The road west from Longtable followed the Mander through green country that looked too gentle for war.
That was the deceit of the Reach. Its fields were generous, its rivers broad, its orchards heavy with fruit, and its villages often sat beneath soft hills where smoke rose peacefully from cookfires. A man could look across that land and almost believe violence would be embarrassed to enter it.
The Fossoways had no such embarrassment.
They did not meet us in one grand line beneath fluttering apple banners, eager to decide the road in a single clean battle. That would have been foolish, and whatever else could be said of them, they were not fools.
They knew we outnumbered them badly. They knew the Unsullied would not break because a few knights shouted loudly at them. They knew the Dread Legion had marched through worse roads than these and lived to complain about them later.
So they tried to slow us.
Their first barricade appeared before noon on the first day out from Longtable, where the road narrowed between two shallow rises and a stand of apple trees pressed close to the left.
Carts had been overturned across the track, stakes driven between wheels, brush piled beneath, and ditches cut where a wagon might try to pass around. Red apple banners hung beyond the obstruction, far enough back to taunt and close enough to invite impatience.
I reined in before the forward line reached bowshot. Landrey rode up beside me, eyes already searching the trees. "They want us to rush the barricade."
"Yes. Which means the barricade is the least interesting part of the trap."
Baela had reported men moving through the orchard earlier that morning, and now her warning proved useful. I ordered the column to halt and spread. Unsullied shields locked in measured formation while Dread Legion crossbowmen moved to the flanks.
Footly guides pointed out the deeper irrigation cuts beneath the grass, and Caswell riders were sent wide rather than straight ahead. The Fossoways loosed their first arrows when they realised we were not obliging them.
The arrows struck shields, dirt, and empty road.
Then our crossbowmen answered.
Men in the orchard learned quickly that trees did not make them invisible once disciplined eyes knew where to look. The Fossoway archers fired from cover, shifted, fired again, and found Dread Legion bolts waiting for the movement.
A small party tried to rush the barricade and set the brush alight before we cleared it, but Grey Worm had already moved two Unsullied files forward under shields. They reached the carts without hurry, pulled the burning brush aside with hooked poles, and gave the engineers room to work.
The whole trap cost us nine men wounded and two dead. It cost the Fossoways more than forty before they withdrew. Rollis would have called it inefficient. I called it the first lesson.
By evening, the army understood the road would not be gifted to us. The Fossoways struck at pace, not strength. Felled trees appeared where the road curved close to the river. Shallow pits were covered with woven branches and loose soil, placed where horses might step during a sudden alarm.
Caltrops were scattered near broken ground. Slingers hid behind stone walls. Archers shot from barns and vanished through rear doors into orchards. Twice, riders appeared on a ridge long enough to draw our scouts and then fled toward ground prepared to swallow horses.
None of it was useless. None of it was decisive.
A lesser army would have frayed under it. Hungry men would have broken ranks to chase shadows. Proud knights would have charged into hedges to punish insults. Green levies would have bunched around blocked roads and died cursing men they could not see.
We were not that army.
The Unsullied made frustration almost pointless. If arrows came, shields rose. If the road halted, they waited. If ordered to advance, they advanced with the same expression they wore while eating breakfast.
The Dread Legion met every ambush with professional irritation, which was often more valuable than fury. They cursed, adjusted, killed the men responsible, and resumed marching as if delay itself had personally offended them.
The trouble came from our Reach allies.
The Footly and Caswell men were brave enough, and most had local knowledge that proved useful, but courage without discipline made them vulnerable to insult. Fossoway riders knew it.
They shouted across fields, called them turncloaks, queen’s pets, and cowards hiding behind foreign spears. The first time a band of Caswell men broke formation to chase them, they rode into a ditch line and took arrows from both sides before Landrey’s cavalry pulled them out.
Thirty-seven men died there. Mostly Caswell. I made the surviving captain stand before his men that evening while the dead were counted.
"You were ordered to hold," I said.
He was young, red-faced with shame and mud, one arm bound from a cut that had bled through the cloth. "They were fleeing, my prince. I thought we could take them."
"You thought they were fleeing because that was what they wished you to think. If you cannot tell the difference between an enemy’s fear and his invitation, you will keep feeding men to traps dug by better minds."
His jaw tightened, but he did not answer. That was wise. Anger was more useful when it had nowhere to go except improvement.
I turned to the assembled Footly and Caswell officers. "No one chases without command. No one leaves the line because a Fossoway man insults his father, his lord, his queen, or his courage. The first duty of a soldier is not to prove he is brave. It is to remain useful."
