There was a plan, of course. A poor one. A plan that Ned felt he had underestimated exactly how poor until he sat across the battlefield. Thirty thousand men were no small number. He had half of that, but the disparity made his force seem that much smaller. Yet, he held his nerve. If only because it was far too late to rethink the plan. For better or worse, he was committed.
They would win the day. If they didn't, then Ned resolved himself to be amongst the fallen as penance for his folly.
“Hold!” Ned shouted to his men before repeating the command in Valyrian. He commanded the center alongside five hundred of those who had fought beside him across the scouring of the Disputed Lands. He trusted them to keep their nerve, and they were placed in pivotal positions to ensure that the center line wouldn't break. “Hold steady!”
The Northmen his brother had given him made up the flanks. They were too few to hold both flanks, so they were divided into groups of two thousand and five hundred, further reinforced by a thousand Freedmen. The front of their army was three thousand, eight thousand, and three thousand. Further supplemented by three hundred archers and five hundred cavalry.
It was not the ideal army to defeat a Dothraki khalasar. The texts and theories recommended a much larger division of cavalry, particularly an even amount of light skirmisher cavalry and mounted knights. It also came with the recommendation to outnumber the khalasar two to one, if possible.
“Archers!” Ned commanded, and the few archers that they had stepped forward. “Loose!”
The khalasar across the field was cleanly split in two wholes. The khalasar on the left was outpacing the one on the right, and the gap between them was widening. They were concentrating all their full might on each wing. Not unexpected, but an unpleasant confirmation of his fears. Their riders pulled back their bows, matching the arrows that flew through the air. It was a sight to see, that much Ned could acknowledge.
Father liked to say that Lyanna and Brandon rode like they were half horse, but the Dothraki rode like it in earnest. They shifted in their saddles, reducing their exposure to their volley, while maintaining the ability to release their own with painful accuracy.
The volley that his archers released struck, but it was swallowed by the thousands that the Dothraki released in kind. Not only could every warrior serve as light cavalry, but they also served as archers. Perhaps not all, but most. Enough so that Ned had no difficulty believing that there were thirty thousand arrows raining down upon them.
Some of the Dothraki faltered as their horses shot out from under them. The horses collapsed or bucked at the sudden pain, tripping up behind them, but each khalasar was spaced out enough that it didn't start a cascading collapse. Which was something he could not say for his army when the arrows reached them. Shields raised high protected them from the worst of it, but there were still sharp cries that rang out where an arrow slipped between a narrow gap or punched through the braced forearm that the shield was attached to. The casualties were light, but every man counted.
“Loose!” Ned demanded, his archers letting out another volley. “Withdraw!” No sooner than the arrows left their bowstrings, the archers fled behind the front line. A second Dothraki volley was their reply, further hammering arrows into their shields until some splintered from the sheer volume.
The khalasars were almost upon them, but they did not charge. That was not their way. Instead, they began to flank around, unleashing a third volley of arrows into their front and sides, intent on bypassing them entirely for an encirclement. From there, they would stay painfully out of reach, feathering them with arrows until they broke formation and collapsed upon them like an unstoppable tide.
That was the plan, at least.
The front of the flanking khalasars did not each strike the trap prepared for them at the same time, but the momentum behind the encirclement carried the latter into it all the same. The sounds of horses in agony echoed out when the front line of the khalasars rose directly into the stake-filled holes that they had prepared days in advance for their exact maneuver. A thin layer of dirt and grass obscured the trenches held up by plant-fiber mesh, which had in turn been obscured by their army.
Dothraki rode into the pits headfirst, the ground and their momentum betraying them. Many were impaled upon the stakes, screaming out in shock as much as they were in pain. Riders were flipped off their horses, slamming into the ground, and some revealed the second row of holes prematurely. Both khalasars recoiled from the trap; those at the back of the khalasar were able to break off without issue, but the frenzied recoil of seeing devastation ahead, even if the source of it wasn’t clear, and attempting to avoid it, saw many riders colliding into one another.
It wouldn’t be enough to win. Ned had discussed it over with Pau -- it would remove upwards of three thousand riders. Enough to blood them, certainly, but a far cry from a decisive trap necessary to defeat them outright. But Ned didn’t need to. What he needed was to enrage the khalasars. Enough that they would give chase until the end of the earth in the name of vengeance.
“Ranks! Form ranks! March!” Ned shouted over the sounds of absolute chaos, nearly losing sight of his army entirely from the amount of dust in the air. The order was relayed amongst his commanders, Paul among them. With minimal difficulty, the formation marched forward past the disorganized and reeling khalasars. And he was unsurprised, but dismayed, to see that the khalasars had not committed themselves in their entirety to the encirclement.
