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Clay was riding south and Yohn Royce turned east.
One was heading back to his stronghold to recover and regroup. The other, to some extent, was also going home.
After a long, heated argument filled with thinly veiled insults and open mockery, the nobles of the Vale finally reached a rare consensus. They would bypass Lord Harroway's Town and return directly to the Vale.
As for what would become of Tywin Lannister's campaign… well, frankly, that was no longer their concern. The battle was over, their strength depleted, and with no fresh troops to offer, their alliance with the Lannisters was, in all but name, over.
What more could they possibly do? They had no men left to fight.
Well… perhaps that wasn't entirely true. The Vale was far from empty. With its sizable population, they could absolutely muster more soldiers if they truly wished to.
But war, at the end of the day, was a business.
And from the look of things, their elite cavalry, once the pride of the Vale, had been completely crushed by Clay Manderly. If they sent in even weaker infantry next, wouldn't that simply hand Clay an easy victory along with even more glory?
It would be nothing but a losing deal. And the highborn lords of the Vale weren't the sort of fools who made losing deals.
Yes, there was hatred… hatred born on the battlefield, forged in blood between them and the Northmen, as well as the riverlords. But there was no real conflict of interest between their factions. No competition for power or territory. No reason to keep bleeding for a fight that brought no gain.
And hatred, among nobles, was a fickle thing at best!
If it lasted at all, it was usually because the gold wasn't enough.
Add a few more dragons to the pile, and who knows how quickly hatred might melt away.
In truth, that attack on the North had always been a gamble, an opportunistic strike quietly nudged along by Littlefinger's silver tongue.
And when Clay Manderly came crashing down on them like a hammer, leaving their forces shattered, well, then the gamble had failed. So what? It was just business. The deal didn't pan out, so they were done. They weren't going to throw good coin after bad.
That, at least, was how the nobles of the Vale chose to interpret the current situation.
As for pacifying the fury of the Northmen in the end… that was simple enough. Hadn't it all been Littlefinger's idea to begin with?
Well then…
They would simply remind everyone that they were all loving, honorable nobles of the Vale… and ask to borrow Lord Petyr's head.
What's that? He refuses?
Now now, how could he say such a thing? That would be rather petty, wouldn't it?
Everyone was quite confident that Lord Petyr would understand the difficult position they were in. Surely, he would lend them his head with all the grace and generosity of a true noble.
Isn't that right, Lord Petyr?
That was what they all believed, anyway. After all, just like the Northmen and the riverlords, none of them had a claim to the Iron Throne. None of them had royal blood. No banners of theirs bore the crown.
This was all just a matter of choosing sides!
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Once Yohn Royce made up his mind to flee, he didn't waste any time. He couldn't afford to.
They had barely any food left.
Clay's men had seized Lord Harroway's Town, and it wasn't the only place where the supply lines had been severed.
The Vale's entire war plan had been flawed from the beginning. After crushing Robb Stark, they'd grown far too arrogant, letting their heads float up into the clouds. That was the real reason things had come to this.
Three thousand cavalry led the way, guarding the slow-moving column of over three thousand foot soldiers trailing behind them.
Yohn Royce had already abandoned the two thousand men under Lyonel Corbray's command, sold them off like surplus grain to a starving market.
And if he were to leave these three thousand infantry behind as well, letting Clay Manderly swallow them whole in one strike…
Then even if he did make it back to Runestone alive, it wouldn't matter. The other nobles of the Vale, furious, humiliated, and burning with outrage, would come storming straight to his gates. They would demand answers. They would demand justice.
No one could get away with something like that, not even the Arryns, the ruling house of the Vale. And Yohn Royce? His house didn't even hold that kind of power.
What Yohn didn't know was that while he was dragging himself home, slow and cautious, trying to keep everything from falling apart, there was someone else, at that very moment, grinding his teeth in fury, wishing he could reach into Yohn's chest and rip out his heart with his bare hands.
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"That bloody fool deserves to rot in the seventh hell. Why… why in the name of the gods did I listen to anyone else and hand the army over to such a useless waste of flesh?!"
Outside the shattered walls of Harrenhal, within the largest and most luxurious tent in the entire Lannister camp, Tywin Lannister poured himself a glass of deep, black-red wine. His face remained as blank as ever, his emerald-green eyes calm and unreadable as they rested on the man sitting opposite him.
That man, once the Master of Coin, was none other than Lord Petyr Baelish. Or rather… Lord Petyr Baelish, for he had begged the pitiful, puppet king Joffrey Baratheon for a lordly title. And the boy-king, too busy wallowing in his foul moods and beating his servants for sport, had granted it.
