While Roman aggressively led his 4,000 elite Vanguard soldiers on his eastern expedition into the Crownlands, the surrounding Riverlands were rapidly descending into an apocalyptic scene of chaotic, demonic slaughter.
Ser Jaime Lannister's devastatingly rapid advance deep into the Riverlands had triggered a massive, catastrophic influx of starving refugees fleeing the western borders. Because the traditional Riverlords possessed neither the food reserves nor the political inclination to support them, the desperate masses inevitably flooded directly into Harrenhal's sovereign territory.
Remarkably, the civic officials of Harrenhal were absolutely overjoyed by the sudden influx of refugees.
Over the past four years, Roman had rigorously educated and trained a massive, highly efficient bureaucracy to govern his local municipalities. Many of these officials were lowborn commoners who had meticulously worked their way up from the dirt through Roman's meritocratic system, and they fiercely cherished any opportunity for administrative promotion.
These massive waves of starving refugees now represented a golden stepping stone for their political advancement. Countless magistrates aggressively volunteered to take the refugees into their specific jurisdictions to aggressively cultivate new farmland and reclaim the surrounding wilderness.
Because the refugees inherently shared the same Riverlands culture and language, as long as the magistrates maintained strict surveillance, filtered out potential Lannister spies, and established clear agricultural quotas, Harrenhal was effectively absorbing a massive, highly motivated, and incredibly cheap civilian workforce.
Consequently, any Harrenhal official who successfully managed a refugee settlement could rapidly ascend from a lowly logistical clerk to a powerful local magistrate, actively competing against other officials through sheer economic performance. This system even triggered fierce, highly competitive bureaucratic rivalries between neighboring magistrates eager to absorb more refugees.
Thousands of desperate refugees were seamlessly absorbed by Harrenhal's flawless logistical machine, quickly settling into heavily fortified agricultural zones to plow new fields, pave stone roads, and dig extensive irrigation canals.
Of course, in times of apocalyptic civil war, a realm is not only flooded with innocent refugees but also plagued by violent, opportunistic bandits. The war-torn Riverlands were currently heavily infested with ruthless highwaymen and cutthroat river pirates multiplying like rats.
However, the territory surrounding Harrenhal was vastly different from the vulnerable landscape it had been four years ago.
Relying on an extensive network of fortified stone watchtowers and a massive, highly motivated civilian militia heavily armed by the Harrenhal armories, the common people living under House Whent were now entirely capable of repelling an assault from a regular aristocratic army, let alone a disorganized band of thieves.
Dealing with these starving bandits was an absolute triviality. Under the strict logistical mobilization of the local magistrates, the heavily armed peasant militias initiated massive, highly organized patrols. The moment a bandit camp was spotted, the militia would rapidly mobilize, encircle the perimeter, and ruthlessly annihilate them.
Simultaneously, Harrenhal's central command post received instantaneous, real-time reports of bandit activity via the Apostle raven network. This allowed the 4,000 highly trained Vanguard reserves Roman had left behind to instantly deploy heavy cavalry to secure any breached borders.
If a bandit group was small, they were simply beaten to death in the dirt by the local farmers. But if their numbers grew too large, they inevitably attracted the terrifying, absolute wrath of Harrenhal's standing army.
On this particular day, a heavily inflated bandit gang aggressively marched toward the southern borders of Harrenhal.
The gang's leader was originally a pathetic, minor highwayman from the southern Riverlands. Previously, under the strict judicial crackdowns of House Tully, he had only ever possessed the courage to ambush lone, unarmed merchants traveling the Kingsroad.
However, since Tywin Lannister's brutal invasion had shattered the King's Peace, hundreds of starving, desperate refugees and deserters had actively joined his violent ranks.
Recently, the massive gang had managed to ambush an isolated, heavily wounded Lannister scouting detachment, utterly slaughtering the exhausted red cloaks through sheer, overwhelming numerical superiority.
"Lord George," a nervous lieutenant whispered. "Are we truly going to raid the sovereign territory of House Whent? I heard terrifying rumors that the demonic army trained by Roman Rivers just annihilated a nine-thousand-strong Crownlands coalition at Antlers! If we encounter his magical monsters, we are entirely doomed!"
Having successfully amassed a massive following, the arrogant bandit leader had officially styled himself "Lord George" and violently demanded his subordinates address him with aristocratic titles.
