After the brutal slaughter at Antlers officially concluded, Fili sat in the Vanguard command tent, meticulously cleaning the blood and minor superficial scratches from Roman's armored scales while softly questioning his tactical decisions.
"Lord Roman," Fili asked hesitantly, wiping a streak of soot from his cheek. "Why did you absolutely refuse to show them any mercy? Isn't it a bit strategically extreme to completely annihilate the entire patriarchal leadership of the Crownlands in a single stroke?"
"Fili, I genuinely did not want to hurt them," Roman sighed, helplessly spreading his massive, gauntleted hands. "I had fully intended to take them as highly lucrative political hostages. But that arrogant young heir suddenly launched a lethal sneak attack. My draconic instincts immediately took over, and I violently retaliated. By the time I actively processed what was happening, the slaughter had already begun. You saw the bloody result."
After carefully bandaging the last minor scratch on his arm, the blonde girl looked up at Roman. Her wide, concerned blue eyes looked exactly like a fiercely loyal golden retriever worried about its injured owner.
Roman's cold, battle-hardened demeanor melted. He smiled warmly and gently pulled Fili into a protective embrace, deeply appreciating the comforting warmth of her presence.
"Lord Roman," Fili murmured against his chest. "No matter what catastrophic events occur in the future, I will always stand by your side!"
Looking down at the young woman's fiercely earnest face, Roman smiled and gently pinched her cheek. "That simply will not do, Fili. If I ever become blinded by power and make a catastrophic moral mistake in the future, I will absolutely rely on you to pull me back to the light."
Fili paused for a moment, absorbing the immense weight of his trust. Then, a brilliantly radiant smile bloomed across her face. "Yes! It is a promise, Lord Roman!"
After a brief rest, Roman took Fili to personally inspect the battlefield.
The Battle of Antlers had been executed with terrifying speed. Because the Harrenhal Vanguard's devastating opening artillery volley had completely stunned the coalition, the already disorganized enemy ranks had violently collapsed almost instantly.
Roman's apocalyptic aerial bombardment had completely shattered the Crownlands' only viable counterattack. Consequently, the coalition forces suffered over two thousand brutal casualties, while Harrenhal sustained only a few hundred.
However, to Roman, even those few hundred Vanguard casualties were an agonizingly heavy loss. The Harrenhal heavy infantry were highly trained, intimately familiar veterans, far superior to the pathetic conscripts and desperate mercenaries they had just slaughtered.
Even entirely disregarding the sheer economic and logistical investment lost with every fallen soldier, Roman felt as if a massive, suffocating boulder was pressing down upon his chest as he looked at the neat rows of Harrenhal corpses being prepared for the funeral pyres.
Seeing the grim, heavy sorrow on Roman's face, the Vanguard battalion commander standing nearby respectfully offered words of military comfort.
"My lord," the veteran captain saluted. "How can a true war be fought without blood being spilled? We have received immeasurable wealth, dignity, and absolute protection from you. We are fiercely willing to bleed for Harrenhal. It is a profound honor to die in your service."
Roman closed his eyes and offered a heavy, exhausted sigh. Logically, he understood this brutal reality; he could not realistically expect to fight a continental war without a single soldier falling in battle.
However, Roman was acutely aware of the psychological trap of this grim arithmetic. The moment a commander begins treating his dead soldiers as mere logistical numbers on a ledger, he fundamentally loses his humanity, ultimately transforming into the exact type of callous, psychotic tyrant he was currently fighting to destroy.
"After the battlefield is cleared, we must compile highly detailed, flawless casualty statistics," Roman commanded the scribes. "Every single wounded soldier must receive immediate, top-tier medical treatment. The enemy prisoners of war are to be treated humanely. And the financial compensation and lifelong pensions for our fallen soldiers must be paid in absolute full to their surviving families immediately. If a single copper is embezzled or misplaced during this process, the responsible clerk will spend the rest of their short life rotting in my dungeons!"
Upon hearing Roman's terrifying, uncompromising directive, the scribes violently straightened their backs. "Understood, Lord Roman!"
This devastating battle had effectively annihilated the primary military leadership of the Crownlands loyal to the Iron Throne. Consequently, Queen Cersei rapidly spiraled into a state of boundless, paralyzing terror.
Cersei had spent her entire life becoming highly adept at maneuvering strictly within the established rules of the Westerosi political game. If she encountered a political obstacle that could not be solved by normal diplomatic means, she simply resorted to seduction, false accusations, and silent assassination to secretly flip the board.
