Following Ser Jaime's defense of Irons' Ford, the war settled into the 'turtle war' pattern first exhibited in the First Slave War. The Army of Tyrosh rebuilt to its former strength within two sennights, but two things prevented it from retaking the offensive. In the first place, the same obstacles that militated against the Myrish forcing a crossing were mirrored against the Tyroshi; the depth of the river, the unsuitable footing of one of the nearby fords and the easy defensibility of the other, and the easy defensibility of the bridge of Dubris all made a forced crossing of Turtle River almost impossible without heavy casualties and unacceptably high vulnerability to a rapid counter-attack.
In the second place, the morale advantage had swung decidedly in favor of the Royal Army of Myr. Despite the influx of reinforcements, the survivors of the Battle of Solva were not eager to try conclusions against the Iron Legion a second time. A few of the letters that the soldiers wrote in this period have survived and they are universally both downcast about the battle's result and pessimistic about the likelihood of future victory. This might have been less of a problem if their commander had been a man of robust leadership in all military affairs, but for all his battlefield vigor Naharis seems to have preferred a hands-off style of managing the morale of his men. Moreover, Naharis seems to have lost confidence in the ability of his army to win a battle. One of the few documents surviving from the archives of the Tyroshi government of this period is a letter that Naharis drafted in reply to an order-in-council from the Archon to resume the offensive; it is a very laundry list of reasons why such an offensive was impossible, concluding with an assertion that to take the army south of Turtle River would expose it to complete destruction and lay all of Tyrosh's mainland possessions bare to the Iron Legion.
Faced with such an impasse, and alerted to the mobilization of the royal fleet of King Stannis, the Archon and his council faced a difficult decision which, to their credit, they did not shy away from . . .
- Red Waves: The Slave Wars at Sea by Enriquos Feori, published 1050 AC
Councillor Andros Stallar sat heavily in his favorite chair, the one just by the fireplace in his study. It had been a long and draining day for the Archon's Council, with their latest debate. Especially for him, as if his advice had been heeded it would have been unnecessary. "I tried to warn them," he told his wife Doraena. "Gods all witness, I tried to warn them that Baratheon was not to be trifled with, but the fools wouldn't listen. And now look where we are."
Doraena poured a cup of wine from the decanter on the sideboard and pushed it into his hand as she sat on the footstool just in front of the chair. "You did all you could before the Archon decided the matter," she said soothingly. "Could you have stood against him after he made his speech?"
Andros shook his head. "He swayed too many of the doubters," he replied. "One voice raised in opposition would only have been shouted down. And been removed from the council, like enough, in favor of a more supportive one." Theoretically the councilors of the Archon were elected from among their peers for a single six-year term, but unless they incurred the Archon's displeasure or made too many enemies, councilors tended to be re-elected with only a minimum of bother. On the other hand, if they did make too many enemies, or go against the Archon too forcefully too many times, those elections could all too easily swing the other way. Assuming that your enemies didn't manufacture charges of corruption or somesuch that would land you in exile, if not a cell in the Bleeding Tower. It was a known stratagem.
"At least they accepted my proposal," he went on. "After talking about it for eight hours on end." Talking was a somewhat misleading way to describe the day's discussions, of course, but Andros made a policy of minimizing the disturbances of the day when he was at home. It was one of the reasons his private life was so peaceful, as opposed to some of the difficulties that his fellow councilors found themselves in with their wives.
Doraena raised an eyebrow. "They accepted your proposal for a truce, then?" she asked.
Andros nodded. "They made some changes," he allowed. "But the terms we are offering the Andals are essentially the terms I drafted, minus one or two they deemed too objectionable." He smiled mirthlessly. "Even Varoros voted for it in the end."
"Varoros voted to open negotiations?" Doraena asked incredulously. "But his speech just yesterday . . ."
"Bravado, if well-spoken bravado," Andros said. "He can read the strategic situation as well as any of us." With the Iron Legion firmly ensconced in Alalia, Naharis desperately holding the line of the Turtle River and bawling for reinforcements, slave revolts sputtering fitfully across the length and breadth of the mainland, and the Lyseni either unwilling or unable to fulfill their commitment to dispatch an army into south-eastern Myr, it had suddenly become vital to seek as much of a peace as they could get. Even if they had to give up a few concessions, it was better to lose some now and have a decent chance of holding the rest, than bet everything and lose.
