ASOIAF/GOT Enduring The Storm

[Paladin]

Summary:

The noose draws tight around Storm's End, and Stannis Baratheon. But a young man not Stannis wakes in his place, and must navigate the deathly serious realities of war and politics in a land unfamiliar to him, while keeping tight hold of both castle and Stannis' people. No one ever said life was easy, and if they did, they were lying.

Chapter One​

Sieges ruined armies. I knew that. Attrition and starvation and disease broke, then left, men dead or running for home or a quiet death somewhere half a hundred miles away. I knew that. I knew that, and I knew all I had to do was hold Storm's End against the fury and rage of the Reach until my older brother came for Renly and I. He held my hand tight, Renly, as we watched forty-five thousand knights and men-at-arms and archers and crossbowmen and miners and sappers and pikemen and serjeants and their whores and wives and mistresses and laundrywomen and children make camp, preparing to invest my new home in a siege.

Sieges ruined armies, I whispered to myself. I had to be strong. We could break them here, against a citadel not even the old gods of storm and sea could crack. Storm's End was one of the toughest nuts in the Seven Kingdoms—and I, fresh into the body of a lanky and lean, coltish still with teenage growth Stannis. I had no other option or choice but to hold the hall of Stannis' fathers.

"What?" Renly asked, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand.

"It's alright," I said, mouth drawn tight. "Robert will come for us. Soon. He has to." A lord who could not hold his very home could not long hold his lands or vassals. I knew that. I knew it, and still, a part of me wanted to go forward on hands and knees to crawl, to beg, Mace Tyrell to accept a surrender. For all he had been my younger brother for only a day or so, I loved Renly as fierce as I had ever loved my brothers other-whence, and knew I would love Robert. I could not bear the thought of seeing Renly or the rest of the castle's children weaken from hunger, sicken, and die when I was charged with their safety and well-being, charged with holding Storm's End for Robert against the Reach.

I wondered if Mace would accept a truce, or armistice for long enough to send the children away, or accept them into his camp so that they would not be butchered like dogs if the castle fell.

But that wasn't how things were done during sieges.

Alesia had expelled their women and children into the land between their lines and Caesar's, and the warriors of Gaul had watched their wives and sons and daughters starve to death in that hellish space. I knew, deep in my gut like I didn't know sieges ruined armies, that I did not have the courage or temperament to order such myself.

"Robert will come," Renly repeated dutifully. I turned to Master Cressen, his eyes tight with worry, and tilted my head at Renly.

"I believe it is bedtime for a young stag. Maester, will you—?"

"I will, Ser," Cressen said. The title mocked me. I was a knight, and lord of nothing but a sword and holding Storm's End for Robert. He nodded, and stooped down to lift a yawning Renly up into his arms. Cressen paused there, arms around my younger brother, and shifted the boy so he could settle a hand on my shoulder.

"You can do this," he said. "It will not be easy. The gods know, it will be the hardest thing you've done in your life. But the choice has fled with the coming of the Reach. Now you will have to fight it out, Stannis. And the gods will grant victory to whomever they please, but I believe."

"I don't know if I can lead like I will need to," I admitted into the quiet of the night and to Cressen, already something of a father to me.

"You have been lord here in all but name for years," Cressen said. "Trust your men. Trust yourself. Trust the gods. Trust Robert. I shall keep the faith, even if you doubt, for I know the Baratheon brothers. You will show them why your words are as they are."

I was silent for a long moment, as the sun slid beneath the rim of the world across the horizon, and the campfires spread and spread and spread. Finally I heard Cressen leave, because I didn't know what to tell him, but the soft tread of a woman's steps followed soon after. I did not need to turn my head to know who it was.

"Princess," I said, and went to one knee. My grandmother gave a hefty sigh, and then a hand beneath my armpit more urged than lifted me back to my feet. I went back to stand at the edge of the wall's crenellations, propping my elbows on the smooth dark gray stone.

"Stannis, you must not be so formal with me," the Princess Rhaelle said. "Ever since you learned I was a Princess. You were what? Six?"

"Seven," I said, with the help of a young man's memories. "Still. I would give you the respect you are due."

"I've been your grandmother longer than I was a Princess before I was married," grandmother said. She stepped close, and wrapped her arms around one of mine, leaning into me.

"You're a good boy, Stannis," she said quietly. "I wish.... I wish things had been different." Stannis remembered a ship, broken and sinking in a storm. I remembered a hospital bed and the quiet beeping trailing into nothingness.

"I do too," I said softly. "But the gods have seen fit to test my mettle."

The cold calculus of war weighed at my mind and my heart and my soul. Forty-five thousand reachmen camped outside my walls. Another twenty thousand across my family's lands, burning and raping and pillaging and thieving anything not nailed down, including the women and children and chickens.

Against that, I had—I had a garrison of a thousand, true fighting men. Perhaps three thousand men, if I armed every boy above the age of seven and every man over fifty. Perhaps another thousand or so from the women fit to span a crossbow or throw rocks from walls.

I felt a leaden weight settle in my gut, and hoped that when the time came, I would have the strength to help my grandmother in this life end her own life and spare her the indignities that a sack of the castle would bring. Grandmother Rhaelle's hands tightened on my arm, surprising me with her strength for a woman of her age, and she sighed again.

"Perhaps I can prevail upon Mace to come to terms of some sort," Grandmother mused aloud. "You're a brave lad, and I know you'll do your duty—I raised you right. But it sickens me to see you so burdened. I would help you bear your weights, my heart."

Stannis had been taller than Rhaelle for almost seven years now. But she unentangled a hand from my arm and began rubbing gentle circles on my back. I felt a sharp knife of grief deep in my gut, that I had stolen this lady's grandson away from her and wore his skin and memories like an ill-fitting suit. Aping at something I wasn't.

"I—thank you, Grandmother." There wasn't anything else to say to that. In her sixties and still working for the good of her family—the family she had made, after her brothers and sister had proven a disappointment to her father the King. I felt hot tears prickling at the corners of my eyes, threatening to spring forward, unwanted and unneeded.

Infants and children and women cried. Men swallowed their tears and their fear and got down to work.

Across the country, Robert might at that very moment be fighting for his life. I owed it to him, to keep our home and grandmother and younger brother safe.

"I told you once that Father was forced to choose between my happiness and the duty he owed the realm," Grandmother said.

"I remember." I said softly. Her brothers and sister chose love and desire over duty, and the Lord Baratheon, whose family had been snubbed by the breaking of a betrothal, revolted over it. Aegon V had gone to Rhaelle, and asked her if she would serve as a peace-bride, to mend tight the bonds broken by willful, ignorant children. Grandmother had chosen her duty.

"There are laws older than that of the kingdoms," Grandmother said. "You could still bend the knee to Mace and accept Aerys' peace once more. No one would blame you for choosing to do so."

"But Robert commanded me to defend our home!" I said, loud enough that my voice cracked on me. Silently I cursed late puberty, and Robert, and Mace Tyrell, and Aerys and Rhaegar and Lyanna bloody Stark.

"I know, my dear one," Grandmother Rhaelle soothed. "There are laws older than the laws of kings and lords. Laws of family. Sons obey their fathers. Daughters obey their parents. The wife must obey the husband. And the younger brother must obey the older. I obeyed my father's wish, and married your grandfather. I was scared, and far away from home, but I obeyed and in time came to love my husband and my son."

"If something happened to you, to Renly, during a siege—" I broke off the thought, unwilling to entertain for long the idea of just how bad things could be in a siege.

Sieges ruined armies. But they ruined the defenders, too.

"So let me go and speak to Mace Tyrell," my grandmother the Princess said. "I cannot command him as a Targaryen, but certainly I can speak with a weight to my voice he would otherwise ignore. And you must have faith. In myself, in your brother, in the Seven."

"Yes, Grandmother," I said dutifully. "So—so you would advise I resist? That if you cannot broker honorable terms, I must obey my brother?"

"Yes," Rhaelle said. "The younger brother must and should obey the older. More, you must defend your family's seat since time immemorial. You know you have to."

