Chapter 3

Robert did not stay long. He fled to the Eyrie, abandoning his younger brothers in their grief while he took solace from his friend Ned Stark. Stannis did not condemn Robert. How could he? He had done more harm to the Baratheon family than Robert ever could.

So he stayed, and he did the tedious work of governing on his elder brother's behalf, and he looked after little Renly. Robert was Lord of Storm's End in name, despite his youth, but preferred to spend his days as if he were still a boy, whiling the years away in the Eyrie. It fell to the even younger Stannis to act as Lord of Storm's End in truth. Maester Cressen advised him, but it was he whose words the Stormlords heeded, while Robert fled from his lordship to grasp at fading boyhood. Stannis's younger brother Renly grew big and strong for his age, a cheerful black-haired blue-eyed boy who was the very image of Robert and of his lord father. He would run around Storm's End with other boys of lower rank and similar age, shouting that he was a knight or a great king or a hero of ages past or a dragon. Stannis allowed it, though he was never so lax with anybody else. He indulged his little brother. He wanted to see Renly smile.

He could not forget the years of his life he had wasted chasing dreams, nor could he forgive himself for what had become of it. That canker of guilt never left his mind. But he could try to move on, and for a time he did.

Then the Tyrells came.

Hunger gnawed at Stannis Baratheon's stomach as he woke. It had not been the first time today. Despite the warmth and softness of his featherbed, he had slept in fits, stopping and starting, lying for long hours awake and in pain thanks to his body's hopeless demands for what it could not have.

This time, however, the sun had risen, so he stood up with a sigh and dressed himself and donned his armour, with the help of his squire, Quenten Peasebury. The boy was suitably obedient, but his presence still felt unreal to Stannis, for it had been less than a year since the failed campaign against the Reachmen invading the Stormlands, so he did not think of himself as a knight. He did not consider it appropriate to wear finery; instead he chose a simple surcoat all in black, a Baratheon colour less extravagant than gold. He did not bathe. Fresh water was too scarce. He put his eating dagger and a scabbard at his belt and strode downstairs from the single tower of Storm's End to inspect the night watch on the curtain wall.

Armed and armoured, Stannis circled the great curtain wall of Storm's End with solemn mien, speaking to captains in each part of it, shaking their hands and hearing their worries. His men in the night watch were bleary-eyed, gaunt and stinking, but they saluted nonetheless when he came, and their captains all informed him that there was nothing they had seen. It was the response he had expected, but he came every day regardless in order to hear it from them. Talking to them face to face was the least he could do for the loyal men who might die for him at any day, should Lord Tyrell decide that the garrison had been starved long enough to satisfy him.

Keeping his visor down to set an example to his men, Stannis looked down beyond the curtain wall that marked the outermost extent of Storm's End. He watched for a long while. A hundred feet of pale grey stone below and eight hundred yards of earth distant—out of range for even the most proficient of Rainwood longbowmen—the Reachmen were awakening. They could be heard even from here in their great half-circle of a camp, around Storm's End and ending only at the coast. There was no escape by sea; the fleet of Paxter Redwyne the Lord of the Arbour kept watch night and day, allowing nothing to reach the beleaguered garrison. Around that camp, knights were riding horses; heralds sounded a reveille; pages rushed around the camp, bearing messages and supplies of water; grooms cared for their horses; camp followers emerged from thousands of tents; archers were fletching arrows; soldiers brandished weapons, such as a strong pike wall that surrounded the camp; herdsmen kept a hold on livestock of every sort; and, above all, the scent of food wafted from thousands of cookfires into the air. Men around those cookfires laughed and chatted to each other as they broke their fast, whereas there was to be no breakfast in Storm's End at all, only a poor dinner and a poorer lunch. The smell of it alone made Stannis's mouth water. Bread that was not stale, and hearty vegetable soup, and chicken and beef and suckling pig… the Reachmen had it all, and Lord Mace Tyrell meant him to know it, and meant his men to know it, so the Lord of Highgarden boasted of his Reachmen's meals in the hope that Stannis's own Stormlanders would mutiny and murder him. And worst of all, that was not their food. It was the food of the Stormlands, laid prostrate before them, conquered and occupied by the Reachmen after their victory over Robert at Ashford. How many of the smallfolk of the Stormlands were going hungry at this very moment, because of the Reachmen's greed? He knew not. Though in his heart Stannis knew he could never have won the campaign in the Stormlands after Robert retreated at Ashford with much of the Stormlands' strength, such was the enemy's advantage in numbers, and though he believed he had fought well given his disadvantages, the humiliation of his defeat at Lord Mace's hands still rankled. He had been forced back to Storm's End, and now, because of his failure, his enemies were boasting of how they were gorging themselves on the food they had stolen from the people whom he and all Baratheons were sworn to protect.

