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It had been a long time since Margaery Tyrell last visited her nominal husband, Renly Baratheon.
The two Baratheon kings, Renly and Stannis, were locked in fierce fighting across the streets and alleys of King's Landing.
The battles followed a predictable rhythm: Renly's forces launched their assaults during the day, paying a heavy price to seize control of a few blocks from Stannis. Then, when night fell, Stannis's men, more familiar with the twists and turns of the city's terrain, would seize the opportunity to strike back.
And so it went, back and forth like a relentless tug-of-war, both sides locked in a cycle of attack and counterattack. In the end… sheer numbers tipped the balance. Though Stannis was left with just over six thousand men, he finally made the decision to abandon all the districts outside of Aegon's Hill.
The morale of Renly's army soared. They were eager to press their advantage and drive their enemies out entirely. But just as they prepared to launch their final push, an unexpected problem forced them to slam the brakes on their advance.
The starving people of King's Landing had finally reached their breaking point. To avoid starving to death, to feed their wives and children, some had chosen to risk everything. Under the cover of darkness, they began attacking Renly's patrolling soldiers.
It wasn't that Renly's occupied districts within King's Landing were completely devoid of food — but most of it had been hidden away. And if the starving masses wanted to seize that food, the first thing they needed was to arm themselves.
As a result, within an alarmingly short period of time, nearly a hundred incidents of mobs ambushing the army erupted across King's Landing. The gold cloaks, who had once again changed their allegiance, didn't even dare to set foot into the city's dark alleys.
As locals, they understood all too well what King's Landing was like. If they went in, they wouldn't even know from which corner an old, rusty blade might suddenly slice its way out toward them.
There was no helping it, so a certain lord from Renly's army, responsible for maintaining order, had no choice but to intervene personally. He sent over a thousand soldiers into the labyrinthine alleys of King's Landing, hoping to confiscate the weapons hidden among the mobs.
But it didn't take long for him to pay dearly for that foolish decision.
In just a short span of time, two-thirds of those thousand soldiers were killed by the desperate mob in every gruesome manner imaginable. The survivors fled for their lives, terror written all over their faces, swearing they would never set foot in those alleys again.
When word of this debacle reached Lord Mace Tyrell, the Highgarden lord whose head was filled with dreams of life as the future Hand of the King, his fury exploded.
Without so much as informing Renly Baratheon, that fool took it upon himself to mobilize three thousand soldiers.
It's worth mentioning that these three thousand troops all hailed from the Reach. And that idiot, unbelievably, didn't even bother to notify Renly before moving his army.
Faced with such overwhelming military force, the mobs of King's Landing immediately vanished without a trace. But when the Tyrell soldiers finally pushed their way in, the scene that met their eyes made their blood run cold.
Not a single one of the soldiers who had gone missing during the first confiscation attempt could be found with an intact body. Many had been torn apart, their flesh and bones hacked and scattered into countless unrecognizable pieces, both raw and cooked.
Some had nothing left but a severed head — and as for where the rest of their bodies had gone, no one could say. The soldiers looked around at the pairs of eyes staring back at them from the shadows—eyes filled with fear, numbness, yet glimmering with a desperate, feral hunger—and a chill crept from the soles of their feet all the way to the tops of their heads.
It was in that moment the soldiers suddenly understood. In the eyes of these people, they weren't guardians of order, nor heroes of justice.
They were prey!
And with that realisation, the morale of the Tyrell army shattered. Some of the more cowardly soldiers even pissed themselves where they stood. Sending them into battle was one thing, but facing a starving mob that looked at them like meat ready to be devoured… that was another matter entirely. Terrified beyond reason, they turned and fled.
Lord Mace Tyrell was furious, stomping about in rage, but when it came down to it, there was nothing he could do. It wasn't until this very moment that King Renly Baratheon, holed up in the Great Sept of Baelor, finally learned what had happened.
Only then did everyone finally understand why Tywin Lannister had been so generous in giving up King's Landing.
At first, they had all believed it was part of some elaborate scheme — that Tywin had deliberately abandoned the city to let them and Stannis tear each other apart.
But now it was clear. Tywin Lannister had known exactly what was going on in King's Landing. He understood better than anyone that if things kept going the way they were, even he wouldn't have been able to hold the city. So he simply tossed this mess straight into their laps.
And the worst part was… they had taken it gladly.
