Chapter 168: The Eve of the Storm

Arthur set the parchment down and closed his eyes, and it seemed to him he could hear the gears of fate grinding up to speed. The albatross had strung every scattered clue and every half-formed dread onto one clear, terrible wire. The storm was not coming; it was here, standing just off the coast of the visible. The Vale’s blade was whetted. The east’s shadow was moving west. The dragons could not look north. And the northern ice lay calm on top and eaten hollow underneath. He stood at the exact point where the storm’s eye would form, with no road back and none sideways; and in the depths of him the greenseer’s voice moved again, like wind under a door: the point of balance; guard the spark; the Song of the Age. This storm might be that song’s most chaotic and dangerous movement. He would have to hold the west and the Trident; and cut a way through for the North’s thin hope, for the new soil rooting in frozen ground; and perhaps for something longer than any of it.

He opened his eyes, and there was no hesitation left in them, only ice-field cold and forge-fire will.

“Alwin.” The steward was through the door almost before the name ended, face grave; he had been waiting. “Take the orders. Top secret. Immediate execution.

“First, the land. Kator at Harrenhal takes the Riverlands Allied Force and the new Battanian formations to first-degree readiness: walls reinforced, stores deepened, patrols doubled, reconnaissance pressed hard toward the Bloody Gate; and not one man crosses a border or offers one provocation. Lord Gawen and Ser Rhaegar watch their zones, the Vale marches and the eastern Trident above all, against infiltration and sudden blows. All Bannermen Guard formations in the west begin limited mobilization and assembly exercises, unannounced; we sharpen the sword without showing it.

“Second, the sea. Urgent letter to Lord Jason: holding Seagard and Lannisport secure, he forms a special squadron of Seagard’s main strength and the fastest keels of Lannisport. Mission: patrol the wide waters from Ironman’s Bay along the Iron Islands’ eastern coasts, watching for and intercepting any suspicious sail attempting the passage from the east toward the North, the west, or the Trident. He has full discretion on the spot: unknown, heavily armed, refusing inspection, above all anything answering the intelligence or flying the Shadow Moon’s colors or any strange banner, he warns, expels, and at need takes or sinks, fast and clean and without survivors, so that neither our knowledge nor our strength is advertised. And he keeps his thread to Lord Wyman, so the White Harbor to Moat Cailin route stays alive whatever happens.

“Third, the North. By Grey Shadow’s highest channel, absolute security, three directives. To Torren at Oath Keep: New Soil goes to covert development, preparing for war and famine. Expansion slows on the surface; underneath, grain stockpiling accelerates, the militia trains harder under the village-guard name, and the key settlements and route junctions are fortified. Prepare for sudden assault, long siege, or a flood of refugees; guard hardest against elite infiltration and sabotage; keep the quiet line to Moat Cailin. To Alfie: Moat Cailin to maximum alert. The Neck passage watched to the last cart; anything large or strange, from the Vale’s direction or the sea, inspected hard, restricted at need. Quiet help to Grey Creek’s defenses: a consignment of crossbows, arrows, trap materials, and medicine, dressed as trade goods. And through his own weight in the east, a controlled rumor, in Karhold and its country only: the Vale stockpiles arms; the Vale means the North harm. Enough that the eastern lords Petyr is courting feel a chill when his agents smile at them; not enough for panic. To Jon, in my name, in the most oblique phrasing that will carry it: the external threat rises sharply, the Vale and the eastern sea above all. In dealing with Lord Carrell, he may profitably use the crown’s own claim of jurisdiction: the North is the kingdom’s northern shield, therefore let the kingdom arm its shield; press King’s Landing for defensive aid, weapons, mail, coin; and let it be said that under external threat the North must be united, and whoever divides it or invites outside powers in, meaning the Vale, wounds the kingdom itself. Give him, through Alfie’s channel or White Harbor’s, processed and deniable indications of the Vale’s arms-running to strengthen his hand before Carrell and the lords. And warn him with the same breath: no open break with King’s Landing, none with the Vale; the season’s work is still the base, and time.

