Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire. I am also writing much more quickly than a certain author.
raw666: Indeed, in theory, Robb and Stannis could be great allies, the two according great importance on duty. Alas, it is not going to happen. Stannis feels the crown of Westeros is his duty to gain, and he can't imagine letting go half of the kingdom to form the "Kingdom of the North and the Trident". Not only it would create a bad precedent, but with a potentially hostile Reach on his flanks, Stannis must gain more kingdoms to his cause or his possessions will be in danger.
Cancer-Chris: Nice to see I managed to surprise some readers (grin).
X59: Yes, the Battle of the Four Armies begins in this chapter. Arya will appear in the aftermath, you will see. As for Tywin, there was never any question he was arrogant and too full of himself. With the tide of events going against him in this story, you realise he had a lot of luck in the books to go away with the things he did.
Master of Dragons God: The cavalry is coming, although a bit late due to some issues on ...
Guest: Bolton has not done any (overt) betrayal right now. With the North winning, it would be extremely stupid of him to do so (he would have to deal with plenty of angry Northern lords in the aftermath).
Sorry, but the people of King's Landing are going to suffer. Not only a lot are embracing religious fanaticism as a solution to their problem, but with so many troops around King's Landing, blood is going to flow in huge quantities.
What happens on the Wall and beyond will be told in a chapter. For the moment, let's say there are a few modifications to GRRM's story.
Revan3363: Thanks for the support! The Battle of the Four Armies is coming.
Matt Quinn: Glad you like it!
Paul: Right now, 45 chapters of this story have been written. I can assure you I'm still very far from the end. Or at least what will be the end of the war, with peace returning to the Seven kingdoms. Truthfully, I have no idea how many chapters this story will last right now. I have a rough scenario in mind, but I don't know exactly how much time I will need to arrive there. One thing I can promise: this story will be completed. One way or another. Currently, I write one chapter per week. As for the locations you described, they will appear as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Radio Free Death: I corrected it in the last chapters. Alas, I have not the time nor the motivation to change the first ones.
Godslayer
The Battle of the Four Armies Part I
"I am the High Septon! I speak for the Seven here on this Earth! Strike me and you strike the Gods themselves! "High Septon Justicar, 300AC.
"I am the Godslayer." Tyrion Lannister, 300AC.
When the Second Battle of King's Landing is mentioned today, one of the first questions to be debated was the mental sanity of Queen-Regent Cersei Lannister. Mere days before the great battle, the Lannister queen made the fateful decision to authorise the new High Septon to reform the Faith Militant. Even considering the strategic and tactical situation, all the students of history acknowledged it was one of Queen Cersei's worst mistakes. First, it was increasingly evident the Lannister cause was losing quite badly the war. In these circumstances, it would have been prudent not to antagonise the potential winners when the time came to sit at the peace talks. Secondly, it was a sign of weakness. The High Septon Justicar had gained control of most of the capital when the Faith had not technically the right to carry weapons; it would have been intelligent not to legalise this political and military humiliation.
Moreover, neither of the two kings sitting outside King's Landing was very likely to agree with the reformation of a religious order known for his fanatism. King Stannis was following R'hllor. King Robb was praying the Old Gods. None of the two monarchs was going to tolerate a crowd of monks which at best would call them illegitimate. By abolishing a single edict, the Queen-Regent had just made unavoidable a sack and a massacre inside the city. With somewhere between 17 000 and 25 000 Poor Fellows recruited, the walls of King's Landing could be adequately manned. But at what cost?
While the army of the North were arriving and the Lannisters were losing their last remnants of power, Stannis Baratheon had not stayed inactive. The Baratheon monarch had built a multitude of small craft to cross the Blackwater, along with seven trebuchets (a point the Faith completely missed), many scaling ladders and battering rams.
Two days after the King in the North's arrival, the master of Storm's End and Dragonstone launched his assault in the first lights of the day. A first wave of 500 men crossed the Blackwater, trying to take by surprise the defenders. If so, it manifestly failed. A large party of Poor Fellows were in control of the Mud Gate, and seeing heretics charge their positions, sallied out while letting the reserves prepare the scorpions and the ballista. To put it bluntly, it was a picture of horror. The Stormlanders under Ser Rolland Storm who went in the first wave were only 500 , outnumbered eight to one by the followers of the Seven , but the Stormlanders were veterans , survivors of multiple and terrible battles like First King's Landing and Bronzegate . In comparison ,the Poor Fellows had no military experience , no discipline and often no armour or conventional weapons , fighting with light bows , crude maces , cudgels , axes and other improvised man-killing objects . Ser Rolland Storm's men took heavy casualties, losing half of their numbers in less than an hour, but they held enough for 500 more men to arrive, and for each of the Stormlanders who fell, four or five Poor Fellows went down too. The tenacity (and the fanaticism) of the warriors following the High Septon was to be admired, but hour after hour it was evident the cause was lost. The northern bank of the Blackwater saw hundreds of Baratheons soldiers landing, and the Poor Fellows who tried to repulse the warriors were butchered by the hundreds. The large trebuchets on the southern bank were also causing large destruction, knocking off the defender's siege engines, raving the ramparts, starting fires inside the city, unleashing panic and fear. And it was just the Southern assault.