Stannis hated Paxter Redwyne. He hated Randyll Tarly. He hated Mace Tyrell. He hated every single one of those men feasting outside with greater passion than he had ever hated anyone except himself.

They would not be here forever, Stannis knew, or at least wanted to believe he knew. Robert had not been defeated utterly by Randyll Tarly at Ashford; he had gone away to join his strength with his allies further north. The great lords Arryn and Stark were formidable friends, and ere they parted ways Robert had informed Stannis that he entertained high hopes of Lord Tully joining their struggle as well. With their combined strength, Stannis hoped, Robert would defeat the Mad King's bannermen and come back home to save the day at Storm's End… especially if Storm's End remaining untaken were to force Lord Mace's men to stay here, keeping most of the strength of the Reach away from Robert's battles in the Riverlands.

Robert would win his war. Robert would break that arrogant host outside the walls of Storm's End, if Stannis held out long enough. Robert would come home. Stannis told himself these things every day. He wanted to believe them. He had to.

With a final venomous glare at the fleet and army squatting outside his walls, Stannis descended the curtain wall, passed through the castle yard and entered the tower at the heart of Storm's End.

He spent the rest of the day inspecting soldiers, overseeing the changing of the guard and speaking to captains and stewards and quartermasters. Their supplies made for grim tidings. They had no lack of swords or arrows or mail or wine, but the food situation was truly dire. Ordinary meat had long since run out, cats and dogs too, and they had finished eating the horses a moon past. Nowadays they subsisted on crusts of stale or mouldy bread, scraggly scraps of vegetables, and rats. Rat was the only meat still available in the castle. Dozens of men who had once held other occupations were now tasked as rat-catchers, not for cleanliness but for food. Feeding several hundred men on rats was no easy task, especially since the little beasts were hard to catch…

I can catch them. I can find them in a way from which they can never hide.

Stannis banished the treacherous thought. He had sworn a vow. He would not go back to his old ways. He had no trust in his self-control to stop at skinchanging; if he broke his oath he would return to other workings of sorcery than that, to things greater and more terrible. He had followed that path once before, and though it seemed wide and welcoming at first he now knew what it led to in the end. The waves sweeping away the Windproud at my fingers… Power came at a price. That price must not be paid.

Never again, he told himself. Never again. Never again. Never again. He did not speak of it aloud, as though his sin would cease to exist if he stayed silent.

Unsettled, Stannis resumed his discussions with leaders in the garrison and drew up further preparations for what must be done if, as he feared, no help arrived for another turn of the moon. Cut off from the outside world by the army outside shooting down ravens, he had no way of knowing the course of the war. Those preparations were not pleasant. He had already stopped feeding the failed mutineers who had been imprisoned in the castle dungeons; he had too little food to spare. Now they were dead, and he had not let them be buried despite the protests of Septon Danwell. Maester Cressen had quietly advised Stannis that, unless relief came soon, the dead traitors would be needed for eating.

Even the thought of that made Stannis sick, though not as sick as the thought of what he had done before his vow. He wondered whether he heeded the maester so much because of the man's wisdom, real though it undoubtedly was, or because of what would not have happened if he had trusted the maester's words before.

Stannis headed to the feast hall, which could be found near the bottom of the tower, where it was thickest. The hall was cavernous, with enough space for the whole garrison and more, though half the garrison were on the inner and outer walls, ready to repel an attack. The other half had already had dinner; Stannis himself had overseen the changing of the guard there. Even now, in the most restful part of the day, there could be little rest. Men ate with their armour on and their weapons close to hand, only their helms removed, and there was a stream of dozens of men within sight and earshot of each other, so that there could soon be all hands to the walls if the Reachmen chose this moment to launch their assault.

This inactivity had long taken its toll on Stannis and his men. A bloody mess though it would surely be, with great risk of death and defeat, he often found himself wishing that the Reachmen would give up waiting and attack Storm's End. That would place less stress upon him than day after day after uncounted day of endless waiting, ready for a fight.

