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Lord Damon Marbrand suddenly realized that he had stumbled into a perilous situation.
The problem did not lie with him, but with the king who had just ridden to his side, Joffrey, and with Joffrey's mother, the Queen Dowager, Cersei Lannister.
Unlike his son, Lord Marbrand was one of the few who could truly be counted among the highest circle of power in the Westerlands.
He of course understood very clearly what Tywin Lannister was scheming, and why the Warden of the West had stubbornly refused to abandon Harrenhal.
To the south, the news Tywin most longed for had stubbornly refused to arrive, and so he had been forced to grind himself down in bitter fighting beneath the walls of Harrenhal.
If tidings from the south had come, Tywin would have withdrawn without a second's hesitation. He would have marched south at once, to snatch back with his own hands what he had given away only months before.
However, matters had turned against him. The men of the Vale had proved utterly worthless, collapsing with the same speed they had shown when their attack had first surged forward.
Tywin Lannister had not even had time to adjust when Clay Manderly, that unreasonable brute, was already marching with thirty thousand men, determined to encircle him and fight to the death.
Even now, before Clay's main host had arrived, the Manderly vanguard of heavy cavalry had already ridden straight into view.
What in the Seven Hells was the northern camp doing?
What made Damon grind his teeth in frustration was that only moments earlier he had sent his reserve force to hold back Brynden Tully's assault on the siege lines.
And now, at the very moment when Lord Marbrand's position was at its weakest, Christen's detachment of heavy horse, barely two hundred riders still in their saddles, came thundering into his rear.
That was lethal!
Damon Marbrand did not waste even the blink of an eye. At once he rallied every soldier within reach who could still be moved, wheeled them about, and with him they turned north to meet the furious charge that Christen was driving straight into their backs.
At the same time, he barked another order, sharp and urgent: the Queen Dowager and the King were to be carried off at once, sent somewhere safer, the farther the better. Do not keep them here under his protection.
It was not that Damon Marbrand felt any overwhelming loyalty. He simply knew that if anything happened to those two, the war for the Westerlands would be as good as lost. And as for himself, Damon Marbrand could expect Tywin Lannister to stage for him another "The Rains of Castamere," making of his house the next bloody example.
"Come on, lads! With me! Block these northern bastards!"
With a roar, Lord Damon Marbrand spurred forward, leading fewer than a thousand men, an uneven mix of infantry and horse, straight toward Christen's position.
But the truth was he had lost his head. The sound course, the truly wise choice at this moment, would have been to hold fast, draw up a simple formation on the spot, and trust in the advantage that friendly forces surrounded him on every side. All he needed to do was hold Christen in place, force him to turn aside and strike elsewhere, and the danger would have passed.
Yet the image kept searing through his mind: Joffrey Baratheon, seized and dragged off in chains by the men of the North. At that thought, Damon's vision swam darkly before his eyes.
The fire in his chest simply could not be put out.
And so, another savage clash erupted.
The Lord of House Marbrand hurled his ragged thousand forward in a wild clash against Christen's riders. The result was brutal. In less than twenty minutes his force, hastily drawn together from scattered companies of foot and horse, was broken apart. Unable to fight to their strengths and hindered at every turn, they crumbled almost at once.
Lord Damon Marbrand, his noble birth made plain by the fine cut of his armor and cloak, stood out like a beacon on the battlefield. Christen marked him at once as the prize. In a fleeting pause where their blades struck and parted, Christen swung an axe blow, rough in form yet heavy with force. The strike rattled Damon's senses and left him reeling.
Before he could recover, a harsher blow landed. Darkness swept over his sight, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
"Tie this one up," Christen called. "If we can fight our way clear, this prize alone will be enough to see our fallen brothers richly repaid."
With the order given, Christen seized Damon Marbrand by the collar, wrenched him bodily from the saddle, and hurled him backward into the waiting hands of his men.
He spared no thought for who exactly the man was. Noble or not, it hardly mattered in the press of battle. What mattered was that his instincts told him this one was worth a fortune in gold dragons.
He remembered well how Lord Clay, at Riverrun, had taken a whole harvest of Westerland captives. Tywin Lannister had been forced to ransom them back at a dear price, filling Clay's coffers until his men's armor shone brighter. In truth, much of the steel on Christen's own body now could be traced to the generosity of Lord Tywin's purse.
"Brothers! Just a little more! We're almost through!"
Christen roared and drove his horse onward, veering the charge toward the right flank.
A quick glance back was enough to tell him the truth. Fewer than a hundred and fifty riders still clung close behind. As for the rest, whether slain, scattered, or fallen to the mud, he no longer had the time or the heart to count.
On the battlefield, there is no hour to mourn the dead.
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"I will not leave! What are you all good for? How could you let the northerners break through to this place?"
