Chapter 23: The School of the Wolf and the Thunderer
The small, walled garden of the Hand's Tower became a makeshift graveyard. There were no stones from the windswept hills of the North to mark the dead, only the soft, unfamiliar earth of the south. Ned Stark, his face a mask of grim granite, performed the rites himself, speaking the old words of the First Men over the bodies of Hullen, Vayon Poole, and the six other loyal guardsmen who had followed him into this southern hell. He spoke of winter and long nights, of duty and honor, his voice a low, rough whisper that was nearly lost in the oppressive humidity of the city.
Arya stood beside him, her small form rigid, her eyes dry and hard. She watched as her father and the few remaining guardsmen dug the graves, the rhythmic scrape and thud of the shovels the only sound in their besieged world. Sansa watched from a high window, a pale, ghost-like figure who could not bear to be near the grim reality of it all.
Thor stood apart, a silent, brooding mountain. He had cleaned the blood from his axe and his armor, but he could not clean the sense of failure from his spirit. He had known it was a trap. He had warned them. But he had not been forceful enough, had not understood the depths of a good man's desperate hope. He had let them die. The weight of their deaths settled upon him, another layer on the mountain of grief he already carried. It was a familiar, unwelcome burden.
When the last of the graves had been filled, Ned sent his remaining men away. He stood alone in the garden for a long time, looking at the fresh-turned earth. Then he turned to Thor, who had not moved. The setting sun cast long shadows, painting the garden in hues of orange and blood. The grief on Ned's face had not vanished, but it had been forged into something else, something harder and colder than northern steel.
"You were right," Ned said, his voice stripped of all its former warmth. "My honor is a summer cloak, and winter has come for me. I have been a fool, playing by rules my enemies spit upon." He walked over to Thor, his gaze direct and unwavering. The deference was gone. The awe was gone. In its place was the grim focus of a commander assessing his greatest weapon. "Last night, I asked you to teach me how to hunt lions. I was still thinking like a wolf. I see now that is not enough. Teach me how to be a storm."
Thor met his gaze. He saw the death of the honorable Eddard Stark he had known, and the birth of something new, something born of grief and necessity. "A storm has no honor, Lord Stark," he warned. "It has only purpose. It consumes all in its path—the guilty and the innocent alike. Are you prepared for that?"
"The Lannisters have murdered my king, my friend, and my men. They have threatened my children and sought to destroy my house," Ned said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "Innocence left this city when they wrapped their lions in the skin of stags. Teach me."
Thus began the strangest war council the Seven Kingdoms had ever known. In the solar of the Hand's Tower, with a map of their prison as their battlefield, the wolf and the thunderer planned their counter-attack.
"Tywin Lannister is their great beast," Ned said, his finger tracing the Gold Road on the map. "His army is their strength. But it is also their weakness. It is not here yet."
"An army is a symptom of power, not the source of it," Thor countered. He had learned this lesson over centuries of war. "The source of Lannister power is not their swords. It is their gold, and the idea of their power. They rule through wealth, fear, and a carefully crafted image of invincibility. We cannot fight their army. So we must shatter their image. We must make them look weak. Afraid. We must make their own people doubt them."
"How?" Ned asked. "We are trapped in this tower."
"Are we?" Thor's eyes glinted with a dangerous light. "They believe we are. They expect us to cower behind these walls until their great army arrives to starve us out. They expect the wolf to stay in his den. They will not be expecting the den to bite back."
He leaned over the map, his massive frame dwarfing the table. "Their power in this city rests on three pillars. The authority of the crown, which you have already challenged. The loyalty of the City Watch, which I have already broken. And the perception of their own competence and strength." He tapped a finger on the Red Keep. "We must attack the third pillar. We must make Cersei and her advisors look like fools who cannot even control their own city."
A plan began to form, a strategy of psychological warfare so alien to Ned's way of thinking that it felt like another form of sorcery. It was a plan not of steel, but of symbols.
"Their commander of the Watch, Janos Slynt," Ned mused, catching on. "He is a man of low birth, given his position because of his loyalty to the Lannisters, bought and paid for. He is a symbol of their corruption."
"Precisely," Thor affirmed. "He is a festering boil on the face of this city. And the people know it. But they are afraid to speak of it. We will not just speak of it. We will lance it. Publicly."
The audacity of the plan was breathtaking. They would not hide. They would not flee. They would walk out of their prison and put the city's corruption on trial for all to see.
The summons was delivered not by a raven, but by Thor's own voice. He stood on the battlements of the Hand's Tower the next morning, a solitary figure against the rising sun. He did not shout. He simply spoke, but he imbued his words with a sliver of his own power, a resonance that carried across the city like the tolling of a great bell, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Janos Slynt!" the voice boomed, startling merchants in their shops and making guardsmen in the Red Keep drop their spears. "Commander of the City Watch! You are summoned to the gates of the Red Keep at midday. You will answer for your crimes before the people of this city. You will face the judgment of the Protector of the Realm. If you do not come, your cowardice will be your confession."
The city erupted. The summons was an act of impossible arrogance, a direct challenge thrown in the teeth of the monarchy. The smallfolk, who had been whispering in their homes, now poured into the streets, their fear warring with a feverish excitement. Something was about to happen. The demon of the tower had spoken, and he had demanded a reckoning.
In the Red Keep, Cersei flew into a rage. "He dares? He dares? He summons my commander as if he were the King himself! Slynt will not go! I forbid it!"
"And what will that look like, sister?" Tyrion asked coolly, though his own heart was pounding. "The creature accuses our man of corruption and cowardice, and our man proves him right by hiding behind your skirts? Janos Slynt is a symbol of our authority. If he appears weak, we appear weak."
