Shireen felt like she hadn't dismounted in days. She had raced across the point, to every stronghold and tower, every town and village she could get to to gather every soldier possible to relieve Pyle Castle.

And she had been too slow.

"Let me go!" She demanded, struggling against the iron grip holding her by her upper arms.

"I can't do that, Princess Shireen," Richard said. He clearly wasn't straining to hold her back.

"I need to go!"

"No, you can't."

They had arrived at Pyle castle to find Rowan and Joffrey Baratheon's banners flying from the towers. And as they were watching they saw the Pyle banners on top of the keep starting to lower. Shireen had demanded they attack immediately and had been about to put her spurs to her horse when Richard dragged her bodily from the saddle to stop her racing towards the enemy.

"You must leave this to Rolland and Rennic, Princess," Richard insisted.

Uncle Rolland and Captain Rennic were commanding the soldiers Shireen had been able to gather. Rolland had five hundred knights and armoured horsemen at his command, while Rennic took command of the one thousand seven hundred archers she had been able to gather from various towns, towers and holdfasts. Two thousand two hundred soldiers. They knew they were outnumbered from the reports of their scouts. They knew their enemy occupied a strong defensive position. But while a single banner bearing the black stag on a golden field hung from the castle, there was no question that they would attack. And there was a single banner. Fluttering out of a window on the top floor of the castle. While the towers and keep flew the traitor's colours, this one shard of hope remained.

Rennic and Rolland approached, the captain stringing his bow and her uncle pulling on his gauntlets.

"Just make sure you don't wait too long," Rennic said as trumpets sounded out.

"Why are we sounding trumpets?" Shireen demanded. The army was concealed in a wood just to the east of the castle, across a small plain from the ridge the east wall sat on. Sounding trumpets woudl give away their position. "Are we attacking?"

"No, we are attacking," Rolland replied. "You are staying right here."

"No, you can't leave me here, not while Lyonel is in there."

Rolland ignored her. "Richard, if the attack goes against us, you are to drag my niece to the nearest port and take her back to Dragonstone."

"As the queen insisted," Richard replied.

"Archers!" Rennic roared at the top of his lungs. "To the Prince!"

The trumpets roared again and the archers marched out.

They marched in lock step, their feet hammering on the ground in one as they formed three great squares to march across the plain. "Get them to move faster!" Shireen screamed as they seemed to crawl along the ground.

"Calm down niece or I'll have you gagged," Rolland insisted.

"You'll do no such thing," Richard replied. "But you should be quiet Princess. This is battle, and the commanders must think."

Shireen bit her lip, willing the soldiers to move faster.

The enemy formed up, some on the walls, more on the ridgeline beside the castle.

The archers marched to the left of the ridgeline, where it tapered out to make an easier ascent. Even if they had ladders, the walls on this side of the castle were too tall. They were going to circle around and follow the enemy in through the holes they had punched in the walls. The enemy formed up to meet them. Rowan, Tarly, Lannister and Tyrell banners flying over them.

The archer squares were lay out at three points of a triangle, pointing at their target. But when they got in range, the archers stopped, all three squares and Shireen saw the shadows of arrows arc towards the enemy on the ridgeline. "Why don't they get closer?" Shireen asked. "Only the first square is in range."

"I don't know," Rolland told her. "Captain Rennic said to leave this part of the battle to him, we will join when the enemy provide an opening."

"Richard, please let me go," she said looking back at the battlefield.

"I can't do that."

"You can stay right behind me. But I want to pray." She looked back at her protector. "I won't run, I promise."

Richard fixed her with his glare, then nodded, releasing her arms. Shireen shook them to get some feeling back into them, then sank to her knees and pressed her hands together. She rarely prayed to the Warrior, but she poured every plea and holy oath she could think of into her prayer as she begged him to aid their army.

"Movement!" Rolland said and Shireen's eyes snapped open. Enemy knights were charging down towards the archer squares under flying pennants, lances were lowering.

With a clean ripple, the squares shifted. The archers on the front ranks dropped to their knees and holstered their bows, taking spears and polearms in their hands, as did the row behind them, presenting a bristle of spikes in all directions.

The horses reared and screamed, refusing to charge onto rows of spikes. The charging wedges of knights turned and circled the first square as the archers and crossbowmen in the middle of it shot over the heads of their companions at the knights. Shireen saw horses tumble and realised that the archers were aiming at the mounts, rather than the knights themselves. She wondered how Rolland and his knights, who would no doubt see those horses as potential prizes, thought on the matter.

"I didn't believe it when Lyonel told me he had trained archers to repel horsemen," Richard said.

"The archers aren't repelling the knights. The spears are keeping the knights away," Rolland replied.

"Yes, the spears are keeping them away, but the archers are killing them."

Richard was right. The knights wheeled and circled away and around, trying to find an opening in the back part of the square, where they rode straight into a killing field of arrows and crossbow bolts from the other two squares.

The knights circled and whirled and tried to charge, but the horses always twisted aside at the last moment, and both mount and rider were subject to a brutal barrage of missiles. Eventually she heard trumpets sound the retreat and the knights raced back to the hill, leaving corpses littered in the fields around and between the squares.

When the knights reached the ridgeline they were replaced by the infantry moving down towards the squares. What came then was less dramatic as the lines of infantry marched against the squares of Lyonel's archers.

