Chapter 15: Reaping the Storm - 282 AC

Chapter 15: Reaping the Storm - 282 AC

The army of the Stormlands moved like a great, lumbering beast, an amalgamation of a thousand disparate parts held together by the singular, furious will of Robert Baratheon. It was a force of righteous anger, of feudal loyalty, of men marching for honour and for home. It was also a logistical nightmare. And in that nightmare, I found my purpose.

While Robert and the other high lords planned glorious charges and debated the finer points of battle formations, I, Lord Lysander Thorne, the newly appointed Quartermaster of the rebellion, was obsessed with a far more fundamental sinew of war: numbers. The number of wagons, the weight of fodder, the allocation of bandages, the precise calculus of how many calories a man needed to march twenty miles and still have the strength to swing a sword. I was the master of the mundane, the lord of logistics, and in my quiet, efficient way, I was making myself the most indispensable man in the entire army.

My Thorneguard, with their disciplined marching and professional demeanor, became the de facto protectors of the baggage train—my personal domain. I requisitioned supplies with ruthless efficiency, my agents from Stone's End appearing with wagons of grain or leather at exactly the right moment, a feat the other lords attributed to uncanny foresight rather than the secret hoard I had spent a year accumulating.

"By the gods, Thorne, you think of everything," Lord Grandison remarked one evening, after I had procured a shipment of wool blankets to ward off an unexpected late spring chill. "You have the mind of a Citadel maester."

"A cold army is a slow army, my lord," I had replied simply. "And a slow army is a dead one."

My competence bought me influence and, more importantly, autonomy. Robert, consumed by his grief and his lust for battle, was content to let me handle the "bean counting," as he called it. It was the perfect arrangement. It allowed me to control the army's movements in subtle ways, and to position myself exactly where I needed to be for the events I knew were coming.

Scouts soon brought the news we were anticipating. The loyalist lords of the Stormlands—Grandison, Cafferen, and Fell—had not fled to King's Landing. Emboldened by their numbers, they were consolidating their forces near the tragic, skeletal ruins of Summerhall, intending to form a single, powerful army to crush Robert before he could leave his own lands.

In the command tent, the other lords saw a threat. I saw an itinerary.

"They mean to trap us," growled Ser Ronard Tarth, a man whose sensibilities were as blunt as his warhammer. "We should pull back, consolidate our own forces."

Robert would have none of it. His eyes blazing, he slammed a mailed fist on the campaign map. "Trap us? I will not be trapped in my own lands! We will march on them. We will smash them before they can unite. We will take the fight to them, one by one!"

It was a bold, reckless plan, born of fury. It was also, as I knew from the histories, precisely the right one.

"Lord Robert's strategy is sound," I said, my calm voice cutting through the boisterous debate. The other lords turned to look at me. "Their forces are scattered. A swift, decisive strike now, before they can form a cohesive battle line, is our greatest advantage." I then turned to the logistics of it, my true contribution. "My Thorneguard can secure the baggage train at this crossroads. It is a defensible position, and from here," I tapped a point on the map, "we can resupply your vanguard after each engagement without slowing your advance. You will hit them with the full force of your cavalry, fall back to re-arm, and hit the next one before they even know the first has fallen."

My plan gave Robert's fury a ruthlessly efficient edge. It also, quite deliberately, placed my command post, and myself, in a central, secure location that was well within a ten-kilometer radius of all three impending battlefields. I was setting the table for my own private feast.

The first battle began at dawn. Robert's vanguard, a wave of steel and fury, crashed into the hastily assembled lines of Lord Grandison's army. From my command post on a high ridge, the distant battle was an abstract thing, a clash of miniature figures, the sounds of shouting and steel a faint, bestial roar on the wind.

But I was not watching with my eyes alone. As the first lines met, as the first men fell, a new sense of perception opened to me. It was not a sound or a sight, but a feeling, a psychic shockwave that slammed into my consciousness with the force of a physical blow.

It was the moment of death, multiplied by a hundred.

The ring on my finger, my quiet, unassuming magical engine, flared with a sudden, intense cold. I felt them. The souls. Ripped from their bodies, they were a chorus of pure, raw emotion. The terror of the young foot soldier facing a charging knight. The defiant rage of a man-at-arms as a spear took him in the gut. The sudden, bewildered surprise of an archer struck by a stray arrow. It was a cacophony of fear, pain, and confusion that threatened to overwhelm me. I gripped the edge of my campaign table, my knuckles white, a cold sweat breaking out on my brow.

One of my aides, a young scribe, looked at me with concern. "My lord? Are you unwell?"

"The gravity of the day, young man," I managed to say, my voice tight. "Pray for their souls."

He nodded, turning his gaze back to the battle. But I was not praying for them. I was consuming them. The ring was a ravenous vortex, drawing in the life-force of the fallen, converting the raw, chaotic energy of their final moments into pure, refined magical power. I felt a surge of vitality, a sharpening of my senses, a cold, clean fire coursing through my veins that was utterly at odds with the psychic horror of the process.

While the battle raged, I fought a war within myself. The Serpent, my ruthless, predatory core, reveled in the power. It urged me to embrace the flow, to drink it all in. But another part of me, the last vestige of the man I had once been, recoiled from the intimate violation of it all. I was not just taking their energy; I was experiencing the echo of their final, terrified moments.

