Andrew
They had stayed in a high ground dry enough for a camp. It was too far to make out the outriders clearly, but even through the drifting fog he could see their white banners, with the direwolf of Stark, grey upon its icy field.
"Empty, your grace," said the knight with the Merman of House Manderly stitched upon his doublet. "The castle seems to be deserted."
Andrew nodded. "Let's get the castle back to life then." He turned back to look at the Greatjon. "Get the men ready to move."
Greatjon Umber left, bowing. He mounted his own white stallion when it was brought to him and behind him the lords bannermen fell in. Ghost bounded past before him crossing the muddy path with the ease of a direwolf.
The ground under their horses' hooves was soft and wet. It fell away slowly beneath them as they rode past bushels of reeds, patches of mud and sand, and here and there a small pond filled with mud brown water. He might want to place most of the wagons and horses around here. Even a fortress as big as Moat Cailin would not be able to hold all his men and supplies inside.
"Order the men to camp here with the supplies," Andrew told to Lord Beric Dondarrion. "Lord Halys, you have the command of our supply line."
"Aye, Your Grace," Lord Hornwood said. He wheeled his mount and rode towards the supply line trailing them with all the wagons heavy-laden with hardbread and salt beef pulled by horses.
Just beyond, through the mists, he glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin . . . or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child's wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone entirely, burnt away in dragonflames, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers . . . there had been five of them when his father ruled the north and in the tales of Old Nan it had twenty. Rhaegar Targaryen had left the stronghold to ruin and he could not fault him, the north needs no protection from the south when your son rules in in your stead. Moat Cailin was useless to him.
The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.
It looked no more than a ruin now. The last he had seen Moat Cailin, it had hundreds of men holding the castle in his father's name and the banners of House Stark flew from all the five towers. Even in such state Andrew knew that the ruin was more formidable than it seemed. The three surviving towers commanded a causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs surrounding the castle were impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss, all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers. Even an assassin like him won't dare to face all that. And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood.
He should take command of one of the towers while the others should be given to his lords. Andrew looked at the three towers once again and saw that the Gatehouse Tower was in the best place to oversee everything happening around him. He moved his horse slowly across the green-and-black fields of mud to the yard.
"Halt," Andrew told the men as they found a solid ground beneath them. "Get the men settled in, the fires laid and the horses tended. Lord Umber take command of the Children's tower. Lord Rickard you have the Drunkard Tower." When dozens of orders sounded behind him, Andrew made for the Gatehouse Tower with his cousin, Lord Beric and his men.
Ghost had already taken his place in a drafty hall with a black and cold hearth. "Looks like we both picked the same place, eh?" Andrew smiled and scratched him under his jaw.
When dusk finally came over them and a fire was burning in the black hearth of his hall the lords came to him to discuss the future plans. His men had wrestled in a massive basalt slab for the table and Andrew took his seat at the head of it, a pile of maps and papers in front of him and the lords of the north all around him.
"Less than a fortnight past, the Tyrell army set forth from Highgarden," Andrew told them. "Mace Tyrell's son Garlan Tyrell leads them from the van. Tyrell has Tarly and Fossoway in his host and the others are rallying to him on the way. The Targaryen dragons have not yet taken flight and the fleet is anchored at Dragonstone. Doran Martell has called his spears but at the time he is not making any move. Sooner or later we will come to grips with Tyrell and possibly the other two dragons."
"What about the Stormlands and the Vale?" Ser Wendel asked.
"I've received a raven from Lord Arryn," Andrew told him. "The Knights of the Vale will come to our help. Lord Jon is marching them down the mountain road as we speak now. The means Lord Hoster Tully will join us as well."
"Should we make our stand here, my lord?" Rickard Ryswell asked. "You are strongly placed here. The old Kings in the North could stand at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times the size of their own."
"Yes, that is if the dragons come too far up north," Andrew said. "But there is little chance for that."
"Rhaegar Targaryen is too smart for that," Roose Bolton agreed. "He would never have forgotten what your father served him when he tried to invade the north once."
"Aye," Andrew said, "and the dragon will want vengeance once he knows that Lords Arryn and Tully joined us. He will turn towards our allies and burn them as he goes." He took the carved wooden block in the likeness of the Tyrell rose and positioned it near the borders of riverlands on the map before him, a ragged piece of old leather covered with lines of faded paint. "The Riverlands share borders with the Reach and the Stormlands. With the situation in the Stormlands unknown we cannot let them surrounded by enemies from either side. If we did the Targaryens will move quickly through the riverlands, castle by castle, burning them as they go. We would lose an entire army in no time."
"We should take the battle to Tyrell and sent him back running," the Greatjon said in a bass rumble. "The dragons can only burn cities and castles, you can't hold anything with dragons. Without Tyrell in the way we can march forth straight to the dragon's lair."