As for Petyr's new domain? Why, it was right here… Harrenhal itself. This broken, blackened ruin they now sat beside, both he and Tywin dreaming of claiming it for their own.
And the way he had acquired that title… well, that was a tale worth savoring.
Petyr Baelish, once the royal treasurer, had quite literally thrown himself to the ground, right at the feet of a sulking, ill-tempered boy king and groveled.
He wept. He cried so pitifully it bordered on the absurd, tears and snot running freely down his face as he sobbed, whined, and begged.
But his meaning was crystal clear.
Your Grace, he had wailed, I never betrayed you. I only left to gather reinforcements — for you, for the crown! My loyalty has never wavered, not for a moment!
Had it been Renly or Stannis seated on the throne, Petyr would have been dragged out and thrown to the dogs before the second tear ever struck the floor.
But Joffrey Baratheon, stripped of his power and effectively dethroned, had been stewing beneath the command tents for far too long. His twisted little mind, already dark to begin with, had curdled even further in confinement.
And then, right at the height of his misery, Petyr had offered him a perfect little performance: the loyal servant returned, the prodigal lord begging forgiveness. It delighted him.
With Joffrey's temperament, if Petyr had gone so far as to declare himself Warden of the East, the powerless boy-king likely would've handed him the title on the spot, grinning like a fool as he did it.
Because Joffrey had never understood the true weight of the crown. The crushing burden of ruling with real authority.
To him, the kingdom was nothing more than a toy chest. Something he owned, something he could open and close at will.
Even if, by some miracle, he made it back to King's Landing and reclaimed the Iron Throne, he would still die beneath the blade of another man's scheme.
But that chance, sadly… or perhaps mercifully, was long gone.
Now, Tywin sat there in silence, coldly watching his so-called ally curse his own army's commander as a useless fool, venting his fury like a scorned child.
And for a moment, a strange feeling rose in Tywin's chest — a quiet blend of absurdity and contempt.
This was his ally?
But who else was there? Who else could he even hope to ally with?
The riverlords and the Northmen had already joined hands, united by a common cause.
And as for the other Baratheons, neither of them could be considered an option. So long as Joffrey continued to call himself king, there could be no peace with either Renly or Stannis.
So who was left?
Ah… yes. There was still Daenerys Targaryen, gathering soldiers in Dorne, her power growing with each passing day.
And Tywin Lannister knew full well what his soldiers had done in King's Landing, all those years ago.
That was not just a political obstacle. That was a blood-deep hatred, a grudge that would never die unless one side was buried forever.
So, in all of Westeros, with all its size, splendor, and power, Tywin found himself left with no choice but to hold his nose and do everything in his power to win the favor of the Vale.
The fact that he had survived this long, still managing to seize the upper hand in certain corners of the war, was already a testament to his brilliance. It was a lifetime of discipline, cunning, and calculation poured into one final, desperate effort.
Because if his reckless, unthinking son Jaime had been the one leading the war?
Then by now, House Lannister would be scattered, its halls dark and cold, its members either rotting in chains or lying headless on the floor.
"Enough, Lord Petyr. Put away your complaints. They're of no use to anyone."
Lord Tywin cast a frigid glance at the man seated across from him, the self-styled Lord of Harrenhal who was still busy with his pitiful little performance, and spoke with a voice as cool and dismissive as winter rain.
The moment Tywin Lannister finally acknowledged him, Petyr Baelish's expression shifted faster than a hurricane twisting through a bay.
All that anger and frustration from before vanished in a blink, smoothed over like spilled wine wiped from silk. In its place bloomed his signature sly smile, charming on the surface but hollow beneath.
He said with practiced ease, "Lord Tywin, my troops failed to carry out their duty."
Tywin answered without missing a beat: "Yes, and because of their foolishness, we've lost our most vital position."
"Do you have any idea what it means now that we've lost Lord Harroway's Town? Even if we try to reroute the supply lines, the grain convoys will suffer twice the loss on the way."
"And that is without counting the gods-damned rain that has not stopped for days. The entire Riverlands are turning to slop. Every road is a mud pit, and every wagon is sinking halfway to the axle."
Petyr merely smiled again, accepting every drop of Tywin's scornful words as if they were rain on his face.
There was no point in denying it. No scapegoat to shift the blame to. This disaster, this failure, belonged to the Vale of Arryn. No one else.
Not long ago, Tywin Lannister had begun ordering fiercer assaults on Harrenhal, ignoring the wounds of his soldiers and the mounting casualties.
He hadn't done it out of arrogance or rage. He had done it because he was running out of time.
He had hoped… no, he had gambled, that they could take Harrenhal before the army's supplies completely ran dry. If they held the castle, then maybe, just maybe, they could use it as leverage in negotiations with the North and the riverlords.
