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On the river road one day's ride from Casterly Rock, the land was fairly flat, with hills and woods on either side.
Daven Lannister hid behind one of those hills and watched the prey approach. After a brief hesitation, he said to the attendant beside him, "The enemy wisely sent scouts ahead, but that does not matter.
"Tell Lord Garrison's cavalry to move after the ranged attack ends and surround them. Do not kill them all. Better to drive them toward us and pin them in place.
"Everyone else stays hidden. Wait until they draw in the bigger fish behind them before we close the net."
"As you command."
Hooves beat against the road.
Smalljon, unaware of the danger, led five hundred northern scouting cavalry along the river road. Suddenly, dozens of heavy stones the size of human heads came howling from behind a hill ahead and to the left.
"Enemy attack! Scatter!"
Smalljon's scouts had already been riding in a loose formation so they could search better. With his roar driving them on, the five hundred northern riders immediately pulled their reins and scattered in every direction.
Most of the stones slammed into the ground, smashing shallow pits into the road. A few struck their targets.
Whether horse or rider, anything hit by those stones was left with shattered bones, if it survived at all.
Blood sprayed across the river road. Bodies began to pile up. The ambush had begun.
Right after the stones came a rain of arrows from the left front and enemy cavalry pouring from the woods behind and to the right like a tide.
'Damn it. I was careless.'
Smalljon's face turned iron-gray as he saw his retreat cut off by enemy horsemen. Blame rose in him at once.
Robb had long ago set out the procedures for scouting cavalry. The surrounding terrain had to be searched thoroughly, and the army was not to advance until an ambush had been ruled out.
Before this, Smalljon had obeyed those procedures under Edd's supervision.
But Edd had been left at Riverrun to assist Brynden, and since the second phase of the war began, the northern army had won battle after battle. Smalljon had seen Robb display power like one of the old gods walking the earth.
His pride had slowly swollen, and this time he had not searched the surroundings with enough care.
Most of the northern scouts had never imagined these Westerlands enemies would dare abandon their castles and set a field ambush.
Knowing there was no time for regret, Smalljon looked at the empty road ahead, then at the fifteen hundred cavalry behind them.
After many battles, his judgment on the field had matured. He made his decision at once and spoke low to Gendry, whose face had gone tense.
"Gendry, stay close behind me. I will carve open a road. Take a few men and get help from His Grace."
"Commander Jon, you should go to His Grace. We will hold off their cavalry for you."
Gendry shook his head immediately.
"That is an order. You know the penalty for disobeying military law.
"Do not worry. His Grace's force is cavalry as well. Only the three thousand heavy cavalry are lagging behind. The faster you bring help, the safer we are."
"But..."
"No buts."
Smalljon cut him off, drew his longsword, pointed it toward the enemy cavalry now beginning their charge behind them, and roared, "True men of the North, wedge formation! Let us smash these Westerlands whores flat!"
More than four hundred northern riders formed quickly around Smalljon as the sharp point of the wedge. They drew their longswords, raised them overhead, leveled the points at the enemy, and charged with wild cries.
Gendry, among the northern cavalry, gripped the long-handled warhammer he had forged for himself and charged with blood burning hot in his veins.
In that moment, he knew he had chosen the right branch of service. From the bottom of his heart, he enjoyed the feeling of a massed cavalry charge.
The two cavalry forces closed in an instant. The battlefield filled with noise: horses and men crashing together, blades striking in the pass, men killing and dying as the lines crossed.
Screams, blood, and corpses wove themselves into an iron song of cruel war.
At the tip of the northern wedge, Smalljon did exactly what the point of the formation demanded. He cut down two enemy riders with brutal force and led the cavalry behind him into the Westerlands formation.
After cutting into the enemy cavalry, he released the reins and controlled his mount with skilled horsemanship alone. With both hands free on his sword, he beheaded another enemy rider.
Most of the Westerlands cavalry had already been conscripted by Tywin for the Riverlands.
This force had been formed by Daven from several hundred Lannister riders under his direct command, together with the last household cavalry of the lords near Casterly Rock.
So although they outnumbered Smalljon's men by more than three to one, they were still not enough against northern cavalry whose fighting strength and morale had been hardened by victory after victory.
The man commanding the Westerlands cavalry was Lord Garrison Prester of Feastfires. He was not the sort of lord who won renown by fighting in person.
But his instincts on the battlefield were sharp. When he saw Smalljon's men driving forward with unstoppable force, he immediately sensed that something was wrong.
"Lord Daven told us to hold back a little and not kill them all," he ordered the Feastfires guards beside him. "But that one looks unusual. Take Lord Daven's cavalry and stop him quickly. Do not actually let them break away."
At Lord Garrison's command, nearly six hundred Lannister riders he had kept in the rear of the formation began to move, meeting the northern cavalry head-on as the first force of the northern charge began to fade.
Smalljon, soaked in blood after killing seven or eight men, swung his dulled longsword with all his strength again. This time, the ringing impact told him the blow had been blocked.
'No wonder. Lannister household cavalry.'
'Good. The real fight begins now.'
He recognized the lion worked into the enemy armor.
The Lannister rider exchanged one blow with Smalljon, and their horses passed each other. The rider was preparing to turn his sword on the northern cavalry behind Smalljon when a dark shape came screaming in.
A warhammer with a head as large as a man's skull struck the Lannister rider square in the visor.
The fine helm crumpled inward. Bone cracked sharply, and blood sprayed.
When Gendry pulled back his reforged hammer, the Lannister rider's face was already gone, leaving only a smear of flesh and blood.
The corpse lost balance and fell from the saddle, but one foot caught in the stirrup. The horse dragged the ruined body onward.