Especially since it was reported that the lord of Estermont was riding with King Robert's army. It was reported that there was division between the Baratheon brothers, something to do with a certain Andal priest or somesuch, but who better to patch up such a breach than their mutually beloved grandfather? And if the report was true that he had joined Robert's charge at Solva, which Andros was fully willing to believe given the Andal predilection for such madness, then it was possible that such a rapprochement had already been effected.
"I see," Doraena said, nodding. After a moment of silence her mouth quirked into a half-smile. "Innos will be disappointed," she said, referring to their twenty-year-old second son who had enrolled as a crossbowman in defiance of his father. "His company hasn't been ordered to move to the mainland yet."
Andros shrugged. "At least he'll be alive to be disappointed," he said. "Until the war begins again. As it will, unless we take steps toward a permanent accommodation with the Andals, which we won't." Especially since any such accommodation would require the abolition of slavery in Tyroshi territory, which would be intolerable to the magisters whose estates depended on slave labor to till their fields and work their mines. He shook his head. "If only the Lyseni would send in their army. If they attacked Myr now, while their army is pinned around Alalia, then we would have a chance to destroy the Andals for good and all. Even if they only have half as many Unsullied as they would like."
"They've sent us their fleet, at least," Doraena reminded him.
"Which does nothing to help us destroy their army," Andros replied, "and mark me, wife, we will have no peace in these lands while the Iron Legion exists." There was a reason that, by Tyroshi law, no slave was permitted to own, use, or be trained to use weapons, even if they had been manumitted after long years of loyal servitude. No one was foolish enough to think that their slaves loved them, for all that slaves cooked their food, cared for their children, and warmed their beds. Let a slave once take a weapon in his hand, the wisdom went, and only the gods knew what he would do with it before the end.
XXX
The manse of the Prefect of the East was one of the three largest buildings in Alalia outside the municipal granary and the Temple of Trade, not out of any particular sense of grandeur but because it had housed the Prefect, his family, and the entirety of his staff, from clerks to bodyguards to advocates. This had made it the natural choice for Robert to establish a command post in until the campaign moved on. Which was why Donesso Hestaar, special envoy of the Archon of Tyrosh, was standing in the room that had previously served the Prefect of the East as a courtroom to deliver the Archon's message to King Robert of Myr and the captains of his army.
As Hestaar rerolled the parchment scroll from which he had read the terms that the Archon of Tyrosh offered as the basis of a truce, Robert glanced around the semi-circular table at his captains. What he saw did not give him much hope. Jaime Lannister was only barely concealing a predatory grin. Ser Brynden, by contrast, had a pensive look on his face, while Ned was scowling openly. That made Robert blink. If Ned took against the terms, then this was going to be difficult. Interestingly, Ser Akhollo Freeman had a blankly neutral expression on his face; Robert would have expected him to be spitting fury.
Robert almost wished that his grandfather was present; Lord Estermont loved to play the bluff old reprobate, but he had a sound head on his shoulders for all that. Unfortunately, he was Stannis' man, and so politely excluded from the command council thanks to the lack of an alliance.
He turned his gaze back to Hestaar, who was as defiantly cool as if Robert was the one offering him terms and not the other way around, and raised a finger. "Ser Dafyn," he said to the knight standing behind his chair, "escort Magister Hestaar and his retinue to their quarters. I shall give him my answer after I consult with my officers." Hestaar's lips tightened almost imperceptibly at being snubbed so, but his bow was no less graceful and his gait no less assured as he swept out of the room.
No sooner had the door swung to behind the magister than Jaime slapped the table with a sharp crack. "By the gods, we've got them!" he crowed, his smile fierce. "We can win this whole war with one more push!"
"Perhaps," Ser Brynden interjected, "but why would we want to? They're already handing us a victory, without one more drop of blood needed."
"They wouldn't be offering terms if they still had the strength to fight," Jaime shot back. "I saw it on the Turtle River and I saw it again here; Tyrosh is on its last legs. Your Grace," he turned to face Robert, "let me take the forces along the river and attack across the bridge at Dubris, or at Irons' Ford. If I do not drive the Tyroshi into the sea by the end of this campaign season, then break my spurs and consign me to the infantry."
