[ July 2, 298 AC | Morning to Dusk | The Green Fork — Lannister Left Flank ] The morning mist had not yet lifted.
The Green Fork lay across the muddy shoals like a thick, grey-white vein.
Nero stepped barefoot into the icy, stinking mud.
He stripped a pair of hard leather boots from the corpse of a baggage handler—dead of sickness or cold, it made no difference—and jammed them onto his feet.
They did not fit.
A gap remained at the toes.
On this riverbank that was about to become a meat grinder, no one was picky.
In front of the left flank more than three hundred Mountain Clansmen stood in a ragged line.
They looked like weeds grown through rusted iron and spikes.
Cracked half-moon shields from the night before hung on their arms.
Tattered leather covered their bodies.
“Half-man!” Gonso, son of Gunn, shouldered a notched greatsword and used his thick arm to block Tyrion behind him.
Yellow teeth showed in a grin.
“You can’t even hold a shield steady with those little arms and legs.
When the fighting starts, hide behind my sword.
I promised you I’d cut off a lowlander lord’s head in exchange for gold!” Tyrion sat on his small red horse and looked at the crude but earnest savage.
He nodded with a wry smile.
“Then you’d better pick a wealthy lord, Gonso.” A small squad of fully armored Westerlands light cavalry rode slowly past from the rear.
At their head rode a young Crakehall knight in polished silver scale mail marked with a boar.
He pointed his riding crop at the clansmen who reeked of goat and sweat.
“This is our vanguard on the left flank?” The young master’s sneer was quiet enough that only those nearby could hear.
“Can they withstand a single charge from the northmen?
These wild dogs look more like they’re here to gnaw on dead men’s bones.” The supervising quartermaster held his nose and rolled his eyes.
“As long as they can die for a while and get the northern infantry stuck in the mud, even a blind man would applaud.” Bronn spat a glob of bloody saliva.
“Hear that, Commander Nero?” He gripped his sword hilt.
His eyes had gone cold.
“They’ve already dug the pit for us to be buried in.” Nero did not look back.
He was slowly drawing his sword.
“Boom—Boom—” Drums struck from the thick fog in the distance.
Dull.
Heavy.
Like the heartbeat of something enormous.
The northern army had appeared.
At the front came Roose Bolton’s chilling dark-pink flayed-man banners.
The pike phalanx moved like a wall of barbed iron.
Arrows ripped through the white mist in a dark swarm.
Two hundred paces.
One hundred.
“Raise shields!” Nero roared, activating [Intimidating Voice].
The Mountain Clans’ line steadied for an instant under the psychological weight of the shout.
Tattered wooden shields rose.
Arrows punched into them with a fierce crackling.
A Moon Brother warrior took a stray shaft through the eye socket and collapsed into the mud without a sound.
“Hold the line!” Shagga roared from the front rank as the thicket of pikes crashed in.
“Withdraw!
Lead them into the mud pits!” Nero sliced through a thrusting pike shaft and corrected the command hard.
Following the rules set the night before, the clansmen began to fight while falling back.
From a distance the front looked as if it had instantly collapsed.
On the hill behind the center the young Crakehall knight watched the retreating left flank and sneered as he pulled down his visor.
“Wild dogs are just wild dogs.
They crumble at the first touch.” They soon realized something was wrong.
Seeing the left flank in disarray, the northern vanguard pushed forward eagerly in their heavy boots.
The dull squelch of mud rose one after another.
The retreating clansmen had not scattered.
The rot and muck of the riverbank, together with the broken iron shards and spearheads Nero had driven into the puddles the night before, seized the northmen’s feet.
Heavy armor dragged them off balance.
Pain and panic locked them in the mud pits.
“Bite!” Nero slid in from the flank, stepping on a fallen spear.
Hand-to-hand combat erupted.
This was the clansmen’s game.
Timett became a crazed fire-demon, wrapping bare arms around a northern pikeman and opening the man’s throat with a short blade.
Shagga’s three axes rose and fell, turning the mud bright red.
Nero soon found himself in a bitter struggle.
He fixed on a northern heavy cavalryman in fine armor.
Intelligence 23 let him see the gaps in the man’s attacks in an instant.
Agility 22 let him slide to the knight’s left like a ghost.
