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When Willas first entered a tourney years ago, his opponent had been Oberyn Martell, who was already famous.
During the joust, Oberyn's lance had struck like a viper's tongue and knocked the young Tyrell from the saddle. By chance, his right foot caught in the stirrup and dragged his own horse off balance as well.
The horse fell heavily and crushed his knee, crippling him for life.
At the time, the incident deepened centuries of accumulated hostility between House Tyrell and House Martell. But Willas had never truly hated Oberyn. Because they shared certain interests, the two had even exchanged letters for years.
'Bad. Tywin Lannister's war in the Westerlands is a fraud.'
Willas was the only one of the three Tyrell brothers who had devoted himself to study. The moment he saw the ambushers, he understood.
He admired Oberyn's character and taste, but those things meant nothing before the interests of his house.
He pointed at Oberyn, who was cutting through the line like no one could stop him, whistled to his five hounds, and ordered, "Kill him."
The five deerhounds that had stayed beside his horse barked and charged toward Oberyn from both sides.
Willas had bred them with great care. They were not large, but they had both strength and speed. In past hunts, each one alone could bring down a stag weighing two or three hundred pounds.
He was confident that if all five worked together against one target, even an adult brown bear could be torn apart.
Rip.
Oberyn's spear, its fine steel head coiled with a golden serpent, pierced a Reach soldier through the throat. The Red Viper drew the bloodied spear free and saw the five hounds rushing toward him.
The hounds came with low, aggressive growls. Two from the left, three from the right.
Oberyn's black eyes swept over them. He immediately stepped forward and left, while the golden serpent spear rose fiercely from below.
The leftmost deerhound had its belly opened in an instant. Bloody organs spilled across the ground.
The other hound on the left avoided the spear and bit into the leather on Oberyn's right arm.
That too was within Oberyn's expectations.
He drew a dagger from his belt with his left hand and stabbed the hound's head again and again in a storm of blows.
The hound did not let go when the dagger first struck. It clamped down on his right arm until its body was full of bloody holes. Only then did Oberyn fling it to the ground, where it whimpered weakly.
While Oberyn killed the two on the left, the three hounds on the right had landed, turned, and reached him again.
At such close range, the spear became awkward. Oberyn gripped the shaft near the head with his bleeding right hand and hurled it at one hound.
The golden serpent spear pinned the leftmost of the three to the ground. The beast fought with vicious tenacity. It struggled and howled, trying to tear itself free from the spear that had pierced above its left foreleg.
Without his main weapon, Oberyn reversed the dagger in his left hand and held it before his nose. His black eyes locked onto the last two hounds already lunging at him.
Willas did not watch Oberyn's fight closely.
In his calculation, even if the five hounds could not kill Oberyn, they could hold him and halt the unstoppable momentum of his charge.
That was exactly what happened.
When Oberyn became tangled with the hounds, the Martell soldiers in Dornish cotton armor and face veils on the right side of the road were blocked by the hastily formed Reach infantry line.
The Martell soldiers' long spears were deadly, but their defense was poor.
Unless a blow struck a vital point, the Reach soldiers in new armor might need two or three spear thrusts before their armor was pierced and they lost the ability to fight.
But a Martell soldier struck once by a sword would immediately bleed badly and suffer serious wounds.
Even so, the Reach line buckled again and again under the ferocity of the Martell assault. Gaps opened constantly, and it looked ready to collapse at any moment.
Compared with the right, the Reach left held somewhat better. The Lannister ambushers had closed into melee, and the archers behind them had already dropped bows and drawn swords.
The Reach had more men than the ambushers on both sides. Even caught unprepared, the soldiers on the left were now fighting a more ordinary battle, each side taking losses.
For the moment, the ambush was not perfect. Without another factor, the Reach might still have steadied itself and driven the attackers back.
Then the enemy from the road ahead finally reached the battlefield.
The thunder of hooves grew deafening. A combined force of Stormlander and Dornish cavalry charged straight toward the front of the Reach army.
Willas had drawn spearmen forward in haste, but they were far too few to stop nearly ten thousand enemy riders.
The grassland on both sides of the road was too soft for cavalry. Because of the terrain, nearly twenty thousand Reach horsemen were trapped in the middle of the road and could not move freely.
Under Willas's command, some of those riders had been forced to dismount and fight as infantry to fill the gaps on the left and right. The rest waited for a chance to charge or escort Willas away.
The collision of cavalry and spear line was always bloody.
Stormlander and Dornish riders were impaled on spears like torn sacks. Spearmen were smashed by horses and broken where they stood.
Screams, cries, and the shrieking of wounded horses tangled together.
The Reach spear line was shattered layer by layer. After tearing through it, the combined cavalry still had strength enough to crash into several thousand Reach riders.
At the same time, the spear soldiers of House Martell lived up to their reputation. The more they bled, the more viciously they attacked. After only a short stalemate, the right side of the Reach line collapsed.
'We have lost.'
When Willas saw the combined cavalry being held by several thousand of his own riders, whom he had used as both sacrifice and shield, and saw the right line torn open, he sighed inwardly. Without hesitation, he quietly turned his horse toward Highgarden.
Before leaving, he remembered his hounds. The press of bodies on the battlefield blocked his view of Oberyn, so Willas gave a sharp whistle.
