Black stood fast. Green came on.
Thus began the Battle of the Kingsroad.
The hosts of the Riverlands drew up in grim silence, shields locked and spears bristling, while the men of the Stormlands hurled themselves forward in a desperate, all-or-nothing charge. Mud sucked at boots and hooves alike, churned into a slick brown mire by days of rain and the passage of thousands.
"Shields! Shields!" Lord Kermit Tully roared as he drew his sword.
A wall of oak and iron rose as one, sealing the Kingsroad from ditch to ditch. Banners cracked overhead in the wind. The silver trout of Riverrun swam upon fields of red and blue. The queen's quartered dragon snapped and twisted. The raven and weirwood of House Blackwood hung dark and ominous against the sky.
"Unbreakable!"
"Unbreakable!" the men of the Trident thundered back. Faces flushed, veins bulging at neck and temple, they stood shoulder to shoulder like an iron river dammed against the Stormlands flood. The Riverlands hungered for honor, and they would not yield it cheaply.
"Draww!!. Looose!"
Black Aly gave the command from the low hill to the right, her voice sharp as a snapped bowstring.
House Blackwood had long been famed for its archers, and the three hundred longbowmen under her hand were the best of them. Lord Kermit had trusted every bow on that flank to her command. Black Aly was no courtly beauty. She was sharp of tongue, fearless in the saddle, fond of rough jests and rougher company. She was also a hunter without peer, a breaker of wild horses, and an archer whose eye never wavered.
The sky darkened with shafts. Arrows fell like rain upon the charging Stormlands knights, punching through mail, finding gaps at throat and armpit, and most cruelly of all striking horses. Great destriers screamed as they went down, hurling armored men into the mud. Less than half the knights reached the Riverlands line at all, and those that did came on foot, slipping and floundering, hacking at their reins to keep from being dragged beneath dying mounts.
"Charge, brave knights of the Stormlands!"
The cry rang hollow. The iron-fist charge had already shattered. Mud was a warrior's deadliest foe, and the Stormlanders found themselves trapped in it. What had begun as a gallant assault dissolved into a clumsy, grinding press of men, while the Riverlands waited, ranks fresh and unbloodied.
Spears stabbed out. Swords hacked. Long-axes rose and fell. The Stormlanders fought with stubborn fury, a storm made flesh, for they had ever been counted among the fiercest warriors of the Seven Kingdoms. Yet even their tempest could not break the shield wall of the Trident.
The knights of the Riverlands stood like bedrock, sworn to hold or die.
Shields splintered. Men fell. But for every Riverlander slain, two Stormlanders went down. Blood mingled with mud beneath trampling feet, and the air grew thick with the stench of iron and filth and death.
"Face me in single combat, you cowards!" Lord Borros Baratheon bellowed, eyes bloodshot as the knot of knights around him dwindled. "Drop your bows. Drop your shields!"
Each fallen knight was a dagger in his heart. He had brought thousands of footmen to the field, but only six hundred knights, the sons of lords and landed men, the true strength of the Stormlands. Their loss was ruin.
Still the Riverlands line did not break. Men flowed forward and back with practiced ease, reserves filling every gap the instant it opened. The wall bent, but it did not shatter.
Lord Kermit and Ser Oscar Tully strode along the ranks, shouting encouragement, laying hands on shoulders slick with sweat and blood. The formation held. The Riverlands still had strength in hand. The Stormlands had already spent theirs.
"Press them. All of you, forward!" Borros roared as his infantry finally surged in.
"The wall is moving!" some shouted in wild hope.
Footmen and the few surviving knights shoved forward together, trampling the dead beneath them. Horses lay everywhere now, broken and screaming or already still. The advance became a slow, crushing push of bodies, men packed so tightly they could scarcely lift their arms.
The Riverlands line gave a little ground, wavering, seeming to retreat toward the heart of the field.
Horns sounded from behind the shield wall. Deep and Loud.
The line trembled, but it did not collapse.
Then the earth itself seemed to shudder as a savage black dragon rose from behind the right-hand hill, roaring its fury to the sky.
