Hugh Hammer (ASOIF/SI)

He hated this place, its huge echoing chambers, the strange, twisted

 and melted stone that made up a goodly portion of the castle, and

 most of all he hated the very atmosphere of the place. For it seemed

 to him that Harenhal was not just inanimate stone and mortar, no to

 Criston Cole it seemed to be alive, no alive was probably the wrong

 word, possessed, yes that was a better word, possessed.

 The place was getting to his men also, many complained of strange

 noises and whispering in the night, of figures glimpsed out of the

 corner of the eye that disappeared when you turned your head to

 look for them. Of strange, freezing breezes and draughts that would

 suddenly spring up from nowhere and just as suddenly dissipate,

 and of nightmares, always nightmares.

 He suffered many of the same, inconveniences as his men, but as

 their commander, and as the Hand of the King, he could not be seen

 to be suffering as they did. He hid his uneasiness under the mask of

 duty and burdened himself with as much work as he could.

 Hah! Work? He was supposedly Hand of the King, but little business

 reached him here in Harenhal, no he was sure that Lord Otto

 Hightower had slipped back into his previous role back in Kings

 Landing. No doubt with the tacit approval of Dowager Queen Alicent,

 Lords Strong and Lannister would be unlikely to raise too much of a

 stink on his behalf, of that, he was sure. Oh, he was certain that Lord

 Otto had not officially replaced him, but he would wager that he was

 the Hand of the King in name only in Kings Landing. Which might be

 a reason why he was now stuck here in Harenhal with Prince

 Aemond, safely removed from the capital while others plotted to

 remove him from power.

Dowager Queen Alicent never forgave him for the injuries sustained

 by the King at Rooks Rest, nor did she look favourably on him for

 replacing her father as Hand of the King, even if King Aegon had

 gotten tired of Lord Otto's cautiousness. A woman Cole knew was

 never open to reasoning with, especially when it came to her family,

 so he knew that he did not have the favour of the Dowager Queen

 anymore.

 Thus, he spent his days in Harenhal, making sure that the Lannister

 army and his men were kept in decent shape and kept supplied via

 the Gods Eye, while Prince Aemond rode Vhagar out nigh on every

 day and methodically burned everything within a day's flight of

 Harenhal. Once everything within a day's flight was destroyed the

 Prince had sworn to continue out to destroy everything within two

 days flight, and then three days, and so on.

 Of the rebels they had seen nothing, they had refused battle and

 dared not confront then with Vhagar available to support them. But

 as the days wore on into weeks, Criston Cole became more and

 more concerned.

 The passivity of the rebels was disconcerting to say the least, and he

 suspected some sort of a trap, and so he had set his armies to work

 on a plan that would hopefully serve two purposes, one it would alert

 him to any potential attack by the rebels and two it would keep his

 army occupied and busy.

 Harenhal itself sat on a raised plateau above the shore of the Gods

 Eye and from its towering walls and turrets one could spy upon the

 lands for miles around, but Cole and studied the maps of the

 surrounding terrain extensively before he had left Kings Landing. It

 had been to better understand the locality and prepare for any

 pitched battle, but now the lay of the land suggested something else

 to Cole.

 With the cooperation of several of the Maesters who had

 accompanied the army they surveyed the empty land around

 Harenhal in more detail. And the results confirmed what Cole had

suspected, there were numerous hills and ridges that were in sight of

 the walls and towers that could do service as chains of watchtowers

 to extend the terrain her could keep under surveillance from

 Harenhal.

 And so, he has set his men to work, building watch towers and

 'fortlets' out from Harenhal, the layout and placement of these

 structures were carefully sited so that they all had sight of each

 other. There was a large amount of grumbling at this, the levies of

 the Westerlands in particular being very averse to being used as

 labourers. But he persisted and eventually up to half of the army was

 used on any one day for construction work, the towers and fortlets

 were of wood and earthwork design, temporary in nature but they

 increased by a factor of ten the amount of land he could keep under

 surveillance, and it only took about a thousand men to staff the

 watchtowers and fortlets.

 The completion of this network made him feel a little more secure,

 and stopped his army getting bored and restless, but even with this

 the rebels still did no show their face. And as Aemond burned ever

 more of the Riverlands Criston Cole became more and more

 nervous, surer every day that Queen Rhaenyra would strike at Kings

 Landing.

 To counterbalance this the news from the Reach was good, Lord

 Ormund Hightower and his armies continued to crush the Blacks in

 engagement after engagement, and still it seemed that Queen

 Rhaenyra was doing nothing, content to sit on Dragonstone and see

 her allies defeated. The Vale was quiet also, its great strength

 seemingly content to sit and wait, like their Queen. And the North

 was supposedly mustering its forces, but apart from the so called

 'Winter Wolves' no forces of the North had been committed to battle.

 All of this screamed at Cole that something was in the offing, that the

 Blacks could not remain so passive, that they would not remain

 passive. Prince Daemon Targaryen was not a passive type of man,

 of that he was certain, and his fleeing of Harenhal before their arrival

 was an ominous sign.

Prince Aemond had declared the absence of Prince Daemon to be a

 victory, but Cole had disagreed with him on this matter. And this had

 been the start of him and the Prince not seeing eye to eye, they had

 clashed again over Cole's insistence that the Prince cover the

 advance of the Westerlander army with Vhagar. Aemond had instead

 wanted to start 'burning the Riverlands until they screamed for him to

 stop' as the whelp put it.

 It had only been Cole's insistence and persistent reminders that the

 Westerlander army was vulnerable to ambush by the Riverlander

 forces had gotten the Prince to reluctantly cover the march of the

 Westerlander forces.

 After the Westerlander forces had arrived safely Aemond had chided

 him before the assembled Lords and Knights as being too cautious

 and reminding Cole that caution had cost the last Hand of the King

 his badge of Office.

 In truth Cole was glad that Aemond took off every day and flew off to

 burn smallfolk to ash in their homes, for it kept the lad and him

 separated. And every day Cole visited the Sept in Harenhal and

 prayed to the Gods that Aegon would recover from his wounds as he

 could not abide by the thoughts of his fool of a younger brother being

 at the helm of the Seven Kingdoms. The youngest of the Princes

 Daeron was of a much calmer and pleasant disposition, he had

 trained the lad himself on occasion, and he was much more suited to

 the mantle of leadership than Aemond, of that Cole was sure. Once

 all this unpleasantness was over, and if Aegon did not recover

 sufficient to rule, mayhaps a tragic accident might befall Prince

 Aemond, and Daeron might assume either the duties of Lord

 Protector of the Realm or even King?

 For had he not already made one King, what was making another in

 truth?