"Damn. That's a LOT of cavalry." Hoare said in a tone that had just a hint of worry in it.

"6 or 9000, it matters little ser, Hoare. We have had plenty of time setting up our lines for this battle. We will win."

She thought she managed to kill any hint of fear or worry as she said it.

Around them, on all sides, mounted warriors prowled about in a circle, JUST outside the range of their muskets.

There were plenty of dead men and horses on the ground though. Unfortunate riders who had underestimated the range, or been sent forward to test the waters.

Prodding for a weak spot in the formation.

There wasn't one though.

Once Daemon had gotten the second rapport, that roughly 60% of their opponent's army was composed of cavalry of both kinds, she had known exactly what formation to use.

As so, on the green fields of Tyrosh, the old Napoleonic Infantry square had been born anew.

The Golden Company had formed a massive square formation, composed of a front rank of kneeling men holding their loaded muskets ready, bit to fire, and to use as a makeshift pike against a cavalry attack.

Behind them, stood the second rank, with guns at the ready to fire a volley at the first sign of an approaching enemy, and behind them, stood the third rank, just waiting for the second rank to kneel after they had fired their volley, to fire away their own load.

That way, there would be an additional volley between the point where rank 2 had finished reloading and their next volley.

It was a mighty fortress of bayonets, guns, and steel, not to mention that most of the men wielding the muskets were also heavily armored.

And behind those lines of men, were 13 war elephants, every one of them larger than African Bush elephants, and each with 2 swivel cannons on their backs.

It was the ultimate formation against an enemy of horsemen.

Though they surrounded them on all sides, there were no spots to flank.

Of course, there was one huge problem with it.

She didn't have all that much cavalry herself.

Other than some of the knights and squires who had agreed to serve as light cavalry, equipped with minimal armor, two guns, and a sword, most of the company's cavalry had gone off with Maelys.

That meant that to make this battle truly decisive, she had to. Let her enemy come to her, rather than just sit back and let her artillery do it's work.

They had to BREAK this army and destroy any ability it had to resist them. That meant maximizing casualties as hard as she possibly could.

Which in turn, meant they had to actually wait for a large-scale attack to come before they could begin this battle in earnest.

"As you say, your grace." The man who had laid claim to the lands of Harrenhall said.

The man in charge of the war Elephant she was currently astride did not look much like any Ironborn Daemona had ever seen illustrated.

What he did look like was an actual Norse Viking, with rugged looks, straw blonde hair and beard, as well as blue eyes.

The knight claimed to be a descendant of barren the red, and through, the line of the old kings of the rivers and islands lived on.

He wasn't the only man in the company to have a supposed claim to Harrenhall, but unlike the Strongs, he was the only one who actually wanted it.

Of course, he didn't actually want the castle itself. The man had grown up in the river lands, and just like the Strongs, he understood the castle's dark reputation and curse.

No, he had been all over her idea of breaking the castle down and using the countless bricks and stones from the castle to build a new city. Near the spot where she planned to link the trident to the God's eye through a canal to be exact.

There were a lot of things she had to do for Westeros. Someone had to begin modernizing the country. Both in laws, infrastructure, governmental power, and… everything really.

Westeros was such a broken, and battered place.

It was far behind the east in pretty much anything except armor, castles, and horses. Everything had to be updated, modernized, and made better. That would be her task. It was what she had to do.

Watching the horses of the Essossi, it still astonished her just how small they were compared to the Westerosi warhorse.

The horses the golden company used were the offspring of millennia of breeding to make the biggest, strongest, most endurant warhorse known to man.

The horses of Essos were a different beast. While bigger than ponies, they were nothing compared to the monsters that modern people of earth might have access to.

No wonder cavalry had never taken off as the dominant military force amongst the free cities.

That did beg the question, why the hell were there suddenly so many riders here?

They saw what had some success against us and worked from there, she realized.

Cavalry had been the only part of their enemies that had achieved any level of success. People had noticed that.

That was to be expected. What worried her far, far more was that every single army in Westeros outside the Iron Islands would be able to bring more cavalry to bear than this.

The reach and the Vale, in particular, would probably bring more than twice this number of mounted warriors.

Two-thirds of the north's strength correlated to an equal number of mounted warriors as this.

