A week after the failed assault on Brandon's Rest, Jun Wei sat on his throne in his command ship, listening to the collected intel and growling to himself. His superiors would have his head if they understood how abysmal a failure this invasion had been so far. 1000 ships were lost, 60,000 troops dead or unaccounted for, and still, what was left of his fleet was sitting offshore, starving and losing battle readiness. And he had zero victories, zero captures of landing locations, nothing to show for the cost. He goaded his commanders with threats of execution to devise a plan that would yield some victory and a port where they could land and support an invasion farther inland.
One group of his mages had the ability to inhabit birds and see whatever they saw. It was dangerous because if the bird were killed while inhabited, the mage would also die. But the whole group of the bird mages had produced a fairly accurate map of the coast. Points of defense and population centers were also marked out. They understood the lay of the land much better now, but to little effect so far. Deep within the bowels of the command ship, a dark mage was contacting a mage in the Zon homeland. All the intel, including maps, was being sent home. This mage was making every effort to obfuscate the fact that there had been no victory.
At last, a young Zonian leader came up with a cohesive battle plan that might yield a victory. Jun Wei ordered that this plan be carried out, and it was. The final assault was coming.
The Zonian prisoners at Brandon's Rest were rather shocked by their treatment. They were carefully housed, healed, and fed. They were expected to work hard at various guarded duties, but they were not overworked, tortured, or mistreated. Once they had been interviewed and taken to the prisoner building, they fell into a routine. There were two exceptions to this treatment, and in both cases, the punishment for the offending parties was harsh. In one case, a guard had decided to have a one-on-one fight with a prisoner. The guard was stripped of his rank and sent back to King's Landing. In the second case, two guards had raped and murdered one of the few Zonian females that had been captured. In that case, Arya personally oversaw their punishment. The two guards were taken in front of the entire prison population and severely whipped. They were stripped of their ranks and sent back to King's Landing on the next prison train in dishonor. These two instances had a profound effect on both the prisoners and the troops. The troops understood that, no matter how brutal the enemy they faced was, they were not allowed to sink to that enemy's level. And the prisoners recognized that, though they were captured, they would not be mistreated without consequences for those who acted badly. On the other hand, the one time that a group of prisoners tried to escape from their captivity at the Pyre of Bodies, they had all been caught and killed.
The Braavos mercenaries unloaded at the train station and moved south. Their leader was a wily veteran of many engagements, and they all looked up to him. When they arrived at the front lines, he checked in with the commander. After assessing the stalemate, he convinced the commander to let them try another tactic. He marched his troops all the way to the coast west of the battle front. There were 5 Zonian ships beached there, and his troops all rappelled down the cliffs and captured all 5. One ship was badly damaged by gunfire, and they began breaking down that ship for construction materials. The skeleton crews of the other 4 ships were quickly dispatched, and the prisoner wind users were freed, fed, and healed. Braavos flags were raised, and with gentle coaxing, the wind users helped thin skeleton crews sail these ships out to the Iron Isles. The troops on the beach began constructing portable defense shields. These shields had slots in them for archers to fire through. They had fold-out side shields so that several of them could be connected to form a defense line. When these were finished, the contingent moved east down the beach.
The Zonians that were invading below Barrowton had found an alcove in the canyon they were holding, which protected them from attacks from the water. In the entire week of back-and-forth fighting, no attack had come from behind. They were mortally surprised by the sudden rain of arrows from the beach. Resting Zonian troops were roused to pursue the new attackers, only to discover that the attackers had defenses in place against such a response. The Braavos archers wreaked havoc among the resting troops and mages and slowed the approach of Zonian troops. Several Zonian mages set fire to these wooden defenses, but there was water easily at hand, and these attacks did little to the defense walls. Being attacked from two directions broke the morale of the Zonian troops, and they slowly lost ground in both directions. Within a few days, that fight was over thanks to the quick thinking of the Braavos leader and his stout troops. Communications were sent to the 2 ships on the Iron Isles, now with full crews and many wind users, to come pick up the whole group at the beach. The Braavos troops were far happier with ships to move around on rather than by train or on foot. They soon linked up with the full Braavos fleet, and though their duty was to provide land-based support, they sailed with the other Braavos ships to their next battle destination.