Chapter 28; The Lion does his part;

Characters of the Chapter

Brienne of Tarth Knight of the Twin Kingdoms

Bronn Blackwater, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach

Jaime Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West

Podric Payne, Knight of the Twin Kingdoms, formerly squire to Brienne of Tarth

"It seems the fighting is done My Lord. We have…" Podric Payne began to say.

"Yes Podric, so I see." Jaime Lannister answered, seated atop his horse. Podrick nodded and went on his way and Jaime returned to surveying the battlefield around him. He was surrounded by a field of corpses. A few were in the red and gold armor of Lannister forces, some others in the uniforms of the smaller houses of the Reach or the Westerlands. Most of the dead however had blue shields and banners with two wavy lines of white running horizontally through it, the sigil of the Upstart House Sea.

As soon as Daenerys Targaryen had sent warnings advising him that some of the Upstart Houses had betrayed the Twin Kingdoms, he had turned the Lannister army southwards to deal with the nearest threat, the Upstart House Sea. Originally there had been a plan for him to form a second army that would rally with the Queen's army as soon as the Orlesians made landfall. He had considered those plans to be promptly aborted when the Empire had turned its fleet towards the Bite, guessing the Queen would instead be calling all armies to her straightaway. The logistics of assembling the army in the Westerlands had taken a bit longer than expected, so he had just been about to leave the Westerlands when the invasion had begun. Still, he would have reached the Queen in time before any serious fighting took place had his brother's plans not gone completely out the window the moment the Orlesians hit solid ground. But such was the way of war, with plans rarely surviving beyond contact with the enemy.

The Westerlands had seen its share of the sneak attacks that had followed the Orlesian Landfall, but thankfully his army had already taken to the field by then, and enough of the Westerlands had remained intact to maintain the supply lines that sustained his forces.

Upon entering the Reach his force of some ten thousand had been joined by scattered groups of Reach houses. From them he had learned that the bulk of the Houses in the Reach had in the absence of other instructions moved to join their forces with the Queen's army, while these ones had had to turn back to deal with House Sea. House Sea for its part had been busy in the region, taking out any military force they were big enough to take on, even hammering the Dornish army with hit-and-run attacks as they had passed through this region. They had also been capturing or destroying supplies intended for the Queens army and other royalist forces, supplies that would surely be needed in the war effort. All the more validation for Jaime's decision to deal with the Upstart house before they did more harm. When Jaime had enquired to the fate of Bronn, the man who was supposed to lead the lords of the Reach, the lesser lords could not give him a concrete answer as to his fate. With all the fighting that had been going on in the region it was no surprise. Still, he wasn't too concerned. Jaime already knew Bronn to be crafty enough to survive just about anything life could throw at him, and if he had managed to survive this as well, then surely the old rogue would turn up sooner or later.

Jaime's scouts had found the forces of House Sea setting up an ambush for his troops just as Queen Daenerys had warned. His scouts had done their job well, uncovering the enemy's position without being discovered themselves. With the enemy unaware that they had been discovered, Jaime had gained an important tool to turn their trap to his advantage.

He had sent out a token force along the road so House Sea would think that his army was falling into their ambush just as planned. To improve this illusion the token force had been instructed to inflate their numbers as much as possible so the enemy would not become suspicious. His remaining forces he had divided into two groups, him taking command of one half, while Brienne led the second. Together they had approached the ambush site from the opposite sides, at a critical moment falling on house Sea, in effect ambushing the ambushers. With the advantage of their surprise lost to them and facing a superior force, House Sea had proven to be better tradesmen than soldiers. Within fifteen minutes of fighting the advantage had swung decisively in the favor of the royalists, and now, half an hour later from the fighting's start, here they were taking down enemy stragglers and dealing with the fight's aftermath. By his early estimation the enemy had lost six or seven soldiers for every one of theirs, an excellent result all things considered.

Today's victory was an important one, of that there was no doubt. With a single swift stroke his army had knocked one of the rebelling Upstart Houses out of his war. He had rid the Twin Kingdoms of an enemy force that had caused great harm behind their lines, hampering the Queen's efforts to deal with the Orlesian invader. Most of the military power of House Sea lay dead or dying on this field of battle. What enemy forces remained were shattered and leaderless. The lords of the Reach would have no difficulty dealing with the remnants now. And all this he had managed to do with very light casualties for his side.