Negotiations!
Yes, Tywin Lannister had no illusions left. He didn't want to keep fighting. He couldn't. His army was bleeding and starving by the day.
And when he learned that Clay Manderly, out of nowhere, had sent a force of several thousand men to seize Lord Harroway's Town, he knew instantly that the Vale's part in the war was as good as over.
What followed only proved him right.
Clay Manderly, with a force smaller and far less seasoned, had crushed the Vale army's commander, Yohn Royce, dealing him a devastating defeat that left their position in ruins.
The moment Tywin heard the news, he understood: even if he managed to capture Robb Stark himself, the best he could hope for now was a dignified peace agreement with the North and the riverlands.
Because if he dragged this war on any longer, Clay Manderly's growing army would overtake him before hunger did, and then it would be his turn to learn what it meant to be a prisoner.
"My lord," Petyr said with that same unwavering smile, as if none of Tywin's harsh words had even reached his ears, "surely, you must find some way to turn things around."
He said it gently, almost soothingly, as though trying to coax a storm into a breeze.
That smile… how genuine it seemed, how deeply it radiated concern and faith. At least to those who didn't know him.
"If I had waited for you, Lord Petyr, to offer advice before thinking of a plan," Tywin said dryly, waving his hand in dismissal, "then House Lannister would have gone extinct long ago."
He leaned back slightly in his chair, unbothered, his voice cool and flat.
Truth be told, Tywin had little patience for Littlefinger.
There was something in the man's scent, something Tywin recognized the moment he laid eyes on the former Master of Coin. It was a smell he knew all too well.
Ambition!
But not the ordinary kind — the petty thirst for land, gold, or women. Tywin had long since ceased to care about those things. Men like him, those who had stood atop the realm for decades, measured the world through far broader visions.
A shining crown, for instance. That golden thing that could make or unmake everything.
Tywin had never understood how a minor noble of no great lineage or name could set his sights on the Iron Throne itself. How could someone so insignificant dare to dream of that twisted seat in King's Landing?
And yet, step by careful step, Petyr Baelish had clawed his way here. Through charm, through cunning, through ruthless manipulation, he had taken hold of the Vale and dragged its forces into this war.
The old lion, watching all of this unfold, had slowly begun to see Petyr for what he was.
He could not rise through the strength of his bloodline, so instead, he sought to tear down every noble and ancient lineage, reducing them all to rubble.
If there were no proud and ancient houses left, then his own lowborn blood would no longer be a chain around his neck. In a world of shattered thrones and broken legacies, his lack of heritage would no longer matter. In fact, it might even become his strength.
Tywin saw it. He saw it all, as clearly as daylight.
But now, with the walls closing in, he had no choice but to keep working with this man.
Tywin Lannister, for all his pride, could no longer hold the realm up by himself.
"I've already given the order. My son Jaime is marching out from Crakehall with his forces. He'll rendezvous with me on the way."
"Not from Golden Tooth?" Littlefinger blinked, feigning surprise, then smiled faintly. "A pity. Perhaps Ser Jaime might've recreated his dazzling victory from last year."
"That's none of your concern," Tywin replied curtly, brushing aside the comment with little more than a flick of his voice. "Even if a victory awaited us at Golden Tooth, what would it mean now?"
"Besides," he added, his emerald eyes sharpening like a drawn blade, "you know better than I do who commands the Northern and riverland armies now."
Petyr Baelish gave a slow nod and murmured in agreement, "Indeed. Clay Manderly is a problem we cannot solve."
"I had tried to find a way to keep the riverlords from following his orders," he continued, his tone touched with reluctant admiration. "But that boy moved fast. With nothing but his reputation and a few well-chosen words, he stripped Edmure Tully of command as cleanly as peeling fruit."
"And the worst part?" Petyr's smile soured slightly. "The few Vale lords who still hold real power are all staunchly in his camp."
At the sound of that name, both men — each wearing his mask so tightly it had become a second skin — seemed, for the first time, to find a flicker of common ground.
"You people from the Vale," Tywin said slowly, voice low and deliberate, "you've had your war. Best not go courting Clay Manderly on the battlefield again. Not for now."
"We'll wait," he added after a pause, his gaze drifting toward the horizon, as if trying to peer into the shadows ahead. "Wait for news from King's Landing."
"And you," he said, turning back to Petyr with a voice cold as steel, "you'd best prove your worth. Reach out to those Dornish lords you're so friendly with."
"Have them speak to Daenerys. Convince that Dragon Spawn that the true danger lies not in the South, but in the North."
"If the dragon's fire were to fall on his head first…"
Tywin's smile barely touched the corners of his lips.
"…then that would suit us just fine."
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[Chapter End's]
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