Author's Note:
I had forgotten to put the image i made for Ser Raymun last chapter so here it is:
(Ser Raymun Snow --->)
[The Riverlands, Mummer's Ford, 4th moon, 299AC]
Jory was not quite fond of clear mornings. The thought came to him as he sat atop his horse overlooking Mummer's Ford while dawn slowly crept across the Riverlands.
For weeks they had marched through rain and mud. Roads had become swamps. Rivers had swollen beyond their banks. Camps stank of wet wool, horse piss, and smoke. Men complained constantly, yet Jory had welcomed every miserable day of it.
Rain slowed armies, it hid movement, made scouts cautious and commanders uncertain.
Clear skies did the opposite, they let a man see exactly what was coming for him.
The ford stretched below him, broad and shallow, the waters of the Trident flowing steadily south. Along the eastern bank, thousands of men were already awake and preparing for battle. Fires burned low. Armor was being strapped on. Horses were being saddled. Somewhere in the camp a smith hammered dents from a breastplate.
Beside him, Harrion Karstark stared westward with narrowed eyes.
"Gods," the young lord muttered.
Jory followed his gaze.
The western horizon looked as though it had caught some crimson sickness.
Lannister banners, hundreds of them.
The scouts had reported movement before dawn.
Tywin Lannister had arrived.
Even from this distance, Jory could see the army spreading across the western ridges. Long columns of infantry moved steadily forward while cavalry formed along the flanks. Banners snapped in the morning wind.
The banners of nearly every major house still standing in the Westerlands.
Harrion exhaled slowly.
"That's all of them."
"Aye."
"How many?"
Jory considered it for a moment, deciding to go with the higher estimation. "Thirteen thousand. Maybe more."
Harrion let out a low whistle.
The defenders numbered seven thousand.
Six thousand Rivermen.
One thousand Northerners.
Good, strong men, and yet, they still sat outnumbered almost 2-1.
From the side, a rider soon approached through the camp.
"Ser-Commander."
Jory turned.
"What is it?"
"Ser Marq Piper requests your presence."
"Tell him we're coming."
The rider nodded and departed.
Harrion looked west one final time. "They're not wasting time."
"No, I suppose not," he sighed as they went on toward Ser Marq's tent.
Tywin never was one to waste anything.
The command tent stood near the center of the defensive works.
Ser Marq Piper waited inside. The heir to Pinkmaiden looked exhausted, then again, everyone looked exhausted these days.
Maps covered the table before him.
Wooden markers represented troop positions.
Jory studied them quietly while Harrion stood nearby.
Marq rubbed his eyes.
"I've checked the reports three times."
"And?"
"And I keep getting the same answer."
Jory almost smiled.
"Which is?"
"We are badly outnumbered."
Harrion barked a short laugh.
At least somebody still possessed a sense of humor.
Marq pointed toward the ford.
"The river helps."
"Aye."
"The defenses help."
"Aye."
"The numbers still concern me."
"They concern me too."
Marq looked up.
That surprised him.
Most commanders spent half their lives pretending confidence.
Jory never saw much point in it, the truth was dangerous enough.
No need to lie about it.
"Can we hold?" Marq asked.
Jory studied the map.
Then he looked toward the west, the answer, in truth, was simple.
"We will hold as long as needed."
Marq frowned.
"Long enough for what?"
Jory's expression remained unchanged.
"Long enough for the rest of the trap to close."
[Later that day]
The first horn sounded shortly before midday, a deep, booming note rolled across the river.
Every man along the defensive line heard it.
Thousands of men advanced toward the ford.
No speeches or negotiations. No herald demanding their surrender.
Tywin Lannister had crossed too many battlefields for that nonsense.
The attack came immediately.
Arrows filled the sky, not quite enough to blot out the sun, but enough to make any lesser man piss himself as his rose his shield.
Jory had seen arrow storms before.
They always looked impressive from a distance.
Up close, they were terrifying.
Men shouted, some prayed.
Then the arrows fell.
The first screams followed moments later.
Horses collapsed, either from arrows hitting them or their riders being struck themselves
A Riverman pitched backward from the wall, fell clutching his throat.
Another man spun around before falling face-first into the dirt.
Then the eastern archers answered.
Their arrows met the westermen halfway across the river.
As the cries of dying men filled the air, that's when he knew the battle had truly begun.
