Scene 1: The Feast
The Great Hall of the Eyrie was a cavern of noise and firelight.
Huge hearths roared at either end of the room, fighting a losing battle against the mountain chill that seeped through the white marble walls. Trestle tables were arranged in a long U-shape, groaning under the weight of the farewell feast.
To the lords of the Vale, this was tradition. It was the "Last Supper" before the descent. A final night of camaraderie, grease, and wine before they rode down to Gulltown to bleed for Jon Arryn.
To Robert Baratheon, seated at the high table on Jon's right hand, it looked like a hemorrhage.
He sat motionless, his massive frame dominating the chair. He had bathed and shaved, his beard now trimmed close to the jaw, revealing the hard, brooding lines of his face. He wore a doublet of yellow velvet—tight across the chest—and a heavy cloak of wool.
He wasn't eating.
His blue eyes, clear now but terrifyingly intense, scanned the table.
The "Eagle Vision" overlay flickered across his retina, turning the festive spread into a grim inventory of logistics.
He watched as Ser Eon Hunter, a man with a face like a dried walnut, sliced a massive chunk of the boar, took one bite, laughed at a joke from Bronze Yohn Royce, and then let the rest of the meat fall from his knife to the floor for the hounds.
Robert flinched.
It was a physical reaction. A twitch of the eye. In his mind, he didn't see meat falling. He saw a pile of arrows snapping. He saw a heavy shield rusting instantly. He saw capital vanishing into the rushes.
"Eat, lad!"
The voice boomed like a cannon. Bronze Yohn Royce sat across from him, his face flushed with wine. The Lord of Runestone was a bear of a man, clad in his ancient bronze armor, runes glowing faintly in the firelight.
"You've barely touched your trenchers," Royce roared, gesturing with a turkey leg like it was a scepter. "We ride at dawn! A man needs meat on his ribs to swing a hammer like yours!"
The table laughed. It was a nervous, excited laughter. The Vale lords were eager for war, eager to defy the Mad King. They looked at Robert and saw their champion. The young giant. The storm.
They didn't see the accountant screaming inside his skull.
Robert slowly turned his head to look at Royce. The movement was predatory. The laughter at the table died down, suffocated by the sheer weight of Robert's silence.
"Meat," Robert repeated. The word was heavy, flat.
"Aye, meat!" Royce grinned, though the smile faltered slightly under Robert's gaze. "And wine! Jon opened the '78 vintage. Best in the Vale!"
Robert looked at the goblet in front of him. It was silver, filled to the brim with dark, rich Arbor Red.
Unit Cost: 12 Silver Stags per bottle. Total Volume on Table: ~50 gallons. Equivalent Value: 200 Spears. 500 yards of wool cloth. 20 mercenaries for a month.
"We are drinking a mercenary company," Robert murmured.
"What was that, my boy?" Jon Arryn asked softly.
Jon sat at the center, looking old and tired. The Lord of the Eyrie was the only one not gorging himself. He watched Robert with a mixture of affection and concern. He had seen Robert drunk, angry, lustful, and boisterous. He had never seen him calculating.
Robert looked at his foster father. "The wine, Jon. The food. Look at it."
He gestured to the lower tables where the household knights were engaging in a contest to see who could throw a bread roll the furthest.
"It's a celebration, Robert," Jon said gently. "Morale is a weapon, too. These men are risking their lives for us. For you."
"Morale," Robert tasted the word. "Morale doesn't stop a crossbow bolt. Plate armor does. And we're eating the cost of fifty breastplates tonight."
Jon frowned. "You sound like a steward, not a king."
"A King?" Robert leaned in, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that only Jon could hear. "A King is just a man who pays for the war, Jon. Aerys has the gold of Casterly Rock—or at least, Tywin does. What do we have? We have honor. And honor doesn't buy grain."
He picked up his knife. It was sharp, the steel gleaming.
He stabbed it into the table. Thunk.
The sound silenced the immediate vicinity.
"Listen to me," Robert said, his voice rising, carrying over the hall. "Enjoy your feast, my lords."
The room went quiet. The disruption was palpable. The jovial atmosphere shattered like glass. This wasn't the toast they expected. They expected a roar, a joke about Rhaegar's balls, a promise of glory.
Instead, they got cold resolve.
