Chapter 234

The Stormlands. 301 AC.

Jon Connington.

Silence fell, broken only by the scratch of a pen and the distant rumble of storms. In those first minutes everything went smoothly enough. Jon worked away methodically, and the page slowly filled with figures. The more he calculated, the clearer the situation became for the army, and clearer meant grimmer. They stood a week’s march from Storm’s End, but the food stores for the two thousand men under his direct command could be stretched to last two and a half months at most. Jon had no idea how many losses Aegon had suffered, but evidently not many, which meant his numbers still sat close to three thousand men. For the sake of mobility the young king had brought along only what food his raiding columns needed, and once their two armies joined together, two and a half months would collapse into one.

The late Stannis Baratheon had done the impossible and managed to seize Casterly Rock. His achievement had lit a fire of ambition under every young man in earshot. The reasoning among those hungry for glory was simple enough: if a Baratheon could do it, so could they. Now, they thought even Storm’s end stormable. But Jon wasn’t nearly so optimistic. During Robert’s Rebellion, the entire army of the Reach had failed to break the resistance of a handful of half dead defenders, so their own odds here looked equally pale. Taking a nut as hard as Storm’s End inside a month simply wasn’t realistic.

Lost in trying to work out the most workable plan, HE didn’t notice himself drifting off.

“Jon,” Aegon said, stepping into the tent without warning and cutting the doze short.

“Your Grace,” every trace of drowsiness vanished at once, and the King’s Hand scrambled to offer him the greeting due a king.

“Sit, sit, seems I’ve come at a bad time,” only in private did Aegon ever let the mask of the perfect king slip and allow himself to relax. “Bureaucracy seems to defeat even the strongest of us,” the young man said, glancing at the pages covered in figures, and smiled knowingly.

“That it does,” the simple joke struck the right chord with Jon. “So, what did you need, Your Grace?”

“I’m taking command of this army now, and you’ll serve as my second. In three weeks Strickland should reach us, and only then can we start thinking seriously about taking Storm’s End. Until then, we focus on blockading the castle. Any objections?” There were none; Aegon was king, and the choice was his to make.

“We have a supply problem. We won’t hold up through a long siege.”

“If we play this right, it won’t be a long one.”

…

Storm’s End was an obscenely large castle. According to legend, it stood as the very embodiment of the struggle between gods and men, one that men had ultimately won. Six times Durran Godsgrief had raised his castle, and six times it had been torn down again. Only on the seventh attempt did he manage to build a fortress so strong that not even the wrath of the gods could break it. Looking up at those high, massive walls, it was easy to understand why. Had Jon never laid eyes on Harrenhal, he would have called this the largest fortress in the world. The Baratheon seat rose above the mighty cliffs of Durran’s Point, built of grey white stone. Every moment, the sea hurled itself against the rock with terrible force. It was hard not to start believing in the legends surrounding this place.

“We should attack. Renly’s a nobody, we’ll take the castle without any trouble.” The last Baratheon had become something close to a byword for disgrace by now.

“Him being a nobody doesn’t make the walls any shorter.”

“His vassals have already abandoned him, even the Reach lords chose to run back home.”

Jon found a kind of twisted irony in all of it. A vassal’s loyalty had always been shaped by the strength of his enemy. The Reach men who’d stayed with Baratheon hadn’t been “loyal vassals” for very long, not really. Right up until Randyll Tarly’s death, those puffed up lords had been willing to fulfill their duty to the king exactly as long as their own homes remained safe. They’d known Tarly, their old enemy, would hold firm against the Dothraki, so they hadn’t worried about their own backs. But once their celebrated commander fell, the Reach lords felt the first flames licking at their own lands and hurried straight home. Only those loyal to Renly unto death had remained, and there weren’t many of them.

“Your Grace, we shouldn’t stake everything on taking Storm’s End, we need a plan in case things go wrong.” Even phrased as gently as possible, the sellswords bristled at what they took as an insult.

“Lord Connington, do you doubt us?! We’re the finest soldiers in the world, a great hunk of rock isn’t going to stop us!” A ragged chorus of agreement followed.

If the Golden Company really were the “finest soldiers in the world,” there wouldn’t have been five Blackfyre Rebellions, and the black dragon banner would be flying over Westeros right now.

“I don’t doubt your prowess on the battlefield, but I’ve been inside Storm’s End, and it isn’t like other castles.” The Baratheon seat differed sharply from what these sellswords were used to, and not in a way that favored them.

“I agree with Lord Hand,” the king spoke up. “Besides, it’s only a plan. Whether we ever use it or not costs us nothing.” No one could argue with that particular piece of logic.

The men fell in line. What began as a half hearted discussion soon drew them in fully, and they brought the whole of their considerable experience to bear on it. Working out the details took a long while, but by the end a plan had taken shape. Nothing complicated about it, just contingencies against a possible setback, but it let Jon breathe a good deal easier all the same. Even a rough plan beat having no plan at all, many times over.

“That’s all for now, everyone but the Lord Hand may go,” and once the last man had left the tent, Aegon continued. “A week ago I received an envoy from someone rather interesting: Euron Greyjoy. The pirate wants to swear fealty to me, on the condition that I come to him at the Cape of Sunken Ships within the week.”

For a Greyjoy to swear fealty to anyone willingly, with no force behind it, was simply unheard of. Jon knew his history well enough not to believe things would play out that way.

“It’s a trap. Pirates have no honor, least of all a madman like the Crow’s Eye. They’ll seize you and sell you off for a handful of coppers to whatever usurper’s buying.”

Judging by Aegon’s expression, he’d probably reached the same conclusion himself, and meant to do something foolish anyway.

“You might be right,” a small flicker of hope stirred in Connington’s chest, but… “So we’ll just need to bring more guards along.” The king, true to form, did not disappoint him.

A heavy sigh rolled through the whole of the tent from the Hand.