New GOT Fic: I don't want comfort
Title: I don't want comfort.
Author: reading_is_in
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Rating: PG (plus-ish)
Summary: An account of the Siege of Storm's End. Or, an apologia for Stannis Baratheon.
Disclaimer: Characters are property of George R. R. Martin/HBO
Robert,
Storm’s End is besieged. Tyrell has brought the strength of the reach. Lord Paxter Redwyne holds the bay. I have stores for six months at ration.
Stannis.
*
Beloved Brother,
We are sorry for your news, but do not fear. We will have victory before six months. Bolton has declared for us with all his bannermen. I daresay some of them will chafe at first but we will bring them to heel. These Northern men are good fighters. The most of the people north of the Twins are mine. We will take King’s Landing I daresay in four months.
Do not show them any sign of weakness, brother, but fly the banners as usual, & hold a feast to show them we have no fear. Mace Tyrell is a weak lord who still hides behind his mother’s skirts & the strength of the Reach is not what it was. Hold fast to our cause & we send our love and regards to you and the Lady Selyse & our Beloved brother Renly & our natural son & our Household
Witness this day by my hand
Robert of the House Baratheon, Defender of the Seven Kingdoms
~ Ours is the Fury ~
*
'Robert needs a new scribe', Stannis thought dryly, looking over the disjointed missive. This one was too liberal with his impositions. ‘Beloved Brother’, ‘love and regards’ - those weren’t Robert’s words. And was that a royal ‘we’, or did it refer to the assembled rebels of the North and the Riverlands? ‘Defender of the Seven Kingdoms’ was a clever touch, he supposed. Not the king’s title, but close to it. He considered a moment, then tossed the parchment into the brazier, where it crumpled and charred.
“What are you doing!?” Only a quick intervention from Cressen stopped Renly from trying to grab the letter back out of the ashes. “I want to see Robert’s letter!”
“Robert didn’t write that,” Stannis told him.
“Did it talk about me?” Renly asked, undeterred.
Stannis considered. it couldn’t hurt: “He sends his love.”
Renly beamed: “Did he get to King’s Landing yet? Did he fight the mad king?”
Stannis looked at Cressen.
“Well,” said Cressen to Renly but with one eye on Stannis: “Not exactly….Robert and Lord Stark and our allies cannot simply march into King’s Landing. Aerys’ armies would not let them, just as his allies will not let us leave Storm’s End. Robert and Lord Stark must fight their way through the seven kingdoms, and win us more allies as they go.”
“Knights can fight their way through their enemies,” Renly said, and looked sideways at Stannis. Being six, he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought he was, but Stannis was annoyed to hear that he’d already mastered the courtly tone of disdain. His jaw clenched involuntarily - he only realized when his teeth were grinding together.
“Get him out of here, I have to think,” Stannis said to Cressen.
“Come along then young master it’s time for your lesson.” Renly put up fuss but allowed Cressen to shepherd him out of the small hall, his high little voice demanding a story instead of the counting frame fading away down the corridor. ‘He’s spoilt’, Stannis thought, suddenly and with unease. ‘For all that we have been at war for months now, he has never known a day’s hardship’. There were thirteen years between Stannis and Renly, and until now, he’d rarely cause to particularly notice his younger brother. Now he’d be responsible for the child throughout a siege that, whatever Robert said, had no discernable ending. The child and the aging maester and the whole of the garrison of Storm’s End.
“Storm’s End is impregnable, my lord,” said ancient Lord Cedric Buckler slowly. “They say Durran’s Defiance will repel an enemy’s arrow as well as it repels opposing magic.”
“I put no faith nor fear in ‘magic’”, said Stannis to the table, “As all my lords here know well. Though I don’t doubt the stones of Storm’s End can withstand any assault the Reach might throw at us, my concern is for our people in the meantime.”
“Have faith in your brother then,” advised another lord, “And that the Seven will speed our just cause.”
‘Useless, the lot of them’, thought Stannis, though whether he meant the Seven or the lords of the Stormlands gathered around his table even he could not have said. What he
needed was strategy, not faith.
“Have the butcher slaughter all cows and chickens,” he said to his squire. “We cannot afford grain to feed them, and the meat can be preserved.”
“Yes my lord,” said the boy, and bowed before making a very hasty exit. ‘I am alone’, Stannis thought suddenly. ‘In this, as in everything else’.
*
That night he took a proper count of all the stores in Storm’s End: not only food, but medicines, cloth, wax, wood, steel and other necessities. There were wells inside the battlements, so water at least would not be a problem until and unless Tyrell found a way to pollute the supply from underground. He drew up a detailed calendar, allotting supplies over time according to their perishability. There were 300 armed men at the garrison - all Robert had left him. A few had families - Ser Gawen’s wife had birthed a girl the previous week, he recalled, in a terrible stroke of timing. There was Robert’s bastard, still at his wetnurses’s breast, and of course his own lady wife, so often sick already. The thought of Selyse made him uncomfortable. He had been married a year now, and aside from the strict fulfilment of his duty as a husband, he had found little time for his wife and less to say to her. He put that aside for the moment.
