The world beyond the walls of King's Landing smelled different. It was the first thing that struck Tony as their small convoy pulled away from the North Gate, leaving behind the familiar stench of the capital. Here, the morning air was sharp, heavy with the damp scent of plowed earth, the green smell of first shoots, and the distant resinous tang of the Kingswood pines. It was clean, quiet, beautiful. Almost too beautiful for his mind, now conditioned by Fleabottom.
Seated inside the middle carriage, the most heavily protected, Tony watched the landscape pass through the narrow reinforced opening. It was the first time he had left King's Landing since his clandestine arrival years before. Seeing those open fields, those gentle hills, that vast sky was an oddly unsettling experience. He was accompanied only by Lira — who, for once, didn't seem intent on killing someone — and Theron, whose imposing bulk looked cramped on the padded bench. The rest of their group — an escort of fifteen hand-picked men commanded by one of Jem's lieutenants named Joren — were spread across the other two carriages and on horseback.
The engineer in him couldn't help but analyze. The royal road was a disgrace, barely passable, grinding their progress and straining the suspensions — even the improved ones he'd designed for their vehicles.
The carriages themselves were his creations. Wider, taller, built of solid oak, reinforced at key points with steel plates, and packed with mechanisms invisible to the uninitiated. Their ride was surprisingly smooth thanks to the "Free Wheels" mounted on the axles, but their weight was considerable. They looked heavy and cumbersome — precisely the image he wanted to project: a merchant convoy a little too laden, something harmless. Their true defensive design remained hidden from the outside.
As they drove deeper inland, cutting through a dense stretch of the Kingswood where shadows thickened even at midday, Tony felt tension rising. Joren had sent two scouts ahead; they were slow to return. With a tacit look between the three of them, Lira produced one of her short blades and began to twirl it idly between her fingers. Theron had one hand on the haft of the axe at his feet. Survival instincts, sharpened by years in Fondcombe, told them something was wrong. The forest's silence had become too deep, too attentive.
---
The signal was brutal. Not a single arrow, but a whistling storm that fell on the convoy from both sides of the road. Dozens of arrows struck the carriage flanks — some embedding deep into the oak, others clanging off hidden reinforcements with a high metallic ring. At the same time, hastily felled tree trunks were dragged across the road ahead and behind them, cutting off any retreat. Horses reared and whinnied, panicked, but the drivers — already prepared for such an eventuality — controlled them.
"Ambush! Form up!" Joren's voice cracked, rising above the chaos.
Inside the central carriage, the reaction was immediate. Lira and Theron slid heavy armored panels into place over the openings, plunging the cabin into a dimness pierced only by light from narrow vertical slits.
"Many of them," Lira murmured, her eye against a slit. "They're everywhere in the trees. At least fifty, maybe more."
Theron clenched his fists. "Bandits wouldn't set a trap this elaborate." Tony said nothing; his mind was already mapping the trap, calculating the attackers' coordination. Only an idiot would take them for mere bandits. This was a military operation in disguise.
Outside, under a continued but now less accurate arrow barrage — since the targets were no longer moving — Joren's men executed practiced maneuvers. The horses were quickly driven to the center of the formation. The three carriages pivoted with surprising precision, forming a compact defensive triangle that offered as little surface as possible to incoming fire. The escort took position behind the vehicles, using wheels and chassis as cover while returning fire with crossbows to keep the attackers at bay. They were hopelessly outnumbered, but their fortified stance gave them a temporary advantage.
---
Vorlag watched everything from an elevated position, a satisfied grimace on his lips. The trap had worked perfectly. The convoy was stalled, surrounded by his eighty men — battle-hardened mercenaries, veterans of the rebellion, disguised for the occasion. The employer paid well for this mission: stop these "merchants," seize their cargo (likely gold, judging by the solid carts), and leave no witnesses. The first volley had landed true and pinned the wagons. The guards were defending better than expected, forming that stupid triangle, but they were only a handful. A few more volleys to wear them down, then the final assault. It would be quick.
He signaled his archers to concentrate fire on the improvised slits between the wheels. They had to blind them, prevent effective retaliation. "Prepare for the assault! On my signal!"
---
The arrow rain intensified, targeting the few apparent weak points of the improvised fort. Joren's men returned fire bravely, but their isolated shots were lost amid the attackers' numbers. Several guards fell, their cries of pain adding to the tension. The noose tightened.
Inside the central carriage, Tony gave the expected order. "Phase two. Lira, Theron, to your stations! Alert the other carriages for the maneuver."
Lira, already in position, began cranking a heavy winch bolted to the floor. A complex mechanism of gears and chains answered with a dull metallic clatter. Above them, a section of the reinforced flat roof slid aside, revealing a circular opening. At the same time, a metallic structure rose from within the carriage: a massive crossbow mounted on a pivot, powered not by a bow but by a system of layered steel springs enclosed in an iron housing. A large hand crank on the side compressed the springs while a vertical drum could hold fifty hefty steel bolts. Lira — face set — took her place behind the weapon, her hands finding the sights and firing controls with a cold familiarity. Theron readied himself by the reloading crank.
Similar operations were underway in the other two carriages. Three primitive turrets had unfolded, transforming the heavy wagons into iron-clad beasts. It was the "Reaper," Tony's area-denial engine.
