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CaveLeather Morning mist still clung to the abandoned village.
The only sound in camp was the steady rasp of whetstones on steel.
Westerlands veterans and mountain clansmen who had eyed each other with suspicion the day before now crouched together, carefully wiping the infantry armor and heavy crossbows issued the night before.
In a place where a man’s life was cheaper than grass, Nero offered no stirring speeches.
Before dawn he had done only one thing.
He had ordered Gawen to spend the entire night forging an exquisitely shameless set of accounts.
Using the Free Patrol Seal extorted from Crakehall, every piece of illegal iron was washed clean on parchment: “spoils seized after contact with a disguised Northern force” and “urgent field armament of the supply column.” Without the seal the wagons of armor would have been a death sentence for privateering military stores.
With it, they became legitimate ordnance.
The ragged soldiers understood nothing of legal fine points, yet when Gawen slammed the ledger bearing the red wax seal onto a wooden crate, something solid settled in their chests for the first time.
The price arrived at once.
[Judgment: Fabrication of military accounts under false seal.] [Honor –3.
Current Honor: 7/100.] Nero grimaced inwardly.
He needed to start hoarding Honor points.
One day the system would simply let him drop dead for lack of them.
He walked to the rear of the column where the Black Ears scouts waited.
Without ceremony he assigned two of the heaviest supply wagons—forty sets of Westerlands infantry armor, thirty heavy crossbows, and crates of bolts stacked high.
“Take these by the back roads to the vanguard camp.
Deliver them to Shagga personally.” His voice was calm and absolute.
“Tell him the Half-man’s promise is still a long way off.
Nero’s promise is paid today.” The scout’s eyes locked on the quality flatlander gear.
His throat worked once.
“Tell him the Stone Crows and Burned Men are to wear this iron and keep serving as vanguard under Ser Marbrand.
If they take my equipment, they do my work.
Keep eyes on Crakehall and the logistics clerks.
Anything unusual, ride hard and report.” “The Stone Crows will remember your iron.” The scout thumped his chest and drove the wagons into the northern mist without another word.
With the immediate arrangements finished, Nero drew his longsword and began drilling the newly armored troop with the Battle Formation Swordsmanship he had just acquired.
Westerlands men took shields in the front rank.
Mountain clansmen formed the rear with cocked crossbows.
The new muscle memory erased the old alley tricks of assassination.
Nero’s cuts became wide, powerful arcs meant for the press of a line.
He kicked the back of a loosely standing clansman’s knee until the entire front rank locked into a solid wall of iron.
The shield wall had just begun to hold shape when a sound of pure despair rose from the withered grass at the camp’s edge.
Roland led a squad forward at once.
They dragged two mud-caked figures out of the brush.
They barely looked human—more like two pieces of burnt, withered timber.
One man’s back had been flayed open; the stench of cooked flesh rose from the wounds.
The other, an old man, clutched a broken child’s shoe in both hands, eyes completely empty.
“Soldiers… don’t kill me…” The burned man saw the lion badges and began to shake, curling into the mud like a dying dog.
Roland stepped closer, frowning.
“We are not bandits.
We are Tywin’s logistics patrol.
What happened ahead?” “Mountain… a man as tall as a mountain…” The burned man’s teeth chattered.
Extreme terror lived in his eyes.
“He split my brother in two with one stroke… only because the man was slow setting down a grain sack… They burned the village… hung the living from the old elm…” Roland’s breath caught.
He looked at Nero and spoke under his breath.
“Gregor Clegane.
The Mountain.” Nero’s gaze turned cold.
As a man who knew the plot, he understood exactly why the Mountain was here.
Tywin Lannister had unleashed his most brutal mad dog to force the Tullys of the Riverlands into the first move, or to draw Eddard Stark down from the North.
Without banners, Gregor Clegane’s men were burning, killing, and looting across the Riverlands, manufacturing atrocities.
In King’s Landing the Hand of the King, Eddard Stark, had already answered—not with regular troops, but by sending Beric Dondarrion, the Lightning Lord, and a hundred knights to arrest and execute the Mountain.
From this moment the Riverlands would become a meat grinder for every side.
“Doctor… save the foreign doctor…” The old man with the child’s shoe suddenly wailed.
Tears cut black channels through the ash on his face.
“Talisa… she stitched wounds for us all last night… this morning the Mountain’s men dragged her away… said the main camp needed a woman who could sew flesh…” Talisa.
Nero’s pulse skipped.
The beautiful Volantene healer who was supposed to save lives on the battlefield, fall in love with the Young Wolf Robb Stark, and become one of the threads that led to the Red Wedding—how the hell had she fallen into the Mountain’s hands here?
Almost in the same heartbeat a blood-red system warning flared across the edge of his vision, the letters pulsing hard: [Warning: High-intensity causal echo detected!] [Host intervention along the White Willow Crossing supply line has produced a measurable shift in Riverlands conditions.] [Chain reaction: Pursuit route of Ser Beric Dondarrion (Lightning Lord) has deviated significantly.] [Critical: Core plot character “Talisa Maegyr” was never meant to face a death trap at this location in the original timeline.
If this character dies, major historical nodes including the Red Wedding risk extreme alienation.
Subsequent alignment of continental factions will undergo irreversible and drastic change.] Nero drew a slow breath of cold mist.
A chill ran down his spine.
This was no coincidence.
This was the butterfly he had released the night before when he extorted Crakehall and rewrote the supply situation, now beating its wings directly into his face.
Talisa could not die.
If she died in some nameless village, Robb Stark would almost certainly marry a Frey daughter as originally agreed.
The Starks might avoid being attacked from two sides.
The entire War of the Five Kings would veer off the rails into chaos.
His greatest advantage—knowledge of the original plot—would be shattered by that single pair of wings.
As if to drive the urgency home, a rider pounded up the road outside the village.
A Marbrand scout reined in hard, did not even dismount, and flung a mud-stained order into Roland’s hands.
“Order of Ser Addam!
First Baggage Train Patrol Battalion is to advance south at once and inspect supply conditions along the White Wax Village line.
Ser Gregor Clegane’s grain-requisitioning party is operating in that sector.
The supply train will render full cooperation.
No delay permitted!” The scout finished, spurred his horse, and was gone.
Even he clearly had no wish to linger in the Mountain’s shadow.
Gawen clutched the ledger, face whiter than the refugees on the ground.
“Commander… the Mountain does not read military orders when he kills.
He kills his own.
Do we truly have to cooperate?” “Not cooperate.” Nero turned and strode toward his horse.
Against Gregor Clegane’s absolute, terrifying martial power, his own attributes and traits were a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
But if he shrank back here, the system would not clean up the causal collapse for him.
He had to go.
Use Tywin’s own rules, or use his brain, and pull the woman out of that monster’s jaws.
“Break camp.” Nero swung into the saddle and looked back at the Westerlands soldiers and mountain clansmen who had only just closed their hands around crossbows and iron shields.
Fear held their breath.
“Target: White Wax Village.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Fish_Cakery Your support keeps me motivated to keep posting.
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