Chapter 49: The Toad Witch
The news of Lannisport’s fall and Jaime Lannister’s second capture spread through the Westerlands like sickness. Panic moved faster than horses. Lesser lords barred their gates and prayed the Battanian army would choose another road. Smallfolk waited with the numb patience of people who knew their fate had been given to men they would never meet. Lannister pride had always filled the West like a second sun. Now it was setting, and no one liked the color of the sky.
Arthur did not remain long in the captured port. Lannisport was rich, but richness made poor shelter when an enemy army came to take it back. Tywin would not abandon his home, his son, his mines, his port, or his family’s myth. Worse, the Reach had entered the game with too many flowers and not enough shame.
Inside the governor’s mansion, now serving as a Battanian headquarters, Arthur studied the latest intelligence delivered through Edmure Tully’s channels. The reports were uneven, but the pattern was clear enough. Randyll Tarly was leading fifty thousand men west, mostly Tyrell troops, along the Golden Road. At the same time, the Reach was raising a new force of ten thousand near Old Oak, intending to move toward Pheasant Hall in the southern Westerlands and create pressure from another direction.
“We cannot wait inside Lannisport until they close around us,” Arthur said.
Smith, Kator, Beland, and several captains stood around the map. Candlelight picked out roads, passes, castles, rivers, and names that all meant work for soldiers and graves for someone else.
“Fifty thousand against our main strength, with Casterly Rock still unconquered and Tywin coming from the east,” Arthur continued. “If the Reachmen and Lannister remnants join, we will be caught between armies and stone. We need to strike one force before they become one problem.”
“Which one?” Kator asked.
“Randyll Tarly.”
No one was surprised. That was good. Officers who needed every obvious thought explained were expensive furniture.
“He is steady,” Arthur said. “His soldiers are well-equipped, and his command will not break easily. But they are marching through land that does not belong to them, along roads we have damaged, into mountains and passes we already know better than they do. The new army at Old Oak is less immediate. If we break Tarly’s relief force first, the Reach will need time to gather another large western army. Tywin loses his best hand.”
Beland looked toward the large black mark drawn over the coast. “And Casterly Rock?”
Arthur was silent for a moment.
Casterly Rock was not a normal castle. It was a mountain turned into a fortress, hollowed and carved until stone itself became wall, chamber, vault, and city. Men did not storm such places with courage. Courage only made the pile of corpses higher. A siege would take too long. A direct assault would be throwing soldiers into a throat that never swallowed enough to choke.
“Casterly Rock is a hard thing,” Arthur said at last. “But even the hardest stone can crack from within.”
The words brought back a memory from the day after Lannisport fell.
Beland had come into the governor’s mansion wearing an expression that suggested he had found something useful and regrettable.
“My lord,” he said, “that old woman wants to see you.”
“What old woman?”
“The one the locals call the Toad Witch. She stirred up the refugees and helped open one of the side gates. It seems she also pushed some commoners into attacking the main gate, enough to draw off part of the garrison. I thought our own agents had done it. Apparently not all of it.”
Arthur remembered the unrest during the fall. Several small riots had flared inside the city at just the right time. He had credited Beland’s men, which was unfair but convenient. Now the convenience had a face.
“Bring her.”
The old woman who entered was short, broad, and ugly enough that court ladies would have called her cursed just to feel useful. Her face was pocked, her chin jutted like a small stone, and her yellow eyes held a greedy intelligence that made her ugliness less noticeable than her danger. She smelled of herbs, old cloth, and something stale beneath both.
“You are the Toad Witch?” Arthur asked.
“Yes, my lord. Great lord of woods and hills,” she said, bowing with a fawning hoarseness that made the title sound like something she had polished before entering. “I guided lost lambs to your door and opened a small way to victory.”
“I promised reward to those who opened gates. What do you want?”
Her smile showed sparse yellow teeth. “Only favor for House Spicer. If my lord were to marry Jeyne, or Alianna, perhaps—”
“No,” Arthur said.
The word came out before she finished.
House Spicer was a minor Westerlands house with more ambition than weight, connected by marriage to House Westerling. Arthur knew enough to see the angle. Marriage would bind local legitimacy to his conquest and raise the Spicers far above their station. Clever. Greedy. Badly timed. Ena still lay between breath and silence, and even if she had not, Arthur had no intention of being led to an altar by a woman everyone called a witch.
“I have no intention of claiming a crown,” Arthur said, “not now. And I have no marriage plans. Your contribution will be remembered. House Spicer may keep its lands and recover its trade if it obeys the laws I set. That is my reward.”
The Toad Witch’s smile stiffened, then returned. She had asked for too much and found where the wall stood. Perhaps that had been the point. “So be it. The greenseers bear witness. The Light has noticed you, my lord. Beware shadows.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
She only smiled.
He watched her for a long moment, then waved her away. She left with that same crooked step and unsettling confidence, giving him one last look before disappearing through the doors. He disliked the feeling she left behind, which was usually a sign that someone had done exactly what they intended.
Now, facing Casterly Rock on the map, Arthur remembered her.
As if summoned by irritation, a guard entered the tent and bowed.
“My lord, the Toad Witch asks for an audience.”
Arthur looked at the map, then at Smith. “Let her in.”
She entered without ceremony, unchanged from the last time. Same pocked face, same yellow eyes, same smell of herbs and old secrets.
“My lord,” she said, “I hear you worry over Casterly Rock.”
Arthur’s gaze sharpened. “What do you know?”
“I know the stone lion’s den cannot be knocked open from outside. But no matter how hard the stone, cracks can grow inside it. Even the strongest boot can be worn through by one grain of sand.”
“Speak clearly.”
“If I can give Casterly Rock to you, what will my lord give House Spicer?”
The tent became very quiet.
Arthur studied her. She was either mad, lying, or dangerous enough to attempt what armies could not. In Westeros, those categories often traveled together. Still, if she truly had a way into the Rock, the cost mattered less than the result.
“Branding Castle and its surrounding lands,” Arthur said slowly. “As a hereditary lordship under my authority.”
For a minor family like the Spicers, even a battered castle and scarred lands were a feast. The disappointment in her eyes was brief but present. She had wanted more. Naturally. Humans invented appetite and then blamed hunger for it.
“A fair trade,” she said.
“Your plan?”
She shook her head slightly. “Allow me to send one man. He will enter Casterly Rock. After that, you wait for news. At the proper time, bring your army to the gates. The process is not important, my lord. Only the result.”
Arthur did not like hidden methods. He used them often enough to know why they should worry a man.
“What support do you need?”
“A fast horse. Coin. And your promise that, no matter what happens, House Spicer receives what you have pledged if the Rock falls.”
“If Casterly Rock falls into my hands through your work, Branding Castle will belong to House Spicer. I swear it.”
His honor was not a septon’s lantern, pure and useless, but promises had value when men believed them. The old woman seemed satisfied.
A little later, Arthur watched from the window as a plain, ordinary-looking middle-aged man mounted a fast horse and rode toward Casterly Rock with a small bundle tied behind his saddle. Ser Rhaegar Spicer, distant kin to the old woman, looked forgettable enough to be dangerous.
Arthur remained by the window until the rider became a dark spot on the road.
Casterly Rock had never fallen by force. Perhaps it would not fall by force now. Perhaps an ugly old woman and a grain of poisoned sand would do what kings, raiders, and rebels never had. Or perhaps this was another trap.
“Prepare the army,” Arthur told the messenger nearby. “We move toward Casterly Rock. We will wait close enough to see whether the stone cracks.”
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