Chapter 233

The Stormlands. 301 AC.

Jon Connington.

Somewhere in the distance thunder rolled again, and a bright flash lit up the ground. The Stormlands lived up to their name in every way. A fierce wind that swept through everything in its path, dark clouds filling the sky clear to the horizon, storms flaring within them. Where the sellswords despised such weather, Jon savored every bit of it. This was his home, the place where he’d grown up, but a faint tremor forced him to accept a harsh truth: his body had grown so used to the climate of Essos that it now struggled with the weather of his own homeland. As a man devoted to his country, he loved every part of it, and the shaking in his hands from the light frost came as an unwelcome surprise.

More than eighteen years ago he had been cast out into Essos in disgrace. Stripped of every rank, every title, every acre of land. In exile he learned that his friends had died, that his prince had fallen beneath the weight of a rebel’s hammer, that the dragon dynasty had collapsed, and that Rhaegar’s son had been brutally murdered. That news had very nearly broken him. Jon lost all sense of purpose and considered his fate already sealed: he would die a sellsword for the gold of contemptible merchants, or drink himself into the grave in some forgotten tavern. But fate had other plans for him. Jon was given a chance to set right his old mistakes, to help Rhaegar’s son claim the throne, to put an end to the slaughter across the continent, and to restore peace to Westeros. And damned he would be if he wasn’t going to seize that chance.

With his resolve renewed, Connington clenched his fist and forced the tremor from his hands through sheer will. Foul weather would not break his spirit. The Golden Company advanced steadily toward Storm’s End, the castle Renly Baratheon had retreated to. Truth be told, the company’s captains had spent no small effort driving him into that net. Endless maneuvering, feints, night raids, burned supply lines, one trap after another, all of it had worn down even veterans of the Essos campaigns. The last of the Baratheons had gone to every length, fair and foul, to avoid a full pitched battle, preferring instead to slowly but methodically grind down King Aegon’s strength. His enemies were managing that a bit too well, but what grated on him even more was the discord tearing at House Dragon from within.

“Two hours’ rest! Let the men eat, and in the meantime send scouts out five leagues along the road. Rotate them every twenty minutes…” Jon began issuing his usual orders.

King Aegon’s armies had managed to take castle after castle, bringing lord after lord to heel, but after two years of slaughter, what strength those lords had left was frankly negligible. In the Stormlands, the only ones of any real consequence left were those loyal to the Baratheons unto death; the rest carried little weight anymore. A few dozen lords of various stripes had managed to scrape together barely thousand swords between them, six hundred of those nothing more than raw levies. The plan to replenish their ranks through the Stormlands’ own lords had not survived contact with reality. The wisest course would have been to march straight on King’s Landing, but leaving a wounded enemy alive at their backs was hardly the wiser choice either.

After months of playing cat and mouse, the Baratheon had finally been forced to fall back toward his own ancestral castle. The last stag had nowhere left to run, and Renly would now have to either give battle or hole up behind his walls. The second option was by far the more troubling one and could well spell disaster for the whole of King Aegon’s campaign. Viserys’s betrayal, betrayal of his own blood, had struck a heavy blow. The Mad King’s younger son seemed cursed to repeat the sins of his ancestors, and in his folly he had ordered the Velaryon ships to sink any vessel that might conceivably have some connection to Aegon. Neither his nephew’s letters nor the pleas of Illyrio, his own benefactor, had done anything to slow his mounting madness. Ships kept being sunk, and the Golden Company felt the pinch of dwindling supplies all the more keenly, though thankfully this activity had all but ceased of late. Still, that changed nothing about the plain fact that they simply lacked the means to mount a long siege of Storm’s End.

Back in his tent, Jon turned to a task both useful and thoroughly unpleasant: calculating rations. Too many soldiers, too little food, every last kilo of grain had to be accounted for. The army burned through an enormous amount of food every single day, and as a competent commander, Connington needed to know the exact figures on hand, because if supplies ran out mid march, it would be a disaster. No, the army wouldn’t starve outright, since the bulk of their food stores remained back at the main camp, but the pace of the advance would suffer badly.

“My lord, King Aegon sends word that he’ll arrive here within four hours.” The messenger brought welcome news for the men, since their brief rest had just turned into a proper full camp.

“Good,” Jon thought, King Aegon had made better time than originally planned, “have quarters prepared for another three thousand men.”

“It will be done,” the soldier said, and left at once, leaving the commander alone with his thoughts.