Chapter 44: The Last King
The victory against Tywin Lannister was a fire that warmed the heart of the Grand Alliance, but the raven from Stannis Baratheon was a wind that threatened to extinguish it. In the great hall of Harrenhal, surrounded by his victorious commanders, Ned Stark read the last king's ultimatum. The words were cold, hard, and absolute. Bend the knee, surrender the city, and chain the demon. It was not a message to an ally; it was a demand to a disobedient subject.
"The man is a fool," Prince Oberyn Martell said with a dangerous laugh, after Ned had finished reading. "He sits on his bleak little island, playing with fire and shadows, while we have been winning his war for him. And this is his gratitude?"
"He is the lawful king," Lord Yohn Royce stated, his brow furrowed. The man of tradition was clearly uncomfortable. "His claim is the strongest."
"His claim died with his brother in that tent," Robb Stark countered, his young voice ringing with a king's authority. He had ridden hard to join his father's council, leaving the bulk of his army to mop up the remnants of the Lannister host. "He is a kinslayer and a dabbler in dark arts. The North will not bow to such a man."
The hall erupted in debate, but Ned silenced it with a raised hand. He looked at the faces around him—the vengeful Viper, the honorable Lord of the Vale, his own son, the King in the North. He had forged a fragile unity from these disparate, prideful men. To submit to Stannis now would be to shatter it. To fight him would be to plunge the realm into yet another war.
But Stannis had made the choice for him. He was sailing on King's Landing. He was coming to claim what he believed was his.
"He believes we are still in the capital," Ned said, a new, hard strategy forming in his mind. "He believes he will find a city weakened and a populace ready to accept any king who is not a Lannister. He expects to lay siege to my wife and my daughters."
"Then we must race him there!" Lord Royce urged. "We must march the host back and fortify the city!"
"There is no time for a march," Ned said. He looked across the hall, his eyes finding Thor, who had been listening from the shadows. "And we will not be fortifying the city. We will be meeting him at sea."
A stunned silence fell. The Alliance had no fleet to speak of. Stannis's Royal Fleet was the most powerful naval force in Westeros.
"My lord," Robb began, a worried look on his face, "we have no ships to challenge him."
"We do not need ships," Thor's voice rumbled, as he stepped forward into the light. "He commands the waves with wood and sail. I command them with thunder."
The plan was as audacious as it was terrifying. They would not wait for Stannis to make landfall. They would use the Bifrost to intercept his fleet on the open water of Blackwater Bay, a place from which there was no retreat. They would take an elite force of two thousand men—Northmen, Knights of the Vale, and Dornish spearmen—and materialize from thin air to meet his army.
The strain of such a transport would be immense, Thor warned. But it was possible.
"This is not a battle to destroy his army," Ned commanded his war council, his voice sharp and clear. "It is an operation to capture it. Stannis's men are not our enemies. They are Baratheon soldiers, loyal to what they believe is the rightful king. I will not have them slaughtered. We will disable the fleet, force their surrender, and take the king alive. He will stand trial before the Great Council for his crimes. The world must see that no man, not even a king, is above the law of the realm."
It was a plan that belonged to a new age of warfare. It was swift, precise, and aimed at minimizing bloodshed while achieving total strategic victory.
Three days later, as Stannis Baratheon's great fleet rounded Massey's Hook, sailing into the wide expanse of Blackwater Bay, the sky above them was clear and blue. Stannis stood on the deck of his flagship, the Fury, a grim satisfaction on his face. He could see the distant smudge of King's Landing on the horizon. The city was his. He had the law, he had the fleet, and he had his god. Eddard Stark, for all his surprising victories, would have no choice but to bend the knee.
Ser Davos Seaworth stood beside him, a deep unease in his heart. "Your Grace," he said, "perhaps we should send a final raven, offering terms. Lord Stark is an honorable man…"
"He is a disobedient subject," Stannis cut him off. "He will learn his place. And his demon will be cast back into whatever hell it crawled from."
