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Game of Thrones: Rune Bastard
Game of Thrones Wizard Dothraki
Game of Thrones: Knights Life
The gentle rain over the Riverlands had turned to fine, drifting snow. It landed on the soldiers' armor with a soft, steady hiss.
Especially once every piece of armor had been stripped off and heaped into small mountains, the empty shells amplified the sound of the snowflakes.
The armor wasn't dumped in a careless pile. It had been sorted—vambraces in one heap, helmets in another, breastplates in a third. Captured Stormlander and Crownlands soldiers filed past the mounds in long lines, pulling off their own gear and tossing it onto the growing piles.
Red, black, blue—every color of steel rose higher than the rooftops.
Armor gave no warmth anyway. Once it was gone, the men moved lighter. Not far off, big iron pots already bubbled with hot porridge. After they surrendered their weapons and mail, they still got a bowl.
"Big brother Jess, that Jon… will he really let us go home? I heard he likes killing prisoners. Chops their heads off. Sends men to the Wall."
A young Stormlander with a runny nose clutched his rough clay bowl of porridge and asked in a low voice.
"Probably not," said the older soldier called Jess. "He didn't even take our coin."
From everything Jess had seen in past wars, prisoners got beaten, then stripped of every last copper star. Jon had only demanded their armor and weapons. Leather or padded jacks that still held some warmth? He left them alone.
Only lords and knights who'd brought their own kit took real losses. For ordinary soldiers it barely counted as punishment.
A familiar-looking banner appeared then. A man on a chestnut horse rode past with his chin high, carrying a two-colored banner. Both soldiers kept their eyes down.
The rider raised his voice. "Listen up! The true and lawful heir to the Iron Throne, His Grace Jon Targaryen, is at Harrenhal. His Grace wants you to know that if you stay quiet and behave, once the war ends he'll take you home himself."
"Home?"
"We can go home?"
The word spread like fire through the lines. Men who had been shivering suddenly stood straighter. Even the snow on their faces felt less cruel.
For soldiers from the Stormlands, home meant warm, wet country near the Kingswood. Anything was better than freezing here.
"Those look like Florent men."
"Florent? Who would've thought even the Florents would fold? King Stannis never had a chance."
The soldiers drank their porridge and talked quietly. Kings changed like shirts these days—Robert, Joffrey, Stannis. A crown didn't carry the old weight anymore.
Men who had thrown down their armor formed long columns and marched toward Harrenhal.
Along the road they saw something strange. Maester-looking men with ledgers were stopping soldiers one by one, writing down names, birthplaces, even family details.
The "maesters" told them that when the war ended, every man here would become a subject of the Dragon King. They would swear loyalty and pay taxes to him.
Most of these clerks were only assistant maesters or students from Jon's new schools—barely past basic reading, writing, and sums. In Westeros that still made them educated men.
Jon left Axell behind to finish reorganizing the Crownlands and Stormlander prisoners. He rode for Harrenhal himself.
Harrenhal was stuffed with supplies—nearly everything Stannis had scraped together for the Crownlands and Stormlands over the last year and more. Those stores would pay for the entire campaign and still leave enough to cover the marching costs of the fifty or sixty thousand men coming up from Highgarden.
Petyr had only wanted to get the Vale army out. He hadn't had time to move the supplies or burn them.
Jon wasn't satisfied with just supplies. He sent Martin and a strong force into the Crownlands to seize every warship Stannis had left behind. More important, he wanted Dragonstone. Once he held the island he could start mining dragonglass in quantity.
Dragonglass—the same black stone Stannis had once called worthless—would matter when the Long Night came.
Jon had never planned to fight Stannis before winter. He had only sent a few crates north to the Wall. Now that Dragonstone was his, the mines would run day and night.
He had no interest in holding King's Landing itself. The city was a bloated liability—four or five hundred thousand hungry mouths. His spies said Young Aegon was already gathering strength in Pentos. Let the boy have the stinking capital when the time came.
Legitimacy? A hundred thousand armed men beat any blood claim.
So Jon had zero desire to ride into King's Landing, sit the Iron Throne, and play king of the ashes. His real target was the Stormlands.
When the Targaryens still had dragons they could rule the Seven Kingdoms from the narrow strip of the Crownlands. Without dragons that same small patch of ground was too weak to hold everything. Now that House Baratheon was gone, Jon meant to take the Stormlands and weld them to the Westerlands, Harrenhal, and the Crownlands into one new, much larger Crownlands.
That new domain would run east to west across the continent like a wall, splitting the Seven Kingdoms into north and south. Even without dragons, a future Targaryen could raise a hundred thousand men at a single call and keep every other lord in check.
In the Stormlands, lands directly held by House Baratheon made up more than sixty percent of the territory. Jon planned to hand most of it out to common soldiers and smallfolk, turning them into loyal subjects who owed everything to him.
The rest would come from the usual price of defeat. Westerosi custom demanded fines from the losers. Serious cases meant land and titles stripped away.
