Four days passed in a blur of scrambling, silver, and sweat. Levi had managed, by some miracle of charm, swampberries, and sheer financial cheating, to reach the grand total of one hundred fifty silver stags. He had only shown Harwin the hundred he promised. The rest he kept hidden, tucked deep inside his shirt, tied in an old rag—his first self-made fortune, born of endless swampberries and an increasingly sharp sense of which markets looked desperate enough to pay.
After Harwin confirmed the coin was real—biting into the silver like some caricature of a miserly merchant—things moved quickly. He and Levi scoured White Harbor's crowded streets, warehouses, and taverns, spending the next few days bargaining for food, haggling for strong men, and desperately searching for wagons that hadn't already been snapped up.
Because it wasn't just them.
Rumors moved faster than coin. Other merchants—some already from the North, others from across the Reach or the Vale—had caught wind of the food shortage. The tale twisted with every telling. Some claimed wolves in the woods had eaten the fields. Others swore that southern lords had bought every last grain in Oldtown. One man swore he saw a maester crying in the market square because even the Citadel couldn't secure flour shipments.
Whatever the truth, the result was the same: everyone was buying.
Wagons, mules, oxen, men, salted meats, dried fish, hardtack, even spoiled apples—all snapped up like winter had already arrived. Levi, used to lazy days in Bogwater and half-baked schemes involving swampberries and sarcasm, was suddenly thrown into a feverish race against time.
"I thought merchants were supposed to sit around counting coins," he muttered while checking the axle of a battered cart that had clearly seen better centuries.
Harwin, beside him, grunted. "Only if they have men like us doing the heavy work."
They finally secured twenty wagons, though many of them creaked like dying trees. The food was mostly grains, dried roots, lizard meat (Levi scowled at the memory), cheese, and a few barrels of beer or ale—none of it fancy, but all of it vital. What people wanted wasn't flavor. It was survival.
And they found men. Not knights. Not even trained guards. Just men.
Some were former sellswords, others fishers from the harbor with strong arms and empty stomachs. Most came with their own weapons: chipped swords, hand-me-down spears, or bows strung with fraying gut. A few owned proper gear. Levi had noticed one man in full steel breastplate, polished enough to reflect the torchlight. Another carried a halberd taller than Levi himself.
Levi stared at them wistfully. "One day... one day, I'll own a fine suit of steel. And a helm to match. And maybe even my own forge at Moat Cailin. Tears will fall from my eyes the moment I sell my first blade."
Harwin overheard him and raised a brow. "Better not cry near the forge. Steel don't like tears."
The nearby guardsmen laughed, a few slapping their thighs.
Levi didn't miss a beat. "Better tears than blood. Besides, I've already shed my pride selling berries to grandmothers and lizard meat to drunkards. Honor's cheap. Steel isn't."
"Fair," one man chuckled. "You've got the tongue of a merchant and the appetite of a beggar."
"More like the curse of a swamp-witch," Levi added with a mock sigh. "If I so much as sniff something nice, it turns into something cursed. Swampberries, lizard meat, and cheese that tastes like goat regrets. May the gods pity my next meal."
But it wasn't all jokes.
Securing men meant paying them—sometimes in advance. And some demanded more if they were to ride far north. Not just White Harbor to Mole's Town or Widow's Watch. No, Harwin's ambition—and now Levi's dream—lay further still.
Winterfell.
The fortress of the Starks. Home of ancient kings. Surrounded by hungry holdfasts, half-starved villages, and stubborn northern clans. If they could make it that far, and if winter still held its breath, they'd make a fortune. Maybe enough to triple their silver. Maybe more.
But they had to leave soon.
Every moment wasted was another wagon from another merchant already halfway up the Kingsroad. And food, once plentiful, was now being taxed even within White Harbor.
The morning they set to leave, Levi stood atop one of the rear wagons, looking over the caravan of twenty carts. Some were driven by hired hands, others by Harwin's own people. The guards marched beside or rode atop mules. Armor clanked. Wheels groaned.
He saw the steel again—the gleam of it—and let out a small, theatrical sigh.
"Soon," he whispered, "your shiny buttplates shall be mine."
Harwin, nearby, overheard and barked a laugh. "If we live that long."
Levi turned. "If I die, bury me with some swampberries and a single silver stag. So the gods know what kind of hell I've lived through."
Even more laughter.
But beneath the banter, Levi felt a strange weight in his chest. He wasn't just walking back to Bogwater with sacks of grain. He wasn't hiding behind Mae's hut or wondering whether his system could one day spawn a golden dragon.
He was leaving. With men. With wagons. With coin.
With purpose.
And in the farthest corners of his heart, a seed had taken root. Not of ambition—Levi was far too lazy for that. But of defiance.
If he had to cheat his way to glory, so be it.
But one day, he swore silently, he would rebuild Moat Cailin.
With food, with steel, and—gods forgive him—with swampberries if that's what it took.