"Too-too-too-too-too!"
The blare of horns woke the dawn at the crossing of The Trident, wild and urgent.
Time was running short. The Northerners had appeared only a few miles away, and it seemed they meant to force a head-on clash.
"Move!"
"Move!"
"Move!"
At the call to arms, the entire Lannister host sprang into motion. Shouts, the clatter of spears and lances, and the whinnying of horses filled the camp. Knights vaulted onto snorting warhorses, while infantrymen buckled on their sword belts as they ran.
After receiving confirmed reports that a small force from the Northern army was moving south, Great Lord Tywin Lannister had urgently drawn nine thousand men from his main camp at Harrenhal and sent them through the crossing to stop the Northerners from crossing The Trident. Yet something about this battle still felt wrong.
Tywin stood outside his tent, his squire close behind him.
"How many?" Tywin asked.
"Lord, a few thousand or so. No more than four thousand at most. They came under cover of night. I thought the battle would be at noon," replied Ser Addam Marbrand, his master of scouts, an outstanding knight of the Westerlands and a friend of Ser Jaime.
"So few?" Tywin snapped. "Are those two boys sending men to die with this paltry force?"
"I will swallow them whole," Tywin declared, though a doubt had already begun to form in his mind. The Baratheon bastard clearly controlled The Twins, as well as the men of the North, the Three Rivers, and the Little Smith. They could plainly send far more troops. Why choose a clash between light forces instead of a large-scale battle in the open?
Tywin had always believed the Freys would not send troops, but his contempt for them, along with his overconfidence, had made him suffer the bitter consequence of losing The Twins. He had once had a basis for winning Frey over. The two houses were even related by marriage.
Tywin's squire helped him into his gleaming golden armor. Tywin was not afraid of this detached force. He was only puzzled that the decisive battle he had prepared for felt like a blow landing on cotton.
"Tywin, they have come to slip across The Trident and relieve the pressure from our raids in the Riverlands. With so few men, they cannot possibly break through our lines," Ser Kevan Lannister said, just as baffled.
"That boy Gendry is more ruthless than we thought. His way of making war is not entirely like Robert's headlong charges," Tywin said. "He is gathering men to swallow us all. This vanguard is only bait, a pack of old wolves sent to die."
Kevan fell into a heavy silence as well. He had originally thought the joint army of the Young Wolf and the Wild Stag would march straight south. With the Westerlands' advantage in training and equipment, as long as they could cut off the enemy's head, the war would be won. But the war was changing too quickly, too quickly for anyone to react.
"Then shall we wait until they cross the ford before attacking?" Ser Kevan asked. "A suicidal vanguard like this should have its edge avoided."
"There is no time." Tywin waved a hand. "Eat them. Otherwise, we will have moved so many troops without fighting a single battle, and the army's morale will worsen even further. We must win."
There was no time to think further. Pale mist drifted in from the night like long white fingers stretching across the surface of The Trident. Men and horses stumbled in the chill before dawn as the camp hurried to tighten saddles, load goods onto wagons, and put out the fires.
"Proceed according to our original plan," Tywin ordered Kevan and Addam. The left flank was made up of assorted Westerlands troops, and its commander hardly mattered. That task had originally belonged to The Mountain. The center, mostly infantry, was under Ser Kevan. The right flank consisted entirely of heavily armored cavalry under Ser Addam.
"I will take the reserves." Tywin led a reserve force to a slightly higher point on the battlefield. He was a general of strategy, not a warrior of valor, and disliked the headlong boar charges so fashionable in Westeros. Much of that also came from the fact that his own martial strength had never placed him among the finest knights.
Tywin's battlefield arrangements could be summed up in one word: solid. Upright and rigid, lacking variety, but steady. The Lannisters had the wealth and centralized power to fight that way. In battle, they only needed to press forward in good order. Besides, Tywin had not first become famous as a great commander, but as an iron-fisted Hand of the King.
The Lannister host formed ranks. Ser Kevan raised his banner on the central road. Archers stood in three lines on either side of the road, spearmen formed square formations between them, and behind them waited infantry armed with spears, swords, and axes. Ser Kevan and the lords attending him were protected by three hundred heavy cavalry.
The warhorn sounded, low and drawn out, like a cold wind from the North, enough to make a man shiver. The Lannister horns answered at once, loud and untamed.
As the horn calls gradually died away and the troops charged, both sides could see each other's banners and formations more clearly. The Northerners' banners were varied and scattered. This was an army marching toward death.
Lord Rickard and Lady Maege rode their warhorses at the head of the soldiers, their standard-bearers raising the family banners beside them. Behind the road, Northerners poured out over the hills and fields. They had a small number of cavalry, while most of their men sheltered behind a wall of shields and spears.
