Chapter 7
The Blades are Drawn
Waymar Royce 4
From the outside, Castle Black didn't leave up to the reputation preachers gave him in the septs of Runestone, Gulltown and the rest of the Vale.
According to the rumours he had heard in various tournaments, the headquarters of the Night's Watch was a place dozens of mad sorcerers had haphazardly modified by erecting damned towers ignoring the customs of proper architecture and the walls were filled with the souls of fallen warriors and monsters.
Reality was quite disappointing. Castle Black was a neat block of black stone with one central tower and four smaller barracks, surrounded by a black curtain wall. The former included the quarters of the Lord Commander, the Great Library of the Night's Watch, the maesters rooms and the opening to several tunnels the black brothers used to stock food, supplies and knowledge. The latter were for the warriors of the Night's Watch.
Most of the stones had strange runes embedded in them. Waymar could trustfully say however he didn't see the tormented souls screaming from the inside or the outside. There were sometimes sparkles of colours or magic flickers, but really nothing impressive. Runestone had a sort of similar design, except the sorcery and the vulnerability from the South. The Stark and the rest of the Northern Houses wanted to prevent rebellions and other potential revolts before they happened.
The third son of Lord Royce would love to say everything the septons and septas taught in their morning prayers was wrong but he could not. The monsters were very real at the Wall...and not all were on the other side.
"Get moving Waymar!" barked Asher, one of the elderly black brothers who was practically the definition of 'demon' every good Southerner had of the Northern heretics. "The beastmen are not going for you to be ready!"
Asher was tall and red skinned. His eyes were yellow and had a shape similar to a snake and his helmet had to be modified several years ago for the lone horn on the left of his head. No, Waymar had not drunk an entire barrel of ale last night. The very skin of the Barrowton-born Northerner had turned red and with scales after two decades of service on the Wall.
He was among the lucky ones.
Lacing all the protections of his new armour by himself was a long and awkward process by himself. Not to mention he could never stop a feeling of unease in his throat. The black metal had hundreds of red runes to protect him from the worst emanations of the winds of magic when he was outside, but this was not an absolute protection. There were many warriors who climbed the greatest fortification built by men on the morning and in the evening descended only to find themselves sealed in their armours for the rest of their lives.
When he had verified the plate and the rest of his equipment was in place, he ran as fast as he could to the enormous lifts at the base of the Wall, joining Bran the Red, Wulfer, Jor, Edur and the rest of his group. Like him, they wore red runes on their armour, sign their vows had been sworn to Khorne, the Northern God of War, Blood, Battles, Honour, Carnage, Skulls and a thousand other domains where violence and the shedding of blood was involved.
There were four lifts to get to the top of the Wall at Castle Black. Eastwatch-by-the-Sea had only three in comparison. Unlike many things in use by the Northerners, the cables, the cages and the mechanisms were purely the work of mortal hands. They were protection runes everywhere of course, but the cages they used would have worked the same way at the Eyrie or Casterly Rock.
"The rangers think a small herd of three thousand is coming our way!" screamed Asher before they reached the top of the Wall. "Young brutes are testing our defences and the Lord Commander wants to see what you have in the arms and the guts!"
Waymar shivered once again at the mention of Lord Jeor Mormont. When he had sailed on the Black Ships, Waymar had entertained dreams to convince the black brothers to vote him once the Old Bear died or became a demon – though the Northerners called it 'Ascending'. One look at the man and his arms able to strangle a great boar without relenting was enough to remind him he was an inexperienced fighter in a sea of monster-warriors.
And then they were on top of the Known World. Despite it being the twelfth time he was able to watch the Haunted Forest and the Frostfangs in the distance, this was still something filling him with awe.
"Those of you who know how to wield a bow take one and prepare the fire arrows! The rest, prepare the barrels, the rocks and the substances!"
There was no call for any sorcerers: while Khorne accepted some Blood Mages as His Champions, Waymar was told by the grizzling stewards that the path killed nine out of ten and it was best to begin the training the moment you were able to walk if you wanted to avoid an implosion of your skull or spawnhood.
A score of breaths later, he had a longbow - which looked like it had been carved in the bone of some dangerous animal - in his hands and a small black pot in front of him was in flames. The snow between the forest and the Wall was empty, but given the screams and the brays in the distance, battle was imminent. Far on his right, there was a torrent of blue-green sparks, undoubtedly sorcerers preparing more of their ignoble sorceries.
"Take your time for each volley!" commanded Asher in his back. "These arrows will kill a beastman for sure, but we have not mountains of them!"
Concentrate himself was far harder than usual. The shouts, orders, counter-orders and insults were an ungodly din. There were scores of black brothers everywhere on the defences, which could have been bad enough, but many wildling warriors – or as they preferred to called, Free Folk, were running in every direction.
As far as Waymar could tell, these savages were Chaos-worshipping warriors like the Northerners, except they constantly tried to settle again Beyond-the-Wall and chase the beastmen which had forced to depart their hunting grounds centuries ago. Thousands lived in the Gift, or so the stewards and builders affirmed, but they never truly bent the knee to Winterfell and the direwolf banner of the Starks. Oh, and their armours sucked a lot. The Northern smiths like their counterparts of the Southern Seven Kingdoms had long mastered the art of armour plate. The wildlings were in leather or bone contraptions, and those who had better weapons, shields and the like were the chieftains or warriors who had impressed the black brothers.
Finally, the great horns of Castle Black sounded twice.
"THEY ARE COMING!"
The imprecation was not that necessary as hundreds of small moving points emerged from the Haunted Forest below his watch-post. And damn, the beasts were fast. Waymar was not going to say his brothers would have the time to play ten card games while he crossed fully armoured the snow field, but it was a good ride.
Their enemies were far faster than any infantry should be...but then there was no organisation or discipline in this mass. These were intelligent, human-eating beasts and hybrid of corrupted wildlings that the darkest powers of Chaos had decided to unleash on the world.
Killing them was the right thing to do. Valeman Waymar was by right of birth, but he could safely say no one in his right mind wanted to live with a horde like this in the next valley.
"ARCHERS! SHOOT YOUR ARROWS NOW!"
Waymar obeyed with care and precision, but he could not really miss. The monsters braying and rushing to assault the Wall were literally running to take this deadly rain right in the eye or the muzzle. Some were using shields but the majority had just weapons in their paws and as a result they died.
Rapidly, the archers of the Night's Watch shot three neat volleys and hundreds of beastmen fell.
"SORCERERS! SCORPIONS AND SIEGE ENGINES!"
The damage Waymar and the other archers was overshadowed suddenly by a sort of green-dark cloud which engulfed the enemy horde. When it disappeared after a dozen breaths, the beastmen were fighting each other.
"A sort of massive aggressiveness-inducing spell," told Asher, next to him with a torch in his hand to revive the weakening flames. " A long time they hadn't used this one while I was on duty. In general they prefer the big blasts or the poisons..."
One thing was sure, the magical attack and the bolts of the scorpions had stopped this attack cold. It was entirely possible they even had killed the beast-leader because several imposing creatures were fighting each other surrounded by others in a neat circle like some fist-fighter did during a day's celebration in a village.
They didn't stop shooting arrows of course. And the numbers of enemies decreased and decreased. Each of Waymar's arrows found their mark...he thought, although they would have to wait the corpse-dismemberment to know for sure. If so, this was sixteen kills, no seventeen and...
"They are breaking..." the whisper was repeated and suddenly became shouts in dozens of voices as what had been a horde completely broke in tiny war bands before running desperately for the dark shadows of the Haunted Forest.
Waymar approached cautiously the edge of the great fortification and saw less than two dozens beastmen had managed to climb a few feet above the ground before they were pulverised by sorcery or the old but terribly efficient boulders.
"It was a massacre, not a battle," he told Asher.
"Most attacks on the Wall are usually like this," the red-skinned veteran retorted with a roll of his heavily armed shoulders. "But when the rangers go Beyond, it's usually the reverse. The beastmen have nearly unlimited numbers; we don't. With the Wall, we can hold at two hundred against one. Without it, we can fight six or seven against one on open terrain and plenty of warning."
And since he was anything but a sorcerer or someone with steward-skills, it was likely he was going to join the rangers. The separation in the Night's Watch was only made after one year of service, giving the opportunity to the recruits to prove their worth in battle and for their elders to judge the willingness behind their vows.
"Ah, one of the fresh meat has proved his idiocy," declared a blue-eyed warrior with runes revealing his allegiance to Nurgle.
And indeed several feet away, next to one of the scorpions, a middle-aged man Waymar remembered coming with travelling from Eastwatch to Castle Black was helmet-less...and the result was horrible to see.
A normal human has two eyes at birth and North or South, people love keeping it that way. The Crownlander had now at least ten and this wasn't the most disturbing thing which had grown on his face. On his mouth there were now weird things that should be kept among the insects. His hairs had transformed into tentacles of a purple colour. His tongue was several times its original length. Worse, by the way the armour was bulging, there was no way the changes were limited to his face.
"He's doomed, isn't he?" Waymar asked rhetorically Asher. "Why don't they kill him?"
"Certain spawns can be useful for training and pit duels..." was the disgusting answer.