His work was not quite finished of course. His army still had to take the home castle of House Sea. Doing so would complete the capture the territories held by House Sea, and so would remove one of the areas the Orlesian army had been using to sustain their army with Westerosi supplies. The removal of these areas would make the Orlesian forces more dependent of the supplies they were bringing in from Thedas, and so would make it easier for the Twin Kingdoms to win this war. But taking the castle was no obstacle. With the number of enemies defeated here Jaime did not expect significant resistance. That was something that would happen as soon as he got around to doing it.

Yes, today had been a significant victory. Yet for all that Jaime felt little joy or comfort in it. In reality he had not even wanted to be here, he had simply done it out of a sense of duty, because this invasion did need to be defeated. He did not question the necessity of being here, and he would never have let his reluctance get in the way of leading the men of his army, but he had had his fill of war many years ago.

After the death of Cersei he had been less than himself. Cersei had been a poisonous, monstrous woman that by rights he should never have cared for, but still in a strange way she had been part of him. Her passing had wounded him in ways he could not have anticipated. He hated himself for abandoning her those many years ago. And hated himself for hating himself, wanting to let go of the past and move on. It all resulted in quite a bit of brooding for him. He had lost interest in just about everything, retreating to Casterly Rock, where he had hoped to spend the remainder of his days with the only other woman he had ever fallen in love with. In many ways he had simply wanted to vanish from the face of the earth. The Lannisters were nearly universally shunned now, despised for their part in the wars before the formation of the Twin Kingdoms. Tyrion was the one exception to this rule, another piece of irony, since at one time he had been the black sheep of the family, people eager to blame him for whatever troubles arose, although admittedly the Lannisters had never been very popular.

In the end Tywin Lannister's dream of a thousand year legacy had come crashing down in bitter failure and defeat, crowned with infamy. Against that backdrop Jaime had felt that he was a relic of a bygone age that had no place in this new world. All that was left for him now was to find a little happiness for himself before it was time for him to pass from this world, letting himself fade from memory and letting this brave new world find its own way forward. Even so, at Briennes urging he had done enough to attend to his duties and govern his people properly, gaining him a reputation as a decent Lord, if a distant one. Honestly to many it seemed to be a positive trait rather than a flaw. The common folk were relieved, since the attentions of the powerful generally were bad news for them, heralding oppression and the loss of things that they cared about. And the lesser nobles in the Westerlands had been relieved by his hands off attitude as well, discovering that he cared little what games they played, so long as they kept the Queen's peace and presented no threat to his house or the Twin Kingdoms.

Even for the Queen this was an agreeable state of affairs, for in many ways this represented what she wanted from her Wardens and Lords Paramounts. Since coming to power she had sought to erode the old system where lords were first loyal to their Warden or Lord Paramount, who in theory were loyal to the ruling monarch in turn. In her own words she wanted to be Queen of one Kingdom, the South Kingdom, not the Queen of six Kingdoms. She wanted every lord in her lands loyal to her directly, with the Wardens and Lords Paramount only functioning as her enforcers. In their new role they were to be peacekeepers and wartime leaders of their regions, but to not seek to lead other regional lords during peacetime. This way she hoped to prevent the existence of internal factions powerful enough to pose a threat to her rule.

If not for the destruction sown by the wars before the Twin Kingdoms such reforms could never have been enacted. Jaime's own father would have been absolutely livid if any ruler had tried to impose such restrictions on him. But as it was the power vacuum back then had left the Queen in a good position to consolidate power into her pretty hands and establish her new order. With a Dragon at her command and the armies of Westeros demolished, none had remained to oppose her in this. Only Dorne with its relatively intact army could have considered so doing, but Manfrey Martell was a mellow man who saw well the wisdom in her words. Under his command Dorne too had accepted the Queen's will. As for Jaime, he did not mind this new way of handling governance. More to the point, he was well past the point of caring. Politics had never been a field of interest to him, and these days that was even more true.

He had truly hoped that after everything that had happened the higher powers would leave him be. Alas, no such luck for him. The Lion had been roused from his slumber, this time summoned by the Dragon to fight her war. So here he was to see things through, because he still had some semblance of honor and sense of duty to him, and because he knew that unless this war was won there might be no future for him and Brienne, since the Orlesians were unlikely to let them simply be at home and live their lives.

