First there came the outriders, the scouts and raiders of the Royal Army of Myr. They were a varied crew, a mixture of freeriders who couldn't afford the weight of armor necessary to serve as a knight, renegade Dornish who had made the Principality too hot to hold them with the King's Hounds enforcing the law, and herdsmen from across the Seven Kingdoms who had been drawn by the prospect of a life that wasn't spent eternally looking at the south end of a north-bound cow, as the saying went. Some of them, primarily the Dornish, carried horsebows, but more commonly they carried longbows or crossbows that they dismounted to fire, and for hand weapons they carried spears, axes, and swords. Their defensive armament consisted of padded jacks and light ring-mail shirts for the most part, while a few carried small round shields. The cloth badges they wore stitched onto the breasts of their jacks and mail shirts mostly depicted the arms of Lord Lyn Corbray, a single raven perched on the hilt of a longsword, for the Lord Lieutenant of Sirmium was the man most responsible for the development of the light cavalry of the Royal Army, due to the need for a force to patrol the border that was more mobile than a heavy cavalry squadron.
After the outriders passed, warily scanning the horizon, there came the vanguard. These were the companies that were based in and around the town of Sirmium, marching under Lord Corbray's colors and the golden lion on scarlet of his chief lieutenant in addition to the spear and broken chain of the Legion and the sunset sky and impaled dragon's head that was the war-banner of the Kingdom of Myr. As they were in enemy territory, they marched in full armor, with the knights and men-at-arms of the cavalry companies wearing all but their helmets and the squires leading the already-barded destriers on short reins. In the event of an attack that had slipped by the outriders or, more likely, an outrider galloping back to alert them of an impending attack, it wouldn't take more than a minute for the knights to don their helmets and remount onto their destriers. And while they did so they would be shielded from a sudden onset, for the cavalry marched within a protective shell of infantry like a three-sided rectangle, one company leading in line and the other two on the flanks in column. Alongside the infantry and cavalry there marched the Corps of Pioneers in their leather aprons with their tools sloped over their shoulders and their carts of lumber and rope lumbering along behind them, ready to bridge, straighten, level, or fell any territorial impediment to the army's advance.
Immediately behind them came the main body of the army, the companies drawn from Myr city, its environs, and the heartland of the kingdom between the coast and the borders. The most prominent banner here, aside from the great war-banner, was the crowned stag of the king, but it was hardly alone. Just beside it there flew the running direwolf of the King's Fist, the black salmon of the Master of Soldiers, and dozens of other banners announcing the presence of a full third of the nobility and chivalry of the Kingdom of Myr. Here, too, the cavalry marched in the center of a cordon of infantry, ready at any moment to turn and face an attack. The army trusted its outriders, who were deployed on their flanks as well as ahead of them, but Ser Brynden Tully had hammered on the need to exercise reasonable caution and King Robert had agreed with him. It might be embarrassing to act as if they were afraid of the enemy, he had pointed out to some of his more belligerent nobles, but it would be even more embarrassing to die because they had walked into an ambush that any fool could have spotted if they had taken proper precautions.
Immediately behind the main body came the baggage train, two hundred heavy wains and almost exactly twice that number of lighter carts loaded with all the needs of an army. These were followed by a herd of cattle, sheep, and other beasts that had been driven off of Tyroshi estates since crossing the border, meat on the hoof to supplement the rough flatbread, pottage, and hard cheese that were a soldier's typical fare. The carters and drovers responsible for the baggage train were also armed, in order to fight off any attempt to steal or destroy the army's supplies, and also to mark them as being part of the army, and due the respect that was the right of every soldier of the Royal Army.
Wherever they passed they brought destruction. The outriders were the most guilty of deliberate devastation, for among their orders was the pillage of the great estates of the Tyroshi elite, the which task they carried out with savage glee. Every great house they came across was stormed, ransacked, and burned, often enough with the owners still in it, either dead or alive. The slaves who had worked the estate were unchained and given an escort back towards the army, where they were drafted into either the Pioneers or the baggage train, unless they were taken on as a general servant-recruit by one of the companies. Bridges and culverts along the line of march were zealously guarded, but those that weren't were torn down or burned in order to prevent the army being flanked. Any Tyroshi freeman caught on the road was almost invariably killed, unless they were smart enough to surrender on the spot and declare themselves wealthy enough to pay ransom.
