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Fire is funny thing, Jason thinks, staring at the burning inferno.
Usually, this time of the year means celebrations. The harvest would start in a few days, a week at most, and the people of Gytham celebrate by eating the last of whatever's leftover from spring and summer.
Not this year though. Jason looks beyond the walls of the keep, and he can see hundreds of fires burning, hundreds of small fires turning the night sky into a conflagration.
He tries to imagine what Bruce would say about it, if he were still alive to see it. Wonders if he'd see the irony.
The king burnt Bruce alive, saying he was a traitor. Now Bruce's lands burn.
Dick didn't order it though. He may be the new Lord Wayne of Gytham, in open rebellion against the king, but he would never order something like this.
No. Dick didn't order. Dick simply told the people what was coming. He presented it to the people, and the people responded.
Gytham has always been the kingdom's breadbasket. Alfred -who wasn't burned with his master, but executed all the same -made Jason study all the facts about Jason's new home. Made him memorize the numbers until Jason could recite them in his sleep.
Gytham produces over eighty percent of the grain in the kingdom. Eighty percent of the food source used throughout the lands.
Now it burns. Just like Bruce.
But Dick didn't order it.
Jason was at that meeting. Well, now that Dick's the Lord, Jason's his heir. It's his job to be at these things, even if he's only thirteen. He has to learn, has to be able to help his brother out as much as he can. In case something happens to Dick, so that Jason can lead.
It'd surprised him, looking around at all the young faces. Logically, he knew of course. Bruce wasn't the only one to burn in the capital. Almost every lord who served under Bruce burned alongside him. The whole of Gytham is ruled by people only barely old enough to shave.
It'd been Roy who'd put it out there. When Dick had told them that the king was coming, that he was going to kill everyone in his path, and take their lands, and their wives… That the king would wage a war, using their own grain supplies to do it… It was Roy who'd shrugged. His feet crossed at the ankle on the table -Alfred would've boxed his ears for that, Jason remembers thinking -hands folded behind his head.
They can't take anything if there's nothing to take. Can't feed an army on an empty stomach.
Roy's adopted father, Lord Oliver, had been one of Bruce's best friends. According to the news that was still spreading out from the capital, Oliver's dying words had been, 'Duty and Honor', the words of House Wayne, right before they'd lit the pyre.
At that meeting, with Roy's casual disrespect of Alfred's dining room table… Dick had stared at Roy, quiet and pensive. And Jason hadn't understood what Roy meant, although looking around -at Donna, at Kaldur, at Connor, at Wallace -showed that the rest of them understood. Their fathers and mothers had burned in the capital too.
"Jason."
Jason turns, looks up at his older brother. The only family he has left now.
"It's time to go," Dick says quietly, offering Jason the rucksack he packed earlier.
Jason takes it slowly, feeling the weight of it in his hands. Or rather, the lack of weight.
There wasn't much left to take. Anything of value was either melted down and forged into weapons, or destroyed. All the Wayne family heirlooms, gone in the heat of a blacksmith's forge.
They kept a few small things. One of Martha Wayne's hairpins. Bruce's journal. Jason has one of Alfred's roses, dried and tucked into Bruce's journal, safely stored at the bottom of his rucksack.
"Are you ready?"
No. He's really not. Jason spent three of the happiest years of his life at this keep. It's the first time he ever really had a family.
But he's Dick's heir now. He has responsibilities. He has duties. He can't cry over things that would be taken anyway.
"I'm ready," he says, swinging himself up onto his horse. And he wants to look away, wants to look out at the conflagration burning the night sky. But he can't. Duty and honor.
So he watches, as Dick gives the order. As Dick turns towards the alchemist, and nods. He watches as the order is signaled up to the fastest runner in Gytham.
He watches as the runner takes his lit torch, and sets it against the wick, before running as fast as he can down the hill away from the keep, towards where Dick, Jason, and the rest of the keep's staff are waiting.
The boy is only halfway down the ramp when all the air is sucked straight from Jason's lungs. There's a flash of light so bright, all Jason can see is pure white for a few seconds.
When his eyes start working right again… Half the keep is rubble. Half of it is still burning.
None of it will be left by morning.
Dick swings himself up onto his horse, his eyes never leaving the keep. He stares at it for a few minutes, before he wheels his horse around, towards the towns and villages.
Or rather… where the towns and villages used to be.
All of Gytham burns tonight. All the wheat that can't be carried, all the goods that can't be carted, all the animals that can't be herded. Anything that can't make the trip to Atlantis, the most heavily defended keep in Gytham, is being destroyed tonight.
Eighty percent of the kingdom's grain. Gone in a single night.
Not on Dick's orders.
The people packing up everything they own, and trudging fifty miles over rough terrain to Atlantis.
Not on Dick's orders.
The people of Gytham loved Bruce. And Bruce burned.
Now? The people will make sure everything else will burn too. Gytham today. The capital next. The king after that.
A war is coming. And Jason isn't entirely sold on the idea of burning their food supply, of putting their people at risk of starvation. He knows hunger, knows how the cold bite of it sets in.
But the people made their choice. Dick didn't order them. He told them what the king did to Bruce. He told them what the king would do to them. He told them what was coming.
Dick, Jason, and their party of advisors and trusted servants make their way down the dirt path into the village. The heat from the fields burning on either side of them flashes on Dick's face, highlighting the hard set to his jaw.
The heat roiling off the fields, and into Jason's face makes him think of Bruce. Think of the only adult in the world who ever gave a damn about Jason. Thinks about how Bruce taught him to read, taught him to write. About how Bruce taught him to fight, to defend himself. How Bruce taught him right from wrong, about duty and honor.
Thinks about Bruce burning.
Jason knows the pain of starving. And he wouldn't wish it on anyone. But they chose.
And if Jason had a choice… He thinks he'd starve right along with them, if it made the king suffer.