The maester's chambers smelled of vinegar, boiled linen, and blood.
Orys stood near the narrow window as the maester worked a needle through Robert's thigh, drawing torn flesh together in tight, deliberate stitches. Robert bore it without wine, jaw clenched, knuckles white around the edge of the table. Sweat beaded along his brow, but he did not cry out.
"You were fortunate," the maester said, voice thin and clinical. "Another inch and the muscle would have torn clean through."
Robert exhaled sharply through his teeth. "Fortune had nothing to do with it."
The needle pierced again. Dark blood welled, then slowed as the thread tightened.
Orys watched the wound carefully. It was deep. Not mortal, not crippling, but enough to keep Robert from mounting a deck or charging a boarding plank for weeks.
Weeks.
Outside the chamber, the Stormlands buzzed with renewed talk of Widow's Teeth. The brutality of the channel battle had spread quickly. Men spoke of skulls split like melons and bodies broken upon rock. They spoke of Robert fighting through blood as though it were rain.
They also saw the bandage, and they understood what it meant.
When the maester finished and wrapped the wound in fresh linen, Robert leaned back against the wall, breathing more evenly now.
"I'll be up in three days," he said.
"You won't," Orys replied calmly.
Robert's eyes flicked toward him, irritation flashing. "You're not my father."
"No," Orys said evenly. "I'm the one who has to command while you recover."
The words settled in the chamber. Not challenge, but reality.
Robert studied him for a long moment before giving a faint, reluctant nod. "Don't lose what we gained," he said quietly.
Orys inclined his head once. "I won't."
The council convened that evening under darker mood than any before it.
Lord Steffon sat at the head of the table, his expression lined more deeply than usual. Reports from Widow's Teeth had been confirmed. Two pirate ships destroyed. One escaped. Casualties moderate but not insignificant.
Robert's injury altered everything.
"The southern patrol requires command," Lord Estermont said carefully.
"It has command," Orys replied. "I'll take it."
A murmur moved through the gathered lords.
Wylde spoke first. "Your focus has been inland."
"It won't remain so."
"You risk stretching yourself thin," Fell added.
"I risk allowing them to regroup if I do not act," Orys answered.
The room quieted.
Lord Steffon regarded him steadily. "You will have full authority," he said at last. "But you will not chase pride."
"I won't," Orys replied.
It was the closest thing to blessing he would receive.
Three days later, Orys stood at the prow of the lead vessel as the fleet pushed south once more. He wore no flourish, no ceremonial cloak, only fitted mail and a dark leather surcoat bearing the crowned stag in subdued thread. His hair moved slightly in the steady wind.
The sea looked calmer than it had any right to.
Reports had arrived from a minor hold along the western coast, Grimwatch, of increased pirate scouting near its shallows. The hold was small, its defenses modest but stone-built, capable of resisting light assault.
It was also poorly positioned.
To defend Grimwatch fully would require splitting the fleet into narrow channels that mirrored Widow's Teeth, tight passages where concealed archers could once again rain death from elevated stone.
Orys studied the coastline from the deck as they approached.
The cliffs narrowed inland. Reefs lay scattered beneath deceptively clear water. The inlet was shallow enough to slow larger vessels.
"They want us there," Stannis said quietly beside him.
"Yes."
"And the hold?"
Orys did not answer immediately.
Smoke rose faintly in the distance. Too early for cooking fires. The pirates were already striking.
The fleet could push hard into the narrow channel and attempt to break the assault directly. They would likely succeed. But they would do so in terrain prepared for ambush.
The sea was not the only weapon.
Stone was.
"How many ships?" Orys asked.
"Three confirmed. Possibly four."
"And archers?"
"Likely positioned along the inner ridge."
Orys watched the smoke thicken.
Grimwatch's villagers would already be retreating behind the keep's walls. The pirates would burn outer structures first. They had established that pattern.
He calculated silently.
If he entered the inlet, he risked repeating Widow's Teeth without Robert's ferocity to anchor morale. If he circled wide and cut off retreat further south, he could trap the pirate fleet in open water.
But Grimwatch would burn longer. Men would die. He felt the weight of the decision settle heavily in his chest.
"Hold course," he said at last.
Not toward the inlet.
Southward.
Stannis looked at him sharply. "You're abandoning them."
"I'm repositioning."
The words felt colder aloud.
The fleet angled away from Grimwatch, sails catching wind as they moved to intercept likely escape routes. Smoke thickened behind them, black and furious against the sky.
From the distant shoreline, the sound of a bell rang faintly across water.
Stannis did not speak again.
The pirates did not expect resistance from the south.
When their ships pulled from Grimwatch's shallows an hour later, hulls heavy with plunder and decks still smoldering from their own torches, they sailed directly into open water and into the jaws of a waiting fleet.
Orys gave the signal.
Stormlander ships closed from both flanks. The pirates reacted too late.
The first collision shattered their formation, hulls grinding against reinforced prows. Grappling hooks flew. Boarding began in brutal earnest.
This time, Orys led the charge.
He crossed onto the pirate deck without roar, without spectacle, sword drawn in smooth precision. The fighting was immediate and vicious. A pirate lunged with twin blades, Orys parried one and drove his own steel beneath the man's sternum, feeling ribs resist before yielding with a dull crack. Blood poured hot across his gauntlet.
Another swung an axe downward. Orys stepped inside the arc and slashed across the man's abdomen. The blade cut deep enough that something pale and glistening slipped through the widening gap as the pirate staggered backward, clutching futilely at his spilling entrails.
The deck became chaos.
Stormlanders pushed hard, anger sharpened by the smoke still visible behind them. They had smelled burning homes. They had heard distant bells.
The pirates fought savagely but without the terrain advantage they had relied upon. Their discipline faltered when retreat routes vanished.
Orys moved through them not as Robert did with devastating force, but with controlled lethality. Each strike calculated. Each motion efficient. He did not roar. He did not taunt. He advanced steadily, leaving bodies in his wake.
When the final pirate ship attempted to flee, Stannis's vessel intercepted cleanly, cutting off escape and driving it toward a shallow reef where its hull split open under pressure.
The battle ended with three ships destroyed and one captured intact.
The sea around them churned red.
Only then did Orys allow himself to look back toward Grimwatch.
Smoke still rose.
By the time the fleet reached the hold at dusk, the outer village lay in ruin. Wooden homes reduced to blackened skeletons. Livestock slaughtered in the streets. A woman knelt beside a charred doorway, rocking silently.
Lord Halren of Grimwatch met Orys at the gate, face streaked with ash.
"You were not here," he said.
The accusation was not shouted. It was spoken with exhausted clarity.
Orys did not deflect it.
"No," he said.
"You chose elsewhere."
"Yes."
Halren's jaw tightened. "My people paid for that choice."
"They would have paid more if the fleet had fallen in the inlet," Orys replied evenly.
Halren's eyes flashed with anger. "That is cold comfort."
"I did not come to offer comfort."
Silence stretched between them, heavy with smoke and grief.
Orys turned toward the burning remnants of the village and began issuing orders for aid, rebuilding materials, and redistribution of grain from Storm's End stores.
The pirates had been crushed.
But the cost had not been invisible.
That night, as the wounded were tended and the dead laid out in ordered rows beneath linen sheets, Orys stood alone near the shoreline where tide lapped gently against blood-stained sand.
He had won the battle.
But the Stormlands would decide for themselves whether he had won something else.