Despite that, and despite Mace Tyrell's foul ploy of feasting on fine food outside the walls, his men queued up in good order to eat their tough-as-old-boots bread and watery broth and scraps of rat-meat and cheese. Stannis sat at the head of the table with his brother Renly at his right hand. Once a happy little boy, Renly had become a gaunt shadow of a child. Stannis slapped Renly's hand away when his brother tried to take some of his own meal. He took no greater a portion for himself than he allowed to his men, and he waited in line for his food with everyone else, rather than striding to the front to claim a lord's share. This siege had taught Stannis much about trust and who was or was not worthy of it. His old master-at-arms, Ser Gawen Wylde, who had taught Stannis how to use the first sword that the smith Donal Noye had ever made him, a man he thought he knew and could count on, had tried to sneak out of a postern gate along with three other highborn knights. Meanwhile, most of the lowborn men of the garrison, survivors of his failed campaign to defend the Stormlands from Lord Mace's invading army, men whom he had scarce exchanged two words with prior to this siege, had remained true to House Baratheon, spitting on all the temptations the Tyrells had offered. Stannis greatly esteemed such men, and though he did not say it, not wanting to risk implying to them that their loyalty was anything but the proper and expected and ordinary course to be undertaken, he could not have been prouder of them.

After dinner, Stannis stood and meant to leave until he felt a light tug at his hand. "What is it?" he asked his brother.

"I want to talk," said little Renly.

"We'll speak upstairs." He gathered that it was not something that could be said in the earshot of the garrison, else his brother would have already said it.

"I want to talk here."

"Can you say it in the earshot of the garrison?"

Renly shook his head.

He hardened his voice. "Then it will be upstairs."

His brother made no further argument. He picked Renly up in his arms—the boy was very thin and correspondingly light—and took the boy to his own chambers, formerly Robert's. Robert had taken up residence in the lord's chambers, so Stannis had started sleeping here. He did not want to live in the place where he had so often practised his old ways.

"Now then," he said, depositing his little brother on an armchair in the comfort of his chambers, "what is it?"

Renly burst out, "I'm hungry."

"We are all hungry," Stannis said, unmoved.

"I thought you'd listen to me," said Renly plaintively, sounding betrayed. "I talked quiet, this time."

"Just because you didn't make a hideous scene, undermining my authority in front of my men, does not mean you always get your way. That is the least you must do. It is not enough on its own. You won't get more food."

"I need more," Renly insisted. "It hurts, Stannis, it hurts me in my tummy and it makes it hard to move and when I go to the privy my poo looks strange. Please. Please. You're hurting me when you give me less, it really does hurt, I'm not japing. That man who came in the boat last week, the one the bad men caught, he wanted to give me more."

"He was only a smuggler," Stannis said dismissively. "He didn't try to get past Lord Paxter's fleet just for the sake of helping us. He came to take lots of our gold, since we have so little food we are desperate and would have to pay whatever price he demands. He died for Robert's gold, not for us."

"I got less than half what you took. Why can't I have more?"

"You're less than half my weight. That's why I give you less. Do you think you alone are starving? Every man of us is, I as much as any other. We all need food; I merely give it out justly."

"Not justly. I listened to some big men, Stannis, they said you and me take not much, we could take more. They said most lords take more."

"Yes," Stannis admitted.

"Then why not?" There were tears in Renly's wide blue eyes. "I'm really really hungry, Stannis. I've never been so hungry. Please. Why don't you give me food, when other lords will? Do you hate me?"

"Of course not! You are my brother! Never question that! If I had food enough to give, I would give it in a heartbeat. But all the men need food, not only us. Everyone is feeling what you are feeling. If I take more for you or me, they'll want more too, and we do not have more to give them, so long as the Tyrells besiege us."

"Then make them go away."

He sighed. "If only I could."

"You must," his little brother demanded. "They weren't here always. Yes?"

"Yes."

"They came, because the war came."

"Yes."

"Then stop the war, and they'll go away."

That simple childish reasoning chilled Stannis's thoughts. "We must not." He knelt in front of the armchair so that he was low enough to look his brother in the eye. "Listen to me, Renly. You have another brother, Robert. Remember him; he came here from Gulltown moons ago, and he spoke with you and played with you for a little while. If he loses Storm's End, his bannermen will lose confidence in him, and the Tyrells will be free to march against him with all their strength. We dare not let that happen. We have to hold strong to keep our brother safe."

"What about keeping us safe?" cried Renly.

"The walls will do that."

"They don't stop us starving!"

"They do not, but we must endure it. Robert is our brother, our elder brother. He is the head of our House. We have a duty to serve him. If he loses Storm's End the war is as good as lost, and if the war is lost, the Mad King will b… kill him cruelly. We need to protect him, Renly, just as you would protect me. You want to protect our brother, do you not?"

"I'd protect you," Renly said.

"And Robert," Stannis prompted. "You've not seen him as oft as you have seen me, but he is our brother still, our blood, our kin."

"No matter what he's done?"

