The Wolf's Axe
Robb Stark, heir to Winterfell and future Warden of the North, stares down his fellow Lord with his Tully blue eyes. His bannermen stand around him in an imposing circle within the war tent. A camp table with a map of Westeros is set at the center of the tent and is devoid of the pieces that will surely decorate it once the army begins its true march. For now, the future Lord of Winterfell judges Lord Brandon Stel. It is nothing less than he expected from the son of the most honorable man in Westeros. While many of the Lords present celebrate Brandon's move to blunt House Frey's ambition Robb seems incapable of realizing that what Brandon did was the best possible solution.
"I fail to see why you are so...disturbed my Lord," Brandon comments flatly.
"You were called to march for Riverrun not the Twins. I doubt Lord Tully would appreciate his banner men drawing swords on one another when the Lannisters burn his lands to ash."
"My Lord if you think that Lord Frey had any intention on marching to aid his Liege Lord then you are a fool. I'm sure you noticed that he is still mustering his house's forces: they were all in their keeps. If I hadn't been here then you would have had to negotiate for crossing when that weasel's men should have already been marching for Riverrun, and you would no doubt have been extorted for a marriage." Robb stiffens at that last point. No doubt Walder would have... insinuated his desires for the price of crossing. A marriage between the most powerful house of the largest kingdom and another who is not even Lord Paramount? Madness.
"The fact remains that you have attacked—"
"I did no such thing. I reminded a fellow Lord of the oaths he swore to his Liege. If you knew anything of Lord Walder Frey you would know that he serves one man in all the world: himself."
"Lord Frey is a loyal bannerman to my father and his family has held the crossing for six hundred years," Lady Catelyn chides. Brandon turns his dark eyes on the Lady of Winterfell who gifted her son with so many of his features.
"Lord Walder is a self serving old man who holds grudges like a Lannister hordes gold my Lady, and your father coining him "the Late Walder Frey" is probably his most valued grudge. He wouldn't have marched of anything less than the sight of your father on his knees begging for the Frey banners," Lord Brandon retorts savagely. He pushes back from the table and openly glares at Robb.
"Watch your tone boy," a gargantuan man, Brandon belatedly recognizes him from his vision, rumbles threateningly laying a hand on the pommel of his blade.
"I'll not apologize for speaking truth that I know that Lord Tully would support," he spits while staring daggers at Lady Catelyn. It's her actions that brought the Lions to the Riverlands. What madness possessed her to arrest the son of the most prideful and powerful man in Westeros?
'A grieving mother with more emotion than sense,' he answers himself. The tension in the tent is shattered as a pair of Northmen muscle a young boy through the tent flap.
"Pardon my Lords, but we've captured a Lannister scout," one reports as Robb rises from his chair and walks around the table. Theon Greyjoy, the smirking ward of the Starks, flips the map over before the spy can see the lack of any plans to which the Greatjon Umber chuckles darkly.
"Don't worry lad, he won't be leaving this tent with his head."
"Where did you find him?"
"In the brush above the encampment. He looked to be counting.
'More of a boy than I am,' Brandon thinks to himself. He smirks when Robb asks a simple question of the spy.
"How high did you get?" The scout looks at the ground then up at the imposing form of the Greatjon.
"Twenty thousand, maybe more."
"You don't have to do this yourself, your father would understand!" a portly knight with an impressive, or unfortunate, white beard counsels from the rear of the Northmen congregation. Robb whirls around to interrupt the older man.
"My father understands mercy when there is room for it. And he understands honor. And courage," Robb turns back to the scout. Brandon watches carefully. He can hear the numbers and thoughts running around in Robb's head. Many times throughout history the poets and bards forget the small moments that lead to the great battles and legendary campaigns. He will not miss a single one.
"Let him go." Every person present stiffens in shock. Brandon merely grins savagely and rests a hand on his axe. Now it begins: an opening gambit.
"Robb!" Catelyn exclaims as she erupts from her chair, shock draining her blood from her face. Robb stares at his mother with the icy blue orbs she gave him and eventually she subsides. He leans in towards the scout and mutters something quietly, so quietly that no one but the Lannister man can hear him speak. A jerk of his chin dismisses the guards and the scout. The moment the flap falls back into place the Greatjon storms forward in a fury and growls deep in his chest.
