It is an indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of the military environment of pre-Conquest Essos that every phase of Daario Naharis' campaign during the Fourth Slave War is considered a masterpiece of its kind exceptfor the Battle of Claymoor Water. This is not an indictment of Naharis, but rather is meant to illustrate the environment that produced him. Before the Conquest, mercenary companies were paid by the month, with a bonus for victory and a cut of any ransoms taken, but there was no bonus offered as compensation for casualties. Indeed, it was not uncommon for companies who took casualties to have their pay reduced by the amount due to each man lost, the argument being that dead men had no need of pay. The only exception was that dead men received the pay of their last month alive regardless of circumstances, in order to help pay for their funerals and settle any outstanding debts. Consequently, it became the common practice among mercenary companies to avoid battle if at all possible. From the perspective of their captains, this had the twin benefits of preserving their men, who were after all their primary capital assets, and potentially prolonging the conflicts they were engaged in, allowing both them and their men to continue enriching themselves both by regular wages and by plunder.
The primary exception to this tendency to avoid battle was when the captain judged that victory would be swift enough and complete enough to justify the potential losses. It was this that informed Naharis' decision to strike the Army of the South's encampment at Claymoor Water . . .
From Calm to Storm: The Military Revolution in Essos by Maester Brand
Corporal Andrik Freeman, First Banda, Royal Company of the Alalia Regiment of the Iron Legion, couldn't help a feeling of foreboding as he jostled the collar of his breastplate to make it sit more comfortably over his gambeson and bent to scoop up his shield and spear. He had seen some places in his time with the Legion, but never a place as forebodingly dreary as Claymoor Fell. It was, campfire gossip had it, the southernmost edge of the uplands on either side of the border, and the steep descent from the moorland down to the plains that gradually leveled down towards the coast was responsible for the fog that coated the earth and prevented anyone from seeing more than a hundred feet. He spat uncaringly and glanced at where the rest of his section was getting the last of their armor on. After today's marching they would be out of the hill country, praise the gods, and the weather thereof could go hang.
Captain Hauser, the Company's commander rode up on his dappled palfrey; he was no knight, but being on horseback allowed him to move about the company quickly and see better than the banda officers. It also made him a visible rallying point for the Company, especially with the Company banners riding close behind him. "Your men ready, corporal?" he asked.
"Just a minute more, Cap'n," Andrik replied. "Ethyn was slow to get breakfast off the fire."
"Him and the rest of the cooks," Captain Hauser said sourly. "When the war's over we'll have to remind our men not to take too long over their cooking, eh?"
"Yes, ser," Andrik said. "Is it true that we're getting out of the hill country today, ser?"
Captain Hauser waggled his free hand to indicate uncertainty. "Maybe yes, maybe no," he answered. "Depends on what our scouts have to say about what Devil Daario's doing."
Andrik had just opened his mouth to reply when he heard the brassy scream of a bugle. He closed his mouth into a puzzled frown; the chivalry used bugles, but they were camped close enough that their calls would be louder than that. And it wasn't a call he recognized.
Captain Hauser, meanwhile, had gone white as a sheet. "Corporal, fall your men into line of battle. At the double," he snapped, and then turned to his trumpeter. "Sound 'To Arms'."
"Yes, ser," Andrik said even as the trumpeter started blowing. Turning to his section he roared, "Deploy in line of battle to my right, deploy! Form on me!" holding his spear straight in the air as he did.
