Scene 1: The Quartermaster's Failure
The victory at Summerhall had faded. The euphoria of the soldiers had been replaced by the grim reality of the morning after.
The Stormlands host was preparing to move West, toward Ashford. The camp was a hive of activity—tents striking, horses stamping, men shouting.
Robert Baratheon stood by the main supply train. The "Eagle Vision" was pulsing in his mind, demanding data that wasn't there.
He watched the line of wagons trundling onto the muddy road. They were a motley collection: heavy wains from Storm's End, commandeered farm carts from the Summerhall harvest, and ox-carts seized from the Royalists.
"Quartermaster!" Robert shouted.
Ser Hyle, a cousin of House Errol, trotted over on a fat palfrey. He looked flushed and stressed, clutching a roll of parchment.
"My Lord?"
"We march for Ashford," Robert said, eyeing a wagon that looked dangerously tilted. "The Reach army is large. We might be in the field for a fortnight before we can force a battle or retreat. Do we have the grain?"
Ser Hyle nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes, my Lord. We are well-provisioned. I have secured the harvest from the local holdfasts."
"Give me the number," Robert demanded.
"We have forty wagons, my Lord. Full to the brim."
Robert froze.
"Forty?" Robert repeated, his voice dangerously quiet.
"Aye, forty!" Hyle beamed, seemingly proud of the number. "It's a long train, my Lord. Very impressive."
Robert walked over to the nearest wagon. It was a heavy wain, piled high with sacks of barley. The oxen were straining, their hooves slipping in the mud. The axle groaned with a sound like a dying tree.
"This wagon," Robert said, slapping the wood. "How much is in it?"
"It is... full, my Lord," Hyle said, confused.
"Full is not a number!" Robert roared.
He climbed onto the wheel hub and slashed a sack open with his dagger. Grain spilled out. He grabbed another sack—it felt heavy, the size of a grown man. He grabbed a third—it was light, filled with chaff or straw.
"This one is heavy," Robert growled. "That one is light."
He jumped down and marched to the next cart in line. It was a smaller farm cart. The pile of sacks reached the same height, but the cart was half the width.
"And this?" Robert pointed. "Is this a 'wagon' too?"
"Well... yes, my Lord. It is a cart. It counts."
"So when you write '40 wagons' in your ledger," Robert said, stepping close to Hyle, looming over the smaller man, "does this cart count as one? And the heavy wain counts as one?"
"I... I count the vehicles, my Lord. It is the standard way."
"The standard way gets us dead!" Robert shouted.
He dragged Hyle back to the heavy wain.
"This wain carries maybe a ton of grain. That cart carries half. If you count them both as 'one,' you don't know what we have."
He turned to the army, seeing the men watching. They trusted him to lead them. They trusted him to feed them. And this fool was going to starve them because he couldn't do math.
"Halt the column!" Robert bellowed.
The order rippled down the line. Halt! Halt!
"Dump them," Robert ordered.
Hyle blanched. "My Lord?"
"Dump the wagons!" Robert roared. "I want to see what we are eating!"
The soldiers scrambled. They began to pull the tarps off. They began to drag sacks onto the muddy grass.
The result was a horror show.
Wagon 1: The bottom sacks had burst days ago, the grain wet and sprouting mold. Wagon 2: Half-full. The sacks had shifted, creating a hollow center hidden by the tarp. Wagon 3: Not grain. It was filled with bolts of wool and three casks of wine—loot that Hyle had prioritized over food. Wagon 4: A commandeered hay-wain piled with loose turnips that were soft and rotting in the damp air.
Robert walked down the line. He kicked a rotting turnip. He cut open a sack that turned out to be sawdust meant for bedding, not flour for bread.
He looked at Hyle. The Quartermaster was trembling, clutching his useless ledger.
"You have forty vehicles," Robert said, his voice cold. "You have loot. You have rot. You have bedding."
He looked at the endless pile of unorganized, uncounted, rotting chaos spread out in the mud.