She was right. As much as I did not know if I had the fortitude to stand against Mace and the assembled might of the Reach, I had no other choice.

"We shall speak of our terms to Mace tomorrow. For now—will you tell me about the time you realized you loved grandfather?"

I felt more than saw her smile beside me, and for a brief moment I let myself forget that the campfires encroaching on the palisade around the castle town were those of the enemy, that we were at war. Instead I listened to how a rough Baratheon lord had charmed a princess by matching the custom in King's Landing of the time by presenting a different color flower every day for a month. We watched the sunset together, my grandmother in this world and I, and I wondered if Stannis was happy, wherever he had ended up. Certainly I had not come to a place known for its joy, although already in my brief time I had begun to realize that while Westeros as a whole was a land much concerned with war and the making thereof and the aftereffects, people still found ways to create happiness. They loved, and laughed, and dreamed big dreams for their children, and prayed for rain in summer and weak snows in winter. They worked hard to gather enough for a harvest feast, and tithed to the sept, and gave thanks to the gods for healthy births and long lives.

And they trusted their lords to see to their safety, and the safety of their babies and children and families.

That sinking feeling in my gut was not fear for the coming days, where I knew the siege would try me as I had never been tested before. It was not for the idea that I might be forced to make war in one of the most close and personal ways there was: sword-to-sword, face to face, close enough to see the hate and fear in a man's eyes.

It was the slow, cold realization that even if I might try my utmost, pray to the loving and kind gods as hard as I could, and do everything just so, just right—I could still lose. War wasn't an abstract on a screen or far away anymore. War was upon me, in all his red-eyed, bloody-handed fury, a rage and bloodlust huge enough to drown a man and everything he loved in the storm, in the clashing of swords, in the spear-dance, where boys became men and men became unto gods.

I wanted to lose my dinner then and there, but Rhaelle's voice and hands on my arm kept me rooted to the stones of Storm's End's huge curtain wall.

"Stannis," she was saying. She. Grandmother. Stannis' grandmother. I'd stolen his face and his body and wore him like a flesh-puppet, and I didn't even know what I was.

"Stannis," Rhaelle whispered. She turned me, so that I stood in front of her, and then wrapped me in an embrace. "Lift your chin and hold your head up high, my darling grandson. You are a Baratheon of Storm's End, and Argilac the Arrogant's blood runs in your veins. You will show the Reach why they feared the men of Storm's End. You will show them your fury."

"I don't feel very furious," I murmured. "Mostly cold, I think." It was a frank admission, for a young man. Especially a young man to his grandmother. Especially a young man born into the martial culture of Westeros, where admitting weakness of any stripe was like to end in daggers drawn in the night, below courtiers' cold smiles.

"That's normal," Rhaelle said. "I was terrified before I met your great-grandfather, and before I met your grandfather. I was especially terrified before I married the silly man, but I was happy I did after a few years. He realized he'd be better off listening to me."

"Do you miss him? Do you miss them?" Grandfather. Father. Mother.

"Oh, Stannis," Rhaelle said, and frowned up at me. "Of course I do. But I have been happy with you and your brothers, too, and thank the gods every day for the gifts I have been given, both in you and the time I was given with your grandfather and parents."

"I don't want to fight them," I admitted into the quiet space around us, and Rhaelle patted my hand.

"I know, my lamb," she said. "But you must. And you must be brave. For your brothers. For me. For the smallfolk." Her silver hair gleamed pinkish-gold between the sunset and the fires of sixty or seventy thousand people outside the palisade walls across the thin land bridge that was all that connected Storm's End to the rest of the Stormlands. Grandmother—Rhaelle—was a beautiful woman still, for all she was nearing her sixties and had begun to slow down, somewhat. Her deep indigo eyes were still bright with wit, and Stannis knew that she could have a cutting tongue, if she wished, which she had little fear of unleashing upon recalcitrant lords or meddlesome knights.

"If you think I must—"

"There is no think about it, my dear," Rhaelle said, sharp. "Your older brother, your Lord, charged you to defend his home—your home. Our home. If you surrender, you know what they will do to your people, your smallfolk. Where is the courage of the stag that faces down the snarling wolves, or growling lions? Are you a man or are you a boy cowering behind his grandmother's skirts?"

"I'll fight," I said at last. The gods would have their siege and their fighting. So be it.

I knew what would come, of course. Raids in the dark out of a sally port in the main gate. Archery duels to keep them from digging trench lines close to the walls to provide cover for ladders. Tunneling and counter-tunneling and the fighting beneath the ground. Months or potential years of hardship and growing hungrier and hungrier.

"Swear it, Stannis," my grandmother in this world said. "Swear you'll defend our home to the death."

"I so vow," I said. "But if I die in the fighting—negotiate a surrender. Renly mustn't be punished for the folly of his older brothers."

"Oh my darling," grandmother said. "If you die, none of us will be long for this world. I certainly cannot hold the garrison to their posts if you fall, and Renly assuredly cannot, either."

So that was it, then.

Defend the siege. Don't die, or my family in this world would follow me into whatever afterlife awaited. Easy enough, I told myself. But I knew it was a lie, the kind of thing one tells themselves before a remarkably difficult undertaking in the face of likely failure. This would be for real, for all time, and I would have to trust myself and the family I had left to me to help me beside but never walk the path I now faced. Victory or death, for all my people in Storm's End.

It was a remarkably lonely future. I would have to be the strong one, for everyone, for possible years. I felt cold, though the afternoon had been warm and it had not yet begun to chill in the aftermath of sunset. I frowned, staring out across the tops of the curtain wall's defenses, at thousands upon thousands of campfires. Already they would be dismantling the palisades that had defended the villages across the land-bridge to the mainland, and would be moving into the houses and farms that provided for the smallfolk who fed and staffed Storm's End. Forty-five thousand enemies, and I had twenty household knights and their lances, and another five hundred or so total knights, archers, and men-at-arms from Robert's defeat at Ashford, with another couple hundred archers from the Marches. Hunters or poachers, in truth, but they'd brought their own horses and were the best archers in the kingdoms, according to Ser Morrigen, the captain of the garrison.

Stannis had not prayed since his parents sank beneath the waves in a storm. If the gods were real—and whatever had brought me to this land clearly had the power of such—I had no idea if they were kind or not, but it certainly would not hurt to pray.


A/N: First post, and it's the first chapter of a story also available on SB and AO3. The next twenty-seven chapters have already been written.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

This is one of the better ASOIAF fics, Would be cool if you posted it all here for the others to read.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

A/N: First post, and it's the first chapter of a story also available on SB and AO3. The next twenty-seven chapters have already been written.

I am definitely intrigued.

 

[Buba]

Goody!
Does happy dance, nearest seismic monitoring station intrigued.
I'm following it at the other two sites already, but here I will be able to comment (unlike SB) or diuscuss (unlike AO3).
I love those few and far in between few fics with Robert's and Stannis' living grandma - a violet eyed, silver haired Targaryen.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Very nice to see this here! Welcome!

 

[Paladin]

Chapter Two​

Six days passed before Mace Tyrell agreed to a parlay.

Little had progressed in that near-sennight, save that the Tyrells and their Reachmen had taken root in the rain-sodden, muddy lowlands around Storm's End, impressing the smallfolk sworn to Storm's End who had not fled for the sanctuary of our walls into menial labor.

Few though they had been, they were foolish for staying within their homes.

After all, Storm's End had never fallen.

Not to gods.

And never to men.

It had been besieged and fought over and fought in but never sacked and never captured, and the only way that Orys Baratheon had taken the place was by marrying Argella Durrandon after her garrison expelled her and surrendered rather than face dragonfire. They had hung for it afterwards.

But more than a place of legend, it was also a home.

Storm's End was the product of millennia of skilled hands and master craftsmen pouring their love and all their skill into a place they called home, that had seen their births and their marriages and their children's births and their deaths and burials. It was also Stannis' home, full of Stannis' people, with the remnants of Stannis' family.

So those six days, as fretful as they were from atop the ramparts, were still of dear enough comfort.

