Chapter 45: The Road to Lannisport
The smoke outside Golden Tooth faded slowly, but the smell of blood remained. Kator oversaw the clearing of the field, while captured weapons and armor were piled into proper stacks. The prisoners were tied together with rope and forced to crouch under guard. There were more than five thousand now: two thousand captured from the Golden Tooth garrison, another three thousand taken in the battle outside the castle, and scattered survivors gathered from Oxcross and nearby roads. A very large problem, then. Naturally, it breathed, ate, and might rebel.
Smith approached Arthur while the prisoners were being counted.
“My lord,” he said quietly, “there are too many. They outnumber the original garrison. We are about to march, and we lack the men to guard them properly. If they mutiny, they could threaten the rear.”
Arthur frowned. The man was right. Taking five thousand prisoners on campaign would slow the army, drain food, and require too many guards. Killing them all would be efficient but wasteful. The Westerlands had mines. Mines had a talent for turning inconvenient men into income.
“What do you suggest?”
Smith’s eyes did not change. “Use them on the march. If a castle refuses surrender, drive prisoners forward first. They will consume arrows, stones, oil, and attention. Those who survive can be used again or sent to labor. Those who are useless can be disposed of later.”
Arthur studied him for a moment. Smith was a pure soldier. Not cruel for pleasure, perhaps, but free of the comforting lies men used to make war look cleaner than it was. His suggestion was monstrous. It was also practical. Westeros had always been eager to teach that the two were close relatives.
“Very well,” Arthur said. “You take two thousand prisoners. I take two thousand. The remaining thousand, along with those from the garrison, go to the gold mines under strict guard. Diana is responsible for Golden Tooth and the prisoners assigned to labor. Any unrest is to be crushed immediately.”
Diana nodded calmly. “Understood.”
Arthur looked to one of the captured young Lannister knights kneeling apart from the rest. “Damon Lannister is not to be killed yet. Keep him under guard. A name can be useful before it becomes a head.”
The army divided soon after.
Smith led twenty thousand troops, including two thousand veterans and two thousand prisoners, along the route Robb Stark had taken before. His task was destruction, plunder, panic, and training. Arthur personally led thirty thousand men, also with two thousand prisoners, down the River Road toward Lannisport, one of the richest ports in Westeros and the largest city of the Westerlands.
After the split, the two armies moved like hungry wolves through a wounded land.
Smith advanced first. Branding Castle was his first target. It had fallen once during Robb Stark’s campaign and had not recovered. Its new garrison consisted mostly of militia and half-trained replacements. Smith did not rush his veterans against the walls. He drove the prisoners forward with ladders, placing swords and bows at their backs.
“Take the walls and live,” his men shouted. “Turn back and die here.”
The prisoners charged because men preferred a chance at death over certainty. Arrows, stones, and logs fell from the walls. Bodies piled at the base. Their deaths consumed the defenders’ supplies and revealed weak points along the walls. When the garrison was tired and low on missiles, Smith sent his veterans in. They stormed the blood-slick ladders and took the wall in one push. Branding Castle fell with little cost to his core.
After replenishing food and seizing supplies, Smith continued west toward the Crag, seat of House Westerling. The castle was in worse condition. The Westerlings had fallen on hard times, their mines exhausted, their wealth diminished, and their walls neglected. They resisted, because pride was cheap until the bill arrived. Smith repeated the same method. Prisoners first. Veterans after. When an old section of wall collapsed under pressure and age, the Battanians poured in.
The Crag fell. Most members of House Westerling were captured.
From there, the west coast of the Westerlands lay open. Smith split his force again, sending ten thousand south to seize the Casterly Rock gold mines and the Pendric Hills, another gold-producing region. He personally led ten thousand elites toward Rockfall. Its lord had already been captured earlier by House Bracken and held at Stone Hedge, while most of the garrison had marched with Tywin. After a short, symbolic resistance, Rockfall surrendered.
In less than two weeks, the west coast of the Westerlands had almost entirely changed hands.
News spread faster than order. Refugees fled east with carts, children, livestock, and panic, carrying tales of Golden Tooth fallen, the Crag taken, the mines occupied, and strange Battanian warriors appearing wherever the roads were weakest. Fear did half the work for Smith. Men who had not seen a single Battanian still locked their gates because rumors had already entered.
Arthur advanced more slowly along the River Road, but more methodically. Estates were stripped. Food was requisitioned, which was a polite word for taken. Nobles who surrendered gave hostages. Nobles who refused saw their keeps burned or their men broken. Arthur did not linger. He was not there to rule the Westerlands. Not yet. He was there to gut the Lannister war machine before Tywin could turn around.
Sarsfield became the next obstacle.
The castle belonged to House Sarsfield, a middling Westerlands house whose main strength had already been drawn away by Tywin. Arthur arrived before its walls with thirty thousand men, dense formations spreading across the fields. The banners of House Sarsfield moved weakly in the wind above the ramparts. The men on the walls looked frightened, and they were intelligent enough to be so.
Arthur offered surrender first.
They refused.
So he sent prisoners.
Two thousand men were driven forward with ladders under the cover of Battanian archers. The defenders responded with arrows, stones, and hot oil. Prisoners died in heaps at the foot of the wall, but they consumed the enemy’s strength and dragged the defenders’ attention forward. When the wall was fully engaged, Arthur sent Kator and Beland with elite Clan Warriors and Young Noble Warriors toward a weaker flank section.
They climbed fast. Too fast for the defenders to shift properly. Once a foothold was taken, more Battanians poured onto the wall. The defenders were struck from front and rear, and their morale broke. Sarsfield fell before dusk.
Arthur took the surviving noble family members as hostages, seized food and wealth, burned the main keep, and continued west.
His goal remained Lannisport.
Several days later, when Arthur’s army appeared outside the city, panic broke over the port like a wave.
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