That lesson had to be repeated twice more before it rooted properly.
The Fossoways grew bolder on the fourth day.
They struck at dawn, when mist lay low over the Mander and the column had only begun to move. A horn sounded from the riverbank, then arrows came from the reeds. Men shouted from the orchard side at the same time, and a cart full of stones was released down a slope toward the baggage line. It was a better attempt than their first efforts, coordinated enough to reveal someone competent directing them.
The stones crashed into two wagons, killing horses and crushing three Legion men before the teamsters cut the traces. Fossoway men rushed from the mist toward the confusion, hoping to reach the baggage before the centre could turn.
Black Rat stopped them.
The Unsullied line pivoted with brutal simplicity. Spears came down. Shields closed. Fossoway men who had expected panicked wagon guards instead met a wall that neither shouted nor gave ground. They struck it, broke against it, and died in the mud while Dread Legion men cleared the reeds with crossbow and blade.
Rhaenys watched from above on Meleys but did not intervene. That was wise. Dragonfire would have ended the skirmish faster, but it would also have burned river grass, wagons, perhaps our own men, and every shred of restraint I was trying to preserve. Meleys’s shadow was enough. Fossoway archers began withdrawing the moment they realised the red queen was circling overhead.
Baela returned from a forward flight an hour later. "They are falling back in groups," she reported. "Not broken, but they are no longer trying to hold every lane. I saw more banners westward, closer to Cider Hall."
"Did you see Tessarion?"
"No. Only smoke from village hearths and Fossoway movement along the river road. If the blue dragon is near, she did not show herself."
Rhaenys looked relieved, though only someone watching closely would have seen it.
I gave Baela the praise she had earned. "Your report is clear and useful. Rest Moondancer before the next flight."
She nodded, trying to hide satisfaction beneath discipline.
Progress again.
By the third day, the Fossoways had learned they could not break the army, so they tried to make the army angry.
They left two murdered scouts hanging from an apple tree near a crossroads, their bodies stripped of boots and marked with red fruit shoved into their mouths. One was Caswell. One was Dread Legion. The message was crude, ugly, and effective enough that several men wanted to burn the nearest orchard in answer.
I refused. Landrey found me beside the bodies while the burial detail worked.
"The men will want blood for this," he said.
"They can have it from armed men."
"They may not see the difference by nightfall."
"Then their officers will teach them before nightfall."
He studied me for a moment. "You are thinking of the Reachlords watching us."
"I am thinking of farmers watching us. I am thinking of Lord Matthos Tyrell hearing whether we answer two dead scouts by burning orchards that feed half the villages nearby. I am thinking of every undecided house waiting to learn whether Rhaenyra’s army brings order or permission."
Landrey nodded slowly. "Then we kill Fossoway soldiers cleanly and leave their trees alone."
"Yes."
He looked toward the hanging branches. "Cleanly may become difficult."
"It often does."
The burial was brief. The march resumed with colder men.
That afternoon, the Fossoways tried to draw us into a village.
They had abandoned most of it, or seemed to. Doors hung open. Chickens scattered across the road. A few old people remained in doorways, frightened and silent. Our forward scouts reported movement behind the far cottages and fresh scrape marks across the well-stones. I halted the column outside the village and sent Footly guides around the eastern side while Dread Legion infantry entered in pairs, shields raised, eyes on roofs and windows.
The trap lay beneath the main square.
They had weakened the cover over an old storage cellar and placed brush and dust across the boards. Enough weight would have collapsed the centre, dropping men and horses into a pit where archers could shoot from surrounding houses. It was clever. Too clever to waste on the first few scouts. They had expected a larger push, perhaps cavalry rushing through to secure the far side.
Instead, we found it, marked it, and took the archers from behind when Footly men guided a Legion detachment through a goat path outside the wall line.
The Fossoways lost nearly a hundred men in and around that village.
We lost eighteen.
Afterwards, I had the old people brought food and asked whether they had been forced to remain. Most would not answer. One old woman spat near the Fossoway dead and said their lord’s men had taken her sons three days earlier to carry timber for barricades. That answer travelled through our ranks faster than any speech I could have given.
War did not make villains tidy.
By the fourth day, the resistance weakened.
Not vanished. We still found traps. We still saw riders at distance. We still took arrows from orchards and stones from ridges. But the Fossoways had spent too much blood for too little gain. Their ambushes no longer struck with confidence. Their barricades were abandoned sooner. Their archers fired from farther away. Their dead were harder for them to recover.
