The following is an excerpt from Flash for the Faith!
You need an uncommonly detailed map to find Solva these days, mostly because it doesn't exist anymore; the Myrish outriders burnt it out and those that survived decided to try their luck elsewhere. It was a little village about four days ride from Alalia that had sprung up because it lay where the main east-west road through the Tyroshi interior crossed Hatchet Stream and it was a convenient day's ride to the two nearest plantations. It's always the small, unknown places that seem to attract great battles, though; Tara was a sleepy country estate, Narrow Run a magister's playground, and the Battle of the Greenblood took place along a deserted stretch of the high road along the river. I don't know if its fate, the gods, or the imp of the perverse, but whatever it was, it put both the Royal Army of Myr and the Army of Tyrosh at Solva at the same time, and that's as good a way to start a battle as any.
The land around Solva was primarily pastureland, thanks to the demand for the village to supply meat to the nearby plantations, to its inns, and to Alalia, and it was divided into great lots by hedgerows much like the ones in the Crownlands. One of these lots, lying just across the road to the north of Solva with the bridge at its southwest corner, had been turned into an improvised fortress by the Pioneers, who had spent the past day and half the night chopping down some of the foliage along the north and east-facing hedgerows and weaving it into the rest to form makeshift barriers. The south-facing hedgerow had been mostly cleared of vegetation and two channels twenty feet wide hacked through the bank to allow for wheeled vehicles to pass through. A regular little castle it was, if you had infantry to hold it with, and in the Iron Legion the Royal Army had the best infantry in the world at that time.
The Army of Tyrosh had come down out of the northeast and spent the night opposite us, about a mile distant. Most of them, about ten thousand, were spear-and-crossbow militia, Tyroshi citizens who were ordinarily yeoman farmers or urban tradesmen. The other fifteen hundred were sellsword cavalry, the Ragged Standard, the Bright Banners, and the Second Sons. It was certainly respectable, as armies went; the militia weren't a patch on the Iron Legion but they would fight bravely enough for their homes and their families, and the sellswords would fight because that was what they were paid to do. And the man commanding them, Daario Naharis, was a clever sod of a sellsword who knew his business, and also knew that he didn't dare let us get to Alalia without fighting for it. If they let us any deeper into the Tyroshi interior the slave revolt would make the one in Myr look like a harvest festival, and that and the army's devastations would tear the guts out of Tyrosh's economy.
So when Robert, cool as willie-be-damned, started sending his baggage train across Hatchet Stream, Naharis threw the lever and went at him like a lightning bolt. I don't mind telling you that it was more than a little unnerving seeing almost twelve thousand men coming at us with murderous intent, but then the skinpipers that Maege Mormont had brought across the sea with her struck up that hideous droning wail and Ned Stark led the Iron Legion to their positions and I began to feel much better. After all, I was on the Legion's side, and for the first several minutes of the battle my optimism seemed justified enough as the Legion met the Tyroshi militia at the hedgerows and cut them up something dreadful. I'm told that Septon Jonothor was right there with them, tramping up and down the line with an iron-bound staff in one hand and shouting quotes from the Seven-Pointed Star with the other septons while the red priests did the same thing with their own scriptures. Having met the man, I wouldn't be surprised; I don't know what it is about god-botherers that makes them so careless of their own lives and so convinced that they're doing the right thing, but whatever it is Jonothor had enough of it for five men. No wonder he caused so much trouble. I was just thinking that things seemed well in hand when I looked out towards the right and I felt my heart go into my throat.
Naharis had put all fifteen hundred of his cavalry on that flank and it was coming down the road like water down a pipe. If they managed to get all the way down that road to the bridge, then two things would happen. One, the sellswords would be able to cut off and swallow the supply wagons that had already gotten across Hatchet Stream, which would be bad enough. Two, they would be able to swarm over the southern face of the Royal Army's position and break it open from the inside. Especially since the only uncommitted forces in the lot were the hundred lances of Robert's bodyguard; the rest of our cavalry had ridden off in the night and was nowhere to be seen. And three to one, or so I thought, was poor odds for anybody, even men that Ser Brynden Tully and Eddard Stark had taken a personal hand in training.
Well, I was punished for thinking that things were about to go to shit, because on top of being a bonny fighter Robert had a useful head on his shoulders, and in the Blackfish and the Iron Wolf he had two of the canniest generals of the day. No sooner had the sellsword cavalry gotten within a hundred yards of the east-facing hedgerow than a horn sounded and out from a sunken road between two lots just east of Solva came the Royal Army's cavalry, Jaime Lannister and four hundred knights and squires that barged into the flank of that charge and turned them from a wave of oncoming destruction into a chaotic mess of falling riders and struggling beasts with the knights plunging further in to complete the overthrow while the valets, archers, and pages moved in on foot to establish a position.
