Chapter 15: The King's Camp
The body of Dunstan Drumm arrived at the gates of Drumm Keep on the end of a rope.
It didn't take long after that. A white flag appeared on the battlements within the hour — someone inside had done the calculation and reached the obvious conclusion — and the gates opened. The defenders came out without their weapons and stood in the rain while Barristan's men went in.
Barristan found Henry in the yard afterward, still in his scarlet armor with Red Rain across his back, and handed him a sealed letter without preamble.
"My letter of recommendation," the old knight said. "Take it to Pyke and present yourself to the King. I've arranged a thousand infantry to escort you — you can march immediately." He looked Henry over with the expression of a man who is satisfied with something he helped make. "Robert will want to meet the man who took Blacktyde Keep, captured Old Wyk's holy ground, and killed Dunstan Drumm."
Henry took the letter. He looked at it for a moment, then at Barristan.
"Thank you, ser," he said. "For all of it."
Barristan nodded once, the way men of his generation acknowledged things they considered simply done correctly, and walked away.
The King's camp on Pyke was enormous — the kind of installation that announces itself from a distance, a city of canvas and cookfires spreading across the rocky ground outside the castle walls. Henry rode through it with his escort and felt the particular atmosphere of a siege in its middle stages: not the urgency of fresh fighting, not the despair of a failed assault, but the grinding, tedious discomfort of an army that has been sitting in the same place long enough to resent it.
Robert Baratheon was in his command tent with a wine cup and Barristan's letter spread across the map table.
He was everything the stories said — six and a half feet of black-haired, blue-eyed vigor, broad enough across the shoulders that the tent felt slightly undersized for him. He had the kind of presence that filled a room even when he wasn't trying to, and the laugh that broke out when he finished reading the letter was the laugh of a man who had never in his life felt the need to moderate himself for company.
"Henry Reyne!" He gestured at the chair across the table without standing. "Sit down and drink something. Barristan doesn't praise many men — I've known him thirty years and I can count on one hand the letters like this one." He leaned back and looked at Henry with frank assessment. "You look like your grandfather. I never met Roger Reyne, but I've heard enough that I'd know a Reyne anywhere."
Eddard Stark sat to one side, an untouched cup of wine in front of him, his expression doing what Eddard Stark's expression usually did — which was very little, on the surface. He gave Henry a small nod. "Lord Manderly and Ser Willis both spoke well of you before I sent you west. It seems the reports were accurate."
"I'm grateful for the trust, my lord." Henry sat, still in his armor, Red Rain across his back. He'd considered leaving the sword outside and decided against it. A Valyrian steel blade carried its own introduction. "Is there anything useful I can do here, Your Grace? The siege —"
"The siege." Robert's expression shifted — not quite a grimace, not quite a sigh, somewhere between the two. He stood up and moved around the table, the way a man moves when sitting has become physically objectionable to him. "The siege is a misery. Balon's still in there, holding out, hoping we get tired and go home or offer him terms." He picked up his wine cup. "He's going to be disappointed on both counts."
He stopped beside Henry and put a hand on his armored shoulder — a substantial hand, with the grip of someone who had spent decades swinging a warhammer. "When we break through, I'll have someone knight you properly. And after — I want you at court. My son Joffrey needs a sword instructor. Someone who can actually teach him something, not just flatter him."
Henry kept his expression neutral. A court appointment wasn't what he'd come here to earn. But the war wasn't over, and the King had made a decision in a generous mood, and this wasn't the moment to redirect it.
"You honor me, Your Grace. I'll serve as best I can."
Robert drained his cup and began pacing. His footsteps were heavy enough that the camp furniture shifted slightly each time he changed direction. "You know what the real outrage is? Dorne sent transport ships. The Reach sent grain. Grain! And Tywin—" He stopped and laughed, a short hard sound. "Tywin says the Ironborn are still raiding his coast and he needs to hold the Westerlands." He set the empty cup down hard on the map table. "Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. I think Lord of Five might be more honest, and that's on a generous day."
Eddard looked up from the map. "Your Grace." His voice was quiet and had the quality of a man who has said watch yourself in the same tone so many times that the specific words have ceased to matter.
"Don't 'Your Grace' me, Ned." Robert wheeled on him, though without real heat. "You and I both know if it had been you on that throne, you'd have said exactly the same thing in private and said nothing at all in public, and somehow that would have been more dignified, and I'd still be wrong." He shook his head. "I'd have given you the crown if I could. You know that."
