On the High Ground
The confidence and composure on Ser Nestor Royce's face had vanished, replaced by a pale, iron-gray dread.
He saw it now.
Just as his most elite knightly order fell into chaos, the Northern army—which was supposed to be "routing"—stopped dead in its tracks.
They turned. They reformed their lines.
On the flanks, the Greatjon Umber and Rickard Karstark led their forces like two massive steel pincers, clamping down tight to seal off any retreat.
It was a perfect pocket formation. And the drawstring was pulling tight.
"We've been played..."
Nestor's lips trembled.
That young wolf pup had been acting from the very beginning! He used a feigned ambush and a fake retreat to drag the Vale's finest knights into the mud.
The slaughter began.
stripped of their momentum, the heavy cavalry were nothing more than clumsy tin cans before the agile Northern infantry. The Northerners wasted no movements. Their longswords, war axes, and warhammers found the gaps in the armor with brutal efficiency.
They chopped at the horses' legs, sending knights crashing into the muck. Then, three or four frenzied Northmen would swarm a single fallen knight, howling like beasts, driving their blades through visors and gorgets.
Blood sprayed from the gaps in the steel, pooling into dark, serpentine rivers on the muddy ground.
Some Vale knights, backed into a corner, tried to rally a defense. They swung their swords, desperate to carve a path to safety. But they were facing a tide of Northern steel. If one Northman fell, two more took his place. There was no fear in their eyes, only a numb, terrifying madness.
This was the fury of the North.
"Break out! Push south!" a Vale noble screamed, his voice cracking as he tried to gather the remnants of his unit.
His answer was a battle axe flying from the flank.
It spun through the air and split his skull with a wet crunch.
The Greatjon spat a glob of bloody phlegm and yanked his axe from the corpse.
"Open your fucking eyes, lads! Any man barking orders gets the chop—those are the leaders!" he roared. "Break out? Go break out in the Seven Hells!"
This could no longer be called a battle. It was a massacre.
Nestor Royce watched helplessly as the cavalry he took such pride in was harvested like summer wheat. Finally, after paying a butcher's bill of over five thousand men, the remnants of the Vale army tore open a gap in the line. Leaving countless corpses behind, they fled south in disgrace.
The cavalry treated the slower infantry as sacrificial pawns; most of the dead were foot soldiers. After all, two legs could never outrun four, and to survive a rout, you didn't need to be faster than the enemy—just faster than your friends.
The situation was perfect, but Robb did not order a pursuit.
The Northern army had taken its own share of casualties, and he understood the wisdom of not chasing a desperate enemy too far. He simply sat on his horse, watching the backs of the deserters with cold eyes. His young face was smeared with enemy blood, but those grey Stark eyes burned bright.
"Strip their weapons and armor. Clean the battlefield. We rest here!"
This was his first real command.
And he had won.
The Kingsroad was strewn with bodies and slick with blood. The surviving Northern soldiers erupted into a thunderous cheer, raising their gore-streaked weapons to the sky, chanting the name of their Young Wolf.
"Robb! Robb! Robb!"
Nestor Royce looked back at the hellscape below, at the cheering Northmen, and felt his entire worldview shatter.
An ambush... cavalry against infantry... with the terrain advantage...
How did it end up like this?
What exactly was going on inside that teenage boy's head? A chill shot from the soles of Nestor's feet to the crown of his head.
The North, it seemed, was no longer a beast that could be easily tamed.
---
Meanwhile, Deep in the Neck
A frost road, a hundred yards wide, wound its way like a white serpent across the deadly swamps.
Lynn's army marched silently along this path of ice. Aside from the heavy thud of giants and mammoths, and the occasional crack of settling ice, there was no sound.
Lynn walked at the very front, his face pale. Creating and maintaining an ice road that spanned the entire Neck was taking a massive toll on his mental reserves.
Arya walked quietly beside him, her small hand gripping his tightly. She watched Lynn's tired profile with eyes full of concern but said nothing to disturb him.
Behind them, Jon and Benjen Stark followed, still reeling from the shock.
Miracle.
It was the only word they could find to describe what they were seeing.
Suddenly, Lynn's steps faltered.
A system notification, visible only to him, floated into his vision.
> [Killed Vale Knight. Experience +5]
> [Killed Vale Infantry. Experience +2]
The notifications cascaded like a waterfall. Finally, they coalesced into a single line of bold, golden text.
> [Total Experience Gained: +16,802]
Lynn raised an eyebrow.
Sixteen thousand.
It seemed Robb's battle was over. And the results were far richer than he had anticipated.
In his original plan, Robb's twenty thousand men were merely bait. If they could trade blows with the Vale army, hold the line, and create a stalemate, that would have been a total victory. As long as they tied down the Vale's main force to buy Lynn time, the plan worked.
