The silent night sky lay under a high, bright moon, a faint bluish hue spreading along the horizon.
At the very moment when all was utterly still, a shrill, piercing whistle suddenly tore through the silence.
The arrow's whistling head screamed through the air, its sharp cry instantly jolting the already wary Lannister host awake.
"They've caught up!"
Kevan opened his eyes, rose to his feet, and placed a hand on his sword hilt.
As his words fell, scattered points of fire were already visible advancing from the distant forest, painting half the sky a blazing red against the darkness.
"Order the army to withdraw. Keep the ranks steady."
Tywin rose as well. He brushed the snow from his shoulders, his voice calm and cold.
"This is the decisive moment."
Kevan said no more. He silently drew the sword at his waist and nodded solemnly.
Tywin likewise drew Longclaw, then donned his helm.
The two men exchanged a glance. Both understood how their fates would unfold, how their futures would be written in the aftermath of this war.
…
Within the forest, the Northern army advanced with torches in hand, stretched into a long line that curved into a half-arc, closing like a pocket around the enemy ahead.
Their movements were neither hurried nor slow, as though they feared disturbing their prey.
"Is doing this really all right?"
At Robb's side, Galbart Glover, the lord of Deepwood Motte, could not help but voice his concern.
In response, Robb looked back over his shoulder.
Another contingent stood there in silence, weapons in hand, not a single point of light beside them. The silver glow of the full moon reflected off the snow, providing more than enough visibility.
Grey Wind, the direwolf now grown to waist height, suddenly let out a low whine. Robb reached down and stroked its head, soothing it.
"If Tywin is foolish enough to insist on staying here instead of leaving, isn't that a good thing?"
"Lord Galbart, there's no need to rush. We must take this slowly."
Robb smiled as he countered Galbart's anxious question, signaling the lord of Deepwood Motte to have a little more patience.
Suddenly, Grey Wind let out a howl—"Awooo!"
Immediately after came the sharp hiss of arrows ripping through the air.
The battle had begun.
Robb said no more. He patted Grey Wind's head and spoke softly, "Go."
A gray blur flashed past and vanished into the snowy forest.
…
The well-prepared Lannister army blocked the enemies attacking through the woods,
while the troops at the rear began to withdraw in an orderly fashion.
And in order to have sufficient visibility in this dark environment, the few houses here were set ablaze.
It was precisely this that conveniently created an advantage for the enemy.
Arrows were loosed one after another before the men themselves even arrived, cutting through the air and flying toward the foolish enemies who had voluntarily exposed their positions in the darkness.
Although the accuracy of archery under such conditions was, admittedly, far from ideal, there were still a few unlucky souls who suffered badly.
Screams rang out one after another, marking the first wave of casualties on both sides of the engagement.
Immediately after, the Northern troops surged forward, charging into this world now lit by raging flames.
At close quarters, brutal slaughter erupted.
A Stark soldier from the vicinity of the White Knife River had just burst out of the forest when he saw a damned Lannister lighting wooden houses with a torch.
They used torches soaked in grease to ignite them, simply hurling them onto the thatched roofs of wooden houses or directly into the wooden structures themselves.
Snow melted under the heat of the flames, and with the deliberately added grease, in just ten-odd seconds the fire began to spread through these wooden buildings.
"Damn bastard!"
Seeing these men committing such acts, the soldier cursed aloud, raised his spear, took aim at one of them, and hurled it.
But his aim was poor—the spear failed to strike its target, instead pinning itself into a tree, giving the Lannister soldier who was setting the fire a fright.
Seeing that his opening strike had missed, the enraged Northern soldier no longer cared about anything else. He drew the iron sword at his waist and charged forward.
The Lannister soldier who had just thrown his torch felt panic rise in his chest at the sight. With no time to draw his sword, he simply gripped the torch in his hand and swung it wildly, trying to stop the enemy before him in this manner.
But his effort was futile.
For the Northern soldier charging at him had no intention of slowing down to swing his sword.
On the contrary, he accelerated even further, then launched himself forward in a leaping shoulder charge, diving headlong into the Lannister soldier.
This not only neatly avoided the enemy's torch attack, but also relied on the iron armor on his shoulder and his own body weight to instantly knock the unprepared foe to the ground.
The Lannister soldier, taking such a blow to the chest, was knocked flat without any chance to resist—and by sheer misfortune, the back of his head slammed directly into the steps of the very house he had just set on fire.
Had it not been for the iron helm protecting his head, that blow might well have shattered his skull.
But while his head was indeed protected, he was no longer back in the Westerlands, and the armor he wore on his body was not even a breastplate that had originally belonged to him.
