Sandor Clegane had intercepted Raff's group barely four days' march from Riverrun. Due to a twist of timing, he had missed Jaime Lannister's arrival at the castle, but the intelligence squeezed from Raff was enough. Sandor had sent the sellswords to "reunite with their brothers"—which meant a short drop and a long rope—and then led his scouts on the trail of the departing Riverlords.
Led by "Big-Foot" Jon, they ghosted the noble host through a landscape of ash and crows. On the third day, the banners of the Trident finally came into view.
Sandor watched from the ridgeline as the coalition fractured. The pink dancing maiden of House Piper peeled south toward Pink Maiden. The two-headed horse of House Roote turned north for Lord Harroway's Town. Finally, the black eagle's claw of House Lychester broke away, leaving a meager force of forty men trailing behind.
What remained was the core of the relief force: the Vances of Atranta and Wayfarer's Rest, the Smallwoods of Acorn Hall, and the Goodbrooks of Blue-Wave.
Nearly five hundred foot and two hundred horse remained, a heavy column of steel and resentment marching toward the besieged Blue-Wave Keep. Sandor sent half his riders back to Aldric with the news, while he stayed buried in the brush, watching their every move.
In the Riverlord camp, Lord Karyl Vance was a man divided.
A year ago, when the Young Wolf had ridden west, Karyl had remained in the Trident. He remembered a skirmish near the Gold Road where he, Marq Piper, and a stranger named Aldric Cerese had combined forces to shatter a Lannister supply train. He remembered the Light—a brilliance that turned common men into giants.
Karyl had no desire to trade steel with the Lightbringer. But Lymond Goodbrook was his good-brother, and Lord Smallwood was his vassal. If he ignored their pleas for aid, the web of feudal loyalty that sustained his House would unravel.
To bolster their numbers, Karyl had used every scrap of kinship to bring Lord Norbert Vance into the fray, bringing their total strength to seven hundred. It didn't feel like enough.
As they entered Goodbrook lands, the reports from the villages grew stranger. During the siege, Aldric's men hadn't burned the crops. Instead, they had driven out the tax-collectors and bailiffs, replacing them with monks who preached the Path of Light. As the Lords' army approached, the monks had simply vanished back across the border.
Lymond Goodbrook was frantic. It was one thing to lose a wall; it was another to lose the hearts of the peasants who fed that wall. He pushed the army to a grueling pace until the gray towers of Blue-Wave Keep finally rose above the horizon.
Aldric's forces had already abandoned the siege lines. They were drawn up on a low rise outside the castle.
A brass horn shrieked, a lonely, jagged sound in the autumn air. Karyl's army halted two hundred paces out. The gates of Blue-Wave Keep creaked open, and the skeletal remains of the garrison—led by the master-at-arms, Henry—rushed out to join the relief.
"Have you fought them?" Karyl asked Henry, noting the man's hollow eyes.
"Twice, My Lord," Henry rasped. "They are... not easy. We lost a dozen men trying to break the line. They fight with a discipline that isn't of this world."
Karyl looked at the rise. He counted barely five hundred men and a ring of heavy supply wagons.
"Is that all of them?" Lord Norbert asked, his blind eyes squinting as if he could see the shapes. "Only five hundred? Lord Karyl, let us brush these mercenaries aside so we may all return to our hearths."
Karyl suppressed his unease and ordered the attack.
The first volley came from the archers. Under Lord Smallwood's command, the shafts rose like a cloud of locusts. They thudded into the enemy ranks, drawing screams as steel points found necks and bellies.
After twelve volleys, Karyl loosed the horse. Twenty knights and a hundred and eighty light riders thundered across the field. But as they closed the distance, the Dawn infantry retreated behind their wagons. The carts were lashed together with heavy chains, forming a wooden wall.
From the gaps between the wagons, a blizzard of crossbow bolts erupted. Thrum-snap! Puth-puth! Horses screamed and cartwheeled, throwing riders into the mud to be trampled. The few who reached the wagons found themselves poked by long pikes and heavy axes wielded from behind the wooden barricades.
"Infantry! Cover the retreat!" Norbert Vance shouted, seeing his own men falling.
The Riverlord foot-soldiers pressed forward with spears and shields. As they reached fifty paces, the Dawn's crossbowmen leaned out from the wagons again. A rain of steel hammered the front ranks. Men died instantly, their chests punched through by heavy, armor-piercing quarrels.
"Damnation, they are rich in bolts!" Karyl swore.
In the third assault, a group of Smallwood men managed to drag a wagon aside, opening a breach. They surged in with a roar—and were swallowed. The sounds of a chaotic melee rang out for a few heartbeats before a terrifying silence followed. No one came back out.
Karyl was reeling. This wasn't a battle; it was a siege where the walls were made of wood and the defenders refused to die. He ordered his scouts to circle the ring, looking for a weakness.
"It's wagons all the way around, My Lord," a scout reported. "If you get close, they shoot. If you stay back, they watch."
"What now, Karyl?" Lord Norbert asked. "My boys are dying for a pile of Goodbrook stones."
Lymond Goodbrook turned to Karyl, his face pale. "We have to break them! If we retreat, they take my home!"
Karyl looked at his bloodied, demoralized men. He knew the nature of a feudal host; they were brave when winning, but once the momentum died, every Lord began to count the cost of his own levies.
"One more push," Karyl decided. "Lymond, your men and mine in the center. Smallwood and Norbert on the flanks. We hit them all at once. If the line doesn't buckle, we fall back and entrench."
The fourth charge began. But the "Wagon-Fort" held. The air was thick with the scent of wet wool, iron, and the relentless clack-whir of the Dawn's industrial crossbows.
Just as Karyl was about to signal the retreat, the wagons suddenly unlatched. The ring opened. The Dawn infantry, who had been hiding like cowards, finally surged out to face them on open ground.
"Now!" Karyl roared, sensing a chance. "Charge! Break them before they set their feet!"
He spurred his horse forward, leading the cavalry in a desperate lunge at the enemy center. He saw the black iron armor of the Dawn, the golden suns on their chests. Ten yards out, a bolt—faster and heavier than any he'd seen—hissed through the air.
It caught Karyl in the right shoulder with the force of a mace. The impact threw him from his saddle. His head hit a stone, and the world dissolved into a smear of black and crimson.
When Karyl Vance opened his eyes, the moon was high. The battlefield was a graveyard of broken wood and silent men. The only sound was the low, rhythmic chanting of a prayer he didn't know, and the soft, golden glow of hands moving through the dark.
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