Scene 1: The Refusal
Location: The Allied Camp, South of the Twins.
Time: Mid-Day.
The camp of the Rebellion was not one city, but three distinct nations stitched together by a common enemy.
To the North lay the host of Eddard Stark—grim, grey, and silent. The Northmen kept to themselves, sharpening their heavy axes and praying to the Old Gods. They were disciplined, but wild; a sprawling mass of fur and leather that smelled of wet wool and roasted meat.
To the East lay the chivalry of the Vale under Jon Arryn. It was a pavilion of silk and silver. Knights in shining plate rode destriers with braided manes, their squires polishing shields until they gleamed like mirrors. It was a camp of songs, heraldry, and the rigid, performative honor of the Andals.
And in the center, occupying the high ground near the river, was the Stormlands.
It didn't look like a camp. It looked like a machine.
There were no silk pavilions. There were no bards singing of maiden's love. The tents were arranged in a perfect, rigid grid, mimicking the legionary styles of old Ghis that Robert had read about in the dusty tomes of the Citadel. The latrine trenches were dug deep, located far downwind, and covered with fresh earth every hour.
But the most striking difference was the water.
In the Vale and Northern camps, men simply dipped buckets into the river or nearby streams.
In the Stormlands camp, the riverbank was lined with strange wooden towers. They were stacks of barrels, three high, lined with linen. Men stood atop ladders, pouring river water into the top barrel. It tricked down through layers of crushed charcoal and washed sand, emerging from a spigot at the bottom into clean casks.
Lord Tytos Blackwood, a proud man of the Riverlands with a cloak of raven feathers, rode his horse to the border of the Stormlands sector. He was accompanied by Ser Jonos Bracken—a rare moment of unity between the feuding houses, brought together by mutual annoyance.
They stopped their horses at a line of wooden stakes that marked the boundary. A Stormlands sergeant, a man with a face like a slab of granite, stepped forward. He held a pike horizontally, barring the way.
"Halt," the sergeant said. He didn't bow.
"I am Lord Blackwood," Tytos said, his voice dripping with the arrogance of a thousand-year lineage. "We are riding to the upper bend to water our horses. Step aside, man."
"You can't water there, my Lord," the sergeant said, his voice flat. "That's the filtration intake. Horses go downstream. Past the markers."
"Downstream?" Ser Jonos scoffed, pointing a gauntleted finger. "That is a mile ride through the mud. The river is right here. And who are you to tell a Lord of the Trident where to let his beast drink?"
"I am the Watch Sergeant for this sector," the man replied, unmoved. "And Lord Baratheon's standing orders are clear. No horses upstream. No washing upstream. No shitting within three hundred yards of the water."
"I take orders from Hoster Tully," Blackwood snapped, his hand drifting to his sword hilt. "Not from a Stormlander. Move your pike, or I will move it for you."
The sergeant didn't flinch. Behind him, fifty Stormlands pikemen stood up from their positions. They didn't shout. They didn't bang their shields. They just picked up their weapons and formed a line.
These weren't the levies of the Riverlands—farmers dragged from their plows who would run at the first sign of blood. These were the survivors of Summerhall, of Ashford, of the Stoney Sept ambush. They were lean, hard men. Their armor was dull, painted black to stop rust. They looked less like knights and more like executioners.
"We don't want trouble, my Lord," the sergeant said. "But no horses go upstream."
"This is insolence!" Bracken roared. "You deny allies water?"
"I deny you the right to poison our water," a deep voice rumbled.
The pikemen parted instantly, snapping to attention. Robert Baratheon walked through the line.
He wasn't wearing a crown. He wasn't wearing the velvet doublet of a Lord Paramount. He was wearing a simple chainmail hauberk over boiled leather, stained with oil and dust. His massive warhammer rested on his shoulder as casually as a woodsman carries an axe.
He looked different from the man Blackwood remembered from the tourneys. The bloated, laughing drunkard who pinched serving girls was gone. In his place was a man carved from teak and iron. His beard was trimmed short. His eyes were clear, cold, and utterly sober.
"My Lord Blackwood," Robert said, nodding. "Ser Jonos. Is there a problem with the layout?"
"Your man is confused," Blackwood said, trying to maintain his dignity while looking up at the giant. "He thinks he can command High Lords. We wish to water our horses at the bend."
"He isn't confused," Robert said, his voice calm but carrying across the field. "He is following the sanitation protocols. If you water your horses there, the dung flows into the intake for my filtration towers. My men drink that water, Tytos."
