Storm's End rose from Shipbreaker Bay like a pale, clenched fist, daring the sea to break it. Years ago that fist had pinned the Redwyne fleet and tens of thousands of Highgarden men long enough to keep the southern royalists from aiding Rhaegar — buying the allies time to finish off the Targaryen reinforcements. The castle still felt like a thing of siege and salt: compact, implacable, and built to endure storms.
A middle-aged nobleman under that indifferent sky stared up at the place he had been raised. His ocean-blue eyes were cold; his thin mouth was set like a blade. This was Stannis Baratheon, King Robert's younger brother. He had lived on strictness and iron will; memory folded into memory of petty slights and unpaid debts, and each one had become another weight he carried.
Stannis tightened his hand on his sword, Lightbringer. He had stood at that wall years before gnawing at leather and living off rations to delay the royalist fleet—so Robert could seize victory. He had never been fêted for it. He had been passed by, mocked in favor of other men who wore silk and smiled in the right places. That memory had not softened with time. It had only crystallized into fury.
Renly's treachery rankled still. Renly, who wore court finery and received Storm's End while Stannis bled for it. Renly now dead, Stannis saw only another obstruction: Storm's End's acting castellan refused to bend the knee to him. The thought was intolerable. He had chosen a course, and the course was clear: he would make claim and enforce it. If no man would yield him his lawful place, he would take it by other means.
A red figure slid through his vision then — the Red Woman. It was to her, in part, he owed the chance he had seized; to her, he had entrusted certain things best left unspoken. Already the wheels were in motion: once the acting castellan of Storm's End died, Stannis would press the advantage, marshal his fleet, and strike for King's Landing. He imagined the future with a grim satisfaction: the city falling to him, the throne rightfully claimed.
A raven, thin-winged and black, landed on a branch nearby — an odd little interruption in the calculus of power. Jon had sent it. Tywin had withdrawn west, and the Riverlands were quiet for the moment. Jon watched Stannis's movements from afar and kept a careful eye on timing. If Stannis and Jon struck King's Landing in tandem, the city could be taken from both north and south. The timing had to be right.
The castle gates of Storm's End opened at last. A horse's head emerged, pulling a carriage in which lay a corpse wrapped under House Penrose's banner: Cortnay Penrose, acting castellan and man who'd refused Stannis's authority. He had paid for that refusal with his life. Storm's End took on the red heart-stag of Baratheon: the sight of Stannis riding through with the banner raised was the sight of a claim finally asserted.
Noblemen of Storm's End knelt as Stannis entered. Their words were perfunctory; their loyalty was newly convenient. He glanced once at Cortnay's pale face, then rode under the gates.
A woman in a robe the color of flame came forward then, every inch of her as hot as her cloak. The air around her seemed to burn. Most of the Storm's End men saw only a provocative stranger in red, but from Dragonstone came looks of reverence and fear. The raven perched on the branch nearby tried to turn for a closer look and caught her sudden motion; the bird changed direction mid-air and fled. The Red Woman's face flickered with confusion, then a mask of practiced weariness slid over it.
Jon, who had been watching through other means, drew back the thread of his distant vision. He felt the hair on his neck prickle. "You're sweating," Sola said, reaching to brush his brow. Her hand lingered on his forehead.
"Nothing," Jon answered, wiping his face. Even in the saddle he felt the Red Woman's presence like heat from a distant hearth. He didn't yet know the full measure of her power, but stories in the north painted her arts as an economy of sacrifice—blood and kings and veiled bargains. In the old tale, she used king's blood as currency. He resolved to use his warging less near her until he understood the shape of her craft.
At Dragonstone Stannis's muster was complete: the fleet and the levies gathered, ready. If Storm's End's capture held, the Battle of Blackwater would arrive in less than a month. Jon's plan required him to seize some measure of military power in that time; he could not afford to be slow.
Jon turned his gaze northward. Harrenhal loomed ahead for the Northern army — the massive ruin spread like a great grey curtain across the horizon. The castle was notorious, a monument of hubris: five towers so high they seemed to prop the sky itself, walls broad enough for wagons to cross, ancient stone that had once been the instrument of Harren the Blackheart's tyranny. Aegon's dragons had burned the house away long ago; its stone remained as a hollow, dreadful reminder.
After the Green Fork, Tywin had left Harrenhal provisioned with the Brave Companions. But gold was a language that bought things when swords could not. On Jon's suggestion, Roose Bolton had moved with coin. The Brave Companions' leader, Vargo Hoat, and the maester who accompanied him, Qyburn, now stood at Harrenhal's gate accepting the North's arrival. Vargo's men were nominally hired swords — brutal and adaptable — but their allegiance could be purchased with enough patience and the right price. Bolton's purse had been open, and Jon's name as the Mountain-slayer had done the rest..
There, at the main gate, Vargo Hoat and Qyburn waited. The castle's shadow fell long and terrible across the field as Jon's forces approached. The old stories of Harrenhal's doom whispered across the ranks, but the Northern banners moved forward all the same: black and white wolves, battered standards, the ragged, hopeful chorus of an army that had learned to believe because it had to.
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