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CaveLeather [ July 1, 298 AC | Dusk to Dawn | Lannister Left Flank Temporary Camp — The Green Fork ] The left-flank camp sat on the edge of the muddy flats.
It was far from Tywin’s command tent and farther still from the gold-and-crimson banners of the Westerlands nobility.
By the time orders from the center reached them, the river wind had already torn half the words away, leaving only the distant thud of drums and the restless neighing of horses.
Tywin’s “generosity” arrived before sunset.
Several supply wagons rolled to a stop on the churned mud.
The drivers tipped their loads without ceremony—old shields, leather with most of the rings missing, notched short spears, chipped longswords, and rusted helmets—dumping them like refuse.
Hundreds of green-stained half-moon shields.
Leather that would barely turn a knife.
Dozens of blades already half-ruined.
In the main Westerlands host even a stable boy would have walked past without bending.
The Mountain Clans boiled with excitement.
“Heavy iron shell!” Shagga seized a hauberk missing half its rings, dragged it over his furs, and pounded his chest in delight.
Chella snatched a pair of bracers, sniffed them, and wrinkled her nose.
“Someone died in these.” “Iron always kills someone,” Bronn said lazily from where he squatted sharpening his sword.
“Iron that hasn’t killed is still in the ground.” Timett turned a crude cast-iron axe in the firelight, then pressed his thumb to the edge as if testing whether it was worthy of blood.
The Moon Brothers and Stone Crows nearly came to blows over a handful of shoulder guards.
A Black Ear woman jammed an iron helm with half the noseguard missing onto her head; it slid down over her eyes and set the nearby wildlings roaring with laughter.
The laughter turned to shoving.
The shoving threatened to turn into drawn blades.
“Rules of the Mountains of the Moon.
Form three lines.” Nero’s sword was suddenly in his hand.
He used the flat to shove aside two Moon Brother youths fighting over the same breastplate.
“Any tribe that grabs first sleeps on the riverbank tonight.
And they will be the last to receive iron when we fight tomorrow.” “The Stone Crows saw it first!” a young wildling shouted.
“Then the Stone Crows line up first.” Nero’s gaze was cold.
“Or would you prefer Shagga explain what a line is?” Shagga grinned, yellow teeth showing, and seemed to find the idea entertaining.
The young man shut his mouth at once.
The iron rules Nero had hammered into them settled over the clans like a weight.
Shagga and Timett glared at each other, then separated their people.
Tyrion stood on a half-collapsed supply wagon, sour wine in hand, looking for all the world like a king surveying a rubbish heap.
“Stone Crows take the shields—they will be in front tomorrow.
Black Ears take the crossbows and short blades; Chella’s people have the eyes for it and should not waste them holding a wall.
Moon Brothers take the spears so they do not dive into the first rock crack when things get loud.
Burned Men…” He paused and looked at Timett.
“…take the axes and whatever wildfire you can scavenge.
Gods help us if they cannot tell friend from foe.” The wildlings did not catch every barb, but they understood “distribute.” The chaos subsided.
Nero watched them treat scrap as treasure and felt sweat gather on the hilt under his palm.
This nonsense armor would, at best, buy them a few extra heartbeats before true northern heavy horse and pike.
It was the bait Tywin had assembled to feed the wolves.
Enough to hold for a while.
Only a while.
At dusk Tyrion was summoned to Tywin’s table.
The long board stood on a low rise, covered in gold-and-crimson cloth.
Grease from a roasted suckling pig hissed in a silver platter.
Tyrion’s legs still ached from the day’s ride; his unsteady climb drew a few muffled laughs from the Westerlands lords.
He pretended not to hear and took the seat beside Ser Kevan, pouring his own wine.
“I expected you earlier,” Tywin said without inflection.
“If you move as slowly on the field as you do to supper, the battle will be finished before you arrive.” “That would be a pity.” Tyrion raised his cup.
“I was hoping Father might leave me a few farmers so I would not return empty-handed.” Tywin did not smile.
