Chapter Three – Honourable Traitors

Robb

"I've had no answers yet" Roren Bulwer stated as he rode beside Robb towards Riverrun. "And the dreams are worse in your presence, your Grace, not less powerful".

For twelve days Robb had travelled with that Bulwer man from the south, joined by five hundred mounted men as Dacey and Smalljon along with Ser Brebin Vanderhart, bannerman to House Bulwer marched with the infantry of that same house, two and a half thousand men under the Bullskull banner of Bulwer and Blackcrown, an ancient keep on the outlet of the Honeywine, kept by that old family descended from Bors the Breaker of Greenhand's get. Even though Bulwer kept to the Seven and had been amongst the first to convert their loyalty to the Andal gods had almost always been… superficial. Robb thought that was the right word for it. All surface and no centre. For as ancient as their House was the Bulwer line was bound to have secrets and dark shadows in their history, and chief amongst them was the Dreaming.

"I saw a Wolf walk in a forest where the trees whispered his name" he had said when they had met for the first time, after one of the seven or eight bastards of Brebin Vanderhart had stepped in front of Armstark's hooves and demanded to meet the King in the North. And what had followed had been intriguing to say the least. "The blood-splattered snow covered the ground beneath his paws as he brought the Winter with him, and his eyes shone blue and burning".

"And your family has always had these dreams, Lord Bulwer?" Robb had still be suspicious as an armoured knight entered the red and green Bulwer pavilion, the one from Renly's rainbow Kingguard clad top-to-toe in maroon and sanguine armour. That one that had seemed so familiar yet so unplaceable.

"One every generation since the founding of my house, your Grace". He had called Robb 'your Grace' from the very start despite how he had rejected Renly and all but made war with the Reach, which had been a good sign to the Young Wolf. "At least one of us is always struck by it. Dreams of images, a green haze through which mad sights of past and present can be seen. But… ever since I heard of you coming down from the North it has grown worse. My dreams are filled with Wolves and crows and roses with iron thorns dripping with blood as the flowers twisted on themselves and made to kill each other".

"I see". A few months ago, a single month earlier even, Robb would have dismissed it as madness out of hand. Then though, after the Vision had come to him, he was inclined to believe just about anything. And old Nan had told him stories, stories about the green dreams and the Greenseers, about the Gods and the Others. But things had changed. "And you believe that I am this Wolf. I had heard stories of the Green Dreams, Lord Roren. Perhaps together we will find out what they mean". And then, as he had thought on stories and memory he had realised it, and he had turned to the Red Knight of the Rainbow guard. "Royce. You're Yohn Royce's kinsman, aren't you?"

"Verily, that I am, your Grace. I am Robar Royce" he had bowed, that dark and rugged fellow from the Vale, with all the respect due a king that he had not knelt to. "Lord Yohn of Runestone is my father. And our families have always held close counsel with other true descendants of the First Men. We Remember". Aye, so it was. House Royce had the oldest memory in all of Westeros. Secrets dark and frightening both were kept in the records of Runestone. "I am sworn to serve Renly Baratheon, your Grace – but We Remember our old alliances with the Starks of Winterfell. Ask me anything else but to betray my duty, and you shall have it, your Grace".

Robb's answer had been nearly instant. "Tell me about Margaery Tyrell".

He had hoped to learn that she was a deviant, that she was cruel, that she was anything but the kind and magnanimous and smallfolk-loving young woman of high birth that she really were. He had hoped to break her spell over him that way, so that he could turn his heart elsewhere and focus once again. Every day since that day she had haunted his mind like the spectre of the life that he would never have. He saw her when he closed his eyes, when he smelled the flowers on the wind, when the taste of honey was on his lips when he woke up –

He hadn't eaten anything sweet at Renly's ill advised feast. Grey Wind had, from the Summer-Sun Flower-Maid's fingers, but Robb Stark hadn't.

Gods, what accursed sorcery is this?

"The dreams have changed, though" Roren Bulwer broke the spell on Robb for the moment and catapulted him back to the now, when he was nothing but a tired young king straddling one of the bravest and dumbest horses in Westeros. "Perhaps the Seven are showing me the way. Perhaps it is your gods that are showing me the way". Roren was not a large man, short and stocky and with arms as thick as a blacksmith's and a neck like a bull's, but in contrast to that his skin was pale and wan, almost yellowed and his hair all but gone despite his young age. The rings beneath his eyes were deep and discoloured enough to be scars, and his eyes were always unfocused and more red than white. Roren Neversleep, some called him. He would use drugs and draughts to keep himself awake and out of the Dreaming state.

"What do you see now, Bulwer?" Their negotiation had been long and ardoursome, but all Roren had truly wanted were answers, and Robb had been able to give him some. By the stories of Nan and some wives tales from the North that he had heard from his personal guard he had given Roren more than any maester or wise woman ever had, which somehow seemed odd. Something else had made the Southron noble follow the Direwolf banner and bend his knee to Robb, but what? Because it certainly wasn't only because of empty stories. Perhaps he truly was driven. Or perhaps it was nothing but a scheme.

