TYRION
"What do you mean, they're marching west?" Joffrey Baratheon stamped his foot. "They should be retreating. We won!"
"We won the battle," his great-uncle agreed, "but a battle is not a campaign, let alone a war. Recall our last discussion, Your Grace. What was Renly's purpose in the Battle of the Blackwater?"
"To take the capital."
"No. That was the purpose of the overall campaign. In yesterday's battle, he didn't even fall upon our walls. What was the immediate task he sought to complete?"
To Tyrion's amazement, Joffrey seemed to think about it truly. "To cross the Blackwater."
"Very good, Your Grace. Exactly so," Kevan praised, sounding for all the world sincere, and Tyrion muffled a chuckle. Improvement must be made in small steps, I suppose. "Lord Renly must still cross the Blackwater if he wishes to take the capital, and I assume he does. Hence why he marches west, to cross it."
"So we'll stop him," Joffrey declared with a smile. "I shall lead the army there myself."
"I wouldn't advise a battle there, Your Grace. Near to the sea as this, the Blackwater flows deep, but it is not so everywhere. No river is." The Lord Regent of the Seven Kingdoms put his finger on the map. "The Blackwater is wide and swift and treacherous for much of its course, and the nearest ford is nearer to Casterly Rock than to us. That is much too far; Lord Renly dare not wait so long as to complete a journey thither. But a hundred and twenty miles hence—" he moved his finger— "there's a place called Arlan's Bridge. 'Twas named for a royal ancestor of yours, Your Grace. The Storm King Arlan of House Durrandon was the first man to build a bridge there."
"I know of him! He conquered the riverlands, as I shall!"
"Your honourable ancestor Arlan the Third conquered the riverlands, Your Grace. This was King Arlan the Second of His Name. We burnt the bridge there lest Lord Renly cross it." Spotting Joffrey's expression, Ser Kevan Lannister added, "And that isn't the first time; often 't has been cast down and wrought up again, following the fortunes of war. The bridge we burnt is not the one that Arlan built."
Joffrey's wrath subsided.
"Unfortunately, Lord Renly needs no proper bridge. Arlan's Bridge is not a ford—a man can't walk across—but the river flows so shallow there that any galley of war or big-bellied cog has too deep a draught to sail. Your fleet cannot follow his host all way upstream. At Arlan's Bridge, I daresay, he will cross."
"But then what did you fight the battle for, if he's going to cross anyway? What was your purpose?" The king crossed his arms petulantly. "Why did I have to be betrothed to a greyscaled girl if the royal fleet can't stop my traitor uncle from crossing after all?"
"'Tis a long way to Arlan's Bridge from King's Landing, Your Grace. Lord Renly needs must march for weeks. All the while, both ways round, the royal fleet can harry him. Men may cross, and scaling ladders, but thousands of horses can't be taken on hastily built rafts o'er the Blackwater; they and all great siege weapons, such as his battering rams, will have to be left on the south bank. And he lost more than a dozen thousand men in the Battle of the Blackwater. We have won time and his host is diminished. Yet greatest of all is that he cannot now lay siege to King's Landing and hope to take it. Rest assured I shan't throw away all the royal treasury on fattening peasants, but from Essos our gold can buy grain enough to hold the spectre of starvation at bay, long enough for matters between House Lannister and House Stark to be settled one way or the other. So he cannot afford to wait; he needs must take the city by storm; and such an attempt, against high and well-guarded walls, is the only way a host the size of his can be defeated by a host the size of ours."
"You say 'settled one way or the other'," the king observed, startling Tyrion with the perception. He cast a suspicious eye on his Lord Regent. "If grandfather wins he gathers the strength of the west and comes to reinforce us, I understand, my traitor uncle can't allow that. But what if grandfather loses?"
Kevan's voice was calm as still water. "Then we are all dead men walking, caught between the stag's antlers and the wolf's claws. So let us hope he does not."
At the end of the lesson, Tyrion stepped out from behind a pillar after Joffrey had gone. "You are doing good work with him, uncle."
"I hope so," said Ser Kevan Lannister, taking a seat. "'Tis madness that he hasn't been taught how to think like this already. My oath on it, 't has been many years since I've seen my lord brother quite so wroth as he seemed in the letter he sent to me after I told him of Joffrey's ignorance. He's fighting a war for the trueborn son and heir of Robert Baratheon while Robert himself didn't trouble to teach his son the first thing about ruling vassals, leading hosts and fighting wars. Oh, I'll grant you, the boy's handy enough with a sword, considering his tender years—naught special, but not exceptional in the other way either—but where was King Robert when other fathers, better men, were teaching their sons how to be a man?"
Drily, Tyrion supplied, "Chataya's."