The last of his men had just finished falling in and the rest of the company was starting to coalesce around the banners when there was a sudden swelling roar and armed men came pelting at them through the fog. "Stand to!" Andrik bellowed, bracing his shield and lowering his spear to the level, and then the charge hit and he was too busy to think for long minutes. There was only the surf-roar of howling men battering at his shield, the pistoning of his arm as he punched his spear at them, and the eternally comforting presence of his shield-brothers on either side of him. Dimly he heard a despairing shout of "We're flanked!" and the trumpet blaring out the call to form a rally square, and he began shuffling his men to the left, towards where Captain Hauser had been standing with the banners. Behind him he could faintly hear Lieutenant Collier's harsh baritone chant of "Front rank, take aiiim, loose! Reload! Rear rank, take aiiim, loose! Reload!" and the sergeants' mantra of "Close up, boys, close up! Stick together, courage now!" He risked his life to glance to his left and saw with knee-weakening relief that there were still banners to rally to, although he couldn't see Captain Hauser and what he could see of the Company looked dangerously small. Thanks be to the Warrior, the rest of First Banda had managed to get into ranks, but he could only see half of Second Banda and a glance to the right showed no sign of Third Banda at all, unless they had already peeled backwards to refuse the Company's flank.
A blow on his shield that shoved his feet back two inches through the packed dirt reminded him to keep his mind on his work and he went back to stabbing at the enemy, his spear punching back and forth and back and forth and back over the top of his shield, the shaft balanced on the rim to help ease the strain of holding six and a half feet of mountain ash topped by a foot of steel at the level. Around him the noise of the battle was building higher and higher and he could already feel the ache set into his arms and the dryness settle into his mouth, but he drove concern from his mind with the ease of long-practiced discipline and roared, "Close up, brothers, and let the bastards have it!" as he put his shoulder into his shield and continued stabbing.
Across the rest of the field a few other units were imitating the stand of the Alalia Regiment's Royal Company, but none had managed to rally so many of their men before the assault hit. To give only one example, the Sinuessa Regiment's Royal Company only managed to get two of it's three bandas into a fighting line, and its Reserve Company only got one banda into a coherent rally square. The rest of its bandas were fighting by platoons or by sections, where they hadn't been shocked into the panic that gripped some sections of the Army . . .
Daegon Melgaris had spent the morning in tightly controlled fear that this ludicrous plan that Captain Naharis had come up with would get them all killed. All well and good to say that they were going to march through the night to close the distance on the Andals and strike them at first light, but actually doing it . . . If they had been rumbled, they would have been dead men.
But they hadn't, and now the Andals were running! The Iron Legion was running! Fear had turned to exultation as Daegon and his messmates plunged ahead into the fog, spears ready to plunge into any Andal or slave that stumbled or slowed. Some of their company had gotten hung up fighting a Legion company that had held together, but Daegon and his section had run on, the fatigue of the long night march forgotten as they egged each other on and pounded through the lines of campfires and half-struck tents.
Ahead of them loomed a knot of slaves around an Andal officer, possibly a knight judging by the quality of what little armor he was wearing. Daegon tucked his shoulder into his shield and pelted at them with a roar, his mates hard on his heels. His spear was shivered out of his hand as he rammed it against a shield, but the impact of his six foot-tall and fourteen stone-weight body sent him crashing through the shield-wall the slaves had tried to form. When he didn't die in the next instant, he swept out his short sword and started pressing the Andal, trying to bear him down the way the sergeants taught you to do. The Andal, clearly a seasoned adventurer by the grey in his hair and beard, fought back hard and cannily, landing a blow with his longsword that made Daegon see stars as it landed on his helmet, but then a spear lanced in from the side and ran him through the throat. The Andal dropped his sword and clutched at the spear desperately, but Daegon hit him a crashing blow over the head with his short sword and punched him down with the shield boss and then it was on, on, on again, with his messmates whooping victory and the Andals and the slaves fleeing before them . . .
Given the suddenness of the onset, it is not surprising that the Army of the South was temporarily driven out of its positions. This was, in fact, the exact effect that Naharis had been hoping to achieve. As his report after the battle elucidates "Knowing that my army was unlikely to withstand a traditional contest of battle, I decided to rely on surprise, and pray that the suddenness and the ferocity of the onset might panic the Legion into a rout."
Two factors, however, prevented the rout from becoming general. Firstly, the attack had struck the Army of the South while it was preparing for the day's march, meaning that everyone was awake and either partially or mostly armored. Secondly, the Army of the South had some of the finest combat leaders that the Abolitionist Alliance could field at its disposal . . .