"We aren't marching to Ashford," Robert whispered. "We are marching to a famine."
He turned to the stunned army.
"Strip every wagon," Robert ordered, his voice echoing off the ruins. "Empty every sack. We do not move one inch until I know exactly how many days of life we have left."
He stood amidst the garbage of his own supply train, the King of a pile of rot.
"Get to work," he snarled.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 6: The King's Weight
Scene 2: The Stag Pound
The supply train looked like a disaster area. Mounds of grain, barrels of fish, and piles of turnips lay scattered on tarps in the mud. The Quartermaster, Ser Hyle, looked ready to weep.
"It will take a week to sort this!" Hyle wailed. "We have no scales! We have no measures!"
"We have gravity," Robert grunted. "And we have wood."
He walked to a nearby campfire where soldiers were sitting on a fallen log.
"Move," Robert ordered.
The soldiers scrambled. Robert grabbed the log—a thick oak trunk—and rolled it to the center of the muddy road. He then grabbed a long, sturdy plank from a dismantled wagon bed.
He laid the plank across the log, finding the center point. It teetered like a child's seesaw.
"A balance beam," Robert announced.
He looked around the roadside. He waded into the tall grass and returned with a jagged, heavy grey stone. He hefted it in one hand. It felt solid. Dense. Roughly fifty pounds—the weight a man could march with all day, but heavy enough to matter.
He slammed the stone down on the left side of the plank. The plank banged down into the mud.
"This," Robert shouted to the watching army, pointing at the rock, "is The Stag."
He grabbed an empty sack. He handed it to Hyle.
"Fill it."
Hyle scooped grain into the sack.
"Put it on the other side," Robert ordered.
Hyle placed the sack on the right end of the plank. The "Stag" side stayed down. The sack was too light.
"More," Robert said.
Hyle scooped more barley. Still too light. He added another scoop.
The plank shifted. It groaned, leveled out, and hovered parallel to the ground.
"Stop!" Robert barked. "Sew it shut."
Hyle quickly stitched the top of the sack with twine.
Robert picked up the sack. He threw it to a nearby sergeant.
"That is One Stag of grain," Robert declared. "Every sack in this army will weigh exactly that. Not a handful more, not a handful less."
He turned to the carpenters and engineers.
"Build ten more beams. Find ten stones that match this one exactly. Then line up the men."
The Assembly Line
An hour later, the chaos had transformed into a machine.
Ten balance beams were set up in a row.
Soldiers formed bucket brigades.
Scoop. Pour. Balance. Sew.
It was rhythmic. It was hypnotic.
Robert walked the line, watching the piles of rot and chaos disappear, replaced by neat, uniform stacks of sacks.
The math clarified instantly. They didn't have ten days of food. They had two.
The realization was terrifying, but it was accurate. Now he could plan. He knew he had to forage. He knew he had to confiscate. He knew he had to move fast.
"Mark the wagons," Robert ordered Hyle, who was now sweating and covered in flour, looking more like a baker than a knight. "Paint the number of Stags on the side of the wain. If a wain says '40' and it only has 38, the driver hangs."
"Yes, my Lord," Hyle breathed, looking at the standardized stacks with a strange sense of relief. The ambiguity was gone.
The Spear Yard
Robert didn't stop at the grain. The "Audit" fever had taken him.
He marched to the area where the levies were sharpening their weapons. He saw the same chaos he had seen in the wagons.
Some men held long pikes—12 feet of ash.
Some men held hunting spears—6 feet of light wood.
Some men held rusty pitchforks.
"Useless," Robert muttered. "A porcupine with broken quills."
He walked to the blacksmith's wagon. He grabbed a piece of charcoal and drew a line on the side of the wooden cart. Then he drew another line exactly eight feet away.
"Line up!" Robert roared to the spearmen.
The men shuffled into formation, confused.
"Bring your spears," Robert ordered.
The first man stepped up. He held a long, unwieldy pike.