"It's a river," Bracken dismissed, waving his hand. "It flows. The dirt washes away. You Stormlanders are as skittish as old women. We hear you make your men drink 'black-water' run through burnt wood."
Robert walked over to one of the clean casks beneath the filtration tower. He dipped a wooden ladle in. The water inside had been filtered through the crushed charcoal and sand. It was crystal clear, with no trace of the river's silt.
He took a long drink, then tossed the ladle back into the bucket.
"It's not black-water," Robert said. "It's clean. And it's the reason my men are standing here holding pikes while yours are clutching their bellies in the sick wagons."
Bracken bristled. "Our men are fine."
"Are they?" Robert asked. He gestured to the Riverlands camp in the distance.
"I walked your lines this morning to meet with Hoster," Robert said. "I saw the 'sick lines.' You have three hundred men down with the Flux. Another hundred are too weak to march. You have flies swarming your cookfires because your men dig their latrines too shallow and don't cover the waste."
"The Bloody Flux is the curse of war," Blackwood argued, though he shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. "It happens in every host. The Gods decide who sickens and who fights."
"The Gods gave us brains," Robert growled. "I intend to use mine. The Flux comes from filth. It comes from drinking where a horse just pissed. We filter the water. We bury the shit deep and cover it with earth immediately. No flies. No Flux."
He stepped closer to the horses. Blackwood's destrier shied away, sensing the immense, predatory strength of the man.
"We are forty thousand strong, my Lords. But a big army is just a big target for disease. If the Flux takes hold in a camp this size, it will kill more men than Rhaegar Targaryen ever could. I will not lose this war because we were too lazy to dig a hole or filter the silt."
"It is... unusual," Blackwood conceded, looking at the clear eyes of the Stormlands soldiers. "But to deny a Lord..."
"I advise you," Robert corrected, his voice dropping to a confidential, steely tone. "I cannot order you, Tytos. You are Hoster's bannerman. But I advise you: water your horses downstream. If your sickness spreads to my lines... if my men start dying because your horses shat in my drinking supply... we will have a different conversation."
He patted the neck of Blackwood's horse. The slap sounded like a gunshot.
"Ride downstream, my Lords. The water is just as wet there."
Time: Late Evening.
Location: The Command Tent (Riverlands Sector).
The sun had set, and the smells of the camp shifted to roasting meat and woodsmoke.
In the Riverlands sector, the lords were feasting. Hoster Tully, trying to cement the alliance and smooth over the friction of the day, had invited the commanders to a banquet.
Robert sat at the head of the table, flanked by Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. But while the other lords had plates piled high with venison swimming in butter and onions, Robert's plate was sparse.
He was eating hardtack and a piece of dried beef.
"My Lord Robert," Hoster said, gesturing to a servant holding a silver flagon. "Some Arbor Gold? It is a vintage year. We liberated it from a royalist wagon train near Stonyhead."
"Water," Robert said, lifting his own battered tankard. It was filled with the charcoal-filtered water he had brought with him.
The table went quiet. Robert Baratheon refusing Arbor Gold was like a fish refusing to swim.
"You... are abstaining?" Jon Arryn asked, raising a bushy white eyebrow. "This is a celebration of our unity, Robert."
"I need a clear head," Robert said, chewing the tough beef. "Rhaegar is marshaling. Tywin is watching from the West. I cannot afford to be drunk."
"Surely one cup," Ser Jonos Bracken pressed, smiling greasily. "And perhaps some company? I have a camp follower, a Myrish girl with talents that could make a septon blush. She is waiting in my tent."
"No," Robert cut him off. The word was flat and hard.
He looked at Bracken with a look of pure disinterest.
"I have a betrothed," Robert said—a half-truth that felt solid in his chest. He thought of Lyanna, yes. But mostly, he thought of the discipline. He thought of the fourteen thousand men watching him. "And I have an army to lead. Keep your whores, Jonos. I have no use for them."
Ned Stark, sitting to Robert's right, looked at his friend with a mixture of shock and quiet pride. This was not the Robert of the Eyrie, who would tumble a wench before breakfast and drink a keg by noon. This was a man who had been tempered in the fire.
"You eat hardtack," Lord Blackwood noted, eyeing Robert's meager plate. "While we feast on the fat of the land."
"My men eat hardtack," Robert said simply. "I eat what they eat. It keeps the supply lines simple."
He looked around the table at the gathered Lords of the Vale and Riverlands.
"We are three armies," Robert began, his voice authoritative. "But we share one camp. I strongly suggest you adopt the sanitation protocols we use in the Stormlands sector."
