Chapter 76: The Stag’s Fire
On Dragonstone, Stannis Baratheon stood before a map and listened to the night.
The Stone Drum rumbled beneath his feet as waves struck the island. Behind him hung the black banner with the crowned stag, though red flames had begun to appear too often in his halls. Men changed gods more easily when the new one promised victory. Stannis did not love that. He tolerated it because the world had not given him enough honest tools.
The reports were clear.
King’s Landing’s harbor defenses had thinned. Mace Tyrell, using the Ironborn threat and fear of Westerlands movement as excuse, had sent much of the Blackwater fleet toward Maidenpool and Duskendale. Reach ships meant to fill the gap had not yet arrived in full. Wind, supply, delay, pride. Whatever the cause, the result was the same.
A window.
Small, dangerous, and likely to close.
Melisandre had seen victory in the flames. The false king devoured by the wrath of the Lord of Light. The true king’s fleet breaking darkness beneath night fire. Stannis distrusted visions when they spoke too sweetly. He distrusted everything sweet. But the military opening was real.
“The time has come,” he said.
His captains waited.
“The false king and his handlers fight among themselves. The Tyrell fleet is scattered. The harbor is weak. We sail tonight. Target: King’s Landing.”
There was no grand proclamation. No tourney of banners. No long speech to make men feel better about drowning. Stannis had little talent for comfort and less respect for it.
Ships were loaded before midnight. Not many, but hard crews, loyal knights, and soldiers who had followed him through hunger and defeat. Melisandre held her rites on the shore, flames burning strangely green and red in the dark. Men knelt. Some prayed. Some pretended to pray. The sea did not care which were sincere.
The wind shifted east.
The fleet left Dragonstone under cover of night, black shapes sliding across Blackwater Bay toward the city that had denied him.
It was a gamble.
On weak defenses. On surprise. On Tyrell delay. On Melisandre’s fire. On his own claim. On the chance that justice, which had been ignored so often, might finally arrive with ships and burning pitch.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Stannis had never been fond of gambling. That did not stop the world from turning his life into one.
At dawn, fishermen near King’s Landing saw sails on the horizon.
Then more.
The ships came with strange green fire burning at their bows and the fiery heart painted across their sails. Horns sounded low over the water. The city woke to fear.
“Stannis!” someone screamed from the harbor wall. “Stannis is attacking!”
Bells rang across King’s Landing.
Tyrell officers scrambled men toward the walls and docks. Remaining ships in the harbor tried to form a defense. Messengers ran through streets already filling with panic. The smallfolk did what smallfolk always did when kings argued: they suffered first and understood last.
In the Red Keep, Cersei heard the news and went still.
For one breath, fear touched her.
Then calculation followed.
A Stannis attack could destroy them. It could also break the Tyrell hold over the city, expose Margaery’s weakness, force Joffrey to rely on his mother, and create chaos in which Dorne, Lannister loyalists, and old debts might all become useful.
Disaster and opportunity often arrived in the same cloak. The trick was not being crushed while checking the pockets.
“Close the gates of the Red Keep,” Cersei ordered. “Summon the Kingsguard. Gather every guard still loyal to the king. Send riders and ravens to the Reach, the Westerlands, and our friends from Dorne.”
She almost smiled at that last word.
Almost.
Outside, Stannis’s fleet drove toward the harbor like a burning spear.
The rose hurried. The lion waited. The snake moved unseen. The stag came with fire.
And far in the Westerlands, Arthur had only just stepped onto the pier at Lannisport when the messages reached him.
King’s Landing under attack.
Cersei reaching toward Dorne.
Tyrell forces scrambling.
Bolton movement sharpening in the North.
The Ironborn contained, but not destroyed.
Arthur stood at the pier, sea wind striking his face, the smell of smoke, salt, tar, and distant beacons carried over the harbor. Captured ships creaked behind him. Men unloaded stores. Sailors shouted. Smith waited for orders. Lord Jason spoke with captains. Flio had already found three ways to turn the treaty into profit and two ways it might get them killed.
Arthur looked east.
The board had grown again. More players, more knives, more fires, more lies. A newly risen lord of the Westerlands, fresh from hunting sharks in the west, now had to decide whether to secure the sea, answer the capital’s chaos, watch Dorne, or turn north before Bolton rot spread too far.
Naturally, the answer was that all of them mattered.
The world remained deeply inconsiderate.
Somewhere on Blackwater Bay, Stannis’s ships burned with green fire. In King’s Landing, Cersei counted enemies and called it duty. In Dorne, Oberyn rode toward a city full of men who deserved him less than they feared him. In the North, old betrayals sharpened in cold halls.
Arthur folded the letters.
“Summon Diana,” he said. “Smith, bring the full naval report. Flio, I want estimates for trade, ship repair, and what we can spare if the capital falls into complete idiocy. Send riders to Newroot and Seagard. Grey Shadow is to watch the Boltons, the Tyrells, and every raven leaving King’s Landing.”
The men moved.
Arthur remained by the water a moment longer.
The Sea Hunt had ended. The larger storm had not. It had only been waiting for him to come ashore.
Westeros, considerate as a knife, had offered him another choice.
He would have to answer before someone else chose for him.