I held no doubt that Mace Tyrell would agree to a parlay, if only to avoid having to oversee a boring and lengthy siege while the real war was fought to the north. Grandmother, meanwhile, put my frettings to rest while correctly anticipating the manner by which he would accept it.

"He is a Reachman," the Princess said after the second night, when our messenger had slumped back to our walls with no response. "The symbols of the Faith hold a great meaning to them, and they hold the Seven to their hearts. I suspect he will send back word on the seventh, and not a day before."

"What else?" I asked softly, my attention caught between her and the faint light that bathed the night sky from the Reachmen camps.

"He will ignore you and Harbert, in the hopes that by entreating with me, and my woman's sensibilities and frailties directly, he will be able to open the gate and achieve a great bloodless victory."

"The only man to ever seize Storm's End. Somehow I don't think he'll pause at the thought of spending blood to take it, Princess."

"He has tens of thousands of fighting men outside our walls, yes. And he will use those numbers to drive fear into our hearts, so you must stand firm when the parlay comes. He will speak at me, yes, but you will have to stand before them."

"Yes, Princess."

So together we stood on the mighty curtain wall of our home, and I watched the results of a lifetime of the labor of my people be turned against us, to fuel the army that would seek to butcher them in their refuge away from homes stolen from them. It was disgusting. And then the following days. And then we watched, as a lone rider came up the isthmus and along the path from the army camped outside our walls, a herald of things to come. Just like grandmother had said.

"Stannis? We're ready."

Ser Harbert was Stannis' great uncle, a Storm gotten on the widow of a knight by Lyonel Baratheon—so Ormund could hardly have ignored the boy. Harbert had given long years of loyal service to Storm's End, serving as the castellan since the boyhood of Stannis' father, and I felt terrible that he would be called on once more to garb himself for war. His hair, whatever color it had been, was finely silvered now, but his gray eyes were still sharp as good knives.

"We are agreed on terms, Ser Harbert," I said to my granduncle, rousing from the reverie that the sight of the Tyrell host had instilled. I spoke as we went down the stairs from the wall, heading for the stables. "If he quits the siege, I will send or lead no troops north, and will recognize Rhaegar as rightful King, even if Aerys lives yet."

"Good," said the old Storm in the affirmative. "He'll not accept those terms, but those are as dear as we can give without outright surrendering. And that we can offer them at all will pique his interest as to whether you or your grandmother rules in Storm's End."

"To that end, the Princess will ride in the center." Harbert suggested. "You and I will take her left and right, and on my left will be Herbert and Joran. Lomas and Loran, you'll go on Stannis's right, and the household knights will surround us."

Harbert Bolling and Joran Wensington were older, landed knights, distant kin to the Baratheons. Their brothers and nephews were riding with Robert, and whose holdfasts were more than likely now held by Tyrell garrisons. Their mothers and sisters had taken shelter at Storm's End ahead of the Tyrell host, and were now among the surfeit of noblewomen serving the princess as ladies in waiting.

Lomas and Loran were much nearer as kin, for they were the Lady Cassana's brothers and thereby Stannis's uncles. Lomas's son Andrew and Loran's daughter Raya were both guests at Storm's End, as was Raya's husband Warren Brownhill, who had been badly wounded at Ashford. He was one of many convalescing in the hearth-keep, knights and smallfolk who had followed Robert until they could follow him no more.

There were many of them at Storm's End, since Ashford. I didn't begrudge them, of course. They were my people, and the Stormlands were now unsafe for a man to travel, let alone a woman and children.

So we set off, as Harbert had arranged it, and I tried not to let the fear or doubts show. I must have succeeded, for no one said anything about my youth or inexperience, and we were led through the Reacher encampment to Mace's tent. We were introduced, sat to lunch, and then he expounded at length on the virtues of living to fight another day, and why surrender was the right choice. He refused the terms that we offered.

So, finally—

With my grandmother and great-uncle by my side, I informed Mace Tyrell—red in the face and sweating over his lace ruffled collar, green doublet and garish red breeches—that he would have to pry my father's castle from my cold dead hands and those of the garrison. Moreover, I insisted that there could be no peace between us until the war was concluded decisively one way or the other, and that I would hang as an outlaw and bandit before I surrendered any inch of Storm's End. Mace Tyrell didn't like that, and he told me so.

"You're out of your mind if you think you can resist, boy!" He spluttered. He'd spluttered when he'd refused our terms, too.

I nodded. "Perhaps I am," I said. Perhaps. But I did know that his terms had been intolerable from the outset, and if he insisted that they be our terms—well, we would have no terms. I would not surrender my father's hall—Robert's hall—to the indignity of a Reach garrison. I would not accept a Tyrell knight or cousin as castellan. I would not be sent to King's Landing and separated from Grandmother Rhaelle and Renly and my people to make obeisance to a king who burned people alive and demanded my older brother's head. I would not send Renly to the Reach to foster.

I would rather, as I told Tyrell, be hung as a bandit and an outlaw if I even survived the castle's fall.

So the dice were cast. Storm's End would fight.

Mace didn't like that I didn't like any of his terms.

"You'll come to rue the day you decided you were man enough to fight a siege," he said, hot grease from a roasted quail dribbling down his chin. His lunch plate—silver—had little jewels set at seven points in the rim, to signify the Seven. It was heaped with roasted turnips and onions, bread baked fresh in one of the huge brick ovens built for the castle's town, and the bread was slathered with honey and butter. There were heaps of fruit in silvered bowls: apples and mangoes, oranges and pears and grapes, with bottles of wine looted from a dozen or more manor houses across the farmlands of the Stormlands. There was chilled milk with ice from the ice house built into the side of a hill, with berries and cream.

It would have been a fine feast to celebrate the first harvest of spring with.

Instead it was feeding Mace Tyrell, myself, my grandmother and two score knights and lordlings from the Reach and Storm's End. I ate because to do otherwise would have been to deny myself good fuel for the hard soldiering I knew I would be subjected to in the days ahead, and I prayed—to Stannis' gods and to my God—that I would have Mace Tyrell and his principal lieutenants under my sword ere the war's end—however it might come down. But I took the anger I felt and banked that fire. When the time came I would stoke it into a mighty fury.

"Man enough to do what I must," I said. "It was not I that chose war, nor was it I that chose to bring war to my home. And now, forced between a boulder and a cliff, you would demand I go meekly to a near assured doom? No, my Lord of Tyrell," I said.

"I will be man enough for whatever storm you may bring, for that is the best and only path forward. We shall see whom the better man is in the contest betwixt us."

"A powerful boast," Mace said. And then he laughed. That was what infuriated me the most. Not that he believed me—Stannis—a callous boy, too young to make war as men do, or too inexperienced to know when to surrender before even fighting at all. But he laughed about it.

I mastered my temper only by driving the nails of my left hand so deep into the palm that they left dark red half-moon crescents. I—Stannis—had not wanted a war. More, he had been torn between his brother, and his King and cousin. Stannis had been a man in an unenviable position, and I had inherited it. I wondered briefly if his soul—his vital force—was still with me somehow, someway. Well, if it was—I could but do the best I could. Wondering what Stannis would do in my shoes was as good as crapping in one hand and wishing for fish with the other. Only one would leave me filthy.

"I make no boast," I said quietly, into the hollow silence left hanging by his laugh fading into awkwardness. "The gods have seen fit to make you the instrument by which they test my mettle. I shall rise to the challenge or die trying. What would you do, I wonder, if I came to your home and made war against the people who look to you for protection and shelter against the fury of the Warrior? If I laid siege to Highgarden?"

I didn't give him the chance to speak.

"You would resist, as is your duty and privilege. I will speak no more to you save to accept your surrender," I finished. Grandmother Rhaelle had hardly eaten, but she let me help her up and twined her arm with mine. She'd worn a Targaryen dress—a purple so dark it was almost black, with the bright red dragon, and a silvered girdle about her waist from which hung a copy of the Mother's Mercies with a dark red leather binding. She shot me a glance, and then tilted her nose up and away from Tyrell.