Cannibal beat his vast wings and soared straight upward, a living shadow blotting out the sun. Green sparks danced between black fangs. Sulfur stung the air as gray smoke rolled from his jaws. He was ready to loose his wrath upon the world.
"Onward, my friend," Prince Aegon cried.
The dragon was black flame given flesh. Jet-black scales armored him from snout to tail, horns and spines ridging his back like blades. Only his eyes shone differently, a fierce, blazing green, bright as wildfire in the dark.
His roar broke across the battlefield like thunder.
"That is our cue," Aegon said calmly, settling himself in the saddle. He had trained long upon Dragonstone, tempering fear into iron and learning the true bond between dragon and rider.
Cannibal plunged.
He fell upon the Stormlanders packed in the mud at the front, where there was no room to flee and no cover to be had.
"A dragon! A dragon!"
Terror swept the vanguard. Shadows swallowed them whole.
"Gods preserve us!" men wailed, knowing their fate at last. Blood-smeared faces turned upward, eyes wide and empty, waiting for judgment to fall.
"The heir of Queen Rhaenyra has come," the Riverlands men shouted in fierce joy. "Lay down your arms and swear to the rightful king."
"In your dreams, boy," Borros roared, rage and despair twisting his voice. "I would sooner burn than kneel."
Some of his attendants loosed arrows upward in futile defiance.
Aegon answered them with fire.
A ball of sickly green flame burst among the Stormlanders at the front. Fire rained down, clinging and spreading. Borros's closest retainers were there, and they died first, screaming as heat rolled over them. Cannibal's fire was not merely vast, but cruel. Steel softened and ran. Poorly armored footmen vanished in moments. The green flames burned on like wildfire, consuming flesh, leather, and hope alike.
"Well done," Aegon called. Cannibal rumbled, pleased.
"Down, my lord," Borros's remaining men dragged him into the mud as fire washed over the field, saving him by inches from death.
The stench of charred flesh filled the air. Men howled, clutching at melting helms and burning cloaks. Knights staggered crowned in green flame, their features burned away, mock kings in a living hell.
Cannibal did not linger. The end was certain now. He cast more fire into the Stormlanders' packed ranks, then wheeled away, Aegon's voice ringing clear above the din.
"Forward. Kill them."
"The prince's dragon fights for us. Claim your honor."
From the woods to the left of the Kingsroad came a fresh roar as Lord Benjicot Blackwood burst forth at the head of hundreds who had waited in silence. Only thirteen, tall and thin, shy in hall and council, he was something else entirely upon the field. There he was feral, unrestrained, a blade loosed at last.
The Riverlands dead rushed in, fearless.
Borros hauled himself upright, mud-caked and shaking. Horror and disbelief warred across his face as he saw banners crushed beneath boot and hoof. The crowned stag lay trampled. The golden dragon was cast down.
"This cannot be," he whispered.
"Run, my lord," someone begged.
His attendants lay dead or dying, burned and pierced. Borros stood unmoving, mind numbed.
"Charge. Charge," he croaked, tearing a warhorn from a corpse and sounding it amid blood and smoke. "I still have men."
High above, Aegon wheeled Cannibal over the Stormlanders' rear.
"I am Prince Aegon Targaryen, heir of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone," he proclaimed. "Lay down your arms, bend the knee and swear, or be destroyed."
Horses screamed and broke. Men fled. The terror of the dragon was irresistible. The rabble levied from King's Landing ran at once. Lords of Duskendale, Rosby, and Stokeworth saw the truth and turned their cloaks, casting down the golden dragon and falling upon the Stormlanders from behind.
Weapons clattered to the ground. The Riverlands shield wall opened at last, men stepping carefully around still-burning corpses as they closed the noose.
The battle ended not with a final clash, but with a rout.
Mud, blood, fire, and screams marked the field. Above it all, the black dragon danced in the smoke-filled sky.
The Green faction's last field army was destroyed.
-------
A/N: Some reviews would be really appreciated, Thanks Guys!!
Read ahead on Patreon, 23 advance chapters available, with the first 2 free.
patreon.com/Captain_Lag