I think it is necessary to mention that the others will not appear in this story. At the very least they will not affect the outcome of the battle at Winterfell.
Chapter 11 Battle in the Snow
On the walls of the western portion of the Winter Town Ser Garlan Flowers saw the Stark propaganda, scrawled hurriedly in white paint. 'Every man of the North shall take arms, and we shall stop the lion hordes under the walls of Winterfell.'
'Someone should've made mention to them we're roses, not lions,' he jested to Dickon Tarly, son and squire of Randyll Tarly, shouting to make himself heard above the snowstorm.
Dickon Tarly laughed. 'Rose or lion, they still can't stop us.'
True. In the Winter Town was stationed over nine thousand Stark soldiers, most of them hastily gathered and poorly trained, and over fifty thousand civilians fleeing from the war, denied shelter in Winterfell. Ser Garlan's men slew both alike. It was glorious.
His own men launched a rain of arrow on the Starks, they answered with stones. The elder and the weak were fleeing, desperately crying for their family. The men fought with each other for the finest weapons. Some flamed ale bottles and threw them at his army, a long gust of smoke trailing behind them. Arrows and stones were raining on them from the top of every roof, and darkness, blood and chaos was everywhere.
Garlan slew two Northmen with his sword and kicked one's head into a bloody horror with his horse. They rode down most of the Northmen on the street but a few had built up crude defenses or were garrisoned in fortified buildings. They were also consumed by the storm of steel but inflicted many casualties upon them. Some of them hid behind a hasty line of wooden stakes, aiming crossbows at them. The Reach army answered with longbows.
All the men on the battlefield had lost all sense of reasonability by now, they had forgot about their old mothers and children, the only thing in their eyes was their enemy and the only thing in their minds the lust to kill them. Like trapped beasts they roared and charged.
He saw he had lost Dickon, and turned his horse around to search for him.
Despite having the obvious superiority fighting through the Northmen was a pain. They had fortified and garrisoned almost every building, and each man fought to his death. Still, they were outnumbered and gradually overwhelmed.
A man who rode beside him was caught in the throat by a bolt. Blood trickled out of his mouth as he collapsed from his horse. Garlan turned and saw, at his right was a stout wooden inn with two stories, its doors barred, on the second story a dozen of Northmen were firing arrows and flinging stones at them. Two knights were going at the barred door with warhammers. More men were firing back at the defenders. Garlan grabbed a torch laying on the ground and flung it at the inn. The inn blazed, giving a blinding light as well as the deafening screams of the defenders.
Screams sounded in front of him. He noticed Dickon Tarly galloping back with a dozen horse around him. 'Northmen!' Dickon screamed, 'Northmen everywhere!'
Before they parted Randyll Tarly had warned them of a Northern war tactic they called the Hailstorm Charge. 'The Northmen are savage like animals, and like animals when they are trapped they grow mad,' Randyll Tarly had told him. 'I fought Northmen in Ashford in Robert's Rebellion, and when I shattered their van and pinned down their main host Lords Hornwood and Cerwyn launched a Hailstorm charge. They charged at our lines with everything they got, screaming "Hail Robert", and other mad things such as that, charging at our lines with a thick wave of men. We threw them back and slew all of them with lines of spears, but they severely damaged my divisions and several of my boldest knights were maddened at the sight of Northern bodies littering the entire battlefield like a thick black carpet.'
It was one thing to be warned about it, and quite another to actually see one. Under the tall dark shape of Winterfell's walls thousands of hastily gathered Northern soldiers stranded outside the citadel decided to launch a Hailstorm Charge. 'Robb, King Robb, the Young Wolf,' thousands of Northmen screamed as they charged towards his horses with scythes and spears and sticks and stones, all ragged and starved and frozen, some of them younger than Dickon. Yet in their eyes burned the fires of revenge, their passion burning bright.
'Hail Robb!' They screamed as they charged towards Garlan's men, an imposing storm raging towards them. Some of the knights were so startled they stopped fighting and gaped.
'What are you looking at, idiots?' Shrieked Garlan, 'kill them!'
His men recovered to their senses and charged towards the Hailstorm, lance and longsword against sticks and stones. The two sides engaged in bloody battle, Northman on foot and the Southron on horses. Although the Southron had the obvious advantage the Northmen all fought to the death and none surrendered. Soon the Northmen were all swept aside by the tidal wave of knights. A thick, unbroken mass of corpses covered the earth like a blanket.
The fighting raged for a long time. After the last of the Northmen were swept from the streets his men dismounted and burst in every house, slaying the last of the defenders, though losing some men in the vigorous room-to-room fighting. Garlan lost track of all time, but judging by the lights in the sky it was around midday. His watch proved him correct.
After the western Winter Town was under control Garlan joined up with Randyll Tarly's own corps, stationed south of Winterfell launching occasional catapult attacks of the South Gate. A third portion of their army was already east of Winterfell, slowly encircling the great Stark citadel in a ring of steel.
The snow was slightly lighter when Garlan reached Lord Tarly's army, still cold and wet but was not as bad as it was before. At least he could see Winterfell's walls clearly now. In Lord Tarly's camp he saw a host of catapults ready to fire.
A dozen of hastily erected catapults, all well-used lay before Tarly's army. His men were erecting another dozen. 'We've been bombing Winterfell for all of last night, but only with stones. We're gonna feed those Wolves hidden up in there fire now, let the Starks melt,' grinned Ser Hyle Hunt, one of Lord Randyll Tarly's household knights, a pleasant man with a rich smile.
Randyll Tarly emerged from his tent, a hard man with a tall structure and deep blue eyes. 'Dickon, Ser Garlan,' Lord Tarly greeted. 'I presume you have overwhelmed the resistance in Winter Town.'
'Aye,' said Garlan, 'we encountered one Hailstorm Charge but the Northmen did not inflict much casualties upon us, My Lord.'
'Good and better.' Randyll Tarly declared. 'Hailstorm charges are stupid in military sense, yet still may inflict great damage upon unseasoned commanders. You have done well.'
Garlan felt proud to be given praise by one of the finest commanders in Westeros.
'Why are we firing at the castle, Father?' asked Dickon. 'Should not we be storming Winterfell? If we breach the castle walls before the Lannisters come so we can win the race?'
'We shall fire on the castle until Matthis Rowan returns from the North and rejoins with us,' announced Randyll Tarly. 'Until he arrives and completes the encirclement of the city we shall bombard them with catapults, preparing a breach for the storming. Winterfell has tall thick walls, a headlong attack would not be the wisest route.'
'Where are we aiming for?' asked Garlan.
'The Great Keep, the Maester's Tower and the Godswood.' Slowly the greased ropes on the catapults winded and the pine wood groaned. Soldiers carried barrels of tar and stacked them aside.
'Open fire on the capital of the rebel Kingdom of the North,' then, from Randyll Tarly's lips thundered the tremendous words of command. The fresh catapults groaned and flung barrel after barrel of flaming tar into Winterfell with a deadly rhythm. These did not make the hollow booming sounds the old catapults made, but rather a sickening crunch and a whoosh of flame. They could hear Northmen screaming and stone crumbling and collapsing. Fires blazed through the snow.
Garlan noted the time from the delicate watch he bought with him. It was exactly the middle of the hour of the falcon. Hundreds of barrels of burning tar were thrown into Winterfell, when they ran out of tar they threw stones, then the corpses of the dead Northmen in Winter Town.
The bombarding lasted all the day and well into the night, and thousands of stones smashed into the center of Winterfell.