Chapter 25: The Hand of the Storm
The aftermath of the Market Square Massacre was not the cowed silence the Lannisters had expected. It was the ringing of hammers. The blood had been washed from the cobblestones by grieving families, but the fire of rebellion, once sparked, now caught and spread with astonishing speed. The Tower of the Hand was no longer a prison; it had become a capitol building. And Eddard Stark, the man of honor who had been its prisoner, was now, by the will of the common people, the reluctant leader of an urban revolution.
He did not retreat to the tower. In a move that shocked the Red Keep and electrified the city, Ned Stark, flanked by Thor and his last loyal Northmen, claimed the market square as his own. He stood on an overturned cart, the body of Tobb the blacksmith laid out respectfully below him, and spoke to the crowd of shell-shocked but defiant citizens.
His voice was not the booming command of a king, nor the honeyed poison of a courtier. It was the grim, steady voice of a northern lord, a voice that spoke of harsh truths and harder duties. He did not promise them safety or riches. He promised them only one thing: justice.
"The Queen and her son have shown you their justice," he declared, his voice carrying over the silent crowd. "It is the justice of the sword for those who dare speak the truth. It is the justice of the butcher for the shepherd who protects his flock. I offer you something different. I offer you the justice of the wolf. We will be swift, we will be loyal to the pack, and we will hunt down those who have preyed upon this city for too long."
He then made his decree, an act of open defiance against the Iron Throne. "By the authority vested in me as Protector of the Realm by King Robert Baratheon, I am disbanding the City Watch. In its place, I call for the formation of the Protector's Guard. Any man of this city willing to stand for his home, to protect his family not from foreign invaders but from the tyrants in our own castle, will be given steel in his hand and bread for his table. We will be our own shield. We will defend our own."
It was a call to arms, and the city answered. They came in droves. Blacksmiths with soot-stained faces, dockworkers with calloused hands, masons, bakers, and even former Gold Cloaks who tore the lion from their cloaks and threw them in the mud. They were not an army. They were a mob, armed with little more than courage and fury. Ned knew it was not enough. Fury could not stop a charging knight, and courage could not pierce steel plate.
"They need weapons," Ned said to Thor as they watched the first clumsy attempts at drilling in the square, led by his remaining Stark guards. "And they need armor. We have a thousand willing men and fifty swords."
"Then we shall make them," Thor said. His eyes gleamed with a creative fire Ned had not seen before. "Your smiths are skilled, but their tools are weak. Their fires are cold. That is about to change."
What happened next became the second great legend of the Thunderer's time in King's Landing, a story that would be told in hushed, awestruck tones for generations. The first had been the Sermon of the Storm. This came to be known as the Miracle of the Forges.
Thor, with Ned at his side, walked to the Street of Steel, the heart of the city's industry. They came first to the forge of the martyred Tobb, which had become a shrine. They cleared the flowers and tributes, and Thor addressed the assembled blacksmiths of the city, who had gathered with a mixture of fear and hope.
"You have the skill," Thor told them, his voice echoing in the smoky forge. "You have the will. But you lack the heart. The true heart of a forge is not the coal, but the fire within it."
He placed his hands on the cold stone of Tobb's forge. He closed his eyes, and the air grew thick and heavy, the scent of ozone returning. He was not calling the storm this time. He was summoning its heart. A low hum started, and the coals in the forge, gray and dead a moment before, began to glow. They did not just glow red; they bypassed all normal colors, erupting into a furious, brilliant white-blue light, a miniature star born in the heart of Flea Bottom. The heat was so intense, so pure, that the smiths cried out and shielded their eyes.
"Bring me your poorest iron," Thor commanded. A smith nervously brought forward a stack of pig iron, a low-grade, brittle metal barely suitable for nails. Thor tossed it into the impossible heat. The metal did not just melt; it boiled, the impurities burning away in a shower of brilliant sparks, leaving behind a pool of liquid metal as pure and as bright as silver.
"Now," Thor said to the master smith. "Quench it. Fold it. Work it as you would the finest Dorne-steel, but do it now, while the star-fire lasts."
