Scene 1: The Contrast
The rain in the Stormlands did not fall; it drove. It came in horizontal sheets, turning the Kingsroad into a river of brown slurry.
To a normal army, this weather was a death sentence for momentum. Wagons sank to their axles. Men trudged with heads down, misery soaking into their bones.
But Robert Baratheon was not leading a normal army.
He lay prone on a ridge of wet grey stone, his heavy cloak blending with the moss. The "Eagle Vision" cut through the curtain of rain, zooming in on the valley floor below.
Below him, the army of Lord Grandison was a snake trying to crawl through tar.
Robert watched the column. It was a mess. The spacing was ragged. Every few minutes, the line bunched up as men near the front stumbled or fell out of formation.
He focused on a group of spearmen near a roadside stream.
The stream was swollen, brown with runoff from the fields upstream—fields that were likely full of dead sheep and manure. The soldiers, exhausted and thirsty, were kneeling in the mud, cupping their hands to drink the filth.
Robert flinched.
"Don't do it," he whispered, though they couldn't hear him.
They drank. One man wiped his mouth, stood up, walked ten paces, and then bent double, retching violently.
"They are drinking death," a voice said beside him.
It was Black Walder (not the Frey, but a grizzly Stormlander sergeant Robert had promoted for his shovel-work). The man lay in the mud, chewing on a piece of sourleaf.
"They don't have the Barrels, my Lord," Walder noted with a grim sense of superiority. "Poor bastards."
Robert shimmied back from the ledge, sliding down the embankment to where their horses waited in a cluster of pines. His small scouting party—ten of his best riders—looked at him expectantly.
These men looked different from Grandison's. They were soaked, yes. But their eyes were clear. Their skins were filled with the tasteless, charcoal-filtered water from the Black Barrels. They hadn't stopped for a "flux break" in four hours.
"Grandison is slow," Robert said, swinging into the saddle of his massive destrier. "He's stopping every mile. His men are cramping."
"He waits for Lord Cafferen and Lord Fell," one of the outriders said. "They plan to join forces at Summerhall."
Robert pulled up his map—a piece of oilskin protected from the rain.
The three Royalist armies were converging on the ruins of Summerhall. The plan was simple: unite the three hosts (Grandison, Cafferen, Fell) into one massive hammer and crush Robert before he could leave the Stormlands.
But they were moving on "Old World" time. They assumed Robert was moving at the same pace. They assumed he was bogging down in the mud, fighting the same dysentery, stopping to boil water (or failing to).
"They think they have a day," Robert grinned. The rain ran down his beard, but he felt a fire in his chest. "They think we are ten leagues behind."
He turned his horse.
"Ride back to the column," Robert ordered. "Signal the forced march pace. Double time."
"Double time, my Lord?" Walder asked. "In this mud? The men will break."
"The men are hydrated," Robert snapped. "The men are clean. And the men know that if we get to Summerhall first, we win."
He looked back at the ridge, at the slow, sick enemy dying of ignorance in the valley below.
"Grandison is fighting the mud. We are going to run right over it."
Robert kicked his horse into a gallop.
"Speed is the weapon!" he roared to his escort. "We sleep in Summerhall tonight!"
The small troop thundered after him, hooves tearing up the earth. They weren't just riding to a battle; they were riding to prove a theorem.
Sanitation is velocity, the accountant thought as the trees blurred past. And velocity is victory.
Chapter 5: The First Test
Scene 2: The Ambush
The forced march was a brutal, lung-burning affair.
For six hours, the Stormlands host had moved at a pace that bordered on a trot. The mud sucked at their boots, but they didn't stop. They didn't stop to forage. They didn't stop to cook.
Robert rode up and down the line, a relentless engine of motivation. But even his presence couldn't stop the grumbling entirely.
"Hardtack again," a voice drifted from the ranks of the rearguard. "I'm chewing on a brick. My belly thinks my throat's been cut."
"I heard Grandison is feasting on roast venison," another soldier muttered. "And we eat dry biscuits in the rain."
Robert pulled his destrier to a halt. He slid out of the saddle, his boots splashing into the muck. He walked over to the complaining soldier—a burly spearman named Hoke.
The column slowed, watching.
"You want venison, Hoke?" Robert asked.
"My Lord... I..." Hoke stammered, pale.
"Venison is heavy," Robert said loudly, addressing the whole platoon. "It sits in your gut like a stone. It takes blood from your legs to feed your stomach. Grandison eats venison, and that is why Grandison is five miles behind us, vomiting in a ditch."
He grabbed Hoke's pack. It was heavy, laden with the extra kit Robert had insisted on (shovels, water skins).
"Give it here," Robert ordered.
He slung the soldier's pack over his own massive shoulder, right over his plate armor. He gestured for the column to move.
"I will carry the weight!" Robert roared. "You carry the speed! We eat light so we can kill heavy!"
