Chapter 130 – War!
Peace did not arrive after the negotiations—just as everyone had expected.
At this point, whether it was Tyrion Lannister or Renly Baratheon, both sides maintained a strangely shared understanding.
Everyone knew that from the moment the siege began, there could only be one ending.
And so, beneath an ever-tightening, suffocating tension, war finally erupted as the slanted sun sank toward the west.
For Renly's army, it was the perfect hour.
The setting sun burned low behind their ranks, throwing long shadows toward the walls of King's Landing.
Across the plains beneath the city, soldiers in a riot of colors surged forward like an endless tide—armor mismatched, banners snapping, weapons raised—as wave after wave crashed toward the walls.
Behind them, massive siege engines rolled forward under infantry escort.
Trebuchets. Scorpions. Siege towers. Battering rams.
Everything was there.
The battering ram moved first.
Renly's soldiers raised their shields and bent beneath them, moving in rhythm as they heaved the colossal structure forward, chanting in time to their steps.
From the walls, it looked almost alive.
The immense shape sprawled across the earth, crawling forward like some awakening beast, parting the dense mass of men as it carved a straight path toward the city gate.
Even from atop the battlements, its pressure was suffocating—an overwhelming presence that clawed at the heart and whispered despair.
Because size like that meant only one thing:
Irresistible force.
But before anyone could tear their gaze away, the air itself screamed.
A low, heavy whoomp tore through the sky.
Instinctively, heads snapped upward.
Dark shapes suddenly appeared overhead—black masses hurled into the sky, shredding the air as they roared toward the walls.
They were stones.
Each one was as large as a man's embrace, tumbling through the sky like overripe apples, tracing cruel arcs before plunging downward.
Most smashed harmlessly against the walls—but "harmlessly" was relative.
Each impact sent a thunderous boom through the stonework.
The wall shuddered beneath their feet, vibrations rippling up from the soles of boots into bone.
Where the stones struck, masonry buckled—some sections dented inward, others shattered entirely. In places where the stone was weaker, the projectiles lodged themselves deep into the wall before finally losing momentum.
Of the five or six boulders hurled in that first volley, one slipped through fate's fingers.
It cleared the parapet.
A gold-cloak archer had just loosed an arrow and bent to nock another when the light vanished above him.
A shadow swallowed his world.
The stone did not wait for him to look up.
In less than a heartbeat, it crushed him flat against the wall—life erased, flesh smeared into stone.
Blood burst outward in a grotesque spray. Limbs, fragments, and organs scattered across the battlements.
After wiping away one living soul, the stone smashed through half a crenelation before finally grinding to a halt.
The first casualty of the battle.
Killed by a trebuchet stone.
If that wasn't misfortune, nothing was.
"Hold the line!"
Podrick had seen it all.
The soldiers around the corpse had gone pale, frozen in shock, staring at what moments ago had been their comrade.
Podrick's shout boomed across the wall like thunder.
He surged forward, planting a boot squarely into each man's backside, one by one, knocking sense back into them.
"Move!" he roared. "Follow your training! Don't scatter—don't panic!"
"Steady—yes, like that!"
"Loose! Shoot, damn you! Put every arrow you've got into those bastards' backsides!"
He sprinted along the battlements as he shouted, barking orders, correcting formations, plugging gaps.
It looked as though he meant to replace every soldier himself.
But his body was strong, his speed terrifying.
Even along the long stretch of the King's Gate wall, he moved back and forth in moments, ensuring every section held firm.
And all the while—
He was far from idle.
Wherever a breach appeared, Podrick could reach it in under thirty seconds.
Sometimes he seized a bow and loosed a rapid volley, arrows hissing down to extinguish the danger before it could spread.
Other times he simply grabbed whatever lay at hand—broken bricks, shattered masonry, even the massive logs and stones prepared for wall defense—and hurled them down toward the most crowded points beneath the walls.
The battering ram was the clearest example.
That monstrous siege engine, hauled to the gates at tremendous cost in blood and effort, never even had the chance to strike.
Podrick had prepared for it long in advance.
Standing atop the wall, he heaved massive stones one by one, each throw calculated with terrifying precision, singling out the wheels—each taller than a mounted knight.
Under the brutal force of gravity, those enormous wooden wheels proved as fragile as biscuits fresh from the oven. The stones barely had to touch them before they exploded into useless splinters.
Breaking a single wheel wasn't enough, of course.
A siege ram that size couldn't move with just one or two.