"Trees, your Grace" Neversleep shuddered, and Robb arched an eyebrow at how frightened that strong bull of a man seemed. "Trees, white and tall, Weirwoods. Thousands upon thousands of them, reaching for me with their branches, tearing the flesh off my bones. They had faces, and their mouths were filled with teeth. And then they suddenly weren't. They were all smiling, and the sun was shining, and I a saw an island in a great lake. But the branches held me yet, and I could not move as their tendrils pushed through my skin and into my eyes".

Robb said nothing for a little while, absorbing the vivid images Roren had delivered onto him. "Your nightmares are even worse than mine, Lord Bulwer" he confessed at last and shook his head. All he ever dreamt of – before these last ten days – were pains all around and throughout his body as quarrels struck him and blades impaled him. No images, no sights. Only pain and screams and the howling of dying wolves.

The Bulwer men were good sorts, though they seemed a little untested to Robb. Too romantic, not jaded enough like most seasoned warriors were. Then again, it had been nigh-on twenty years since the Reach went to war and much longer than that since there had been any good fighting going on so far south. Apparently Roren Bulwer was the leader of the house in all but name, as he was the guardian of his niece Alyssene despite the efforts of his sister and second cousin and niece three times removed – the Bulwer family tree was horribly convoluted and bordered on incestuous at times – Victaria Bulwer and her infant son, Sylas. That was how he could swear his entire House to the Direwolf banner and still not be an outcast from his kin and have the loyalty of his men. Robb wondered if they would hold under the pressure of battle. They had betrayed once – perhaps they would betray again.

He would have to see. Time would tell, and they would be bloodied soon enough.

When they rode in under the portcullis of Riverrun, over the drawbridge over the wide moat that served the keep so well and had done so in ages past, they were met with thunderous cheer as the soldiers that roused themselves saw the Direwolf banner of House Stark and Robb's own Wolfshead flowing behind him. There were no shouts of "King in the North", though, thankfully. Those had a tendency to escalate into even more cheering and chanting that Robb knew that he had no time for.

He beckoned Owen Norrey to him from behind, and the lumbering clansman came quickly, turning his good ear towards Robb. "Call my council, all of them, to the warroom. There is no time for us to rest". Owen bowed and saluted before he hurried to shout at the messengers, and so Robb nodded to himself, shaking visions of brown doe eyes from his mind as he unhorsed Armstark and beckoned the stableboys to him.

Armstark had been a gift for his fifteenth nameday, a gift from the old Rodrick Ryswell from out of the finest stables in all the North, the Ryswells having bred horses ever since their ancestors, as Horse Kings of the Rills, bent their knees to Rickard Stark the Laughing Wolf thousands of years earlier. Armstark was the latest and greatest scion of a long line of shaggy Ryswell coldbloods, white with a flowing black crest, standing at almost seventeen hands high at the withers, strong and tall and mighty. Unfortunately, Armstark was dumb as a post. Robb suspected that was why the horse went so willingly into battle yet remained so docile towards other horses and around Grey Wind. He simply did not know any better. Probably thought the Direwolf was a big furry friend and that the Lannisters were good and honest people.

Before the stableboys brought Armstark away and saw to the horses of the Bulwer men Robb walked up to the horse and took from within his saddlebags his old breastplate. The one he wore now, borrowed to him by one of his personal guard in great charity, was a poor fit, but the old breastplate had been run through in one place and had cracked down the entire front, almost split in two. With it in hand he went to the smithy to go see to a few smaller matters before the council of war.

Perhaps he could even go five minutes without thinking of Margaery Tyrell and her summer scent.

"Your Grace!" the smiths of the smithy on the edge of Riverrun's great courtyard greeted him, gathering all as one to stand in a line before them, the brawny Lucan and the old Bromber shoving at each other in open spite while Ferrel and Tib regarded the two in amusement.

"We came across a bit of trouble on the road" Robb muttered as he handed the cracked breastplate over to Lucan, one of those four smiths that worked the Riverrun forge. "Lannister scouts. My gambeson took the blow, so I am unhurt. But I need better armour". Lucan nodded and muttered. He was the master armoursmith there, while Bromber, who was a greensmith by trade and had served House Tully for nigh on twenty-seven years and forged Robb's crown for him, was the one who owned the forge. Now he and his apprentices and assistants had to crowd in with Lucan's and swordsmith Tib's and even those of the Glover silversmith, Ferrel, who Robb had incidentally spoken to before he rode south. "And that other matter?"

"Yes, yes, the question of a mint has been on my mind for quite some time, your Grace" Lucan the armoursmith muttered and frowned with his bushy eyebrows over the plate in his hands. "We all thought o' it by the time his Magnificent Poofness Bromber brought it up. So we had ourselves a wee contest, so we did" he put the breastplate aside and showed Robb towards one of the scorched tables in the smithy. On it were a gathering of three coins, silver ones to replace the silver stag of the south when the war was over and the North needed its own currency. "We each made a hammer, to show our skill. I made the wolfshead one, Tib made the crowned wolf, and his Magnificent Poofness made the dead lion. Ferrel worked on your likeness, your Grace".

