“I will spare House Celtigar.”
The relief around the table was almost audible.
Arthor’s shoulders dropped an inch.
“But only for now.”
They stopped.
“Hear me properly.” Alric’s voice went flat.
“I have not forgiven him. I will deal with Sunglass first, and when that is finished I will decide what Claw Isle deserves — mercy or fury. That decision is mine and it stays mine, and I will make it when I have the leisure to make it well.”
He looked at Arthor.
“But whatever I decide, Ardrian Celtigar will be dealt with. That part is not negotiable, and it will not change. Not for you, not for your brother, not for anyone at this table.”
Arthor Waters went down on one knee.
“You have my thanks, my lord. More than I can say.” His voice was thick with it.
“And I swear this on my life — if you are not satisfied with House Celtigar when Sunglass is done, I will be your first sword in the assault on Claw Isle. I will go over the wall ahead of every man you have.”
“Get up, Arthor.”
He got up.
Something had shifted in the room, and Monford Velaryon — who had been in a great many rooms — felt it settle.
Every man there had learned the same thing at the same moment: Alric Baratheon could be reasoned with, if the reasons were good enough.
He was not a tyrant, and he was not so arrogant that he listened to no one.
A man who cannot be argued with dies early, with everyone cheering.
He is remembered well enough.
But the man who survives becomes the man they talk about.
“If that is settled,” Alric said, “then the plan changes. Let us fix it now.”
Monford stepped up to the chart, and he did it with the ease of a man finally on his own ground.
“Then Sunglass still burns,” he said.
“But instead of splitting your strength between two great houses, the second column takes the minor houses. We can sweep them up in the same fortnight for a fraction of the cost, and when the smoke clears you will have struck every house on this bay except Celtigar. That ought to put its own kind of pressure on Ardrian. However arrogant he is, he is not entirely stupid.”
“Aye. Good.” Alric’s finger came down on Claw Isle.
“But I do not want Celtigar sitting comfortable while it happens. If they are spared, they are not to be free. No supplies, no allies, no letters to the mainland, and no forty hulls turning up somewhere I did not invite them.”
He tapped the island twice.
“I want a blockade. Cut them off from every ship in the water. It hurts their economics and it takes away their reach both at once.”
Alric straightened up from the chart.
“Numbers. All of you. What can actually sail and fight.”
Monford Velaryon did not need to consult anything.
“House Velaryon can put fifteen hundred to two thousand men in the field, my lord, with the hulls to carry them. But three hundred stay on Driftmark. I will not leave that island naked, and neither would you if it were yours.”
“Agreed. Cressen — Dragonstone.”
“Two thousand to twenty-five hundred, my lord.” The maester consulted nothing either.
“Five hundred must remain. This castle cannot be held by less, and it must be held. It is our first priority, so that no other party takes advantage of the situation.”
“Davos.”
“Near a thousand between the crews and the fighting men of your own company, my lord.” Davos’s voice was unhurried.
“But six hundred is what you can have. The rest are on the Braavos run and the Pentos contracts, and if I pull them off it, the coin stops coming in and we are paying for a war with nothing.”
“Six hundred, then. The gold needs to be keep moving.”
Alric turned.
“Duran.”
Duran Bar Emmon sat up.
“Eight hundred certain, my lord. Twelve hundred if I call in every sworn sword.” He hesitated.
“But if it comes to armed conflict with Massey, it will be eight hundred and not twelve.”
“Eight hundred of use, then, and four hundred to stand in a line.” Alric bent over the chart.
He was quiet for perhaps twenty heartbeats.
Then he began.
“Davos. You take the blockade of Claw Isle.” His finger drew the ring.
“Your six hundred, and the Dragonstone ships and the Dragonstone men beyond what the castle needs. Nothing enters those waters and nothing leaves — no grain, no timber, no ravens if you can help it, and certainly no hulls. I want Ardrian Celtigar sitting in his own hall watching his harbor die and unable to do one thing about it.”
“Aye, my lord.”
“Lord Monford. I want five hundred of your Velaryon men and the hulls to go with them under Davos’s direct command for this. Do I have your support?”
It was not really a question.
Monford inclined his head without hesitation.
“You have it, my lord.”
“Arthor.”
“You go with Davos. Field command under him — everything on the water is his, and you will not argue with him about it in front of the men.”
Alric held his eye.
“You know every current, every shoal and every back channel on that island. Use them. And Arthor — if it comes to a landing, you will be the one facing your father’s men. Consider it now, because I want the answer before you sail and not after.”
“I can do it, my lord.”
“Good.”
His finger moved north and west, across the scattered holdings.
“Lord Monterys. The minors are yours. Farring, Follard, Chyttering except Massey— take the remainder of the Velaryon strength and deal with all three.”
Monterys blinked.
“All three, my lord?”
“All three. And I am not going to tell you how.” Alric looked up at him.
“You have shown me today that you can read a room and read a man, and you have learned a great deal from your father. So I am giving you three houses and a free hand. If one of them opens the gate and kneels, take the kneeling and move on. If one of them fights, break it. You will know which is which when you are standing in front of them, and I will not be there to ask.”
Monterys Velaryon straightened, and something in his face changed.
“It will be done, my lord.”
“Massey you leave entirely alone. He sits next to Bar Emmon land — Ser Willem, he will be your headache to handle.”
“Understood, my lord,” Ser Willem said.
“Lord Monford.” Alric turned to him.
“You stay on Dragonstone.”
There was a pause.
“My lord.” Monford’s tone was perfectly courteous.