Under Thor's guidance, a process that should have taken days was accomplished in minutes. The smiths, their faces slick with sweat and alight with a craftsman's holy fervor, worked the metal with a speed and precision they had never known. The star-fire seemed to infuse the steel, making it stronger, lighter, more resilient than anything they had ever produced. From a single forge, in a single hour, they produced a dozen longswords and fifty spearheads of a quality that rivaled the Valyrian steel of legend.
Thor went from forge to forge that day, a traveling miracle worker. He did not just make weapons; he taught. He showed them Asgardian quenching techniques, folding patterns that created blades of incredible strength. He was not just arming a rebellion; he was bequeathing them a technological leap of centuries. The smoke that rose from the Street of Steel that day was not the smoke of industry, but the smoke of revolution. The legend of Thor the Hammer, Thor the Smith, was being forged right alongside the steel.
From the highest tower of the Red Keep, the Lannisters watched the city transform. They saw the columns of unnaturally bright smoke rising from the forges. They heard the distant, rhythmic clang of a thousand hammers, a sound that had replaced the fearful silence. They saw the Protector's Guard drilling in the squares, their numbers swelling, their new steel gleaming in the sun.
"He is arming them," Tyrion said, his voice a mixture of admiration and utter dread. He lowered his looking glass. "Stark is giving them discipline. The Thunderer is giving them steel. They are building an army. In our city. Under our noses."
"This is your fault!" Cersei shrieked, turning on Jaime. "You should have killed Stark in the street when you had the chance!"
"And what would that have accomplished?" Jaime retorted, his voice weary. He felt increasingly like a man in a dream, the rules of which kept changing without warning. "It would have only given the demon a reason to bring this whole castle down on our heads sooner. We cannot fight him, Cersei. How many times must I say it?"
"We fight with what we have!" she snarled. Her gaze was cold and reptilian. Her military and religious strategies had failed. It was time for a more personal, more intimate form of warfare. "We cannot reach the monster. But we can still reach the man." Her eyes narrowed. "Where is the Stark girl? The older one. The little dove."
The threat was delivered an hour later. It was not a formal declaration, but a single, headless doll, dressed in the grey and white of House Stark, thrown over the wall into the garden of the tower. Pinned to its dress was a note, written in the Queen's elegant, looping script.
A father has a duty to protect his daughters. Mine are safe. Are yours? End this madness. Disperse your mob. Surrender yourself to the King's justice. Or the next wolf to lose its head will not be made of cloth.
Ned Stark stared at the doll, his face turning to stone. It was a vile, personal threat, an attack not on him as Hand, but on him as a father. It was a move of pure, spiteful cruelty.
He found Thor in the makeshift armory they had established in the tower's great hall, inspecting the first shipment of newly forged spears. The god looked up as he entered, sensing the shift in the Hand's demeanor. Ned wordlessly handed him the doll and the note.
Thor read the words, his jaw tightening. He looked at the headless doll, and his eyes, for a moment, seemed to hold a sorrow so vast it was cosmic. He thought of his own family, of the losses he had endured. He understood this kind of pain. He understood the barbarity of a foe who would target children.
"She is weak," Thor said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "She threatens what she cannot take. She does this because she is afraid. Because she has no other move to make."
"She is a cornered lioness," Ned said, his voice trembling with rage. "And a cornered beast is the most dangerous."
"No," Thor corrected him. He tossed the doll into the hearth, where it was consumed by the flames. "A cornered beast is desperate. And desperation leads to mistakes." He turned to face Ned fully. "She wants you to fear for your daughter. She wants you to be a father. You must be the Protector. You must be the King she fears."
"And how do I do that?" Ned cried. "She holds my child's life in her hands!"
"Does she?" Thor asked. "I am here. Do you truly believe I would allow them to harm your daughters?" The simple, utter confidence in his voice was more reassuring than any army. "No, Lord Stark. This is not a threat. It is a gift. She has shown you her heart. She has shown you what she values, and how she fights. She uses fear and love as weapons. So we will do the same."
He began to pace the hall, his mind, once clouded by grief, now a sharp, tactical instrument. "The people of this city are beginning to see you as their protector. They are beginning to see me as their champion. Now, we must show them what we are protecting them from. We must show them the true face of the lion."
