Chapter 10
Part III

When Ser Stannis Baratheon descended alone to greet his victorious army, they looked upon him in awed, almost worshipful silence.

It was difficult for Justin to resist that. Whatever else he was, the captain was one man. One man. For one man to overcome hundreds of fearsome Dothraki warriors and send them fleeing was a feat of arms beyond imagination.

"I told you," Stannis said to the sellswords, the corners of his lips twitching upward ever-so-slightly. "Did I not? I told you, 'You will see.'"

"Oh yes," said Bozyno Vunel. "Captain—I—Captain. I have never seen a battle like this in all my years. I have never seen a man do what you have done—twice now, after Nyrelos. We were badly outnumbered, on an open plain, naught to protect us from the strength of a greater host; we should have been easy prey for their reserve; and we won. They ran away. From you." He shook his head in wonder. "It is the perfect battle."

"Did you know all along it would be this way?" Justin asked. "Is this what you meant when you said 'preparations'?"

"Yes, and yes."

"How…" Alequo Nudoon could scarcely speak. "How did you make 'preparations' for this?"

"Suffice to say that I did, with some difficulty," the captain said. "This perfect battle was long in the making. That is why I required the delays I did." He looked around. "Where is the Iron Shields' commander, Lagan?"

"Dead," Marro Namerin supplied. "He was cut down in the battle. Wonoat commands the Iron Shields now."

"I see," said Ser Stannis. He made no further comment on the matter. "Have you looted the corpses yet?"

Some of the other men looked taken aback. None of the Company of the Cat men were surprised by that brutal honesty. "Not completely, yet, Captain," Nudoon said. "We… well… you…"

"Then get it over with, if you intend to," Stannis said. "I will not tarry long. We'll rest for the remainder of today, but afterwards we shall be heading back westward, with haste. Handtaker will be expecting me. There is a war to win."

Justin forwent a chance to steal gold rings and suchlike from the bodies, though doubtless there would be plenty. Sellswords tended to carry their wealth with them, available at a moment's notice, rather than relying on faraway vaults. The favour of King Robert's brother mattered more.

He deemed that it was working. Namerin, Vunel, and the others had known Ser Stannis for years longer than Justin had, but Stannis nowadays rode with Justin more often than not. They were both men of Westeros, and that was a bond in this summery, lonely land.

So it was that he spoke often with his captain on the long ride to the west. He learnt little of the witchcraft the banished knight had unleashed upon the unsuspecting Dothraki, for Stannis did not like to reveal much, though he did like to believe Stannis had shared more with him than any other. Often their conversations were about Westeros, or about their past (albeit usually Justin's).

The army took a different path to their previous way, so that they went through lands that still had something left to pillage. Yet there was not much pillaging. Ser Stannis drove a hard pace. They stopped to sleep or to forage food from unfortunate peasants. That was all. They did not divert their path to raze as many villages as possible. Indeed, they were scarcely razing villages.

Again they passed through the Ralemne Heights, for they did not wish to be followed. (The journey was less daunting this time, now that they knew it could be done.) They were far from the greatest host currently roaming the far northwest of Essos. The grand army of the Pact of Four had the greater part of a hundred-thousand men, and that was with the Pentoshi not yet arrived. One encounter with that leviathan and this little host would be crushed like a bug.

After they emerged from the Ralemne Heights, the peril of other hosts was even greater. Stannis grew cool and distant on that ride. He almost never spoke, except to command strange, winding courses for the army to follow—often through steep, rocky valleys, and on paths that were a disgrace to the honourable name of 'dirt track'—or to warn them of enemy outriders in a particular place who needed to be intercepted and killed before they could proceed further on their way. He ate and slept and rode, fully in control of himself, yet somehow seemed simultaneously a hundred miles away. Most did not understand why; but Justin had seen how Stannis treated his golden eagles, and now there were dozens of them, nesting at the camp and flying far and wide.

Justin saw to it that the eagles were well fed and kept his captain's condition secret as best he could. He suspected this was necessary. Stannis had forbidden outriders to leave the army, lest they be captured by the enemy and reveal his presence, but there must be tens of thousands of the Pact of Four's sellswords and soldiers in these lands. It was a wonder that their small host did not intersect with any of them, and Justin was fairly confident that he knew how it was done.

Wonder though it was, it took Stannis's full attention, night and day, to achieve. By the time they at last reached the rest of the Company of the Cat, the captain was weary to the bone. Justin had to watch him to check he was not in danger of falling off his horse, and his eyes were red and often blinking.