"And even if you succeed, what will you feed those forces with?" Ser Brynden said, heat creeping into his voice. "We are on the end of a supply chain forty miles long or more, one that can be cut at almost any point along that length by anyone with a light cavalry banda and half the usual ration of ballocks. We have,right now, four and a half days of food for the army and not a crust more until the next convoy comes through three days from now. We have something on the order of twenty thousand new subjects to feed and house and resettle, which will cut our margin for error as regards supplies to the bone. And if Naharis has left so much as a crumb within three day's march of the north bank of the Turtle River, then I'll eat my boot without salt and call it a cutlet."
Ned forestalled Jaime's retort with a raised hand. "I agree that our supplies are not satisfactory at this point," he said, "but I too believe that we should reject these terms. They are so paltry as to be insulting."
Ser Brynden's jaw dropped. "They're ceding all the land between Turtle River and the Lyseni border," he said when he finally regained control of himself. "They're acknowledging their guilt over the massacre Ser Lyn found and have sent us the heads of those responsible. They're offering to pay weregild for them and give us Hestaar as a hostage against its payment. They're even offering to order their garrison commanders to refrain from burning the towns they command in the event of defeat. How in all the hells are they paltry?"
"They are not abolishing slavery," Ned said flatly. "Nor are they offering us the heads of those responsible for crushing the rebellion north of the Turtle River. Nor are they even apologizing for the deaths their commander here caused when he fired the town. This is not an offer that can lead to peace; this is an attempt to buy us off until they can cudgel their slaves back to the fields and the mines."
"There are twenty thousand of those slaves who they can no longer cudgel, because they have crossed over the river to us," Brynden snapped back. "Under the Charter, we are now responsible for them, until they can be resettled either here or in Myr. If we fight on, then we run the risk of causing a famine in these lands, for us and for them. Would you like to ride into one of their camps a few sennights hence, when the hunger's set in, and tell the mother of a starving child that we are keeping the food out of her child's mouth because we didn't accept peace when it was offered us?"
"Enough," Robert snapped, cutting Ned off even as he opened his mouth to roar at the Blackfish. "Ser Akhollo, what say you to these terms?"
Akhollo tapped his fingers on the table, taking a long second to marshal his thoughts. "I agree that these terms should be rejected, if for different reasons," he said slowly. "The only peace I would have with the slavers is the peace of the grave. But Ser Brynden is right that we should not cause our people to starve, willingly or not. They are ours, now, and we must care for them as our own. If we do not, then we are no better than the masters. As to any question of strategy," he shrugged, "when I hunt a new prey, I seek advice from a man who has hunted it before. After taking that advice I would be a fool not to heed it. It is the same in war, I have found, since I joined you after Pentos."
"Then hear this advice," Jaime said, leaning forward. "We have the Tyroshi by the balls. If we press forward now, we can drive them into the sea and drown them like the curs they are."
"And their fleet with them, with all their marines?" Brynden asked. "And all this with the Lyseni still in the fight? Lord Buckler beat back their raid, aye, but who is to say they might not return with an army? Or, worse yet, send that army against us here, and catch us between the hammer of their army and the anvil of the Tyroshi along Turtle River?"
Ned snapped his fingers. "That, for the Lyseni," he said flatly. "They're brothel-keepers, not soldiers."
"Then why isn't Lyn Corbray here, instead of watching the Lyseni border with half our army?" Brynden demanded. "If the Lyseni are worthless, then surely he's wasting his time when we need his counsel here."
Robert raised a hand, stifling further argument. "Your council is welcome, friends," he said, using his "war-king voice" as Alaesa had called it and suppressing a stab of pain at the thought of her. "But after hearing your council the decision is mine. And I agree with Ser Brynden that we should accept the truce, if only to feed our new people. That said," he turned to Jaime and Ned, who were looking at him with faces made blank by shock, "I note that the truce is only offered under the Archon's signature. The Lyseni are not covered by its terms. And there is a debt there that I would see repaid with interest."
Ned opened his mouth, shut it with a frown, and then nodded. "I will take my household to the border and command the attack myself."
"Make it a raid only, Ned," Robert said. "Pillage and burn how you like, sack any towns you can take without undue losses, but don't let yourself get drawn into a pitched battle unless it can't be avoided. Make the Lyseni howl enough to make their conclave either fight or offer terms."
