The fields before Myr dissolved into a violent tapestry. The copper flesh and black leather of the Dothraki clash against the silver plate of the Wolf Pack and the bruised iron of the Unsullied. Above it all flew the grey-and-white banner of the roaring wolf, snapping against a sky choked with dust and ash.
The noise was a physical weight. The screams of dying horses, the ringing of steel on bronze, the guttural curses in Dothraki, and the desperate prayers in a dozen Myrish dialects merged into a single, deafening roar.
Gendry watched from the battlements, his breath slow and measured. Below, Grey Worm's shield wall was buckling, expanding and contracting like a dying lung.
The Unsullied held the front rank, their long spears forming a lethal, bristling forest. The Dothraki charged, wheeled, fired their short bows, and charged again. The sheer kinetic force of the horse lords was staggering, but by some miracle of discipline and fear, the Free Army had not yet broken.
The window is closing, Gendry thought. His freedmen were not the legendary Three Thousand of Qohor. They could not stand against eighteen charges. They had neither the elixirs of courage nor the absolute emotional void of true Unsullied.
Down on the field, Khal Jhezkahn brought his black stallion to a halt, eyeing the Myrish formation with mounting frustration.
"They are just stone men in iron suits!" the Khal roared to his bloodriders. "Break them! Leave none alive!"
He had expected the slaves to flee at the first sight of his arakh. Instead, the weakened shield wall of Myr stood firm.
The screamers surged again. They rode like demons, raining arrows down upon the defenders. From behind the gates, the Myrish trebuchets answered, hurling boulders that shattered Dothraki formations, leaving craters filled with blood and bone.
Several Dothraki coursers, mad with the scent of blood, ignored their riders' reins and slammed chest-first into the spear wall. The beasts screamed as steel pierced their hearts, their massive bodies crushing the infantrymen beneath them. The line wavered as men scrambled to plug the gaps left by the dead.
"Hold the line!" the Iron Fist bellowed, his heavy armor dented and scored. "Hold!"
Arrows rained down in a continuous, hissing sheet. Freedmen dropped, clutching their throats and thighs, their blood slicking the cobblestones. Grey Worm stood at the apex of the carnage, his face a mask of stone, his spear striking out like a serpent's tongue.
The Dothraki completed their seventh charge.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The heavy war drums sounded from the Myrish walls—the signal to shift the tides.
Khal Jhezkahn wiped the sweat from his brow. Seven charges had cost him dearly. If he kept throwing his riders against the iron wall without breaking it, his khalasar would bleed to death against the stones of Myr.
"It is time," Gendry announced, turning from the parapet. His heavy cavalry could wait no longer.
He looked to Dick Fletch and Brown Ben Plumm. "Loose the fire arrows. The Second Sons will flank from the postern gate and hit their rear."
Gendry descended the stone steps, Prince Oberyn and the captain of the Long Lances matching his stride.
"The Warrior guides our hands today," Oberyn said, his eyes alight with the promise of slaughter.
"The Warrior gives us strength," Gendry replied, pulling himself into the saddle of his destrier. "The Smith gives us steel."
On the battlements, Dick Fletch raised his hand. "Draw! Loose!"
A volley of flaming arrows arched over the shield wall, plunging into the earth directly in front of the Dothraki vanguard. The ground, saturated with thick Myrish pitch hours earlier, had been churned into a muddy paste by thousands of hooves. It did not explode like wildfire, but it caught. Patches of thick, choking black smoke and sudden bursts of flame erupted beneath the Dothraki horses.
The sudden fire panicked the beasts. Formations tangled as horses reared and threw their riders.
In that moment of chaos, the northern gates of Myr swung open.
"Charge!"
A thunderous roar echoed from the stone tunnel as Gendry led the vanguard out. Six hundred heavy knights of the Wolf Pack, eight hundred riders of the Long Lances, and the armored cavalry of the Free Army poured onto the plains like a river of steel. Beside them rode the hundred Dornish light horsemen under the Red Viper.
A massive Dothraki warrior, eager for glory, spurred his horse directly at the rising Baratheon. Gendry did not raise his shield. He swung his warhammer in a brutal, sweeping arc. The spiked iron head caught the screamer squarely in the chest, shattering ribs and painted leather in an explosion of blood, throwing the man backward off his mount.
Gendry pushed deeper into the fray, his hammer a blur of ruin. The heavy cavalry hit the disorganized Dothraki flank with the force of an avalanche.
"Find the Khal!" Gendry roared, his voice carrying over the din.
He rode like a spear tip, cutting a path through the sea of copper skin and bronze until he saw the gold-belled braid of Khal Jhezkahn.
The Khal spotted the giant in black scale armor. He recognized the aura of command. Jhezkahn spurred his magnificent black stallion forward, his arakh gleaming in the sunlight.
"Come to me, stone man!" Jhezkahn bellowed in rough Dothraki, raising his curved blade.
The Khal moved with the speed and grace of a striking viper, his arakh a blur aimed at Gendry's neck. But Gendry did not flinch. He leaned into the charge, his hammer raised, looking every inch the Warrior reborn.