Gendry's golden banner, recently famous throughout the realm, could be seen everywhere alongside House Stark's white banner. The standards streamed in the wind and snapped atop long poles. The red three-headed Dragon, the black warhammer, the crowned stag, and the gray Direwolf all seemed to come alive, racing along the shafts. Then came the great bear of House Mormont, the elk of House Hornwood, the sunburst of House Karstark, Lord Cerwyn's battle-axe banner, and the armored fist of House Glover.
"My name was given in honor of Great Lord Rickard. I fought for Lord Eddard and King Aerys, and now I fight against King Joffrey for Lord Gendry and Lord Robb, those two green boys. I consider this battle the last of my life," Lord Rickard said to Lady Maege.
"We are old, but thankfully, we still have some courage left." Lady Maege laughed loudly and tightened her grip on her spiked warhammer. "Even if we all fall by the river, as long as the Vale's plan succeeds, Tywin will surely hear the bells tolling for him."
The North was bitterly cold, and sacrifice was something Northerners understood. Many Northerners had originally come south unwillingly. The Long Winter stretched endlessly ahead, and marching out before enough grain had been stored would bring serious trouble. But with Gendry's reinforcements and the Northern army reduced to a leaner force, the pressure on the Northerners had lessened greatly. This force of roughly three thousand "Winter Wolves" no longer expected to return home. They knew what a winter lasting ten years meant.
"Charge, wolves!" Lord Rickard Karstark shouted, swinging his two-handed greatsword. The Winter Wolves began their desperate advance.
"Damn it! That fool Frey." From atop the small hill, Tywin used his Myrish far-eye to look at the attacking Northern troops. Some of them even wore black scale plate, House Frey blue-steel ringmail, and silver-gray Frey cloaks. It seemed that after The Twins fell, all that equipment had ended up in Northern hands, along with some black scale plate supplied by the Little Smith.
The red Dragon and black stag appeared again in Tywin's field of view. Gold, red, and black tangled together before his eyes, filling him with fury.
"I must win this battle, or I will have no place to be buried," Tywin warned himself.
The blazing fires of war were lit as lion and wolf collided, and the Northerners were the first to feel a sweeping rain of arrows.
Lord Rickard and Lady Maege roared as they led their "Winter Wolves" south. The archers on both sides of the road loosed a volley, and the Northerners broke into a run, roaring as they charged.
"Take cover!"
"Take cover!" Lord Rickard shouted. Seeing the arrows filling the air, he could not help feeling a chill of fear. Had they not urgently replenished some equipment at The Twins, the gap in equipment alone would have cost them dearly.
The Lannister arrows fell on them like hail, hundreds, thousands, countless in an instant. Many men were struck and fell, their battle cries turning into screams. Then a second wave dropped from the sky, while the archers were already nocking a third arrow to their bowstrings.
"Kill to your heart's content!" Lord Rickard shouted. Then he saw the Lannister bait on the left flank.
"Lady Maege, I think the left flank is Lannister bait. Those recruits and farmhands will be the easiest to break. I will leave them to you. Whether we live or die, kill as many enemies as you can. I will take the center. You take the left. If you are lucky enough to live, go back and look after my children for me, and find Alys a good man. As for me, I will not look back again." Lord Rickard saw that the left was only bait, but since they had all come here to die, there was no need to care too much.
"Good." Lady Maege nodded.
"Warriors! Let us give our lives for the Stag and the Young Wolf!" Lord Rickard roared. The Northern cavalry on their shaggy warhorses thundered south, followed by Northern spearmen, their target Kevan's center. The Northerners swung their battleaxes, warhammers, and greatswords, roaring as they faced the Lannister spear formation head-on.
The main Northern force surged toward Kevan, while another force under Lady Maege formed a spear formation and charged left.
Ser Kevan's elite infantry spear line was the first to clash with the aged Rickard's cavalry and infantry. In their bright new armor, the Northern cavalry feared death even less.
Steel struck steel, joining into a song of slaughter.
The Lannister red-cloaked spearmen hid behind their shield wall, most of their shields painted with the roaring lion of House Lannister, and waited in tight formation.
"Clang! Clang!"
The moment the two armies met, many Northern warhorses were skewered by sharp longspears and died on the spot. Many warriors fell with them, crushed beneath their mounts. A few nimble horses managed to swerve aside and avoid the spearheads.
Some horses were only wounded, and they screamed madly as they crashed into the shield wall. Though longspears thrust in from every direction, the shield wall still buckled beneath the weight of the horses.
"Kill them!" Lord Rickard swept past the shield wall, his longsword flashing in his hand. The blade was sharp as a razor, and one unlucky red-cloaked spearman fell at once. All the Northern cavalry roared as they joined the melee, attacking wildly and driving toward the banner at the center.
