more precise strikes, creating a lethal whirlwind in the gateway.
For a time, it worked. The corpses began to pile, creating a macabre barricade that slowed the flood. Kerr’s arms burned. His breath sawed in his lungs, the air thick with smoke and the copper stink of blood. He could hear the screams from deeper in the castle, the crash of doors being broken, and each one was a knife twisting in his gut. Mother. Iona. The others.
“Little busy for daydreaming, lad!” Martyn bellowed, slamming his maul down onto a man’s helmet, collapsing it and the skull inside with a sound like a dropped melon.
A spear jabbed up under Kerr’s guard, the point scraping along his ribs. The leather held, but the impact stole his wind. He snarled, grabbed the spear haft, and yanked the man forward onto his waiting sword point. He felt the blade grind through something solid, the man’s scream hot in his face.
They were tiring. The endless press of bodies was a tide, and they were just two rocks. A sword caught Martyn high on the shoulder, biting through his boiled leather. The big man roared, more in annoyance than pain, and backhanded the attacker with his gauntleted fist, dropping him like a sack of grain.
Then the pressure eased. The Howe soldiers drew back, not in fear, but in disciplined order. They formed a half-circle, their faces grim and blood-spattered in the dancing firelight. Through the gap they created, a man walked.
It was Rendon Howe.
He wore battle-plate, dark and polished, devoid of any ornament. In his hands was a long-handled axe, its blade already darkened. He looked older than Kerr remembered, his face hardened into lines of bitter ambition, but his eyes were calm, calculating. He surveyed the carnage at the gate, the two blood-drenched defenders, with the dispassionate interest of a man reviewing a ledger.
“Kerr,” Howe said, his voice carrying easily over the moans of the dying. “You always did have your father’s stubbornness. And his poor judgment in allies.” His gaze flicked to Martyn. “A smith. How fitting.”
“How fitting.”
Kerr straightened, wiping a slick of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He leaned on his sword, the point grating on the broken stone. His breath came hard, but his voice, when it came, was clear and carried a weary, knowing contempt.
“You know, Rendon,” Kerr said, shaking his head as if disappointed. “I always pegged you for a bottom-feeding worm. I just didn’t realize you were the kind that eats its own.”
Howe’s expression didn’t change, but a tightness appeared around his eyes. “Brave words from a boy who’ll be dung on my boots before the moon sets.”
“Brave?” Kerr laughed, a short, bitter sound. “No. It’s just truth. Your own lady whispers it in the dark.” He saw a flicker, a tiny fracture in Howe’s icy composure. “When the candles are out, and the castle’s quiet. She has quite a lot to say about the man who shares her bed.”
“You think girlish gossip wounds me?” Howe spat, but he took a single step forward, the axe tightening in his grip.
“Not gossip,” Kerr said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone, intimate and cruel. “Confessions. She tells me how you sigh like a deflated bellows and roll over. She says it’s the only merciful part, that it’s over so fast.” He paused, letting the image hang in the smoky air. “It’s not like that with me.”
Howe’s knuckles were white on the axe haft. The elite assassins at his sides seemed to hold their breath. “You lying little bastard.”
“She moans into the pillow so the servants won’t hear,” Kerr continued, the words precise and devastating. “She digs her nails into my back hard enough to draw blood. She says my name, Rendon. Not yours. Never yours. She screams it when she finally comes apart.” He met Howe’s livid gaze squarely, his own blazing with a final, defiant truth. “She tastes of mint and regret. Mostly regret for you.”
Howe’s roar was pure, undignified rage. The calm facade shattered, replaced by a face twisted with venomous hate. “I’ll cut that lying tongue from your head!”
He charged, not with a commander’s strategy, but with a cuckold’s fury. The elite assassins surged forward with him, a wave of polished steel and murderous intent aimed solely at the tall, bloodied figure in the gate.
Martyn braced himself, hefting his maul. “Well,” he grunted. “That did it.”
The assassins moved like smoke, blades seeking the gaps in Kerr’s leathers. Their steel was an extension of the shadows, flickering and deadly. But Kerr had spent weeks in the damp courtyard with Daveth, their sparring a blur of feints and counter-strikes that felt more like argument than combat.
He wasn’t just big; he was anchored. No rogue’s blade could wound him enough to take him out of the fight. A dagger licked toward his kidney. He twisted, letting it score the leather, and his own blade came down on the attacker’s wrist with a dry snap.
