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Clay at last arrived upon the battlefield before Harrenhal. Behind him streamed the banners of the Riverlands, and with them those of House Manderly of the North and House Karstark. Nearly twenty thousand soldiers stretched out in a rolling tide at his back, their march shaking the earth.
Yet he had to admit to himself that he had come too late.
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Christen led more than four hundred cavalrymen and hurled them directly into the attack on the enemy.
He did not much care about the Lannister riders circling on either wing, hoping to hem him in, but he could not allow them to achieve what they intended. That was a rule etched deep into every battlefield: never let your enemy finish their move.
So Christen resolved to give them no more time for preparation.
The charge of heavy cavalry always began the same way. First came a slow advance, hooves striking in rhythm. Then the pace quickened into a steady canter, and at last the riders broke into a full gallop. When they were no more than a hundred yards from the Lannister line, Christen gave the signal and his men thundered forward in a headlong rush.
This was the balance he sought: to maintain the cohesion of the formation for as long as possible, while still unleashing the full crushing force of a cavalry charge at the final moment.
On the Lannister side, soldiers who looked up saw these armored figures racing toward them like moving walls of black iron, their lances still slick with fresh blood. The earth shook beneath the pounding hooves, and many Lannister men felt their mouths go dry, their nerves tight with dread.
Even through the noise of the charge, Christen could hear the shouts of the enemy officers barking orders ahead of him:
"Hold the line! Stand firm, don't be afraid!"
"Spears out! Skewer them where they ride!"
The drumbeat of hooves drew nearer and nearer. At that instant, Christen raised his left hand, the one that had remained empty all this time, and made a sharp gesture.
Magic coursed from within his body, gathering into his palm, light and force bound between his fingers.
In silence, he shaped the power with his will, and within his heart he whispered the name of the sign.
"Arad!"
A deep, thunderous boom followed. A flash of blue-white force streaked forward in an instant, and the four Lannister swordsmen standing before his horse were flung aside as if caught in a storm. Their shields splintered, their armored bodies hurled through the air, crashing down like discarded dolls.
Behind them, the pikemen who had braced their spears toppled all at once, scattered like stalks of wheat cut down before they even realized what had struck them.
Christen's warhorse, weighed down with heavy barding, plunged ahead without resistance, tearing open the first and second lines of defense, the hardest part of any charge to break. And beyond that shattered wall, he saw them: the Lannister archers. Their faces were etched with panic, their hands fumbling with arrows, some not even loosing a shot before the cavalry was upon them.
The breakthrough had come too quickly. These men, who were supposed to calmly fire from the safety of the rear, had no time to think, no time even to believe what their eyes were showing them.
How could this one man, whose killing intent seemed so thick it was almost a physical presence, tear through the lines of their comrades as if nothing stood in his path?
It looked as though he had simply smashed them aside with brute force.
But they had no chance left to puzzle out the answer.
For Christen's lance was already leveled before their eyes.
A burst of crimson sprayed across the air!
The sheer momentum of his warhorse added crushing force to the strike, and the sharp steel lance drove straight through the chest of a man standing to his right. The tip burst out through the man's back, and within ten heartbeats the archer was dead, his life draining away in a flood of blood.
Christen swung his arm, wrenching the body free. With brutal force he flung the corpse sideways into the ranks of bowmen who were still fumbling to notch their arrows, scattering them in shock and horror. Then he turned his mount sharply, spurred its flanks, and drove at full speed into the rear formations of the Lannister archers.
The cavalrymen following behind him needed no orders to understand their commander's intent. They surged through the gap Christen had ripped open, widening it into a breach so vast that the Lannister foot soldiers could no longer close it, no matter how they tried.
Once inside, the horsemen spread of their own accord into two directions, splitting like a tide and crashing into the lines of bowmen from both flanks.
This was the great strength of cavalry on the battlefield. They were not bound to the slow march of infantry but moved swift and fluid. Given space to maneuver, they could strike wherever they pleased, turning the tide with sudden and devastating force. Countless tactics that foot soldiers could never attempt became reality in their hands.
