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The horses' hooves splashed through the slush and thaw, kicking up muddy water with a rhythmic slapping sound that echoed faintly in the winter air.
At the edge of a stream just outside the crumbling walls of Oldstones, stood two mounted figures: Lord Lyonel Corbray and his younger brother, and heir, Ser Lyn Corbray.
The old, abandoned stronghold lood above them, its weathered stone walls crowned with layers of snow that had yet to lt, clinging stubbornly to the battlents like a mory of winter refusing to fade.
Their company of two thousand mounted n had taken temporary shelter within the ruins, using the dilapidated fortress as a place to rest and regroup after their long, grueling pursuit.
Stripping off his gloves, Ser Lyn knelt by the stream and scooped up a handful of the ice-cold water. Without hesitation, he splashed it across his face in one sharp, bracing motion.
The freezing sting bit deep into his skin, cutting straight to the bone, but it jolted him awake like a slap across the cheeks.
"Co on down, brother. Wash your face while you still can," he called out, glancing up toward the silent figure still seated atop his horse. "We might not get another chance once we're back on the road."
Lyonel Corbray, cloaked in black leather and fur, stirred at the sound of his brother's voice. His gaze drifted slowly from Lyn's face to the longsword hanging at his brother's hip, then back again. At last, he gave a small nod, the gesture as slow and weary as the snow-laden wind brushing past them.
Swinging down from the saddle, his boots landed with a heavy squelch in the thick, half-frozen mud.
A man in his forties and a seasoned commander of the Vale's cavalry, Lord Lyonel rely frowned as he glanced down at the muck swallowing his feet. Without a word, he pulled his boots free and walked over to where Lyn knelt by the stream.
He crouched beside his younger brother, his eyes settling not on the water itself, but on the clumps of brittle yellow grass growing along the bank — each blade tipped with the last stubborn remnants of snow, now hardened into icy crystals that clung like shards of frost.
A long sigh escaped his chest, drawn deep from within.
Their column had broken off from Yohn Royce's main force at Mumr's Ford, splitting to pursue Lord Mallister's retreating five hundred northward through unfamiliar terrain. But despite days of effort, they had never managed to close the distance.
And truthfully, sowhere deep inside, Lyonel Corbray hadn't wanted to catch them in the first place.
He would have been perfectly content to drive them away and leave it at that, sparing his n a needless fight in a war he did not truly believe in.
But his younger brother was a different sort altogether.
Lyn Corbray was a man consud by the thrill of battle, a warrior through and through, always at the vanguard, always eager to charge ahead with steel in hand and fire in his blood.
As the commanding lord of the Vale host, Lyonel could not openly say what he truly thought. He could not speak the words: "Let them go, we've done enough." He could not simply turn back.
And yet, neither could he rein in his brother's reckless zeal.
So in the end, he had no choice but to let events unfold as they would. With Lyn pressing forward at every turn, he found himself swept along, his army driving ever deeper into hostile territory, like a lone spear thrust blindly into the dark, with no reinforcents in sight.
And what did they get for all that effort?
After days of pursuit, after riding so hard and so long, they could do nothing but watch helplessly as the enemy troops flying the banners of the Riverlands and the North, slipped right into the gates of Seagard, the stronghold of House Mallister.
The gates slamd shut behind them, heavy and final, and the two brothers were left outside in the cold, standing there in awkward silence, their faces tight with frustration and bitter disappointnt.
Even Lyn Corbray, as reckless and hot-blooded as he was, couldn't possibly order an assault on Seagard. That castle was the keystone fortress against the ironborn's coastal raids, and attacking it now would be suicide.
No one with a working mind would do sothing so foolish, not unless they had a death wish and wanted to take a thousand n down with them.
So after a day of standing in the freezing wind outside Seagard's high walls, Lord Lyonel Corbray placed a firm hand on his disgruntled brother's shoulder and made the only decision left to him. He turned to his soldiers and announced, with asured calm, that their mission was complete and it was ti to return.
The n didn't complain.
They'd already learned their lesson the hard way… not from fighting, but from the last ti they'd tried to test themselves against those sa towering walls. The Vale's knights, brave as they were, had co to realize just how poorly suited they were for storming castles.
So when their commander gave the order to retreat instead of laying siege, most were secretly relieved.
No loot, perhaps. No glory to show for it. But at least they wouldn't have to bleed or die for a cause that wasn't theirs. And for many, that alone was worth more than gold.
As for spoils, well, no one truly minded. After all, it hadn't been long since they'd crushed Robb Stark's twenty-thousand-strong host in a single battle. That victory alone had fed the pride of the Vale's soldiers until it overflowed.
This, what they were doing now, was rely the next step; pressing the advantage, stretching their reach a little further before the tides turned.
So the army began its journey south, but they had barely marched more than a few miles when the storm hit them.
