The Odyssey navigated the murky, winding waters of the Trident like a phantom, its submerged form invisible to the fishing skiffs and trading barges that plied the great river. On the holographic map in the Eye, the situation around Stoney Sept was a chaotic swarm of sigils. The Griffin of House Connington, loyal to the Targaryens, held the town, a tightening noose around the whole area. Converging on them from the north and west were the Direwolf of Stark and the Trout of Tully.
"They're hunting someone," Torren observed, pointing to the tight search patterns of the royalist troops within the town's walls. "A high-value target."
I refined the ship's sensors, focusing on the life signs within the town. Thousands of civilians, hundreds of soldiers, and one individual, cornered in a large building near the town's center—a man whose life force burned like a forge. He was wounded but powerful. The entire royalist army was trying to snuff out that single flame.
"That's our fulcrum point," I said. "Whoever he is, his survival is key. And look." I pointed to the approaching Stark banners. "That is Lord Eddard Stark. My cousin."
Torren's hand went to the hilt of his blade. "Then the path is clear. We fight with the North."
"A direct assault would win the battle, but lose the war," I countered, my mind racing through a dozen different scenarios. "Look at the players. This isn't a simple raid; this is the heart of a rebellion. Stark, Tully, Arryn… they are fighting for the future of the Seven Kingdoms. If we reveal ourselves, we become the focus. Our power becomes the prize. No. We cannot be soldiers in their army. We must be the myth that strengthens it."
My plan was one of subtlety and terror. We would not be warriors of flesh and blood, but a force of nature.
As the first Stark outriders clashed with Connington's pickets, the battle for Stoney Sept began. The fighting was fierce, a bloody, house-to-house struggle. From the submerged Odyssey in the river, I reached out with my power, not to the stone of the earth, but to the moisture in the air. I pulled, cooled, and condensed.
A fog, impossibly thick and chillingly cold, began to roll off the river. It did not spread naturally but moved with a grim purpose, blanketing the streets and alleys held by the Targaryen loyalists while leaving the path of the attackers clear. Shouts of confusion and fear erupted from Connington's men. Their lines faltered, their archers blinded, their commands swallowed by the oppressive white silence.
Inside the town, at an inn called the Peach, Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, leaned heavily against a wall, his warhammer slick with blood. The wound in his side was a fiery agony. Outside the door, he could hear the splintering of wood as Connington's knights prepared their final breach. He was cornered. He was dead. He grinned, ready to take the bastards with him.
Just as the door was about to give way, a blur of motion in the fog-choked alley outside caught the knights' attention. Two figures, clad in armor as black as a starless night, emerged from the mist. They moved in perfect, deadly silence. Before the knights could even raise a proper alarm, the figures were upon them. It was not a fight; it was an execution. Torren's blade was a whisper of steel, each movement precise, economical, and lethal. I moved with him, my power a subtle weight on the scales, turning a knight's desperate parry into a fatal misstep, making a thrown dagger veer harmlessly off course.
In less than a minute, a half-dozen of the king's best knights lay dead or dying in the mud, and the two silent figures melted back into the fog as if they had never been there.
Inside, Robert Baratheon heard the attack outside fall silent. He braced himself, but the door never broke. Minutes later, he heard a different sound: the fierce, familiar battle-cry of "Winterfell!" The tide had turned. Eddard Stark had arrived.
When the unnatural fog finally burned away under the afternoon sun, the battle was over. The royalist army was shattered, and Lord Jon Connington was in full retreat. Eddard Stark found a wounded but very much alive Robert Baratheon, who spoke in a feverish haze of being saved by two "shadows," warrior spirits from the fog itself.
The story spread through the victorious army like wildfire. The men of the North and the Riverlands saw it as a blessing from the Old Gods, a sign that their cause was just. The legend of the Sea Wolves was no longer just a northern tale. It was now woven into the very fabric of the rebellion.
From the quiet bridge of the Odyssey, deep beneath the Trident, we watched the Stark and Tully banners rise over Stoney Sept. We had saved the rebellion's leader, aided my kin, and cemented our legend, all without a single soul knowing our names.
"You should have seen Eddard's face," Torren said, a hint of longing in his voice as he watched the real-time display.
"He will see it, one day," I replied, turning the ship back towards the distant sea. "But not today. Today, we gave them something more important than an ally. We gave them a miracle."