"Joffrey," Ned breathed, understanding.
"The boy king," Thor affirmed. "He is your greatest weapon. He is a walking, talking testament to Lannister cruelty and incompetence. We have shown the people his cowardice and his sadism. Now, we must show them his illegitimacy."
"I have sent the letters…" Ned began.
"Letters are for lords in castles far away," Thor said dismissively. "The people do not read letters. They read faces. They understand stories." He stopped pacing and looked at Ned. "It is time for another sermon. But this one will not be mine to give. It will be yours."
The plan he laid out was audacious, dangerous, and brilliant. It was a piece of political theater so bold it would either win them the city or get them all killed.
The next day, a crier, a man from the new Protector's Guard, walked through the city, banging a drum. He announced that the Hand of the King would hold public court in the market square at noon. He would hear the petitions of the smallfolk, those who had been denied justice by the corrupt Gold Cloaks and the indifferent King.
The Lannisters were perplexed. What was Stark's game? It seemed a foolish, risky move, exposing himself in public. Cersei wanted to send assassins, but Tyrion argued against it. "And have him martyred in front of his adoring new followers? To have his godling burn half the city in revenge? No, sister. Let the wolf play at being a king. Let us see what this is about."
At noon, the market square was packed. The Protector's Guard, armed with their new, shining steel, formed a cordon, their discipline a stark contrast to the slovenly Gold Cloaks. Ned Stark sat on a simple wooden chair on the cart that had served as his podium, a table before him. He was not dressed as a warrior, but as a lord and a judge, in a simple grey doublet bearing the direwolf of his house. Thor stood behind him, a silent, imposing figure of authority, Stormbreaker resting on his shoulder.
For hours, Ned listened. He heard the complaints of a baker whose flour had been stolen by a Lannister guardsman. He heard the plea of a woman whose husband had been imprisoned for speaking ill of the boy king. He listened with a patience and gravity that the common folk had never seen from a great lord. He dispensed justice that was fair and swift. He ordered the baker to be repaid from the confiscated funds of a corrupt merchant. He promised the woman he would look into her husband's case. He was governing. He was showing the people what a true Hand, a true Protector, did.
Then, as the sun began to dip, the final petitioner was brought forward. It was a young woman with dark, almost black hair and startlingly blue eyes. She was a serving girl from a tavern on the Street of Silk. She was weeping. With her was her infant son, a babe with a shock of thick, black hair.
"What is your petition, my child?" Ned asked gently.
"My lord Hand," the woman sobbed. "It is about my boy. His father… he was a great man. Strong. He used to visit the tavern. He had a laugh like a thunderstorm."
A hush fell over the crowd. Standing at the back, hidden in the shadows, Varys the Spider felt a thrill of cold dread. He saw what was about to happen.
"He promised he would care for us," the woman continued. "But he was a king. And he is dead. And now his… other family… they want to harm my boy. They say he is a threat."
Ned looked at the child, at his black hair, his blue eyes, his strong jaw. He was the very image of a young Robert Baratheon. He stood up and addressed the crowd.
"You have all heard the Queen and her Septons call me a heretic," he said, his voice ringing with righteous anger. "They say I have brought a false god into your midst. I have brought a protector. They call me a traitor. I am loyal to the true blood of my king."
He pointed to the woman and her child. "Look here! Look upon the face of Robert Baratheon's son! This is the King's blood! Black of hair, blue of eye! The seed is strong!"
He then turned his gaze towards the Red Keep, his voice rising to a roar. "And now look to the children on the throne! Golden-haired, green-eyed! They are not Baratheons! They are not the King's blood! They are the product of incest and lies, a mockery of the gods and men! Joffrey is no king! He is the bastard of the Kingslayer!"
The truth, spoken so plainly, so publicly, landed like a thunderclap, an echo of the one Thor had summoned days before. It was no longer a secret whispered in the halls of power. It was a declaration shouted in the streets.
The crowd erupted. The seeds of rebellion, so carefully planted and watered, had just burst into full, glorious, and terrifying bloom. The war for King's Landing had just begun in earnest.