"You couldn't," Eddard said. "And I wouldn't have taken it."
"No." Robert almost smiled. "You wouldn't." He raised his voice toward the tent entrance. "Lancel! Where in the seven hells—"
A young man came through the tent flap at something between a walk and a run — blond, fine-featured, perhaps fifteen, carrying a wine flagon against his chest as if protecting it from harm. He came in fast enough that his foot caught the edge of a camp chest and he went down completely, flagon and all, dark red wine spreading rapidly across the ground cloth.
The silence that followed had a particular quality.
"You were supposed to be standing at my elbow," Robert said, his voice dropping in the way that is more dangerous than shouting. "The entire purpose of your being in this tent is to be ready when I need wine. Where were you?"
"You said—" Lancel got to his feet, face scarlet, voice barely holding together. "You told me to wait outside because you were discussing important matters—"
"If I'm discussing important matters, that's exactly when I need wine!" Robert advanced on him. "Use your head, boy! Your head, not just the space between your ears!"
"To be fair," Eddard said, from the side, in the same calm tone he used for everything, "you did tell him to wait outside."
Robert stopped. He stood very still for a moment.
Then he laughed — the big laugh, the one that had no restraint in it — and the entire atmosphere of the tent changed in an instant. "Seven hells, Ned. My own memory." He pressed a hand over his face. "I'm not thirty and already I'm losing arguments to myself."
Even Eddard's expression shifted slightly — not quite a smile, but the closest thing to one that his face seemed to permit. Lancel let out a breath and an involuntary half-laugh.
Robert's eyes moved to Lancel immediately. The laugh stopped.
"And what exactly are you laughing at?"
Lancel went still. The color drained from his face.
"Your King's poor memory is funny to you?"
"No — I wasn't — Your Grace, I—"
"Get more wine." Robert turned away. "Go."
Lancel grabbed the empty flagon and was through the tent flap before Robert finished the sentence.
Eddard watched him go. "That was a Lannister."
"Lancel Lannister." Robert made a sound. "Cersei's cousin. She installed him as my squire. I can't turn around without finding a golden-haired Lannister where I didn't expect one." He looked at Henry with the expression of a man sharing a private joke. "I imagine you find them just as charming."
"Your Grace's insight is always sound," Henry said.
Robert stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing again. "Slippery answer. I like you, boy." He pointed a finger. "You're coming to court. I need someone around me who doesn't have gold thread on his collar. Go see to your men — you've earned a rest."
Henry stood, bowed, and left the King to his next cup of wine.
The siege of Pyke had settled into the particular misery that sieges become when neither side has enough of what they need.
Timber was the problem. The Iron Islands had almost none, which meant every beam for a siege tower and every trunk for a battering ram had to come by ship from the mainland. It arrived slowly and in indifferent condition — green wood, warped planks, material that a decent carpenter would have turned away at the gate. The towers that had been built had been destroyed in the first assault attempts. The rams had fared no better. What remained operational were a few catapults throwing stones at walls that barely noticed them.
Each day the army looked at Pyke from a distance. When the stones ran out, the engineers scavenged local rock and shaped it as best they could. Occasionally a lord too impatient to wait would send knights and levies at the walls with wooden ladders, and the ladders would be pushed off, and the men who'd climbed them would fall, and the survivors would walk back to camp looking at the ground.
Henry stood on the camp's watchtower in the grey drizzle that had been falling for two days and looked at the walls of Pyke and thought about timber.
"Without proper siege equipment," Maester Winston said beside him, following his gaze, "escalade will cost more men than this army can comfortably lose, and there's no guarantee it works even then."
Henry watched the latest failed ladder attempt retreat across the mud toward the camp. The timber that had arrived from the Westerlands had been notably poor — slow in coming, worse in quality.
"Tywin," he said.
Winston glanced at him.
"The timber contracts run through Lannister ports. The delays, the quality—" Henry watched the retreating soldiers disappear into the camp. "He's not going to let the King win this war too quickly and too cleanly. A long siege means Robert needs him. A quick victory means Robert doesn't."
Winston considered this and said nothing, which was the response of a man who thinks the observation is probably correct and has learned not to say so too clearly where others might hear.
The rain came down harder. The walls of Pyke showed no sign of caring.
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