Chapter 342 You come and I go

Stannis's attack on King's Landing will not be slowed down by the attention of all parties.

After five days of confrontation, Stannis has rebuilt a batch of siege equipment. Although it is not as sophisticated as the previous batch, it can still be used.

Stannis, who had been impatient for a long time, immediately ordered an attack on the city through the Iron Gate.

The Steel Gate is located on the east side of King's Landing, next to Blackwater Bay. Inside the city wall are Flea Nest, Dragon's Den and the slums. The other side of the road is surrounded by high walls, and within the high walls are the residences of the powerful in King's Landing.

According to the terrain, it is neither convenient to attack the city nor to defend the city.

The reason why it is inconvenient to attack the city is that the area outside the Steel Gate is very small, with only a small open space, and behind it are cliffs and Blackwater Bay. The siege army cannot spread out here, and there are a large number of poor houses inside the Steel Gate. , there are obstacles everywhere, and the defending troops are also unable to deploy. Another point is that due to the terrain, the height of the Steel Gate city wall is much shorter than other city gates, making it easier to climb.

However, Stannis has a big advantage when attacking the city here, that is, Stannis's fleet on Blackwater Bay can assist in the siege. The ballistas and trebuchets on board can attack the defenders in the city over the high walls. military.

Before the official attack on the city, Stannis played a little trick. He gathered a large number of civilians outside the city disguised as troops and assembled near the old city gate, making the defenders mistakenly think that they were preparing to attack the old city gate.

In fact, his real siege army had moved from the forest outside the city to the Iron Gate and was hidden. After Stannis gave the order, he launched an attack, catching the gold robes and the recruited defenders by surprise.

Stannis's siege army once stormed the wall and occupied it for a while, but the hound Sandor Clegane led the Kingsguard and a group of defenders in time to support Stannis's army and drove Stannis's army off the wall.

At the old city gate, after Tyrion discovered that the siege army outside the city was an illusion, he did not immediately let Adam Malbrand lead the main force of golden robes to support the Iron Gate. Instead, he asked the hound to lead the newly formed city defenders. The army was responsible for the support, and at the same time ordered Adam Malbrand to go out of the city to attack the army disguised outside the city, completely treating this army disguised as civilians as a regular army.

In this battle between real and fake armies, Adam Malbrandn easily defeated the army, directly killing Rodran Storm, who was in charge of commanding the army, and then pursued the victory and tried to attack Stannis' rear camp, but was defeated by the ancient army. Sir de Morrigan saw through this and set up an ambush in the camp to ambush Adam Marbrand.

After paying more than 2,000 casualties, Adam Malbrand led the remaining army and fled back to King's Landing. However, when entering King's Landing, Tyrion had Adam Malbrand's army pretend to be a victory. And returned, and snatched Adam Malbrand from Stannis's camp and hung the king's standard on the spear, pretending to be an army and attacked Stannis's camp. In addition, he defeated the disguised army before, so that the city The spectators had the illusion that Stannis was nothing more than this, and their morale soared.

After that, Tyrion offered a high price and continued to recruit the city's defenders. Perhaps he felt that Stannis's army was easy to deal with and could win the victory soon. They could also get a good share of the spoils, so he participated There were more and more people defending the city, and the number of newly formed defenders increased to more than 10,000 in a short period of time.

Although the number of these people is astonishing, just like the civilian team that Adam Malbrand defeated before, they have little combat power and are sent to the city wall purely to be used as consumables.

However, even so, Tyrion still paid a large sum of money for this, but the empty treasury could not afford the cost, so he could only find other ways, such as snatching it from his sister, Queen Cersei. .

"You filthy idiots, get out of here. This is not the place for you." Cersei directly stopped the mercenary Bronn who was breaking into her dormitory, and turned towards him and those who were following him. More than a dozen mercenaries shouted.

"Dear sister, of course we will leave, but first we get the money." Tyrion walked out of the crowd, stood in front of Cersei, and said: "Now we need to hire a lot of manpower to expand the city defense army, but the treasury You can’t afford so much money, I know you must have some here..."