The former criminal who had been sent to the Black Ships tried to bit the arms of the black brothers holding him but the moment he began to struggle, a sort of bright magical bolt struck him right where his forehead had been – Waymar wasn't ready to describe what had replaced it. The transforming recruit collapsed and hit the ground, unconscious.
Turning his head to see who was responsible for this act, Waymar had to repress a gasp. Walking towards her target was clearly a woman in black armour, though in her case the runes were not the usual red, blue, green or purple, but a shining silver. But this was not the kind of plate armour every black brother was given once they score the vows or even the big prized ameliorations of the commanders. No, this armour was skintight and left very little to the imagination of the woman's curves hidden under it. In clear, the armour looked like it had been forged to the degree of precision of a ball dress...except it should be ruinous, even with sorcery, right?
But the most worrying thing was the aura of power surrounding the woman. Where most runes shone in a pale light, the silver runes were radiance itself and there was an unnatural power surrounding the moves of the female sorceress.
"Who is she?" He whispered to the older black brother.
"Lower your tone, your eyes and stay far away from her," he received in return. "She is the Silver Archer, Undivided Champion and ward of the Lord Commander. The fresh Southerners like you, she kill ten before noon when she's in the mood."
Several sorcerers bound the mutating brother in unnatural chains and this time the scream out of his lips was one of unfeigned agony.
"What is her name?"
"Ygritte...but don't try to engage a conversation unless you have an excellent reason or you will envy the eunuchs before the next dawn..."
Lord Howland Reed 1
For those who were born in the swamps of the Neck, the region known as the Southern March was not home. Oh, there were swamps, a few dangerous animals and insects. But the ground was largely solid. With some effort, a skilled rider could ride a horse from the western to the eastern coast without walking and helping his four-legged companion cross the various natural obstacles.
The problem was not the absence of the great and wrathful predators the Neck could unleash on unsuspecting visitors however. No, the reason the crannogmen and their allies did not like this March was the presence nearby of the Southron and their Seven-damned banners. The humid plain he was currently observing was close to the Small Wall and the Riverlands fortresses like Sentinel's Stand, blocking with their high towers and large walls the Kingsroad.
These lands had belonged to House Reed and all crannogmen once upon a time. But now only the sagas and the legends transmitted generation after generation allowed the Northerners to remember. After the failures of the damned Crusaders to take Moat Cailin, this was where the Andals had stopped their conquests before dividing the lands and rivers they had joyously painted in blood and First Men's corpses.
As such, the surviving crannogmen and the Starks of Winterfell had enthusiastically explained with axes, magic and sword why respecting the frontier and the North was a good idea. The idiotic Southerners who thought otherwise didn't come back. The Neck was the domain of Grandfather Nurgle and a non-believer did not last long in the waters and the tiny islands in the middle of the swamps. Between the ferocious predators and the plagues, no self-proclaimed adventurer had survived more than eleven days under Howland Reed's rule when he commanded the Host of the Reaper.
But change was in the air and his daughter had taken the mantle from him. It appeared he had been an excellent master in the ways of hunting, patience and scythe-fighting. Too good, had whispered his beloved wife before he left at the head of his score of skirmishers. Bah, he was getting older and ascension had evaded him for decades. His soul was going to join the Garden in time. His back ached, his breath grew ragged at every intensive long progression and his hairs were more grey and white than green or brown. He knew it and he embraced it. As a follower of the Lord of Life and Death, you learned every being was a part of the great cycle. He was no different than the scouts waiting with him neck-deep in the small pond they had themselves created a day ago.
"I see two scores of infantry," Howland whispered to the man of Greywater Watch on his right. He could have screamed, the curses and the loud imprecations of their targets created a din so loud Howland was surprised the dead were not waking up to tell them to stop.
"They have left three more men as a rear-guard," added his second. "One of them has used the wrong leaves for his meal. He will be dead before sunset."
Ah, the eyes of youth. Sometimes Howland was telling himself it would be nice to sacrifice a couple hundred of ignorant Riverlander to regain the senses of his twenty name days. Next thought unavoidably was that this war may very well give him the chance to do exactly that.
"Good," he affirmed. "One dead Southerner is a good Southron for our purposes."
The old Master of Greywater Watch seized his great scythe Soul-Reaper and gave a long and silent signal with his hands.
Not for the men and the women of his group the loud battle-cries of the Khornate berserkers and Slaanesh thrill-seekers. To be fair, there were also followers of Nurgle who delighted in chanting and announcing the fate awaiting those who dares oppose the plans of the Lord of Nature and Decay. But crannogmen had other strategies when they drew their blades outside of the great battlefields.
One by one, the men and the women of the Neck disappeared in the shadows and the waters of the Marches. A particularly vigilant animal or bird could have given the alert.
The clumsy and vocal Southrons advancing first in what was for them an unfamiliar terrain did not. They had a pretty appearance, these men. They were clad in mail and steel. Each wielded a large weapon. The first to come had one-handed swords, while the heart of the formation was equipped with halberds and one or two lone warriors had chosen a large warhammer or a double axe. Over their heads flew the mighty banner of House Sentinel, the wall and the knight shining in holy light.
Two scores of men in patrol far from their citadel, certainly sent by their Lord in the hope they discovered something important about the preparations of the Black Crusade and the sorcery darkening the clouds.
Too bad for the old Lord Sentinel, he was playing against sorcerers. Moat Cailin and Greywater Watch had seen him like they were above his shoulders giving his subordinates the commands to harass and bleed enemies coming from the Neck.
When the first swamp arrow pierced the flesh, it was not something he could call a battle.
The men of the tranquil Riverlands screamed and panicked, tried to give succour to the man who had just received a projectile in the eye and raised their weapons in defiance. They just provided nicer and easier targets for his archers. Leg, arm, head, throat...it didn't matter for his veterans. With arrows prepared with some of the deadliest and most painful venoms the Neck could provide, any contact with human's blood was the end of their lives on this blessed soil.
The ambush had just begun and in two volleys half of the Riverlanders were agonising. One or two tried to escape from where they came. He abandoned his hideout and removed the head of one of the cowards. Like in many things, these blasphemers preached one thing and then forgot it the moment victory eluded them.
"DEMON! DEMON!"
Deep inside, Howland was amused when his next opponent squeaked like a virgin maiden.
"No, I am not a demon," he told the halberd-wielder before cutting the hand wielding the weapon. "But don't worry, you are going to meet them imminently." Soul-Reaper slashed his throat, and the patrol had one more dead man on its legs.
The rest was just a slaughter, his crannogmen and crannogwomen removing the heads of their kills and ending the torments of the men who had the misfortune to be 'merely' injured by the arrows. Their pleas of mercy were a good clue they were regretting their survival.
"And now we move on the next patrol..."
Asha Greyjoy 5
There were moments where you wished to kill your Lord Father and he was sadly out of reach for a good-old axe strike.
The instant Asha saw her wedding dress was absolutely one of these moments. The horror she had been forced to choose from a very short range of robes had not been to her taste, and this was her lying.
The frilly light blue...thing...had given her murderous thoughts and her 'choice' had been like swallowing poison to fight poison. You didn't know if it was going to work, but you were sure the other cures were far, far worse. Or in the case of the dresses, you didn't want to be seen wearing the second choices.
Yes, Asha wanted to murder the Iron King after that. And the dress being in a coffer locked and guarded by warriors she couldn't bribe had sealed her fate.
So imagine her surprise when the...robe...which the servants in charge of preparing her for the wedding presented to her was NOT the light blue dress she had been presented fortnights ago.
"What is that?" The Ironborn woman managed to utter in shock. The reaction Arya Stark, leaning against the wall, was more expressive. Her Northern guide burst in laughter so hard Asha was for a moment worried she was going to die giggling. The rest of the women smiled, but they respectfully did not voice their hilarity. Without doubt they were going to wait she was away to succumb to their emotions.
"It...looks...like...a...Slaaneshi...robe..." Arya Stark was laughing so hard the words were coming in one or two. Asha, on the other hand, was shocked and traumatised by the...cloth...the women placed in her hands. "Your...Father...must have...bought...this from a Lysene trader."
The worst part was that the sister of the man she was about to marry was certainly right. Asha had sailed to the Free Cities and saw enough goods being sold to know which merchants sold this. The exquisiteness and the weaving screamed Lysene, indeed.
This was where the good news ended. The robe was long, going from her neck to her toes...and it was in a transparent sort of lace which didn't seem to hide anything.
Asha had seen many whores wearing less revealing dresses in the quarters near Westerosi and Essossi harbours and this was a generous affirmation.
"I can't wear this for my wedding!" she hissed as Arya continued to laugh. A rapid search in the coffer where the dress was stored was fruitless. She found the undergarments – transparent, like the robe – and shoes which were looking prodigiously uncomfortable.
"I can't wear this for my wedding!" she repeated urgently. By the Drowned God and the Stormed God, the attires she used to fuck when she was with men on the Black Wind were less outrageous. She wasn't going to present herself like this in front of the Northern warlords and their captains!
Fortunately, Arya had stopped laughing and one of the servants surrounding her opened her mouth to save her.
"One of Lady Saara's robes could work, they are of similar height."
