Chapter 21: The Kingslayer's Price and a Land Scoured by Light
The raven from King's Landing arrived on a bleak, grey morning, its message as cold and sharp as the wind that whipped through Riverrun's battlements. Maester Vyman read the Lannister reply in a hushed, horrified voice before Robb's war council. Cersei's defiance, Joffrey's childish boasts, and the veiled, sadistic threats against Sansa – and Arya, whom they still believed they held – echoed in the sudden, profound silence of the Great Hall.
Catelyn Stark made a small, broken sound, her hand flying to her mouth, her face ashen. The Greatjon Umber's knuckles were white where he gripped his axe haft. Brynden Blackfish's expression was granite.
Robb Stark, King in the North and of the Trident, listened without a flicker of emotion on his face, but his eyes, usually the grey of a winter sky, seemed to hold the cold, distant light of dying stars. When Vyman finished, Robb slowly rose, the iron-and-weirwood crown a stark shadow on his brow. The sun outside was struggling to break through the clouds, but within him, a different, fiercer sun was beginning its inexorable climb.
"So," Robb said, his voice unnervingly calm, a quiet prelude to a devastating storm. "The lions choose to roar their defiance, to threaten my blood, to mock our demands for justice." He looked directly at his mother, her face a mask of unspeakable grief. "They believe they can break us by holding my sister hostage."
"Robb, please," Catelyn whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Sansa… Arya… we must offer them something more for the girls…"
"Offer them what, Mother?" Robb's voice was still quiet, but it held an edge that made the room colder. "Our kingdom? Our freedom? The lives of every man, woman, and child in the North and the Trident who look to me for protection? Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell. From the moment of her birth, her life was pledged to the North, as was mine, as was Father's. She would not want her life to be the chain that binds our people to ruin. If her sacrifice is the price for our kingdom's survival and the utter destruction of those who murdered our kin, then it is a terrible price, but one a Stark must be prepared to pay, and one her King must be prepared to exact from her enemies."
His words fell like stones into a frozen pond. Catelyn gasped, a choked sob escaping her. Tony Volante's ruthless pragmatism had spoken, cloaked in the grim language of a king facing impossible choices. He would not be blackmailed. He would not trade a kingdom for one life, even his sister's. The North came first. Always.
"As for the Kingslayer," Robb continued, his gaze sweeping over his stunned lords, "his value as a hostage to these… creatures… is clearly nothing. But his value as a message is now immeasurable." He turned to the Blackfish. "Ser Brynden, bring Jaime Lannister to the castle courtyard. Assemble the army. They will bear witness."
An hour later, Riverrun's main courtyard was packed with Northmen and Riverlanders, their faces grim, their mood somber. Jaime Lannister, arrogant and defiant even in chains, was dragged before a hastily erected wooden platform. He looked a mess – his golden hair lank and dirty, his fine clothes torn – but his Lannister pride still burned in his eyes.
"Come to beg for my release, Stark?" Jaime sneered as Robb ascended the platform, Rhitta now held loosely in his right hand, its golden head gleaming with a dangerous, inner light as the sun finally broke through the clouds. "Realized you can't win without my father's mercy?"
Robb ignored him, turning to address the silent, watching army. His voice, amplified by the nascent power of Sunshine, boomed across the courtyard. "Men of the North! Men of the Trident! You have heard the response from King's Landing! They scorn our terms! They threaten my sister, your princess! They murdered my father, your liege lord! They believe we are weak, that we can be broken!"
A low growl of anger rippled through the assembled soldiers.
"They are wrong!" Robb declared. "Today, we send them our reply! Ser Jaime Lannister," he turned, his sun-touched eyes fixing on the Kingslayer, "for your crimes against the North and the Trident, for your treachery, for your house's war of aggression, and for the murder of my father, Eddard Stark, at the hands of your kin, I, Robb Stark, King in the North and of the Trident, sentence you to death!"
Jaime Lannister actually laughed, a short, incredulous bark. "You wouldn't dare, boy! I am worth more to you alive than dead! My father…"
"Your father," Robb cut him off, his voice like the crack of a glacier, "will learn the price of Lannister arrogance today." He raised Rhitta. The Sacred Axe seemed to pulse with the sun's growing strength, its golden head radiating an almost unbearable heat. The crowd gasped, many shielding their eyes from its brilliance. Even Jaime Lannister fell silent, a flicker of true fear finally dawning in his green eyes as he beheld the weapon and the transformed visage of the young King.
Catelyn Stark, watching from a high window, turned away, a muffled scream caught in her throat.
Robb did not offer Jaime any last words. There was nothing left to say. With a single, incredibly swift movement that belied the axe's colossal size, he brought Rhitta down. There was no clumsy, hacking blow of a common executioner. The divine edge of the Sacred Axe, imbued with the sun's power, sheared through bone and sinew as if it were soft cheese. Jaime Lannister's head, his expression frozen in surprised terror, tumbled from his shoulders.
A stunned silence fell over the courtyard, broken only by the thud of the head and the hiss of Rhitta's superheated edge cooling in the air. Then, a sound like a tidal wave, a collective roar of savage approval, of grief unleashed, of vengeance tasted, erupted from nineteen thousand throats.
Robb Stark stood over the headless corpse, Rhitta dripping not with blood – for the heat of its passage had cauterized the wound instantly – but with a faint, golden steam. His face was a mask of cold, implacable judgment.
