This is how the infantry of the Guides fight.
Before they took the King's silver, they were a great many things. Herdsmen from the Vale, woods-runners from the North, nomadic shepherds from Dorne, hill farmers from the Westerlands, villagers from the Dornish Marches, and foresters from the Riverlands, just to name a few. But what they all were, without exception, were good archers.
The bare minimum standard for military archers, as set down by the Department of War, is that the archer in question must be able to shoot ten arrows to the measured minute from a bow of fifty pounds draw-weight and hit a man-sized target at one hundred yards with seven of those ten arrows. That is the minimum. The average bowman of the Guides draws a hundred-pound bow and can place all eleven of his regulation arrows in a space the size of a man's splayed hand. Some, like Sergeant Anguy, can split a willow wand at fifty paces with a single arrow. They are the best archers in Westeros, which to them means that they are the best archers in the world.
When the war horns bell out archers, engage the enemy, the Guides infantrymen instinctively fall into their shooting stances and pluck their first arrows from their arrow bags. Thirty inches long and a quarter pound in weight apiece, these arrows are, and tipped with broadheads, wickedly sharp metal triangles as wide at the base as a man's paired thumbs. They are usually used against game, but they work just as well against lightly armored men, and the heaviest armor the sparrows have are padded jerkins worn by a few of their officers. The rest are in shirtsleeves or, a few of them, naked to the waist.
"Nock and draw!" the underofficers roar, and the Guides infantrymen fit arrows to bowstrings and haul back on the cords until their string-fingers are tickling their ears. "Let the gray geese fly! Wholly together, loose!" The string-fingers roll off the bowstrings and a slight shock runs through each archer's arm as the arrows are launched on their way. After that there is no time for thought. There is simply the hand to the shaft, the shaft to the string, the string to the ear, and away she goes, again and again and again and again, until even an archer's troll-like shoulders ache with the effort.
The effect is nothing short of murderous. Six hundred archers, loosing eleven arrows a minute, yield an arrow-storm that averages six thousand, six hundred arrows a minute, or one hundred and ten arrows every second, loosed at a largely unarmored enemy at what amounts to point-blank range. Some of the sparrows who are struck by that withering fire fall silently, either because brain trauma or the severing of the spinal cord produces more or less instant death, or because the arrow splits their vocal cords so that they cannot scream. The majority of the sparrows who are shot, however, scream loud and long as the broadheads slash through their bodies, leaving terrible wounds. Many of these bleed out in a minute or less, having had a major artery severed or a major organ ruined. Others, less fortunate for being shot in the belly, will die over the course of minutes, both from hemorrhage and from essentially being poisoned by the contents of their own bowels.
The sparrows waver, shocked by the sudden violence of the arrow-storm, but there are too many of them still unhurt after those first few seconds to be panicked into flight by the archers alone and so they charge. When they get close enough, then the archers will rely on their hand weapons, but until then, the bows continue to pluck their deadly song and fill the air with hissing death, although slower now and in more strictly defined lanes, because the lordlings in front of the Guides are standing up to receive the charge.
XXX
This is how the young gentlemen of King Aegon's Court fight.
They are the sons and nephews of the King's courtiers for the most part. The wealth that that fact implies means that they have access to some of the best training, armor, and weapons that money can buy. Each young man (and they are young, their average age is seventeen) standing in front of the Guides infantry is wearing at least some plate armor over a ring-mail hauberk and many of them are wearing full plate. For weapons they carry sword, axe, mace, and war hammer, in varying combination thereof, and they wield them like extensions of their own arms.
That is as it should be, because the overarching purpose of these men's lives is war. Some of them will inherit lordships or knight's manors, but they are expected to hold them by strength of arms as much as by force of law. And so from the age of seven, these men have trained, for hours every day, to become some of the finest slayers in the known world.
Some of them have seen action against the Three Daughters. Artos Stark would have been knighted there, had he followed the Seven, and Jon Baratheon also distinguished himself. For most, though, younger men like Lancel Lannister, this is their first taste of battle. So when the sparrow's charge hits them, they are so frightened that they do not have the wherewithal to think.
