"The air will do your recovery good." Maester Cressen repeated his assurance as Stannis found himself jolted in his litter once more by the uneven stairs he was being carried up.
"More likely it will hasten me to that grave you have had dug for me." Stannis managed to rasp out through the crushed vocal cords, just one more cruel reminder of the Deluge.
"Do not take offense Uncle, my grave has been dug too. When the day comes that Highharden returns, I will fight and triumph or I shall fight and die." his bastard nephew announced as Stannis found himself, at last, deposited in the crisp air that blew over Storm's End.
"Don't be a fool boy, you'll fight and triumph, or fight, flee and live to return." Stannis snorted. Terse exchanges were the closest thing to education and mentoring as Stannis could manage.
One of Robert's get from before the Deluge, half-Storm, half-Snow, Caradoc Storm was, privately, Stannis's last hope for the line of Durran Godsgrief. It didn't stop them from having a tense, strained relationship, largely due to Caradoc's birth and his father's actions as regards Stannis. Cressen had been known for a long time that it was less than half the story, the remainder being that the bastard and the dying Stormlord were too alike.
A grunt escaped Stannis's mouth as his nephew lifted him bodily out of the litter, setting him in his wheeled chair. He ignored the hint of pity in Caradoc's pale eyes as he picked up the Stormlord's emaciated frame. Instead he stared over he expanse of the fortress in bemusement.
"What in the name of hellfire is this?!" demanded Stannis.
"Preparations based on an assumption." Caradoc responded shortly, then eventually elaborared. "Linden wood for shields. Ash, whole and coppiced for spearshafts. Yew for bowstaves. Poplar for scabbards. Oak for arrowshafts and quarrels, for structures, for charcoal and fuel, shavings and sawdust for the smokery."
"I have even taken on an acolyte to serve Master Caradoc, such has been the activity these last few months that you have been abed." added Maester Cressen. "Alleras has been most satisfactory in accounting, recording, making arrangements and assisting."
"And you trust some flotsam from the shadow of the Hightower here?" Stannis bit out.
"Need I remind you, I was no Stormlander myself, and I dare say I did not become such until I found myself a Stormlander son bereft of a father." Cressen frowned.
Stannis managed a grateful nod at that, though it had long been a painful memory.
"Besides, Lord Stannis, I am Dornish, and no friend of Highgarden." a light, lilting voice offered. The Stormlord twisted in his chair, eyes falling on a figure in the shadow of the stairwell turret, clasping a tome. Slender, somewhat androgynous, with the unadorned robes of an Acolyte of the Citadel over a black tunic and doeskin breeches.
"So be it." he grunted, turning back to his nephew. "We have the gold for this?"
"Stormlands timber and iron find plentiful markets, if you know where to sell it." Caradoc shrugged. "I make a habit of not asking too many questions, so long as the gold ends up in our treasury."
"Pirates and slavers." Stannis spat.
"Men of the sea who are beyond the law have need of good timber, pitch and iron. I suggest that we do not seek answers that we know we will not like." his nephew grimaced. "For it, though, Ser Davos and his Black Betha came back from the Stepstones so laden with gold, silver and steel that I could hear her hull groan as the burden was taken off her."
"Where is the Knight of the Black Ship?" asked the Lord of Storm's End, using the name his nephew had bestowed upon the man who had once been the Onion Knight.
"Gone five days now, sailing for the Essosi coast, carrying word from here to the Company of the Rose."
"Mercenaries." the word was pronounced with distaste. "Are we so desperate to throw pirate's gold to sellswords?"
"The Company of the Rose are the descendants of men, many Northmen, who would not bend the knee to the Dragonlords." Caradoc reproached him. "In truth we are that desperate."
"Explain." ordered Stannis.
"If we had the full weight of the Black Betha in gold, it would be not so valuable as Marya Seaworth. A Fleabottom-born housewife living in the Stormlands can weave her threads so far and wide, yet utterly beneath the notice of the High Lords of Westeros." Caradoc shook his head in admiration. "I appointed her to run our household, and now every merchant, courier and traveller to cross into the Stormlands finds their way to the hearthside of a tavern, or the stall in the market, or a hundred other places where one of her little folk listen."
"When a rumour spread that you had passed beyond, the Tyrells mustered five-thousand men, mounted, east of Highgarden at Grassy Vale." Alleras took over. "We found out before they marched, so long they spend at the tilt. I was carried about in your litter and seen in your chair, though concealing my face, my build convinced all that saw me. The Tyrells turned back not ten miles from the Stormlands border."
