Lychesters Turn

We had won over House Harroway, and in the end I decided it would be best to remain here, I needed capable commanders, and nothing but leading a battle is more efficient at getting one.

I sent my entire cavalry alongside 400 surrendered infantry and 100 of my own, they wouldn't step out of line with the cavalry there. They were given extra horses and carriages and they would therefore only need 20 hours to arrive through the road as we didn't need to hide anymore. I still had 200 surrendered men from the army and 150 from the garrison. We only lost 50 men during the siege and no cavalry. With all this I had around 850 men from Bracken and 350 from those surrendered.

Either way I would be busy hear. I order all my 1200 men to begin patrolling the streets. The first thing I did was work together with the surrendered garrison and city watch to attack all criminal related organisations. This was a perfect time to clean them out due to the excuse of the siege. The 2nd thing I did was send 200 of the surrendered men and 300 of my original ones back to Stones Hedge to reinforce the garrison and train the surrendered men.

After that I quickly opened the town and sent a letter to lord Hoster Tully about our capture and conquest of the town.

Lastly, I sent a letter to Jaime and ordered him to send me 500 recruits. Once we successfully siege the town I found out that they owned 10 25 man longships and 5 River Galleys that could have 50 fighters each. River Galleys had 18 oars and 7 sailors while longships had 12 oars but could have more.

If we increased our river navy a bit we could control the Trident river reaching through Riverrun and towards Westerlands alongside towards Fairmarket and Sweet Willow. However they needed to overcome the naval power of House Darry, House Cox and House Mooton. If they got their recruits they would already be stronger than Cox but Darry had 1000 marines, 15 River Galleys and 10 Longships meanwhile House Mooton had 2000 Marines, 25 River Galleys, 4 Galleys ( 75 men ), 1 Flagship Galley ( 100 men + artillery ) and 14 Longships.

Either way, the marines would need a different training regime. And I knew where to find one. I decided to take one out of the famous sailors, the ironborn. As many faults they did have, there's one thing where they destroy anyone else, and that was naval warfare. They had a lot of secrets, but a major part of it was how they used armor during naval battles, the Royal Navy and the Reach Navy did not use armor as the men was afraid of drowning, however the ironborn believe in the drowned god and therefore did not have a problem with drowning. And with that I decided to do one thing. Hire a mercenary, or more specifically Ragnar Harlaw, he was once apart of House Harlaw but in the end he became a merchant, he was currently residing in Seagard as far as the news of him raiding around there was true.

I therefore sent a courier to find him, I gave him a few coins and a picture, he would find him in the end.

And with that I turned around and went out. It was time to train my new unit. I had put Jon and Jorgen in charge of them. I had named them the River Rangers, they numbered a total of 50 and would be trained in multitude of things, primarily infantry fighting, then cavalry. They would not be given the usual spear but a sword and a heater shield, larger than usual and similar to the ones the Kingsguard used. ( just search it up, similar to Zelda Heater Shield but larger ) covering over half their body. They would be primarily trained to fight in close combat, such as inside a town, keep or a ship.

They were also given a modern body training routine and enough meat and food. After a few days I got a response from the Lychester Battlefield.

The letter was simple.

"The Battle had been won and the Lychester Army is completely routed, cavalry hunting them down, shall we proceed on Lychester Keep?"

*Switch POV*

I had sent the letter requesting support a long time ago. Around 2 days after sending it we had gotten a response, 450 cavalry alongside 500 infantry was on the way and they would arrive in 20 hours. Even though they would arrive in 20 hours or around 12 due to the latency of the ravens I knew Damon well enough that he would rest and wait. He took after Lord Alexander in that. ( I just realised I never named him, but I fixed that so if you have already read it when I release this then his name is Alexander and his father is Jonos )

And as such I allowed my men to rest, they had gotten little of it due to always being on watch. But I decided to take the risk, even with 1000 men in reinforcement we might loose if 60% of our men are exhausted and as such I decided to let them sleep. Most slept close to the walls as their catapults never targetted the wall, only the barracks in the camp. The last 2 days since they decided to repeatedly launch stones at us they had never targetted the walls, and we had only lost about 20 men due to it. We would bide our time.

