The Gathering Gale
The sky over Bronze-gate did not turn black—it bruised.
A sickly violet spread across the heavens, as if the gods themselves had taken a beating. The first drops of rain fell heavy and slow, striking the steel helms of Orys Baratheon's line with the sound of thrown stones.
Then the wind came.
It screamed through the valleys, tearing at banners and cloaks alike—yellow stags snapping wildly against black dragon-cloth. Rain followed in sheets, turning earth to mud, blurring the distance between the two armies into a shifting Grey veil.
Across the field, upon the opposing ridge, upon his black warhorse Argilac Durrandon lifted his gaze.
He saw the hills his enemies had settled on.
He saw the trenches, the sharpened stakes, the waiting line of steel.
The fluttering red and black dragon banners.
But he barely paid any of that mind, no, he was watching the chaotic skies and listening for the flap of leathery wings or the vibrations of roars in the wind.
Yet he heard nothing, which could only mean one thing: there was no dragon in the sky.
Argilac smiled as the threat of one of Aegon's beasts had been dealt with not by men but by the gods themselves.
He would not be denied this battle that would be decided by storm, not fire.
The Storm King raised his long-sword—a massive thing of castle-forged steel—and pointed it toward the hills.
His voice came next, a roar that tore through the gale itself, carried on the storm so that every man could hear it.
"Forward!"
Behind him, the greatest host the Stormlands had raised in a century surged into motion.
The ground trembled.
Five thousand knights drove forward as one, iron-shod hooves hammering the soaked earth, banners whipping like lightning made cloth.
They did not slow.
They did not hesitate.
They were the storm.
And the gods rode with them.
---
Orys Baratheon from his central defensive position could barely see through the wind and rain, but through the vibrations of his boots that reached his teeth, he knew that the enemy was almost on top of his defensive position.
Through the Grey veil of rain, the yellow and black banners of House Durrandon didn't look like cloth anymore; they looked like a solid wall of gold, screaming toward him and his men.
The earth began to drink up the cold rainfall, but it didn't slow them, at least not yet. The enemy rode with the arrogance of men who had never known a hill they couldn't climb.
He gripped the hilt of my sword, the leather wrap slick with rain. His heart was a frantic thing, yet his face and voice were sculpted from iron.
"Shields!" Orys roared his voice like thunder in the gale-like wind.
The sound of five thousand shields locking together was a dull, metallic thud that was almost immediately swallowed by the thunder.
Then, the world ended in a cacophony of screaming horses and shattering wood.
The Storm King's knights struck the first hill and the hidden stakes at full charge. A massive destrier screamed as a sharpened pole drove through its chest. Its rider was catapulted forward, crashing into the Baratheon line like a hurled corpse. More followed—horses impaled, riders flung, bones snapping like dry wood beneath the endless crash of steel.
War-trained destriers did not break easily. Some leapt the fallen, others trampled their own dying mounts in blind fury, driven by spurs and the thunder of their masters' voices. The dead and dying became a gruesome ramp, and the charge punched through.
Orys watched as the first hill, like a boulder facing the ocean's ruthless waves, was drowned, and for just a moment, he thought they would be overwhelmed, but at the last moment, they rallied.
Men roared, spears flashed, and knights were dragged or flung off their horses as the charge began to lose its energy.
Seeing this, Orys gave orders to his commanders to send reinforcements to the first hill.
As soon as the first groups of extra spears and swords arrived, the charge quickly lost cohesion, and soon a horn blast filled the raging air, a signal the knights answered as they began to retreat.
Most made it back to their own line, but those who were just a bit slower were dragged from their horses and taken to their camp, not to be killed but as hostages and possible "important guests" to be held at the Aegonfort or Dragonstone.
Orys quickly brushed aside such thoughts, for after the battle.
---
Argilac's roar nearly drowned out the storm beyond his command tent.
Three times.
Three times his heavy cavalry had charged those cursed hills.
And three times they had returned bloodied, broken, and fewer in number.
With a snarl of fury, the Storm King brought his long-sword crashing down across the campaign table. Wood split apart violently as maps, markers, and cups were hurled into the air.
"The gods are with us!" Argilac thundered, and lightning cracked overhead at that exact moment, white light flooding the tent as thunder shook the ground beneath every man present.