The first assault hit the center, exactly where Jory had expected.
Tywin wasn't probing them, this battle would be all or nothing, a true full-force clash.
The westermen surged forward beneath shields while arrows hammered against them from above.
The ford itself became chaos almost immediately.
Men slipped, drowned, and just all around died.
Still they came.
Jory rode behind the lines watching.
Not because he wished to stay safe.
Because a commander who charged too early was a fool.
You could only commit your reserves once, and he intended to use them wisely.
The first attack failed.
The second attack failed.
The third nearly succeeded.
That one worried him.
The westermen managed to gain a foothold near the center before being driven back into the water.
The fighting there lasted nearly half an hour.
By the end, bodies clogged the shallows.
The river carried the dead downstream.
Yet despite their losses, the western banners never retreated far.
They regrouped, reformed. Prepared for another assault.
Harrion rode up beside him.
"They're serious."
Jory looked at him.
"When have they not been?"
"Not like this."
The young Karstark wasn't wrong.
Something about the attacks felt different.
The westermen weren't conserving strength.
They weren't behaving like men trying to preserve an army.
They were spending lives.
Buying ground.
Paying for every yard of riverbank with blood.
That meant Tywin wanted something badly.
And that worried Jory more than the numbers did.
The fourth assault came harder than the previous three.
The fifth harder still.
By midafternoon the battlefield had transformed into a slaughterhouse.
The dead lay everywhere, men stumbled over corpses while fighting, horses screamed as they died.
The smell of blood had become impossible to ignore.
A messenger arrived at full gallop.
"Ser-Commander, the center's bending!"
Jory didn't wait.
He spurred his horse forward immediately.
Harrion followed.
They reached the center moments later.
The situation looked ugly.
The western assault had punched deep into the defensive line.
Several barricades had fallen.
Dozens of Rivermen were retreating.
Others fought desperately around broken stakes and overturned wagons.
At the forefront of the attack flew lion banners.
Veterans, the best troops Tywin still possessed.
Jory drew his sword.
The runes along the blade caught the sunlight briefly.
Ancient symbols.
Older than the Wall.
Older than Winterfell itself.
Alaric had placed the weapon in his hands before the campaign, although he was but a Lord then, now, he ruled as a king.
The sword had been his king's gift, his king's very trust.
Now seemed a good time to use it.
"Harrion."
The Karstark turned.
"Take a hundred men and stabilize the left flank."
"Understood," he replied, steeling himself for the bloodshed to come
He wheeled his horse and rode away.
Jory turned toward the breach.
The westermen were coming.
And this time they were getting closer than before.
He lowered his visor.
Then he rode straight into the fighting, his own veterans falling into line with him.
The breach swallowed men.
That was the first thought that came to Jory as he rode into the broken center of the line, where the barricades had been smashed apart, and the westermen had forced their way through the ford in a thick wedge of shields and spears.
It did not look like the rest of the battle.
Elsewhere men fought in broken lines, falling back and surging forward, shouting through smoke and spray and mud. Here the fighting had become a press of bodies so dense that horses could barely move. Men killed at arm's length and died without space enough to fall properly. Corpses were trampled into mud beneath boots. Shields jammed together. Spears snapped. Axes rose and fell without rhythm.
Jory saw a Piper man go down with a spear in his belly, only for the man behind him to step over his body before it had even stopped kicking. A westerman knight tried to push through the gap and caught a riverlander axe against his helm. The blow did not kill him. It only stunned him long enough for three men to drag him from his horse and finish him in the muck.
Jory did not shout at first.
He rode straight at the gap.
The first westerman to turn toward him raised a shield painted with a golden lion.
Jory's runed sword struck it hard.
The blade bit through the wood deeper than any common steel had a right to, carving into the shield rim and splitting one of the iron bands beneath. The shock of it widened the man's eyes just long enough for Jory to strike again. This time the blade took him through the side of the neck above his gorget, and the man dropped, choking into the mud.
"Greycloaks!" Jory shouted then. "With me!"
The men heard him.
They always did.
That had become one of the stranger things about command. A man could scream himself hoarse in battle and still be lost beneath the din, but once soldiers had learned to trust a voice, they found it through anything. Through horns. Through steel. Through dying horses. Through fear.