"You may be right," Kevan said with a sigh. "Still, 'tis a monstrously poor deed. Any man, be he king or pauper, should teach his son how to ply his trade after he's gone, how to carry out the duties that befit his station. What shall his son do elsewise?"
"Cut kittens from the bellies of pregnant cats. Tear at the dresses of little girls. On occasion, execute a great lord and start a war. You know, generally make a nuisance of himself."
Kevan Lannister was unamused but did not deem Tyrion's words unfair. "Quite."
They stood together by the window, uncle and nephew, Lord Regent and King's Hand, man and half-man. Tyrion looked out, beyond King's Landing's southeastern wall where watchmen pranced in cloaks of gold, beyond the flattened rubble, ash and dust that had once been the shacks and houses of the waterfront ere his red cloaks had burnt them to deprive Lord Renly of a way to climb the walls, beyond the cruel swift currents of the river Blackwater, unto the cleared and empty land of silent tree-stumps where the southern host's camp had once been. Lord Renly's whole host had marched with him westward. There had not even been an attempt at leaving an army for rearguard, to protect stonethrowers from the Lannister army if it were to cross to the south bank. It seemed that the pretender dared not risk leaving men on the south bank, lest they be unable to take part in the battle; he meant to throw all his sixty-thousand against King's Landing's walls.
Tyrion's eyes returned to the swarm of red-cloaked soldiers of the westerlands and gold-cloaked City Watch who guarded those walls. I hope that they will be enough.
At the dawn of the day of battle, the sky was ocean-blue without a cloud in sight and sunrise spilt over the tourney grounds like a pool of molten copper, forge-fresh. The standards of the army that had come hither yesterday eve danced in the breeze of the Narrow Sea, a forest of loud competing colour, highest among them the prancing, crowned black stag of the royal House Baratheon. The ruin of the local woodland marred the morning beauty, full of stumps and ash where the men of the west had sought to deny the southerners use of the wood to build weapons of siege, but it did not do so overmuch. Greater harm came from the campfires of the mass of tents, like a new forest wrought not of bark but of pale cloth.
The tourney grounds were clean, green and pristine. Lord Renly's armed camp lay beyond them, lacking stonethrowers and war-bred destriers but overspilling full of men, countless men-at-arms in boiled leather and shining mail. On the other side there stood the high walls of King's Landing, unyielding as sun-baked stone. Today the pretender would close that gap, cast the dice and pray the gods were watching. There would be no siege; the city had the food it needed. In father's words, Tyrion thought, leaning against the pink granite of the wall, today matters with Lord Renly will be settled, one way or another.
He sighed, drinking in the dawn-light one last time, and stepped down from the balcony. In his chambers, Podrick Payne helped him don his armour, not any man's chainmail but full plate that fit lightly on his body, coated garishly with gold. There was duty to be done.
Tyrion left the Tower of the Hand without a backward glance and told Pod to help lift him up onto his horse, which was already waiting, fetched for him from the stables. Pod handed him a helm and heavy oaken shield and he rode out of the Red Keep; its portcullis had already been raised for his uncle, who had left shortly before him.
Tyrion's party followed Kevan's for a while, but they parted ways when the Lord Regent turned left onto the Hook while his nephew followed King's Way longer. Kevan had chosen to directly lead the fighting at the King's Gate, whereas Tyrion was to hold the Lion Gate, which lay to the northwest of that. As King's Way reached the foot of Aegon's High Hill, he saw a man drawing a heavy wagon through the city, even at this early hour in the morning. "Halt," he called, and was obeyed.
"M'lord Hand." The carter, a tall thin man with a bushy beard, looked more confused than anything else.
"By the order of the Lord Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, a curfew has been imposed upon the city for the duration of the battle, save for those in the defence of the city," Tyrion told him. "Return to your home. For now the streets are needed for the movement of troops, but you're free to ply your trade tomorrow."
"I need these sent today, m'lord, beggin' your pardon, m'lord. I'm a law-abiding fellow, m'lord, an' I ain't heard nothing 'bout no curfew."
"I was speaking with the Lord Regent less than half an hour ago," Tyrion said, "I'm quite certain. It will be proclaimed once we've gathered some criers. Now begone."
The carter scowled at Tyrion and his guards as he turned his wares around and trudged off the great road, though he dared not disobey. There's one more to curse the twisted little monkey demon, Tyrion thought sourly. Though at least he's not a fisherman, or it would have been more than a scowl.
The sun today was too hot and too bright. Tyrion felt like he was cooking alive in his armour, but knew better than to put his visor up. The men whom he was to command were clad similarly. The Lion Gate which led onto the goldroad, and thence to the westerlands, was filled with carvings of the beast that was its namesake, but he was nonetheless pleased to see the scarlet cloaks and lion-crafted helmets of the sworn men of House Lannister. His uncle Kevan had worked miracles with the discipline of the City Watch, and they had not given great cause for complaint a day fewer than a full turn of the moon ago, when Lord Renly had been defeated on the Blackwater. However, Tyrion remembered how far Littlefinger's corruption had crept into the gold cloaks, as so much else in the city. He was glad to have good Lannister men-at-arms instead.