A normal man would almost certainly have been put in paralyzing fear of his life and his reputation by such a blow, Lyn Corbray thought wryly as he spurred his borrowed destrier to its best lumbering speed. But not him; he didn't have time to be afraid.
He had spent the past five hours in one saddle or another, racing hither and yon over the field to try and bring some order out of the chaos that Daario Naharis had thrown his army into. Thank the good gods that his own Sirmium Regiment had managed to form a more or less coherent battleline before the attack had reached them. That at least gave him a foundation he could build on, even if they were being forced to give ground by the pressure that Naharis was bringing to bear. Across the rest of the campground-turned-battlefield, his men were fighting by companies, bandas, and sections, and sometimes by knots of die-hards from half a dozen units around whatever officer had managed to rally them. It was those men that Daario had been riding over the field to reach since he stumbled out of his tent, his squires frantically buckling on his armor as he roared for his horse and his knights. Alone in their little clumps, they could do nothing but fight and die where they stood. But if they could be gathered together . . .
He reined in in front of a cluster of Legion infantry and dismounted men-at-arms. "What unit, friends?" he demanded as his household men clattered to a halt around him.
"Fourth Banda, Royal Company of the Dubris Regiment, my lord!" yelled a man with a sergeant's shoulder-knot on his spaulder. "And men from the Alalia Cavalry!"
Lyn nodded. "Alright, you men are with me for the next while," he said, injecting calm authority into his voice. "We're going to march back up the Fell towards the rear of the camp; the Sirmium Regiment is holding a defensive line there that the rest of the army is rallying on. My knights will escort you there, but we'll have to step lively; there's slavers all over the bloody place."
"Don't we know it, my lord," the sergeant said dryly as he turned to his comrades. "Right, lads, you heard his lordship! Close column with crossbows in and shields out, move!"
In a handful of moments the knot of desperate men had resolved itself into a roughly-ordered column with spearmen leading and covering the flanks, the crossbowmen in the center with prods spanned and loaded, and the men-at-arms bringing up the rear where their heavier armor would provide more protection against an attack from behind. A few commands from Lyn sufficed to shake his household men into a screen on either side of the company; doing just this for the past five hours had reduced their numbers badly, but those who remained were the best, or just the luckiest and most bloody-minded, which amounted to the same thing in battle. Ser Joren Potts brandished his red-dripping sword to indicate that the left-hand screen was ready, to which Lyn replied with a shout of "Forward, march!" that made the little column step off. They would cut their way back through the scrum to reach their comrades, picking up whatever other survivors they could along the way, and that would do that much more to rebuild the army.
When a knot of Lyseni horsemen loomed out of the slowly-clearing fog, Lyn raised Lady Forlorn and pointed it at them, provoking a series of brassy notes from his trumpeter that passed along his roar of "Enemy to the front! Charge!" Even as little as forty destriers made the earth shake at the canter, and at the shock of impact the Lyseni horse were scattered in all directions, some of them squalling in sudden terror. Lyn nodded to himself as he jerked Lady Forlorn out of a dying Lyseni; the confusion that Naharis had thrown his army into was affecting his army as well. Like enough those men had thought they were perfectly safe with the enemy driven off and they could get on with some looting or looking for a surviving legionnaire or two for some recreational torture. That was already giving him ideas on what to do next, once he got the army back together . . .
XXX
Jaime Lannister couldn't help a laugh as he knocked up his visor and took a gulping breath. By the gods, but this was a fight. A fight such as he hadn't had since Novadomo, if not since Tyrosh. He had almost forgotten how it felt.
After he had gotten his Legion company rallied and into line, Lord Corbray had told him to take the Summer Islanders to the left flank of the line the Sirmium Regiment was anchoring and keep the slavers from infiltrating through the broken ground around the Claymoor Water. The Water was only a narrow stream, but it was deep and swift-flowing and the land that shelved down to its banks was studded with boulders, many of them man-sized or larger. Not the place to form a shield-wall, but just the place to put two thousand infantry who were at their best in a disjointed brawl and give them leave to do their worst.
