Lord Vernan Irons was old enough in war to know when listening to your feelings was a good idea and when it wasn't. So he knew that the presentiment that had lain on him since Haven was one that he should put out of his mind until he returned to his keep and hung his armor up for the last time. But the aches he had woken up with had only reinforced the premonition that this might be his last battle.
It was many years since he had met Lanard and Brynnan on the Roseroad, and he had not been a young man even in those days. His hair was entirely gray now, and his joints were stiff enough in the mornings that he wasn't able to arm without the help of his squire and page. At Haven he had come within an inch of dying when a pair of Dothraki had managed to come at him at the same time; only his armor and the training of his warhorse had kept him alive and let him dispatch them both. The company of cavalry he led might revere him and his name might inspire respect among the Legion and the chivalry alike, but the simple fact was that he was past sixty and war was a young man's game. Last night he had dreamed of that campfire on the Roseroad, and seen the shades of his dog-brothers waiting for him.
Well, if it came to that, he had few enough regrets. His Brienne was now a charming young lady who delighted in showing him her embroidery and his sons Lucas and Robert were both likely lads who bade fair to be good squires and better knights. A third son, Jon, was a babe yet but a lusty one, who his maester was confident would be as strong and healthy as his brothers. Young Lanard Axewell was also a strong lad who was making his first fumbling attempts at courting Brienne. His wife Emely and their good friend Jesmyn would be able to keep their Houses on an even keel if he fell, thanks to the strong foundation he had left for them and the justice of King Robert's law. But not seeing his daughter become a beauty and marry, or seeing his sons break their first lances or earn the belt and spurs of knighthood, or even just see his Emely a last time . . . That would be a heavy burden to carry to the Father's judgment seat.
He glanced up at his banner flying at the head of the company beside the royal standard with its simple device of a black bar across a brown field flapping against the cloudless sky and sighed, driving the fey feeling from his mind with an effort of will. The Stranger waited for every man, rich or poor, and when a knight accepted the belt and spurs he accepted that his fate was to live and die by the sword. And there were worse ways to die than in a battle as great as this, fighting for his king and Holy Freedom against a mighty opponent that would yield much honor from their defeat. The words that King Robert had said last night rang in his head. "Father, Warrior, and all the Seven," he muttered under his breath, "be with me and with us all in this hour of our need. And if this is the day you call me to you, let me die as a true knight, in the finest hour of my king and my brother knights." He signed himself, took a lance from his page, and raised it high as the bugles blew for his company to ride out and face a Volantene company of horse that was probing the center. "I Repay!" he roared, and the company roared the battle cry as they spurred their horses into a walk after him.
XXX
Durran Bahaan was so scared he barely had the spit to swallow. Which was, in fact, not that big a problem. For one thing, you didn't need spit to beat a drum. What the fifers were doing to keep their whistles wet enough to blow he couldn't imagine. For another, that same fear and Legion discipline were keeping him rooted to the spot behind the Captain, although that meant that he was exactly where he could see what was making him so afraid.
Across the field the Unsullied were on the march. Ten thousand men marching in lockstep so that the earth shuddered under their hobnailed sandals, the morning light flaming off the spikes atop their cap-like helms and the blades of the spears, all in total silence. All around Durran the Legion was singing, as they had been since the cavalry had made the first sallies and forays of the day so the kings could feel each other out. At the moment they were singing a hymn to the Lord of Light that was catchy enough that even the Legion's Faithful had adopted it, modifying the lyrics to suit their seven-faced god instead of the Lord. They hadn't changed the chorus, though, which was even now rising to the sky as the fifes shrilled and the drums, Durran's among them, hammered and ten thousand spear-butts thundered on the earth to keep the tempo. "My heart shall sing of the day you bring!/Let the fires of your justice burn!/Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near/And the world is about to turn!" But across the field not a single drum beat, not a single instrument played, not a single voice sounded a cadence. The Unsullied simply marched, silent as so many statues, faceless behind their shields.
"Crossbows, advance!" the Captain ordered as the hymn came to its final thundering chorus, and Durran's drum joined hundreds of others in the quick rattle that sent the Legion's crossbowmen out in front of the shield wall to form a three-ranked firing line. As the Legion began to sing again, the lieutenants and sergeants of the crossbowmen began chanting the plainsong of commands. "First rank, take aiiiim! Loose! Reload! Second rank, take aiiiim! Loose! Reload! Third rank, take aiiiim! Loose! Reload! First rank, take aiiiim! Loose! Reload!" At each shout of "Loose!" the crossbow strings strummed their unmusical notes, followed moments later by a sound like a handful of gravel flung against a fence rail, multiplied a thousand times, as the bolts slammed home. Here and there Unsullied began to drop as bolts slipped past their shields to pierce their armor, but their fellows simply stepped over them, filling the gaps with smooth and unhurried speed so that the wall of advancing shields seemed not even to quake as the crossbows raked it with fire. As they came closer, still at a deliberate lockstep, the commands changed, and the crossbows began to fall back by ranks after each volley, reloading as they went. The last four volleys, delivered with the Unsullied barely fifty yards away, were scorchers; at such close range the bolts were only slowed by the shields and Unsullied went down in clumps. But still they closed up and came on, as grimly silent as when they started.
By this time the order had been given to "Prepare for push of war!", and the spearmen had started jogging in place, the singing replaced by a thunder of hobnailed boots and rattling armor as the spearheads waved above them. The crossbows filtered back through the ranks, frantically spanning their prods as they went, and regrouped behind the spears, where they began lofting their bolts over the heads of their comrades. Durran could hear Myles muttering "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," under his breath next to him as their hands plied their drumsticks on pure trained instinct, both of them too scared to think. Then the Captain roared, "Spears will advance to contact! At the double-quick, charge!" and Durran and Myles and almost five hundred other drummers sounded the long roll.
The spears stepped off with a great roar of "Free or dead!", their jog in place letting them go from a standing start to a dead run despite the weight of armor and weapons. Across the rapidly closing space, there was a single barked command and the spears of the Unsullied swung down like the teeth of a harrow and they accelerated to their own jog, still in complete silence except for that one command.
When the two shield walls hit, there was a sound like the world's largest gate crashing closed, muffled only by the size of the thing. All along the front rank, men were shocked off their feet by the impact, and were quickly trampled unless they bounced back up immediately. Dozens, Durran could only guess, had died already as the long spears struck home, and a cacophony of grunting and yelling and roaring and screaming began to rise above the stour as the Iron Legion and the Unsullied ground to a halt against each other. Durran, Myles, and the other drummers, in the absence of other commands, began to beat out the DUM-tum-tum, DUM-tum-tum, DUM-tum-tum that was the Legion's cadence for close fighting, the beat that drove the spearmen to put their shoulders into their shields and push as they stabbed blindly with their spears or, finding their spears breaking, drew their short swords and stabbed with those. And meanwhile the crossbows shot, and shot, and shot, while from the slavers' side the Unsullied in the rear ranks began hurling javelins in eerily synchronized volleys.
