The mounted companies moved out at once.
The road dropped away from the pass, following the mountain valley down, crossing a small river running cold with snowmelt.
Broken Peak rose to their left.
On its far side, on the next pass over, stood the Golden Tooth itself, an ancient, formidably fortified seat belonging to House Lefford.
The rising sun struck their backs, then their left side, then their right, shifting with every bend in the winding road.
At the head of the column rode the fiercest, most battle hungry lords among them, the Blackfish himself, Jonos Bracken, Marq Piper, Patrek Mallister, and Goodbrook.
Karyl and Lord Piper trailed a short way behind with the rest.
Three hours later, the Blackfish called a halt.
Mountains rose on every side.
Were it not for his nerves and mounting exhaustion, Roman might genuinely have enjoyed the beauty of the place, the clean, sharp air.
Peaks thick with spruce and pine commanded real respect.
At one point the road ran beneath a sheer cliff face, a massive slab of reddish brown stone looming directly overhead.
A flock of birds wheeled somewhere in the distance.
Whatever else could be said of it, this country had real character.
The advance party, dressed in captured cloaks taken from Prester’s men, ran into an enemy patrol not long after.
The patrol never suspected a thing, and let familiar looking riders approach far too close before realizing their mistake.
A short, brutal skirmish followed, and every one of them died; the mounted archers made certain none of the fifteen or so enemy riders escaped to raise the alarm.
They regrouped under cover of the forest, pulling the main body of the army up behind them.
Then the mountain road opened out into open ground.
From there, more than two kilometers of road lay in plain view of the castle walls above.
This was where it would truly begin.
“Attack!” The Blackfish rose in his stirrups, looking back over the ranks behind him.
“Keep it quiet as long as we can,” he said, drawing his sword and sweeping it forward in a sharp gesture.
The Riverlands cavalry surged ahead.
Wind tore at their faces as the pace quickened into a full gallop.
Roman rode among them, swept up in something close to reckless joy.
Excitement, the strange thrill of riding shoulder to shoulder with so many others, carried him along, and somewhere in the middle of it all, without quite meaning to, he found himself shouting too.
Everyone was shouting by then.
The noise grew with every passing second.
At first, individual house cries rang out here and there, but soon they merged into one single, continuous roar.
Trumpets sang.
Horns bellowed.
The cavalry crested the rise and, like a great wave breaking against the shore, surged forward as one.
Individual riders spurred ahead of the pack, whipping their horses without mercy, showing off their own fearlessness.
The ground itself seemed to shake beneath the combined thunder of hooves.
The gray walls of the Golden Tooth drew steadily closer.
They’d been spotted; somewhere ahead, a warning horn blared out across the valley.
“Forward!
Forward, faster!” knights and lords shouted, again and again.
The river cavalry swept over the outer guard post in a single unbroken wave.
Perhaps two hundred men had held that position; they were crushed and scattered almost instantly, leaving the rear ranks to finish what the charge had started.
Roman caught sight of the broad meadow beneath the castle walls, the walls themselves, the banners snapping above them.
Behind the round keep, a white capped peak rose into view, thick gray clouds already gathering around its summit.
And there was the enemy camp too, rows of tents, hitching posts, latrine trenches off to one side.
Even from a distance, tiny figures could be seen scattering in every direction, screaming, struggling to understand what was happening.
Buglers sounded their commands once, then fell silent and reached for their weapons instead.
The Riverlands host poured into the meadow before the walls.
Following the Blackfish’s plan, the army split apart.
Patrek Mallister, spear raised, led his company straight for the gate.
The Blackfish swung right, tracing a wide arc around the enemy camp.
Roman and the rest continued straight through the center.
The westermen screamed at the sight of death bearing down on them.
Some scrambled for horses, others fought to pull on their mail, but most had already given themselves over to panic, running blindly, with no real notion of how to escape the trap closing around them.
A scattering of arrows still found their way toward the charging riders.
Horns wailed anxiously from the castle towers above.
The enemy camp had looked so distant only moments before, and now it was almost upon them.
Roman drew his sword.
His horse carried him straight into the press of soldiers and guards.
He found himself shouting something too, though the only thought that mattered was simply staying in the saddle amid all this chaos.
Their well fed horses crashed through the fleeing men, chests knocking soldiers from their feet.
The riders began cutting and thrusting in earnest.
Anyone who tried to resist was crushed within moments, thrown down and trampled into the mud.
The slaughter began almost at once.
