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At the crossing of Mummer's Ford, Yohn Royce divided his forces. Two thousand riders were sent north, tasked with chasing down the five hundred troops under the command of Lord Melister.
As for himself, he led the remaining three thousand men in pursuit of Clay, who was retreating with fifteen hundred riders at his back.
It wasn't long before Cray learned that a sizeable force was closing in behind him. But he wasn't the least bit afraid. After all, the soldiers on Royce's side were tense and wary the entire way, always watching for an ambush. Meanwhile, his own men were riverlands cavalry who knew this terrain like the backs of their hands. How could they possibly be caught?
Yohn Royce wasn't wrong. The route Clay had chosen… heading east… was, in truth, a path to death. Up ahead, the Blue Fork to the east and the Red Fork to the south met and merged, forming a closed-off wedge of land.
The river was calm, yes… but wide, far too wide. There were no fords, no crossings, not even a decent place to attempt one.
But Clay had known that from the very beginning, so he never intended to fight here.
The real reason he had lured Yohn Royce into chasing him was simple: to make him split his forces!
Five thousand troops were far too many to swallow. But a smaller number? That, he could deal with.
"We head east first. Give the order… tell everyone to speed up and shake off the enemy behind us as quickly as possible!"
Now that the goal of splitting Vale's army had been achieved, Clay had no more reason to toy with him out here.
This was dead land, a cul-de-sac with no escape. The only true exit lay back at Mummer's Ford.
Clay planned to use his superior speed to force a second crossing there.
He didn't know who was commanding the forces on the other side of the river. But whoever it was… so long as they weren't a fool — once they realized they had lost his trail, they would likely scatter and spread out in search of him. That, however, was exactly what Clay was counting on. He would pull off a classic sleight of hand — vanishing into the darkness, only to reappear where no one expected: right back where he'd just passed through.
No one would ever thinks to search a place already scoured. Doing so would be like admitting they had made a mistake from the very beginning.
Autumn had now sunk deep into the heart of the riverlands. During the day, the open plains no longer offered much warmth. Clay and his riders pressed onward, galloping through yellowed fields where dying blades of grass rustled beneath their hooves, heading northeast at a rapid pace.
They made no effort to conceal their movements. This was intentional… Clay wanted his enemies to chase him. If they completely lost track of his movements and simply decided to turned back, then everything he had worked for would be wasted.
The Vale's cavalry numbered no more than ten thousand. They were, of course, famed across Westeros as the most formidable mounted force in the realm.
But even so, ten thousand was all they had — and that number was far from reassuring.
To the south, nine thousand soldiers stationed at the Twins had already begun to march. Their target was Lord Harroway's Town.
It might seem like a small, unremarkable dot on the map, but this town was a crucial crossroads. Take the road east and you would arrive at the Bloody Gate. Head south and it would lead you straight to King's Landing. Travel west and you would join the famous River Road, the main artery of the riverlands that ran directly to Riverrun.
That meant this unassuming town had become the lifeline for both the Vale's cavalry and Tywin Lannister's massive host. It was their shared supply hub. Losing it would force both armies to fall back and defend their rear lines.
That was exactly why Clay had lured the Vale's cavalry northward, pulling them away from their main camp without them even realizing it.
No one had any idea the Manderly family still had so many troops left.
After Tywin Lannister crushed Robb Stark's main force, he believed he had already crushed every last elite soldier that House Manderly could field. From what Littlefinger and Tywin both understood, even if the Manderlys had somehow taken control of the Twins, they could not possibly have had more than five thousand troops left to deploy.
At most, they estimated that a thousand men might still be garrisoned inside the castle. But what could a mere thousand men accomplish on a battlefield like the riverlands, where tens of thousands clashed in brutal, unrelenting warfare?
They all lamented that Clay Manderly hadn't been with the army when it fell, that he'd narrowly escaped death. They saw him as the one commander the North had accidentally managed to preserve.
As for the rumors that Robb Stark had sent Clay beyond the Wall, they'd heard vague whispers of it, but they brushed it off with scorn… just another foolish, suicidal order from a boy king out of his depth.
What none of them could have imagined was this: that by the time this war ended, thanks to Clay's iron rule and the sheer force of his presence, the wildling prisoners under his command had, directly or indirectly, brought nearly ten thousand new troops to House Manderly.
It was a number far beyond what any normal noble house could ever hope to raise — so many that it shattered all their assumptions.
That hidden force of nine thousand troops stationed east of the Green Fork was Clay's secret weapon. An entire army no one even knew existed.
And the power of a surprise attack lay precisely in that word — surprise. It was designed to catch everyone off guard, and it would do exactly that.
Because most of those hidden soldiers were infantry, which meant they moved slowly. But that didn't matter. Clay and Lord Melister would buy them all the time they needed.
