Post by Nash Lydden on Aug 7, 2012 19:35:28 GMT -5
The foul mixed miasma of horse and unwashed men, along with the unmistakable sounds of iron-upon-iron, covered those of the restless sea that raged all around them. They were the army of King Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, and they were going to take the Pyke from the hands of the ironmen tasked with defending it - or so many of them believed, at least. Our story takes us to a place humbler than the front lines, however, where the ruler of Westeros and his most valiant and colourful men could be found, its focus being the royal host's right flank, right where the men flying the badger on green-and-brown were readying their steel for the final battle. Strangely enough, the man leading them wasn't Lord Lewys Lydden, the baleful old man having been kept to his bed by a sudden illness; instead, their commander was Nash, his eldest son, whom had distinguished himself in a series of operations designed to weed the bandits out of the forests of their ancestral lands. Several of those had turned cloak and they were all with their new leader, having earned his acceptance, his coin and - in some cases - even his trust. The knights and their men hadn't agreed with that decision when they'd left the Westerlands, but the ferocity of his sellswords had aided them too many times for any of them to still be vocal about their mistrust by that point.
"Men! Today, we face the followers of the Drowned God again! Why the arsefuck are we here?" Nash's booming voice echoed throughout their ranks, repeating the words that they'd decided were their good-luck charm.
"TO HELP THEM DIE!" came their reply, as in a ritual of sorts.
"Then let them hear the wrath of the Storm God!" he bellowed, sending a gauntlet-covered fist toward the dreary sky.
As they roared and they smashed their weapons against their shields time and again, their commander drew his sword and dagger, waving them above his head as if to dictate the rhythm. It was good that they still responded to that kind of thing, he told himself, letting his gaze wander over his men; many were tired, some nursed unpleasant wounds and others still appeared rather tempted to speak out against their leader and even desert; they weren't the only ones, either, so he hoped that it would be the final time in which he'd need to raise the spirits of those particular troops for a while. "Blueberry!" he called out, returning to the middle of their front line.
"Aye, Yer Lordship?" The former brigand managed to sound ironic and insolent even when he was trying in earnest not to; he had a habit of widening his nostrils when spoken to, which also moved the large wart on his nose that had earned him his nickname.
"Take some of the lads and put them around our lines. Anyone tries to flee, you lot kill them, understood?" The last thing they needed in a moment like that was to have another batch of deserters right when it mattered the most; his eyes and ears had already informed him of some knights and lords muttering about his command and he wasn't going to give them any more reasons to do so than couldn't be helped. As the older man whistled after a few of his former underlings and left, Nash followed their movements with a wistful gaze; he had done well up to that point, but he felt that he was no leader of armies; a band of trusted men was a far cry from what he lead at that point and there were many who would still grumble against him, even if he had proven himself time and again, just for not being the old Lord Lydden they had grown accustomed to. In truth, he was not; both his armour, studded leather and mail draped with a tabard bearing the markings of his House, as well as his arms and his decision against riding a horse into battle, preferring to lead the infantry in the stead of the couple dozen knights who had accompanied him, seemed to be quite disagreeable to many.
Up to that moment, each victory they had won had been hard-fought and never devoid of some losses. The important liege lords might have been able to afford hundreds and thousands of deaths, but he knew nearly each and every man that had come with him by name; it was easier with numbers like theirs. It was rather disheartening - if not downright painful - to see just how willing people were to disagree with and hate each other merely on whatever foolish thought they could have had in their dim-witted heads. The commoners hated the lords and knights for their coin, their gear and their lands, whereas the others looked down upon the brunt of their troops for being poorer and fouler-smelling than they were. To add salt to the wound, both of the aforementioned had something against Nash's trusted men (even if they hadn't robbed most of them personally, as some of the more light-hearted brigands liked to say) as well as Nash himself, for a number of reasons. Even if most of the ones who had a family name to boast probably owed their lives to the nimbler and lighter-armoured lot who could easily match the speed and guile of their foes, nothing really changed in their camp; blood was still blood and brigands were still brigands, even if few of them would stoop as low as to commit the atrocities for which some of the nobles were responsible. Thankfully, the assigned commander of the mounted troops was a man of honour who cared too much for the young Lydden to allow the rowdy sots directly under him to let them make their displeasure known in the open.