"Are you touched boy? Letting him go?" Robb is unphased.
"Call me boy again. Go on." His voice is flat and cold as the ice of his homeland. The imposing figure of the Greatjon towers over the Stark. Lord Umber's eyes flick around the tent looking for support and finding only stoney masks or Lord Stel's smirk. He makes to leave the tent with a growl only for a voice to stay his hand.
"You would not wait for your Lord's plan to be explained Lord Umber?" The giant of a man pauses and turns and cocks an eyebrow.
"Plan?"
Lord Bolton remains silent, a quiet sentinel in the corner of the tent, as the young Stark lays out his plan to fool the mighty Lannisters. His cold grey eyes watch the young man for weakness as a hawk hunts rabbits on the plain. The history of his family is written in the blood of Starks, Umbers, Glovers, Karstarks, and all the rest. One day the Flayed Man will fly above all others where it belongs but for now he bows to the Direwolf. He can admit the pup has a sharp mind when it comes to warfare as evident with his tricking of the Lannister scout to feed Tywin misinformation while still giving it a kernel of truth. Unbidden his eyes drift to one of the few Southerners in the tent this, Brandon Stel of the Stonekeep.
His father was a strong but unassuming man if his memory of the Trident holds true. The new Lord Stel carries his father's axe on his belt, the haft is the unmistakable white shot through with red of Weirwood while the head is an unassuming steel. An ancestral weapon but not one as valuable or famed as the Valyrian steel some houses possess. The boy's mind seems to be as sharp as his axe; he contributes little but it is always sound advice. His force is far from the strongest but it appears as though he has competent men in charge and, most importantly, he listens to them.
The only major advice Robb Stark has heeded was placing Lord Bolton in command of the force moving to distract Tywin's force instead of the Greatjon. And that came from his mother.
"My Lord Stark, I would request to join my men with the distraction force," Lord Stel requests as the meeting falls silent. The boy, Robb, peers into Stel's eyes for a moment before nodding. A good move: almost a thousand extra foot can make all the difference in keeping a fighting retreat coherent, and the hundred or so lances under Lord Stel's banner would do little good in the pup's plan for dealing with the Kingslayer. Roose can use these extra men...and test out this young Lord's mettle for himself. All a knife needs to kill a knight is the smallest chink in his armor and Boltons pride themselves on being able to find the weak spot in any armor. This new player on the board could make all the difference if he is levered in the correct path.
The Leech Lord rest a hand on the pommel of his sword and watches as the other Lords jostle for positions of importance in the coming battles. Always quiet, always watching, always waiting. With a slight start he realizes that a pair of dark eyes are boring into him from across the candlelit table. Brandon stares hard at the Leech Lord, unflinching in the face of his cold almost dead eyes, and rest his own hand on his axe. The message loud and clear.
You are watched.
The corner of the Leech Lord's mouth twitches in amusement.
The steady tramp of thousands of feet and beating drums sounds along the road before and behind him. The Riverlands were the sight of the climactic battle of King Robert's Rebellion and once more it plays host to massed armies of men bleeding each other dry for a few petty differences. How war's sweet siren song calls to man's hearts that they should seek it so easily. Lord Brandon huffs and takes in the cut of his men. They march tall and strong at the head of the column flying his house banners proudly for all to see. On the surface it is a great honor for the small house to march in the van of Lord Bolton's command, after all the very next banner to be seen is the flayed man of the Dreadfort. But in truth it is a political play: a brazen young man with a small, not insignificant, force at his back appears and begins making brazen and effective moves and is placed at the head of an army. The first force to make contact and the last to break it if it comes to a retreat thus suffering the most casualties.
If even half of his force survives the coming action it will be a miracle. In a twisted way he can understand it as he would likely make some of the same moves as Lord Roose but to be on the receiving end of them...is inconvenient. Still Ser Ronley remains confident of their success and he has more experience in the brutal attrition of war than he. The horse swaying beneath him tosses his head for a moment slapping the young Lord with his mane.