Justin and his comrades rejoined the main strength of the Company of the Cat at a camp outside Amnos, a tiny fishing village on the coast of the Shivering Sea about a hundred miles east of Braavos. The cat banners rose above a characteristically well-ordered grid of tents, surrounded by signal fires and a swarm of sentries.

"Prepare your tents," Ser Stannis ordered once they arrived. "I do not and cannot know when the Company will be on the move. For all I know, it may be tomorrow. Speak with the guardsmen, they will tell you where to go. The commander does not approve of disorderly sprawl." He turned to the men who were not from the Company of the Cat—the Iron Shields and the other small free companies. "I would advise you to set up your own camps. We are all, for the moment, in the hire of the same employer, and it would not be prudent to part ways; but we are not of the same free company, and it would be presumptuous over my commander if I were to forget that."

Finally Stannis turned to Justin.

"Nudoon, Massey, Namerin, Vunel, come with me. We must report to the commander."

"Yes, Captain."

Once they had removed their armour and garbed themselves in easier clothes, they walked deeper into the camp. Soon twelve armed guardsmen fell in around them, walking quietly on all sides. Justin was surprised, but a whisper from Vunel told him not to be. "Handtaker's a paranoid bastard, that's why he's lived so long."

They passed into a tent larger than the others—with several layers, all filled with suspicious guardsmen ready to raise an alarm—and for the first time in his life, Justin laid eyes upon the commander of the free company he had sworn years of his life to.

Aro Isattis, called Handtaker, sixth commander of the Company of the Cat, was a lean, ageing man, perhaps forty or fifty, with a downturned mouth and a prominent protruding nose. His thinness did not look like starvation, or at least not current starvation, but seemed to hold a certain quiet strength. His face was impassive. Justin tried to see some sign, perhaps in the eyes, that he was looking at one of the most infamously cruel men in the Free Cities. He saw nothing. The commander of the Company of the Cat could have passed for a merchant.

"Sunsetlander," Handtaker said.

"Commander," Stannis said, bowing his head respectfully. "Would you like me to relay to you what we have done in the east?"

"That would be convenient."

And so he did.

It was a long tale. Handtaker remained perfectly silent throughout; whatever else the commander was, he was plainly not the sort of man who was in love with the sound of his own voice. Justin listened to most of it. Many of the explanations he knew, but Ser Stannis spoke more of the truths behind his magic to the commander than he had disclosed to his men. It made for some intriguing stories. It was a pity Justin would never be able to tell anyone. He had heard enough of Handtaker's reputation to know how that might end, and, when faced with the risk of a slow and miserable death, Justin considered that it was better safe than story.

"…and so they fled," Stannis finished, in a triumphant tone. "It was the perfect battle. I could not defeat them, so I did not. I found a way for them to defeat themselves."

Handtaker spoke for the first time in half an hour. "I see."

Then he backhanded Stannis across the face.

Ser Stannis tumbled down, struck so hard that he lost his footing. "What—?" he gasped.

Justin started to step towards the captain. Namerin grasped him hard. "No!" he hissed. "You'll only make it worse. You're new, you don't know anything here."

Handtaker flicked a finger. Four burly guardsmen stepped forward immediately. Two grabbed Stannis's arms and hoisted him up while one held steel at his throat. Stannis was not fool enough to make a move. He stood still, eyes wide with panic, taking very short breaths very quickly.

"You utter imbecile," Handtaker said, very softly. "Do you have any idea what you have done, Sunsetlander?"

Stannis spoke between sharp breaths. "Commander, I… I do not understand."

"That would be a no," Handtaker said. "How disappointing. Very well. Do you remember the orders I gave you?"

This time, Stannis remained silent.

"I commanded you to use this passage you were so happy to boast to me your little spies had found. To ravage the lands of Norvos. To lure out part of the host Norvos was contributing to the Pact of Four. This you did. And then, to use that to pull out another part. Which you did not."

"But—commander—I destroyed—"

"Destroying them was not your objective. It was merely a possible means to an end. If you ravaged the lands of Norvos, seized a great deal of food and then retreated into the Ralemne Heights, that would reveal to the Norvoshi that an army could pass out from the Ralemne Heights, when they had thought it impossible. That would allow you to hide in the mountains which, by your art, you know better than they, and would force them to send reinforcements to fortify all the passes from the mountains—not just the one most closely connected to that passage of yours—so that the Braavosi force, which they would know is somewhere in the mountains, could not attack out at will. That would have tied down many times your number. That strategy—or any other of a dozen I could name—would have been greatly preferable to your glorious victory."

