With Power in Hand, Breaking Armies and Destroying Foes, Aweing the Seven Kingdoms-Truly Tigers and Wolves

The bloody battle raged from daylight into the dark of night.

The Riverlands defenders stood like unyielding rocks atop the walls.

Again and again, the men of the Vale surged upward, only to be driven back by blood and corpses.

They fought in shifts, battle after battle, dying without retreat.

Watching the bodies of his knights and soldiers pile ever higher beneath the walls, Yohn Royce felt as though his heart were being twisted apart by that mire of flesh and blood.

He knew this could not go on.

At last, the long, somber horn call sounded—the signal to retreat.

The exhausted Vale soldiers withdrew like a receding tide, as if granted a pardon, leaving chaos strewn across the walls.

"Their ranged weapons have been exhausted," a knight reported to Yohn Royce.

"Pass on my order. Feign attacks on three sides; strike in earnest on one," Yohn Royce said in a low voice.

He looked at the black lion banner whipping wildly in the night wind, his eyes filled with amazement and confusion.

"Reorganize. Attack again at dawn."

"Yes!" The Vale lords departed one after another to regroup their troops.

As night deepened, campfires blazed throughout the Vale encampment.

The groans of the wounded mingled with the clanging of The Smith repairing weapons.

Yohn Royce stood on high ground in the camp, looking toward the deathly silent Harford City.

"Ser Blackfish, have you ever seen it?" he asked softly without turning around.

"Seen what, Lord Royce?" Brynden Tully came to stand beside him.

"Have you ever seen commoners fight to the death for their lord?" Yohn Royce's voice was full of astonishment.

"Never. What do victory in war, ownership of land, or changes in power have to do with them?"

"I've fought all my life. I've seen knights fight for