Chapter 22: The First Move of the Lions
The news arrived on the wings of a terrified raven, a bird that seemed to have flown straight from a battlefield. It was not a formal letter, but a frantic scrawl from a Stark scout near the Gold Road. Lord Tywin Lannister, the Old Lion, the Hand that had ruled for twenty prosperous and ruthless years, had taken the field. At the head of twenty thousand men, the westerlands host was a river of steel and red cloaks pouring towards the capital. They would be at the gates in a fortnight.
The uneasy peace that had settled over King's Landing shattered. The waiting was over. The ticking clock of Ned Stark's survival had just grown deafeningly loud.
In the solar of the Hand's Tower, the map of Westeros lay spread on the table, no longer a tool of governance but a battle plan for a war Ned now knew he could not avoid. The weight of the news pressed down on him, a physical force. Twenty thousand men. Against his remaining dozen guardsmen, his two daughters, and his one god. The numbers were an absurdity, a cruel joke.
"This is the end of it, then," Ned said, his voice a hollow whisper. "We cannot hold a tower against an army. They will starve us out or tear it down stone by stone."
Thor, who had been staring out the window at the city below, turned. The news of a conventional army did not seem to trouble him. If anything, a strange, grim calm had settled over his features. The political maneuvering, the whispers, the heresy—that was a battlefield he did not understand. But an army? An army was a problem with a physical solution.
"An army is a beast," Thor said, his voice a low rumble. "It must be fed. It must be led. It has a head. Cut off the head, and the body will wither."
"Tywin Lannister is its head," Ned countered. "And he is one of the most cunning and ruthless commanders this realm has ever known. I cannot reach him."
"Not yet," Thor agreed. "But his daughter is here. His sons are here. Their power is concentrated in this keep. Your mistake, Lord Stark, has been to think defensively. You have been the wolf, cornered in your den. A cornered wolf is a dead wolf. It is time to stop waiting for the hunters to come to you. It is time to become the hunter."
Before Ned could process this radical shift in strategy, the war took on a new, more insidious front. The Lannisters, emboldened by the news of Tywin's approach, decided to make their first direct move since the sermon. They knew a frontal assault on the tower was suicide. So, they attacked its foundations: Ned's hope.
The agent of this attack was, as always, a whisper. Petyr Baelish, playing the role of a reluctant double agent, managed to get a message to Vayon Poole, the steward of the Stark household. The message was simple and tantalizing: a Pentoshi trading cog, the Wind-Witch, was preparing to sail on the evening tide. Her captain was a man from the North who despised the Lannisters and was loyal to the memory of Robert. For a hefty price, he was willing to smuggle Lord Stark's daughters out of the city and see them safely to White Harbor.
When Poole brought the news to Ned, the Hand's heart leaped with a desperate, painful hope. To get his girls to safety… it was the one thing he craved above all else. It was a path to mitigating the disaster he had created.
"It could be a trap," he said, his caution warring with his fatherly desperation.
"Of course it's a trap," Thor stated bluntly from across the room. He had listened to the proposal with an unnerving stillness. "The lions are not fools. They would not leave an open door unless it led to a cage of their own making."
"But what if it is not?" Hullen, the master of horse, argued. He was a good, loyal man, and his heart ached for his lord's predicament. "There are still men in this city loyal to Robert, loyal to you, my lord. It is a chance we must investigate."
"We cannot risk the girls," Ned said, shaking his head.
"Then let us go," Hullen urged. "Just a few of us. Vayon and I. We will go to the docks, we will speak with this captain. If it is true, we arrange passage. If it is a trap, we are only two men. A worthy loss for the knowledge."
The loyalty of his men was a painful balm on Ned's soul. He looked at their earnest, determined faces and felt a surge of love for these Northmen who had followed him into hell. Against his better judgment, against the cold certainty in Thor's eyes, he found himself agreeing. Hope was too powerful a poison to resist.
"Go," Ned said, his voice heavy. "But be careful. Take six men with you. Go armed, but be discreet. Find the truth of it."
As Hullen and Poole prepared to leave, Thor stood from his chair. He had donned a heavy, hooded brown cloak, one large enough to conceal his frame and cast his face in deep shadow. "I am going with them."
"No," Ned said immediately. "You are the one thing keeping the Lannisters at bay. If you are seen in the city, it could provoke…"
"It will provoke them far more if your men walk into a trap and are slaughtered," Thor cut him off. "I can move in the shadows. I will not be seen unless I choose to be. But I will be there. I will not allow your loyalty to be rewarded with a knife in the dark."
His resolve was absolute. And Ned, deep down, was relieved. He agreed. Thor would follow them, a secret guardian, a thundercloud hidden in a humble cloak.
The city after dusk was a different world. The narrow, winding streets near the waterfront were a maze of deep shadows and flickering torchlight. The smell of the sea, of tar and salt and fish, mingled with the ever-present stench of the city's gutters. Hullen, Poole, and their six guardsmen moved cautiously, their hands on their swords, their northern cloaks pulled tight against the damp air.
From the rooftops above, Thor followed, moving with a silence that defied his size. He leaped from one rooftop to another, his powerful legs carrying him across alleys in a single bound, a great, dark bird of prey tracking its flock. From his vantage point, he could see what they could not. He saw the figures detaching themselves from the shadowed doorways ahead. He saw the glint of steel in the moonlight. He saw the trap being sprung.
The ambush happened in a narrow lane that led to the fish market, a place of tangled nets and stacked barrels that offered a hundred places for an ambush. Hullen and his men found their path blocked by a dozen men in the crimson and gold of the Lannister household guard. At the same time, another dozen appeared behind them, cutting off their retreat. They were surrounded.