"Yes," the direwolf-owner agreed. "She wasn't able to take everything for her travel to the Iron Islands...err...which colour do you want, Asha?"
"Black or dark blue," she said after a moment of reflexion. Half of the women left the room, leaving the indecent robe on her bed. Asha had a few minutes to contemplate it before her 'helpers' came back. By the storm and the waves, what was wrong with her Father and the rest of her family? This was something to wear in the privacy of someone private quarters, not at a grand wedding? As the days away from Harlaw were adding to one another, Asha was raging more and more against her brothers, her uncles and of course 'King Balon'. What a good father he had been, truly.
On these unhappy thoughts, Arya came back with the handmaidens and with them came a young boy with the typical Stark straits, dark brown hairs and grey eyes. There was no need to present him for her to realise this was another of Eddard Stark's children. Inwardly, the daughter of the Iron Islands wondered how many children the Heir to Winterfell had sired, legitimate or illegitimate. Torrhen, Saara, Arya, this young boy and the bastard Jon Snow...
"My younger brother, Cregan," said the owner of Valkia. "He loves sorcery, books and mysteries."
Watching him, Cregan Stark looked...well perhaps like a younger version of her uncle Rodrik, Lord of Harlaw and Ten Towers. His right arm had a large book in his grip and his clothes looked like they had been covered in runes five times in close succession because it was difficult to guess the original colour of the cloth. Fixed on his left eye, a device looking like a mini Myrish spyglass contributed to a bookworm and maester-like look.
Asha pronounced the usual greetings, but the young boy superbly ignored her.
"Where is the robe you want me to work with?"
One of the servants unveiled a long dark blue dress. In the privacy of her head, Asha grimaced. This was not the robe of her dreams for sure. As expected from the eldest Stark daughter, this dress would show far too much of her breasts and her back...but it was largely better than go naked.
Then Cregan Stark touched the robe and suddenly the hems took a golden colour while the front was decorated with a great yellow kraken. The shades of purple which had been here and there disappeared to leave the robe a dark blue. Runes appeared and disappeared, with the robe becoming more elegant and refined.
"Done," said Cregan in a petulant tone. "You owe me one favour." And he left the room without a salute or another look back.
"Is he always like this?" She wondered out loud. Arya snorted.
"No, most of the time he's worse. But he was authorised to blow some targets this morning, so he was in a better humour when I interrupted his reading."
"I know I am going to regret this," the women around her helped disrobe before new undergarments were handed to her and the Northern robe was prepared. "But what is he doing when he's angry?"
"Oh the usual. He transform people into frogs, grow toxic mushrooms, he summons blizzards..." seeing Asha's worried expression, her guide and benefactor spoke louder. "But you don't have to worry. He will not touch you since you're Torrhen betrothed."
"It must be nice to have powerful sorcerers like him."
Arya did not meet her eyes this time.
"He's the most powerful Gift-user of his generation. He has not yet made his final choice, but he's going to be a Champion of Tzeentch, everyone at Winterfell knows it."
Then the handmaidens surrounded her for the robe and the conversation didn't continue. Time flew faster than she wanted, and before long she found herself in front of Great Altar of Winterfell, Brigit and Arya behind her. The Ironborn woman like her had received a dark blue robe, but a far more modest one: unlike her they must not have chosen Saara Stark's dresses. Arya Stark was in a dark grey robe but very conservative. Other Northern Ladies followed.
Of course her attention was mostly on the four different themes of the room where they were waiting. Drowned God or Storm God-worshipper, you could not deny this place was bathing in power. Where the North was, the wall and the ground were red like spilled blood and covered in weapons. Eastwards, strange flames contorted and burned, with small lightning striking the blue ground at irregular intervals. Westwards, the decoration was green and a large tree the Northerners called weirwood was there, with a pale face and tears of red sap. And to the south, the atmosphere was definitely pink, gold and lustful, with images of naked demonesses joining incredible jewels.
In the centre was a great throne where a very old warrior was seated. No announcement was made, but the grey hairs, the massive direwolf at his feet and the long Valyrian sword in the scabbard next to him could belong to only one man: Lord Rickard Stark, Lord Paramount of the North, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. Closer, he seemed even more formidable. Uncountable scars, small and big, were present on his aged skin and one of his eyes was forever shut. But despite this, Asha felt she was an ant in front of a giant.
"Asha Greyjoy..." the rumble out of the Lord's mouth was like thunder had been placed in a mortal's mouth. "I don't like your Father."
"I am not pleased with him too," she admitted in the silence which had engulfed the large crowd waiting in the Great Hall behind them.
"Humph!" The huff was voiced while caressing the great direwolf at his feet. "But you want to marry my grandson, no?"
"Yes." And not just for the reason her family would kill her if she negated their precious alliance just before they were ready to rebel.
"Ha!" The wrinkled face guffawed. "And you, grandson?" Asha made a side-step in surprise as Torrhen Stark had appeared out of nowhere to her side. She slightly reddened when she examined him from his head to his shoes: until now she had only seen him in his armour or other war-time attire. But here he wore a full set, doublet and all in grey and while the clothes were not transparent, he was far better than every sailor she had chosen to amuse herself between Pyke and Volantis.
"I see no objection in marrying my betrothed," replied Torrhen with a large smile.
"Then we can begin," and there was iron and steel in this voice. Power too. It amazed her and terrified her in equal measure. Never there had been so much authority in her Father's words.
"Asha Greyjoy, do you swear in the name of Slaanesh to love your husband Torrhen Stark and sire his children?"
A purple blast echoed in her and suddenly Asha felt a warmth which had nothing to do with fire and everything to do with sex.
"Yes." Gods, the ceremonies had better not to last long because she was ready for some male attention after that.
Rickard's son pronounced the same words for Torrhen, though for him it was to love his wife and put a lot of virile seed in her loins.
"Asha Greyjoy, do you swear in the name of Nurgle to endure the Circle of Life, Decay and Death with Torrhen Stark? To help the weirwoods grow across this continent and return to the earth when your union breaks and death tears you apart ?"
The new magic was green and had the same 'taste' of several trees she had enjoyed staying under in the Wolfswood. It was powerful and wild...but also there was a hint of darkness behind them.
"Yes."
The next question asked to his grandson was different, something like the branches and the leaves Asha didn't understand.
"Asha Greyjoy, do you swear in the name of Tzeentch to join Torrhen Stark in the pursuit of sorcery and change? Will you help him build and destroy new marvels in the name of the Architect?"
"Yes."
The magical sensation was...weird. She felt simultaneously stronger and weaker, caught between the waves and the storms of the Iron Islands. Her thoughts erred for a few breaths and thinking only got easier when the Grey Wolf asked his fourth question.
"Asha Greyjoy, do you swear in the name of Khorne to fight and bleed the battles of Torrhen Stark? To battle , wield the axe and crush his enemies on the battlefield?"
Rage, anger, determination, courage and more strength she had ever felt filled her veins and the promise could only appeal to her warrior's instincts.
"Yes."
Torrhen Star imitated her immediately after and his grandfather slammed his sword against the ground.
"Then I stand witness and unite you as Husband and Wife."
There was a flash of uncountable colours and when Asha looked at her robe again, she gasped for everything, shoes, robe and cloak, had taken a grey colour and the kraken Cregan Stark had made appear was now replaced by a growling direwolf.
"You can know kiss, Torrhen and Asha Stark, united under the Light and the Darkness of the Gods."
Asha was not going to pretend she felt reluctant at obeying the command under the thousand of cheers coming from the Northerners.
Ser Gerion Lannister 2
Now that he had seen what the world had to offer, Gerion thought he should have stayed at Casterly Rock and raised his illegitimate daughter. It would have been boring, but being bored was preferable to these last years. Assuredly Tywin was a poor brother, but he was only one man for all his defaults. The ancestral Lannister home was a safe place as long as he remembered and there were people he really enjoyed living with.
Departing for a lone quest for Brightroar on the other hand, had just caused him trouble after trouble and the failed quest had been filled with abominable revelations and desperate battles.
His hopes this poor luck had suddenly stopped with his liberation from the cannibals' prisons in the jungles of Sothoryos had not lasted long. First, a Northerner warrior had decided he was the reincarnation of Theon the Hungry Wolf and decided to go on a rampage on these shores. The result had been scary, bloodbath-horrifying and worth at least sixty heresies in front of a septon.
Secondly, it was quite obvious all the men following Euron Greyjoy were absolutely insane. A conversation with the Ironborn captain was sufficient to realise this and for the others, the craziness was not difficult to observe. Like the madman-in-chief had told him on that day:
"Every time they see my sails, they all pray their Gods to protect them from me."
A hard and bloody journey in the jungles later, they had left the disease-plagued continent and then the true magnitude of the folly having taken hold in the Crow's Eye mind was in front of his eyes. But where was he supposed to go? The Silence was a lair of monsters hidden behind human visages, but it was still his last chance to return to the Westerlands or anywhere on Westeros.
He had been forced to repeat this fact in his mind every day from dawn to sunset. The Silence was a torment for his mind and his sanity.
