“You won’t,” Jon blurted.
It was as if he whacked a wasps’ nest with a stick. One of the queen’s men laughed, one spat, one muttered a curse, and the rest all tried to talk at once. “The boy has milkwater in his veins,” said Ser Godry the Giant-slayer. And Lord Sweet huffed, “The craven sees an outlaw behind every blade of grass.”
Stannis raised a hand for silence. “Explain your meaning.”
Where to begin? Jon moved to the map. Candles had been placed at its corners to keep the hide from rolling up. A finger of warm wax was puddling out across the Bay of Seals, slow as a glacier. “To reach the Dreadfort, Your Grace must travel down the kingsroad past the Last River, turn south by east and cross the Lonely Hills.” He pointed. “Those are Umber lands, where they know every tree and every rock. The kingsroad runs along their western marches for a hundred leagues. Mors will cut your host to pieces unless you meet his terms and win him to your cause.”
“Very well. Let us say I do that.”
“That will bring you to the Dreadfort,” said Jon, “but unless your host can outmarch a raven or a line of beacon fires, the castle will know of your approach. It will be an easy thing for Ramsay Bolton to cut off your retreat and leave you far from the Wall, without food or refuge, surrounded by your foes.”
“Only if he abandons his siege of Moat Cailin.”
“Moat Cailin will fall before you ever reach the Dreadfort. Once Lord Roose has joined his strength to Ramsay’s, they will have you outnumbered five to one.”
“My brother won battles at worse odds.”
“You assume Moat Cailin will fall quickly, Snow,” objected Justin Massey, “but the ironmen are doughty fighters, and I’ve heard it said that the Moat has never been taken.”
“From the south. A small garrison in Moat Cailin can play havoc with any army coming up the causeway, but the ruins are vulnerable from the north and east.” Jon turned back to Stannis. “Sire, this is a bold stroke, but the risk—” The Night’s Watch takes no part. Baratheon or Bolton should be the same to me. “If Roose Bolton should catch you beneath his walls with his main strength, it will be the end for all of you.”
“Risk is part of war,” declared Ser Richard Horpe, a lean knight with a ravaged face whose quilted doublet showed three death’s-head moths on a field of ash and bone. “Every battle is a gamble, Snow. The man who does nothing also takes a risk.”
“There are risks and risks, Ser Richard. This one … it is too much, too soon, too far away. I know the Dreadfort. It is a strong castle, all of stone, with thick walls and massive towers. With winter coming you will find it well provisioned. Centuries ago, House Bolton rose up against the King in the North, and Harlon Stark laid siege to the Dreadfort. It took him two years to starve them out. To have any hope of taking the castle, Your Grace would need siege engines, towers, battering rams …”
“Siege towers can be raised if need be,” Stannis said. “Trees can be felled for rams if rams are required. Arnolf Karstark writes that fewer than fifty men remain at the Dreadfort, half of them servants. A strong castle weakly held is weak.”
“Fifty men inside a castle are worth five hundred outside.”
“That depends upon the men,” said Richard Horpe. “These will be greybeards and green boys, the men this bastard did not deem fit for battle. Our own men were blooded and tested on the Blackwater, and they are led by knights.”
“You saw how we went through the wildlings.” Ser Justin pushed back a lock of flaxen hair. “The Karstarks have sworn to join us at the Dreadfort, and we will have our wildlings as well. Three hundred men of fighting age. Lord Harwood made a count as they were passing through the gate. Their women fight as well.”
Stannis gave him a sour look. “Not for me, ser. I want no widows wailing in my wake. The women will remain here, with the old, the wounded, and the children. They will serve as hostages for the loyalty of their husbands and fathers. The wildling men will form my van. The Magnar will command them, with their own chiefs as serjeants. First, though, we must needs arm them.”
He means to plunder our armory, Jon realized. Food and clothing, land and castles, now weapons. He draws me in deeper every day. Words might not be swords, but swords were swords. “I could find three hundred spears,” he said, reluctantly. “Helms as well, if you’ll take them old and dinted and red with rust.”
“Armor?” asked the Magnar. “Plate? Mail?”
“When Donal Noye died we lost our armorer.” The rest Jon left unspoken. Give the wildlings mail and they’ll be twice as great a danger to the realm.
“Boiled leather will suffice,” said Ser Godry. “Once we’ve tasted battle, the survivors can loot the dead.”
The few who live that long. If Stannis placed the free folk in the van, most would perish quickly. “Drinking from Mance Rayder’s skull may give Mors Umber pleasure, but seeing wildlings cross his lands will not. The free folk have been raiding the Umbers since the Dawn of Days, crossing the Bay of Seals for gold and sheep and women. One of those carried off was Crowfood’s daughter. Your Grace, leave the wildlings here. Taking them will only serve to turn my lord father’s bannermen against you.”