But now...
Robb hadn't just stalled the enemy; he had kicked their teeth in.
Over sixteen thousand experience points implied a complete wipeout of a medium-sized force. That "Young Wolf," who usually looked so green in his father's shadow, had delivered a stunning performance in his debut.
The corners of Lynn's mouth curled up.
Interesting.
It seemed his dear brother-in-law had far more talent for war than he had given him credit for.
"What is it?" Arya sensed the shift in his mood.
"Nothing," Lynn said, squeezing her hand as the exhaustion vanished from his face. "Your brother just gave me a little surprise."
He didn't explain further. There were more important things to do.
Lynn mentally summoned his status panel.
> [Name: Lynn]
> [Strength: 22 (2%)]
> [Agility: 21 (61%)]
> [Constitution: 20 (0%)]
> [Spirit: 36 (1%)]
> [Remaining Experience: 17,002.2]
Seventeen thousand XP. The most he had ever held at one time. He would need to carefully plan how to spend this windfall.
---
The Eyrie (High Hall)
Lysa Arryn smashed a solid gold goblet onto the floor.
Fine Arbor gold splashed across the sky-blue Myrish carpet.
"Incompetent! A pack of useless fools!"
Her scream echoed in the high vaulted ceiling, shrill and twisted.
The messenger kneeling before her shook like a leaf in a storm. He had brought news of Ser Nestor Royce's defeat, along with a casualty report stained with blood.
The ambush had failed?
Twenty thousand elite Vale troops, commanded by the seasoned Nestor Royce, holding the high ground against a green boy leading foot soldiers. And they had been beaten into a rout?
The cavalry was crippled, five thousand infantry dead, and who knew how many had deserted in the chaos.
How in the Seven Hells was this possible?
"That old wretch Nestor... he did this on purpose!" Lysa's face flushed red with rage.
"He can't stand to see me succeed! He lost this battle intentionally just to humiliate me! Yon Yohn Royce must have whispered poison in his ear!"
Lysa's mind spiraled into paranoid madness. She was unstable at the best of times; now, she was biting at shadows. To her, this couldn't be a tactical failure. It had to be betrayal. Everyone was out to get her. Even Nestor, who had been loyal to little Robert, was now a suspect.
Just then, Maester Colemon shuffled in, his steps uneven. He held a raven scroll that had just arrived from the North.
"My Lady," the Maester's voice wavered. "A letter... from Lord Ramsay of the Dreadfort."
"Bolton?" Lysa sneered with undisguised contempt. "I told him to flee first to break their morale. He failed at that, and now he has the gall to write to me?"
Lysa snatched the letter and tore it open roughly. The handwriting was scrawled and frantic.
Ramsay used fawning language to excuse his "strategic withdrawal," claiming he was preserving strength to counter a deeper plot by Lynn.
> "...The Stark pup is just a distraction. His Northern army is bait!"
> "The real threat is the King Beyond the Wall, Lynn!"
> "I have seen his monsters with my own eyes!"
> "I suspect he has taken his creatures on a different path. His target is not the Riverlands!"
> "Please, My Lady, beware his trickery!"
"Hah! Trickery?" Lysa laughed coldly.
She crumpled the letter and tossed it into the hearth. The flames instantly devoured the paper filled with warnings.
"A coward who wet his breeches trying to lecture me on strategy? Laughable."
She didn't believe a word of it. When men lost battles, they needed scapegoats. In her eyes, the Bolton failure was the direct cause of Nestor's defeat. Now this craven was trying to use scare tactics to save his own skin?
Lynn? That savage who climbed the ranks on a woman's skirts? What trickery could he possess? His only power was that fire-breathing beast. If he dared come here, the natural defenses of the Eyrie would turn his dragon into a roasted chicken.
Lysa had made up her mind. Once the Northern trouble was settled, the Dreadfort was next. She would teach Roose Bolton the price of betraying House Arryn.
However, just as she was about to order Nestor Royce to hold the Kingsroad at all costs to atone for his sins, another scout stumbled into the High Hall, tripping over his own feet.
The man's face was devoid of color, as if he had seen the Stranger himself.
"My... My Lady!" He collapsed to his knees, his voice trembling uncontrollably.
"I... on the ridge south of the Kingsroad... I saw... I saw..."
"Saw what?!" Lysa barked impatiently.
"A giant!" the scout finally screamed, terror choking him. "A giant... made of solid ice!"
"It... it was taller than the highest watchtower! It just peeked its head over the ridge, and the earth shook! Its eyes... they were blue fire!"
Dead silence fell over the hall. The only sound was the crackling of the logs in the hearth.
Is this a joke?