Littlefinger. It was easy to forget that the man had been in the city not long past. Tyrion had been too lenient with the men, he had decided. He had known the man for an enemy and refused to make a move. My lord uncle was right to banish him. The crown was in debt and the royal treasury was poorly, but they were not crippled, and a dangerous traitor with motives and means unknown—for Tyrion had sent men and there had been no sign of Petyr Baelish in Castle Spilbroke—had been expelled from the capital.
Tyrion spared a thought, now, just briefly, for where the man had gone, before dismissing it from his mind. Littlefinger was not with Lord Renly, nor with Robb Stark, the eunuch had assured them. He had more important things to deal with than one traitor. Sixty-thousand well-armed southerners were camped outside his walls.
The southern camp was awakening. Tyrion watched uneasily as more and more men left their tents and donned their mail. In the light of the sun, merely the night watch had been piercing bright; the whole host was like snow on the field, such was the shine of sun on steel. Boys rushed to present fighting men with their armour and their helms and weapons, and cups of wine to sate their thirst. Ladders, for scaling the walls, were everywhere. Stonethrowers, from humble scorpions to great trebuchets, and battering rams and other such great engines of siege were absent, destroyed by the very men who had carried them so far from Highgarden so that the Lannisters could not get them, for they could not be borne across the Blackwater by raft. But archers, armed not with crossbows or shortbows but the storied longbows of the south of Westeros, were present in their thousands. No fool, Lord Renly, or mayhaps his lords commander, had surrounded his camp with a thick wall of pikemen, long weapons bristling like the spines of a hedgehog, only no hedgehog's spines had such marvellous points that caught the dawn's light, red on the steel. Any host of horse that sought to strike the southern army while they slept would have had a cruel welcome.
But there were not just men-at-arms and knights and squires and the rich pavilions of lords in the host of the pretender. There were grooms leading horses, camp followers coupling with the soldiers, and servants of every age and sex drawing water and carrying messages and tending tables. Other standards proliferated, especially House Tyrell's rose, but everywhere there streamed the black stag on gold of Baratheon.
Troubled, Tyrion glanced around him. His immediate environs were full of westermen, good battle-hardened men-at-arms who had come from his lord father's army, but not all the defenders were as reliable as that. He knew a great stretch of the river-facing wall downstream of the King's Gate were held by westermen, along with the King's Gate itself and all of the walls from there to the Old Gate. Gold cloaks were guarding other gates—the Dragon Gate, the Iron Gate and the River Gate—that were considered less critical to the defence of the city, as Lord Renly was not like to make his way past all the other gates, scoured by archers and scorpions, to strike them. And men of all sorts, no matter be they cloaked in red or gold or neither, took part in the numerous reserves that Ser Kevan had placed throughout the city to reinforce any part of the walls that was hard pressed. The sole exception was the Gate of the Gods, which was held not by westermen but by the vassals of Lord Alester Florent, who had been gifted with Highgarden and raised to Lord Paramount of the Mander, Warden of the South and associated expansive titles at King Joffrey's pleasure. Save for the Reachmen whom he had promised princely rewards, few liked Lord Alester. Even his brother Axell, Lord of Brightwater Keep, who had been made master of ships as a tactful manner of acknowledging the royal fleet's allegiance to his niece Selyse Baratheon, kept a distance from the man who had sat in Lord Renly's war councils from the beginning, ate his food and drunk his wine and then betrayed him in the midst of a great battle. But the treachery he had committed had made it essential for him to see Joffrey victorious over Renly and House Tyrell if he wished to keep his head, so, in a perverse way, he was almost trusted. Tyrion had no doubt that Lord Alester would fight loyally to the best of his ability. The Florents had sought to rule the Reach ever since Aegon the Dragon ended the line of the Gardener kings on the Field of Fire and loftily raised their stewards to mastery of the Reach, defying the other ancient Houses of that kingdom. The favour of House Lannister and King Joffrey was the best hope of achieving their ambition they had had in the last three-hundred years. They would follow through.
Tyrion knew much of the city's defences, but he would have felt safer if he could see them, as he could see the unimaginable vastness of the host of foes. He wished he was in the Red Keep, watching safely from above. He was unaccustomed to this manner of seeing war, unable to see the broad strokes of what was happening, his sight thinned by the slits that served as eyeholes in his helmet. He had spent much of the Battle of the Blackwater on Fury, the royal fleet's flagship, with its admiral, the then-Ser Axell Florent. Lady Selyse had insisted upon it, fearing that House Lannister would sue for peace after sending her men to die to win goodwill from Lord Renly. That had not been a joy, but he had been blind to Lord Renly's host for much of the battle, and for the rest he had exulted in the exquisite satisfaction of his plan being executed well against a surprised enemy. Oh, there had been arrows, but he would not compare the danger of those to the mortal peril he was like to face on the walls against the host seeking to storm them.
