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"Things cannot go on like this any longer!"
Lord Mace Tyrell bellowed in fury, his voice echoing over the din of camp.
Yet few bothered to pay him any heed.
They were gathered now upon the banks of the Blackwater, just beyond the walls of King's Landing.
When Stannis had at last accepted that his daughter would never be returned to him, the fragile window for negotiation slammed shut completely.
Seized by a rage that bordered on madness, he even commanded his men to launch a countercharge against the host that Ringed them in… Renly's vast army.
But his will was not faithfully carried out.
On the front lines, his soldiers still fought bravely whenever they clashed with the levies of the Reach. Their swords flashed with a stubborn courage, and their formations held firm.
Yet when it was Renly's own household troops they faced, the fire in their blows seemed to dim. The fighting often turned half-hearted, as though the soldiers were merely playing out a scene upon a stage rather than truly striving for each other's lives.
After all, they had once stood in the same trench, brothers-in-arms under a single banner. Were it not for the bitter accident of the Baratheon line producing two rival kings, they would never have come to this; drawn blades against kin.
And such behavior, repeated again and again upon the field, could not remain hidden for long. Soon enough, the commanders on both sides understood well what was happening.
Curiously, neither Stannis nor Renly seemed willing to acknowledge it. They carried on as though blind to the obvious, bound perhaps by some unspoken, half-conscious pact that neither dared to name.
Meanwhile, the Reachmen had taken charge of maintaining order in the occupied districts of King's Landing.
But hunger is a merciless master. Once the desperate citizens of the capital crossed the threshold of their endurance, there was little they would not do.
At first, the soldiers of the Reach merely avoided stepping into the shadowed mouths of narrow alleys. Everyone knew too well what awaited those who dared to enter whole. The unlucky soul who went in might not come out again, or if he did, it would be in pieces.
But as the days bled into weeks, desperation gnawed deeper, and the danger spread. No longer confined to the narrow lanes, even the broad main streets of the city became perilous. When night fell, people would vanish into the darkness, dragged away by hungry hands, and rumors of soldiers being "stolen" off the roads grew frighteningly common.
The patrols changed with it. At first, men went out in pairs, two by two. Soon that no longer felt safe, so they began to move in groups of three or five. Now, unless ten men marched together, no one dared to patrol at all.
"This work can't be done anymore!" was the unspoken truth heavy in every soldier's heart.
And matters only worsened. Renly's host, for the most part, suffered no real losses. Their battles with Stannis's men had turned into hollow performances, each side feigning effort without striking true.
The Reachmen, however, paid in blood. Their patrols bled steadily, their dead and wounded mounting high.
Nobles muttered complaints in their tents, their voices thick with grievance. The rank-and-file, already weary, saw their will to fight crumbling like a mountainside breaking apart, collapsing in an avalanche of despair.
The Tyrell family issued order after order, but beneath them, officers and men alike only offered lip service. They bowed and nodded, but when the time came, their feet stayed planted. No one was willing to move.
Faced with this hopeless situation, and with little true loyalty left binding them to Renly, the soldiers of the Reach finally slunk away from the city, slipping out in defeat and frustration.
Once they had gone, Renly's own household force was whittled down to fewer than twenty thousand. Confronted with the nightmare that King's Landing had become, even his bannermen began to clamor, pressing him to find a solution quickly.
But Renly was no conjurer, no fat blue imp who could simply pull answers from a pouch at his belly.
What could he possibly do?
So, after sending a letter across to Stannis, Renly too withdrew his army from King's Landing.
The truth was, the feeling of being stared at day and night as though he and his men were walking loaves of bread, waiting to be carved into meals, was unbearable. None of them could stand it any longer.
Stannis's followers, of course, saw through the situation as well. They were no fools.
They did not rush in to take over the city's defenses the moment Renly departed.
And besides, what would be the point? To hold all of sprawling King's Landing with barely ten thousand men would be no defense at all.
Instead, they withdrew into the Red Keep. The castle, by comparison, was tight and defensible, with walls that could be held and gates that could be barred. And within those walls, the starving masses of the city could not break through.
Stannis himself had food stores, though this was a secret he dared not share. If word spread that he possessed grain while the rest of the city starved, the hungry would descend upon the Red Keep at once, willing to throw their lives away for a single crust. In that frenzy, they would become little more than fodder for Renly's army, an endless tide of human bodies driven by desperation to batter down the gates.
Both sides understood the terrible power that hunger represented. Harnessed properly, it could overturn the balance of the war in an instant, deciding victory or defeat in the blink of an eye.
But therein lay the danger: such a force could never be controlled. Who could guarantee that once unleashed, these desperate wretches would not turn their teeth on their supposed masters instead?
And so the districts of King's Landing beyond the Red Keep slipped into a state of abandonment, a no man's land that neither side dared to govern.
No one wanted to take responsibility. To try would be to court death.
As for the common folk of the city? They were invisible. The lords who stood so high above them did not see, or chose not to.
Now both armies found themselves caught in an impossible bind, trapped in a position where neither could advance, yet neither could retreat. To fight was unthinkable, so the only question was which side could endure longer.
And while they lingered in this uneasy stalemate, Clay in the North was free to work his maneuvers, his plans unfolding in restless motion, while here all remained eerily still.
With several of the city gates left unguarded, King's Landing in effect lay unbesieged. At last the starving citizens poured out like water breaking through a dam. They fled the city in wild droves, stumbling barefoot along the roads, ragged and hollow-eyed.
Once the proud residents of the capital, they now looked like refugees staggering from the ruins of a battlefield, their clothes in tatters, their faces gaunt with hunger.
Their eyes, when they lifted them, burned with hatred. They glared at the crowned stag banners of Renly and of Stannis, those proud symbols that had once stood as the guardians of their realm. Now, to the people, they were nothing but the marks of betrayal, the very reason their lives had been brought so low.
It could be said that the name of Baratheon had completely rotted in the hearts of these people.
Yet these folk were powerless. Their voices carried no weight, and there was nothing they could do to change the course of war.
All they could manage was to gather their families, clutch their children to their breasts, and leave behind the city that had been their home.
Both Renly and Stannis allowed this exodus to happen. In truth, they welcomed it. For neither commander could sleep soundly with such a ticking time bomb nestled against their side.
And so, with the streets of King's Landing nearly emptied of its citizenry, and the Reach replenished with fresh troops, the great Tyrell host began preparing for its second assault.
And then the news came.
Word reached the front before King's Landing that a dragon had set fire to Starpike Castle.
Suddenly, the camp erupted in uproar.
Starpike Castle? That place? Could trouble truly have reached it?
And the Peake family… what was the Peake family? Nothing less than one of the great and powerful houses of the Reach.
True, its current lord had long been whispered of as timid, but even so, the Peakes commanded several thousand soldiers. Within the coalition, their voice and their strength were not to be ignored.
And now this proud and ancient house, so strong and so deeply rooted in the Reach, had been wiped away in a single day?
Just like that… gone?
The Reach lords flew into a frenzy, their camps boiling with anger and panic.
"Move the army at once!" one shouted, his fist crashing onto the table. "Through the Prince's Pass, march south! We'll drive straight in, slay that cursed dragon, and avenge Lord Titus Peake!"
But then another report arrived. Word spread that Titus Peake had, by sheer luck, escaped with his life. And so the lords quickly shifted their cries. The slogans changed, their fury redirected, now calling that Dorne must be held accountable for the devastation, that it was the Dornish who should answer for the losses the Reach had suffered.
It was a fine show of power, the lords of the Reach declaring themselves with all the grand airs of a mighty realm.
Yet Renly Baratheon, seated as their king and watching all this with cool, detached eyes, tore their fine garments of dignity apart with a single remark, exposing what lay beneath.
"You only want to bring your men back to your castles," he told them, "whether to gather your treasures or to prepare against the dragon's fire. But courage enough to face Dorne in open war… that, you do not have."
He said it calmly, at a feast no less, in full view of every nobleman assembled. His voice was steady, his words plain, but each one landed like a knife laid bare upon their pride.
Most of the Stormlands nobles, seated around the feast, let out cold, mocking laughter as they watched the Reach nobles squirm. Their faces grew increasingly flushed, twisted by a mix of embarrassment and anger, yet they still raised their voices in fierce protest against Renly's words.
They insisted that this was nothing less than the king's mistrust, a deliberate slight against their loyalty and honor.
One lord, unable to bear it, declared on the spot that he found such service tedious, and threatened to march away, to take his men and quit Renly's host altogether.
But Renly gave them no indulgence, no compromise.
A king could not be threatened.
If they wished to go, then let them go. He agreed to their departure without hesitation.
The truth was, he had no way to stop them. The authority was his, yes, but the power was not. He could command, but he could not compel.
Deep down, he understood very clearly who these men truly were. They were not bold defectors, nor rebels at heart. They were pawns, pieces the Tyrell family had pushed forward to test his will, to probe the strength of his position.
And in the wake of the dragon's fire that had turned Starpike Castle into ash, Renly knew that if he still insisted on pressing the attack against King's Landing, then this so-called alliance would shatter instantly, in both name and in truth.
Once the first lords marched away, the effect was like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples spread outward, wider and wider.
Soon, one after another, noble houses announced their wish to depart. Every so often, another voice rose in the camp, demanding to break from the king's host, to turn homeward and safeguard their own lands.