The tip of his sword sought the weakest link at the armpit junction with perfect precision.
The moment the steel touched scale mail it gave a harsh metallic screech.
The blade was forced half an inch offline.
[System Warning: Target armor hardness exceeds current physical penetration threshold.
[Armor Gap Tracking (Green Fragment 1/3)] failed to trigger a fatal blow due to incomplete armor penetration.] Damn it.
It did not trigger.
Nero’s heart sank.
He felt a sharp, useless regret for choosing the incomplete green fragment the night before.
He had eyes that could see the weakness, but not the strength to pry open the shell.
The northern knight roared and smashed his heavy full-face steel shield into Nero’s chest.
The impact lifted him off his feet and flung him into the mud.
Constitution 15 was not enough.
His ribs groaned.
Internal organs shifted.
A mouthful of metal-tasting blood surged up his throat.
In this meat grinder of thousands, no amount of Intelligence could stand against pure mass.
“Protect the Half-man!” Bronn’s cracked voice cut through the noise nearby.
Nero wiped the blood from his mouth and forced himself up through the pain.
He saw a strong Karstark pikeman fixing on Tyrion in the chaos.
The pike thrust hard.
Tyrion’s small red horse went down with a scream.
The Imp’s short legs were pinned under the animal’s belly.
A mud-stained short sword came straight for his face.
Nero roared, slammed into two northern infantrymen with raw Strength 18, and pounced from the side.
He kicked the pikeman’s knee to pieces and backhanded his sword across the man’s throat.
Warm blood sprayed across his face.
He leaned against the dead horse, gasping, a stray arrow grazing his shoulder.
There was no air of a master about him.
In this quagmire he was only a mortal giving everything he had to stay alive.
The northern army was dragged into the mud of the left flank for more than half an hour.
The clansmen paid an extremely painful price.
Severed limbs lay everywhere.
When Tywin’s central pike phalanx finally pressed forward and the heavy cavalry swept in from the flank, Roose Bolton blew the retreat.
The left flank had not collapsed.
— After the battle the muddy water had been churned into a dark-red paste.
Severed limbs and viscera mixed into the mire and gave off a nauseating stench.
The surviving clansmen scavenged excitedly among the bodies.
“Nero!
Look!” A rough shout rose.
Gonso, son of Gunn, crawled out of a mud pit, limping.
He was covered in blood.
A wound on his left arm showed bone.
His leather armor hung in tatters.
Yet his mud-stained face beamed with pure ecstasy.
He clutched a rope.
At the other end an unconscious northern noble knight was bound.
The scale mail on the man was filthy, but it still shone in the morning light.
It was clearly worth a fortune.
“I said I’d catch a big fish!” Gonso panted, patting the knight’s iron helmet hard.
“This one’s sword snapped under my hand.
He surrendered to me.
You remember to tell the Half-man that I, Gonso, keep my word and didn’t hide behind him!” He caressed the fine scale mail with calloused hands, eyes full of longing.
“Once I exchange it for gold, or peel this iron shell off… when my son reaches the age to have his ears cut, he’ll wear real lowlander armor.” Rhythmic hoofbeats approached and shattered the silence of the quagmire.
Two squads of Westerlands light cavalry and dozens of halberdiers surrounded the shoal.
At their head rode the same young Crakehall knight who had watched from the hill.
His boar-sigil silver scale mail was pristine.
Not a speck of blood marked it.
He looked down at the foul-smelling mountain men with cold arrogance.
“Take your dirty hands off, savage.” He covered his nose and mouth with a perfumed handkerchief and pointed his riding crop at the northern knight at Gonso’s feet.
“According to the Duke’s military law, all enemy commanders, noble captives, and high-grade standard weapons are to be centrally allocated by the central camp.
Hand him over.” The air went still.
Dozens of Westerlands halberdiers raised their weapons in unison.
Cold spear tips pressed the clansmen back.
Gonso froze.
He looked at the rope in his hand, then at the high-and-mighty knight.
His eyes widened slowly.
“I knocked him out with my own hands!” He planted himself in front of the captive like a beast guarding a kill.
“He surrendered to me!
By the rules of the Mountains of the Moon he is Stone Crow meat!