After the enemy weathered a storm of arrows, they met the archers, the ringing of steel on steel sounding out across the plains. Shireen closed her eyes to pray again, begging that the archers be given the strength to prevail in this contest of arms.

She lost count of her prayers when Richard spoke next. "The knights are coming again."

Her eyes snapped open. The enemy footmen had pulled away from the squares of archers that looked beaten, battered and misshapen, but still holding, still sending arrows at their enemies. But the enemy knights were charging in, all focussing on the left had square, the most battered of the bunch. Perhaps the spearmen didn't have time to form, or perhaps the reachmen knights had blinkered their horses, but they smashed right into the square in a tight wedge, scattering it. The other squares, locked in formation, could do little more than send flights of arrows to help, hoping that they hit the enemy and not their fellow archers.

"Now's the time, while the enemy are all distracted, sound the charge!" Rolland declared, snatching his lance from the hands of his squire.

Trumpets sounded and Rolland and the knights cantered out into the field, making for the battle.

Shireen wanted to close her eyes, but could tear them away as Rolland's knights approached the battlefield. Perhaps the enemy didn't see them, perhaps they were simply so tired from fighting the archers that they were unable to resist, and the few troops remaining on the ridge were not enough, but Rolland's knights drove into the enemy and carried everything before them. The archer circles joined them and in what seemed to have become a single sweeping movement, their army had taken the ridge.

Shireen turned to take her horse's reins but her arm was seized in Richard's iron grip before she could put a foot in the stirrup. "Richard, let me go."

"And what will you do if I do?"

"They've beaten the enemy, let's go."

"No, they've taken the ridge. I am not letting you go until the castle is in our hands."

"Let me go, Lyonel is in there, we have to save him!"

"Let the army save him," Richard said, holding her fast.

She struggled, but in the end slackened in his grip, this time he didn't let her go. They waited. And they waited for the minutes to drift by until she was certain hours had passed. Then, one by one, the banners flying on top of the castle were lowered and Baratheon ones raised in their place. "There, now let's go!" Shireen demanded.

"You stay close to me," Richard said, mounting his own horse next to hers. As she was about to kick her horse into action, he reached out and seized her reins, ready to drag her away from any danger. They rode across the battlefield, littered as it was with hundreds of dead, up the ridge where yet more lay slain towards the castle. The castle gate was held by archers. Richard refused to let her cross the threshold until he had demanded to know whether the castle had been taken. In answer the archer had pointed to the west, where the dust swirls of an army in retreat could be seen. They entered the castle, dismounting by the keep. As she ran into the castle, she saw that the archers were starting to lay out their dead, their many dead, in neat rows, bows and crossbows resting on their bodies.

She ignored them and took the stairs two at a time. "Lyonel!" She cried out. She ran passed bodies dead and dying. "Lyonel!" She ran past archers of their army, some were shaking with tears and anger, one had a hunk of his own hair clutched between his fingers, his scalp bleeding from where he had ripped it from his head.

Men were gathered around a door. She ran over and shoved her way through the knights and froze.

"Shireen," uncle Rolland said, his voice hoarse. He was kneeling beside Lyonel. Her brother's face was white, he sat in a pool of blood next to a knight with a rope around his middle. His head was lolling against his chest.

"Lyonel." She sprinted over and fell on her knees, her legs jarring with the blow, her dress soaking in the cold blood. "Lyonel, please wake up." She clutched his cheeks, they were so cold. "Lyonel, wake up, wake up." He didn't move, didn't respond. "Lyonel, I said wake up!" She slapped him across the face so hard her hand was stinging. Lyonel's head flopped to one side before falling back onto his chest. She slapped him again. "Lyonel, that's enough, wake up now."

"Shireen, he's-" Rolland began.

"No!" She snarled, shoving her uncle away, covering Lyonel's body like a protective beast. "He isn't. He can't. He wouldn't leave me! Lyonel!" She turned back to him, cradling his head again. She could warm him up, that would help until a maester could arrive to help him. Rolland would have sent for a maester. He would have.

"Lyonel," she whispered. "Please don't go. Come back to me." She pulled one of his gauntlets off, feeling for a pulse but finding nothing. She drew his dagger from where it sat at his belt and held it in front of his mouth, desperate for the heat to mist the blade, but there was nothing. Maybe his breathing was too shallow for that? She grabbed some of her hair and cut off a lock with the blade. She held the black hairs in front of Lyonel's lips. "It's moving," she cried as the hairs fluttered ever so gently. "It's moving."

No one spoke for several moments. Then her uncle finally spoke in his still hoarse voice. "Shireen, that's your breathing, not his."

"No it isn't, look." She sucked in her breath and held it. The hairs didn't move. She dropped them in his lap and clutched his face again, bringing her own against it, her nose pressing into his cheek. "Lyonel, please say something."

He said nothing so she kissed him on the cheek, he always responded to her kisses. She kissed his forehead, his other cheek and finally, despite his objections, his lips. He still refused to speak, so she kissed him again and again, holding her lips against his own, cold and unmoving. "Wake up Lyonel," she whispered through the taste of salt. "Please don't leave me."

But he didn't. He couldn't. She hugged his head against her chest, kissing his hair, squeezing tightly.

"Princess…" Richard said in the softest voice she had ever heard from him. "He's gone."

They were in one of the highest rooms in the keep. Shireen would later be told that her screams were heard in the deepest, darkest dungeons.