The presence of slaves aboard, alas, had not been astonishing. Gerion was a Lannister, and knew many reavers raided and pillaged while filling their hulls with captives. Depending on their mood, the Ironborn captains called their prisoners slaves or thralls. Euron Greyjoy obviously belonged to the first category.
But to the knight's knowledge, no one save the madman-captain had ever cut the tongues of his captives by the scores. This mutilation was cruel and had left him unable to sleep many nights...and this was just the first of many indignities, tortures and torments Euron Greyjoy visited upon them. Every captive chained in the hull of the Silence bore the marks of the chains and long beatings one way or another. Their eyes were troubled and vacant, like they were perpetually plunged into a nightmare. The men were often branded with hundreds of runes and castrated in addition to the tongue removal. Worse, if they were judged too weak, Euron gave the authorisation to his false-maester Qyburn to 'practise' on them.
The final experiment, according to the two or three warriors able and willing to talk to him, was always ending in the exiled of the Citadel opening the belly of his 'subject' and breaking as many parts as possible before the heart failed. And yes, this experiment was realised with the victim conscious and unable to resist.
One should have hoped that after this display of cruelty and madness, the fate of the women would have been preferable. It wasn't. Many had been branded in the same manners men were, and all were raped either by Euron or one of his lieutenants. A few had even given the captain of Silence children...who were used in blood sacrifices when the situation demanded it.
It went without saying there was no salvation to be found on this ship. Not for him, not for the slaves and not for the ship itself. The blood-warrior Gerion had taken at first for a Northerner was in fact revealed to be a bastard of House Bolton, one of these human-flayers Houses exiled by the Starks and forced to cross the Narrow Sea after an unsuccessful rebellion. By all the Gods and Demons of this world, it was better to be far away from this 'Ramsay'. The mad warrior was already whispering alone, laughing or screaming heretical words. Only Euron could approach him and keep his life.
The rest of the crew was a pack of murderers and monsters. In no particular order, it included: sorcerers and warlocks of the Free Cities enslaved by Euron, a Summer Islander archer who had decided hunting men was more interesting than birds, an Essossi trader who had decided to sell human meat instead of flesh, five pirates of ill-repute known for their bloody reputations from the Sunset Sea to the Jade Gates, an Ibbenese whaler who had decided torture was a noble activity and a mind-broken Dothraki convinced the Master of the Silence was the avatar of something terrible and war-like.
If there was a more dreadful crew to ever sail the known seas, Gerion did not know its name. And consequently while he would have loved to see this band of scoundrels and murderers dance at the end of the ropes they deserved a thousand times, he had done his best not to attract attention, help with the sails and the navigation and stay away from the path of Euron Greyjoy. It had been easier than he thought, to say the truth. In the end, Euron had not been interested in Brightroar – the family legacy which was now with him – but in a medallion of bronze and jade supposed to have mystic powers. Said object had been on his prison's door, which was why the Crow's Eye had bothered rescuing him.
Anyway, Euron Greyjoy was now rarely seen outside of the meals on the bridge, and Gerion thanked the Seven profusely for it. Happy or unhappy, the Crow's Eye was a dangerous man and he could after a good joke call you brother like he could seize a dagger and slice your throat.
And yes, Gerion had seen him do it. Twice.
But as far as threats went, the biggest problem right now Gerion faced was the weather. For the last three days, they had met violent storm after violent storm on their attempt to come back to Westeros. When he arrived to the prow, Qyburn was not tight-lipped voicing his thoughts.
"So early in the season, the storm shouldn't be so violent. I fear there is sorcery behind these clouds," affirmed the man who had been long ago a master.
"I don't know," replied hesitantly Gerion, wondering what his life had become for him to discuss the limits of magic on the bridge of the Silence. "I want to find a reason for our navigation problems, but aren't we a bit far from any civilisation using sorcerous means?"
"We are!" exclaimed an amused voice and everyone listening turned to see the dark figure and its mantle of crow feathers join the conversation. "But the witches and wizards of the wild North or the warlocks of Qarth are not responsible for our woes. My little seers have revealed to me the name of the storm-maker."
"Tell me his name! The Blood God demands his skull!" Great contest: one chance to guess who had spoken in such a bloodthirsty manner.
"I'm afraid the sorcerer sailing west is a too dangerous prey for us, berserker," the eye of the Crow's Eye was shining with malice. "I do not wish to challenge the Yellow Emperor...yet."
Lady Saara Stark 2
If anybody had the strange idea one day to marry an Ironborn, Saara's advice was: don't. There were a few exceptions, but generally most of the local women were ugly. It must have been taken into account long ago: by tradition, any reaver worth the name was supposed to have a rock wife keeping the affairs in order at home while the husband jumped on everything which had a pair of big breasts, enslaved them and called them his salt wives.
The men were more interesting body-wise: a life at sea had given them muscles and other traits which were pleasant to look at. But as they loved to play axe-throwing and other stupid games where they lost limbs half of the time, the middle-aged generation was sufficiently scarred and crippled it had nothing attractive anymore. And then there was the issue of their minds. The Ironborn were the product of a society repeating to them at every moment of the day they were the elite of the human species. Saara had thought of a joke at first, but it seemed they really believed that. How they thought it true when their miserable culture had been crushed decisively and punched back to their home islands, the daughter of Eddard Stark had no idea. By a direct reasoning, if the Ironborn were really the best warriors from the Lonely Light to Yi-Ti, they should govern a great empire.
Thanks to their idiotic boasts, the Lord of Pyke and their bannersmen had the arrogance of the Goddess Slaanesh Herself, the level of intelligence to make a Khornate berserker look like a war genius, the knowledge of a narrow-minded fanatic septon and the charm of starved sellswords.
Saara could continue for a long time like this. Their 'Drowned Priests' were giving her a feeling of pity. They played with bits of power and rituals, proud of their ignorance and the lives they gave to something they didn't understand. Most of them hadn't any magical skills at all but this brainless religion found no obstacles when they weren't able to back their deeds and pretensions. The Ironborn culture was a martial one and there wasn't anything wrong with that, but they had disregarded most of the songs, musics and artwork which should ensure their victories were remembered for centuries. The fortresses she had visited until now were dark and unwelcoming, tapestries, paintings and books were extremely rare and in majority had been taken in raids.
The Iron Islands rarely produced anything but blades and war supplies, in service of a God which was staying silent. And the best point was the reavers tended to blame the Reach, the Westerlands and the Riverlands for their crass ignorance, their wealth and their governance.
Happily, Saara was here to remedy to their flaws. When she had finished her work here, she swore the number of ignorant Ironborn would be drastically cut down.
"Under the eyes of the Drowned God, we are gathered in this holy place on this day..."
She rolled her eyes discreetly as a Drowned Priest who had his place in a piggery began his boring litany. Really, she understood her duty and this marriage was no true alliance, for even a simpleton understood House Stark and House Greyjoy intended to betray each other the moment the forces of the Iron Throne were annihilated.
"As the Grey King himself said, the waves are the empire of life and we must defend them..."
Before today she had hoped the ceremony would begin in the Great Hall of Pyke but it wasn't the case. The Ironborn of Pyke had a huge black stone they called the 'Rock-Oath of the Krakens' or something similar in the middle of the island. It was there marriages unions were officially pronounced.
In Saara's opinion, it was ridiculous. She could wear the long grey-white dress with the long grey-furred cloak of her family without shivering, but she was the exception. The weather was windy and the air was getting colder. The sun was absent and hundreds of men and women were wrapped in warm clothes or sea cloaks to protect themselves from the embrace of their 'Storm God'.
"This is a glorious day, for two Royal Houses are tying their destinies in blood and love..."
Saara didn't jiggle but the laughter was there behind her smile. Love? The Northern woman in her had not been lovestruck by the Heir of 'King Balon'. This oaf had already many ugly scars which had not been correctly healed – and wasn't it surprising, when Ironborn killed their maesters at the first sign of anger? And the whispers the reavers uttered when they thought she was out of reach had not endeared him further to her cause. Rodrik Greyjoy was a dangerous brute, and there was no doubt in her mind that if she had not cast a few rituals and spells along several preparations for his wine and food, the wedding night would see her raped and brutalised. Blood? Saara was a sorceress and controlling if the seed of a man made her pregnant or not was child's play for her. Without hesitation, she had decided this reaver was never going to sire a child in her belly. She would kill herself first.
"From the glorious days of House Greyiron and House Hoare, we pray the Drowned God to give House Greyjoy new children strength and renown..."
Watching the entire Greyjoy family, strength was definitely something they had. The 'Iron King', his brothers and his sons were built like towering masses over the hundreds of highborn and smallfolk who had come to assist to the marriage – and soon sail to war of course. Yes, strength and renown the Greyjoys had, without question.
It was all they had. Victarion, Maron, Rodrik and all the pirates...they were imposing warriors but no God would take them as His or Her Champions. They were just too dumb. Victarion Greyjoy in particular in all likelihood had met fishes which were smarter than his huge carcass. Balon Greyjoy fancied himself a King and a master of war, but his strategic skills were so poor Father's sorcerers had to whisper in his dreams to convince him of a plan which was not pure madness.