“I have fought in a war. I was at the Gullet in the rebellion, I have commanded ships in anger, and I am the only man at this table who can say all of it. I would be of more use to you there than sitting in a chair.”
“I know what you have done. That is exactly why you are not going.” Alric put his bandaged hand flat on the chart.
“Look at what I have just built. Three columns, five hundred men detached from one house to another’s command, four fronts if you count the Crown, and every one of them needing grain, cordage, hulls, timber, coin and news. Who else in this room can run that? The rest of us are young, and none of us are near experienced enough for it.”
He looked up.
“On a deck you are one more good captain and I have no supply. In this castle with Cressen, my columns stay fed and I have a man who hears bad news before I do.” A pause.
“I am not putting you behind the lines because I doubt you, my lord. I am putting you there because it is the one task here I trust only you to do properly.”
Monford Velaryon regarded the young man across the table for a moment.
“Then consider it done, my lord,” he said.
“Good.” Alric’s hand came down on Sweetport Sound.
“And I will take House Sunglass myself.”
That, at least, surprised nobody.
But Monford was already frowning at the chart, running the numbers, and he did not like them.
“My lord — forgive me, and no offense to Lord Duran.” He glanced at the boy.
“But the Bar Emmon strength cannot do that. Eight hundred good men against a walled seat? We are stretched too thin already. The division does not work this way.”
“No offense taken, my lord,” Duran said.
He said it with a small, deeply mischievous smile, and Monford Velaryon felt the first cold touch of something on the back of his neck.
Alric smiled too.
It was not a pleasant expression.
“I have another force,” he said.
“It has been mustering on Bar Emmon land for some time. It seems this is their time to come out.”
Monterys’s head snapped up.
He has been raising men for a long while.
The thought went through Monford like cold water.
That is why Massey has been careful with him.
He has been preparing for this war far longer than any of us knew.
“How many,” Monford heard himself ask, “may I ask, my lord?”
Alric looked at Ser Willem.
He did not know the exact figure himself.
Ser Willem came off the wall, and he was smiling — the modest, contained smile of a man who has been waiting a very long while for this particular moment.
“Twenty-five hundred men, my lord,” he said.
“With sufficient war galleys, built to order in Braavos, and the best equipment we could afford. Trained to fight on land and on the sea both, to board and to be boarded.” He let that sit for exactly as long as it deserved.
“Trained personally by Ser Kenneth. The Ironslayer.”
Nobody said one word.
Duran was grinning openly now.
Davos had the expression of a man watching a wave he had already seen coming break over someone else.
A chill ran down Monford Velaryon’s spine.
He thanked his past self for choosing to ally with this boy, because now he understood exactly how terrifying it would have been to face him.
Also Ser Kenneth,he gulps down and didn’t even want to think about it.
Alric looked around a chamber that had gone entirely silent, and seemed satisfied with it.
“If everything is settled,” he said, “begin your preparations. And keep it quiet. Every day that passes may raise the price we have to pay.”
Chairs began to move.
“Wait a moment, my lord.”
Monford Velaryon was still confused, still shaken, and still perfectly capable of counting.
“We have a problem, and it is a glaring one. Davos is your naval commander, aye, but he is barely known to your Dragonstone men and entirely unknown to mine. You are about to hand him five hundred Velaryon swords and my hulls.” He spread his hands.
“He needs a title, my lord. Something men can obey without thinking about it.”
Alric nodded slowly.
It was sound.
It was also, he thought, four years overdue.
“Good thinking.” He turned.
“Davos. From this moment you are Master of Arms of House Baratheon of Dragonstone.”
The speed of it startled the table more than the decision did.
No deliberation, no consultation, no waiting a week to see how it sounded.
Davos went to one knee.
“You have my thanks, my lord,” he said, and his voice was not quite steady.
“I will not waste it.”
“Get up. You have a blockade to plan.”
Monford still was not satisfied.
“A good office, my lord. But a knighthood would carry further among fighting men. ”
Alric sighed.
It made no great difference to him one way or the other — but if a lord with thirty years behind him said it twice, it was probably worth doing.
“Fine. Davos, on your knee again.”
Monford coughed.
Loudly.
“What?” Alric asks
At moments like this it showed plainly that Alric Baratheon was still six-and-ten and inexperienced.
“My lord.” Monford picked his words with visible care.
“Only a knight may make a knight. And you are…”
“Oh.” Alric stopped.
“Ah. Yes. I am not a knight.”
“Just so, my lord.” Monford inclined his head.
“If it is agreeable to you, I would take that honor myself. It would also make it easier for my men to follow him, and it does his reputation no harm to be raised by Driftmark.”
“Go ahead.”
Monford Velaryon rose, drew his sword, and did the thing properly — the old words, all seven of them, unhurried, in a room that had gone quiet in a different way than before.
Davos Seaworth got up a knight.
Alric let it sit for a moment.
Then he turned.
“Cressen. Have a sigil drawn for Ser Davos.” A pause.
“And a personal sigil for me too.”
The maester’s quill stopped.
“A personal sigil, my lord?”
“Aye.” Alric was looking at the chart, not at him.
“A stag. With a wing.”
The silence that followed was not the same as any of the silences before it.
Everyone understood it instantly, and they wished very much that they did not.
A winged stag was a new thing entirely — a house making itself, a lord announcing that Dragonstone was no longer merely a seat that Baratheons were given.
But also recognise a root many would feel uncomfortable with,
It was a message to the whole realm, and the King would be among the first to read it.
“My lord—” Cressen began.
Alric looked up.
That was all it took.
The old man closed his mouth, and so did every other man in the chamber.
OTHERWISE MINE IS THE FURY