"This is but the first payment on the debt they owe!" Robb proclaimed, his voice thundering over the din. "Now, we march west! We march back into their accursed lands! Not to raid, not to skirmish, but to ERASE! We will pull down their castles, salt their fields, choke their mines, and burn their towns! The Westerlands will become a monument to Lannister perfidy and Northern wrath! When we are done, there will be nothing left for them to reclaim, nothing but ash and sorrow! This is not a war for glory! This is a war of annihilation! For our murdered lord! For our stolen princess! For the North! FOR KING ROBB!"
The army's response was a primal, terrifying roar. They were no longer just soldiers; they were an instrument of their King's terrible vengeance, a force of nature about to be unleashed.
The second invasion of the Westerlands was unlike the first. There was no subtlety, no feinting, no concern for winning hearts and minds. Robb Stark led his army, now numbering over twenty-five thousand with fresh Riverland levies, like an avenging angel, Rhitta blazing in his hand, the Stark direwolf banner casting a grim shadow over the land.
They bypassed the ruins of Oxcross and struck deeper, aiming for the heart of Lannister power. Their first major target was Kayce, a prosperous port town ruled by House Kenning, staunch Lannister loyalists. The town's walls were stout, its garrison confident. They did not expect what came for them.
Robb Stark did not bother with siege engines or protracted assaults. As the sun climbed towards its zenith, he walked alone towards the main gate of Kayce, Rhitta held ready. Arrows and scorpion bolts rained down upon him, only to melt or shatter into sparks a dozen feet from his body, consumed by the shimmering aura of heat that now constantly surrounded him when his power was high.
"People of Kayce!" his voice boomed, amplified by Sunshine into a sound that seemed to make the very stones tremble. "You serve false lords who have brought ruin and murder upon Westeros! Your King Joffrey is a bastard and an abomination! Your Lord Tywin is a butcher and a tyrant! I offer you one chance: open your gates, lay down your arms, and swear fealty to me, your rightful King! Refuse, and your town will share the fate of Harrenhal!"
From the walls came a defiant shout, then another volley of arrows.
Robb sighed, a sound more of sorrowful necessity than anger. "So be it."
He raised Rhitta. It blazed with the fury of the noon sun. He did not bother with a Cruel Sun. Instead, he focused his power through the axe, unleashing a concentrated beam of pure solar energy, a lance of unbearable light and heat, at the main gatehouse. Stone melted like wax, iron hinges vaporized, and a thirty-foot section of the wall simply… ceased to exist, collapsing into a molten ruin.
Through the smoking breach, the Northmen and Riverlanders poured, their King leading the charge, Rhitta now a reaping tool, every swing carving a swathe of destruction through the terrified defenders. The battle for Kayce was short, brutal, and utterly one-sided. The town was taken, its defenders annihilated. And then, Robb Stark, his face a grim, pitiless mask, gave the order: "Raze it. Burn it to the ground. Let the smoke be a beacon of our coming."
And so it began. The scouring of the Westerlands. Town by town, castle by castle, Robb Stark's army, with their King as its irresistible spearhead, moved through the Lannister heartland. Feastfires, the seat of House Prester, was next. Its proud towers were melted into slag. The gold mines near Nunn's Deep were not just crippled, but their entrances sealed with molten rock, their depths turned into fiery tombs. The rich farmlands that supplied Lannisport were systematically burned, the fields salted, the herds slaughtered.
Robb himself was the main engine of this destruction. Where castle walls were too strong, he unmade them with focused blasts of solar energy or the sheer, terrifying power of Rhitta. Where Lannister forces dared to make a stand, he met them at the head of his men, his presence alone often enough to break their will before battle was truly joined. He moved with a chilling efficiency, the Tony Volante persona directing the systematic dismantling of an entire kingdom's infrastructure, while Escanor's power provided the means. The son of Eddard Stark watched, a silent, grieving ghost within the fiery crucible of the King in the North.
His own men followed him with a mixture of fanatical devotion and profound terror. They were winning, their victories absolute, their enemies scattered and broken. But their King… their King was becoming something other, a figure of awesome, terrible power, who could command the sun itself, who walked through battle like a god of destruction. They whispered his new names in hushed tones: "Robb the Sunstone," "The King of Ashes," "The Wolf Unchained."
Catelyn Stark, who had insisted on accompanying the army, perhaps in a desperate attempt to act as some kind of moral anchor for her son, or simply because she could not bear to be parted from her last remaining child in the south, watched his transformation with growing horror. The boy she had raised, the honorable son of Eddard Stark, was being consumed by the crown, by the war, by the terrible power he now wielded so openly.
News of the systematic annihilation of the Westerlands spread throughout the Seven Kingdoms, carried on the wings of terrified refugees and the smoke of burning towns. Tywin Lannister, in King's Landing, received daily reports of his homeland's destruction, each message a fresh knife in his proud heart. His armies were broken or too far away. His allies, the Tyrells, were suddenly hesitant to commit their forces to defend a land that was being unmade by a seemingly invincible foe. Joffrey whimpered on his throne. Cersei drank.
The King in the North was no longer just a rebel; he was a cataclysm. He was not just fighting a war; he was erasing his enemies from the map. And as his army, leaving a trail of smoldering ruin and salted earth behind them, turned its grim, relentless march towards the golden prize of Lannisport and the formidable bastion of Casterly Rock itself, the world held its breath, wondering if anything could stop the fury of the Sun that had risen in the North.
Robb Stark, King of Ash and Light, felt nothing but the cold, hard imperative of his terrible vow. The Westerlands would burn. And then, he would turn his gaze to King's Landing. For his sisters. And for his father.