AN: While I might suggest inventions that would benefit me personally, I'm not wandering around trying to be Johnny Invention-seed. And that's not even getting into the limitations on my own abilities.
ooOoo
The day after the battle was busy. Despite my best efforts at delegation, the city fathers of Selhorys refused to finalize the prisoner-handling arrangements without speaking to a company commander. Since the Tattered Prince and Irrys Marohr were off chasing down members of the Golden Company who hadn't managed to make it across the bridge the duty fell to me. So my morning was shot.
The meeting wasn't that bad, honestly. The people of Selhorys were grateful for our appearance, not to mention impressed that we had managed to drive off the Golden Company. They put on a touching victory parade in our honor, and the town fathers were generous in their efforts to slip me an under the table reward. If I hadn't been happily married-and morally opposed to pleasure slaves-the negotiations could have dragged on all day.
Settling the handling of prisoners was relatively straightforward. I had tasked Petyr with putting together a list of reasonable ransom demands for each prisoner and he'd come through for me. I explained to the city council that my primary concern was that I didn't want to face these men on the battlefield during this campaign. Ideally they should wait to ransom them until the war was over, but if they couldn't wait then the men should at least be shipped down to Volantis before being released. With our control over the river traffic that should keep them out of action for long enough to suit my purposes.
They dickered a bit over who would get what percentage of the ransom paid out, but the basic terms remained unchanged. One key point that I emphasized was that we expected to get paid the same amount whether the men were ransomed or died in prison. I could only assume that there would be some score-settling once members of an invading army were helpless prisoners of the city they'd been attacking. I couldn't stop it completely, but I could provide a bit of a financial disincentive. And insulate myself from risk in the bargain, of course.
That business was handled relatively quickly. Selhorys was eager to have control of the prisoners and happy that it looked to be a financial windfall as well. What turned out to be a stickier issue was the matter of securing supplies. Volantis had promised to pay for our armies' provisions, but the people of Selhorys were understandably hesitant to trade hard goods for paper promises.
They unbent a little bit when I reminded them why Volantis was paying for our food. An army had to eat one way or another, and if we couldn't buy food then the only alternative would be "living off the land." Also known as stripping local farms bare by force of arms. I'd provide the farmers with receipts, but I suspected that they would be less successful than the city council at turning those promises into gold.
In the end we reached a compromise. I agreed to pay a small portion of the cost up front, an amount easily realized out of our loot. They also would be allowed to apply our share of the ransom gold to cover any portion of the IOU not paid by Volantis. It was possible that they would try to dick us around in the future, but I wasn't too worried. I didn't think they'd be able to come up with any kind of accounting trickery that would slip past both me and Petyr, and in the event of any trouble I'd have eight thousand pissed off collection agents at my beck and call.
Provisions secured, I spent the afternoon putting together an assessment of how badly we'd hurt the Golden Company and how well we'd be able to defend this position. The answer: pretty badly, and pretty well.
We'd killed a little over seven hundred of them and captured about that many. More captives trickled in throughout the day, but not enough to change the basic calculation. We'd also killed or captured substantially all of their elephant force. Everybody I spoke to swore up and down that no elephants had made it over the bridge, which meant that our raiders should have them all in hand by the end of the day. For all their other virtues, elephants are not particularly stealthy.
We would be sending the captured elephants down to Volantis for sale. Cool as it would be to add them to our forces, the only available trained elephant handlers were from the Golden Company. Mercenaries could be cold blooded, but I could hardly expect them to make war on their long time comrades. Not to mention that if anybody had effective anti-elephant tactics up their sleeve, it would be the Golden Company.
Would the Golden Company be in any shape to deploy those tactics? It was hard to say. They had suffered fearsome losses, with around fifteen percent of their men killed or captured. Armies had dissolved over less comprehensive defeats. On the other hand, they had retreated in good order and were famed for their iron discipline. They had to be shocked at what had happened, but I suspected that beneath that they would be spoiling for a chance to avenge their defeat.
The other good news for us was that the terrain was well suited for defense. The bridge would be easy enough to secure, and the rolling hills north of Selhorys on the east side of the river were the kind of terrain that could chew up an attacking army. They might be able to cause some mischief if they could round up enough boats, but an amphibious landing with medieval technology didn't seem particularly threatening.
All in all, I was in a good mood as I headed for a meeting with my fellow Captains at the end of the day. I had already half started picking out design elements for our long term camp. The Sunset Company could more or less build permanent facilities around its tents and be perfectly content for months or years on end, of course, but it would take a bit of work to integrate our allies into the field works.