Ned's face could have been carved from Northern granite. "Howl be damned," he snarled. "I'll make the Lyseni scream loud enough for the dragons to hear them in Volantis."
XXX
Before the Slave Wars, the isle of Tarth had been a backwater. Its lands were more beautiful than rich, it didn't produce anything that couldn't be had elsewhere, and its lords tended to a certain introspection that probably stemmed from the fact that Tarth was usually self-sufficient if the harvest was any sort of good. What it did have was a series of natural harbors along its western coast that the island's bulk protected from the storms that the westerlies blew into Shipbreaker Bay and the coast of the Narrow Sea, combined with a lord who was even-tempered, amiable, and fiercely if quietly loyal to his king. It was for this reason that the Storm Kings of old had based their fleets on Tarth before the Conquest. It was also for this reason that the Braavosi ships pledged to enforce the terms of the Peace of Pentos had relocated to Tarth from windswept Estermont, and why Stannis had ordered the joint fleet to assemble there.
It had come to the attention of the Iron Throne and the Sealord, Stannis had announced in the great hall of the Red Keep with the Braavosi consul only two steps below the Throne, that Tyrosh had broken the terms of the Peace of Pentos, both by murdering Myrish subjects on Myrish soil, as had been sensationally reported, and by unilaterally closing the Sea of Myrth to trade. Therefore, the Seven Kingdoms and the Commune of Braavos had resolved to restore the Peace, punish the breach of its conditions, and secure fitting compensation for the loss inflicted on the Kingdom of Myr. Hence the fleet that had been ordered to assemble on the isle of Tarth, one hundred galleys of the royal fleet of Westeros and thirty-five galleys of the Braavosi fleet under the joint command of Lord Paxter Redwyne and Commander Marquos Dandalo, with a mandate to destroy the Tyroshi fleet and besiege the isle of Tyrosh.
It was, Stannis reflected as he looked down on the principal harbor of Tarth below Evenfall Hall, potentially unwise of him to join the fleet himself, especially without taking command, but it needed to be done. He had made a good start on a martial reputation with the crushing of the Red Viper Rebellion, but his subjects, especially the martial nobility, expected their king to be the foremost knight of the realm as much as anything. His roads and public works, and the alliance with the Braavosi and the boom in trade it had engendered, would not endear him to his nobles half as much as a successful campaign. That being said, he knew very little about how to command a fleet in battle, while Lord Redwyne had first made his name hunting pirates and rogue Ironborn before ascending to the lordship of the Arbor. It had taken some argument, but eventually even Jon Arryn had accepted the wisdom of him ceding command to the more experienced sea captain.
A discreet cough made him turn around to find Lord Selwyn Tarth standing just beyond Lord Commander Penrose. At his raised eyebrow Selwyn bowed shortly, although his long-limbed and slender frame made it look as graceful as a full courtly reverence. "Your Grace," he said in his soft voice, "my steward tells me that supper shall be ready shortly."
Stannis nodded. "Then by all means, let us not keep our people waiting for us," he said, stepping away from the promontory where he had been surveying the harbor. As he walked back towards the castle with Selwyn at his left hand, he felt more than saw Ser Cortnay fall in on his right side as the four other members of the Stormguard on duty today resumed their positions around him. Two dozen Stormguards had followed him onto the great galleyFury, the royal fleet's flagship, and if Ser Cortnay had had his way at least half of them would have been on duty, but Stannis had worn him down to four by patiently restating the fact that Tarth was loyal to him not just as King but as Lord Paramount of the Stormlands until Renly came of age. Going about with a dozen fully-armored knights surrounding him would be a mild way of calling that loyalty into question, but an insult was an insult no matter how mild. Lord Tarth had done nothing to deserve such, and Stannis had long since made up his mind not to tread on the hem of any man's honor unless he deserved it.
"Will your daughter be joining us for supper, my lord?" he asked stiltedly; he had never been one for casual conversation, but it was expected in this sort of situation. Thankfully Ser Cortnay had given him some advice on how to go about it.