On the other side of the battlefield, Lady Maege's force had carved into the left flank. The left was a ragtag mob, most of them bewildered recruits. Mounted archers in nothing but leather armor, large numbers of undisciplined freeriders and wandering swordsmen, farmers on plow horses with sickles and rusty swords handed down from their grandfathers, and boys dragged from the alleys of Lannisport before their training was complete.
Faced with the frenzied Northern force, the left flank could hardly withstand the assault. The old Northerners longed for their own deaths, and wherever they tore through the left, bodies piled up across the ground.
"Die, old woman!" A spearman foolishly charged straight at Lady Maege, only for her spiked warhammer to smash into his chest. It punched through armor, leather, muscle, and lung, killing him on the spot.
Lady Maege wrenched the warhammer free and roared as the corpse collapsed limply to the ground. She could feel her blood burning madly inside her.
The battle had become a boiling mess of chaos. Lady Maege's troops slaughtered the left flank in a frenzy, while Lord Rickard's hardened fist drove hard toward the center.
"For Lord Eddard!" Lord Rickard's iron gauntlets were soaked in blood. His black scale plate was proving far more useful than chainmail.
In his fury, Rickard hacked open a bloody path by sheer force, but the spear formation before him was an iron wall almost impossible to cross. The Lannister main force was trained and far more disciplined than ordinary sellsword knights.
"For Casterly Rock!" The enemy heavy cavalry also seized the chance to reinforce the collapsing spear formation, trying to encircle Rickard and his men.
Under the slaughter of spear formation and cavalry charge, two-thirds of Rickard's fist had already been spent. They were still some distance from Kevan's center, but they were never going to reach it. Masses of spearmen tried to drive them back, while Ser Kevan's cavalry and Ser Addam's cavalry on the right closed in around them.
The road had already been dyed red with blood. Blood turned the earth to mud, and the ground near the crossing had been soft to begin with. Facing enemies several times their number and better equipped, the Northerners still inflicted a terrifying toll. Wherever Rickard passed, the bodies of red-cloaked soldiers lay scattered in heaps.
But Rickard did not retreat. Many Northerners had fallen around him as well, their faces still bleeding. There were gray-haired old men, ruined men with no homes left, and a very few second sons from their families. Then he heard the whistle of a spiked morningstar. A Lannister red-cloaked knight was charging straight at him.
Kevan saw the dead old men and young men. The fact that they had forced their way this far was already terrifying. They simply did not have enough men.
Hooves thundered, and the red-cloaked knight shouted, "Old man, today is the day you die!"
Rickard laughed aloud. "Boy, I never meant to live through this anyway."
The two crashed together. The spiked morningstar whirled over Rickard's head, while Rickard swung the greatsword in his hands.
Sword and morningstar collided. Rickard no longer knew how many men he had slaughtered along the way. He only felt that the road stretched on forever, and his strength was slowly fading.
The spiked morningstar slammed into the top of Rickard's helm, warping it out of shape. Blood was about to blur his vision. Rickard endured the pain. In the brief instant when the morningstar caught on his helm, the red-cloaked knight's movement slowed as he tried to drag his weapon back.
"Die!" Rickard pulled a dagger from his body and drove it upward at an angle into the joint beneath the red-cloaked knight's armpit, the weakest point in the armor. The knight screamed in agony. His red cloak snagged on Rickard's cloak and dragged him down as well, and his death pulled Lord Rickard's death after it.
Just as Rickard reached up to touch his head, trying to remove the warped helm, the Lannister encirclement had fully closed around him. Several longspears were already aimed at him. The spearmen roared and thrust from every direction, ending his life.
Rickard's head spun. For a moment, he seemed to see his younger self, the man who had once fought for Rickard and Lord Eddard.
"Rickard is dead!"
"Rickard of Karhold is dead!" the Lannister soldiers cheered. Stark's death-seeking army had been a terrible nuisance.
Though the left flank was running red with blood, Lady Maege heard that chilling cry. Lord Rickard had chosen an honorable death in battle. Looking at her own troops, Maege quickly ordered the horns to sound the retreat.
"Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!"
The Lannister archers sent another volley toward the left flank, scattering a rain of arrows. Many Northern soldiers fell beneath the merciless barrage.
"Go!" Lady Maege shouted wearily. Her muscles ached from the killing, and both her arms were sore and heavy. Maege hurried away with what few troops remained, only a few hundred battered survivors left.
The horns sounded again. Tywin's reserves poured out in full force, charging down from the low slope toward the enemy. Tywin galloped past, surrounded by five hundred knights. Sunlight flashed on spearpoints, and House Lannister's red-and-gold banners flew overhead.
The Winter Wolves were doomed to destruction, like beef beneath a butcher's knife. But this victory was never going to be sweet.