The rest of the army was almost as bad. Twelve thousand men, almost five times as many animals, and six hundred wheeled vehicles would damage almost any surface they marched on, and while the roads of the Disputed Lands were relatively well-established, they were not the nigh-impervious dragonroads of Old Valyria. Where the army marched the land was alternately pounded flat by tramping boots and torn up by clopping hooves, so that the ground was almost mutilated by their passage. If there had been rain the army would have left a quagmire in its wake, but there had been no rain for two weeks and so in place of a sea of mud the army was trailed by clouds of dust. Where the army camped all wood for almost a mile around, whether trees, fence rails, or houses and barns, went for the legion of fires that twelve thousand men required to do their nightly cooking. What the army didn't trample down or consume, the baggage train did, especially at night when the drovers herded their beasts off the road to graze.
This trail of destruction zig-zagged across the Tyroshi borderland for almost a hundred miles in the opening sennights of the war, mirrored almost exactly in parallel a few miles opposite, for the Royal Army of Myr and the Army of Tyrosh were maneuvering to try and gain a position of advantage over each other. King Robert Baratheon of Myr sought a place where he could trap the Tyroshi army and destroy it, while Captain-General Daario Naharis of Tyrosh sought to force the Myrish army to attack him in a place where he could use the terrain to nullify the Myrish advantage in cavalry. As a by-product of these opposing strategies almost a thousand Tyroshi citizens were killed and hundreds more rendered destitute as the borderlands were devastated for the second time in almost as many years. Many of those who had gambled on improving their fortunes by commandeering a destroyed estate and rebuilding it as their own saw their dreams of riches quite literally go up in smoke as the armies stalked each other. Even those that didn't lose homes and lives saw their fortunes plummet as their slaves seized the opportunity provided by the chaos and ran for the border or the Myrish army, depending on which they thought was closer. On two estates the slaves outright revolted on hearing of the Royal Army's proximity and their masters' plans to flee to the interior. Both of these revolts were successful, but only narrowly and bloodily, with almost twice as many slaves being killed or wounded as masters, guards, and overseers, for the Tyroshi had learned from the Great Raid that servile insurrection could not be met with any countermeasure but swift and overwhelming violence, and the slaves knew that to lose was to die.
But for all the tumult, the armies only fought each other through their outriders. A proper battle, where the fate of the borderlands would be settled, continued to evade both armies, much to the consternation of the men commanding them.
XXX
The captains of the Royal Army of Myr sat around the table in various degrees of disgruntlement. They weren't used to being denied their prey, and the way in which the Tyroshi army had fended them off over the past sennight put them in a sour mood. Especially since a round of debate lively enough to put even the veteran squires serving them on edge had established that their lack of good fortune was no one's fault; apparently, the Tyroshi were just that good at outfoxing them. And so far, none of them had been able to come up with an idea to change the situation.
"We're looking at the problem backwards," Robert said suddenly, making everyone glance at him in sudden attention. "We've been trying to fight the Tyroshi army, but we don't need to."
Akhollo frowned. "Doesn't fighting a war usually involve fighting an enemy army?" he asked skeptically.
"Not when you consider our goals and circumstances as opposed to the Tyroshi's," Robert replied. "We're fighting this war to conquer Tyrosh and free its slaves, or as much of it and as many of them as we can before the Braavosi call us to heel." There was a round of sour chuckles around the table. For all that Braavos was the Kingdom of Myr's closest ally, there were still sore feelings against them for the part they had played in crafting the Peace of Pentos and its insulting terms. "The Tyroshi, on the other hand, are fighting this war in order to keep us out of their territory and keep their slaves," Robert went on. "And we got over the border first. That being so, in order for us to obtain our goals, all we need to do is march into the Tyroshi interior and start taking towns. The Tyroshi, though, need to face us in battle and defeat us in order to achieve their goals."
Ser Brynden frowned. "In that case, they should be maneuvering much more aggressively than they have been," he said. "Instead of us trying to trap them, they should be trying to trap us. But they've been content to let us chase them hither and yon, keeping one step ahead of us the while. If they need to fight and defeat us, then they should be trying to catch us in a situation where we'd have to fight at a disadvantage."
"Unless whoever's commanding them isn't confident of victory," Eddard mused, drumming his fingertips on the table. "Who is commanding the Tyroshi?"
Ser Brynden flipped through his papers for a moment. "One Daario Naharis," he said, finding the correct report, "Tyroshi-born, but a sellsword all his adult life. Former lieutenant in the Stormcrows, fought at Tara, led the remnant of the Stormcrows out of Myrish service after that battle, entered Tyroshi service about a month before the Peace of Pentos, according to Ser Gerion's sources." He frowned. "If he fought at Tara with the Stormcrows, that might explain why he's being so damned cagy. From what I've heard, your horsemen handled them pretty roughly, Ned."