One of those javelins missed Durran's left ear by inches, but he didn't notice. His world had devolved to his drum, his sticks, and the cadence that he was hammering out like a madman, unaware that his face had contorted in a bestial snarl. He was Legion, and the Legion was here to fight.
XXX
Nerio Velcius knew he was a brave man. As a much younger man, in a tavern in Tyrosh-that-was, he had once made a Yi-tish corsair back down with nothing more than an even stare and a hand on the hilt of his seaman's knife. But there was a difference between dock-and-canal-side brawls and the two duels he had fought and this.
This being standing in the third rank of an infantry regiment, with the sun braising you in your own sweat under morion, cuirass, pauldrons, tassets, and buff coat, watching the enemy come your way. Volantene Militia, these were, by their banners, and equipped almost the same as Nerio's comrades were with pikes, crossbows, and short swords, with halberds in the hands of the sergeants. Nerio found himself muttering prayers as his regiment's crossbowmen moved forward and began volleying into the Volantenes, answered by the Volantene's own crossbows. Every rational and instinctive thought in his head was screaming at him to run as far as he could, as fast as he could, but he could not. The Tenth Volunteers were recruited from his ward of the city; many of the men around him had been recruited from the metalworks his father owned a share of and in which he had spent a grueling but rewarding summer working alongside the apprentices. His father had been adamant that his sons remember where their wealth came from, and both respect the men who made it and earn their respect in turn. His file-closer was one of the apprentices he had worked next to that summer, now a journeyman with two young children, and his sergeant was one of the senior journeymen who had been preparing to make his masterpiece. If he broke ranks and fled, he would have to live with their contempt for the rest of his days, if he could bear to even return home again bearing the name of a coward.
So as the Volantenes came trundling on, stepping over their fallen, Nerio held his place in the ranks, shuffling forward when the man in front of him took a crossbow bolt through the throat and collapsed to choke his life out in bloody gouts. And when the call of "Pike-points front, DOWN!" rang out he hefted his pike up and swung the point forward to the level with hundreds of his neighbors and friends and countrymen to form a hedge of steel-tipped wood. The Volantenes also leveled their pikes as the crossbowmen scuttle away to the flanks and edged forward. Nerio's teeth bared in a grimace as the two pike-hedges reached each other and began to interleave themselves, the silence broken only occasional clacks as enterprising souls tried to beat aside the shafts of the men directly in front of them, then there was a great shout of "Fuck your mothers!" from the man in the front rank of Nerio's file and the unbearable tension of the slow approach to combat broke in a tidal wave of noise as both regiments lunged into each other. Nerio felt a shock through his hands as the point of his pike rammed into something he couldn't see past the bulk of the man in front of him, felt his ears ring as something whacked him on the side of his morion, and then the man in front of him was stepping forward and he followed like a boat being towed on a line, his arms and shoulders pistoning the fourteen-foot pike forward and back and forward and back as he gave voice to a keening war-scream.
XXX
The Tattered Prince was finding it difficult to keep up his façade of serenity. "Your Grace," he said finally, having struggled for an hour to put his request into properly courtly language, "it is not in my nature to beseech, but I beg you; let me lead my men against their flank. If I can unhinge them, then the day will be ours."
Ser Arthur Dayne shook his head. "I think it unwise, Your Grace," he said, as he had been saying for the last two hours. "If the abolitionists counterattack, we will need every man."
"Let them counterattack!" the Tattered Prince shouted, flinging reserve to the winds. "It will but put them deeper into the bag I mean to draw over them."
Viserys, a horse-length ahead of them, continued to stare at the melee that had developed where the Unsullied and the Volantene Militia had met the Iron Legion and the Braavosi. The clouds of dust and the crowding of the men prevented a good view of what was happening, but the banners, those crucial indicators of identity and movement, had not shifted a foot from where they had ground to a halt against each other. It was, the Tattered Prince felt, like watching four logs being fed into a fire ends-first, if the logs were the respective bodies of infantry, the fire was the scrum of combat, and the ashes were the bodies of the slain.
It was also, he knew, the most brutally expensive form of combat that there was; two great masses of good infantry locked together like stags in rut, neither willing to give way, with the only thought in their heads being to destroy their opponents in place. Every minute they delayed, hundreds of men were dying, men who by dint of their training and experience could not be replaced for years. It was an offense against everything he had learned in a lifetime as a sellsword, which emphasized above all the imperative to hoard the lives of your men like precious jewels, spend them only at great need, and never spend them so profligately as this.
Viserys finally turned his horse to regard them both. "We will make efforts against both of the enemy's flanks," he decreed. "My lord Prince, do you lead your men against the enemy left as you have planned, and attempt to turn their flank. Ser Arthur, once the Prince's efforts are underway, we shall lead our reserve against the enemy right, where their lines will be weakest."
The Tattered Prince frowned. "They will be weaker, Your Grace, but the ground will be unfavorable," he averred. "The proximity of the stream will reduce the amount of force we can bring to bear against them."
"Which is why I pray you to press their left as hard as you may, my lord Prince, to pin as many of their reserves as you can," Viserys replied. "Much of their best infantry must be tied down facing the Unsullied and the Militia already. If you can pin down their cavalry, then they will have nothing left that can withstand us."
The Tattered Prince bowed in the saddle. "All that men can do, I and mine shall, Your Grace," he promised, reining his horse aside and spurring away. And devils take you, Ser Arthur, if your caution has cost us this battle, he thought savagely. It might be Ser Arthur's duty to be chary of his king's safety, but in a battle like this caution had to be thrown to the winds if it was to be won quickly. He could only pray that he had enough hours of daylight left to hook his cavalry around the northern end of the battle-line, get into the rear of the abolitionist left flank, and start killing people and breaking things loudly enough to draw their reserves onto himself in time for the King to make his attack on the abolitionist right.
XXX
Ser Brynden Tully narrowed his eyes at the column of dust rising behind the slaver lines. Unless he was seeing things . . . no, that dust column was definitely moving from right to left. He turned to one of the couriers that hovered nearby. "Orders; bring up the mounted infantry regiments from the reserve and have them take this position," he snapped. "Message to His Grace: Enemy is moving towards our left flank. I am taking light horse to investigate."
