With the political crisis regarding Winterfell successfully resolved, Roman officially initiated Harrenhal's grand military campaign.
The people of the Riverlands had long been deeply dissatisfied with Queen Cersei's erratic, tyrannical behavior. When King Robert was still alive, Roman and the King shared a legendary, boisterous friendship, meaning the commoners would only occasionally criticize the Queen for her famously venomous tongue.
But now that Robert was dead, absolutely no one cared about maintaining royal decorum. In the bustling markets and taverns of the Harrenhal domain, Cersei was openly referred to as the "treasonous slut" and the "incestuous whore."
As the massive Vanguard column marched steadily toward the Crownlands border, specifically targeting the fortress of Sow's Horn, the armored infantrymen enthusiastically debated the impending war.
"If you ask me," a veteran halberdier grumbled, "Lord Roman is still being far too conservative. Tywin Lannister's raiding parties have already burned the western Riverlands! Lord Roman shouldn't have waited for that blonde bitch Cersei to formally accuse us of treason to make his first move!"
A younger spearman walking beside him chimed in. "To be entirely honest, I simply cannot comprehend how Cersei possesses the sheer, suicidal arrogance to provoke us right now. King's Landing's entire food supply is completely dependent on grain shipments from the Riverlands and the Reach. Without Harrenhal's agricultural exports, the Iron Throne will starve. They will have absolutely no choice but to beg the Tyrells for food and arrange a royal marriage between the princes and the Tyrell girl."
"Wait, what about the Princess?" another soldier asked, confused.
"The Princess? Princess Myrcella is Lord Roman's betrothed, you absolute idiot!" the veteran smacked the back of the younger man's helmet. "Have you completely lost your mind? Or have you just been sleeping through all your political indoctrination classes lately?"
The squad's chaotic bickering finally annoyed their commanding officer.
"Shut your mouths, you bunch of bastards!" the captain roared, turning in his saddle. "This is an active warzone! Do not become complacent! Even though our steel and our training vastly surpass the enemy's, a stray arrow to the throat will still kill you just as dead. You are entirely too arrogant!"
Hearing the captain's harsh reprimand, the soldiers immediately lowered their voices and tightened their marching formation.
At the absolute front of the massive Vanguard column, Roman and Fili were meticulously reviewing their invasion route.
The fortress of Sow's Horn was situated dangerously close to the borders of House Whent. Because Roman had spent years constructing massive, fortified granaries and logistical hubs all along the Harrenhal borders, his army's supply lines were incredibly short, massively reducing the operational strain on his Vanguard.
Before long, the heavily armored column crossed into the territory of House Hogg. As the massive, thundering Vanguard marched down the Kingsroad, the local Crownlands peasants were absolutely terrified. Assuming they were about to be brutally raped and pillaged, the villagers frantically scattered in all directions, hiding in the dense forests.
However, they quickly realized their terror was entirely misplaced. The Harrenhal soldiers adhered to a violently strict code of military discipline. They maintained flawless, organized marching columns, completely refraining from looting villages, trampling crops, or harassing the women.
The local villagers watched in absolute, paralyzed astonishment as the terrifyingly disciplined Harrenhal army marched peacefully down the road. Some Vanguard quartermasters even stopped to politely purchase grain and local intelligence from the farmers using heavy, solid silver stags.
An ancient farmer rubbed his weathered eyes, staring at the silver coins in his palm with sheer disbelief. "By the Old Gods and the New... I have lived through three brutal wars, and this is the very first time I have ever seen an army behave like this. Whose men are these?"
Roman's primary target was the territory of House Hayford, and the knightly House Hogg of Sow's Horn served as one of their primary bannermen.
When the Harrenhal Vanguard finally arrived at the gates of Sow's Horn without facing a single skirmish, Ser Roger Hogg stood upon his battlements, absolutely terrified.
His ancestral seat was not a sprawling, impenetrable castle. Sow's Horn was merely a stout, fortified towerhouse with stone walls barely eight feet thick, defended by a pathetic garrison of fewer than a hundred men.