So Podrick smashed them all.
Four wheels on the left.
Four on the right.
None were spared.
With that sudden burst of destruction, the battering ram—meant to be the spearhead of the assault—collapsed helplessly before the gate.
Worse still for Renly's army, the ruined machine now served as an enormous barricade, a ready-made obstacle shielding the Gold Cloaks above.
It lay there before the King's Gate, immovable and mocking, daring anyone to approach.
But war does not stop because one weapon fails.
If anything, Podrick's actions provoked a harsher response.
Renly Baratheon's forces sent more engines forward, doubling their efforts.
Arrowfire from the walls never ceased.
Though most arrows shattered against raised shields, sheer numbers ensured that some always found flesh.
Feet pierced through gaps in shieldwalls.
Shoulders struck when shields dipped too low.
Hands pinned clean through as arrows punched through wooden shields and bone alike.
And some men simply died.
Iron rain cares nothing for valor.
Siege warfare was never fair.
The screams rose endlessly—mostly from below.
On the walls, casualties were rare: the occasional man crushed by stone, or struck by a stray arrow that found its way through impossible angles.
Any archer who dared step close enough to threaten the wall did not live long.
Either they were picked off before loosing a single arrow, or they managed one or two shots under shield cover before Podrick personally marked them for death.
Ten heavy war bows lay ready behind him.
Whenever one cracked or warped, he simply grabbed another.
Always firing.
Always moving.
In just over an hour of fighting, more than a hundred men had died by Podrick's hand alone.
Less than a minute per kill.
It terrified Renly's archers so badly that many refused to advance at all.
Which only meant others died in their place.
At first, the newly recruited attackers—many barely trained—had panicked at blood and noise.
But after an hour of relentless slaughter, fear no longer mattered.
The walls had not been threatened even once.
And their commander…
He stood there like a god of war made flesh.
Even the greenest recruits no longer felt fear.
The Gold Cloaks' morale surged.
What began as trembling defense turned into roaring dominance.
Bodies carpeted the ground beneath the King's Gate.
Blood soaked the earth.
The stench thickened.
Both sides fought red-eyed.
Yet despite the advantage of defense, losses were not nonexistent.
The ladders were useless—Podrick saw to that—but siege engines still posed danger.
Trebuchets lacked accuracy, but quantity made up for it.
After repeated failures, Renly's commanders adjusted their tactics.
The trebuchets meant for hurling rubble and firepots were retargeted, all aimed at the most fiercely contested sections of the wall.
Fire oil jars were worse than stones.
Podrick could dodge.
His soldiers could not.
Even if only one in ten—or one in thirty—found the wall, every hit meant death.
The efficiency was low.
The cost was not.
So Podrick killed harder.
There was no retreat.
To abandon the wall would be to abandon the city.
He was not invincible—no Kryptonian, no super-soldier.
He dodged falling stone when he had to.
He was flesh.
But still—
Casualty estimates ran fifty to one.
And more importantly, the first assault shattered Renly's close-range siege capability.
The battering ram was dead.
Then came the siege towers.
Two were deliberately allowed to advance.
Ten meters from the wall—
Podrick hurled prepared jars of wildfire oil, smashing them evenly across both towers.
One spark was enough.
The towers became infernos.
Soldiers waiting inside—ready to storm the walls—burned alive where they stood.
Their screams lasted less than two minutes.
Then silence.
The battlefield froze.
Men stared upward at twin pillars of fire rising a hundred meters into the sky.
The Blackwater wind carried the crackling of flames.
No one could tell whether it was timber burning—
—or souls screaming.
The sun vanished beyond the horizon.
Darkness fell.
Yet the blazing towers lit the battlefield in cruel detail.
At last, the towers collapsed.
The sound struck the heart.
Then—
Gongs rang out.
The signal to withdraw.
The Gold Cloaks snapped back to life.
The enemy was retreating.
Cheers erupted.
"They're pulling back!"
"We held!"
"Lannister forever!"
"Lord Payne forever!"
Joy exploded across the walls.
Podrick did not celebrate.
Because this was only one gate.
Renly's army numbered tens of thousands.
And Renly Baratheon was not here.
Which meant—
He was at the Mud Gate.
Where Tyrion Lannister stood.
Podrick felt dread coil in his gut.
Then the horns sounded again.
The signal to attack.
And at the same moment—
A messenger rode hard from behind the walls.
From the direction of the Mud Gate.