Hoster Tully sighed. "Robert, we have discussed this. The men will not dig deep trenches after marching all day. They are tired. They are soldiers, not ditch-diggers. And building these... filtration towers? It is too much labor."
"They are tired," Robert agreed. "But a tired man can fight. A man shitting blood cannot."
He leaned forward.
"I have zero cases of Flux in my lines, Hoster. Zero. You have hundreds. The Vale has dozens. The wind blows the flies from your latrines to my food. I am asking you—as a brother in arms—to issue the order. Deep trenches. Earth cover immediately. Filtered water."
"We will... consider it," Jon Arryn said diplomatically, though he looked skeptical about the charcoal. "But the men are set in their ways."
"Ways that kill them," Robert muttered.
He stood up, his chair scraping against the wooden floorboards.
"Think on it. Rhaegar will not give us time to recover if a plague sweeps through us. We need every sword sharp and every gut solid."
He shouldered his warhammer.
"Enjoy your feast, my Lords. I have rounds to walk."
Time: Moments later.
Location: The Stormlands Lines.
Robert walked through his own camp. The contrast was immediate. The noise of the Riverlands—the drunken singing, the brawling—faded.
Here, it was quiet. The fires were dying down to embers.
The men were gathered in small circles, repairing armor, oiling boots, fletching arrows. When they saw him emerge from the darkness, they didn't cheer wildly. They didn't mob him like a celebrity.
They stood up.
One by one, circle by circle, the men rose. They slammed their right fists against their chests. A silent, thunderous salute.
They watched him pass with eyes that held a fanatic devotion.
They knew. Every man in the fourteen thousand knew. They knew he had refused the soft bed in Riverrun to sleep on a cot here. They knew he ate their garbage food while the other High Lords feasted on venison. They knew he made them dig ditches and filter water not to be cruel, but to keep them alive.
A young archer, no older than sixteen, stepped forward near the command tent. He held out a piece of salted beef—slightly better, slightly less grey than the piece Robert had eaten earlier.
"For the... for the Lord," the boy stammered, offering his own ration.
Robert stopped. He looked at the boy. He took the beef. He tore it in half, ate one piece, and gave the other back.
"For the victory," Robert replied, chewing the salt and the gristle.
The boy beamed, looking like he had been knighted.
Robert walked on.
He could feel the difference in the air. The Riverlords fought for their lands and their rivers. The Northmen fought for their Lord and their vengeance. The Valemen fought for duty and honor.
But the Stormlanders?
They were fighting for him.
They were a cult of discipline in a chaotic world. They were the anvil upon which the Targaryen dynasty would break.
Robert reached his own tent—a modest canvas structure, no bigger than his captains'. He ducked inside.
He went to the map table. He didn't look at the troop movements. He looked at the logistics report.
Charcoal stocks: Sufficient.
Sand filters: Operational.
Sick list: Empty.
He smiled, a grim, humorless curving of his lips.
The Riverlords mocked the black water. They mocked the latrines. They called him a washerwoman behind his back.
Let them laugh, Robert thought, pouring himself another cup of clear, tasteless water.
Germs don't care about their heraldry. Flies don't care about their knighthood.
He drank the water. It was cool and clean.
When the battle comes, and their men are weak and fevered, and my men are strong... then they will see.
He blew out the lamp. He didn't need wine to sleep. He didn't need a soft bed. He slept the sleep of a man who had built a machine, and was just waiting to turn the key.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 22: The Three Kingdoms United
Scene 2: The Outbreak
Location: The Riverlands Encampment, outside the walls of Riverrun.
Time: Four days after the "Feast of Refusal".
It started with a smell.
At first, the Lords of the Trident ignored it. An army camp always smells. It smells of unwashed men, of horse dung, of woodsmoke, and of wet wool. It is the scent of war.
But this smell was different.
It wasn't the earthy, honest stink of manure. It was sweet, cloying, and metallic. It smelled like a butcher's shop that had been left open in the midsummer heat for a week. It smelled of copper and rot.
Ser Jonos Bracken woke before dawn, not to the sound of trumpets, but to the sound of retching.
He rolled over in his silk-lined cot, his head throbbing from the Arbor Gold he had consumed the night before. The air in his pavilion was hot and heavy, despite the cool morning mist rising off the Tumblestone.
"Podrick!" Bracken croaked, his mouth tasting like old felt. "Wine. My throat is parched."
There was no answer.
"Podrick!" he roared, throwing off his furs. "Useless boy. I'll have him whipped."
