Scene 1: The Chase
The woods north of the Cockleswent were ancient, dark, and hostile.
Randyll Tarly rode at the head of a column of three thousand men—light cavalry and mounted scouts. He had left the heavy baggage and the sick behind. He was pushing the pace, driving his men to the brink of exhaustion.
He was hunting.
But the prey was refusing to behave like prey.
"Tracks!" Tarly barked, halting his horse by a muddy ravine.
A scout slid down the embankment. He studied the ground.
"They were here, my Lord," the scout reported, looking nervous. "A lot of them. Infantry. No wagons."
"Which way?"
The scout pointed North. Then he pointed North-West. Then he hesitated.
"They... they split, my Lord. One column went into the rocky creek bed. Another went up the ridge. The rain has washed the mud flat."
Tarly gripped his reins until the leather creaked.
Robert Baratheon wasn't marching in a column. He had shattered his army into a hundred small splinters, moving in parallel through the dense brush, likely to reassemble at some pre-arranged point.
"They are twenty thousand men!" Tarly snapped. "They are not ghosts. They cannot walk on air!"
"They are moving fast, my Lord," the scout said. "And they are moving... quiet."
Tarly looked at the trees. The canopy was thick, blotting out the sun. The silence was unnerving. Usually, a retreating army was noisy—wounded men groaning, sergeants shouting, metal clanking.
But this forest was dead silent. It felt as if the trees themselves were conspiring to hide the rebels.
"Forward," Tarly ordered. "Keep to the ridge line."
They rode for another hour. The paranoia in the ranks began to fester.
Every time a branch snapped in the wind, half a dozen knights raised their shields, terrifyingly expecting another black arrow from the dark. The ghost of Lord Caswell rode with them, headless and silent.
"My Lord!" a captain whispered urgently. "Movement! Three o'clock!"
Tarly drew Heartsbane. The entire column froze. Crossbows were leveled at a thicket of holly bushes.
"Come out!" Tarly commanded.
There was a rustle. Then silence.
"Fire!" a nervous squire shouted, loosing a bolt.
Thwack.
A squeal erupted from the bush. A wild sow, panicked and bleeding, burst from the cover and scrambled away into the undergrowth.
The knights lowered their weapons, looking foolish.
"Idiots," Tarly hissed. "You are jumping at shadows."
"The men are on edge, my Lord," the captain apologized. "They say... they say the Stormlanders are sorcerers. That they turned into wolves."
"They are men," Tarly said coldly. "And men need food. Men need roads."
He looked around the empty woods. The physical trail was cold. The "Splinter Strategy" was working; tracking individual squads in this terrain would take weeks.
Tarly realized he couldn't track the feet. He had to track the wake.
He needed witnesses. An army this size couldn't pass through inhabited land without being seen.
"Map," Tarly ordered.
His squire unrolled the parchment.
"There," Tarly said, pointing to a small clearing marked five miles ahead. "Turnbridge. A charcoal-burner's hamlet."
He looked at his spooked, exhausted men.
"If the mud won't speak," Tarly muttered, "the peasants will."
He spurred his horse.
"To the village. Burn it if you have to, but find me someone with eyes."
[End of Scene]
Chapter 13: The Silent Land
Scene 2: The Lie
Timeline: Six Hours Earlier.
The hamlet of Turnbridge was little more than five huts huddled around a smoking kiln. The air smelled of burnt wood and peat.
The charcoal burner, an old man named Hobb with skin like cured leather, stood frozen by his kiln. His two sons were behind him, clutching axes, terrified.
A giant had walked out of the woods.
He was covered in mud. He carried a bow that looked like a ship's timber. But he wasn't shouting. He wasn't demanding women or wine.
He was drinking from a waterskin.
"Good morning," Robert Baratheon said, wiping his mouth.
Hobb trembled. He knew the sigil. The Crowned Stag. This was the Rebel Lord. The man the Tyrells said was a monster who ate babies.
"My... my Lord," Hobb stammered, dropping to his knees. "We have no food. The winter stocks are low."
"I don't want your food," Robert said. He pointed to the kiln. "I want your charcoal."
"Charcoal?" Hobb blinked. "For... for the smiths?"
"For the water," Robert corrected, though he didn't explain. "I need ten sacks. Crushed fine. And fresh."
Robert reached into his belt pouch. He didn't pull out a sword. He pulled out a handful of silver stags—hard currency, not the clipped copper the Tyrell soldiers usually tossed at them.
He counted out five stags. It was more money than Hobb earned in a year.
"Is this fair?" Robert asked, holding out the coins.
Hobb stared at the silver. "My Lord... that is too much. Three sacks is worth a copper."
"I am paying for the rush," Robert grinned. "And for the silence."
He tossed the coins to Hobb.
"If anyone asks," Robert said, leaning in, his voice conspiring rather than commanding, "you saw a broken army. You saw men limping. And you saw them heading East, towards the marshes."
Hobb clutched the silver. "East. To the marshes. Yes, my Lord."
Robert clapped a heavy hand on the old man's shoulder. He didn't squeeze. He just rested it there, warm and reassuring.
"Keep your head down, Hobb. The storm is coming behind me."
Timeline: The Present.
Randyll Tarly sat on his horse in the center of Turnbridge. The village was silent. The charcoal kiln was cold.
Tarly looked down at the old peasant kneeling in the mud.