There was naught that he could do of it, however. Ser Kevan thought that the men would lose heart if their lords refused to share the danger with them, that they would believe their lords doubted the possibility of victory and thus begin to doubt it themselves, and he was the veteran of a hundred battles, and Lord Regent besides. In this city his word was law.
Lord Renly was gathering his soldiers. His left flank was led by Lester Morrigen, Lord of Crow's Nest, with a tail of his fellow stormlords. The southern host's centre was the province of Lord Rowan of Goldengrove, who Tyrion recalled had served Lord Renly in that capacity before, when the Lord of Storm's End had put an end to his brother Stannis's ambitions, and his life. The right flew the huntsman sigil of House Tarly, whose Lord Randyll had once won a battle against Robert Baratheon, a feat of which few men indeed could boast. And the rear, the reserve, bore the standard of its king with no commander's standard next to it; doubtless Lord Renly was there, as he had been in the Clash of the Stags and the Battle of the Blackwater.
At last the trumpets brayed their challenge, high and strong, and the army of the stormlands and the Reach advanced. This was no mounted charge, swift and strong and seeking to break the enemy with the shock of impact. Walls could not be thus taken. But the sight of so many men marching with martial purpose was also, in its own way, formidable. If a charge was a shadowcat bounding upon you, shredding you with its teeth and claws, this was a bear walking steadily towards you, slow and vast and patient, while you have nowhere to run.
The southerners thinned their ranks as they drew nearer, seeking to envelop a great part of the length of the walls, assailing them in different places at will. Tyrion tilted his head every which way to try to keep sight of them. He could not. Blindly, stupidly, he could not help but think, There are so many.
Here at the Lion Gate, under the Rowans' golden trees on silver standards, mailed men rushed forward. Elsewhere mayhaps it was elsewise, for all that Tyrion knew. He could not afford to look far. "Nock," Tyrion called to his longbowmen once he judged the southerners to be in range, "draw, loose," but it did them little harm. Arrows soared from the wall's murder-holes, but it was no easy thing to hit a running man. They were not so close together that the longbowmen could be assured of striking true.
They proceeded. Heated oil and sand and burning pitch were hurtled at them from the wall, but for all that some among their number died screaming, it did not slow them down. These are brave men, part of Tyrion thought in admiration, while another part saw them coming closer with their weapons in their hands, while he himself was on the wall and could not leave it, and gibbered in helpless fear.
The southerners closed in. Dear gods, there are so many. He saw them grow rapidly larger, nearer, saw the grapnels, ropes and ladders, saw the light reflecting off their helms, their mail, all steel, the hunger in their eyes.
And that was when, he knew. "Drop!"
His men-at-arms heeded him, and with the dropping of the pots green fire took light among the southerners. The attackers gave voice to their torment, high and long, drawn out till they were dying. Wildfire was too scarce to use a pot to kill one or two men; it had to be reserved till its victims were close enough that they might give spark to each other, lest the defenders of King's Landing waste the precious few thousand pots that the Battle of the Blackwater had left them.
Even now, with the Reachmen so extremely close together, Tyrion had known it would not be enough. Ladders clattered hard against the walls, grapnels were flung—one came too high and struck some poor man several yards from Tyrion, knocking him off the wall to his death—and men pulled themselves up rope and ladder to ascend. The world became a mad, chaotic struggle. Tyrion tried to pull loose a grapnel that had dug into a cleft between blocks of red stone, but he had not the strength for it, and had to leap away when a taller man climbing up swung a sword at him. Some nameless western man-at-arms—thanks be to the Warrior—managed to cut the thick stout rope, and they plummeted. Behind him, he heard breathing. A chainmailed man was pulling himself onto the wall from a ladder when Tyrion battered his sword away with his own and kicked him down, bolstered with the power of the forward leap that had brought him to the scene. The man fell, but Tyrion's whole leg shuddered under the impact and he saw stars for a few moments ere a westerman pulled him up. A moment later his saviour was slain, a dirk through a shoulder-joint of his armour, and Tyrion, staggering, hurled himself out of the path of the killer's sword. He hacked at the man's unarmoured foot, and another man hit him with a mace that soon dribbled grey with bits of brain.