No one else at the table dared to.
Lord Lefford, master of supplies, complained at once about the mountain men.
“They are like starving dogs loosed in a smithy.
Shagga demanded three axes.
Chella’s people nearly emptied a crate of bolts.
I issued military equipment, not winter scrap for wildlings!” “Rest easy, Lord Lefford.” Tyrion cut a piece of pork.
“They will be eager to return that iron to the northmen—only they will return it from inside the enemy’s bellies.” Tywin’s knife never paused.
He might not have heard the exchange at all.
When he finally raised his eyes it was only to look at the son who had always been a source of shame.
“Since you are so confident, when the fighting begins tomorrow you and your clansmen will meet the enemy on the front of the left flank.
That position requires men who can take a charge.” The roast pork on Tyrion’s plate suddenly lost its taste.
The old lion was telling every lord present that the dwarf and his wildlings would be the first meat thrown into the grinder.
Tyrion heard the quiet threat inside the words “left flank” clearly enough.
In Tywin Lannister’s army, positions of true honor never fell to a dwarf and a few hundred men who had crawled out of the mountains only days before.
“I am touched,” Tyrion said.
“I had not realized Father held me and my friends in such high regard.” “A soldier’s worth is measured only on the field.” The words fell like a block of ice.
Tyrion finished his wine, set down the knife, and rose.
“Then I hope the northmen will be properly appreciative tomorrow.” As he left the table a muffled laugh followed him.
This time he still did not look back.
After dark the Lannister host became something else—dice, women, the endless rasp of whetstones.
Tyrion’s mood was foul enough that even wine could not blunt it.
He found his own camp by following Shagga’s low, thunderous laughter.
The Stone Crows had somehow acquired a cow and were roasting it over an open fire.
Blood and fat hissed into the flames.
“Half-man!
Come to the Stone Crows’ fire and eat!” Conn raised a mug of ale.
Tyrion eyed the half-raw carcass.
“Thank you, Conn.
At this rate it may be cooked just in time for my funeral.” Shagga roared with laughter.
The tribes still kept to their own fires, but at least no blades had been drawn tonight.
For a moment Tyrion felt that the humiliation received from his father had been answered by a thin, unexpected support among these crude monsters.
When he pushed into his tent Nero was already there, seated by the brazier, poking the ashes with a dry stick.
“How was the dinner?” Nero did not look up.
“He formally confirmed my position as bait in front of every Westerlands lord who mattered.” Tyrion dropped into the chair and forced his short legs into the manure-smelling leather greaves.
His voice was low, as if chewing grit.
“He wants us crushed in the mud of the Green Fork.
Even if the shields are paper I still have to stand.” “The left flank is meant to be crushed.” Nero dropped the stick and stood.
The eyes that Intelligence 23 had made deeper and colder studied Tyrion in the firelight.
“But if we are crushed exactly according to Tywin’s script, there will be nothing left of us but bones by noon.
My lord—if he treats us as bait, then we hide hooks inside the meat.” Tyrion’s mismatched pupils tightened.
“With that pack of barbarians outside who barely understand what a line is?” “Precisely because they do not understand lines.” Nero moved to the crude sand table and dragged his scabbard through the wet earth that represented the riverbank.
“The left is low ground, hard against the Green Fork, pure mud.
For a regular army that lives by ranks and measured advance it will slow them, tear their lines, tangle shields and spears.
For mountain men who have spent their lives fighting dirty on rock and animal tracks, it is not good ground—but it is not alien either.” He held up three fingers.
“First: Timett’s people smash every piece of the scrap Lefford threw at us this afternoon.
Tonight, in the dark, we drive the sharp fragments, broken spearheads, and wooden spikes point-up into the shallow mud in front of our position.
Not neat.
The more it looks like natural river rubble, the better.” “Second: do not try to hold a shield wall with Shagga’s men.
They cannot, and they will not.
Tell the chiefs that when the northmen charge, the front ranks fall back to the earthen slopes on the flanks.
