On the Mountains of the Moon, the long procession marched from day to night. As night fell, the soldiers had to choose a suitable place to rest for a while. At least one-third of the taxi soldiers needed to remain awake, on guard duty. In the tent, Ser Barristan Selmy and Anguy, both from The Marches, were guarding Gendry tonight.
Gendry slowly turned the pages of "Storm King," which recorded the deeds of successive Storm Kings: some foolish, some great, some warriors, some cowards, and even bastards who successfully usurped the throne.
Gendry was engrossed in the book, shedding his identity as a warrior and blacksmith, now like a devout Maester studying the secrets of the ancient Storms Blood.
"Durran, the first Storm King, extended his rule to the Rainwood," Gendry read slowly. The book featured many names of Durran. Ancient Storm Kings traditionally named their eldest sons "Durran" to commemorate the family's founder, so there were many Storm Kings named Durran throughout history.
In the Age of Heroes, Durran, the first Storm King, won the favor of Ynys, daughter of the storm god and the goddess of wind, and they fell in love. Although Ynys's divine parents did not approve of their romance, they secretly married. With immense divine power, on the night of the wedding, the two deities destroyed Durran's fortress, killing all his relatives and guests.
Durran, enraged, declared war on the gods, and in response, great storms ravaged his entire Kingdom. Every time Durran built a new fortress by the sea, the gods immediately destroyed it. Durran stubbornly continued to build larger and grander fortresses, and finally, the seventh castle stood firm, withstanding the storms surging from Shipbreaker Bay. It is said that this was because the Children of the Forest participated in the castle's construction; another account suggests that "Brandon the Builder" (an ancestor of House Stark), then a Boy, contributed ideas for the construction. The true facts remain unknown to this day.
"Black hair, blue eyes, tall and strong, resilient lineage," Gendry pondered the Storm Kings described in the book. Most Storm Kings were incredibly fierce warriors, like storms themselves, possessing the bloodline of the storm god. Were it not for this, the Storm Kingdom could not have expanded step by step.
"I am the rage. Successive Storm Kings have upheld this family motto. The stag is proud, and it is also fierce. Their ancestors dared to defy the gods, proving that man can overcome nature. This is unique among all heroic legends. Although Durran's story is just a legend, it reveals the wildness and unruliness of the Durrandon family. The Storm Kingdom's climate and geography are not outstanding; the Stormlands are constantly battered by rainstorms and gales from the Narrow Sea. The inland terrain is mostly rugged mountains (like near Summerhall), the coast is mostly rocky (like Cape Wrath), and there are vast and dense forests (represented by The Kingswood and Rainwood). But even with these harsh environmental constraints, the Durrandon family, relying on their wildness and courage, repeatedly advanced, even once occupying the Riverlands, seizing the Blackwater Rush and the Mander River headwaters, and simultaneously fighting several Kingdoms. When the Kingdom of the North and the Arryn Kingdom were content to stay put, and Dorne was difficult to cross due to its mountains, the Storm Kingdom brought storm after storm, repeatedly attacking."
Although the Maester's narrative contained some praise, before Aegon the Conqueror, when the North and the Vale were relatively inactive, the Storm Kingdom had indeed been a minor hegemon of Westeros. It once exclusively controlled the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and parts of the Crownlands, attacking The Reach and Dorne. However, it later declined, and the most formidable was the Kingdom of House Hoare.
"Arrogant Argilac was the last Storm King before Aegon the Conqueror united Westeros. Unfortunately, this great warrior King was so unlucky. During his reign, the last storm fiercely defended the gradually declining Storm Kingdom. In his youth, he repelled a Dorne invasion. Twenty years before Aegon the Conqueror, he decisively defeated the army of The Reach in the Battle of Summerfield, killing their King, Gyles Gardener VII. When Volantis's expansion reached its peak, the warrior King joined the grand alliance against the Tiger Party, led his army into the Disputed Lands, defeated the Volantis army attempting to retake Myr, and curbed Volantis's ambition to rebuild the Freehold Empire. The warrior King inherited his ancestors' mess, stemming the Storm Kingdom's precipitous decline, but he had no male heir. As the warrior grew old, he could only watch helplessly as the castle of his old rival, the Ironborn House Hoare, was completed, and he was even more powerless to stop the Dragon King in the sky..." Gendry looked at the image of the old warrior; he was the last Storm King. If not for the era's protagonists being magic dragons and The Conqueror, Argilac would seem more like a passionate hero.
"A book written by Maester Mellon; this book is now a unique copy. I never expected to see this book in the Frey Family, not in Storms End," Ser Barristan glanced at the book's cover. It was indeed a valuable tome.
"The books at Storms End, I guess those Knights don't really read them either," Gendry chuckled. The Long Night was long, and when the fighting stopped, one could also change one's mindset and life.
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