Fire blossomed around Gendry as he tore through the mercenary lines. He was a shadow of iron and fury, a titan of the storm who moved with a speed that defied his massive frame. Behind him, the Wolf Pack knights rode in a wall of steel, their grey banners whipping in the wind like the wings of a predatory bird.
The Company of the Cat had not expected a frontal assault at the break of dawn. Their arrows hissed through the air, but the Wolf Pack's heavy plate and scale mail turned the shafts aside. Bloodbeard roared commands, his voice a jagged saw, but the momentum of the "Storm-born" was a force of nature.
CRACK.
Gendry's warhammer found the chest of a Second Son's sergeant, the impact sounding like a hammer hitting a hot ingot. The man's ribs collapsed inward, and he was thrown from his saddle before he could even scream. Gendry did not stop to watch him fall. He was a blacksmith at the forge of war, and his hammer was reshaping the Disputed Lands with every stroke.
The Second Sons, already a hollow shell of a company, began to dissolve. They were exiles and failures, poorly equipped and even more poorly led. When they saw the "Titan's Bastard" being hunted by the Wolf King, the remaining courage in their ranks evaporated.
Mero, the towering Braavosi with the red-gold beard, fought with the desperation of a cornered animal. He parried a spear-thrust from Longspear, but his arm was already leaden from a wound in his side. Then, the black sand steed cut through the chaos, and Gendry was upon him.
Mero raised his shield, but Gendry's hammer descended like a thunderbolt. The first strike shattered Mero's sword; the second caved in his gilded helm. The Titan's Bastard fell like a mountain of meat and broken pride, his blood staining the fertile earth of the fireweed fields.
"The Titan's Bastard is dead!"
"The Wolf has his head!"
As Mero's body hit the mud, a man with a weathered, broad face and almond-shaped Dothraki eyes stepped forward, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. He wore a salt-and-pepper beard and a broken nose that suggested a lifetime of narrow escapes.
"I am Ben Plumm," the man shouted over the din of battle. "My brothers have no wish to die for a dead man's contract. We surrender to the Liberator!"
Gendry reined in his horse, his hammer dripping crimson. "Mero is gone. If you want to live, Ben Plumm, you take up your banners and you strike the Cat. Do you want to be a slave to the Myrmen, or a brother to the Wolf?"
"The Second Sons are always with the winner," Brown Ben said with a pragmatic grin, scratching at his beard. "Lead the way, Wolf King."
The betrayal was infectious. On the other side of the field, the slave-crews of the Myrish trebuchets saw the tide turn. They turned their tools on their overseers, dragging down the Wolfslayer with heavy chains and setting the Lady of Myr ablaze. The "Three Daughters" of Myr, the pride of the Magisters, were silenced by the very hands they had sought to chain.
Bloodbeard's eyes turned a hysterical red. "The Second Sons have turned cloak! The Spear Company is pinned! We are surrounded!"
But the worst was yet to come.
From the east, the rising sun revealed a new forest of banners—solid gold, with no devices, save for the gilded skulls of dead captains hanging from the pikes. The disciplined rhythm of ten thousand marching feet shook the very foundations of the Wolf's Den.
"The Golden Company," a Myrish officer whispered, his face turning the color of ash. "But they were contracted to the Magisters!"
At the head of the column, the massive, wrinkled shapes of war elephants emerged from the dust. The beasts let out a trumpeting roar that sent the mercenary horses into a blind panic. The Golden Company had not come to reinforce the siege; they had come to break it.
"Beneath the gold, the bitter steel!" the war cry echoed across the plains.
The Golden Company had rejected the Myrish gold. They had found a new cause, and the Wolf King had found his army.