Chapter 677

The sun dipped westward, casting long shadows across the Reach. Another spring day on the vast plains was drawing to an end.

Nearly twenty miles west of where the morning’s one-sided bombardment had taken place, the massive Reach army had set up camp. Sixty thousand infantry, along with an uncountable number of auxiliaries and camp followers, stretched across the landscape in a sprawling encampment so vast it extended beyond the horizon. At the heart of this city-sized war camp, within its grandest and most opulent tent, the core members of the joint command convened in an atmosphere thick with tension and unease, exchanging reports and debating new strategies.

This was a serious military council—yet many of those present found themselves in a state of numb bewilderment.

They weren’t supposed to be here.

When they had risen that morning, the army had been encamped further east, confident and determined, marching out in full battle order, prepared to engage the invaders in a decisive clash that would go down in history.

By nightfall, they had pitched a new camp further west—closer to Highgarden than they had been at dawn. Their previous camp had been seized by the Queen’s army.

What baffled them the most was that they had not suffered a crushing defeat. In fact, most of them had never even glimpsed the enemy.

The vanguard, a force meant to serve as bait, had broken within half an hour of entering the battlefield—without luring the enemy into a trap. That in itself was no disaster; the command had never fully relied on the feint succeeding. If the enemy refused to be baited, they would simply shift to a conventional battle.

Yet when the vanguard returned, they did not come empty-handed. They carried back a grim message: the Queen’s army possessed far more firearms than expected, with a lethality beyond anything anticipated—sweeping through infantry formations like a farmer tilling the earth.

Lord Rowan, who had commanded the vanguard, had no reason to exaggerate the enemy’s strength to excuse his failure. The maimed and dying soldiers he brought back served as irrefutable proof. Now, even within the command tent, debate raged: should they press forward through the firestorm, or should they retreat and reconsider? Each side had its arguments, but Aegon had hesitated, swayed by his Hand, Jon Connington. In the time wasted on indecision, the army had been forced into retreat after retreat before the relentless, methodical advance of the enemy’s trapezoidal formations—falling back until, at sunset, they had no choice but to dig in.

The Reach lords were shaken. Never before had they encountered anything like this—something that defied both instinct and military convention. They had laid a perfect trap, encircled the enemy, closed in from all sides, ready to crush them whole…

Yet they could not digest what they had swallowed.

In fact, the enemy was wreaking havoc in their very belly—defying the pressure from all sides and, in the span of a single day, pushing several miles closer to Highgarden, despite being surrounded by a hundred thousand men.

The Western Expedition had already advanced a hundred miles into the Reach before today. But allowing an enemy to penetrate was one thing—failing to stop them when you tried was something else entirely.

In simple terms, the Reach had intended to trap the enemy inside and slaughter them.

Instead, they had let a tiger into their home.

As the realization sank in, an ominous thought crept into the minds of the commanders:

That damnable Night’s Watch bastard.

It was as if the gods had sent him to break them.

...

"The routed troops have been gathered and placed in a separate camp to prevent further damage to morale," Randyll Tarly was the first to break the silence. "This morning, I argued for an immediate assault, but Lord Mace insisted on caution. Well, if we’re committed to caution, let’s see it through—let’s continue using our cavalry to slow their advance, fighting a war of attrition, and write off both Highgarden and this year’s spring planting as acceptable losses. As long as we cut off their supply lines along the Roseroad, their thirty thousand men, stranded deep in the Reach, will starve all the same."

"Abandon Highgarden?"

Mace Tyrell’s mustache bristled in fury. He had already watched countless eastern vassals abandon their castles in the name of scorched earth tactics—he could hardly claim that his own stronghold was a special exception. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself and chose his words carefully. "Highgarden is the seat of the Reach! We have discussed this before—if Highgarden falls, the entire Reach will lose the will to fight! And if we miss the planting season, yes, perhaps we’ll starve them, but how many of our own peasants will die alongside them?"

"Morale, morale!" Randyll snapped. "Our men were at their peak this morning—why didn’t we fight then?" His frustration boiled over, decorum be damned. His own lands lay exposed to the southern advance of the Dragon Queen’s Dornish allies, and yet here he was, fighting for the Reach as a whole, only for both his liege and his king to hesitate. "Had we fought today, even if we didn’t win, we could have at least blunted the enemy’s momentum, slowed their march toward Highgarden! Do any of you realize how much morale is lost when you prepare for battle, when men write their wills, steel their hearts—only to be told to retreat? If we weren’t willing to fight today, then let’s not fight at all! While our army remains intact, we still have leverage—let’s sue for peace before it’s too late!"

"Lord Randyll, calm yourself!"

Jon Connington swiftly interjected, preventing the meeting from descending into open bickering. This was no joke—if the Reach truly sought peace with Daenerys, he and his king would be the first names on the terms of surrender. Even the Golden Company might be offered up as part of the bargain. Whether Randyll had meant his words or not, such talk could not be allowed to spread.

Yet, in an ironic twist, the very conflict Connington had feared—that between Aegon and his Reach supporters—had not yet materialized. Instead, the Reach lords were turning on each other.

Mace Tyrell and his family truly were the weakest of the great lords of Westeros when it came to commanding loyalty. That much was undeniable.

"I won’t deny you have a point," Connington admitted. "Our men’s morale was at its highest this morning, and we are unlikely to replicate that—unless we win a battle. But to win, we need to boost morale, and to boost morale, we must first win a battle. The enemy, however, refuses to give us the opportunity." He let the weight of the words sink in before continuing. "But consider this: must victory come from annihilating the enemy?"

As all eyes turned to him, the King’s Hand spoke decisively.

"Abandoning Highgarden is not an option—that would cause our entire alliance to collapse. That discussion is closed. And the morale we lost today by failing to engage is already gone. There’s no point dwelling on it. Instead, let’s focus on what we did gain—we have tested our enemy and gathered vital intelligence. If we can trade the initiative we lost today for a better, more precise strategy, this war is still far from over."

"Now, listen carefully—this is the plan I developed this afternoon with Captain Strickland and Lord Rowan."

Clearing his throat, Harry Strickland nodded and began speaking.

"First, let me clarify—this plan was primarily devised by Prime Minister Connington and Lord Mathis Rowan. I merely offered my input as a military advisor."

It was no mere formality—Rowan was the real mastermind behind the strategy. But his vanguard had been so thoroughly routed that it would have been unseemly for him to present the plan himself. The Golden Company’s commander took a deep breath before delivering their countermeasure.

"When we first realized the enemy had developed superior anti-infantry tactics and an entirely new form of rolling advance, we, like all of you, were caught off guard," Strickland admitted. "But in discussing the matter with the Prime Minister, we identified the root of our confusion." He paused.

"The enemy’s methods perfectly counter our hammer-and-anvil tactics. Their artillery shatters our infantry before we can form a solid ‘anvil,’ leaving our cavalry with no opportunity to strike as the ‘hammer.’"

"And so, our question became simple—how do we break the enemy’s ‘anti-hammer-and-anvil’ strategy?"