Chapter 5: New Orders
On the afternoon of the second day, the infantry fleet Lord Wyman had led personally up the White Knife finally made port at the southern docks below Winterfell's approach road.
Sails came down one by one along the quay. Manderly soldiers in their scale armor — tridents and shields, the white merman on every surcoat — filed down the gangplanks in good order, their footsteps and equipment ringing across the quiet harbor. Lord Wyman was brought ashore in a covered litter by four attendants, his second son Wendell walking close behind with the expression of a man who had spent the river journey listening to his father complain about the accommodations.
Henry and Willis rode down from the camp outside Sheepshead Village to meet them. The infantry folded into the cavalry column, and what had been a respectable force became something considerably more impressive.
Lord Wyman caught his breath, patted both his sons on the shoulder, gave Henry a nod, and raised his hand. "Form up. We march for Winterfell."
The road north ran through country that reminded Henry why people in the south thought of the North the way they did. Ancient forest pressed in on both sides — massive trees, dark and dense, their canopy so thick overhead that the sky became a rumor, visible only in pale fragments through gaps in the branches. Moss covered everything that held still long enough. The forest was quiet in the way that forests are quiet when they're large enough to swallow sound entirely, broken only by the noise of the column itself and the occasional distant bird.
Halfway through, even Lord Wyman's considerable tolerance for sitting in a litter gave out, and the column halted for an hour. Soldiers drank and ate. The cavalry stripped the saddles from their warhorses and put fodder in front of them. The packhorses were left to graze the roadside scrub.
The following morning, the first thin light was just burning through the mist when Winterfell appeared ahead.
Henry had known, intellectually, that it would be larger than Sheepshead Village. Seeing it was something else. The grey walls rose against the hills behind them, thick and ancient, the watchtowers climbing above the treeline. From every parapet hung the Stark banner — a grey direwolf on a white field — pulling taut in the morning wind. The castle didn't look like something men had built so much as something that had always been there and men had simply organized themselves around.
Ser Rodrik Cassel was waiting outside the gates with a guard detail. Henry recognized him immediately — the white side-whiskers, the chainmail, the longsword at his hip, the particular bearing of a man who has been Master-at-Arms for long enough that it has become his entire personality. He gave the arriving column a practiced look and nodded.
"My lords. Lord Eddard is expecting you inside. The troops will need to make camp outside the walls."
Henry followed Ser Rodrik's gaze to the open ground beyond the castle. Tents were already up — a substantial camp, well-organized. Above it flew a banner Henry recognized without warmth: a flayed man on a pale pink field. The sigil of House Bolton of the Dreadfort.
Willis's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Henry said nothing. He filed the information away. The Boltons had arrived first and would have had Eddard's ear first. That was worth noting.
While the troops began setting up camp, Lord Wyman waved off his attendants when they moved to fetch the litter. He took a slow breath, squared his shoulders as best he could, and walked. It cost him. By the time they'd crossed the outer yard, his forehead was sheened with sweat and his breathing had gone ragged, but he kept moving, one step at a time, through Winterfell's gloomy corridors and courtyards until the doors of the Great Hall opened in front of them.
The hall was warmer than it had any right to be for a northern castle in this season. Henry had read about the hot springs running beneath Winterfell — pipes in the walls carrying warm water through the stone — but feeling it was different from knowing about it. After days in the cold, the warmth of the hall hit like something almost medicinal.
Eddard Stark sat at the head of the room on a plain chair — not quite a throne, not quite not one. He was around thirty, long-faced, dark-haired going a little grey at the temples before his time, with grey eyes that missed nothing and gave away very little. His beard was trimmed close and beginning to show the same grey. He looked older than his age, but not in a diminished way — in the way of a man who has been responsible for a great many things for a long time and carries the weight of that without complaint.
Henry had known what to expect from everything he half-remembered about this world. Seeing Eddard Stark in person, the word that came to mind was solid. Like the castle around him.
Standing near the dais was Roose Bolton. Younger-looking than Eddard, pale-skinned, clean-shaven, dressed in black with silver at his belt. His eyes were the thing you noticed. Light — almost colorless — with the particular quality of eyes that never seem to be reacting to what they're looking at. He watched the Manderly party enter the hall the way a man watches weather: with complete calm and no particular feeling about it.