Just as he was surveying the citadel with a gaze that was likely to pierce its walls had it been more fiery, Nash found himself elbowed in the ribs by Olon, a wise old man-at-arms who had just won a massive tower shield playing dice and was quite content to make himself some well-needed shade with it; the man needed only point toward their right for his leader to frown and bellow "Look alive!" as a handful of ironmen emerged into the open just in time to properly hear the war machines starting to pound their walls. They stopped just far enough to be outside the range of the archers and simply stood there, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
"Come on, lads, we'll send the Storm God some more of you!" the young nobleman called, earning himself some rather threatening gestures the warriors did by aid of their axes; he wanted to draw them close enough for their arrows to have a chance at reaching them. "Pricks from the Grasslands!" he added, much like a merchant from the market would have, spreading his legs and shoving his crotch toward them; that earned him a bout of roaring laughter from their ranks and seemed to get their attention, but it still wasn't enough. "Pay the iron price and we might fuck you with 'em!" That seemed to do the trick; two of them ran forward, threw their axes and returned before anyone could get a proper shot at them. The knight sidestepped, but there had been no need for it, since the one aimed at him lodged itself in Olon's new shield, but an archer from someone else's retinue wasn't as lucky; his hit him squarely in the chest, causing him to fall to his knees with a surprised gurgle. The angry rumbling that gesture stirred caused one of the more hot-headed lordlings from the area to spur his horse and take a number of his fellows with him after the miscreants, leaving part of the flank exposed.
"STAY IN FORMATION, WHORESON!" bellowed Nash after him, but it was to no avail; the few enemies were leading the knights well away from the battlefield. "Stay in formation..." he growled, his shoulders dropping with a massive sigh. No sooner had he said it that he spied a far larger number of enemy troops coming at them in a neat spearhead. Turning pale, the commander grabbed his squire by the shoulders. "Go to Ser Wacian and tell him I need a vise!" he hissed at him, relying on the veteran to remember how they'd trapped a large amount of bandits on the road, back home. Indeed, the knights were quick to ride away, but that only left their flank in a more weakened state; it fell upon his shoulders to keep it from falling apart until they could crush their attackers between their combined might. "Men! Form a diamond!" he called, barely having time to place himself in the middle of one of its sides when the two groups collided. Without knights or pikemen to absorb the first impact - who could have thought they would come to that? - , the ironmen managed to ignore the few arrows that'd had time to be fired and they started to cut through their counterparts.
From the lower lines, Nash and his brigands fell upon the ones who were trying to get through and have a go at the war machines and the ones manning them with roars of "Deep Den!" and "Pricksuckers!". Bursting out from between Pock, a beanpole of a man wielding an enormous greatsword, and Harlan, with his castleforged blade and trusty kite shield, the Lydden heir caught the axe of an assailant with the guard of his dagger and ran him through, kicking him away before hamstringing another one who had tried to get by them, leaving him to Pock's mercy. He dodged the wild swings of yet another ironman with ease, but he hadn't been ready for his sudden charge, the man's buckler striking him full in the face; he staggered back a few steps, but the finishing blow met with Harlan's shield; enraged, barely able to see and bleeding out of his nose, Nash rushed ahead, catching his foe's neck between his blades and bleeding him with a pained scream. Around him, the Westerosi army was slowly advancing, pushing their opponents back - and, strangely enough, they turned tail and fell back.
"May the Stranger bend your mothers over," the knight muttered, angrily wiping his face on the back of a gauntlet. "Men! Regroup!" he bellowed, gazing in dismay at the ragged look of their lines as the surviving defenders did as they were told. Mere moments passed until their enemies regrouped and returned for another go, this time aiming directly for the middle of their defence. Nash found himself faced with a large man with a mouth full of rotten teeth, wielding a warhammer that he had, undoubtedly, obtained from one of them; he presented his foe with his left flank, dagger poised to disarm, while his sword, from above the nobleman's shoulder, kept its tip pointed at the attacker's face. Still bleeding, the knight dodged his first wild swings and countered with a strike of his own aimed under the man's arm, which he quickly parried with his shield. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to them, locked in their own ways of single combat as they were, so they still traded seedless attacks for a while, but the loud clattering of ironshod hooves distracted the ironman enough for Nash to launch himself against the bastard's shield and shove his dagger through his throat. Breathing heavily, he noticed that his trap had worked and their foes had nowhere left to go, so he pushed his men ahead with a wordless roar and began cutting left and right, but - alas - that hadn't been the last of them.