We could charge down the hill, but we would be at a disadvantage due to it not being a flat terrain and the phalanx would therefore be at a disadvantage against the legionary formation.

And as I predicted after 12 hours there was no sign of reinforcements. I decided to let the men sleep for another hour before waking up.

After 1 hour I ordered everyone to wake up, we formed up and equipped ourself, everyone and gotten a good meal and we were prepared.

"Sir!"

One of the solider screamed, they had seen a red flag on the other side of the hill, where the enemy wasn't positioned. It was an easy command, charge. I guess that would be Daemon. And charge we did.

I quickly opened the gate as everyone ran out, all 1500 men. We took them by surprise, they never expected us to come out after waiting so long and therefore our first 4 lines managed to reach flat ground before they were intercepted. The Lychester forced had gotten reinforcements and therefore was back to 2500 men.

However if there were one thing the Phalanx was supreme in, it was wasting time. We actually did not get pushed back instead we pushed forward, this was due to the fact our more experienced guys from the last 2 clashes were in the front and therefore knew how to use the formation at it's best. Even though we had a lot of casualties due to us advancing we managed to push them back and have 25 minutes we had our entire force on flat ground. That's when a horn sounded and out of the forest there came a large force of 450 cavalry. The Lychester's had a force of around 150 cavalry but they were meant as escorts and not fighters and they are light cavalry, they were simply outmatched against the heavy cavalry and our forces simply ran straight through them.

The hill had no forest around it and it was therefore 500 meters between the forest and the battlefield. And it took 3 minutes before they arrived, the Lychester forced were more skilled than the Roote forces and therefore managed to turn around to meet the cavalry, however even then they struggled to fight against and the heavy cavalry simply smashed through. At that time the 500 infantry reinforcement came out of the forest also charging towards the Lychester forces. It took them about 7 minutes to arrive but the Lychester men didn't see them until they were 3 minutes away and by that time it was already too late, they had been surrounded.

"Split up into 3 units of 500, attempt to completely surround them!" I screamed as the 30 lines behind the frontal 15 split into 2 units and went on either side of the main force. The cavalry was pushing further and further into their lines. Their 2.5k men had originally split into 3 units, 1500 in the middle, same as our main. And 2 sub units of 500. Now those sub units and been intercepted and therefore couldn't turn to deal with either of the reinforcements and the main unit of 1500 already had enemies in the middle of the formation and it was too late to organise a different unit, therefore when the reinforcements of 500 arrived, it simply became an all out brawl. Our 100 original men had formed up in the back so that they could deal with the surrendered men if they went to the Lychester side, meanwhile the surrendered trooos utilised their original legionnaires formation to attack, even with 2 legionnaires formations against each other the Bracken was winning due to being organised while the Lychester forces simply brawled.

And with that the casualty rate of the reinforcement infantry were 3:1 for Bracken each killing 3, while the cavalry had as high as 8:1. The main infantry also had a 2:1 due to the chaos of the Lychester ranks.

It didn't take long before the Lychester Lord lost all control of his forces and they attempted to escape, however they were perfectly encircled and any lucky managing to escape was easy picking for the cavalry, and therefore a force of over 1500 surrendered, they had lost 40% of their forces, 1150 men, these 2 battles if added together was the bloodiest battle in the Riverlands since Roberts Rebellion.

The Lychester forces was completely and utterly killed.

I was standing on a small hill watching the battle when I saw a small unit of arojnd 50 horses run from the enemy camp, I quickly turned to Daemon.

"Captain! Chase that escort, it's probably the Lord!"

He instantly understood his task and left without even saying anything. They needed to take care of that Lord, if he managed to return he would be a large pain in the ass.

With that I went back to the command tent as I ordered all the troops to return. As I arrived I began writing a letter.

** Authors note:

On god ya'll are lucky, a double release.