"They still fear you. Tenscore Seven-sworn Reacher knights, a dozen noble lords, thousands of levies and serjeants." Caradoc listed. "The blood price their deluge demanded be spilled on Durran's walls has not been easily forgotten."
"And when I am gone they will not turn back." Stannis realised. "Yet you are a bastard, with little difficulty they'll find some trueborn Reacher fool with a thimblefull of Baratheon blood to puppet us, to do what was begun with Robert slain and Renly starved."
"Such is my fear." his nephew admitted. "I was preparing at first to hold under siege. Since the Tyrells turned back, I've been looking at the long term."
"We don't have Robert's armies. The reach has a hundred-thousand men." Stannis stated the obvious.
"The Tyrells won't muster their full strength. It takes time, and is ruinously expensive, even for Highgarden." Caradoc shook his head. "When they come, it'll be flying columns with a main force coming straight for us. Right along the Highgarden road. Haste will be their aim and undoing."
"One ambush. Prepared, with the lay of the land in our favour. Inflict on them such slaughter that by fear or by respect our unruly vassals answer once more to Storm's End." realised Stannis. "Had you not had time to prepare, had I not awoken..."
"I would have concentrated what little horse we have on any smaller columns coming against us, seeking to cut the Tyrells off and smash them against these walls." Caradoc answered. "I still intend to use aspects of that plan, I have no illusions I can completely wipe out the first Tyrell offensive."
"How long do you need?"
"Another two months."
Stannis nodded, then with a gesture of his hand dismissed the small group, who retreated to a polite distance, all of them but for his nephew.
"Where?"
"The Felwood Pass. There's a point where the passage is well wooded, and narrows such that at most ten horses may pass, stirrup-to-stirrup. There are dozens of caves in the walls of the pass, and a good half-a-dozen streams we can divert to flood the valley floor."
"If you and Dame Marya's little folk can convince Highgarden's watchers with a Dornish boy that I am awake and active..." Stannis mused. "Might it be possible to convince them the opposite. We would be the ones setting the time for the Tyrells to dance to."
"I think it may well be something we can arrange." Caradoc agreed eventually.
"Good. Leave me."
Caradoc bowed his head and backed away, leaving the exhausted Stormlord to stare out over his lands in disquiet.
Two Tyrell guardsmen winced, for even at the end of the hallway from the solar which had long been the residence of the Queen of Thorns, her voice rang out sharply.
"Storm's End was built to defy the Gods, you know that Mace. Not because it is of strategic importance beyond being the seat of the Storm Kings." Olenna lectured her wayward offspring from behind the carved desk where she was receiving her son like a supplicant. "The Stormlords have no love for Stannis, only a small fear. Few of them will follow that bastard boy of his brother's unless you drive them into his arms. Severed from their roots, vines merely wither." to add a theatrical aspect, she waved the half-stripped vine of a bunch of grapes at her stubborn son.
"Mother, if I am to finish the work my great ancestors, Gyles the Stormhammer and Garth Goldenhand, Storm's End must fall." argued Mace resolutely, banging his hand on the arm of the chair. "If that castle still stands with the Stag's head banner flying over it, we will never be secure on our eastern border."
"Have you forgotten that Gyles the Third conquered the Stormlands, at the cost of making war against six other kings. He ended his days shitting himself to death in an unnamed bog on the Riverlands border as the chivalry of the Reach died in their droves around him." scowled Olenna. "If you want to do as the Goldenhand, marry Margaery or one of her chits to Robert's bastard. Circumstances have done the first part of Garth's work, splitting the kingdoms apart and containing the strength of the Stormlands."
"And have my daughter given to some brothel-born bastard? I think not." Mace's face reddened as he sprang up - or at least as much as 'the Fat Flower of Highgarden' could 'spring'.
"We are not so secure in kingship this last decade-and-a-half that you can throw the blood of the Reach against those walls like you did for Mad Aerys without repercussions from our vassals." warned Olenna with a deep frown. "Do you think Mattis Rowan, those Florent fools, even Randyll Tarly will sit back and do nothing when hundreds of their knights end up in the Stormlands' peat, and hundreds more come back unable to walk, unable to ride?"
"Nonsense mother, you fret too much. That was then, this is now." Mace scoffed, settling his rotund frame back into his chair. "Even then I gave Robert a sound thrashing in the field at Ashford. They won't dare offer us battle after that, all we need do is cross into the Stormlands with all the Highgarden Horse and the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down."