The first few horsemen fell without even noticing the fresh forces that their enemies had sent against them; by the time the others did and managed to turn and face them, it was already too late. The dust and the screams of death grew more and more as they intertwined with the battle cries of the Iron Islanders, which left Nash and the remaining defenders disheartened and enraged. Having lost his dagger at some point, he slashed with his sword and an axe he'd found on the battlefield in crazy arcs that had lost all of their initial grace; it was a massacre and he desperately tried not to think about dying as it seemed that more and more strange faces popped up around him, hungry for his blood. He relied more on his left leg, after having received a solid kick in his other thigh, but that was just the beginning of his troubles; a blow to his ribs knocked the air right out of him and a shove from behind sent him to the ground, where only the precision given to a man by terror was able to help him spin and shove his sword through the assailant's belly. His entire body ached; his face, crazed and bewildered, looked just as ragged as the rest of him.
As he went back to his feet, however, Nash could swear that he could hear distant cries in a familiar tongue; he dropped the axe and took his sword in both hands as "For Winterfell!" became increasingly clear for more and more of them. Flying through their ranks, horsemen and footmen akin, all fresh and raring for a good fight, they quickly routed the remaining ironmen; they left no survivors. "Winterfell!" he cried, his throat raw and his voice torn, shaking the axe over his head like a madman; they had held the line, which was all that truly mattered, but his gut clenched painfully whenever he looked around and recognized the good men who had died under his command. To his right, Pock laid face-down in the ground, while Harlan, his left shoulder visibly crushed, sped to help him get back to his feet. When had he fallen? In truth, he couldn't remember. "Harlan, go and find Fleetfoot. You two lead the lads into the castle and take whatever you can carry," he told him, with a look of gratitude on his face.
"He's dead, m'lord. So are..."
Nash raised his hand; his man understood and held his tongue. As odd as it may have seemed, he cared more for the band of gallow-birds he had rescued from the noose than their old leaders ever had - more than their parents themselves ever had, for many of them. Waving Harlan away, he hawked and spat a large glob of phlegm on the corpse of one of the fallen ironmen. "Men! Form up!" he bellowed, with a final effort, then, as the ones still alive and able to walk gathered behind him, Nash Lydden, nobleman, killer and unlikely leader of men, began limping in silence toward the breach. History would remember other heroes - the King, the first ones into the Pyke, those seemed likely - but, for him, the true heroes would always be the little people whom had shed their blood and given their lives by his side that day, along with their rescuers from the North.
Total Word Count: 2545
"Men! Today, we face the followers of the Drowned God again! Why the arsefuck are we here?" Nash's booming voice echoed throughout their ranks, repeating the words that they'd decided were their good-luck charm.
"TO HELP THEM DIE!" came their reply, as in a ritual of sorts.
"Then let them hear the wrath of the Storm God!" he bellowed, sending a gauntlet-covered fist toward the dreary sky.
As they roared and they smashed their weapons against their shields time and again, their commander drew his sword and dagger, waving them above his head as if to dictate the rhythm. It was good that they still responded to that kind of thing, he told himself, letting his gaze wander over his men; many were tired, some nursed unpleasant wounds and others still appeared rather tempted to speak out against their leader and even desert; they weren't the only ones, either, so he hoped that it would be the final time in which he'd need to raise the spirits of those particular troops for a while. "Blueberry!" he called out, returning to the middle of their front line.
"Aye, Yer Lordship?" The former brigand managed to sound ironic and insolent even when he was trying in earnest not to; he had a habit of widening his nostrils when spoken to, which also moved the large wart on his nose that had earned him his nickname.
"Take some of the lads and put them around our lines. Anyone tries to flee, you lot kill them, understood?" The last thing they needed in a moment like that was to have another batch of deserters right when it mattered the most; his eyes and ears had already informed him of some knights and lords muttering about his command and he wasn't going to give them any more reasons to do so than couldn't be helped. As the older man whistled after a few of his former underlings and left, Nash followed their movements with a wistful gaze; he had done well up to that point, but he felt that he was no leader of armies; a band of trusted men was a far cry from what he lead at that point and there were many who would still grumble against him, even if he had proven himself time and again, just for not being the old Lord Lydden they had grown accustomed to. In truth, he was not; both his armour, studded leather and mail draped with a tabard bearing the markings of his House, as well as his arms and his decision against riding a horse into battle, preferring to lead the infantry in the stead of the couple dozen knights who had accompanied him, seemed to be quite disagreeable to many.