Now, she had violently collided with a man who simply bypassed the board entirely, brought a literal dragon to the table, and smashed the entire room to pieces. In the face of Roman's apocalyptic military power, Cersei's political parlor tricks seemed utterly childish and entirely ridiculous. Panicking, she frantically drafted ravens to Tywin Lannister, desperately begging him to abandon his campaign and march to King's Landing's defense.
But Tywin Lannister possessed absolutely no time to indulge Cersei's hysteria. Ser Jaime was aggressively advancing down the River Road to lay siege to Riverrun. Tywin had to rapidly maneuver his primary host to cover Jaime's rear; otherwise, the Kingslayer would be completely surrounded and annihilated by the remaining Riverlords.
However, Tywin could not simply leave Roman completely unchecked. He immediately dispatched his fiercely loyal, highly competent brother, Ser Kevan Lannister, to the capital to assume the duties of the Hand of the King, primarily to prevent his foolish daughter from entirely ruining the realm.
Sitting in his war tent, Tywin rubbed his throbbing temples as he read the catastrophic intelligence report detailing the massacre at Antlers. Harrenhal now firmly occupied the absolute strategic throat of Westeros. No matter how the other Great Houses advanced, their supply lines and armies simply could not bypass Roman's sprawling territory.
If the Lord of Harrenhal had been a weak, easily manipulated fool, the situation would have been manageable. But the agonizing reality was that House Whent had somehow managed to adopt a terrifying, mythological monster. Now, every single lord on the continent was violently forced to factor Roman's wrath into their grand strategy.
"Brother," Kevan suggested grimly. "We have officially cut off all Westerlands ore shipments to Harrenhal, and we have strictly forbidden our vassals from trading with Roman's merchants. Perhaps we can aggressively strangle Roman's steel production!"
"Impossible," Tywin immediately rejected the idea, his green eyes dark with frustration. "The massive ironwood and ore shipments from the North are still steadily supplying Harrenhal's forges. Unless we can successfully blockade the ports of Maidenpool and White Harbor, Harrenhal's industrial production will remain entirely unaffected."
The mere thought of attempting to blockade those two incredibly wealthy, heavily fortified port cities made Tywin's head spin. Roman's massive glass and porcelain monopolies had made those ports impossibly rich. The Lannister fleet would likely be entirely annihilated in a naval war against them.
"Kevan," Tywin commanded. "Ride for King's Landing immediately. Stabilize the chaotic political situation and strictly exercise my absolute authority as Hand of the King. We must decisively crush the Riverlands first, because we still have the Tyrells and Renly Baratheon gathering in the south to deal with."
The Reach. Highgarden.
It was the day of Renly Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell's grand royal wedding. The sprawling, opulent courtyards of Highgarden were overflowing with breathtaking floral arrangements, decadent feasts, and extravagant musicians.
The political union of these two figures represented the absolute, terrifying fusion of the Reach and the Stormlands. The sheer, overwhelming agricultural wealth of the Tyrell roses, combined with the brutal military strength of the Baratheon stag, had effectively birthed an unstoppable political juggernaut.
Renly and Margaery's wedding had occurred significantly faster than Roman had originally anticipated. The Master of Storm's End actively recognized Roman's terrifying capabilities and had decisively accelerated his own political timeline.
If Roman Rivers successfully stormed King's Landing and officially backed Stannis Baratheon's older claim to the Iron Throne, Renly's rebellion would be entirely crushed. He had to act quickly.
At the wedding feast, the aristocratic guests were laughing and offering boisterous toasts, but Olenna Tyrell—the legendary Queen of Thorns—acutely noticed the deep, anxious shadow lingering on Renly's handsome face.
"My sweet boy," Olenna smiled, her voice dripping with sharp, grandmotherly affection. "Today is the grandest day of your life. Why are you sitting there looking so dreadfully gloomy? Smile! My beautiful Margaery is right here waiting for you!"
Renly took a heavy sip of Arbor Gold and sighed. "Lady Olenna, surely you have received the horrific ravens detailing the Battle of Antlers. I cannot stop thinking about Roman of Harrenhal. Whose side is that terrifying monster genuinely fighting for?"
The Queen of Thorns offered a dry, dismissive chuckle. "My dear, you are overthinking the board. Lord Roman is actively dominating the Crownlands. Whether King's Landing falls into absolute chaos or not is entirely up to him now."
Olenna elegantly adjusted her wimple. "But you absolutely do not need to worry yourself to death over a single winged boy. Harrenhal can muster a highly trained force of perhaps eight thousand men at most. Currently, encamped outside these walls, we possess over eighty thousand fully armored regular soldiers. Even if Roman were to successfully sack King's Landing, his numbers are simply no match for the combined might of the Reach and the Stormlands."
