When the mist cleared, the totality of the damage was clear to see.
Splinters of a broken trebuchet lay in a heap. The Green Fork, choked with sunk ships, corpses and gore, looked like the Smoking Sea of Valyria. The two towers were covered in soot, blood and shattered windows, looking ready to kneel to the snow any moment. Jaime Lannister had been told that internal damages to the towers made them unfit for siege, and that if they wanted to hold Daenerys Targaryen at the Neck, they would have to find a better castle. The news did not in any way disappoint him. I swear to never come this far north of Westeros, ever again.
Shortly after his puzzling encounter with Lord Littlefinger the night of the battle, the pair talked while men of the Westerlands and the Vale doused away remaining Tully flame.
“Cersei never told me she made allies with the Arryns,” Jaime said, in his politest way of challenging his most suspicious arrival. Littlefinger, with an equally puzzled expression, showed him a scroll proving exactly that. “Queen Cersei sent me this while I was in the Vale,” he said. “She also told me that we must all retreat to King’s Landing, for Dornishmen march to the capital.”
Of course. Fleetingly, Jaime wondered if he could renege on his promise of not going further north, if it meant greater distance between him and Cersei. In keeping him away from important information, Jaime knew exactly the message she tried to send him, but her power plays were getting increasingly childlike. She is becoming a disease, and I regret my role in spreading it.
But there was nothing to be gained in staying here any longer. The battle was deader than summer dust. The naval war had swallowed both Tully and Greyjoy forces, including Cersei’s mad dog. Unless the Blackfish had gills in his belly, he assumed he had drowned in the water as well. King Edmure’s corpse they hung on the ramparts as an unimaginative warning to the locals.
They had lost men too. Around ten-thousand Lannisters had fallen in the battle at the Twins, leaving them with fifty thousand. He planned to garrison some of them at Riverrun to form a welcoming party for Daenerys on the way to the capital. Now that the Freys and Tullys were dead, a new Lord of the Riverlands must be appointed. “Lord Baelish,” he said, “did Cersei specify to you who that will be?”
Littlefinger gestured to the man beside him. “This is Lord Yohn Royce,” he told him.
“Previously mentor to Robin Arryn.”
Of course.
*
Comments