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Ooooo!
Just as the horizon had begun to pale, urgent siege horns sounded, cutting through the castle's quiet.
Under the orders carried by those horns, the siege of Riverrun began once again. No one knew how many times it had happened already.
Riverrun was a strong triangular castle, easy to defend and difficult to attack. To the north and east of the castle lay the meeting of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork. With swift rivers on the northeast and east, it possessed a natural defensive system.
To Riverrun's southwest was a large man-made ditch shaped like a bent angle. Sluice gates controlled by Riverrun had been built at both ends of the ditch.
When Riverrun came under attack, opening the sluices let water from the two rivers fill the entire ditch, turning the castle into an isolated island surrounded by water on three sides, nearly impossible to take.
After nearly two months of siege, however, the angled ditch to the southwest had finally been completely filled.
It had been filled with the lives of Riverlands smallfolk.
Because Robb had not entered Tywin's trap, Kevan had received Tywin's order and made up his mind to take Riverrun.
After leading his soldiers back to Riverrun, he had specifically sent out search parties to seize Riverlands smallfolk on a large scale. The Mountain's men contributed the largest number of them.
These Riverlands smallfolk were driven by Daven's troops to carry baskets of earth and fill the ditch.
At first, seeing that all of them were smallfolk of the Riverlands, Edmure Tully, acting lord of Riverrun, could not bear to have the soldiers attack.
Under threat of death, the forced mass of Riverlands smallfolk filled the ditch with terrifying speed.
Seeing this, Edmure's uncle, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully, stepped forward. He overrode Edmure and ordered the archers defending the castle to fire directly.
Facing arrow rain that covered everything, the unprotected smallfolk fell in great swaths like wheat before the scythe.
After one group of smallfolk died, Daven sent up another group. The corpses of the dead in front became material for filling the ditch as well.
From this, one could see that in troubled times, human lives were worth less than dogs.
Edmure had been unable to bear it from the beginning. He went before Lord Hoster Tully, who was seriously ill, sometimes lucid and sometimes confused, and accused Brynden of cruelty.
Fortunately, Lord Hoster happened to be lucid then. Although he had never had an easy relationship with his younger brother, Brynden had decisively resigned his post as Knight of the Bloody Gate in the Vale and returned to Riverrun to fight. That alone was enough for Hoster to trust him.
Moreover, having lived to his age, how could Hoster not understand that his younger brother's decision was the correct one?
After handing command of Riverrun to Brynden, he waved away his unworthy son.
And so, after nearly a month of delay, Riverrun's man-made ditch was finally filled.
After countless small-scale attacks and defenses, Riverrun now faced a full assault from nearly thirty thousand soldiers under Tywin and Kevan together.
House Tully of Riverrun had originally had nearly ten thousand men. But Edmure had previously sent Lord Vance and Lord Piper with four thousand men to demonstrate at the Golden Tooth, only for them to be destroyed instead.
After gathering Lord Piper's nearly one thousand remnants, Riverrun now barely had close to seven thousand defenders.
Rumble, rumble!
A wheeled battering ram was pushed by several dozen Lannister infantrymen toward Riverrun's only western gate.
This wheeled battering ram had been built by the Lannister supply troops since the beginning of the siege.
Its whole shape was like a wooden turtle. The turtle shell was protected by wooden shields covered in rawhide.
Wooden wheels beneath allowed it to move, and the turtle's head was the heavy battering ram. The Lannister soldiers pushing it hid beneath the shell and were well protected.
Beside the wheeled battering ram was a dark mass of at least seven or eight thousand other Lannister infantrymen, holding shields and carrying scaling ladders.
Perhaps because Tywin was personally overseeing the battle this time, all of them seemed eager for battle.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The first to attack were not the Lannister siege infantry, but the dozens of trebuchets in the formation behind them.
The trebuchets, about three yards high, released their counterweights suddenly. Their five- or six-yard throwing arms hurled stones the size of a man's upper body hard toward Riverrun.
Thud, thud, thud!
The stones that struck Riverrun's sturdy walls only left shallow pits that did little damage. The stones that fell inside the castle destroyed some houses and parts of the defensive works.
The greatest blow to morale came from the few stones that accurately struck the wall.
