The Muir knight's hand tightened on his sword hilt. Every muscle in his body pulled taut. His gaze moved across Solomon in long, slow passes.
His voice stretched out, loaded with disbelief.
"You..."
"You actually intend to champion these escaped serfs... in a trial by combat?"
Behind him, the attendants and soldiers looked at one another, wearing the same expression of stunned incomprehension.
In their eyes, the ragged people huddled in the road were nothing more than ambulatory property — their lord's walking assets. And Solomon — the Black Lion, a man whose name meant something — was proposing to fight a genuine knight, a proper noble, over a herd of walking livestock. To make an enemy of House Muir over this.
The Muir soldiers went quiet. Solomon's expression did not change by a fraction.
He gave a single, calm nod.
"Yes."
No explanation attached. But it landed like a stone dropping through still water.
Brynden Tully nudged his horse forward half a step. His lips moved. He seemed on the verge of speaking.
Then he checked the horse and went no further. He folded his arms across his chest instead, his brow knotted hard, fingers tapping an unconscious rhythm against his own arm.
They really are different. I cannot read this young man at all.
The twenty riders behind Solomon — Brin among them — had their hands on their hilts already. Their bodies angled forward slightly, like a pack of wolves that had heard the signal and were waiting for the order to move. The air carried the unmistakable weight of imminent violence.
The refugees raised their hollow faces. Tears still tracked through the dirt on their cheeks. They did not fully understand what was happening, only that a noble lord seemed to be standing up for them. In the dead ruin of hope that their hearts had become, a single small flame flickered into existence.
There was something about the young man who had simply stepped forward — who looked nothing like a warrior, and had declared he would fight for them anyway — that made that flame real.
Septon Meribald was the first to recover his senses.
He stepped forward and placed himself between Solomon and the knight.
"Lord Solomon. I am grateful for your courage."
"But... you are not a knight. You do not possess the standing to represent the Church — to fight as the Faith's champion in a formal trial by combat."
He had assumed the only logical framework: Solomon was acting as a champion for the Faith. He had never once in his long wandering life witnessed a lord simply choosing to stand as champion for common smallfolk in a personal capacity.
The knight heard the septon's words and let some of the laughter back into his expression.
He narrowed his eyes and studied Solomon again.
"Solomon?"
He rolled the name around, and then recognition lit in his face — followed immediately by recalculation.
"You're the Black Lion?"
The name did something to the air. The laughter behind him stopped. Grips tightened. In the Vale, that name was not a small thing.
The knight's manner adjusted.
He was no longer looking at an unknown attendant. He was looking at a lord of meaningfully higher standing than himself.
"Black Lion." His voice had steadied and cooled. "The Barefoot Brother is correct. You are not an ordained knight. You cannot stand as champion for the Faith or conduct a formal trial by combat in the Church's name."
To champion a septon of the Seven was to act as the Faith's agent. Only a knighted man could assume that role. The Sons of the Warrior had once held it — but they were dust and old stories now.
Solomon looked at the old septon and the knight with an expression neither of them could quite interpret.
He spoke quietly.
"When did I say I was representing the Faith?"
Both Meribald and the knight stared at him.
Then for whom?
Solomon extended his hand and pointed at the kneeling refugees.
"I represent these people."
The Muir knight's hand closed tighter on his hilt. He looked at Solomon for a long moment.
Then the calculation settled visibly behind his eyes.
He had heard that the Black Lion was a commander with a reputation. He had not heard that the Black Lion was any kind of swordsman. The young man before him was lean — even slight. He was wearing leather, not plate. He had never been a squire, which meant no formal combat training. A man who had never served as a squire — how dangerous could he be?
This was a winning proposition on every axis. He could uphold his lord's law through the sacred mechanism of trial by combat. He could resolve the present inconvenience cleanly. And — the best part — he would personally defeat the famous Black Lion, then graciously extend mercy, and that story would make him a name in the Vale that would outlast this road and this morning by a generation.
A slow, satisfied smile spread across Ser Corben Muir's face.
He raised his voice, letting it ring off the mountain walls, as though victory were already a settled matter.
"Very well!!"
