Blinded by the thick, sulfurous slush, Ron couldn't see the incoming strike. He could only hear the heavy whuff of air as Jon's ash-wood sword came raining down.
The blunt wood cracked hard against Ron's shoulder blade, a white-hot flash of pain radiating down his spine. He staggered, coughing mud, but the bastard wasn't finished. Another blow clipped Ron's ribs, then another caught the meat of his thigh. Jon was pummeling him, abandoning form for the raw, unchecked release of hours of accumulated rage.
Through the blur of tears and grey forge soot, Ron caught the flash of a smirk on Jon's bloody face.
"Do you yield, apprentice?" Jon panted, his voice ringing with a sudden, arrogant lilt that made Ron's blood boil hotter than the primary furnace.
"Jon, hold your hand!" Mikken shouted, his heavy boots splashing through the freezing muck as he lunged forward. "Don't mock that shameless prick! He doesn't have a lick of honor to break!"
Jon raised the ash wood for a final, decisive strike to the crown of Ron's head.
He never delivered it.
Ron perfectly calculated the direction where Jon would swing. His right hand snapped upward, fingers locking around the blunted grain of Jon's training sword with a desperate, iron grip. Before Jon could pull the weapon back, Ron pivoted his hips, using the functional strength forged from months of swinging Mikken's rounding hammer. His left fist came around in a brutal, Textbook right hook.
The blow caught Jon squarely on the point of his jaw.
A hollow, wet crack echoed through the yard. Jon's grey eyes rolled back into his skull, his knees buckling instantly as he crashed face-first into the frozen mud, completely limp.
The training yard went dead silent, save for the steady patter of the northern rain.
Mikken froze, his face draining of all color until his skin matched the grey winter sky. "you petty brute," the master smith whispered, his voice trembling as he looked from the unconscious bastard to his apprentice. "You've knocked him out. By the old gods, they'll hang us both from the iron cages before the crows can blink."
"He... he started it," Ron wheezed, spitting a mouthful of black, ash-stained saliva into the dirt as he rubbed his bruised shoulder.
Mikken didn't argue. He didn't use words. His massive, calloused fist took Ron across the ear, sending the apprentice spinning into the gravel. Before Ron could scramble away, Mikken's heavy leather boot caught him twice in the ribs, a brutal, defensive thrashing meant to ensure the Starks saw proper penance had been dealt on the spot.
A low groan cut through the violence.
Jon Snow stirred, his fingers twitching in the mud. He rolled over slowly, pressing a hand to his swelling jaw, blinking away the fog of concussion. As his vision cleared, he looked up to see Ron slumped against a water barrel, sporting a fresh split eyebrow, a bruised jaw, and a thoroughly ruined leather apron—all courtesy of Mikken's frantic disciplinary measures.
Jon stared for a long, agonizing moment. Then, a sharp, ragged laugh broke through his split lip.
"I lost again," Jon muttered, shaking his dark curls as he pulled himself up into a sitting position, the absolute absurdity of the street fight washing away the remaining poison of the Great Hall.
"You absolute, miserable, brain-damaged piece of medieval shite," Ron hissed, entirely devoid of any filter as he clutched his bruised ribs, glaring at the bastard through a swelling eye. "I hope your noble skull cracks like an untempered horseshoe next time."
Mikken's hand cuffed the back of Ron's head yet again, shutting him up instantly. The master smith dropped to one knee in the mud, bowing his head deeply before the bastard. "Forgive him, Lord Snow," Mikken pleaded, his voice tight with genuine dread. "The boy was dragged out of a gutter and doesn't know the speech of decent folk. I'll skin his back raw for this, I swear it to you."
Jon didn't take Ron's insult to heart. He slowly stood up, wiping the cold rain from his neck, his gaze lingering on the battered apprentice and the trembling smith. For the first time all day, his grey eyes held a spark of genuine purpose.
"Tomorrow," Jon said, his voice steady and quiet. "Same time."
Ron's jaw dropped, his mind instantly flashing to a worst-case scenario involving Catelyn Stark's guards executing him for treason. "Like hell I am—"
"Yes, My Lord," Mikken interrupted aggressively, his heavy hand clamping down on Ron's shoulder with enough force to crack bone, answering before his apprentice could ruin their lives permanently. "He'll be here. Waiting."
After Jon left the smithy.
Ron rubbed his jaw, staring at the empty doorway before turning a bewildered look toward the master smith. "Why in the hells did you say yes to him? He's a bastard. Lord Stark wouldn't blink if you told the boy to find his amusements elsewhere."
Mikken's hand clutched a heavy iron tong. Without a word of warning, he swung his left forearm, clipping Ron hard across the side of his skull. The blow rang out like a hammer on an anvil.
Ron stumbled back against a stack of unworked iron bars, wincing and cursing as he cupped his throbbing ear. "Seven hells, Mikken! What was that for?"
"For being born a fool and living long enough to brag about it," Mikken growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp born of four decades inhaling coal dust. He pointed a thick, soot-stained finger at Ron's chest. "Jon Snow carries the Stark longface, and he carries Ned's blood. Bastard or no, he is a son of Winterfell. If he commands us to give him steel, we give him steel. We do not question, and we do not refuse."
Ron spat a glob of dark phlegm into the dirt. "He's a small thing. Light on his feet, aye, but fragile as winter glass. What if we're out in the yard, my grip slips, and I accidentally snap his bloody neck?"
The smith's eyes hardened into flints. He stepped forward, the heat radiating from his massive chest like an open hearth. "If you break that boy's neck, the Lord of Winterfell won't need to waste a hempen rope on you. I'll take my heaviest cross-peen hammer, cave your skull into your throat, and then I'll walk up to the executioner's block and let the King's Justice take my own head for failing my duty. Do you take my meaning, boy?"
Before Ron could answer, Mikken reached into a barrel of scrap metal and hauled out a heavy, dull-edged practice sword. The crossguard was pitted, the blade thick and blunted with years of striking wooden dummies. He hurled it.
The iron clattered hard against Ron's breastplate before he scrambled to catch it by the leather-wrapped hilt. The balance was wretched—top-heavy and clumsy.
"Do you want me to take this to the grindstone?" Ron asked, running a thumb over the rounded, useless edge. "It wouldn't cut butter in a high summer."
"No, you miserable ape," Mikken barked, turning back to his anvil and seizing his hammer. "I'm sending you out there to Spar with him, not to butcher him. If he wants to improve his skills, he'll learn the proper way—the way of knights and lords, with form and discipline. I'll not have him learning that ugly, tavern-brawling filth you call fighting."
Ron gripped the blunt iron, a bitter taste in his mouth. He sneered at the old man's back, his voice dropping to a sharp whisper over the clinking of the forge. "My 'filth' keeps a man breathing when the wildlings come over the Wall, old man. Your proper forms look right pretty at a tourney in the South, but a dead man doesn't care if his killer's stance was beautiful."