Robert was victorious. He shattered Grandison's lines and, without pausing to celebrate, reformed his cavalry and charged towards the encampment of Lord Cafferen, who was still trying to organize his men.

The second wave hit me an hour later. This time, I was more prepared. As the psychic torrent of the second battle washed over me, I built walls in my mind. I became a filter, a dam. I let the raw emotion—the fear, the pain—flow around my consciousness, diverting it, while channeling the pure, untainted energy into the reservoir of the ring. It was a mentally exhausting process, like trying to separate salt from water in a hurricane, but I managed it. The ring on my finger grew noticeably warm, then hot, a physical manifestation of the immense power it was accumulating.

Through my spyglass, I watched Robert Baratheon. He was a god of war, his great antlered helm a terrifying sight, his warhammer a blur of motion that smashed through shields and helmets like eggshells. He was not just a commander; he was the heart of the storm, his personal prowess inspiring his men to impossible feats of bravery.

He crushed Cafferen's forces and, in a feat of legendary stamina and speed, marched his now-exhausted but victorious army on Lord Fell's position at the foot of the charred ruins of Summerhall.

The third battle was fought at dusk, and with it came the third and final harvest of the day. By now, the process was becoming refined. I sat at my table, a stoic expression on my face, appearing to be a calm commander managing his logistics, while internally, I was a silent, psychic vortex, drawing in the souls of the dead with a cold and practiced efficiency. The ring was no longer just hot; it felt like a miniature sun forged on my finger, humming with a power that was both exhilarating and terrifying. The souls of three defeated armies now resided within its silver circumference.

That night, the camp was a scene of wild celebration. Robert's victory was absolute, a legendary feat that would be sung about for centuries. He had smashed three loyalist armies in a single day, securing the Stormlands behind him and proving himself a commander of genius and a warrior without peer.

While the men drank and sang, I undertook my own grim, necessary work. Under the guise of my Quartermaster duties—"to reclaim any serviceable arms and armour and to ensure the proper care of the wounded"—I rode out onto the battlefields.

The moon was a cold, silver eye in the sky, looking down upon a scene of utter devastation. The ground was a churned morass of mud and blood, littered with the broken bodies of men and horses. The air was thick with the coppery smell of death and the groans of the dying. For my men, it was a grim task. For me, it was the final stage of the harvest.

As I moved through the fields of the dead, my ring was a silent, greedy presence. It was gleaning, absorbing the last fading wisps of life force from the fallen, the spiritual echoes of those who had not yet fully passed on. I walked among the corpses, my face a neutral mask, my heart a cold, hard stone. These were not men to me anymore. They were not farmers, or fathers, or sons. They were a resource. They were fuel. The Serpent did not mourn the sheep it consumed; it simply drew strength from the meal.

Later, in Robert's tent, the mood was exultant. He clapped me on the back with a force that nearly sent me sprawling. "Thorne! By the gods, your wagons were there every time we needed them. Arrows when we were running low, water for the men. You keep my army fed, and I'll keep killing Targaryens!"

I also dealt with the captured lords—Grandison, Cafferen, and Fell. Robert, in his magnanimity, was prepared to accept their surrender and renewed oaths of fealty. I was the one who handled the quiet negotiations. I offered them generous terms, ensuring their lands would not be seized, their titles would not be stripped. In return, I received their gratitude and a quiet, unspoken understanding. They now owed a debt, not just to Robert Baratheon, but to the quiet, efficient Lord of Stone's End who had treated them with dignity in their defeat. I was collecting allies as methodically as I was collecting souls.

Long after the camp had fallen into a drunken slumber, I sat alone in my tent. I held up my hand, the simple silver ring on my finger glowing with a faint, internal luminescence in the dark. It was pulsing with power, a deep, rhythmic thrum I could feel in the very marrow of my bones. The combined life force of thousands of men, the martial prowess of knights, the defiant pride of lords—it was all mine now.

My internal monologue was no longer a conversation or a summary. It was a revelation. I had theorized what this would be like, planned for it, even craved it. But the reality of it, the sheer scale of the power and the profound, soul-deep violation of its acquisition, was something else entirely. It had changed me. The last vestiges of Antonio Moretti's earth-bound morality had been scoured away by the torrent of dying souls. The Serpent was no longer just a part of me. It was me.

I now possessed a reservoir of magical energy that could have made the Valyrian dragonlords of old weep with envy. With this, I could do more than just reinforce my castle walls. I could make them sentient. I could do more than enchant a sword. I could forge an army of magical constructs. The limits of what was possible had been shattered.

I thought of the battles to come. Of Ashford, where the Reach would descend upon us. Of the Stoney Sept, with its brutal street-to-street fighting. And of the Trident, the final, apocalyptic confrontation where the fate of the kingdom would be decided.

I did not feel dread. I did not feel fear. I felt only a cold, thrilling, and deeply hungry anticipation.

The Summerhall Harvest had been a staggering success. But it was only an appetizer. The main course was still to come, and I, Lysander Thorne, was ready to feast. The storm had been reaped, and now, I had its power. The world would tremble before what I would become.