A soft knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come,” he said. At this hour it could only be Cressen, unless there were some sort of emergency, in which case the horns would be sounding and the lamps lit.
“My lord,” said the maester.
“Maester,” said Stannis, and indicated that the maester take a chair. Cressen got to the point:
“If you have a moment, I would like to suggest an address of the garrison on the morrow.” Stannis appreciated the directness. What he needed was good counsel, not pleasantries or worse - some sort of misplaced sympathy for his position.
“That would be appropriate,” he nodded. “I’ll need to advise everyone that we won’t be negotiating with Tyrell, and implement rationing.”
“You might also attempt to lift their spirits,” said Cressen. “Morale is important during a siege.”
“Yes,” Stannis had read that. But how? For himself, once he’d decided that Robert’s cause was just, concepts ‘morale’ and ‘spirits’ were irrelevant. He would live or die by the path he’d committed to.
“You might remind them how their valour will be remembered, how the honour and protection of House Baratheon will be theirs and their families,” said Cressen. his opinion must have shown on his face, for the maester added: “It’s harmless, Stannis, and it might help,” with just a hint of amusement in his voice.
“They are soldiers,” Stannis said, “And noblemen. They shouldn’t have to be cajoled and flattered like children.”
“My boy, when this war is over and you’re Lord of Storm’s End, you may find that children and noblemen have more in common than you think,” said Cressen.
Stannis stared at him for a long moment. “Alright,” he said at last. “I’ll - make a speech.”
“Good,” said Cressen, and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder as he got up to leave. “If I might offer one more suggestion?”
“You know you can say whatever you want to me.”
“Then go to bed. It’s very late and your candle there has almost melted onto the parchment.”
Stannis quickly rescued the paper from where dripping wax looked to overflow its little dish. “When I finish this,” he said.
“As my lord wills,” said Cressen mildly, and took his leave.
*
In the beginning it wasn’t so bad. As the Lord of Storm’s End, Robert had commanded fierce loyalty and great personal affection, and men all professed conviction for the cause. They sang songs for the rebellion in the eveings, while Stannis went up to the battlements and looked out at the field of green-and-gold pavilions on the west side and the sails of the Redwyne fleet in the east. So far as he could see, Tyrell had brought little siege machinery. ‘They know they cannot take the castle,’ he thought. ‘They don’t mean to. They mean to force us out’. Or, force Robert to retreat once he realized his brothers and his garrison were starving. Robert wouldn’t. Stannis didn’t fault him for that - he wouldn’t either.
*
“Peaches, my lord,” said the squire. He looked doubtfully from the basket to his master and back again.
“No doubt poisoned,” said Lord Buckler, but that didn’t stop everyone in the chamber from staring at the fruits. No-one had tasted anything fresh for almost three months. Hunger wore away dignity.
“No,” Stannis shook his head. “Too obvious. Even Tyrell isn’t that stupid. It’s a mock, as the feasts are. It is simply an invitation to surrender.”
“If they were tested,” said Cressen doubtfully, “They could perhaps be divided amongst the children….”
The squire looked up sharply. He was only a child himself, nine or ten at most.
“No,” said Stannis, and to the boy: “Return the peaches to the messenger. Tell them to thank Lord Tyrell for his thoughtfulness, but assure him we are well supplied in Storm’s End.”
The squire stared. He was a shy child, and this was probably the longest he had ever met Stannis’ gaze.
“Yes my lord,” he said dully, after a moment.
“Ser Trystan, escort him,” said Stannis.
*
The Gawen infant died its third month. The bastard’s wetnurse followed shortly, so Stannis ordered that the bastard be given to Gawen’s wife to nurse. The bastard itself seemed strong. It looked like Robert, Stannis thought as he stood over the crib one night, at a loss and not wanting to admit it, except for the unfortunate Florent ears. Intelligent dark eyes tracked his face as he watched it. Oddly trusting. He didn’t feel anything in particular, except for the added weight of another responsibility.
The Lady Selyse took to her bed in the fourth month. Stannis had been avoiding attending her, but could no longer put it off without seeming positively churlish. He greeted her, kissed her hand, then sat awkwardly at the side of her bed whilst her maid fussed around disapprovingly, trying to think of something to say. ‘And I am supposed to get a son on this’, he thought almost disdainfully, then was ashamed of the thought. Unable to bear it any longer, he made his excused, and retreated to the belltower with the thought of vague thought of sending a raven to Robert, even though the besieging forces would try to shoot it down. When it came to it, though, he had nothing to say to him.
*
Six months had been optimistic.
No, not optimistic, he thought impatiently. Realistic. Necessary. It wasn’t as though he allotted himself more food than anyone else. Less, if anything. He realized quite quickly they were going to be hungry. Well, then that was that. He could be hungry if he had to.
He had never been hungry before, except in the sense of being ready for a meal. Long-term hunger, the kind that came from not having enough to eat from one day to the next, was a different sensation. It wasn’t an endless gnawing or feeling of emptiness - that came and went, and could be dulled by drinking water, though if his stomach was totally empty that tended to make him nauseous. It was more like a feeling of constantly being worn down a little further - a little tireder, a little slower, a little less sharp. That was the worst part from Stannis’ perspective - he really needed all his wits about him.