Jaime's thoughts were interrupted as he noticed Brienne riding to him, and he smiled despite himself. She was the one remaining bright light of his existence. If not for her he might have given up long ago, just laid down and died.

"Brienne. It's good to see you're alright. How are the men I entrusted to you?" He said to her.

"They came out okay. Your people are well trained. And we had surprise on our side. We lost only a few." Brienne replied.

"You know, if someone had told me that one day I would be fighting alongside Lannister troops… I'm not sure I would have believed it." She added.

"Strange times Brienne, in a strange new world." He said.

"So what is next?" She asked.

"Once we have sorted things out here there will still be the matter of taking the home castle of House Sea. I don't expect that to take very long. After that I have received some new orders from the Queen concerning Riverrun." He said.

"My Lord!" They both heard. Turning their heads they saw a Lannister commander approaching. "My Lord, word from our scouts. There is another army approaching from the south." The commander said.

"Friend or foe?" Jaime asked at once.

"Friend, as far as we can tell. They appear to be troops from the Reach, My Lord. More precisely House Blackwater troops." The commander replied.

"Blackwaters? You're sure?" Jaime asked.

"The banner they displayed was a green flame on a field of black." The commander said.

Jaime nodded. "Well that is House Blackwater's sigil. Even so I want the troops regrouped into battle formations, just in case. It would not be the first time a false banner was used to confuse an enemy."

"At once My Lord." The commander said and left to carry out his orders.

"You're expecting trouble? I thought the enemies we defeated today were the bulk of them here?" Brienne asked.

"That's what I believe as well, and it may still well be true. But in my time I have had to learn the hard way some very important lessons for any commander of an army. One good one is *hope for the best and prepare for the worst*. An even better one is *always expect the unexpected*" Jaime said.

"Still, I'm not terribly worried. This is more likely to be genuine than not. By all reports the main fighting strength of House Sea are now corpses you can see all around, and I have not received any word from anyone about there being another enemy force nearby. The only way there could be one is if there was a very serious oversight, and I have a hard time believing we could make a mistake that bad." He added.

"Sounds like this could be some good news. It would mean that Bronn is still alive." She commented.

"Or at least his troops. But yes, likely good news either way." He said.

As the Lannister troops got themselves organized he and Brienne took their place at the head of the army. Podric found his way to their side as well after a few moments. Then they waited for this second army to appear. They did not have to wait very long. At first a few scouts appeared, riding back as soon as they noticed them, then a little while later the rest of the army arrived in a marching column.

"Good. If they're in marching order they aren't here with the intention of starting a fight." Jaime thought.

The second army stopped itself a respectful distance away, and some time later a small group of riders departed from the main body of the army, heading towards the Lannister lines. Jaime nodded to Brienne, and the two rode to meet the other group of riders along with Podrick and a group of six guards. As they approached Jaime spotted Bronn at the head of the second group. The two groups met at the center of the field separating their armies.

"Lord Bronn. Good to see you again. We were unsure what had happened to you. You have been out of contact." Jaime said in greeting.

"Jaime, Brienne, Podrick." Bronn greeted each of them. That he ignored using their titles did not escape Jaime's notice. Typical.

"Yeah, had some trouble back home at Highgarden. Turns out the Orlesians don't like to play fair, sent assassins after us. Took this long just to get things sorted out. And they killed all the ravens too, so we couldn't send word to anyone." Bronn continued.

"They did the same all over Westeros. Is lady Blackwater alright?" Jaime said.

"Oh, just fine. She sends her regards. Turns out she's a very dangerous lady when she wants to be. Far more than I even knew." Bronn replied, his tone light.

"Looks like you've had a busy day." He then said, eyeing the battlefield around him.

"Yes, we took out an enemy ambush, dealt with House Sea's main fighting force." Jaime said.

"I just came from their home castle myself. It was deserted, not a soul in sight, so I left a garrison of my lads there to hold it and came here looking for the rest of the bastards. And then my scouts found you lot instead." Bronn explained.

"So you took the castle? Good. That will save us some time." Jaime said, nodding his approval.

"Are your boys, uh, waiting for something?" Bronn asked, nodding towards the Lannister host arrayed into battlelines.

Jaime glanced at his troops. "Ah yes, sorry about that. We had to be sure it was you. With everything that was going on it felt like a sensible precaution. I'll tell them to stand down now of course." He nodded to Podric, who rode off to deliver his commands.