Dear God… How many men would the red dragon muster to meet them in the field?

How would they stand against such hordes as the seven Kingdoms could bring to bear?

Maybe… Maybe she should look into the tactics of the lord of Battles. He had faced armies in the half a hundred thousand before. Even without guns.

All of that was for later though.

In the now, she had to face this army.

And across the fields, she finally saw the movements she had been waiting on, as their foes began to turn and form ranks.

Finally.

She grabbed a horn and blew.

It sounded far and wide across the plain, being blown from up high.

She supposed she should have given a speech as well, but at the moment, she just didn't have one in mind.

So, the signal to be ready would have to do instead.

Down below, she saw thousands and thousands of men suddenly stiffen and ready themselves. They had waited for this for hours. Discipline and training kicked in, as dozens and dozens of serjeants got ready to give orders.

"Finally…" Hoare said with a clear tone of resignation.

In the distance, a dozen different columns of riders formed up.

They would hit from every direction.

The way they had arranged themselves was so that the bulk of the horsemen would hit the four square sides.

Unfortunately for them, she had anticipated this. Hence the way she had arranged her elephants.

By her side, Manderly discretely handed her two pieces of beeswax, and after she quickly put them in her ears, he also handed her her helmet.

It was a kinda risky move, deafening herself like this when she was the commander. But given the kind of noise she was about to be bombarded with, it had to be done.

In previous battles she had attended, she had always stayed well away from the cannons. That wasn't an option here, where she had to be here up top of an elephant, literally overlooking the battle below.

She had given everyone their orders, and everyone knew what to do.

It would have to be enough.

It took a while, but finally, the charge of men with spears in hand entered their range.

Muskets began to sing, and jets of fire from the second rank fired away the first volley.

Horses fell, but the cavalry moved on.

A second volley followed, but though they slowed, the cavalry moved on.

Then, the cannons began to sing.

In one single instant, as 26 small cannons fired, and she felt the shock of the two fired from the tower of wood and steel she was standing on, hundreds of lives were snuffed in an instant, as the tightly packed horsemen were annihilated.

Heads burst, limbs flew, men died and screamed cries of pain and suffering that Daemona could not hear, and horses exploded into bloody chunks all around the battlefield.

And though slowed, the cavalry rode on trampling any survivors of the volley into paste beneath their hooves.

A third volley followed. More died, way more than the first and second volleys.

And yet the cavalry rode on, refusing to break under the onslaught of fire and lead.

A fourth volley fired. More deaths, more screams, more suffering and broken bodies, thousands upon thousands of limbs and destroyed bodies were strewn over the battlefield in bloody chunks, grey smoke beginning to cover the front of the lines, like smoke from a campfire.

And yet the cavalry moved on.

Only 60 meters yet to go.

Another volley followed. Hundreds fell. The cavalry moved on.

50 meters. 40 meters. 30 meters. The next volley didn't come, though it was ready.

25 meters. 20 meters. 15 meter.

It happened everywhere along the square. Some fired at 15 meters, while some managed to wait until the actual point they were supposed to fire at 10 meters.

Both those who had loaded, and the first rank, who quickly fired, before readying their bayonets for impact.

Like every other time, the cavalry tried to move on, but here, so close to the frontline, there were few spots to do so. The now-dead cavalry were too many, and too packed up together, and with little spaces between each dead horse and soldier.

A few did manage to make it past though, and with energy and momentum, they barreled into the line of bayonets, spearing the front liners with their long, iron-tipped spears…

But there were too few of them to make the line break, or even buckle. A cavalry charge depended upon a long, unbroken line of riders moving side by side to truly work.

Mayhaps two dozen made it to the lines. The rest… was at close range, as the Golden Company unleashed the second cannon volley.

A far, far more deadly volley.

And so, it was, that the Tyroshi cavalry brigades, were the first force on this world, to experience a whiff of grapeshot.

After that…

It was just cleaning up.

I


As Daemona walked amongst the Jubilee of the victorious soldiers. She got more than one cheer from the men as she walked by, carrying one helmet in her hand, and the other resting on the butt of her mace.

She supposed she struck a regal figure. Her coat was unblemished, and with a height that was already equal to most men in the army. Not to mention her Valyrian features.