Most of the Stormlander lords who had stood hard for Stannis had already died in Petyr's sudden purge. The ones left were soft targets—the same situation Jon had faced when he first took the Westerlands.
After he finished dealing with the surviving lords, Jon found Stannis's body. Knife wounds marked it where someone had taken out their anger.
Leo examined the corpse and told him the real killer had been the Strangler. The knife cuts were just extra.
"Send word to the Citadel. Make the true cause of Stannis's death public. At the same time announce Petyr's crimes."
Jon looked down at the body. He felt no triumph. He added, "And name the crime clearly."
"What crime, Your Grace?"
"Regicide."
Leo blinked. Jon was acknowledging Stannis as a rightful king.
Jon's thinking was simple. Westeros had changed hands. Stannis had been a responsible king. After taking the throne he had spent every waking hour working, never once indulging himself, even while he tried to outmaneuver Jon.
As for Renly's death, Jon decided to bury that story forever. Renly had been all looks and no brains—a man who thought with his cock and nothing else. If he had simply supported his brother from the start, none of the later slaughter would have happened.
Two days later the full count from the battle at Harrenhal came in. Jon's side had lost roughly a thousand men. They had taken more than thirty-four thousand Crownlands and Stormlander soldiers prisoner, plus over two thousand knights. Petyr had escaped with only eight thousand cavalry and fewer than ten thousand longbowmen, fleeing back to the Vale.
With Stannis dead and the royal coalition broken, the Reach army no longer needed to force-march. Garlan and Randyll Tarly stayed with the main host while Loras rode north with a smaller force to join Jon.
Loras was sulking. Fighting beside Jon was never satisfying. Everything was already won before he drew his sword. There was no glory in it, and it left him restless.
Robb had brought the Northern army south across the Trident as well. He sent Roose Bolton on with the main body and rode ahead with Rodrik Cassel to meet Jon.
Edmure Tully came from Riverrun. Rhaegar Frey and Stevron Frey spoke for House Frey.
Even without counting the surrendered royal troops, Jon now commanded more than a hundred thousand men. It was still a patchwork army, but nothing like the ragged force he had started with.
He held the North, the Reach, the Westerlands, and the Riverlands together. The old Deer-Eagle-Wolf-Fish alliance had become something stronger: Dragon, Rose, Wolf, and Fish.
The enemy was weak. Both the Crownlands and Stormlands were hollow. They were ripe for the taking.
The only real question left was which to seize first—the Crownlands or the Stormlands?
In a quiet study inside Harrenhal, guards stood thick outside the door. Inside, the room felt crowded. Roslin moved among the lords with her maids, pouring tea. Most of the men knew who she was and took the cups with careful respect.
The Hall of a Hundred Hearths still felt unlucky after what had happened there, so they had chosen this smaller room instead.
"Of course we take the Crownlands first," Loras said at once. "Jon is king now—a Targaryen. The Crownlands belong to House Targaryen. Taking back what's yours is only right."
"Then you can ride straight into the Stormlands afterward, is that it?" Jon asked, amused.
Loras flushed but lifted his chin. "No. The southern army is already near Bitterbridge. The Stormlands are right there. It makes sense."
Everyone laughed.
"Jon—uh, Your Grace," Robb began, then stopped, unsure of the proper address.
Jon cut in. "We're all family here. Robb, you're my cousin—we grew up together. Loras is Margaery's brother, so he's mine too. Ser Edmure is Lady Catelyn's brother. Rodrik watched me grow up. From now on, when it's just us, call me Jon. I don't want my own children calling me 'Father King.' It sounds cold."
The men relaxed. Robb let out a breath and went on.
"From a Targaryen point of view, the Crownlands are the obvious prize. But if we look at geography, holding the Stormlands gives us a stronger position. For the Reach especially, the Stormlands would be a solid shield—"
Robb's reasoning was sharper than Loras's simple hunger for a fight.
Jon nodded. "And there's the food question too, isn't there?"
Robb met his eyes and nodded back.
No one in the North needed to be told how precious grain had become. North of Winterfell almost nothing grew anymore. Only around Karhold and the Neck could they still raise potatoes and other hardy crops. The North now imported nearly forty percent of its food, trading timber and coal for it. Every grain at Winterfell was counted twice.
If Jon took King's Landing he would suddenly be responsible for feeding more than two million people in the Crownlands. That was a burden no one wanted to shoulder yet.
There was also the Vale to consider. Petyr had fled there with his best troops. From behind the Bloody Gate he could still raid the Crownlands whenever he chose.
Edmure spoke up. "Did Petyr really kill the king just to settle a grudge? We could hit the Vale from the sea even if we never break the Bloody Gate. What in seven hells is Littlefinger playing at?"
No one had an answer that made sense. A smart man would have bent the knee by now instead of propping up a girl barely old enough to bleed as queen regent.
Jon looked around the table. It was time.
"Listen," he said. "I have something important to tell all of you. What if I said my father—Rhaegar Targaryen—still has another son alive in this world?"
"Another son?"