The rest of the garrison made it difficult though. The men complained. A lot. The Lords of the Reach had taken to feasting in sight of the battlements. Some of the younger soldiers watched with anguish from their posts. They could smell the meat roasting. That scent brought on the sharp physical pain, the intermittent grasps of acute hunger in the stomach. They went away if you ignored them long enough, to be replaced by general weariness.
Stannis had taken Cressen’s advice and given a speech at the beginning, and now he made it a regular practice to at least give a short address. Words of encouragement - and increasingly, words of warning. No hint of treachery could be tolerated. He consulted the histories, and saw that in other sieges, commanders had pinned notices about their keeps to remind the garrison that the punishment for desertion was death. Cressen advised against it.
The maester was looking older by the day. Stannis strongly suspected he was giving Renly some of his food, but he didn’t say anything. That was Cressen’s decision. In any case, it seemed to be sorely needed. From the little he saw of them, all the children at Storm’s End appeared to be losing weight quickly. Some became quieter and duller, but Renly grew wild and angry, refusing to learn or listen to the maester, and tearing around the castle at all hours knowing full well Cressen couldn’t catch him. Ser Trystan Bucker, Gawen’s second-in-command, delivered him kicking and screaming to Stannis in the middle of the night, saying he’d found the young lord wandering around the armoury. Stannis smacked his brother with a wooden ruler for that, but not very hard.
*
In the seventh month they ate the horses.
“What is it?” Renly asked, eyes wide and dark and suspicious.
“Horse.”
“You don’t eat horse,” said Renly.
“Plenty of cultures do,” said Cressen. “Remember your lessons about the Dothraki?”
“In wartime you eat what you’re given.” Stannis pushed his chair back from the table abruptly, suddenly unable to take his own instruction. By the ninth month, the sensations he once recognized as hunger were all but gone, replaced by coldness, nausea and a maddening sense of vagueness and lack of attention. He’d never thought much about his body, beyond the necessities of basic training, but now its futile whining, its pointless weakness and demands, dogged him day and night. That annoyed him. There was no more food, and what he did eat made him want to vomit, so why did he keep thinking about it? Pointless thoughts of food, food, food were humiliating. Base. Stannis didn’t have a mirror, but when he undressed he didn’t recognise his body anymore, the sharp defined angles and points of bone. There were hollows between his hipbones and stomach, and the skin between his ribs was starting to indent. It was - pitiful, and that angered him. His body was a traitor. Weakness was the last thing he could afford.
He had to force himself to follow the words of his advisors and retainers. Some were angry now. They wouldn’t say as much to his face, but he caught the rumblings and mutterings from around corners, received dark looks of discontent. Stannis had never been popular, and their loyalty to Robert and his cause waned with time and distance. The absence of news didn’t help.
“It might be that Redwyne’s archers have shot down any ravens Robert sent,” said Cressen. But to Stannis it didn’t matter. Robert had told him to hold Storm’s End, and he would hold it until the siege was lifted or he died.
By the tenth month, the latter was starting to seem like a possibility. Sometimes, now, when he woke, the feeling of sickness was overwhelming that he had to spit bile into the chamberpot. Blackness hovered at the edges of vision when he stood. Yet food revolted him. They were down to the last of stringy cats, and the old and the children and the les hardy men were beginning to die. Selyse clung on, surprisingly, and he was forced to reflect that perhaps there was more steel in her than he’d thought. Yet the thought of putting a son in her seemed more impossible than ever. Not that this was the time for it, but in truth, these days, he wasn’t particularly sure that he could. The very notion was exhausting to the point of distress.
In the eleventh month, Gawen and his men made their attempt and he absorbed the truth of Cressen’s words that meant in any form could no longer be wasted. Cressen was like a skeleton, the bones of his face prominent and deep hollows under his eyes, and it was that above all that made Stannis hate. The emotion was unfamiliar. He thought he hated the Lords of the Reach, despite the fact that in their place he’d have done much the same. He wasn’t prepared to eat a man - yet - but if Gawen died in the cells he wouldn’t prevent the others. Some of the men had taken to chewing on sawdust, but Stannis put a stop to that when they found one of the squires dead, bloody sawdust half-regurgitated down his tunic. More rules made the men angrier, and some deep part of him wanted to scream at them, ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you alive?’
That night, Stannis realized he hadn’t seen nor heard his little brother all day. Panic seized his heart. The room spun a he pushed himself up from his desk, and a horrible sinking dread settled on him as he ran, heedlessly, through the corridors. He stopped outside Renly’s chamber. the door was closed all the wy but a crack, as Renyl usually demanded.
Stannis didn’t let himself pause to thnk.
A small bundle sturred under the coves as he barged in.
“Renly,” Stannis said.
“What?” Tearful and angry. Renly sat up and rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“Nothing,” Stannis’ heart was pounding. He felt faint with relief. “Go back to sleep.”
