He rode a tall black warhorse at the very front of the army.
The last light of sunset outlined his stern, weary profile.
He looked far older than his actual age, his eyes sunken.
Yet those dark blue eyes still burned with a fiery tenacity and rage.
He wore plain dark gray plate armor beneath a surcoat embroidered with the crowned stag in a burning red heart, and gripped an unadorned longsword.
Beside him was Davos.
On Stannis's other side rode the most striking figure in the entire army, the Red Priestess Melisandre.
She still wore her deep red robe, which traced her tall, graceful figure.
Her thick red hair stirred gently in the evening breeze, and her exquisite face looked all the more uncanny beneath the blood-red sunset.
Yet the most alarming thing was her belly.
It bulged high, like that of a woman who had carried a child for ten months and was about to give birth.
Its swollen curve formed an eerie contrast with her slender frame, and even her loose red robe could scarcely conceal it completely.
Her hands rested lightly over her swollen belly, and an inscrutable smile lay on her face.
The enormous ruby pendant at her throat refracted a shifting, uncanny red light in the sunset.
The banners of the great houses of the Stormlands clustered around the burning stag banner.
They had brought the last of the Stormlands' strength.
After the wildfire catastrophe at King's Landing, the Stormlands had barely managed to muster an army of roughly ten thousand, who joined Stannis's five thousand to form the host.
He had followed all the way, watching the villages of the Stormlands destroyed and their people wantonly slaughtered by the horsemen or carried off as slaves, and his heart had long since filled with