In this frigid North, the only thing he had been able to find was a battered suit of plate armor.
It offered some protection against the cold and provided a measure of defense as well.
But for a man as strong as a bear, that bit of protection was plainly not enough.
Not only had the blow to his chest knocked the breath from his lungs, the impact to the back of his head had also left his mind reeling.
As for his troubles, they were clearly of little importance at this moment.
For the enemy who had slammed into him with that shoulder charge was already on top of him, and before he could even strike back, the man sprang up swiftly and yanked a dagger from his lower back.
Then, with a large hand pressing down, he pried open a gap in the Lannister soldier's helmet.
The blade—already icy cold from the freezing weather—slid easily into the warmth of the enemy's neck.
The sensation was dull yet crisp, the movement clean and smooth.
In the very next instant, before there was even time to react, the dagger embedded in the neck was dragged sideways. At once, steaming crimson blood burst forth impatiently, splashing onto the trampled, muddy snow without leaving a trace behind.
Having dealt with his first foe, the farmer's son rolled forward, narrowly avoiding an iron sword that swung toward his head.
Behind him, the Lannister soldier he had knocked to the ground in that single exchange—his throat slit in passing—clutched at his neck in vain, twitched helplessly a few times, then went limp as his legs gave way.
But Lannister soldiers had comrades—and how could this Northern soldier, who had just finished off one opponent, be without his own?
The spear thrown earlier had gone slightly wide.
And so the next Northern soldier to follow up was far more prudent.
He had no need to seize the initiative. All it took was a plain thrust as he charged in, piercing straight through the chest of the enemy who happened to have his back turned.
The clash between the two sides began with the collapse of the Lannister army.
And thus, as a matter of course, a pursuit battle unfolded within this wolf-haunted forest.
The great fire deliberately left behind during their retreat failed to halt Robb and the others.
Like wolves chasing prey, the Northern host—though already showing signs of fatigue—remained locked onto the enemy, refusing to let go.
They gnawed away without pause, attacking again and again.
Blood was splashed across the snow along the way, staining it with patches of deep red.
Then it was crushed beneath the feet that followed, leaving behind nothing but corpse after corpse to serve as markers along the road.
No one noticed that they were being deliberately driven toward the direction of Deepwood Motte.
Perhaps someone did notice—but no one cared.
Time passed quickly. As daylight finally broke overhead, this battle of pursuit and flight at last arrived at the battlefield both sides desired—Deepwood Motte.
Yet when Kevan burst into the place—his face still smeared with blood, and his sword crusted with dark red clots frozen stiff by the bitter cold—what greeted him was nothing more than an empty wooden stronghold.
It stood atop a small hill, neither large nor conspicuous.
The perimeter fence, built of rough-hewn logs, lay wide open, and the streets were muddy everywhere—yet utterly devoid of people.
All the necessities of daily life had been placed neatly and methodically where they ought to be.
This was an empty city.
The people here were as if they had received word long ago and vacated the place in advance.
"The ironmen have arrived?"
"They've already taken this place?"
Rushing in only to face such a sight, Kevan's heart gave a sudden lurch.
He asked the question while clinging to a last shred of hope, yet his voice could not stop trembling.
The calm and silence of this place had already made Kevan realize that this was a trap long prepared.
As for the reinforcements they had been counting on, they were nothing more than a sack filled with air.
They had been deceived.
This was not a path to survival at all—only a snare.
At the same moment, from the narrow forest path stretching through the woods not far away, the sound of galloping hooves suddenly rang out.
Kevan's focus sharpened as he looked up.
But the banner that came into view was not the golden kraken of the Iron Islands he had hoped for.
Instead, it was the Stark banner of the North—the silver-gray direwolf racing across a white snowfield.
Stark cavalry, who had hidden themselves here at some unknown point, burst forth the moment they arrived.
Mounted knights rode hard, iron swords flashing with deadly speed; with only the rough motion of a swing, the warhorses beneath them carried their riders forward.
Thus their masters were able to carve effortlessly through enemy flesh with the weapons in their hands.
The unease that had lingered in Kevan's heart froze solid in that instant. Struck by such a crushing blow, Kevan stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly at the slaughter unfolding not far from him, all color draining from his face.
But just as despair welled up within him, a slap cracked across his face.
"Get a grip!"
"Of course there wouldn't be any Greyjoy men here—if they were, wouldn't they have alerted the enemy long ago!"
"Break out to the west, Kevan. Break through—once you do, there is a chance to live!"