“Your father’s bannermen seem to have no liking for my cause in any case. I must assume they see me as … what was it that you called me, Lord Snow? Another doomed pretender?” Stannis stared at the map. For a long moment the only sound was the king grinding his teeth. “Leave me. All of you. Lord Snow, remain.”
The brusque dismissal did not sit well with Justin Massey, but he had no choice but to smile and withdraw. Horpe followed him out, after giving Jon a measured look. Clayton Suggs drained his cup dry and muttered something to Harwood Fell that made the younger man laugh. Boy was part of it. Suggs was an upjumped hedge knight, as crude as he was strong. The last man to take his leave was Rattleshirt. At the door, he gave Jon a mocking bow, grinning through a mouthful of brown and broken teeth.
All of you did not seem to include Lady Melisandre. The king’s red shadow. Stannis called to Devan for more lemon water. When his cup was filled the king drank, and said, “Horpe and Massey aspire to your father’s seat. Massey wants the wildling princess too. He once served my brother Robert as squire and acquired his appetite for female flesh. Horpe will take Val to wife if I command it, but it is battle he lusts for. As a squire he dreamed of a white cloak, but Cersei Lannister spoke against him and Robert passed him over. Perhaps rightly. Ser Richard is too fond of killing. Which would you have as Lord of Winterfell, Snow? The smiler or the slayer?”
Jon said, “Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.”
“I have heard all I need to hear of Lady Lannister and her claim.” The king set the cup aside. “You could bring the north to me. Your father’s bannermen would rally to the son of Eddard Stark. Even Lord Too-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse. White Harbor would give me a ready source of supply and a secure base to which I could retreat at need. It is not too late to amend your folly, Snow. Take a knee and swear that bastard sword to me, and rise as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.”
How many times will he make me say it? “My sword is sworn to the Night’s Watch.”
Stannis looked disgusted. “Your father was a stubborn man as well. Honor, he called it. Well, honor has its costs, as Lord Eddard learned to his sorrow. If it gives you any solace, Horpe and Massey are doomed to disappointment. I am more inclined to bestow Winterfell upon Arnolf Karstark. A good northman.”
“A northman.” Better a Karstark than a Bolton or a Greyjoy, Jon told himself, but the thought gave him little solace. “The Karstarks abandoned my brother amongst his enemies.”
“After your brother took off Lord Rickard’s head. Arnolf was a thousand leagues away. He has Stark blood in him. The blood of Winterfell.”
“No more than half the other Houses of the north.”
“Those other Houses have not declared for me.”
“Arnolf Karstark is an old man with a crooked back, and even in his youth he was never the fighter Lord Rickard was. The rigors of the campaign may well kill him.”
“He has heirs,” Stannis snapped. “Two sons, six grandsons, some daughters. If Robert had fathered trueborn sons, many who are dead might still be living.”
“Your Grace would do better with Mors Crowfood.”
“The Dreadfort will be the proof of that.”
“Then you mean to go ahead with this attack?”
“Despite the counsel of the great Lord Snow? Aye. Horpe and Massey may be ambitious, but they are not wrong. I dare not sit idle whilst Roose Bolton’s star waxes and mine wanes. I must strike and show the north that I am still a man to fear.”
“The merman of Manderly was not amongst those banners Lady Melisandre saw in her fires,” Jon said. “If you had White Harbor and Lord Wyman’s knights …”
“If is a word for fools. We have had no word from Davos. It may be he never reached White Harbor. Arnolf Karstark writes that the storms have been fierce upon the narrow sea. Be that as it may. I have no time to grieve, nor wait upon the whims of Lord Too-Fat. I must consider White Harbor lost to me. Without a son of Winterfell to stand beside me, I can only hope to win the north by battle. That requires stealing a leaf from my brother’s book. Not that Robert ever read one. I must deal my foes a mortal blow before they know that I am on them.”
Jon realized that his words were wasted. Stannis would take the Dreadfort or die in the attempt. The Night’s Watch takes no part, a voice said, but another replied, Stannis fights for the realm, the ironmen for thralls and plunder. “Your Grace, I know where you might find more men. Give me the wildlings, and I will gladly tell you where and how.”
“I gave you Rattleshirt. Be content with him.”
“I want them all.”
“Some of your own Sworn Brothers would have me believe that you are half a wildling yourself. Is it true?”
“To you they are only arrow fodder. I can make better use of them upon the Wall. Give them to me to do with as I will, and I’ll show you where to find your victory … and men as well.”