Justin had never heard the words 'glorious victory' spoken with such withering scorn.

"The purpose that I desired was for you to pull as large a Norvoshi force as possible away from the main host of the three Free Cities allied against Braavos to her east, before that host could join with the sellswords hired by Pentos. Therefore, a late victory—like the one you obtained—was as useless as a defeat. I did not care whether the men you lured away from Norvos's army were gloriously slain or tied up with some other duty; I merely needed them gone from the west. And because of how long you delayed the encounter with the very first force sent to bring you to heel, trying to utterly destroy them instead of to do whatever you had to do to make Norvos give them reinforcements, no reinforcements were given; so those men stayed in the west."

Handtaker leant forward, looking into Stannis's paling face.

"I see the beginnings of realisation on your face. Good. The Sealord's men met the Lorathi, Norvoshi and Qohoriks on the west coast of Lorath Bay. The Braavosi tried to stamp them out. The Pact lost more men than Braavos did, but the Pact's army is intact. The soldiers and hired sellswords of Lorath, Norvos and Qohor joined with those of Pentos, overcoming the separation of forces that previously hindered them. The Pentoshi, who have no formal army but plenty of money to hire sellswords, and the Free Cities fight more with sellswords than with their armies in any case. The Pentoshi, who are famously very rich, and have not lost anything in the recent war as Braavos and Norvos have. Those Pentoshi. Which now leaves the Braavosi facing precisely the strategic nightmare they tried their best to avoid from the very beginning of this war: not three but four Free Cities, all their forces together, against Braavos alone."

Stannis's eyes widened.

"You think like a warlock, not like a captain," Handtaker went on remorselessly. "You have become so accustomed to using your witchcraft to destroy your enemies that you forgot to consider when and why and whether they need to be destroyed. You faced an enemy that would be difficult to destroy in battle, because you were badly outnumbered. Instead of thinking back to the circumstances of the war and wondering whether you needed to utterly destroy him—indeed, whether an attempt to destroy him would even be the wisest course—you cast aside every other strategic consideration in order to be able to destroy him. You succeeded. At the cost of making your success useless."

For the whole conversation, Handtaker did not raise his voice. His tone was polite, pleasant, conversational. It was as if he were remarking on the pleasant weather.

A gesture. The guardsmen stepped back.

Stannis fell to both knees, voice shaking with distress and dismay. He massaged his throat. "Commander, I will redeem myself for my failure. I will lead your men to great victories—"

"No."

The bald, lone word left Stannis actually shocked. "Commander?"

"You will not lead my men. You are demoted from the rank of captain. You are not suited to it. You have served me ably as my warlock, aiding the outriders and giving good winds to the ships and working terror at Nyrelos, and for that you will continue to be paid very handsomely. But it was a mistake to raise you to command."

"Commander," Stannis protested, "I made a mistake, I see that now, but—"

"'A mistake'. You did not follow your orders. I've killed men for less. I do not tolerate disobedience, I believe I'm mildly well known for it. Know this: If you were not so useful as a warlock, or if I were not entirely convinced that your deeds arose from stupidity rather than betrayal, you would already be dead."

Stannis absorbed that solemnly.

"I… I'll do… I'll… I'll fix it, commander." Stannis lifted his eyes imploringly to stare into Handtaker's own. "I'll set right what I set wrong. You need do naught but give the word, and I will go out to battle for you, under your command or whoever would you like, I will destroy your enemies—"

The commander regarded him coldly. "It is far too late for that."

"What do you mean?" Stannis seemed bewildered. "Surely you can undo my demotion—"

"Of course I can," Handtaker said, impatient. "With one utterance I could make you the new commander or I could make you a corpse in a shallow grave. It is too late because Lord General Ls'tar has brought about a cataclysmic collapse in the Braavosi front lines. It is too late because the Pact of Four have stormed the cities of Karavos, Moninth, Lyndos; only the fleet in the lagoon holds them back from Braavos itself; what remains of the Braavosi army cannot last long. It is too late because Antaryon has been deposed, and Magister Anno Nusaris is the new Sealord, and Nusaris has sent envoys to Ls'tar seeking terms." And finally, finally he raised his voice. "It is too late because we've lost the fucking war."