At last, the Drowned Priest stopped his nonsense and they got to the important part. Rodrik Greyjoy laced his hands on the black stone – it went without saying there was nothing powerful or enchanted in it.
"Captain Rodrik Greyjoy, do you take Lady Saara Stark to be your wife?"
The Ironborn swelled out his chest and unclasped his midnight-blue cloak.
"Yes."
The gaze he gave her was one of raw lust. Saara knew she would have to make sure he got killed at the first opportunity. Perhaps not Lannisport, but Seagard would do nicely.
"Lady Saara Stark, do you take Captain Rodrik Greyjoy to be your husband?"
Hopefully the next one would be a proper marriage, not this aberration without sorcery and with beggar-drowned Priests.
"Yes," she answered, joining her hands on the stone with those of the Heir of Pyke.
Her grey cloak was thrown to the ground irreverently and the Greyjoy colours were placed on her shoulders.
The first kiss, when it came, was horrid. Rodrik smelled like a powerful and malodorous dead fish. The cheers came but they were filled with voices and male-dominated expressions she really hated.
"May this union be blessed by happiness and fertility for long years!"
That, the young Saara Greyjoy swore, was not going to happen.
Lord Benedict Sentinel 1
They came out of the swamps at sunset like a tide of darkness and damnation.
Benedict had dreaded and anticipated this moment for the last fortnight. The Seven Kingdoms were at war, and the Northern heretics would not have darkened the skies with their ignoble sorcery if they didn't intend to invade the Riverlands. Sentinel's Stand was the gate they had to crush; there had never been any doubt in his thoughts the monsters would come here.
A night assault had been expected by some of his knights, but unfortunately whoever was in command of the heretics was far too clever to order a storming with so little preparation. His archers had to discourage some skirmishers at the light of the torches, the common raiders with more muscles than brawn wearing the skin of some monstrous beasts, but these were probes and everyone knew it.
And so the defenders of Sentinel's Stand waited and tried to take a good night of rest despite the close presence of the enemy of the Seven. In the night, it was impossible to count the enemies ranks but the thousands of torches flickering in ugly colours were not reassuring at all.
When the grey morning came and his eyes were able to discern the Northern camp, it was almost a relief.
"I count between five and six thousand of them, Father," told his cadet son Aerys. The Lord and Master of the most important citadel of the Small Wall nodded thoughtfully. "Their sorcery is making a more precise count difficult."
Benedict and several of his sons and commanders winced from their position on top of the wall. This was not a great army by any standard, but Sentinel's Stand was defended right now by two thousand and seven hundred men, though more arrived every day from the South. About eight hundred were freeriders, small detachments recruited by lesser Knights and scores of warriors sent by his relatives from House Ryger and House Goodbrook.
So they were facing a superior opponent but the real reason of the bad mood was the confirmation all the 'wild stories' extracted from captured raiders in the last decades were not that ridiculous in the end. Already House Sentinel had been forced to cede the watchtowers and the first defences of the Riverlands without a real battle.
Benedict knew he was going to be blamed for it. But four out of five of his patrols had not returned and the first small towers built to keep the Kingsroad in loyal hands had not lasted long when the heretics had covered them in poisonous green fumes. Four leagues away, he had heard the screams of the men he had sent to their death.
As a consequence, his forces were waiting on the ramparts and the towers of his home fortress. The White Crusade had been called and Ser Edmure Tully had begun a large muster of the Lords of the Trident near the Blue Fork. All he and the warriors under his command had to do was to hold and pray the reinforcements of the great Westerosi Lords Paramount arrived before the core of the heretics' army did.
Lord Benedict Sentinel turned to call his third son.
"Do you recognise any of their banners, Quincy?"
"The bloody axe is House Cerwyn I think, Father," replied the son who was charged to study with the septons the rumours and what little information spies managed to gather from their enemies. "The blue-black banners may be House Flint, but I don't know which branch. The other banners are not from any Noble House I can remember."
In other circumstances, he would have approved ignorance of Northern matters but not here. The enemy army was divided into four big parts and one reserve. From left to right there were symbols of a red axe on a brown-dark field, a blue flame and a tower, a putrid green-swamp thing with no real shape and a gold ring on a pink field. Behind them were banners of a black spear surrounded by a eight-pointed star.
The Northern army was a dreadful spectacle as they formed ranks in the plain in front of the castle he owned. There were no neat lines, and every time you fixed the same banners or the same group of soldiers, his eyes began to hurt. There was no great organisation although you could tell the commanders of this army had made an effort to place the light infantry in the vanguard and the cavalry at the rear.
"I do not see any siege engines, Father," The voice of Tyler, his eldest, was filled with disgust. "What do they hope to achieve? We have archers, ballista and our walls have been blessed. If they try a frontal assault with ladders and ropes, we are going to decimate them."
Yes, Tyler had a good point and this worried Benedict. Heresy damned the soul and destroyed the heart of a man but the Lord of the Sentinel's Stand did not believe alas it made an heretic stupid and unwilling to learn basic tactics. Whoever was in command, he had crossed the Neck in a forced march and come to besiege his fortress. The Northern commander had also taken great care to leave his monsters and warriors outside trebuchet range.
There was something he had missed or wasn't able to guess. And it didn't feel him with joy.
"Maybe they think their demon-loving sorcerers can replace catapults," proposed Andrew, his fourth son. At sixteen name days and recently knighted, Andrew was the youngest of House Sentinel who would participate in the battle to come. Martin was far too young and had accompanied his wife Marianne and his only daughter Leana southwards while the rest of the household worked hard to prepare a welcome the enemies of King Rhaegar were not going to like.
"We have the holy septons and septas of the Convent of Piety," affirmed Quincy after a couple of breaths.
Benedict frowned when about one in three of his captains spat, grumbled or looked away. The Convent of Piety was about the only small Faith-build redoubt between the Twins and his own lands. On parchment, this should have made them incredibly popular, the fist of the light of the Warrior or another noble affirmation close to it. But the septons in charge of this Convent had decided a long time ago they were to oppose the heretic sorcerers with magic rather than Faith, and this had not made them popular either with the highborn or the smallfolk.
One or two had succumbed to the very dark powers they swore to protect the realm in the last fifty years and the secrecy and mysteries they were surrounding themselves had not increased their standing at Riverrun or King's Landing. There were other orders studying and learning the miracles and the blessings of the Seven from Oldtown to Seagard, but the Convent of Piety was small and not likely to grow larger.
That they had been able to send only a score of old men to Sentinel's Stand and twice that number of healers didn't give him the urge to cheer and organise celebrations. They were going to be five or six sorcerers for each of the 'gifted' Septons.
"They have..."
Tyler's next sentence stopped as suddenly the Northern army began to adopt a more disciplined shape. The big four factions were still present however. It was like each part of this army couldn't fight shoulders-to-shoulders with each other.
This left huge gaps between the heretic companies and in this empty space the siege engines came at last. Benedict was not travelling often to the capital and the Crownlands, but he had seen twice the new weapons of the Alchemists and realised what the Northerners had brought.
"Cannons," the Lord of Sentinel's Stand announced before correcting himself when the things became fully visible. "Heretical and sorcery-filled cannons."
The devices had been built to inspired revulsion and malice. Hundreds of feet away, Benedict and his sons were able to acknowledge the demonic threat. No mortal and Faithful smith could have ever built these monstrosities. The long tubes looked like they had been forged in a metal darkest than night and in the shape of demons. Evil runes were shining malevolently on their entire length. In the hole-maw of the infernal device, unnatural flames promising agonising torment were burning.
At this moment, Benedict wanted to order a charge and destroy the Northern cannons without waiting. But when the aurochs-like creatures dragging the cannons stopped, it was far outside the range of his trebuchets. Furthermore, orders rang out in the enemy's army and at an impressive rate magic and hundreds of corpse-like creatures began to dig trenches.
A cavalry charge in this was not going to achieve anything. He had three hundred horses here and they could not be sacrificed in a futile attack.
Unfortunately, this very much confirmed the heretic behind these ideas was methodical and prudent. Not a good combination of traits for him when he had three or four thousand men and monsters to kill before achieving force parity.
High and tall black-armoured figures shrouded in darkness and magical fumes supervised the work, unless they were protecting the cannons nearby.
As what should have taken days for an army of this size was accomplished at three or four times this speed, the battle-cries began to be heard.
"WINTER IS COMING!"
"BOW TO THE TRUE GODS!"
"SLAUGHTER IS CALLING!"
"JOIN THE GRANDFATHER ARMIES!"
"CHANGE IS UPON YOU!"
There were more but the majority were shouted in tongues hurting the very air and which should have never been learned by human mouths.
Then the first cannon-demon thing fired.
Benedict was not a coward. He had fought and bled with his men in countless skirmishes, killed his fair share of swamp mutants and men. This time though he shivered in fear.
The atrocious roar was like the carrion bell of the End of Times itself.
There was no metallic ball or any earthly projectile projected at incredible speed. There was a column of flames and a vague shape of burning darkness ejected from the cannon's overture.
It missed the western tower utterly. Cheers echoed in the courtyard, the summit of his dungeons and the other fortified positions.
Then the other cannons fired and the laughs died. There were about two score of them, and while their precision was horrendous, five hit the walls of Sentinel's Stand.
