By the time the next storm season approached, Orys had grown into his sixteenth year.
The change had not come all at once. It had arrived in increments, in the way armor settled more naturally across his shoulders, in the way older knights no longer corrected his footing without being asked. His height had steadied, his build filling out without losing its lean discipline. The softness of youth had given way entirely to something more deliberate.
Storm's End remained as it ever had, black against the sea, enduring.
But the yard no longer felt like a place of instruction.
It felt like preparation.
Robert had abandoned the sword almost entirely.
It had not been a declaration. He simply stopped reaching for it.
The hammer had become extension rather than experiment. His wrists had thickened from its weight. His shoulders carried it without strain. When he swung now, it was not wild enthusiasm that drove the blow, but practiced force.
The practice posts did not last long beneath him.
One morning, beneath a sky heavy with salt-grey cloud, the hammer struck true and split oak clean through its grain. The crack echoed across the yard, and splinters scattered in a wide arc.
Robert grinned, breath fogging in the cool air.
"That's better," he said.
Orys stood opposite him, blade resting against his thigh.
"You commit fully now," he observed.
Robert rolled his shoulders. "You can't half-swing a hammer."
"No."
Orys had come to understand that about him.
A sword allowed retreat, correction, subtlety.
A hammer demanded certainty.
And Robert had chosen certainty.
It was near the end of that autumn when the first true sign came.
Not rumor.
Not distant smoke glimpsed by chance.
A rider arrived before dawn, salt still crusted along his cloak from hard travel along the coast. His horse stumbled as he dismounted in the courtyard, foam clinging to its flanks.
"Ships," he said, voice hoarse. "Three, maybe four. No sigils. They struck Greenwater Cove at first light."
The yard filled quickly.
Armor buckled. Straps tightened. Men moved with practiced urgency.
This was not a boyhood alarm.
This was response.
Robert's expression sharpened as he secured the hammer across his back.
"Finally," he muttered.
Orys fastened his sword without comment. His hair did not stir much in the wind rising from the sea.
They rode hard.
The road toward Greenwater Cove cut low along the cliffs, narrow in places, treacherous in others. The sea lay restless below, not storming, but unsettled, as if aware of the intrusion along its edge.
Smoke appeared before the village did.
This time there was no question.
Two long plumes twisted upward from beyond the ridge, dark against the morning sky.
When they crested the final rise, the village lay exposed beneath them.
Three ships anchored offshore.
Disciplined formation.
Men moved with purpose between huts and shoreline.
This was no ragged band of opportunists.
Robert did not wait for full formation.
He never did.
He drove his horse forward down the slope, hammer already free of its strap.
Orys followed, but his eyes moved first to the ships, then to the spacing of the men below, then to the terrain along the beach.
They were organized.
They had chosen a cove narrow enough to control retreat.
Testing.
The clash came swift and brutal.
Robert's hammer met the first pirate with a downward strike that shattered shield and shoulder alike. The impact carried through the air differently than steel on steel. It was not sharp.
It was final.
The pirate line faltered momentarily at the display.
Orys used that hesitation.
He angled left instead of center, cutting toward the group, corralling villagers toward the boats. He did not roar. He did not announce himself. His blade moved in controlled arcs, striking exposed wrists, hamstrings, shoulders.
Behind him, Stormlander knights advanced with renewed confidence.
Robert broke through the center of the pirate line with sheer force, hammer swinging in wide arcs that demanded space. Each strike drove men backward physically and psychologically.
The pirates adjusted quickly.
They fell back in staggered formation, archers repositioning toward the shoreline to cover retreat.
Orys saw the pattern form before it fully solidified.
"They're buying time," he called to Lord Steffon.
The retreat was not panicked.
It was deliberate.
Robert pressed forward again, eager to finish it at the water's edge.
Two pirates moved to flank him.
Orys intercepted the nearer one before the trap closed, steel ringing as he deflected the strike and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. Sand shifted beneath their boots as he pivoted and struck cleanly across the thigh.
Robert crushed the second with a blow that snapped the man's leg beneath him.
The pirate captain barked an order.
The line dissolved into rapid withdrawal.
Arrows rained from the anchored ships, forcing Stormlanders back from the surf. Oars struck water in urgent rhythm. Sails caught wind.
Within minutes, the ships were pulling away, smoke trailing from a burning hut left deliberately to distract.
Silence crept in slowly.
Bodies lay along the sand.
The villagers emerged cautiously from hiding.
Robert stood near the waterline, hammer resting against his shoulder, chest heaving but triumphant.
"They ran," he said.
Orys surveyed the shoreline.
"They measured," he replied.
Robert glanced at him.
"Measured what?"
"Our response."
Robert snorted. "Then they learned it."
Orys looked toward the horizon where the ships dwindled into dark silhouettes.
Not fully, he thought.
The attack had not been reckless. It had been organized, probing. The formation of retreat, the spacing of archers, the choice of cove.
Someone was watching the Stormlands.
Testing the edges.
Robert swung the hammer once through empty air, as if finishing a blow denied.
"Next time," he said, "we take their ships."
Orys sheathed his sword.
Next time, he thought, we will not meet them on their terms.
The sea stretched wide and patient before them.
And somewhere beyond that horizon, someone had begun to calculate.
So would he.