54 The Battle of Hayford Fields
Mid 283 Spring
Rather than continue to ruminate on the subject I shifted my thoughts to the nearing battle. Rhaegar, the cunt, had finally seen fit to leave his desert love nest and emerged to find his dynasty on the verge of destruction via my concentrated effort. I broke the Crownlands and Riverlands over my knee, and the Dornish are prickly in their loyalty after his debauched degrading of their princess.
Rhaegar went hat in hand to the Reach, and promised the Tyrells his son and heir, the baby Aegon. Mace Tyrell, seeing the final prize of his House's ambitions in hand left nearly a skeleton siege at Storm's End, which Stannis the Mannis would soon break in a night attack - and called the full muster of the Reach. An error immediately resulting in grievous wounding when Lord Reaper Quellon Greyjoy - at the urging of his sons desperate to take a piece of glory now that the world is becoming aware of the Crown's dire situation - declared for the rebellion and instead of finding disaster at the mouth of the Mander, found a Reach lacking in fighting age men.
Mace promised a hundred thousand swords to make his newborn daughter Queen of Westeros, and nearly lost her when fifty Ironborn longships arrived at High Garden. Though Quellon's failing health saw his end in the fighting, the Ironborn nearly took the keep at the apex of the surprise attack. Besieged in her own home, the Queen of Thorns got the box seat view of the heartland of the Reach open to the depredations of the newly risen and old school cruel Lord Reaper Baelon Greyjoy and his psychotic brothers, Euron and Victarion.
They are going to be absolutely unbearable after this little shot in the arm to their confidence. I'll need to run my ships in gangs, forgoing the smaller routes and easy profits for the more competitive but stable ports. At least until they finally get too big for their britches and show up for their humbling. Till then, I'll just have to make due as Westeros's premier combat sports athlete during the reign of Bobby 'Tourneys and Tiddies' B.
Once my sugar daddy healed up, our combined army nearing sixty thousand marched to Hayford Castle. Rhaegar needed to split his Reach forces to prevent desertion like what happened with Jon Connington, and sent Randyll Tarly west along the Rose Road and Paxter Redwine south around Dorne to drive out the Ironborn. They took with them thirty five thousand men, and with the ten thousand coming up from Dorne, we needed to squeeze the Riverlands and Vale a bit harder, bringing down a further four and five thousand men respectively. This gave us 69 thousand to their seventy five.
My comment of the numbers favoring us flew over most heads, but Bobby B pointed his meaty finger at me and nodded in deep appreciation.
It was slow going maneuvering those armies, but eventually we got them into place, both sides rushing in the final days due to the Westerlands finally marching thirty thousand men out of Deep Den onto the Gold Road. Neither side knew who the final kingdom to enter this drama would support and both suspected rightly that the Lannisters would simply attack whichever side lost the coming battle. Neither side also knew that the Tywin forced the march and would arrive much earlier than expected.
Over a hundred fifty thousand armed men. From the eyes of my eagle high enough to see all of us at once we looked like two waves of ants moving towards each other. My horse joined the calvary wings, but I kept my bears and hounds with my foot where they wouldn't cause problems with the animals. The North took up the right flank, and across from us stood thousands of Reach spearmen led by Ser Jonothor Darry. Though well equipped, they lacked the reputation of their southern counterparts who made up the other Royalist flank under the leadership of Ser Lewyn Martell. Despite that I didn't discount them. They are a mass of well fed well armed farm boys, and behind them form up the knights of the Reach.
Money and time are the major factors in the effectiveness of knights and the Reach has both in spades to support their chivalric obsession. While some may mock them for it, I don't. Their respect and adoration for knightly endeavors counts as a warrior culture, and I wouldn't even call them more naive than the other warrior cultures of Westeros, just less barbaric. Is a Ironborn reaver looking at an unwinnable situation and deciding to give it a go anyways because 'greenlanders' are soft prissy boys' any less dumb than a knight charging into an unwinnable situation because honor demands it? No. Just different colors of the same stupidity.
