The King of Winters

Chapter-130

Andrew

They had come upon the city to the sight of smoke filling the air from the burnt out stakes. Seated atop his fiery black stallion Andrew had watched the grey plume rise from the wooden stakes driven into the ground all around the walls of the city.

Andrew and his men had gathered around the stakes and the burnt bones, some hundred yards away from the city wall. Not even the thoughts of archers on the walls bothered him as much as the stakes did.

The stakes were all eight feet long and made of polished ash wood, half burnt in a grisly manner. Every single one of them were smooth and straight as if they had been perfectly selected for this. At the foot of each were the severed and burnt bones of those who had been unfortunate enough to find themselves in them. The bones were full of cracks and charred from the extreme heat, and the remaining ash had covered them in somber white blankets. Where their eyes had been, only empty sockets remained, black and empty holes that stared down in silent accusation.

“Who were they?” Andrew had asked his men but no one knew.

“Some men who must have wronged Rhaegar,” Lord Arryn said solemnly.

And so it was when Smalljon Umber brought him the wooden plaque that was left unburnt on the ground beside the central stake, taller and wider than the others. Upon it the words had been carved crudely. “TO THE DEADMAN OF WINTERFELL - A REMINDER OF STARFALL.”

The ground had been stripped bare and was covered in ashes. The stakes and the spears were driven so deep and arranged in a way that they could be seen by everyone even from afar. And Andrew had clearly seen that it unnerved some of his own men.

“They could still be watching us from the walls,” Lord Stannis informed. “We should move out of the range of the archers and catapults.”

“Aye, could be a hundred of them out there,” Lord Roose had said. “Could be a thousand. And everyone would want you dead, your grace.”

“No,” said Andrew Stark grimly. He remembered the empty tombs in the crypts of Winterfell. Rhaegar had not given back their bodies, he remembered then. “They must have left their gifts and then ran inside the city.” Ghost prowled around the wood, sniffing at the ash and bones. Andrew shoved the stake away violently that it uprooted from the ground. “Pull down the others,” he commanded. “Have our own archers and trebuchet covering the walls. Take the bones and bury them.” His soldiers had hurried to obey. He had not lost anyone to the arrows but the task had taken some of the time with the defenders shooting their own arrows. But he had to do it. He would have if it had been his father or mother or uncle.

They had lost all hope of taking King's Landing unawares, yet even so, Rhaegar had prepared his city to ward off his approach so strongly. He had his own swords and hammers at work as well, and the long arms of his catapults threw stones as big as horseheads at them occasionally. It is for the better after all. At least no one will say that he had butchered the city in their beds. That much was good with him.

He could see the city standing in front of him, south of vast green fields and looming over the edge of the Kingsroad. Andrew had hoped that the sight of him outside would enrage Rhaegar enough that he would be coming out of the walls with his army marching behind him with axes and spears in their hands and his slave soldiers coming out to meet him.

That would have been too easy. And he thought the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms would know that as well as his own allies had said. Instead they found the city closed and the walls too well defended to attack. At least until enough siege engines had been built. They fell down the trees from the nearby woods and waited for the others he had used in Duskendale to roll down to King's Landing.