Behind Smalljon, Gendry's eyes were bloodshot as he swung the long-handled hammer again and again, killing like a man gone mad.
These Lannister riders were more elite than the other Westerlands cavalry. They might block Smalljon's heavy cuts, but they could not escape Gendry's killing hammer.
Even so, after those elite riders blocked them, the northern cavalry's speed through the enemy formation slowed at once.
Ordinarily, the riders at the very front of a cavalry charge suffered the heaviest casualties. Under Smalljon and Gendry, the opposite was happening.
The point of the northern wedge suffered fewer losses and kept driving through the Westerlands cavalry. The left and right wings, which should have been safer, were instead being swallowed by attacks from the enemy formation.
As the two sides crashed together again and again, corpses fell from horseback all across the field, northern and Westerlands alike. Horses whose riders were dead wandered near the battlefield, unwilling to leave.
When more than half the northern cavalry had fallen and fewer than two hundred were left, Smalljon, now covered in blood until he looked like a man made of it, finally saw no enemy ahead.
He turned and swept his gaze around. Two or three hundred of the Westerlands riders who had first crossed blades with them had already turned their horses and were pursuing from behind.
Then he saw a noble rider in ornate armor on the left rear of the Westerlands formation, protected by more than a hundred cavalry.
"Our horses are tired from the march," Smalljon shouted to Gendry. "If we all go together, they will catch us. Gendry, take a squad and find His Grace. I will hold them here."
There was no time for sentiment. If they delayed any longer, none of them would leave.
Gendry decisively took a squad of ten riders and galloped straight ahead.
In the woods behind and to the right of the river road, scorpions with cold gleaming bolts were aimed at Gendry's ten-man squad, waiting only for the commander's order.
"Let them go. Lord Daven is waiting for them to bring the big fish."
Someone laughed in the woods. The scorpions slowly eased their strings and no longer aimed at Gendry's party.
Unlike the relaxed mood in the right-side woods, Lord Garrison was now thoroughly panicked. The enemy riders who had broken out were coming straight for him.
"Protect me! Draw bows! Kill them, quickly!"
After forcing himself to calm down, Lord Garrison ordered the household riders around him to attack.
His life mattered most now. Daven's command could wait.
Gendry's party escaped smoothly, with no Westerlands cavalry pursuing them. Smalljon, with fewer than two hundred northern riders, held alone against at least twelve hundred remaining enemy horsemen.
Half a day's ride away from Smalljon's scouts, the northern army was marching along the river road at an ordinary cavalry pace.
The three thousand heavy cavalry of the North each had three horses: a fine warhorse fed on rich fodder for battle and charges, a packhorse to carry armor and weight, and a horse for long marches.
The more than three thousand packhorses slowed them. Their pace was not much faster than infantry on a forced march.
That was why Addam had previously used Stormlands infantry to carry the heavy cavalry's armor when he needed Lannister horsemen to move quickly between the Golden Tooth and Lannisport.
Robb sat on Bloodwind's back with his eyes closed, still thinking about new mining techniques for the gold mines. Once he fully occupied the Westerlands, those mines would be a strategic resource that could expand the North's military strength.
To be safe, he had sent Smalljon's scouts ahead as usual. Yet his thinking was much the same as Smalljon's. He did not really believe the remnants of the Westerlands would dare abandon their castles and fight in the field.
So when he saw Gendry half-covered in blood, his surprise was obvious.
After hearing Gendry's detailed account, Robb understood at once.
This was a trap aimed specifically at his side.
They had prepared at least dozens of catapults in advance. That was not something built in a day or two.
And only a little more than a thousand cavalry had attacked Smalljon and Gendry. The archers and infantry had not appeared at all.
'Interesting.'
'Rather than wait to die slowly in their castles, they gathered together for one desperate gamble?'
Robb felt a trace of appreciation for the enemy commander who had planned the ambush and for his willingness to seize whatever chance of victory remained.
After a moment's thought, Robb made his tactical decision.
To reach Smalljon as quickly as possible, and to guard against accidents, he left five hundred northern heavy cavalry in place to watch the packhorses carrying armor and supplies.
He personally led the Wolfguard and seven thousand lightly equipped northern cavalry to break through the enemy's trap and destroy every foe.
'Good. This saves me the trouble of visiting castle after castle. I will gather all of you in one net and occupy the Westerlands completely.'
'Before absolute strength, every scheme is futile.'
Robb, who had obtained supernatural power, now had the right to say such a thing.
It was natural for a hunter to set a trap for prey.
But when the prey was a terrifying direwolf like Bloodwind, it became hard to say who was hunter and who was hunted.
Led by Robb, seven thousand northern cavalry raced toward the ambush site. In the afternoon, as the sun began sinking westward, they reached the battlefield covered with blood and corpses.
Bloodwind's keen nose warned Robb at once that the woods on both sides of the river road were full of human scent.
Robb did not care.
His ice-bright eyes, clear as crystal, were fixed ahead in anger.
Far down the river road, Smalljon and more than thirty northern cavalry had lost their horses. Covered in blood and swaying on their feet, they were surrounded by at least a thousand Westerlands cavalry.
From time to time, a Westerlands rider took advantage of their inattention, darted in from behind, and opened another cut on them.
They were being toyed with like animals in a pit.
Robb breathed out white mist threaded with ice, calming his anger slightly.
Then he gave his orders in a ringing voice.
"There are enemies hidden in the woods on both sides. I will attack the right woods alone. Wyl, lead the Wolfguard into the left woods.
"Gendry, take every northern brother here and tear the Westerlands filth playing with Smalljon to pieces."
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