Chapter 129: Thorns at the Gate

The patience of the Reach had finally worn through.

For weeks, perhaps moons if one counted every insult, western hunters had bled the border by cuts too small to name war and too numerous to ignore. Patrols vanished between Pheasant Hall and Old Oak. Supply carts burned. Watch posts fell silent in the night. Men of the Reach began seeing Battanian cloaks in every stand of trees and hearing axes in the wind. Lord Randyll Tarly sent report after report to Highgarden, each one more severe than the last, written in the clipped hand of a man who considered complaint a personal failure and therefore hated being forced into it.

Lady Olenna Tyrell read them all.

She also read the letters from King’s Landing, where Cersei demanded that the Reach increase pressure upon the Westerlands, contain Arthur Greyoak, and support the coming blow against Dragonstone. Cersei’s letters had grown sharper, which was bold from a woman sitting on a throne largely held up by other people’s patience. More troublesome still were the complaints from Reach lords whose trade had suffered under the blockade they themselves had helped impose. Merchants grumbled. Lesser houses counted losses. Border knights wanted revenge. Highgarden heard all of it.

Olenna’s cane struck the floor of her solar.

“It is time,” she said, “to teach that arrogant lord in the west a lesson he cannot dress up as strategy.”

Margaery Tyrell stood nearby, listening with care. “You mean a raid?”

“I mean a blow large enough to interrupt his little knitting of lions, trout, and whatever forest savages he has adopted. If we can force him to turn from the Riverlands, perhaps even make him disgorge some of what he has swallowed, all the better. Men who grow too quickly should be reminded they have throats.”

The target chosen was Pheasant Hall.

It was one of the most important western fortresses along the border, guarding roads that ran from the Westerlands toward the northern Reach. Its position mattered. It was also isolated enough to tempt ambition, far from Casterly Rock’s heart and worn by months of harassment, sorties, and border strain. If Pheasant Hall fell, the Reach would tear a thorn from its side, bruise western morale, and show every uncertain river lord that the rose still had strength enough to draw blood.

Randyll Tarly was given leave to gather a host of more than fifty thousand men: Tyrell men, northern Reach levies loyal to Highgarden, veteran household troops, knights, heavy foot, archers, and sellswords willing to die for coin in the usual generous human fashion. His orders were plain. Strike hard. Take Pheasant Hall quickly. Do it before Arthur Greyoak could bring the full strength of the Bannermen Guard to bear.

At sea, Olenna moved another piece. Lord Redwyne of the Arbor was ordered to assemble his fleet and sail against the western waters. The Arbor’s warships were among the finest in the Seven Kingdoms, broad-bellied where they needed strength, swift where they needed speed, crewed by sailors born to rope, sail, and salt. Their task was not necessarily to seize Lannisport, though no Reachman would weep if chance offered it. They were to blockade, threaten, and seek battle with the combined sea strength of the Westerlands and Riverlands, especially the ships of Seagard that might move downriver to aid Arthur.

Two great blows, one by land and one by sea.

The rose had extended its thorns toward the creature rising in the southwest, a thing no herald had yet found the proper shape for: part lion’s den, part river trout, part old greenwood oath, and wholly inconvenient.

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At Pheasant Hall, General Smith stood on the tower of the main keep and watched the Reach host approach.

From a distance, it looked like a slow-moving forest of iron. Banners rippled above the lines: green hand, huntsman, oak, rose, fox, and a hundred lesser devices. The long columns darkened the roads. Siege timber creaked behind oxen. Archers marched in blocks. Knights rode in polished mail, confident in the way men often are before learning that confidence is not shield enough.

Smith had ten thousand western soldiers inside the fortress.

They were loyal, blooded, and not fools, which put them ahead of many armies. They were also outnumbered five to one. The walls were strong, but stores were lower than he liked. Months of border war had eaten through arrows, oil, spare timbers, leather, bowstrings, pitch, nails, and all the other dull necessities that decide whether men live long enough for glory to arrive. Morale was firm in places, brittle in others.

“Close the gates,” Smith told his adjutant. “Raise the drawbridge. Every man to his assigned wall. Ballistae strung. Oil readied. Rolling logs and stone to the towers. No wasted arrows. No shouting unless there is something useful to shout.”

The adjutant nodded and hurried away.

Smith kept watching the host. “Tell the men that behind them lies the Westerlands. There is nowhere to retreat that is worth the name. Lord Arthur’s reinforcements are on the road.”

That last was true. It was also necessary. Truth and necessity so rarely travel together that a commander should enjoy the occasion.

Smith knew Pheasant Hall could hold for a time. He also knew time was all it could hold without help. The hope lay in Casterly Rock, in the army Arthur had been hammering into shape: the Bannermen Guard, the Battanian core, the veterans of the Wall, the new levies, the hard men and harder lessons born from border blood. If they came quickly enough, the Reach might find Pheasant Hall less a prize than a jaw.

At Casterly Rock, the news of Tarly’s advance and Redwyne’s fleet arrived nearly together.

The Rock answered like a machine struck into motion. Bells rang. Ravens flew. Grooms saddled horses. Armorers opened stores. Quartermasters cursed, counted, and cursed again. Arthur Greyoak received the reports in his war room, read them once, and gave his orders without theatrics.

“The main body of the Bannermen Guard marches for Pheasant Hall.”

Twenty-nine thousand men had been held ready for just such a storm: veterans from the Wall, newly trained Volunteers, noble youths, Sworn Men, Fian warriors, skirmishers, riders, archers, engineers, and the strange, stubborn mix of Battanian discipline and western supply that Arthur had begun to trust more than noble vows. They would move at once.

Then Arthur turned to Diana.

She stood in riding leathers, no court gown, no jewels beyond what her rank required, her expression unreadable. She had spent the past moons in administration, supply, and coordination, work most knights dismissed until they went hungry. Arthur knew better. He also knew what the system had shown him: Diana’s talent was strongest in defense, order, morale, and the cruel arithmetic of keeping walls alive.

“You will take the main body to Pheasant Hall,” Arthur said. “Ride hard. Once there, you exchange commands with Smith. You take the fortress and the ten thousand defenders. Smith takes the Bannermen Guard outside the walls. He will use them to strike Tarly’s lines, supplies, scouts, and flanks.”

A few officers stared before they remembered their faces. Giving the defense of a besieged castle to a woman known more for household and civil order than battlefield command would sound mad to half the realm. The other half would wait to see who died before deciding.

Diana placed her hand over her heart. “As you command, my lord.”

“No pride,” Arthur said. “No heroics. The walls are your weapon. Men are your mortar. Supplies are your blood. Spend all three carefully.”

A flicker of a smile touched her mouth. “I know how to manage a household.”

Arthur almost smiled back. “This one has fifty thousand men trying to break the door.”

“Then they will be disappointed.”

She left at once. Within the hour, the Bannermen Guard poured from the Rock like a dark green flood of steel, banners snapping, hooves striking sparks from stone, wagons creaking behind them, drums beating low and steady. Diana rode at their head.

Arthur watched them go from the battlements.

Behind him lay the west, still rebuilding. Eastward lay the rivers, newly sworn and still uncertain. Southward, the Reach had chosen battle. At sea, the Arbor’s fleet had unfurled its sails.

The next days would decide whether his new order was a realm or merely an idea with good roads.