Nerd In the North 5-6A

Third Month, 299 AC

The waves broke wrong.

Davos had watched enough seas to know when water moved against its nature. These waves came in threes, then fives, then threes again—no rhythm a sailor could trust. They curled where they should roll, rolled where they should break. And the color. Grey as old iron where the morning sun should paint it gold.

He stood on the easternmost tower of Dragonstone, wind finding the holes in his cloak like it knew where to look. Salt crusted his beard, familiar as an old friend. Around him, the black stone of the fortress rose like something the sea had vomited up in a temper—all angles and edges, gargoyles staring with blind stone eyes.

Something had changed in his king these past weeks.

Stannis Baratheon had never been a man for soft words or warm company. But the man who’d emerged from the sept that night—red priestess dead at his feet, golden light in his eyes—seemed carved from something harder than the stone around them. There was strength in him that hadn’t been there before. Certainty. The kind that made men lower their eyes when he passed, not just from duty, but something deeper. Something that made Davos’s fingers itch for the pouch of finger bones no longer there.

“M’lord H-Hand.” The voice shook somewhat as it sounded off quietly from behind him, young and nervous, a boy’s voice at that. One of Stannis’s new squires—too many to keep track of lately.

“Just Davos, or m’lord, if you must,” he corrected gently. The lad would keep calling him “Hand” anyway. They all did now.

The boy nodded just as shakily as he had spoken before, quickly catching his breath before opening his mouth again. “The king requests your presence in the Chamber of the Painted Table.”

Davos nodded, eyes not leaving the horizon where dark shapes moved against darker clouds. Ships. And that’s what worried him more than most anything else. Too many to be traders. Too orderly to be pirates.

“Tell his Grace I’m coming,” he said, letting old habits straighten his shoulders. “And tell the captains to prepare the harbor defenses.”

The boy hesitated. “The king said you’d see them. The ships. Said you’d know what they meant.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the wind settled in Davos’s bones. Stannis knew. Somehow, he’d known before any of them.

His feet carried him toward the Stone Drum, a path that felt much longer than usual these days, or maybe it was just that his legs just felt heavier. Everything seemed heavier over the last few moons. Servants scurried past, eyes down, moving faster than before. Guards stood straighter, hands resting on sword hilts, eyes scanning shadows that hadn’t seemed threatening yesterday.

The common folk called it blessing. The nobles of Dragonstone called it divine favor.

Davos wasn’t sure what to call what had happened to Stannis. He’d been there, seen the red priestess die as a sword removed her head and shattered her mummery, seen the light take hold in his king. Golden, warm, and powerful, a holy light if he had ever seen one. 

Yet men weren’t meant to hold light inside them.

At the Chamber of the Painted Table, the guards opened the doors without a word. Inside, Stannis stood where he always did—at the head of the massive table carved in the shape of Westeros, looking out over his claimed kingdom.

“Your Grace,” Davos said, closing the door quietly behind him.

Stannis didn’t turn, hands clasped behind his back, straight as the sword that hung at his side. That sword. Gold where it should be steel, warm to the touch even when the room was cold. It was a thing as terrifying as the man who wielded it.

“The Ironborn have made their choice,” Stannis said, voice unchanged and yet somehow deeper, like it reached places inside Davos’s chest where words shouldn’t be able to go. “They have sided with their drowned god against the Seven. Against the Father.”

“They’ve brought a large fleet, Your Grace,” Davos said, crossing to stand a careful three paces back from his king. “Two tens of ships at least, maybe more behind the mist.”

“Three and thirty,” Stannis corrected, finally turning. His eyes were the same blue they’d always been, but something flickered there now. Something old. “Three and thirty ships, with the priest Aeron Damphair leading them.”

Davos didn’t ask how he knew. There was no point anymore.

“We’ve three hundred men on the walls,” Davos said instead, because that was what he knew. “Another two hundred who can hold a sword if needed. Four ships in the harbor, two more ready to sail by midday.”

Stannis nodded once, a tight approval. “Have the men form three companies. You’ll take the eastern approach with the first. Ser Rolland the harbor with the second. I’ll hold the main gate with the third.”

