"Dickon, aren't the casualties a bit too high for a opening gambit?"
Ser Maldor of Highgarden watched the soldiers charge forward like a swarm of angry bees, only to be mown down by the disciplined, narrow-window fire from the city walls. He couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache that went deeper than his purse. They had been fighting for barely two hours, and the grass of the southern bank was already hidden beneath a carpet of green-and-gold surcoats. His own levies had suffered hundreds of casualties, while the enemy behind those thick stones seemed to be suffering none at all.
How could they continue fighting like this? It wasn't a battle; it was a harvest.
"Ser Maldor," Dickon Tarly said, his voice as cold and emotionless as the Valyrian steel his father no longer carried. "Eddard Karstark has fewer men but is defending a fortress that has stood for six hundred years. We have the numbers, but we do not have the time. In this situation, my father always taught that we must commit every soul to the field. Hesitation is the only thing that kills faster than an arrow."
Dickon stared at the wall with a gaze that mirrored his father's severe intensity. "You see dead men, Ser. I see progress. Our causeway is growing. Our ladders have tasted the stone. We have forced the 'Wizard' to engage. This is the limit of a small garrison, they cannot be everywhere at once. If we maintain the pressure, the Twins will fall by sunset."
Ser Maldor's face was stiff, his jaw tight. "When it comes to the business of killing, your family is the professional one, Dickon. I'll keep my mouth shut and my purse open."
Dickon nodded curtly, his attention returning to the moat.
Across the field, Roose Bolton stood atop a small rise, his pale, milky eyes scanning the carnage with a detached, clinical interest. He saw the rafts being splintered and the ladders being pushed back. He saw the inefficiency of the current assault. Turning to his captain, a brutal man known as "Iron Leg" Wharton, he whispered a few sharp commands.
Wharton didn't hesitate. He led a small squad of cavalry into the chaos of the skirmishers, their whips cracking.
"LADDERS TO THE WATER! RAFTS CLOSE!" the Bolton men screamed.
The Reach soldiers, half-blinded by blood and adrenaline, followed the orders without question. They began throwing the heavy scaling ladders horizontally into the moat, creating a skeletal framework. The rafts, drifting and broken, were shoved against these ladders.
It was a brilliant, cruel piece of engineering. By tangling the ladders and the rafts together, they were creating a floating bridge, a patchwork causeway that spanned the gap to the base of the wall.
Wharton dismounted and grabbed a thin, terrified skirmisher by the collar. The boy was Mick, a civilian from Goldengrove who had been dragged from his father's cellar to carry dirt.
"Boy," Wharton hissed, his breath smelling of sour wine. "Go out there. Straighten those rafts. Tie them to the ladders to form a path, or I'll use your body as the first plank."
Mick looked at the arrows hissing from the murder holes and the bodies floating face-down in the mud. He shook his head, tears blurring his vision. He had already made three runs today; he just wanted to live.
Wharton's veteran lieutenant didn't speak. He simply drew a longsword and pressed the cold edge against Mick's throat, a yellow-toothed grin splitting his face. "It's a command, lad. Not a negotiation."
Mick swallowed, snatched a discarded shield, and sprinted for the water. He leaped onto the first floating ladder, his heart hammered against his ribs as bolts thudded into the wood around him. "Straighten them... just straighten them..." he whimpered, lashing a raft to the ladder with a length of hemp rope.
He managed two before Anguy, perched in a high watchtower, caught the movement. The Archer loosed a single, whistling arrow that took Mick through the heart. The boy fell into the water with a quiet splash, his shield floating away like a discarded leaf.
But for every Mick that died, the Boltons sent ten more. The bridge was forming.
"They're building a bridge!" Lando roared, his voice cracking through the tin horn.
Eddard, stationed at the center of the wall, saw the tactical shift immediately. The ladders were acting as pontoons, and the rafts were being lashed together to form a solid path. Once the planks were laid, the heavy infantry would be able to run straight to the base of the gatehouse, bypassing the mud and the deep water.