Tyrion pulled himself up, cursing his right leg's throb, and met a wondrously brave soul who had clambered up after being burnt by hot sand. He threw himself at the staggering Reachman, ruining his balance, and they wrestled on the ground for a while. Minutes passed, or moments, and Tyrion's sword was wrenched from his hand. He wet himself as the man tried to put a sword through the joint between fauld and breastplate, but a dark-haired westerman pulled open his attacker's visor and shoved a dagger through his skull. He almost wept with relief. The weight of the corpse was overbearing, but nobody helped, so Tyrion had to push it off himself, and he picked up some southerner's discarded axe just as another southerner near brained him with a blow from a morningstar.
Another group of men, the sixth or seventh or, as may be, the twenty-seventh for all he knew, was drawing nearer to the Lion Gate. Tyrion barked a command while struggling against a pothelmed man, and, in addition to the arrows flying at them, his men tried to drop some more pots of wildfire. Only, one of them was struck by a longsword in the struggle, staggered, and Mad King Aerys's pear-shaped pot of fiery death flew from his hand and fell inside the city walls upon one of the nearby houses. The place went up at once, the magic green flames giving spark to a much greater fire of orange ones. Men and women ran screaming from there. Tyrion shouted at some of the red cloaks in the city to try to put it out, but stopped paying heed when a Reachman charged at him, trying to knock him off the wall. A strong, plate-armoured westerman tried to pull off the Reachman's helmet while his thoughts were elsewhere. The southerner noticed the attempt, and soon he and the westerman were locked in battle, his former quarry altogether forgotten.
Tyrion drove his stolen axe into a southern swordsman's wrist, between vambrace and gauntlet, and hurled down the sword at a trio of men climbing a ladder they had set upon the wall. A westerman, or rather his corpse, fell over and near knocked Tyrion to his death, but that he grasped some comrade and almost had his hand chopped off until he was recognised. Up, and a nearby scream of a westerman killed by his friend's burning pitch through mischance made Tyrion start, saving his life from a spear that would elsewise have pierced him and now merely clanged off his helm, and he stuck the axe into the soft flesh of the luckless spearman's throat.
He fought on, and on, and on. His arms and his armour were red with blood, some of it his own. He was bleeding from the Warrior knew how many wounds. Part of his face was raw and red with a glancing blow from a mace that, had it struck inches truer, would surely have slain him, and his left leg was cut at the joint between cuisse and greave so deeply that it was growing numb and stiff-straight. Tyrion jabbed at a man in boiled leather with a spear that he had picked up one way or another, and as the southern freerider gurgled and died, no man came to replace him. Gradually the flare of instinct gave way to confusion, then to understanding. It seemed the flood of men onto the walls had stopped for a while.
Tyrion caught his breath. There were still Reachmen near the walls, many of them. The battle was not over yet. But the southerners scaling the wall near the Lion Gate had seemed numberless, and however mad that thought may be, it was a relief to know, not only know as an abstract thought but know, in his bones, that they were not. Some of the houses near the walls had been burnt, though not the desolation of flattened rubble and blackened ash that had once been the waterfront. The soldiers being held as reserves within the city were helping to control the fire, lest it hinder their movements. The sun was high in the sky now, nearer noon than dawn, and by the golden light it spilt over the world he saw that while Lord Renly's reserve held back much of the southern host was heavily engaged… and nevertheless failing. Tyrion felt a warm and unexpected glow of pride in his men. Against all the fury of the south, King's Landing was holding.
Tyrion waved away some gold cloak shouting for men to preserve public order in the east of the city, to clear Muddy Way and Fishmonger's Square of obstinate locals not heeding the curfew, so that soldiers and wagons of supplies could move swiftly through there. He had more important tasks at hand than unclogging King's Landing's arteries. Already he could see Reachmen under House Rowan's standards forming up again to assail the Lion Gate. The wrath of the rebel Lord of Storm's End was not expended yet.
With a great cry, together, more southerners made for the wall. Longbows twanged and arrows hissed, without stopping them, except for some only. Dying men screamed when struck by hot sand or oil or burning pitch or, worse yet, wildfire. The alchemists' green flames, spell-born fire that could not be put out, evoked in their foes an unsurpassed dread. Tyrion hefted the spear that he had gained, and he fought on.
Further hours did not dam the flow of blood of this battle's viciousness. Tyrion, flailing on the ground, drove a stolen dagger between the bevor and the gorget of a Reachman who would have killed him. The taller man collapsed and gurgled out his last breath, and Tyrion, struggling, stood, to face a man-at-arms who had just clambered off a ladder. This foe caught sight of another westerman and tried to face him, not noticing the dwarf rising far below his eyes. Tyrion hacked at the southerner's legs and tried to snatch his sword as he fell, only to reel away from a cut by the falling foe that would have slit his throat.
As he struggled to regain his balance, a lion-halfhelmed westerman with a brown beard shouted, "Look! M'lord!"