"Then send Jaime!" she shrieked. "Send the Kingsguard to arrest this monster!"
"And have them slaughtered in the streets?" Jaime said, his voice tight. He had not forgotten the alleyway massacre, the tale of which the one terrified survivor had spread throughout the barracks. "No. I will not send my men to their deaths. This is not a fight that can be won with swords."
They were trapped. If Slynt refused the summons, he would be branded a coward, and Lannister authority would be diminished. If he went, he would be walking into a confrontation with a god. They had no good move. For the first time, they were on the defensive, reacting to a strategy they couldn't comprehend.
At midday, the plaza before the main gate of the Red Keep was a sea of people, a thousand anxious faces turned towards the Hand's Tower. A cordon of Lannister guardsmen, their faces pale and sweaty, struggled to keep the crowd from pressing too close.
Then, the gates of the Tower opened. Ned Stark walked out, flanked by his last four guardsmen. He wore his northern leathers, Ice strapped to his back, his face grim and determined. He was no longer the frightened Hand; he was the Lord of Winterfell, the Warden of the North.
And beside him walked Thor. He wore no cloak. He was bare-armed, his Asgardian armor glinting in the sun, Stormbreaker held loosely in one hand. He was not a monster hiding in the shadows. He was a god walking in the light of day, and the sight of him sent a collective gasp through the crowd.
They walked to the center of the plaza and stopped, turning to face the gate of the Red Keep. They waited.
Moments later, the gate creaked open. Janos Slynt appeared, his face the color of sour milk. He was flanked by a double contingent of his most loyal Gold Cloaks, but their bravado was a thin, brittle thing. They looked at Thor as if he were the Stranger himself.
Slynt, a man whose courage was directly proportional to the number of armed men surrounding him, puffed out his chest. "In the name of King Joffrey," he began, his voice attempting a bluster it could not achieve, "I am here to arrest the traitor Eddard Stark…"
He was cut off by the sound of Thor's laughter. It was not a loud, booming laugh. It was a low, rumbling, and deeply contemptuous sound.
"Arrest?" Thor said, taking a step forward. The Gold Cloaks flinched as one. "You are not here to arrest anyone, Janos Slynt. You are here to be judged."
He pointed Stormbreaker at the Commander, though its tip remained lowered. "The people of this city know you. They know you take bribes from merchants and whores. They know you protect criminals who pay you and punish the innocent who cannot. You wear the cloak of the City Watch, a body sworn to protect these people. But you are a parasite who feeds on their fear."
"These are lies! Slander!" Slynt sputtered, his eyes darting nervously towards the Red Keep, as if hoping the Queen would save him.
"Is it?" Thor asked. He turned his gaze to the crowd. "How many of you have paid the 'Slynt tax' to keep your shops open? How many of you have seen a thief go free because he was one of the Commander's men?"
A low murmur went through the crowd. A few brave souls nodded. A merchant shouted, "Aye! It's true!"
"And then," Thor continued, his voice growing harder, "you took the Queen's coin. You betrayed your oath to the Hand of the King, the man sworn to protect this realm, and you drew your swords on him in the very throne room. You are a man without honor, without loyalty, and without courage."
Slynt, his face now purple with rage and fear, finally snapped. "I am the Commander of the City Watch! I will not be judged by a foreign monster! Seize them!" he shrieked at his men.
The Gold Cloaks hesitated, looking at Thor, at the humming axe in his hand, and then at their terrified commander. They did not move. Their fear of Thor was greater than their fear of Slynt.
Seeing his authority crumble, Slynt did the only thing a cowardly bully can do. He drew his own sword, a gaudy, gold-plated thing, and lunged at Thor himself in a fit of desperate, suicidal rage.
Thor did not even move to block. He simply raised his free hand. He focused for a fraction of a second on the sword, on the cheap, gaudy metal of Slynt's helmet.
He did not call the lightning. He did not summon the wind. He simply… willed it. A low hum filled the air, and the Commander's sword suddenly glowed cherry-red in his hand. Slynt screamed, dropping the superheated metal as it sizzled and smoked on the cobblestones. At the same time, his ornate helmet, with its proud steel plume, crumpled inwards as if struck by an invisible hammer, collapsing around his head like a tin can. It did not touch him, but the message was clear.
Janos Slynt stared at his smoking, ruined sword, his hands blistered, his fine helmet now a mangled piece of scrap around his ears. He looked at Thor, his eyes filled with a terror that had transcended mere fear and entered the realm of religious awe. He fell to his knees, babbling, incoherent.
Thor looked down at him in disgust. He then turned to the stunned, silent crowd. "This is your protector," he boomed, his voice filled with contempt. "This is the strength of your Queen. A coward and a bully whose authority melts when faced with the truth."
He raised Stormbreaker, not as a threat, but as a symbol. "I have passed judgment on this one. But the true judgment falls to you, people of King's Landing. You can continue to serve cowards and tyrants. You can live in fear of corrupt men in gold cloaks. Or you can demand better. You can demand justice. Lord Stark, the true Protector of this Realm, offers it to you. The choice is yours."
He then turned, placed a hand on Ned's shoulder, and guided him back towards the Tower of the Hand. They walked through the silent, parted crowd, the people staring at them with wide, stunned eyes. They had not just witnessed an execution. They had witnessed a public exorcism of power, a miracle of judgment.
From the highest window of the Red Keep, Tyrion Lannister watched them go. He slowly lowered his wine goblet, a look of grudging, terrified admiration on his face. They had tried to trap the wolf, and in response, the wolf's god had put the entire city on trial. He was no longer just a piece on the board. He was changing the rules of the game itself, moment by moment.
"Gods help us," Tyrion whispered to himself, taking a long, shaky drink. "He's not just a warrior. He's a bloody politician."