Renly stared at him hatefully. He looked tired in a way no child ever should. His fingers, clutching the edge of the covers, were white little twigs, and that hurt Stannis somewhere he thought long put away.
Abruptly, Renly started crying. Not the controlled, manipulative crying he used to practice when he was younger, but real helpless sobbing. He didn’t bother to hide his face and pound the bed with his fists, as he used to on the rare occasions he was denied something. He just sat there and cried.
Stannis froze. he had never been in this situation before.
“Renly-“ he tried, but found he had nothing to say.
“I want Robert,” Renly sobbed. “I don’t care about the mad king I want Robert to come back. And I want my pony and my puppieeees…..”
Stannis made an abrupt start forward, and found himself on the bed next to his brother. He put a hand on Renly’s back. Small vertebrae and the structure of ribs pressed like stones against his palm. He felt sick.
“Robert is fighting a rebellion,” he repeated emptily.
“I hate the rebellion.”
Stannis wanted to shake him. He also wanted to put his arms around him. above all, he wished he had something to give him - if not food, then reassurance.
He had nothing.
“You said Robert would save us,” said Renly.
“I said nothing of the sort,” said Stannis sharply. “I said he was going to war for us, and all the people of Westeros.”
“But I’m hungryyyyy.”
“You won’t be for much longer,” Stannis said.
*
In the end, Robert never saved them.
Robert won the war - well, the combined forces of the North and the Riverlands won the war with a helping hand from some last minute Lannister pragmatism - and Robert took the throne and the queen and the love of the commons. The garrison greeted him like a conquering hero, all their doubt and anger and terror and pain just - wiped away that morning. A smuggler saved them, his fish and onions keeping them alive until Stark arrived and the Tyrell host dipped their banners. The bastard lived and Robert named it Edric, and invited or commanded the whole House to King’s Landing for the wedding and ceremonies and to see all the new knights get their land and titles and his enemies kneel and swear fealty.
“But they’re bad men,” said Renly sleepily. He was perched on Robert’s hip, with his face in his shoulder and arms around his neck like a little monkey. He was frankly too old to be carried like that, but had refused to be put down when Robert lifted him to greet him, so Robert shrugged and carried him around using words like ‘fuck’ and describing war wounds over his head.
“Not so bad,” Robert said. “They had a bad king, but they fought bravely for him. You should forgive your enemies if they’re sorry and swear to serve you faithfully. That’s what good lords and kings do.”
“Stannis puts his enemies in the dungeons,” Renly said.
“I - well that was different,” said Robert magnanimously, and gave him Storm’s End, and apparently thought he was doing Stannis an enormous honour by giving him Dragonstone.
“Traditionally, Dragonstone the seat of the heir to the Iron Throne,” Cressen reminded him, as he packed a few things for the journey to King’s Landing, silent.
“Storm’s End is my-“ home, he had almost said. “Right,” he finished. Thinking of Dragonstone made him exhausted all over again. A strong seat of Targaryen loyalists, there would be uprisings and disorder there for months or years.
“So may be the Throne, one day,” said Cressen. Stannis paused. Somehow, though he knew intellectually he was now Robert’s heir, the truth of it hadn’t yet dawned on him.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Robert will have a crop of sons. And daughters. Legitimate and not. No doubt I’ll have to put up with some of them running around my castle.”
Cressen paused. “Have you - had occasion to meet Cersei Lannister, my lord?”
“No,” Stannis said.
“Well,” said Cressen. “I would not dismiss the possibility that you might inherit altogether. The next years will be…testing.”
Stannis was silent. He didn’t quite know what to make of the idea. What kind of king would he be? How would be remembered? ‘Just’, he thought at once. ‘Fair. I would root out all the corruption at King’s Landing. All the flatterers and liars. I would make it so that lords received the same justice as commoners. I would repair the treasury. I-’
No. There was no point in thinking about it. He had a journey to make; and then, a new holdfast to secure, a son or two to get on his wife.
“You’ll come with me to Dragonstone,” he said to Cressen.
“Of course my lord,” said the maester.
Stannis thought. “And Ser Davos,” he said.
“The smuggler?” Cressen asked, surprised.
“He is a knight, not a smuggler now. I would have him at my court, if he will, once he has put his lands in order.”
“Is that wise?” said Cressen doubtfully.
“I consider myself a good judge of men.” Stannis turned to face him. He wanted to say, ‘thank you. Thank you for everything’. Instead he said, “You have my leave to go, maester. It has been a long day, and I can see that you are still not well.”
“I will take it,” Cressen rose. Then he said, “Stannis.”
“Hmm,” Stannis was staring distractedly at his several cloaks, trying to decide what was appropriate for the ceremony and if Robert would care.
“Someday, I would be proud to call you my king.”
END
Notes:
1) In England, it was normal to refer to babies as 'it' until relatively recently. This probably reflects high infant mortality rates, and a reluctanct to humanize the child before a certain age was achieved.
2) Most of the lines that this fic grew out of are in the books, notably Cressen's POV in A Clash of Kings,but I followed TV-canon in having Selyse at Storm's End during the siege (and thus Edric born) just because I think it's more interesting that way.