---
What was that? Trap doors had opened on the wagon roofs, and… some kind of compact ballistas had sprung up? Mounted on pivots? He had never seen anything like it. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He didn't like surprises.
"Archers! Concentrate fire on those… things! Cut down the crews!" he shouted.
But it was too late. The strange machines rotated, aiming toward the tree line. "CHARGE…!" he began to shout, realizing that the pause had been a fatal mistake.
The sound that tore through the air resembled nothing he knew. It wasn't the whistle of an arrow or the crisp snap of a crossbow. It was a mechanical noise, brutal and repetitive: a heavy, rapid CHONK-CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK, accompanied by the sinister creak of springs uncoiling and a crank furiously turning to recompress them. It was the sound of the Reaper at work.
From each turret, a near-continuous stream of heavy steel bolts hammered into the forest's edge. Lira and the other crewmen weren't aiming for individuals. They were sweeping. They mowed the treeline, shredded thickets, and turned thin trunks into a meat grinder.
The effect on the mercenaries massed for the assault was cataclysmic. The hefty bolts sliced through saplings like parchment and found men who believed themselves safe behind them. One bolt could impale two or even three men. Limbs were torn away, chests blown open. Battle cries dissolved into a cacophony of panicked screams and agony. Men were literally split in half. Within seconds of the three Reapers' intermittent but sustained fire, the area around the convoy had become a field of slaughter.
---
The forest exploded. Not with flame, but with iron. A hellish forge-noise rose from the wagons as trees shattered, launching splinters of wood and metal. He saw Roric beside him vanish in a spray of blood, his shield and torso pierced by a dark bolt. Another bolt took Petyr's head off. Blood splattered his face. He was pinned to the ground, unable to move, paralyzed by terror. The sound… that CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK… was the very voice of death, a mechanical, remorseless killing that devoured the forest and its men. He closed his eyes and prayed to the Seven, to the Old Gods, to anyone…
Even if the firing rate wasn't that of a modern machine gun, to Tony the penetration power and the saturation effect were more than satisfactory. In less than a minute of the three Reapers' intermittent but steady fire, the zone around the convoy had been turned into a killing field. More than half the attackers were out of action, dead or maimed.
---
The survivors — some thirty men broken by horror — had no will left to fight. Some froze behind their flimsy cover, others began to crawl backward, trying to flee. Vorlag, ashen-faced, realized he had led his men into a slaughter. There was no gold to take here, only death.
"Retreat! Fall back! Every man for himself!" he screamed, his voice cracked with panic.
But Tony had no intention of letting them go. The lesson had to be complete. The threat had to be eradicated. "Phase three!" he ordered coldly.
On the roofs, the Reaper crews swapped positions to reveal another surprise: incendiary bottles. This time the target wasn't the men themselves but the escape zones — the denser thickets where the fugitives tried to disappear.
A dozen of these small devices crashed into the forest, igniting scattered fires that trapped survivors between flame and the Reapers. Agonized cries rose again as the blaze licked clothing and flesh. A few men burst out of the brush in flames, easy targets for the embushers behind the carriages, who shot them down with crossbows.
The rout was total. The few mercenaries who escaped into the deeper woods fled with nothing but the terror of what they had seen.
Silence, heavy and viscous, fell over the road. The chemical tang of fire mixed with the sickening smell of burning flesh. The carnage was indescribable. Nearly seventy bodies lay strewn across the ground, dismembered, burned, pierced.
"Secure the area! Finish off the wounded! No survivors!" Joren's voice, though shaking, remained firm. His men carried out the grim orders with brutal efficiency. Two of his own lay dead (the two scouts), and three more were seriously wounded. The cost was bitter but not high for such a decisive victory.
Tony stepped out of the carriage, followed by Lira and Theron. He inspected the damage to the wagons, noted the Reapers' performance (one mechanism had briefly jammed on the front carriage), then approached the corpses. He quickly confirmed his suspicions: mercenaries, well-armed beneath their tatters. Contracted. By whom? The question remained, but the brutality of the answer they'd received would leave its mark. "Load our dead and wounded," he ordered. "Recover as many bolts as you can. Burn all the bodies to erase our tracks. We move immediately after."
Two hours later, the convoy resumed its journey in an icy atmosphere.
---
" Two dead. Joric… He'd just gotten married. That sound… that CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK… still echoes in my head. We didn't even fight them. We… erased them. Like insects. Is this what Tony's war is? Is this what his father was building on the other side of the strait? Machines that kill at a distance? There's no honor left, no courage. Just the cold efficiency of steel. I feel… powerful behind this crossbow. And I'm afraid. Not of the enemies. Afraid of what we are becoming." Lira thought, her fingers still trembling, bile rising in her throat. The massacre of the black dogs had been almost poetic in comparison.
Of all of them, Theron was the most shaken. He had fought wars and knew the world was ruthless, but not like this.
"Seventy men… maybe more. Shredded by machines I helped build. The springs I forged. The gears I adjusted. I made tools to build, to make life easier. And now I see what they become when hatred guides them. The boy… he watched the slaughter like he was reading a report. No anger, no fear, no pity. Just… calculation. Is that progress? A more efficient killing machine? If King's Landing restrains its potential, I'm sure we're on the road to opening the gates of the seven hells."
The rest of the trip to Dontos Hollard's lands took place in leaden silence, the sound of the Reapers sliding back into their secret compartments echoing long after through the desecrated forest air.