After a short while, one deerhound with a shallow sword cut across its body pushed through the crowd and returned to his side.
'Only one left. Oberyn truly is strong.'
Just as Willas silently praised Oberyn, the last hound suddenly vomited a foul mixture of blood and filth.
Then it collapsed and began breathing with short, desperate heaves. In less than a minute, its breath grew faster and faster until it stopped completely.
'Poison... the Red Viper. The name was not wrong.'
Willas pulled his reins and led the remaining nearly ten thousand cavalry in retreat.
The more than ten thousand Reach soldiers still fighting behind him were left to buy time.
But once Willas withdrew with the cavalry on such a large scale, the remaining soldiers understood what had happened.
In terms of losses alone, they had not even lost a fifth of their number. But their will to fight had vanished.
The first soldier dropped to his knees and threw away his weapon. Like a spreading sickness, the Reach soldiers began surrendering one after another, each trying to grasp any chance of survival.
"Collect everything valuable from them," Oberyn called when the result of the ambush was clear. His face was smeared with blood as he poured medicinal powder over the bite on his right arm. "Strip them if you must. I want to see whether there is anything I like."
Outside Starpike, the missing thirty thousand Lannister soldiers were digging trenches, pits, and all manner of traps, as if preparing to ambush another enemy.
At the front of the army, Lord Titus Peake of Starpike rode beside Kevan with a flattering smile, occasionally offering compliments.
Kevan did not seem interested. Out of regard for the man's dignity, he answered now and then, but he spoke far more often with the youth riding on his other side.
Titus had no wish to keep fawning over a man who had no interest in him either. Yet House Peake had fallen completely after the Blackfyre rebellions, its influence greatly reduced. The three castles once proudly shown on its arms had become only Starpike.
This time, he had used the opening created by his wife, Margot Lannister, and boldly stood with House Lannister to gamble on restoring House Peake's former glory.
After several failed attempts at flattery, Titus sensibly fell silent and listened to Kevan's conversation with the youth.
"Prince Quentyn," Kevan asked, his left arm hanging weakly at his side while his right held the reins, "Lord Tywin told me you once disguised yourself as a sorcerer and went to meet him in the Tower of the Hand?"
"Yes, Lord Kevan. After Cletus, Archibald, and I escaped Yronwood, we wanted to find a port and return to Sunspear. But Yronwood pursuers kept chasing us.
"In the end, we could only go farther and farther north until we reached King's Landing.
"At first we wanted to take a ship home, but by then we did not even have one silver stag. We had no choice but to think up that trick and ask Lord Tywin for help.
"Looking back, we were rather clever."
Quentyn looked at Cletus and Archibald beside him and smiled as he told the story.
"Very clever," Daven said, indulging him. "You not only returned to Sunspear, you brought Prince Doran allies.
"Recently, we helped put down Dorne's internal rebellion, and Lord Cletus recovered Yronwood. That decision of yours was worth several castles."
"I agree with Lord Daven," Cletus said. "Quentyn, after this service, Prince Doran's seat will surely pass to you. Sending you to fight beside Lord Kevan and Prince Oberyn this time must be meant to harden you.
"My only regret is that when we took Yronwood, I could not kill that beast Yorick Yronwood."
Hatred appeared on Cletus's face.
"Do not worry. He will not escape forever," Quentyn comforted him.
Then he deliberately changed the topic and asked Kevan, "Lord Kevan, are we truly not going to support Uncle Oberyn? Even with an ambush, their numbers are far lower than the enemy's. I am worried."
Kevan laughed softly.
"There is no need, Prince Quentyn. Lord Tywin once described the soldiers of the Reach. He said they are like golden roses: gorgeous and splendid, but lacking the toughness of weeds.
"When they fought with the wind at their backs below King's Landing, their morale was high and their courage fierce. When they meet hardship, they surrender just as quickly.
"Compared with Prince Oberyn's side, our task is heavier. We must prevent the Reach cavalry from carrying news away."
Kevan's explanation eased Quentyn somewhat.
"Then these traps are meant to keep the news from escaping? I should study them carefully."
"We can only do our best," Kevan said. "This ground is not suited for cavalry charges, but it is not perfect for encirclement either. If this were the Westerlands, I could guarantee it."
"So what we are doing may not work?"
"We will know very soon. Listen."
Quentyn tilted his head and listened carefully. Sure enough, faint hoofbeats came from ahead.
"Pass the order. Form according to the plan. Infantry inside, cavalry outside. Kill every enemy rider who tries to flee toward Highgarden."
"Yes!"
The thirty thousand Lannister soldiers stopped digging and quickly formed ranks.
As the hoofbeats grew thunderous, the field outside Starpike became a contest of interception and breakthrough.
Some time later, nearly one thousand blood-soaked Reach riders broke through the encirclement, protecting Willas as they raced toward Highgarden.
Willas's escape had been purchased with the sacrifice of nearly nine thousand cavalry. After his hawk warned him that many enemies were ahead, he had already prepared the plan.
"This is bad, Lord Kevan. They broke through. What do we do?"
When the battle outside Starpike ended, Quentyn hurried to Kevan with anxiety on his face.
"Our interception failed," Kevan said. "But Lord Tywin has other plans."
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