Chapter 43: The Lion's Last Stand
The news of the Westerlands' complete and total capitulation fell upon Tywin Lannister's army like a death shroud. For weeks, they had been conducting a masterful fighting retreat, harried by Rivermen and shadowed by Robb Stark's northern host, but their discipline had held. They were Lannister men, and their lord, the Old Lion, was the most feared commander in the realm. But that fear was predicated on an idea of power that no longer existed. Their homes were now occupied by the enemy. Their great lords had bent the knee. Their gold, the very lifeblood of their House's influence, was gone. They were an army without a kingdom, fighting for a lord who no longer had a castle to his name.
Morale, already brittle, began to crumble. Desertions, once a trickle, became a flood. Men who had families in the westerlands simply vanished in the night, choosing the uncertain mercy of the new rulers over a pointless death in the mud of the Riverlands.
Tywin Lannister watched his army begin to bleed away and knew his time was running out. He was a master of war, but he was also a master of logistics, and he knew an army that could not be paid and had no home to return to would not fight for long. He was trapped. To his east was the main host of the Grand Alliance, a massive, slow-moving anvil of steel. To his north was Robb Stark's victorious and mobile army, a hammer poised to strike. And to his west, in his own lands, was Eddard Stark and the unknowable power that had started this all.
He was surrounded, outmaneuvered, and for the first time in his life, facing a strategic problem to which there was no logical solution. He could not run, he could not hide, and he could not win. For any other commander, it would be the time to sue for terms. But Tywin Lannister did not sue. He did not bend. He fought. If he was to be destroyed, he would be destroyed on his feet, amidst the ruin of his enemies. He would make his last stand.
He chose his ground carefully, a stretch of rolling hills south of the Trident. He anchored his flanks on a river and a dense forest, creating a killing ground where the superior numbers of his enemies would be partially negated. Here, he would await the inevitable, final clash. Here, the Lion would make its last, defiant roar.
Harrenhal
The Great Council had dispersed, the lords returning to their own hosts to prepare for the final battle. A new sense of unity, forged in the fires of Thor's miracles and Ned's statesmanship, had taken hold. They were no longer just an alliance of convenience; they were the Army of the Dawn, a force united to end the long night of Lannister rule.
The final war council was held in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths. The map on the table showed the jaws of their great trap closing around Tywin's beleaguered army.
"He has chosen his ground," Robb Stark said, his voice now holding the quiet confidence of a seasoned commander. He had arrived at Harrenhal with his personal guard, leaving the bulk of his army under the command of the Greatjon, ready to coordinate the attack. The reunion with his father had been a moment of profound, unspoken emotion. The boy who had left Winterfell was now a King. The father who had left was now the leader of a continental rebellion. They were strangers, and yet more deeply connected than ever.
"He is a proud man," Robb continued. "He means to bleed us, to make our victory so costly it feels like a defeat."
"Pride will be his undoing," Oberyn Martell purred, tracing a line on the map with a gloved finger. "He has anchored his flank against the river. A classic defensive posture. But it also means he has no room to retreat."
The plan was simple, brutal, and decisive. The main host of the Alliance, under the command of Yohn Royce and Randyll Tarly, would engage Tywin's center, pinning his army in place. Robb Stark, with his cavalry and the swift Dornish riders, would swing around the south and smash into the Lannister flank. It was a classic hammer and anvil strategy.
"And what of us, Father?" Robb asked, looking at Ned. "What part do we play?"
Ned looked at Thor, who had been listening to the proceedings in his customary silence. "We," Ned said, "will be the blow that breaks the shield wall. The Lannister heavy infantry is the heart of their army. They are disciplined, professional, and they will not break easily."
"They will break," Thor said, his voice a low promise. He looked at the assembled commanders. "You will engage the enemy. You will fight with the steel and courage of mortal men. I will not win this battle for you. But when the time is right, when the lines are locked and the battle hangs in the balance, I will remove their greatest advantage. I will take away their discipline. I will show them a terror that no shield wall can withstand. When they falter, you must strike. Hard and without mercy."
He was not offering to be their champion. He was offering to be their fulcrum, the point upon which the entire battle would turn. He was placing the responsibility of victory squarely on their shoulders, empowering them to win their own war, with but a single, divine push.
The march from Harrenhal was a solemn affair. The army, now unified and numbering over eighty thousand, moved as a single entity. The direwolf banner of the Lord Protector flew at its head, a symbol of the new order. They were not just fighting to defeat an enemy; they were fighting to birth a kingdom.
The two armies met on a grey, overcast morning, the fields still damp from a night of rain. The air was heavy with the palpable tension of two great hosts preparing for a battle that would decide the fate of the realm.
From a low hill overlooking the battlefield, Ned Stark, Thor, and Robb watched as the armies deployed. The Lannister host was a grim, beautiful sight, a sea of crimson and gold, their lines perfect, their discipline holding firm even in the face of their impending doom. At their center, on a great, black warhorse, sat Tywin Lannister himself, his golden lion helm gleaming, a figure of cold, unyielding defiance.
The Alliance army was a more colorful, more chaotic affair, a patchwork of a dozen different houses, but their numbers were vast, and their morale was high. They trusted their commanders. They believed in their cause. And they believed in the god who stood on the hill beside their Lord Protector.
The horns blew, a mournful, baying sound that seemed to shake the very heavens. And with a great, earth-shattering roar, the battle began.
The initial clash was a thing of terrible, brutal ferocity. The center of the two armies met in a monstrous collision of shield and spear. Men screamed and died, the mud of the field quickly turning to a slick, red paste. The Alliance, with their superior numbers, pushed forward relentlessly. But the Lannister infantry, true to their reputation, did not break. They were a wall of disciplined steel, giving ground grudgingly, making the invaders pay for every inch in blood.