Restricted by the thin slits of his helmet, Tyrion's eyes followed the bearded man's gauntlet till he took a sword against one of his vambraces. It was a mighty blow, and struck near to the joint, though—thank the Warrior—not upon it. He fell, ears ringing, right forearm screaming its pain at him, right vambrace bent badly out of shape. As he picked himself up, he retreated from the fighting behind four westermen whom he summoned with a shout to guard his person. Cursing loudly and quite profanely, he lifted his visor—I need to see in this gods-damned helm; if the gods are kind I won't be shot this moment—and, by pure instinct placing his hand in front of his face, as if that could possibly protect him, he gazed out in the direction he had been told to look.
—and recoiled.
A horde of thin and dirty men—hundreds, or was it thousands?—had gathered in the eastern part of the city, the part that faced the river. They were shouting something, a chant that, as it fell into a steady beat, with many throats acting as one, was heard over even the clamour of battle:
"NO FIRE! NO FIRE! NO FIRE! NO FIRE!"
Men-at-arms from nearby in the city, whoever could be spared, were rushing to confront the crowd. A group of one or two dozen Lannister men-at-arms, swords bared, met them in Fishmonger's Square. Cold steel will deter this mob, he thought, till the crowd howled with rage upon espying the redness of their cloaks and threw itself upon them. Bodies abounded, most of them belonging to the cityfolk, but by the end of it the westermen had been so cruelly torn apart that there were no chunks large enough to be called a corpse. They continued to chant: "NO FIRE!"
Someone in the area had a head on his shoulders. More men were coming to put down the riot, gold cloaks, swiftly and in good order. This was a large group, and Tyrion spied a glint of light off the iron hand of Ser Jacelyn Bywater. He had never felt gladder at his choice for the Lord Commander of the City Watch. There must have been several hundred watchmen there, all armed. It was past certain that would be enough to defeat the mob and disperse it.
Ser Jacelyn was ahorse, riding this way and that way in front of his men, addressing them. What is he doing? Tyrion wondered in irritation. This is no time for speeches and games. Break the mob and have done.
At last Ser Jacelyn turned to face the crowd, his sword raised, letting loose a rallying cry… and a trembling thin youth in a gold cloak stabbed him in the back.
Tyrion's humours turned to ice. No no no no no no no…
The gold cloaks there dissolved into a mess of fighting, some trying to avenge their Lord Commander and others joining the crowd in mutiny. King's Landing men, Tyrion remembered, King's Landing born and bred, every man of them. The wildfire… that's what has the cityfolk up in arms… they saw the Battle of the Blackwater, they're afraid… the wildfire being used on the walls… the wildfire…
There was no time for pondering. The people of eastern King's Landing, facing the river Blackwater, the fisherfolk, those who hated the Lannisters more than anyone else in the capital, were closing in on the River Gate. Of its guard, composed purely of gold cloaks, some tried to fight the mob. Others, whether from genuine comradeship with the cityfolk or simply fear, refrained. The battle was short. The people had the numbers, and none of the gates of King's Landing had been built to resist a mass assault from the inside. With a creak of poorly oiled hinges, the River Gate opened.
"My lord?" One of his knights was shaking him. "My lord!"
"A hundred men to the River Gate," Tyrion snapped. "No. Five-hundred. And be quick about it. Ser Petyr, you command them. And send a boy, call in that fucking reserve or else we're all dead men walking."
Someone in the host opposite must have seen the opportunity. There was a call of trumpets, clear and magnificent, and suddenly the great golden banner with the black stag was moving. The southern host's reserve was committing at last. Seizing the moment, Renly Baratheon whirled to the right of the right flank of his own army, for Lord Randyll Tarly's wing was already committed and could not swiftly withdraw. The pretender led his charge on foot through a deadly rain wrought by longbowmen and scorpions, a rain that slew some but was impotent to alter the sheer speed and number of the foe. The southerners went beyond the King's Gate, filling the narrow strip of land between the river and the river-facing wall. In all other circumstances, the charge would have been madness. With the River Gate open, it might just work.
Kevan Lannister was roaring orders. Thousands of red cloaks departed from the fiercest fighting, in the south of the city near the King's Gate, and rushed to fend off Lord Renly and the mob. From the walls and from throughout the city, fighting men were summoned to the River Gate.
The scarlet flood of new Lannister soldiers, some of them mounted knights in full plate, cut through the undisciplined crowd, including the mutinous gold cloaks there. The mob did not last long in open battle against an army with bare steel and the sense of urgency that made them willing to use it, but nonetheless they lasted long enough. Reachmen and stormlanders entering at a run clashed with westermen and Renly Baratheon's standard fluttered, yards within the walls of the city.