We left Mace's pavilion at ease, walking through his encampment knowing that our passage was guaranteed by the laws of gods and norms of chivalric warfare. Our horses were being held by a boy from Mace's camp, likely avoiding harder work, and I gave him three bronze stars for his troubles.

"My thanks," I told him. He tipped his hat to me and then dashed off—probably to tell his friends—and I couldn't help but smiling, a little.

He was young enough that it seemed unlikely that I would have him under my sword on the walls come the storming attempts.

Ser Harbert and I helped Grandmother mount her horse—a silver mare she'd named Carina, then pulled ourselves into our own saddles. Ser Harbert's squires and my uncles did likewise, and as we rode out, our escorts, a retinue of men-at-arms and knights from the garrison, met us where Tyrell's camp ended and the no man's land of the isthmus between Storm's End and the castle town began.

Grandmother Rhaelle leaned her head close to mine, so the men wouldn't hear over the sounds of their conversations and horses, and smiled.

"You kept your nerve well in there," she said. "Your father would have been proud."

I nodded, and I gestured to Ser Harbert to lean in.

"Did you see?" I asked him. "Lord Redwyne had a few of his ships beached on the speck of land below the town for deworming and drying out. I'll lead the men tonight. We'll set fire to them, and hopefully not get our throats cut in the dark."

We couldn't fight the blockade directly, because Storm's End kept no ships except the fishing boats owned by the good people of the castle town. But we could certainly beard Redwyne and Tyrell by setting fire to a few ships on land—if we didn't get lost in the dark and stumble our way into the heart of their camp.

Our ride back to Storm's End—to home—was uneventful, and two of the squires competed for the honor of helping Grandmother off her horse after we were through the gate. I glowered at them, but she laughed and I left the younger men to the game. Soon enough there'd be no smiles or laughs. Only tightening belts and a sore lack of boot leather. I tried not to grimace at everyone in the halls as I made my way to the lord's solar.

As soon as I was in the lord's solar—still a King's solar, in truth, from the time when the Durrandons, Stannis' ancestors reigned—I set to work.

Maester Cressen arrived soon, his eyes widening when he saw I'd laid out a large sheet of parchment, with ink and quill.

"How's your sketching hand, Maester?" I asked.

He gave a faint smile.

"Fair, Ser Stannis," he said. "I expect I could sketch whatever you have in mind."

"Can you take what we tell you and turn it into a map? Of Mace Tyrell's encampment?"

"Why, what a marvelous idea," Cressen said. He took a seat at the dining table, took up the quill, and dipped it into the ink.

We began directly, and I paced as I spoke.

Mace Tyrell's camp adjoined and merged into the castle town, with the palisade removed, and the castle town across the isthmus was approximately a third of an hour or so easy-paced ride on horseback, which translated to roughly an hour on foot. He had pickets in the castle town's edge closest to the land bridge, but they were concentrated in a few spots: the alderman's house, the town hall, and the largest inn—the Prancing Stag. I suspected that the expectation was that they would serve as strong points to resist any attempt to sally out of the castle, while runners hurried to summon reinforcements from the body of the camp, namely the houses and shops that had grown outwards from the points so named, and into the tent city that had sprung up.

As I described the encampment to the maester, the others began to enter the solar.

The first to arrive was Grandmother Rhaelle, having changed to a more subdued dress of dark green and a circlet about her brow of iron and rubies. Uncle Harbert arrived almost immediately afterwards, his servants following along with pitchers of wine and water. Last were my Estermont uncles, who briefly reunited with their children before following suit.

As they came, each gave their descriptions of the camp, adding to a larger and more complex sketch by Maester Cressen.

Mace had surprisingly not chosen any of the homes in town kept by the lords of the Stormlands for attending the Lord of Storm's End when matters required all of them; he was staying in a tent at the center of his encampment. A precaution, I suspected, to keep a raid from burning him to death in the night.

I wondered aloud if there would be any way to snatch him and hold him hostage against the enemy outside our gates, or at least force a cessation of the siege while we had him. But the tents weren't laid out in any kind of good order or grid, and I hadn't seen any designated latrines. If the gods or God saw fit to lend me a little assistance in the form of disease, I wouldn't cry about it. That was merely one of the risks run by an army when it chose to settle in one place and lay siege to a man's home.

"It bodes well to see you think boldly, Stannis," Harbert said, gesturing and with a laugh. "But this map shouldn't be our first concern. If we make a raid, and I take the fishermen with me across the isthmus and down to the beach, we can steal a few and burn the others!"

If Storm's End was nigh unbreakable on the landward side, she was surely impossible to attack from the sea. Defensive ballistae lined the seaward wall—with larger gaps between the crenellations, so they had clear lines of shooting. We could certainly stand off any attempt to take the castle by storm from ships. And with ships of our own, by the gods and by God—we could fight the blockade.

I swallowed a lump in my throat back, at a loss for words. Near sixty-five or so, and still attempting to serve. I was choked by the filial loyalty that granduncle Harbert lived by, willing to lead a crucial raid and in the dark, his silvered hair a stark reminder of the old adage; beware the man who grows old in a young man's profession.

"Good enough," My granduncle responded.

I took a sip of wine to cover my momentary embarrassment and nodded.

I glanced at the sketch Cressen made following our directions, and at least for a brief minute, was delighted at the artfulness with which his skillful hand had brought to life my words. There, on the low beach down the path from the town, Lord Redwyne's beached ships, rendered as almost almond-shaped along the beach. There, the cliff path—treacherous even in the best of times, and the small settlement for the fishermen and their families. Tyrell's tent city, his grand tent at the center. The layout of the castle town, with the large central square, the alleys and streets. Cressen's own memories had clearly gone into it as well, and I smiled at him, before favoring my family with a more pensive thought.

"This raid will be a risk. We cannot ask the fisher folk to sally out for us against the ships simply because we are their masters. And you are too old, uncle, to be leading night raids."

Harbert nodded once with reluctance, and then again.

"Bold, nephew," he said. "You will command?"

"I will," I said. "And while I'm gone, the command of Storm's End will be yours once more."

I glanced between him and Grandmother, and balled my hands into fists.

"And if I die—you must surrender. Must! Grandmother and Renly must survive. Do you understand, uncle Harbert?"

Harbert nodded, after a long moment. "I understand," he said. He was not happy, I could tell that much. But it had to be done. The men had to see me—see Stannis—leading them.

There wasn't much to discuss after that. I had said all that needed to be said, and the fighting men and fishermen we'd be taking with us would need to be organized before the attack. I requested that Harbert see to preparing them and I went to see Renly before his bed time.

I suppose I should pause at this point, and sketch you a layout of Storm's End. Every available room in the huge drum tower had been pressed into service to shelter Robert's people while he waged war against the tyrant Aerys and our cousin Rhaegar. The lord's chambers—a private dining room, nursery for the children, a series of bedrooms for the lord and his wife, and any siblings as might need private accommodations—all laid behind a series of doors in the solar, which was meant to serve as both the lord's private office for meetings and business. The solar itself was both big enough that it had a wall and window facing out to sea, and small enough that if it came down to it, the men of the Baratheon family could fight a last ditch effort to defend their women and children from slaughter. Renly's room was decorated with tapestries of hunts and feasts, lords and ladies courting, and had a small fireplace that likely vented into the larger fireplace's chimney in the solar. The fire in his room was banked, and he lay in the child's bed, watching the door. Waiting for me.

"'lo, Stannis," he said tiredly. It wasn't quite his bedtime, but a glance at the valet busily laying out Renly's clothes for tomorrow told me the truth of the matter.

"Hullo, Renly," I said. I glanced at the valet, and nodded a quiet dismissal. He dipped his head in a stilted bow and left, and I sat on Renly's bed.

I patted his pillow—green, with turtles stitched onto it. It was one of the only things Renly had from his mother.

"Tell me a story," Renly said, and I nodded. He laid his head back down, and I stared out the window in his room at the softly setting sun, the clouds over the sea a lovely riot of pinks and oranges and golds, reflecting back at the world.