As the couriers galloped away, Ser Brynden gestured and his trumpeter brayed out the advance, sending four companies of light horse into a walk-march in almost perfect unison. Ser Brynden couldn't help a thrill of pride. Let other men boast of the Houses they sired, this was his legacy; the finest fighting army since the fall of Old Valyria. An army in which even the light horse, always the most raffish and piratical element of any army, obeyed orders with steely discipline while still retaining the virtues of free men. If any doubted him, let them watch how the Legion was fighting the Unsullied. Any other infantry in the world would be giving ground and many of them would have broken and run, but the Legion was holding the Unsullied to a standstill and cutting through them like a saw through hard wood. Of course, the Unsullied were giving as good as they were getting, but the fact remained that simply standing and fighting toe-to-toe with the Unsullied for this long was already enough to make the Iron Legion a name of legend. And they showed no signs of letting up anytime soon.
But that could, and would, change in a heartbeat if the enemy managed to outflank them. There was no situation more deadly for heavy infantry than to be caught in a flank while being engaged from the front. Ser Brynden had seen it happen, once, in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and the memory of the carnage that had resulted was as bad as any from these more recent wars. King Robert was hoarding the chivalry behind the center, to counter the Targaryen's main effort, but the four companies of light horse that Brynden had under his command would at least be enough to tell him whether this was that main effort or merely a probe. And if it was the main effort, then the mounted infantry would add enough weight to buy time for couriers to tell King Robert that the chivalry was needed on the left.
Ser Brynden smiled wolfishly. It had been too long since he had ridden to war, what with the wound he had taken at Novadomo and the time he had had to spend in his office dealing with papers. He had almost forgotten what it was like to ride at the head of well-ordered companies, with the wind in his face and the enemy before him, and his wits as deadly a weapon as his sword. As commander of the left wing, leading this effort in person was arguably a dereliction of duty, but there was nothing he could do to sway the Legion's fight against the Unsullied; the battle was too young for that yet, and the enemy would counter any move he made. What was important now was to learn what this new movement of the enemy's entailed, and decide what to do to counter it. And to do that, he had to get close enough to find out for himself, without having to wait for reports that could come too late or not at all.
XXX
The light horse of both armies were men as hard as any of their comrades in the infantry, if slightly different in manner. Where the infantry's pride was to stand face-to-face and slug it out until the last man fell, the light horse fought in what a contemporary chronicler called "a wolfish fashion, for they make sudden forays followed by sudden retreats, and aim not to strike down their enemy in one fell blow but to bleed him dry by a multitude of wounds, as wolves do when faced with an aurochs bull." Underlying this was the fact that when a light horse unit was caught out, it was not uncommon for its men to fight to the death; the independent nature of their work, far from the sight and control of any officers but their own, meant that light horse units were more readily given to casual atrocities than other units, and it was considered usual for opposing light horse units to have a 'no quarter, no survivors' attitude to each other.
So when the light horse of the Kingdom of Myr and the Grand Army clashed on the abolitionist left wing by the Agneiat, the result was a swirling, snarling brawl as fierce as the infantry fight in the left flank and the center. The Myrish Third Light Horse was cut to ribbons after it was caught in front by Norvoshi horsemen and in the flank by Dothraki screamers, but they were avenged by a scorching countercharge from the First Light Horse that left Khal Drogo's erstwhile successor Khal Ematto dead and his screamers cantering for the rear in yipping dismay. When the Myrish mounted infantry entered the fray, the violence was redoubled; the mounted infantry didn't have the same quicksilver mobility as the light horse, but they had imbibed their comrades' attitudes in full, and their heavier gear meant that they could stand the fire of close combat for longer than the lightly-equipped horsemen. The Fourth Mounted Infantry was overwhelmed by a combination of Dothraki mounted archery and a neatly timed charge by the Windblown led by the Tattered Prince in person, but when the Eighth Light Horse came riding to the rescue it was found that two dozen of the Fourth's spearmen and officers had managed to stand back-to-back around their standards; the Fourth Mounted Infantry lost more men as a percentage of the unit than any other at the Agneiat, but even their enemies acknowledged that they had earned the sobriquet of "Iron Fourth" which was later given them by the Legion.
But it was not the stand of the Iron Fourth, or even the way in which Ser Brynden Tully was managing to bring some orchestration to the efforts of the Myrish light horse and mounted infantry, that spurred the Tattered Prince's last great effort. The Tattered Prince knew as well as any man, and better than most, that the Grand Army was operating under a strict time limit; if they could not break the abolitionist armies while there was still light enough to pursue them by, then it was better than even odds that the abolitionists would be able to make good their escape. And the sun was already wearing past noon. So the Tattered Prince gathered his Windblown and as many of the Norvoshi horsemen and Dothraki screamers as he could rally quickly and made one last attempt to punch through the screen that Ser Brynden Tully had erected around the abolitionist left wing . . .
XXX
Ser Brynden Tully craned his head around to look over his shoulder at the pursuing enemy; rather more difficult than it sounded when you were doing it in armor on the back of a cantering horse. What he saw made him grin in anticipation; the enemy were hot on their heels. The Windblown under their blue-and-white banner were still in neatly-ranked lines and holding themselves to a canter, but the Norvoshi riders around them had let their already-loose order fall apart completely as they spurred up to the gallop. His grin widened. Perfect, he told himself.
Of course, the surprise wouldn't be complete; the enemy already knew that the mounted infantry was on the field, after all. But even light horses like the ones the Norvoshi were riding took time to slow down or change direction, and more time to stop or change direction at any angle sharper than about ten degrees. The Norvoshi cavalrymen were gentry's sons, after all, not light-riding herdsmen who learned to ride cutting animals out of their herds. That's it, you dumb, heedless bastards, keep coming straight at us.
A glance ahead of him showed that the mounted infantry had reorganized themselves into a single line of squares. Risky, because if the enemy cavalry got in among them, they couldn't shoot at any who stayed in between them without risking hitting their comrades. But if the enemy cavalry got that far then the plan had gone to shit anyway. Steady, now, old son, just a bit longer . . . "Sound 'columns of troops'!" he shouted.
His last remaining trumpeter blared out the notes of the signal and the light horse went from a broad band into a dozen columns, each aiming for a gap between mounted infantry regiments. As Brynden's column thundered in between two regiments, close enough that he could have reached out and rapped the outermost rank on their helmets with his gauntlets, the mounted infantry's own trumpeters were blaring out the command for volley fire.