Tyrion returned to the fighting on the wall against the southern host's centre—with the dire depletion of men-at-arms that he himself had ordered, he needed every man—but that did not last long. Within an hour, as Renly's men pushed Joffrey's back, Mathis Rowan's Reachmen were slowly disengaging from the effort in order to come in through their comrades' widening foothold in the city. When he found himself idle for a whole minute, a new thing to feel, Tyrion retreated behind some of his men-at-arms to look northwest, where Lester Morrigen's stormlanders had almost wholly abandoned their efforts against the city's northwestern wall, then turned his head east, towards the fighting around the River Gate, and at once perceived what had to be perceived.
In that single instant, he made his choice.
Tyrion called a few dozen men to him, as many as his voice could reach. There was no time to lose. With the horses long gone to send men to the River Gate, they dashed on foot through the city. His own stunted legs would have slowed them down but for a thoughtful soul who picked his lord up like a child and held him as he ran. Some of the men he had led at the Lion Gate remained there to fight off Lord Rowan's increasingly feeble assaults against King's Landing's southwestern wall as their foes withdrew. Others went straight to the city's east, to fight Lord Renly. How many would do which? Who knew? Who cared? They all knew the Lion Gate was not where the battle would be decided.
Tyrion's party hurtled around the foot of Visenya's Hill; ascending it now would be a waste and a peril. Thus they came onto the Street of Steel, and the city's central square thence. Tyrion looked for long seconds at King's Way, where the Red Keep loomed tall and strong above him. Those seconds meant everything, or mayhaps nothing at all. Then, cursing himself, witless dwarf, he turned away and followed Rosby Road northeastward. I will have to live with that choice.
Soon they turned left into the alleys of Flea Bottom where the houses often leant so far over the road that one could scarcely see the noon-day sun, setting a brisk pace, around the foot of the Hill of Rhaenys. Townsfolk watched them from windows with sullen eyes, but they did not attack. The people here did not despise House Lannister as much as the fisherfolk did. This was a large and well-armed party. Here, hate was still weaker than fear.
In time they cleared Flea Bottom and emerged in the far north of the city. Here it was almost absurdly calm. With the Hill of Rhaenys in the way, one could not even see the fighting in the east of King's Landing. A gold cloak with a salt-and-pepper beard demanded, "Who goes there?"
"Tyrion of House Lannister, Hand of the King," Tyrion snarled, lifting a bloody sword, "and I am out of patience. You'll let us past if you know what's good for you."
In voiceless dread, the man obeyed.
His nephew appeared atop the wall, flanked by four white shadows, golden-haired, his exquisite gilded armour still pristine, not spattered with blood and gore like Tyrion's plainer set. Against a foe from the south, the Dragon Gate had never been likely to see much fighting, hence why Kevan had judged it a good place to put a king who should be seen in battle with his men-at-arms but who had, after all, seen only three-and-ten namedays. "Uncle!" he cried. "What news of the battle?"
"Lord Renly and several thousand men of his are through the River Gate," Tyrion told him curtly. "Our men are holding them off as best they can, but their toehold is growing. The battle is lost, Joffrey, the city is lost, and you'll be coming with me if you don't—"
"Lost?" Joffrey squawked. "'Tis my city, my men will yet throw out—"
"It is lost! Every man here can attest to it." As he spoke, Tyrion took a long look at the ruined right vambrace digging into his flesh, then discarded it with a grunt of disgust. As he tore it off his own blood splashed on Joffrey, along with the blood and flesh and brains of other men on the outside of it. The boy king flinched. "Lord Renly has more than thrice our numbers, we can't win a battle of attrition and yet that's what it has become. Now he's contained in the east of the city; 't won't last forever. Your only choice is whether to come with me or die here."
"But what—what are you do—"
"I'm saving your life, Your Grace." He addressed the Kingsguard. "Clegane, sers, your king requires your protection, know it though he may not. Help me get him to the Iron Gate. The royal fleet can save him; they've already left their berths on the riverside lest the southerners take them. A galley to Dragonstone and we're away. 'Tis the only choice Renly can't follow. With me!"
Ser Preston Greenfield and Ser Alyn Stackspear, newer to this service, hesitated. The other two did not. Sandor Clegane picked up his lifelong charge like a sack of potatoes, grabbing Joffrey's sword lest the young king think to resist, and Ser Meryn Trant drew his sword, flanking him. "Come," Tyrion added to the men-at-arms at the Dragon Gate, "'tis better to spend more of your lives in service to your king than to die without use here." They fell into ranks behind him. All in all they must have numbered more than a hundred now.
They set off.
"But what about my crown, my throne, my mother, my crossbow?" yelled Joffrey as they ran. "Go to the Red Keep." When the party did not immediately obey, he added, "I command you, I'll have your heads, 'tis a royal command!"