Robb picked up one of the coins and turned the silver over in his hand. On one side there was his face in profile, bearded and thick of hair and surrounded by the name Robb Stark in bold lettering, and on the reverse a lion with a sword through its heart and the words Winter is Coming around it. Another had the Stark running Direwolf and the words were King in the North. And on the last – the Wolfshead on that coin was very much like the one carried on the shields of his men, but it faced the other side, so that no matter how you turned the coin face up both heads on it seemed to look to the left. And over the Wolfshead… "'The North Remembers'" Robb nodded as he read and then took that coin, tossing it to Lucan. "Make more of this one, but keep the others. I might have a use for them".

"As your will, your Grace" Lucan said as the four master blacksmiths bowed to him, and when he turned to leave the smithy and strode past its doorway he could hear the jests and the exclamation. "Hah! Told you, you fucking poof! Lion with a sword through it – are you taking the piss?!"

Robb found himself smiling a hint as he left the smithy and crossed the courtyard without too much fanfare, stopping once or twice to speak with some of his outrider captains and their men. He conversed with them, let them know him. It was one of Father's principles: never ask your men to die for a someone that they do not know. And he had kept it to heart, and in turn the soldiers loved him and shouted "the King in the North!" at his back when he left them, eager and fresh to find his enemies and ride them down. The guards that opened the gates of the Riverrun citadel for him wore Stark colours but Tully livery, a grey fish on white water, and even they called him king.

The Bulwer men would do so too, in time. As Robb hurriedly climbing the steps of the keep, wondering when he at last could take off his armour and rest his shoulders for only a moment, Maester Wyman approached him, whispering "A raven from King's Landing brought this, your Grace". Robb nodded and took the paper that the maester offered. It was in Sansa's hand, and he smiled when he saw the same loops in the bends that Maester Luwin had taught him when he was a boy, but despite the handwriting it was still the Queen's words. Damned Cersei Lannister, that brother-fucking she-lion. He knew that Joffery was a braggart and a fool, but he was Cersei's boy in everything. She might not have been the one who ordered Father's head chopped off, but she might as well have been. And she had ordered his arrest and the butchering of Father's men.

Oh, the Lannisters had a lot to answer for. "Mother has seen it?" Robb asked the Maester, anger burning in his heart now, and the old man nodded. "Good". And so Robb crushed the note in his gauntleted fist and went on up through the keep, to his designated Warroom on one of the castle's higher floors, inwardly cursing over lions and Lannisters. How he hated them. With all his heart. No matter how many times he told himself that the war was just and for a good reason, he knew that what drove him to it was more vengeance than it was justice. Though ever since the Gods had spoken to him the two seemed to blur together as one. Forsake Righteousness. He hated doing it, but if that was what needed to be done he would do it. For his Father. For Eddard Stark.

For the North.

A few lords had already gathered within and without the warroom by the time Robb got there, and chief amongst the ones waiting by the sides of the doors was the Lord of the Dreadfort. Roose's eyes still unnerved Robb, cold and white and black all at one, narrow slits in his face through which he could see the Leechlord's soul and abhor what lay therein, but not as much as they had used to. He had seen into the eyes of the Gods. No mortal eyes could hope to even make him flinch now.

Brown eyes, shining with life and cleverness and a gentle soul. A smile, bright and perfect. Hair that tumbled thick and brown down her shoulders. She smelled of Summer, of warmth, of life and love and fields of golden roses.

He all but slapped himself back to the present as the Lord Bolton approached him while he hurried down the hallway, the heels of his boots ringing harsh against the stone floors. Ahead lay the warroom, and the Leech of the Dreadfort walked by his side in through those double doors. "What news from the South, my king?" Roose asked, and Robb let out a sound of frustration. "What of Renly Baratheon? Did it go as you had hoped?"

"'Did it go as I hoped?' Did it bollocks" Robb cursed and flung open those doors, meeting there the familiar faces of his closest commanders. Rickard Karstark still had mud on his boots and had a new sword at his hip, the last broken when he beheaded a particularly thick-necked Lannister bannerman. "Mormont! Blackwood! Did you manage to kill off that fucking Lannister shite of a knight?"

"No, King Stark" Maege glowered aside, short fingers drumming at the sleeves of her leather jerkin. "He's got eight thousand men with him. We don't. We're spread too thin, Stark, though we did make that blonde-haired ponce hurt. We can't hold the Riverlands with only twenty thousand men and fight the Lannisters at the same time".

"We've another three thousand to add to that" Robb told them, and the rest of them seemed taken aback by this new development. What had the he done to make three thousand men suddenly join his cause - sown fields with Dragon's teeth like the heroes of the ancient stories? "No, I didn't conjure them from out of the fucking winter winds. The commander of House Bulwer struck his banners and joined our cause, and so did all his men. It seems that they didn't want to be sworn to a seven years old girl and a boy still suckling at the teat".

"Whatfor?" Roose asked as the young king reached up to rub his eyes. "Keeping to the traditions of chivalry or not, even these Southron knights do nothing without expecting recompense. What does this... this Bulwar want in return for his allegiance?"

"He wants to know the will of the Gods" Robb answered him quietly, staring darkly at the far window of the warroom, seeing brown eyes reflected back at him from the few warm memories he had left not coloured by bitterness and sorrow or vengeful rage. "He has five hundred mounted men and knights at his back, and two and a half thousand heavy pike and longbowmen. We will see if he knelt to me with truth in his heart. Lord Tytos - where is Steffon Lannister's army camped?"