"Furthermore," Olenna added shrewdly, "Roman is currently deeply entrenched fighting in the northern Crownlands. He has shown absolutely no logistical intention of marching south to King's Landing. You can simply remain here and enjoy your honeymoon with Margaery while the wolves and the lions butcher each other."
Hearing Olenna's pragmatic, highly accurate tactical analysis, the profound anxiety slowly drained from Renly's chest.
She is entirely right, Renly realized. The Reach and the Stormlands can easily mobilize over a hundred thousand swords in an absolute crisis. Why should I be terrified of Roman Rivers?
Renly officially finalized his grand strategy: he would march his massive host agonizingly slowly, actively watching the wolves, the lions, and the dragon violently bleed each other dry, and then he would effortlessly sweep in to reap the spoils of the Iron Throne.
The North. Winterfell.
Compared to the relaxed, opulent composure of the southern lords, House Stark and House Tully were drowning in frantic anxiety.
A desperate raven from Edmure Tully had arrived for Catelyn, detailing the catastrophic loss at the Battle of the Golden Tooth. The Riverlands army was broken, and Riverrun was now completely besieged by Jaime Lannister. Edmure was desperately appealing to Winterfell for immediate military reinforcement.
Robb Stark fiercely wanted to march his Northern host directly into the Riverlands to relieve his uncle's siege, but his massive army was entirely halted by the rushing waters of the Green Fork. To cross the river quickly and bypass the Lannister blockades, he absolutely had to negotiate with the treacherous House Frey of the Twins.
"Father," Robb pointed to the war map spread across the table. "Lord Roman Rivers wrote that his Vanguard was aggressively refused entry into the western Riverlands by the paranoid local lords, forcing him to shift his campaign east into the Crownlands. We cannot rely on him. We absolutely must secure a crossing at the Green Fork and march west to relieve Riverrun."
Ned Stark, still somewhat pale and weak from his grueling imprisonment, leaned heavily on his cane, staring at the map in silent contemplation. Catelyn, however, was already trembling with absolute fury.
"Those paranoid, arrogant fools!" Catelyn hissed, slamming her hand on the table. "The Riverlords constantly ignore my father's defensive edicts! And now that Riverrun is entirely surrounded by Lannister steel, they are still cowering behind their own walls, actively refusing Harrenhal's assistance! What is the difference between this profound cowardice and open rebellion?!"
Seeing his father's grim expression, Robb asked tentatively, "Father, should we dispatch a raven begging Lord Roman to forcefully march his Vanguard west to break the siege and save Uncle Edmure?"
Both Ned and Catelyn immediately shook their heads.
"We absolutely cannot ask that of him, Robb," Ned stated firmly. "We already owe Lord Roman the lives of our daughters and my own head. He possesses absolutely no strategic reason to actively trigger a brutal civil war with the Riverlords just to break Jaime's siege. This specific battle must be resolved by our own Northern steel."
"Send riders to the Twins," Ned commanded. "We must negotiate Walder Frey's toll for crossing the river."
Listening intently to her parents' dire strategic conversation, Sansa suddenly perked up, a brilliant flash of inspiration hitting her.
"Father!" Sansa said eagerly. "Since the Lannisters have entirely broken the King's peace and are actively slaughtering the Riverlands, could we not formally arrange a grand marriage alliance between Winterfell and Harrenhal? It would permanently bind Lord Roman's apocalyptic strength to House Stark!"
Sitting by the hearth, happily stuffing her face with expensive, syrup-soaked canned peaches imported directly from Harrenhal, Arya burst into a fit of raucous, mocking laughter.
"Oh, listen to you, Sansa!" Arya giggled, pointing a sticky spoon at her older sister. "Weren't you incredibly proud of becoming the golden Queen of the Seven Kingdoms just a few months ago? How exactly did you so quickly abandon Joffrey to start fantasizing about Lord Roman?"
Hearing her tomboy sister violently expose her romantic secrets so openly, Sansa's pale cheeks flushed an aggressive, furious crimson. She let out an embarrassed shriek and lunged across the room, aggressively swatting at Arya with her silk fan.
Watching his daughters bicker over the draconic warlord, Ned Stark leaned back in his chair. He had to profoundly admit that, even while fighting hundreds of leagues away, Roman Rivers had completely and utterly reshaped the entire geopolitical landscape of Westeros.
Now Get The FULL AVAILABLE NOVEL at Once!
Get 20% OFF for limited time only.
@patreon.com/Authorizz/shop