“Your Grace, perhaps it would be wiser to remain in the Stone Drum. Direct from safety.”

“A king doesn’t hide behind stone when his people face steel.” Stannis’s jaw tightened, a muscle working near his temple. “This attack is meant for me. The Drowned God seeks the Father’s heir. The ironmen think to find easy prey.”

Davos shifted his weight, fingers of his maimed hand twitching for luck that wasn’t there. “If I may speak plainly, Your Grace—”

“You always do.”

“Whatever blessing the Father has given you, it doesn’t make you immortal. One lucky arrow—”

“The Father’s blessing is not mere fortune, Davos. It is purpose.” Stannis turned back to the window, shoulders set like masts in a storm. “The Ironborn have their god. I have mine. We will see whose faith holds stronger.”

Outside, a horn blew—three long blasts. The Ironborn had been spotted from the harbor towers now.

“Go, Davos. See to the men.”

Davos bowed, knowing Stannis wouldn’t see it, and headed for the door. He’d almost reached it when Stannis spoke again.

“Davos.”

He turned. “Your Grace?”

“When this is over, we’ll speak of what troubles you so.”

Davos nodded, throat suddenly tight. He hadn’t said a word of his fears, his doubts about what his king was becoming. Yet Stannis knew. Of course he knew.

The eastern shore of Dragonstone was sharp black rock and narrow beaches, the kind of coastline sailors whispered warnings about. No good landing spots, nothing but death for any ship that came too close. But the Ironborn weren’t ordinary sailors.

Davos watched from the small promontory above the largest beach, fifty men arrayed behind him with spears and bows. The mist had rolled in thicker, unnatural in its stillness. Through it, dark shapes moved—ships where no ships should be able to approach.

“Steady,” he told his men, more habit than need. They’d been Stannis’s men long enough to know discipline.

It emerged like a nightmare, the first ship that is, as it broke free from the mist with an ease and power that shouldn’t be, Davos knew the seas and ships alike and something was more than odd here. The ship shouldn’t even have been able to travel this far on open sea, it’s hull black with rot, sails tattered yet somehow full. Symbols painted along its sides pulsed with a sick hue, not too far from the look of rotten flesh, yet bright all the same. At its prow stood a tall figure, rail-thin and draped in what looked like seaweed, raising a staff of driftwood toward the sky.

“Archers,” Davos sounded out, voice steady and ready despite his misgivings of what they were to fight. No matter what it was or who it was, they would face King Stannis’s men on his orders. “On my mark.”

The ship shouldn’t have been able to land on the rocks. But it did, grinding to a halt as if guided by unseen hands. From its sides, men poured forth—Ironborn warriors with axes and shields, some barefoot despite the sharp stones. And something else. 

Something wrong.

The waves surged with them, rising and breaking against the shore as water began to form horrid shapes, worthy of the title demon and unholy. Davos had no other word for them and didn’t have the wit to form such a thing. What else would you call things not quite men, not quite beasts, but something in between? Whatever the vile monsters were, they moved in time with the Ironborn, raiders and all,  forming a vanguard of living water that rolled in like the tide toward Dragonstone’s defenders.

“Loose!” The word escaped Davos’s lips through teeth that were nearly gritted, the man so unsettled by what he was seeing his knuckles were clenched a pale white. The sea should not be like this and it brought him a great deal of fear that he could do little to deny.

Arrows arced through the air, finding Ironborn flesh easily enough. But they passed through the water creatures like stones through a stream, leaving no mark.

Behind the first ship, two more appeared, then three more beyond them. Each disgorged more Ironborn, more watery abominations.

“Form up!” Davos drew his sword, the plain steel catching what little light filtered through the mist. “Spears front!”

His men obeyed, but he saw the fear in their eyes. This wasn’t battle as they knew it. This was something from the stories old women told to scare children away from the sea.

The Ironborn charged, voices raised in a chant that made Davos’s skin crawl. “What is dead may never die! What is dead may never die!”