Almost a thousand crossbows, loosed nearly in the same instant, made a noise like a giant clearing its throat, and the sound of the bolts striking home a heartbeat later was a cross between hail on a shingle roof and hammers hitting meat in a slaughterhouse. Half the front rank of the enemy light horsemen went down, or so it seemed, men either falling from their saddles or horses losing their footing with terrified whinnies as the bolts struck them. Brynden allowed himself a single whoop of triumph before shouting "Left wheel! Advance to contact!" At the brassy scream of the trumpet the light horse reined their horses around in dirt-flinging turns and went cantering back through the same gaps they had retreated through. Those that still had javelins cocked them over their shoulders to throw, while others raised the swords or horseman's axes that they used for sidearms. Ahead of them the slaver light horse was shaken but still coming on; the Norvoshi had turned into a confused muddle but the Windblown had closed up and were lowering their spears for the charge. Brynden set his teeth; if his light horse had no javelins left, this would have been fucking dicey. Accepted wisdom had it that lancers ruled supreme in a head-to-head contest, especially if they had heavier armor than their opponents, and the Windblown were mostly armored in half-or-three-quarter plate as opposed to the brigandines and light mail shirts of his light horsemen. But lancers depended on cohesion not only to multiply the shock of their impact, but to prevent enemy horsemen from getting in among them where a lance was much less handy than a sword. "Javelins, loose!" Brynden ordered, and as the javelins flew he roared "Charge!"
His light horse voiced a baying roar as they closed in, and the shock of impact was as ferocious as any Brynden had ever experienced. He fought with his usual cagy skill, keeping his shield up and his blows short and controlled instead of the haymaking swings that came so naturally to horsemen, and he and his adjutants and trumpeter cut a hole through the Windblown like an ember through a snowbank. He cut down a Windblown wearing the shoulder knots of a lieutenant with a stiff-armed thrust to the face, made a corporal flinch aside with a snapping reverso cut that distracted him from the axe blow one of his adjutants was throwing at his opposite shoulder, and then a sudden impact sent him reeling in the saddle, his shield dropping from his nerveless left arm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the lancer that must have hit him lose his head to a blow from his trumpeter's sword, and then he saw the Dothraki cantering through the melee, teeth bared in a yipping howl as he drew the string of his recurved bow back past his jaw and the sunlight glinted off the arrowhead. Oh, fu-.
XXX
"It's true, Your Grace," the courier said, tears falling unheeded. "I saw his body myself. The Tattered Prince got away, but the light horse are swearing bloody revenge if he ever falls into their hands."
XXX
Viserys Targaryen peered at the turmoil off to on his army's right flank for a moment longer and then turned away. At this distance, and with so much dust being kicked up, there was no way to tell if the Tattered Prince had succeeded or failed. Not in time for it to matter, anyway. If the abolitionist's left flank was being pressed as hard as the Tattered Prince said he would press it, then Robert must surely have shifted his reserves to bolster it.
He turned his gaze towards the abolitionist right flank where it rested just shy of a stone bridge over the Agneiat. If he was going to win this fight, then he had to throw his blow now, while there was still daylight. And he had to use the best corps left to him. The great majority of the Iron Legion and the Braavosi heavy foot were engaged against the Unsullied and the Militia, those that remained would not equal even half of the Exile Company's strength. And the Old Faith militia that formed the rest of the abolitionist army would be no match for his veterans.
It was still risky, though. Robert had not committed his chivalry, and the knights of the Kingdom of Myr were possibly the best in the world. If they counterpunched him hard enough . . . For a moment Viserys quailed at the enormity of the risk. If he lost this battle, then he would almost certainly lose everything. King of Volantis he might be in all but name, but he knew how much the Old Blood resented his rise to power, and how easily they could turn the people against him if he was defeated. The thought of becoming a homeless exile all over again, bereft of power, followers, and quite possibly family, was daunting.
But not as daunting as the prospect of twenty more years of war. Robert had as good as told him that he meant to conquer all of Essos at least as far as Slaver's Bay in furtherance of his mad crusade. And while Robert might consider their feud to be nothing against that dream, Eddard Stark had shown that the hatred he bore House Targaryen remained undimmed. The specter of the Iron Wolf standing over his wife and son with raised sword hardened Viserys' resolve. "He fears his fate too much, and his rewards are small," he whispered to himself, quoting the Conqueror's last toast before landing at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, "who dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all." He turned to Ser Arthur. "Ser Arthur, the Exile Company will advance against the enemy's right flank. I assume, of course, that you will wish to ride with me at the head of my knights?"
Ser Arthur looked him in the eyes for a moment, clearly weighing whether he should urge caution, then bowed in the saddle. "Wherever you lead, my king," he said.
"Let us to it, then," Viserys said, gesturing for his trumpeter to sound the advance.
XXX
When the Exile Company crossed the Lower Bridge it did so, in the words of a later commenter, "with its fangs out and its hair on fire". The few Legion and Braavosi regiments that had not been engaged against the Unsullied and the Volantene Militia found themselves facing odds of almost two and a half to one and were grudgingly forced to give ground. The Ceralia Reserve Company of the Legion found itself stranded and forced to make a hedgehog, as were the Braavosi Thirteenth Volunteers. The Norvoshi exiles and the Old Faith's company were more precipitate in giving ground, as they had neither the weight of numbers nor of metal to fight the Exile Company head-to-head, and the death of Ser Jon Bay removed most of their experienced leadership.
As the abolitionist right flank began to crumble under the weight of the Exile Company's infantry, Viserys led his knights across the bridge and began to deploy for the charge that, he hoped, would seal the fate of the abolitionist army. But the abolitionists had not been idle . . .
XXX
If he had been light enough, Samwell Tarly would have been dancing in the saddle with nervousness all day. But even the patiently rigorous tutelage of Lord Willas' master-at-arms had only been able to make him stout instead of fat, and so he sat his horse heavily and waited, nervously rubbing the pommel of his saddle as he did. It had been made worse by not having much of anything to do; the Expedition had been placed in reserve, and while the heavy infantry tore each other apart and the light horse fought their duels on the left flank, no messenger had come with orders since they had been posted behind the right flank.
But now the enemy was over the Agneiat in droves, and the flank he and his men were stationed on was collapsing before his eyes. The advance of the dragon banners was not very fast, but to all appearances it was unstoppable; the few Legion and Braavosi regiments that remained were being steadily beaten back, and the companies of the Old Faith and the Norvoshi exiles were only being restrained from rout by the impassioned example of Septon Deryk, who was walking his mule behind their ranks brandishing his crystal as he roared Scripture.
And that was just the work of the infantry. If the Targaryen heavy cavalry, even now coming over the Lower Bridge, was able to deploy and enter the fight, then there would be nothing to stop them from caving in everything up to the center of the army. Samwell glanced at Ser Harry Flash, who was calmly chewing at a biscuit as he viewed the battle with a calmly abstract air, as if it were a tourney he hadn't placed a wager on. Ser Harry caught his eye, read the question in it, and shook his head. "Not yet, my lord," he said. "We have no orders. And the time is not yet ripe, anyway. If you're going to goose someone, it's best to wait until they pull their trousers all the way down and have Wee Willie firmly in hand."