"Three days north of Pinkmaiden now by my own reckoning, your Grace" Blackwood had proven himself a man loyal to the Stark cause even though he was a Tully bannerman by birth. His family kept to the Old Ways as much as a Riverlander House could, and by the shadow of that enormous and dead Weirwood heart tree that stood outside of Raventree hall they kept the Gods too, not Seven with all their light and sound and fury. "That is what my scouts say, at least. It seems that he heads for Pinkmaiden and House Piper. Ever since Jaime Lannister-"

"The Kingslayer, that?" Maege asked, and all turned their heads to her. "What? Kingslayer is what he is. Oathbreaker and traitor most accursed. Though I thought his name was Jon or James or something like that".

"Ever since Jaime Lannister smashed Clement Piper's and Darrel Vance's forces by the Golden Tooth Old Piper has been sitting astride the wall of the war, us to one side and Lions to the other" Blackwood spoke up as if he hadn't been interrupted while Edmure Tully gave him a long look. It was no secret that the heir to House Piper was a close friend of the heir to House Tully. "All it would take is an army at his gate to make him tip one way or the other. Pinkmaiden is as good as lost, your Grace".

"Then we will retake it" Robb made a show of being unconcerned, and by the looks of his commanders he knew that he had succeeded in instilling concern, not confidence. He cleared his head of brown eyes and focused. It was time for a speech. "Smalljon's wee sister and her men will come with us, and the Bolton outriders and Glover and Tully horse, too. Uncle, you and the Blackfish will hold the Riverlands. Remember what I have told you. Piper has forsaken us for too long, my lords and ladies. We will fall on him in the dead of night and slaughter the lions he would cleave to. Then he can choose to bend the knee or see his House hanged for oathbreaking. One way or another, he will know that Winter has come for him".

"Aye!" they spoke back to him as one, but it was Galbart Glover who smiled broadly and raised his spiked steel gauntlet above his head and shouted "The King in the North!" And that shout spread through the room, even Roose the Leechlord joining in a hushed hiss of a whisper, and soon it came back at Robb from the courtyard and halls of Riverrun as the fighters of every banner and even the Bulwer men joined in on the call.

But through all their shouting Robb could hear a voice carried on the wings of memory. Farewell, Robb Stark. A voice as soft as silk.

Damn it all, why couldn't he get Margaery Tyrell out of his head?

Margaery

As she held her dagger awkwardly in her hand and Edric's shaking fingers in her other Margaery wondered why it had all gone so wrong. Well, she knew why. Renly had died. And now either his sworn banners turned home or turned to Stannis, his murderer.

But she wondered why the Seven had allowed such a thing to happen.

"Hush, now" she whispered over her shoulder to Elinor Tyrell, who huddled against the back of the alcove with Alla and Megga, also of Tyrell, and Alyce Graceford, those of her ladies in waiting who hadn't all but vanished with their fathers' and husbands' hosts when the news came of Renly's death. "Don't cry out. Not a word". As she and the ladies and the trembling little boy hid there in that stony alcove of Bitterbridge Keep she heard the sound of armoured footsteps coming closer. She adjusted her grip on her dagger and prayed that she would know how to use it when the time for using it came.

The dagger was an ornate and gilded thing given to her on the day of her wedding as a gift from a Tyroshi merchant lord called Jaerio… something or other… and was broad at the hilt yet narrow at the tip. With any luck it should have been able to punch through armour. "Find the Tyrell whore and the bastard!" came the voice of the Florent men from down the hall, and pressing themselves into the shadows of the alcove the ladies behind her cried silently as armoured soldiers with the Fox on their breastplates ran past. "King Stannis wants them alive – but not unspoilt!"

The sight of the man that walked past the alcove then, a knight in the colours of House Florent with a red tuft atop his helmet and followed by another from House Meadows, made Margaery's stomach turn. Traitors. She knew now why Robb Stark and the northerners hated them. Her little knife would do little against their plate suits, but it was the only weapon she had, and she would die before she let them touch her. Suddenly the knights turned at once, putting their backs to Margaery and the alcove to look down the far hall, and through the sound of distant fighting she heard a new rumble.

"Eat their hearts!" a roar blasted into the Florent men, followed by a charge of spears and swords. Through flashes of steel and the cries of the wounded and slain Margaery glimpsed Valemen features and livery of bronze, brown and black. The struggle within the keep mirrored that of the hundred small battles fought in the night without, as the camp of the Storm King and the beloved Stag tore itself apart when Tyrell and Hightower fought Meadows, Florent and all those other lesser houses that had declared fully for Stannis the moment Renly died.

Megga let out a shrill cry as the dead crashed into the walls beside the alcove, but over the noise of the puissance she went unheard. Margaery pressed Edric back against the wall and the window with the other ladies when a knight, struck back, stumbled to his knees in the shadows of the alcove.

It was the Florent knight, the one who had said that his men could "spoil" her if they wanted to, and with a sickening turn of her stomach she raised her knife. Her hand was trembling like the wings of a newly hatched sparrow, and silently she prayed to the Maid and the Warrior that she would strike true.

And strike through she did. The blade struck the knight in the neck – and then it broke.