"A long way from home, Northmen," the Lannister captain, a hard-faced man with a scar down his cheek, sneered.
Hullen drew his sword. "We are on the King's business, by order of the Hand."
"The Hand is a traitor," the captain spat. "And traitors' men get traitors' deaths. Kill them."
The fight was a brutal, one-sided butchery. The eight Stark men were skilled and brave, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. The narrow alley became a flurry of desperate parries and savage thrusts. The Lannister guards fought with a cold, professional efficiency. Vayon Poole went down first, a sword through his gut. Two more guards fell in the opening seconds. Hullen, roaring a northern battle cry, fought like a cornered bear, his greatsword a blur, but he could not be everywhere at once. A Lannister guardsman slipped past his guard and drove a dagger deep into his back. The master of horse crumpled to the ground, a look of shocked betrayal on his face.
The remaining Stark men were cut down one by one, their bravery no match for the sheer weight of numbers. Within a minute, it was a massacre. The Lannister men stood over the bodies, laughing, their swords dripping with blood.
"That's the last of the Hand's wolves," the captain said with a smug satisfaction. "Let's get the bodies out of sight. The Queen wants this to look like they deserted."
It was at that moment that a shadow detached itself from the rooftop above. Thor landed in the middle of the alley with a ground-shaking impact that cracked the cobblestones. He landed in a crouch, and when he rose to his full, terrifying height, his hooded cloak fell back, revealing the grim, furious face of a venge-filled god. In his hand, Stormbreaker seemed to drink the torchlight, its runes glowing with a soft, hungry blue.
The twenty-four Lannister guards froze, their triumphant laughter dying in their throats. The smug captain's eyes went wide with a terror so absolute it seemed to stop his heart. He had been sent to kill a dozen men. He had not been told he would be facing a demon from the darkest pits of hell.
"You have made a grave error," Thor's voice rumbled, the same words he had spoken to the Faith, but this time, there was no calm, no offer of choice. There was only the promise of retribution.
The captain, driven by sheer terror, shrieked, "Kill it! Kill it now!"
It was like watching children throwing stones at a mountain. They charged, a wave of desperate steel.
And the storm broke over them.
Thor did not just fight; he deconstructed them. This was not the wide-open reaping of the throne room. This was a brutal, close-quarters ballet of destruction. He swung Stormbreaker in a tight, horizontal arc, and the first three men who reached him were simply erased from existence, their bodies bisected, their armor shorn apart like paper. He used the handle of the axe as a weapon, smashing jaws and crushing helmets with short, savage jabs. He moved with a speed and ferocity that was breathtaking.
A man tried to stab him from behind. Thor, without turning, slammed the back of his head into the man's face, shattering it. He spun, grabbing another soldier by the throat and using him as a human shield against two others before throwing the body with enough force to break the men behind it.
The alley became a symphony of screams, of shattering steel, and of the sickening crunch of bone. Thor was relentless, implacable. He was not the reluctant protector of the throne room. He was not the wise preacher of the Sept. He was the God of Thunder in his wrath, the warrior of Asgard unleashed. He moved through them, not with the wild rage of a berserker, but with the focused, terrible efficiency of an executioner. He was avenging the loyal men who had died because of a lie, and he was repaying the Lannisters' treachery in the only currency they understood: blood.
The captain was the last one left standing, frozen in place, his sword having fallen from his nerveless fingers, his bladder having let go in a warm, shameful rush down his leg. He stared at the carnage, at the dismembered bodies of his men, at the giant striding towards him through the gore, Stormbreaker dripping crimson onto the stones.
Thor stopped before him. He raised the axe. The captain let out a thin, high-pitched whimper and closed his eyes.
But the killing blow did not fall.
Thor looked at the pathetic, trembling man before him. He saw the abject terror in his eyes. And the red mist of his rage began to clear. Killing this wretch would achieve nothing. But leaving him alive… leaving a witness… that was a weapon.
He lowered the axe. "Go back to your Queen," Thor growled, his voice a promise of future pain. "Tell her what you saw here. Tell her this was a warning. Tell her the North Remembers. And so does the Thunder. Now run."
The man needed no further encouragement. He turned and fled, screaming, into the night.
Thor stood alone in the alley of the dead, his chest heaving. He looked at the bodies of Hullen, of Poole, of the loyal Stark men. He felt a profound, aching sorrow. He had failed them. He had known it was a trap, and he had still let them walk into it.
He gathered the bodies, his great strength making the grim task a short one. He carried them, two at a time, back through the deserted streets. He did not use the rooftops now. He walked down the center of the road, a grim god carrying the fallen, daring anyone to challenge him. No one did.
He laid the bodies in the courtyard of the Hand's Tower, a neat, respectful row. Ned Stark came out, saw the grim harvest, and a great, shuddering sob escaped his lips. His hope had been repaid with death. His men were gone. He was truly alone.
He looked at Thor, the blood-soaked giant standing vigil over the dead. There was no horror in Ned's eyes now. There was no conflict. There was only a cold, hard, and absolute understanding.
His honor was a ruin. His laws were meaningless. His hope was a fool's dream. All that he had left was his family, and the terrible, beautiful, and monstrous power of the god who stood beside him. The lions had made their first move. They had drawn first blood.
Ned Stark looked at the bodies of his friends, then at Thor, his protector, his weapon, his last and only hope.
"You were right," Ned said, his voice quiet, but stripped bare of all its former doubt. It was the voice of a man remade in the crucible of grief and betrayal. "The time for being a wolf in a cage is over." He drew his own sword, Ice's ancestral Valyrian steel seeming to weep in the moonlight. "Teach me," he said, his voice hard as northern iron. "Teach me how to hunt lions."