Chapter 185

The Crownlands. 300 AC.

Renly Baratheon.

A pleasant autumn night, still and calm, nothing but the song of crickets and the occasional clink of armor from his guard. Sitting beneath the full moon, Renly allowed himself a small smile. It struck him as almost funny that only at night did he find anything resembling freedom, anything close to peace of mind. War, blood, intrigue, politics, death, betrayal... None of this was what he'd pictured when he'd decided to raise the crowned stag's banner. Back then, in those distant days, everything had seemed so simple, so clear. Another lie, as it turned out, like all the rest.

"Can't sleep, my king?" His true love and most trusted man, Ser Loras Tyrell, stepped out of the tent.

"Lost in thought." A pity that the Knight of Flowers was already in his armor, denying the king's eyes their usual pleasure. "Look at us. Once we had a hundred thousand men, an army the likes of which the world had never seen, and now? A pitiful twenty eight thousand marching on King's Landing, hoping to beat that half dead Targaryen there first."

He'd gathered everyone he could reach, pulled his scattered forces back into a single fist, and still it looked pitiful next to what they'd once had. War had already been cruel enough to the sons of the Reach and the Stormlands, but the battles against Dorne and the destruction of Tywin Lannister's host had broken the back of their whole strength. Where seasoned soldiers once stood, yesterday's farmhands stood now. Tens of thousands of good men had given their lives for his ambitions, so much sacrificed for a crown, and it left Renly feeling hollowed out.

No, after two years of war, death, and betrayal, none of it cut quite as deep anymore. What Renly hated most of all was choosing. Choice, that was his true curse. It fell to the king to decide who lived and who died, which towns would burn and which would be spared. A king shapes the fate of hundreds of thousands of people. A brutal weight to carry, one no one had ever prepared him for.

And here he was again, standing at a fork in the road: march on King's Landing, or turn back to defend his own homeland from the Dothraki horde bearing down on it. The first choice was the sound one, tactically and strategically. It would send the right message to those still wavering, remove the last obstacle standing between him and his goal, win him the crownlands lords, and cut off the danger of those same lords throwing in with Viserys instead. But on the other side of the scale sat his own home. He knew shamefully little about the savage horselords, but what little he did know told him he needed to get back to the Stormlands as quickly as possible.

"This is more than enough to take a half empty capital," Loras pressed, trying to reassure his king. "Don't worry. This will all be over soon. You'll take the throne, we'll crush the beggar king, and peace will settle over the realm. I believe that."

"Thank you." The moment of weakness passed. "Let's go back to the tent."

"What? Again!?" His Lord Commander had no great enthusiasm for going through the ordeal of removing his armor a second time that night.

"The king wills it, his Kingsguard obeys," which earned him an exaggerated sigh from Loras.

Renly himself, though, was already turning over an unexpected problem brewing in the south. Lord Randyll Tarly had handled the ironborn invasion brilliantly, but afterward he'd simply stopped answering letters and begun ignoring his liege's commands outright. There was a real chance the Bloody Hunter had quietly turned against his king. Seven thousand swords under the command of one of the finest generals in Westeros, sitting right in the heart of his own territory, was a disaster waiting to happen, and it was only a mercy that Randyll himself had made no move yet. Were their position less precarious, and Tarly's silence less quiet, Renly would have turned the army around to snuff out the rebellion brewing at the heart of his own lands. As it stood, the matter of his vassal would have to wait. That was his choice to make, and his burden to carry.

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