"Yes you honery creature you'll geat your damn apples when we stop," he scowls in mock anger and pats the black courser's neck affectionately. The hardy steed was bred by the Ryswells of the Rills, a famed family of horse breeders in the North, and was immediately identified by one of the knights in the small contingent sent by that house. Apparently House Ryswell dislike of Eddard Stark extends to holding to their oaths as well as never sending a good word by raven. If the rumors are to be believed. And rumors have a funny way of having a small grain of truth imbedded in them somewhere. A pounding of hooves announces the arrival of his nominal leader and a quartet of his stone faced guards in their ridged helmets and black armor.
"I understand this is your first taste of war Lord Stel," Roose says by way of a greeting. His cold grey eyes watch for the slightest sign of weakness, something that the younger Lord is weary of even if Robb Stark is not.
"It is Lord Bolton. I have drilled, and drilled, and drilled but never have I led a host. It makes one wonder why you would let one such as I lead the vanguard?" Brandon replies ending with a comment inflected as a question. Bolton merely flashes a small smirk and stares ahead down the road.
"I have not yet informed the other Lords of my plans but...I do not plan to challenge Lord Tywin in the open. It is suicide with as few heavy horse as we have and the Lannister infantry will crush ours under their combined weight. I plan to march through the night on the morrow and catch the Lannisters by surprise. If all goes well we might be able to destroy a part of their army before they can properly form to greet us."
"Do we know exactly where they are?"
"No, just that they are moving towards the Green Fork to cross and support Ser Jaime's army's siege of Riverrun from the east." The younger Lord frowns and stares off into the distance.
"Our scout riders cannot venture any further from the bulk of our army without giving away our own position, we cannot afford to not engage Tywin's force… what if we don't engage the Lions. What if we lead them on a merry chase to the east and towards the Mountains of the Vale. We can lay a small ambush when he begins his march. Foil their order and then retreat back towards King Robb and the rest of the army."
"...if we had more heavy horse I would back this plan. However we haven't the numbers for such an engagement. If a forced march at night can catch the Lions then our mission will be even more successful than our young Lord expected. If not then we shall maintain this army as best we can." The quiet Lord's hesitation encourages Brandon, confirming that his idea wasn't a bad one just not an option available to the Northmen with their forces. Unfortunate.
"If wishes were horses…" he mutters to himself.
"Indeed."
The morning sun races the Northmen along the horizon as they double time along the Kings road. Grim faced and dogged they do not make a sound and neither do the Rivermen among them. Lord Brandon grimaces as he takes in his men and the exhaustion dragging at their limbs from the early morning start. The small amount of sleep his men managed to snatch will come back to bite them later he is sure. A thousand men depend on him to keep them together and alive in the coming madness. The weight of their expectations is heavy on his shoulders and ever more does he curse the Lord of the Dreadfort for putting his men in the van.
The sun is shining cheerily above the tops of the trees as the Northmen erupt from the treeline opposite the Lannister encampment. A scowl twists Brandon's lips at the sight of the Lannister force already forming ranks, all crimson and gold. Lions adorn their banners, and are emblazoned across their shields announcing to all the world their loyalty. Twenty thousand of them. The Northmen swiftly form ranks of their own with what little cavalry they possess after Robb Stark stripped them for his surprise maneuver massing on their right flank.
Brandon shouts orders of his own forming his men into a simple formation of infantry to the front in a shield wall and the archers behind them. His eyes cast across the fields at the portion of the Lannister army opposing him. He recognizes most of the banners as the gold lion on crimson of Lannister...but there are a few of a different kind that sends a chill down his spine. Three hounds on a field of yellow. The sigil of the Cleganes and, perhaps more infamously, the Mountain that Rides. And the Mountain himself is seated on a massive black charger at the center of his formation looking right at Brandon.
IMPORTANT! I am now in Guam onboard the USS Emory S. Land and that means that I will have a significantly different schedule from now on. I work for a living and wifi isn't always available on this tiny, humid, spit of land in the middle of the Pacific. Updates are in all likelihood going to be slower but hopefully I can continue to upload at all. Thank you for your understanding.