There was a chuckle from the knights close enough to hear, but Samwell had already turned his gaze back to the oncoming slavers, a wild surmise forming in his mind. Shortly after Haven, a courier had brought a missive for Ser Harry, addressed from King Lyonel, supposedly clarifying his chain of command and his instructions since King Stannis' death. Supposedly. But what if there had been more to it?
Samwell was no man of blood, but he had learned enough of strategy from Lord Willas and Lord Mace to be able to follow not just the previous wars but also this one. Khal Drogo's defeat had effectively barred the Targaryen from making too many permanent gains in this war. The best he could hope for, in fact, was to defeat this army in so convincing a fashion as to shock the remaining garrison of Pentos into surrendering on terms. And even then his ability to actually hold Pentos would be significantly in doubt, with his army so far from home and so much of it made up of Militia who would have to be released to their farms and shops sooner or later. And even if the Targaryen could take and hold Pentos, it would be years yet before he could challenge the Braavosi for mastery of the Narrow Sea.
So the Targaryen was no immediate threat to King Lyonel. But what of his uncle? His uncle who might object to whatever Queen Cersei had planned for the future of the Faith, who might side with Lord Renly, who would have a ready following among the Reformists who regarded him as their ultimate patron, the Northmen who were so dear to his heart, and the Ironborn who were kinsmen to so many of his sailors? If King Robert were to defeat Viserys so decisively as to break Volantis' power for a generation, then why would he not look westward if the Reformists or the Northmen appealed to him for aid? And how quickly would the jeers about Robert the Brief turn to admiration of Robert the Strong, once the Iron Legion's banners were raised on Westerosi soil? King Stannis had never feared his brother so, but King Lyonel might, with his throne shaking beneath him.
And if the plan was to ensure that both Targaryen and Baratheon lost this battle, Samwell's mind raced on as he looked back at Ser Harry, who better to carry out such a scheme than Ser Harry Flash? Ser Harry had a sovereign reputation for loyalty to King Stannis and for bravery, but that was not all he had a reputation for. He had broken hospitality in Gulltown, to fulfill King Stannis' command to root out heresy. Compared to that, doing his level best to ensure that his king's allies suffered as much loss as he could and arrange for both Viserys Targaryen and Robert Baratheon to die would be small beer.
There was no proof, of course, and no time to gather proof. It could all be simply his fears making him paranoid. How long had he suspected Lord Willas' friendship to be all a ploy? But if it was true . . . If it was true, then Samwell Tarly knew he would never be able to forgive himself if he did nothing to prevent it. King Robert had shown him more kindness in one meeting than his father had in his whole lifetime. For a long moment he was torn between action and inaction, and then he heard his father's harsh shout break into his brain for the first time in years. Damn it, boy, DO SOMETHING!
"Prepare to charge!" he shouted. Or tried; it came out as an embarrassing squeak. He flushed, swore under his breath, spat, dragged in a shuddering breath. "Prepare to charge!" he shouted again, this time with a gratifying volume. "Helmets and lances! Squires to the rear rank!"
Ser Harry Flash, who had spat out a spray of biscuit crumbs, wheeled towards him as the knights began to prepare themselves and the trumpeter blared out his notes. "My Lord . . ." he began.
Samwell, suddenly seized by frantic anger, threw his best glare at one of the most famous knights in Westeros. "Do I command the Expedition or not, ser?" he spat.
Ser Harry paused, his face working, then nodded. "You do, my lord," he said formally.
"Then prepare to charge, ser," Samwell spat, taking his helmet from the Frey cousin who had become his squire since Lord Merryweather's death and jamming it onto his head. He waved off the lance, though; even the most patient training in the world hadn't made a jouster out of him. Instead he drew the mace that hung at his saddlebow and raised it high; Lord Willas' master-at-arms, having observed his tendency to forget all form and training and simply flail madly, had given it to him with the comment that a mace didn't care about technique. "For the King!" he shouted, those being the first words that entered his head. "Forward!"
XXX
Matteo Contarenos had not run so fast since he was a boy. Had hardly run at all, in fact, since he was a boy; it was considered undignified for a man of his station and years to be so visibly in haste. Yet here he was, blowing like a racehorse, his breath loud as a gale in the confines of his helmet, outstripping most of his guards as he raced into danger.
The infantry of the Exile Company were rolling up the flank of the army; King Robert had a plan for that. But first, the Exile Company's cavalry needed to be broken. And for that to happen, they had to be stopped. Gods all bless whatever had made Lord Tarly charge them the way he did; the portly young man had shown no evidence of possessing such brio before, but his charge had been a sight to see. It had only slowed the Targaryen's knights, though, and now the Westerosi were streaming back past them in flight. Which meant that now he and his guards had to step into the breach. They had no orders to do so; in fact, Matteo suspected they had anticipated their orders by a concerningly wide margin, but there were times when men had to act regardless of orders.
He had all of fifty halberdiers and twenty swordsmen, plus his own self, to try and stop a charge of almost four thousand heavy cavalry; the odds, on the face of them, were obscenely long. But there were three things that made him think it was possible. Firstly, he and all his men were armored in three-quarter plate made from the best steel that Braavosi armorers could forge, and Braavosi armorers had been second only to those of Qohor and Tyrosh before those cities fell. Secondly, they were few but they were tightly-knit; not as tightly-knit as Andal knights or Ironborn huskarls would be to their gold-giving lord, but they were all bound by sacred oath to serve and guard the Viceroy of Pentos, which was to say, him, with their lives. Thirdly, they had spent months training to fight heavy cavalry, from the day the first spy reports had come in indicating that the Targaryen would directly intervene in the wars. Which was why his swordsmen were carrying heavy spears in addition to their swords and bucklers and why, when he finally reached what he thought would be a good place and raised his own spear in signal, they fell into ranks around him, planting the buttspikes of spears and halberds under their right feet and leaning forward to brace for the impact, right hands reaching across their bodies to take hold of their sword-hilts; the shafts would likely break, in the collision, and when that happened they would need their swords quickly.
Matteo searched the dust cloud where the charge of the Westerosi knights had provoked a melee, and saw a fourth reason to think he and his men might be able to stop the enemy knights. Lord Tarly's charge had disordered the enemy, and now they were breaking into two clumps. One was pursuing the Westerosi knights, while the other was trying to reform even as it went back to trailing their infantry. Doing it well, too, but having to do it slowly, at the trot. Which meant that now, as they cleared the dust cloud to find him and his men in front of them, they would not have time to build up the head of speed that would allow them to shatter his tiny force.
They came very near to doing it anyway.
