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In essence, what Asha Greyjoy proposed was nothing more than a political claim. After all, the traditional territory of the Iron Islands was quite small, and their overall strength was extremely limited.
No matter where the Ironborn managed to seize control, they would always end up spitting it back out in the end. It might sound a bit ridiculous, but in a way, what they truly lacked was something called legitimacy of claim.
Westeros was vast, but every inch of its land had already been divided into well-established, though somewhat abstract, geographic territories. One castle belongs to the Vale, another to the Riverlands. These boundaries remained firm and lasting unless someone truly powerful, like a king, came forward to alter them.
Therefore, in order to genuinely hold a piece of land, one needed more than just force. One needed a name, a banner, a claim backed by undeniable authority — for instance, a king's endorsement.
And this was precisely what Asha Greyjoy desired.
However, if the North, represented by House Stark, truly chose to support the Iron Islands in this matter, helping these seafaring raiders take Fair Isle for themselves and driving out House Farman from Faircastle, then trouble would undoubtedly follow.
Such an act would place the North firmly at odds with the Westerlands, for it would mean interfering with their long-established territorial structure.
It was a clever plan, yet Asha did not know that the man standing before her had recently made a promise to a rather unfortunate soul named Aenys Frey — a man who was now nothing more than a half-roasted corpse.
Clay pretended to hesitate for a moment. Then he nodded slightly, only to shake his head afterward. He spoke slowly and clearly:
"In principle, I can agree to your conditions. However, you must launch the first strike on Lannisport. Only when Lord Tywin is truly enraged will we uphold the terms of this agreement."
If Clay had agreed too easily, how could Asha Greyjoy possibly believe he was sincere?
His words were actually a calculated and rather harsh counter. He was telling the Ironborn that unless they shed enough blood to prove their determination, the North would not place its trust in them.
Because if the Iron Fleet launched a surprise assault on the Lannister navy and set fire to Lannisport, it would ignite a conflict with the Westerlands that could not be reconciled. The Ironborn and the West would become bitter enemies, with no room for compromise or peace.
Asha Greyjoy, of course, understood what lay beneath those words. Though it was unpleasant to hear, it touched just short of her breaking point. With a scowl darkening her face, she glared at Clay for a long while. In the end, she still gave her reluctant consent.
But almost immediately, doubt surfaced on her face. Her eyes narrowed as she questioned him:
"You are a Manderly. What gives you the right to speak on behalf of the Starks? How can I be sure that the agreement we've made today won't be overturned the moment it reaches Robb Stark's ears?"
Clay let out a cold laugh in response. Without answering directly, he simply raised his arm in a dismissive gesture, signaling her to leave:
"Then go, Lady Asha. If you are fast enough and fortunate enough, you may still reach Lord Robb Stark before his army clashes with Lord Tywin's. Go on, then. See what price the noble lords around him are willing to offer you."
He paused for a beat before continuing, his voice colder than ever:
"And let me make one thing very clear. Even if you come to an agreement with them, it will still be me who fights the Westerlands for you. No one else. You know that better than anyone, Lady Asha. So choose your words carefully. Do not assume that just because you have something heavy in your heart, I will show you any more patience."
His words left no room for courtesy or sentiment, though in truth, there had never been much of either between them.
Asha Greyjoy clenched her jaw. After holding back for a long moment, she finally muttered under her breath:
"Do not underestimate women."
Clay's gaze brazenly swept across her body, pausing deliberately at a few suggestive spots. Before she could lash out, he turned and delivered one last scornful remark:
"Spare me, Lady Asha. A woman like you wouldn't even dare pull a knife on me."
He lifted the flap of the tent and strode out into the open. His voice, youthful and drifting on the wind, reached the ears of the Ironborn woman, who now stood alone in the tent with a dark expression clouding her face:
"Leave now. Take the terms we agreed upon and carry them back with you. Remember, the day I see the squid banner flying above Lannisport is the day we begin our campaign against the Westerlands."
Now, there was only one woman left inside the tent. And within it, her muttered curses lingered in the air like the smoke of a dying fire:
"Damn that Clay Manderly… I swear, one day I'm going to cut you to pieces!"
…
After remaining in Seagard for a single day, Clay's cavalry force moved out swiftly and plunged straight into the battle-scarred Riverlands.