"I accept your trial by combat!!"
He lifted his longsword toward the sky.
"Let the Seven above bear witness!! Let them render their judgment!! Let them show the world which side is righteous!!"
With the declaration made, both parties' men began clearing the ground. The space between the two sides opened up.
And then Ser Corben Muir turned.
Without warning. Without any shift in his expression.
He turned toward the huddled mass of refugees and his longsword swept out in one clean, cold arc.
A head rose into the air. The face on it still wore an expression of bewilderment and disbelief.
The body swayed. Blood erupted from the neck like water from a broken pipe. The man fell forward heavily and lay still, his blood spreading fast and dark into the dust.
Time stopped.
The wind stopped. The birdsong stopped. Every breath in the gorge stopped with it.
Ser Corben withdrew his sword slowly. With an unhurried, almost elegant motion, he produced a cloth from inside his coat and wiped the warm blood from the blade with meticulous care. When he had finished, he turned back to Solomon — whose face had not moved — and smiled pleasantly.
His tone was the tone of a man discussing the morning weather.
"My apologies, Lord Solomon. The trial has not yet begun."
He paused, allowing everyone's eyes to settle on him.
"And so, at this present moment, I remain entirely within my rights to dispose of my lord's property as I see fit."
Septon Meribald let out a sound from somewhere below speech — a broken, furious cry — his whole body shaking.
"You monster!!"
"How dare you do this!! The Seven will punish you!! Your soul will wail through all seven hells!!"
Ser Corben paid the old septon's curses no more attention than he would pay a gust of wind.
His gaze dropped to Solomon's light leather jerkin beneath the black noble's coat, and he spread his hands in a show of sporting generosity.
He turned and waved to his attendants.
"Lord Solomon, since you are so courageous, I can hardly allow an equipment disparity between us."
"Come — take off my breastplate and vambraces."
"I'll fight in light armor as well. Only fair. Don't you think?"
The attendants worked quickly, unbuckling straps and releasing catches, lifting away the heavy steel pieces to reveal the padded leather coat beneath.
Septon Meribald forced himself to move. Choking on grief and rage, he walked step by step into the open ground between the two men. As the only man of the Faith present, it fell to him to preside. He had no choice in this.
His voice shook with the effort of holding itself together as he recited the long formal proclamation, every word familiar from too many years of witnessing trials like this one — trials where the guilty escaped through strength and the innocent died badly.
He finished, and closed his eyes for a moment. If the Seven truly exist.
Ser Corben raised his cleaned blade high and swore his oath in a ringing voice.
"I!! Corben Muir!! Fight for my lord's law!! I call upon the Father Above to render judgment!!"
Solomon pulled the Myrish blade from the ground and looked at Ser Corben's face. His black eyes held no agitation, no anger, no anticipation. They were as still as the surface of a very deep well.
His voice came out low and clear, each word striking the ears of everyone present like a separate blow.
"I, Solomon, fight for the lives and freedom of the people of the Riverlands."
No invocation of the Seven. No call for divine judgment. Nothing but the statement itself.
Septon Meribald drew the deepest breath of his life.
May the Seven protect him.
He threw every remaining scrap of strength into his voice.
"Let the Seven bear witness and render judgment!! The trial by combat — begins NOW!!"
The last word had barely left his mouth.
Ser Corben Muir unleashed a roar like a wounded animal and launched himself forward. He drove off both legs at once, the full weight and momentum of his body behind the charge — like a bull with nothing left to lose — and brought his longsword crashing down in a sequence of massive, sweeping blows, each one carrying the full rotation of his shoulders, each one designed to break something if it landed. Classic knightly swordsmanship: overwhelm the opponent with raw, unstoppable force.
But Solomon did not meet the force with force.
His body was impossibly light. His footwork was strange and fast, as though he were moving to a rhythm only he could hear. Corben's blade came down and found air — close enough to stir the fabric of Solomon's coat, but somehow always just beyond reach. Each time, Solomon yielded by the exact minimum required and no more, slipping out of the path of each blow at an angle that seemed physically improbable.
Brynden Tully's eyes narrowed to slits.