"My riders should already be drowning these invaders in blood!" He roared, veins bulging, his face turning red, "Yet they return with nothing but defeat, why!"
No one answered. Some lords stood like statues. Others studied the ground or the walls of the tent. Argilac's breathing came heavy and animalistic beneath his thick beard, his breath forming white clouds in the cooling air. With the antlered crown upon his brow, he looked every inch a wild stag ready to gore them all.
The tense and awkward silence was broken when the flap of the command tent was a soldier stood there wiping his face with water, only to freeze upon seeing all the eyes of some of the most powerful people in the kingdom all looking at him.
"What?" Argilac asked, his voice carried the air of a warning if not given a proper or significant answer to his question.
The soldier quickly fell to his knees, his body shivering and breaking into a cold sweat that wasn't caused by the rain.
"Your grace, we have gained important information. We know whose commanding the enemy forces," the soldier's statement caught everyone's attention.
Everyone had assumed that Aegon had let one of his sisters command this force; as such, one of their objectives was to capture her.
But if she wasn't, then who?
"Then tell me who do we face?" Agilac asked in a tone showing something like curiosity, other than anger.
For a moment, the soldier hesitated, but then he spoke. His answer froze all the lords in the tent as a chill went up all their spines as they immediately felt their king's already dark mood turn black.
"Orys Baratheon is commanding the enemy forces..." A cold chill swept through the tent, stronger than the storm wind outside.
Every lord present knew the name.
Orys Baratheon—Aegon Targaryen's bastard brother. The same man Argilac had insulted when he murdered Aegon's envoys beneath his roof and broke sacred guest right. The same man whose proposed marriage to Princess Argella Durrandon the Storm King had been treated as an unforgivable insult.
The lords knew the truth of it.
But Argilac never had.
To the Storm King, he had merely punished arrogant foreigners from a line of dragonlords who ruled three small islands and dared offer a bastard's hand for the blood of House Durrandon.
Argilca stood completely still for some time, everything went still, even the storm raging outside seemed to calm affreaied to disturb his dark thoughts.
Then Argilac moved; he grabbed his helmet and, with one shift motion, removed his crown and was already out of the tent before his lords could voice concerns.
---
Orys felt it in his bones and in the deepest marrow of his soul—this was the true test.
The storm shifted. Rain now drove straight into his men's faces, blinding them, but sight was no longer needed. The ground itself spoke. Not the rolling thunder of cavalry, but the steady, rhythmic hammer of thousands of boots marching in formation.
Then the roar came—raw and savage from a thousand throats. The steady rhythm exploded into an avalanche. The curtain of rain parted like a torn veil, revealing the steel fury of the Stormlands on foot.
They came as one unstoppable wave.
The first hill fell in minutes, its muddy slopes turning red with blood. The avalanche did not slow. The second hill was overrun. Then the third.
With every slope taken, the Stormlanders' steps grew heavier. Sword swings lost their edge. Spear thrusts slowed. Fury was burning away into raw exhaustion.
"Forward!"
The booming voice cut through the gale. Argilac Durrandon himself stormed at the head of his host, his massive longsword gleaming wet in the downpour, antlered helm rising above the press of bodies like a crown of defiance.
"Ours is the Fury!"
Thousands of raw, ragged throats took up the cry. The avalanche slammed into Orys's final defensive line with the force of a breaking sea.
Steel screamed against steel. For one terrible heartbeat, the Baratheon line held—shields locked, spears bristling. Then it began to buckle inward under the Storm King's personal charge.
Orys felt the fracture coming. His men were giving ground, step by bloody step.
And then the line broke.
A roar of triumph rose from the Stormlanders as they poured through the gap—only to freeze mid-step in sheer primal terror.
GRRRRRRRRR
A deep, earth-shaking growl rolled across the battlefield.
There, atop the crest of the final hill, stood Queen Rhaenys Targaryen upon Meraxes.
The great silver-white dragon towered like a living mountain of scale and wrath. Its vast wings spread wide, blotting out the bruised sky. Golden eyes burned with cold intelligence as it glared down at the charging men. A hellish orange-white glow built at the back of its gaping maw.
Rhaenys's voice rang out clear and merciless over the storm:
"Dracarys!"
A torrent of pale white fire exploded forth.