"Once upon a time," I started, because all good stories began with 'once upon a time' and then paused. What to tell him? It came to me, whispered by the muses, and I smiled.

"Once upon a time, there was a knight named George. George was a young knight, eager to prove his spurs, and so it came that one day, he heard of a dragon ravaging the lands of a kingdom neighboring his home. He clad himself in his armor, and belted on his sword and lifted his lance, and rode away to save the people being terrorized by the dragon...."

The words came easily to me, and at some point while George was doing battle with the wicked serpent, Renly's breathing shifted to deep, even breaths. A child asleep, forgetful at least for an evening, of the insidious fear that would return in the morning. I wondered if the gods of this land were real, and if so, what possible reason they could have had for me to come to this place, at this time, and become this young man. The deep dark sea provided no answers, and neither did the painting the stars made across the black canvas of the night. The constellations were unfamiliar to me, but there was a faint memory at the back of my mind—Stannis, aged thirteen, determined to learn to sail from the oldest and best fishermen of the village beneath the bluff. Stannis, tongue set in concentration, as he worked at equal parts swordstrokes and lance, longbow and mace, sail and horse. The tools were there for me to grasp, when I needed them. I would need them. But why?

It was a question I suspected I would have no answer to, excepting save perhaps in death. I swallowed back a dryness in my mouth and a lump in my throat. I pressed a hand to Renly's forehead, smoothing back unruly black hair.

"I'll protect you," I murmured to him. "I'm sorry I stole your brother, kid. But I'll be a damn good one, for you. For Robert." I stood up. There were things that needed doing, and time waited for no man. I would do as I must because I had to. It was as simple as that.

In Stannis' room, one person greeted me. Ser Harbert was there, waiting, with Stannis' arming clothes laid out. I shook my head.

"I'll wear a padded jack," I said. "We'll have to move light and quietly, and armor's not quiet."

Harbert's face—stern angles and a thin mouth—was unreadable, but I thought I detected a hint of displeasure. His gray eyes watched me for a moment, but he nodded anyway.

"The Princess has received word from Tarth," he said slowly. "Selwyn Tarth has chosen not to fight and accepted terms."

"Disappointing," I murmured, after a heartbeat. That surprised me, but I did my best to hide it. It stung, a little, but I hoped that there were extenuating circumstances, and not merely Lord Tarth choosing to abandon his oath and liege. "What swayed him?"

"Lord Paxter Redwyne vowed upon the Warrior and Stranger that if he had to drag Selwyn Tarth out of his castle, he would dash the man's daughter's head against a rock and let the sharks fight over the babe's corpse."

I paused midway through pulling my doublet off, and looked at him.

Harbert's face betrayed nothing.

"Do you think him capable of it?" I asked.

He nodded, serious. "Very much so. I suspect that Lord Tyrell gave the command to Redwyne specifically for that reason. Even if Tarth doesn't know that he is capable of such an act, the girl is his only living daughter at the moment, and Selwyn dotes on her."

"Thank you," I said. "Then we'll account Lord Tarth as having been forced to accept terms, when the time for reckoning comes after the war."

"Very good, Stannis," Harbert said. "Will you be needing assistance with the jacket?"

I shook my head. "No, thank you. You're dismissed to get some sleep."

At some point, one of the serving folk had come through, lit candles and prepared the coals in the fireplace of Stannis' room to be stoked into a real fire, but I ignored it.

He watched me for a moment, before nodding. "As you say, my lord. Good luck, and the Gods be with you."

"Thank you," I said. He exited the room, and I shrugged into the padded jack he'd set out for me. Undyed wool, it was a thick, sturdy thing. I pulled it on. The front parts overlapped and the leather laces tied up one side of the chest, so that there was nowhere without armor, and most of my vital bits were covered by a double layer of the thick, fourteen-layered quilting. I belted on sword and dagger, and eschewed the almond shaped shield leaned up beneath Stannis' armor stand, painstakingly painted bright yellow, with two black and crowned rearing stags on the front. Every single thing here was made by man hours. Man hours to get a crop from plowing to harvesting. Man hours for clothes and laundry. Man hours for blacksmiths at work in the forge. Man hours even for the charcoal the smiths used in their work. People took pride in their work, too. You could tell, by the level of care and attention placed into even a hand towel.

And a military aristocrats' work was killing. I felt vaguely ill.

Light and quiet, I had said. Well. Light, and quiet, and easy to kill if things went wrong.

I wasn't tired. That was strange, given I had been awake before dawn, and the day was then creeping into night, but I felt a sort of electric buzz coursing through me. I wondered if it was anticipation for the coming fight, if it was fear. I wasn't hungry, but knew that if I ate, the food would stick in my guts like a brick, weighing me down.

A hawk's screech broke me from my thoughts. A goshawk had come through the open shutters of Stannis' window, alighting on a post built into the wall.

"'lo, Proudwing," I murmured. I crossed the room and ran a finger beneath the hawk's throat, petting him gently, and he closed his eyes and stretched his neck out for me to continue.

"What a handsome bird you are," I told him. He let out a croak at me, and I grinned. Proudwing shoved his head at my hand, demanding more attention. I provided it to the greedy thing. Despite the grin, I felt a vague sort of melancholy deep in my soul, a sense that things had gotten colder and darker in the world, but I had nothing I could do about it, save that which I must because I had to. The alternative was unthinkable, untenable, wholly intolerable.

"Stay here and guard Grandmother and Renly," I admonished him.

And that was it. It was time.

I strode away from Stannis' oldest friend, wearing for protection only a particularly thick coat. There was work to be done.

 

[MarkWarrior]

I’m already caught up on SB, (unless there’s new chapters out on AO3 I’ve missed.) but I’m very willing to read this here as well.

 

[Blasterbot]

I’m already caught up on SB, (unless there’s new chapters out on AO3 I’ve missed.) but I’m very willing to read this here as well.

same but I will definitely keep up with it here.

 

[Paladin]

Chapter Three​

In the shadows of the night, Grandmother stood, veiled by a headscarf of some dark material I couldn't see the color of in the dimness of the evening. She seemed very lonely, there alone. She'd been waiting by the postern gate built into the huge curtain wall of Storm's End.

"Fight well," she said. "Fight hard, and win." She did not, I noted, bid me return alive. She hadn't pleaded with me to stay, either.

Still, I nodded a grim acceptance. Death hadn't been so bad the first time. A warm, welcoming light—a comforting murmur I couldn't make out the words to, and then—I woke up as a dour-faced Stannis, facing a siege and civil war and all the problems those entailed. The odds of my returning alive were up to the gods of this place, and undoubtedly she would pray for us—for me—but I had only my thoughts and the men with me to see to our success.

My goal was three ships. Three ships, to slip to Tarth and put knives in the back of Lord Paxter Redwyne's men. Three ships, and the weight of the situation shifted drastically in my favor, closer to something I was comfortable with. Because if three ships and fifty men could free Tarth from Redwyne's squatting, then Tarth's fleet could be put to sea, and be joined by my lord uncle Estermont's fleet, small as it was. And by the gods, if the fleet could be put to sea....

I dared not finish the thought.

But I knew the calculus, knew the odds. I had to press Mace Tyrell, press him early and hard, or else we faced the slow death. But if we pressed Lord Tyrell, if I could set the initial pace of our slow dance, then I could put him on the back foot. I knew only what I had observed earlier and what Stannis had heard of him. He was trending towards fat, he liked to flex his wealth and the plundering of the Stormlands, and he was said to be ruled by his mother, a Redwyne herself. You can't fight forty-five thousand men with one thousand, I thought. But I had to try.

But God wants winners, not quitters. And if you can't win, at least try to win. God loves those who try.

