Battle by the Lakeshore

Jason Lannister never reached the Gods Eye. He fell to Pate of Longleaf at the Battle of the Red Fork, and command of the western host passed to Lord Humfrey Lefford, already wounded and old. Under him the column crawled east, meaning to reinforce Aegon II.

By the time it reached the lake's western shore, Lefford found himself surrounded. Roderick Dustin brought two thousand Winter Wolves, Forrest Frey added knights and foot, and Robb Rivers contributed three hundred archers from Raventree Hall. From the south came survivors of earlier fighting, along with the lords of Bigglestone, Chambers, and Perryn. Lefford did not attack; he pulled back to the shore and waited, the water at his rear.

He sent ravens to Harrenhal, where Prince Aemond kept Vhagar, but Robb the Red's archers brought them down one after another. The blacks, meanwhile, were gathering reinforcements of their own, and knew time was against them: if Aemond noticed the silence, he would come with his dragon. So they chose to strike first.

They struck at dawn. The Winter Wolves charged first, five times against the western spearmen, and each charge cost them men. Encircled on three sides, Lefford's soldiers began giving ground toward the water.

What followed was no battle but a slaughter among the reeds. Hundreds died fighting in the mud of the shore; hundreds more drowned trying to flee across the lake. In time the survivors gave the place a name, and that name said all that needed saying.

Among the blacks, Forrest Frey fell, along with the lord of Bigglestone and Jon Charlton; two of every three northmen lay dead or wounded. Among the greens, Lefford himself did not survive, nor did Lord Swyft, Lord Reyne, or Ser Clarent Crakehall. Benjicot Blackwood, not yet a grown man, wept at the sight of the piled dead.

The western army ceased to exist that morning. With the coast undefended, Dalton Greyjoy seized the moment and threw in with Rhaenyra: his ironmen sacked Lannisport, though Casterly Rock held. In the riverlands, the victors did not come away unscathed either; the cost of winning had run nearly as high as the cost of losing.

At Harrenhal, the news drove Aemond and Criston Cole apart. Aemond took Vhagar and began harrying enemy country from the air; Criston marched south to find Ormund Hightower. The river lords did not meet him in open battle but wore him down with ambushes and something crueler still, laying out their own Fish Bait dead along his line of march to sow fear in his ranks. That harassment eventually cornered him at the Butcher's Ball.