On the other side of the city, the Northern and the Riverlanders troops were also on the move. The soldiers of King Robb Stark had had less time to build siege engines, ladders and ram for the assault, but unlike King Stannis, they were on a side Tyrion Lannister and his commanders had made very little preparation before the First Battle of King's Landing (said preparations consisting in razing and burning the houses too close to the walls). As a result, it allowed most of the Stark's vanguard to use cover to advance to the Old Gate, which had been designed as the primary objective. Too predictably, a large force of Poor Fellows sallied out the gate in question when it became clear the battering rams were going to crush the Old Gate. However, whoever the commander of the Faith was had never fought a battle. Unlike Stannis Baratheon troops, Robb Stark's main force wasn't blocked behind a river, forced to cross in small groups. Virtually all the army could be brought to the front, if it was needed ... and indeed it was. The 5 000 or so Poor Fellows who guarded the gate received the furious charge of hundreds of Northmen, led by Lord Jon 'Greatjon' Umber. The lord of Last Hearth by all accounts , made a mountain of corpses fighting his way to the Old Gate , all the while Mormonts , Mallisters and Brackens men were scaling the walls , dismantling the scorpions , pulverising the ballista , turning oil and all the military supplies against their former masters .
By the time the sun reached the zenith, it was clear King's Landing was lost. The Old Gate had fallen to the Northern warriors and the Mud Gate barring a miracle would not last five more minutes. Until then, the Lannisters troops had shone by their absence on the battlefield. But this was about to change. Upon hearing the gates were about to be breached, Queen-Regent Cersei Lannister totally lost her mind and broke the status quo.
What exactly made the Queen-Regent act like she did remain a mystery to this day? However, historians were able to make a certain number of statements. First, the Queen-Regent was more and more looking like her deceased husband Robert I, always drinking, whoring, and refusing to take any logical decisions to govern the realm. Secondly, there is a theory that the Red Keep received at the moment the battle was beginning a raven from Dorne. Apparently said bird was carrying the news of Princess Myrcella Baratheon's death. While it was never confirmed afterwards (due to the heavy battle damage), the combined news of her daughter's death and the apparent defeat of the Faith were enough to send Cersei Lannister into madness and cruelty. If the Lannisters were about to lose, then the Queen-Regent intended for everyone to lose. The Lannister troops garrisoned at the Lion Gate, the Gate of the Gods and the Red Keep received direct orders to charge into battle. And to prove the "victory or death" point, the mad Lioness delivered all her hostages in the care of the High Septon including Sansa Stark.
This proved terribly ill-advised to say the least. The Western men present at King's Landing were not suicidal idiots, and their loyalty following the First Battle of King's Landing and the Battle of Bronzegate had been in free fall. Most of them had not been paid since a long time, and even the men loving to kill on a battlefield were tired to kill the very people who were supposed to be on their side. Supporting religious fanatics was unpopular in the ranks and did not raise any enthusiasm. So when Tyrion 'the Imp' Lannister rushed out of a tavern shouting "With me Lions!" the men of the West knew in an instant changed their allegiance (at least three establishments today claim their tavern was the one where Tyrion Lannister was hiding). This was the legend. More realistically, men like Lord Addam Marbrand and Ser Lyle Crakehall had been disgusted by Cersei Lannister's abuse of power, and rallied to the man (or half-man ) they saw as legitimate Lord of Casterly Rock (Tywin Lannister being unconscious and unlikely to remain alive ).
For the strategic situation, it could not be worse. Led by Tyrion Lannister, more than 2 000 Westernlanders fought their way to the Great Sept of Baelor, hoping to rescue the hostages before the High Septon executed them. In the Red Keep, men loyal to Cersei Lannister fought those loyal to the Imp. The carnage was total. The Baratheons and Starks troops were inside the city, fighting their way across each house, each street and hundreds of Poor Fellows and Warrior's Sons. Visenya's and Aegon's hill were aflame. Lannisters and Faith warriors fought each other. Northerners and Riverlanders fought the Faith and the Lannisters. Stormlanders did the same thing, and were burning half of Fishmonger's square and the street of steel along the way. Hours passed, and the armies of the Stag and the Wolf slowly but relentlessly advanced in the city, pouring rivers of blood upon the streets. And Tyrion Lannister, Ser Lyle Crakehall and 800 Westernlanders reached the white marble plaza surrounding the Great Sept. The plaza and it surroundings were paintings of horror. Most of the Most Devout and common folk having spoken against the High Septon had been hanged, dismembered. The marble was black with dried blood. The smell was horrible and Ser Podrick Payne, Tyrion Lannister's squire, would later describe it as "one of the Seven Hells". Slaying dozens of Poor Fellows, the warriors loyal to the Imp destroyed the doors of the Sept and rushed inside, killing every enemy who blocked their way. The Hall of the Lamps was ravaged by the fighting and most of the altars, statues and others religious symbols were covered in gore or torn apart. Tyrion Lannister arrived in time to kill the High Septon himself with an axe strike which crushed High Septon Justicar's skull and save his wife Sansa Stark. But for many of the Stormlanders and Reachers who had been imprisoned, it was too late. As it would became clear after the battle, quite a few lords and knights had suffered horrible deaths, being burned alive (and some whispered the use of wildfire had sometimes played a role).
The High Septon was dead, but his sinister deeds were not at an end. All over the city, hundreds of fanatics and desperate men continued to fight. But with the end of the day, another problem was starting to appear: far from cooperating to take the Red Keep, King Stannis Baratheon and King Robb Stark troops refocused their military attention on each other. Thousands of battle-hardened veterans fought in the alleys and the streets of the capital, at the light of the fire and the wildfire. A horrible spectacle, to decide who would sit the Iron Throne once for all...
