Davos stood at the hearth. He had been paying for hours, though he had slept a little, and eaten sparsely. He had refused to share a meal with Lady Melisandre, who had not offered, having barely said a word since the foreigners has arrived, which he could only regard as a positive. She had spent a great deal of her time starting into the flames, as though seeking revelation from her God, would he provide it. The blank look in her eyes under sometimes furrowed brows indicated to him that she was yet to receive it.
Were it not for the guards who stood in silent vigilance, he would have gladly fed her to the manifestation of her Lord.
He was tapping his hands on the cold stone of the hearth as the flames crackled, the sporadic snaps the only noises relieving the silence of the chamber, when one of Cresson's lads opened the door and approached diffidently.
'My Lord, one of the foreigners requests an audience with you,' he whispered. Davos turned, and saw one of them, one whom he had not seen before, wearing the same grey uniform, standing at the door. He had something in his hand, though it did not appear to one of the clubs they had called guns. Davos nodded to him, and he approached with the clipped confidence demonstrated only by soldiers.
'Sir,' the man spoke hesitantly. He was young, clean shave and fit. 'Your tongue, my tongue, not so good.' He smiled slightly. 'Word.' He lifted his hand and showed Davos what he held. It was black, with a green square at its top, and a small stick emerging from above that square. It was perhaps 10 inches long, three inches wide. Davos looked at it in confusion.
The man sighed. He depressed his finger against the side of device, the green square lit up slightly, and he placed the device to his mouth, speaking quickly in his own language. It crackled slightly.
Davos jumped as words in the language of the foreigners emerged from it. He could understand none of it, but it was undeniable that the object spoke. Davos had seen a great deal of the world, and seen things he could not explain and could not have been explained to him. This was far and away the most inexplicable thing he had ever seen, in Westeros, Essos, or beyond. He doubted that there was anything like this devilment even in the ruins of Valyria, from which no man ever returned.
He jumped away from the device as it spoke again, backing away quickly before he heard something that shocked him to his core.
'Davos?'
The voice was more unclear than if Stannis had been standing beside him, but his King's voice it most certainly was. He moved forward cautiously as the young men held out the device, and spoke again quietly. 'Word,' he said again, pointing to his mouth, to the device, to Davos' mouth, and then to the device again, and repeated himself. 'Word.'
Speak, Davos realised. He is telling me to speak.
'Your Grace?' he spoke into the device uncertainly.
The device crackled again. 'Davos, it's me, your King. Do you still have your knuckles around your neck?'
Davos gripped the small pouch around his neck, and breathed in relief. He had no idea what it was the soldier held, how Stannis was speaking through it, where he was or even how he was, but that it was his King, he has no doubt. Few others knew the story, and certainly the foreigners could not know.
He would learn about modern surveillance later, and realise how easily at that moment he could have been duped but, at that moment, he was fortunate.
'I do, your Grace,' he spoke into the device.
'In which case, I hope they still bring you luck,' Stannis' voice came through with that odd crackling. 'Because I need you here. These people have questions to which I do not have answers. Follow the lad in front of you.'
'Your Grace,' Davos nodded, then berated himself. He assumed Stannis could not see him.
'And, Davos, prepare yourself, for the trip will not be easy.'
Davos entered the house on shaking legs, his mind reeling from what he had seen. He scarcely knew how to process all of it before he was escorted into a room where he saw Stannis sitting at ornate table, with Leclerc standing behind two soldiers and a woman in odd clothing, wearing a blouse of some description that revealed more of her cleavage than he would have considered decent, though not enough to suggest that she was courtesan. DuPris was sitting beside Stannis, and appeared frustrated.
'Sit down, Davos,' Stannis ordered him, and it occurred to him that his King must have truly himself been shaken when he forgot himself to the point of neglecting titles. 'We will speak later of what we both have seen, and with Shireen when she returns, she is with their healers. These people, the French, they need answers to questions on subjects of which I have no knowledge, but you might.'
Leclerc moved around the table and poured a glass of what smelled like wine for Davos. The soldier grinned. 'You look like you need it, and no one will think less of you that your hands are shaking, ours probably would be too in your position.