It took the army four days to reach the area near Raventree Hall, just north of Riverrun.
Along the way, they encountered several scattered units retreating from the Riverrun front lines. These troops hailed from various houses, but Clay carefully picked out the cavalrymen who still had the will to fight and absorbed them into his own forces.
By the time he made camp at Raventree Hall, his command had swelled to nearly six thousand mounted soldiers.
He did not choose to advance any further. Going forward would mean exposing the army to the watchful eyes of the Lannister scouts, who patrolled the region ahead.
With such a large force, it was simply impossible to move undetected under the enemy's surveillance.
In order to maintain the secrecy of his army's position, Clay ordered his troops to halt and rest where they were, awaiting further commands. At the same time, he dispatched Ser Brynden Tully, known as the Blackfish, along with his four personal guards, to lead a force of two hundred elite cavalry southward.
Their mission was to swiftly investigate the disposition and deployment of the Lannister forces encircling Riverrun, gathering as much detailed intelligence as possible in preparation for the next assault.
The four personal guards had a separate task: to slip past the blockade and penetrate deep into enemy territory. Clay intended to identify the logistical supply routes of the Lannister army and devise a means of disrupting them.
His goal was to force Jaime Lannister to divert part of his forces to protect those supply lines, thereby reducing the number of soldiers stationed around Riverrun.
In the original timeline, Robb Stark, after a series of swift strikes, still allowed several thousand Lannister troops to retreat westward and return to their homeland. But this time, Clay had crafted a far more meticulous and merciless plan.
He had no intention of allowing even a single Lannister to escape.
To him, this battle was meant to strike directly at Lord Tywin's gut—to make the old lion toss and turn in agony, unable to find sleep at all.
…
Ser Brynden Tully was somewhat puzzled by Clay's decision to send four of his personal guards along. He did not believe Clay had sent them to spy on him, since all the elite cavalry under his command were northerners loyal to House Stark. There was simply no need to monitor him.
Clay had been quite clear. Once they went south together, the four guards would soon part from the main force and head even further south. He told Brynden not to concern himself with them.
But what could four people accomplish by going further south? Were they being sent to die?
This was what baffled Ser Brynden the most. As the commander of the scouting force, he could not suppress his concern and eventually asked the four guards about the purpose of their mission.
He was not trying to pry for classified information, only hoping to help these young men—each about Clay's age—avoid a needless death.
They were elite warriors, skilled and brave. They should not die being hunted down by the enemy like prey in a forest. That was Ser Brynden's heartfelt conviction.
However, no matter how he asked, the four guards remained utterly silent about their orders. They could chat about anything else, but the moment he touched on their true objective, they would all fall mute at once.
Eventually, Ser Brynden gave up. There was no point in asking what they clearly would not answer.
As they neared within fifty miles of Riverrun and drew close to the Red Fork, their forward scouts finally spotted a group of Lannister scouts. These enemies, however, seemed thoroughly unconcerned, moving about leisurely and without vigilance.
Ser Brynden could understand their attitude. After all, under the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister's command, the Lannister army had crushed a host of nearly twenty thousand Riverlanders and now had the lord of the Riverlands besieged inside his own castle.
Such a victory had left the surrounding Riverland lords demoralized. Even those who still had troops did not dare send reinforcements into the battle around Riverrun.
So, when these scouts were deployed, the initial tension they felt gave way to complacency after encountering no real threats. Eventually, they became lax in their duties.
And so, when Ser Brynden led a ten-man squad toward them, they remained blissfully unaware of the danger approaching.
Ser Brynden had divided his two hundred men into twenty teams, each guided by a local Riverlander who knew the terrain. These teams began to infiltrate toward Riverrun from various directions.
However, he did not order them to go too deep. If any team ventured too far and was caught and captured by the Lannisters, Clay's entire army risked being exposed.
In truth, out of the two hundred, a full one hundred and ninety were sent purely to draw the attention of Lannister scouts on the outskirts. Only the small team led personally by Ser Brynden was meant to truly approach the walls of Riverrun.
They pressed their horses flat to the ground. At such a critical juncture, the presence of horses could only mean one thing: cavalry in the area. Ordinary farmers could not afford to keep a horse, and scouts knew this all too well.
Their target was a three-man Lannister scouting party gathered around an old oak tree, its trunk half-scorched by fire. The men were laughing loudly as they relieved themselves at the tree's roots.