Up to that moment, each victory they had won had been hard-fought and never devoid of some losses. The important liege lords might have been able to afford hundreds and thousands of deaths, but he knew nearly each and every man that had come with him by name; it was easier with numbers like theirs. It was rather disheartening - if not downright painful - to see just how willing people were to disagree with and hate each other merely on whatever foolish thought they could have had in their dim-witted heads. The commoners hated the lords and knights for their coin, their gear and their lands, whereas the others looked down upon the brunt of their troops for being poorer and fouler-smelling than they were. To add salt to the wound, both of the aforementioned had something against Nash's trusted men (even if they hadn't robbed most of them personally, as some of the more light-hearted brigands liked to say) as well as Nash himself, for a number of reasons. Even if most of the ones who had a family name to boast probably owed their lives to the nimbler and lighter-armoured lot who could easily match the speed and guile of their foes, nothing really changed in their camp; blood was still blood and brigands were still brigands, even if few of them would stoop as low as to commit the atrocities for which some of the nobles were responsible. Thankfully, the assigned commander of the mounted troops was a man of honour who cared too much for the young Lydden to allow the rowdy sots directly under him to let them make their displeasure known in the open.
Just as he was surveying the citadel with a gaze that was likely to pierce its walls had it been more fiery, Nash found himself elbowed in the ribs by Olon, a wise old man-at-arms who had just won a massive tower shield playing dice and was quite content to make himself some well-needed shade with it; the man needed only point toward their right for his leader to frown and bellow "Look alive!" as a handful of ironmen emerged into the open just in time to properly hear the war machines starting to pound their walls. They stopped just far enough to be outside the range of the archers and simply stood there, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
"Come on, lads, we'll send the Storm God some more of you!" the young nobleman called, earning himself some rather threatening gestures the warriors did by aid of their axes; he wanted to draw them close enough for their arrows to have a chance at reaching them. "Pricks from the Grasslands!" he added, much like a merchant from the market would have, spreading his legs and shoving his crotch toward them; that earned him a bout of roaring laughter from their ranks and seemed to get their attention, but it still wasn't enough. "Pay the iron price and we might fuck you with 'em!" That seemed to do the trick; two of them ran forward, threw their axes and returned before anyone could get a proper shot at them. The knight sidestepped, but there had been no need for it, since the one aimed at him lodged itself in Olon's new shield, but an archer from someone else's retinue wasn't as lucky; his hit him squarely in the chest, causing him to fall to his knees with a surprised gurgle. The angry rumbling that gesture stirred caused one of the more hot-headed lordlings from the area to spur his horse and take a number of his fellows with him after the miscreants, leaving part of the flank exposed.
"STAY IN FORMATION, WHORESON!" bellowed Nash after him, but it was to no avail; the few enemies were leading the knights well away from the battlefield. "Stay in formation..." he growled, his shoulders dropping with a massive sigh. No sooner had he said it that he spied a far larger number of enemy troops coming at them in a neat spearhead. Turning pale, the commander grabbed his squire by the shoulders. "Go to Ser Wacian and tell him I need a vise!" he hissed at him, relying on the veteran to remember how they'd trapped a large amount of bandits on the road, back home. Indeed, the knights were quick to ride away, but that only left their flank in a more weakened state; it fell upon his shoulders to keep it from falling apart until they could crush their attackers between their combined might. "Men! Form a diamond!" he called, barely having time to place himself in the middle of one of its sides when the two groups collided. Without knights or pikemen to absorb the first impact - who could have thought they would come to that? - , the ironmen managed to ignore the few arrows that'd had time to be fired and they started to cut through their counterparts.