As long as they reached Lord Harroway's Town and seized control of it, everything would change. That single strategic point would break the deadlock in the riverlands and breathe new life into a stagnant battlefield.
And once that happened, the momentum of the war would shift. Control of the battlefield would fall back into Clay's hands.
For now, though, his task was clear. He had to lead Yohn Royce's cavalry in circles, keep them chasing ghosts across this terrain until they lost all sense of direction and purpose.
On the first night, Clay's forces stopped to rest along the banks of the Red Fork. The men dismounted to draw water from the river, and once enough scouts had been sent out to watch the perimeter, the army settled in for a proper night's rest.
Yohn Royce, who was leading the pursuit, made camp roughly a hundred li behind them. His soldiers also erected tents and stationed scouts throughout the area, guarding against surprise attacks.
They had once used a night raid to destroy Robb Stark's army of twenty thousand men. They knew better than anyone just how devastating such a tactic could be.
So the first night passed without incident on either side.
At dawn, Clay's men rose well-fed and fully rested. Then, at his command, they suddenly reversed direction and charged north at full speed, riding hard along the Blue Fork River toward the trading town of Fairmarket.
Because they had rested so well, their pace didn't suffer in the slightest. But the Vale soldiers trailing behind them weren't nearly as fortunate.
Unfamiliar with the land, they couldn't help but slow down. The unfamiliar terrain dragged at their pace, and exhaustion had already started to weigh heavily on both man and horse. Their strength was fading fast.
In the end, Lord Yohn Royce had no choice. Grumbling under his breath, he gave the order to halt. The army stopped to rest and recover, while he sent scouts ahead to trace Clay's new route.
But Clay had left something waiting for them.
The rear guard of the riverlands cavalry, posted behind as a trap, accepted this gift without hesitation.
They had taken cover in the woods, and as the Vale scouts passed by, they pounced… swift, sudden, and merciless. They attacked in groups, using numbers to their advantage, cutting the enemy down in an instant. Then they dragged the bodies into the trees, hiding every trace of blood and battle.
This was Clay's way of waging war. He might not be able to win in a straight-up fight, especially not in these grand, drawn-out wars that the wealthy and powerful in the south liked to fight. The North wasn't built for that.
But one thing he would win—had to win—was the battle between scouts.
Among the hundred cavalrymen Clay had brought with him this time were five of his personal guards… the Witchers. Until now, Clay had rarely put this squad to real use. After all, he had spent a long stretch of time away from Westeros.
But this time also, heading south, he brought them along.
Their individual strength was unmatched. They were perfect for acting as the eyes of a large army, and in small-scale scout skirmishes, they had every advantage.
They operated in groups of five, moving independently, with one goal: to hunt down enemy scouts.
Whenever they spotted a target, the five of them would activate their Quen shields in perfect unison, then mount up and charge directly at the enemy.
Some of the Vale's scouts were crack archers. The moment they noticed the incoming riders, they would whip the longbows off their backs, pluck an arrow from the quiver, and fire without hesitation.
But the arrows, which should have struck true, shattered harmlessly in midair, bursting into flickering yellow sparks. The riders they targeted remained completely unscathed.
While the enemy stood frozen in shock, the squad had already reached them. Before they could even draw their swords, a blast of the Aard Sign knocked them to the ground. If information was needed, the Axii Sign would be slapped across their faces without ceremony.
If it wasn't, then a single swing of the sword was all it took to silence them.
After several days of this, the number of scouts lost on Yohn Royce's side had grown to a deeply unsettling figure — so much so that even he, a seasoned commander, couldn't help but feel a creeping sense of unease.
When they clashed with ordinary riverlands scouts, even when outnumbered or caught off guard, at least one or two men might manage to escape and report back.
But when they ran into those five, anyone spotted was as good as dead.
So for Yohn Royce, it began to feel like his scouting teams were vanishing in whole units, wiped out to the last man.
Over time, fear crept in. He began to wonder… how many men had Clay Manderly really brought out of Riverrun with him?
And it wasn't just him. The scouts under his command were starting to push back. None of them were fools, and no noble, no matter how highborn, could demand they go out only to die for nothing.
They were soldiers. They could endure casualties. That was part of the job.
But this kind of eerie, one-sided slaughter — where no one ever came back — left them shaken and unwilling, no matter how furious Yohn Royce became.
And so, without even realizing it, with no grand plan and no grand speech, just through the relentless, quiet work of his witcher squad, Clay had turned Yohn Royce into a half-blind man on the battlefield.
But by this point, there was no turning back.
If he retreated now, the northern force he had sent in pursuit would be left exposed, and the entire operation risked collapsing.
So Yohn Royce had no choice but to grit his teeth, lower his head, and keep marching forward along the trail Clay's army had left behind.
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