"Measure it against the cart," Robert said.
The pike extended three feet past the second line.
"Too long," Robert said. "It's heavy. You'll drop it in a charge."
He drew his dirk. Whack. He chopped the tip off, then shaved the wood down to a new point. "Eight feet. Standard."
The next man stepped up. He had a short hunting spear, barely five feet long.
"Short," Robert grunted. "A cavalryman will embrace you before you can scratch his horse."
He took the spear. "This is a sidearm now. Go to the wagon. Get a standard ash pole. Fit your iron to it."
"But my Lord," the man protested, "this was my grandfather's boar spear!"
"Your grandfather wasn't fighting heavy horse," Robert said. "Standardize or die."
He turned to the Sergeants.
"I want a wall of points," Robert instructed, holding his hands out to show the concept. "If every spear is eight feet, the points align. We create a killing zone. If they are mixed, the enemy finds the gap."
He gestured to the charcoal marks on the cart.
"Every spear. Every shaft. Check them against the mark. If it doesn't fit, fix it."
Sunset
The sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows over the camp.
The transformation was absolute.
The wagons were re-loaded, not with random piles, but with uniform, counted stacks. The axle-breaking overloads were gone. The "Stag" stones sat on the balance beams, the silent arbiters of truth.
The spearmen were drilling. The clack-clack-clack of their shafts hitting shields sounded different now. It sounded crisp. Uniform. The spear tips formed a perfect, straight line of death.
Robert stood by the fire, eating a ration bar (one half-Stag of flour divided by the company).
Ser Hyle approached. He looked exhausted, but he held a new ledger.
"The count is done, my Lord," Hyle said. "We have 942 Stags of grain. 200 Stags of salted fish."
"We are light," Robert said, chewing. "But we are honest."
"We are," Hyle admitted. He looked at the wagons. "I have never seen a train so... tidy. It feels lighter, somehow."
"Order is weightless," Robert said. "Chaos is heavy."
He looked at the spears gleaming in the firelight.
"Tomorrow we march," Robert said. "And tomorrow, we know exactly what we carry."
[End of Scene]
Chapter 6: The King's Weight
Scene 3: The Spy
The sun was high, and the "Stag Standard" was in full effect.
A long line of camp followers and local merchants stood before the balance beams. The mood was tense. The days of eyeballing measurements were over.
At the front of the line, a grain merchant named Pytos—a man with a greased mustache and a nervous smile—was arguing with Ser Hyle.
"It is a full bushel, my Lord!" Pytos insisted. "My own weights are certified in Oldtown!"
"We don't use Oldtown weights," Hyle said, pointing to the grey rock on the balance beam. "We use the Stag."
Pytos placed his sack on the scale. The Stag slammed down. The sack flew up. Light.
"It... it must be the dampness!" Pytos stammered. "The wool of the sack absorbs moisture... it throws off the count!"
Robert stepped out of the command tent. He had been watching.
Robert walked to the beam. He didn't speak. He drew his dagger and slashed the bottom of the merchant's sack.
Grain spilled out. But so did a hollow wicker cone, woven into the lining to take up space.
The crowd gasped. It was a crude trick, theft by volume.
"You sell air," Robert said, kicking the wicker cone. "And you charge my men for grain."
"My Lord, please! It is a misunderstanding! I will refund the difference!"
"You steal from the army," Robert announced to the crowd, "you kill the army. A man who steals food is no better than a poisoner."
He looked at Hyle.
"Hang him."
"My Lord?"
"Hang him with his own weights," Robert clarified. "Tie the sacks around his neck. Throw him from the tree."
As the guards dragged the screaming merchant away, Robert turned to the rest of the line—sutlers, smiths, and farmers.
"The price is the price," Robert stated calmly. "The weight is the weight. Cheat me, and you join him. Deal fairly, and you will find no better customer than the Stormlands."
He turned and walked back toward his tent. Behind him, he heard the sounds of merchants hurriedly refilling their sacks to the brim, terrified of the Stag.
