Battle at the Mummer's Ford

When Lady Catelyn Tully had Tyrion Lannister seized, his father answered the only way he knew how: he turned Ser Gregor Clegane loose on the Riverlands. Lord Hoster Tully sent a party to King's Landing led by Ser Marq Piper to demand justice for Sherrer, Wendish Town, and the Mummer's Ford, three villages already burned to ash.

Eddard Stark, as Hand of the King, ordered a force raised to hunt Clegane down and bring him to the king's justice. Tywin expected Lord Stark himself to lead that column and had set a trap meant to win him a hostage he could trade for his son. But Eddard was still recovering from the wound Jaime Lannister had given him in the streets of the capital, so command fell to Lord Beric Dondarrion instead.

Thoros of Myr, Ser Raymun Darry, Ser Gladden Wylde, Lord Lothar Mallery, and two of Stark's own household guard, Alyn and Harwin, rode with Dondarrion. With Piper's and Vance's men the party numbered a hundred and twenty swords, but both knights peeled off once word of the Golden Tooth reached them, choosing instead to strike at the Lannister supply lines and ease the siege of Riverrun.

Dondarrion's column crossed the Mummer's Ford without knowing Clegane had men waiting on both banks. The moment they reached the water they were struck from front and rear at once. The Mountain cut Raymun Darry down along with his horse in a single stroke; Gladden Wylde died at his side, and Lothar Mallery, unhorsed, drowned in the current.

Those still standing tried to fall back, only to find Clegane's rearguard already waiting there too. Nearly every man Stark had placed under Dondarrion's command died that afternoon. It was Alyn of Winterfell who managed to pull the survivors together, and the few riders left closed ranks around Thoros of Myr to cut their way clear of the ford.

Young Edric Dayne, Dondarrion's squire, lived through it and pulled his badly wounded lord out of the river, shielding his body with his own while the fighting went on around them.

Of the hundred and twenty men who rode into the battle, only forty were left standing by nightfall. Dondarrion was gravely wounded; Thoros had to tear a foot of spear shaft out of his own chest and sear the wound shut with boiling wine. He told the survivors that their war hadn't ended at the Mummer's Ford — it had only just begun there, and that ten enemies would fall for every one of theirs who had died.

That handful of beaten men would in time become the founders of a band that answered to no lord of Westeros. For Tywin Lannister the slaughter paid off at once: it left the Kingsroad open and let him march north toward Harrenhal.