The golden quartered banners whipped in the wind as the riders ahead advanced in a long winding line, like a river of steel twisting through a hundred bends on its way to the Bloody Gate.
Crossing the Mountains of the Moon kept every nerve drawn tight as a bowstring. There were wildlings to fear, but also falling rocks, landslides, and sudden attacks from shadowcats. It was a dangerous journey. Still, because their numbers were large and their guides were good, the march went fairly smoothly.
The Imp has done one good thing after all, Gendry thought. Tyrion's fanciful notion of hauling off a band of wildlings from the High Road and pressing them into service had at least cleared out some of the fiercest and most warlike of them, making the mountains a little safer.
A book rested on Gendry's saddle, a heavy, ancient-looking volume lacquered black, with a crowned stag in black set against gold on the cover. The Storm Kings. Genealogies and Legends of House Durrandon of Storm's End. It recorded every Storm King, from Durran of the legendary Age of Heroes to Argella Durrandon, the Storm Queen who crowned herself at the end.
Compared with the other royal houses, House Baratheon were the true upstarts. By joining with House Durrandon, they had leapt at once into the ranks of the great lords of the Seven Kingdoms, the youngest of them all, and later become kings.
The speed of that rise would bring tears to Frey eyes and silence to Tully mouths. But reckoned through the female line, House Baratheon could still claim old royal blood, making up for the shallowness of its own history.
A welcome surprise indeed. Gendry weighed the thick book in his hands. The Storm Kings had long been thought lost, and Maester Qyburn had mentioned it to him several times. Yet here it was, found in the Freys' library at the Twins. House Stark had a similar volume of ancestral history, The Kings of Winter. Genealogies and Legends of House Stark of Winterfell.
Gendry was certain the Freys of the Twins had never read such a book. The Freys preferred counting coppers, collecting tolls, and going hunting. Even the maesters of past generations had likely never studied it closely, only left it buried in a pile of books.
Knowledge disappeared quickly in this age as well. A great old tome like Lives of Four Kings, written by Grand Maester Kaeth and recounting the deeds of Daeron the Young Dragon, Baelor the Blessed, Aegon the Unworthy, and Daeron the Good while omitting King Viserys entirely, survived in only four copies.
Gendry understood that this was simply the nature of the age. The pen mattered less than spear and sword, and what the nobility loved most were knights.
Throughout the history of Westeros, lords had cared more for tourneys, hunting, hawking, and even women than for books. An illiterate knight might be forgiven, but a weak bookworm could disgrace an entire house. House Baratheon's own history included one such Great Lord, Borros, who had been unable to read and write.
Knowledge, craftsmen, magic. Sooner or later I will have to deal with the Citadel. Gendry had been born a smith, and naturally held a deep respect for craft and skill. A good craftsman was often more welcome than a maester. A smith could earn his bread anywhere.
As for knowledge, learned men were not especially valued in an age ruled by feudal warlords, but they truly did monopolize learning. The keeping of libraries, the healing arts, and the exchange of information all depended largely on maesters. The Citadel could not be underestimated.
According to Qyburn, there might be an entrenched faction within the Citadel that loathed magic and was trying to build a world without it. If news of the magic dragon ever spread through the known world, then Gendry would have no choice but to deal with those grey sheep as well. The Citadel seemed aloof and above the world, but there was nothing clean about what lay beneath.
Their long column wound through the Mountains of the Moon from day into night, and once darkness fell the soldiers had to choose a suitable place to stop for a while. At least a third of the men had to remain awake and on watch. Inside the tent, today Gendry's guards were Ser Barristan Selmy and Anguy, the two of them both hailing from the marches.
Gendry slowly turned the pages of The Storm Kings. It recorded the deeds of generations of Storm Kings, fools and great men alike, warriors and cowards, even a bastard who had successfully seized the throne.
He read with full concentration. He had set aside, for the moment, his identities as warrior and smith, and now seemed almost like a devout maester bent over old learning, studying the secrets of the ancient blood of the storm.
"Durran, the first Storm King, extended his rule into the Rainwood." Gendry read on slowly, and the name Durran appeared again and again throughout the book. In ancient times, Storm Kings traditionally named their eldest sons Durran in honor of the founder of their house, so history had known many Storm Kings by that name.
In the Age of Heroes, the first Storm King, Durran, won the love of Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. Though her divine parents did not approve of their love, the two wed in secret. But the gods' wrath was terrible. On their wedding night, the two deities destroyed Durran's keep and killed all his kin and guests.