He stepped out of the tent, expecting to see the bustle of the morning watch—squires polishing armor, cooks breaking eggs, grooms walking the destriers.
Instead, he walked into a nightmare.
The camp was eerie. It wasn't silent—that would have been better. It was filled with a low, collective moan that seemed to rise from the earth itself.
Jonos walked toward the fire pit where his household guard usually gathered for breakfast.
The fire was out. The ashes were cold.
Five of his best knights—men who had ridden down royalists at Stoney Sept—were sitting on the ground. They weren't wearing their armor. They were pale, their skin grey and clammy, sweat beading on their foreheads.
"Get up," Jonos commanded, though his voice lacked its usual bite. "Why is the fire out? Why are the horses not saddled?"
"Can't, my Lord," one of the knights whispered. He clutched his stomach, grimacing in sudden, sharp pain. "The cramps... it feels like knives."
"It's the bad mutton," Jonos dismissed, looking away. "The cook served us rotten meat."
"No meat," another man groaned. "It's the water. The water turned inside us."
Suddenly, the knight on the left scrambled up, his armor clanking loosely on the ground where he had discarded it. He stumbled toward the bushes on the edge of the clearing—the shallow ditches they had dug days ago.
He didn't make it.
Jonos watched in horror as one of his finest swordsmen collapsed in the mud, sobbing as his bowels gave way, staining his breeches with blood and water.
The smell hit Jonos then. A wave of it.
The Bloody Flux.
Jonos took a step back, covering his nose with a perfumed handkerchief. He looked around the camp with new eyes.
He looked past his own circle, out toward the lines where the levies camped. There were no Maesters for them; Maester Vyman only tended to the highborn. The common soldiers were lying under wagons, or simply curled up in the open grass. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
He saw the swarms of flies—thick, black clouds of them—hovering over the shallow latrines he had refused to order dug deeper. He saw the horses standing in the river mud, defecating into the sluggish current. He saw men dipping buckets into that same water just fifty yards downstream.
And in his mind, clear as a bell, he heard the voice of the man he had called a washerwoman.
I will not lose this war because we were too lazy to dig a hole.
Location: Lord Hoster Tully's Command Tent.
Time: Mid-Day.
The heat was oppressive. The sun beat down on the canvas, turning the tent into an oven.
Hoster Tully sat at his map table, his head in his hands. He was a proud man. A veteran of the Stepstones. A man who had brokered marriages to unite half the realm.
But he had never felt as helpless as he did right now.
"The numbers," Hoster croaked. "Give me the numbers."
Maester Vyman, usually calm and composed, looked ragged. His robes were stained. His hands shook as he held the parchment.
"Two thousand, my Lord," Vyman said quietly.
Hoster looked up. "Two thousand dead?"
"Two thousand incapacitated," Vyman corrected. "Three hundred dead since last night. But the others... my Lord, they cannot stand. They cannot hold a spear. They are shitting their life's blood into the dirt. Dehydration is killing them faster than the fever."
Jon Arryn stood by the tent flap, looking out. The Lord of the Eyrie looked grim.
"The Vale is beginning to turn," Jon said, his voice heavy. "The wind carries the flies from your sector to mine, Hoster. I have fifty knights down this morning. My squires are falling sick."
"And the North?" Hoster asked desperately. "Does the Wolf bleed?"
"Ned ordered deep trenches three days ago," Jon said. "The Northmen are used to hard labor. They dug the pits as Robert suggested. But they are drinking from the same river. They are starting to sicken, though not as fast as your men."
Hoster slammed his fist onto the table. "We are the freshest army! We gathered last! Why us?"
"Because we are arrogant," Jon Arryn said softly.
He turned to face Hoster.
"We laughed at him, Hoster. We sat at this table and drank wine and laughed at his charcoal and his sand. We called it peasant work."
Jon pointed a shaking hand toward the west.
"I walked the perimeter an hour ago. Do you know what I saw in the Stormlands camp?"
Hoster didn't answer. He knew.
"Nothing," Jon whispered. "I saw nothing. No flies. No smell. No bodies under wagons. I saw fourteen thousand men drilling in the sun, drinking clear water."
Hoster closed his eyes.
The strategic reality was a noose tightening around his neck. Rhaegar Targaryen was marching up the Kingsroad with forty thousand fresh men. The Westerlands host sat at the Golden Tooth, watching, waiting for a moment of weakness.
And the Riverlands army—the anvil of the rebellion—was dissolving into a puddle of bloody diarrhea.
If Rhaegar arrived tomorrow, it wouldn't be a battle. It would be a slaughter. The Stormlands would stand alone, flanked by a dying ally and a sick one.