"Damn it!" Eddard cursed, his visor splattered with the blood of a Reach knight he had just decapitated. "I don't know which bastard thought of this, but it's going to end us!"
He looked at his archers. They were exhausted, their fingers bleeding from the constant draw. The ballistas were overheating, their gears groaning. The sheer volume of the Reach host was starting to tell.
Eddard looked at the piles of defensive stones in the corner of the battlements - large, rounded boulders intended to be dropped on climbers. He looked at the bridge forming eighty meters away.
He sheathed Heartbreaker and walked to the edge of the parapet. He reached down and gripped a hundred-pound boulder with both hands. His [System] stats hummed in his mind, the 3x strength multiplier surging through his muscles.
With a roar of effort, he hoisted the stone over his head and launched it.
The boulder didn't just fall; it flew. It whistled through the air like a projectile from a trebuchet, striking the center of the floating ladder-bridge with a sound like a thunderclap. The wood shattered instantly, the kinetic energy of the impact sending a massive plume of water into the air and tossing the soldiers on the rafts into the depths.
"Hahaha!" Eddard's laughter was a wild, jagged sound.
He didn't stop. He moved along the wall like a whirlwind, picking up stones that usually required two men to lift and launching them with terrifying accuracy. One after another, the rafts were smashed to splinters. The "Bolton Bridge" was being dismantled by a single man's fury.
The Karstark soldiers, seeing their lord performing a feat of legend, let out a roar of defiance that drowned out the Reach horns. Their fatigue seemed to vanish, replaced by the fanatical belief that they were led by a god of war.
Across the field, Roose Bolton's expression darkened. He had seen many things in his life, flayed men, burning villages, and the cruelty of the Long Night's tales but he had never seen a man throw stones like a catapult.
"Pull back," Roose whispered to his captains. "The boy is still too fresh."
Suddenly, the horns of the Reach changed their tune.
The relentless assault faltered. The skirmishers, who had been carrying the next wave of rafts, stopped in their tracks, looking back at their camp. The heavy infantry began to retreat in a disciplined "turtle" formation, shielding themselves from the final Karstark volleys.
Eddard stood on the wall, his arms aching, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He leaned through a murder hole, his face full of confusion.
"Why are they stopping?" he muttered.
It made no sense. He was a man, and men got tired. Tarly and Bolton knew that if they pushed for another hour, the defenders would collapse from sheer physical exhaustion. To stop now, after sacrificing a thousand men, was tactical madness.
The battlefield fell into a strange, ringing silence, broken only by the patter of a light rain and the groans of the dying in the moat.
"Lord Eddard," a soft voice called from behind him.
Eddard turned to see Beric Dondarrion. The leader of the Brotherhood had a strange, knowing smile on his face.
"Count Beric? What's happened? Has the West Bank been breached?" Eddard asked, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword.
"Quite the opposite," Beric replied, his one eye gleaming with relief. "A contingent has arrived from the west. They managed to navigate the marshes of the Cape and slip past the enemy's outer patrols. There are five hundred of them, well-armed and fresh."
Eddard felt a sudden, sharp relief wash over him. "Who leads them?"
"A young man who claims he knows you well," Beric said. "He calls himself Patrek Mallister of Seagard."
Eddard let out a long, shaky breath and smiled. The math of the siege had just changed. Five hundred fresh Mallister soldiers, the elite of the sunset coast, had just doubled his effective garrison.
"Let them in," Eddard commanded. "And tell the men to double their rations. We're not just holding the bridge anymore, we're holding the North."
[System Notification: Reinforcements Arrived: House Mallister.]
[Garrison Strength: 1,100.]
[Soul Power Gained for Successful Defense: 200 SP.]
Eddard looked out at the Reach camp, where the banners were being lowered for the night. The first day was his. Now, he just had to survive the next nine.
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