By the Half-man’s rules this is spoils we traded our lives for!
Why should we give it to you cowards who watched from the back?” “Rules?” The young master laughed as if he had heard a fine joke.
“On this battlefield there is only the rule of Lord Tywin Lannister.
You savages are just consumables used to fill mud pits.” His eyes turned cold.
He swung the riding crop.
“The barbarian is resisting military orders and inciting mutiny.
Execute him on the spot.
Kill him.” Tyrion had already been escorted to the rear to wash and change.
Everything happened too fast, too cleanly, too without reason.
Two halberds punched through Gonso’s chest with cold precision.
Blood gushed from his mouth.
The savage warrior who had shared roasted meat with Tyrion by the fire the day before, who had been dreaming of his son in iron armor only a moment earlier, clutched the shafts piercing his chest with both hands.
He stared in disbelief at the high-and-mighty Westerlands noble, unable to understand until the end why his life-risking slaughter had earned him not gold and honor, but a butcher’s knife from behind.
His massive body collapsed into the muddy blood with a heavy thud.
It twitched twice and did not move again.
“Gonso!!” Shagga let out a heartbreaking roar and raised his three battle-axes like an enraged bear, ready to charge and die.
Chella, Timett, and every surviving Mountain Clansman turned red-eyed at once.
Beast-like sounds tore from their throats as they grabbed broken swords from the ground.
“All of you, stop!” Nero lunged forward and locked both arms around Shagga’s waist.
The wound on his shoulder burst open under the strain.
Blood soaked half his body.
“Let me go!
I’m going to chop that boar!” Shagga struggled madly.
“Look at the hill above!
Shagga!
Look up!” Nero gritted his teeth.
His nails dug into his own palms until blood ran between his fingers.
He hissed the words into Shagga’s ear with pure fury.
Shagga forced his bloodshot eyes upward.
On the surrounding hills two rows of Westerlands crossbowmen had appeared.
Heavy crossbows were drawn.
The arrowheads pointed coldly at the mudflat.
A trap.
A clean legal slaughter under the name of mutiny.
The young Crakehall knight had never cared about a northern captive.
He had come to provoke the Mountain Clans into giving him an excuse.
“If you move now, Gonso died for nothing!” Nero pressed down on Shagga’s shoulders.
His eyes were black and bottomless.
“You will all die in this mud pit, and no one will even collect the bodies!” The murderous weight around them settled in.
Shagga’s heavy breathing turned into desperate, broken sounds.
The clansmen were forced to step back with blood in their eyes.
A flicker of open regret passed through the Crakehall knight’s face when he saw the savages actually hold themselves in check.
He glanced at them as if they were refuse, ordered his men to drag the northern noble away, and casually stripped the battle-axe from Gonso’s waist as well.
The accompanying quartermaster looked heartbroken at the broken shields the clansmen had damaged in the mud and shook his head.
“A waste of natural resources.
All losses on the military supply books.” “Consider you dogs to have a bit of brains.” The Crakehall knight’s voice was pure contempt.
Nero slowly released Shagga and stood straight.
He did not shout.
He did not denounce the injustice of nobles.
He glanced once at the quartermaster, then turned his head.
His deep, dark eyes met the arrogant young master on horseback.
“What the Lord gave was broken iron.” Nero’s voice was low and hoarse, yet perfectly calm.
“What we returned was the lives of northmen, and armor full of enemy elite gear.
On Lord Tywin’s ledger there should not be any losses.” The young Crakehall narrowed his eyes, irritated by the fearless stare.
He turned his horse and snorted coldly.
“A wild dog that bites for a lion dares to talk about balancing books with me?” Nero lowered his eyes.
He did not refute.
[System Prompt: Left flank defense successful.
Important NPC survived.
Honor +5.
Current Honor: 7/100.] The cold system prompt sounded in his mind.
There was no joy in it.
Nero kept his head slightly lowered.
In that shadow he silently noted the owner of the boar-sigil armor.
In this massive meat grinder, dying was easy.
It could be a stray arrow.
It could be retreating soldiers.
Or it could be a black blade silently wiping across a throat.
You took Gonso’s life.
Nero passed the quiet judgment in his heart.
This debt, I will cut it back together with your head.