Chapter 20: The History of Castamere
The Arbor fleet was taking King Robert and the assembled lords south to Lannisport, where Tywin Lannister was hosting a grand tournament at his own expense — the kind of generosity that cost a great deal of gold and bought a great deal of goodwill, which was how Tywin preferred to spend both.
The Royal Fleet sailed the other direction, carrying the spoils of the Iron Islands campaign back around the southern coast toward King's Landing.
When Barristan relayed Henry's request for passage, Stannis had agreed without ceremony or excessive comment. That was, Henry was learning, simply how Stannis operated.
On the appointed morning, Henry boarded the Fury with his men, his chests of gold dragons, and the captured longships sailing alongside under borrowed oarsmen. The flagship of the Royal Fleet was a different scale of vessel from anything Henry had sailed on — sixty meters of warship, three decks, three hundred oars in perfect arrangement, scorpions crowding the rails, catapults fore and aft, a ram at the prow that caught the morning light with the cold gleam of something designed specifically to destroy other ships. The golden sails were still furled against the tall masts as they made ready to depart.
Henry's men were shown to their quarters by a sailor. Henry was shown to the captain's cabin.
Stannis Baratheon sat at his map table as if he'd been there since the ship was built.
He was broad through the shoulders and hard-looking — the particular hardness of a man who has spent years doing difficult things in difficult conditions without complaint, because complaint wasn't something he had time for. His hair was thinning, black going to grey at the temples, cropped short. His beard was trimmed with the precision of a man who applies the same standards to his personal appearance as to his fleet dispositions. His blue eyes were sharp and gave away nothing that he hadn't decided to give away. His jaw was set in the tight, perpetual clench that his face apparently defaulted to at rest.
Beside him stood a smaller man — unremarkable in appearance, brown-haired and brown-eyed, thick grey beard, black leather gloves worn indoors despite the relative warmth of the cabin. A small cloth pouch hung around his neck on a cord. He had the look of a man who had learned to be easy to overlook and had decided that was useful.
"Lord Stannis," Henry said, with a small bow.
"Ser Henry." A slight nod. No change in expression. "Sit. I've heard a great deal about you."
Henry sat. "Less than I've heard about you, my lord. Fair Isle, Great Wyk — you broke the ironborn fleet and did the hard work of this campaign before anyone else arrived."
"There's no need for flattery," Stannis said, in a tone that was not unkind, merely factual. "Ser Barristan speaks well of you. That's worth more than most recommendations I receive." He slid a wine cup across the table. "I've also heard about your family's history with the Lannisters."
Henry took the cup. He waited.
Stannis, it turned out, was not a man who built toward a point when he could simply make it.
"You and Tywin Lannister have an irreconcilable feud," he said. Not a question. The tone of a man stating something he has already concluded.
"A blood feud, my lord. My grandfather's family was destroyed. My father died in exile fighting someone else's war." Henry kept his voice even. "There's not much room for reconciliation in that accounting."
"The Rains of Castamere." Stannis said it flatly. "I've heard the song. I've read the history." A pause. "Rebels deserve to face consequences. That's not in question. But Tywin Lannister killed everyone — men, women, children, servants. He drowned them underground." His jaw worked slightly. "Even for treason, there are limits. There's a wall between justice and what he did, and he crossed it without apparent difficulty."
Henry looked at him. This was not what he'd expected Stannis Baratheon to say.
Davos Seaworth stepped forward smoothly, with the practiced ease of a man who has spent years filling silences that his lord creates. "What Lord Stannis means to say is—"
"Lord Stannis said it plainly enough," Henry said. "I understood him."
He set the cup down. The moment settled.
"Thank you," Henry said. He meant it simply.
The history of what had happened at Castamere was not something Henry recounted often — not because he had forgotten any of it, but because most people either already knew or didn't want to hear it from him. He had pieced it together over years, from his father's rare words, from Willis Manderly's more detailed accounts, from what Maester Winston had found in various records.
The year before the Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion, there had been a reconciliation.