He deflected their strikes like a trained fencer, his longsword a barrier of ringing steel. He let them come, reading the minute shifts in their shoulders, the tells Daveth had beaten into him. When the one on his left overcommitted, Kerr charged. He drove the top rim of his shield up under the man’s nose. The crunch was wet and final, a spray of blood misting the air as the man screamed, hands flying to his ruined face, blinded.
Kerr didn’t pause. He followed with a low, vicious side kick to the outside of the man’s lead shin. The crack was cleaner, sharper. The assassin folded with a truncated cry, his leg buckling at a new, impossible angle. He was out, writhing on the stones. Howe’s wild axe swing came from Kerr’s right, a furious overhead chop meant to split him to the waist. Kerr parried it, not with force, but with a sharp slap of his blade that redirected the momentum. He stepped inside the swing, turned his shoulder, and drove it into Howe’s chest plate.
The Teyrn staggered back, breath gusting from him. The third rogue, seeing his opening, tried to flank Kerr from behind. He never saw Martyn. The maul descended in a short, brutal arc. It connected with the side of the man’s head with a sound like a dropped pumpkin. He dropped, instantly and forever still.
Howe got to his feet, his face a mask of spit and rage. He feinted high and lunged low, aiming a thrust at Kerr’s hip. Kerr swatted the blade aside with a contemptuous backhanded sword stroke, the clang harsh in the confined space. Howe’s forward momentum carried him within inches. Kerr’s left arm came across his body. The edge of his shield met Howe’s face with a solid, meaty thud.
Howe’s head snapped back. He wobbled, dazed. Kerr reversed the motion, bringing the shield back in a tight, powerful arc. The backhanded shield bash caught Howe flush on the jaw. The sound was different this time—denser, final. Rendon Howe dropped like a sack of stones, his armored form hitting the wet cobbles with a heavy clatter. He did not move.
A strange, ringing silence descended upon the courtyard. The fighting had stopped. Howe’s soldiers stared, their weapons wavering, at the still form of their lord in the mud and blood. Kerr stood over him, his chest heaving, steam rising from his skin in the cold dawn air. The fury that had carried him through the fight was gone, leaving only a hollow, cold certainty in its place.
He looked at the faces of the men who had followed Howe’s orders. Some were hired blades, their loyalty as cheap as the steel they carried. Others were Howe’s own, their faces now pale with the sudden understanding of what their lord’s failure meant for them.
“Martyn,” Kerr said, his voice rough but carrying across the sudden quiet.
The big smith nudged one of the dead assassins with his boot. “Aye?”
“Gather the traitors.” Kerr’s eyes never left the stunned soldiers. He pointed his bloodied sword at the cleared space before the main gate. “Have them on their knees in front of the gates.”
Martyn wiped his mustache, leaving a darker streak of crimson across it. He looked at the two dozen remaining men, then at Kerr. He saw the set of his young lord’s jaw, the flat, promise-of-pain in his eyes. He nodded once, a sharp dip of his chin.
“You heard the man,” Martyn rumbled, hefting his maul in a clear, unambiguous gesture. “Drop the steel. Line up. Knees on the stone. Now.”
There was a moment of resistance, a collective hesitation. Then one man, an older sergeant with Howe’s crest on his gambeson, let his sword clatter to the cobbles. The sound broke the spell. A percussive rain of weapons followed. They shuffled forward, defeated men moving under the watchful eyes of the few remaining Cousland guards who emerged from the shadows, their bows now trained on the group.
Kerr watched them kneel, a line of surrendered men framed by the wreckage they’d helped create. He turned his attention to the figure at his feet. Rendon Howe was breathing, a wet, ragged sound. One eye was swollen shut, and his jaw hung at a sickening angle. Kerr sheathed his sword. He bent down, grabbed the front of Howe’s ornate breastplate where it met the gorget, and began to drag.
The sound was awful. Steel scraping over broken stone, the limp weight of a man, the rhythmic puff of Kerr’s exertion. He didn’t look back at the kneeling men or at Martyn. He focused on the stairs leading up to the inner battlements, each step a deliberate, grinding effort.
He dragged Howe past the dead, past the scattered weapons and the widening pools of blood that shimmered black in the low light. The ascent was brutal. Howe’s body bumped over each step, his head lolling, a faint moan escaping his broken mouth. Kerr’s muscles screamed in protest, his own wounds a dull, insistent fire, but he didn’t stop.
