The West. The River Road. 299 AC.
Ser Bronn.
"Form up! Form up!" the young man was rallying his people for the attack. "Lord Umber, take a thousand swords to the left flank. Torrhen, a thousand men, and we cut through to King Stannis, get him out. I'll hold a safe corridor with the rest. We hold as long as we can!"
At what point in the life of a simple sellsword, now styled Ser Bronn of the Rock, had everything gone wrong? Not the humiliating nickname foisted on him by a king of limited imagination, and not even Robb Stark organizing a suicidal attack. No, it had started somewhere around Casterly Rock. Bronn, a plain sellsword in the service of the Heir of the North, had been summoned to the king's tent and given the task of assembling a party for an impossible undertaking: infiltrate the Lannister stronghold and open the gates from within. The whole business reeked of shit, and the existence of some mysterious passage did little to clear the air.
Bronn had never been a fool. Fools in his profession did not last long. He understood at once that the highborn lords themselves had no confidence in the scheme. Ordinarily such men fell over one another to prove their valor and courage, to be first up the enemy's walls, to lead the vanguard, to be the last man to fall back. It had unsettled him, seeing lords who would do any damned thing for a footnote in some chronicle suddenly go cold at the prospect of actually doing the deed.
He would have refused outright, but Stannis, may the fire god roast him, had promised a royal reward on success. Greed outweighed good sense. There were only three things a sellsword could genuinely want: coin, a castle, and a highborn beauty for a wife. One castle out of Stannis's hands would hardly beggar the man.
Rounding up twenty desperate souls had been easy enough. The plan was another matter. A narrow passage leading to gods knew where was the full extent of their intelligence. No one, if he was honest, actually knew the layout of the castle. A couple of men had visited the Rock years back, but memory had long since eaten the details. By rights that should have thrown every instinct for self-preservation into full scream, but Bronn was already picturing himself as a lord, sunk in some cushioned chair in his own hall with a cup of expensive wine.
Then the brilliantly impudent idea had struck him: instead of fighting through the entire garrison while praying they stumbled on the right room, they would dress in Lannister armor and order some obliging fool to show them the way. With no better plan on offer, they did exactly that. Twenty men conjured an atmosphere of urgency and tension for the benefit of some unlucky sentries, and the authority of "Ser Lorrence Lannister himself" had the guards sprinting for the gatehouse. The delicious irony was that Bronn had invented Ser Lorrence on the spot, and the sentries had made every appearance of knowing him perfectly well, as one more face from the endless Lannister brood.
Where the guards in the outer passages had been satisfyingly stupid, the men at the key positions had been something else entirely. It came to a fight, and then a desperate rearguard action to keep the garrison from sealing the gates. Twenty minutes and sixteen dead companions later, the critical point had been passed and the king's army had marched in without them.
A feast followed the fall of the allegedly impregnable fortress, with rewards distributed to the most distinguished among them, Bronn included. Only there was no magnificent castle waiting for him. What a lord wanted and what an ordinary man wanted turned out to be very different things. Right there in the great hall, King Stannis called him forward and, in front of everyone, and hailed him Ser Bronn of the Rock. Then, in an uncharacteristic burst of eloquence, Stannis delivered a short speech on royal generosity, on the White Cloaks and their place in history. At the time Bronn still had not seen where it was going, but something at the base of his spine was sending urgent messages. It turned out those messages had been entirely correct. Ser Bronn of the Rock was invited to join the Kingsguard.
The honor struck him dumb. Being made into a gelded errand boy was the last thing he had ever wanted. He had spent his whole life trying not to be that, because he loved women, wine, and brawls in roughly equal measure. Drawing on every reserve of eloquence he possessed, Bronn managed to convey that there was really absolutely no possible way for him to serve in the Kingsguard. Stannis accepted the refusal with rigid stoicism, grinding his teeth audibly, and banished the ungrateful man to the far end of the table. In that moment Bronn understood that he would never see a castle from Stannis.
Switching sides was unfortunately not an option: he had become rather too well known for that, and the Lannisters had put a handsome price on his head. Were he not so attached to it, he might have sold it himself. As for the younger Baratheon, Bronn had a brain, and he was not inclined to board a sinking ship. Deserting in the heart of the Westerlands was hardly an improvement on any of that. So he stayed on for the time being in the retinue of the Heir of the North, and at least managed to pocket decent money along the way. Enough to cover the finest brothels in Lys for the rest of his natural life. He only had to get clear of the West, and after that he could quietly disappear into the Riverlands.
But they had not yet crossed out of lion country when an army of Lannisters materialized from nowhere and hit them. Immediately, his temporary employer lost his grip on reality and ordered the charge sounded. The prospect of a frontal attack on fifteen thousand men with four thousand battered soldiers at his back gave Bronn no pleasure whatsoever. What made it truly wretched was that not a single highborn backside bothered to engage its brain and push back against the Young Wolf's command.
"This is suicide," someone had to grab the boy and knock some sense into him. "We won't break through."
"If we fall back, everyone on the other side is lost," Stark answered, grimly.
"If we attack, we join them," but arguments do not work against a son trying to save his father.
"We have to," Stark dropped his visor and spurred forward, ending the conversation.
"Bad day. Very bad day," Bronn could only hope he would not die. "RIGHT THEN LADS, READY TO SKIN A LION?!"
"AAAAAAA!"
...
The situation was shit. The Lannisters had identified King Stannis and Lord Stark's forces as their primary target. The bastards had left a screening force of roughly seven thousand swords while the rest of the lions went hunting for venison. The opening charge and Umber's feint had pulled the enemy's weight onto the left flank, easing the pressure at the center and thinning the right considerably. After that, with the Young Wolf at the point, they had rammed a hole through the enemy's center formation. Lack of numbers meant they could not exploit it, and they settled instead for playing a fence, keeping the Lannisters from closing the trap. Karstark had made it through the right flank with relatively little trouble and galloped off toward the king.
But strength ebbed, men died, ground was surrendered, and the Lannisters kept pushing. No royal banners appeared on the horizon, and even Karstark had ridden beyond sight. Another twenty or thirty minutes and they would all be corpses.
"Lord Umber is giving ground and asking for reinforcement." Knowing that every reserve had been committed long ago, Bronn turned to reason. "Don't be a fool. Sound the retreat."
"Abandon the king?" Robb demanded.
"In half an hour they'll ride back to nothing but our bodies." It is a hard thing, asking a noble boy to leave thousands behind so that at least a few might live.
"If I had even five hundred more heavy horse, I could..." Bronn felt for the boy, but enemy spears were not known for encouraging sentiment.
"Planning to breed them?" He received a scorching look in return.
Robb Stark was thinking hard, his eyes cutting toward where Karstark had gone, still hoping for something that only happened in songs. No sign of an imminent return came. Gathering himself, the Young Wolf gave the right order, and the worse for being right:
"Patrick, sound the retreat!"
The note of a northern horn rang out across the entire field.
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