The Islanders had risen to the challenge with a will. Their archers were perched on boulders further back, where they could take advantage of the greater range and hitting power of their goldenheart bows, but the spearmen and macemen among them . . . Those men had pushed forward through the boulder field like weasels through tall grass, keeping in contact with each other by call-and-response chants in their guttural, percussive tongue, and when they found slavers who sought to use the cover of the boulders to outflank the line the Legion was building they tore into them with every evidence of glee. Taquor Dar and Tarano Rhosaq had appeared to be in some sort of competition with each other when Jaime had seen them last, trading chaffering insults and egging each other on as they counted their slain. Zantar Salas had for once abandoned his habitual taciturnity to plunge into a knot of Lyseni with a leonine roar and his long mace whirling. Balabos Rhosas and Jalabhar Xho had gone off into the boulders together, Rhosas with belligerent anticipation animating his square and battered face while Xho had been concealing nervousness behind bravado, but Jaime had heard their voices in the chants since, so whatever they were doing they were still alive.
A clump of half a dozen slavers, these ones in the colors of a Volantene company, came clattering around a boulder just ahead of him and Jaime closed his visor, raised his longsword, and waded into them. The first went down with the swordpoint in his throat, the second had his cut foiled by a raised vambrace and was cut down with a snapping forehand cut to the neck, the third was wrestled against a boulder and knocked senseless by an armored elbow, the fourth took the head of Mantar's spear in his face as he tried to take advantage of Jaime's preoccupation with the fifth, who took a thrust to the groin and had his head bashed against another boulder hard enough to crack his skull through the helmet, and the sixth had just turned to run when Mantar's spear came sailing past Jaime's head and lanced into his back. Jaime raised his visor again and cocked an eyebrow at Mantar as he stalked past. "Mind your aim, there, squire," he said mildly. "No need to be greedy."
"The day I miss a spear-cast after your teaching, ser, is the day I open my own throat in shame," Mantar retorted as he tugged his spear out of the dying man's back. A Lyseni stumbled around the corner and had barely enough time to recoil in shock before the iron knob at the butt end of Mantar's spear whistled under the brim of his kettle helmet and smashed his jaw off his face. "How much longer are we going to have to do this, ser?" Mantar asked half-jokingly as he spun his spear back into a proper grip and finished the man with a thrust to the neck. "Only you'd think the slavers would have learned by now that they can't force their way through these boulders while we hold them."
"They don't have much of a choice," Jaime said as he finished the man he had knocked out of his senses with a stamp of his armored heel. "If they can't break the Legion from the front, then they need to hit it from the flank. And they can either try the boulders here, or they can go try their luck on our right, where our cavalry has room to work."
Mantar nodded. "Suppose so, ser," he said. "Only I'm getting a bit dry for this work, if it please you."
Jaime returned his nod. "The Lyseni must have been marching all night to get close enough to launch this attack," he replied. "And they've been fighting as hard as we have all day. Think about how dry they must be by now."
Mantar smiled, teeth startlingly white in the ebony blackness of his face. "Dryer still when we drain the blood from them," he said savagely, turning towards the trio of sellswords who had rounded a corner three boulders ahead and were now starting to rush them. "Hi, a!" he shouted as he charged, Jaime clattering behind him.
By mid-afternoon, the Army of the South had managed to establish a defensive line along the rear of their camp and repelled two hastily-organized assaults. Partly the success was due to the enfilading fire of the Summer Islander bowmen in the boulder field along Claymoor Water, but mostly it was due to the fact that Naharis's success had left his army almost as battered and disorganized as the Army of the South. After a long and fraught night march and a hard day of battle, Naharis's army was in no condition to mount a frontal attack against such a line as the Army of the South had mustered, especially when they still had pockets of Myrish soldiers behind them trying to cut their way through to their comrades.