Roman halted his Vanguard and dispatched a raven directly to the tower, offering a formal challenge.
"Ser Roger Hogg. I am Lord Roman Rivers of Harrenhal. You possess exactly two choices: either open your gates and unconditionally surrender, in which case I personally guarantee the absolute safety of your family and your smallfolk; or refuse, and I shall launch a full-scale siege. Choose quickly."
Standing on his battlements, Roger Hogg swallowed hard. He was terrified, but he had recently received an encrypted raven from his liege lord, House Hayford, promising that a massive column of Crownlands reinforcements was currently marching to his aid. Praying the reinforcements would arrive in time, Ser Roger foolishly chose to confront Roman head-on.
When the raven returned with a formal declaration of defiance, Roman's face twitched in profound annoyance.
"It appears these arrogant southern knights will simply not learn their lesson until we brutally beat it into them," Roman sighed. He looked down at Fili. "Fili, when exactly will the giant artillery battalions arrive?"
"They are currently hauling the heavy trebuchet components up the ridge," Fili reported efficiently. "It will likely take them another half hour to reach our position, my lord."
"Excellent. Order the Vanguard infantry to immediately assemble the light siege equipment on the spot!"
Roman possessed absolutely no desire to needlessly sacrifice his infantry in a frontal assault. He intended to let the heavy artillery do the bleeding.
Within thirty minutes, the towering, massive figures of the Vanguard giants crested the ridge, easily hauling the massive timber components of Harrenhal's advanced trebuchets.
When the first barrage of massive, hundred-pound boulders rained violently down upon his battlements, Ser Roger Hogg instantly realized the catastrophic depths of his own naivety.
The stone walls of Sow's Horn were simply not thick enough. Without earth-packed reinforcements, the rigid masonry absolutely could not withstand the terrifying kinetic bombardment of Harrenhal's magical giants and advanced siege engines.
In a mere five hours of relentless, deafening bombardment, the entire eastern wall of the towerhouse catastrophically collapsed inward. The shattered masonry created a massive, sloping ramp of rubble that provided the perfect, natural siege ladder for the Vanguard infantry.
"The eastern wall has been breached! All heavy infantry, launch the assault!"
At Roman's booming command, the Harrenhal Vanguard locked their heavy tower shields together, forming an impenetrable, tortoise-shell testudo formation, and aggressively charged up the rubble ramp.
The surviving defenders of Sow's Horn stood trembling at the top of the breach, desperately firing their light crossbows in a vain attempt to halt the armored tide.
But what damage could a terrified garrison of fewer than fifty men possibly inflict against flawless plate armor? The defenders were instantly shredded by a single, devastating volley of heavy, armor-piercing bolts fired by the advancing Harrenhal crossbowmen.
Seeing that his infantry had perfectly secured the breach without suffering any casualties, Roman stepped forward. He violently unfurled his massive, dark blue dragon wings and launched himself into the sky, bypassing the rubble entirely and flying straight toward the central keep where Ser Roger was desperately trying to rally his men.
The Harrenhal soldiers fighting in the courtyard below erupted into wild, deafening cheers as they watched their draconic lord take to the sky.
The Lord of Sow's Horn was frantically screaming at his surviving squires to release a raven to King's Landing when a blinding, roaring sphere of superheated Pale Flame violently crashed into the roof of the keep directly beside him.
The catastrophic thermal shockwave blasted everyone off their feet. Several guards were instantly engulfed in the crackling white plasma, screaming in absolute agony as they thrashed on the stone floor.
Roman landed heavily on the battlements, the kinetic impact cracking the stone beneath his armored boots. He casually rested his massive, crackling warhammer directly against Ser Roger's throat.
"Ser Roger," Roman stated coldly, his glowing blue eyes piercing the knight's soul. "The fires have not yet spread to the structural timbers. Your burning soldiers can still be saved if my maesters treat them immediately. I am offering you one final opportunity: surrender the castle."
