Captain Gault marched at the front, a ghostly grey dawn barely rising over the distant hills. Beneath his boots, the earth was dry and compact; no sound of hooves or footsteps had betrayed the passage of the seven hundred men following him. The deployment had been a masterpiece of infiltration. For two days, the force had advanced in small groups of ten or twenty, bypassing villages, avoiding roads.
Gault was proud of his work. An anonymous lord from the Royal Council had paid a colossal sum for this "discreet annexation operation." The goal was simple: take the new industrial town by surprise, capture its enigmatic Steward, and secure its factories before the Crown could hear of the matter.
He thought back to the rumors he had swept aside in King's Landing. It was said that the company at work here had pulverized seventy men, a serious strike force, a few months ago. The rumors spoke of "celestial fire" and "thunder without clouds."
Nonsense. A successful ambush by well-placed archers, at most. A group of men-at-arms couldn't just vanish into thin air, and lightning didn't strike on command.
"Captain, the Watering Glade is ahead," whispered Joss, his lieutenant, pointing to a break in the trees. "Val-Engrenage is less than a half-hour's quick march from here."
"Perfect," Gault replied, a satisfied smile stretching his scar. "This is where we rally one last time. We review the orders, and then we charge that little town of upstarts."
The troop fanned out into the vast grassy clearing, an open space bordered on one side by a small stream, offering an unobstructed view of the road leading into the valley. The seven hundred men, finally visible in their terrifying mass, were the epitome of military might. There were spearmen in sturdy mail, a small unit of heavily barded cavalry, and archers. Against the "Steel Guard," which numbered only a hundred veterans, victory was guaranteed.
Gault raised his hand to halt the movement. He was about to give the order to form assault columns when a strange sound tore through the dawn silence: not a war cry, nor the wind, but a sharp, rapid whistle, followed by a soft pop high above them.
The first projectile landed in the middle of the spearmen, fifty paces from Gault. It was neither a rock nor an arrow. A thick, acrid grey smoke, like burning wool, immediately billowed out, enveloping the men. A second, then a third canister fell, striking the cavalry and the archer unit.
"By the Seven! What is this..." Joss began, spitting out the metallic taste in the air.
The smoke was not toxic, but it was blinding and disorienting. Horses neighed in panic. Men coughed, losing all sense of formation. It was pure, sudden panic, without a single blade being drawn. Gault felt his heart tighten. It was a coward's tactic, but a damned effective one. Something was wrong.
"Out of the smoke! Battle formation! It's a trap!" Gault roared, his voice barely audible. But the collective stampede of panic had already begun. The seven hundred men, blind, pushed and trampled each other to find the tree line.
This was no archer's ambush. It was a diabolical strategy to break their strength before the battle even began. Gault drew his sword, preparing to lead the charge through the fog.
Then, he heard the whistle of a second type of projectile, heavier, deeper, and infinitely more terrifying.
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Joren, a former man-at-arms and veteran of a thousand skirmishes, stood in position behind a makeshift shelter, his heart beating with a strangely cold rhythm. Beside him, nine other of the fastest and most loyal men of the Steel Guard waited, armed with the same strange machine.
Fear was absent, replaced by disbelief. Joren had seen cavalry charges, sieges, slaughters by the sword. He believed in the weight of steel and the speed of his own blade. But for the past three months, Tony Stark had shown him that those rules belonged to a bygone era.
"They are in the clearing, Joren," Tony announced, posted nearby. "The scout signals that the smoke is doing its job. They are disorganized. Now. Show them the difference between numbers and technique."
Joren gritted his teeth. He held the grenade launcher prototype (as Tony called it), a compact invention made of steel tubes and a spring-and-powder mechanism. It was the weapon Tony had made them handle hundreds of times, with training loads. But the live ammunition...
"The age of chivalry is dead," Joren murmured, addressing his men. "This is no longer a question of honor; it's a question of survival. This is the world of tomorrow against the world of yesterday. Aim for the center of the mass. On my signal."
He glanced at his own grenade launcher. The projectile he inserted was a steel sphere the size of a fist, filled with "Sparks powder" (a high-explosive, stable compound developed by Tony) and metal shards. He knew nothing of its composition, only that it was concentrated fury.
Joren shouldered the weapon, adjusted the small brass sight, and fired.
The thwump-boom of the launch was deafening, followed by a rapidly rising whistle. The projectile landed not in the main mass, but slightly behind it, where the soldiers were beginning to reform out of the smoke.
The explosion was a physical and auditory shock. It didn't just tear the air; it tore the earth. Bright orange flames erupted, followed by a shockwave that slammed into the trees. The silence that followed the blast was immediately broken by a terrifying concert of screams.