The charge hit them at a trot instead of a canter, but seventy-one men being hit by three thousand men on as many horses were most closely similar to a pebble struck by a boulder. Matteo was buffeted almost off his feet by the shock of the impact; only the fact that he rebounded off the breastplate of one of his halberdiers meant that he kept his feet. All around him was a cacophony of screaming men and horses and steel striking steel and flesh, and for a moment he was paralyzed. Then the training he had subjected himself to for so many years kicked in and he found himself wading forward, jabbing his spear at the faces of the horses that loomed before him to make them rear and then driving forward again to thrust at their necks or bellies. He did this twice, spilling the riders to the unforgiving ground, before he found himself facing a horse in a trapper all of black save for shockingly crimson trim, ridden by a man armored in black-enameled plate that made him look uncannily like a dragon with a coronet around his helmet. A distant part of Matteo's mind said Holy fuck, that's the Targaryen himself, but the rest of him didn't care; he was roaring now, roaring as loudly and madly as any of his guards, despite having never been a man of blood by inclination. The black-armored knight raised his sword to smite down upon him, and Matteo lowered his head to accept the blow in order to plunge the head of his spear into the belly of the horse before him. The horse went down with a blaring scream, but as Matteo pressed forward to attack the black-armored knight that threw himself from the saddle one of the horse's flailing hooves caught him in the hip and knocked him flat on his arse.
He tried to get up, screamed as something grated in his pelvis, and then something hit him on the helmet and smashed him down into darkness.
XXX
Ser Garin Uller leapt from his horse and dragged it over to where his king was getting to his feet by the bridle. "Take mine, Your Grace!" he shouted. As Viserys hauled himself into the saddle Garin began to wave him on frantically. "Go, Your Grace, go! Don't worry about me, I will follow on foot!"
Viserys rose in the stirrups, raised his visor with the same hand that held the red-dripping Blackfyre, and peered through the chaos, lips moving in what Garin could tell were obscenities despite not being able to hear a word of them. "Damn it, this won't do," he finally said. "Trumpeter, sound rally on the banner! As loud as you can, man, we need every man we can!"
"No, for the gods' sakes!" Garin screamed. "On, Your Grace, on! We can break the enemy into pieces if only we move on now!"
"We must reorder ourselves, ser!" Viserys snapped. "Otherwise, their next counterattack will roll us up piecemeal! And get yourself a horse! Quickly, ser! You're my banner-carrier; you must keep up with me!"
Garin swore long and fervently under his breath as Ser Clarence Webber brought over a stray horse that had streams of rapidly drying blood streaking it's trapper. He was born of a people who lived for swift action and swifter reaction; he could feel the initiative slipping away, like sand through his fingers. If there was one thing he had learned as a young man, it was that it was better to take a good-enough action immediately then wait to take a perfect action that would come too late to do any good.
XXX
For an unbearably long moment, the fate of half a world seemed to rest on the point of a single lance. For better or worse, that lance was in the hand of Eddard Stark, who pumped it in the air to signal the advance. "Forward!" he howled. "Justice and vengeance!"
"JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE!" chorused the men behind him as they snapped their visors down with the rims of their shields and nudged their horses forward into the walk as the trumpeter brayed out the signal. Ser Gerold Dayne felt his eyes widen and breath come more quickly as liquid fire seemed to race along his veins. This was what a knight lived for; a massed charge of lances across level ground against a foe of equal strength. Any knight worth the name, he knew, would give lands, wealth, even their souls, to be in this charge, and especially to be where he was now, only three places from Lord Stark's right shoulder in the leading rank. Behind him four thousand of the finest knights in the world were now nudging their horses up to the trot, their ranks as straight as a plumb-line even as the pace changed. To his left he could hear Lady Maege and Lord Jorah Mormont snarling behind their visors even over the rumble of sixteen thousand hooves, a sound eerily reminiscent of the bears on their shields, while to his right Ser Murtagh Whitefield, a volunteer from the Manderly lands, was promising the Warrior two candles of fine beeswax the length of his arms from wrists to elbows if he survived.
Ahead of them the Targaryen's knights were rallying, but Ser Gerold could tell that they were doing so too slowly. Lord Tarly and Viceroy Contarenos might have disobeyed orders, but they had broken the momentum of the Targaryen's advance. And in doing so they had turned a potentially equal fight into a fight where the odds were substantially stacked in favor of the Kingdom of Myr. Especially since, Ser Gerold realized as he scanned the enemy's lines, Lord Tarly's countercharge in particular had left many of the Targaryen's knights without their lances.
As the trumpet sounded the canter he heard an uncannily accurate imitation of a wolf howl, and realized with some surprise that it was coming from his own throat. The knights and lords around him took it up with only a hint of hesitation, and the unearthly hunt-and-blood-song rose even above the hoof-drumming that was making the earth shake beneath the advancing knights. He glanced to his left and saw Lord Stark raise his lance. "JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE!" he roared again. "CHARGE!"
There was a great baying howl as the lances swung down to form a streak of razor-edged steel in front of the still-perfectly-straight ranks of charging horsemen, and Ser Gerold Dayne felt his whole world contract to the point of his lance and the knot of enemy knights that were even now riding out from around the dragon banner.
The impact, when it came, was tumultuous. Ser Gerold was never sure, thereafter, whether he had unhorsed his man or not; all he knew was that his lance exploded into myriad splinters and in the next instant his sword was in his hand and he was spurring deeper into the enemy ranks. All around him was uproar, like a tavern brawl in a smithy, and blows were raining on his armor even as he fought, his long and hard training at Lord Stark's hands bearing fruit as enemy knights fell away before him.
He had just dumped a knight with peacock plumes in his helmet into the dirt when his horse screamed, rearing uncontrollably, and he had to throw himself from the saddle before it fell over backwards and crushed him. He bounced to his feet, ignoring the fact that the wind had been knocked out of him, and saw a white-cloaked knight rush at him, brandishing a banner like a spear. He beat aside the point that probed for his visor-slit, hurled himself forward, got his sword around the other knight's neck, threw him to the ground, kicked him in the helmet, and then saw the black-armored knight with a coronet around his helmet that was bearing down on him with sword upraised in both gauntleted hands. The realization that he had just put down a knight of Viserys Targaryen's Kingsguard and that Viserys himself was now coming at him registered only dimly; he was too deep in the battle-trance for conscious thought.
What happened when Viserys Targaryen tried to collapse his helmet with a crushing overhand blow had nothing to do with deliberate decision-making and everything to do with trained reflex. He raised his sword into a high cross-guard and was suddenly reminded that the Targaryen had a Valyrian steel blade when he felt it break his own blade like a stick and crash down on his right shoulder. The pain was staggering but long years of training pushed him through it to reach up and get his left hand on the cuff of the Targaryen's gauntlet as he tried to ride past him. The momentum of the horse jerked him off his feet, but he held onto the Targaryen's gauntlet like a limpet, and his own not-inconsiderable weight dragged the Targaryen half out of the saddle. The Exile King managed to grab onto the pommel of his saddle with his left hand to keep himself from falling, but either he hadn't been trained wisely enough or he wasn't canny enough to either accept the fall and fight on foot or let go of his suddenly-too-long blade for something handier in such an awkward position.