"We can't rush forth to meet the Tyrell bulk head on," Galbart Glover said. "Even with the strength of Jon Arryn and Hoster Tully with us, we cannot match it up with the power of Highgarden and the two dragons altogether."
"That is without taking the crownlands and Connington into account," Roose Bolton said. "The Lannisters can take us in the rear as well if we ventured too far into the south. Lord Tywin is a cunning man. He won't declare for us like Jon Arryn."
A chorus of consternation filled the hall, all of the lords telling their views. Andrew raised a hand and that stopped them.
"This is what we'll do," Andrew told them and looked over at the map. "We leave a good enough force here to hold Moat Cailin, archers mostly, and the rest of the army will march with me down the causeway," he said. "Lord Howland," Andrew looked to his father's old friend near him, "if the dragons come up the Neck, you and your crannogmen will bleed them every step of the way. You held the Moat for my father now I ask you to do the same for me. Do not let anyone inside our lands."
Howland Reed bowed his head in respect. "I will not, Your Grace," he said.
Andrew continued when Lord Reed was done. "Once we're below the Neck, we will continue down the kingsroad and hold here at the Crossroads inn." He pointed. "Here we wait for Lord Jon and the Knights of the Vale to join us from the mountain road. Then together we cross the Trident at this ford and make for Riverrun to join our strength with Lord Hoster's men. Once we are at Riverrun we wait for the word on Lord Baratheon and then we make the final plans for the war." Andrew sat back, watching the map and the blocks on it. He was pleased with himself. The quick march had given him the time to meet up with his allies and gain some good ground before the Targaryens arrive. If things go by plan he might trap the whole Targaryen army right in the riverlands from north, south, east and west and destroy them in one single stroke. Then Rhaegar will be left all alone in King's Landing with no armies to defend him or his city.
"Your Grace, autumn is almost upon us," William Dustin expressed his concerns. "The Trident will soon be flooded which will make it hard for us to cross the river."
"That may be so," Andrew told him, "but it is our only way to Riverrun. Unless," he looked over at the map and found the Twins up far north in the Green Fork marked by the twin towers in blue and grey, "we cross here at the Twins." Andrew thought back at his past lessons with Maester Walys. He had known the castle and the lord who held it. Was it Darry or Drey or Grey . . . ? Frey, it was Frey. He remembered now. House Frey held the Twins at the Crossing, and their coat of arms is the two blue towers, united by a bridge, on a silver-grey field. Andrew had crossed the Twins with his father once when they went south.
"Walder Frey is a treacherous bastard," the Greatjon said. "You must not treat with him, Your Grace."
"He is Lord Hoster's bannerman is he not?" Andrew asked.
"Aye," Lord Beric agreed, "but he is a cold man, filled with low cunning. Kings and overlords mean little enough to him. He will leech you for favours to grant you safe passage." He pressed the word safe enough that Andrew understood what he meant.
It would be very different from the last time he crossed the Twins with his father, he thought. Without his father, Walder Frey would not be so welcoming to him it seemed. Andrew scratched his beard and looked over at the map once again. Both the plans had their own virtues. Making it to the Crossroads inn will gain him grounds north of the Trident and a commanding position to control the river. But it will give time to the Targaryens and the Tyrells to muster up with their forces. Crossing through the Twins makes the journey and the crossing swift and easier but it will let any loyalists to take control of the Trident and cut off their armies from the Vale.
"From the way I see it, we have only two options," Andrew told them. "Both plans have virtues . . . If we make for the Crossroads inn, we'll join along with the Knights of the Vale and we can hold the Trident. If we crossed from the Twins it'll make our journey to Riverrun considerably quick and our crossing much safer without fearing the autumn floods. I Intend to . . . " He was saying and the call came drifting through the evening air. Andrew pushed himself from his seat, his hand reaching for Frost by force of habit as his men began to stir. Even Ghost was up and bounding for the door once he heard the horn. The horn came from the north, he thought then, not from the south. Who is coming for him from the north?
The long low note lingered at the edge of hearing. Outside the men threw their tankards and horns aside and reached for spears and swordbelts, moving from the peat fires at once. As the sound of the horn faded, even the wind ceased to blow. A horse whickered and was hushed by its rider. For a heartbeat it seemed as if the whole world was holding its breath.
When the silence had stretched unbearably long and the men knew at last that the horn would not wind again, they grinned at one another sheepishly, as if to deny that they had been anxious that it was not the warhorn of a foe.
A Hornwood rider rode down the log-and-plank road that had been laid across the green-and-black fields of mud to the yard below him. "Riders in the south, my lord," he shouted. "They say that they'll only talk to you."
"How many of them?"
"Five of them turned up at our camp," the man said. "There are more camped a short way away northeast from our position."
"Do they bear any standards?" Andrew asked.