As he spoke, Melisandre emerged onto the deck, her red robes a bloody stain against the blue sea. "The Lord of Light is with you, my king," she purred. "I have seen your victory in the flames. The city will be yours by nightfall."
But as she spoke, the clear blue sky began to change. A single, dark cloud appeared from nowhere, directly above the fleet. It grew with unnatural speed, swirling and churning, a vortex of black and angry grey. The wind, calm a moment before, began to howl, whipping the sails and tearing at the banners. The sea began to heave, great, oily swells rising from the depths.
"A squall!" the ship's master cried, his face pale. "Impossible! The sky was clear!"
But this was no squall. This was a contained, intelligent storm. It raged only over the hundred ships of the Royal Fleet, while the shores on either side remained bathed in sunlight. Lightning, thick as a tree trunk, crashed into the water around them, not striking the ships, but creating concussive blasts that rattled their very timbers.
"Sorcery!" Stannis snarled, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. He looked at Melisandre, but for the first time, he saw a flicker of something other than serene confidence in her eyes. It was shock. This was a power that was not hers.
Then, from the heart of the storm, it came. A sound that was not thunder, but something far more ancient, a reality-bending hum that made the sailors' teeth ache. In the shallow waters near the coast, the air began to shimmer, to tear, and a swirling rainbow of impossible colors erupted into being. From the heart of that light, an army appeared, two thousand men in the armor of the North and the Vale, materializing on the shores as if walking out of a dream.
And on the water, amongst the fleet, Thor appeared. He did not arrive on a ship. He simply stood on the surface of the churning water, his feet planted on the waves as if on solid ground, Stormbreaker in his hand.
He raised the axe. The sea obeyed.
Great waterspouts, dozens of them, rose from the bay. They did not smash the ships; they did something far more precise. They tore the sails to ribbons. They snapped the rudder-posts. They ripped the oars from their locks. The entire Royal Fleet was disarmed, demasted, and disabled in a matter of minutes, left drifting helplessly, at the mercy of the storm and the god who commanded it.
"This is your only warning, Stannis Baratheon," Thor's voice boomed over the howling wind, carrying to every ship in the fleet. "Surrender your ships and your men. Your war is over."
Stannis stared, his face a mask of apoplectic fury and utter disbelief. His fleet, his pride, his entire strength, had been rendered useless without a single casualty. He saw the army waiting for him on the shore. He was defeated.
With a roar of pure, frustrated rage, he drew his own sword. "To me! We will fight them on the beaches! The Lord of Light will protect us!"
But his men did not respond. They were staring at the being who stood upon the water, at the storm he commanded, at the army that had appeared from nowhere. They were sailors, and they knew when the sea itself had turned against them. They were soldiers, and they knew when a battle was lost before it had even begun. One by one, they began to drop their swords.
Seeing his command broken, Stannis stood alone, his sword raised, a defiant king with no one left to lead.
The storm subsided as quickly as it had come. The sea grew calm. The sky cleared. Alliance ships, small fishing boats commandeered by Ned's men, began to ferry the surrendered Baratheon soldiers to the shore.
Stannis and Melisandre were brought before Ned Stark on the beach. The last king stood in chains, his face a thundercloud of impotent fury.
"Stark," he ground out. "You will pay for this. This is treason. This is heresy."
"This," Ned replied, his voice calm and cold, "is justice. You stand accused of the murder of your brother, Renly Baratheon. You stand accused of burning men alive in the name of your god. You will be taken to King's Landing, where you will stand trial before the Great Council of Westeros."
"I am the king!" Stannis roared. "I am not subject to the laws of lesser men!"
"We shall see," was all Ned said.
The trial was held a week later in the Dragonpit. The great lords were reassembled, their faces a mixture of awe and fear. They had heard the tales of the Battle of the Blackwater, of the god who had tamed the sea. The authority of the Lord Protector was now absolute.
Stannis stood before them in chains, proud and unbowed. Melisandre was at his side, serene and unnerving, her red eyes missing nothing.