Wherever the damned things hit, the explosions were terrible and a black-red inferno which could not be natural started.
Benedict screamed new command for the fire-fighting parties to neutralise this threat, temporarily trying to ignore the wrongness of the scene. Fire was always the great enemy of citadels. Yes, Sentinel's Stand was made of stone but like every castle, uncountable wooden trunks had been used since the moment its foundations were built.
But the Northerners fires were not burning this wood. They were burning and melting stone. A feat which according to the maesters and the knowledgeable old men was only possible for wildfire and dragonfire.
To make it worse, his men had just the time to stop three out of five fires before the enemy cannons fired again. And this time the infernal engines were better positioned. Ten heretical fires began their work of destruction and death.
Volley after volley followed and while he ordered his siege engines to throw boulders in retaliation, their efforts were tiny and did not caused much damage to the heretics. The trenches dug did not help matter. Every time one was completed, the holes burst in unnatural flames and acted like massive shields for the enemy.
The Northerners should have been in the range of his ballista now. But when the grey noon came, arrows and rocks were not doing enough damage. They must have killed some scores of light foot, when any normal enemy would have already lost hundreds.
The weather was not raising the morale of his troops. The sky was covered by dark clouds, the sun was pale and sparse and sinister screams were heard in the air.
And he could do nothing against it.
Mortal men he could stand his ground and kill, but he couldn't find a way to stop this fire rain pouring on his troops.
He simply couldn't.
"Prepare the men at the gates," he ordered Tyler. "If the heretic commander wants to launch an assault, this is the moment."
His eldest son struck his plate above his heart in salute before rushing down the stairs and joining his men. Benedict returned his attention to the fire-fighting parties and the battle. He would have given half of his gold for reinforcements right now. One or two thousand men might not seem like a lot for a Lord Paramount, but for House Sentinel on this day it was a question of life and death.
If Ser Stevron managed to rally this old weasel of Walder and gather the Twins' levies, he would have far enough soldiers to give these heretics a bloody nose.
But the warriors of the Twins and the dozens of sons Walder Frey had sired during his long life were not here. And the messengers he had left at different outposts and inns to warn him were not rushing to inform him House Frey was coming to play the role of saviours. And without them...
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
The power behind the words almost forced him on his knees and Benedict had to fight with all his strength to stand on his old legs. Many of his guards weren't that fortunate. Five or six in front of him were trying to use their surroundings to rise on their own, their ears and their noses bleeding.
On these words the section of the enemy army showing the Cerwyn banners attacked. Benedict showed a grim smile and gave the order for the archers and the trebuchets to decimate this horde. But when the arrows began to slam into the enemies, the sky began to turn red and suddenly the number of enemies tripled in the blink of an eye.
The heretics had received reinforcements...and they were not humans. Even from afar, the new beings were simply wrong. They were mostly red-skinned, with horns and hooves. In their hands were black or red blades. Their faces were sculpted to be representations of executioners and warriors.
The cry among the defenders of Sentinel's Stand could not be suppressed.
"DEMONS! DEMONS!"
The first monsters were stopped well before the walls but the more they killed, the more came to scream their hate. The space between the two armies was taking strange colours of red, yellow and blue. The air was unnaturally shivering. The sky was by moment taking red-purple colours and Benedict was sure this was no sunset.
"Prepare to repel ladders and infiltrators!" Benedict shouted.
These words had not left his lips the rest of the Northern army was entering the fray too. The green-putrid mass advanced slowly but relentlessly, singing in gurgling tones things which were best not heard. A mass of blue and pink horrors spread from a blue lightning and the Flint sorcerers began to throw lengthy blasts and horrifying spells above the ramparts. The sybarite host of pink and weird colours jumped into battle with spectres and shining monsters whispering unnatural things in the warrior's ears.
The septons of the Convent of Piety did their best but in two or three exchanges the brilliant shields they materialised broke under the cruel sorcery. When Quincy came back from one of his assignments, Benedict was told their leading Priest had died, his head transformed into a pumpkin without warning. Twelve others had shared disturbing and bloody ends.
All the while, the demonic cannons didn't stop their sapping work. Volley after volley, they fired and a large part of the outer walls were now in flames. Stocking oil and torches at regular emplacements had not helped the situation, he guessed.
"Losses are heavy, Father," the voice of Aerys was close to panic. "We have already over one hundred men by the healers and twice that many are already dead on the walls and thorough the citadel. "We need..."
The demons reaching the top of the walls interrupted this report. In spite of the efforts of his men, many of the red monsters evaded the efforts to collapse the ladders and when they jumped, they reached the ramparts. And their damned black blades hurt. Benedict saw the guard in front of him cleaved in half.
"Khorne wants the blood to flow..." laughed the demon.
"Fuck Khorne! I serve King Rhaegar and the Warrior!" The Lord of Sentinel's Stand boomed, trying to rally his forces. His good sword clashed with the demonic blade.
"Your soul will be consumed..."
The halberd of one of his guards pulverised the monstrous skull from behind, saving him from a duel which was not exactly turning in his favour. These demons were really tough bastards, all right.
The fight continued, more desperate than ever. Sorcery assaulted the ramparts, opening breaches where stone and mortar should have stood for a thousand years. The cannons fired relentlessly, adding their nightmarish flames. They were killing some Northerners for sure but the number of demons they faced made a mockery of the killing. Between five and six thousand living heretics, they had estimated before the first blood was shed. It was a wild guess but he could say there were easily ten thousand of these abominations and from their corpses more were spilling onto the battlefield.
As for the enemy commanders, it was impossible to notice them in this cacophony of unnatural events. Moreover he had never seen any Northern Lord face-to-face, and the black armoured figures, the half-giants and the monsters were all shouting in the same demonic language.
"The eastern tower is overwhelmed, my Lord!" a messenger ran to him with horrible wounds on the left part of his body. At a glance, it was like his blood was changing into a green substance the instant it left his body...by the Crone, Benedict really loathed sorcery. "Their sorcerers are..." Benedict threw himself aside to avoid a sort of revenant shimmering in fallen light. The messenger was too slow and the demon merged with his body. Benedict Sentinel had to kill him as the unfortunate young man's body throbbed and began to mutate.
"Push for the eastern tower, Quincy," he commanded his third son. "Banish their demons, and tell our scorpions to target the sorcerers in priority."
"Father I don't think we have enough men left." The brown hairs of his son were completely dishevelled and a third of it was covered in blood and other fluids. His armour had seen better days.
"We have not the choice," he grunted as he expedited his sword into the skull of another demon. "The towers must hold until sunset. I will not order a withdrawal to the dungeon before..."
His words died in his throat as a red-armoured massive warrior joined the fight on the rampart. Armed with a colossal double axe, the newly-arrived heretic murdered four of his men like they were nothing.
The red aura and the torrents of blood which soaked the stone were sufficient to reveal this was no ordinary warrior.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! HOUSE CERWYN FOR KHORNE!"
"COURAGE! HERE WE STAND!"
Quincy and a score of his soldiers rushed to slay this new threat but four more demons materialised and intercepted them. The fight was confusion and death, and Quincy arrived alone with his one-handed sword and his large shield against the heretic.
The first strike of his son was dismissed like it was nothing. Then the great double axe shining with red runes struck the shield and destroyed it with a flash of red.
"NO!"
He tried to fight his way into the carnage but there were more demons and his men were dying. More enemies were coming and between the demons and their sorcerers, he couldn't see anything for a brief moment.
When the Cerwyn monster was once again in his sight, his red gauntlet was holding the decapitated head of Quincy by his hairs.
Range consumed him. Tears came to his eyes. He thought he was screaming. Benedict tried to fight his way again and slay the Northerner but his strength was not enough. They tried a last push to retake the ramparts, but it failed. Two captains and the survivors of his personal guard forced to him retreat.
The race to the dungeons was disastrous. There was no order in the stairs surrounded by flames and sorcery-fuelled fumes. Everywhere the screams of the dying was heard. Great crows fell on the fallen of both sides.
"My Lord, Sentinel's Stand is lost," one of his captains declared, his great helm still on his head and half-destroyed by what looked to be vigorous impact with a warhammer or a mace. "There are too many demons and we can't retake the walls. We must retreat to Cliff Fort or the Twins before they surround us."
"House Sentinel will not flee!" Benedict immediately realised how aggressive his snarl had sounded and softened his voice. "If the heretics take Sentinel's Stand, it will become a dagger at the entrance of the Riverlands. These demons will corrupt the soul of our home and tens of thousands men will lose their lives to retake it. Give the orders to retreat to the dungeon. How fare the gates?"
"Your son is still holding them but I don't know for how long," a purple storm surrounded the northern tower and exploded, precipitating more men to an inglorious death below. "Sorcerers are sending acid on the gates and I saw huge rams being prepared."
Benedict nodded, his heart proud of Tyler and his sons. No matter what happened today, House Sentinel would fulfil this duty as the shield of the Riverlands. There were vows pronounced under the gaze of the Seven-Who-Are-One which had to be upheld, adversity, demonic threats and strategy be damned.
"In this case give the orders for the general retreat."