"We have lost," Hoster whispered. "We have lost before the first arrow is loose."
"Not yet," Jon said. "But we cannot solve this alone. We don't have the clean water. We don't have the manpower to dig the new trenches fast enough because half our men are dying."
"He warned us," Hoster said bitterly. "He told us exactly what would happen."
"Then go to him," Jon urged. "Swallow the pride, Hoster. Before the grave swallows your army."
Hoster Tully straightened his back. It was a humiliation that tasted worse than bile. To ask for help from a man half his age—a man he had dismissed as a brawler.
But he looked through the tent flap. He saw a group of levies dragging a corpse by the heels toward a burial pit. The dead man was just a boy, his face twisted in agony.
Hoster stood up.
"Vyman," he said. "Get my horse."
Location: The Stormlands Border (The Filtration Line).
Time: Late Afternoon.
The heat was breaking, but the stench was getting worse. The wind had shifted, blowing the rot of the Riverlands directly into the faces of the Stormlands sentries.
But the sentries didn't waver. They wore strips of cloth over their noses and mouths—another "Washerwoman Order" from Robert. If the air smells of death, filter it.
Hoster Tully rode alone. He didn't bring a guard. He didn't bring a banner.
He rode past the line of stakes. The difference was immediate. The air cleared. The buzzing of flies ceased.
He saw men sitting in the shade of the filtration towers, filling canteens with crystal clear water. They looked healthy. They looked strong.
They watched him pass. They didn't bow. They looked at him with a strange mixture of pity and judgment.
They know, Hoster realized. They know my men are dying because I was too stubborn to listen.
He found Robert near the riverbank.
The giant was stripped to the waist, his skin glistening with sweat and soot. He was working alongside a team of builders, using a shovel to mix sand and crushed charcoal in a massive wooden trough.
"More sand!" Robert shouted, tossing a shovel-load into the mix. "It has to be fine! If the grain is too big, the filth gets through!"
"My Lord Robert," Hoster said.
Robert stopped. He leaned on his shovel, wiping his brow with a rag. He looked at Hoster.
He didn't smile. He didn't say 'I told you so.' He didn't gloat.
He looked past Hoster, toward the Riverlands camp. He saw the vultures circling. He smelled the death.
"How bad is it?" Robert asked quietly.
"Two thousand down," Hoster admitted, the words tasting like ash. "Three hundred dead. Blackwood is sick. The men... the men are broken, Robert. Panic is setting in. They think it is a curse."
Robert nodded slowly. He threw the shovel into the sand.
"We have run out of clean water," Hoster continued, forcing himself to say the words. "The river near us is poison. The men are too weak to dig new latrines. The flies are eating us alive."
Hoster climbed down from his horse. He stood in the dirt, eye to eye with the young lord.
"You were right," Hoster said. "About the water. About the pits. About everything."
He took a breath.
"I am asking for your help, Robert. Not as a Lord Paramount to a bannerman. But as a man who does not want to watch his army rot into the ground."
The silence stretched out. The Stormlands builders stopped working. They watched their King.
Robert looked at Hoster. He saw the humiliation. He saw the desperation.
In the old days, Robert might have laughed. He might have made a joke. He might have demanded a concession.
But the Robert who had survived Stoney Sept, the Robert who had walked the starving streets of King's Landing, didn't have time for ego.
"Lord Buckler!" Robert roared.
A stout, balding man with the stag sigil on his breastplate stepped forward from the line of officers.
"My Lord?"
"Take the Fourth and Fifth Builder Companies," Robert ordered, his voice snapping with command. "And the Third Pike Company for labor."
"Where to, my Lord?"
"To the Riverlands sector," Robert said, pointing a finger at the dying camp. "I want a perimeter established. Quarantine the sick. I want deep latrines dug—six feet, covered with fresh earth immediately—within the hour. And Buckler?"
"Yes?"
"Take the water wagons," Robert said. "All of them. Drain our reserves if you have to. I want every man in the Riverlands camp drinking charcoal water by sundown."
Hoster blinked, stunned by the speed of the response. "You... you will use your own men? To dig our ditches?"
"Someone has to," Robert grunted, picking up his tunic and pulling it over his head. "Rhaegar is coming, Hoster. I need you on your feet, not on your back."
Robert stepped closer, his blue eyes intense.
"But understand this, Lord Tully. My men are entering a plague zone to save your army. They will follow my protocols. If any of your knights refuses the charcoal water, or refuses to use the new latrines because it is 'peasant work'..."