Bronn meanwhile turned to one of the riders he was with. "Tell the lads to take a break while I have words with Lord Lannister here."

"Yes My Lord." The rider said and left.

Bronn smiled. "Still enjoy it when they call me that."

"I count your army to number around four thousand. Mostly the troops of your own House I think?" Jaime said.

Bronn nodded. "Yup. The three thousand the Queen allows me to have for *peacekeeping*. Plus some of me bannermen I picked up along the way. No idea where the rest of them are though."

"You'll be pleased to hear that we have some of your bannermen with us." Jaime said. "They joined with us on a temporary basis since they didn't know what had happened to you. Now that you're here I'm sure they'll wish to join with you again. Most of the rest are with the Queen's army now."

"That's good to hear. Does anyone have an idea what were supposed to be doing now that House Sea is done for?" Bronn asked.

"We do indeed. The Queen has ordered me to remain in reserve. She didn't mention you though. I assume she thought you dead or at least unable to respond." Jaime said.

"I'm not quite that easy to kill." Bronn quipped.

"No indeed." Jaime chuckled. "Anyway if she knew you were alive I'm rather sure she would order you to join forces with her. The last messages put her army just beyond the Ruby Ford. Your forces are welcome to travel with us as far as Riverrun. The Queen wants me to check on the situation there so we'll be going the same way already."

"My soldiers just came out of a fight, and your troops likely have a long day's march behind them. I suggest we let them rest here tonight and set out tomorrow at first light. If you'd like to join me and Brienne for supper this evening, we'd enjoy your company. There's quite a lot of catching up for us to do I think. It's been a few years since we last talked."

"No surprise, what with you spending all your time holed up in Casterly Rock and me busy with my own work. Supper sounds nice though. If we ought to talk might as well do it over food, right? And all this wandering about does make a man rather hungry. I do enjoy touring my lands of course. Lovely country. It's just the reason I have to do that I don't much care about." Bronn said.

"You know, I was just about starting to enjoy my early retirement. I had more or less everything I could have wished for. Lands I owned that provided a living for me, more wealth than I could ever spend, servants to chase after whatever craving I happened to have and a pretty highborn lady for a wife. And then all this happened." He added with no small amount of bitterness.

"Well, contrary to what the smallfolk seem to think being a lord does include some responsibilities. Particularly for ones as important as you or I. Particularly in the world built by Queen Daenerys." Jaime said.

"True enough." Bronn sighed. "Still, had I known that something like this might be coming along I might have thought twice about asking you to give me a castle in payment."

"Asking for a castle? Oh is that what you call it when you point a crossbow at someone and threaten to shoot them unless they pay up all their debts?" Jaime joked.

"Hey now, I only did that after you and Tyrion skipped out on payments for too long." Bronn countered. "Had to make sure people who owe me pay up on time, particularly when they have a boast that they always do so. Back then if I didn't do that I'd have never been paid by anyone. And it wasn't anything personal either. I still think you and your brother are fun company to hang around. Seriously, you can't still be angry about that. That whole mess happened eight years ago."

"No, no, I suppose that I'm not. It's old history. Just water under the bridge. Doesn't mean that I don't enjoy reminding you about it every now and then. I've got to be allowed to have some peculiarities, no?" Jaime said.

"Wait wait wait. Bronn did what?" Brienne asked, shocked.

At first Jaime looked surprised. Then he snapped his fingers. "Oh, right. I never told you about that incident, did I? Sorry. As I said, it's old history for me." He smiled apologetically. "Look… it's a bit of a long story. I'll tell you all about it later. Right now I think I we have things to do."

"We'll, Lord Blackwater, I'll be seeing you later this evening. For now I think I should attend to my troops. If I might be excused?" Jaime finished the conversation, then turned his horse back towards his army, with Brienne and his bodyguards following close by and Bronn returning to his army as well. Jaime ended up inviting Podrick to take part in the supper as well. The man was a mere knight of course, but he knew all three of them as friends and had been a participant alongside them in many events of the past and present, so Jaime thought he had a right to be there. The supper itself was uneventful enough, although their conversations inevitably turned to reminiscing and in the course of that they did end up drinking too much.

The next morning, still working through hangovers, they set off on the long road towards Riverrun, to find out what in the hells had happened there.