The Witch-King of the Vale [GoT x LotR]

King Renly's Camp.

"So the Falcon's eye has gone on the attack?" King Renly concluded.

"So it seems," said the king's Hand, Mace Tyrell, thoughtfully.

"Either he's grown too sure of himself, or he's waiting on reinforcements." Lord Hightower held no high opinion of Arryn, but he acknowledged the man's talent as a commander readily enough.

"Doubtful. An army isn't easy to hide, and our spies in the Vale have reported nothing of the sort," Garlan Tyrell put in.

"But what's his final aim in all this?" Every eye turned toLord Hightower, who explained the reasoning behind his question. "Arryn hasn't meddled in anything up to now, kept himself quietly neutral. Only the Rock's enormous store of gold was enough to stir him into action at all. So what sense does it make for him to throw his men away now in a battle that gains him nothing?"

"To remove a threat," the King's Hand declared, though the rest looked far from convinced.

"That's possible, but unlikely." The middle son tried to salvage what little remained of his father's authority. "However this plays out, Arryn stands to lose a great many men, which will badly cut into what he can accomplish in the Riverlands afterward. That runs against his own aims."

"We'll need more time before we understand Arryn's intentions," King Renly declared. "I've been burned too many times playing wait and see, so I've sent reinforcements to settle the matter."

...

Axel Arryn.

My army met Willas Tyrell's on the Iron Plain. It lay near the border where the Reach, the Riverlands, and the Crownlands meet, though a fair way further south. The plain had earned its fitting name five hundred years ago, in the great slaughter between the Gardeners and the Hoares. The butchery had been immense; by battle's end the whole field lay carpeted with dead knights with most of them being the Hoare men, and so the Iron Plain got its name. Now it was the Arryns' and Tyrells' turn to stage something similar, though on a far smaller scale.

While the soldiers on both sides held their positions, it became plain enough that my army was outnumbered: ten thousand against fifteen. The odds could hardly help but weigh on the sons of the Vale, but the unshaken confidence of their commanders gave them a real sense of security. The soldiers knew one simple but important truth: they could win. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of everyone else.

"Lord Arryn, I urge you to reconsider," yet another worrier tried to talk me out of my "reckless" course. "The Tyrells are not an enemy we can overcome alone! It isn't only the numbers working against us, it's the quality of the men. These soldiers fought under Lord Tarly's command; they know their business."

"I'll take my chances against an army of sheep led by a tiger over an army of tigers led by a sheep any day." My opinion of the cripple Tyrell was exceedingly low. "It hardly matters how strong the fighters are; if a weakling leads them, they lose."

"Wasn't the whole design of this campaign to work in concert with the Lannisters, to strike the Tyrells together and force out a victory? Except the lions haven't answered a single one of our proposals for coordinating our efforts since then, and we have no way of knowing now whether they'll even take part in this battle or leave us to fend for ourselves." That would have worried me, if I didn't have Elena and her gifts at my side. But I know exactly where the Lannisters and their unexpected commander stand.

"I mean to attack today, and nothing will stop me."

"My lord! At the very least, I urge you to wait for Ser Jasper's reinforcements to arrive. It would cost us only half a day, and it would bring us level in numbers with the enemy." No, I had other plans for Jasper's army.

My confidence came from two sources. The first: I trust in Tywin Lannister's rationality. Joffrey the little suckling's stunt had struck me as darkly funny. Stripping his own grandfather of the Handship was about the stupidest move he could have made just now, one that would come back to bite both Joffrey and the lion's house in time. And I believed Tywin could have quickly reined in his grandson's overreach, but the little suckling had unexpectedly found some sense and sent his grandfather far from the capital instead. Now Tywin had only one path left to him: crush Tyrell, return to the capital in triumph, and put down his grandson's "rebellion" from there, with the destruction of an enemy army serving as fine cover for reclaiming his post as Hand. The second: Jasper's army. I'm not so fond of bloody battles that I'd go out of my way to make my own life harder. I had already sent an army of five thousand men off in a different direction well beforehand.

The plan: I attack first from the northwest and draw the enemy army into the fight, then Jasper's fresh forces arrive from the north and break their left flank, and some time after that Tywin's army seals off the southeast. That way Willas Tyrell will find himself surrounded on three sides by superior numbers.

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