"Yes, Your Grace," the Hornwood rider agreed. "Their banners sport your mother's rose."
My mother's rose. He wondered whom they could be. The Company of the Rose once had the violet rose his mother had loved very much in their banners but what's left of the company was long gone from the north as far as he knew. If they were even around somewhere no one knew where they were or what they were doing.
"Send them in, then," Andrew told him, "and keep watch on that camp."
"Aye, Your Grace." He wheeled his horse around and left.
Could it really be them? Or is it another one of Rhaegar's treacherous plots? He would find it soon enough, he thought. He walked back to the hall with Ghost, his lords bannermen all following him. When he took his seat the direwolf laid by his side and rubbed his head against his leg.
The hall was restless as they waited for the strangers to finally arrive. When they finally came, Andrew saw that the Old Nan's myth about Moat Cailin came true only that the ghost he saw that night was not of the old northmen who died here but of a boy from his childhood in Braavos.
"Asher," it was not him who said the words but Lord Gregor Forrester. "What are you doing here?"
Asher Forrester gave a stiff nod to his father. "Father," he said and turned to Andrew. His friend went down to one knee and the men accompanying him did likewise. "I've brought the Company of Rose for his grace and some old friends as well."
"Edgar," Lord Dustin said and rushed to a boy behind Asher.
"Bill Fucking Dustin," the Greatjon announced with a laugh that filled the hall, "its so good to see that sour old face of yours once again before you die."
"I'm not biting the dust before you do, Umber," the old man said with a matching laugh and hugged the Greatjon.
Before him Asher was still on one knee. Andrew was too observed with seeing his old friend and everything that was happening around that he forgot him once again. "Get up," he said gently.
"My men are yours to command, Your Grace," Asher said, "so is my sword. Forgive me for my informalities, but you do look like you father."
"You know King Andrew?" Lord Gregor asked his son.
"We know each other, my lord," Andrew told him. "It seems so long now but I'm happy to see you and your men. Come join us."
"Do you require any refreshments?" Andrew asked them as they took their seats.
"We do, my lord," Asher said. "We've been riding hard for days."
Andrew pushed the flagon of wine on the table to their side. The men with his friend looked well worn out tired and could do with some good sleep.
"You're coming from White Harbor, I believe?" Andrew asked.
"Aye, Your Grace," Asher replied. "Lord Wyman sent us here."
"And I suppose you know of the fight." It was more of a statement than a question.
"Yes, sire."
Andrew unrolled the map again and frowned at it. He pondered where the hammer would fall. Rhaegar will not wait for him to move now that he's lost a dragon and a son. The Riverlands and the Vale siding with him will only enrage him. The dragon will not take the news of betrayal lightly. The Riverlands will be the first to burn, he knew. He would not want Andrew to join with allies. The Eyrie and Winterfell sat well away from the men's grasp but even they were not so far away from a dragon's grasp.
"We cannot let the river get in between us and our allies," Andrew said once they were all settled.
"What about Jon Arryn?" Rickard Karstark asked. "Arryn will come past the crossroads. He can hold the ford."
"Lord Arryn will not make it in time," Andrew said. "The army of the crownlands is much closer than they are. Should Rhaegar's men take the river while we swing past through the Twins and make it to Riverrun it will put a river in between us and the knights of the Vale. Should we risk moving for the ford we would leave Riverrun alone for the Reach and Connington. Either way we risk losing an army and splitting our army will leave us vulnerable."
"What about Harrenhal?" his cousin asked.
"Harrenhal is close to the ford," Lord Beric replied. "But with Oswell Whent in Kingsguard you can't be sure of their allegiance."
"Either way Harrenhal lacks the strength to hold the rivers," Robett Glover said.
"I can win it for you," a familiar voice broke in.
Andrew looked at Asher. His friend stood up. "I have some eight thousand strong in my company," he said. "I can hold the river until Lord Arryn arrives from the East."
That would work. If Asher could hold the ford until the Knights of the Vale arrive from the mountain road, he could move to Riverrun through the Twins without splitting his army. There will not be a barrier between them should any of them find the need for help.
"As you wish then," Andrew said. "Get your men ready to march once they get enough rest. Hold the crossroads and let no one from the crownlands into our domains."
"I will not fail you, Your Grace," his friend said.
Andrew smiled sadly at him. He wished for more time to spend with the friend he had once lost as a boy but no matter what his wish was he could not at least until this war was over.
"Ron," Andrew called the boy Maester Walys had given him to take care of the ravens. "Send a raven to Lord Arryn telling him of our new position."
When the ravens were sent and all the plans were done in the night and all the waiting and rest had been taken in the following days, Andrew marched his army down the neck. At the Kingsroad his host split and he saw his friend getting away from him once again. He turned back to his course and led his army southwest along the Green Fork of the Trident towards the Twins.