The Redwyne fleet's ambush was timed to perfection.
With total control of the sea lanes and remote direction from a certain old lion in King's Landing, they struck the weakest point in Dragonstone's defenses exactly when Stannis's exhausted garrison was at its breaking point.
The outer walls collapsed quickly. Resistance splintered into isolated pockets, and the Dragonstone soldiers could only fight on alone.
In a narrow alley, five of Stannis's men stood with their backs to the cold stone, forming a ragged semicircle.
Most were wounded, armor dented and torn, breathing hard. One man's arm hung uselessly—clearly broken—and the other four weren't in much better shape.
Facing them were twelve Redwyne soldiers.
These Arbor warriors wore fine deep-purple armor that gleamed in the torchlight. They didn't rush. They advanced steadily, spears and blades shrinking the defenders' space, trying to win with the fewest possible losses.
"Give up," a Redwyne squad leader sneered, tapping his shield rim with the flat of his sword in a steady rhythm that made enemy hearts pound. "Stannis has no chance. There's no point in this."
"Kneel. Drop your weapons. I promise you'll live."
The Stannis men stayed silent, but their eyes held no surrender—only the desperate ferocity of cornered beasts.
These were the die-hards who had stayed with Stannis after the Blackwater.
Their leader was a grizzled veteran with a stubbled face. He spat on the ground and mocked, "These soft bastards don't have the stones to fight us. Hahaha—grapes from the Arbor don't grow real men's backbone!"
"Come on then, you gutless fucks!"
"Raaah! Raaah!!"
The five men roared together.
The Redwyne leader's face darkened. Persuading these stubborn bastards was proving harder than expected.
He raised his hand to order the final assault.
Just then—
Thud… thud…
Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed from the far end of the alley. The sound of something massive and iron being dragged across stone followed.
Both sides turned to look.
In the flickering torchlight, a single figure emerged against the glow.
He was tall, powerfully built, moving with unshakable steadiness. Atop his head, a pair of fierce, majestic antlers spread wide—the unmistakable emblem of House Baratheon.
In his right hand he dragged an enormous two-handed warhammer. The rough head scraped the stones, throwing up sparks.
The air seemed to freeze for a heartbeat.
"King Robert…" an older Stannis soldier whispered in awe, as if a legend had stepped out of story and into the present.
The sight of the antler helm sent a jolt of fear through the Redwyne leader.
Robert Baratheon's war record had been terrifying: Gulltown, three victories in a single day at Summerhall, the Stone Sept, and the legendary Trident—leading every charge himself. Especially that final hammer blow that had smashed Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and won the Iron Throne.
"Put on a show," the Redwyne leader muttered, steadying himself. He raised his voice. "Stop right there, boy, or I'll cut you down first!"
No matter how great Robert had been, the man had been dead for nearly two years, gored by a boar.
Gendry watched the Redwyne soldiers closing in and tightened his grip on the warhammer. His heart hammered.
The antler helm sat heavy on his head, vision narrowed to slits. The armor—stripped from Ser Ilen—didn't fit perfectly, but it would do.
He could hear his pulse pounding, yet strangely he felt no fear. Only a strange, surging heat flooding his limbs.
Every muscle, every drop of blood, seemed to hunger for the fight.
"Kill him!"
Seeing Gendry ignore the warning and keep walking forward, the Redwyne leader lost patience.
Three soldiers lunged, spears leveled in a wedge.
Through the visor, Gendry watched the spearheads swell in his vision. Corleone's words echoed in his mind: Don't think. Just swing like you're hammering iron—smash the bastards! Horizontal, vertical, whatever feels natural.
Gendry roared. No technique, only pure instinct.
His waist twisted. Power exploded from spine to shoulders to arms.
The massive warhammer carved a brutal arc, sweeping upward in a savage diagonal.
Bang! Crack!
The first spear snapped. The hammer crushed the soldier's chest, then continued into the second man. Both flew backward like they'd been hit by a catapult, smashing into the wall, blood spraying.
The third soldier froze in terror, but Gendry had already reversed the swing. The backhand horizontal blow caught him across the ribs.
Eighty!
Chainmail crumpled. Bones shattered. The man screamed and rolled.
Three down in seconds—one dead, two gravely wounded.
Gendry stopped, breathing hard, stunned behind the visor.
He had killed them… just like that?
But there was no nausea, no dizziness. Only a fierce, exhilarating rush.
It felt right. As if he had been born to swing this exact weapon in this exact brutal way.