The Florent knight howled in pain as Margaery's knife slanted off the bottom of his coif and broke as it went upwards under his helmet, cutting the straps off it and throwing it off his head as it made a deep gash across his cheek, missing his eye by a hair. Roaring in inarticulate rage he stood and Margaery stumbled back, holding that now merely four inches long dagger in her hand limply. The Florent knight parted his lips and raised his sword, making to curse her and call her a whore, a dead whore – but then a sword was thrust through the back of his head and out his mouth.

"My lady Tyrell" Robar Royce, once the Red of Renly's Rainbow guard but now garbed in a fey suit of burnished armour that seemed more ancient than the earth itself, panted as he wrenched his longsword out of the head of the Florent knight and then took off his plumed helmet and bowed once the corpse had slumped to the floor and bled all over Margaery's slippers and the hem of her black dress. "At your service. Are you hurt?" He glanced to the broken knife in her hand and gave a court nod. "Poorly tempered, no doubt. Tyroshi do not know how to make proper blades".

"I found that out the hard way, Ser Royce" Margaery cast the broken weapon away from her in disgust and gestured to Edric and the ladies to go forth with her out into the group of Royce guards and squires. "We are unhurt, thank the Seven". Not that it stopped fat Megga from bawling like a babe or Alla and Elinor from weeping quietly or Edric from being so scared that he shook like an aspen leaf, though Alyce, thankfully, kept her mouth shut, staring at the son of House Royce in awe. "Florent and Meadows… they were sworn to my father. How could they do this?"

"When fortune turns the tides of war the wind changes with them" Ser Robar gestured to his men to form up, half in front of Margaery and her ladies and half behind her. "And men turn their coats after the way the wind blows. We looked for you, my Lady. By your leave we would escort you to safety". Margaery nodded and liked her lips. They felt dry and cracked. Damn it all, what would her mother say about the state of her and her gown? Gods, that was such a fool thing to worry about, yet she could think of nothing but it. The shock, doubtlessly. It was doing strange things to her head.

"Gods bless you, Robar Royce" she told the Red Knight, now Bronze, as they set off down the halls of Bitterbridge keep, the very halls that she had walked with her now dead husband not twenty days hence when death and defeat had seemed an impossibility. "You, at least, have your honour. How is it that some men are so much more loyal than others? Are some simply born with better hearts?"

"I am of Runstone and the line of the Bronze Kings, my lady". Royce spoke back darkly, a scowl shifting his ruggedly comely features as he spied down one hallway and then the next before signalling his men to advance, the jagged runes hammered into the plates of his armour filling with shadows under the flickering torchlight. "We Remember. We remember where our loyalties should rightly lie". Another group of Royce bannermen waited down the next corridor, raising the number of the escort to one and a half dozen as they brought with them two chests. Margaery recognized them from her and Renly's chambers. "I thought that you would want your clothes with you on our way, my Lady".

"Bless you sevenfold, Ser Royce" she thanked him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. His armour – it was warm to the touch. Almost unnaturally so. He politely but firmly shrugged off her touch, a gentleman in every respect. He had volunteered to be the member of the Rainbow guard that stayed behind to protect the Queen when Renly rode into battle against Stannis, and even though she was queen no longer – and had never been in truth – he was still loyal. She glanced back at Alyce and saw the blush in her pale cheeks and starry look in her pale eyes as she followed the Bronze Knight with her gaze. Robar was unmarried, and with the Rainbow guard dissolved he deserved to be rewarded. Alyce was pretty enough, and from a fairly prestigious family. It would be a good match.

But making marriages and tying loyal vassals even closer to her house would have to wait. They descended the steps of the keep to the great vestibule and found it guarded by a score of Florent and Stormlander men. Royce held back his men from advancing before he raised the crossguard of his simple longsword to his brow and said a short prayer to the Warrior for strength and the Father for nobility and trueness of heart. After he had finished he lowered his blade and bared his teeth at the Florent men as he walked down the steps of the stone stairs and into their sight, placing the helmet back on his head, his azure cape spotted with blood on his back, mighty in his bronze like a figure of legend. "Stand aside or die!"

"Not fucking likely, heathen Valeman scum!" one of the Florent spoke back at him. "We were told the guard these doors, and by the Burning Heart we shall!" These men… they even kept the Red God, like Stannis. How had they not known? How had they let such men join the ranks of their mighty army?

"Very well" Royce replied and levelled his sword at the Florent men as they all pointed their spears and their swords at him. "Eat their hearts!" And he rushed forth, his men charging down the stairs to join him except for a few that stayed with Margaery and her train. Royce laid into the traitor vassals like bronze wind of death, almost dancing from man to man, slashing through leathers and finding gaps in plate with almost supernatural knowledge. No, definitely supernatural. A greatsword wielded by a tall knight in green struck at the runes on Ser Royce's armour, but when the steel impacted the much weaker metal of the plates the bronze did not break. Instead it was the blade that did, shattering like glass, slivers of metal flying through the air to impale and blind Florent men but did not even come close to the Royce guards.

Sorcery, or chance? Margaery had seen metal break just a little while earlier, after all. But still she doubted. The Gods had allowed the gentlest of kings to die, so what unhallowed powers protected this man of the Vale?