Selwyn nodded. "She promised to make an extra effort to act in a becoming fashion, in return for being allowed to watch Your Grace's knights at exercise," he replied. He sighed slightly. "She's a good girl, Your Grace, but I must confess that I can't understand her infatuation with arms. Just the day before you arrived, I caught her asking one of my men-at-arms to show her how to hold a dagger. When I asked her why she wanted to learn such things she said it was so she could fight if the slavers ever came." He shook his head. "There are days, Your Grace, when I dread trying to find her a husband. Given . . . well, everything."
Stannis nodded. Brienne was only six but she was already as tall as a boy of eight or nine would be, and judging by the size of her hands and ears she was going to grow even taller. She was also painfully plain-faced and had a habit of forthrightness that might be considered precocious in a child but would be unattractive in a young woman. "If the gods and fortune are good, then they will provide," he said, trying to inject a comforting tone into his voice. After a moment's hesitation he went on. "And if they do not, then I would advise you not to try and force a square peg into a round hole. It may fit, but it won't fit well and it won't hold half as well as it would in a hole of the proper shape."
Selwyn glanced at him. "You would have me encourage her interest, Your Grace?" he asked, plainly somewhat befuddled.
Stannis shrugged. "In time my daughter will need a sworn shield of her own," he observed, hiding the flash of emotion that went through him at the thought of little Joanna. "It would be as well if she had one who would understand things that men would not, and could follow her into places that men could not."
Selwyn's eyes widened, then narrowed. "There is precedent, even," he said after a long moment of consideration. "Jonquil Darke and Queen Alysanne."
"Among others, back through the centuries," Stannis agreed. "It would ease my mind greatly if my daughter's nearest guard were the child of one of my most trusted bannermen."
Selwyn visibly inflated at the compliment, making Stannis sigh slightly to himself. Flattery, he was beginning to accept, was a necessary part of kingship, but he had thought Selwyn too discerning to fall for it. If he had to judge such a thing dispassionately, the list of his most trusted bannermen would start with the Penroses and then go down the roster of his New Nobles. The Tarths of Tarth would be a long way down that scale, if only by comparison. Really, he asked himself as he and Selwyn walked up to the gates of Tarth and the men-at-arms stiffened at their passing, was it too much to ask for people to think logically?
The Peace of Alalia, whereby Tyrosh ceded that town and all the lands between Turtle River and the Lyseni border to the Kingdom of Myr, was signed the day after Hestaar met with Robert and his officers. Two days afterward, while dispatch riders were fanning out across the newly ceded territory bearing news of the peace and a special delegation was bearing news of the Kingdom of Myr's acceptance to the Archon, Eddard Stark and Lyn Corbray led their troops over the Lyseni border in a two-pronged and highly destructive raid. This offensive, which sparked a general slave uprising in Lys' northern territories, forced the Lyseni to sue for peace in only twenty days. Lys was able to retain all its territories, but the emigration of the slaves in those territories northward to the Kingdom of Myr meant that those territories were temporarily rendered almost useless to the Lyseni exchequer.
The question of what might have happened if Robert had known of Stannis' impending offensive is, in the editor's opinion, a moot point. The messenger ravens that the Seven Kingdoms and the Kingdom of Myr relied upon for long-distance, high-speed communication could not cross the Narrow Sea, and even the fastest dispatch galley then in Westerosi service would have been hard put to outrace the Tyroshi (or Tyroshi-contracted) ship that almost certainly set sail from King's Landing as soon as Stannis declared war. The fact that the Tyroshi were operating on interior lines as opposed to their enemies gave them an invaluable edge in speed of communications.
Moreover, the Kingdom of Myr needed peace almost as badly as the Tyroshi did. With the acquisition of Alalia, a relatively narrow salient had been pushed in between Tyroshi and Lyseni territory, one that was largely devastated by both the movements of the opposing armies and the servile rebellion sparked by the Battle of Solva. The destruction of farms and the disruption of the food-transport network caused by the armies' commandeering of wheeled vehicles came within a hairs-breadth of causing a general famine in the newly acquired lands; the raid into Lyseni territory was undertaken not just to bring them to the negotiating table but also to allow at least a portion of the Royal Army to live off of enemy lands and allow the food that Ser Brynden Tully was shipping into the newly conquered lands to go to the former slaves.
The restoration of peace on land, however, would have grave consequences on the seas . . .
- excerpted from the Historical Note from the end of Flash for the Faith!