I led the way, followed directly by Joran Wensington, dour in his padded jack and countenance, except for the grin he was trying to hide. Wensington was a Stormlander's Stormlander. He loved a fight, loved to fight outnumbered, and loved a good victory even more. In short, he was happier than a dog with a bone, and that infected the men. Wensington and I were the youngest men of the soldiers and warriors I led out of my home. All of them were men over forty, with sons and daughters at their homes or sheltering in the castle, and several grandfathers in their fifties. It was the cream of the experienced soldiers, but I had them because if it came down to standing and dying, they would stand and die. Was it cold? Yes. Would I be questioned later by grief-stricken relatives asking why their father, husband, brother, uncle would never come back? Yes. But I needed them. I needed them, because they would stand and die if it had to happen. They were an eclectic bunch: the dribs and drabs of knights and men-at-arms from across the Stormlands. They one and all had agreed to come when I'd asked.

I'd been too nervous to make a speech to the men and fisherman following us out, but Joran hadn't—in his mid-thirties, perhaps, he'd delighted in exhorting them with the promise of bloody-handed killing and vengeance for the dispossessed small folk.

'Dispossessed.' It was a polite euphemism for men killed, women raped, children left to starve outside the enemy camp, hunted like sport by hounds and knights who didn't care at all for protecting the weak like their oaths said they should.

I liked to tell myself that of course I was better, for I came from a time and place that had had the benefit of Saints Aquinas, and Francis of Assisi, and more—but of course I wondered. Well, I would have a lifetime to do good works for Stannis' people left affected by the war. If I survived. But if I didn't, then it wouldn't be my problem anymore. Still, I felt some responsibility for the way things had ended up.

That, I knew, wasn't quite the smart or correct thing to feel, but still I felt it. I wondered what Grandmother Rhaelle thought, then, as she watched her middle grandson march off to war, to what would be a bitter fight in the dark between men who would become mortal enemies. I suspected I knew what she felt, of course. Fear that she would never see Baratheon blue eyes from Stannis staring at her again. Fear that her middle grandson would be slaughtered like a dog in the night by an alert Reach knight or picket or even some lucky bastard coming across us on his way to piss.

I had a padded jack—good and sturdy, and quilted and sewn by the women in Stannis' life, a fighting dagger, and a sword. It wasn't much at all, really. And six dozen fishers, old men and their old sons and their grandsons. Three, in one case four, generations of entire families entrusting their men to us. To a few dozen knights and men-at-arms, and one scared nineteen year old. In my previous life, the life before Stannis, I'd had an older brother. He'd given me a piece of advice that still rang true, all these years later and in another world entirely.

I'm scared I'll screw it up.

It's okay to be scared. Just don't fuck it up. It's that easy. Just don't.

Just don't fuck it up. I swallowed back the fear, and the dryness in my mouth, and turned back to Grandmother Rhaelle. Her eyes widened behind the veil, and for a moment I thought she was going to admonish me for cowardice. Instead I wrapped her in an embrace and crushed her to my chest.

"I'm sorry," I told her. That I'd stolen her grandson's place. That I wasn't him. That I wasn't sure if I had the mettle to do this, to lead men into as bitter a fight as ever I'd heard of. That it had come to this. That her home had been laid siege to by smirking sons of bitches from Highgarden and Goldengrove and the Shield Islands. All of it. None of it.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, against the top of her head. She embraced me back, silent. I let go, first. She tightened her arms around me.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Stannis," Rhaelle Baratheon said. "Go lead your men, and you need not concern yourself with making your parents or grandfather proud. You are what we have only ever wanted you to be, our grandson and son. And I'm proud of you as you are."

The tears sprang unbidden to my eyes, and I turned away so as not to reveal them. I left her standing there, and broke into a jog to get by the men pressed against the wall so I could pass. I heard the gate close softly behind me, and then the thing being barred and locked. Overhead, the stars shone down, bright and too happy for such a night. But Stannis was a knight. I was Stannis. Ergo—I was a knight. I had no time to mourn, no time to weep. There was work to be done, and it would be cruel work, butcher's work, before long the night was done.

"Let's go," I snapped. I tried not to sniffle, and damned the teenage hormones. There's not much worse than a grown man weeping like a child. I rubbed at first one eye and then the other with the back of my sleeve, to keep from breaking into a solid cry.

The first thing you must know about the crossing of the isthmus that night was that it was a chilly spring night, yes, but we were not fully in the grasp of true spring yet. We had been getting rain for days prior—and that had been the first day without at least a haze or drizzle. So. Paxter's ships needed deworming and drying. They were hauled onto the shore, some still on their keels to put to sea fast, but others with their masts taken down and turned over, hull up, so they looked like fat beetles without any legs.

I wanted those ships. I wanted to burn the ones overturned. I wanted to burn the ones keel-down. I wanted to burn every single ship Paxter Redwyne owned, and toss him and his whole bloody retinue on the things, and then laugh as ships from the Vale and North traded the gold in Storm's End's belly for grain and mercenaries from Essos, for horses and knights and men-at-arms and archers, so I could cram an army to rival Mace's into Storm's End and then beat him black and blue and bloody up and down Stannis' home. I was scared, yes. Rightly I was terrified, but there comes a point with the fear where either it paralyzes you, or you go forward anyway. I refused to be paralyzed, refused to let Mace fucking Tyrell drag me out of Stannis' home.

The second thing is that it was muddy.

It wasn't the regular sort of 'grass flattened by rain, and turning to mud because it's still damn rainy' muddy.

It was the churn of several thousand pairs of feet, walking into Storm's End, with all their meager possessions—a good pot, or wood axe, or a mattress, or a slightly successful man of the house carrying his wife's spinning loom, what little currency they may have had, and the animals. Whatever animals had made it through winter slaughter and preservation had been chivvied and cajoled into the castle that the Baratheons called home, and their people called refuge. It was pitiful. The war had made refugees of Stannis' own people, huddling together beneath the curtain walls of their lord's castle, sheltering beneath the storm and fury of war behind the walls—and behind their lord's brother. I had to be as a rock for them, for all of them, and it was a gut-freezing realization to know I commanded the power of life and death for all those people. The men and women, children and old ones, entire families at the mercy of my resolve, my will to fight a siege, and to keep them from suffering.

And there I was, with the night approaching midnight, crawling through mud, and horse, and cow, and pig, and sheep shit. It was cold, and wet, and frankly miserable as hell. I knew I'd be getting dunked in the sea cave beneath the castle quite a bit if we made it back alive, and that would be its own kind of miserable.

But I led from the front.

The pickets in the castle town hadn't seemed to have cared to cross onto the isthmus proper, and so we weren't quite faced with having to cut throats just yet. I wondered how all the older men were doing, and hoped that we weren't being too strung out, too separated to be any kind of effective fighting force. I prayed they were keeping pace with the easy one I was setting, and that they'd be ready to fight—and die—on the beach. I paused.

I had not heard anything, had not felt anything, but still—the hair on the back of my arms and neck had tried to stand. I set my chin against the cold embrace of the earth, and thought small thoughts. A knight was a fighting man, and a fighting man must trust his guts. His guts, and the fear. The fear was a friend that would keep him alive. Oh, I was scared. I was terrified. But there was no choice. There was no other way. I had to fight, and perhaps die, or I would die anyway. I was cold, could feel my teeth trying to rattle in my head from the chill, and only keeping my jaw clamped kept me from giving us away. If, in truth, there was anyone there. I counted to three hundred.

Then I counted till six hundred, to be safe. The only sounds I heard were noise from the camp, and my own ragged breathing.

I felt more than heard the movement next to me. "What's the hold up, ser?" It was a whisper.

It was Uncle Lomas.

"I thought—I felt something," I whispered back.

"Good to halt, then," Uncle Lomas whispered. "Better a surfeit of caution than a dearth."

That had been my consideration. I didn't say it, though. To me fell the command, because I had the name and the right by birth and by blood.

Well.

There would be blood enough, before the war was over. I frowned against the mud, colorless in the black of the night.

"I think we're good to keep going," I whispered.

Lomas was silent for a long time. I had rapidly lost track of what time it could possibly have been, in the dark of the night. It's strange, to have lived in a world lit so constantly you can walk outside and see a distant city's glow on the horizon. Then to live in this world, where if the night is moonless and you're not in civilization, lit by candles in windows or doorways, the blackness will swallow you whole a few feet from another man. I was a ghost, I told myself. A ghost of a man, in the body of a man fresh out of boyhood, inhabited by a world built by ghosts. It all went back to ghosts.

The ghosts of fathers and mothers, ghosts of the men and women who came before.

I wished Robert was there, so that I could get to know Stannis' brother. That we could face the storm together. But he was at war, as good lords must be when their King orders their beheading.

Aerys had written Storm's End and demanded Stannis surrender himself to King's Landing, as well.

"Very well," Lomas Estermont said. "You know the way, nephew."

We resumed our slow, interminable pace, cutting from the postern gate in the north side of the wall and across the isthmus, both lengthwise and widthwise. Our goal lay on the south side of the isthmus, a staircase carved into the cliff side that would let us make the level change to the seaside, where the Baratheon fisherfolk called home.

I felt them, first. I went from crawling through mud and shit to my hand groping into nothingness. I stopped, my legs cocked awkwardly, and then patted the air in front of me, seeking, searching for—

There!

The rock of the stairs. I turned my head, and spat to clear muck from my lips. Our signal, prearranged and briefed to every man to let them know we'd found it—the white headed osprey's nesting cry. My gamble—the first of many—that we would find the stairs and not all fall to our deaths—had paid off. My second gamble was that the Reachmen wouldn't recognize the cry of a Stormlander bird. I mimicked the shriek with a good bit of accuracy, aided by the memory of the bird Steffon Baratheon had kept before his untimely shipwreck. Stannis had ordered no ospreys kept in the falconer's mews since.

We all stood after my brief career as a bird-call, and I loosened my sword at my hip. With no lights to guide our way, I had to trust in my faith and my feet. I took the first step.

I did not tumble to my death.

My foot landed solidly and firmly on the natural stair. I took the next one. I didn't die then, either, and as I felt my way forward and down, down the long dark cliff to the fishing ville, I had no time for idle thoughts. Instead my thoughts were on faith and family.

But.... I couldn't help but feel there was an analogy to be made about descending a staircase in the dark, and Hell.

There's a common saying, where I came from. War is Hell. Well. I can tell you emphatically that Hell is Hell, and no one that doesn't deserve it is there. War is war, and war is worse. War sweeps up the guilty and innocent alike, and makes ruin of all that a man will have spent his life working to build.

So I descended that staircase to the fishing village beneath Storm's End, and brought death to my enemies.

The first man to die was some poor sod who'd walked up the beach from their fire to take a piss. His back was turned, pissing into the sand, wet where the surf had receded. I waited till he finished.

I slid the long fighting dagger from its sheathe on the belt at the small of my back, and I lied to myself. It's just a dummy or a pell. It's not real. It's not real. The resistance his flesh offered was nothing like a pell or a training dummy, though, when I slid the dagger home into the base of his skull, where the spine meets the brain. He went limp, falling against me. I caught him and felt his legs twitching as the nerves in his legs tried to fire, tried to make contact with his brain.

Nothing.

The lie didn't help.

I drew the dagger across his throat, and then rolled him to the side, where I watched, my gorge rising in my throat, as he tried to flop like a landed fish. Instead he twitched uselessly.

The lie didn't help.

I turned away, unwilling and unable to look any longer.

Men, knights and soldiers, streamed past me to begin their work. One man slowed long enough to clap me on the back, and I felt a flush of something in my gut.

Pride, that I had done work recognized by another man, another man of arms, as good work. And shame that it had come at the cost of another man's life. When you kill a man... when you commit violence against him, it is one of the most intimate things you can do. More perhaps even than making love. Killing a man? You take everything from him. Every dream he ever had, every hope and desire for his future, every sunset and sunrise. You take it, you rip it away from him, and then in the aftermath his lifeless eyes stare up at you, accusing you, begging you, asking me why?

Of the fighting that first, true, night of the siege I will speak no more. Suffice it to say that we did our work.

 

[MarkWarrior]

So, is anything changed from the Spacebattles version to this one? Or is it mainly copy/pasted.

 

[Paladin]

So, is anything changed from the Spacebattles version to this one? Or is it mainly copy/pasted.

Mainly copy pasted.

 

[f1onagher]

Well now isn't this a most pleasant surprise! Welcome to our seedy hole in the wall. I look forward to reading this again.

 

[Paladin]

Chapter Four​

An inferno lit the night.

Ships burned remarkably well, once you caught the rigging and sails and the tarred ropes used to caulk the ship on fire. And in the night, my blood ran cold. I realized, watching my fishermen load their gear, little as it was, into the three ships we had kept back for their use, that I had not planned how to return to Storm's End. It smelled more festive than I had thought it would, like we were just a group of friends at the beach having a bonfire.

The woodsmoke masked the smell of dead and dying men. That's something the stories never talk about. Not in the fantasy novels, or war stories from older relatives—how men void their bowels when they die, so that the stench of shit lingers in the air and mixes with the sharp smell of blood.

I'd had no time to be sick, though. We had but bare moments before a great horde of Reach soldiers began to descend on us. We had lost twelve men taking the three ships, putting their crews to the sword in their sleep, and firing the twelve or so others. My knights and soldiers were being helped onto the decks by the fishermen, even as old salts who'd spent years in the royal navy began belting out commands to make ships ready to sail. Lomas Estermont stood beside me, watching the confusion, the chaos, and he wasn't smiling.

"Will you be well, nephew?" He asked. Lomas Estermont had spent years at sea, first as a boy learning to sail and then as one of Grandfather Estermont's captains. So he would command the ships, when they went. But I had to stay. Stannis had to stay. The mind went to strange places, when under stress. I wanted to ask him if he could write to me from Braavos. But Lomas wasn't going to Braavos. Lomas was going to take the ships we had stolen, and head for the rainwood. Because in the rainwood, the castles that belonged to the bannermen who professed loyalty to Storm's End weren't besieged. The rainwood was too dense, too thick, to risk any sizable hostile army, not when every peasant with a bow and a grudge could be waiting for a chance to feather your sentries—or you—from behind a tree or from a bank of fog.

Uncle Lomas was going to link up with whatever forces remained to the lords in the rainwood, and work to create a supply line to Storm's End. Tenuous, true. But some form of supply. I had to trust that he would do his work, and do it well. Between that and his working to bring the men of the rainwood to bear, to free Estermont and then Tarth, possibly the entire siege hung in the balance. And ultimately,it all boiled down to one thing. I had to trust him. I had to trust the man to do his duty, do his job.

It was a cold feeling.

"Yes," Stannis said through my mouth. I felt as though I weren't in the body, that there was something puppeting me, speaking through me. The tongue felt heavy in my mouth, in my head. "I cannot leave Storm's End," Stannis said.

"So you must turn the entire Stormlands to war, uncle. Every man, woman, and child. You must drive the invaders out, castle by castle. Retake them by trickery or treachery or bribery. It must be war to the very knife. And I will hold Storm's End."

"That's very cold of you, nephew," Lomas said. In the night, his eyes were hooded, hidden. Stannis could not guess at his thoughts.

"I must be cold, to win."

It wasn't me. I hadn't knifed another man in the dark. I hadn't—I had. I had knifed another man in the dark, and put more to the sword while they slept.

I hadn't. Stannis had. I was Stannis.

I wasn't Stannis. I was Stannis. I had.

I felt sick to my stomach, a churning low in the gut, but I couldn't spare the time to be sick.

"Be sure not to let the cold freeze you, nephew," Uncle Lomas offered. All along the beach, ships burned. I could feel the heat rising off the fired ships: rising, rising to the heavens, burning. Too, I could hear the din of men preparing for battle, to sweep down the staircase and cliff, to pin us against the ocean and drive steel through our hearts. The blood-soaked breath of war would come again, and again, and again, until Stannis lay dead and his people ruined, cast into the winds and to the corners of the earth, scattered and lonely and broken by battle. Fields would go unplowed for want of men to work them and be sown by their wives, fled or turned into whores, or worse. Children would starve, their parents killed, their grandparents too stooped and knurled to work hard or long. And Stannis Baratheon, a ghost of a man puppeteered by whatever wretched thing I was, regent of ashes and corpses.