Ser Gerold Dayne, on the other hand, had learned precisely what to do in this situation. He let the stump of his broken sword fall, got his dagger in his fist as he scrambled to get his feet at least partially under him as the Targaryen's horse came to a slewing, squealing stop, and had just gotten the triangular blade into the Targaryen's visor slit when something crushed his already-battered right shoulder and a wave of pain drove him into darkness.
In Volantis, a shaven-headed warlock screamed denial and rage as blood streamed from his nose and eyes. In Oldtown, a stockily built archmaester poring over a tome jerked his head up with a frown, as a man does who thinks he hears alarum bells. In Asshai, a young shadowbinder clutched at a table as she staggered, gasping behind her mask as if she had been kicked in the belly. And in a cave in the far north of Westeros, an old, old man ranted at the uncertainty of fate and the interference of the gods as the dim figures watching him from the shadows glanced at each other nervously.
Robert Baratheon looked at the flank of the Exile Company like a man looking at treasure. Ned's glorious, brilliant charge had smashed the Targaryen's knights and was driving them back. Which meant that the flank of their infantry was now exposed, open to the gods and anyone with a free force and the ballocks to use it. And here he was, with his Brotherhood, those knights and squires of the Expedition that young Tarly and Ser Harry Flash had managed to rally, and the Expedition's archers still under his hand.
He reached his hand out for his lance only to find Ser Akhollo Freeman's hand staying it. "Please, Your Grace," Akhollo said, pleading for the first time since Robert had known him. "We cannot afford to lose you. Not with Ser Brynden dead and Lord Stark's fate still unknown."
Robert looked at the chief of his guards, emotions tearing at him. All the experience and instinct of a life spent in arms was screaming at him to take his men and crush that open flank like an eggshell. But . . . He had seen Ser Brynden's body being carried to the rear. The singers would recount that he had died valiantly, and would rest in his grave in satisfaction with the victory his blood had won. But Robert had seen only how his old friend and faithful captain had been diminished by his death, beyond even the slackness of his limbs. It was as if he had been made physically smaller by the loss of the spirit that had animated him so vividly for a man of his years. The thought of Ned being reduced in the same way . . . "What would you have me do, ser?" he asked finally, softly enough that only Akhollo could hear him.
"Let me lead this attack, Your Grace," Akhollo answered. "If the gods demand a blood-price for this victory, I can be more easily spared than you."
Robert's guts twisted at the idea of letting another man pay the price for him, but the stony expression on Akhollo's face, an expression which as good as said that he was prepared to knock Robert down and have the Brotherhood restrain him, made him nod. "Go then, and the gods speed you," he said. "And come back alive, ser. My children will need you, when they come of age."
Akhollo bowed in the saddle, snapped orders for two for two of the Brotherhood's knights to stay by Robert's side, and then led the rest of the army's last reserve away with a shouted command and a skirling blast on the trumpets. Robert turned away; barring a miracle, Akhollo would flatten the Exile Company where it stood, or drive it into a retreat that would let him ride it down into ruin. No, there was nothing he could do there.
In fact, he realized with a start, there was nothing left for him to do anywhere. Ser Vernan Irons was holding the left flank steady by his last report, the Iron Legion and the Braavosi had held the Unsullied and the Volantene Militia to a standstill all the long, bloody day, Ned had broken the Targaryen's cavalry, and now Akhollo was going to break the slaver's left flank. The whole day he had been dispatching reinforcements here and there from the reserve, sometimes leading them into place himself, and riding behind the lines encouraging the men. But now the reserve was empty, and his men would have all the encouragement they needed once Akhollo started rolling up the enemy's flank.
For a moment, Robert's soul rebelled at being forced into inactivity on the battlefield, then he tamped it down. Until Akhollo's attack actually went home, the right flank would still be shaky, with so few Legion companies and so many militia. With a curt "Follow me, sers," to the knights on either side of him and to Ser Dafyn Otley his banner-bearer, he began walking his horse towards where the right flank had established itself on the rim of a sunken road. Septon Deryk might have little love for him personally, but he would welcome the aid in inspiring his men.
XXX
Ser Clarence Webber reined in his horse barely a foot from Ser Myles Toyne. "Ser Myles!" he burst out. "We must retreat!"
Ser Myles frowned, shook his head. "We have them on the run," he replied, gesturing forward to where the Exile Company's infantry was trying to cross a sunken road in the face of determined, if largely inexpert, resistance. "Another hour, maybe two, and we'll be rolling their army up like an old carpet. I'll bring the heads of their captains to the king . . ."
"The king is dead!" Ser Clarence shouted, stunning everyone in hearing into silence. "The king is dead," he repeated. "The king is dead and the abolitionist cavalry is menacing your flank as we speak. We have to get out of this, while we still have something to get out of it."
Ser Myles Toyne had many faults. Being a slow thinker was not one of them. After staring at Ser Clarence for only a bare handful of heartbeats he turned and began roaring for his couriers, telling them to pass on orders to disengage and fall back to the dragonroad. "We'll need time to disengage, Ser Clarence," he said as his couriers scuttled away. "Time, and the abolitionists chewing on someone that isn't us."
Ser Clarence nodded. "Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Edwyn Saffron will cover your retreat as much as they can," he promised. "But as hard-pressed as they are, that might not be very long. The True Myrish will hold the rearguard."
Ser Myles nodded. "And the Militia? And the Unsullied?"
"The Militia are being ordered to retreat as well," Ser Clarence assured him. "As for the Unsullied," he arched an eyebrow, the effect of which was largely lost under the brow of his helmet, "what of them?"
Ser Myles frowned, then nodded again. Losing the Unsullied would make this a disaster instead of a mere defeat, but there was sense in it. With Viserys dead, control of the Unsullied should, in law, pass to his newborn son, but actual control would be exercised by whoever the boy's regent would be. There was no point in risking that one of the other Triarchs would seize the regency from Magister Rahtheon or Ser Arthur, and use the Unsullied to avenge years of being relegated to the sidelines.