Davos ignored Stannis' brief glance of disapproval as he emptied his glass with hands that were indeed shaking. Leclerc had been; it was not the best wine he had ever tasted, but it settled his nerves a little. He noticed that Leclerc had left the bottle near enough that he could pour now himself, and was sorely tempted, but know that for this, he needed a clear head.
DuPris made brief introductions, which mostly went over Davos' head, as his heart was still thumping. So little of this should be possible, but it so real I can smell the difference.
The bigger man of the two on the other side of the table spoke, and Leclerc translated. He pointed to the map. 'I think you call this the Roseroad,' Leclerc stated. 'It runs from south of your capitol to this city, Highgarden, a distance of maybe 350 miles. What's its condition?' he asked bluntly.
Davos looked at the map, and realised what Stannis was planning; he would need to take King's Landing, if nothing else to secure his rear, but he was aiming for the Reach to house the people from here. It was the most fertile of the Seven Kingdoms, and could easily feed the 700,000 of these foreigners. Of course, the Tyrell's would first have to accept Stannis' sovereignty – as would the North – and Davos has no doubt that, for all he would never show it, Stannis would enjoy every moment of ramming that recognition down Mace Tyrell's fat throat.
He cleared his throat. 'It is probably the best road in Westeros,' he confirmed. 'The Reach keeps it maintained. Solidly cobbled and bound with cement, it is wide enough to take four wagons at a time. It is also probably the busiest, the Reach exports a great deal of food.'
The foreigners babbled amongst themselves after Leclerc translated. DuPris spoke quietly to him. 'Our vehicles are very heavy, many tonnes in weight. There was a question over whether or not your roads could take them, but I see no reason they should not.' Wheeled vehicles, anyway, she thought. Tanks would rip it to shreds, if we can ever get them over.
The larger men with the odd metal and glass over his eyes looked at both Stannis and Davos, and asked another question; the other two leaned forward.
'Captain Garcia wants to know how many transport ships you have available, and what are their carrying capacity,' DuPris translated.
Stannis grunted. 'Now you see why I needed you,' he growled. Stannis was a very good commander, on land and on sea, as proven by his crushing victory over the Ironborn during the Greyjoy rebellion, but his knowledge of the minutiae of ship handling and handling was negligible.
Davos thought out loud as he mulled over the question. 'Our War Fleet was hit badly by the Blackwater, but the troop transports were barely affected – they stayed at the rear, obviously,' he said softly, trying to forget the pain of his son's death, though he knew he never would. 'We have thirty three transports, repurposed trading ships, really. Depending on the ship, they could carry anywhere between 40 and 90 tonnes. But escorts are thin, many of those that managed to make the journey back to Dragonstone are either damaged or crewed by men who have little experience of the sea.'
'How long from Dragonstone to the mainland, to somewhere on the coast that is fairly open and lightly populated? the other woman asked as Leclerc translated her question.
Davos turned to Stannis, who returned his look questioningly. 'Above Massey's Hook, is probably the best, without taking Blackwater Rush, would you agree, you Grace?'
Stannis thought for a moment, then nodded. The area of which he spoke was not far from the Roseroad, was bordered to the south by the Kingswood, and was sparsely populated, only a few villages relieving the dreary, heavily wooded landscape. It was perfect for a staging area if one had no direct point of assault, but for a direct attack on King's Landing, it was inappropriate. The only way to the city from Massey's Hook was straight through the Rush, and into the open killing ground beneath the strongest southern wall. However, they had promised him that they did not need to besiege the city; he did not really believe them, yet, but they said they could take it in a day, though also that they said that they did not have the numbers to garrison a city that large, that their soldiers should be, and would be, put to better use.
Davos turned to the others. 'It's a fourteen hour journey, with good winds and a good tides from Dragonstone, give or take.'
Leclerc babbled at the others, then turned. 'So you can deliver maybe 2000 tonnes if all your ships were full and sailed at once?' he asked, frowning as he thought to himself at the implications, which were better than he had hoped. One fully loaded convoy of ships would be enough for roughly 16 round trips to the destination, if they could figure out a way to get trucks onto the mainland. That didn't apply to combat operations but, realistically, a few snipers on the top of each truck, maybe a few with RPGs or even machine guns, if necessary, would be able to fend off anything other than a massed attack, which he viewed as unlikely. Especially if they could have a few tanks, though that would be problematic, at best. The Leclerc tank weighed fifty six tons, but it was so concentrated in such a small place the wooden ships would need massive structural reinforcement. Maybe we could ship some of our barges over and mount outboards …
'Lord Baratheon,' DuPris interjected. ' May we speak amongst ourselves in our language for a moment? There will be no treachery, I give you my word as a soldier.' Stannis nodded stiffly.