Lyn leaned forward in his chair, lowering his hands from where he had steepled them in front of his face. "If we need to march into the Tyroshi interior and take towns," he said, "then let us start with Alalia. It's the hub of the Tyroshi lands' south-eastern district, and it sits astride the crossroads of the main north-south and east-west roads in this quarter of the Disputed Lands. If we take Alalia then we can dominate the whole countryside hereabouts." A quick stroke of Lyn's finger on the map laid out on the table indicated a rough right triangle ten miles along the height formed by the Myrish border and thirty-five miles along the base formed by the Lyseni border, with the long side formed by the Turtle River, a broad but shallow and slow-flowing stream that ran roughly northeast from the Whitestone Hills to empty into the Sea of Myrth about five miles over the Myrish border.
"Agreed," Akhollo said, leaning forward himself. "From what the new freedmen tell us, that area is well watered by Turtle River and its vassal streams; the estates there are very fertile, in crops and livestock both. And they have many slaves as a result." He grinned savagely. "And also much wealth in Alalia, from the petty magisters who cannot afford to live on Tyrosh isle except for a small part of the year, and the factors who deal in the produce of the estates." The captains all nodded. The destruction of slavery was a fine and worthy goal, but insofar as the business of the kingdom was concerned, Akhollo had just listed the most attractive fruits of any war. Thousands of new subjects, fertile and productive land to support them, a rich town to stimulate commerce, and a fair bit of ready cash to reward the army for its service and sacrifices.
Robert nodded. "So starting tomorrow we'll stop this feinting and march straight for Alalia," he said, drawing his finger across the map, "and we'll dare this Daario Naharis to stop us. If he stands and fights, well and good. If not, then we'll storm Alalia and make him look like a coward who won't use the army the Archon's given him."
XXX
Daario glared at the scrap of parchment that the scout's report was written on and manfully resisted the urge to tear it to bits, or ball it up and throw it away. The Myrish, it seemed, had lost patience with maneuvering and were tromping down the road towards Alalia. The force he had set to watch the bridge at Pipe Creek had been brushed aside by Lyn Corbray and Jaime Lannister's outriders, and by now the Myrish would have almost all their force across Pipe Creek.
He transferred his glare from the parchment to the western horizon, thinking furiously. Alalia wasn't strategically critical, in the grand scheme of things; it's loss and that of the farms and mines in its hinterland would be a blow, but a survivable one, in that it wouldn't cause the city to starve or go bankrupt. Politically, however, the loss of Alalia would be intolerable. Quite a few of the Archon's council had estates around Alalia, and Daario could already hear their howls of outrage at the loss of productive estates and valuable slaves. In the broader population the outrage would be that the barbarian Andals and their rogue slaves had gotten so far into the Tyroshi heartland and wrought their outrages on Tyroshi citizens.
If Alalia fell without a fight, then there would be questions asked about why the upjumped sellsword, who had been given command over more deserving men by a perhaps-too-indulgent Archon, had not fought to prevent the sacred soil of Tyrosh from falling into the hands of the barbarians and their renegade bondsmen. Questions that could all to easily become sharp, hot, or heavy, if not a combination of the three. Daario might have regained his Tyroshi citizenship after rejoining the city's service and so was theoretically legally protected from torture, but citizenship could be revoked as a punishment for treason. And you could easily make a case that refusing to fight for a major town constituted treason; he could hear Varoros framing the argument already. The Archon might be his patron, but at the end of the day, the Archon always held his position at the pleasure of the conclave, which could be called for a special session to debate and vote on a motion of no confidence on the recommendation of a majority of the Archon's council. Daario wasn't willing to trust his personal, precious, and irreplaceable neck to the strength of the Archon's political position, especially since, as the man's client, his fortunes reflected on the Archon.
Daario stuffed the parchment into his belt purse and sent his manservant to summon his officers. He had an army to turn around.
King Robert's turn towards Alalia, risky as it was in that it exposed the Royal Army's flank to the Tyroshi, was a calculated risk; Robert was gambling that his army's superior march discipline would allow them to outrun the Tyroshi until they came to a suitable battlefield. Four days after executing the turn, and twenty-three days after crossing the border, that battlefield came to hand . . .
- Freedom or Death: An Overview of the Slave Wars by Maester Julian, published 2182 AC