The Greycloaks near him rallied at once, tightening around his horse as he pushed deeper toward the breach. He saw Ser Ulrich Umber already fighting ahead of him, huge even among the press of armored men, his axe rising above helms and shields before crashing down with enough force to break men apart. The 3rd Company followed him like hounds behind a butcher, grim-faced and disciplined despite their captain's wild roar.
Ulrich laughed as he fought.
Not because the battle was funny.
Because he was an Umber, and death seemed to put joy in their blood.
"Commander!" Ulrich bellowed when he saw Jory. "Took you long enough!"
"You looked busy."
"Aye, well, I was saving half the Riverlands while you admired the view."
Jory cut down another westerman before answering.
"Then save the other half."
Ulrich grinned beneath his blood-splashed helm and threw himself back into the line.
The 3rd Company hit harder after that. They drove shields forward in short steps, stabbing beneath rims and hacking at arms whenever westermen tried to push past them. Unlike the Riverlanders, many of whom still fought like levies defending homes and fields, the Greycloaks fought like men who had been made into a weapon and sharpened over years. They did not waste movement. They did not shout more than needed. They killed, stepped, closed, and killed again.
For a little while, it worked.
The breach stopped widening.
Then the westermen sent in fresh men.
Jory saw them before they reached the ford. Heavy infantry in good mail and plate, shields tight, officers bellowing orders behind them. Not green boys from the Crownlands. Not levies scraped from frightened towns. These were Tywin's veterans, men who had survived the Green Fork and the march from Harrenhal, men who knew they had to break through or die trapped between enemies and river.
They came hard.
The center bent again.
Jory's horse screamed as a spearpoint cut across its chest. He pulled the reins sharply and barely kept the animal from rearing into another rider. A westerman lunged for him from the left, and Jory parried low, then struck upward. His sword tore through mail beneath the man's arm and opened him from ribs to shoulder.
The weapon frightened him sometimes.
Not because it glowed or sang or any of the foolish things singers loved to put into tales.
It frightened him because it worked a little too well.
It held an edge longer than it should. It bit deeper than it should. Shields that should have caught a blow split apart. Mail that should have turned a strike opened under hard enough steel and proper aim. The runes along the blade did not blaze, but sometimes in the corner of his eye they seemed darker than the metal around them, like old cuts filled with shadow.
Alaric had given such weapons to his top commanders before the campaigns split apart.
Jory had never asked exactly how he had done it.
He was beginning to think he did not want to know.
A rider pushed through behind him, nearly thrown from the saddle by the crush.
"Commander! The left holds!"
"Harrion?"
"Aye, my lord. Lord Harrion has taken three hundred men and thrown back the push there."
Good.
Jory had given Harrion a real command because there had been no time for smaller tests. The young Karstark had wanted war badly when they first came south, as many young lords did. He had wanted honor, names, victories, stories to carry home to Karhold.
Now he had men dying under his orders.
That changed a man.
A horn sounded from the western side.
Low and sharp.
Another assault.
Jory turned just in time to see a fresh wedge of westermen cavalry trying to force a crossing along the shallower stretch north of the main ford. Marq Piper rode there with his own men, standing in the stirrups as he shouted orders, his blue-and-pink cloak snapping behind him.
The heir to Pinkmaiden had blood running down one side of his face.
He had not left the field.
Good man.
Jory cut his way toward him with a couple dozen Greycloaks following.
By the time he reached the northern shallows, Marq's line was buckling. Westermen knights had forced their horses into the water and were trying to break through before the mud trapped them fully. One riverlander went under screaming when a horse crushed him against a submerged stake. Another tried to rise and was ridden down before he found his feet.
Marq saw Jory and laughed once, harsh and breathless.
"Your center looks like the seven hells."
"So does your flank."
"Good. I would hate to be outdone."
A lance came at them.
Marq ducked low, and Jory leaned from the saddle, slashing with the runed blade as the knight thundered past. The strike cut deep into the lance shaft, splitting it near the grip. Marq used the opening to drive his sword into the rider's thigh. The knight toppled sideways into the water and vanished beneath the churn.
"They're pressing everywhere," Marq said.
"They have to."
"Aye. That's what worries me."
Jory looked across the river.
Far beyond the crush of fighting, on the western bank, he could see Tywin Lannister's command banners.
Golden lion on crimson.
The Old Lion watched the battle the way a butcher watched cattle being counted.
No panic.
No hurry.