At this moment, Riverrun's walls were crowded with many defenders. Aside from infantry and archers, many conscripted servants were heating covered boilers over fires.
Several trebuchet stones struck with tremendous force, smashing entire lines of defenders standing together into broken limbs. A few unlucky soldiers were struck and crushed into meat paste.
In truth, the damage was not too great, but it still created some disorder on the wall.
Looking at the confusion on the wall, Brynden did not even furrow his brow. His eyes remained fixed on the wheeled battering ram.
He understood that attacks by trebuchets and the like were of little importance. The wheeled battering ram charging straight toward the gate was the key.
After this round of attacks, the Lannister trebuchets fell silent, entering the slow and laborious stage of reloading.
"Loose!"
When the Lannister soldiers entered range of the defending archers, Brynden swung his hand hard and gave the order.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Thousands of sharp arrows traced perfect arcs, falling from the highest point of the sky like rain into the formation of Lannister siege infantry.
Thud, thud, thud!
The broad wheeled battering ram was instantly pierced with countless arrows, like a hedgehog.
But these arrows could not penetrate the rawhide-covered wooden shields of the battering ram. The Lannister infantry hiding within remained unharmed and pushed it forward with all their strength.
The many Lannister siege infantrymen holding shields were less fortunate. Some unlucky men were pierced through the gaps by arrows.
But aside from those struck in vital places and killed on the spot, the other Lannister soldiers hit elsewhere were protected by fine armor. Their injuries were not serious, and they continued advancing.
Overall, Riverrun's volley did not cause much loss to the well-equipped Lannister soldiers.
Brynden took all this in. He had seen the same thing during earlier small-scale assaults.
He had long prepared other measures for the fact that arrow volleys would not do much damage to Lannister siege troops, so his heart was steady and he did not care.
Only the wheeled battering ram was difficult to deal with.
Now that Riverrun's moat had been filled, if the ram broke the gate, with the enemy outnumbering them by at least four to one, the castle would certainly be impossible to hold.
"Archers, second volley. Scorpions, aim at that wheeled battering ram. Begin firing."
At Brynden's order, the archers on Riverrun's wall drew and loosed again.
Meanwhile, the soldiers operating the three scorpions placed on platforms at the left, center, and right of the wall focused their eyes on the wheeled battering ram.
Because scorpions were not especially accurate at long range, Brynden had not ordered them to fire at first. Only when the ram entered the best firing range did he give the order.
Twang, twang, twang!
The bowstrings of the three scorpions on the wall sounded loudly. Three bolts as thick as spears shot into the Lannister formation in the blink of an eye.
Two bolts struck to the left and right of the wheeled battering ram, piercing three Lannister infantrymen and pinning them to the ground.
"Aaaah!"
One Lannister infantryman, whether lucky or unlucky, had been grazed on the left leg by an arrow from the second volley. He limped and had fallen slightly behind the soldier in front of him.
That allowed him to luckily avoid being skewered two at a time by the scorpion bolt like the men beside him.
However, the tip of this bolt just happened to pierce through his right foot, nailing him firmly to the ground and making him scream in agony.
The third bolt hit the front of the wheeled battering ram squarely. Its force pierced the front wooden shield and entered the ram, blowing apart the head of an unlucky Lannister infantryman inside.
But that was as far as the bolt's power went.
At a command from the infantry captain inside the battering ram, two Lannister soldiers threw the headless corpse outside.
Then the wheeled battering ram, now stuck with one scorpion bolt, continued moving toward Riverrun's gate.
Seeing that even a direct hit from a scorpion bolt had not blown the wheeled battering ram apart, Brynden knew this battering ram had been carefully built by the Lannisters.
He immediately ordered the messenger beside him, "Change bolts."
The order quickly reached the soldiers operating the three scorpions. The assisting soldiers immediately took from nearby wooden boxes bolts whose heads were wrapped in thick oilcloth.
Once the bolts were loaded, the assisting soldiers carefully took glass jars full of green liquid from the wooden boxes.
Wildfire.
Wildfire was not hard to obtain on the continent of Westeros. So long as one had gold dragons, one could certainly get it.
Only in the previous peace of the Seven Kingdoms had there been little occasion to use such methods, and all nobles looked down on them.
They considered such things low tricks that violated the spirit of chivalry.