Lord Wyman moved toward the dais and bent his knee. His weight shifted wrong and he went down hard — a muffled thud that echoed in the stone hall. Willis moved immediately, but Eddard was faster, stepping down from the dais and taking Wyman's arm himself, pulling him back to his feet without ceremony or embarrassment.
"Lord Wyman. Please — no formalities. You've had a long road." His voice was quiet and genuine.
Wyman steadied himself, pressed a hand to his knee, and managed a wry look. "As you can see, my lord, I am in no condition to ride to war. Walking across a room is already something of an adventure."
He paused, collected himself, and his voice settled into something more deliberate.
"But I have brought my sons, Willis and Wendell, to serve in my stead. They are capable men — loyal, steady, and willing. I trust them with my life, which means I trust them with your campaign." He glanced at them both. "I have also brought seven hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry from White Harbor. These are not levied farmers with spears they've never used. These are trained men, properly armed and outfitted."
Eddard looked at Willis and Wendell in turn. Whatever he was measuring, it seemed to satisfy him.
Then Wyman stepped to the side and gestured for Henry to come forward.
"And this is Henry Reyne, rightful Lord of Casterly Rock. He is not your bannerman, Lord Eddard — he owes you nothing by oath. Yet he has brought nearly a hundred sworn cavalry to ride in your name." Wyman let that land before continuing. "You may have heard of his grandfather, Roger Reyne — the Red Lion, the finest warrior the Westerlands ever produced. His father, Ser Jeyro Reyne, rode under the Manderly banner during Robert's Rebellion and died at the Battle of the Bells."
Eddard's gaze moved to Henry. There was something in it that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite admiration — something quieter than either. "Your father was a brave man, Lord Henry. I remember him. House Stark does not forget debts of that kind." A pause. "Thank you for coming."
"The honor is mine, my lord." Henry meant it. Of all the great lords in Westeros, Eddard Stark was perhaps the only one he trusted without reservation.
Once the room had settled and seats had been taken, Eddard laid out the situation plainly, the way he seemed to do everything.
"The ironborn have hit Lannisport hard. Victarion Greyjoy burned the Lannister fleet at anchor — the whole of it. King Robert is moving south to consolidate forces at Lannisport before the Royal Fleet arrives. When it does, we sail for the Iron Islands and end this." He looked across the assembled lords. "The North marches south to join the King's host."
Henry's expression didn't change, but the shift in his posture was visible to anyone watching carefully. "Lannisport is Lannister land. I won't march my men into that family's seat." He said it without heat, but without apology. "That's not something I'm able to do."
Eddard didn't react to the bluntness with anything but patience. "I understand. And I have something else to ask of you, as it happens."
He leaned forward slightly. "The ironborn main fleet hit the Westerlands. But Balon Greyjoy is smarter than he looks — while Victarion was burning ships in the south, smaller raiding parties have been working the western coast of the North. Salt Shore, Flint's Finger, the Bay of Ice settlements. Villages burned, people killed or taken. The lords along that coast are sending ravens asking for help, but they don't have the cavalry to run the raiders down. The ironborn raid fast, get back to their ships, and are gone before anyone can respond."
Henry was already sitting straighter.
"What they need," Eddard said, "is fast-moving cavalry that can reach a burning village before the longships push off. Which is precisely what you have."
Henry stood. "I'll go. Give me the western coast and I'll clear it."
Eddard studied him for a moment, then nodded. "I'll send letters ahead to the lords along the coast. Their men will answer to you for the duration." He paused. "I'm grateful, Lord Henry."
Lord Wyman raised a hand before Henry could respond. "While we're discussing the coast — Lord Eddard, the North has had no navy worth the name since Brandon the Burner torched his father's fleet on the shore. We have two coasts and nothing to defend them with. Give me the coin and the time, and I can build enough ships to change that."
Eddard was quiet for a moment. "Lord Wyman. We finished one war six years ago. We're starting another today. The people of the North cannot bear another round of war taxes on top of everything else." He shook his head. "When we have ten years of peace and a treasury that can support it, we'll talk. Not before."
Wyman accepted this with a slow nod — the nod of a man who has made his point and intends to raise it again at a more favorable moment.
Henry tucked his helmet under his arm and bowed his head slightly to Eddard Stark. "Then I'll take my leave, my lord. The western coast won't clear itself."
He turned and walked out of the Great Hall, back into the cold.
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