Some ten thousand Dothraki were across the field, messengers riding back and forth to get answers on what just happened. It would take time for those that fell into the trap to reorganize themselves, but those at the rear of each khalasar were taking strides to do exactly that.
“Paul,” Ned uttered, giving Lord Atreides a nod. Paul returned it, diving into the plum of dust with a hundred others. Unceremoniously churned in his gut over the action, but he trusted Paul when he said he could buy them the time necessary to make the maneuver possible. The maneuver being to march forward out of what would have been the encirclement, then march to the right.
They did not engage the disorganized enemy, though the temptation to do so was strong. They simply couldn't afford it. Engaging the enemy would slow them down and that was the very last thing they could afford. They couldn't defeat enough before both khalasars recovered and then overwhelmed them. Instead, they had to swiftly march to the next phase of the plan would be held.
A battlefield that did not favor horses.
The khalasars were currently just mercenaries, and like all mercenaries, they valued coin over their word. They were here because they were paid to. Ned had little doubt that if the battle turned against them, they would simply retreat, regroup, and if not enough damage was done to them, attack again. Or, in the worst case, one of the Khals would challenge the other and absorb their khalasar, leading to a united army.
But with the trap, the khalasars would want blood. They would want vengeance. The khals would want to wipe away the shame of what just transpired badly enough that they were willing to take to follow Ned and his army to a battlefield of their choosing.
That being said, there was still the issue of getting there.
Arrows bounced off Ned's armor from the Dothraki, who realized their prey was slipping from their grip. There were few, but he had been singled out as the commander. Ned didn't let that distract him from his duty, even if his heart was hammering at his ribs, half expecting each arrow to be the one that killed him. “March! One-two-one-two!” He shouted until his throat felt raw, the army picking up the pace in a brisk jog. Not fast by any means, but they moved as quickly as they could while remaining in formation.
Perhaps it was the sheer audacity of the move that stunned the khans into inaction. Or perhaps Paul was more effective at stalling the enemy regroup than Ned dared to hope for. In either case, they made it further than Ned expected they would before the weight of the khalasars bore down upon them. Their war cries cut through the air alongside arrows, which assaulted them from every side.
The assault was thin at first. A handful of enraged Dothraki charging forth to claim their blood debt. That, in turn, led more of the Dothraki to attack. The careful formation that they rode in was nowhere to be seen. Now it was blood and death and vengeance. Ned held his nerve, arrows hammering into his shield and armor, thinking one single thing. ‘An angry enemy is a foolish enemy.’
And the Dothraki were furious. More and more committed themselves to the attack, darting in to shoot an arrow or slash at their flank. Then groups of them. They were only held at bay by the line of pikes that outlined their marching formation, but the formation wasn't perfect. Men fell with arrows sticking out of them, gaps opening up where daring Dothraki galloped forth, getting stuck into their formation before falling or being repelled.
It was not a proper battle. It was more of a hundred fights that were happening sporadically.
Ned did his best to be everywhere at once. Where the line faltered, and the formation threatened to crumble underneath the blood thirsty raiders, he was there to lift their spirits and bring order. All the while, he shouted orders for the march to continue. The attacks slowed their march dramatically, and they could only move as fast as their slowest member, or their force would fragment. And despite his best efforts, that fragmentation happened all the same.
Some men lost their nerve. They saw the vast mass of Dothraki that didn't just want blood, but an agonizing death. They dropped their spears and tried to surrender, or they broke formation when they saw a gap. And it didn't matter how many times those gaps proved to be traps; there was always someone desperate enough to risk running if it meant survival.
Their march slowed dramatically. More and more of them were being dragged into a prolonged fight. Soon it didn't matter how hard Ned tried -- there could be ten of him, but it still wouldn't be enough. The only reason why they were able to continue the march at all was the path they had chosen. A thin spattering of trees along one flank broke up the Dothraki pressure, turning it to merely overwhelming from crushing.
Ned fought to keep the army moving, and his stomach clenched every time portions of the army were overwhelmed or simply dragged too far behind to be helped. Every man knew what to do in that case, but there was a very different thing to follow through upon it.
Time seemed to lose all meaning while he fought with increasing desperation to keep the army moving and whole. The sun never dimmed, but to anyone who would ask, Ned would confess that it felt like days before he heard the horn blowing. A signal that they were at long last in position.
Ned looked underfoot to see that the solid ground had become rough gravel full of unevenly shaped stones. Poor for galloping horses. Something that he just now noticed that the Dothraki were dealing with, but such was their ire that they paid no heed to it. Something that they paid the price for when twenty thousand Dornish spearmen announced their arrival upon the battlefield alongside fifteen thousand Reachmen. And in doing so, effectively trapped the Dothraki upon it.
Timing and positioning.