Now, "Lord George" scoffed arrogantly at his lieutenant's paralyzing cowardice.
"You absolute fool!" George spat. "It is precisely because Roman Rivers is currently busy slaughtering a nine-thousand-strong coalition in the Crownlands that Harrenhal's borders are entirely undefended! He couldn't possibly have left a significant garrison behind!"
"Furthermore," George boasted loudly, puffing out his chest. "We currently possess a massive army of three thousand men! We literally slaughtered Lannister heavy infantry just last week! What on earth do we have to be afraid of?"
The nervous lieutenant desperately wanted to point out that the Lannister "infantry" they had slaughtered was actually just forty starving, half-dead scouts with shattered armor, and that any group of three hundred men could have easily defeated them.
However, George confidently ordered his massive mob to violently prepare for the raid. The starving subordinates could only sigh and begrudgingly agree. After all, they possessed absolutely no food left, and if they did not actively pillage a village soon, the massive gang would inevitably tear itself apart in a violent, cannibalistic mutiny.
Because the gang's internal organization and logistical discipline were incredibly abysmal, it took George an entire, exhausting week just to assemble his mob and march them across the Harrenhal border.
Attacking the towering, impregnable black walls of Harrenhal itself was obviously out of the question. George's primary targets were the sprawling, wealthy agricultural towns directly surrounding the fortress.
By this time in the season, the massive, highly subsidized agricultural fields within Harrenhal's territory had already been fully harvested, leaving behind nothing but neat, withered rows of golden stubble.
Strangely, the first few farming villages George's mob violently charged into were entirely deserted. Not only were there absolutely no peasants to be found, but the villages had been meticulously stripped of every single grain of food, every piece of livestock, every steel tool, and even the thatched straw from the roofs. Yet, the hearths were still warm, indicating the peasants had only just evacuated.
Many of the terrified bandits genuinely believed they were being haunted by ghosts, while others frantically whispered that the horrific slaughter in the Riverlands had directly summoned the Stranger to harvest the living.
Every single village George's mob passed through was exactly the same; there was absolutely not a single crumb of food to be found. Driven to the absolute brink of starvation, the desperate bandits had resorted to eating boiled grass and gnawing on tree bark. They were mere days away from violently butchering each other for meat.
Eventually, the massive gang stumbled upon a moderately sized agricultural town that had not yet constructed its defensive stone walls and appeared completely undefended. George and his starving men easily stormed into the muddy streets.
Simultaneously, they were absolutely overjoyed to discover that several of the larger houses still contained small, hastily abandoned caches of grain and salted meat. It wasn't a feast, but it was enough to keep them alive.
As for why the terrified peasants had mysteriously chosen to leave small amounts of precious food behind during a highly organized evacuation, the starving bandits possessed neither the intellect nor the patience to question the anomaly. They immediately began violently brawling with their own comrades over the meager scraps.
In the end, George was forced to violently beat several men to death to restore order. He aggressively commanded the gang to split into highly organized, small squads to systematically search the town, which finally calmed the starving mob down.
Once the specific search quadrants were assigned, the desperate bandits cheered wildly, kicked down the heavy oak doors, and frantically rushed into the houses to violently loot the food.
But their starving joy was terrifyingly short-lived.
The seemingly deserted town violently erupted into a lethal, perfectly coordinated counterattack.
Inside a bedroom, a heavily armed Harrenhal militiaman silently pushed open the false back of a wardrobe, fired a heavy, armor-piercing crossbow bolt directly through a looter's throat, and seamlessly vanished back into the hidden compartment.
In the kitchens, squads of heavily armed townspeople violently burst out from hidden trapdoors beneath the floorboards, viciously stabbing the surprised bandits to death before dragging their bleeding corpses down into the dark.
Outside in the streets, highly trained militia snipers suddenly emerged from heavily fortified, camouflaged firing positions on the rooftops, unleashing a devastating, synchronized crossfire that instantly pinned the panicking bandits down in the mud.
What infuriated George the absolute most was that the townspeople operated like lethal, terrifying ghosts. They would execute a single, devastating ambush, and then instantly vanish back into their hidden fortifications, leaving the surviving bandits completely unable to locate them.
George was absolutely livid. His eyes bulged with sheer, unadulterated rage.
"Search!" George roared, drawing his rusted sword. "Tear this entire wretched town apart! I want to see exactly where these cowardly peasants are hiding! What, did they magically burrow into the earth like moles?!"