Unless I stopped it. Unless I won.

"Now Death lines his dead chops with steel," I whispered. "The swords of soldiers are his fangs, the summer dust laid with showers of blood."

"That's quite good," Lomas said. The ships creaked into the salt-spray of the surf, groaning from being shoved over beach sand. A corpse was dumped overboard the far one, closest to the inferno roaring alongside his former ship. "You could have composed poetry, perhaps."

"You need to be away before the ships or soldiers respond," I said. That, too, was an advantage for us. It was difficult for sailing ships to keep a close blockade. Station-keeping was a muddy art at best, handled by each ship captain's gut, and the ability of his oarmen to keep time with the ships on either side of them. In short, it was nearly impossible, and they couldn't use their sails for fear of being cast off course and location to many leagues away.

Were the gods—was God—conspiring to lend me these successive breaks in my favor, tipping the scales in my direction, assisting with a little sleight of hand? Was the night darker than it should have been for this time of year?

I had a million million questions, and few answers. But I knew what I knew: Stannis had people depending on him. Stannis had people who loved him. Stannis was a brother and a grandson and a cousin and a nephew, and all of those things meant that I could not fail. It was not simply a matter of fearing it. Failure would be more than just a death for me, for Stannis. Failure would be the ruination of all that he loved. All of those who he loved.

Was a killing a murder if you ordered it in service of a greater cause? I had an idea, as the ships burned and Lomas Estermont clapped me on the shoulder. I had an idea. I owed it to my people. I owed it to Stannis' people.

"Gods lend you strength and wisdom, nephew. Strength and wisdom and courage and cunning, and I will pray for you in the sept."

"The same to you, uncle," I said. "I'll pray for you as well. Godspeed."

Lomas didn't say anything else, turned and ran to the last ship, lowering its mast so the thing wouldn't rise above the horizon. And then I was alone on a beach, burning with the warmth and cheer of a friendly bonfire or Christmas fire. I could hear men shouting, both on the ships as they put to sea, and above me. For a moment, I stood there where ocean met land, in the place between one day and another. I felt disconnected. Alien. A stranger in the strange hour.

I fled into the surf.

I had not been a strong swimmer. Stannis was, because swimming helped make a knight strong. So I swam against the surf, headed for the cavern beneath the castle, hoping I would not miss it in the dark—praying I would not miss it.

The waves and surf beat against me, bone-chillingly cold and brutal. If my jaw had not been clenched so tight I could feel my teeth grinding with every breaker buffeting me, I would have bitten my tongue clean off. The sea, cold and cruel, seeped into me. I swam. I swam. I swam, and I could not find the break in the sheer, jagged cliffs that would have beckoned me to safety. As the cold began numbing my fingers and toes, I felt my hope and determination begin to fade.

Was this what I had killed men for? To die alone and shivering in the surf, my body to be broken by the waves against the very earth of Stannis Baratheon's home?

I stopped swimming, exhausted and defeated. The cold was receding. I stopped swimming, and the waves began carrying me. They'd sink me eventually. I was tired.

Swim, Stannis. Swim, my dearheart.

I lifted my head, to look.

I saw.

A woman stood on the waves, pale and willowy. Her hair dripped, soaked, in the beating surf. Her dress reached her ankles, undyed linen also soaked through, and I wanted to sob. This was it, then. I'd died and was being ushered to whatever judgment awaited me. At least she was a looker. That was a comforting thought—that I could still admire the beauty of a woman, even as the waves tossed me about like a dog will tear at a haunch of meat.

Swim, ye outsider from beyond. Swim. Stannis must live yet.

Her words were urgent, insistent, and had become something to focus on. Stannis could swim. I could swim.

I spat the tang of salt from my mouth and sucked in a huge, gasping breath. Night-cold air shocked my lungs, forcing me to breathe deep again. Desperate strength filled my limbs, and all I could manage at first was to tread water, keeping my head above the briny death that would await me if I failed.

I'm tired, I wanted to tell the woman. She crossed the waves to me and knelt, brushing a finger along my cheek.

I know. But the fate that awaits is not to die in the cold sea. So swim, dearheart. Swim for life.

I swam. She stood back up. She guided me. Whoever she was, whatever she was—she showed me the way, beckoned me onwards. For some reason I trusted her, despite that she could have been luring me to a doom of being dashed against rocks and broken, or pulled beneath the waves and drowned, to feed the sharks. She led me towards home.

For how long I battled wind and wave and salt brine, I could not tell you. But the desire to stop, to sink and give up and succumb—that was still there. But overriding it was the knowledge that if I let Stannis die there, Mace Tyrell would exact his pound of flesh for the burned ships from the two Baratheons remaining in Storm's End. And that I would not allow. Could not allow.

So I swam, and swallowed seawater, and spat seawater. I don't know if you know this, but fishes shit in the sea. I don't recommend swallowing a lot of the stuff.

At some point, when it felt like I had lead weights in my arms and that God had abandoned me and I was all alone in the world, I was seized by four strong hands and hauled upwards. I hung there in the air for a moment, and then I was placed gently down onto the wooden pier that served as Storm's End's only maritime infrastructure. I was rolled onto my side, and the blurry shapes above me resolved into something clearer: Great Uncle Harbert, Maester Cressen, two of the manservants, and Grandmother.

I finished rolling until I was on my front, and tried to get my hands and knees under me.

Then, wretched, I retched and heaved and puked, for what felt to be an hour but was probably only about five minutes. I collapsed to the side and let myself be rolled over onto my back.

"Got it all out?" Harbert asked, gruff but not unkindly. "Better out than in, I always say. Hah! You showed those perfumed knights why men fear the Stormlords. Well done, my boy, well done."

Grandmother knelt beside me, and handed me a clay cup of wine. She helped me sit up, and then helped me sip it down. It had been heated, was warm still, and flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. I should have been embarrassed to be treated so, like a child, but the exhaustion was bone deep and grinding at my soul. My limbs were worse than tired and leaden, they were close to useless.

"That was bravely done, Stannis," she said. "You are a knight of excellence and courage, my dearheart."

Despite the cold, despite the tiredness, despite the embarrassment, I felt myself blush. I ducked my head and tried to keep anyone from seeing.

"Help me—help me get upstairs and into armor," I said between sips of wine. It, and being out of the water, were restoring a semblance of warmth to my bones.

I didn't want to go up top, to be armored and then take a place on the wall, to throw back however many thousands of angry Reachmen. I was terrified of it. I was weary and beaten and couldn't feel my fingers or toes.

"We beat them off already," Harbert said. He knelt beside me, too. "You did your part, this night. We did ours."

I grunted, too tired and dull and sore to say anything real.

Rhaelle patted my cheek, and then began rubbing my back with her other hand. "Let's sit here a moment longer. We had feared you lost at sea."

I grunted again, unable and unwilling to share just how close I had tread to dying. I would not be sharing that, or that I had hallucinated a woman guiding me to the cave beneath my home, and especially not that that thing had known I wasn't Stannis. But I was relieved, too, that I would not be going directly into a fight. And that I'd survived.

Harbert and the two manservants, Jack and Geoff, tugged me out of my sodden and soaking clothing, setting it aside. I'd lost the boots at some point, and wiggled my pale toes in the dim light cast by the iron braziers throwing off a dull heat. They wrapped me in two woolen blankets, and Grandmother's eyes were hooded in the dim light of the cavern.

"Let's go upstairs," Princess Rhaelle Targaryen said. "You need to rest."

I wasn't sure what I needed, but the siren song of Stannis' bed beckoned. Goose down feather stuffed, it was eminently comfortable. I was sure they'd shove me in front of the fire to dry me out and warm me up, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to be comfortable. The world felt colder, somehow. I had killed men, and caused men to die. In my name. In Stannis Baratheon's name. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted, though. But it certainly wasn't to be coddled like a child. I was a man. I had, as brutal as it had been, done the work of a man in this cold, cruel world.

I did know one thing. I wanted to be better. I would be better.

 

[Blasterbot]

Merry Christmas and thanks for the chapter.