"Eat your fill," Robert continued, standing up. He loomed over them, a black-haired titan in yellow velvet. "Fill your bellies. Because where we are going, there are no glazed boars. There are no honeyed onions."
He looked at Eon Hunter. He looked at Horton Redfort. He looked at young Denys Arryn.
"The Mad King has closed the ports," Robert said, his voice ringing off the marble walls. "Gulltown is not just a city; it is a chokehold. Until we break it, nothing comes in. No grain from Pentos. No steel from Myr."
He pointed a thick finger at the scraps of meat littering the floor.
"That," he snarled, "is the last meal you will waste. From tomorrow, every scrap of bread, every drop of wine, every copper penny is ammunition. You want to kill Targaryens? Then stop throwing your resources to the dogs."
He didn't wait for a response. He didn't wait for the applause that wouldn't come.
He turned and walked out of the Great Hall.
The silence he left behind was total. It was the silence of men who had just realized that the summer was over, and winter wasn't just coming—it was already sitting at their table.
As he pushed through the heavy oak doors, the "Eagle Vision" faded, leaving him in the cool darkness of the corridor.
His stomach grumbled. He was starving.
But he wouldn't eat. Not yet. He had to set the example. If he was going to turn these knights into an army that could survive a siege, he had to start by tightening his own belt.
Wars are bought, he reminded himself, heading toward the rookery to check on his letter. And I am almost overdrawn.
Chapter 2: The Falcon and the Stag
Scene 2: The Ledger
The morning sun hit the high peaks of the Giant's Lance with a brilliance that felt like an accusation.
Inside the solar of the Eyrie, the air was thick with the smell of stale rushes, burnt toast, and the sour reek of men who had drowned themselves in wine the night before.
Jon Arryn sat at the head of the table, nursing a cup of willow-bark infusion to dull his headache. Bronze Yohn Royce looked less like a bronze giant and more like a pile of scrap metal, his eyes red and swollen. Lyn Corbray was slouched in his chair, picking his teeth with a dagger, looking pale and irritable.
Robert stood by the window, staring at the map of the Vale pinned to the wall.
He had been awake for four hours. He had already exercised—a brutal regimen of lifting heavy stones in the courtyard until his muscles burned and the fog of the previous life cleared. He had drunk three pitchers of icy mountain water. He was vibrating with a restless, terrifying energy.
"Sit down, Robert," Jon croaked, his voice raspy. "You're blocking the light."
Robert didn't move. He kept his eyes on the map, specifically on the coastal city of Gulltown.
"We are light," Robert said, his voice rumbling in the quiet room.
"Light?" Yohn Royce grunted, reaching for a tankard of weak ale to steady his hands. "Light on what? We have five thousand swords gathering at the Gates of the Moon. It's enough to crush Grafton."
"We are light on provisions," Robert corrected, turning around.
He walked to the table and slammed a piece of rough parchment onto the center. It wasn't a battle plan. It was a steward's tally.
"I cornered the steward this morning," Robert said, his voice clear and painfully loud to their sensitive ears. "I made him weigh the consumption from last night."
He pointed a thick finger at the ink scratches.
"Twelve casks of Arbor Red. Three entire oxen. Forty chickens. Two hundred sacks of fine white flour."
Royce rolled his eyes. "Gods, man. Are you a Lord Paramount or a scullery maid? It was a send-off!"
"It was a defeat," Robert snapped. "That feast? It cost us the equivalent of three hundred spears."
The room went silent.
"What?" Jon asked, blinking through his pain.
"I did the reckoning," Robert said, pacing the room like a caged cat. "The gold value of the food and wine pissing onto the rushes last night could have purchased three hundred iron-tipped spears from the smiths in Wickenden. It could have bought leather jerkins for two hundred archers. It could have bought salt beef to feed the vanguard for a week."
He leaned over the table, placing his massive hands flat on the wood. He looked at each of them in turn.
"So I ask you," Robert whispered, the intensity in his blue eyes burning through the haze of their hangovers. "Do you want to eat like kings for one night? Or do you want to keep your heads?"
Royce shifted uncomfortably. "We are knights of the Vale, Robert. We fight for honor. Not... copper counting."
"Honor is expensive," Robert shot back. "And right now, we are beggars. Grafton holds the port. He holds the customs house. He holds the silver."
He walked back to the map and tapped Gulltown hard enough to make the parchment rattle against the stone.