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“Fourth, the letters. As Lord Paramount of the Trident, secret letters to Queen Daenerys, to Lady Olenna, to Prince Doran. To the queen: loyalty reaffirmed; then, with concern, that according to intelligence not yet fully verified, Lord Petyr appears to be in contact with ill-intentioned powers across the narrow sea, Blackfyre remnants or eastern pretenders may be named vaguely, and to be stockpiling arms far beyond any defensive need, in a manner deeply unsettling; that if the Vale stirs the North while Her Grace’s strength is bent on the south, or joins hands with the east, the peace she is rebuilding will be gravely wounded; and that the west will keep its duty, and cannot stand aloof if the North is set alight, which she may read, correctly, as both pledge and warning. Goal: the seed of doubt about Petyr planted in the royal ear; her understanding, or at least her hesitation, secured in advance of any northern conflict. To Olenna and to Doran, in parallel: a reminder that the true threat gathers east and north; the suggestion that Baelish’s ambitions do not stop at the North, and that his eastern friends aim at the balance of the whole south; the counsel that the Reach and Dorne spare each other, lest the real fisherman profit; and the offer of open channels with both, against the larger danger. Goal: the Vale isolated from any southern understanding, the south’s eyes turned outward, our southern pressure eased, and the ground laid for coordination later if it comes to that.

He paused there, and behind his eyes the panel turned over its cold arithmetic: what the treasury held, what a wall of Oathsworn cost by the hundred, how many months of both remained if every front opened at once. The numbers were not comforting. They were, at least, numbers, which was more than any other power on the board could say about its own position.

“Fifth, the house itself. Diana and Alwin launch the Deep Cellar contingency: full inventory of every strategic reserve in the west and the Trident, grain, arms, mail, medicine, gold, and wartime control applied without public requisition. Arms production accelerated at Lannisport and the river workshops. A second levy of Battanian Volunteers raised and trained in quiet, for garrisons and for whatever comes. And under the name of flood-works and road repair, the corvee strengthens the cores, Casterly Rock, the Golden Tooth, Pheasant Hall, Deep Den, with siege stores pre-laid. We prepare to stand siege, and to stand alone.”

The orders came down like a hard rain across war, sea, shadow, diplomacy, and the household itself, and Alwin wrote until the sweat stood on his brow, feeling in every line the duke’s full assessment of what was coming and his full decision about it: not a plan for a border conflict, but the final contingency for a many-fronted crisis that could sweep the southwest, the North, and reach across the sea.

“My lord,” he said when the last was down, and his voice had gone dry. “If it is as the albatross warns, and the Vale and the east strike together, the North, the Trident, the west itself could all be fighting at once. Our strength...”

“I know.” Arthur’s voice was calm in the way deep winter is calm. “Scattered fronts, many enemies, bad odds. Which is exactly why we do not sit and wait, and do not price our survival in the enemy’s mercy or the enemy’s delay. We move first: break their rhythm, breed their variables, gather our friends, and harden ourselves before their preparations finish. The North’s new soil is the fire we guard. The west and the Trident are the ground we cannot lose. The Vale’s viper gets contained; the east’s shadow gets stopped at the waterline. And King’s Landing, we need her legitimacy, and we watch her leash.”

He walked to the window and looked down at the busy harbor below the Rock, and out at the lead-grey cloudbank building on the horizon with the storm inside it. “The storm is coming, Alwin, and no one gets to watch this one from shore. All that is left is to hold the sword hard, stand on our own ground, and cut through the thunder and the sea to buy a living road for everything we mean to protect. Execute the orders. And then we will see what this storm tears apart, and what it tempers.”

Alwin drew one long breath, nodded, and gathered the thick sheaf. At the door he stopped.

“One more thing, my lord. It did not seem worth a raven.” He did not turn round entirely. “Jaime Lannister died in the night. The maester says his heart. He had been failing since the autumn and would not say so.”

Arthur did not move from the window.

Three years ago that name had been the most famous in Westeros, and men had argued about it in every hall from Oldtown to the Wall, and it had been worth a war. It had ended in a tower room above the sea, quietly, with nobody in it, on an evening when the man who had never got round to deciding what he was worth had rather more urgent letters to sign.

“Bury him in the Rock with his house,” Arthur said. “Properly. With the sword.”

“My lord.”

“And say nothing about it until the storm has been through. Half the Reach would read it as a message.”

Alwin went out fast.