This style has no name I recognize. Not the brutal directness of the North, not the elegant dueling tradition of the Reach. Something looser, stranger — more like a Free Cities pit-fighter, or a Dornish sand warrior. And yet he had never heard of this young man receiving formal training from anyone in those traditions. Where did he learn to move like that?
Solomon's own soldiers watched with the calm satisfaction of men who have seen this before and know how it ends.
The Muir soldiers cheered loudly for their knight — still certain the dodger would tire and fall, that it was only a matter of time.
Solomon did not hurry. He hunted with patience, circling and shifting, using Corben's attacks to drain Corben's reserves, letting each massive swing that landed on nothing cost its price in breath and strength.
Corben's lunges came slower. His chest heaved. Sweat ran freely down his face, and the fury inside him had mixed now with something uglier — humiliation. He felt like a bull in a pen, all power and no purchase, unable to land so much as the edge of a blow on a man who never seemed to actually be where he reached.
He bellowed.
"You fight like a rat!! There is no honor in this!!"
"Stand and face me!! Fight me straight!!"
The words were barely out.
Solomon's sword moved.
The long, narrow Myrish blade went forward like a tongue of flame — quick, economical, silent — and bit into the forearm of Corben's sword arm.
Not deep. But hot and immediate.
The rhythm of the fight stuttered. Corben flinched, his next move a fraction slow — and Solomon had already stepped back to distance before the recovery came.
Then, in the silence after the next dodge, Solomon's voice came forward.
It was light. Almost pleasant.
"Ser. Your sword is considerably slower than your mouth."
Before the sentence finished, the blade moved again — this time a longer stroke, drawing a deeper line across Corben's thigh. Blood spattered.
Corben Muir screamed.
"AAHH!!"
His eyes went the color of blood. His attacks lost all structure, all pattern — pure deranged aggression now, a man swinging at everything and hitting nothing, every missed blow bleeding off what little remained of his stamina. In all the fights of his career, he had never faced anything that felt like this. It was obscene.
Solomon's voice came again, floating in from the side, as though offering idle commentary.
"Ser. Who was it that knighted you?"
Another wound opened.
"Whoever it was, I suspect he may have misjudged the situation."
Another.
Ser Corben Muir shattered completely.
Every last scrap of rational thought burned away. He abandoned every guard, every technique, and poured everything — his entire weight, his entire remaining strength — into his legs, and charged.
A final, all-or-nothing, mutual-destruction attack.
He screamed as he came, sword raised high.
"I'LL KILL YOU!!!!"
In the instant before the blade would have arrived —
Solomon dropped.
His body went sharply downward, a low sliding movement, passing along Corben's flank. His sword hand came up in a tight, controlled arc.
The edge of the Myrish blade passed cleanly across the back of Corben's right leg — the leg bearing his weight.
The hamstring parted.
A shriek split the mountain air.
Ser Corben's charge ended in the same instant it reached its peak. His right leg buckled and gave out entirely, balance gone, momentum turned against him. He pitched forward like a felled post and crashed into the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust.
His sword flew from his grip and landed somewhere in the rocks with a sharp, ringing clang.
Silence.
The fight had ended so fast that half the spectators hadn't finished processing what they were watching. Then Solomon's soldiers erupted — a roar that shook the narrow gorge. The Muir soldiers stood ash-faced and motionless, unable to trust what their eyes were telling them.
Brynden Tully let out a long, slow breath through his nose. At least it ended cleanly. He moved to step forward and close proceedings — though he was privately reconsidering whether he had done the right thing bringing Solomon anywhere near a negotiation.
Corben's two attendants, believing the trial concluded, sprinted in from the crowd to reach their fallen lord. One of them grabbed Corben's shoulder and began to lift.
He felt something warm hit his face.
He looked down.
A sword had been driven through his lord's chest from behind.
He looked up.
The young Black Lion was withdrawing the blade slowly from behind the knight's body, letting the blood fall from the tip in a steady drip. When he spoke, his tone was identical to the one Corben Muir had used earlier — light, pleasant, almost conversational.
"My apologies, Ser Corben."
"The trial had not yet ended."