Ever since their defeat in the Riverlands, then being sent to King's Landing for judgment, and afterward being dispatched as the defeated to the uttermost north of the Seven Kingdoms, clad in black—by the time they were being driven about like common laborers, good news finally came from King's Landing.
Robert was dead.
Yet for reasons unknown, they too had been exposed. Though they had long harbored thoughts of rebellion, in such circumstances—if they did not wish to die—the only thing they could do was rise up in advance.
Under their elder brother's leadership, they slew Jeor Mormont, the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. After that, they regrouped and gathered supplies, then moved against House Umber, amassing the strength needed to claw their way back from the brink.
But the months of constant hiding that followed still proved too much. In this moment, Kevan—who had been forcing himself to hold on to confidence all this time—finally felt himself collapse.
For Tywin, however, none of this was worth dwelling on.
Unlike Kevan's barely sustained resolve, Tywin's confidence only grew stronger as time passed.
He had long noticed the state his younger brother was in, and so at this critical moment, he stepped forward.
A slap, coupled with his brother's words, snapped Kevan out of his bleak despair, making him realize that under the pressure he had fallen into a fog of impaired judgment.
Forcing himself to steady his resolve once more, Kevan and Tywin both turned their gaze westward.
That was where their chance of survival lay.
The ironmen had landed in the North along the Stony Shore.
Yet this glimmer of hope was immediately plunged into peril as another army closed in around them.
"Damn it—they've surrounded us. This is a trap Robb Stark laid out long ago." Seeing enemies still blocking this direction, Kevan instantly grasped the reality of the situation.
His mind replayed the fighting that had begun before dawn, along with everything that had followed.
As a capable military commander himself, once he sensed something was wrong, how could he not understand what the enemy had prepared for him?
Wave after wave of pursuit, relentless as the tide, had inflicted heavy losses and left them fleeing in exhaustion.
And just when they had finally escaped to this place—it turned out this was the real trap.
Lannister soldiers continued to converge on the wooden stronghold from within the forest, making the already limited open ground increasingly crowded.
Behind them were the pursuers; to left and right, forces pressed in, fully prepared and lying in wait. These fresh, elite troops were the final killing blow.
After prolonged pursuit and desperate flight through the dense woods—on top of months of unstable morale during their long escape—the Lannister soldiers, already pushed to the brink of collapse, finally had the last thread snap inside them at this moment.
They fell into chaos.
"The western route is blocked as well—only the north still has an opening!"
Seeing the collapse become undeniable, Kevan wasted no time on further thought, quickly scanning the battlefield to judge the situation.
But at his words, Tywin showed not the slightest hesitation.
"No—that is the real trap."
"If you want to live, there is only one choice: break out!"
Tywin cut off his brother's impulse to continue fleeing. His gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the west.
After saying this, he spoke no further. Lifting Longclaw, its blade likewise stained with blood, he forced his way through the crowd and headed straight toward the western direction.
As he advanced through the press of bodies like a blade cleaving waves, he raised his arm and shouted commands. The sword in his hand struck again and again, cutting down Northern soldiers who, drunk on bloodshed, had chased all the way to him.
Step by step, shouting as he went, Tywin actually managed to rally a group amid the chaos of the battlefield.
In their confusion and panic, they instinctively gathered around the man giving orders, and just as instinctively followed in his footsteps.
Unlike the other directions, the force hemming them in from the west consisted only of infantry.
Then, making use of a slope formed by the small hill of Deepwood Motte, Tywin truly led his men straight into the enemy that sought to encircle them and continue the relentless pursuit.
Blood fell like rain. Curses and screams merged into a single, brutal chorus.
Whether it was heaven's favor, or whether this tightening pocket had truly been little more than a bluff, as the crowd swelled around him, Tywin actually succeeded in smashing through the encirclement.
The remaining Lannister troops, who had only just emerged from the dense forest, were swept along by the flow of bodies and followed it forward without thinking.
Like a flood long choked by blockage, suddenly finding an unexpected breach.
The column that had been fleeing north abruptly changed direction.
...
"Something's wrong!"
"Why are they turning west?!"
Robb, who had been pressing the pursuit and overseeing the attack from the rear, noticed the unexpected development at once.
This was not part of the plan—nor should there have been such a flaw in it.
"That direction… if I recall correctly, that's where Lord Roose Bolton is stationed. How could there be such a gap?"
"Damn it—change the plan immediately. Commit the entire army. Stop using the current tactics."
"We could have relied on this approach to drive them all the way to the coast and finish them in one blow, but since Tywin has seen through it, we can only alter our methods."
"We cannot let them escape any farther. If we want to end this rebellion as quickly as possible, we have no choice but to go all out, regardless of the cost!"
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