Naharis, to his credit, realized this, and also realized that trying to push through the boulder field on the banks of the Claymoor Water would be unwise. Even if his men could defeat the Summer Islanders, the boulder field was too narrow to permit the passage of enough men quickly enough to outflank the Army of the South before they could feed in reinforcements or refuse the threatened flank. Consequently, he focused his efforts on the Army of the South's right flank, where the ground was more open and conducive to cavalry fighting . . .
Ser Joren Potts couldn't remember the last time he had fought like this. Tyrosh had been grimmer, but in that fight there had been the certainty of eventual victory and the wrath born of the Tyroshi's atrocities to spur a man onward. The fighting of the coastal war, when he had first come to Myr, had more in common with it; those had been grinding, brutal fights, seasoned by the knowledge that every heartbeat counted when you were riding to the rescue of a village or a refugee column menaced by slaver galleys.
Here, they weren't fighting for victory, whatever Lord Corbray might roar in the spaces between charge and countercharge. They were fighting for time, time for more isolated pockets of legionaries and dismounted cavalrymen to fight their way through the maelstrom to the line that was holding together by discipline alone, time for the Lyseni to feel the weight of their labors and the fatigue that demanded rest, and above all time for afternoon to give way to evening and eventually to sunset. Every attack that was foiled, whether by a countercharge or simply by bluffing one, bought precious minutes in which the enemy had to regroup their men.
The shadows were already lengthening, he saw as he knocked his visor upwards; a glance at the sun showed that it was barely six fingers above the horizon. Only an hour left of sunlight; the slavers had to strike them soon or give up any hope of breaking them before sunset. A warning shout directed his attention across the field and he felt the grim satisfaction of a man who sees his prophecy of bad luck unfolding; the slaver cavalry was massing for another charge. And this time there would be no half-measures. Not when, as Joren could see, the slavers were bringing their light horse into the line. He sloped his war hammer, a deceptively small affair forged from a single piece of steel, over his shoulder and nudged his horse into line; there were no more lances left, and he had left his sword irretrievably embedded in a slaver's ribs. He had taken the hammer from a mortally wounded knight of his company who had begged him to take it and give the bastards hell with his last breath. Ser Ferris More, that had been, and Joren had hardly recognized him with half his face staved in by a slaver's spearhead.
The trumpets sounded and Joren's spurs went back automatically, sending his horse forward at the walk; this late in the day even the best horses were tiring, and every breath counted in a cavalry charge and melee. Across the field the slavers were also advancing at the walk, with a banner showing two crossed lighting bolts and four crows flapping at their head. Joren set his teeth; that was the standard of Devil Daario himself. "Hear me, Warrior and Stranger," he said under his breath. "If you bring Daario Naharis under my hand and allow me to kill him, I will build a chapel to you both at Pottsdam when I return from this war." The trumpets sounded again, this time for the trot, and Joren began to bob in the saddle with the ease of the lifelong horseman as his horse picked up the pace. The knights around him heeled their horses up to pace as well, and Joren felt cruel resolve fill his bones. They were the knights of Myr, the iron fist of King Robert the Strong; with such a captain as Lord Corbray at their head there was no force on earth that could stand against them. And Lord Corbray was at their head, under his banner of the raven and sword. Joren could see him not ten feet away brandishing Lady Forlorn as he exhorted the knights that could hear him over the rumble of hooves to strike the strength out of the enemy.
The trumpets sounded the two rising notes of the charge and Joren felt the familiar surge of living fire in his veins as he leaned forward in the saddle and cocked his war hammer back over his shoulder as his horse lurched into the canter. "Free or Dead!" he roared with the other knights around him; on this desperate day every man had adopted the Legion's war cry. Joren heard Lord Corbray's howl of "Feed the Birds!", and then he was guiding his horse ever so slightly to the left to let him avoid a head-on collision with the slaver cavalryman directly to his front and throwing a haymaking blow with his hammer, trusting in his armor to ward the slaver's counterstroke.