Where the projectile had struck, there were no longer men, but shreds of flesh and steel. The gaping crater testified to the energy released. Soldiers had been thrown more than ten yards, their armor ripped, their bodies broken.
"Fire! Fire, you idiots!" Joren roared, galvanized by the sight of pure horror.
The other nine men, stunned for a second, obeyed. Nine more whistles. Nine more explosions, each wider, more devastating than anything Westeros had ever known. The infantry attempting to reform was pulverized by successive waves. War cries turned into howls of terror.
Each of his men also carried five grenades. Fifty in total. Which made the enemy's defeat an absolute certainty.
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Captain Gault no longer understood anything. He was struggling through the acrid smoke when the first explosion blinded and staggered him. It wasn't the sound of a catapult. It was the sound of the world ending.
He saw Joss fly. One moment, he was next to him. The next, he was just a torn shape, slamming into the trunk of an oak, his shield pulverized.
Panic was now a physical wave sweeping through his seven hundred men. They were no longer an organized force, but a screaming mass of men trying to flee the invisible. The explosions followed one after another, insane sounds of yielding steel and pulverized wood.
Gault had fought in bloody sieges, he had seen men die by the hundreds at the Stepstones, but this... this was a devastating humiliation, a warrior's nightmare of seeing his art rendered obsolete. He felt like a straw man under a giant's pestle, utterly powerless against an incomprehensible magic of war. Every whistle was a death sentence.
He tried to rally the survivors, about fifteen cavalrymen. "Retreat! GET AWAY FROM THE SOURCE OF THE FIRE!"
But before he could give the impulse, the explosions stopped, replaced by another horror.
Repeating crossbows began to spit, firing not one, but four bolts in the space of a single breath. Their steel shafts struck the fleeing men with surgical precision, turning the rout into a slaughter.
Then, the rumbling. Two heavy carts, armed with ballistae, appeared, firing enormous iron bolts that pierced entire groups of fugitives, pinning men to the ground. The carts moved quickly, escorted by guards who finished off the wounded.
The massacre was so complete, the rout so appalling, that Gault realized they had never even seen the enemy's face. No screams, no cavalry charges; they weren't seeking glory. Only the pure and simple elimination of the enemy mattered to them. It was efficient, but of an indigestible barbarity; even a wildling or a Dothraki screamer had more honor.
His heart shattered, he threw his sword into the mud. He was one of the few survivors. Shame and terror overwhelmed him. There was nothing left to do. He let himself fall to the ground, ignoring the chaos, the screams, and the blood. Val-Engrenage had won without even letting the enemy see its walls. And for the first time in war, he wept.
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When the sun finally rose, it illuminated a scene of mechanical horror. The clearing was just a field of debris, dismembered limbs, twisted armor, and blackened craters. Of the seven hundred mercenaries, only a few dozen had managed to flee into the forest, relentlessly hunted by the Steel Guard, which had not lost a single man. Tony Stark's victory was total, brutal, and absolute.
Joren returned to the Hollard Keep, his face blackened by smoke and blast. He wasn't boasting, but a new light of understanding, almost of fear, was in his eyes.
"They're broken. We've captured half a dozen for questioning. The rest are... neutralized."
Tony nodded, watching the columns of smoke rise.
"Let them understand that I am not a Lord to be robbed, but a force capable of doing what is necessary."
As Joren was grabbing a jug of water, a man dressed as a peasant rushed into the courtyard, his face covered in sweat and tears, collapsing at Tony's feet. He carried a message from Elara, recognizable by her personal seal.
"Master Tony! From King's Landing!" he bellowed.
Tony opened the message. He read the scrawled words, his expression freezing.
"Attack. Visenya Headquarters. Poison. Several Gnats dead. Jem critical. I am safe."
The messenger gasped, his story mingling with the words on the parchment. The attack had been cowardly, targeted. Flick, Pip, Pock. Dead. His students, his young engineers-in-training, the boisterous co-founders of the enterprise, all poisoned. Jem, too, had been gravely wounded; he had lost a leg, fighting for his life. Elara had only survived thanks to her foresight and the regular use of a taster, a security protocol she had put in place after Tyrion's visit.
The parchment slipped from Tony's fingers. He had just crushed an army, saving his physical empire. But his heart had just been struck. The attack on Val-Engrenage was an attempted annexation. If they had succeeded, eliminating Elara and the others would have been child's play.
Rage rose in him, not the cold anger of the strategist, but the burning fury of a wronged and grieving friend. His enemy, rich and powerful, had just raised seven hundred men to strike him down. He was playing a fine game of dice, very fine, but he did not hesitate to get dirty, to be unscrupulous.
"War is war," he had told Joren.
But the war had just taken a personal turn, one he hadn't thought possible, even as he survived their second attack.
Heads were going to roll. That was a certainty.