She turned to the others, leaning on the table and speaking as rapidly as the thoughts which entered her mind. 'We can take these people whenever we wish, but we must conserve resources,' she said to them all. 'Anyone can fire a rifle, but our trained soldiers will not slaughter them like cattle; it would be too much to ask and I will not. We need to provide a salient example of our power, but at the same time we need to begin to develop a logistical infrastructure beyond the portal. For this reason, we need to move the CDG.'
The others looked at her uneasily. 'We know nothing of the nature of this portal,' Muller replied in harshly German-accented French. 'We do not know if moving the carrier will eliminate it, or whether it is tied to the location.' He raised his hand. 'And, yes, you have made the point that the earth is moving constantly, but for all we know, it could be tied to the magnetic field, or even the weather, for all we know.'
She thanked the God in which she sometimes believed that they were left with a German soldier who had studied in France. What would our two nations have achieved during the last century had we been allies rather than enemies, she had often wondered to herself. However, in this case, she was to offend him.
'I thought you would say that,' she breathed. 'That is why it is already moving; I ordered the acting captain to make sail for the island. He is already doing so, and the portal still remains.'
Stannis and Davos watched the other five explode into an orgy of shouting, finger pointing, and near assault. The last was curious; Leclerc placed his hand on the shoulder of the woman, DuPris, and she grabbed it, seemingly about to drive him into the table, but she held back and released then, her expression murderous as she looked at the others. She is the most skilled of them, he thought to himself, and the most dangerous. What is this world, and how harsh can it be, that women are forced to become so skilled?
'You lunatic!' Kosciusko-Morizet snarled at DuPris. 'You could have damned us all, you know better than anyone how close we are to a total collapse, what happened at Pasteur was a miracle, then we were presented with another, and you could have thrown it into toilet!'
'You exceeded your authority, and acted with complete insubordination,' Leclerc growled. 'I am the ranking officer left, you do nothing without asking my permission, you know that, and yet you give orders outside the chain of command with impunity? I should have you cashiered.'
'Good luck,' DuPris replied calmly. 'You may be my superior, but the chain of command is in tatters, and I am the senior remaining combat soldier. You haven't ever even had an enemy fire at you, I served in both Afghanistan and Chad. You think the army will follow you if you try anything against me? We don't have any intact regiments, what's left is an amalgam of anyone we could save. So until we re-form in some order, you need me. Remember that. And my order to the CDG was necessary; we can do nothing if it remains offshore. With it moored here, we can treat it as an extension of the island, even lay gauge if necessary. What would have taken months will now take weeks, if even.' Before they could interrupt, she pointed at the portrait of Napoleon. 'Remember whose birthplace this is, and ask yourselves: what would he have done?'
That silenced them, she saw. Napoleon had not been called the Great Gambler for no reason.
She turned to the Westerosi Lords. She had developed instant respect for Stannis; apart from his armour and sword, he was every inch the soldier. Davos seemed competent and intelligent, but he was no warrior, though she wondered what happened to his hand.
'Regardless of long term plans,' she began, 'you are engaged in a war for the throne of your country, and you suffered a recent defeat, yes?' Leclerc, though glaring at her, translated for the others.
Stannis said nothing, but Davos nodded. 'We nearly took the capital,' he told her, 'but as we we're about to breach the walls, Tywin Lannister, the Old Lion, and the Tyrells arrived with a large army and we were forced to retreat. Tywin now rules King's Landing in the name of his incest-born bastard grandson, Joffrey.'
'This … Tywin … is a formidable man?' she asked curiously, thinking.
'He is,' Stannis answered, reluctant to give any compliments to an enemy, but he had to give the man his due. 'A good general, and capable administrator. His family sigil is the Lion, his House words "Hear me Roar."'
Thinking for a moment, she turned to Leclerc, but spoke Westerosi. 'They will not expect an air attack,' she smiled. 'So we send Tigers after the Lion.'
