Battle of the Honeywine

When the war broke out, the Greens assumed the whole Reach would follow House Hightower, Queen Alicent's own family. It did not: major houses like Caswell, Rowan and Tarly went over to Rhaenyra, and even direct Hightower vassals, the Beesburys and the Costaynes, did the same. With Oldtown's regency declaring young Lord Lyonel Tyrell's Highgarden neutral, Ormund Hightower had to raise an army and fight his way across his own region before he could help anyone else.

The march was slow and bloodied for months. Alan Beesbury harried Ormund's camps by night and burned his line of march, while Owen Costayne came up from Three Towers to strike at the Hightower rear. None of it stopped the army, but it wore it down, and when word came late in the year of another host coming down from the upper Mander, Ormund chose not to press on: he dug in along the Honeywine and sent word to King's Landing asking for a dragon.

Aegon II was still recovering from his wounds at the Battle of Rook's Rest, and his brother Aemond decided the more urgent threat was Daemon Targaryen at Harrenhal: he flew Vhagar and marched the bulk of the army into the Riverlands, leaving Ormund's pleas unanswered. In the third week of the new year, the Hightower army found itself trapped along the Honeywine: from the north came Thaddeus Rowan and Tom Flowers with a great host of knights, while Alan Beesbury and Owen Costayne, with smaller forces, sealed off the road south to Oldtown.

Ormund's lines were beginning to break when a shadow crossed the sky: Prince Daeron, riding his dragon Tessarion, joined the fight and turned the day. Tom Flowers died in the melee and Owen Costayne was struck down mortally wounded; Alan Beesbury was taken prisoner, and only Thaddeus Rowan managed to escape north with what remained of his men. That same evening Ormund knighted Daeron with the sword Vigilance, though the boy insisted the real credit belonged to his dragon.

The defeat ended the Blacks' offensive in the Reach: their leading commanders in the region were dead or captured, and Thaddeus Rowan himself bent the knee months later. With Tessarion now riding alongside his army, Ormund and Daeron forced the submission of the Rowans of Goldengrove, the Oakhearts of Old Oak and the lords of the Shield Islands, and the Hightower host moved slowly up the Roseroad, crushing any attempt to harry it while Daeron scouted ahead from the air to warn of ambushes.

The victory also had a wider effect on the war: by tying down the great Oldtown army for months, it kept the Greens of the north without reinforcement just as the westermen were wiped out at the Battle of the Lakeshore and the Crownlands Greens fell at the Butcher's Ball. Ormund's army went on to besiege Bitterbridge and sack Bridgebridge, then crossed the Mander again toward King's Landing, an advance that would lead to the First Battle of Tumbleton.