Roman hadn’t imagined grown men could scream and moan the way some of these did, though most of them, he supposed, were simple militia rather than trained knights.
Screaming, moaning, cursing filled the air on every side, deafening in its intensity.
Caught up in the confusion, Roman nearly lost the main body of the charge entirely.
He reined in, drew a few steadying breaths, spotted the trout banner, and rode hard to catch up.
Glancing over, he found his squire’s face pale and wide eyed with shock.
Poor boy, likely his first time caught up in anything like this.
Roman thought, with a bitter kind of humor, that he probably looked no better himself just then.
A dozen guardsmen rode with him, striking left and right without pause.
Tristan Ryger swung a long handled axe, and each blow he landed seemed to end in someone’s death.
Bracken’s archers, sowing chaos of their own, loosed a hundred flaming arrows into the tents, setting the camp alight.
A dozen riderless horses, driven half mad with fear, thundered past somewhere nearby.
Roman genuinely couldn’t imagine what he’d have done without his uncle here.
Nothing, most likely.
He’d probably be sitting back in Riverrun, trying to feel his way down some version of Littlefinger’s path instead.
Whatever else could be said, the Blackfish never lost his composure, never lost his grip on the situation.
He hadn’t forgotten the plan for a moment, adjusted it skillfully as the battle unfolded, and kept the reins of command firmly in hand throughout.
Under his direction, the river soldiers broke the enemy into a terrified, will-less mass and drove it steadily toward a distant cliff edge.
Those at the front surely saw the danger waiting for them there, but the sheer weight of the crowd behind kept pressing forward regardless, each man desperate for a few more seconds of life, desperate to escape the swords at their backs.
People went over the cliff edge screaming, plunging down onto the sharp rocks far below, taking their last, brief flight.
The wet, heavy sound of each landing carried back up to the men above.
Roman knew he’d never fully forget that particular horror.
The rest of the enemy force found itself pinned against a steep slope and simply cut down there, grim, unpleasant work that had to be done all the same.
Goodbrook and the younger Piper led their own company in pursuit of stragglers fleeing further down the road west.
Somewhere around five or six hundred men, by Roman’s first rough guess, had crowded together near the gate itself, hacking desperately at the heavy, iron bound wood with axes and swords, screaming for the doors to be opened, begging to be let inside.
Only now did Roman realize, with real dismay, that Patrek had failed to break through into the castle at all.
And there’d be no second chance at it now.
Whoever commanded the garrison clearly had no intention of opening those gates, abandoning his own men to whatever fate awaited them outside.
Roman scanned the field for the silver eagle banner of House Mallister.
There.
His friend was already pulling his company back out of the press, wheeling wide for another run, driving hard once more toward the gate.
“To the gate!” Roman led his own guardsmen after him, spurring his horse forward into the crush.
He very nearly went down when a wounded knight seized his stirrup, grabbed hold of his boot, and almost dragged him bodily off his horse.
“Mercy.
Mercy, please,” the man sobbed, tears streaking down his young face.
In the roar of battle his voice barely carried at all.
“Let go,” Roman said, swinging his sword in warning but not bringing it down.
One of his guardsmen leaned in instead, and drove a spear down sharply from above.
Roman felt the grip on his leg vanish at once.
Arrows began falling from the fortress walls now.
At first, while the fighting had pinned attacker and defender together, the garrison had held their shots, wary of striking their own men.
Now, with most of the field already cleared of anyone but river soldiers, the arrows came thick and fast.
They struck the earth with a soft hiss, or rang off armor, or found softer targets entirely, each impact followed by a fresh curse or groan.
“Watch yourself, Lord Tully!” Tristan Ryger shouted, throwing his shield up just in time.
A heavy arrow dropped from the sky and buried itself in a nearby tree instead.
“We need to get the lord clear of this,” the guardsman shouted to the others.
“Help me here!” Roman realized, belatedly, that his own fine armor had marked him out as a target.
A hard lesson, that: less flash on the battlefield in future.
Or better yet, stay well clear of the front ranks entirely.
Arrows kept falling like hail.
One struck his horse.
Another glanced off his helm.
A third thudded into the boss of his shield.
And just as he began to think they’d finally pulled clear of the gate’s range, one final arrow found a gap in his armor and buried itself in his thigh.
Roman felt a sharp stab of pain.
Damn it.