"And that's why you've not done a thing while Stannis is known to still live." Olenna noted dryly.
"It's a matter of legitimacy mother. Besides, a Lord of Storm's End who cannot walk is of little concern." was Mace's uncomfortable answer, to which her response was a contemptuous snort.
"Remember this conversation and my warning well should this grand enterprise of yours come crashing down about your ears." Olenna shook her head, dismissing her obstinate son with a wave of her hand.
"You fret too much mother. Leave it to us military men." Mace puffed out his chest.
"Uncouth military men have lost more wars than wizened crones like myself." his mother noted. "All the same I hope I shall see dear Randyll about here soon."
"Lord Tarly remains at Horn Hill for the nonce. I thought that, though he is an able vassal, I should not involve him given his failure to secure Storm's End." Mace replied, beginning to nervously twiddle his fingers under his mother's stare. "He doesn't have my record in fighting the Baratheons you know."
"I know many thinks Mace, but you still astound me sometimes."
"Thank you mother." Mace smiled blithely.
"I wouldn't thank me too quickly." she huffed. "Now I am sure there are many fool boys wanting to show off their ability to hit other fool boys off their horses for you, so I shan't detain you a moment longer."
"Thank you Areo." Elia favoured Sunspear's Captain of the Guard with a gentle smile as she took the proffered fold of parchment.
"A matter of interest..?" Doran asked, turning his wheeled chair to face his sister.
"It would seem so." Elia mused. "Oberyn, you will be glad to know that dear Sarella has made her way into a position of import. She - or rather 'Alleras' - has become acolyte assistant to a Maester called Cressen?"
"A name we all know... Cressen." Oberyn smirked. "All hail Cressen. Who is Cressen."
"Stannis Baratheon's Maester, and by all accounts the closest thing to a father that either Stannis or his bastard nephew have." explained Elia. "By all account an old man, serving a Stormlord unable to walk. As a result Sarella is at the heart of Storm's End, serving at Caradoc Storm's side. She has access to the heart of the Stormlands."
"Ah." was all the reaction from Doran, allowing his sister to continue.
"The Tyrells grow hungry it seems. The day Stannis dies they will march on Storm's End." she added. "Stannis intends that his nephew, bastard-born or not, will succeed him. They intend to wipe out the Highgarden Horse in an ambush."
"And the Gods be good the Tyrells will put an end to the Baratheon line." Oberyn snorted.
"If the Gods were malign and uncaring, brother. The Tyrells and the Gardener Kings before them were never friends of Sunspear." Doran shook his head. "Divided, the Stormlands and the Reach are weakened by their antipathy, our merchants may pass freely and bring coin and resources back. United under one crown they may cut us off by land, and with the Redwyne fleet, the squadrons of the Mander and all the ships of war of the Stormlands, we would be greatly beset."
"Something we have survived before." Oberyn protested. "Why would they turn on us anyway?"
"We survived at great cost. The Tyrells would turn on us because to go north would be attacking their biggest trading markets, and facing Tywin Lannister, or Brynden the Blackfish." Elia replied quietly. "Why brother, would we wish anything but ill on the Tyrells, who, freely and without leverage, served the Mad King so dutifully, even when he burned King's Landing to the ground, my son within."
"I am sorry-" Oberyn began.
"No, it is in a time past. I only hope that the Tyrells receive a just return on their fidelity to Mad Aerys." his sister shook her head.
"There is little we can do to support the Baratheon boy." Doran interjected. "We cannot move openly in support. I will see to it that they receive favourable trading terms and loosen the taxation of their merchants, perhaps see if I can send arms to Storm's End, but that is it."
"I will see to it that Sarella has a way out if all the Stormlords' plans fail." Oberyn decided.
"Perhaps, Prince Doran, to draw back the arms of Dorne on the Boneway and the Prince's Pass, instead reinforcing the Torrentine and the mountain trackways towards Horn Hill would send a message to the Marcher Lords of the Stormlands?" Areo rumbled, leaning on his greataxe, a silent shadow much of the time.
"Sarella could assist in making our actions clear to Storm's End." suggested Elia.
A long, thoughtful silence followed, then eventually, Doran agreed.
"Indeed. Brother, see to it." he ordered, then let our a long sigh, adding, "We can offer little and hope the boy Stormlord succeeds."