The sensation of shattering spears, crushing armor, pulverizing flesh—it felt strangely like hammering glowing iron in the forge.
"This thing… really hits hard!"
A wild, primal excitement surged through him.
He looked at the warhammer in his hands—this "toy" Stannis had made for Shireen. In his grip it felt perfect, a hundred times better than the clumsy longsword he'd swung before.
Ser Corleone hadn't lied.
"It's King Robert!"
"King Robert has returned!!!"
The trapped Stannis soldiers erupted in disbelieving, joyous roars.
The antler helm. The warhammer. The devastating power. In their eyes it was the invincible legend reborn.
A miracle. The late king's spirit had returned to shield his loyal men.
In an instant, the five exhausted soldiers' morale exploded.
"For King Robert!"
"For King Stannis!"
The grizzled veteran charged first, swinging his notched sword at the suddenly disordered Redwyne line.
The other four followed, last reserves of courage blazing.
The Redwyne soldiers panicked.
The sudden "antler warrior" wasn't just terrifyingly strong—he had shattered their will.
Attacked from front and rear, their formation collapsed into chaos.
What followed was a slaughter.
Gendry fought like an armored grizzly bear among sheep. No technique, just raw power, speed, and precision.
Every swing of the warhammer whistled through the air—graze and it wounded, connect and it killed.
Combat instinct fully awakened, he was no longer the hesitant rookie who needed Corleone's reminders.
One Redwyne raised a shield—man and shield were smashed flat. Another tried a side attack and got the hammer haft rammed into his face, flipping backward.
Stannis's men fought beside their "heaven-sent Robert," hacking with everything they had left.
Soon the last Redwyne—the squad leader—was cornered.
Face pale, sword shaking, he dropped to his knees. "I surr—"
Bang!
The warhammer fell.
The alley went quiet except for heavy breathing and the thick copper smell of blood.
One unlucky Stannis soldier had died, but Gendry and the remaining four stood among the enemy corpses, drenched in gore.
The soldiers gathered around him, eyes shining with awe and gratitude, faces glowing with something close to worship.
They tried to peer under the visor, but Gendry turned his head slightly, keeping his face hidden.
According to Corleone's instructions… what now?
Right.
Gendry drew a deep breath, pushing down the nervous excitement of leading men for the first time.
He had never been good with words, but something inside him—mixed with the strange power still surging through his veins—pushed him forward.
He suddenly raised the blood-dripping warhammer high. His voice boomed through the visor, hard and commanding:
"Soldiers! Are you tired?"
He didn't reveal his identity. He simply said what Corleone had told him to say.
Yet those simple words made the four wounded men snap to attention, eyes burning.
"No!!!" they roared with everything they had left.
The sound carried, fierce enough to cut through smoke.
Their spirit made Gendry's own blood surge. He slammed the warhammer forward on the ground with a heavy thud, raised his arm, and shouted:
"Then follow me—kill every last one of those bastards!!!"
Before the main gate of Dragonstone's keep the ground was open—once a parade square, now a charnel house.
Ser Andrew Estermont hacked left and right, eyes blood-red.
Over fifty, beard and hair gray, but his back still straight as a pine. His armor was painted with blood—some his, most the enemy's.
Fewer than ten knights remained beside him, all wounded, but they held a tight circle against enemies many times their number.
Ser Andrew was no reckless fool.
He had been ordered to hold a section of outer wall, but the Redwyne fleet's sudden landing and the rapid loss of key inner strongholds had told him the castle's fall was inevitable.
What truly terrified him was a piece of intelligence he had picked up: Melisandre's fanatical followers—the "Red Party"—were moving in secret, and their target was almost certainly the reclusive Princess Shireen.
King Stannis was consumed by the front-line fighting and the red priestess's prophecies. He might not reach her in time.
And Ser Andrew—this old knight who had followed Robert Baratheon from the Stormlands to King's Landing, who had watched the Baratheon dynasty born—would never allow the king's blood, especially that kind but unlucky princess, to become a sacrifice on those madmen's altar.
So he had gathered his best knights and fought a bloody path toward the inner keep.
They were nearly at the main gate.
"Quick! Get inside!"
Ser Andrew cut down a Redwyne spearman and roared at his men, "We cannot let those fire-brained lunatics reach Princess Shireen first—do you hear me?!"
"Yes, sir!"
"We swear to protect the princess!"
His knights shouted back, bloodied but unbroken.
