Chapter 56: The Old Lion Moves
“Golden Tooth is lost. Casterly Rock is lost. Branding Castle, the Crag, Feastfires, Rockfall, all lost. Lannisport, my port, fell three days ago. Damon fled by ship like a frightened child, and my son Jaime is a prisoner again, this time taken alive in Split-Hoof Valley by a mountain lord no one had the wit to notice until he had half my lands in his hand.”
Tywin Lannister’s voice was not loud. It was barely raised at all. He sat in his study in the Tower of the Hand, within the Red Keep of King’s Landing. Outside the window, the sky over Blackwater Bay had turned a dull lead grey, as if the city itself had begun to rust. Inside the room were only Tywin and Grand Maester Pycelle, who looked as though age had finally remembered where it left him.
That calm made Pycelle’s hands tremble.
The old maester knew Lord Tywin well enough. A raging Tywin was terrible. A silent Tywin was worse. A Tywin calmly listing disasters meant his anger had been hammered down into something cold, thin, and sharp enough to split bone.
“The reports may be mistaken, my lord,” Pycelle said, his voice dry. “These savages—”
“Savages do not take seven important castles in the Westerlands in half a moon, including two gold mines and the largest port in the West,” Tywin interrupted. His pale green eyes were fixed on Pycelle as if the old man were an error in a ledger. “Savages do not capture one of the best swordsmen in the Seven Kingdoms twice. Savages do not take Lannisport and then calmly set an ambush for Jaime’s relief force.”
Pycelle closed his mouth.
“This is an army,” Tywin said. “Organized, supplied, informed, and directed by clear purpose. Its leader is not mad. Arthur Greyoak is a general. A dangerous one.”
The name sat in the room like poison.
Pycelle had heard it many times in the last days. Ser Arthur Greyoak. The Battanian lord. The man from Newroot. The butcher of the Twins, some whispered. The wolf in the lion’s den. The reports contradicted each other, as terrified reports liked to do, but the results did not. Castles had fallen. Mines had been seized. Lannisport burned. Jaime captured. Casterly Rock taken. Facts were wonderfully rude things.
“Lord Randyll Tarly’s fifty thousand men have entered the Westerlands,” Pycelle said, reaching desperately for something that sounded like hope. “The Reach—”
“Randyll Tarly is a good soldier,” Tywin said. “He is also facing an unfamiliar enemy in broken country filled with fear, burned roads, ruined supply points, and people who no longer know whom to obey. As for the Reach, Mace Tyrell wants his daughter near a crown and his family near power. He will not bleed the Reach dry for a Lannister unless doing so feeds a Tyrell.”
He rose and walked to the window, placing his hands behind his back. From there, much of King’s Landing could be seen: crowded streets, poor roofs, the Blackwater, the smoke, the rot dressed in red stone. It had always been a prize. At that moment, it looked very much like a prison built on mud.
“Cersei and Joffrey have made a ruin of things,” Tywin said. There was no heat in his voice, which made the words worse. “Killing Eddard Stark forced the North and half the Riverlands into rebellion. Courting the Tyrells required promises, debt, and humiliation wrapped in ceremony. Now the Westerlands have been pierced through, and I sit here relying on Reach grain and Reach soldiers to maintain the dignity of this city and my grandson’s throne.”
Pycelle’s scalp prickled. Those words were treason-adjacent, family-adjacent, and truth-adjacent, three things dangerous men disliked hearing in the same sentence. He wisely remained silent. Wisdom had preserved Pycelle longer than dignity ever could have.
“We march back,” Tywin said. “Immediately. Take every soldier we can move. Abandon unnecessary baggage. We return to the Westerlands at speed. Every day we delay gives Greyoak more time to fortify my home, bleed my mines, and convince frightened men that Lannisters can be beaten.”
“But, my lord,” Pycelle said before fear could stop him, “what of King’s Landing? What of the court? House Tyrell? Stannis watches from Dragonstone.”
“King’s Landing can be left to Mace Tyrell and his daughter. They want influence over the crown. Let them hold the weight of it.” Tywin’s mouth twisted without humor. “As for Stannis, he is a man of laws and old claims. He will not act recklessly while a Baratheon sits the Iron Throne and the Reach stands between him and the city. The Tyrells will be delighted to prove they can protect the king. They have purchased the opportunity.”
Pycelle understood enough to fear it. Tywin was cutting away a limb to save the body. He would give the Tyrells practical control of King’s Landing for the chance to save the Westerlands. It was a gamble that Mace would prefer power in the capital to finishing off the Lannisters, that Stannis would hesitate, and that Tywin could return west before Arthur Greyoak turned conquest into rule.
“When do we depart?” Pycelle asked.
“Tonight.”
Tywin walked back to his desk and began writing with quick, controlled strokes.
“You will prepare several letters. First, in the name of the king and the Small Council, appoint Lord Mace Tyrell as Regent with full authority to oversee the court’s military and political affairs until the king comes of age or until I return. Let him have the title. Men like Mace are very fond of titles.”
Pycelle swallowed.
“Second, notify Randyll Tarly that his command remains unchanged. His objective is now to delay, weaken, and contain the Battanian army at all costs until my forces return. He is not to chase glory. If necessary, he may abandon secondary targets, but he must not allow Greyoak to consolidate the Rock and Lannisport unhindered.”
Tywin’s quill paused on the third letter. A small blot of ink spread on the parchment.
“Third, write to Deep Den and every remaining loyal commander in the West. Hold fast. Reinforcements are coming. A Lannister always pays his debts.”
He spoke the last words softly. Pycelle heard the steel beneath them.
“And the Queen Regent? His Grace?” Pycelle asked, because apparently old men could still develop suicidal impulses.
Tywin looked up. Pycelle stopped breathing for a moment.
“I will speak to them,” Tywin said. “Go. Quickly and quietly. Before dawn, I want the first troops marching from King’s Landing.”
Pycelle took the scrolls, bowed so deeply his chain nearly swung into the desk, and retreated from the room with as much speed as an ancient man could disguise as respect.
When the door closed, Tywin stood alone before the map of the Westerlands. Red marks covered it like a disease. Golden Tooth, Casterly Rock, Lannisport, the mines, the west coast. A wound from east to west, almost cutting through the lion’s body.
His finger traced the road from King’s Landing westward, along the Roseroad, across the Blackwater, through the Kingswood and the Crownlands, toward the place where his life’s work bled.
“Arthur Greyoak,” he whispered. “Battania.”
The intelligence remained poor. A man from a remote mountain people, or so the reports claimed. Distinguished at a tournament. Taken into Lord Jason Mallister’s service. Caught in the disaster at the Twins. Then suddenly in the Westerlands, moving like a ghost with an army behind him and a purpose no one had named.
A Stark remnant? Unlikely. A pawn of some other power? Possible. A raider with ambition? Too organized. A lord building a realm from vengeance and stolen gold? That sounded closer, and more dangerous.
Whatever he was, he had to be crushed. Not defeated. Not negotiated with. Crushed, in a way every lord in Westeros would understand. House Lannister’s dignity, the rule of the Westerlands, and the power Tywin had built over a lifetime now depended on that.
He walked to the wall and took down the ornate longsword hanging there. It was not Valyrian steel, only a beautiful weapon decorated with lions worked into the scabbard. A symbol. Men needed symbols. They were easily led by them, and just as easily terrified when they broke.
“Going home,” Tywin said, to the sword, to the empty room, and perhaps to the enemy who had stolen his halls. “It is time to clean house.”
To read more, check the link in the profile!