And then it was over. When all the Florent men lay dead or wounded or had routed from the keep – so much senseless blood and death – Royce gestured at the stairs, and tentatively Margaery and her following were escorted down the steps and out before the keep where they could see the camp of the dead stag burn around them, and barely Royce had time to order his pages and men to get their horses so that they could set off on their way before a dozen riders could be seen approaching the keep from the east. At first Margaery was scared, but when she saw what two figures led those Tyrell knights she smiled with relief from ear to ear. "Margaery! Thank the Gods you are safe!"

It was Loras who led them, Loras and Brienne of Tarth, the Blue and the Lord Commander of the Rainbow guard respectively, and Margaery breathed out a long sigh of relief. Her brother was here now, and he was one of the fiercest and bravest warriors in all the world. His silver armour was steeped in gore from elbow to chin. "Blessed seven for you, Royce! Now we can go to Highgarden in peace!"

But Royce didn't answer to that. With an air of solemn duty he stepped up before Margaery and hefted his longsword high. "I am escorting the Lady, my Lord" he intoned darkly. "And she goes not to Highgarden". What?

"Stand and deliver, Robar!" Loras shouted at them, and the Bronze Knight raised his sword in warning. "You-! You are as much a traitor as the others!"

"My loyalties never waver. I would die for my rightful Lord" Royce spoke back and set his feet wide, affixing the Knight of Flowers with his dark eyes. "The High King of the First Men, of all of us, North and Mountain and River, even the ones that dwell in the Vale of Arryn. Robb Stark – the King in the North!"

"Loras!" Brienne halted him with her massive arm as the Royce men shouted "the King in the North!", and she held back the Knight of Flowers from charging in blindly and riding down the squires and men of the Vale. "Think of your lady sister! She is their hostage!" Margaery felt a cold hand seize her heart as she stared at the back of Robar Royce's armour and then glanced around her. The Valemen surrounded her and her following, like a ring of steel drawn tight to leave not a single gap through which she could escape. Royce was no different from the rest of them.

"Think on it, Lord Commander" Robar spoke up then, looking darkly at Loras all the while even as he rolled his shoulder under that ancient armour. "Ten thousand traitors hold the western camp. A dozen riders with double the weight in the saddles will not punch through that with ease, and Mace Tyrell is in Highgarden. The Riverlands are closer. The Wolf gave his word that we would be safe in his court, and the King of Winter is sweet on her. You saw it, as clear as I did too".

"She comes home with me!" Brother shouted, his face contorted and mad with grief and anger, but as he panted in his rage he glanced at his men and then to the chaos that lay across the banks of the Mander and the Bitterbridge. "Margaery decides!" he then went. "You've got your honour, Royce? Or so you claim! Let my sister and the Storm boy go where she wills!"

"My lady?" Royce lowered his sword and turned around to face her, bending his head to her decision. Perhaps he wasn't like the others, and thinking back on it he had not lied to her. An honourable traitor, just like his men. Honourable traitors all. And if her brother trusted his honour… she trusted her brother, at least, if not the Valeman. But the decision was hard fraught. Now it was a matter of survival, and if houses of the Reach and the Stormlands turned their banners to Stannis and defied her father the Lord Paramount… she made her choice. She breathed in hard to steady herself.

"Mount the horses" she told them firmly, using her queenliest tone. "We ride North for the Riverlands!"

Robb Stark, at least, had honour. Or so she hoped.

Jon

His brother Robb's envoy reached him at Craster's Keep, the first man not of the Night's Watch to have crossed into the North beyond the Wall in living memory.

"I'm telling you, Sam, I saw it" Jon implored his brothers Samwell, Pyp and Grenn as they sat around one of the campfires, their black cloaks drawn tight around their bodies to ward off the ever-present cold. Along with them were three hundred brothers of the Night's Watch and their horses, but none of them were within earshot. They didn't believe him as he told them what he had seen then, when he had followed Craster out the night before as he swaddled that crying babe in his arms. He had left the child on a rock deep in the haunted forest, and then… "White, white and ice all over, impossibly fair, eyes so winter blue. It spoke, Sam. I heard it. A voice like breaking ice and mountains being split apart".

"This is horseshit" Grenn cursed and shuddered, looking to Sam only to see the schooled southerner stare bleakly right in front of him. "Isn't it, Sam? It can't be real! The Others're no more than fucking wives' tales". But that was empty baying, and somehow they all knew it even before Sam answered.

"And so are the dead that walk" Sam told them, and all of them shuddered. They had met a few Wights on their patrols, all of the men participant in the Great Ranging had, a few stragglers lumbering on northwards that were easily dispatched with fire merely, but still the dead arisen. "They say that the Wights serve the Others. That fire and steel cannot kill them. That when the great frost comes and winds of winter rage there in comes the Cold Shadows, the White Walkers. We've seen Direwolves and mammoths and the bones of giants. The Others might be real too".

"I didn't take my fucking oath to fight demons, so I didn't" Pyp hacked his teeth together and tried to warm his fingers over the flickering campfire, but in vein. It was midday, but this far north everything was in a state of perpetual blue twilight when the darkness didn't fall to cover all. Suddenly Pyp frowned and rose up on his hunches, looking out southwards towards the distant Wall. "Who the fuck is he?" he muttered, and all of them craned their heads around to look. A stranger had come to their camp from the South, and he wasn't a brother of theirs.