Fortunately for them, they don't need to think. The instincts that years of training have etched into their bone marrow take over and against an opponent like the sparrows, that is enough. Sword and axe cleave limbs and torsos, while mace and war hammer rise and fall, crushing bones and scattering brains like water. Artos Stark enhances an already good reputation as a fighting man when he kills six sparrows in as many blows; all bare-chested fanatics who had sworn death-oaths to show no mercy to the pagan Starks and who die screaming the Warrior's name. Next to him, Jon Baratheon stands like a steel tower, against which even champions of the sparrows, men like Pate Hammerhand and Tom of Bitterbridge, fling themselves in vain. When Tom of Bitterbridge tries his luck, Jon swings his war hammer up between the other man's legs and the resulting scream sears clean across the plaza. Down the line, Brienne of Tarth, the only woman in that line and who is with them only because she was waiting in the courtyard of the Red Keep armored and mounted and offered to prove her worthiness upon the body of any man who wished to gainsay her, writes the first chapter of her reputation in the blood of sparrows; the end of the fight finds her amid a pile of the slain two or even three deep in places.
The sparrows do their best, but they simply don't have the weight of metal to challenge the men-at-arms, and in those instances where danger does threaten, the archers of the Guides are barely three yards away and some of them have hoarded arrows against extremity. Lancel Lannister will later visit Redgrass Barracks to tell the colonel of the Guides that he owes his life to a Guides archer and so, if ever the Guides have need, they can call on him.
As strange as it may sound, the most terrible execution that day is not done by the young gentlemen of King Aegon's Court. That happens further down the line.
XXX
This is how the Royal Marines fight.
When the sparrow's charge gets close to them, they lunge forward, their glaives punching out in stop-thrusts aimed at either the face, to make the targeted sparrow flinch, or at the belly, in order for the blow to be assured of striking home. As that first lunge strikes home, the sparrow's charge stops dead in its tracks, stymied by discipline and weight of metal.
The sparrows are not given time to recollect themselves. In shipboard combat, he who hesitates dies and so the Marines push forward, their glaives working in an economical chop-stab-cut-thrust rhythm that chews through the sparrows like a saw through hardwood. As the sparrows fall, the Marines keep grinding forward, trampling the fallen underfoot to press the advantage. This is the style of fighting that has spread the fame and dread of the Marines from the Stepstones to the Volantene littoral and against the sparrows, it might as well be a meatgrinder. No prisoners are taken this day, by any of the contingents, but the Marines are especially ruthless. They have lived and died by virtue of that ruthlessness, because when boarding a hostile ship, there is no time for the chivalric conventions of surrender, there is only shock and fury, until one side is overwhelmed.
When the dead from this battle are tabulated, the Royal Marines will be credited with the most killed sparrows of any contingent, just edging out the Guides infantry. Oddly enough, they will not be considered the fiercest fighters that day. That honor belongs to their neighbors in the line.
XXX
This is how the King's Landing Regiment fights.
They have hated the sparrows from the moment they set foot in their city. These sanctimonious, uncouth hicks dare to come into their city and lecture them on the proper way to live and honor the gods, as if their shit didn't stink? Please. And then they started to flex their muscle by accosting men of means in the streets and upbraiding them for decadence and ungodliness, as if the gods didn't say in the Book of the Father, "Go forth and be prosperous." And as for ungodliness, what exactly is godly about setting a warehouse on fire, with the night watchman still in it, or setting upon a group of clerks and apprentices on their way home from a night on the Street of Silk and beating them half to death?
To the guildsmen, merchants, and apprentices that make up the King's Landing Regiment, the sparrows are an affront against the proper order of the world, and so they hate the sparrows with a passion that, thanks to their king's thoughtfulness, they now have a chance to unleash. And so when the sparrows charge, the King's Landing Regiment counter-charges, meeting the sparrows halfway with a rippling, thudding impact as the spears drive home, some impaling two sparrows at the same time, so forcefully are they driven home. Those who can drag their spears free and thrust again, while those who can't release their spears to draw short sword and buckler and lay about them in a fury.
