Chapter 49 46

The Eastern Disputed Lands. 294 AC.

"DEATH TO THE BASTARDS!!!" A giant of a man, two meters tall, caved in someone's skull with a mace.

"Come on, lads! Push!" The commander urged the infantry forward.

"Help me, I don't want to die!" A young soldier with his belly torn open was trying to push his own entrails back inside.

"FOR THE GOLDEN COMPANY!"

A cacophony of screams, curses, prayers. It all merged into one, and on this field men fought with no thought of anything but survival. Not for honor, glory, homeland, freedom, or any other fine sentiment. Every second, dozens of men gave their lives for a merchant's gold. Such was the life of a sellsword: fight in battles, earn coin for it, and spend that coin the same day, because death could come at any moment.

The swift growth of Myr's power and its seizure of the greater part of the Disputed Lands had upended the balance in these lands. Tyrosh was still recovering and could not move against its rival. Lys, though mired in its own war against renegade pirates, could not sit idle and watch Myr's influence grow unchecked. The city's magisters had paid handsomely to hire sellswords and send them rampaging across the territories of their old enemy, burning everything in their path.

Fortunately for Myr, the Golden Company had known this was coming and dispatched a portion of the company to intercept the raiders. A corps of three thousand soldiers was led by the young but already celebrated Paymaster of the Golden Company, Ser Axel Arryn. Despite the position being not especially martial in nature, Arryn had made a name for himself on the battlefield as one of the most inventively brutal captains in the company.

Part of that reputation had come from the day he held off a large khalasar with a small force. After two assaults, Khal Dago had challenged Arryn to single combat and been killed shortly after. The horde fell apart, but three thousand Dothraki were taken prisoner by the Golden Company. For an entire day they were made to dig an enormous pit, and when it satisfied Arryn, he gave an order that turned stomachs. All three thousand prisoners were buried alive, and in the place of their mass grave, stakes were driven into the earth bearing severed heads and braids. From that day forward, khalasar activity across the disputed lands had all but ceased entirely.

This time, the Windblown, a sellsword company numbering two thousand horse and foot, had been lured into a trap. First, using bait, a portion of their cavalry was separated from the main body and destroyed. The main force of the Windblown was then struck from every direction at once, and with their numbers advantage eroded and part of their cavalry gone, they were quickly broken into flight.

For dozens of kilometers the fleeing men were herded by pre-positioned detachments, funneled in precisely the direction Arryn wanted. When the exhausted soldiers of the Windblown began collapsing from fatigue, a unit of light cavalry cut down what remained of the company with almost no resistance. In the fighting, the greater part of the Windblown's captains were killed, among them Caggo, the right hand of the Tattered Prince.

Caggo had carried a black arakh forged from Valyrian steel. Valyrian steel had been priceless even in the days of Valyria itself. Now, with the secret of its making lost to the world, it was beyond valuation entirely. When Axel Arryn claimed it as the right of the conqueror, the other captains of the Golden Company raised an outcry. Every man among them wanted such a treasure for himself.