He knew better than to yank an arrow free, the head could easily stay lodged inside the wound, but in the heat of the moment he forgot everything he knew and pulled it out at once, tossing it aside without thinking.
They rode another two hundred meters before Roman finally reined in.
Here and there, scattered riders were still finishing off wounded stragglers across the field.
Half an hour earlier this camp had looked so neat, so orderly, that it was hard to believe how completely everything had changed in so short a time.
Now the meadow was a ruin.
Hundreds of bodies had piled into low, uneven mounds.
The ground itself looked plowed under.
Tents burned themselves out in patches.
Everywhere, the wounded and dying moaned softly.
But none of that held Roman’s attention for long.
He looked back toward the gate, still sealed shut, the towers rising unshaken on either side like a pair of stubborn cliffs.
Banners bearing a golden sun and a wedge on blue still snapped proudly overhead.
Mallister had already pulled his men back out of range, wary of the arrows still raining down.
He’d never taken the gate.
There simply hadn’t been time.
How had it slipped away from them?
Roman clenched his jaw in frustration.
They’d failed their main objective once again.
Just like with the Kingslayer, fortune had refused to smile on him.
Instead of wounding the lion cleanly, they’d only provoked him further, made him angrier still.
The Golden Tooth held firm, sealed tight and secure.
The river army settled in at the walls to make camp.
While Roman’s leg was being tended, the wound washed clean with hot wine, he winced and muttered a quiet curse.
Even through the pain, he noticed several ravens taking flight from the fortress, heading west.
Some had already gone earlier, right at the start of the battle, according to Lord Bracken.
But now the garrison was sending fresh birds out, carrying word of how the situation had changed.
There was nothing to be done about it; the ravens launched from the castle’s farthest rear wall, clearing a deep gorge almost immediately, well beyond any bowshot they could arrange.
“How’s the leg, Ed?” Ser Brynden asked, dropping heavily onto a saddle propped up as a makeshift seat, plainly worn out himself.
“Better than I expected, honestly,” Roman said, wiggling his bandaged leg to prove the point.
“Got off lightly, all things considered.” He looked away, hiding a flash of embarrassment.
The truth was, right after the battle he’d glanced down at his own sword and found it perfectly clean.
Not a single trace of enemy blood on it anywhere.
He hadn’t struck a single man the entire fight.
That fact did little for his pride.
Lords and knights didn’t think much of that kind of showing, generally speaking.
He’d sheathed the blade quickly afterward, but the awkwardness of it lingered all the same.
“Good.” The Blackfish’s mind seemed to be somewhere far away.
“But what do we do about the castle itself?” “We won’t be taking it,” Roman agreed.
The parley riders they’d sent to the gate had returned quickly enough, bearing the unwelcome news that Ser Daven had no intention whatsoever of surrendering the Golden Tooth, under any circumstances.
Lannister’s position was understandable enough.
He had the full weight of Casterly Rock standing behind him.
A single setback, however costly, changed nothing about that.
The Blackfish had already worked through some rough figures.
They’d won a genuinely brilliant victory, killing well over five thousand of the enemy while losing fewer than two hundred of their own.
But a great many knights had spent the night safely inside the castle walls, entirely untouched, and the victory itself hadn’t delivered the result they’d hoped for.
The Golden Tooth remained unconquered.
“Maybe it’s worth blockading the castle and pushing part of our force further west?” Roman suggested carefully.
In truth, Patrek Mallister had first planted the idea in his head back at Riverrun, while they were still working out the shape of this campaign.
“The plunder wouldn’t hurt us any.
And the Lannisters ought to be reminded that the Trident isn’t the only place that can burn.” “Yes, my thoughts run the same way,” the Blackfish said, accepting a cup from his squire, nodding gratefully, and draining it in one long pull.
Wine ran down in two thin streams across his black brigandine.
They settled in around the walls of the Golden Tooth.
His men dug trenches, raised a palisade, and blockaded the garrison as thoroughly as they could manage.
Every scrap of armor and weaponry was stripped from the dead.
The Blackfish took command of the blockade itself.
Roman sent the rest of the army, the younger, hungrier lords, further along the River Road.
They’d lost the advantage of surprise now, and taking any more fortresses outright was clearly off the table.
All that remained was raiding, burning, doing what damage they could to enemy lands.
Goodbrook’s company reached as far as Ashemark.
Mallister and his men caught sight of Sarsfield’s dark yellow walls in the distance, another substantial castle guarding the River Road.