It had been a formal affair — both sides present, oaths exchanged, witnesses. Tywin Lannister, then still his father's heir rather than the lord himself, had stood in the same hall as Roger Reyne and Ellyn Tarbeck's husband and sworn the kind of peace that was supposed to mean something.
Less than a year later, without informing his father Lord Tytos, without seeking permission, without sending word to either house, Tywin had summoned his bannermen and marched on Tarbeck Hall.
He'd executed Lord Walderan Tarbeck and all the male members of the family he could find — sons, cousins, nephews, anyone of Tarbeck blood or close connection. He'd put Lady Ellyn Tarbeck's two daughters into grey robes as Silent Sisters after cutting their tongues out. He'd collapsed the walls of Tarbeck Hall with siege engines while Lady Ellyn was still inside, then put what remained to the torch.
Roger Reyne had gotten the news in the night and ridden immediately. He'd brought two thousand men — everyone he could gather on short notice, a tenth of them knights. If he'd had time to call his full strength, if he'd had time to reach the allies who would have answered his name, he could have put eight thousand men in the field. But Tarbeck Hall was burning, and his kin were dead, and he'd ridden through the night on a forced march with exhausted horses and men who hadn't slept.
Tywin's force, picking up Lannister bannermen along the route, had grown to six thousand.
Three to one. A careful commander would have pulled back and reorganized and waited for better odds. Roger Reyne was not a careful commander. He was the Red Lion of Castamere, and caution was not something the Red Lion had ever had much patience for. He'd put the horn to his lips and led the charge into Tywin's camp himself.
The initial shock had worked — for a few minutes. Then Tywin's numbers had reasserted themselves, the way numbers always eventually do, and the Reyne army had broken. Roger had taken an arrow and fought on until they dragged him away from the field, and what remained of his force had retreated to Castamere.
The castle sat above a gold mine — most of it underground, most of the fighting strength of the keep in the tunnels and chambers below the surface, holding the narrow entrance against a force that couldn't get to them without going through one man at a time.
Tywin had besieged it.
Reynard Reyne, Roger's brother, who had taken over the defense, sent envoys to Tywin asking for terms. Asking for pardon. Offering submission.
Tywin didn't answer.
Reynard sent out the family — Jeyro, Henry's father, still a child, smuggled out with his mother in the confusion — and organized the cover for their escape.
Then Tywin had his engineers dam the Castamere stream and divert the flow into the mine entrances. The water had gone in fast. Three hundred people were underground when it did — fighting men, servants, wives, children, anyone who'd taken shelter in the castle's depths.
The guards on watch that night reported hearing sounds from underground for hours. By morning there was nothing.
Tywin sealed the mine entrances. He burned everything on the surface. He had the whole episode set to music — a song about the power of House Lannister, about what happened to houses that forgot their place, about lions and rain and drowned men. He had it played everywhere.
That was the Rains of Castamere. That was what the song was about.
Henry sat in his cabin that evening, Red Rain across his knees, the ship moving beneath him.
Stannis had said: even for treason, there are limits.
Henry had spent sixteen years knowing exactly where those limits were, and knowing exactly what had happened when they were crossed. He'd grown up in the knowledge the way a man grows up near a river — always aware of it, always hearing it somewhere in the background, unable to imagine the landscape without it.
Restoring House Reyne. Returning to Castamere. These were the things his father had told him to remember, in the rare moments when Jeyro Reyne had spoken at all about anything beyond training and preparation and the particular hatred that had organized his entire adult life.
He had land now. Iron Fist Keep. A title. Thirty thousand gold dragons in chests in the hold below him.
It was a beginning. It was more of a beginning than his father had managed to build in a lifetime of trying.
He ran his thumb along the flat of Red Rain's blade and watched the pattern in the dark steel catch the lamplight.
Fire tests gold. The words of his house, and the only thing his grandfather had ever been sure of.
Henry was beginning to understand what they meant.
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
[Review Goal: 10 = +1 Chapter]
If you liked it, feel free to leave a review.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger