Storm's End
The wind howling off Shipbreaker Bay usually sounded like a woman screaming, but tonight, to Robert Baratheon, it sounded like a war horn.
He stood on the battlements of his ancestral seat, the massive, drum-towered fortress that had defied gods and armies for thousands of years. The salt spray lashed his face, sticking in his thick black beard, but he didn't blink. He gripped the stone merlons with hands the size of hams, his knuckles white.
"They're coming, aren't they?"
Stannis stood beside him. His brother was grinding his teeth, a sound that was starting to grate on Robert's nerves more than the wind. Stannis was iron—brittle, hard, and utterly joyless.
"Of course they're coming," Robert roared over the gale. "Aerys wants my head. He wants Ned's head. He probably wants your head just for being related to me."
"The Lords Grandison, Cafferen, and Fell," Stannis listed, reciting the intelligence report like he was reading a tax ledger. "They have gathered their levies. They intend to march on Storm's End and deliver you to the King."
"Loyalists," Robert spat the word like a curse. "My own bannermen. Turning on me for a madman who burns people alive."
He turned away from the sea, pacing the ramparts. He felt like a caged animal. The energy inside him—the raw, chaotic fury that had been building since the news of Lyanna's abduction—was screaming for release. He needed to hit something. He needed to break something.
"They plan to join forces at Summerhall," Stannis continued. "If they unite, they will outnumber us two to one. We should provision the castle and hold. The walls of Storm's End have never fallen."
Robert stopped pacing. He looked at Stannis.
"Hide?" Robert laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "You want me to hide behind stone while they march on my land? While they laugh at me?"
"It is the tactical choice," Stannis insisted. "We hold. We wait for the North. We wait for the Vale."
"Ned is fighting his way through mountains," Robert growled. "Jon is securing the Vale. I am here. Now."
He grabbed his warhammer, which was leaning against the wall. It was a massive thing, iron and steel, heavy enough that most men needed two hands to lift it. Robert swung it onto his shoulder with one hand effortlessly.
"I'm not waiting for them to shake hands and drink tea at Summerhall," Robert declared, his eyes burning with a terrifying light. "I'm going to meet them."
"You can't fight three armies," Stannis argued.
"They aren't three armies yet," Robert grinned, a savage, reckless expression that made him look like the Warrior himself. "They're just three groups of confused men walking into a trap. I ride at dawn."
He clapped a hand on Stannis's shoulder, nearly buckling the younger man's knees.
"You hold the castle, Stannis. If I die, it's yours. Try to smile once in a while if you become Lord, eh? It confuses the peasants. And prepare for a long seige until the war is over."
Summerhall - The First Smash
Summerhall was a ruin. A tragic monument to Targaryen folly, where a King had tried to hatch dragons and burned his whole family instead. It was a place of ghosts and ash.
Perfect for a battle.
Robert arrived first. He had ridden his knights into the ground, pushing a pace that killed horses, to get there before the loyalists.
"They're coming from the north, south, and west," Robert told his captains as they sat amidst the blackened stones of the ruined palace. "Grandison, Cafferen, Fell. They think they're meeting here to plan my execution."
He stood up, hefting the hammer.
"They think I'm cowering in Storm's End. They won't have scouts deployed for combat. They'll be in marching columns."
"Which one do we hit first?" a captain asked.
"The first one that shows his ugly face," Robert roared.
It was Lord Fell.
His column emerged from the treeline just as the sun broke over the horizon. They were relaxed, banners fluttering, knights chatting in the saddle. They expected a rendezvous, not a war.
What they got was an avalanche.
"BARATHEON!"
The roar echoed off the hills as Robert led the charge. He didn't use tactics. He didn't use flanking maneuvers. He used pure, unadulterated shock.
He smashed into the center of Fell's line like a cannonball. His warhammer was a blur of death. The first swing crumpled a knight's breastplate like tin foil, sending the man flying from his saddle with a shattered chest. The backswing took the head off a horse.
It was a massacre. Fell's men panicked. They couldn't form a shield wall. They couldn't brace. They were scattered like leaves in a storm.
Robert spotted Lord Fell's banner.
"FELL!" Robert screamed, spurring his massive destrier through the chaos. "YOU WANT MY HEAD? COME AND TAKE IT!"
Lord Fell, to his credit, was a brave man. He leveled his lance and charged.
It was a mistake.
Robert leaned in the saddle, dodging the lance tip by an inch. As the horses passed, he swung the hammer.
CRACK.
The sound of iron hitting the helmet was sickeningly loud. Lord Fell dropped from his saddle, dead before he hit the ground.
With their lord dead, the army broke. But Robert didn't let them flee. He captured them.
"Bind them!" Robert ordered, his chest heaving, blood splattered across his face. "Throw them in the ruins. Quickly! The next one is coming!"
Summerhall - The Second Smash
They barely had time to wipe the blood from their swords before the dust cloud of the second army appeared. Lord Cafferen.
He rode into Summerhall expecting to find Lord Fell waiting. Instead, he found a scene of carnage... and then Robert.
"Surprise!" Robert laughed, charging again.
This time, the fighting was harder. Cafferen's men saw the bodies and formed a hasty line. But Robert was in a frenzy. The thrill of battle was singing in his blood. He felt invincible. Every blow landed. Every block was perfect. He was a force of nature, a storm made flesh.
He cornered Lord Cafferen against a crumbling wall. Cafferen yielded, dropping his sword.
"Smart man!" Robert bellowed, grabbing Cafferen by the gorget and hauling him off his horse. "Chains for this one! Save him for the drinking contest!"
Summerhall - The Third Smash
By the time Lord Grandison arrived, the sun was setting. The ruins of Summerhall were choked with bodies and prisoners.
Robert didn't even charge this time. He just lined up his army—now bolstered by the weapons and armor of the defeated—across the road.
Grandison halted his column. He looked at the devastation. He looked at Robert, who was sitting on a pile of rubble, drinking wine from a skin, his hammer resting on his knees.
"You're late," Robert called out.
Grandison looked at his men. They were tired from the march. Robert's men were high on victory, covered in blood, looking like demons.
Grandison sighed. He dismounted and drew his sword... then laid it on the ground.
"I yield," Grandison said.
Robert stood up. He walked over to the lord who had planned to kill him. He looked him in the eye.
Then, he laughed.
"Good! Because I'm starving. Let's eat."
That night, amidst the ruins of the Targaryen dream, Robert Baratheon achieved his greatest victory. Not by killing men, but by winning them.
He didn't execute the rebel lords. He didn't torture them. He ordered his own supply wagons opened. He broke casks of Arbor Gold.
He sat Lord Grandison and Lord Cafferen down at his own table. He drank with them. He joked with them. He told stories of the battle, praising their bravery, mocking their terrible timing.
"You fought well, Cafferen!" Robert roared, slapping the man on the back so hard he nearly face-planted into his stew. "Next time, try aiming for the horse, not the rider! I'm too thick to kill!"
By dawn, the banners of Cafferen, Grandison, and Fell were no longer loyalist. They were Robert's. He had turned enemies into fanatics with nothing but charisma and a few barrels of wine.
"Now," Robert said, standing up as the sun rose, nursing a slight hangover but feeling like he could punch a mountain. "We have an army. Let's go find the rest of them."
Ashford
The victory at Summerhall had been heady wine. It made Robert feel unstoppable. He marched west, intending to cut off the Reach before they could join the main war.
"We catch them at Ashford," Robert told his war council. "We smash the vanguard, and Mace Tyrell will run back to Highgarden to hide in his flowers."
But Mace Tyrell wasn't leading the vanguard.
Randyll Tarly was.
Robert arrived at Ashford with confidence. He deployed his men—seasoned Stormlanders, eager fresh recruits from the defeated lords—and prepared to do what he did best: charge.
But Tarly didn't play by Robert's rules.
When Robert launched his assault, expecting the enemy line to buckle under the ferocity of the Stag, he hit a wall.
Tarly had positioned his men perfectly. Rows of spears, disciplined and unmoving. Archers on the flanks, protected by trenches.
Robert smashed into the center, his hammer claiming a dozen lives in the first minute. But for every man he killed, two more stepped into the gap. It wasn't a brawl; it was a meat grinder.
"Push!" Robert screamed, his voice raw. "Break them!"
But they wouldn't break. Tarly's discipline was absolute.
Then, the horns sounded from the south. The main Tyrell host. Mace Tyrell, arriving late as usual, but bringing twenty thousand fresh swords.
Robert looked at the sea of green banners flooding the field. He looked at his own men, tired and bloody.
"Damn it," Robert growled.
He felt a sharp pain in his thigh. An arrow. Then a slash across his ribs from a knight he hadn't seen in the chaos.
He was losing.
The realization hit him harder than the hammer blow. He wasn't invincible. He was going to die here, in a muddy field in the Reach, while Lyanna was still...
"No," Robert snarled.
"Sound the retreat!" he ordered, swinging his hammer to clear a space. "Fall back! North! We head North!"
The retreat was messy. Tarly pursued them doggedly. Robert fought in the rearguard, holding the line personally to let his men escape. He took another wound, a spear graze to the shoulder.
By the time they shook Tarly's pursuers, Robert's army was scattered. He had a few hundred men left. The rest were dead, captured, or fled.
He was bleeding. He was defeated.
And he was angry.
The Flight of the Stag
The march north was a nightmare.
Robert's wounds festered. His leg burned with every step. He rode until his horse died, then he walked. When he couldn't walk, he leaned on his hammer.
They crossed into the Riverlands, avoiding the roads. The realm was waking up to the war now. There were patrols everywhere.
"They're hunting us," Ser Ebert, one of his surviving knights, whispered one night as they huddled in a wet ditch. "Griffin banners. It's Connington."
"Let him come," Robert rasped. He was pale, sweating with fever. "I'll kill him too."
But he knew he couldn't. Not like this. He needed rest. He needed a wall. He needed a place to heal before he could swing the hammer again.
"Stoney Sept," Robert decided, looking at the map with fever-bright eyes. "It's close. The smallfolk there hate Aerys. We hide there."
"It's a trap, my Lord," Ebert warned. "If they surround the town..."
"Then we die in a town instead of a ditch," Robert snapped. "Move."