He began to jog.
The army stared. Their Lord—the stag-helmed giant—was rucking with a infantryman's pack.
It was a piece of theater, calculated and performative, but it worked. The shame hit them harder than a whip. Hoke scrambled to keep up, trying to take the pack back, but Robert refused.
He ran with them for the last mile. He showed them that the "Clean Water" and the "Light Rations" weren't punishment; they were fuel. He wasn't just a King; he was the Apex Predator of the march.
Summerhall.
The ruins of the Targaryen pleasure palace rose out of the mist like broken teeth. It was a melancholy place, blackened by the fire that had killed King Aegon V, but to Robert, it was perfect.
It was a chokepoint.
His army arrived forty minutes before the enemy.
"Form up!" Robert bellowed, dropping the pack. "Standard ambush formation! Archers in the ruins! Spears in the tall grass!"
The men moved with a crisp, frenetic energy. They weren't sluggish. The charcoal water and the simple carbohydrates of the hardtack had kept their blood sugar steady. They were wired.
Fifteen minutes later, Lord Grandison's host emerged from the treeline.
They were a sorry sight. Their banners hung limp in the rain. Men were walking with their heads down, stumbling. They weren't in battle formation; they were in marching order, strung out, expecting to meet their allies, not their enemy.
Robert stood in the center of the ruined archway, his warhammer resting on the ground.
Grandison rode at the front. He blinked, wiping rain from his eyes. He saw the lone giant standing in the ruins.
"Baratheon?" Grandison called out, confused. "You... how did you get here? You were reported at Bronzegate!"
"I walked," Robert shouted back.
He raised his hammer.
"NOW!"
The ruins of Summerhall exploded.
Archers popped up from behind the blackened walls. A volley of arrows hissed through the rain, cutting down the front rank of Grandison's cavalry.
Then, the charge.
Robert led it. He didn't wait for tactics. He was the tactic.
He slammed into the exhausted Royalist line like a bowling ball hitting pins. His hammer swung—a blur of black steel.
CRUNCH. A shield shattered.
CRACK. A helmet caved in.
Grandison's men, sluggish from the heavy meal and the dysentery, couldn't react. Their reflexes were slow. They were tired. Robert's men were fresh, fighting with the manic energy of the hydrated.
It wasn't a battle. It was a rout.
Lord Grandison was pulled from his horse within ten minutes. Robert stood over him, chest heaving, the "Eagle Vision" already scanning the horizon.
"Tie him up!" Robert ordered. "Drag the bodies off the road! Reset the line!"
"Reset?" Hoke asked, wiping blood from his spear. "My Lord, we won!"
"That was breakfast," Robert grinned, his teeth white in his mud-streaked face. "Here comes lunch."
One Hour Later.
Lord Cafferen's host arrived. They saw the road empty. They saw the banners of House Baratheon hidden in the mist. They thought they were meeting Grandison.
Instead, they met the Hammer.
Robert hit them from the flank. The "Light Food" advantage was even more apparent now. Robert's men had caught their breath. Cafferen's men were winded just from the march.
The second victory was bloodier, but faster. Cafferen surrendered when Robert smashed his horse's skull with a single blow.
Two Hours Later.
Lord Fell arrived.
He didn't even get to deploy. Robert, realizing the "Ambush" trick wouldn't work a third time as the sun was setting, simply charged straight down the road.
Robert was a demon. He had fought two battles and marched twenty miles, but he was still swinging. The "Eagle Vision" showed him the fatigue points of the enemy soldiers—red auras of exhaustion. He targeted them mercilessly.
He killed Lord Fell in single combat, the hammer crushing the Lord's breastplate.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the wet ruins of Summerhall in a bloody light, Robert Baratheon sat on a pile of rubble.
Three armies lay broken before him.
His soldiers stood around him, panting, bleeding, but alive. They looked at their packs of hardtack. They looked at the clean water in their flasks. And then they looked at the piles of Royalist dead, who had died with full bellies and slow limbs.
Hoke walked up, holding a piece of dry biscuit. He looked at it with new respect.
"It tastes like chalk, my Lord," Hoke said.
Robert laughed, a booming sound that echoed off the broken stones.
"Aye," Robert said. "But it tastes like victory."
He stood up, looking North.
"Gather the prisoners. We have a rebellion to win."
Chapter 5: The First Test
Scene 3: The Merit
Night had fallen over the ruins of Summerhall, but the darkness was pushed back by a hundred bonfires.
The rain had finally ceased, leaving the air crisp and smelling of wet ash and pine. The Stormlands host was not sleeping. They were vibrating. Three victories in one day. The impossible had been made flesh.
In the center of the ruined courtyard, a massive pile of "assets" had been stacked.
It was a mountain of steel. Swords, poleaxes, shields, conical helms, and heavy mail hauberks stripped from the three defeated Royalist armies.
