Scene 1: The Blindness
Location: The Deep Woods, ten miles south of the Stoney Sept.
Time: Dusk.
The pain was not a headache. It was a spike of white-hot iron driven directly into the base of the skull.
Robert sat on a fallen log, his head in his hands. He pressed his palms against his eyes until stars exploded in the darkness, but the throbbing didn't stop.
For four days, he had kept the
He had been a god looking down on a chessboard.
Now, the god was bleeding.
"My Lord?"
The voice was soft. It was his squire, faint and worried.
Robert dropped his hands. The world swam. The trees were just trees—dark, indistinct blurs. The System interface, usually a crisp blue overlay, was a frantic static fuzz that made him want to vomit.
"I am fine," Robert lied, his voice thick. He accepted a waterskin and drank, the water tasting like copper.
"Lord Buckler asks for the night's watch order," the squire said. "He asks... where should we place the sentries? Where are the blind spots?"
Robert blinked, trying to summon the map. Nothing happened. Just the static and the pain.
For the first time in weeks, he didn't know. He couldn't see the elevation changes. He couldn't see the heat signatures of distant scouts.
"Tell Buckler to ring the perimeter," Robert rasped. "Standard spacing. Keep the fires low."
"And the scouts, my Lord? Siro?"
"Siro is gone," Robert muttered, regretting the order now.
He had sent the assassin North two days ago. He needed to know if Hoster Tully had declared for the rebellion. He needed to know if Ned had crossed the Twins. He had sent his eyes away because he thought the pursuit was over. Tyrell was stuck at Storm's End. Tarly was in the marshes.
Robert looked into the darkening woods. To his normal eyes, they were just a wall of black leaves and grey trunks. They could be hiding anything.
"We are safe here," Robert said, trying to convince himself. "We outran them. Tyrell is days behind."
He stood up, swaying slightly. The migraine pulse was deafening, drowning out the ambient sounds of the forest—the snap of twigs, the rustle of wind... or the clink of muffled steel.
"I need to sleep," Robert admitted, the weakness tasting bitter in his mouth. "Wake me if the wind changes."
He walked to his bedroll, which was laid out on the hard earth. He lay down, closing his eyes against the agony. The System was silent. The map was gone.
For the first time since the war began, Robert Baratheon was just a man. Alone. In the dark.
He fell into a heavy, pain-drug slumber, unaware that the wind had changed. It was blowing from the North-West, carrying the scent of Griffin Roost.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 16: The Ambush
Scene 2: The Attack
Location: The Western Ridges, near the Stoney Sept.
Time: 02:00 Hours.
Lord Jon Connington, the new Hand of the King, did not sleep.
He rode at the head of a column of three thousand mounted knights and men-at-arms. They were the elite of Griffin's Roost and the Crownlands. They were tired, their horses stumbling on the roots, but Connington whipped them forward.
"He is here," Connington muttered, his eyes scanning the dark, impenetrable tree line. "I can smell him."
His lieutenants thought he was mad. The maps said Robert Baratheon was likely trapped near the Blueburn or hiding in the marshes. But Connington knew Rhaegar's cousin. He knew Robert wouldn't hide. He would run. He would try to punch through to the Riverlands.
So Connington had done the unthinkable. He had ignored the roads. He was sweeping the deep woods in a grid, riding through the night, risking broken horse legs for the chance of glory.
"My Lord," a scout whispered, riding back from the darkness. "Smoke."
Connington halted. "A village?"
"No, my Lord. Too faint. Smell it? It's pine resin. And sweat."
Connington flared his nostrils. The wind was blowing from the hollow ahead. It was a faint, sour odor—the smell of unwashed bodies and damp wool.
"How many?" Connington hissed.
"Hard to say," the scout replied. "But the birds... the birds are silent in that valley."
Connington's heart hammered against his ribs. It was sheer, dumb luck. He had taken a wrong turn at the septry two hours ago, forced his men down a deer track, and stumbled right into the flank of the rebel host.
He didn't wait for the infantry. He didn't wait to send ravens to King's Landing.
He drew his sword. The Griffin on his shield gleamed in the moonlight.
"No trumpets," Connington whispered to his captains. "We scream only when the steel bites."
The Stormlands Camp
Robert was dreaming of drowning. The water was dark and heavy, pressing against his skull.
He woke to a sound that was worse than the dream.
It wasn't a horn. It was the wet, terrified gurgle of a sentry dying three feet from his bedroll.
"UP!"
The scream ripped out of Robert's throat before his eyes were fully focused.
Crash.
A horse leaped over the log barricade, smashing into the dying fire. A knight in the red and white surcoat of House Connington swung a flail, crushing the skull of a sleeping spearman.
"AMBUSH!"
The camp exploded.
Usually, the System would have slowed time. The
But there was no overlay.
Robert scrambled to his feet, blind in the darkness. His head throbbed with a blinding migraine. All he saw were flashes of steel and shadows.
"Shields!" Robert roared, grabbing his warhammer from the ground. "To me! Form up!"
But the men couldn't form up. The attack had come from the "safe" side. The Griffin knights were riding through the sleeping lines, trampling men in their bedrolls, tossing torches onto the tents.
"Die, traitor!"