Along Christen's path of charge, within the ranks of another wavering formation, Joffrey Baratheon was screaming at the men around him. His face burned crimson with rage, his fists were clenched so tightly that his nails cut into his palms, and his whole body bristled like a wildcat driven into a corner. His fury was so raw and violent that even Cersei Lannister, who had always been the one most capable of indulging her son's madness, felt a cold jolt of fear twist through her chest.
Joffrey Baratheon had utterly lost control.
The shame of his desperate flight from King's Landing still clung to him like an unhealed wound, festering beneath the skin, a disgrace that this proud and reckless king believed would stain the whole of his life.
Now, at last, he had come to the front. This was his chance to redeem himself, his chance to prove his courage, not only to his mother, not only to his grandsire, not only to the armies of the Westerlands, but to every corner of Westeros. He would show them all that he, Joffrey Baratheon, was no craven boy king, but a ruler as fierce in war as his father, King Robert Baratheon, and destined to be feared in his own right.
No one could cage a true king. No one!
Yet Joffrey's soaring ambition lasted scarcely two hours before cruel reality struck. Word reached him that the northerners had already smashed their way through the entire northern encampment, tearing apart the siege lines and driving straight toward the king himself.
They were here for regicide. They had come to strike down the king!
A king's body is beyond price. One so precious should never linger in a crumbling hall. He must be taken to safety at once, never left in peril.
That was what Cersei thought. That was what Sandor Clegane thought. That was what even the unconscious Lord Damon Marbrand would have thought, had he been awake.
But the problem was this: Joffrey Baratheon himself did not think so.
Instead, he drew from his side a dagger set with gleaming jewels, its edge flashing with the cold light of Valyrian steel. Clutching it tightly, he pressed the blade against his own throat and shouted in a voice that shook with fury.
"Go! Take the king's army and cut down every last northerner that dares approach. Bring me their commander alive! I will kill him with my own hands!"
At the sight of that glittering Valyrian steel dagger in her son's grasp, Cersei Lannister gasped aloud in horror. Her voice rose to a shriek.
"Joffrey! Put it down! It's dangerous!"
The Queen Dowager was nearly frightened to death. As the king's mother, she knew all too well what her son was capable of.
One careless tremor of his hand, and he could very well slit his own throat.
Yes, most of the time, Joffrey would burst into tears from the faintest cut or bruise, and she would have to cradle him and soothe him until his sobbing subsided.
But now, he was deaf to her pleas. The dagger's point hovered less than a finger's breadth from the pale skin of his neck.
Everyone present looked to one another in shock, faces frozen in disbelief. Not a single soul had anticipated such a scene.
After a long silence, Cersei Lannister finally spoke. Her voice, usually so sharp and commanding, was now laced with helplessness and dread.
"Very well. Do as His Grace commands. I will… I will find some way to reason with him…"
There was really no other choice. In theory, all of them were fighting this war for the boy before them. If he died, what was the point of continuing? They might as well throw down their swords and surrender.
And who among them would dare bear the accusation of driving their king to his death?
Everyone could see, if they were honest with themselves, that the youth before them was nothing but a puppet. But even so, a puppet king was still the king. Without him, the entire structure collapsed.
Around Joffrey stood close to eight hundred men.
Lord Damon Marbrand had brought three thousand into this battle. More than a thousand had already been shattered by Christen's charge. Another thousand were still locked in the assault on the walls. The rest, what remained, were here now.
If this force was broken as well… no one dared imagine what would follow.
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Christen had never laid eyes on Joffrey before. When Lord Clay had visited Winterfell, Christen had still been a boy, mucking about in the mud outside White Harbor.
Yet when he scanned the battlefield earlier, he had already noticed, amidst that great mass of troops, a figure that stood out from all the rest… a boy, conspicuous in every detail.
Anyone with eyes could see it at a glance. Surrounded layer upon layer by knights in gilded crimson, clad in finely tailored robes, with a great scarlet cloak embroidered with a golden lion billowing from his shoulders, the boy could hardly be mistaken for some common squire.
But Christen, in his lack of knowledge, never once thought of Joffrey Baratheon.
What reasonable man would expect that the enemy king himself, with the battle raging this close, would remain rooted to the spot, foolish and exposed?
Clay knew Joffrey Baratheon for the thorough fool he was. The trouble was, Christen did not know that.
To him, this boy seemed no different from the other young nobles he had just crossed, the kind who led their men out of the camp gates in reckless charges, glorious in appearance yet ending only in death.
Another hot-blooded youth, another idiot blinded by valor, rushing headlong toward doom.
What Christen did not realize was that he had stepped onto a grand avenue of fortune.
For in all the Seven Kingdoms, who else could claim, in the same breath, to be both defending their rightful king and striking straight for the capture of the enemy's?
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[Chapter End's]
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