**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5, now streaming on HBO Max**

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5 starts with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) launching a successful guerrilla raid on the combined forces of the Riverlands’ vast army and the North’s Winter Wolves, and ends with him dramatically teasing an infamous battle from George R.R. Martin‘s Fire & Blood: The Butcher’s Ball.

The Butcher’s Ball occurs after Cole and his reduced Team Green army depart from Harrenhal to join Ormund Hightower (James Norton) at Tumbleton. In Martin’s version of events, the Riverlanders are the ones doing the most damaging guerrilla tactics against Cole’s men; House of the Dragon flips the script by having Cole start this type of warfare, prompting young Lord Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes) to suggest they bring the same fight back to them.

Ser Criston Cole, Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), and their men believe they have the upper hand on the Riverlanders until their horses are felled by “crowsfeet” underfoot. (Caltrops are, indeed, a historically effective way to deter calvary troops and this nerd loved seeing them finally used correctly in a show based on George R.R. Martin’s world!) Without their horses, the troops are forced to travel on foot through the overgrown and unforgiving Riverlands. This not only slows them down — allowing their rivals to get ahead — but it also demoralizes them.

When Ser Criston and Ser Gwayne realize that Rhaenyra’s army has crossed the river before them and burned the bridge behind them, it becomes obvious that they will no longer be able to slow their rivals’ progress to Tumbleton. Ser Criston tilts straight into accepting that he will die on the battlefield, a free man — “unbowed, unbroken” — fighting for himself for the first time in his life.

DECIDER spoke to Fabien Frankel ahead of the House of the Dragon Season 3 premiere, and we asked why Ser Criston kept fighting, even as he seemingly was embracing nihilism.

“You do find a much more profound understanding of what it is that he is still fighting for, and it goes far beyond the subject matters that have been tackled in the first two seasons,” Frankel said. “But yes, there is stuff he’s fighting for. I just can’t say what it is yet.”

Well, now we know! When Ser Gwayne questions Ser Criston’s plan to die in battle, he lays out exactly what it means to him.

“You have offered me service to your house. I’m grateful, but I have been a servant all my life, to Green or to Black. I have defined myself by oaths, through unyielding devotion, and the highborn have made much of me while it pleased them to do so,” Cole tells Gwayne. “But I will not let them diminish me now. I will not return spurned, rejected.”

“I am the realm’s greatest warrior and I will die as such. Clear-eyed, unbent, unbroken, glorious in battle, and finally not in their service.”

(It’s worth noting that earlier in this same episode, Ormund Hightower spoke well of Meria Martell, who outwitted Aegon the Conqueror in battle, leading to Dorne still being independent at this time. The Martell words are “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” and House of the Dragon made it canon that Ser Criston Cole was half-Dornish.)

So will Ser Criston Cole die the way he wants? What is the Butcher’s Ball? Here’s what you need to know about Ser Criston Cole’s fate in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood...

How Does Ser Criston Cole Die in House of the Dragon?

We don’t yet know exactly how Ser Criston Cole will die in HBO’s House of the Dragon, but we do have a sense of how it might all go down thanks to George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood.

In that book, Ser Criston Cole dies in a battle nicknamed The Butcher’s Ball.

What is the Butcher’s Ball in House of the Dragon?

The Butcher’s Ball is essentially a massacre that occurs in between Rhaenyra’s taking of King’s Landing and the first battle of Tumbleton. Ser Criston Cole leads a greatly diminished force south from Harrenhal, along the God’s Eye lake, and suffers constant losses through guerrilla warfare tactics.

Eventually, Ser Criston and his men ran into thousands of Team Black soldiers, led by a trio of officers — one of whom is Tommy Flanagan’s Roddy the Ruin. Cole first offers to surrender himself if the oversized army spares his troops. Then he asks to challenge Ser Roderick Dustin, Ser Garibald Grey, and Ser Pate of Longleaf together, only archers attack. Ser Criston Cole is ignobly felled by three arrows, while his remaining soldiers are murdered. The Team Black soldiers who were there compared it to butchery, not battle.

When DECIDER asked Fabien Frankle how the Butcher’s Ball would compare in scope to the Battle of the Gullet, he said, “I mean, it’s a very different battle, you know. What can I say?”

“It’s very different. I mean, obviously the Battle of the Gullet is, you know, on water, our fight is on land,” Frankel said. “I think there’s like little segments of it that are teased in the trailer. It’s a really interesting fight. It’s a very isolated fight. That’s all I’ll say. It’s not grand in the same way that the Battle of the Gullet is.”

House of the Dragon returns next Sunday, July 26 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.