Mad with fury, Durran declared war on the gods. In answer, great storms ravaged his kingdom. Every time Durran raised a new castle by the sea, the gods struck it down at once. Yet he stubbornly went on, building greater and grander castles each time, until at last the seventh stronghold stood fast and endured the storms blowing in from Shipbreaker Bay. Some say the children of the forest helped build that castle. Others say that Brandon the Builder, then only a boy, offered his counsel in its making. The truth of it remains unknown to this day.
"Black hair, blue eyes, tall and strong, the seed is strong." Gendry pondered the Storm Kings described in the book. Most of them had been fierce warriors, stormlike in their violence, men said to carry the blood of the storm god himself. Without that, the Storm Kingdom could never have expanded step by step the way it had.
"I am Fury." Every Storm King had upheld that house words. The stag was proud, and it was violent too. Their forefather had dared to make war on the gods themselves, defying heaven by force of will. There was nothing else like it in all the heroic legends. Though the tale of Durran was only legend, it still showed the wildness and unrestrained spirit of House Durrandon. The climate and terrain of the Storm Kingdom had never been especially favorable. The Stormlands were lashed year round by rainstorms and fierce winds blowing in from the Narrow Sea. Inland, much of the ground was harsh mountain country, like the lands around Summerhall. The coasts were rocky, as at Cape Wrath, and there were vast, dense forests, the Kingswood and the Rainwood among them. Yet even hemmed in by such a harsh land, House Durrandon had again and again pushed outward on courage and sheer audacity, once even taking the Riverlands, seizing the headwaters of the Blackwater and the Mander, and fighting several kingdoms at once. While the North and the Vale kept to their own corners, and Dorne was shut away behind its mountains, the Storm Kingdom had sent storm after storm crashing outward, forever on the attack."
The maester's account was a little flattering, but before Aegon's Conquest, when the North and the Vale mostly kept to themselves, the Storm Kingdom really had once been a lesser hegemon in Westeros. It had held the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and part of what would later become the crownlands, while striking at the Reach and Dorne. Later it declined. The most overbearing kingdom of all, however, had been that of House Hoare.
"Proud Argilac was the last Storm King before Aegon the Conqueror united Westeros. Sadly, this great warrior king was ill-starred. During his reign, the last storm fought desperately to defend the fading Storm Kingdom. In his youth he drove back an invasion from Dorne, and twenty years before Aegon's Conquest he crushed the Reach host at the Battle of Summerfield, killing their king, Gyles Gardener VII. When Volantis reached the height of its expansion, the warrior king joined the grand alliance against the Tigers, led his army into the Disputed Lands, defeated the Volantene forces trying to retake Myr, and checked Volantis's dream of rebuilding the empire of the Freehold. The warrior king inherited the mess left by his forebears and halted the kingdom's steep decline, yet he had no male heir. As the warrior aged, he could only watch as Harrenhal, seat of his old ironborn enemy, was completed, and he was powerless to stop the Dragonlord in the sky..." Gendry looked at the image of the old warrior. He was the last Storm King. If dragons and conquerors had not been the true protagonists of the age, Argilac would have seemed more like the hot-blooded hero of the tale.
"A book by Maester Merlon. This copy may be the only one left now. Strange that we found it at the Twins instead of Storm's End," Ser Barristan said, glancing at the cover. It truly was a precious old tome.
"As for the books at Storm's End, I doubt those knights ever bother to read them." Gendry smiled. The long night stretched on, and when the fighting paused, a man could always turn to a different kind of life for a while.
"The knights of Storm's End, no, most knights, would rather drink, throw dice, hunt, and chase women. Every one of them. Asking them to read a history book is far too much. They would rather sing songs, 'The Two Bears' and the like."
"Ser, do you believe the tale of Durran?"
Ser Barristan shook his head. "I take most legends for what they are, old stories. Durran Godsgrief, Brandon the Builder, Lann the Clever, and the rest. But when it comes to courage and strength, I do believe both Durrandon and Baratheon carry the blood of the storm in their veins."
Gendry looked down at the book, but the painted Storm Kings upon its pages seemed almost alive before his eyes. "Before the Targaryen dynasty came, the Storm Kingdom truly was powerful for a time. The Stormlands may have been battered year round by rainstorms and howling winds from the Narrow Sea, but they also gave birth to a people of formidable warriors."
The warriors of the Stormlands were famed across the Seven Kingdoms for their strength, ferocity, and skill in war, just as King Robert and the Great Lords and kings before him had shown. The Stormlands also produced great sailors and seamen. Best of all were the warriors of the Marches, where Anguy came from. They were said to be the fiercest fighters in the Stormlands, even in all of Westeros. Those men had a gift for the sword, and their longbows were something else again.