The red apple banners withdrew toward Cider Hall.
Cider Hall itself sat amid orchards and rolling ground, rich and proud, its walls not the greatest in the Reach but strong enough to make foolish assault costly. By the time our vanguard sighted its outer lands, the Fossoway force had been cut down badly. They had never stood for one proper battle, yet battle had found them in pieces: at barricades, in ditches, near villages, along the river, beneath trees whose fruit would ripen over soil newly fed with blood.
The count came that evening.
Dick brought it with the expression of a man who hated uncertain numbers almost as much as false ones.
"Enemy dead confirmed and estimated together are near one thousand," he said. "Prisoners are fewer than expected because they withdrew in small bands and carried off those they could. Our own dead stand at two hundred and seventy-two."
I looked up from the map.
He continued before I asked. "Most were Caswell and Footly men, especially from the early ambushes and the ditch line on the third day. The Unsullied lost twenty-eight dead and forty wounded. The Dread Legion lost thirty-six dead and fifty-one wounded. The remaining losses are from allied infantry, wagon guards, and scouts."
Two hundred and seventy-two.
A small number beside twelve thousand.
A large number when given faces.
I read the list. Names from the Legion. Numbers from the Unsullied, though Grey Worm had their chosen names where they used them. Footly boys from villages we had passed. Caswell men who had learned discipline too late or died obeying it after learning. Scouts who had found traps with their bodies so others would not.
Rhaenys stood nearby, helmet under one arm, her hair wind-tossed from another flight.
"The road is open," she said.
"Open enough."
"That was the purpose."
"Yes."
She waited, then said what I would not. "The cost was lower than it might have been."
"That does not make it low."
"No. It makes it war."
I looked toward Cider Hall, visible in the distance beneath the fading light. Smoke rose from within, not from burning, but from hearths and campfires behind walls. The Fossoways had retreated into their own strength.
They had lost near a thousand men and killed fewer than three hundred of ours. Their traps had slowed us, bloodied our allies, irritated our veterans, and failed to stop the queen’s army from reaching their seat.
A poor exchange. Yet not meaningless.
They had bought time. They had made us spend attention. They had tested our discipline before we came before Highgarden. They had forced Reachmen to bleed beside foreign soldiers, which could either bind our cause or sour it depending on what came next.
Lord Footly arrived not long after the count, face drawn with grief he carried carefully. "Many of the dead are mine," he said.
"Yes."
"My men were too eager at first."
"Some were. Many held well after."
He accepted the fairness without comfort. "The Fossoways will claim they bloodied your great army all the way to their walls."
"They will."
"And you will claim victory?"
I looked toward the road behind us, where broken barricades, buried men, and frightened villages marked the path. "I will claim the road was contested and taken. Victory can wait until Cider Hall opens or falls."
Footly nodded. "That will sound less glorious than the songs prefer."
"Good. It will be closer to true."
We made camp beyond bowshot of Cider Hall, close enough for pressure and far enough to avoid wasting men in darkness. The Unsullied formed the forward line with Dread Legion companies anchoring both flanks. Footly and Caswell men were placed where they could rest and re-form, not as punishment but because exhausted allied levies made poor night guards after eight days of ambush.
Rhaenys landed Meleys where Cider Hall could see her in the morning. I sent word for Dravvaxx to remain near but not overhead, his dark shape better used as uncertainty until needed.
The Fossoways had chosen Aegon. Now they had to decide whether their walls were worth the next thousand.
Before sleeping, I dictated the message to be sent at dawn.
"To the lord and captains of House Fossoway," I said while Dick wrote. "The queen’s army has reached Cider Hall despite every barricade, trap, and ambush set upon the road. You have spent near one thousand men and failed to halt us. Queen Rhaenyra still offers lawful submission to those who lay down arms, open the road, and surrender hostages for future obedience. If you refuse, your losses today will be remembered as the warning you ignored before worse followed."
Dick looked up. "Do you want the number of our dead included?"
"No. They know how many they killed, or they will pretend to. We honour our dead among ourselves, not in a letter begging their killers to count better."
He nodded and continued writing.
Outside the tent, the army settled under watch. Some men slept quickly from exhaustion. Others stared toward Cider Hall and imagined the next day. The Reach wind carried the scent of crushed grass, river damp, horse sweat, and apples from orchards that had watched men die beneath their branches.
We had reached the Fossoway seat. The road west had not broken us.
But it had taken its price, and Cider Hall waited ahead with closed gates.