Neither that castle nor Silverhill fell to them, but the Lannisters lacked the strength here to mount any real counterattack, or risk meeting them in open field.
They stayed shut up behind their own walls instead, waiting for reinforcements from Casterly Rock.
Wagons loaded with plunder stretched back east in a long line.
It wasn’t a great haul, but something was certainly better than nothing.
Roman calculated they’d come out of the campaign reasonably well compensated, and there’d be fine gifts from the spoils for the men who’d distinguished themselves most.
However much they might have wished to press on, they eventually had to lift the blockade around the Golden Tooth and withdraw back toward their own lands.
They’d done what they could.
As they pulled away, mocking, hostile shouts followed them from the castle walls, a fitting enough send off.
“What do you make of the campaign, uncle?” Roman shifted his wounded leg with real pleasure.
Over the past two weeks it had healed completely.
It felt good, being whole and full of energy again.
“What do you want me to say?” Ser Brynden asked, lazily.
“We won, didn’t we?
That makes it a success, surely.” “Success.” The knight snorted, clearly unimpressed by the word, leaning to one side to pinch a nostril shut and blow his nose loudly.
“Patrek Mallister had the right of it.
We scattered a mob of swineherds and tinkers.
Rabble.
Not warriors.” “There were five thousand of them, though.” “Sword fodder and carrion for the crows.
That’s what we beat.” “There were knights among them too.
Real fighters.” “Were there?
And how many did you actually count?
A hundred?
You’d be lucky if it was even two.” “I’m not claiming some triumph on the scale of Robert Baratheon’s at the Trident,” Roman said, unwilling to simply concede the point to his uncle.
“But we accomplished something real here.
It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
Daven Lannister will have to rebuild an army from scratch now.
We killed men who might otherwise have marched on our own lands.
And we’ve taken captives besides, ones worth a decent ransom.” “Fine.
Perhaps you’re right,” the Blackfish allowed, grudgingly.
That was simply his nature, and no one expected it to change.
“Go on and enjoy your little victory, if that’s the mood you’re in.
I’m going to check on the rearguard,” he said, turning his horse and riding off.
Roman watched him go, thoughtful.
In many ways, the stern old knight had a point.
The victory hadn’t amounted to much on its own terms.
They’d beaten back militia, not the Lannisters’ regular army, not their household knights.
But when you killed five thousand men, that wasn’t simply a number to shrug off.
Five thousand men, no more, no less, men who might otherwise have marched against Riverrun’s own lands, laid siege to its walls, burned its fields, done far worse to the people living there.
That mattered, whatever else could be said about it.
It was worth remembering.
Victories like this one were good for morale, good for putting fresh strength back into tired, worried men.
Beyond that, Roman found himself looking at the whole experience from another angle entirely.
He’d finally gotten his first real taste of both combat and campaigning.
It hardly mattered that he had little enough to boast about personally.
He’d seen, now, at least in some small way, how a campaign came together, how orders moved through an army, how command actually functioned in the chaos of battle.
As the old saying went, a man who’s been beaten once is worth two who never have.
The veteran soldier still lay a long way off from where he stood now, but a beginning had genuinely been made.
Looked at that way, the whole campaign had gone just fine.
Day by day they made their way back east.
Word of their victory raced ahead of the army, and the faces along the road grew steadily more hopeful as they passed.
When Riverrun’s walls finally rose into view in the distance, Roman let out a long, satisfied breath.
He was home.
He realized, somewhat to his own surprise, that he’d already come to think of Riverrun as exactly that.
“What are you thinking about, Karyl?” Roman gave his friend a light, jesting jab in the side.
“About what comes next, Ed.” “Let’s get inside the walls first and see what news is waiting for us.” The smile faded from his face.
“We’ll find out how Robb’s faring, whether Blackwood or Mallister have sent word, whether Peg has finally taken Harrenhal.” “That’s not quite what I meant, Ed,” Vance said, entirely serious now.
“The new year has already turned, and Joffrey’s wedding, the one you told us about, should have happened by now.
Two days past, if I have it right.
If your visions hold true…” If the king really is dead, then we’ll know your dreams can be trusted.” “Yes.
We’ll find out soon enough how much truth there is in what I’ve seen,” Roman said, pausing a moment.
“Let’s hope nothing’s changed course, and that the little bastard finally met his end.
And if he has, then it’s time you started preparing for a journey to the capital.” “Into the lion’s den, is it?
Well.
I don’t mind that at all.”
com/Hezzario