A rider lunged out of the smoke, a lance aimed at Robert's chest.
Robert didn't see a trajectory line. He didn't see a percentage chance of evasion. He just saw death.
He threw himself sideways by pure instinct. The lance tip tore through his tunic, grazing his ribs.
Robert roared, swinging the hammer blindly.
CRACK.
He felt the impact shudder up his arms. The hammer head caught the horse's knee. The beast screamed, collapsing sideways, pinning its rider.
Robert didn't finish him. He was already spinning, looking for the next threat.
"Where are they coming from?" Buckler screamed, running up with half his armor unbuckled, a sword in one hand. "The North? The West?"
"Everywhere!" Robert shouted back.
Without the map, he couldn't see the size of the force. He couldn't tell if this was a skirmish or the entire Royal Army.
"Rally to the trees!" Robert commanded, his voice fighting to be heard over the screams of dying horses. "Get off the open ground! Into the dark!"
It was a rout. The disciplined army that had marched twenty miles a day was dissolving into a panicked mob. They were hungry, tired, and now, they were being butchered in their underwear by fresh knights.
Robert swung his hammer, crushing a man-at-arms who got too close. But he felt a cold, sinking sensation in his gut.
He was blind. He was surprised. And for the first time, he didn't know the way out.
Through the smoke, he saw a banner rising above the slaughter—two griffins combatant on red and white.
"Connington," Robert spat the name like a curse.
The Hand had found him.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 16: The Ambush
Scene 3: Alone
Location: The burning ruins of the Encampment.
Time: 02:15 Hours.
The camp was a slaughterhouse.
The Griffin knights were everywhere, their torches turning the night into a disorienting strobe of fire and shadow. Men were screaming. Horses were trashing through tents.
Robert parried a sword stroke that would have taken his head off. The impact jarred his shoulder. He swung the hammer back—a clumsy, desperate haymaker that crushed the attacker's ribs—but he was too slow.
Another knight was already charging him from the left.
Warning. Flank.
His mind waited for the blue prompt. It never came. Just the darkness and the pain in his skull.
He realized then that the army was dying. If they stood here, confused and half-armored, Connington would encircle them and butcher every single man.
Robert filled his lungs with smoke and air. He didn't shout "Retreat." He didn't shout "Run."
He roared the word they had practiced until they hated it. The word for when the formation was broken and the only goal was survival.
"WILDFIRE!"
The cry cut through the din of battle.
"WILDFIRE! WILDFIRE!"
It was the code for the Scatter Drill.
For a second, the Stormlands soldiers froze. Then, the training kicked in. The muscle memory, beaten into them during the grueling marches, overrode the panic.
Instead of bunching together—which makes a perfect target for cavalry—the army exploded outward.
Small groups of three and four men turned their backs on the firelight and sprinted into the black void of the forest. They didn't run in a straight line; they broke left, right, zigzagging through the trees where the horses couldn't follow.
"They are routing!" a Connington captain laughed, skewering a fleeing spearman. "Cowards!"
But they weren't routing. They were dissolving.
The Griffin knights found themselves swinging at smoke. They tried to chase, but the Stormlanders vanished into the undergrowth, slipping into ravines and briar patches.
But not everyone ran.
Near the command fire, a group of fifty men stood their ground. They were the ones who couldn't run. Men with slashed legs, broken ankles, or arrows in their guts.
They looked at their retreating brothers. They looked at the wall of heavy horse closing in. They knew the math.
A sergeant with a spear through his thigh dragged himself to a log. He braced his shield.
"Go!" the sergeant screamed at a young boy trying to help him. "I'm dead anyway! Make them pay for me!"
The wounded didn't ask for quarter. They formed a ragged, pathetic line of steel in the mud. They swung at horse legs. They threw dirt in the eyes of knights. They turned their bodies into speed bumps to buy the main force ten seconds, fifteen seconds, twenty seconds of lead time.
Robert watched them die.
He wanted to stay. He wanted to swing his hammer until they cut him down. But Buckler grabbed his arm, his face streaked with soot.
"The code, Robert!" Buckler shouted, forgetting titles in the terror. "You gave the order! Go!"
Robert looked at the sergeant being trampled by Connington's vanguard. He looked at the chaos.
He gritted his teeth, the migraine pulsing behind his eyes like a second heart.
"North," Robert gasped out. "Rally point Delta. The Stoney Sept."
"Go!" Buckler shoved him toward the darkness.
Robert turned. He didn't look back. He ran.
He crashed through the brush, his boots slipping on wet leaves. He ran until his lungs burned. He ran until the screams of his dying men faded into a dull, distant murmur.
He scrambled down a ravine, splashing through a freezing creek to hide his scent, and clawed his way up the other side.
He collapsed against a massive oak tree, sliding down until he hit the dirt.
Silence.
The woods were terrifyingly quiet. No marching feet. No banter. No System hum.
Robert Baratheon sat in the dark. His velvet tunic was torn. His armor was covered in the blood of men he couldn't save. His head felt like it was splitting open.
He reached out, touching the air, half-expecting a prompt to appear.
Nothing.
He was twenty thousand men strong yesterday. Today, he was one man, gasping for air in the mud, with the entire might of the Iron Throne hunting him in the dark.
[End of Chapter 16]