From the lower lines, Nash and his brigands fell upon the ones who were trying to get through and have a go at the war machines and the ones manning them with roars of "Deep Den!" and "Pricksuckers!". Bursting out from between Pock, a beanpole of a man wielding an enormous greatsword, and Harlan, with his castleforged blade and trusty kite shield, the Lydden heir caught the axe of an assailant with the guard of his dagger and ran him through, kicking him away before hamstringing another one who had tried to get by them, leaving him to Pock's mercy. He dodged the wild swings of yet another ironman with ease, but he hadn't been ready for his sudden charge, the man's buckler striking him full in the face; he staggered back a few steps, but the finishing blow met with Harlan's shield; enraged, barely able to see and bleeding out of his nose, Nash rushed ahead, catching his foe's neck between his blades and bleeding him with a pained scream. Around him, the Westerosi army was slowly advancing, pushing their opponents back - and, strangely enough, they turned tail and fell back.
"May the Stranger bend your mothers over," the knight muttered, angrily wiping his face on the back of a gauntlet. "Men! Regroup!" he bellowed, gazing in dismay at the ragged look of their lines as the surviving defenders did as they were told. Mere moments passed until their enemies regrouped and returned for another go, this time aiming directly for the middle of their defence. Nash found himself faced with a large man with a mouth full of rotten teeth, wielding a warhammer that he had, undoubtedly, obtained from one of them; he presented his foe with his left flank, dagger poised to disarm, while his sword, from above the nobleman's shoulder, kept its tip pointed at the attacker's face. Still bleeding, the knight dodged his first wild swings and countered with a strike of his own aimed under the man's arm, which he quickly parried with his shield. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to them, locked in their own ways of single combat as they were, so they still traded seedless attacks for a while, but the loud clattering of ironshod hooves distracted the ironman enough for Nash to launch himself against the bastard's shield and shove his dagger through his throat. Breathing heavily, he noticed that his trap had worked and their foes had nowhere left to go, so he pushed his men ahead with a wordless roar and began cutting left and right, but - alas - that hadn't been the last of them.
The first few horsemen fell without even noticing the fresh forces that their enemies had sent against them; by the time the others did and managed to turn and face them, it was already too late. The dust and the screams of death grew more and more as they intertwined with the battle cries of the Iron Islanders, which left Nash and the remaining defenders disheartened and enraged. Having lost his dagger at some point, he slashed with his sword and an axe he'd found on the battlefield in crazy arcs that had lost all of their initial grace; it was a massacre and he desperately tried not to think about dying as it seemed that more and more strange faces popped up around him, hungry for his blood. He relied more on his left leg, after having received a solid kick in his other thigh, but that was just the beginning of his troubles; a blow to his ribs knocked the air right out of him and a shove from behind sent him to the ground, where only the precision given to a man by terror was able to help him spin and shove his sword through the assailant's belly. His entire body ached; his face, crazed and bewildered, looked just as ragged as the rest of him.
As he went back to his feet, however, Nash could swear that he could hear distant cries in a familiar tongue; he dropped the axe and took his sword in both hands as "For Winterfell!" became increasingly clear for more and more of them. Flying through their ranks, horsemen and footmen akin, all fresh and raring for a good fight, they quickly routed the remaining ironmen; they left no survivors. "Winterfell!" he cried, his throat raw and his voice torn, shaking the axe over his head like a madman; they had held the line, which was all that truly mattered, but his gut clenched painfully whenever he looked around and recognized the good men who had died under his command. To his right, Pock laid face-down in the ground, while Harlan, his left shoulder visibly crushed, sped to help him get back to his feet. When had he fallen? In truth, he couldn't remember. "Harlan, go and find Fleetfoot. You two lead the lads into the castle and take whatever you can carry," he told him, with a look of gratitude on his face.
"He's dead, m'lord. So are..."
Nash raised his hand; his man understood and held his tongue. As odd as it may have seemed, he cared more for the band of gallow-birds he had rescued from the noose than their old leaders ever had - more than their parents themselves ever had, for many of them. Waving Harlan away, he hawked and spat a large glob of phlegm on the corpse of one of the fallen ironmen. "Men! Form up!" he bellowed, with a final effort, then, as the ones still alive and able to walk gathered behind him, Nash Lydden, nobleman, killer and unlikely leader of men, began limping in silence toward the breach. History would remember other heroes - the King, the first ones into the Pyke, those seemed likely - but, for him, the true heroes would always be the little people whom had shed their blood and given their lives by his side that day, along with their rescuers from the North.
Total Word Count: 2545