And the men under Christen's command were no ordinary riders. They were the finest of heavy cavalry, armored in steel and trained for war without mercy. Against fragile bowmen, soldiers meant only to stand at a distance and loose arrows rather than face steel up close, such opponents were little more than lambs to the slaughter. Often the riders did not even bother to lower their lances.
All they needed was to check their horses just enough for control, then drive the armored beasts straight into the bowmen, knocking them flat. The men fell to the dirt, stunned or broken, only for the pounding hooves of those behind to crush them into the earth until nothing remained but mangled corpses.
The sight of it made one of the Lannister commanders on the flank blanch in horror. He was a knight of House Marbrand of Ashemark.
His name was Ser Addam Marbrand, heir of Ashemark and eldest son of Lord Damon Marbrand.
The young knight had not been meant to stand here at all. Originally, he was left behind in the main camp, assigned to guard the northern gate of the Lannister encampment. His father, Lord Damon, knew well that this battle before Harrenhal would run red with blood, and for the sake of his house's survival, he had ordered his son to remain within the safety of the camp while he himself led the Westermen into the storm of the siege.
But Addam was young, headstrong, and burning with pride. How could he stomach being held back? When word reached him that Christen's cavalry had smashed through two hundred of their patrol riders with shocking ease, he could not restrain himself. At once he rushed to the northern gate of the encampment, dragging with him some eight hundred infantry hastily scraped together, and from them he formed a line of defense as thin as paper.
To crave battle and to carry the will to fight were worthy qualities. Yet spirit alone had to be measured against time, against place, and against the strength of the foe.
Blind to his own limits, Ser Addam's choice could only be called by its true name: suicide.
"Quickly! Get the young lord back behind the walls! Open the gates and let him in!"
The captain of the Marbrand household guard was no fool. He was a hardened veteran who had seen his share of war. At a glance, he knew the truth: these eight hundred men would not survive.
Their line had already been smashed through once. Now these northern horsemen, wild and relentless, were cutting through the archers as if harvesting grain.
When the bowmen were dead or scattered in panic, the cavalry would be free to wheel around and tear open the rear once more. Then the only line left standing would be a flimsy wall of pikemen and shield-bearers, a formation that could be divided, surrounded, and butchered without mercy.
Several of the Marbrand household guards, their breastplates marked with the burning tree wreathed in orange smoke, wasted no time. They seized their dazed young lord, who still stood frozen in disbelief, and dragged him back toward safety.
They knew all too well that in the state these savage cavalrymen were in, their young lord's noble bearing would make him stand out like a beacon. If the riders caught sight of him, he would surely become their first target.
And on a battlefield, blades and lances showed no mercy. Who could say if these men, already drunk on slaughter, might not in a fevered rush lower their lances and drive one clean through the young knight's chest, skewering him from front to back?
If such a thing were to happen, then for these sworn guards there would be no escape. Lord Damon Marbrand's fury would fall on them like a storm, and he would see every last one of them put to death. None would survive to tell the tale.
So they had only one choice: get this precious young lord behind the palisade walls as quickly as possible, and hope that the wooden defenses might blunt the charge of these northern horsemen, if only for a moment.
By ordinary reasoning, the captain of the guards was not wrong. His thinking made sense.
Because for a commander like Christen, who already held absolute advantage, the slaughter of these eight hundred infantry was a matter entirely at his discretion. If he wished, he could decide how many of them lived to limp back, and how many would be left broken in the mud.
But the problem was that killing was not Christen's true goal today.
What he sought was to break through into the Lannister camp itself, to throw their army into chaos, and then ride straight to the walls of Harrenhal, showing himself beneath the castle so that the garrison above might feel the strength of northern steel and find their spirits lifted.
By now he had cut down so many that even he had lost count. At last the lance he had been clutching beneath his armpit gave out. With a sharp crack, it snapped cleanly at the haft.
However, Christen did not pause. Without hesitation he hurled the broken shaft like a club, catching a Lannister spearman squarely and sending the man sprawling. In the same instant, he drew the sharp steel sword at his hip and drove forward into the charge once more.