The Tattered Prince had certainly picked out a nice spot for his command tent. Located on a small hill that rose out of the flat plain between Selhorys and the river, it offered a terrific view of them both. I admired the view as I approached, and admired the tent as I took a seat around the Tattered Prince's small field table. The inside of his tent was festooned with souveniers from his long career as a sellsword. I hardly recognized any of them myself, although a few of the symbols struck a chord in Brynden's memory. Taken together they gave the tent the same sort of crazyquilt design aesthetic as his cloak.
The meeting began with a brief discussion of the day's events. The Long Lances and the Windblown hadn't lost any men during the day's pursuits. They had managed to gather twelve elephants under their control and confirm the deaths of nine more. They both seemed satisfied with my report on the negotiations with Selhorys. All in all, no surprises.
I was caught completely off guard when Irrys announced that the Long Lances would be ready to commence pursuit of the Golden Company tomorrow morning. Even more so when the Tattered Prince declared that the Windblown would be ready to go as well.
I blinked, a bit taken aback at their eagerness. Then I realized they were both looking at me. The brightly decorated walls of the Tattered Prince's tent felt like they were closing in on me as I scrambled for a response.
"My men are always ready to march, of course."
It was even true. They might grumble about all of the drilling that I put them through, but the result was the most disciplined force that Brynden had ever been associated with.
"I had thought that we would hold this position and wait for reinforcements," I continued. "After our victory, Volantis should have no trouble recruiting more men to its cause."
"Pah! They had chance to join!" Irrys said, punctuating his words by bringing his fist down on the table. "Why share glory now?"
The Tattered Prince nodded along with Irrys's words. The flickering lamplight gave his eyes an eerie shine as he added his two cents.
"Defeating the Golden Company will build a reputation. Destroying them will build a legend."
I held my tongue for a moment as I thought things through. I hadn't worried overmuch about my reputation since arriving in Westeros. Oh, I wanted the Sunset Legion to be well respected, and with our combat record as it was we were well on our way there. But as for myself, personally, there had been no need. Brynden Tully had lived a full life and built a strong name for himself long before I had arrived on the scene. While I might feel a bit awkward trading on another man's reputation, the fact remained that it was always there when I needed it. The chance to add some significant shine to that name in my own right had some appeal.
And, as the Tattered Prince had intimated, there were names and then there were names. Randyll Tarly was well known as a talented military commander. Robert Baratheon was a legend in the flesh.
Destroying the Golden Company would be the stuff of songs sung for generations to come. However eager my companions might be, though, I reminded myself that there was a reason the Golden Company had survived this long.
"They didn't appear poised on the brink of destruction to me."
They had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of a terror weapon that they had likely never before encountered. A weapon that had turned the force of their own special units against them. And despite that they had managed a well-organized fighting retreat. Charging after them hell for leather seemed awfully risky to me. A reputation built out of careful victories might not be as grand as a reputation won from dramatic gambles, but it was valuable all the same and I'd hate to throw it away.
"On the brink, no," the Tattered Prince acknowledged. "But we did capture much of their supply train. Men of the Golden Company must eat like any other man."
That... was a very good point. The Golden Company's baggage had been a big disappointment, loot wise. They had grabbed everything valuable before they left. They hadn't been able to take the bulky low value items, though, like food.
It occurred to me that I had been thinking of pursuit in a far too modern fashion. If you were chasing mechanized infantry and you gave them a day's head start, they could be hundreds of miles away by the time you moved. Men marching on foot couldn't cover nearly that distance. Especially men who had to forage for food as they went. We could almost certainly catch up with them, operating as we were with a solid supply line from the river. If we could wear them down, pick away at their morale, deny their attempts to rest, harass their attempts to gather food... they were very disciplined men, but at the end of the day they were men. They could be defeated.
Something could go wrong, of course. They could get supplies from their own sponsors' navies. Hell, they could have reinforcements waiting up river. Things could always go wrong in war. For that matter, if they chose to engage us in a decisive battle immediately, we could lose. The Golden Company's losses had only been enough to drop us to rough numerical parity, not enough to give us a real advantage. They wouldn't have their elephants, but we wouldn't have more than a few of our firebombs.
It would be a pure test of strength on strength. Will against will.
When I realized I was smiling I knew I had made my decision.
"We'll cross the river at first light."
ooOoo