3) Title from Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.
Author: reading_is_in
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Rating: PG (plus-ish)
Summary: An account of the Siege of Storm's End. Or, an apologia for Stannis Baratheon.
Disclaimer: Characters are property of George R. R. Martin/HBO
Robert,
Storm’s End is besieged. Tyrell has brought the strength of the reach. Lord Paxter Redwyne holds the bay. I have stores for six months at ration.
Stannis.
*
Beloved Brother,
We are sorry for your news, but do not fear. We will have victory before six months. Bolton has declared for us with all his bannermen. I daresay some of them will chafe at first but we will bring them to heel. These Northern men are good fighters. The most of the people north of the Twins are mine. We will take King’s Landing I daresay in four months.
Do not show them any sign of weakness, brother, but fly the banners as usual, & hold a feast to show them we have no fear. Mace Tyrell is a weak lord who still hides behind his mother’s skirts & the strength of the Reach is not what it was. Hold fast to our cause & we send our love and regards to you and the Lady Selyse & our Beloved brother Renly & our natural son & our Household
Witness this day by my hand
Robert of the House Baratheon, Defender of the Seven Kingdoms
~ Ours is the Fury ~
*
'Robert needs a new scribe', Stannis thought dryly, looking over the disjointed missive. This one was too liberal with his impositions. ‘Beloved Brother’, ‘love and regards’ - those weren’t Robert’s words. And was that a royal ‘we’, or did it refer to the assembled rebels of the North and the Riverlands? ‘Defender of the Seven Kingdoms’ was a clever touch, he supposed. Not the king’s title, but close to it. He considered a moment, then tossed the parchment into the brazier, where it crumpled and charred.
“What are you doing!?” Only a quick intervention from Cressen stopped Renly from trying to grab the letter back out of the ashes. “I want to see Robert’s letter!”
“Robert didn’t write that,” Stannis told him.
“Did it talk about me?” Renly asked, undeterred.
Stannis considered. it couldn’t hurt: “He sends his love.”
Renly beamed: “Did he get to King’s Landing yet? Did he fight the mad king?”
Stannis looked at Cressen.
“Well,” said Cressen to Renly but with one eye on Stannis: “Not exactly….Robert and Lord Stark and our allies cannot simply march into King’s Landing. Aerys’ armies would not let them, just as his allies will not let us leave Storm’s End. Robert and Lord Stark must fight their way through the seven kingdoms, and win us more allies as they go.”
“Knights can fight their way through their enemies,” Renly said, and looked sideways at Stannis. Being six, he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought he was, but Stannis was annoyed to hear that he’d already mastered the courtly tone of disdain. His jaw clenched involuntarily - he only realized when his teeth were grinding together.
“Get him out of here, I have to think,” Stannis said to Cressen.
“Come along then young master it’s time for your lesson.” Renly put up fuss but allowed Cressen to shepherd him out of the small hall, his high little voice demanding a story instead of the counting frame fading away down the corridor. ‘He’s spoilt’, Stannis thought, suddenly and with unease. ‘For all that we have been at war for months now, he has never known a day’s hardship’. There were thirteen years between Stannis and Renly, and until now, he’d rarely cause to particularly notice his younger brother. Now he’d be responsible for the child throughout a siege that, whatever Robert said, had no discernable ending. The child and the aging maester and the whole of the garrison of Storm’s End.
“Storm’s End is impregnable, my lord,” said ancient Lord Cedric Buckler slowly. “They say Durran’s Defiance will repel an enemy’s arrow as well as it repels opposing magic.”
“I put no faith nor fear in ‘magic’”, said Stannis to the table, “As all my lords here know well. Though I don’t doubt the stones of Storm’s End can withstand any assault the Reach might throw at us, my concern is for our people in the meantime.”
“Have faith in your brother then,” advised another lord, “And that the Seven will speed our just cause.”
‘Useless, the lot of them’, thought Stannis, though whether he meant the Seven or the lords of the Stormlands gathered around his table even he could not have said. What he
needed was strategy, not faith.
“Have the butcher slaughter all cows and chickens,” he said to his squire. “We cannot afford grain to feed them, and the meat can be preserved.”
“Yes my lord,” said the boy, and bowed before making a very hasty exit. ‘I am alone’, Stannis thought suddenly. ‘In this, as in everything else’.
*
That night he took a proper count of all the stores in Storm’s End: not only food, but medicines, cloth, wax, wood, steel and other necessities. There were wells inside the battlements, so water at least would not be a problem until and unless Tyrell found a way to pollute the supply from underground. He drew up a detailed calendar, allotting supplies over time according to their perishability. There were 300 armed men at the garrison - all Robert had left him. A few had families - Ser Gawen’s wife had birthed a girl the previous week, he recalled, in a terrible stroke of timing. There was Robert’s bastard, still at his wetnurses’s breast, and of course his own lady wife, so often sick already. The thought of Selyse made him uncomfortable. He had been married a year now, and aside from the strict fulfilment of his duty as a husband, he had found little time for his wife and less to say to her. He put that aside for the moment.