Their horses were tied up about fifty paces away, which was a dangerously far distance in a battlefield setting.
Under proper discipline, a scout was never to dismount during a patrol, much less separate from his horse. Doing so robbed them of all mobility as cavalry.
If an enemy emerged and charged on horseback, a dismounted scout would not have time to remount. Even if he did, the horse would not have gained enough momentum, and the scout would likely be cut down before escaping.
The fact that these scouts had let down their guard so completely could only mean that the Lannister forces besieging Riverrun had grown exceedingly negligent, even disregarding the most basic principles of reconnaissance.
For a veteran like Ser Brynden, this was an opportunity that could not be ignored. The thick forests and dense foliage of the Riverlands offered his men excellent cover for a swift and silent ambush.
As members of the North's most elite scouting unit, each soldier had been equipped with one of the army's rare heavy crossbows. While not as finely crafted as the ones Clay had issued to his personal guards, these were still deadly weapons at medium range.
The ten men split into two groups and approached the three Lannister scouts from the east and west, using the forest as cover to slowly surround their position.
As the distance narrowed, they came within the perfect range for attack. Ser Brynden came to a halt and crouched low. From that position, the coarse and vulgar laughter of the Lannister scouts drifted to their ears.
The men were speaking crudely about what they would do once Riverrun had fallen, boasting about how many women they would seize for their own pleasure. One among them, who had apparently visited Riverrun before the war, was loudly comparing the women of the Riverlands to those of the Westerlands, sharing his crude observations with his companions.
He had just finished raving about the upper bodies of Riverlands women and was about to begin describing their lower parts when a sharp thud echoed through the trees. A heavy arrowhead slammed through his throat and burst out from the other side.
Blood sprayed out in a wide arc, splattering directly across the face of the man sitting opposite him, momentarily blinding him in a wash of crimson.
Death had already arrived. The scout with the arrow through his neck collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. Bloody bubbles frothed from the wound as he struggled helplessly. The arrow had pierced his windpipe and grazed the artery along his neck.
The other Northern scouts surrounding them had already cut down the remaining two Lannisters before they could react. One of them, however, had not been struck in a vital spot—his tongue remained intact—so he was left behind for questioning.
"Please… please help me… bind the wound on my leg… it's bleeding so much… if this continues, I'll die…"
Under the lifeless gaze of his fallen comrades, feeling the blood draining from his own thigh, the surviving Lannister scout finally broke down. His desire to live overwhelmed any sense of honor or loyalty.
"Bandage me first. I beg you. I'll tell you anything, anything you want to know!"
Ser Brynden gave a subtle nod to one of his men. The scout stepped forward, tore a sleeve from one of the dead bodies, and began pretending to tend to the wound.
It was merely a comfort. The Northerners fought ruthlessly, and earlier, in order to stop the man from escaping, they had driven a sword deep into his leg. The resulting wound was so large that under the current medical standards, it was impossible to heal.
If this were peacetime, the man would be lying inside a sept, with corpulent septons chanting sacred verses of the Seven Gods, which they themselves barely understood, guiding him through his final hours.
Once he passed, his family would be expected to pay a hefty fee. If they could afford to offer enough gold dragons, he might be laid to rest in the cemetery behind the sept. But if they could not even spare a few copper stars, they would be left to collect the body themselves, either burying it in the wilderness or leaving it to decay at home.
How could the noble servants of the Seven possibly trouble themselves with such matters?
But this was the battlefield. There were no septons, no sacred chants, and no grieving family members. There were only comrades-in-arms or enemies.
In the end, the man would return to the earth. A shallow grave would suffice, dug not out of kindness but necessity. The Northern scouts did not want their presence discovered, and if someone came looking, they could not afford to leave behind any trace of the Lannisters.
Whether or not someone found the bodies later no longer mattered. By that time, the siege of Riverrun would already be decided. If they won, the army would occupy the city and be hailed as heroes, kissed by women of the Riverlands.
If they lost, the worst that could happen is that they would end up on the ground alongside the Lannisters, lifeless.
The brave men of the North had already come to terms with this fate. From the moment they left the Neck, they had accepted that they might give their lives in this war.
On the battlefield, there was only kill or be killed. No one could be sure they would survive every encounter.
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[Chapter End's]
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