The water creatures hit their line first, impossible strength behind their fluid forms. Men screamed as they were grabbed and dragged down, water filling lungs that had only ever known air.

Davos fought with the grim efficiency of a man who’d learned to fight late in life—no flourishes, no wasted movements. His sword found Ironborn flesh once, twice, a third time. But for each man who fell, another rose from the sea to take his place. And the water creatures kept coming, reforming even as swords cut through them.

“Fall back!” Davos ordered as their line began to buckle. “To the stairs! Make them climb to us!”

His men retreated in good order, taking position on the narrow stone steps leading up from the beach. A better position, but Davos knew it was only delaying the inevitable. There were too many of them, and whatever power drove them was beyond steel to stop.

From his new vantage, Davos could see more of the harbor. What he saw froze his blood colder than any northern winter could.

The main harbor was in chaos. Ships burned despite the rain that had begun to fall. Men fought on the docks and in the shallow water. And in the center of the harbor, the sea itself had risen up—a massive whirlpool that reached toward the sky like a grasping hand. Within it, shapes moved. Long, sinuous shapes that reminded Davos of the kraken on the Greyjoy banner, but impossibly large. Tentacles the size of ships lashed out, crushing stone and men with equal ease.

And striding through it all, a golden light cutting through mist and madness—Stannis. His sword burned with inner fire, each stroke leaving trails of light that hung in the air too long. Where he walked, the water creatures faltered. Where his blade fell, even the Ironborn’s unnatural fervor seemed to waver.

Davos felt something tighten in his chest. Pride, maybe. Or fear. Or both.

A shout from below snapped his attention back to his own fight. The Ironborn were charging up the stairs, water creatures flowing around and over them like a second tide.

“Hold!” Davos shouted. “Hold the line!”

They fought grimly, step by step, minute by minute. Men died. Good men. Men who’d stood with Stannis through the siege of Storm’s End, through the rebellion, through all the lean years after. They died with Stannis’s name on their lips, or the Father’s, or their mothers’. In the end, it made no difference.

Davos took a cut to his forearm, another to his thigh. Nothing deadly, but enough to slow him. The Ironborn kept coming, and behind them all, on the ship that shouldn’t have been able to land, the tall figure raised his staff again.

Aeron Damphair. Davos had heard of him—a priest of the Drowned God, half-mad and wholly devoted. Now he stood like a prophet of old, calling to his god with words that made the air itself shudder.

The sea answered. A wave rose, impossibly high, impossibly shaped—like a hand reaching for the defenders on the stairs. Davos knew no wall could stop it, no sword could cut it. This was the sea itself turned against them.

“Run!” he ordered his remaining men. “To the keep! Now!”

The wave crashed down. Davos felt himself lifted, tumbled, the world turned to water and pain. His maimed hand scrabbled at stone, finding purchase more by luck than skill. When the water receded, he found himself clinging to the side of the stairs, half his men gone, the rest scattered like driftwood after a storm.

The Ironborn howled in triumph, charging up the now-clear path to Dragonstone proper. Davos pulled himself up, knee screaming in protest, sword somehow still clutched in his good hand. He’d failed. Failed to hold the east approach. Failed his king.

But his king, it seemed, had not failed them.

From the direction of the harbor came a sound like no horn Davos had ever heard—deep and resonant, shaking the very stone beneath his feet. Light blazed, golden-white, cutting through mist and rain and despair.

Davos limped toward it, drawn as he’d always been to Stannis Baratheon’s unbending strength.

What he found at the harbor stole the breath from his lungs.

The great whirlpool had resolved itself into something more solid—a creature of the deep, all tentacles and malice, large enough to crush ships between its limbs. Ironborn surrounded it, chanting, feeding it strength with their belief.

And facing it, alone on the shattered remains of the harbor wall, stood Stannis. His armor gleamed not with polish but with inner light, as if he’d swallowed the sun itself. The sword in his hand burned so bright it hurt to look upon it directly.

“Foul hosts of the Demon of the Depths. Your god of putrid fetid bloated corpses has no power here,” The voice of their king carried across the chaos, propelled across the slaughter, amplified by something more than simple air. “This is the realm of men, and men answer to the Seven. All men answer to the authority of the Father!”