He had made his choice. He would spend men until the ford broke, because if it broke quickly enough, the road west reopened.
Jory understood him then.
Not fully, for no man fully understood Tywin Lannister except perhaps Kevan, and even that was doubtful.
Tywin knew he could not remain east forever. He knew Alaric was in the Westerlands. He knew Jory's net was tightening. So he had chosen the most dangerous answer available.
Break one point with everything.
And for a while, it looked as if he would succeed.
By late afternoon, the defenders were being pushed back from the first line of earthworks. The barricades closest to the water had been splintered. Archer positions had been overrun. The wounded were everywhere behind the lines, lying in rows beneath soaked cloaks while maesters, septons, and camp followers cut, stitched, and prayed as fast as hands allowed.
Jory rode through it briefly while shifting reserves.
A boy no older than sixteen clutched at his stirrup.
"My lord," the boy gasped. "My brother. Have you seen my brother?"
Jory looked down at him.
The boy's face was grey. Blood soaked his belly.
"What's his name?"
"Tom."
Jory did not know any Tom.
"No."
The boy nodded as if that answer made sense, then released the stirrup and fell back into the mud.
Jory rode on.
He hated that most of all.
Command meant leaving boys to die while looking at maps and banners and lines instead of faces. It meant deciding where a hundred men would die so a thousand might live. He had once thought himself a soldier, then a captain, then a commander.
Now he understood command was mostly choosing which grief had use.
Near the second ridge, Harrion found him again.
The Karstark heir's horse was gone, and he had a cut across his cheek that bled freely down into his beard. He looked wild-eyed, but not afraid.
"The left holds," Harrion said. "Barely, at least."
"Barely is still holding."
Harrion gave a short laugh and leaned both hands on his sword pommel for half a breath.
"They nearly broke us."
"But they didn't."
"No." Harrion looked toward the ford. "But they will if this goes on."
Jory did not answer.
Because Harrion was right.
The numbers were beginning to tell. 7,000 men against 13,500. Defenses, terrain, and discipline helped. But men still tired. Lines still cracked. Arrows still ran low. And Tywin still had enough strength to keep hitting them where they were weakest.
A fresh horn sounded from the west.
Harrion cursed.
"How many men does he mean to spend?"
"As many as it takes."
Then came another horn.
Not western this time, but something far more recognizable and familiar.
A Riverlander horn.
Long and deep, rolling over the battlefield from somewhere beyond the northern hills.
Every man close enough to hear turned his head.
Another horn answered it.
Then another.
Jory felt something loosen in his chest.
Harrion looked at him.
"The Blackfish?"
"Aye."
The first banners appeared through smoke and distance moments later.
Tully colors, followed by Mallister, Blackwood, and many more.
Brynden Tully had arrived from the north.
He had not come fresh. No one who had ridden from Sherrer through mud and blood could be fresh. But he had come, and the men with him came hard, charging down from the northern ground into the westermen's exposed flank with all the fury of men who had just learned how badly they had been played.
The effect was immediate.
Westermen near the northern shallows hesitated. That hesitation killed them. Riverlander cavalry crashed into their side while archers behind Brynden's line began shooting into men who had thought all threats lay ahead of them.
Marq Piper laughed aloud.
"There he is, the old bastard!"
Morale shifted so quickly it almost seemed a physical thing. Men who had been stumbling backward steadied themselves. Men who had lowered shields raised them again. The riverlanders began shouting Tully's name, then Stark's, then King Alaric's, then simply "North!" because at that point most of them were too tired to care which banner they served under as long as someone had come to keep them alive.
Jory did not cheer.
He watched Tywin's banners.
They did not move.
Tywin had expected Brynden.
'Of course he did, the old bastard.' Jory cursed him inwardly
A commander like Tywin would not plan a feint at Sherrer without knowing the Blackfish would come south once he overcame it. Brynden's arrival was not the end of Tywin's gamble. It was one part of the calculation.
The question was whether Tywin had calculated enough.
Then another set of horns sounded.
From the northeast.
Lower, rougher… Northern.
Jory turned.
For a moment he saw only dust, smoke, and moving shapes through the trees.
Then grey banners appeared.
The remaining Greycloaks.
Ser Raymun Snow had arrived.
They looked like dead men walking.