But the demons had other plans. Just as Benedict was seizing a jug of wine and a piece of bread to regain some strength, an inferno of black flame coalesced around the gates. The noise of the wood and the stone being consumed by the hellish fires was strange and awful.
When it was over...there weren't any gates, doors or walls left. There was just a blackened area, uncountable corpses and an earth-shaking roar of triumph from the Northern army.
"My lord you must go!"
The enemy heavy foot and horse chose this moment to enter the battle. All of this had been clearly prepared beforehand. Their charge was like a mailed fist escorted by demons. Benedict raced to the dungeon but to his shock there was no safety to be found here once he passed the large doors. Winged horrors were attacking his smallfolk and the fire-fighting parties. Men and women were slaughtered by the red demons or possessed by the spectral horrors. There was also cursed fire everywhere.
Benedict Sentinel knew at this moment his fortress was lost. A couple of hundred men had arrived with him and proceeded to kill the abominations the fastest they could, but the defences had already been breached. And in all honesty, there were too many enemies and not enough Faithful soldiers. He had begun this battle with more than two thousand and five hundred men. Between the diverse towers they still held and the detachments coming back, he had likely a third of that and it was a generous estimate.
"It is too late to retreat!" His battle-cry raised swords and shields in unity. "For Sentinel's Stand! For Westeros! For King Rhaegar!"
Then there was fighting and killing until his arms abandoned him. The gates of his dungeons were barred and condemned, but the enemy still came from the flames, from the blood and from the very Hells. The air and the skies were tortured by sorcery, demons and abominations.
His sons Aerys and Andrew were with him, helping him rest and give orders when the battle became too hard for him. Of Tyler there was no trace and he feared the worst: the last men who had seen him told him he was fighting against a monster of pestilence and flies.
"The stone under our feet is changing!" Indeed the very pavement was transforming into a reddish-brown substance. "What sort of sorcery is this?"
"The worst kind, my son," he replied to Aerys. "The worst kind..."
The ancestral gates of House Sentinel ceded not long after this. It was a bitter disappointment. Their creation had been commissioned in his grandfather's time, and the septons and artisans who had been involved in this endeavour had swore to his family no evil force would be able to breach it, should they besiege it a hundred years with one hundred thousand abominations.
The emptiness of these boasts was truly revealed now. In an apocalyptic crash, the last line of defence ceded and a black warrior with a long lance of obsidian colour entered the redoubt of House Sentinel, dozens of demons and plate-armoured humans on his heels.
"What are you waiting for?" This was in all likelihood his last order as the Lord of this Noble House. "Kill him! Send him and all these demons in the Seven Hells where they belong!"
His men charged...and the enemy commander threw his lance like a javelin, impaling Andrew and three other knights after a flash of black sorcery blinded temporarily his senses.
"YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!"
He tried to charge the Chaos equivalent of a great knight, cutting heads, legs and arms which were in his way.
Benedict saw too late the demon which tore apart the upper part of his armour protecting his back. The bite in his neck forced him to scream...and then the rage he felt dissipated as his mind flickered and died under a dark sky.
Ser Jory Cassel 1
The Southern warriors were really meek, pathetic and the support their so-called 'New Gods' left much to desire. Jory had thought he would need five or six days of siege to breach the walls of Sentinel's Stand. His plans had been based on the report of the rare cultists visiting the lands of House Sentinel, the size of the fortress itself and many other factors like his own experience under Lord Rickard in humbling unruly Host Lords.
But he had not imagined in his wildest dreams the vanguard he had received the command of would breach the walls and storm Sentinel's Stand in a single day.
It was by all accounts a devastating victory...and it now created for him some problems for both the Riverlands reinforcements and Lord Stark army were far from his position. The achievement was impressive, but it had screwed uncountable plans, forcing him to improvise.
"How many warriors did we lose?" He asked Jonelle Cerwyn while keeping his eyes on the chained man calling himself Ser Aerys Sentinel. Of the members of His House who had fought in this one-sided bloodbath, the second son had been the sole survivor. He was going to regret it before the day was over.
"Flint lost five sorcerers and between the four Hosts and the raiders, two hundred fighting men and women are dining with the Gods. We have three hundred wounded, but two out of three can be saved if we don't fight another battle in the next two days."
The voice of the axe-wielder was almost calm today, a rarity if there ever was one. On the other hand, the trail of blood and viscera she had created during the storming had been so deep even the God of Blood and War must have been slightly sated by this amount of devotion.
"The enemy?"
It was Lord Bog Boggs who answered his demand.
"Two thousand and four hundred souls are fertilising the gardens of the Grandfather with more to come. Two hundred Riverlanders soldiers and one thousand smallfolk have been captured."
The soldiers were barely worth the name and certainly didn't deserve joining the Hosts.
"The smallfolk with be divided in five equal parts and given to each Host," his subordinate commanders made noises of approval and excitation. "I don't care what who do with them. Convert them to the True Gods, feed their souls to the Ascended or create new agents after you break their minds and bodies. The soldiers however will be used for the ritual to consecrate this castle. The failure of these cowards to die in the defence of their home will be exploited for our purpose."
"Sentinel's Stand will be a true bastion of War, Change, Life and Pleasure by the time the Crusaders arrive, Black Spear," Robin Flint obviously cherished the idea of perverting the works of the South. "And the son of the deceased Lord Sentinel will be a powerful instrument."
The namesake of the recently defunct King of Westeros chose this opportunity to shout what he had left of defiance.
"HERETICS! YOU THINK YOU'VE WON? HOUSE SENTINEL IS NOT DEAD AND SOON MY BROTHER WILL LEAD THE RIVERLANDS ARMIES HERE! YOU WILL BE PURGED AND EXTERMINATED!"
Jory looked at the red sky, distinctly unimpressed.
"Your last brother is sucking your mother's tits, Sentinel. And if all the Riverlanders fight like you do, my army will trounce your Noble Houses and your knights by the hundreds. The Southern warriors speak a lot, but they appear to be challenged when it is time to back their boasts with steel and great deeds."
"Your arrogance will be your doom, monster."
"I prefer it to weakness, incompetence and lamentable war preparations." The Cassel warrior smirked before striking his prisoner with his armoured fist twice to teach him the price of insolence. "Where are your Seven and your miracles when you really need them?"
"Kill me and finish this mummer's farce," Ser Aerys spat blood and two of his injuries reopened after the small beating he gave.
"But I'm not going to kill you, Ser," the eyes of his prisoner widened in incomprehension. "We are going to make you the Lord of Sentinel's Stand...forever."
Ser Patrek Mallister 3
"Edmure's muster is too slow," said Myles in an acid remark once their force was two leagues away from the sprawling mass where the flower of the Riverlands chivalry was gathering.
Patrek thanked the Crone his cousin and Heir to Seagard had been willing to wait to be outside anybody important listening range before exploding. Criticizing like Myles had just did the Heir of a Lord Paramount was not treason, but it would have invited more than a few comments and the influence of House Mallister in days to come would be under attack by other highborn challengers.
Besides, Edmure was their friend and stabbing him in the back like this would not have improved his skills or his confidence. And the son of Hoster Tully needed them when the Seven Kingdoms were suddenly without any warning sign answering the call to arms for a Crusade.
"He has many Lords causing him problems," this was not an excuse but it didn't help either. "The Brackens and the Blackwoods, the Vances and the Keaths, the Darrys and the Whents...I think we are lucky the Freys are further north and already mobilising to help the Small Wall..."
"Yes," convened Myles impatiently, "but it has been a moon and the great muster of the Riverlands is terribly organised. The Hereward Fields where the army is mustering had less than thirty thousand men last time I checked, and the Noble Houses are arriving slowly and in tiny companies. It is going to take days for them to march northwards in anything looking like a proper army."
Patrek opened his mouth before deciding he didn't want to argue with his cousin. In truth, Edmure's choice to order the muster at the Hereward Fields was contestable and contested. This large plain was situated between the Red and the Blue Fork, which made the next travel of the Tully-led army quite evident: cross the bridges over the Blue Fork like Myles and he were about to at Fairmarket, then direction the Twins before marching on the Kingsroad and arriving to Sentinel's Stand.
"And at a moment we need every Lord and Knight's strength to bar the paths out of the Neck, most Lords don't take their true strength with them. Take the Blackwoods: they could arm three thousand, maybe four thousand if they want to commit their men and open their coffers. But this old fox of Tytos came with just one thousand spears and Edmure welcomed him like he was the Crown Prince!"
Likely making the remark that House Blackwood was not going to send the totality of its crusade when they had been worshipping the heretical religion until fifteen days ago may not be appreciated, Patrek guessed.
"House Blackwood is dancing around betrayal like a raven circle around a corpse, yes. But there are other Houses too who shirk on their duties. House Piper could have done far better than one thousand and six hundred swords. The Whents have sent ravens after ravens and in the end, they arrived with eight hundred warriors. The two branches of House Vance have rallied three thousand to their banners when we both know they have the men for six or seven thousand. House Goodbrook left half of its strength at home with seven hundred foot and two hundred horse."
Patrek decided to interrupt before his cousin recited House by House who had failed in his oath-bound obligations and who hadn't.