The creature lashed out, tentacles thick as old trees sweeping toward Stannis. He didn’t dodge. He stepped forward, sword raised, and where the blade touched the monster’s flesh, it hissed and recoiled as if burned.

Stannis advanced, each step deliberate, each stroke of his sword precise. The Ironborn moved to intercept him, but they might as well have tried to turn back the tide with their hands. Without seeming to hurry, without seeming to exert himself beyond any mortal man’s capability, Stannis cut them down. Three with one stroke. Another two with the next. Men who should have been beyond his reach fell clutching wounds that smoked rather than bled.

The creature roared—a sound like rocks grinding beneath the sea—and reared back. Its central mass rose from the water, a maw large enough to swallow a ship opening to reveal teeth like jagged stones.

Stannis didn’t hesitate. He leapt.

No man should have been able to make that jump. No man should have survived landing on the creature’s heaving mass. But Stannis was more than a man now. Or maybe less. Davos wasn’t sure anymore.

The shining sword plunged deep into the monster’s flesh. Golden light burst from the wound, spreading through the creature like fire through dry tinder. It thrashed, tentacles whipping through air and water in mindless agony. Stannis held on, driving his sword deeper, his face set in lines of grim determination.

The light grew brighter, too bright to look at directly. Davos shielded his eyes with his arm, but still saw the moment the creature’s flesh began to dissolve—not burning, not bleeding, but simply coming apart like sand returned to the sea.

When the light faded enough to see again, Stannis stood on the broken harbor wall, golden blade in hand, surrounded by the remains of the creature—nothing but water now, indistinguishable from the harbor around it. The Ironborn ships were in retreat, those that could still sail. The water creatures had collapsed back into ordinary seawater.

And Aeron Damphair knelt in chains before Stannis, dragged there by what remained of Dragonstone’s guards. The priest’s face was a mask of hatred and fear, eyes wide in his gaunt face.

“Your god failed you,” Stannis told him, voice carrying easily despite the wind and waves. “As all false gods must.”

The Drowned God’s stink hadn’t left the shore. Even with the tide turning and the dead hauled off, it clung—oil-thick, like bilge water spoiled in the hold. Davos had smelled it before, in broken hulls and half-drowned men, but never so strong. It settled behind the teeth. Bitter. Old. Like something that had never seen the sun.

Aeron Greyjoy’s voice carried like sea wind through snapped rigging—bluster without ballast. “The Drowned God is the only true god,” he spat, salt and blood curling in his beard. “This victory is temporary. The deep places of the world are his, and he will rise again.”

He always did, didn’t he? The sea didn’t stay quiet. It rose. Then rose again. Until something broke.

“Not here,” Stannis said.

No shout. No fury. Just iron.

“Not while I stand.”

He turned. And Davos saw it then, for less than a breath—the weight in the king’s face, the wear. The kind of exhaustion that went bone-deep. Then it was gone, tucked beneath the same resolve that had carried them through fire, famine, and worse. The kind of weight a man didn’t shrug off. He just carried it because he must.

“See to the wounded. Secure the prisoners. Repair what can be repaired.”

“Your Grace,” Davos said, lowering his head.

The title wasn’t for show. Not with Stannis. Never had been.

He watched his king walk off toward the Stone Drum. Tireless, like always. The sword on his hip bled golden light through its scabbard, not much, just enough to catch the edge of stone and shadow. Enough to say: I am not what I was.

Davos felt it settle in behind the breastbone then. That quiet shift. Like the moment before a storm. You couldn’t see it, but the air changed.

The gods, if they existed, had done more than whisper this time. They’d shouted. Shifted the board. Changed the bloody game. And Davos—smuggler, father, knight against his own birth—stood in the middle of it all because of one man. Because once, years ago, Stannis Baratheon had taken his fingers and given him purpose.

And now that same man had cleaved a sea-beast in two with a sword that burned.

He followed orders. Always had. That much hadn’t changed.