"The Red Keep has not the men to hold if the city does not," Tyrion said without looking back at the boy held in the Hound's burly arms. Ser Kevan had made that choice. If the city fell, even Lord Tywin's army would not suffice to take it back from Lord Renly, given both the defender's advantage and the gift of numbers, so in time the Red Keep would inevitably fall. Cersei had wanted a Kingsguard too, but her uncle had denied her; save for Ser Arys Oakheart in Dorne, Ser Lyle Crakehall with Prince Tommen and Jaime chained in Riverrun, the Kingsguard were to be with Joffrey on the walls. There had been no use in wasting lots of able-bodied men in guarding the Red Keep if they would be useless at that task and it would harm the defence of the city. "His Grace the King has seen three-and-ten namedays. Ignore him. Come with me."
They tore through the city at a run. The shouts and screams and metal clangs of battle were coming ever closer. At last they came upon the Iron Gate. "Thanks be to the gods," muttered Tyrion when he saw the number of guards there. Most of the men-at-arms who had been protecting it had been drawn away, towards the fighting in the east.
"The king's with us!" yelled Tyrion as he was put down from the tall westerman's arms. "Let us through and come with me. The city's lost, needs must we save whatever we can!"
The men guarding the gate were lowborn but not stupid. They could hear the battle as well as anyone could. Most of their comrades in arms had probably deserted already. Those left were thankful for an official excuse to do the same. How many fled with him and how many merely away, he could not tell, but he was glad to hear the sound of the Iron Gate opening. He felt no guilt for that; the Battle of King's Landing was already beyond hope.
His deformed legs, one of them badly hurt and numb, carried him swift as they could towards the waves that crashed against the shore. In that moment, for all of his sickness in voyages, he found in the depths of his heart a deep love for the Narrow Sea. "We have the king, we have the king!" he roared at the top of his voice to the galleys, and—thank the gods!—a few of them halted for him. "You, there. You, there. You, there," Tyrion ordered, pointing with his bloody sword to herd his men onto the ships. In passing, he had thought there were a hundred, but no, he had accumulated many times more than that. Mayhaps they had just rallied to his small initial group for strength in numbers, or to follow someone, anyone, who seemed to have some manner of plan. He chose a grand royal galley of four-hundred oars, to keep the king, and the Kingsguard took Joffrey on-board at once, and he was glad to see that ship, King Robert's Hammer, leave once it was full, but there were hundreds of men-at-arms fleeing the city who needed to be directed, crowding onto the ships. These men might be needed. It was his duty, Tyrion knew, to preserve whatever he could of House Lannister's strength, else this battle would be a deathblow to the west.
They were not alone. Southerners were coming to the ships, some through the Iron Gate, others around the sides of the city. At their head came a knight in a ridiculous cloak of pure green. Most of their fellow southerners were busy in the city—Renly Baratheon's standards were being hoisted everywhere, displacing the lion and stag that shared the banner of Joffrey—but this Rainbow Guard knight, whatever his name, had more than enough. "Back water! Back water!" Tyrion cried, and the ships moved to obey him, rowing away from the seaside; but it was no quick or easy thing to get a great ship into motion, and before the ship that Tyrion was on, a smaller older galley, could enter water too deep for a man to run, a soaking but strong party of southerners dragged themselves aboard. The westermen and gold cloaks here outnumbered their foes, but the stormlanders and Reachmen were fresher and better-armoured and—which mayhaps mattered more—the defenders were fleeing from defeat, whereas they had tasted the sweet nectar of victory.
The world descended once more into a red hell of chaos. "Defend the Hand!" howled the black-of-hair westerman who had borne Tyrion so far, but it was fruitless. This was not an ordered army, but a mess of men who had escaped a lost battle, many of them, he suspected, by desertion. There was too little discipline. It was every man for himself. Tyrion grabbed at his sword and waded into battle, guarded by a trio of westermen who had been in his company at the Lion Gate. The rest must have been dispersed on other galleys of the royal fleet, or else deserted or dead; it was hard to say. He drove it between the cuisse and greave of an armoured southerner who had not seen him, wounding the man's leg and sending him crashing to the ground. Another man, a burly knight, crying with rage at his companion's fall, caught sight of him then, and sent a flying slash that struck Tyrion's breastplate. The armour saved his life but the greatsword's blow was so powerful he utterly lost his balance. Swaying, he tried to regain it, and flailed out with his sword. He missed. His sword clanged off a greave. Then the greatsword was brought down, a second blow.
The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt, white and hot and all-devouring. His mind could dwell on nothing else. Distantly, Tyrion was aware he was on the floor. Only the thud of his head on the wooden deck told him that much. His sight certainly did not. There was just blood, his own blood, so much of it, so much, so much, oh gods oh gods so much too much too much—
When red turned black, it was a mercy.