A blizzard, sudden and fierce, swept down from the sky like a living beast. Snow poured from the heavens in thick, blinding sheets, the wind screaming through the open plains with a voice sharp as broken glass.
Many of the younger soldiers had never seen anything like it. Even the older ones, though more seasoned, ca from a land of steep mountains and narrow valleys. In the Vale, snowstorms didn't often rage with such raw power. The landscape there shaped the weather, breaking up the wind and muffling the snow. But here, on the flat, open plains of the Riverlands, there was nothing to stop it.
And so when the snow ca, heavy and relentless, and the temperature plumted all at once, many of the n simply couldn't endure it. Their bodies, unprepared for such a sudden freeze, began to fail. One after another, soldiers fell ill, shivering and fevered, their strength drained by the cold.
Morale plumted alongside their health. The army's condition was deteriorating fast, and Lord Lyonel Corbray knew it.
A seasoned commander, Lyonel understood better than anyone that in such an open and empty stretch of land, stopping even for a short while could be fatal. There was no cover here, no high ground to hold. If they stalled, even for a night, the entire army could be swallowed up by the storm.
They had to find shelter… real shelter, and fast. A place large enough for two thousand n to rest, even just temporarily, where they could get out of the wind and snow and light so fires without fear of exposure or collapse. But the road ahead offered nothing. There were no villages to speak of, no inns or halls to take refuge in. Edmure Tully had seen to that, withdrawing his people and stripping the land bare. The few small hamlets they passed were too small, too empty to hold so many n.
It was a desperate situation!
Even Lord Lyonel himself, wrapped in layers of fur and armor, had frozen snot running down his face each morning when he woke. What hope, then, did his common soldiers have? Most of them wore only thin, simple clothing… not ant for this kind of cold, not ant for war in winter.
Every morning, his aides ca to him with new reports of frostbite spreading through the ranks. Dozens at a ti, their skin blackened or cracked, their hands and feet stiff and numb. The cold was stealing pieces of them, one limb at a ti.
More than once, the Lord of Heart's Ho found himself silently thanking the gods that he hadn't followed his brother's advice.
If he had given in to Lyn back at Seagard and tried to storm the town, not only would they have failed, but after this brutal freeze, the army's strength would've been reduced to a fraction of what it once was, less than one-third, perhaps. Their fighting power would have all but vanished, and with morale this low, even a single counterattack from the Mallisters could've shattered them.
And Lyonel Corbray knew he had no faith, not even a shred, that he could withstand a surprise assault from within Seagard's walls in their current state.
So, with no other options left, he and his brother spread out the maps and searched for anything—any place at all that could offer refuge.
Eventually, they chose a destination that hadn't even been part of their original route: the ruins of the Mudds' old stronghold, a once-proud seat now long since destroyed.
Oldstones!
And so they marched!
Five more days in the blizzard. Five days of n collapsing in the snow, five days of pain and cold and howling wind, and in the end, they reached it. Not without loss, of course…
Three hundred n had fallen behind or gone missing during the journey. But Lord Lyonel Corbray had managed to bring the rest of the army to Oldstone, where at least the outer walls still stood, strong enough to hold back so of the wind.
That, at least, was sothing.
He still had so grain and stores left under his command. Now was not the ti to be stingy. They tore apart what remained of the old Mudd castle, splintered old furniture, broken doors, rotting floorboards, anything they could burn. Fires were lit, and from those fires ca the first real warmth the army had felt in days.
The first pots of hot food were cooked.
It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough to keep the soldiers from breaking apart completely.
All across the ruined courtyard, n huddled beside the cold stone walls, doing everything they could to build themselves makeshift shelters. So used shields and broken wagons, others old canvas or bits of leather. The results were awkward, misshapen, and far from elegant, but no one cared how they looked.
All that mattered was survival.
If it could block the wind, if it could trap even the faintest trace of warmth, it was worth its weight in gold.
In that mont, no one gave a damn about appearances. Beauty and pride ant nothing now. Only staying alive mattered, and every soldier, no matter how proud, whispered silent prayers of thanks to whatever gods still listened.
And so, after holding on for what felt like an eternity, after scouring every corner of that haunted ruin and stripping it bare of anything that moved, Lord Lyonel Corbray's army finally made it through the blizzard.
Sohow, through sheer will and desperate resourcefulness, Lord Lyonel Corbray and his army survived the storm.
They survived!
And in the end, they saw it, that long-awaited light, that warmth they had almost forgotten existed. The sun.
When the first pale ray rose gently over the eastern horizon, many soldiers just stood there, staring in stunned silence. Their faces were mottled with frostbite, blotched blue and purple, skin cracked and raw, but in that mont, all of it was forgotten. Rough, muddied tears welled up in their eyes and spilled freely down their cheeks, warm and unstoppable.
They had never realized just how much they loved the sun.