"This brings me to the terms of the assault," Robert said.
Jon straightened up, wincing. "Terms? We besiege the city. We storm the walls. We kill Grafton."
"And then?" Robert asked.
"Then we sack the city," Lyn Corbray said, a cruel smile finally touching his lips. "That is the right of the victor. The men will expect it. They'll want their plunder."
"No," Robert said.
The word hung in the air like a guillotine blade.
"No?" Corbray's smile vanished. "You expect men to bleed for free?"
"I expect them to bleed for wealth," Robert said. "But organized wealth."
He grabbed a piece of charcoal and drew a circle around Gulltown on the map.
"If we sack the city like barbarians," Robert lectured, his mind channeling strategy while his voice stayed guttural, "we burn the warehouses. We rape the populace. We create a city of rebels who will spit on us for a generation. And worst of all, the soldiers will find the wine sinks, get drunk, and we lose control of the army for three days."
He turned to them.
"I am proposing a new order. The Gulltown Pact."
He held up three fingers.
"One: No looting of private homes. Any man found forcing a woman or burning a roof hangs. I will swing the sword myself."
Royce frowned deeply. "The men won't like that. It's their right."
"Two: No looting of the granaries. That food belongs to the army, not the individual soldier's belly."
"And three," Robert said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial growl. "The Vanguard—the first men over the walls—get the King's Customs."
The room paused.
"The Customs?" Jon asked.
"Grafton collects the tariffs for the Iron Throne," Robert explained. "The Customs House. The Tax Office. The Guildhall vaults. That is where the hard currency is. Gold Dragons. Silver Stags. Not silver candlesticks torn from a merchant's hands. Real coin."
Robert stepped closer to the map, his mind flashing with the overlay.
"We tell the men," Robert said, "that the gold is in the towers. We tell them that if they follow orders, if they leave the smallfolk alone, we crack the vaults and split the coin. A share system. One share for a footman. Five for a knight. Ten for a lord."
He looked at Corbray. "You want plunder, Lyn? The Customs House in Gulltown holds the duties from the last six months of trade. That's tens of thousands of dragons. A clean strike. A King's ransom."
He slammed his fist into his open palm.
"We don't burn the orchard to get the apples. We shake the tree."
Jon Arryn looked at his foster son. He looked at the map. He looked at the steward's tally on the table.
"It... has merit," Jon admitted slowly. "It keeps order. It wins the smallfolk to our cause—or at least, keeps them from taking up knives against us. And it targets Aerys's coin, not the people's."
"It's mercenary work," Royce grumbled, but he was stroking his beard thoughtfully. "But... three hundred spears, you said?"
"Three hundred spears lost last night," Robert nodded. "But the Gulltown Vaults? That's ten thousand spears. That's a fleet. That's a kingdom."
Robert grabbed his helm from the sideboard. It was the great antlered helm of House Baratheon. He held it under his arm.
"I'm leading the Vanguard," Robert stated. It wasn't a request. "I'm going over that wall first. I'm going to kill Marq Grafton. And then, I'm going to collect what is owed."
He looked at the hungover lords.
"Now, finish your drafts. We have a city to bleed."
Chapter 2: The Falcon and the Stag
Scene 3: The Vanguard
The heavy oak door closed behind Bronze Yohn Royce, the latch clicking with a finality that echoed in the solar.
The room was suddenly quiet. The map of Gulltown still lay on the table, the charcoal circle Robert had drawn around it looking less like a strategy and more like a noose.
Jon Arryn did not move. He stood by the hearth, staring into the dying embers of the fire. His shoulders, usually squared with the dignity of the Lord of the Eyrie, were slumped. In the harsh morning light, he looked every day of his sixty years.
"You cannot take the Vanguard, Robert," Jon said. He didn't turn around.
Robert stood by the table, his hand resting on the hilt of the dagger he had used to pin the map.
"It is done, Jon. The lords heard it. To retract it now would look like cowardice."
Jon turned then. His face was etched with a pain that had nothing to do with the war and everything to do with the boy standing in front of him.
"Cowardice?" Jon's voice cracked. "It is suicide. You know the walls of Gulltown. They are high, Robert. Grafton has had weeks to prepare. He will have boiling oil. He will have scorpions. The first men up those ladders are dead men walking."