A soft knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come,” he said. At this hour it could only be Cressen, unless there were some sort of emergency, in which case the horns would be sounding and the lamps lit.
“My lord,” said the maester.
“Maester,” said Stannis, and indicated that the maester take a chair. Cressen got to the point:
“If you have a moment, I would like to suggest an address of the garrison on the morrow.” Stannis appreciated the directness. What he needed was good counsel, not pleasantries or worse - some sort of misplaced sympathy for his position.
“That would be appropriate,” he nodded. “I’ll need to advise everyone that we won’t be negotiating with Tyrell, and implement rationing.”
“You might also attempt to lift their spirits,” said Cressen. “Morale is important during a siege.”
“Yes,” Stannis had read that. But how? For himself, once he’d decided that Robert’s cause was just, concepts ‘morale’ and ‘spirits’ were irrelevant. He would live or die by the path he’d committed to.
“You might remind them how their valour will be remembered, how the honour and protection of House Baratheon will be theirs and their families,” said Cressen. his opinion must have shown on his face, for the maester added: “It’s harmless, Stannis, and it might help,” with just a hint of amusement in his voice.
“They are soldiers,” Stannis said, “And noblemen. They shouldn’t have to be cajoled and flattered like children.”
“My boy, when this war is over and you’re Lord of Storm’s End, you may find that children and noblemen have more in common than you think,” said Cressen.
Stannis stared at him for a long moment. “Alright,” he said at last. “I’ll - make a speech.”
“Good,” said Cressen, and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder as he got up to leave. “If I might offer one more suggestion?”
“You know you can say whatever you want to me.”
“Then go to bed. It’s very late and your candle there has almost melted onto the parchment.”
Stannis quickly rescued the paper from where dripping wax looked to overflow its little dish. “When I finish this,” he said.
“As my lord wills,” said Cressen mildly, and took his leave.
*
In the beginning it wasn’t so bad. As the Lord of Storm’s End, Robert had commanded fierce loyalty and great personal affection, and men all professed conviction for the cause. They sang songs for the rebellion in the eveings, while Stannis went up to the battlements and looked out at the field of green-and-gold pavilions on the west side and the sails of the Redwyne fleet in the east. So far as he could see, Tyrell had brought little siege machinery. ‘They know they cannot take the castle,’ he thought. ‘They don’t mean to. They mean to force us out’. Or, force Robert to retreat once he realized his brothers and his garrison were starving. Robert wouldn’t. Stannis didn’t fault him for that - he wouldn’t either.
*
“Peaches, my lord,” said the squire. He looked doubtfully from the basket to his master and back again.
“No doubt poisoned,” said Lord Buckler, but that didn’t stop everyone in the chamber from staring at the fruits. No-one had tasted anything fresh for almost three months. Hunger wore away dignity.
“No,” Stannis shook his head. “Too obvious. Even Tyrell isn’t that stupid. It’s a mock, as the feasts are. It is simply an invitation to surrender.”
“If they were tested,” said Cressen doubtfully, “They could perhaps be divided amongst the children….”
The squire looked up sharply. He was only a child himself, nine or ten at most.
“No,” said Stannis, and to the boy: “Return the peaches to the messenger. Tell them to thank Lord Tyrell for his thoughtfulness, but assure him we are well supplied in Storm’s End.”
The squire stared. He was a shy child, and this was probably the longest he had ever met Stannis’ gaze.
“Yes my lord,” he said dully, after a moment.
“Ser Trystan, escort him,” said Stannis.
*
The Gawen infant died its third month. The bastard’s wetnurse followed shortly, so Stannis ordered that the bastard be given to Gawen’s wife to nurse. The bastard itself seemed strong. It looked like Robert, Stannis thought as he stood over the crib one night, at a loss and not wanting to admit it, except for the unfortunate Florent ears. Intelligent dark eyes tracked his face as he watched it. Oddly trusting. He didn’t feel anything in particular, except for the added weight of another responsibility.
The Lady Selyse took to her bed in the fourth month. Stannis had been avoiding attending her, but could no longer put it off without seeming positively churlish. He greeted her, kissed her hand, then sat awkwardly at the side of her bed whilst her maid fussed around disapprovingly, trying to think of something to say. ‘And I am supposed to get a son on this’, he thought almost disdainfully, then was ashamed of the thought. Unable to bear it any longer, he made his excused, and retreated to the belltower with the thought of vague thought of sending a raven to Robert, even though the besieging forces would try to shoot it down. When it came to it, though, he had nothing to say to him.
*
Six months had been optimistic.
No, not optimistic, he thought impatiently. Realistic. Necessary. It wasn’t as though he allotted himself more food than anyone else. Less, if anything. He realized quite quickly they were going to be hungry. Well, then that was that. He could be hungry if he had to.
He had never been hungry before, except in the sense of being ready for a meal. Long-term hunger, the kind that came from not having enough to eat from one day to the next, was a different sensation. It wasn’t an endless gnawing or feeling of emptiness - that came and went, and could be dulled by drinking water, though if his stomach was totally empty that tended to make him nauseous. It was more like a feeling of constantly being worn down a little further - a little tireder, a little slower, a little less sharp. That was the worst part from Stannis’ perspective - he really needed all his wits about him.