On the southern flank, Robb Stark led his cavalry in a thunderous charge. The young wolf was a magnificent sight, his great direwolf, Grey Wind, running beside his horse, tearing men from their saddles. They smashed into the Lannister flank, but Tywin, anticipating the move, had reinforced it with his best spearmen. The cavalry charge, while ferocious, bogged down into a desperate, swirling melee.
For hours, the battle raged. It was a meat grinder, a brutal, attritional fight that was costing both sides thousands of lives. Tywin Lannister sat on his horse, a calm, cold general, directing his reserves with masterful precision, plugging gaps, and shoring up faltering lines. He was losing, but he was making the victory so horrific, so costly, that it would feel like a defeat for Ned Stark.
From the command hill, Ned watched, his heart aching at the sight of the slaughter. This was the cost of his war, the price of his new world.
"It is time," he said, his voice hoarse. He turned to Thor.
Thor nodded. He had been watching the battle with an unnerving calm, his gaze sweeping over the field, assessing the flow of the fight. He had identified the lynchpin of the Lannister defense: a solid block of five thousand heavy spearmen, commanded by Ser Kevan Lannister himself, that formed an unbreakable rock in the center of their line. It was against this rock that the main force of the Alliance was breaking.
Thor raised Stormbreaker. The sky above the battlefield, which had been a placid, overcast grey, began to darken. A low rumble, deeper than any war drum, began to vibrate through the earth.
The soldiers on both sides felt it. A sudden, unnatural chill in the air. A strange pressure in their ears. They looked up from their bloody work and saw the sky churning, a black, angry vortex forming directly over the Lannister center.
Tywin Lannister saw it too, and his cold composure finally cracked. He stared at the impossible storm, his face a mask of disbelief. "What… what is he doing?"
Thor was not calling the lightning. He was not summoning the wind. He was doing something far more subtle, and far more terrifying. He was speaking to the earth.
He slammed the butt of Stormbreaker into the ground.
And the ground beneath the Lannister shield wall buckled. It did not split open. It did not erupt. It simply… liquefied. The solid, muddy earth turned to a thick, grasping quagmire in a fifty-yard radius around Ser Kevan's position. The disciplined shield wall, the pride of the Lannister army, dissolved into chaos. Men sank to their knees, to their waists, in the sudden, inexplicable mud. Their tight formations shattered. Their footing was gone. They were a stationary, terrified mass of men, trapped in the earth itself.
"Now," Thor's voice boomed, amplified by his power so that it carried across the entire battlefield. "STRIKE NOW!"
Ned gave the signal. The horns of the Alliance blew a new, triumphant call. The Protector's Guard, who had been held in reserve, charged forward, their star-forged spears lowered. They did not have to break the shield wall. They simply charged into the floundering, trapped mass of Lannister infantry.
At the same time, Robb Stark's cavalry, seeing the enemy center collapse, renewed their charge with a savage, howling fury. They smashed into the now-unprotected flank, and the entire Lannister line imploded.
The battle turned into a rout. The disciplined army of Tywin Lannister broke, shattered by a geological miracle they could not comprehend. They threw down their weapons and fled, only to be cut down by the charging northern cavalry and the vengeful Rivermen.
Tywin Lannister watched his army, his life's work, his entire legacy, dissolve into a screaming, fleeing mob. He saw his brother Kevan, unhorsed and trapped in the mud, being surrounded and forced to surrender. He saw the direwolf banners and the rose banners and the sun-and-spear banners surging forward, consuming everything in their path. He had lost. It was a defeat so total, so absolute, that it was an extinction.
He looked up at the command hill, at the grim, quiet figure of Eddard Stark, and at the terrifying being who stood beside him, the axe that had defeated him now resting quietly on his shoulder.
The Old Lion did not wait to be captured. He did not wait to be brought before his conqueror in chains. With a final look of pure, unadulterated hatred, he turned his great warhorse and, with his last few loyal household knights, fled the field. Tywin Lannister, the richest and most powerful man in Westeros, was now a fugitive in a kingdom that belonged to his enemies.
The aftermath of the battle was a field of unimaginable carnage. But it was a field of victory. As the sun began to set, Ned Stark rode onto the field, his son Robb at his side. They looked out over the wreckage of the Lannister army. The Riverlands were free. The war, for all intents and purposes, was won.
They found Thor standing alone in the center of the battlefield, in the circle of liquefied earth that was already beginning to firm up. He was looking at the faces of the dead, his own face a mask of profound, weary sorrow.
"It is done," Ned said, dismounting.
"Yes," Thor replied, not looking at him. "A victory." He gestated with his axe at the thousands of dead bodies that littered the field. "It looks much the same as a defeat."
Ned had no answer to that. He looked at his son, at the king the North had made, and he looked at the god who had won him a kingdom. He was the victor. He was the Protector. He had the power to remake the world.
Just then, a rider approached, his horse struggling through the muddy, bloody field. He carried a banner that Ned recognized with a sinking heart. The fiery stag of Dragonstone.
The rider dismounted and handed Ned a scroll. "A message for the Lord Protector," he said, his eyes wide as he took in the carnage, and the figure of Thor. "From King Stannis."
Ned broke the seal. The message was short and to the point.
"I have taken Storm's End. My fleet is prepared. I am sailing for King's Landing to claim my city and my throne. You will have it ready for me. Bend the knee, or be swept away."
Ned looked up from the scroll, at the setting sun, at the fields of the dead. He had just won the great war. And the next one was already on its way. The burden of the victor, he was beginning to realize, was a heavier crown than any king had ever worn.