To the side, the prisoners sat under guard. Lord Grandison and Lord Cafferen sat on log stumps, their hands bound, looking at the scene with a mixture of exhaustion and horror. They saw their own banners thrown into the mud.
Robert Baratheon stood before the pile. He had washed the blood from his face, but his tunic was still stained with the sweat of the march and the gore of the battle.
He didn't look like a High Lord. He looked like a blacksmith who had just finished a hard day's work.
"Hoke!" Robert called out.
The burly spearman who had complained about the hardtack pushed through the crowd. He looked nervous. He was wearing a boiled leather jerkin that was peeling at the shoulders and a pot helm that was dented from a mace blow he had miraculously survived.
"My Lord?" Hoke asked, clutching his cheap ash-wood spear.
"You held the line against Cafferen's knights," Robert said, his voice carrying over the crackle of the fires. "I saw you. You took a charge and didn't break."
"I... I dug in, my Lord. Like you taught us."
Robert reached into the pile. He didn't pull out a sword. He pulled out a heavy mail hauberk—fine steel rings, double-riveted—and a pristine, castle-forged helm with a nasal guard.
"This belonged to a knight of House Fell," Robert said. "He doesn't need it anymore."
He tossed the hauberk to Hoke. The soldier caught it, stumbling slightly under the weight.
"Put it on," Robert ordered.
"My Lord," Hoke stammered, looking at the prisoners. "This is... this is noble steel. I am just a levy. I am not trained for the weight."
"You are a veteran," Robert corrected. "The steel does not care about your father's name. It cares about keeping your blood inside your body."
He reached back into the pile and pulled out a spear. It wasn't ash. It was ironwood, tipped with a razor-sharp steel point that gleamed in the firelight.
"Your spear is splintered, Hoke," Robert said. "Take this one. It will not break when you need it most."
A murmur went through the crowd. Giving a peasant a sword made him clumsy. Giving a peasant armor made him dangerous. It made him hard to kill.
"Black Walder!" Robert shouted next.
The sergeant stepped forward.
"You organized the water," Robert said. "You kept the men moving."
Robert picked up a heavy heater shield painted with the silver Griffin of Connington (a straggler from the advance scouts) and a war-axe.
"Yours. Paint over the Griffin. Put a stag on it."
He spent the next hour doing this. He prioritized Defense. He gave out gambesons, chainmail, and helmets. He was upgrading his unit's survivability rating.
Internal Logic: A dead soldier is a sunk cost. A surviving soldier is an appreciating asset.
Lord Cafferen couldn't stay silent.
"This is theft!" the prisoner shouted from his log. "That armor belongs to my household guard! You are dressing pigs in pearls, Baratheon! It is against the laws of war!"
The camp went silent.
Robert walked over to Cafferen. The "Eagle Vision" scanned the prisoner.
Robert looked down at the defeated Lord.
"You call them pigs," Robert said softly. "But these pigs marched twenty miles in six hours. These pigs broke three armies before sunset. And these pigs are standing, while you are sitting in chains."
He turned back to his men.
"I do not care about your blood," Robert announced. "I care about your worth. You dig for me, you fight for me, you obey the contract... and you will rise."
He picked up a heavy, jeweled dagger from the pile—a useless, ornamental thing with a gold hilt. He looked at it with disdain.
Then he picked up a plain, ugly iron mace.
"Gold shines," Robert shouted, holding up the dagger.
He threw it into the mud.
He held up the mace.
"But Iron kills."
The men roared. It was a guttural sound, deep and primal. They pounded their new shields with their new weapons. It wasn't just greed; it was recognition.
Robert walked over to Hoke, who was struggling to buckle his new sword belt (a secondary weapon he had been given). Robert reached out and tightened the strap himself.
Hoke looked up, eyes wide. "My King..."
"Stay alive, Hoke," Robert said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I need you for the next one."
Robert walked away, toward his command tent.
Lord Grandison watched him go. The old Lord turned to Cafferen, his voice a whisper of terrified realization.
"We are fighting a different kind of war," Grandison murmured.
"He is a brute," Cafferen spat. "He is arming the smallfolk. If he loses, he has created an army of bandits."
"And if he wins?" Grandison asked, watching the common soldiers looking at Robert's retreating back with tears in their eyes.
"A King who eats dust with his men," Grandison said, "is a King his men will die for."
Robert entered his tent and let the flap fall. The cheer outside was deafening.
He sat on his cot, exhausted. He rubbed his eyes. He knew Grandison was right. He was breaking the feudal social contract. He was creating a dangerous precedent.
If I die, Robert thought, I leave behind ten thousand well-armed, well-trained peasants who know they are worth more than their lords say.
He smiled grimly.
Good.
"Iron," Robert whispered to the empty tent. "It's all just iron."
[End of Chapter 5]