The new school of magic began testing for wind affinity across Westeros. Nearly 80,000 soldiers were gathered in what was now a small tent city at Zon Landing. A team of tree-kin mages began testing them for all affinities, but they were especially looking for wind affinity. From the soldiers alone, they found 5000 possible wind users. They found another 3000 among the general populace. They began training these to weed out the mostly useless and to create wind users to power the ships in the counter-invasion. The fleet would need at least 9000 wind users to keep the ships moving, and 10-12 thousand would be better.
1000 ships would be required to move 100,000 soldiers alone, and that would require 2 12-hour shifts with 4 wind users per ship. Six wind users per troop ship would make the shifts much easier, but finding that many would be difficult. Even a slightly trained soldier could help meet the required numbers. The new supply ships also needed consideration; the troop and supply ships were huge and required real skill to power. The roughly 400 other ships that would make up the rest of the fleet already had their wind users in place, except the Shadow Land ships. The Shadow Lands were training their own wind users, taught by the same tree-kin mages that were trying to find 10,000 more potential students.
Forges across Westeros were making wind-affinity rings by the thousands, along with the steady metal needs of building so many huge ships. This didn't even account for the needs of ships from Essos and places like the Iron Islands, who were trying to field their own ships to take part in this massive counter-invasion. Bran and the ministers of King's Landing were doing yeoman's work just trying to collate the entire operation. Tyrion and the intel people were trying to glean as much information as possible about the locations to be taken and the size of the Zonian forces. They printed maps and put battle plans in place. They formulated contingency plans to anticipate obstacles that might arise half a world away.
Arya was constantly knee-deep in officers and briefing meetings. She would come home to their apartment and collapse at night. She often ate two meals a day at the intel building, where most of the meetings were held. Thomas was still mostly bedridden from his poisoning, but he did his best to help with the children. After a couple of months on this schedule, Arya put her foot down: "I need to spend some quality time with my husband and children; you will have to get along without me for a while!" The intel team soldiered on while Arya, Thomas, and the children went on a good long holiday. They stopped at Winterfell and spent two weeks in King's Landing without any talk of war, planning, or anything else related to the counter-invasion.
But as fall rolled around, 800 troop ships were docked at a massive wharf at Zon Landing. Every day, the troops there practiced loading onto ships, sailing out to sea, and then returning. They unloaded near the docks as if they were attacking a beachhead, and maneuvers were in place. Hired locals played the part of defending Zon, much to everyone's chagrin. The locals would scream and yell, and the soldiers would advance on them. Then the locals would run away laughing and collect their pay. The same remarkable scene played out over and over. The troops began to understand exactly what this whole endeavor would involve. Their captains and lieutenants were also learning to drill them for actual battle.
The entire north was buzzing with production, training, and preparation. The first snowfall came early, and shipbuilding went into a frenzy as they tried to finish all the needed vessels before the bay iced over. They gathered huge stores of foodstuffs and prepared them for the whole fleet to eat on their voyage across the sea. The armies would have to forage on land once they made landfall, but they wouldn't go hungry on the way.
They moved most of the ships to the quay at Zon Landing to avoid freezing in the bay. As Arya and her family returned to Brandon's Rest on the steam train, the first snowflakes fell; she leaned into Thomas, tears in her eyes. Thomas kissed her forehead and said, "It will only be a year or so, dear, and then you won't have to ever leave again." She dried her eyes and admonished him to take good care of their children while she was away for so long. "Yes, dear," he said. They had decided that he was still too frail to go along this time and that someone needed to stay with their two children. He had argued against it, but she was adamant about it. "At least one of us has to live to raise them," she had railed, and he couldn't argue that. When the ice broke in spring, the invasion fleet would leave. The thought of not being on board with her ate at Thomas in a way he fought to internalize, because she already had more on her plate than she could handle. He would not add to her burden, at least not openly for now.