"I have heard that too," Anguy said, rubbing his nose. "Back in the days of the Seven Kingdoms, the Stormlands were far bigger than they are now. There was a King Arlan the First, called the Avenger, who swept aside every obstacle and pushed the borders all the way to the Blackwater and the headwaters of the Mander. His great-grandson, I think, crossed not just the Blackwater but the Trident too, and brought the whole Riverlands under his rule. Back then the trout were servants to the stag. Those were glorious days for the Stormlands. Shame it all went downhill after that, with enemies pressing us from every side. Proud King Argilac managed to claw some of it back for a while. Then before long the Dragonlord came, and after the old Storm King died, his daughter married the Dragonlord's bastard brother."
By now Gendry understood well enough how prosperous the Storm Kingdom had once been. Storm's End had known greatness in its bloodline. The Stormlands of today were only a stripped-down shadow of the old Storm Kingdom.
The knights of House Durrandon had once ridden as far south as the headwaters of the Mander, pressing the Reach, north to the sources of the Blackwater, once ruling Duskendale and Maidenpool, and west into the Riverlands. At one point, the banner of the crowned stag had even been planted on the shores of the Sunset Sea. Yet Storm's End had never truly held the Riverlands securely. Rebellions had broken out again and again. The distance was simply too great. Even so, to hold it for three centuries was extraordinary.
"Everything turns into its opposite in the end. After the death of Arlan III, House Durrandon inevitably fell into decline, because the strength of the Stormlands alone could not sustain such a vast kingdom," Ser Barristan said.
"Perhaps they would have fared better if they had dug a port on the Blackwater back then, where King's Landing now stands," Gendry said. The ancient Durrandon kings had seemed proud of strength itself, ruling by force and straightforward power, without much subtlety.
"I fear even that would not have preserved it. No one could stop the Dragonlord," the old knight said.
"But now the Dragonlord has made peace with us. There is only one house now," Anguy said proudly. "Prince Gendry's kingdom is far greater than the old Storm Kingdom ever was."
"Rage sweeping across the land, or I Am the Fury. House Durrandon wrote fury into its very words, far more unrestrained than the Lannisters' Hear Me Roar. Fury can mean a man stirred to violent action by some outside cause, seized with blazing anger. It can also describe a storm, fierce and overwhelming." Gendry slowly turned the thought over in his mind, then closed the book.
"Durran built seven castles before Storm's End finally stood.
The bastard Ronard overthrew his own brother and became Storm King. The singers say Ronard had twenty-three wives and ninety-nine sons.
Arlan I the Avenger, who expanded the realm to the Blackwater and the headwaters of the Mander.
Arlan Durrandon III, great-grandson of Arlan I, the first Storm King to rule the Riverlands.
And the warrior king, poor Argilac, struggling to hold the Storm Kingdom together." Gendry thought back over those kings, and then the Baratheon lords who came after them.
Orys, first Hand of the King, the maimed man whose hand the Dornish cut off. Lord Rogar, who upheld the Targaryen realm. Lord Borros, slain by House Tully during the Dance of the Dragons. The Laughing Storm, greatest warrior of his age. Lord Ormund, who died fighting for the Targaryens. His grandfather, who drowned while searching for a bride for Prince Rhaegar. And then the late king Robert.
Through swamps and rainwood, through storms and stone, generation after generation of stags had fought for honor and power, riding out of the Kingswood, crossing the Blackwater, crossing the Mander, sweeping past the Red Mountains, until Robert's Rebellion.
"The late king was a failure," Gendry said suddenly, rising to his feet and turning to Ser Barristan and Anguy.
Ser Barristan stared at him in surprise, not understanding why Gendry would say such a thing. Though Robert's reign truly had been a shambles in many ways.
"The late king reached the highest point of power, yet had no wish to protect it. He only wanted to indulge the appetites of the world, and in the end died at another man's hands, leaving himself a laughingstock for a thousand years. The stag is a symbol of pride, wild and unrestrained, brave and fearless. If a stag sinks into drink and women, if it grows afraid of wind and rain, then it is no longer a true stag. A man must not be forged in hardship only to die in comfort."
Power was power. The Storm Kings of old had failed because they lacked enough of it, because they had never become truly strong. True power had to crush every hardship and every scheme. It required courage, wit, and strength of will. The stag had to reach the very highest height, fear nothing, and conquer even itself.
Honor, the crown. Only strength, only victory, could master such things.
"I am the Fury." Gendry stared at the crowned stag on the book's cover. The stag had always been one of the symbols of kingship. "I am the Fury. I am the storm. I am power."
...
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