“Ambush!” Jaime yelled, his good-hand pulling at his sword. “To the king! Protect the king!”

His cry was answered with another flight of arrows, and men along with mounts fell all throughout the column. Horses bucked and whinnied, and steel scraping on leather sounded in the air as swords flew out. Lightbringer came instinctively into my hand, already warm at the hilt, vibrating with hunger.

Suddenly, I heard the pounding of hoofbeats on earth and turned to look. Further up the road, from the bend we’d just been through, a group of horsemen appeared galloping four abreast, at least ten of them. They smashed into our rear, scattering the knights who’d fallen out of formation when the arrows hit.

That seemed to be the others’ cue. Bandits hiding in the forest burst through the brush on the other side of the road, running at the broken column, shouting indistinct war cries.

Jaime and I were separated from our men, well away from the treeline. I pulled at the reins and aimed my horse at the incoming bandits, intending to charge them, but by then the outlaws on our side of the road were upon us.

The first three revealed themselves when they sprung from behind a tree, wearing black cloaks and chainmail beneath it. Jaime reacted first, snapping his reins and taking off to meet the first one, white cloak trailing behind him.

I didn’t have time to pay attention. Displaced air wooshed nearby, and I turned on the saddle to parry the axe blow that promised to bite my head off. The rough-looking man snarled, arms cocking up to swing again, but I was faster. Lightbringer sliced through his mailed arms like they were made of silk.

His tortured scream didn’t distract me from the other bandit sneaking up from the other side. He jumped up and thrusted with a longsword, trying to find a chink on my armor. So I leaned into the strike, his blade raking off my breastplate.

“Fuck,” he cursed, though he used the opportunity to rip my shield from my saddle so it went flying underfoot.

When Lightbringer cut the air his way, he proved smarter than his companion and ducked. He danced around the horse, always keeping to the other side of my sword arm. In my periphery, I saw that Jaime had managed to finish off the first bandit, but he was now holding off two others, swinging his golden hand around like a shield.

I needed to finish it fast.

Digging both knees to its flanks, my horse burst forward. I feinted right with Lightbringer, the blade leaping to cut the outlaw in half, and just as I thought, he side-stepped left. Snagging my antlered helm off my saddle, I lurched to the side as I passed by him and swung the helm like a club with my left hand.

The bandit wore no helmet of his own, and the great rack brained him in three places as the bone spikes caught the side of his head. Blood and brain matter spattered across my black armor, and I pulled the helmet to me before the falling body of the bandit took it with him.

My breathing had quickened, and blood was pounding in my ears from all the rush. In both lives, I’d always been a serial planner, carefully setting the board to my liking before I sat down to play.

But when I did, make no mistake. I was all action.

I was already moving before the bandit’s body hit the ground, urging my mount to swivel and ride to my birth-father’s help.

Jaime was clearly struggling against two men, his left-handed swordplay clumsy and inexperienced. But I couldn’t forget that before his disfigurement, Ser Jaime Lannister was one of the finest knights of the realm, and I watched as he skillfully maneuvered his horse around the outlaws, using his advantage of sitting higher up to deflect any of their blows.

He might not be able to finish them off, but he was good enough on a warhorse to stave off his own demise until someone came to help him.

And I did. Galloping by, I killed the one closest to me, Lightbringer hacking his head off on my first pass. The other yelped and turned to flee, but then Jaime made quick work of him with two swipes of his sword to the man’s back.

Fool, I thought. You don’t just outrun a horse like that.

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I immediately turned to look around. Fighting rang all across the line, the clang of steel on steel loud in the air. At a quick glance, I counted no less than fifty bandits still fighting against some forty of ours. To the back, I saw the Strongboar and Ser Loras rallying the knights, trying to organize the soldiers into a semblance of formation.

More than once they tried to break out and come my way, but the bandits there had spears and halberds with them, and seemed to be skilled enough to keep the knights at bay.

Sellswords, I decided, unlike the rabble I killed here. Still, as soon as morale broke for them, they would scatter.

“Your Grace,” Jaime said, panting. “We need to leave, now!”