Many were limping. Many had torn cloaks and dented helms. Some had blood dried dark across their faces. Yet they came in formation, with Raymun at their head, his strawberry blond hair turned nearly red beneath blood and rain.
A rider near Jory muttered, "Redsnow."
Jory heard it and almost smiled.
He had received word from Raymun himself about the new name they had given him, it fits, in all honesty.
Raymun rode straight toward the weakest point of the fighting and did not slow. His men followed him with the blunt obedience of soldiers too tired to think about fear anymore. They hit the westermen from the side and drove them toward the river, step by step, not with wild strength but with bitter discipline.
Jory pushed through the press to meet him.
Raymun was breathing hard when he rode close, blood still streaked across his jaw.
"You're late," Jory said.
"Blame the lions."
"I have been," he replied with a hearty laugh, something that came rarely in times like this
Raymun looked across the ford, then toward Tywin's banners.
"How bad is it?"
"Bad."
"Good. I'd hate to have marched all this way for something easy."
Jory finally smiled.
Then the southeast horns sounded.
This time the western lines truly shifted.
Lord Medger Cerwyn had come, the final nail in the lion's coffin, the linchpin for their trap and plan.
From the direction of Stony Sept, his host emerged onto the southeast approaches, banners rising beyond the far fields where the westermen had not expected fresh men to appear so soon. Cerwyn's troops had marched hard, and they struck the southern edge of the battle with enough force to buckle the westermen's screening lines almost immediately.
Now the shape of the field changed.
Brynden pressed from the north. Raymun closed the northeast. Cerwyn came from the southeast. Jory and Marq held the ford's bank and the center. The river and the ford, once Tywin's road to escape, began to look like something uglier.
A killing box.
And thousands of westermen stood inside it.
Jory looked across the field and saw men beginning to understand.
Not all at once, men in battle rarely understood anything all at once. First one officer turned his head too quickly. Then a banner shifted direction. Then a cavalry troop hesitated because the order they had expected no longer made sense. Then wounded men began shouting that enemies were behind them. Then fear did the rest.
The westermen did not break.
They were too well led for that.
But they sure as hell faltered, and that was enough to be capitalized upon.
Tywin saw it too.
Jory could not hear his orders from across the ford, but he saw the reaction. Westerlands reserves began moving toward the center. Cavalry pulled back from the northern shallows. Fresh banners gathered near the western bank.
Someone was trying to open the way.
Someone good.
Raymun followed Jory's gaze.
"Did the old lion send Ser Kevan?"
"Most likely, Ser Kevan remains as one of the only men alive who Tywin trusts fully."
The Lannister counterattack came within minutes.
It struck the center with terrifying speed.
Kevan Lannister rode at its front beneath a smaller lion banner, surrounded by household knights and veteran men-at-arms. He did not look like a young hero from a song. He looked older, controlled, and deadly practical, a man who had spent decades making other men's wars work.
His push nearly split them.
The first line of Greycloaks bent under the charge. Riverlanders fell back. A Cerwyn banner went down near the southern edge. Kevan's men drove toward the thinnest seam between Jory's center and Raymun's arriving troops, trying to punch through before the encirclement tightened fully.
If Kevan broke that seam, Tywin might still pull a large portion of his force through the gap and turn the battle into a retreat rather than a slaughter.
There was no time for orders beyond the simplest ones.
"Ulrich!" Jory shouted.
The Umber turned, face red with blood and fury.
"With me."
Ulrich grinned.
"Thought you'd never ask."
They charged on foot because horses were nearly useless in the press now.
Jory pushed through mud and bodies with Ulrich and dozens of Greycloaks around him. Harrion joined from the left without being called, his sword already drawn, his face hard. Raymun's men pressed from the other side, battered but steady.
The two lines crashed near a broken wagon half-submerged in mud.
Jory saw Kevan clearly then.
The older Lannister cut down a Riverlord with a short, brutal stroke before turning aside a spear and driving his sword through the attacker's chest. He fought without waste, without show, and without fear. When one of his own men stumbled near him, Kevan shoved him back into line with a barked order rather than letting him fall.
Jory respected it even as he moved to kill him.
Kevan saw him coming.
Their swords met in the middle of the chaos.
The first clash jarred Jory's arm to the shoulder.
Kevan was stronger than he looked.
But not strong enough to keep his mount steady, a spear struck his horse's throat, leading the Knight of House Lannister to swiftly dismount and meet him on foot.