"I will strip them of their knighthood myself," Hoster vowed, his voice trembling with emotion.
"Good," Robert said. He picked up his warhammer. "Now, let's go save your army."
As the Stormlands machine roared into action, wagons rolling out with casks of clean water, another figure approached.
Eddard Stark rode up on a grey gelding. He looked tired, his face splashed with mud.
"Robert," Ned said, nodding to Hoster.
"How is the North, Ned?" Robert asked.
"We dug the holes," Ned said, his voice raspy. "My men followed the order. We have the deep latrines. But the river..."
Ned looked at the water wagons rolling toward the Riverlands camp.
"We are digging, but we are still drinking mud," Ned admitted. "We don't have the towers. We don't have the charcoal. My men are holding, but the sickness is starting to creep in."
Ned looked at his friend—not as an equal, but as a man looking for a solution he couldn't provide himself.
"We need the water, Robert. The North needs the Black Water."
Robert nodded. He turned to Lord Buckler.
"Double the charcoal burn," Robert commanded. "We filter the whole river if we have to."
Hoster Tully watched them. He saw Ned Stark—rigid, honorable Ned—deferring to Robert's logistics. He saw his own army being saved by Robert's builders.
The Rebellion had started with three leaders. Jon, Ned, and Robert. Equals.
But in the heat and the stench of the Flux, amidst the flies and the dying, the hierarchy had changed forever.
There were no longer three leaders.
There was a Commander. And there were his lieutenants.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 22: The Three Kingdoms United
Scene 3: The Lesson
Location: The Riverlands Encampment (The "Sick Zone").
Time: 24 hours after the Stormlands intervention.
The sound of the Riverlands camp had changed.
A day ago, it had been a chorus of groans, retching, and the buzz of a million flies. Today, it was the sound of iron striking earth. Thud. Scrape. Heave.
Robert Baratheon had turned the camp into a construction site.
Lord Buckler and his Stormlands builder companies were working with a terrifying efficiency. They had established a quarantine line using rope and wooden stakes, isolating the sickest two thousand men from the rest of the host.
Inside the quarantine zone, the "sick lines" were no longer a chaotic sprawl of bodies in the mud. The Stormlanders had organized the sick into rows. They moved them to higher ground, away from the latrines. They burned the soiled bedding. They washed the men with the precious clean water.
But the real war was being fought in the ditches.
Ser Raymun Darry, a knight of a minor branch, stood by the edge of the new latrine trench. It was six feet deep, narrow, and long. Beside it sat a mound of fresh earth.
"I am a knight of the Trident," Raymun spat, looking at the shovel a Stormlands sergeant had thrust into his hand. "I do not dig shit-pits."
The sergeant, a man named Gendry (no relation to the future bastard, just a common Stormlands name), didn't blink. He pointed to the trench.
"King's orders, Ser. Every man digs. Every man covers. You shit, you shovel."
"I take orders from my liege lord," Raymun sneered, throwing the shovel down. "Not from a stag-helmeted peasant."
"Then take the order from me."
The voice was ragged, but it carried the weight of absolute authority.
Hoster Tully rode up. He looked terrible. He hadn't slept in thirty hours. His eyes were sunken, his tunic stained with sweat. But his hand was on the hilt of his sword.
"My Lord," Raymun said, bowing stiffly. "These... outsiders are trying to force us to labor like serfs."
Hoster looked at the shovel in the dirt. Then he looked at Raymun.
"Do you see that wagon over there, Ser Raymun?" Hoster asked, pointing to a cart piled high with bodies wrapped in grey cloaks.
"I do, my Lord."
"That is my vanguard," Hoster whispered, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Those are good men. Fathers. Sons. Dead. Not by a lance, but by their own filth."
Hoster drew his sword. The steel hissed in the quiet morning air.
"We are dying because we were too proud to dig. We are dying because we thought we were too highborn to be clean."
Hoster pointed the tip of his blade at the shovel.
"Pick it up."
Raymun blanched. "My Lord?"
"Pick up the shovel, Ser Raymun," Hoster roared, the sound echoing across the camp. "Dig the trench. Cover the filth. Or surrender your spurs and ride home. I will not have a single man in my army who thinks he is too good to survive."
Raymun looked around. He saw the Stormlands pikemen watching. He saw his own fellow Riverlords watching. He saw the shame in Hoster's eyes—not for the digging, but for the dying.
Slowly, Raymun bent down. He picked up the shovel. He drove it into the earth.
Hoster watched him for a moment, then sheathed his sword. He turned his horse and rode toward the water distribution point.