As for the Militia, it could be argued that they should be left to die as well; their loyalty to Viserys had been predicated on his being a Triarch of Volantis, and only a fool would think that the other Triarchs would not seize the opportunity to reassert control over the Militia. But even with Viserys dead, there were still ties of comradeship between the Exile Company and the Militia, and there was no point in making more enemies than they already had. And any of the Militia that kept their heads enough to obey the order to disengage and had the skill, courage, and luck to survive the retreat would be useful people to have around in the future, if a way could be found to retain their loyalty that didn't involve asking them to hail Viserys's son as King Aemon of Volantis, the First of His Name. The last person who had tried to make Volantis a monarchy had been torn apart by elephants in the great square before the Palace of Order, after being arrested by his own bodyguards.
As Ser Myles began the process of disentangling the Exile Company from its enemies, Ser Clarence wheeled his horse around and spurred back towards where Ser Arthur was desperately trying to hold the Myrish knights at bay, feeling a slight smile twist his face. King Viserys had changed many things, but he hadn't changed the nature of Volantene politics. Not in that way. That much, at least, had survived the coming of the Andals, and this new age of blood.
XXX
Eddard Stark raised his sword vertically in the air to signal a halt, raising his visor to glare after the slaver knights. He hadn't seen the Targaryen since the charge, but he had seen Ser Arthur Dayne; the mad knight was unmistakable, even with other knights wearing the white cloak. And what was happening was too familiar from Tara. Short, smashing counter-charges to disrupt the pursuit, followed by swift retirements in the confusion to shelter behind a screen of infantry until the pursuit drew too close again. His men were fresher now than those he had led in pursuit from the field of Tara had been, but such fighting would wear them down just as quickly.
He shook his head. Damned if he'd make that mistake twice. He called up the map of the surrounding countryside that he had spent so many evenings poring over. The dragonroad ran straight from the Agneiat to Ghoyan Drohe, but it did so from the Upper Bridge, a good two or three miles upstream from the Middle Bridge that the slaver knights were now retreating across. If the Targaryen was retreating to Ghoyan Drohe, and he had to be, there was nowhere else nearby that could serve as a base of supply, after Khal Drogo's horde had come through, then riding across country would let his knights outpace the slavers. With no wagons or other wheeled vehicles, they were fast enough that even the dragonroad wouldn't let the slavers keep ahead of them. If he could get the knights under his command to Ghoyan Drohe, and burn the boats that were supplying the Targaryen's army from Ny Sar . . .
The image of the Targaryen trapped and starving made him smile like a wolf scenting prey as he turned to his former squire, who had been knighted years ago. "Saul, inform the king that I am taking the knights across country in hot pursuit of the enemy; I mean to beat them to Ghoyan Drohe and destroy their logistika. Go, ser, go!" As Saul cantered away on his already foaming horse, Eddard wheeled and raised his sword again as he faced his knights. "Comrades!" he roared. "I mean to ford the creek, ride to Ghoyan Drohe overland, burn the Targaryen's boats, and trap him here for us to carve up at our leisure! Will I have to do it alone?"
The knights roared as they flourished their weapons. "On to Ghoyan Drohe!" "Death to the slavers!" "Stark, Stark, STARK!"
Eddard turned his horse again and pointed his sword towards the Agneiat and the fields beyond that led to the Rhoyne. "Follow me!" he roared again, and led the chivalry of Myr across country at a hard trot to spare the wind of the horses. They would need as many of the heavy chargers to survive the journey as they could, and they were already tired.
Eddard Stark's venture was not only unauthorized, but exceedingly risky. At a stroke he deprived the abolitionist army not only of its most powerful mobile strike force, but of one of the cornerstones of its tactical superiority. This would, in the event, not matter.
The Grand Army of Volantis had been broken by the rapidly spreading reports of Viserys Targaryen's death, which not only deprived it of its commander, but of its reason to continue the attack. The charge that Ser Akhollo Freeman led against the flank of the Exile Company's infantry, which in the vivid reportage of the time left the sunken road 'packed with the slain', was all that was needed to make the retreat wholesale. Ser Myles Toyne managed to lead a rump of the Exile Company's infantry away from the sunken road and back to the Middle and Upper Bridges, picking up survivors from the Volantene Militia as he went. Both bridges became 'scenes from a nightmare of the Hells' as the Grand Army tried to retreat through these two narrow chokepoints, but two things prevented the Grand Army from being annihilated on the field.
The first was the True Myrish component of the Exile Company. These men, having been driven from their homes twice over and just lost their last best hope of reclaiming their homeland, volunteered to form a rearguard at the Middle Bridge that repelled five separate assaults by Ser Akhollo Freeman's scratch force. They were, eventually, 'killed to the last man where they stood in their ranks', but they bought the Grand Army six valuable hours to get across the Agneiat and begin their retreat in earnest.
The second was the Unsullied. Having received no orders to retreat, they simply continued to fight as they had done all day, even as the rest of the Grand Army crumbled away around them. They did halt their attempts to grind through the Iron Legion, but only because the Braavosi regiments started to curl in on their flank and forced them to adopt an all-around defensive posture. Surviving accounts of participants in the battle all agree that the Unsullied refused all offers to surrender on terms, although they differ on the manner of the refusal. Durran Bahaan's Testament of Twenty Years in the Legionstates that the offers of surrender were met 'only with silence, a silence that would have proclaimed contempt if the Unsullied had been capable of feeling it', while Ser Harry Flash's Dawns and Departures of a Knight's Lifeasserts that the heralds who volunteered to carry the offer of surrender 'were answered with javelins'. We may safely disregard the report of Ser William Doggett, which has the Unsullied answer a single offer of surrender with the honors of war with 'We thank the King for his courtesies. But we are Unsullied. Unsullied do not surrender. They die.' Ser William had been injured, unhorsed, and briefly taken prisoner in Samwell Tarly's charge, and would not have been in a position to observe the last stand of the Unsullied.
Overseeing the destruction of the Unsullied and the True Myrish at Middle Bridge occupied King Robert's full attentions for the remaining hours of daylight. The True Myrish he later dismissed as 'mad dogs long overdue to be put down', but he admitted in a letter to his queen that the destruction of the Unsullied was 'the most grim and doleful scene I have yet witnessed . . . Even at the last, when less than a dozen of them were still on their feet and every one of those wounded, they would not surrender, but had to be clubbed and wrestled to the ground and bound hand and foot. Even then they snapped at our men like beasts, seeking to kill with their teeth since they were prevented from doing so with their hands. Of these last dozen, four have died of their wounds and the rest must be bound hand and foot in their sickbeds, to prevent them from attacking their doctors or tearing the bandages from their wounds in order to ensure their own deaths.'
Even so great a victory as he had won, however, did not end Robert's labors. There were decimated companies to reorganize, prisoners to secure (the Militia and the Exile Company having proven less fanatical than the Unsullied) and thousands of wounded men to arrange care for before he could lead the Alliance's infantry in pursuit of the Grand Army . . .
Place of Slaughter: the Battle of Agneiat Creek by Jaymes Sears