Cersei immediately refused: "No, absolutely not. This is what I have accumulated over the years..."

Tyrion said seriously: "Cersei, you haven't figured out the situation yet. What we need to do most now is to defend King's Landing and defeat Stannis. If Stannis invades King's Landing, the property in your hand will be It will eventually become his. Instead of that, it is better to use it to recruit the city's defense army." As he said, he showed his hands and clothes to Cersei and said, "Look, even I am. I took out all the valuables I had on me, and now everything must be focused on protecting King’s Landing City.”

Looking at Tyrion, Cersei's face was full of hatred. In the end, she could only take a few steps back, sat on a chair, and said dejectedly: "Move, everyone move!"

When Tyrion heard this, he immediately winked at the people around him. The soldiers of the city defenders immediately entered the house, took out a box filled with various gold and silver jewelry from the wardrobe, and left the Queen Mother's room. Room.

When Tyrion was leaving, he suddenly said: "By the way, there is one more thing. If Joffrey can appear on the city wall, it will affect our morale..."

"Get out! Get out!" Cersei shouted at Tyrion, picked up a fruit knife on the table, waved it towards Tyrion, and said: "If you say one more thing, I will use this Put the knife through your throat!"

Tyrion also knew that he should not irritate Cersei at this time, so he quickly opened his legs and ran away.

When he ran to the Prime Minister's Tower, Bronn, who was following him, suddenly asked in confusion: "Aren't all the jewelry on your body put in Shae's place?"

Tyrion shrugged and said: "I just said that I took out all the valuable things. I didn't say that I spent them on military expenses. The woman who took them out to me also took them out. Is not it?"

Bronn raised his eyebrows and was about to sneer at the other party when he suddenly saw thick smoke rising from the city in the distance.

Tyrion also saw the smoke and was shocked, thinking that Stannis's army had breached the city gate, but he soon discovered that the smoke was not coming from the city wall, but from the center of the city near the Great Sept of Baelor. nearby.

Tyrion immediately thought of what facilities there were nearby, and quickly determined where the fire was. His face suddenly turned pale, and he cursed: "Damn it, it's the granary, it's the granary that's on fire. . Stannis was not attacking the city at all, he was covering the inside. "

As Tyrion guessed, Stannis, who knew the city defense of King's Landing extremely well, knew that even the Iron Gate would be difficult for him to attack in a short time. Therefore, his purpose of attacking the city from the beginning was to Attract the attention of Tyrion and others, create an opportunity for his spy who ambushed in the city, and burn the food in the city.

Originally, due to wars and other reasons, a large number of refugees fled to King's Landing City, which increased the food consumption here. The main food suppliers of King's Landing City are the Riverlands and the Royal Territory, but the food in these two places has been reduced due to the war. The reason is either production reduction or production suspension.

Although Tyrion promptly purchased a batch of grain and grass from Tengshi Town after returning to King's Landing City and transported it to King's Landing City via the Blackwater River in the shortest possible time, this batch of grain was still not enough for the entire King's Landing City. But if you can use it sparingly, you can still survive a month or two.

Now, a fire was ignited in the granary. Although the nearby monks of the Great Temple of Baelor and the patrolling defenders put out the fire in time, nearly half of the food was still burned.

What's worse is that Stannis's spies are still spreading various rumors in the city. For example, the food in the city is no longer enough and will only be able to supply the powerful people of the Red Keep. As for the ordinary people in the city, they will only starve to death.

Tyrion could already feel that the atmosphere in King's Landing had become tense, and Stannis did not stop the siege. Instead, he continued to attack each city gate, creating the illusion that there were many siege troops outside the city, aggravating the tension inside the city. An atmosphere of panic.

Tyrion knew what he had to do, otherwise when the people's panic reaches its limit, terrible riots will break out in the city. If Stannis attacks the city with all his strength, King's Landing will most likely fall. .

"Have you checked all the people I asked you to check?" On the third night after the granary was burned, Tyrion asked Podrick Payne who had just returned to the Red Keep.

"Yes, sir, these are all the information found." Podrick put the information in Tyrion's hand and said.

