Chapter 223: The Throne Room Assembly
The throne room was a sea of armor, swords, and gleaming cloaks.
More than half the great lords of the Crownlands, Stormlands, and the Reach had assembled beneath the hall's high windows, packed shoulder to shoulder in the kind of deliberate display that reminded everyone present exactly how much power had answered the crown's summons.
Robert Baratheon sat above them all on the Iron Throne — that ugly tangle of melted swords and cruel edges that had ended more than one king's reign by simply existing. He wore the great stag antler helmet that hadn't been seen on his head in years, and a suit of silver plate that must have required three fittings to accommodate his size.
He was laughing at something a courtier had said, loud and genuine, the same laugh he'd had at the Trident the day he caved in Rhaegar's chest.
Varys stood at his right in pale lavender robes, answering questions in a soft murmur that carried no further than the king's ear. The High Septon occupied his left, unable to get a word into the conversation, his crystal crown throwing small rainbows across the stonework whenever he shifted his weight.
The first to enter was Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone.
He was broad across the shoulders, hard-limbed, with a face that looked like it had been carved from the same dark rock as his island — weathered, tight, utterly without ease. Years of sea wind and campaign sun had done nothing to soften him. He had proven himself in the field more than once during Robert's Rebellion and again when Balon Greyjoy had tested the crown's patience. There was no serious argument against his competence. Robert simply didn't like him, which was a problem that had followed both men their entire lives and showed no sign of resolving itself.
The appointment today was the reason the throne room was full.
Two weeks earlier, a raven had come down from the North carrying the kind of news that made men's stomachs drop. The wildlings beyond the Wall had united behind a man calling himself King-Beyond-the-Wall — nothing new in itself, except this time they had come with outside support that nobody had yet explained. Someone had equipped their vanguard. Armed them properly, in a way that free folk armies simply didn't arm themselves. And instead of battering themselves against the Wall's gates, they had used the hidden passages beneath it.
By the time Lord Stark had received word, all three major castles were gone. Castle Black, Shadow Tower, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea — fallen. House Umber had sent ravens to Winterfell reporting a wildling host numbering close to a hundred thousand moving south.
Eddard Stark, who had already marched his forces toward the Bite in preparation for the southern campaign, had written to Robert with regret and necessity in equal measure: the North had to come first.
Robert couldn't argue with that. He'd let Ned go. Which left him needing a new commander for the royal army, and the field of reasonable candidates was thinner than he would have liked.
Jon Arryn was dead — the Lannisters had seen to that, and the Vale was still finding its footing under the grief of it. The knights of the Eyrie had not yet answered the crown's call in any meaningful number.
Hoster Tully was bedridden at Riverrun, his Riverlands forces badly mauled a month earlier when Jaime Lannister had driven his main strength out of the Westerlands and hit them before they were ready.
That left three men with the combination of ability and reputation that the position actually required: Stannis himself; Randyll Tarly of Horn Hill, the finest battlefield commander the South had produced in a generation; and Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne, who had come to King's Landing alone because Dorne had declined to send troops — and who had his own reasons for being there that had nothing to do with the crown's war.
Even Ser Barristan Selmy, living legend of the Kingsguard, wasn't the right answer for a command of this scale.
Robert could dislike Stannis as much as he wanted. He couldn't justify passing over him for either of the other two.
Stannis knelt before the Iron Throne. His expression was what it always was — the expression of a man who had decided long ago that the world owed him something and had never quite stopped waiting to collect.
"Your Grace. The armies of the Crownlands are assembled and ready."
"Brother." Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Robert's youngest brother, stepped up level with Stannis without particular concern for order of precedence. He had the kind of easy smile that made people want to be near him, and he used it now. "The Stormlands fight for you."
Robert's face told the whole story without any assistance from the rest of his body. He loved Renly the way men love their own youth — easily and without reservation. Stannis he regarded the way men regard an obligation.
But war didn't run on preference. Renly was popular and personable and utterly unsuited to independent command. That was the reality.
"Stannis Baratheon." Robert used his brother's name directly, without title, in the way that managed to sound both formal and dismissive at the same time. "I appoint you Commander of the Royal Army. You will march my forces into the Westerlands and end this rebellion."
"I swear to take Casterly Rock and bring the Lannister traitors to King's Landing in chains." Stannis said it the way Stannis said everything — as though he were reading from a document he had already reviewed and found acceptable.
The throne room applauded. The nobles called his name with the enthusiasm of people performing a ritual they understood the necessity of without particularly enjoying it. Nobody liked Stannis. Nobody was arguing with him either.
The herald announced Lord Mace Tyrell of Highgarden.
He came in broad and prosperous-looking, carrying more weight than he'd had in his prime but wearing it with the comfortable confidence of a man accustomed to abundance. His sons flanked him — Ser Loras, the Knight of Flowers, whose reputation in the tourney circuit had made him the most famous knight in the Seven Kingdoms south of the Neck, and Garlan, called the Valiant, whose actual battlefield record was considerably more serious than his younger brother's. All three wore deep green velvet trimmed with sable.
Their elder brother Willas remained at Highgarden. His knee had never properly healed after a tourney accident years ago — an accident that had involved a lance from Oberyn Martell's direction, a fact that was not precisely secret in the hall. Loras and Garlan glanced toward the Dornish prince as they entered, and neither glance was warm.
Behind the Tyrells came the principal lords of the Reach: Paxter Redwyne of the Arbor, whose fleet was the backbone of the royal navy; Lord Mathis Rowan in his white wool coat; Lord Randyll Tarly, tall and bald and radiating the particular coldness of a man who had spent forty years making hard decisions; and Lord Leyton Hightower, whose city of Oldtown was the largest in the Seven Kingdoms by population and the seat of the Citadel.
The Reach was second only to the North in raw size, and it outproduced the North by every measure that mattered in a sustained war — grain, gold, men, ships. The lords currently standing before the Iron Throne each commanded resources comparable to what a great lord might hold in a less wealthy region. Mace Tyrell had not come to King's Landing with this assembly merely to answer a summons.
"Welcome, my lords, all of you." Robert's tone carried an unusual degree of grace. It was harder to be brusque with a man who'd brought a hundred thousand swords. "The crown will not forget your loyalty."
"Thank you, Your Grace," Mace Tyrell said, settling into the smile of a man who had been waiting comfortably for his moment. "Beyond answering Your Grace's call, we have a request to make."
"Name it," Robert said, with the expansiveness of a man who had already calculated that refusing was not a realistic option. It was difficult to say no to the man standing in front of you when he'd just handed you an army.
Mace Tyrell's smile broadened.
"I have a daughter, Margaery, of an age to wed. She is — I say this as her father, but the court will confirm it — the finest young woman in the Seven Kingdoms. She has heard of Your Grace's many accomplishments and holds you in the highest regard. It is my humble request that Your Grace bring her to King's Landing and do our two houses the honor of joining them in marriage, that we might stand together as one family in the years ahead."
Robert's expression went flat.
He hadn't seen this coming — or if he had, he hadn't seen it coming this quickly, this publicly, with this many witnesses. He turned his head slightly, saying nothing, and the silence in the throne room stretched out longer than was comfortable for anyone in it.
(End of Chapter)
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