"It is not that bad...you forget neither the Twins nor all the forts have the supplies in their larders and their granaries to feed huge armies like the one Edmure musters. Don't forget the Crusaders armed by the Faith and the High Septon are on the other side of the Green Fork with twenty thousand and the might of the Crownlands is days behind them."
Between the host Myles' father mustered at Seagard, the garrison of the Twins, the Frey bannersmen, the defenders of the Small Wall, Edmure's army and the Faithful desiring to accomplish the will of the Seven Heavens, there would be more than sixty-five thousand swords, spears, axes and bow to destroy the heretics and make the Northern lands compliant.
When they would be on the same field in front of Sentinel's Stand, this would be the greatest army ever fielded by the Iron Throne in living memory...and it would be just the beginning. The Lannisters, the Arryns, the Baratheons and the Tyrells would all come, hundreds or leagues or not, to find honour, glory and fortune under the eyes of their new Targaryen King.
"You don't worry enough," Myles retorted with a gloomy look and pointing his hand in the direction of the dark clouds of storm waiting northwards. "The Riverlands are under threat and we should have begun our muster moons ago...the heretics knew they were going to assassinate the King and have prepared their monstrous armies to invade at the moment of their choosing."
"Even assuming the North sends us everything they have, we're speaking of thirty thousand men," said thoughtfully Patrek. " We will have twice than that and as the West, the East and the Crown reinforces us, we can make our losses good in days. Plus as you've said many Houses had their men-at-arms stay in their castles: we won't lack reserves if we need them."
"Perhaps," agreed the Heir to Seagard, "but I will feel better when our armies will take position on the ramparts of Sentinel's Stand..."
Tyrion Lannister 4
In one moon, Tyrion had quickly arrived to a logical conclusion for the mummer's farce which had led him to his current duties. He figured he might as well share it with his second-in-command.
"Bronn, I hate army's life," the last son of Lord Tywin Lannister complained.
"You will get used to it, Captain-Quartermaster," was the sardonic reply he received with a neat mockery on his military title.
Tyrion exhaled loudly. Why could the sellsword not feel some awe and respect at the skills of his superior?
"I am getting used to it," the dwarf retorted, "and I don't like what I see."
This was a very polite way to present his lack of satisfaction and Bronn knew it.
"The Fourth Grand Company is the shame of this army," he told in a murmur. Appearances had to be preserved, for what they were worth. "I can find a way to pay them the silver and the bronze at the end of each moon they hired for, but only a miracle of the Father can make them skilled warriors!"
His Lord Father had found a new and unpleasant punishment, by the tits of the Maiden. Looking at the great army camping on both sides of the Kingsroad, Tyrion wondered how many of his cousins were laughing at his predicament in the entrails of Casterly Rock.
Tyrion could handle the duties of a Quartermaster with Pod. Handling the flow of money was something he had always a gift for. But commanding men was not one of his talents. His very size forbid he fought in the first lines and he would never be squired, never mind knighted.
If he had been given a group of veteran Red Cloaks and skilled officers, it could have worked. But he was in a Crownlands force, and the boys he had been given were the dregs of the dregs. Young men who had been a few days away before they were sent to the Black Ships, Goldcloaks which had fallen out of favour with their officers, thieves of Fleabottom, smugglers of the capital's harbour and unsavoury sellswords preying on merchant convoys when the times were hard.
The sum of this could not be described as 'good' by any definition of the term he had read.
The Fourth Grand Company was a disaster waiting to happen. The five hundred men under his command had not yet managed to complete a training exercise without two or three monumental fuck-ups. What they would do the day they met the enemy, Tyrion preferred not to think about it.
"What I would not give for proper officers..."
Usually highborn commanders and knights should have been available to help him transform this crow-meat into something looking vaguely like a fighting force. But by a strange coincidence which reeked of someone's duplicity, the Noble House assigned to the Fourth Grand Company had been House Hollard and the men-at-arms were commanded by a knight named Ser Dontos.
By Malal, Tyrion was ready to swear he had never heard of the Heir of Hollard Hall before today. It was unfortunate really. Because if he had learned beforehand Dontos was to be his third-in-command of the Great Company and provide most of his training cadre, he would have returned to Casterly Rock, duty or no duty, army or no army, Chaos or Order be damned.
Dontos was loud, boisterous, incompetent even by Tyrion's standards – which were very low – and a drunkard. Now the dwarf loved wine cups and was drinking his sorrows each evening, but Dontos was permanently drunk on the morning, on the afternoon and at night, duty or no duty. Worse, most of his men were imitating him. The Crownlands wineries were only too happy to sell them barrels as long as he had his back turned.
"We will just have to hope the heretics are worse than us in that regard," fat chance of that of course; to be that bad, you had to actively try.
Bronn snorted in derision at that thought.
"Our archers can't hit a damned target at fifty feet and they have crossbows, not longbows to shoot with. Our spearsmen can form a correct line if they are given most of the day to prepare and they don't forget their shields somewhere. We have no siege engines or any of the new weapons imagined by the Alchemists."
It was probably for the best, now that he thought about it. The Kingslanders under his command were hard pressed to stand in line and find their weapons when the trumpets called for march or training time; giving them larger and more dangerous weapons was not an intelligent thing to do.
But this still meant he had one hundred archers, three hundred heavy shields with spears and one hundred swordsmen that were going to break when they faced their first real skirmish. Bronn knew it, Tyrion knew it and Pod knew it. Seven Hells, even Dontos knew it...when he was sober.
Meagre reassurance, they were in army of forty thousand souls so maybe the rest of the Crown knights and warriors would save their asses when the bloodshed started.
Maybe if he repeated a hundred times that, he would even convince himself. Tyrion sighed, wishing he had a girl with nice tits in his couch for the night and not mountains of reports and problems to peruse.
"I hate army's life..."
Lady Saara Greyjoy 3
As long as plans of rebellions against the snakes pretending dragons had been made, the fleets of the Sunset Sea had caused a major problem to Winterfell.
The North had warships on the western coast obviously. The problem was...their potential opponents had fleets too. Better and often more experienced crews, and with numbers largely superior to their own. Whether they wanted to admit or not, the Northern Champions and commanders had to face the reality: the North was not a redoubtable naval power. Ah, if only they had been able to unite the warships of both coasts in a grand fleet...but no one having found a spell or a few billions dragons to create a canal without sinking half of the continent and provoking the wrath of the Gods. This was a problem which would remain with them for centuries to come.
The alliance with the Ironborn had broken the threat of an imminent invasion from the Sunset Sea. Saara had not only sailed to Pyke with a wedding dress. She had also given to these brutes of Greyjoy the defence dispositions of all the harbours and coastal fortresses the North had not the means to raze in the grand opening of the Black Crusade.
Balon Greyjoy, his brother and his sons were dim-witted, but even they could decently not fail when they were provided this kind of priceless advantage.
And now from the eyes of ten purpose-bred owls she had brought with her south, Saara watched the results.
By Khorne's flaming sword, it was glorious.
The sea front of Lannisport was in flames as the Ironborn fleet retreated, the reavers taking with them gold, captives and loot from the city.
The Lannisport fleet which had been built to prevent exactly this sort of grand raid was joyously burning in the harbour. As far as she could discern, there had been nearly twenty-five war galleys of imposing size and fifteen carracks guarding the approaches of the greatest city of the West. Two of said galleys were now towed away by the great longships of the Iron Fleet. The rest of the Lannister-built warships were sunk or burning. Saara was rather sure hundreds of sailors were already dead, and the death count was not going to stop quickly as the surviving defenders shot from the walls their bolts and other long-distance projectiles in a vain attempt to touch the defilers of their harbour.
In one sentence to sum-up the battle, the Westerlands had stopped being a naval power after this one-sided butchery.
This outcome, unfortunately, didn't mean it was a complete disaster for Lord Tywin and House Lannister. Assuredly, all warships were lost and irreparable, but Lannisport was mostly untouched saved the naval facilities. Dry wood, turpentine, ropes, barrels and the like were terribly vulnerable to fire, but the stone walls were not and the forces mustered for the Crusade nearby had been a little too fast to intervene. Still, this was a victory and Ironborn losses were limited, which was going to make them more confident, not less.
For more than a turn of hourglass she maintained control of the birds, watching what they saw – and as they were nocturnal birds, it was like she observed the Western harbour in daylight. The prow of the Lannister flagship, a big golden lion barring fangs and claws, disappeared under waves inch by inch until only bubbles were left to indicate it had existed. Thousands of smallfolk and fire-fighting parties were press-ganged by the so-noble Lannisters to extinguish the fires.
Finally satisfied, she broke the connection after pushing the impulse for her little helpers to come back to Pyke after their night hunt. When she opened once again her eyes, she was in the grey and moderately cold bedroom of Pyke.
"Enjoy the taste of defeat, oh Great Lion. There are many more coming your way."
Author's note: Well, the Crusades have truly begun. Lannisport and Sentinel's Stand have been the first locations to realise this affair is NOT going to be a one-sided punishment of the heretics. The armies are gathering, the skies are red and everywhere old and new threats rise for a great war. Summer is over, autumn is here and with autumn, the fallen leaves are going to drown in blood.
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