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Bloodwind's howl was the signal.
The Wolfguard answered at once. Each rider drew two explosive fruits from a padded pouch and hurled them toward the densest knots of Westermen.
Boom, boom, boom!
Fire, smoke, broken shields, and severed limbs burst through Kevan Lannister's front line. Men who had been holding formation a breath earlier threw themselves aside in panic.
The explosions did not kill as many men as a full cavalry charge, but they did something more precious. They made men look away from their officers, from their banners, from the rhythm of command. They made each soldier wonder whether the next strange fruit would land at his own feet.
Kevan watched from the center, his face drawn tight.
This was not how war was supposed to unfold.
When his army had reached the plain below the Golden Tooth, Robb Stark's men had already been waiting. Scouts from both sides had skirmished briefly, and Kevan had seen the numbers for himself. The northern infantry before him was far smaller than his own host.
He still expected Addam Marbrand to strike from the Golden Tooth and take the northmen in the rear.
So Kevan had chosen the steady answer: a broad infantry formation, spears forward, archers behind, cavalry held in reserve. Against northern cavalry, that should have been enough.
In any ordinary battle, it would have been a sound answer. Spears fixed cavalry. Archers punished infantry. Reserve horsemen sealed gaps. Kevan had commanded enough men to know that simple, disciplined answers often won wars.
But Robb Stark fought like a man using rules Westeros had not yet learned.
From what Robb remembered of warfare in his previous life, cavalry had dominated battlefields for long ages because it could choose where to strike. Infantry could hold ground, but cavalry decided shape, rhythm, and pursuit.
Robb had turned that knowledge into a blade.
The infantry at the front was not his true strength. Four thousand of the men there were Westerlands and Stormlands prisoners pushed into service, with one thousand northern overseers behind them to keep the line from dissolving. Their task was to pin Kevan's center in place.
Those prisoners did not need to defeat the Lannister center. They only needed to occupy its weapons, force its shields forward, and keep its attention fixed long enough for Robb's true blades to move.
The light cavalry rode the edges, cutting away at exposed flanks, harassing, retreating, returning, forcing the Lannister line to stretch and turn.
The heavy cavalry, equipped with armor captured from Addam's force, struck the seams.
And where men hesitated, Bloodwind's pack tore the hesitation apart.
"Center forward!" Kevan ordered. "Break their infantry!"
The Lannister center advanced with shields locked.
Bloodwind gave a short howl.
The Wolfguard threw the ice crystal fruits.
The pale fruits spun through the air in a neat row. For a heartbeat, soldiers on both sides watched them with the same bewilderment.
Crack!
A wall of ice burst from the ground before the Lannister center, swallowing the first ranks in glittering crystal. Some men were frozen to the waist. Some had hands fused to shields or feet trapped in the earth. The soldiers behind them crashed into the sudden obstacle and fell over one another.
"Ice magic!"
"Fire magic!"
"The northmen have sorcery!"
The cries mattered more than the ice itself. Fear gave the frozen wall a life of its own. Men several ranks back, who could not even see what had happened, began to shove away from it.
Panic spread faster than commands could stop it.
A few soldiers tried to drag their comrades free. Others cut off frozen hands or legs rather than be pulled down with them. The center lost its rhythm, and in that lost rhythm Robb's heavy cavalry struck.
The charge split Kevan's formation open.
Among the men in Robb's front line, a surrendered Stormlands soldier from Felwood stabbed at the Westermen before him with shaking hands. He had once marched beside men like these. Now a northern overseer stood behind him, and a direwolf banner flew above him.
'I will never see Felwood again.'
Then the line surged, and thinking became impossible.
He thrust because the man before him wore a lion, because the man behind him wore a direwolf, and because stopping meant dying between them.
Rumor moved through the Lannister ranks like poison.
"Lord Kevan is retreating!"
"The center has broken!"
"The wolves are behind us!"
Some men fled. Others threw down weapons and surrendered to a northern force smaller than their own. Once the first group knelt and lived, more followed.
The collapse spread unevenly. One company still fought in good order while the men beside them ran. Another surrendered only to be trampled by Westermen trying to flee over them. The field lost all shape.
Kevan tried to hold the center long enough to withdraw in order, but order was gone. At last, he turned with the remaining Westerlands cavalry and rode hard from the field.
Only about two thousand horsemen escaped with him.
Patrek Mallister and Thormad stayed hidden until Kevan's riders passed, then rode toward Robb's banners with empty hands raised.
Robb saw them while the pursuit was still raging. He and Bloodwind had been cutting through fleeing Westermen, drawing blood pact points from enemies who no longer had the discipline to resist. Bloodwind's physical and magical attributes had both climbed close to fifty as the battle went on, and every new threshold made the great direwolf seem less like a beast and more like a calamity given flesh.
Red mist seeped from the dying and vanished into man and wolf. Robb had long since stopped pretending the sight was ordinary. He simply used it.
Robb did not spare fleeing enemies out of kindness.
Mercy in the wrong place only made the next war bloodier.
Patrek reached him breathless. "Your Grace! Riverrun is in danger."
Robb turned sharply.
Patrek told him everything: Stone Hedge, Marq Piper, Edmure's fingers, Brynden captured, the staged battle, Riverrun's gate nearly lost.
Robb listened without interrupting.
When Patrek finished, Robb's eyes were cold.
Crey had watched House Piper. Robb's intelligence net had watched House Piper. But messages could pass through prisoners, through victory reports, through servants, through a dozen tiny gaps no net could seal.
No net was perfect.
The thought angered him precisely because it was true. He had built a net across the south, but a net was still full of holes.
"Gendry," Robb said.
"Your Grace."
"Send messengers. Stop the pursuit. Lord Rickard is to come down from the Golden Tooth and take over the camp. Count the prisoners. Clear the battlefield. Replenish our infantry ranks with suitable prisoners from the Golden Tooth."
"And us?"
"We leave for Riverrun tomorrow."
Patrek bowed his head. "Your Grace, let me come."
Thormad stepped forward as well. "Me too."
Robb looked at them. Both men were exhausted. Both had ridden through betrayal and death to reach him.
"You will come," he said.
Near Riverrun, sunset painted the walls red.
For a day and a half, Lord Tytos Blackwood had defended the castle with four thousand men who were not the elite of Robb's army. The attackers outside were a mixed force: Westermen and Riverlands recruits driven forward in wave after wave.
The defenders had learned quickly that the Riverlands recruits in the attacking lines fought with dead eyes. Some came forward because they feared the men behind them. Some came forward because they had already done too much to be forgiven.
Six assaults had already failed.
Nearly two thousand attackers lay dead or maimed beneath the walls.
Ser Marq Piper watched the latest retreat with a face like stone. Feints had failed. Tricks had failed. Tytos saw through each attempt before it could ripen.
Marq knew Riverrun's walls. He knew its habits, its blind spots, its pride. Tytos knew enough to refuse every invitation.
Then Tywin Lannister arrived with fifteen thousand men after joining Lord Serrett's force.
Marq went to meet him at once.
Tywin looked at Riverrun, then at Marq. "I am disappointed. I expected you to welcome me inside the castle."
Marq lowered his head. "Give me three days, my lord."
Tywin said nothing.
"Two days," Marq said quickly. "I can take it in two."
"No," Tywin answered. "Today I will destroy this ancient castle."
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