"Ser Jory Cassel, I presume?" Kevan asked, his voice rough beneath his helm.
"Aye."
"Thought you'd be taller."
Jory shoved him back half a step.
"Thought you'd be west by now," he sneered as their blades separated again.
Kevan's mouth tightened.
Then they clashed again.
It was not a clean duel. No clean ground. No circle of watching knights. No courtesies.
Men died around them. A horse screamed ten feet away. Ulrich roared somewhere to Jory's right as he tore a westerman apart with his axe. Harrion shouted orders behind him. Raymun's men chanted something harsh and northern as they pushed forward.
Kevan pressed hard.
His first true attack nearly opened Jory's thigh. The second caught his shoulder hard enough to dent the plate. Jory parried the third and struck back, the runed blade biting deep into Kevan's shield.
The older man's eyes flicked toward the cut.
He understood immediately that the blade was not common.
That made him more cautious.
Kevan shifted his stance and stopped offering the shield so freely. He began fighting tighter, using shorter cuts, trying to close inside Jory's reach. Twice he forced Jory backward. Once he nearly drove him over a corpse hidden beneath the mud.
Jory barely kept his footing.
Kevan saw it and lunged.
Jory twisted aside, but not cleanly enough. The older man's blade scraped across his forearm, cutting through leather and drawing blood beneath. Pain flared sharp and hot.
Kevan pressed.
Jory gave ground.
For one breath he saw how this might end. Not with glory, but with one single mistake in mud and a Lannister sword finding his throat.
Then Ulrich crashed into the knight beside Kevan, knocking the man away with a shield blow.
The opening lasted half a heartbeat.
Jory used it.
He struck Kevan's shield again, not at the center but near the weakened edge where the runed sword had already bitten deep. The blade cut through the cracked wood and iron binding, shearing off enough of the shield to expose Kevan's left side.
Kevan cursed and stepped back.
Jory stepped with him.
Kevan tried to counter low.
Jory caught the blow, turned it, and drove forward.
The runed blade slid through damaged mail beneath Kevan's arm with a sound Jory felt more than heard.
Kevan stiffened.
For a moment both men stood close enough to see each other clearly.
Kevan's eyes widened slightly.
Not fear, but cold recognition.
Jory pulled the blade free and struck again.
This time the sword punched through the older man's side below the ribs.
Kevan dropped to one knee.
Around them the fighting did not stop.
It never did.
Kevan looked up at him, breathing hard, blood spilling dark down his armor.
"Tywin will not forgive this," he said.
Jory stared down at him.
"No, but then again, he will have to see the next day to care."
Then Kevan Lannister fell forward into the mud.
Dead.
For a moment Jory stood still.
Only a moment.
Then the shout began.
"Kevan Lannister's dead!"
It came first from a Greycloak nearby.
Then another man took it up.
Then another.
"Kevan Lannister is dead!"
The words spread faster than orders.
Men heard it and changed.
Riverlanders roared. Northerners slammed shields. Westermen recoiled as if struck. For many of them, Kevan had been more than Tywin's brother. He had been the man who made Tywin's will possible, the steady hand beside the lion.
Far across the ford, Tywin Lannister turned.
Jory saw it.
Even through distance, smoke, and battle, he saw the old lord look toward where Kevan had fallen.
For the first time that day, Tywin's stillness changed.
Not much.
A tightening of the body. A pause where no pause belonged. One heartbeat of a brother seeing the price of his gamble.
Then it was gone.
Tywin gave another order.
Because that was what men like Tywin did.
Jory wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one glove and looked around the field.
The western army was no longer advancing.
They still had thousands of men, with enough veterans to carve a path out if given room.
But the ford had become death.
Brynden held the north. Raymun's men held the northeast. Cerwyn pressed from the southeast. Marq Piper's men, battered and bleeding, still held the eastern bank. Harrion had stabilized the left. Ulrich's 3rd Company stood in the center, bloodied nearly black.
The trap had not caught cleanly.
But now it was closing.
The sun lowered behind grey clouds as the battle raged on around Mummer's Ford, and the river carried men away by the dozens.
Jory looked west through the smoke and saw the lion banners still standing.
He tightened his grip on the runed sword.
The battle was no longer about whether Mummer's Ford would hold.
Now it was about whether Tywin Lannister could escape it.