Inside the Command Tent
Robert entered the dim interior of his pavilion. He walked to the map table, intending to pour a cup of water.
He stopped.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. It wasn't the "Eagle Vision." It was instinct. The air pressure in the room felt... wrong.
He spun around, hand dropping to the dagger at his belt.
"Come out," Robert growled.
Nothing. Just the shadows of the tent flaps.
"I can hear your heartbeat," Robert lied (or perhaps, with his adrenaline, he could). "You are behind the armor rack."
A shadow detached itself from the darkness.
It wasn't a soldier. It was a boy. Maybe twelve years old, thin as a rail, with skin the color of old parchment and eyes that were entirely too big for his face. He wore rags that seemed to blend into the canvas of the tent.
He held a half-eaten loaf of bread in one hand. In the other, he held Robert's own signet ring, which had been sitting on the table.
Robert narrowed his eyes. The guards outside hadn't raised a cry. This kid had walked past three sentries and a perimeter patrol.
"You have nimble fingers," Robert said, not advancing. "To steal from a King."
The boy didn't speak. He didn't tremble. He watched Robert with a flat, dead gaze that was unnerving in a child. He didn't look like a thief caught in the act; he looked like a cat deciding which way to jump.
"I was hungry," the boy said. His voice was accented—Low Valyrian? Braavosi? It was hard to place.
"There is bread in the mess hall," Robert said. "But you came here. For the ring."
The boy looked at the heavy gold ring. "Gold buys more bread."
"And gets your throat cut," Robert countered. "You saw the merchant? Pytos?"
The boy nodded slowly. "I saw. You killed him for the wicker cone."
"I killed him for the lie," Robert corrected. "I hate lies."
He took a step forward. The boy tensed, ready to bolt under the canvas.
"Don't run," Robert said. "If you run, I have to hunt you. And I am very good at hunting."
He picked up a heavy silver goblet from the table.
"Catch."
He threw the goblet. It wasn't a gentle toss. It was a hard throw.
The boy's hand snapped out. Snatch.
He caught it out of the air without flinching, without a sound. The movement was fluid, liquid. It wasn't the desperate grab of a beggar; it was the reflex of a dancer.
Robert smiled. A cold, calculating smile.
"What is your name?"
"Siro," the boy said.
"Where are you from, Siro? You aren't Stormlands born."
"Nowhere," Siro said. "Everywhere."
"Braavos?" Robert guessed.
A flicker in the boy's eyes. Tiny. Almost imperceptible. But the "Eagle Vision" caught it.
Got you.
"I don't care where you came from," Robert said. "I care that you walked past my guards like they were statues."
Robert sat down in his chair. He gestured to the bread.
"Eat the bread. Keep the ring."
Siro blinked, the mask slipping for a second. "Keep it?"
"It's a test," Robert said. "You like to steal? Good. I have a job for you."
"I am not a soldier," Siro said warily.
"I have enough soldiers," Robert said. "Soldiers are loud. They stomp. They bleed. They die."
Robert leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"I need eyes, Siro. I need someone who can walk into a camp and count the wagons without being seen. I need someone who can listen to a Lord's whisper in a crowded hall."
He pointed to the boy's feet, wrapped in silent rags.
"You move like the wind, boy. Stop stealing pennies."
Robert looked him dead in the eye, offering a compact that was far more dangerous than simple theft.
"Steal me a kingdom."
Siro looked at the ring in his hand. He looked at the giant man who offered him a job instead of a noose.
Slowly, the boy slid the ring into his pocket. He took a bite of the bread.
"Ashford is south," Siro said, his voice quiet. "Lord Randyll Tarly has the vanguard. He drills them at night."
Robert froze. "How do you know that?"
"I stole from his tent three weeks ago," Siro said simply.
Robert threw back his head and laughed.
"Welcome to the war, Siro," Robert grinned. "Now, tell me about Tarly."
[End of Chapter 6]