In heavy furs and fine armour he looked more like a nobleman than anything else, though his face was rough and scarred and his nose broken enough times to denote to all his common birth. Jon and those who looked, who had trained their eyes scouting in the eternal snow of the uttermost north, knew that his armour had not been made for him. He had dragged it off a dead Westerland noble. This was someone from the far south, and not a single thing he wore, not even the heavy bundling around his freezing horse, was black. This wasn't a brother of the Night's Watch, but it was someone from the other side of the Wall.

"Oi!" the stranger called out as he approached the camp outside Craster's keep under guard by two mounted brothers in black, shivering all the while so hard that his teeth her hacking together violently. "I've got a message for one of youse! Some Jon Snow of Winterfell!" His accent was decidedly northern, and Jon stood from his friends and approached the man in question, bundled up by furs as he was. "I've got it right here, so come on, will you?! My liegelord was only allowed one man through that special gate of yours by that enormous prick Allister Throne, and I was unlucky enough to grace this fucking frozen hellscape!"

"I'm Jon Snow" Jon told the man as he approached him, hand on the stone pommel of Longclaw while the brothers of the camp, even the Lord Commander himself, approached the messenger from behind. He didn't seem to be even slightly intimidated, though, that messenger herald. He was used to men in swords gathering around him in the hundreds. On his breastplate and on his cloak was, after all, the chained giant of House Umber stitched and embossed. And going by his voice Jon thought that he must have been a herald of some sort.

"You'd be him, then?" the Umber bannerman asked, holding back a clattering of the teeth, and aware of all the eyes on him Jon nodded. "Aye, I'd bloody hoped that t'was you. Can't stand the fucking cold up here one sodding moment longer. Name's Drustan Cranmer, not that it matters". With a hand shaking from the bold he reached inside his heavy cloak and pulled out a bundled scroll sealed with grey wax, a scroll he then cracked open himself. He eyed the contents through before he gave a shrug like he couldn't care less and looked up at Jon. "Oi, m'lord, what name did you swear yourself to the Watch by?"

"Jon Snow" he answered, not understanding what was going on.

"And how much exchange has youse had with the South since you went a'ranging, lord Snow?" Drustan asked further, to which Jon shook his head and answered that he had had none. "Well, you're in for a surprise, aren't you? Now then" the man cleared his voice in a practiced manner, having served as the personal herald of Smalljon Umber, the Greatjon's son and heir, for the entirety of his campaigning in the South under the Stark banners. And what he then said shocked all around him.

"Herein follows a proclamation made by king Robb Stark". Jon's eyes shot open in shock, and all could see that commander Mormont was growling in rage like the beast on his old shield would have had it been alive, having already figured out what was about to happen. "'Let it be known, to all and sundry'" the herald went on "'that his Grace's baseborn brother, Jon Snow, son of the late Eddard Stark, has for his duties and his loyalty to his House and his Lord earned the right from his liege for all to recognize his noble blood. From this day henceforth and until the end of time he shall be known to all as Jon Stark, equal in status to his trueborn brothers and sisters in blood, inheritance and honour. Let it be known also that the holding of the Whispering Woods, two and a half square miles of land north of Riverrun, is bequeathed onto Jon Stark and his descendants from this time until the end of time to tend to and do with as they please. Lord Jon Stark is hereby ordered to install himself at his King's side and aid him in these times of warfare and strife'".

The herald cleared his throat again and rolled up the scroll, finishing with proclaiming its contents with practiced ease. "So decrees king Robbard Stark, the first of his name, Lord of Winterfell, King of Winter and of the Trident, High King of the First Men and the Sword of the North". He paused and took in the heavy silence around him, his lower jaw trembling at the could as he looked at Jon, puzzled. "You know m'lord, it's just a whole lot of empty woodlands in the middle of sodding nowhere" Drustand shrugged. "The Whispering Wood, that is. Doesn't even have keep on it or anything, except for this ruined fucking pisshole. A little symbol of a thing I guess, to make you seem important and what not-"

"I know bloody well what it means!" Jon shouted back at the insipid man, wanting some silence to take in this moment. No. It hurt his heart, this all did. He had just sworn himself fully to the Night's Watch, from that night and all nights to come, in heart and soul, and to now be offered everything he had ever dreamed of… that hurt, more than any sword or Wight's hands. And he had seen the Others, and the dead that walked. "I cannot-"

"Of course he bloody well cannot!" Jeor Mormont thundered past him, squaring up to the rider, huffing like an irritant beast that had just been Robbed of its dinner. "This is a man of the Watch! He's sworn an oath to-"

"Oi, mate, maybe t'wasn't clear and my words muddled" Drustan's face darkened and his hacking of teeth stopped. "The King just ordered him to get his lordly arse back south. M'lord Umber didn't ride like a sodding demon through half of Westeros fetching the man only to be turned away. And I didn't come out into this godsforsaken frozen hell for nothing. Here!" he reached down into his saddlebags and pulled out another scroll, this one sealed as he handed it on to the Lord Commander. "He's offering you his terms-"

"Give me that!" Jeor tore the paper from the herald's hands, broke the seal and eyed it through. Slowly his snarling face morphed into a wry smile of acceptance, and so he handed the scroll back to the herald. "Is this true?"

