Because of the siphoning effect of a capital, cities near the capital are usually not very large.
In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, this rule also applies.
Rosby lies thirty kilometers north of King's Landing. The town is small, with no bustling commercial districts and no grand, towering buildings. Apart from House Rosby's castle, the place is filled with huts made of wood and mud.
Wealthy merchants, titled knights, and even the Count of Rosby himself all live next door in King's Landing.
Yet Rosby is very wealthy. Or rather, the narrow stretch of land that makes up the Crownlands, whether near the bay or along the Blackwater River, is fertile and rich in produce.
During the War of the Four Kings, the grain supplied by Rosby and Stokeworth (Bronn's domain) alone was enough to meet half of King's Landing's needs.
But because of their tireless support for the Iron Throne during that war, Rosby now cannot even sustain the twenty-thousand-strong Vale army under the Second Stag.
On this day, beneath a dim sky, a wyvern flew in from the east and landed on the wide training ground before Rosby Castle.
There were many people on the field, but no one paid any attention to the old knight dismounting from the wyvern.
Hundreds of people had formed a circle, conducting some sort of ritual.
Davos was the Hand of the King. As he approached, the crowd ahead parted for him.
Before long, the Onion Knight squeezed to the front. Near the central pile of wood, he saw the iron-faced king, the graceful red-robed woman, and eight knights bound to stakes, desperately begging for forgiveness and mercy.
"What's going on?" Davos found his son, Stannis.
Not the Second Stag, but Davos's sixth son.
The Onion Knight had seven sons. The first four died in the Battle of the Blackwater, indirectly lost to the dwarf.
The fifth, Devan, was fifteen this year and had been serving as a squire to the Second Stag. But one day, the Onion Knight noticed the way his fifth son looked at Melisandre.
It was the look of a man toward a woman, filled with intense desire and inescapable love.
Later, after making discreet inquiries, he learned that when the Second Stag left the Wall to march on Winterfell, Devan had not been brought along. It was because Melisandre had suggested keeping the squire by her side.
In truth, this was a misunderstanding.
Although Melisandre knew that the Onion Knight disliked her, she deeply respected his character.
Her reason for keeping Devan was not, as Davos feared, out of loneliness, but because she knew the campaign would be dangerous, and Devan would likely never return if he went.
She pitied Davos for losing four sons in a single battle at the Blackwater and wanted to preserve Devan's life.
She understood Devan's feelings for her and felt pleased by them, but she never acted on them.
Davos, unaware of all this, used the excuse of returning home after years away to visit his mother, and left Devan behind in the rainwood near Storm's End.
Out of loyalty to the Second Stag, he instead brought his thirteen-year-old sixth son to serve.
The sixth was named Stannis. The seventh, only ten, was even more remarkable, named Steffon after the Second Stag's father.
"They are Braavosi mercenaries. They violated His Majesty's orders. Not only did they leave their assigned area without permission, but they also looted a village three miles away and assaulted a fourteen-year-old farm girl…"
Young Stannis's childish face was filled with indignation, and the way he looked at the mercenaries tied to the stakes carried a kind of fervor that made Davos uneasy.
The boy had only been at the king's side for a few days, yet he was already anticipating the sight of burnings.
Davos felt a deep worry.
The Second Stag stood quietly before the stakes, listening to each prisoner's pleas before finally turning his head.
His gaze first swept over the stout Ser Songer and the scarred Ser Richard without hesitation, then moved past them.
"Asell, can you do it?"
"Your Majesty, your faith is what I serve," replied a plain, sturdy, middle-aged man with protruding ears.
"Then begin," the Second Stag said softly with a sigh.
In the past, the sacrifice rituals of the Knights of the Fiery Heart had been led by Godry Farring and Richard. After Godry was killed by Greatjon with a single blow, Ser Songer took over.
Now, although Richard still wore the Fiery Heart cloak, a bright white seven-pointed star adorned his chest.
As for Songer, though his attire remained the same, he had died once. His soul had not gone to the Lord of Light but had instead been revived by the Dragon Queen.
What did that mean?
Songer no longer believed in R'hllor.
And a man without faith could not lead believers in sacrifice.
Asell Florent, meanwhile, was an opportunist. His conversion to the Lord of Light was more about currying favor with the king and queen to gain power. His faith was far less pure than that of Godry or Richard.
"Lord of Light, hear us!" Asell shouted.
"Lord of Light, protect us," the followers chanted in unison. "For the night is dark and full of terrors."
Ser Asell raised his head to the dim sky and cried out, "True god, restore the light of day. Guide us forward to destroy our enemies. Dispel the clouds that block the heavens and let us once again bask in the brilliance of the stars."
The believers prayed, "Lord of Light, protect us and drive away the merciless darkness."
At a glance from Melisandre, the wood piled around the eight stakes burst into flames, and the offerings began to scream and curse.
"R'hllor," Ser Asell raised his voice, "we offer these eight sinners. With pure devotion, we present them to you. With their blood, we make this sacrifice. Grant us your aid so we may destroy our enemies. Accept this offering and guide us to King's Landing to purge the heretics!"
"Lord of Light, accept the offering!" hundreds of voices shouted at once.