They were devout Seven worshippers who had always distrusted Melisandre's Lord of Light. Their loyalty belonged to House Baratheon, to King Stannis, to the blood of the stag—not to some foreign red witch from Asshai.
Just as they were about to step into the gate's shadow, disaster struck.
"Watch out!"
A sharp-eyed knight cried.
Thud! Thud!
Dozens of arrows suddenly flew from the arrow slits on both sides of the gate—but these arrows made no distinction between friend and foe.
The two lead knights fell with arrows through their throats, dead before they hit the ground.
The Redwyne soldiers following behind also took casualties and scattered in panic.
Before anyone could breathe, Ser Andrew heard running feet.
He turned. From behind the pillars on either side of the gate poured more than twenty men in dark-red robes and armor, weapons marked with flame sigils. They quickly formed a tight ring, trapping Ser Andrew and his men in the open space before the gate.
Leading them rode a tall knight in exquisitely crafted silver-plated armor edged with flame patterns that shimmered in the torchlight—beautiful and somehow sinister.
He removed his helm, revealing a lean, stern face with deep eye sockets, about forty years old.
"Ser Gody Farlin," Ser Andrew growled through clenched teeth, knuckles white on his sword hilt.
This man had once been a knight of Storm's End before becoming one of Melisandre's most fanatical followers—the heart of the so-called "Red Party."
After the war began, Queen Selyse Florent had been the first to embrace the Lord of Light, and the Red Party had gathered around her. But in truth they worshipped Melisandre herself, convinced she was closer to Stannis than the actual queen, and openly called the red priestess the true "queen."
"Ser Andrew!"
Ser Gody Farlin pointed his sword down from horseback, voice dripping with righteous anger. "While this battle rages, instead of fighting the enemy you lead loyal Stannis men into the castle. What exactly are you doing?"
"Cut the act, Farlin!" Ser Andrew snapped. "I should be asking you what you're doing!"
"If I remember right, your sector isn't here. Haven't you poisoned His Grace's mind enough? Now you're coming for the princess?"
Hearing his purpose exposed, Ser Gody Farlin showed no shame. He simply looked down coldly. "Watch your tongue, Ser Andrew."
"Lady Melisandre is the true god's messenger. Her prophecies are the light guiding His Grace on the path destiny has written. Everything we do is for His Grace, for the realm, to fight the Long Night that will soon swallow the world!"
"Bullshit!" Ser Andrew's sword trembled with rage. "Burning your own people, sacrificing a child's blood—that's your method?"
"We rose with Stannis to defend the realm's laws and justice, to execute usurpers. I will not let you stain that honor with your filthy games!"
"Hahaha!" Ser Gody Farlin's lips curved in a mocking smile. "Laws? Justice?"
"Let me tell you something—when the eternal frost freezes every living thing, your laws, justice, and honor will be worthless!"
"Only the light and heat of the true god can save us. And power always demands a price!"
He leaned forward, voice dropping. "Lady Melisandre saw it in the sacred flames: the true blood of House Baratheon holds ancient power. At the decisive moment, that bloodline's offering will become the spark that ignites victory and banishes the darkness!"
"This is not murder, Andrew. This is ascension. The princess's sacrifice—for her father, for the realm, for all humanity—is the noblest thing she can do."
"Bullshit!" Ser Andrew shook with fury, spittle flying. "She's still a child!"
"You lunatics want to tie her to a stake. I, Andrew Estermont, swear before the old gods and the new—if I have one breath left, you will not touch a single hair on that girl's head!"
"My sword will protect her until the last drop of my blood is spilled!"
Behind him, his knights raised their swords and roared in unison: "We swear to protect Princess Shireen with our lives!"
Seeing their stubbornness, the last trace of patience left Ser Gody Farlin's eyes.
"A pack of blind, pitiful worms," he said coldly. "The real war is in the North, in the darkness. To win that war, necessary sacrifices—including you—are acceptable."
He slowly raised his hand. "Since you insist on standing in the Lord of Light's path, then let the flames purify your confusion."
"Surrender… or die."
"For House Baratheon!!" Ser Andrew answered with a roar instead of words.
He charged, sword thrusting straight at Ser Gody Farlin.
The fight exploded.
Ser Andrew was a veteran of the Usurper's War—steady, seasoned, deadly. He forced back one of Farlin's guards, backhanded a spear aside, hacking and slashing with ferocious skill.
His knights fought just as hard. Better equipped and individually superior, they briefly threw the larger Red Party force into disorder.
Ser Gody Farlin stayed back on his horse, coldly directing the encirclement.