The slaver's saber rang off his breastplate with an unmusical skringg! and the shock of his hammer striking home vibrated up his arm and then the whole world was a pandemonium of noise and violence on every side. Joren spurred his horse onward, knowing that to sit still was death in a cavalry fight, and laid about him with wordless roars as the fury took him. A slaver's axe bit on his backplate, and a frantic reverso blow over his left shoulder buried the spike on the back of the hammer in the slaver's face. Ripping it free with frenzied strength, Joren turned his horse to the right to ride down a slaver rising dazedly from the ruin of his fallen horse and made blood and bone fragments fly as he caught the man alongside the head with an upswinging blow. A slaver cavalryman with a longsword loomed ahead of him, keening a howling war-shout, but a borderer came crashing in from the side and speared him out of the saddle, only to be cut down in turn by a slaver in the colors of a Volantene company who rode up and dashed his brains out with an axe. Joren caught up to the Volantene a handful of moments later; his first blow broke the man's shoulder through his spaulder, his second jammed the pyramidal spike atop the hammer's shaft into the Volantene's mouth as he screamed, his third caved in the man's whole face above his lower jaw. His horse stumbled with a despairing whinny and Joren frantically threw himself free of the saddle as it foundered. He stumbled to his feet, had barely enough time to sway out of the way of a slaver saber, and only escaped death a second time by sidestepping again and swinging his hammer into the mouth of another slaver's horse. The slaver, a Lyseni by his surcoat, sawed at the reins frantically as his horse reared with a scream of pain, but Joren rushed in to seize him by the elbow, drag him off his horse, and dispatch him with three savage hammer blows.
A crash behind him made him whirl to see that Lord Corbray had rammed flat a slaver cavalryman who had been riding him down from behind. As Joren watched, he slew two more in quick succession with snapping blows of Lady Forlorn, and then raised his visor to laugh. "THEY FLEE!" he bellowed. "THEY'RE RUNNING, BOYS!"
Joren wheeled around to see that it was true; the slavers were falling back! And doing so in what could almost be taken for fear, at that. One man that Joren could see had no weapon in his hands and was crouched low over his horse's neck as he frantically drummed his spurs against it's flanks to make it gallop. Relief turned his knees to water for a brief moment; the slavers were done. They had survived the day. Thanks to the gods and Lord Corbray. He rose, muttering a brief prayer of thanks to the Warrior, and turned to see that Lord Corbray had ridden up next to him and was holding the reins of a riderless horse. "Up you get, Ser Joren," he said with a half-smile. "Can't have a knight of your worth walking off this field, can we?"
Joren nodded, reaching for the reins, and then his eyes dropped and what he saw made his heart stop. "My lord," he said dully, pointing at Lord Corbray's hip.
Lord Corbray looked down and saw what Joren had seen; one of his faulds had come away, somehow, during the fight, and he had taken a wound. A bad one, too; his thigh was covered in a sheet of blood. "Oh," Lord Corbray said dully. "Well. That's vexing, isn't it?" He leaned in the saddle like a drunkard, and Joren barely had time to dash underneath him to break his fall.
With the failure of his last assault, Naharis called an end to further attacks against the reformed line of the Army of the South. His army was so disorganized by the chaotic fighting that unscrambling it would take most of the night, and there were still pockets of resistance to reduce behind his lines. This latter was complicated by the fact that while Naharis was willing to offer mercy to any man who surrendered, the Legion didn't trust him to hold to his word. Or, perhaps more accurately, they didn't trust that he would be allowed to hold to his word by the Conclave, which had after all decreed that any rebel slave taken in arms was to suffer death. As for the non-Legion portion of the Army of the South, the borderers had no room in their particular code of military ethics for such heretical notions as trusting an enemy, while the chivalry generally considered themselves obligated to stand with the Legion and fight it out. The few exceptions were universally condemned as cowards throughout the Royal Army, and later investigations by the Royal Inspectors into the conduct of those knights who had surrendered would be unsparingly harsh.
Across the field, the Army of the South found itself facing a crisis of command . . .