It was the neatest flank attack I ever saw and ever hope to see; the knights of the Royal Orders couldn't have done it better and I saw them try. Within a minute the melee was starting to collapse as sellswords streamed away in flight, while the horns blew wildly to reform and next to me Lord Estermont was standing in his stirrups bellowing triumphantly. "That's the way, boys!" was one of the more restrained things he said. "By the gods, that's the way! That's how you fix their hash!" A little way over Robert himself was also standing in the stirrups roaring approbation, with the knights of his bodyguard hammering gauntlets against breastplates in applause, and then Robert was shouting orders and the horns were blowing again and Robert was leading his bodyguard out through one of the lanes cut into the bank. That set Lord Estermont off good and proper. "There he goes!" he roared. "Out to finish them off, by the gods! That's the way to do it!" He hesitated for only a moment before throwing caution to the winds entirely. "Guy, my lance! Lances ready sers, we're going with them!"
My initial thought was that I'd misheard him, but then a lance was shoved into my fist and he and the other five men-at-arms in our party were cantering away and my horse, idiot screw that he was, was cantering after them and I realized that he was quite serious. He had no business doing it of course, we were a fact-finding mission for all love, we weren't even supposed to be anywhere near the border much less thirteen days ride over it, but that didn't matter to him. His grandson was going to fight and he would be damned if he didn't ride with him. Besides which, Robert was that kind of man; if he went somewhere you followed, even if you couldn't explain why for the life of you. I wouldn't have, for a pension, but I've got a windy streak wider than the Trident, so maybe it was just me.
Not that it mattered by that point. Backing out would be impossible, in broad daylight with everyone able to see. So instead I placed myself in the second rank as we joined Robert's guards; whoever took the brunt of the charge, it wouldn't be me if I had anything to say about it. We caught up to the cavalry just as they had straightened themselves out, placed ourselves in their center as another hundred lances joined us on the right, and then the horns blew and the charge began.
I heard afterward that the Tyroshi started to break before the charge even began and the gods know that it felt like it at first. What I didn't know until afterward was that as soon as Daario Naharis saw his cavalry collapse, he had given the order to retreat. Quite rightly, in my opinion, with fifteen hundred heavy horse and mounted infantry on his left flank front ready to come down on him like a hammer on a nail and nothing to put in their way. And after an hour of bouncing off the Iron Legion the militia were ready to oblige. The Legion didn't like that above half and if they'd had their way not one of the Tyroshi militia would have escaped. But the same fortifications that had helped them handle the Tyroshi so easily kept them from pursuing; depending on who you ask it took the Pioneers anywhere between ten and twenty minutes to get to the front and dismantle the fortifications to let the Legion through. And unless you've seen a man run for his life, you really don't know how much ground he can cover in that length of time. Suffice to say that its more than you might think.
Of course, even men running for their lives are slower than cavalry and for the first several minutes we just rode over them. There's nothing in the world quite like riding down a fleeing man and swinging your sword back into his face; it's a lot like being drunk except you feel like your blood's been replaced by chain lightning. You feel invincible, almost god-like, like there's nothing in the world that can stop you. Right up until someone belts you across the face. Which is what Daario Naharis did.
How he managed it I don't know but somehow he managed to rally a few hundred of his sellswords and led them in a counter-charge that caught us about halfway through his infantry. At the time it was just a wild chaos of shouting men and screaming horses and the clangor of metal on metal, but at this remove I can see it for the neat little counter-punch it was; quickly in, bam, to throw us off our stride and into confusion, and then quickly out again, to do it again when we had sorted ourselves out. Nor was he alone in doing so. On the far side of the army a company of Myrish exiles and their in-laws refused to break and run. Instead they retired at a walk, in formation, turning back every now and then to lock horns with anyone who tried to complete the rout by breaking them. As the Blackfish put it afterwards, "Slaver bastards, perhaps, but brave men withal. They deserve a better cause."
I learned later that between that company and the cavalry Naharis had rallied, the Army of Tyrosh managed to put up a fighting retreat for almost ten miles, with Jaime Lannister and Lyn Corbray chewing away at the rearguard like bulldogs, but I didn't see all of that. My horse gave out and collapsed about four miles in and I sprained my ankle bad enough in leaping clear that all I could do was sit myself on the beast and wait for someone to collect me when the fighting was done. Thank blind idiot luck for that, too, because apparently the last few clashes were downright vicious, including one exchange where Daario came up against Jaime Lannister and only escaped by dint of killing Jaime's horse at the first opportunity. Not that I knew or cared, then; all I wanted was for my damned ankle to stop throbbing.