The front ranks of the Stormlanders simply ceased to exist—turned to ash and screaming cinders in an instant. Others threw themselves into the mud and blood, rolling desperately as white flames clung to armor and flesh like living things. The air filled with the sickening stench of cooked meat and charred steel. Men burned. Men trampled their own brothers in blind panic. Men died begging for mercy that would never come.
Argilac Durrandon stood surrounded by fire and chaos, his finest warriors reduced to writhing torches. He tried to rally them once more, roaring commands that were swallowed by the dragon's roar and the howling wind.
"Argilac!" Orys bellowed, and the storm king turned his antlered helm glistening black in the rain and white fire. "I give you one last chance to surrender!"
"So you're his bastard brother..." Argilac said his voice like distant thunder, "You think I will surrender to you!"
The two men began circling each other, the pale fire making a ring around them as men screamed, died, and burned, but above the storm still raged.
"You have already lost your army, lying broken and scattered," Orys said, sweeping his sword, emphasizing the fleeing men and scattered banners of the crowned stag beyond the flames.
"I am blood of Durran Godsgrief, my family didn't bend to the gods, and so long as I live, we shall not bend to dragons and especially not bastards!" Argilac, cured and with a roar charged, and Orys met him.
Argilac struck first.
His longsword came down like a thunderbolt, a brutal overhead blow meant to split Orys from helm to hip. Orys barely caught it in time, his knees sinking into the mud as steel screamed against steel.
The force of it shocked all the way down his arms.
Gods, the old man was still strong.
Argilac shoved forward with a roar, using his sheer weight to force Orys backward through the mud.
Orys twisted away just as the next strike came.
The longsword tore through the air where his head had been a heartbeat earlier, but used the opening and struck.
Argilac did not show any pain; he merely grunted as if pushed slightly and charged forward once again.
For an instant, lightning split the heavens, and the battlefield became white like the gods were capturing this clash in a picture.
Then darkness crashed back down with the thunder.
Argilac attacked, each blow was savage and heavy, battering Orys backward. The Storm King fought with the fury of a man who knew his world was ending and intended to drag someone into the grave with him.
Orys blocked one strike.
A second slammed into his shoulder hard enough to numb his arm.
The third tore across his thigh armor, sending him stumbling into the mud.
Argilac advanced immediately.
"No dragon to save you, boy!"
His sword came down.
Orys rolled.
The blade smashed into the earth where his skull had been, spraying mud and blood.
Orys came up low and drove his shoulder into Argilac's chest.
Both men crashed into the soaked ground.
Mud swallowed them.
They grappled like animals.
Gauntlets slammed into helms.
Steel scraped against steel plate.
Rain poured over them in freezing sheets.
Then Argilac's hand wrapped around Orys's throat. Even old, the Storm King was monstrously strong, and Black spots danced in Orys's vision with a snarl. Orys slammed the pommel of his sword into Argilac's jaw.
Once.
Twice.
The third strike cracked something.
Argilac released him.
Slowly, both men staggered to their feet, both covered in mud and blood, and stared at each other, breath misting in the cold air.
Argilac's antlered helm had been knocked away. Blood mixed with rain in his beard. One eye was swelling shut.
Orys had a cut on his arm, blood seeping into his clothes, and felt his throat swelling, making it difficult to breathe.
Neither looked like warriors anymore; they looked like corpses too stubborn to fall.
The Storm King laughed then.
Actually laughed.
A deep, ragged sound.
"GOOD!" Argilac said, blood running down his mouth. "Good! At least you are a warrior bastard."
Another crack of thunder rolled overhead.
Then Argilac planted his feet and raised his sword one final time.
And he charged.
Orys met him.
Steel collided one final time.
Argilac swung high.
Orys stepped inside the strike.
And drove his sword beneath the Storm King's ribs.
The blade punched through mail, leather, flesh, and heart.
Argilac froze.
For a heartbeat, neither man moved.
Rain hissed against steel.
The Storm King looked down slowly at the sword buried in his chest.
Then back up at Orys.
There was hatred there.
Pride too.
But no fear.
Never fear.
Argilac coughed blood across Orys's armor and gave one final bitter smile.
"...So…this is how I die…sword in hand…"
Then his strength failed, and the last Storm King collapsed into the mud all across the battlefield; the fighting began to die one by one, swords lowered.
The banners of the crowned stag lay in the mud; the storm had broken.