“Clearly, you were right before, ser. But you’re not now. It is not the time to leave my men behind.” Who would respect a king that fled in his first battle? A battle against bandits, at that. I buckled my antlered helmet up and stood on my stirrups.

“To me!” I yelled over the noise. When I breathed in, all I could smell was blood and sweat inside the helm. “To your king!”

Barely anyone seemed to have heard it, but some four knights from the front of the column did and rode my way. I barely waited for them to get closer. Pointing with my sword deeper into the brush, I said, “We’ll wheel around this side and smash their backs at the center. Ride right through, then loop around again, and hit the back of the column. Don’t stop for anything!”

“Aye, Your Grace,” one of them said. The rest of the men nodded and arranged themselves in formation.

Before I could fall in with them, Jaime pulled me back by the arm. “One bad idea a day,” he said. “I’ve seen you riding to know you’re not ready to be point yet.”

He had me there. Grumbling, I allowed Jaime and the four knights to form up in front of me like an arrow, with two on each side and one taking point. My Kingsguard stood as the last in one of the flanks, supposedly where he could still look after me.

Being watched over like a child rankled me something fierce, but it was better than fucking up and dying to some outlaws.

In a cavalry charge, you’d usually start with a trot, then slowly build up to a canter before going into full on galloping, so the line could maintain its cohesion. Here, we had neither the numbers nor the time for all of that.

We took off at a canter right away, going deeper into the brush. Even this close to the kingsroad, the forest was densely packed with thick bushes and tangling branches that reached like dark fingers, but our destriers broke through them easily. They were trained for war as much as any knight was.

The point knight looped around when we were some thirty yards out from the road, looking straight at the center of the column. He called the charge and we took off, swords out and pointing.

We hadn’t gone two steps when an arrow suddenly struck my horse on the shoulder. The animal immediately bucked up, rearing wildly on his hind legs. I held on to the reins for all I was worth as my world turned sideways, but a second one followed, this time hitting it on the throat.

The horse folded, its muscles clenching for a second before it gave a last whinnie and let go of its hold on life. Pulling my feet out of the stirrups, I jumped off as it fell to the ground, hitting the undergrowth with my back, one hand tight around Lightbringer’s handle. Air was suddenly an expensive commodity I didn’t have access to, and a jutting root almost took my arm off its socket as I rolled over it. But I held on to the sword.

My head swam for a moment as I lay there, black and white spots filling my sight.

Get up! I told myself, grunting until I could gulp in a breath. Get up now!

Several hurried steps crunching underfoot were enough motivation that I sprang to my feet, so fast the spots turned to blurs fogging in my eyes.

“Seven fucks,” a man said. “It’s really the bloody king we’s got.”

I could barely see straight, but from the sound of it there were at least three of them.

“Doesn’t matter, all the more reason to kill him,” someone said, his voice so flat he might as well be talking about killing a rat.

It was likely just reality reasserting itself after a hard fall, but I like to think it was the red anger brought up by that toneless voice that righted myself up.

Half of kingship is keeping your pride in check, lest you go around chopping off the heads of everyone who even minutely annoys you; but I was sure as hell going to make an exception for him.

A cruel smile showed on my lips as I settled my shoulders straight and considered the men before me. The one standing at the back had an empty quiver at his side and two long hunting knives in hand. The other two had longswords, good castle-forged steel, but only one caught my attention.

He was a smaller man, with grey hair and a square jaw, looking at me through dispassionate, half-lidded pale eyes.

That man knew how to kill, I thought.

In the distance, I could see that the knights had made it to the column, though a lone man in a white cloak had stopped just by the edge of the trees, looking around frantically before he spotted us all the way back here.

It seemed I had to soften them up before daddy dearest came to the rescue.

With my left hand, I took hold of my injured shoulder and pulled. Red hot agony lanced through me, but even that was eaten by Lightbringer, and a warm calm flooded my mind.

Blowing out air through gritted teeth, I smiled. “Let us see your worth, then, sers.” I raised and pointed my sword at them. “Come and kill your king!”