Staring up at the terrifying, winged demon standing over him, and listening to the agonizing screams of his dying men, Ser Roger's fragile courage entirely shattered. He dropped his sword onto the stones and unconditionally surrendered the fortress to Roman.
The subsequent cleanup of the battlefield was entirely routine. It was less of a military operation and more of an organized janitorial effort to clear the rubble.
Ser Roger's pathetic towerhouse possessed very few actual defenders, and absolutely no advanced defensive countermeasures like boiling oil or murder holes. Once the main wall had collapsed, the morale of the surviving garrison had instantly evaporated, resulting in a virtually bloodless victory for Harrenhal.
Through this overwhelming display of localized violence, Roman officially annexed his very first piece of Crownlands territory. The Vanguard quartermasters and logistical administrators attached to the army immediately moved in, rapidly seizing total administrative control of Sow's Horn.
The surviving members of House Hogg were placed under comfortable house arrest and transported back to Harrenhal as political hostages. Meanwhile, Roman personally led a survey team to meticulously map the surrounding topography, assess the local population density, and evaluate the region's agricultural resources before officially deploying his own Harrenhal magistrates to govern the territory.
Watching Roman meticulously organize tax ledgers instead of marching on the capital, Fili was deeply puzzled. "Lord Roman, are we not marching directly on King's Landing? Why are we wasting time establishing a permanent bureaucratic administration here?"
Roman smiled, gently ruffling the girl's blonde hair. "King's Landing is currently an apocalyptic viper's nest, Fili. Every single ambitious lord in Westeros is desperately trying to seize that damned Iron Throne. If we march directly into the capital now, we will simply be inviting the combined wrath of all the warring factions. It is vastly more strategic to systematically annex the surrounding Crownlands territory piece by piece. By the time we have entirely encircled the capital and absorbed its resources, we will be so overwhelmingly powerful that it will not matter in the slightest who is currently sitting on the Iron Throne."
Fili nodded slowly, her expression a mixture of profound awe and slight confusion. She possessed very little formal education in grand geopolitical strategy, but her absolute faith in Roman meant she would follow his orders to the ends of the earth.
"Understood, Lord Roman! I shall immediately coordinate with the quartermasters to begin constructing Harrenhal-standard fortifications along the Kingsroad!"
The Harrenhal Vanguard moved with terrifying efficiency, rapidly transforming the area surrounding Sow's Horn into a heavily fortified, highly militarized administrative zone.
Roman's first official act of governance was massive tax reform. He ruthlessly annihilated the oppressive, feudal tax structure previously enforced by the Crownlands lords. By implementing Harrenhal's highly progressive economic policies, he instantly eliminated over half of the local smallfolk's land taxes and entirely abolished the Queen's exorbitant wartime levies.
Secondly, Roman established a series of heavily fortified Vanguard outposts along the primary trade routes, ensuring his scouts could actively monitor any hostile military movements from the surrounding Crownlands nobility.
Finally, after meticulously reviewing the financial ledgers of Sow's Horn, Roman officially declared all predatory, high-interest loans owed by the local peasantry to be completely forgiven. He subsequently ordered his quartermasters to distribute high-quality Harrenhal steel farming tools to the impoverished villagers to aggressively stimulate local agricultural production.
Roman deliberately utilized this specific administrative process to extensively train his Vanguard officers in the art of civic governance. This was the exact, systematic method Harrenhal would employ to slowly, permanently annex territory across the entirety of Westeros.
Furthermore, Roman's method was terrifyingly effective. The illiterate peasantry genuinely did not care about the complex political blood feuds of the high lords. They did not care if a Baratheon, a Lannister, or a Dragon sat on the Iron Throne.
What the smallfolk definitively cared about was exactly how much grain was left in their bowls at the end of the winter.
When Roman's radically progressive, highly lucrative economic policies were officially implemented, the peasantry of Sow's Horn experienced a massive, unprecedented surge in their quality of life. Almost overnight, the entire region completely defected from the Iron Throne and swore absolute, fanatical loyalty to Harrenhal.
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