The final phase of conflict in the Rebellion of the Lords Declarant, or as the United Westerosi Nationalist Party has dubbed it, the First Westerosi War of Independence, played out over the course of fifteen days in the Kingswood, the last four of which passed in almost continual, if only loosely connected, action. Starting around the 870s, it became the historical vogue to regard those last four days as separate battles, but in more recent years a re-revisionist movement among historians has resulted in a reversion to considering the Kingswood campaign as a single battle four days long, preceded by eleven days of maneuvering and skirmishing. This is due largely to a new appreciation that each day of battle influenced the next, even if only lightly, and that the Lords Declarant, at least, had a coherent and overarching plan of action that they tried to impose on the battle.

The first day of action began when the leading edge of the Royal Army of the Reach, a column of knights primarily consisting of Hightower, Beesbury, Bulwer, and Costayne men, was attacked at the crossroads of the Kingsroad and the Roseroad by a contingent of Vale and Riverland knights led by Robert Baratheon . . .

This is how you fight when you are Robert Baratheon.

It starts softly, at first, the singing in your ears. You first notice it when you give the order to advance and tighten your grip on your lance, a faint tone in your ears like a far-away whistle. As the knights around you break into a trot and the dust of the road begins to rise like smoke that tone grows, little by little until it starts to fill your ears so that you can hear little else.

The storm-rage, Maester Cressen called it when you asked him about it years and years ago, before Mother and Father died. A legacy of the Durrandons, a fighting-madness that imparts strength and courage beyond that of ordinary men. Apparently Great-Grandfather Lyonel, the Laughing Storm, had it, as did various other men of the Baratheon line.

All that you care about is that when the storm-rage takes you, it makes you stronger than any man in Westeros. When the storm-rage takes you, the blood in your veins becomes liquid fire and your lungs expand until you think that they might burst out of your chest. Even Jon Arryn's household guardsmen, fighting you ten to one, cannot hope to defeat you. Of all the men you have fought, only Ned has lasted more than two or three passes. It's why you like and respect him so much; the dour, sober-sided wolf that can only enjoy himself with extreme difficulty once held his ground against you for a full three minutes of cut and thrust, until you both staggered to a halt from mutual exhaustion.

Not even being with Lyanna makes you feel as purely alive as the storm-rage does.

By now the knights are around the bend in the road and spurring up to the canter and the Reachmen are only a hundred yards away, too close for further thought. Countless hours of practice bring your lance down and couch it under your armpit, the point aimed unwaveringly at a knight wearing the cups and flowers of the Costaynes. The singing in your ears is deafening now, drowning out everything but the thunder of hooves as the world narrows to the point of your lance and the knight you're aiming it at. The singing is momentarily broken by the rippling crash of lances on shields and armor as the charge strikes home, but as you leave your broken lance in the Costayne knight's breastplate and snatch your war hammer out of its loop at your saddlebow it picks back up again. And the only sounds that register through the high, strident tone are the clash of steel and the booming of your own laughter.

Baratheon's charge into the royalist vanguard was so effective that the Reachmen broke in disarray. The majority were rallied by Lord Hightower and reformed on the center of the army, but many were driven south along the Kingsroad. Most of these were picked up by Lord Tarly's advanced task force, but the majority of these were in no fit state to fight and the news they bore struck a heavy blow to the morale of Tarly's men.

Some scholars hold that this was the decisive action of the battle, as it prevented the main body of the Royal Army of the Reach from reuniting with Tarly's task force and separating the Lords Declarant from the joint armies of Stannis Baratheon and Oberyn Martell marching up from the Stormlands. Others claim that the true decisive action came either at Wendwater Bridge or Wolf Glade. This author believes that no one action during the Battle of the Kingsroad was more decisive than the others, but rather that the cumulative effect of the actions proved decisive.

- Crucible: The Reforging of Westeros from the Lords Declarant to the Revolution by Jon Tarly, published 1015 A.C.