Ned presided, but Catelyn Stark was the first to give testimony. Her voice, clear and strong, filled the vast ruin as she recounted the night in Renly's tent, the unnatural cold, and the shadow with Stannis's face that had committed murder before her eyes. Brienne of Tarth, her face a mask of grief, corroborated the story, her loyalty to her slain king burning in her eyes.
Next came the lords who had followed Stannis, men who had been captured on the Blackwater. Lord Florent, a man whose niece Stannis had married, testified with a trembling voice about the burning of the idols of the Seven on the beaches of Dragonstone. Another knight told the tale of the "castles" Melisandre had burned, men who had opposed her, sacrificed to her Red God to bring favorable winds.
Through it all, Stannis remained defiant. When Ned asked him to answer the charge of kinslaying, he simply said, "Renly was a traitor. I offered him his life and he refused. His death was a necessity of war."
When asked about the burnings, he replied, "The men were idolaters and unbelievers. They were cleansed by the purifying fire of the one true god."
He was guilty, and he did not even have the capacity to understand his own guilt. He had wrapped himself so tightly in the armor of his own righteousness that he had lost all touch with humanity.
The verdict of the Great Council was swift and unanimous. Guilty. Of murder, of kinslaying, of treason, and of crimes against the gods and men.
Ned Stark stood to deliver the sentence. "Stannis of the House Baratheon," he declared, his voice heavy with the weight of the moment. "For your crimes, this council sentences you to death. You will be taken from this place and beheaded, your line and your claim to end with you."
Stannis did not flinch. He simply stared at Ned with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"And what of the witch?" Oberyn Martell called out. "A simple beheading is too good for a creature who births shadows and burns men alive."
All eyes turned to Melisandre. She smiled, a strange, serene expression. "You cannot kill me, mortal men. I am but a servant. My god will protect me. My fire cannot be extinguished."
"All fires can be extinguished," Thor's voice rumbled from beside the dais. He stepped forward, his gaze locked on the Red Priestess. He saw her not as a woman, but as a vessel for a dangerous, parasitic power. He saw the dark fire that burned behind her eyes, the life force she had stolen from others to fuel her magic.
He raised his hand, palm open. He did not touch her. But Melisandre gasped, her serene expression turning to one of shock and pain. The ruby at her throat, which had been glowing with a dull, inner heat, suddenly flared brightly, and then went dark, crumbling to dust. The illusion of her youth and beauty fell away. The skin on her face wrinkled, her fiery hair turned a wispy, brittle white. Her body, held together by centuries of borrowed life and dark magic, began to fail. The fire inside her was being drawn out, pulled from her by a power far greater and more ancient than her own. It flowed from her in a stream of red, smoky light, and was absorbed into the head of Thor's axe, which glowed for a moment before fading.
Melisandre of Asshai, the Red Woman, crumpled to the ground, a frail, ancient crone, her eyes wide with the terror of a being who has just lost its immortality. She was no longer a priestess. She was just a woman.
"Her magic is gone," Thor said. "Her fate is now your own to decide."
The execution took place at sunset in the center of the Dragonpit, before the assembled lords. Stannis Baratheon met his end with the same iron defiance with which he had lived his life. He knelt, his back straight, his eyes burning with a cold fire until the very last moment. Ned Stark, with a heavy heart, swung the Valyrian steel sword Ice, and the last of Robert's brothers was gone.
The now-ancient Melisandre was executed by a simple headsman's axe. There was no magic, no final prophecy. Only the quiet, pathetic end of a woman who had gambled with dark gods and lost.
As the sun set, Ned Stark stood before the silent lords of Westeros. The Lannisters were broken. The Baratheons were extinct. The old world, the world of the Iron Throne and the game of kings, was well and truly dead, executed by his own hand.
He had won. He had saved the realm. He had protected his family. But as he looked at the blood on the stones and the uncertain faces of the lords who now looked to him for guidance, he felt no triumph. Only the crushing, terrifying weight of the empty crown he had refused to wear. The war was over. The task of building a new world was about to begin, and it was a task that seemed infinitely more daunting than any battle he had ever fought.