Add to that the difficulty of storing wildfire safely, and the fact that one careless mistake could burn the user alive, and it was basically seen only in the Alchemists' Guild and black markets of King's Landing.
Robb, however, had used wildfire from the beginning without the slightest scruple. Before this war began, to ensure Riverrun could hold long enough, he had written many suggestions for defending the castle.
Edmure certainly had looked down on Robb's suggestions and had not wanted to pay attention to them.
After all, Robb had stressed in his letter that vassals should be summoned for defense, yet Edmure had directly sent four thousand soldiers beneath the Golden Tooth to die for nothing.
But clearly, Brynden had fully accepted Robb's advice. This wildfire was what he had found people to collect. Because there was not much of it, it could only be used selectively.
The assisting soldiers poured the pungent wildfire onto the oilcloth wrapped around the front of the bolts, then ignited it with firestones.
Emerald flame rose from the heads of the bolts and spread over the oilcloth at great speed.
Twang, twang, twang!
Three loud bowstring sounds rang out. One bolt burning with emerald flame struck a Lannister siege infantryman and the scaling ladder he carried.
The green fire spread swiftly along the corpse and the ladder, two excellent fuels. Seeing this, the other Lannister infantry immediately threw down the green-flame-stained ladder.
The surrounding siege infantry also retreated far away from the burning corpse and ladder. An empty space appeared in the dense assault formation.
The remaining two wildfire-burning bolts struck the wheeled battering ram squarely. By now the distance was closer, and the first round had served as a test shot.
From the wall, Brynden saw that the carefully built battering ram had still not been shattered by the bolts. However, after being struck, it stopped moving forward.
A minute later, more than a dozen siege infantrymen with green fire clinging to them crawled out from beneath the battering ram, rolling and struggling wildly on the ground.
Then threads of emerald flame began rising from the ram. Green fire quickly spread, and in the blink of an eye, the wheeled battering ram had become a giant green torch.
Seeing the greatest danger to the gate removed, Brynden's face still did not move, though he secretly let out a breath of relief.
Without the burden of the wheeled battering ram, the seven or eight thousand Lannister siege soldiers actually sped up. Holding shields, they reached Riverrun's walls, raised scaling ladders, and began a brutal assault.
In the Westerlands army's formation, atop a temporary platform, Tywin watched the wheeled battering ram burn with raging green fire. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
He had never expected wildfire to be used this way. That carefully built wheeled battering ram, which did not fear ordinary fire attacks, had been burned away by wildfire bolts before it even reached Riverrun's gate.
Tywin's pale green eyes, flecked with gold, stared at the battlefield ahead. Although his family's soldiers had only just reached Riverrun, he already roughly knew the result.
Pressing his lips together, Tywin turned his head to Kevan beside him. "Without that wheeled battering ram, Riverrun's front will be difficult to break. Have the other houses begin."
"Good."
Ooooo!
As Kevan passed on Tywin's order, horn calls once again sounded from the Westerlands army.
Rumble, rumble!
Siege towers, likewise covered with rawhide and mounted on wooden wheels, nearly twenty yards high, were pushed out from the nearby dense woods by soldiers of the other Westerlands houses.
These siege towers were clearly not as sturdy as the wheeled battering ram. As they moved forward, they creaked constantly.
At the same time, they swayed back and forth, forcing the soldiers standing atop them to grip the edges tightly to steady themselves.
These siege towers had been produced in quantity. Their purpose was only to let the attackers better suppress the defenders on the wall and look for opportunities to get men onto it.
Beside the siege towers was an assault force of nearly fifteen thousand men, made up of other Westerlands houses.
But they did not come straight toward Riverrun's western gate. Instead, they moved toward the southern wall.
'A feint at the front. Tywin wants to make the south wall the main attack and use numbers to overwhelm it?'
Brynden watched the larger enemy force push siege towers toward the south. In his heart, he guessed Tywin's true intent.
Compared with Riverrun's western gate, the south had no gate, only a broader stretch of wall. It truly could accommodate more attacking soldiers climbing at the same time.
Staring at the siege towers that had already rounded the corner toward the south wall, Brynden ordered the messenger beside him, "Tell Lord Tytos Blackwood that if anything unusual happens at the south wall, he is to inform me immediately."
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