It is not flight—it is letting them bite.
Lowlanders love a flat battle line.
Once they pour into the riverbank we have prepared, their formation will come apart.” “Third: once they are stuck, do not strike the breastplates.
Mountain men are short, quick, and born to close work.
Cut the horses’ legs.
Stab the backs of the knees.
Pierce the armpits.
Slash the wrists.
Black Ears take the officers.
Burned Men use smoke to panic the mounts.
Moon Brothers come in from the broken ground along the bank.” Tyrion listened to the thoroughly unknightly plan, breathing growing heavier.
This was not the doctrine of any proper host.
This was a pure hooligan meat-grinder.
“You are turning the death trap against them,” he said, staring at the sand table, already seeing northerners screaming in the mud.
“You mean to use the wildlings’ chaos to cancel the crushing weight of a regular formation.” “If we want to live, we must be more ruthless than Lord Tywin.” Nero’s voice was flat.
“Hold the left long enough and kill enough northmen, and after tomorrow you will hold a force that can actually stand inside the Lannister army.” Tyrion looked at the younger man for a long moment.
He realized he did not understand him at all.
Insight this poisonous did not belong to any ordinary sellsword.
“In which pile of corpses did you learn this, Nero?” “Live long enough and you learn to think a few steps further.” Nero offered no deeper explanation.
A rough, wild shout rose outside the tent.
When they lifted the flap they found Shagga standing on a broken shield, roaring at several Moon Brother warriors who were refusing to dig.
“The half-man says whoever buries the most iron tonight gets first pick of northern steel tomorrow!” Shagga bellowed.
“Nero said that,” Chella corrected coldly.
Shagga considered, then nodded.
“Same thing!” Timett crouched by a fire, methodically smashing already-notched and chipped swords one after another.
The broken pieces that could no longer serve on the field would sleep in the mud of the riverbank by morning, waiting to cut feet and trip horses.
With every smash the smile on his face deepened.
“Bury the iron,” he whispered, laughing.
“Let the northern feet find it themselves.
This lowlander is interesting.” Bronn stood nearby supervising, a blade of grass between his teeth, looking bored.
“Don’t smash the good ones, One-Eye.
That one can still kill.” Timett raised his single eye.
Bronn met it.
After a moment Timett actually tossed the still-serviceable blade aside.
Bronn spread his hands toward Nero.
“See?
I can lead men too.” “You merely know how not to get killed by a madman,” Nero said.
“That’s already better than most lords.” The clans began their work across the mudflats.
Black Ears moved light-footed, hiding scrap and wooden spikes.
Stone Crows shifted stones and broken timber.
Moon Brothers cursed while digging shallow pits.
Burned Men handled oilcloth and wet grass with something close to joy, as if this were the true feast.
Tyrion stood outside the tent and watched.
His expression was still dark, but the earlier pallor had faded.
“If we survive tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I will seriously consider raising your pay.” “It is not coin I want, my lord.” “That is what worries me.” Tyrion glanced at him.
“Men who do not want coin usually want something more expensive.” They had just finished locking the muddy meat-grinder plan into place when the tent flap was flung open.
A heavy wave of cheap perfume and sour ale rolled in.
Bronn swaggered through, face flushed with a suspicious redness.
“Still calculating the cleanest way to die, the two of you?” He looked from Tyrion to Nero.
“Everyone else is drinking, gambling, or finding a woman.
Only you two squat here like monks counting graves.” Tyrion rubbed his forehead.
“If you’ve brought bad news, it had better smell of wine.” “Better than wine.” Bronn stepped aside.
A slender young woman entered.
Thick black hair.
Large, bright eyes.
A smile that mixed shyness with something more deliberate.
She did not look at Tyrion with the usual pity or disgust.
She simply looked at him—as if taking the measure of an interesting man.
“My lord,” she said, bowing slightly.
“My name is Shae.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Fish_Cakery Dont forget to comment and vote, its makes me happy …
CaveLeather