"No matter what he has done," Stannis confirmed, feeling relieved. He understands at last.

"That's not right," said Renly, stamping his foot. "I only saw Robert for a few weeks. He came here for our soldiers and went away again when he got them. Before, I didn't see him for years. I think you didn't, either. Did you?" Stannis tried to think of what to say, but before he could speak, his brother saw the answer in his eyes. "Right. We shouldn't starve for Robert. He wouldn't starve for us."

"You're wrong," Stannis growled.

"No I'm not," said the small boy, with a small boy's confidence.

Stannis's voice rose further. "Robert does care. He is our brother."

"If he cares about us, then he doesn't want us starving. So let's not." Renly leant forward. The bright blue eyes set in his bony hollow-cheeked face were alight with hope. "Let's go to the men outside, Stannis, just you and me. You can stop the war, and make them go away. Then we'll get to eat again, and it'll stop hurting us so much."

Stannis wanted to. Until his brother told him he had never known how much he wanted to. He loved little Renly more by far than Robert. Self-preservation and love combined to pull him the same way with the force of a flying dragon.

Only one thing held him back, and that one thing was hard as iron: his duty. I owe my life to my family. No loyal service I can ever give will make up for what I have done.

"He is our brother," Stannis said simply, and there his answer was.

His younger brother's face twisted with anger. "You're so stupid. We're going to die."

"We may," Stannis said, trying to keep his voice down. He could not. His voice was rising in response to Renly's.

"We are," Renly spat, "and it's for nothing." Words flew from Stannis's brother's mouth like daggers, all of them aimed at his heart. "Robert doesn't love you, you big dumb ox. Everyone knows that. The cooks know that. The stableboys know that. How don't you know that? I'm your brother, your real brother, not Robert, and we'll die because you care about him more than me. Septon Danwell said the Father was just, but there's nothing just about that. Why are you so stupid? I wish I was someone else; I wish I wasn't a Baratheon. If I was on the other side, I bet Mace Tyrell wouldn't be so stupid; it would be better to be his brother. I hope you die so someone else commands, then he'll surrender and we can get food, then you'll see you were wrong, you'll be sorry."

The rant ended. Renly Baratheon was panting, taking short, sharp breaths. His bony little face was flushed with rage. Stannis Baratheon regarded him in silence.

"Stannis," his brother said, "let's not fight them. It hurts so much. I need to eat. Please."

"Come, Renly," he said. "There's something that I think you need to see."

Without waiting for a reply, he plucked his brother up in his arms and carried the boy out of his chambers. He was already near the top of the single tower of Storm's End. He went higher. Nobody disturbed him. At last he reached the place he meant to find, a place he had not set foot for several years: a room with a balcony that overlooked Shipbreaker Bay.

Stannis stepped out onto the balcony. He feared no archers; at this height, they were far out of range. Harsh ocean wind blew straight at his face. The cold dug in like a knife. He welcomed the pain. It was different to the pain of starvation, and a suitable reminder of what he remembered from this place.

He put down his brother gently. The boy clutched the railing and shivered.

"I didn't mean it, Stannis," Renly said. "I was angry. I don't want you to die. I never have, really. You're my brother."

"I know."

"I only want something to eat," Renly continued, encouraged by that assent. "Anything. I won't fuss. Please. We can surrender, then we can eat again."

"I understand," Stannis said, and tossed him over the railing.

He looked down. A small shape plummeted into the waves with a scarce-visible splash. The wind swallowed his brother's scream.

Thunder was roaring and winds were shrieking outside when Maester Cressen went to seek the Baratheons.

His boys' bedchambers were empty. That fact troubled Cressen. He would have expected them to be there, trying to sleep. Then a certain memory rose to his mind, and he knew where his boys would be. Poor boys. They would not forget their memories of a night quite like this.

Cursing the stiffness of his knees, Cressen shakily climbed the stairs to go even further up in Storm's End's single spiked-fist tower. Nobody came to help him. No servants dwelt habitually here. At a level almost at the very top, he stopped and pressed against an unlocked door. It resisted for a time, then his pushing told and it swung open all of a sudden. He had to grasp its handle to keep himself upright.

In front of him, facing away, stood a tall thin boy of about twenty namedays, clad in black—one of the boys who were the closest he had ever had to sons.

"Maester," murmured Ser Stannis Baratheon, and Cressen almost jumped out of his skin. He had not known that the boy knew who was there. "Tell me this. Why do maesters swear not to marry or rule lands or sire children?"

What an odd question. It took Cressen a while to think of how to put his answer. "Our order is to serve, not rule," he said. "If we did not so swear, that would lead to maester dynasties; and if we were to rule, that would do harm to our true purpose, to provide wise counsel and to widen the boundaries of knowledge."