Fortunately I have the knights of the Vale and Northern riders in position to screen charges from them, and despite his youth and infectious terminal Nedness, I can count on Ned Stark and Yohn Royce in a scrap.
"Oh this is going to be good!" Greatjon practically shuddered in his armor as he straddled the saddle atop an armored Snowbear.
When my grudgingly admitted best friend found out that I spent the war riding around on a bear fighting in all these awesome castle stormings and huge field battles, he nearly cried from the unfairness. I'd already been kicking ass by the time he'd left Winterfell, and had to spend a month with the slow moving column heading south, though he found the lizard lion hunting a decent distraction during the clusterfuck that is moving any sizable force though the Neck.
He traded me three excellent lizard lion hides to ride around on one of my bears in battle. The guy I told to give up his spot cried, and Greatjon and I laughed about it. Was fun.
We watched the Royalist army line of foot soldiers advanced, their archers and cavalry behind them. Both sides put the archers in the back to fire in arcs over the foot formations, but that didn't stop me from bringing my bow and a stand full of arrows to the front and showing Westeros just how far they are from the mountain top.
"You're about to watch me kill everyone worth a damn before you even get the chance to engage." I informed the big man and stepped through my bow for the stringing.
My newest warbow is a thing of lethal beauty, the weirwood, horn, and sinew composite recurve required a well waxed sinew string in a continuous loop to draw. All of those things a bitch and a half to make, but I got a girl for that and a big budget. The engineering behind the bow pushed to utilize as much of my mutant strength as possible, and I am the only man in Westeros capable of stringing the weapon, though there are a handful that can draw it. My shafts are thick hardwood, and the tips heavy castle forged steel to put as much air resistance and penetration behind them. The entire pull is smooth and heavy enough to light my back of fire, but there is no error in the weapon system, only what human users introduce.
I lined up my first shot with the enemy five hundred yards away, not aiming at a specific target with my eyes, but placing the shaft along the trajectory of destiny, to carry it to the throat of the man most troublesome on the other end of the equation. When that first arrow landed in the throat of Ser Jonothor Darry, Kingsguard and commander of the left flank, that five hundred yards suddenly looked a whole lot more intimidating for the enemy host.
It's not smart to run five hundred yards into battle. In fact, showing up that winded is a great way to get your men killed. So the Reach had to endure while I put out ten shafts a minute for four straight minutes. Each and every shaft shifting the effectiveness of their forces down. At the four minute mark I sent my bow back with a runner and two youths brought forth my pauldrons and gauntlets. Like a NASCAR pit stop they had me ready to get back to it in under twenty seconds and I pulled myself atop Ser Fluffles.
"I can feel it in my balls, Mormont." Jon called over to me from his place in the line twenty yards down from me, "This is going to be the best day ever."
"It will certainly be a day for blood." I told him.
Arrow volleys began landing from our side as the Royalist archers continued to march into position for them to loose deep into our ranks to avoid friendly fire. The farmboy front pressed together tightly together, more out of fear of the armored bears in sight than to get a more organized shield wall against the arrows raining down on them. They dragged their feet while the mass of men behind them kept pushing them forward step by increasingly unwilling step towards the collision with my line and the thirty armored snow bears leading it. I solidified that fear by sounding a short horn blast, signaling my forces to charge over the remaining space between us.
Fun fact about bears: they don't need much space to reach top speed. That hesitating line of Reachmen suddenly had over sixty tons of bears, metal, and armed riders hit them at thirty miles an hour. Having a serious penetration in your battle line is bad, having thirty points of major penetration and all the commanders dead caused an instant rout. The men up front trying to flee, the men behind them knocking them over. Absolute chaos in the enemy lines and my warriors poured into each and every gap swinging their weapons with wonton glee. Many threw down their weapons and begged for mercy, and perhaps they were spared and only jostled about rather than slain. Those that threw themselves on the ground to avoid the blade learned a lesson in pain they likely failed to survive as the battle marched on over them.
