The King of Winters

Chapter-91

Daenerys

The Tyrell scouts had told her how it was, but Dany wanted to see for herself. She took Drogon so high up in the air that her men on the ground looked like nothing more than ants from where she sat. From the top she could see everything without being seen. It was how she had taken the Hightowers unawares at the banks of a tributary of the river Honeywine which flowed in from the east by the Uplands, the castle of House Mullendore.

Ser Baelor had hoped that her men would go straight to Oldtown to find the city barred against them. They would have been forced to sit in another pointless siege and whilst they were mounting it, the true forces of the Hightowers would come swinging in from the behind to break them against the walls of Oldtown.

She had seen it all from atop her dragon and when the time came for it, Dany urged her army southeast to make for the Uplands. They had found the Hightowers somewhere between the Honeywine and Uplands by the river, well covered behind a high ridged slope blanketed in long green grass.

Dany had decided to attack at night when their enemies would least expect one. And with the cover of the dark, barely illuminated by the silver moonlight, she had given the order for the attack. When she torched the camps up in fire atop her dragon, the battle had come to an end.

When the battle was done, Dany had rode her mare through the fields of the dead. Her goodfather and his lords bannermen coming behind her, smiling and jesting among themselves.

The hooves of warhorse had torn the earth and trampled the grass and canvas into the ground, while swords and arrows were strewn across the field watered with blood and torched in fire. Dying horses lifted their heads and screamed at her as she had rode past. Wounded men had surrendered, whilst others died for the cause they chose to believe in. Dany had sent some of her men amongst them when he couldn't stand their screams, and mercy had been given to those who were in need of it with their swords and heavy axes and arrows, putting down the dead and dying alike. Finally when the camp had been cleared and Dany's own banners had been flown, the numbers came from the bloodshed. A lot of blood had been shed, but little had belonged to her or hers. They had counted five hundred dead from Ser Baelor's army. Dany had lost barely half a hundred.

Even still Ser Baelor had made off with the best part of his army. Her counts had put them at almost six thousand men, but barely five hundred of them had lost their lives whilst the rest broke away and ran, the better part of them. She would have happily traded this five hundred for the five thousand who had fled.

She had torched the camp with fire as they left it the next day. They made off to Oldtown as black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard blue sky behind them. Beside burned tents and trodden fields, riders galloped back and forth, herding away the survivors and captives from the smoking grass and clothes. If only the  city of Oldtown would fall as easy as the camp had, that would be a great victory indeed. But even Dany knew that would not be the case.

Lord Leyton had more men in his city apart from the ones his son and heir had led. And the city was well fortified and defended by all the accounts the captives provided. Even with the help of Drogon, it would be a bloodbath before the city would fall. Her goodfather advised her to chase after Ser Baelor, but Dany had deemed that Oldtown is much more important than pursuing some defeated forces.

When she could see the beacon of Oldtown burning on top of the Hightower, green through a sea of grey clouds, Dany reined in Drogon and flew down past the clouds enough to see the city without the interference of the clouds but still high enough to escape the eyes of the people down in the city. She circled around the city twice and looked across the fields, to where the Hightower host lay athwart her path. She knew how best to count the numbers of a foe. Four thousand, she thought, more or less.