He reached the top of the wall, the cold wind off the sea hitting him, clearing some of the smoke and stench from his lungs. Below, in the courtyard, the kneeling men were small and pitiable. He released his grip, letting Howe slump against the cold merlon stone. Kerr straightened, looking out over his home—the shattered gates, the burning stables, the bodies. Then he looked down at the broken Arl at his feet.
Then he looked down at the broken Arl at his feet. Howe’s good eye blinked slowly, registering the high wind and the long drop beyond the wall. Understanding, thick and slow as cold treacle, seeped into his battered face. Kerr didn’t smile. He just turned and walked along the parapet to where a supply cache held coiled rope.
The rope was stiff and cold in his hands, the fibers rough against his skin. He worked it silently, his fingers methodical, forming the simple knot Daveth had shown him for securing game. Howe tried to speak, but only a gurgle of blood and broken teeth emerged. Kerr paid it no mind. He looped the noose over Howe’s head, tightening the rough hemp against the man’s sweaty, blood-slicked neck.
He hauled Howe upright, the man’s armor scraping against the stone as his legs refused to hold him. Kerr propped him against the crenellation. The dawn light was finally breaking, a thin, pale smear along the horizon that made the shadows in the courtyard look deeper. He leaned in close, his voice a flat, conversational murmur meant only for Howe’s one working ear.
“You should know,” Kerr said quietly. “Before you go.” He paused, letting the wind whip his words away. “Your wife? She was impressive. All that fury, all that trapped ambition.” He adjusted the noose, his gaze locked on Howe’s widening eye. “She screamed. But your daughter… she just wept afterward. Pathetic.”
Howe’s body tensed, a final spark of outraged life jerking against Kerr’s grip. Kerr didn’t wait for a reply. He simply tipped him backward, a clumsy shove that sent the armored man over the edge. There was a brief, flailing silence, the whisper of cloth and plate against stone. Then the rope snapped taut with a sound like a great branch breaking.
The jerk was violent, final. A sharp crack echoed up the stone face, clean and dry. Howe’s body spun once, then hung still, swaying gently in the sea wind. His legs gave one last, faint kick, a twitch of dying nerves, and then went completely limp.
Kerr stared at the dangling shape for a long moment, his hands on the cold stone. He watched the life leave, saw the finality settle into the limbs. He turned, his chest empty of everything but a cold, heavy certainty. He walked back to the inner edge of the wall and looked down at the courtyard.
Martyn stood amidst the kneeling men, his maul resting on his shoulder. He looked up, his face a question etched in blood and sweat. “Kerr!” he bellowed up, his voice cutting through the low moan of the wind. “What’s the order?”
Kerr didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. The morning air was clear and still, and his voice carried down, calm and absolute. He pointed at the swaying shape hanging from the wall. “His fate,” he said, each word a stone dropped into a still pool, “is the rest of theirs.”
Martyn looked from Kerr to the line of traitors on their knees. A slow, grim smile spread beneath his bloody mustache. He hefted his maul from his shoulder, the spiked head catching the new light. He looked at the handful of surviving Cousland guards, their faces hard and hungry. “You heard the Teyrn’s son,” he growled, the words not loud, but carrying. “Fetch rope.”
The men moved. They moved with a grim, terrible efficiency. Some ran to the same cache Kerr had used, returning with coils of rough hemp. Others began pulling down the decorative banners and horse ties, anything that could form a noose. The kneeling men began to understand. A few cried out, promises and pleadings bubbling from their lips. One tried to stand.
Martyn’s maul took him in the side of the head before his knees were fully straight. The sound stopped the other pleas dead. The work continued. Nooses were fashioned, crude and effective. They were walked to the inner wall, where the iron brackets for torches and the stout beams of the stable overhang offered solid purchase.
Martyn did not delegate the final task. He took the first man himself, a burly sergeant who had been one of the first to drop his sword. He fitted the rope, his movements almost gentle, like a farrier with a skittish horse. He looked the man in the eye. “For Highever,” he said, and pushed him off the mounting block.
The snap was louder from below. The surviving Cousland guards followed his lead, some with fierce satisfaction, others with a detached, mechanical focus. The sounds that filled the courtyard were not of battle, but of butchery: the scuff of boots on stone, the rough whisper of rope, the short, sharp crack, then the creak of weight settling.
Kerr watched from above. He watched until the last of them swung, a ragged line of turning bodies casting long, dancing shadows in the rising sun. The smoke from the burned stables mingled with the new light, casting everything in a hazy, golden grey. Martyn wiped his hands on his breeches, looked up, and gave a single, slow nod.
It was done.