Stannis rubbed the back of his neck. “You haggle like a crone with a codfish, Lord Snow. Did Ned Stark father you on some fishwife? How many men?”
“Two thousand. Perhaps three.”
“Three thousand? What manner of men are these?”
“Proud. Poor. Prickly where their honor is concerned but fierce fighters.”
“This had best not be some bastard’s trick. Will I trade three hundred fighters for three thousand? Aye, I will. I am not an utter fool. If I leave the girl with you as well, do I have your word that you will keep our princess closely?”
She is not a princess. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
“Do I need to make you swear an oath before a tree?”
“No.” Was that a jape? With Stannis, it was hard to tell. “Done, then. Now, where are these men?”
“You’ll find them here.” Jon spread his burned hand across the map, west of the kingsroad and south of the Gift.
“Those mountains?” Stannis grew suspicious. “I see no castles marked there. No roads, no towns, no villages.”
“The map is not the land, my father often said. Men have lived in the high valleys and mountain meadows for thousands of years, ruled by their clan chiefs. Petty lords, you would call them, though they do not use such titles amongst themselves. Clan champions fight with huge two-handed greatswords, while the common men sling stones and batter one another with staffs of mountain ash. A quarrelsome folk, it must be said. When they are not fighting one another, they tend their herds, fish the Bay of Ice, and breed the hardiest mounts you’ll ever ride.”
“And they will fight for me, you believe?”
“If you ask them.”
“Why should I beg for what is owed me?”
“Ask, I said, not beg.” Jon pulled back his hand. “It is no good sending messages. Your Grace will need to go to them yourself. Eat their bread and salt, drink their ale, listen to their pipers, praise the beauty of their daughters and the courage of their sons, and you’ll have their swords. The clans have not seen a king since Torrhen Stark bent his knee. Your coming does them honor. Command them to fight for you, and they will look at one another and say, ‘Who is this man? He is no king of mine.’ ”
“How many clans are you speaking of?”
“Two score, small and large. Flint, Wull, Norrey, Liddle … win Old Flint and Big Bucket, the rest will follow.”
“Big Bucket?”
“The Wull. He has the biggest belly in the mountains, and the most men. The Wulls fish the Bay of Ice and warn their little ones that ironmen will carry them off if they don’t behave. To reach them Your Grace must pass through the Norrey’s lands, however. They live the nearest to the Gift and have always been good friends to the Watch. I could give you guides.”
“Could?” Stannis missed little. “Or will?”
“Will. You’ll need them. And some sure-footed garrons too. The paths up there are little more than goat tracks.”
“Goat tracks?” The king’s eyes narrowed. “I speak of moving swiftly, and you waste my time with goat tracks?”
“When the Young Dragon conquered Dorne, he used a goat track to bypass the Dornish watchtowers on the Boneway.”
“I know that tale as well, but Daeron made too much of it in that vain-glorious book of his. Ships won that war, not goat tracks. Oakenfist broke the Planky Town and swept halfway up the Greenblood whilst the main Dornish strength was engaged in the Prince’s Pass.” Stannis drummed his fingers on the map. “These mountain lords will not hinder my passage?”
“Only with feasts. Each will try to outdo the others with his hospitality. My lord father said he never ate half so well as when visiting the clans.”
“For three thousand men, I suppose I can endure some pipes and porridge,” the king said, though his tone begrudged even that.
Jon turned to Melisandre. “My lady, fair warning. The old gods are strong in those mountains. The clansmen will not suffer insults to their heart trees.”
That seemed to amuse her. “Have no fear, Jon Snow, I will not trouble your mountain savages and their dark gods. My place is here with you and your brave brothers.”
That was the last thing Jon Snow would have wanted, but before he could object, the king said, “Where would you have me lead these stalwarts if not against the Dreadfort?”
Jon glanced down at the map. “Deepwood Motte.” He tapped it with a finger. “If Bolton means to fight the ironmen, so must you. Deepwood is a motte-and-bailey castle in the midst of thick forest, easy to creep up on unawares. A wooden castle, defended by an earthen dike and a palisade of logs. The going will be slower through the mountains, admittedly, but up there your host can move unseen, to emerge almost at the gates of Deepwood.”
Stannis rubbed his jaw. “When Balon Greyjoy rose the first time, I beat the ironmen at sea, where they are fiercest. On land, taken unawares … aye. I have won a victory over the wildlings and their King-Beyond-the-Wall. If I can smash the ironmen as well, the north will know it has a king again.”
And I will have a thousand wildlings, thought Jon, and no way to feed even half that number.