She had put on what Brandon Stark would have dubbed her "Lord's" face, though she wasn't quite as stoic as Eddard Stark might have been.

She nodded to her men, as befit a monarch, and she even stopped to talk to some of the common officers.

All while she desperately tried to not show any sign of sickness at the sheer amount of dead bodies.

Some eight thousand dead all in all.

God, what a waste of lives.

She let her men loot as they pleased, though she had given orders for every single sword to be gathered into one spot, a series of empty wagons they had prepared before they set out.

That had been her idea. It had seemed a good piece of symbolism to use when it was all said and done, but actually seeing the macabre sight of thousands and thousands of swords piled together, knowing that every one of them had once been wielded by some poor, unfortunate fool who had had the misfortune to be put up against her, just made her feel even worse.

The only bright spot was the actual loot.

The men gorged themselves on any bracelets or coin, or pieces of jewelry they found. She had no interest in any piece of gold, so she let them to it.

The only pieces she took, was the Valyrian blades they found on the dead.

The army they had killed had had 4 such blades. That seemed a lot to Daemona, but then again, there were several thousands of them left in the world, only around 200 of whom were in Westeros.

Mayhaps she should be surprised that she found 4 of them in an army composed of 6000 cavalrymen. According to Saan, there two times more Valyrian steel swords in the land of the 3 daughters than in all of Westeros combined.

In either case, only three of the blades were usable. One had been bent neatly in half by a cannon shot and would need to be remade completely.

So, she would probably replace her mace with one of the blades, while giving the two others to Mudd and Manderly.

They had apparently decided to call them Justice and Merman's Cleaver respectively.

She wasn't sure who she was going to give the reforged 4th blade to, but she had rewarded every one of the 4 men who had found the blades, then brought them to her, with a promise of a lordship. And she would give them that. She was a woman of her word.

Maybe she would give each of them one of the Iron Islands perhaps? That was as good a lordship as any.

As for her own new blade… She could not have cared less at the moment.

It was just a tool, and if she needed to use it, she would.

Right now… She just wanted to get away from this damn field of bodies.

They were digging two graves for the dead. One for the 18 men of the Golden Company soldiers who had died today, and one gigantic mass grave for the rest.

One would be buried with their armor and personal belongings. The rest would be unceremoniously dumped after being stripped of everything.

At least… At least these men had died with swords in hand. This had been an actual battle, not a butchery of non-combatants. She could take comfort in that at least.

After they were done burying the lot, they would pack up and March west a bit, to secure the only high ground in the area before they made camp.

Some large hill, in an area that was uncultivated in this gigantic plain of farmlands, where everything was leveled.

Why the Tyroshi had never built an outpost or fort there, was beyond her.

It was a spot that according to her scouts, gave a good look for miles around, and should, by all means, have been claimed by now to secure the nearby slave plantations.

That was yet another thing that had made her sick.

While they had liberated a good number of slave plantations in this area on their March to this battlefield, the ones the army had marched through had suffered a more… punitive end.

Rather than risk them being liberated and joining the army of the invaders, the Tyroshi Army had instead killed every single slave on them.

That should have made Daemona happy butchering them.

But it didn't. It just made her feel even more shitty about what a damn waste of lives this had all been.

Ironically enough, the only men here whose deaths did not make her feel sick to her stomach were her own.

The men of the Golden Company had fought to do their part liberating these slaves. They had died as True heroes, whatever else they might have done in their lives.

It was a death anyone could be proud of, and she DID feel genuinely proud of her army today, however much the actual aftermath of what they had done made her sick.

For as they marched later that day, the golden army got something it rarely ever got anywhere it went.

The full, total adoration of the people living there, as the now ex-slaves they passed hailed them as heroes.

As if they were actually true knights in shining armor and not just a bunch of exiles whose only skill was their ability to kill people.

And so, maybe an hour before the sun went down, they reach the strangely uncultivated area, and the hill dominating it.

Had the Silvertongue known exactly where on the island they had landed, he would have warned the army going north to stay well clear of this area. Had they stopped to ask the liberated slaves for information, rather than simply trust their own scouts' abilities, they would also have been warned to stay well clear of it, and to never, under any circumstances go near the hill at night.

Neither was the case, however, so the five battalions of the Golden Company settled in for what was going to be a night every single one of them would remember until the day they died.