The

The The Six thousand of the Queen's men formed up to face Lord Hightower in the field under the command of Sir Garibord Gray.

They fought bravely for a time, but a withering reign of arrows from Lord Ormond's archers thinned their ranks,

and a thunderous charge by his heavy horse broke them,

sending the survivors running back toward the town walls.

There Red Robb Rivers and his bowmen stood covering the retreat with their own longbows.

When most of the survivors were safe inside the gates,

Roddy the ruin and his winter wolves salred forth from a postern gate, screaming their terrifying

northern war cries as they swept around the left flank of the attackers.

In the chaos that ensued, the Northmen fought their way through ten times their own number

to where Lord Ormond High Tower sat his war horse beneath King Agon's golden dragon and the banners of Old Town and the High Tower.

As the singers tell it, Lord Roderick was bloody from head to heel as he came on, with splintered shield and cracked helm, yet so drunk with battle that he did not even seem to feel his wounds.

We ended our last episode with Circe's famous, You Win or You Die, line spoken to Ned Stark.

But here in the dance of the dragons, the winter's wolves show us a different attitude.

To them, it's more a case of you win and you die, or you win when you die, as long as it's in battle with dead foes about, that is.

Roddy the ruin is Lord of Barreton, but he shares the sentiment, as all Northerners do, of their leech lord. Winter is coming. From them, there is an acceptance of

the inevitability of death paired with the willpower to see it through on one's own terms,

in battle with dead foes about, that is. There is indeed no middle ground when facing a foe like the

winter's wolves. At the beginning of a Game of Thrones, Ned Stark speaks to Bran about the execution of

Garrett, the Knights Watch deserer. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit

if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. Several characters

portrayed in this joint episode, this chapter of the Dance of the Dragons,

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