Stannis nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Just so."

"Are you considering attending the Citadel, ser?" Cressen was surprised to hear it, but not so surprised as he might have been for another. Stannis had long been a quiet boy, not so raucous as his brothers, and frequently reclusive. That had receded in recent years, but if he had been asked half a dozen years ago he would have taken it in his stride. "You'd be an able student, but if so, I advise you to consult your brother ere you make the final decision."

"Fear not. That's not my intent." There was a hint of humour in that first phrase, a wryness that Cressen did not like. "I merely thought to compare. Men are born with many paths open, but to follow one path, you must go out of sight of others. To gain anything worth gaining, you must sacrifice something else. Sacrifice is never easy, maester. Or it is no true sacrifice. That is the way in all things, not only this."

"That is one way of considering it," Cressen said cautiously. Unlike with Robert and Renly, there were times when he felt he did not understand Stannis Baratheon's thoughts at all. "Do you know where your brother is?"

"I'm afraid not. We parted ways before the storm."

"I see."

He did. It would take a blind man not to. Outside the castle built by Durran Godsgrief, a fearsome storm raged. Waves lashed about like whips, knocking the ships this way and that. There was no rhyme or reason to it. As Cressen could feel on his face, chill winds blew unpredictably every which way, ruining any effort to escape by sail. They drove up the waters into a frenzy, ripping, tearing and sinking ships and dashing them against the rocks. It was strange to watch. Cressen was no less starved than anyone else in Storm's End. He too had been on meagre meals, thanks in great part to the fleet outside, a menacing spectre looming high over his life and likely shortening it… only for the aforesaid fleet to prove pitifully powerless against the unimaginably greater wrath of nature.

Cressen was pleased for his boys to see the gods aid them, but he was not pleased for himself. Like many maesters, he had been born in Oldtown. Those men outside were likely closer kin to a boy born to the Reach than were the Stormlander boys whom he had raised. He was an old man now, of better than sixty namedays, old enough to know that the desperate men drowning outside the walls of Storm's End were not so very different to the desperate men starving within them.

A great three-masted ship with lovely burgundy sails fell from the crest of a wave and was driven with sudden fury into a shallower part of the sea. She struck a great rock with tremendous force and it broke her keel. With a rending crash of splintered wood, the big ship collapsed into dozens of pieces. Plenty of sailors were killed by wood or rock in the impact. Plenty more spilt from her decks to drown in the unforgiving ice-cold water.

"That was Paxter Redwyne's Arbour Queen." Cressen had never heard Stannis speak in quite this tone. It sounded as if he were utterly delighted and yet utterly relaxed, as if his pleasure and excitement were great indeed but they were somewhere else, not here. His voice mixed languid laziness with hints of thrill. "The fleet that starved us is sinking, and a good captain goes down with his ship. It wouldn't be fitting for him to escape their fall, don't you agree? And the Reachmen who invaded us are cowering in their tents, pounded by the wind and pissed on by the rain as they watch their dreams die all around them." He is guessing, Cressen thought. The Tyrell army was not visible from here. "How very appropriate for Mace Tyrell. That flowery fool had no idea what forces he was dancing with."

He cannot mean that. He cannot mean what I think he means. "You mean the gods?" Cressen tried, hoping to believe it, wanting to believe it.

Stannis Baratheon turned around. Dark blue eyes gleamed in his gaunt and bony face. "Who do you think I mean?"

"Some things no man can control." It ought to have been a confident assertion. It came out like a prayer. Cressen spoke quickly: "Natural forces answer to the gods, only to the gods. Surely you don't think yourself the master of this storm."

A smile flickered across starved thin lips. "It seems they teach so little at the Citadel. The storm is a force of nature, yes. It has no lord. It answers only to itself. I am no mere master of the storm. I am the storm."

The smile faded.

"This storm and the last."

In the days after the storm, each day brought a new crop of bloated corpses washing ashore. After a week, among drowned Reachmen beyond count, an eagle-eyed sentry espied the body of a child in Baratheon colours.

Most of the garrison agreed that young Renly had jumped, unable to withstand the lack of food. His brother made a great show of sadness, retreating to the castle sept for days. Cressen would have liked to believe it.

Only… he still remembered his last conversation with Stannis Baratheon. The boy had seemed giddy and strangely loose-tongued, as if most of his thought lay elsewhere. Sacrifice is never easy, maester. Or it is no true sacrifice.

Cressen put his head in his hands. My boys… Stannis, what have you done?