Ironically, George was entirely correct. The frantic bandits quickly discovered that the entire village was built directly on top of a massive, heavily fortified subterranean tunnel network.
"Damn them to the seven hells!" George screamed. "How dare these filthy peasants make a fool of me?! Go down into those tunnels and drag them out into the light! I will personally skin every last one of them alive!"
At George's violent command, hundreds of enraged bandits roared and recklessly charged down into the dark, narrow tunnel entrances.
However, the moment they stepped into the pitch-black tunnels, the absolute slaughter began.
The ingenious Harrenhal engineers had specifically carved small, highly fortified "murder holes" directly into the sides of the tunnel entrances. From the absolute safety of these hidden alcoves, the heavily armored militiamen effortlessly thrust short, steel-tipped spears directly into the unarmored faces and throats of the charging bandits.
Dozens of bandits were brutally skewered before they even took five steps underground. When the survivors finally managed to push past the entrance, they were met with an even more terrifying, claustrophobic nightmare. The Harrenhal tunnels were intentionally dug in sharp, zig-zagging arcs, intentionally restricting the bandits' field of vision to a few feet, and the earthen floors were heavily rigged with lethal, concealed spike traps.
After losing another fifty men to the brutal, unseen traps, the surviving vanguard of the gang finally reached a massive, cavernous intersection. The bandits halted in absolute confusion, having no idea which branching tunnel to take.
"This looks like a massive crossroad," a terrified bandit whispered into the dark. "Which way do we go?"
Just as the panicked bandits were debating their route, a series of heavy, deafening metallic clangs echoed from above. Massive, iron-reinforced portcullises violently crashed down from the ceiling, completely sealing off the tunnel exits and permanently trapping the terrified bandits inside the dark intersection.
Immediately afterward, a dozen small, sparking ceramic pots were violently hurled down from hidden murder holes in the ceiling.
The pots shattered against the stone, violently erupting. The entire subterranean chamber was instantly, completely engulfed in a blinding, roaring inferno of superheated, liquid Pale Flame. The trapped bandits let out horrifying, shrill screams of absolute agony as the magical fire instantly melted their skin to their bones.
Simultaneously, highly trained Harrenhal militiamen seamlessly popped out from hidden, fire-proofed tunnel offshoots, ruthlessly slitting the throats of any bandits attempting to escape the flames, before instantly vanishing back into the walls.
When the handful of terrified survivors finally scrambled back up to the surface, they frantically reported the apocalyptic subterranean slaughter to George. The bandit leader was completely beside himself with rage.
"Set the wretched tunnels on fire!" George screamed hysterically. "Flood them with the river! I absolutely refuse to believe we cannot slaughter a bunch of dirt-farming peasants!"
But his brutal, primitive tactics were utterly, entirely useless.
Roman's brilliant civic engineers had designed the tunnel network specifically to withstand total siege warfare. The subterranean labyrinth was equipped with heavy, watertight bulkheads, deep drainage cisterns, advanced flame-deflecting ventilation shafts, and complex smoke-redirection valves.
No matter what destructive tactics the desperate bandits attempted, the Harrenhal infrastructure effortlessly neutralized them. In fact, every single time the gang attempted to break a barricade, a hidden militiaman would effortlessly snipe them through a murder hole. As the hours dragged on and the body count climbed, the bandits' violent arrogance rapidly dissolved into sheer, paralyzing terror.
Eventually, completely unable to bear the extreme psychological strain of fighting an invisible, invincible enemy, George furiously ordered his surviving men to grab whatever meager scraps of food they had found and immediately flee the cursed town.
When the terrified, exhausted mob finally regrouped in the muddy fields outside the village, George conducted a frantic headcount.
Over seven hundred of his men had been violently slaughtered.
George felt a terrifying, icy chill grip his heart. He had secured absolutely zero wealth, gained barely enough food to last a day, and had lost a quarter of his entire fighting force to a bunch of invisible peasant farmers. How on earth was he supposed to establish a terrifying reputation in the Riverlands if he couldn't even successfully pillage an undefended village?
But George's grand, criminal ambitions were violently, permanently cut short.
A terrified scout sprinted up to him, his face completely pale with absolute, unadulterated horror.
"Lord George!" the scout screamed, pointing frantically toward the southern horizon. "The horizon... the horizon has turned completely silver!"
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