The cleanup dragged long. Fifty-seven gone from their own side. Another eighteen too broken to stand again. Two ships taken by the deep, a third bent out of shape like a barrel warped from within. The harbor wall was cracked like old driftwood. And everywhere, the reek—salt and iron and something fouler still. Something deeper. Davos didn’t have a name for it, but it clawed at the edge of memory, like the feeling you got walking alone on a calm deck when the waves were still. When something waited.

They’d driven the Ironborn off. For now. But Davos didn’t believe in endings. Only tide and wind and what you held fast to. And this? This smelled more like beginnings.

He found Stannis at the Painted Table by nightfall, still standing, still watching the shapes carved into the old wood like they might move if he stared hard enough. The golden sword still rested sheathed at his hip, but even covered it burned—leather glowing faint, like embers banking slow beneath ash. The fire never went out. Not anymore.

“The final count?” Stannis asked. No greeting. No turn of the head.

“Fifty-seven dead, your grace,” Davos answered his king. “Eighteen too hurt to fight again. Two ships lost.”

“And the Ironborn?”

“Hundred dead, maybe more. Three ships sunk. Two tens of prisoners taken. Aeron Damphair among them.”

Stannis nodded, that small tilt he did when a number landed where he expected. “The Ironborn will return. This was merely the first test.”

The word pricked.

“Test?” Davos asked, surprised into it. “Your Grace, we lost good men today.”

“Men die in war, Davos.” Stannis’ voice rang low, almost lecturing. “You know this.”

And he did. He had buried enough to fill a bay. Davos had smelled the rot in his own sails more than once.

Stannis turned then, slow and measured. His face, as always, was carved from storm-dark stone. Unmoved. Unsparing. “The Father tests those He favors. The Ironborn were sent to test my resolve. My worth.”

And the rest of us? Davos didn’t ask.

“To what end?” he said instead. “If I may.”

Stannis looked to the side, staring past the wall. “To unite the realm. To cleanse it of false gods. To prepare for what comes.”

There was a pause there. Not hesitation. A weight that seemed to land in the room, the air heavy on Davos’ shoulders until his king finally continued.

“From the North.” And just like that, the chill came. Not from the sea air. From something deeper as Davos realized what direction his king was looking towards.

“The North?” Davos asked.

“There are older things than drowned gods stirring beyond the Wall. Colder things. The Father has shown me. Winter comes. And with it, a darkness that swallows.”

Davos thought of his boys. His wife. Those who believed because he did. Who would follow the flame into frost.

He took care with his next words. As always. “Your Grace… the Starks are in open rebellion. Robb Stark wears a crown. How can we—”

“Robb Stark is a boy,” Stannis cut him off. “He is not the enemy.” He placed his hand on the Wall carved into the Painted Table, fingers resting there like they might feel it crack beneath them, the holy strength he seemed to carry now enough to do so. “The enemy comes from beyond to cleanse the realms of man for themselves. They consider us a plague, our gods anathema, our existence a threat. And we must be ready.”

Davos lowered his head. The sailor didn’t understand, not fully. But the Onion Lord did the only thing he could and accepted. That was enough, most days.

People called it faith. But to Davos, it was simpler. You tied your rope to something. You held fast. And you didn’t let go.

He heard them whisper now—soldiers and squires alike. Calling Stannis blessed. Praying in the name of the Father, not the Red Woman’s fire god. The man who had once burned with anger now burned with something else. And the world was watching.

“Get some rest,” Stannis said, voice gentling by a hair. “Tomorrow, we begin preparations for war. Real war.”

“Aye. Your Grace.” Davos inclined his head.

Stannis started to turn, but paused.

“And Davos…”

He looked back.

“You held the eastern approach longer than any other man could have. Remember that.”

It wasn’t praise. Not exactly. Stannis didn’t give praise. But it landed heavier than any compliment Davos had ever known.

He bowed again, then turned, feet already tracing the familiar path back through the keep.

He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to.

The sword’s light lingered behind him. Too bright. Too still.

And if Davos walked a little faster than usual down the dark corridors of Dragonstone, well, that was between him and the gods.