The The

The Lord Boris was confident a victory, for his scouts had told him that the rivermen were led by boys and women. It was

an eye on to dusk when he spied the enemy, yet he ordered an immediate attack, though the road

ahead was a solid wall of shields, and the hill to its right bristled with archers. Lord Burroughs led

the charge himself, forming his knights into a wedge and thunder down the road at the heart of the

foe, where the silver trout of River Run floated on its blue and red banner beside the

quartered arms of the dead queen. His foot advanced behind them, beneath King Agon's golden dragon.

The citadel names the clash that followed the Battle of the Kings Road.

The men who fought it named it the muddy mess.

By any name, the last battle of the dance of the dragons would prove to be a one-sided affair.

The longbows on the hill shot the horses out from under Lord Boris's knights as they charged,

bringing down so many that less than half his riders

ever reached the shield wall. Those that did found their ranks disordered, their wedge broken,

their horses slipping and struggling in the soft mud. Though the stormlanders wreaked great havoc with

lance and sword and long axe, the river lords held firm, as new men stepped up to fill the place of those who fell.

When Lord Baratheon's foot came crashing into the fray, the shield wall swayed and staggered

back and seemed as if it might break, until the wood to the left of the road erupted with

shouts and screams, and hundreds more rivermen burst from the trees led by that mad boy

Benjicott Blackwood, who would this day earn the name Bloody Ben, by which he would be known

for the rest of his long life.

This was one of many fitting anecdotes available to us recounting the deeds of one of House

Blackwood's many illustrious figures.

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