The Game of Cyvasse

The Legacy

The Hand of the King

Varys was mistaken. The enemy did not position themselves before the Dragon gate, but with a cruel jest from the gods, the dragon banners waved before the Lion gate.

And from there Tyrion beheld scores of shamefully strewn Lannister banners, wrinkled from neglect and smeared with mud, and blood, he did not doubt. The banners were watched by ‘Lannister guardsmen’, an armor, with a spear as a backbone, stuffed with straw and twigs, they would fool the eye if they were set farther away. Nearly a hundred Lannister scarecrows. They mock us and we deserve it, Tyrion would have laughed if his head alone could not end up on a pike.

They had moved the men to the other side of the city with ease, but the catapults, scorpions, fire-spitters and heavy cauldrons for boiling water had to be left behind.

“What use is the Master of Whispers if he can’t deliver a good report,” Ser Addam snapped.

“Whispers are hard to catch if you’re leagues away,” Bronn retorted.

Tyrion was speechless; all my wit was buried in the barrels before the Dragon gate. No matter, he had enough men, nearly nine thousand. Almost half of them the City Watch, a conscripted mob, whom Janos Slynt brought under Cersei’s orders.

The fortnight before, the sound of horns in the distance had filled the city with fear, which like hot water on a winter’s day, evaporated into joy when the lion banners appeared before the gates of King’s Landing. Aerys had rejoiced like this when he saw the lion banners.

Tired, dirty and disheartened they entered through the Old gate, and the army of salvation turned out to be an army of wretches. Every third one was wounded, or shitting himself under the impulse of fever, many were without weapons and shields, where bones were not broken and skin slashed, spirit was bleeding. A ruined army, barely enough to be five thousand. Ser Addam Marbrand rode through the gate among the last, as a true commander he had seen to all of his men.

The knight did not rest until every wounded man had a bed and a medicine, and every hungry one had a bite and a sip. With the bread in hand and hot soup in front of him, all the eyes of the small council bore into him. All but Joffrey, the little shit had 'more pressing royal matters' than saving his bare skin.

"A calamity. One moment we had them on the edge of the sword, the next moment their horse and bloody elephants swept us off our feet. The beasts stomped on everything that moved or breathed. The army barely had time to curse, when the Dornish riders hit us from the flank and rear." With his last word the room fell silent again.

The horror on Cersei's face turned to words, "how could father let this happen?"

Father was never a military genius, competent certainly, but definitely not Randyll Tarly, Tyrion could have said but did not, now was not the time to rub salt on the fresh wound. Lord Tywin was a man of the bigger picture, patient and cunning, but on the battlefield he could slip too. If Roger Reyne had been faster and more capable, his surprise attack would have written different pages of history. Maybe Tyrion's grandfather Lord Tytos would have apologized to House Reyne for killing his eldest son. Reyne's can stay in hell, otherwise, this dwarf wouldn't be born, but the cruelty of war is, that it does not deprive the world of only the living, but also the unborn. How many maidens waited for their husbands and did not meet them. Lucky for me, I only have whores waiting.

"Is Lord Tywin dead?", Pycelle was almost formal, as formal as a screechy voice could be.

Marbrand shrugged, "we had to break through the Dornish infantry, to escape, many did not make it, that's when I saw him last. He waited behind; for us to make a passage." Tyrion remembered his father from his only battle, how he followed the development from the safety of his hilltop, surrounded by the reserves.