The Dothraki didn't neglect scouts. Their outriders would have reported that both the Reach and the Dornish were content to stand at the ready in their camps. Perhaps they had received word that both armies were mobilizing after the battle began, but by that time, their control over the khalasars had slipped. They were angry at the trap. For the fallen.
Those who did not die on horseback did not die honorable deaths.
With timing and positioning, they were able to lure them onto the battlefield, and armies that were discounted appeared at the ready. The battlefield itself was as ideal as they could hope for. And without the gambit, there was simply no way that the Dothraki Khals would fight upon it, even if they were blind, deaf, drunk, and dumb.
Ned’s back was to the sea, the rough-hewn beach faced the gentle incline to solid ground, but there was a near-vertical inclined cliffside ridge. The Dornish emerged upon that gentle slope, while the Reachmen were to the right, forming a solid wall between the cliff and the sea. Both Dornish and Reach archers positioned themselves upon the cliff edge, gathering in almost dangerous numbers, to unleash arrows upon the Dothraki horde below.
“Form ranks! Shields and spears!” Ned shouted, pushing away his exhaustion in the brief lull as the Dothraki recoiled from the revelation that they walked into a trap. His men were battered. He was unsure how many had fallen on the march, but it was in the hundreds. Yet, those who survived mustered their will and obeyed his commands. All the while, he watched the Dothraki regroup.
The faster of the khalasars had suffered the worst from the trap as it was noticeably smaller. The slower had enough of a warning to save more of their riders. Now they seemed to be quarreling over what to do next.
They could attempt to finish off Ned and his host. In doing so, they would open themselves up to the other two armies on the field. Likewise, engaging any of the other two would see the same result. Thus, they had two true choices.
They could fight, or they could escape.
When they made their decision, for the initial few seconds, Ned thought that they had chosen to engage all three armies at once. However, when the khalasars began to engage, it became immediately clear that they were not acting together. Each of their Khals came to different conclusions and were using the other to escape the trap.
“They are divided!” Ned shouted out, rallying the strength of his exhausted men. A token force raced towards them while the main hosts rushed to the Reachmen and the Dornish. The charge was a stunted and staggered thing. Horses slipped upon the uneven stones, some falling over while others broke their legs. The sound of horses in pain set his teeth on edge, but he swallowed his discomfort.
The Dothraki horses struggled to do the same. The ground was treacherous, especially with how far into it that Ned had lured them. Well-trained and disciplined horses resisted orders, turning the charge on all sides into a slow crawl. It hardly meant that they were harmless, of course. Ned once more found himself under an assault of arrows, but even they were rapidly drying up. They used too many in their arrows in their frenzied assault earlier.
“We reinforce the Reach!” Ned shouted out, watching as the token force was felled underneath a hail of arrows and spears. The larger of the khalasars charged the Reach line, sensing the trap that lurked around the Dornish. Or perhaps they were simply that confident that they could break through the Reach line. Ned didn’t know.
What he did know was that his diminished army, yet still more than ten thousand strong, roared with new life at the prospect of getting revenge for the ravaging they suffered. They marched forward, having a much easier time of it, and closed a net around the Dothraki that attempted to fend them off.
Meanwhile, the Dornish held strong while the second smaller khalasar attempted to do what Ned expected them to. Twenty thousand men was no small number, but it wasn’t enough to make an unassailable line that covered the entirety of the exit to the battlefield. There were gaps at the side that could be exploited. Raced between while a token force distracted the relevant flank to allow the rest to escape.
Ned was unsure whether the Khal suspected a trap or was merely desperate. The result was the same, regardless. The khalasar raced towards one of the gaps, starting to pour through it, only for the noose to be tightened. Reach knights revealed themselves just out of sight behind the Dornish at the crest of the slope, slamming into the khalasar and plugging the gap they tried to escape from.
The Dornish weren’t idle while the khalasar recoiled from their escape route closing. Their right wing and center swung inward, pinning the khalasar in place. Some managed to slip between their fingers, but they numbers in the dozens. It wasn’t enough to turn the tide of the battle, and Ned ensured that the khalasar facing the right flank had no such escape route.
The battlefield became a place of pure noise and conflict. Dothraki attempted to force their way through the Reach line, and Ned had no idea if they were making any progress there. Only that they weren’t with his line that slowly strangled the khalasar, the horses that had been the source of mobility were pressed together until they couldn’t move. They couldn’t fight.
It was then that the Dothraki preference for light or no armor sealed their fate. There was nothing to protect them from the savage spear thrusts or slashes with swords. Or from the arrows that rained down from above. Their mobility had been their greatest strength, and without it…
It was a slaughter. No quarter was asked. None was given. The Freedmen and Northmen took their pound of flesh and a great deal more from the khalasar, felling them one by one.
And by the time they were done? The ocean ran red with blood that flowed between the stones in rivers, there were thousands of corpses that littered the rough-hewn beach…
Victory was theirs.