Chapter 108: The Resistance Network
ULF
Three miles inland from the village, a watchtower had been falling down since before anyone's grandfather was born.
I'd picked it for that. Nothing left of the roof, but the walls still stood chest-high on three sides, with a clean view down the slope in every direction and one road up. Far enough from the village that if the whole thing went wrong, the men who'd sold us out would still be looking for a queen forty miles from where she slept. Silverwing waited in the ravine below the north face, out of sight, close enough that a whistle would put her over the tower in the time it takes to draw a sword.
They came in small groups over two days, at odd hours, never more than three on a road at once.
Knights who'd run from the fall of King's Landing with nothing but their swords and their debts. Minor lords who'd knelt to Rhaenyra in her hall and gone home and hated themselves for it. Soldiers who'd lived through the riots and couldn't stop talking about the noise. One former Small Council member, Lord Massey, who'd walked out of the city in a wool merchant's coat with his rings sewn into the hem.
Twelve men total. Not an army. But a core.
"Lord Protector." Sir Gareth got down on one knee on the broken flags before I could stop him. He'd served under Criston Cole and he still stood like it. "We thought you dead."
"I've been busy dying. It's tiresome work."
Two of them laughed, startled at themselves. Good. Men who could still laugh were men who could still fight.
"Rise. All of you. We're not in a court. We're in a ruin, and titles matter less than survival."
They came in around the broken hearth where I'd spread the maps and the notes and weighted the corners with stones off the wall. Somebody had brought a skin of sour wine and it went round without anyone asking permission.
"You've come because you believe the Green cause isn't dead. You're right. Queen Helaena lives. Her children live. The rightful king lives. Jaehaerys, third of his name."
That went through them like cold water. Two or three hadn't been certain until I said it. One of the younger ones put his hand over his mouth.
"Where are they?" Lord Massey asked.
"Hidden. Safe. That's all you need to know." I held his eyes until he understood I meant it. "The fewer people who know their location, the safer they remain."
"But if we're to fight for them—"
"You'll fight for me. For the Queen's cause. When the time comes to rally around the royal family, you'll know where to go."
Massey didn't like it. None of them did. But he nodded, and the rest nodded after him.
"Now. What do we have?"
It took the better part of the day.
Each of them had a piece and none of them had the picture. Gareth had counted ships in the Blackwater. A hedge knight out of Duskendale had watched three of Rhaenyra's tax collectors ride into a village and two ride out. Massey had names, and the names had prices, and he knew which lords had already been approached and by whom.
Put together, it made something close to hope. Rhaenyra's grip on King's Landing was a fist around wet sand. The smallfolk blamed her for the Dragonpit dead, which wasn't fair and wasn't going to stop being true. The lords who'd submitted were watching her the way men watch a sick horse. Her dragons were spread across half the Crownlands under riders too young to have learned what a dragon can refuse to do.
And Cregan Stark was marching south.
"The Wolf of Winterfell," Sir Gareth said. "They say he's bringing twenty thousand Northmen. Maybe more."
"To support Rhaenyra?"
"Unclear. He declared for the Blacks early in the war, but he's done nothing since except gather his forces. Some say he's coming to enforce justice. On both sides."
Winter comes from the North, and wolves judge dragons.
"What about Criston Cole?"
The man who'd brought that news straightened up off the wall.
"He's alive. Leading maybe three thousand men in the Crownlands. Veterans, loyal to the Green cause. They've been raiding Black supply lines, harassing patrols. Waiting for orders."
"You've been in contact?"
"I have. He's desperate for news of Queen Helaena."
"Send him word. The Queen and her children are safe. Await orders." I let that sit a moment. "And tell him: command me. I serve the true queen."
"Those exact words?"
"Those exact words. He'll understand."
He'd said them to me once, in a corridor, with his hand off his sword hilt for the first time since we'd met.
We worked until the light failed and then we worked by the fire. I gave them what I knew and what I guessed, and I gave them what Helaena had seen, dressed as rumour out of the capital so that no man there could ever put a dream and a woman together.
"Rhaenyra is weaker than she appears. Dragonless, unpopular, surrounded by lords who'd betray her in a moment if they thought they could survive it. But we can't defeat her through direct assault. Not with a dozen knights and a few thousand scattered soldiers."
"Then what?" Massey said.
"We wait. We build. We position ourselves to exploit whatever opportunity comes." I put two fingers on the city and drew them down the map to the river. "When the moment arrives, we strike fast and decisive. Take the city before she can organize defense. Offer reconciliation rather than vengeance. The realm is tired of bloodshed."
"And the remaining Black dragons?"
"I handle them. That's what I'm for."
Nobody answered that. They looked at each other instead, which is its own kind of answer.
"My wife's still in the city," the hedge knight from Duskendale said, to nobody. Nobody took it up.
"You really command two dragons?" one of the younger knights said. "That's not just rumor?"
"It's not rumor. Silverwing and Vermithor both answer to me."
"No one's ever—"
"No one's ever done a lot of things. Until someone does them." I rolled the map and knocked the stones off the hearth with my boot. "We meet again in three weeks. Bring more men if you can find them. Build networks, gather intelligence, prepare for action. When I call, I expect you to answer."
They nodded. Some of them slowly. All of them with that hungry look men get when hope arrives somewhere it has no business being.
As they went down the slope in their small groups, one stayed.
Lord Stokeworth. Ancient, dried out, a stick of a man who'd carried a cup for three kings before the Dance and outlived all three.
"A question, Lord Protector."
"Ask."
"You command two dragons. You killed Hugh Hammer, one of the most dangerous dragonriders in the war. You survived the God's Eye where princes died." His eyes were wet and pale and they didn't move off my face. "What are you, truly?"
Some version of it every month since the war started.
"I'm Helaena's protector. That's all that matters."
"That tells me nothing, my lord."
"It's everything I intend to tell you." I met his gaze. "Does it matter what I am, as long as I serve the cause?"
"It matters because men need to believe in something. Right now, they believe in you as much as in the Queen." He waited. "Perhaps more."
"Then help them believe in the Queen. She's the legitimate regent. Her son is the legitimate king. I'm just a tool in their service."
"You're more than a tool, my lord. Whether you accept that or not."
He went off down the slope after the others, one hand on the wall as far as the wall went.
They're following me. Not the cause. Me.
I never wanted to lead. I wanted to protect Helaena. Keep her children safe. Survive.
I went down the north face to the ravine and put my hand on Silverwing's neck, and she came up out of the dark with the first beat throwing grit across the tower's broken flags. And every one of them, all twelve, halfway down the slope in the last of the light, stopped walking and turned their faces up.