"Aye, not a word of a lie. It all waits for you back at Castle Black, Lord Commander" Drustan answered before he himself took it up and began to read. "'King Robb Stark has decreed to all and sundry that he grants onto the Night's Watch ten wagons of barely, twenty bales of hey, a hundred pounds in silver and half a hundred riding men from his army, and their horses, for the Lord Commander to use as he will. He furthermore loans the aid of the builders of House Stark to them for a year and a day to help them tend to the castles of the Night's Watch. He expects, in turn, their good friendship and the safe return of his brother, Lord Jon Stark, to the South. So decrees king Robbard Stark, the first of his name, Lord of Winterfell-' and so on and so forth, you know the rest".

"Such a thing's never been done before, Snow" Mormont looked to Jon earnestly, eyes narrowed and grim face all tense. "But you swore the oath as Jon Snow, and you aren't that man anymore. For half a hundred trained men I'd sell a dozen young lads like you, to brothels and slave pits and worse. Now" he rumbled and pointed up towards Craster's Keep "get your packing and on your horse and follow the fool south. That's an order!" The last one he'd ever receive as a brother of the Black.

Of all the things he had ever wanted and dreamt of in this world that had been the thing he had wished for the hardest. But never like this. Father was dead and now Robb had ordered him to war.

And the watch sold him, like some sort of mere pawn. For strength, perhaps. But there were other ways to fulfil one's duties than die for them. Never the less it broke his heart and hurt like his soul was yanked from his breast. He knew his duty, had sworn his oath – and now he was cast aside.

"Aye" Jon whispered and turned away, ignoring the stares of his brothers – former brothers now – as he stalked over to the supposed keep of rough stone and shite lumber to fetch his things. His saddlebags, his longbow, his clothes and extra pair of boots, he took it all to his horse. Within a quarter of an hour he had saddled his steed, and he was joined by Ghost as he headed back to the camp, stopping before the Lord Commander on his way towards the herald, walking with a heavy head. "Lord commander" he lifted at Longclaw's scabbard at his hip, but a large hand landing on his shoulder stopped him.

"T'was a gift, Snow, freely given. It's nothing but a sword of crows and slavers if you hand it back" Mormont spoke back grimly to him as many of the other men of the watch gathered close around him, most of them jealous and angry but others smiling at a brother that had escaped the bondage they had all been bound to. "If you don't want the damn thing give it to my sister or my niece. Or make it your House's. A sword's good as any other".

"Thank you, commander" Jon answered him and bowed, and when Jeor offered him his hand he took it and clasped it before he turned and headed along his way, mounting his horse. Astride his steed he looked back over the men, at Sam's and Grenn's and Dirk's and all the others' faces. They were hurt, happy for him, angry, bitter, all of it. He was too. "I'll never forget the Watch" he assured them all. "I'll wake the sleepers, send as many as I can your way. I'll live and die at my post!"

"Go to your new life and win new glory, Lord Stark. Take your lands, take a wife, father a whole litter of children" the Lord Commander answered him before he cleared his throat and spoke up. "And now his watch is ended!" The rest of the men of the Watch raised their voices in an echo of that, and with an unshed and silent tear in his eye Jon waved farewell to Sam and his friends and his duty.

And then, his white Direwolf trundling along after him, silent like the ghost it was named for, Jon turned his horse along Drusten and his escort and headed south to join his brother the king.

All but a few dozen of the men behind him would be dead within a month.

END

A/N: Apparently "convincingness" is a word. Who would have thought? Certainly not I.

Nan is never stated to have told any stories about the Greenseers in canon, but she could have, couldn't she? Might as well have. Or maybe she had told those stories to Robb and Jon and the older children but Bran and Rickon had never heard it.

Greatjon Umber didn't ride to the Wall in a couple of weeks. Jon meets the herald around the same time as Margaery rides for Riverrun, but I had no way to make that come across.

The Bulwer stuff is connected to the Reach storyline that comes in later chapter. Most of the history and stuff about the House I'm just pulling out of my arse. But I needed a noble family from the Reach like that, one that would take to Robb because [SPOILER CENSORED]. And as I looked the Reach over I went: Hmm… three of these things are not like the others.

The choice was either the gate in the stone wall of House Rhysling, the spider in the web (no, fucking really) of House Webber, or the fricking Bull's Skull on red of House Bulwer. And I thought about which house's banner would fit best alongside the bears and wolves and chained giants and steel fists and flayed men of the North, and it was a done deal. Northmen have some fucked up stuff on their flags.

Just saying that a family with a Bull's skull for a coat of arms is serious business for almost anyone. If you're not a matador or something, that is. And the Bulwer storyline is going to be in the background and pay off in a big way down the line. Remember: the Dragons have come back, and with them magic. All of it. Even the dark sorceries of a long forgotten age.

Lastly, the Battle of Pinkmaiden replaces the Battle of Oxcross in a sort of hardcored-up version. It will feature prominently in the next chapter. Just wanted to let that be known.

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.