The rest of the garrison made it difficult though. The men complained. A lot. The Lords of the Reach had taken to feasting in sight of the battlements. Some of the younger soldiers watched with anguish from their posts. They could smell the meat roasting. That scent brought on the sharp physical pain, the intermittent grasps of acute hunger in the stomach. They went away if you ignored them long enough, to be replaced by general weariness.
Stannis had taken Cressen’s advice and given a speech at the beginning, and now he made it a regular practice to at least give a short address. Words of encouragement - and increasingly, words of warning. No hint of treachery could be tolerated. He consulted the histories, and saw that in other sieges, commanders had pinned notices about their keeps to remind the garrison that the punishment for desertion was death. Cressen advised against it.
The maester was looking older by the day. Stannis strongly suspected he was giving Renly some of his food, but he didn’t say anything. That was Cressen’s decision. In any case, it seemed to be sorely needed. From the little he saw of them, all the children at Storm’s End appeared to be losing weight quickly. Some became quieter and duller, but Renly grew wild and angry, refusing to learn or listen to the maester, and tearing around the castle at all hours knowing full well Cressen couldn’t catch him. Ser Trystan Bucker, Gawen’s second-in-command, delivered him kicking and screaming to Stannis in the middle of the night, saying he’d found the young lord wandering around the armoury. Stannis smacked his brother with a wooden ruler for that, but not very hard.
*
In the seventh month they ate the horses.
“What is it?” Renly asked, eyes wide and dark and suspicious.
“Horse.”
“You don’t eat horse,” said Renly.
“Plenty of cultures do,” said Cressen. “Remember your lessons about the Dothraki?”
“In wartime you eat what you’re given.” Stannis pushed his chair back from the table abruptly, suddenly unable to take his own instruction. By the ninth month, the sensations he once recognized as hunger were all but gone, replaced by coldness, nausea and a maddening sense of vagueness and lack of attention. He’d never thought much about his body, beyond the necessities of basic training, but now its futile whining, its pointless weakness and demands, dogged him day and night. That annoyed him. There was no more food, and what he did eat made him want to vomit, so why did he keep thinking about it? Pointless thoughts of food, food, food were humiliating. Base. Stannis didn’t have a mirror, but when he undressed he didn’t recognise his body anymore, the sharp defined angles and points of bone. There were hollows between his hipbones and stomach, and the skin between his ribs was starting to indent. It was - pitiful, and that angered him. His body was a traitor. Weakness was the last thing he could afford.
He had to force himself to follow the words of his advisors and retainers. Some were angry now. They wouldn’t say as much to his face, but he caught the rumblings and mutterings from around corners, received dark looks of discontent. Stannis had never been popular, and their loyalty to Robert and his cause waned with time and distance. The absence of news didn’t help.
“It might be that Redwyne’s archers have shot down any ravens Robert sent,” said Cressen. But to Stannis it didn’t matter. Robert had told him to hold Storm’s End, and he would hold it until the siege was lifted or he died.
By the tenth month, the latter was starting to seem like a possibility. Sometimes, now, when he woke, the feeling of sickness was overwhelming that he had to spit bile into the chamberpot. Blackness hovered at the edges of vision when he stood. Yet food revolted him. They were down to the last of stringy cats, and the old and the children and the les hardy men were beginning to die. Selyse clung on, surprisingly, and he was forced to reflect that perhaps there was more steel in her than he’d thought. Yet the thought of putting a son in her seemed more impossible than ever. Not that this was the time for it, but in truth, these days, he wasn’t particularly sure that he could. The very notion was exhausting to the point of distress.
In the eleventh month, Gawen and his men made their attempt and he absorbed the truth of Cressen’s words that meant in any form could no longer be wasted. Cressen was like a skeleton, the bones of his face prominent and deep hollows under his eyes, and it was that above all that made Stannis hate. The emotion was unfamiliar. He thought he hated the Lords of the Reach, despite the fact that in their place he’d have done much the same. He wasn’t prepared to eat a man - yet - but if Gawen died in the cells he wouldn’t prevent the others. Some of the men had taken to chewing on sawdust, but Stannis put a stop to that when they found one of the squires dead, bloody sawdust half-regurgitated down his tunic. More rules made the men angrier, and some deep part of him wanted to scream at them, ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you alive?’
That night, Stannis realized he hadn’t seen nor heard his little brother all day. Panic seized his heart. The room spun a he pushed himself up from his desk, and a horrible sinking dread settled on him as he ran, heedlessly, through the corridors. He stopped outside Renly’s chamber. the door was closed all the wy but a crack, as Renyl usually demanded.
Stannis didn’t let himself pause to thnk.
A small bundle sturred under the coves as he barged in.
“Renly,” Stannis said.
“What?” Tearful and angry. Renly sat up and rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“Nothing,” Stannis’ heart was pounding. He felt faint with relief. “Go back to sleep.”