The flames greedily licked at their skin and hair, and their pleas dissolved into shrill, incoherent wails.
As soon as the ritual ended, Davos hurried to find Stannis.
"Your Majesty, you intend to storm King's Landing? This is not what we planned!" he asked anxiously.
"I don't want to wait any longer. The people of King's Landing may have no food, but the Red Keep surely has ample reserves. Your strategy of starving them out will not work.
Once the grain from the Vale and Dragonstone arrives, I will attack," Stannis said softly.
If they used wyverns to recklessly drop wildfire bombs, the Onion Knight could have taken King's Landing before the Second Stag returned from Winterfell.
But he had not done so.
Blocking the Second Stag's entry into King's Landing were not only the tens of thousands of troops loyal to the Iron Throne, but also the Sparrows who filled the city with their faith in the Seven.
After continuous wars, both the Crownlands and the Riverlands had withered. The people from these two densely populated regions had all moved into King's Landing and joined the Poor Fellows of the Faith.
At this point, they had nothing left but their faith.
Unless the Second Stag could resolve their livelihood, restore production, and ensure they had food, their resistance to a king of the Red God was inevitable.
When King Aegon's True Dragon Alliance once besieged King's Landing, his enemies were only those of the Iron Throne. The common people and the Faith merely watched indifferently.
But when facing the Second Stag's army, the hundreds of thousands of Sparrows in King's Landing became agitated.
They took up wooden clubs, bricks, and rusty kitchen knives, climbed the walls, and even surged out of the gates, shouting, "Long live the Seven! For the Mother!" ready to use their flesh and blood to resist the Vale army.
The Vale lords were the first to hesitate.
They also believed in the Seven. Their support for the Second Stag was purely political. Their loyalty was never strong, and there was no way they would slaughter followers of the Seven for him.
The last person to massacre the Faith was Maegor during the founding era.
And what was Maegor's fate?
Maegor had a dragon, Balerion!
Even someone as ruthless as Cersei only dared to secretly eliminate the High Sparrow.
Aside from the Sparrows, the countless refugees—old, weak, sick, and young—crowded at the base of the walls posed another major problem.
King's Landing was packed with people. If they used wildfire to burn the city, it would inevitably harm large numbers of innocent civilians. Even if Davos could bring himself to imitate Maegor in slaughtering the Faith Militant, he could not bear to harm ordinary people.
Thus, he had only blocked the land routes between King's Landing and Highgarden, cut off sea transport through Blackwater Bay, and severed the city's food supply, hoping to force the starving population to open the gates. Then he planned to use food to pacify the starving believers and citizens.
"Your Majesty, if you burn King's Landing and massacre its people, the Vale lords will no longer follow you.
The Braavosi mercenaries we hired cannot be trusted. They are even considering breaking their contracts and fleeing back to Braavos, where there are no White Walkers.
At that time, even if the gates of King's Landing stand open, without soldiers, how will you take the city? And how will you rule the realm?" Davos urged earnestly.
Lacking a solid power base was indeed one of the Second Stag's current dilemmas.
As the Duke of Dragonstone, with only a small domain, he never had many loyal followers to begin with. After his campaign in the North and the loss of Storm's End and Dragonstone, he had become truly isolated, with only a few hundred Knights of the Fiery Heart remaining.
The Braavosi mercenaries, the two thousand northern cavalry, and the Vale lords made for an impressive force on paper, but none could serve as a stable foundation.
In the past, the Second Stag would have clenched his jaw in frustration.
But now, his pale, lifeless face showed no emotion. He simply said indifferently, "Davos, I have no time to delay. This is the Long Night. The White Walkers are already infiltrating the Neck and moving south into the Riverlands. Hesitation will only bring chaos."
Davos sighed helplessly. "What about the Poor Fellows and the refugees?"
A faint glimmer flashed in the sunken eyes of the Second Stag. "As long as their stomachs are filled, the common people will not care whether the one on the Iron Throne is an angel or a demon.
They adore Margaery, who murdered her husband, calling her the 'Holy Mother,' because Highgarden provides them with bread and cheese.
They accept the rule of the bastard Tommen and the disgraced Cersei for the same reason: the grain from Highgarden keeps them alive."
"I believe in the Red God, but is Euron a devout follower of the Seven?" The Second Stag patted the Hand of the King on the shoulder and said coolly, "Commoners are far easier to deal with than nobles. As long as they are not starving, they will be obedient.
Nobles, on the other hand, have endless desires. It seems that unless they sit on the Iron Throne, they are never satisfied. For example, that woman, and that dwarf. Have you reached an agreement?"
"Tyrion rejected the proposal to divide the Riverlands in two." Davos recounted the entire negotiation from that afternoon.
"Daenerys is willing to give up the Iron Throne, but she demands to inherit the ancestral lands of the Targaryens, namely the Crownlands.
If the new king is unwilling to leave King's Landing, she is willing to accept other lands near Dragonstone as compensation, such as the Trident region."
"The Targaryens were outsiders. What ancestral lands could they possibly have?" the Second Stag said coldly.
"Your Majesty, forgive me for speaking frankly, but your ancestor Orys Baratheon was on the same side as Aegon the Conqueror," Davos said awkwardly.
All of them were foreign conquerors.
(End of Chapter)
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