They had never imagined that sothing so ordinary could feel so holy.
The light fell over them like a blessing. It kissed their skin, and though the heat was faint and distant, it felt like it was lighting fires in their bones. So couldn't stop smiling. Others just wept. And more than a few dropped to their knees right where they stood, bowing toward the east with quiet reverence, offering prayers not out of ritual, but from deep, aching gratitude.
It was the kind of sunrise that made n believe in gods again.
But no matter how deeply they were moved, no matter how intense the mont felt, their situation was still far from hopeful.
Because the ti they'd spent hiding from the storm inside Runestone was ti they were originally ant to use heading south — to rush back and rejoin Yohn Royce's main force.
And as a result, their supply lines had taken a fatal blow. Their food stores were gone. Completely and utterly exhausted.
"Brother… what do we do now?"
Lyn Corbray, of course, understood exactly how dangerous the situation had beco. In truth, only now had the army truly reached the brink of crisis.
This wasn't twenty n. Not two hundred. It was two thousand!
And the people of the Riverlands, long before this war ever began, had already harvested every last bit of grain from their fields. On top of that, they had carried out a thorough scorched-earth strategy. There was nothing left for plunder. No food and supplies, they couldn't even rely on raiding to fill their bellies.
And as for hunting? That was an even more hopeless thought. What place in the world could be so rich, so teeming with ga, that after a snowstorm it could feed a force of two thousand n, all of them grown and hungry? Not even the Reach could manage that… let alone here.
"Sigh… I don't know," Lyonel murmured, his voice heavy. "If we still can't find anything to eat… then we're down to just two options."
Lyn Corbray knew exactly what her brother ant by just two options.
The first: kill the horses!
Their two thousand n were all mounted cavalry. With their warhorses, they could stretch their survival a little longer. But once the horses were slaughtered, they would be severing their own backbone, casting aside the very strength that kept them ard and dangerous. From that point on, their fate would be left entirely up to chance.
It would an placing all their hopes on Yohn Royce winning his battles in the south, on him crushing the Riverlands' resistance swiftly and completely.
If he didn't, if he failed, then without their horses, this cavalry force, ard and trained as it was, would not even be able to stand against an equal number of Riverlands infantry.
They had never trained to fight on foot.
The second option was a desperate gamble.
The nearest castle was Raventree Hall, seat of House Blackwood. While they still had strength left, they could throw everything they had into one last all-or-nothing assault, wagering it all on whether they could seize that castle by force.
If they succeeded, then the supplies inside would be enough to breathe life back into this army that was already hanging by a thread.
And the people inside, their food, their stores, their wealth, would fill the army's empty hands and hollow stomachs alike.
But if they failed, if they couldn't take the castle… then that would be the end of them, completely and irreversibly.
Because they had no food. And once the attack failed and they were forced to start slaughtering horses, if the castle's defenders so much as caught a glimpse of what was happening, the news that this army was facing starvation would spread across the castle walls in an instant.
And at that point, they wouldn't be able to run, nor would they be able to win. All they could do was wait… wait without knowing when the garrison inside Raventree Hall would strike back. Wait for the mont their doom ca crashing down on them.
No matter how you looked at it, making this choice was almost impossible.
If they had been common folk, it would have been simple. They would have just surrendered. But they were not common folk. They were soldiers. And not just any soldiers; they were proud warriors of the Vale, the army that had once defeated Robb Stark, the n who believed themselves to be the greatest cavalry in all the Seven Kingdoms.
How could they possibly surrender to the Riverlands? The Riverlands, one of the weakest military regions in all of Westeros?
How could they give up before even fighting a single real battle?
Lyonel Corbray did not want to do it. He could not imagine bearing the sha of returning to the Vale if he did. But the thought of leading over a thousand soldiers, n covered in frostbite and shaking with cold, into a charge against the towering walls of Raventree Hall was sothing he could barely bring himself to consider
Just thinking about it made the Lord of Heart's Ho flinch.
"What if we leave, brother?" Lyn Corbray said quietly. "Just head south. No matter how many of us make it in the end, escaping with so of our n is still better than dying here. If we all fall in this place… that'll be the end of House Corbray."
Lyonel turned to look at his younger brother, the sa one who had insisted so strongly on chasing the enemy in the first place. His gaze wavered for a long mont, but in the end, he said nothing.
There was sothing Lyn had gotten wrong.
Even if the two of them died here, House Corbray wouldn't be wiped out.
His second wife was already carrying his child.
And back at Heart's Ho, his youngest brother, Lucas Corbray, was currently serving as the acting lord in his place.
According to the plan he'd made before the campaign began, if his wife, the daughter of a wealthy rchant from Gulltown, gave birth to a girl, Lyn would still be nad his heir.
But if Lyn died here alongside him, then he would have nothing. No title, no legacy, no claim to the family na.
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[Chapter End's]
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