King's Landing held hundreds of thousands of mouths to feed. The army had brought some food along, of course, but considering the long supply lines stretching all the way from the Reach to King's Landing, the amount of food they could actually transport was painfully limited.
This wasn't peacetime. Much of their transport and resources were tied up elsewhere. They simply didn't have the means to feed the hundreds of thousands trapped inside King's Landing. The only real solution was to end the war as quickly as possible and restore normal grain shipments from the Reach to King's Landing.
The Reach had chosen to side with Renly. Naturally, this had cut off food supplies to Joffrey, who was still holed up in the city at the time. But in the end, they had only ended up digging a pit for themselves to fall into. Fate really did love playing cruel jokes.
Stannis didn't have this problem. His army was small to begin with, and the connection between the Red Keep and the Mud Gate still hadn't been cut off. As long as his fleet remained intact, he could supply food into the Red Keep whenever he pleased.
There was no point in Renly seizing the little food that remained. It would never be enough to fill the enormous grain deficit in King's Landing.
"Alright, everyone, I suggest you put those noble brains of yours to work and tell me how we're supposed to fix this mess."
Another grand feast was underway, but this time, no one had the stomach to enjoy the fine delicacies laid out before them.
"Perhaps… we could share some of our food with them, just enough to keep them quiet for now. Once we've taken the Red Keep, the food supply will return to normal."
Mace Tyrell sat there in his nobleman's robe embroidered with golden roses, looking as though he had just stepped out of his gardens in Highgarden rather than from a war council.
"Hmm… what you're talking about isn't just handing out a little food," Randyll Tarly interrupted bluntly, showing not the slightest trace of courtesy toward the noble lord famously nicknamed the 'Puff Fish.' His voice was sharp and direct, cutting through the room without hesitation. "Stannis has dumped the entire mob of the city on us. Every single one of them have been starving for days. Just how much food do you think we can possibly spare for them?"
"If that's the case, I'd love to hear Lord Randyll's brilliant solution," Loras Tyrell, the 'Knight of Flowers', shot back at once, his voice dripping with sarcasm. In his eyes, it didn't matter in the slightest whether Lord Randyll's words were reasonable or not. What truly made his blood boil was watching this arrogant old noble openly contradict his father.
Lord Mace Tyrell glanced triumphantly at the Lord of Horn Hill, who had suddenly fallen quiet, a pleased smile spreading across his face, smug and full of himself.
"Your Grace, why don't we simply withdraw from King's Landing for now and toss this mess onto Stannis?"
The one speaking was Bryce Caron, the young lord of Nightsong from the Stormlands, barely past twenty, yet his suggestion at least carried a certain logic.
However, the moment those words left his mouth, they were met with a wall of fierce opposition from every Reach noble present.
"No way! His Grace's army hasn't been defeated. Why should we retreat?"
"Stannis still has his fleet. If he brings in food and arms these mobs to fight against us, what then?"
"We fought our way into King's Landing. If we slink out now with our tails between our legs, what will everyone else think of us?"
The objections came pouring in, some loud and aggressive, others quieter and more cautious, arguments flying from every direction. Whether their points made sense or not didn't seem to matter. All that mattered was one thing:
Absolutely not!
Meanwhile, the nobles from the Stormlands standing off to the side were all clearly tempted by the idea. They understood better than anyone that pulling out now was the smartest choice. King's Landing had become completely unmanageable.
The mobs had only just started to stir, and already the situation was spiraling out of control. Once their hunger grew unbearable, the chaos that would follow would be catastrophic. And let's not forget — this city, reeking of filth and waste, was home to hundreds of thousands of desperate souls.
What made it all the more ridiculous was that the real reason the Reach nobles opposed the retreat was something only they themselves understood.
The truth was, they wanted to keep fighting. Because if they won, they would get everything — the power, the glory, the rewards. But the soldiers under their command? Those men had no desire to fight at all. If they ordered a retreat now, the army's morale would shatter completely.
The Stormlands nobles and soldiers all understood one simple fact: this was their own king, their rightful lord. If they captured King's Landing, they would feast and thrive alongside him.
But the Reach soldiers? Most of them hadn't even known who Renly Baratheon was before all this. And now, after bleeding and dying for him, what would they get? Their own grain left to rot, their wives stolen by other men.
Raising the morale of an army like that was nearly impossible. This wasn't some game where you could pull up a console and type in a cheat code to fix everything.
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[Chapter End's]
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