The resistance broke. Across the camp, knights, squires, and levies picked up their tools. The culture of the Riverlands, held together by centuries of tradition, had been shattered by the Flux and rebuilt by the Shovel.
Location: The Water Lines.
Time: Mid-Day.
The thirst was a living thing.
Dehydration was the true killer of the Flux. The body expelled water faster than it could take it in, leaving the blood thick and the mind delirious.
The Stormlands water wagons were rolling monstrosities—massive casks mounted on reinforced axles, guarded by men with heavy clubs.
Ser Jonos Bracken stood in line.
He was trembling. The sickness hadn't taken him fully yet, but his stomach was cramping, and his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He had finished his wine. Now, he needed water.
He reached the front of the line. A Stormlands builder, his face smeared with charcoal dust, operated the spigot.
"Cup," the builder grunted.
Jonos held out his silver goblet, engraved with the rearing horse of House Bracken.
The builder opened the tap. The water flowed out.
It wasn't muddy. It wasn't green. It was perfectly, crystal clear.
Jonos stared at it. He had heard the rumors of "Black Water," expecting a sludge of soot. But the charcoal had done its work. It had trapped the filth, the silt, the invisible death, and left only the purity behind.
"Drink," the builder said. "Slowly. Or you'll heave it up."
Jonos took a sip.
It tasted... flat. It lacked the mineral tang of the river. It lacked the sweetness of the spring. It tasted of nothing.
And it was the best thing Jonos had ever tasted.
He drank the goblet down in one long gulp. The cool liquid hit his stomach and stayed there. It didn't cramp. It didn't revolt.
"More," Jonos gasped, holding out the cup.
"One cup at a time," the builder said, closing the tap. "Back of the line, my Lord. Everyone drinks equal today."
Jonos Bracken, a man who would have whipped a servant for meeting his eyes a week ago, didn't argue. He didn't bluster. He simply nodded, wiped his mouth, and walked to the back of the line, standing behind a miller's son and a stable boy.
The water was the great equalizer.
All across the camp, the scene was repeating. Men were drinking the charcoal-filtered water. And as the hours passed, a miracle began to happen.
The moaning stopped.
The men in the sick lines, rehydrated with clean water, began to sleep peacefully. The cramps lessened. The fever broke. The fresh cases—the men who would have fallen sick today from drinking river sludge—remained healthy.
The chain of infection was cut.
Location: The Command Tent (The "Clean" Zone).
Time: Evening.
The Lords Paramount gathered again. But the mood was different.
There was no feast. There was no wine.
The table was covered with maps, but the maps didn't show troop movements. They showed sanitation grids.
Robert Baratheon stood at the head of the table. He looked exhausted. He had been digging alongside the men for six hours. His hands were blistered. His face was streaked with soot.
But he looked victorious.
"Report," Robert said, his voice raspy.
Lord Buckler stepped forward. "The Riverlands sector is secure, my Lord. Latrines are dug to depth. Earth cover is mandatory and being enforced by Lord Hoster's guard. The water wagons have completed three rotations. Every man has drunk."
"And the sick?" Robert asked.
"Stabilized," Maester Vyman said, his voice filled with awe. "The new cases have stopped. Completely. The men in the quarantine are recovering. We... we may save fifteen hundred of the two thousand."
A silence settled over the tent.
Hoster Tully sat heavily in his chair. He looked at Robert.
"I have fought in three wars," Hoster said quietly. "I have seen men die of arrows, of swords, of wildfire. But I have never seen an army stop a plague in a day."
"It wasn't a plague, Hoster," Robert said, pouring himself a cup of the charcoal water. "It was a logistics failure. We fixed the logistics. We fixed the problem."
Ned Stark was studying the diagram of the filtration tower Robert had drawn on a scrap of parchment.
"The North is adopting it," Ned said. "My men are building the towers now. We are burning the charcoal. It works, Robert. The water... it feels different in the gut. Cleaner."
Jon Arryn swirled the water in his own cup. The old Lord of the Vale looked thoughtful.
"You have changed the way we wage war, Robert," Jon said. "Lords have always accepted the Flux as the price of doing business. You treated it like an enemy to be flanked."
"It is an enemy," Robert said. "And it's an enemy that kills more of us than the Targaryens do."
He looked around the table. He saw the respect in their eyes. It wasn't the respect given to a warrior who swings a hammer. It was the respect given to a leader who saves lives.
"This morning," Robert began, leaning forward, "Ser Raymun Darry didn't want to dig a hole. He thought it was beneath his dignity."