"I will ask you once," Tarly said, his voice as sharp as Heartsbane. "Did you see the rebels?"
Hobb didn't look up. He trembled, but it wasn't just fear. It was the memory of a heavy hand that had felt like protection.
"Yes, my Lord!" Hobb cried out. "They were here! Hundreds of them!"
"Which way?"
"They were broken, my Lord," Hobb wept, pointing a shaking finger towards the East. "They were dragging their wounded. They were begging for water. They went towards the Frogmarshes. They said they needed to lose the horses in the bog."
Tarly looked East. The terrain there was a nightmare of soft ground and reeds—exactly where a desperate, light infantry force would go to escape heavy cavalry.
It made tactical sense.
"Did they have wagons?" Tarly pressed.
"No wagons, my Lord. They left them. They carried nothing but their bows."
Tarly nodded. It fit the profile of a rout. A panicked flight into the worst terrain available.
"My Lord," a scout said, riding up. "The tracks to the East are heavy. Broken reeds. Mud churned up."
(Hobb had made sure his sons walked the cows back and forth along that path for an hour).
Tarly sneered. "They are running like rats into a sewer."
He wheeled his horse around, away from the hard, rocky path to the North where Robert had actually gone.
"East!" Tarly commanded. "We catch them in the marshes!"
The Tyrell column thundered away, chasing a lie bought with five silver stags and a moment of kindness.
Hobb watched them go. He fingered the silver in his pocket.
"Gods speed, you giant," he whispered.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 13: The Silent Land
Scene 3: The Siege
Location: The Main Tyrell Encampment, South of the Cockleswent.
Mace Tyrell, Warden of the South, sat inside his pavilion. He was wearing full plate armor, despite the sweltering heat of the midday sun. He was surrounded by a wall of fifty guards with locked shields, hiding him from the open air.
He was shaking.
An hour ago, the camp had been preparing to march. Mace had stepped out of his tent to taste the morning air, feeling invincible. He had turned to speak to Ser Alys, his Captain of the Household Guard.
Thwack.
There had been no warning. No sound of a bowstring. Just the wet impact of a black arrow striking Ser Alys in the left eye. The captain had dropped dead instantly, his blood splashing onto Mace's polished boots.
The shot had come from the tree line, three hundred yards away. By the time the guards raised their shields, the woods were silent again.
"My Lord," a messenger panted, running into the tent. "Lord Tarly has returned."
Randyll Tarly stormed into the pavilion. He looked demonic. His boots were caked in black marsh mud. His cloak was torn by briars. He had ridden hard from the Frogmarshes, abandoning the pursuit because of the frantic recall order.
"Why?" Tarly snarled, ignoring protocol. "I had the trail! They went into the bog! I was closing the net!"
"You were chasing decoys!" Mace shouted, his voice shrill. "While you played in the mud, he was here!"
Mace pointed to the corpse of Ser Alys, still lying covered in a cloak near the entrance.
"An arrow, Tarly! From the woods! It missed me by a hand's breadth!"
"One archer," Tarly spat, looking at the arrow. "A straggler left behind to harass us. You halted an army of eighty thousand for one rogue?"
"It is not one!" Mace insisted, his eyes wide and paranoid. "The woods are full of them. Caswell is dead. Meadows is dead. My own captain is dead. We cannot see them. We cannot fight them."
Mace poured himself a goblet of wine, his hands trembling so much the red liquid slopped over his knuckles.
"They do not fight like men. They poison the water. They kill from the shadows. They vanish into the earth."
"So we burn the woods!" Tarly raged. "We sweep the forest! We do not retreat!"
"We do not retreat," Mace corrected, clutching his goblet. "We... consolidate."
He walked to the map table. He pointed a shaking finger at the massive fortress on the coast.
Storm's End.
"Baratheon is gone," Mace rationalized, desperate to believe it. "He has fled like a rat. But his home remains. His brother remains."
"Stannis is a boy," Tarly dismissed. "The castle is a rock. It has no strategic value if Robert is loose in the field!"
"It has walls!" Mace shouted. "It is a target I can see! I will not march my army into those cursed woods to be picked off one by one by invisible demons!"
Mace slammed his goblet down.
"We march to Storm's End. We sit. We wait. Let Robert Baratheon freeze in the woods. I will take his castle, and I will starve his brother until they beg for mercy."
Tarly looked at his liege lord. He saw a fat man terrified of the unknown, masking his cowardice as strategy.
Tarly walked to the tent flap. He looked out at the dark tree line to the North.
The woods were silent. There was no movement. No birds. No glint of steel.
Tarly realized the truth then. There was no one there.
Robert Baratheon wasn't watching them. He wasn't waiting in ambush. He was already miles away, laughing. He had left one arrow behind to scare a fat man, and it had worked perfectly.
"He isn't in the woods, my Lord," Tarly said quietly, the realization tasting like ash in his mouth. "He is gone. He has bluffed us out of the war."
"I gave an order!" Mace shrieked. "To the castle!"
Tarly turned away, his hand drifting to the hilt of Heartsbane. He wanted to scream. He wanted to take the army and ride North. But he was a Tarly, and Tarlys obeyed their liege lords, even the cowards.
"As you command," Tarly said, his voice dead.
He looked at the paralyzed camp—eighty thousand men defeated by a dead captain and a single arrow.
"The numbers mean nothing," Tarly whispered to himself as he walked out into the sun. "The land itself has turned against us."
[End of Chapter 13]