Tyrion picked up the information and quickly looked through it. These information were all about a dozen famous dignitaries in the city. The reputations of these dozen powerful dignitaries were not good. They were all famous bad guys in King's Landing. It's just that Because he is Cersei's person, he can survive until now.

However, Tyrion is now going to take action on these powerful people. The reason for the action is not because of the bad things they have done, but because they have hoarded a large amount of food.

In order to avoid alerting the enemy, Tyrion specifically did not send the more powerful Bronn to collect intelligence. After all, Bronn is now a well-known figure in King's Landing. Once he investigates something, people will inevitably notice whose decision it is. On the other hand, the squire Podrick Payne assigned to him by Lord Tywin not long ago is very inconspicuous and is very suitable for collecting this information.

After reading the information, Tyrion frowned. He was not frowning because the information was incomplete, but because the information was so complete. It was so complete that even the places where these powerful men stored food and where they were stationed were The staffing there is all marked, and such complete information is definitely not something someone like Podrick can look up.

"Who gave you this information?" Tyrion asked directly.

Podrick lowered his head and said timidly: "A little girl from Flea Bottom gave it to me. The things I checked were too few and useless, so I brought this information to you."

After listening to Podrick's words, Tyrion quickly thought of a soft-spoken, fat eunuch. If there was anyone in the Red Keep that he could not see through at all, then it must be Varys. He understood what the eunuch was thinking, and he didn't know the purpose of staying in King's Landing. Varys gave him the feeling that he didn't care about anything, but he cared about everything.

Just like the current intelligence information, Varys could have personally taken it and handed it to him, but he had to go through such a long detour before handing it over to him, as if this important matter related to the safety of King's Landing was just his game. Same.

No matter what Varys thinks in his heart, it doesn't matter to Tyrion now, as long as Varys doesn't hinder him from guarding King's Landing.

After repeatedly confirming that there was nothing missing in this information, Tyrion handed the information to Bronn and said: "Go and execute it! It doesn't matter if you are harsher."

Bronn took the information and looked at the names on it. He couldn't help but whistled and said, "Are you really going to do this? Your sister will probably hate you to death when she finds out."

"Don't she hate me now?" Tyrion asked.

Bronn shrugged, turned around and walked out of the Prime Minister's Tower, and began to search houses in the city according to Tyrion's plan.

Tonight is destined not to be a peaceful night. Overnight, fourteen well-known dignitaries from King's Landing City were arrested by Golden Robe on charges of collaborating with the enemy and treason. All their family properties were confiscated. All the arrested dignitaries were arrested at noon the next day. , were escorted to the square in front of the Red Keep, and all beheaded in front of the residents of King's Landing.

The killed dignitaries were very unpopular. When they were beheaded, the onlookers of King's Landing shouted joyfully and praised King Joffrey loudly. The panic and resentment accumulated in the city quickly dissipate.

Tyrion stood on the wall of the Red Keep, looking at the beheading scene in the square, listening to the cheers, and convinced himself: "This is the voice of the people. It seems that I did the right thing."

"Is it the right thing to do?" Varys walked out from behind Tyrion silently, overlooking the movement in the square, and said, "When Duke Eddard was beheaded, I heard a similar cry. "

Tyrion frowned, looked at Varys sideways, and said, "You think too highly of those guys who were beheaded outside. Those guys are much worse than Duke Eddard."

Varys smiled and said: "My lord, I don't know if those people are too different from Duke Eddard. I just know that your sister, Queen Cersei, is looking for you at this time. If I were you, I would be here now. Don't stay in the Red Keep, otherwise if you are caught by Queen Cersei, it may be difficult for others to rescue you from the Queen Mother."

After hearing this, Tyrion couldn't help but look around, but he didn't see Cersei. He calmed down again, and then asked Varys: "Varys, why are you staying in the Red Keep?" Tell me?"

"For what?" Varys looked at Tyrion and said, "I am for the people."

"For the people?" Tyrion looked confused.

Wallis said nothing more, turned around and walked into a corridor, disappearing around the corner at the end.