Hoster nodded. "I corrected him."
"Good," Robert said. "Because that is the lesson."
He walked over to the tent flap and tied it open. The cool evening breeze blew in. Outside, the camp was quiet. Orderly. The smell of rot was fading, replaced by the sharp, clean scent of woodsmoke and lime-free earth.
"We are forty-five thousand men," Robert said, looking out at the fires. "We are a city that moves. A city that consumes. If we are just a mob of knights looking for glory, we will die in our own filth before we reach the Trident."
He turned back to the Lords.
"Rhaegar is coming. He will have knights in white armor. He will have banners of silk. He will have the history of three hundred years of dragon rule behind him."
Robert pointed to the cup of clear water on the table.
"But he doesn't have this. He doesn't have charcoal. He doesn't have deep pits. He will drink from the river, and his men will sicken. He will march with flies, and we will march with strength."
He looked Hoster in the eye.
"You asked me why my men follow the rules. Why they dig when they are tired. Why they drink black water when they want wine."
Robert paused, letting the words hang in the air.
"Discipline isn't a rule, Hoster. It's a survival strategy."
He tapped his temple.
"My men know that if they follow the protocol, they live. If they break it, they die. That is why they dig. That is why they will hold the line when the dragons scream."
Hoster Tully stood up. He picked up his cup of water.
He didn't toast the King. He didn't toast the Gods.
"To the Black Water," Hoster said.
Ned stood up. "To the Black Water."
Jon Arryn stood. "To the Black Water."
They drank.
It was a strange sacrament. A communion of survival.
In that moment, the distinction between the Stormlands, the Riverlands, the Vale, and the North dissolved. They were no longer separate armies with separate customs.
They were an army that had stared death in the face—not the heroic death of battle, but the ignoble death of the gut—and defeated it with shovels and sand.
Robert wiped his mouth.
"Now," he said, the fatigue falling away from him. "The army is clean. The men are recovering. We have two days before Rhaegar crosses the Ruby Ford."
He slammed his hand onto the map table.
"Let's go kill a dynasty."
Location: The Camp Perimeter.
Time: Dawn, The Next Day.
The sun rose over a unified host.
The Riverlands camp was no longer a disaster zone. The latrines were covered. The flies were gone. The sick were isolated and resting.
But the biggest change was the behavior of the men.
A group of Northmen were walking toward the river to fill their buckets. They passed a group of Riverlands levies.
In the past, they might have traded insults. The Northmen mocked the 'southerners' as soft; the Rivermen mocked the 'savages' as primitive.
But today, they stopped.
"You got the charcoal burn right?" a Riverlands sergeant asked, pointing to the Northmen's buckets.
"Aye," the Northman grunted. "Big fire. Lots of sand. Water tastes like nothing."
"Better than tasting like shit," the Riverlander laughed.
"Aye. Better than shit."
They nodded to each other—a mutual understanding of men who had learned the hard way.
They walked to the riverbank.
There, lining the water's edge, were the filtration towers. Hundreds of them now. Stormlands towers. Riverlands towers. Vale towers. Northern towers.
They were ugly things. Roughly made of wood and barrels. But they were churning out the lifeblood of the army.
Robert Baratheon stood on a small rise, watching them.
Siro—who had returned from his reconnaissance just hours ago, though he kept to the shadows—stood beside him.
"You saved them, my Lord," Siro murmured. "Hoster Tully would have lost half his force by the week's end."
"I didn't do it for Hoster," Robert said, his eyes scanning the horizon where the Kingsroad lay. "I need every sword."
"They are calling it 'Stag's Water' now," Siro noted. "Even the smallfolk in the nearby villages are asking how to build the towers."
Robert smiled. "Good. Maybe when I'm King, fewer children will die of the belly-rot."
He turned to his spy.
"You saw King's Landing?"
"I did," Siro said, his voice dropping. "It is... worse than you think. But the army is ready here. You have forged them, Robert. You hammered the rust off the Riverlords."
"I hammered the fear into them," Robert corrected. "Fear of the Flux is a powerful motivator."
He looked back at the camp.
Forty-five thousand men. Healthy. Hydrated. Disciplined.
They weren't just a rebellion anymore. They were a legion.
"Rhaegar is bringing the past," Robert said, gripping his hammer. "He's bringing chivalry and songs and prophecies."
He gestured to the latrine trenches and the filtration towers.
"I'm bringing the future."
Robert turned and walked back toward his tent. The ground shook slightly under his boots.
"Come on, Siro. We have a war to win."
[End of Chapter 22]