“I’ll send a rider,” said Franklyn Flowers, “but the lad won’t much like the idea of staying safe, I tell you that. He wants to be in the thick o’ things.”
So did we all at his age, Lord Jon thought, remembering. “Has the time come to raise his banner?” asked Pease. “Not yet. Let King’s Landing think this is no more than an exile lord coming home with some hired swords to reclaim his birthright. An old familiar story, that. I will even write King Tommen, stating as much and asking for a pardon and the restoration of my lands and titles. That will give them something to chew over for a while. And whilst they dither, we will send out word secretly to likely friends in the stormlands and the Reach. And Dorne.” That was the crucial step. Lesser lords might join their cause for fear of harm or hope of gain, but only the Prince of Dorne had the power to defy House Lannister and its allies. “Above all else, we must have Doran Martell.”
“Small chance of that,” said Strickland. “The Dornishman is scared of his own shadow. Not what you call daring.”
No more than you. “Prince Doran is a cautious man, that’s true. He will never join us unless he is convinced that we will win. So to persuade him we must show our strength.”
“If Peake and Rivers are successful, we will control the better part of Cape Wrath,” argued Strickland. “Four castles in as many days, that’s a splendid start, but we are still only at half strength. We need to wait for the rest of my men. We are missing horses as well, and the elephants. Wait, I say. Gather our power, win some small lords to our cause, let Lysono Maar dispatch his spies to learn what we can learn of our foes.”
Connington gave the plump captain-general a cool look. This man is no Blackheart, no Bittersteel, no Maelys. He would wait until all seven hells were frozen if he could rather than risk another bout of blisters. “We did not cross half the world to wait. Our best chance is to strike hard and fast, before King’s Landing knows who we are. I mean to take Storm’s End. A nigh-impregnable stronghold, and Stannis Baratheon’s last foothold in the south. Once taken, it will give us a secure fastness to which we may retreat at need, and winning it will prove our strength.”
The captains of the Golden Company exchanged glances. “If Storm’s End is still held by men loyal to Stannis, we will be taking it from him, not the Lannisters,” objected Brendel Byrne. “Why not make common cause with him against the Lannisters?”
“Stannis is Robert’s brother, of that same ilk that brought down House Targaryen,” Jon Connington reminded him. “Moreover, he is a thousand leagues away, with whatever meagre strength he still commands. The whole realm lies between us. It would take half a year just to reach him, and he has little and less to offer us.”
“If Storm’s End is so impregnable, how do you mean to take it?” asked Malo.
“By guile.”
Homeless Harry Strickland disagreed. “We should wait.”
“We shall.” Jon Connington stood. “Ten days. No longer. It will take that long to prepare. On the morning of the eleventh day, we ride for Storm’s End.”
The prince arrived to join them four days later, riding at the head of a column of a hundred horse, with three elephants lumbering in his rear. Lady Lemore was with him, garbed once more in the white robes of a septa. Before them went Ser Rolly Duckfield, a snow-white cloak streaming from his shoulders.
A solid man, and true, Connington thought as he watched Duck dismount, but not worthy of the Kingsguard. He had tried his best to dissuade the prince from giving Duckfield that cloak, pointing out that the honor might best be held in reserve for warriors of greater renown whose fealty would add luster to their cause, and the younger sons of great lords whose support they would need in the coming struggle, but the boy would not be moved. “Duck will die for me if need be,” he had said, “and that’s all I require in my Kingsguard. The Kingslayer was a warrior of great renown, and the son of a great lord as well.”
At least I convinced him to leave the other six slots open, else Duck might have six ducklings trailing after him, each more blindingly adequate than the last. “Escort His Grace to my solar,” he commanded. “At once.”
Prince Aegon Targaryen was not near as biddable as the boy Young Griff had been, however. The better part of an hour had passed before he finally turned up in the solar, with Duck at his side. “Lord Connington,” he said, “I like your castle.”
“Your father’s lands are beautiful,” he said. His silvery hair was blowing in the wind, and his eyes were a deep purple, darker than this boy’s. “As do I, Your Grace. Please, be seated. Ser Rolly, we’ll have no further need of you for now.”
“No, I want Duck to stay.” The prince sat. “We’ve been talking with Strickland and Flowers. They told us about this attack on Storm’s End that you’re planning.”
Jon Connington did not let his fury show. “And did Homeless Harry try to persuade you to delay it?”
“He did, actually,” the prince said, “but I won’t. Harry’s an old maid, isn’t he? You have the right of it, my lord. I want the attack to go ahead … with one change. I mean to lead it.”
THE SACRIFICE
On the village green, the queen’s men built their pyre.
Or should it be the village white? The snow was knee deep everywhere but where the men had shoveled it away, to hack holes into the frozen ground with axe and spade and pick. The wind was swirling from the west, driving still more snow across the frozen surface of the lakes.
“You do not want to watch this,” Aly Mormont said. “No, but I will.” Asha Greyjoy was the kraken’s daughter, not some pampered maiden who could not bear to look at ugliness.
It had been a dark, cold, hungry day, like the day before and the day before that. They had spent most of it out on the ice, shivering beside a pair of holes they’d cut in the smaller of the frozen lakes, with fishing lines clutched in mitten-clumsy hands. Not long ago, they could count on hooking one or two fish apiece, and wolfswood men more practiced at ice-fishing were pulling up four or five. Today all that Asha had come back with was a chill that went bone deep. Aly had fared no better. It had been three days since either of them had caught a fish.
The She-Bear tried again. “I do not need to watch this.”
It is not you the queen’s men want to burn. “Then go. You have my word, I will not run. Where would I go? To Winterfell?” Asha laughed. “Only three days’ ride, they tell me.”
Six queen’s men were wrestling two enormous pinewood poles into holes six other queen’s men had dug out. Asha did not have to ask their purpose. She knew. Stakes. Nightfall would be on them soon, and the red god must be fed. An offering of blood and fire, the queen’s men called it, that the Lord of Light may turn his fiery eye upon us and melt these thrice-cursed snows.
“Even in this place of fear and darkness, the Lord of Light protects us,” Ser Godry Farring told the men who gathered to watch as the stakes were hammered down into the holes.
“What has your southron god to do with snow?” demanded Artos Flint. His black beard was crusted with ice. “This is the wroth of the old gods come upon us. It is them we should appease.”
“Aye,” said Big Bucket Wull. “Red Rahloo means nothing here. You will only make the old gods angry. They are watching from their island.”
The crofter’s village stood between two lakes, the larger dotted with small wooded islands that punched up through the ice like the frozen fists of some drowned giant. From one such island rose a weirwood gnarled and ancient, its bole and branches white as the surrounding snows. Eight days ago Asha had walked out with Aly Mormont to have a closer look at its slitted red eyes and bloody mouth. It is only sap, she’d told herself, the red sap that flows inside these weirwoods. But her eyes were unconvinced; seeing was believing, and what they saw was frozen blood.