It took a long time for the panic at the front to reach the rear, and we battled for many minutes in that hectic slaughter as the mass press of bodies held up our advance, but when they broke they broke hard, fleeing in every direction to escape, spreading their panic like a rot. Many ran right into their archers and cavalry, and the knights of the Reach tried to rally the fleeing smallfolk before riding them down to escape the incoming cavalry charge from the Vale and North. Disorganized, they sought to wheel around and rally for a counter charge, but The Ned and Royce kept discipline and harried them rather than unleash their energy on the fleeing small folk.
Sometimes, a lack of sadistic ruthlessness pays off in Westeros. It's not often, but every now and then a good man doesn't immediately invoke lethal reprisal for doing a good deed, and it's almost heartwarming to see in person. Of course, one good deed begets another and soon enough your sons are dead or turned to treeboys and your daughters are getting railed by your ancestral enemies and inducted into freaky death cults. That's why I maintain a solid stream of business casual cruelty. Gotta keep up with the Joneses.
Amongst the mosh pit, a man didn't need a piece of Valyrian steel to kill another with every swing, so little of the enemy forces tried to stand and fight that they became more like practice targets than an enemy force. Practice targets that run away and cry alot. Though a man didn't need Valyrian steel to get the kills, let me tell you, there is little in the world as slick as slaying smallfolk with it. You put enough weight behind it, and you barely even feel the cut as you cleave them in twain. I really put in the maximum effort to get as many pieces in a single swing as possible, and with such a goal the perfect cut is to aim just above the elbow and swing threw fast enough to cut of the first arm, through the torso, and catch the other arm on the way out. Four parts in one cut. High Score! Ser Fluffles the Bold got in a good workout swinging his paws around, and his efforts generated a lot more fear than my own. The terror we bestowed reached its crescendo when we unleashed the hounds on them, and the slaughter field became a cocophony of clangs, screams, crys, roars, and barks.
With the dogs in play the enemy left flank routed with no chance of a last minute rally, and with the enemy calvary desperately trying to survive the organized charge from our own I gave the enemy foot the final push and pulled back before we overextended to turn our flank in on the center. With pressure from both the Stormland led vanguard and our Northman flank pushing in on the enemy center the battle became a bygone conclusion. The Royalist vanguard held together for a time entirely by the gravity of Rhaegar's ego and a desperate hope, but all that shattered along with the Silver Prince's ribs when Robert's hammer caught him in the chest.
And lo, behind the final enemy flank appeared the men of the west, knights and mounted men at arms in the thousands. In one charge full of honor and glory they rode down the wicked Dornish host. The hated foe who most defiantly wasn't waiving the white flags of surrender died en mass, unable to muster any organized defense of the valiant and bold surprise attack. While his riders rode men down in the fields north of the capital, his foot host entered the city after Tywin's factors in King's Landing opened the Lion Gate for him. They unleashed a just and well measured sacking on the near defenseless city nearing immolation, and would have burned if not for Ser Jaime making short and bloody work of the wildfire plot and finally getting the payoff for my joke from years prior when he eviscerated King Aerys II with Red Rain.
Nobody plays the Game of Thrones like Jorah!
The fields between Hayfield Castle and King's Landing provided a feast for crows in the tens of thousands, so far beyond what the carrion birds could devour that the maggots and worms gorged themselves too. A veritable unfinishable feast for scavengers.
While the unplanned streets of their disorganized city ran red, the final dying day of the Targaryen dynasty came, not in a pitched climactic battle but a one sided slaughter grander in scale than the famed Field of Fire that earned them their crown. So many Reachmen died that day and in the fighting against the Ironborn that food import from Essos would become a strategic priority in the early days of the incoming Baratheon dynasty, providing a golden opportunity for a man with an established trading fleet and an in with the monarch to make obscene coin off the suffering of others.
My silver lining comes in gold.
You should have picked better, Elia.
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Rejoice, for the editing pass of this chapter added an additional five hundred words to it, and the battle is as fleshed out as I could at the strategic level.
Big thanks to 4REEESEARCH for his continued support of me and my family.
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