The general's smile was gone, replaced by a cold, murderous fury. Lysa's defiance had been a slap to his wounded pride, a direct challenge he would not tolerate. He turned his horse and rode back to his army, his mind no longer on games, but on slaughter. He would have his vengeance, and he would have it now.
"Bring the ram forward!" he roared, his voice a guttural command that echoed across the field. "Tear down their gates! Burn their walls! No more games! I want every man dead!"
His second-in-command, Joris, approached him, a grim look on his scarred face. "And the girl and the boy, General?"
The general's eyes, filled with a chilling intensity, met Joris's. "Remember your orders, Captain. Get the kid and the woman. Get them alive. They will be a symbol of the price of defiance. They will watch their family burn, and they will live to tell the tale."
Inside the castle, Lysa felt the sudden shift in the air. The drums had a new, brutal rhythm. The enemy's cold patience was gone. Her eyes met Ren's. He was a boy, but he held his sword with the grim resolve of a man.
"To the gates!" she screamed, her voice a steel-hard command. "To the walls! We hold them at the gatehouse!"
The small, desperate force of House Galen, a mere 350 people—some wounded, all weary—rushed to their posts. They were not an army, but a family. They knew they could not win, but they would not go down without a fight. They would fight for every inch of stone, for every second of time, to defy the general who wanted to break their spirits before he broke their walls.
The battering ram hit the gate with a terrible, thunderous roar. The old wood, already weakened from the first assault, splintered and groaned. The men behind it braced themselves, their shields and swords at the ready. The ram hit again, and again, and on the fourth blow, the gate, a relic of a more peaceful time, shattered, collapsing inward with a terrible, final crash.
The King's soldiers poured into the courtyard, a sea of steel and fury. They were met with a fierce, desperate resistance from Lysa's small, but defiant force. Arrows and spears flew, and the cries of battle filled the air. Lysa and Ren, standing side-by-side, fought with a desperate courage, their swords a blur of motion. They knew they could not win. They knew they would die. But they would not be broken.
The general's men, a small, elite unit, pushed through the main fray, their eyes fixed on Lysa and Ren. They had their orders, and they would see them through. The last stand had begun.
In the midst of the chaos, a single, powerful sound cut through the noise of the fighting. It was the deep, resonant call of a war horn. The sound was unmistakable, and it was not coming from the King's legions. It was coming from the distance, a sound of hope in the middle of a massacre.