His numerical advantage was overwhelming, and his fanatics fought with suicidal zeal.
As the fighting dragged on, Ser Andrew's circle shrank. His breathing grew ragged, sweat and blood stinging his eyes. His sword arm burned, yet enemies kept coming.
"Hah… heh…"
He cut down another man, but three more immediately rushed in, blocking his view of the gate.
Despair flickered through his mind.
Back when they followed young Robert Baratheon from the Stormlands, they had faced impossible odds more than once. But they had always won.
As long as they charged behind that antler-helmed, warhammer-wielding figure who seemed like a god of war himself, no number of enemies could break their belief in victory.
"If… if King Robert were still here…"
The enemies in front of him multiplied. Blade-light flashed. Fatigue and blood loss made the world tilt.
But in the haze, behind the massed enemy silhouettes, in the flickering firelight inside the gate, he thought he saw a pair of familiar antlers swaying.
And… getting closer?
Hallucination?
No.
Not a hallucination.
It was real.
Ser Andrew's heart slammed against his ribs. He widened his eyes.
A figure wearing an antler helmet and carrying a massive warhammer was striding out of the shadows inside the gate!
Behind him came several soldiers in friendly armor—bloodied, battered, but eyes blazing, weapons raised, roaring as they charged Sir Gody Farlin's men!
But none of that mattered.
What mattered was the figure in front—the antler helm, the walk, the sound of the warhammer dragging across stone…
Time seemed to reverse.
Sir Gody Farlin also heard the commotion and turned. One look at the sudden "antler warrior" and his heart lurched.
What the hell was happening?
King Robert Baratheon had been dead for nearly two years!
He shook his head, forcing focus, about to order men to intercept—
Too late.
The antler warrior's target was clear. He ignored everyone else and charged straight at the heavily guarded Sir Gody Farlin.
His movements looked clumsy, almost brutish, but the speed was shocking and the power immense.
Two Red Party soldiers tried to block him and were simply knocked aside.
That strength!
Sir Gody Farlin's face went white. He drew his sword and spurred his horse forward to meet the charge head-on.
Unfortunately, it was probably the worst decision he would ever make.
In a heartbeat the antler warrior reached the horse. His legs drove off the ground—and Gendry, fully armored, leaped into the air, warhammer rising high.
The hammer fell in a deadly arc.
Sir Gody Farlin raised his sword in desperate defense, trusting his fine armor and skill.
Bang! Crack!!!
The silver-plated helm—and the head inside—burst like an overripe melon under the massive warhammer.
Blood and brains sprayed.
The headless corpse toppled from the saddle.
For one frozen instant, everyone—Red Party and Ser Andrew's men alike—stared in horrified silence.
Gendry stood before the warhorse, glancing down at the headless corpse and shattered helm. His hammer hand tightened slightly. His legs ached a little.
He had poured everything into that strike.
And the result… was excellent.
He lifted his head, looked at the stunned Ser Andrew, then surveyed the momentarily panicked Red Party soldiers.
Then he did something that made Ser Andrew's blood surge and nearly brought tears to the old knight's eyes.
Gendry slammed the still-dripping warhammer down on the stones with a heavy thud.
He raised his other hand, clenched his fist, and struck his armored chest with a furious roar:
"Hah!!!!"
Ser Andrew's lips trembled. A thousand words died in his throat. He dropped to one knee and shouted hoarsely:
"Long live King Robert Baratheon!!!"
With that cry, the remaining Red Party soldiers broke completely. Weapons clattered to the ground as they surrendered.
This internal Baratheon clash had been decided by the appearance of one antler helm and one warhammer.
High above on the castle walls, Corleone watched quietly. Seeing Gendry perform so well, he nodded in satisfaction.
The boy might not be the brightest, but he followed orders to the letter.
Not bad.
"Godfather."
Shireen looked up at him, innocent and curious. "Since you knew what the helmet and hammer could do, why didn't you go win their loyalty yourself? Why let that guy take all the credit?"
Corleone blinked, then smiled and gently patted her head.
"I can't swing a hammer that heavy in a fight, little Shireen."
"And…"
He looked down at Gendry below, basking in the kneeling cheers, and spoke thoughtfully.
"In this world, there are always people meant to stand in the sunlight and receive admiration—like the ones who sit on the Iron Throne, or the respectable lords in the Small Council."
"And the sunlight those people enjoy is always decided by certain individuals standing in the shadows."
"The glory in the light is fleeting. But the responsibility in the shadows… that is eternal."