They are amateurs, the men of the King's Landing Regiment, not professionals like the Guides or the Marines. They shout and curse as they drive their weapons home, swinging wildly with their short swords and punching with their bucklers. Against other opponents, their frenzy might result in heavy casualties, but the sparrows are even wilder than they are and have much less armor, and so the King's Landing Regiment cuts a bloody swathe. They take casualties, from axe and spiked club, but spear and short sword and buckler and seething hate leave a carpet of dead sparrows in the wake of the Regiment.
XXX
This is how the City Watch fights.
This battle is much like the sort of brawl they fight at least once a sennight in Flea Bottom, although the scale of the thing is new. These men live by their ability to win such brawls as this, quickly, efficiently, and brutally, so that when someone else thinks of trying their luck, they remember what happened to the last guy who tried conclusions with a Watchman and think twice.
As for specific techniques, these Watchmen have learned from the worst that Flea Bottom has to offer, and so all the dirty tricks of those winding alleys and run-down tenements are theirs to command. In addition to the regulation spear, short sword, and weighted baton, each Watchman has at least two daggers and many of them have sprung for plate reinforcements over the knuckles of their steer-hide gloves and over the toes of their boots. Against these, and with virtually no armor, the sparrows have no chance of victory.
To be sure, Watchmen go down, their helmets crushed by spiked clubs and the mail shredded by axes, but for every Watchman that falls, four of five sparrows die. The gold cloaks become spattered and eventually soaked with blood, but the Watchmen keep at it. These buggers came into their city and tried to take the law into their hands; to the Watch, this is a mortal insult.
And this is how the City Watch avenges its honor.
XXX
This is how the cavalry of the Guides fight.
When the sparrows recoil from the wall of infantry, repulsed by the murderous effect of heavy armor and heavy bows and heavy weapons and relentless training, the war horns bell out cavalry, charge the enemy. And so the four companies that make up the mounted component of the Guides knee their horses forward and through the infantry. They don't have much time to build up speed before impact, being so close, but with the sparrows so disheartened and the infantry on their heels to provide support, the trot they are able to attain is sufficient to break whatever cohesion the sparrows have left.
After that, it is a slaughter, with the cavalry hounding the sparrows through the gardens around the Great Sept and down the streets leading away. Some try to surrender, but cavalry in hot pursuit never take prisoners and so lance and sword are driven home. In any case, the king has given orders that any sparrow who refuses the command to depart King's Landing is a rebel in arms against the Throne and therefore an outlaw, to be killed on sight wherever found.
And so the cavalry slay and slay and slay, until the only sparrows left alive within the vicinity of the Great Sept are the ones barricaded within it.
XXX
King Aegon sits his horse and gazed upon the slaughter his men had wrought. The dead are thickest where the infantry had met them, of course, lying two or three or even four deep in places, but there are dead sparrows the length and breadth of the plaza. The rainbow pool is a lake of blood from the troop of sparrows that made their last stand in it and were cut to pieces by a squad of Marines, and the gardens, Aegon knows, will be a ruin of dead bodies from the cavalry pursuit.
Some of the sparrows will have got away, undoubtedly, but their power is broken and the news of it will be all over the city before three hours have passed. The hue and cry is already raised, judging by the shouting that Aegon can hear from the streets below, and the sparrows have not made any efforts at concealing their identities. If any sparrow within King's Landing makes it into the countryside, Aegon has half a mind to pardon the man on the spot and offer him a job. He could use men of such caliber.
The High Septon, however, is not among the slain. Aegon saw him and the Most Devout get hustled back into the Great Sept the minute the war horns sounded; someone among the sparrows must have recognized the call and been in a position to act. The doors of the Great Sept will no doubt be barricaded by now, and Aegon is loath to order a siege of the seat of the Faith.
Fortunately, he doesn't need to. He turns to the Winter Soldier, who has not moved from his side during the whole fight. "Ser Barnes," he says calmly, "secure the Great Sept, if you please."
Barnes salutes, replies "Yes, Your Grace," and walks forward. On the way, he borrows a round shield from a young nobleman and slips it onto his right arm, leaving his metal left arm free. He walks to one side of the main doors, pauses a moment, and then suddenly goes from a standing start to a dead run that terminates in a mighty leap that carries him through a window in a crash of shattering glass.