Renly stared at him hatefully. He looked tired in a way no child ever should. His fingers, clutching the edge of the covers, were white little twigs, and that hurt Stannis somewhere he thought long put away.
Abruptly, Renly started crying. Not the controlled, manipulative crying he used to practice when he was younger, but real helpless sobbing. He didn’t bother to hide his face and pound the bed with his fists, as he used to on the rare occasions he was denied something. He just sat there and cried.
Stannis froze. he had never been in this situation before.
“Renly-“ he tried, but found he had nothing to say.
“I want Robert,” Renly sobbed. “I don’t care about the mad king I want Robert to come back. And I want my pony and my puppieeees…..”
Stannis made an abrupt start forward, and found himself on the bed next to his brother. He put a hand on Renly’s back. Small vertebrae and the structure of ribs pressed like stones against his palm. He felt sick.
“Robert is fighting a rebellion,” he repeated emptily.
“I hate the rebellion.”
Stannis wanted to shake him. He also wanted to put his arms around him. above all, he wished he had something to give him - if not food, then reassurance.
He had nothing.
“You said Robert would save us,” said Renly.
“I said nothing of the sort,” said Stannis sharply. “I said he was going to war for us, and all the people of Westeros.”
“But I’m hungryyyyy.”
“You won’t be for much longer,” Stannis said.
*
In the end, Robert never saved them.
Robert won the war - well, the combined forces of the North and the Riverlands won the war with a helping hand from some last minute Lannister pragmatism - and Robert took the throne and the queen and the love of the commons. The garrison greeted him like a conquering hero, all their doubt and anger and terror and pain just - wiped away that morning. A smuggler saved them, his fish and onions keeping them alive until Stark arrived and the Tyrell host dipped their banners. The bastard lived and Robert named it Edric, and invited or commanded the whole House to King’s Landing for the wedding and ceremonies and to see all the new knights get their land and titles and his enemies kneel and swear fealty.
“But they’re bad men,” said Renly sleepily. He was perched on Robert’s hip, with his face in his shoulder and arms around his neck like a little monkey. He was frankly too old to be carried like that, but had refused to be put down when Robert lifted him to greet him, so Robert shrugged and carried him around using words like ‘fuck’ and describing war wounds over his head.
“Not so bad,” Robert said. “They had a bad king, but they fought bravely for him. You should forgive your enemies if they’re sorry and swear to serve you faithfully. That’s what good lords and kings do.”
“Stannis puts his enemies in the dungeons,” Renly said.
“I - well that was different,” said Robert magnanimously, and gave him Storm’s End, and apparently thought he was doing Stannis an enormous honour by giving him Dragonstone.
“Traditionally, Dragonstone the seat of the heir to the Iron Throne,” Cressen reminded him, as he packed a few things for the journey to King’s Landing, silent.
“Storm’s End is my-“ home, he had almost said. “Right,” he finished. Thinking of Dragonstone made him exhausted all over again. A strong seat of Targaryen loyalists, there would be uprisings and disorder there for months or years.
“So may be the Throne, one day,” said Cressen. Stannis paused. Somehow, though he knew intellectually he was now Robert’s heir, the truth of it hadn’t yet dawned on him.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Robert will have a crop of sons. And daughters. Legitimate and not. No doubt I’ll have to put up with some of them running around my castle.”
Cressen paused. “Have you - had occasion to meet Cersei Lannister, my lord?”
“No,” Stannis said.
“Well,” said Cressen. “I would not dismiss the possibility that you might inherit altogether. The next years will be…testing.”
Stannis was silent. He didn’t quite know what to make of the idea. What kind of king would he be? How would be remembered? ‘Just’, he thought at once. ‘Fair. I would root out all the corruption at King’s Landing. All the flatterers and liars. I would make it so that lords received the same justice as commoners. I would repair the treasury. I-’
No. There was no point in thinking about it. He had a journey to make; and then, a new holdfast to secure, a son or two to get on his wife.
“You’ll come with me to Dragonstone,” he said to Cressen.
“Of course my lord,” said the maester.
Stannis thought. “And Ser Davos,” he said.
“The smuggler?” Cressen asked, surprised.
“He is a knight, not a smuggler now. I would have him at my court, if he will, once he has put his lands in order.”
“Is that wise?” said Cressen doubtfully.
“I consider myself a good judge of men.” Stannis turned to face him. He wanted to say, ‘thank you. Thank you for everything’. Instead he said, “You have my leave to go, maester. It has been a long day, and I can see that you are still not well.”
“I will take it,” Cressen rose. Then he said, “Stannis.”
“Hmm,” Stannis was staring distractedly at his several cloaks, trying to decide what was appropriate for the ceremony and if Robert would care.
“Someday, I would be proud to call you my king.”
END
Notes:
1) In England, it was normal to refer to babies as 'it' until relatively recently. This probably reflects high infant mortality rates, and a reluctanct to humanize the child before a certain age was achieved.
2) Most of the lines that this fic grew out of are in the books, notably Cressen's POV in A Clash of Kings,but I followed TV-canon in having Selyse at Storm's End during the siege (and thus Edric born) just because I think it's more interesting that way.
3) Title from Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.