The Army of the North considers itself to have come of age during the Revolution, when its regimental system became wholly professionalized, but it first cut its teeth in the Rebellion of the Lords Declarant. As the most professional force at the disposal of the Lords Declarant, even if today's soldiers would consider it more of a militia than anything, it rapidly became the shock army of the Rebellion, and this reputation was cemented at Wolf Glade . . .
This is how you fight when you are Eddard Stark.
You don't like fighting. At least not for its own sake, like Robert and Brandon. You're good at it, to be sure; you swung your first practice sword at the age of six and you've had the best training available to two of the most powerful lords in Westeros. But for all your skill, you can't bring yourself to love it.
That isn't important though. Rhaegar Targaryen stole your sister and it is only by the grace of the Gods and the skill of Sergeant Barnes that she was returned safely. And Aerys the Mad has threatened to burn your family out of the world root and branch and leave Winterfell as a pile of rubble. Either of these on their own would be sufficient cause for war. Taken together, you know you have no choice but to either destroy House Targaryen or at least render it no threat to your family.
Which is why you are here, in the center of the Winterfell Regiment, only a step behind the front rank. Men fight better when they are led from the front, instead of herded from the rear, but at the same time your father has cautioned you against taking unnecessary risks. "It may be that you will need to become more than I originally intended you to be, if Brandon carries on as he has," he had said, looking old for the first time in your memory. That same day he gave you your first lesson in what he calls the game of thrones.
You wish he hadn't. Being a simple younger son, with a simple future ahead of him as lord of a small holdfast and strong right arm to an elder brother who was raised to be a great lord, was so much simpler. But that, it seems, is not the future that the Gods have in mind for you.
If it had been, you would not have met Ashara Dayne.
You thrust away the memory of lissome grace and laughing violet eyes; the regiment is approaching the edge of the trees. You have been up since midnight, following one of Sergeant Barnes' merry band of cutthroats towards a certain glade that you are told contains the majority of the Reachmen's main body. On the face of it, attacking almost thirty thousand men with just under fifteen thousand foot and three thousand horse seems suicidal, but you have five thousand men of the Riverlands with you, and by great good fortune you have arrived at the edge of the glade just as the sky is turning from gray to orange with twilight. The Reachmen are only starting to wake up and rub the sleep out of their eyes; they should be easy meat for your men. Especially since there are no sentries to cry alarm; Sergeant Barnes must have attended to that.
You turn to the sergeant-major to give the order to deploy for battle only to find that it's already been done, the spearmen shaking out from column of march to line of battle with the swordsmen and axe-fighters close behind. Your place is by the banner party, two men bearing the regiment's banners, three feet by four feet of white linen with the grey direwolf of House Stark, guarded by a quartet of hard-eyed color sergeants with greatswords. You yourself have your trusty bastard sword that was a gift from Lord Arryn for your last nameday, thirty-seven inches of castle-forged steel with a plain cross hilt and a scent-stopper pommel. You shift your shoulders one last time to make sure your armor's seated right and draw the blade as you look down the line in either direction at the other regiments finishing forming up.
You mutter a quick prayer to the Old Gods for strength and skill and courage and nod to the trumpeter next to you. Time to go, before the Reachmen have time to fully wake up. The trumpeter raises his oxhorn trumpet to his lips and gives voice to a long, two-step rising blast and the whole line moves forward in ragged unison. As the advance clears the trees and builds up to a full-blown charge you raise your sword and drown out fear with a roar of "Winterfell!" which is answered by a thousand throats and provokes a general bellow of "Stark and the North!" as the charge strikes home.
If Wolf Glade was the first true test of the Army of the North, it boded well for the future. By ten a.m. the main body of the Royal Army of the Reach was put to flight and only a self-sacrificial charge by Lord Alester Florent and his household knights that rocked the Northern cavalry back on their heels prevented the retreat from becoming a rout. Florent's Death Ride, as it was later named, bought Mace Tyrell enough time to establish a defensive line near the village of Twinoak, so named for the double-trunked oak tree that grew in the village square. This previously almost unknown village would become legendary the next day.
- Crucible: The Reforging of Westeros from the Lords Declarant to the Revolution by Jon Tarly, published 1015 A.C.