The noise of combat immediately rises from within the Great Sept, audible even at this distance. Aegon sits his horse calmly, carefully showing no emotion even as a sparrow comes flying out through a window on the other side of the building from the one Ser Barnes jumped in through; it would be unseemly to show amusement, after all.
Eventually the noise dies down, and several minutes later the main doors of the Great Sept open to reveal Ser Barnes, liberally spattered with blood, holding the High Septon by the collar of his tunic. Ser Barnes drags the High Septon the length of the plaza, comes to a halt before Aegon, and snaps off another salute. "Building secure, Your Grace," he says calmly, releasing the High Septon and pinning him on his knees by the simple expedient of standing on one of the other man's calves. "I believe you want this one."
Aegon looks down at the High Septon. "Tell me, Your Holiness," he asks, taking care to keep his voice completely level. "If the Seven are so set against me, what king would they prefer in my place?" At the High Septon's silence, he dismounts and draws his sword. "Hear now your sentence," he says formally. "You have committed treason against our royal person, conspired to usurp the power of justice in our Realm, and sought to levy war against your lawful King. Therefore do I, Aegon, the Sixth of that Name of House Targaryen, In the Sight of the Old Gods and the Light of the Seven, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, and Defender of the Faiths, do sentence you to die." At a nod, Bucky twists the High Septon's arm so that he is forced to bend his neck, and Aegon's sword rises and falls, and the High Septon's head rolls away.
Aegon cleans the blood off his sword with a handkerchief and tells Lord Commander Hightower to "Make arrangements for him to receive honorable burial. He was a brave man and sincere in his beliefs; we would have it said that we know how to honor such men, even when they are our enemies." He turns to the lords of his council who have followed him here and who are blood-splattered from joining the young gentlemen of his Court in standing before the infantry of the Guides. "Spread the word throughout our Realm," he commands, "that henceforward, the sparrows are rebels in arms against the Iron Throne and are to be suppressed by every means necessary. We denounce and attaint them, and name them outlaws, under penalty of death wherever found. This we declare, Aegon the Sixth of House Targaryen, King in Westeros."
His lords bow low.
Author's note: So yeah, that happened. Basically, the High Septon tried to overawe Aegon into knuckling under, failed, and got placed on the spot when Aegon told him to disperse the sparrows on pain of their being declared in rebellion. Backed into a corner, the High Septon decides he has no choice but to employ the Faith's nuclear option and excommunicates Aegon. Aegon, naturally, responds by crushing the sparrows in King's Landing like so many eggshells and executes the High Septon for being the arch-rebel that he essentially is. Now it's open season on the sparrows and Aegon can turn his attention to whatever is going on across the Narrow Sea.
Some questions and comments to answer from the reviews.
Guest: Why thank you. The position of the banners would be a point of contention if it weren't randomized within each bloc. The only real distinction is that the lords paramount get the largest ones.
Marcus Galen Sands: The High Septon wasn't given the chance to be canny. Ideally, he would have spun this arc out for at least another month or two (for reasons that shall become clear later), but Aegon forced his hand. He was hoping that the public excommunication would either break Aegon's resolve or else shake Aegon's control over his army. On the one hand, he underestimated the strength of military discipline and how deeply the sparrows were hated in King's Landing. On the other hand, he failed to ask himself one question; "What does Aegon Targaryen look like? Does he look like a bitch?"
Naruto9tail: Good things come to those who wait. Currently, I have no plans to introduce the White Walkers into the story, largely because magic is still dormant ITTL. The dragons are still officially extinct, for one thing (there are some sightings around Valyria-that-was, but until someone sends a major expedition to Valyria that returns alive and sane, Valyria-that-was will be that area on the map marked Here be Monsters, along with Sothoryos).
Guest: The Most Devout weren't given a choice in the matter. The High Septon's been running the Faith in King's Landing basically by fiat since he was elected, courtesy of several thousand armed followers. The Most Devout aren't that used to situations calling for moral courage, being senior management in an essentially self-running business, and so they caved early.
Guest: Wait and see, my friend. Wait and see.
Thanks again for all the reviews and stay tuned! Cheers, all!