Robert watched him. The "Eagle Vision" flickered involuntarily, reading the micro-expressions on the old man's face.
Robert softened his posture. He knew what Jon was seeing. He wasn't seeing a twenty-year-old warlord. He was seeing Steffon Baratheon, Robert's father, drowning in Shipbreaker Bay. He was seeing the heir he never had.
"I am the Lord of Storm's End," Robert said, his voice low and steady. "I cannot lead from the rear. If I ask men to refrain from looting, if I ask them to fight for a 'share' rather than a sack, I have to be the one to hand it to them. I have to be the first one over the stone."
"Let Corbray do it," Jon pleaded, stepping forward. He reached out, gripping Robert's forearm. His grip was surprisingly strong, desperate. "Lyn lives for the blood. He has Lady Forlorn. He has no wife, no children. Let him take the wall."
"Corbray is a butcher," Robert said. "If he takes the wall, Gulltown burns. And if Gulltown burns, we lose the gold."
"Damn the gold!" Jon shouted, the sudden anger startling them both. "I don't care about the customs house! I care about you! Aerys wants your head, and I am handing it to him on a silver platter if I let you climb those ladders!"
Jon's eyes were wet. "I promised your father. I promised Steffon I would make a man of you. How can I look Stannis in the eye if I send you to die in a ditch beneath a traitor's wall?"
Robert felt a pang of guilt in his chest. It was a sharp, human sensation that cut through the transmigrator's cold logic.
The old Robert—the one who slept in the memories—surged forward. He wanted to hug the old man. He wanted to tell him it would be fine, that he was invincible, that he was the Demon of the Trident.
But the new Robert pushed the emotion down. He needed Jon to agree. He needed the Vanguard. It was the only way to secure the capital required to fight the long war.
He placed his hand over Jon's hand on his arm.
"Jon," Robert said gently. "Look at me."
Jon looked up, his grey eyes searching Robert's blue ones.
"I am not going to die," Robert lied. Or at least, he hoped it was a lie. "But I cannot sit in a tent while my friends bleed. I cannot sit feasting on the outcome while others do the work."
"It is not feasting," Jon argued weakly. "It is command."
"It is waiting," Robert corrected. "And I am done waiting."
He stepped back, breaking the contact. He walked to the window, looking out at the jagged peaks of the Vale. He needed a closing argument. He needed something that would silence Jon's protective instincts and replace them with the cold duty of a rebel leader.
He summoned the memory of the girl. The catalyst.
"She is out there, Jon," Robert said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
He didn't need to say the name.
Jon stiffened. "Lyanna."
"Rhaegar has her," Robert said. He forced the anger into his voice, channeling the residual rage of the original body. "While we sit here debating supply lines and vanguard positions, she is... somewhere. With him."
He turned back to Jon. The "Eagle Vision" showed Jon's aura shifting from Protective to Resigned.
"Every day we wait outside Gulltown is a day she remains a captive," Robert said. "Every day I sit in the rear guard is a day Rhaegar laughs at us."
He walked back to the table and picked up his helm. The great antlers cast a long, shadowed silhouette against the wall.
"I am taking the wall, Jon. Not because I want to die. But because I need to kill the things that stand between me and her."
It was a manipulation. The new Robert knew Lyanna wasn't "captive" in the way the old Robert thought. He knew the complex, tragic truth of the Tower of Joy. But Jon didn't. And Jon loved Lyanna almost as much as he loved Robert.
Jon closed his eyes. He took a deep, shuddering breath. When he opened them, the father was gone, replaced by the Lord of the Eyrie.
"Very well," Jon whispered. "You shall have the Vanguard."
"Thank you," Robert said.
"But Robert?"
"Aye?"
Jon walked to the door. He paused, his hand on the iron latch. He looked back, and his expression was a mask of sorrow.
"If you fall," Jon said softly, "do not expect me to mourn you. I will be too busy cursing you for leaving me alone in this madness."
The door clicked shut.
Robert stood alone in the solar. The victory tasted like ash. He had the Vanguard. He had the "Gulltown Contract." He had the path to the treasury.
But he had just broken an old man's heart to get it.
He looked down at the map. At the circle around Gulltown.
He picked up the dagger and drove it into the center of the city.
"We do not feast," he muttered to the empty room, repeating the lie until it sounded like truth. "We do not feast while my betrothed bleeds."