Renly made no move to stop them. He could not stop them, even if he wished to.
He might wear the crown, but in reality, the only lords who truly obeyed him were his own stormlanders.
The Reachmen despised the Tyrells in private, that was true. Yet when faced with matters that touched their lives and their survival, these same Reach nobles would never dare stand apart from House Tyrell. On such matters, they would march in lockstep.
Through all these quarrels and betrayals, Renly himself had changed. He was no longer the naive, sweet-tempered princeling he had once been, so eager to please, so easily swayed.
He saw everything with sharp clarity now, and because of that clarity, he did not even try to stand in their way.
But even among his own, even among the stormland lords, there were worries he could not dismiss.
The dragon had so far struck only the Reach, yes. But the Baratheons, his house, his name, were still the true enemies of House Targaryen. The usurper's war had begun with Robert, and it was their house that had toppled the dragons from their throne.
The Targaryens would never forgive that crime.
When Robert had risen in rebellion, Renly had still been a child, too young to grasp the weight of crowns and bloodlines. Yet even as a boy, he had seen enough to know how grudges lingered.
And so when the dragon's flames consumed Starpike Castle, leaving nothing but charred ruin, Renly's thoughts leapt immediately to the truth he had long dreaded.
He could not win. He could not go on.
That was why he so readily allowed the Reachmen to break faith. That was why he let them slip away without resistance. At the heart of it all, he himself no longer had the strength to carry the war forward.
So he took up quill and parchment, and sent a letter to his elder brother.
"My brother," the letter began.
"King's Landing… I yield it to you."
"That Iron chair, let it be yours to sit upon."
"Only… do not let it shred your backside~"
"The Targaryens have returned, and I must ride back to guard Storm's End. My throne I give you, but not my crown. Someday, when the chance comes again, the two of us must settle who is truly the stronger. I look forward to that day."
"And one more thing. About Shireen… I am sorry. I never meant her harm. I never once thought of laying a hand on her."
"Read this, then burn it. Pretend it never existed, and leave me at least a shred of face."
"Renly Baratheon the First, King of the Seven Kingdoms… your younger brother."
When Mace Tyrell, after posturing for so long, finally abandoned his tiresome act of loyal vassal, his mask slipped for good.
In Renly's cold, mocking gaze, young Margaery Tyrell, still untouched, rose from the king's pavilion. She departed with her family's banners, leading the Reach host away from the once-mighty encampment that had boasted one hundred thousand men.
From that moment on, the coalition of the Reach and the Stormlands, once as immovable as a mountain looming over Westeros, was officially dissolved.
Both sides understood perfectly well that, unless fate wove some strange twist, there would never again be room for alliance between them.
After all, a broken mirror cannot be mended. This fruitless war had shown them too much, stripped away illusions, and laid bare truths that could not be forgotten.
When the Tyrells were gone, Renly turned for the last time to look upon King's Landing. The city stood before him, grand yet desolate, a capital of ruins, scarred by war. He looked once, then spurred his horse, and rode away.
With that, the so-called Battle for King's Landing came to its close, ending not with triumph but with a imperfect silence.
It had begun when Joffrey Baratheon, the false son of Robert, claimed the throne. It ended now with Renly Baratheon's retreat from the city.
Three kings had fought for King's Landing. More than one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers had bled and died in its shadow, storming its gates and defending its walls in battle after battle.
Later, when a new monarch arose to unite the Seven Kingdoms, the history of that war was set down, the ledgers of the dead tallied. Only then did men realize how merciless it had been.
In total, nearly forty thousand lives were lost, some cut down on the battlefield, others swallowed up in the chaos. And beyond that number, uncounted soldiers fell prey to the starving folk of King's Landing, dragged into alleys and butchered, their flesh consumed by the city's own people.
This war left no victor in this battle. Not one.
Even Stannis Baratheon, who for a time sat upon the Iron Throne when the fighting was done, gained little from it. He had lost his only heir, and though he clung to power, his reign soon crumbled apart, undone by the weight of grief and the chain of events that followed.
He became the second crown to fall to the ground in the War of the Five Kings, after Robb Stark.
A king upon the throne, yet no one to kneel before him.
His decrees could not carry even thirty miles beyond the walls of King's Landing.
And yet, for all his failures, Stannis was still stronger than Robb Stark, stronger than his own brother Renly.
For he had at least touched the dream he had chased all his life. He had sat upon the Iron Throne.
It did not matter that the throne itself rejected him, that it cut his flesh, that it drank his blood.
To him, it was worth it. When he lost his daughter, when he could not, under any circumstance, bend the knee to House Targaryen, the rest of his life was left with nothing but this cold, sin-stained throne.
Men follow different paths. Each carries his own will.
Is that not so?
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[Chapter End's]
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