- Dawn Like Thunder: The Battle of Claymoor Water by Maester Winston
Jaime strode up and went to one knee by the improvised sickbed that held Lyn Corbray. "Before you ask what happened," Lyn said as he saw him, "let me tell you. My fauld came loose somehow, and someone on the ground thrust up at me with a spear that managed to get under the lower rim of the breastplate. The maesters think it might have nicked my guts, judging by the angle and depth of the wound." He snorted to himself. "You know, I always thought I would end in a duel with one of Viserys' Kingsguard, and not because some slaver bastard got lucky."
Jaime grimaced; if the maesters were correct, then Lyn was almost certainly a dead man. A thrust to the belly was just as lethal as one to the chest, especially if it opened the bowels; infection was inevitable, and inevitably fatal.
"Whether they're right or not, I won't be able to lead the army tomorrow," Lyn said, his glassy eyes fixed on Jaime's face. "It has to be you, Ser Jaime. You're the only one with the name, the birth, and the ability."
Jaime's jaw dropped for a long second. "But I've never . . ." he started.
"Doesn't matter," Lyn insisted. "Naharis has his army right in front of us, and if I know this army, they'll have their tails up for tomorrow. Just lead them forward, and they'll break anyone Naharis puts in front of them."
Jaime considered a dozen things he might say, then settled for nodding reluctantly. It was a simple enough plan that even he could pull it off, barring catastrophe. And if a catastrophe that bad hit, then even Lyn wouldn't have been able to save them.
"After the battle," Lyn went on, sweat beading on his forehead, "pursue Naharis; don't let him breathe until you run him to earth. Let Rainwater lead the pursuit, or Myhaelis Shardauqar, if Rainwater falls; they won't steer you wrong, and they both want Naharis' skull for a goblet. Orders from the King about what to do next are in my tent, unless Naharis took them." He paused for a moment, gritting his teeth against what was obviously a wave of pain. "Send my body back to Sirmium," he said when he had mastered himself. "My will is there, and a copy's with the Royal Inspectors in Myr city. My estate is all accounted for and entailed, and it names my successor as head of the Knights of the First Sept. Send Lady Forlorn back as well; my son will want her, when he's of an age."
Jaime nodded; he had heard Lyn say that his wife was pregnant. "Is there anything you want me to tell your lady wife?" he asked.
Lyn shook his head. "Nothing I can say that she doesn't know already," he replied. "Always my lady more than my wife, anyhow. She'll know what to do, once she gets the news. Sensible woman." He reached out and took Jaime's arm. "One thing you can do for me," he said, a gleam lighting in his eyes. "Finish the job. All these years I've made the Lyseni howl and scream; silence them for good and aye. Pillage and burn from the hills to the sea, run the Lyseni off the continent, and give this land a new name. And kill that bastard Naharis if you can; I'll rest easy with his skull mounted on the wall above my grave in the sept at Forlorn Hall."
Jaime nodded. "I won't promise that I can kill Naharis, the sneaky bugger that he is," he said. "But the rest I'll certainly do, or I'll answer for it."
Lyn nodded. "Thought you would," he said, before gritting his teeth again. "If you don't mind, I'll take some of the milk of the poppy the maesters offered me earlier. Didn't want to cloud my wits until after I'd set you up with the army."
Jaime nodded. "I'll name one of my sons after you, when they come," he promised.
Lyn gave a short caw of laughter. "You won't be the only one, I'll warrant," he said with a smile that was half pain-filled and half sardonic. "But I'll take it as a serous compliment from you, instead of simple flattery."
Jaime smiled, rose, and withdrew with a short bow. As the maesters moved in he turned and strode towards the little clump of officers that constituted the command of the Army of the South. "Ser Lyn has passed command of the army to me," he said shortly. "Prepare your men; at first light, we attack."
Jon Rainwater raised a bushy eyebrow. "Slavers kicked all kinds of hell out of our men today, ser," he said, in a tone that made it clear that he was simply stating a fact instead of offering an opinion.
"Yes, they did," Jaime said. "And come the morn, we'll return the favor."