There was not a shred of fear in him. The heavy iron plates of his armor gave him more than enough protection. The arrows of the Lannister bowmen had already proven it: they struck his breastplate and pauldrons with nothing but a ringing clang, useless as pebbles tossed against stone.
And besides, the man was cunning. Every time he felt the shimmering Quen shield around him weaken, he would replenish it in time. Ordinarily, his magical strength should not have recovered so quickly. But here on the battlefield, his role was mostly to drive his horse into men, letting the mount's weight do the killing. He took little damage himself. And so he managed to maintain the cycle, refreshing the protective ward over and over again.
It was, one could only admit, shamelessly effective.
By now he remained utterly unscathed. For the spearhead of the attack, the one meant to take the brunt of the enemy's resistance, to come through entirely without injury was nothing short of a miracle.
In short order, the eight hundred Lannister footmen and three hundred bowmen had been carved apart. More than half lay dead beneath the hooves and blades of Christen's four hundred horsemen. The rest broke in panic, scattering like frightened birds, and in moments the battlefield was emptied.
This was no fault of theirs. This was not some neat two-dimensional game, where the only end condition was to erase every last unit from the map.
In truth, any army that could suffer a quarter of its men slain and still hold its formation was already iron-willed, fit to be called an elite force in any realm.
These three hundred bowmen, to have held as long as they did, had done all that could be asked of them.
But the simple fact remained: they had only two legs, and no matter how desperately they ran, they could never hope to outrun the four pounding hooves of Christen's cavalry mounts.
When the harvest was finished, Christen pulled his force back together, reforming their ranks in the open ground between what remained of the Lannister host and the north palisade wall.
Heavy cavalry were not the same as light. Every charge drained their horses' strength to the bone, and the mounts had to be given time to recover before they could be driven forward again.
The Lannister infantry, clumsy and slow-footed, had in that moment the natural instinct to turn about, for the enemy was now behind them. But their commander, Ser Addam of House Marbrand, had already been whisked away by his household guards.
And so the men were left without leadership.
To expect them, farmers and craftsmen in peacetime, to summon initiative on the battlefield, to realign themselves and form ranks on their own, was simply to demand the impossible.
Inevitably, their formation broke down further, order crumbling into chaos.
Christen's last charge had already left them shaken to the core. The screams of the butchered bowmen still echoed in their ears, mingling with the heavy stench of blood that clung to their nostrils and refused to fade.
Now, with their commander gone and no clear orders to follow, panic quickly took root. Some men wheeled about in haste, lowering spearpoints and steel blades toward their own rear. Others failed to move at all, leaving the line fractured, confusion spreading like a crack running through stone.
Within moments, disputes flared among them. Shouts rose on every side, men jostled and shoved for position, and curses flew as they blamed one another for breaking the line.
That bickering soon grew into something worse, a poison to their already wavering morale.
No one knew who it was that broke first. Perhaps some poor wretch whose nerves finally snapped. With a strangled cry he hurled his weapon aside, bolted from the ranks, and sprinted madly in what he thought was a safe direction.
But once one man fled, the lesson was plain. There were always quick thinkers in any crowd, and the moment they saw it done, others followed. In the space of a few breaths, what had been a ragged but still intact defensive line collapsed entirely.
And as they fled, stumbling and scattering, they blundered straight into the Lannister cavalry that had been trying to sweep around the flanks, hoping to strike at Christen's rear.
The enemy commander, catching sight of this mob of terrified deserters, could not help but show open disdain in his eyes.
Tywin Lannister's discipline was infamous: his rule was iron, and for deserters there had never been mercy.
And so, one after another, heads flew.
Christen paid no mind. Once he had re-formed his men and allowed the horses a spell of rest, he lifted his gaze and saw, in the distance, Ser Addam Marbrand and his little company hammering at the gates, desperate to be let inside.
A thin smile curved across Christen's lips. Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. He already knew who his next target would be.
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[Chapter End's]
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