Chapter 195

Outside King's Landing

Renly Baratheon

To carry out the plan, before the assault began, a scattered bombardment of the city walls was set loose. It went on for a full twenty minutes and thinned the defenders on the walls considerably. Then, defying every doctrine of war, three brand new siege towers were sent forward all at once. The defenders had not expected this, and panic set in. The commander of King's Landing gave the order to use wildfire. From eleven separate points within the city, vessels of the cursed liquid took flight. Not all of them found their mark, but even a couple of lucky strikes were enough; the towers went up in flame.

Watching his siege engines burn, King Renly's war council remained calm. All of it was part of the plan. The towers had served as sacrificial lambs. Now the seasoned engineers, the best of two regions, knew exactly where the wildfire catapults stood. It took them only a couple of minutes to correct their aim. At least three or four attacking engines were now trained on every single point within the city. The command was given, and a dozen fire shells arced into the city.

Renly had sat on the Small Council since 294, and in all that time had never once heard so much as a whisper about wildfire being reproduced. Even the reckless Falcon's eye had never dared touch that subject, one so painful for the whole kingdom. Reasoning it through, the conclusion followed easily enough: whatever was being used against them was a legacy of the Mad King. Wildfire is a fearsomely dangerous substance: volatile, fluid, lighter than water, and violently flammable. Over the years the pyromancer's piss had only grown more temperamental, liable to ignite from the barest hint of heat, even sunlight alone could set it off. Now, instead of harmless rays of sun, fire shells rained down on the positions where it was stored. Only four of the shots found their target, but that alone was more than enough: the city went up in flame, and hundreds of Lannister men tasted their own weapon.

The defenders were thrown into panic, and Storm's End's heavy infantry made the most of it. They cut through the ragged lions like a knife through butter and seized the gate with ease. A thousand horsemen sat waiting for their moment, but it never came; another explosion thundered out, and the King's Gate collapsed into a heap of rubble. The cavalry found itself suddenly useless; the stones had piled into far too steep a slope to cross.

The lords were shaken, but not disheartened. They had more than twenty thousand swords, a breach stood open in the wall, all that remained was to press their advantage and the city would fall. Thousands of Baratheon's men clashed against thousands of Lannister's, neither side willing to yield an inch, and the slaughter at the broken gate raged on the whole day, only easing with the fall of dusk. By battle's end, a veritable mountain of corpses and dying men had piled up in the ruined gateway. So many, in fact, that with the human dead added in, the original height of the stone barrier had doubled. The next day brought the same scene all over again, mountains of the dead, and still the royal army could not force its way into the capital. On the third day, an attempt was made to hold the breach using barricades; it failed. The moment the Lannisters grasped the plan, a volley of wildfire answered it. The lions had learned their lesson and moved their stash to spots the enemy's fire could not reach. The barricades burned, the attackers burned with them, and the assault ground to a halt; fighting against a burning substance is no simple matter. On the fourth day, everything changed.

Renly Baratheon would have fought on to the bitter end, but then came ill news: the Dothraki had been spotted dangerously close to Storm's End, and alongside that, the Dornishmen were once again beginning to raise their heads. Fear for the safety of his own home outweighed the desire for victory over the Lannisters. Ignoring every objection from those around him, Renly gave the order to lift the siege and make ready to return to the Stormlands.

The Lannisters had won, though not without cost. The fanatics were dead, and with them the fragile alliance with the faith had come apart. More than half the city's forces had lost their heads in the fighting. Part of King's Landing had burned; Coal Lane and Street of Steel had, in effect, ceased to exist. With armies at war, no one had spared a thought for the thousand charred corpses scattered across the capital, and already a grim stench of coming plague had begun to rise from them.

The lions had won, but in winning they had lost everything, and now stood defenseless before the threat gathering at Dragonstone.