Peeking over a ridge? How tall would that be? Even if such a thing existed, the amount of food a monster that size would require would be astronomical—enough to starve an army in a day. The North didn't have the resources to feed such a thing.
It was illogical.
But the rage on Lysa's face slowly froze.
What if it's true?
She suddenly remembered Ramsay's warning in the fire.
> "...He has taken his creatures on a different path..."
A thought, terrifying enough to chill her blood, began to take root in her mind.
Lynn might actually have these monsters. After all, he had a dragon. If one impossible thing was true, why not another?
She rushed to the massive map of Westeros on the wall. Her eyes, manic with paranoia, drilled into the area between the North and the Riverlands.
Robb Stark's army was the bait!
All of this was to draw her attention, the entire Vale's attention, to the Kingsroad!
And Lynn... that savage... his real target...
Lysa's trembling finger landed on the map, right on the heart of House Arryn's dominion.
The Vale!
"He's crossing through the Neck?" she whispered. "A feint to the west, striking from the east... clever. Very clever..."
Her voice lost its anger and took on a tone of sickly excitement. She felt she had seen through the fog. She was in a silent battle of wits with this mysterious Lynn, and now, she had won.
"He thinks Lysa Tully is just a foolish woman hiding in her castle? He thinks his little tricks can fool me?"
A twisted, triumphant smile spread across her face. She turned to her knights and stewards, barking out orders with sudden clarity.
"Pass my orders! Tell Nestor Royce to abandon the Kingsroad immediately! Gather all surviving troops and retreat to the Bloody Gate!"
"Tell him the battle on the road is over! The real enemy is coming for us from the other side!"
"Send word to that old corpse, Walder Frey! Tell him Lynn's main force has turned toward the Vale. Tell him to mass his army and crush Robb Stark's isolated bait force! Tell him Riverrun is his if he succeeds!"
"Order the garrison at the Bloody Gate to full alert! Seal every mountain path leading into the Vale!"
"Move all our knights, all our archers, all the Scorpion bolts to the Bloody Gate! I want to prepare a grand welcome for that arrogant savage!"
Her commands stunned the room.
Maester Colemon plucked up his courage and stepped forward. "My Lady... are we truly to abandon the Kingsroad? It is the throat of the Riverlands..."
"The throat?" Lysa cut him off with a sneer. "When an enemy is about to rip out your heart, do you worry about a cut on your throat?"
She walked to the edge of the High Hall, looking out at the mountains surrounding her domain.
"Lynn underestimates me. And he overestimates himself. Does he think a giant can scare me? Does he think he can breach the impregnable Bloody Gate?"
"Fool."
Victory gleamed in Lysa's eyes. She could already see it: Lynn and his monsters, exhausted from the march, arriving at the Bloody Gate only to face tens of thousands of fresh Vale elites and a fortress that had never fallen in thousands of years.
Once the Freys dealt with Robb, she would switch from defense to offense. Lynn would be trapped between two fires, utterly hopeless.
"Let him come," Lysa spread her arms, as if embracing the howling wind of the Giant's Lance. "Let him smash his army against my walls! I will show him that the Falcon is the eternal master of the sky!"
---
However, the Lady of the Eyrie, confident she had seen through everything, did not know one thing.
The "Ice Giant" her scout saw was exactly what Lynn wanted her to see.
At the same moment Robb's army stepped onto the Kingsroad, Lynn had ordered the fifty-foot ice giant to break away from the main force crossing the Neck. It moved alone, skirting the edge of the Kingsroad, leisurely heading south.
Its mission was simple: Get caught.
The moment it was spotted by the Vale scout, it immediately turned around and sprinted back to the frost road in the Neck to rejoin the column.
It was a simple yet lethal psychological trap. A perfect snare for a paranoid commander.
Robb was bait. But Lynn's "surprise attack" was also a calculated leak.
Now, Lysa was convinced Lynn was marching on the Bloody Gate.
---
Meanwhile, just outside the Vale.
Lynn and his army had successfully crossed the entire Neck.
As they stepped onto the solid earth of the Riverlands, the first gray light of dawn was touching the eastern sky. The air no longer smelled of rotting swamp vegetation, but of fresh soil and grass.
Lynn exhaled a long, cloudy breath.
Behind him, the Wildlings and giants made no sound of celebration. They stood in silence, waiting for their King's command.
Through his Greenseer vision, Lynn knew the bait had been taken. Lysa had swallowed the lie about the Bloody Gate hook, line, and sinker.
The irony was, in the "true plan" he had told Robb, he was supposed to attack the Bloody Gate.
But this Wildling Legion, just like Robb's Northern coalition, was merely another layer of bait.
His goal was to force Lysa to mass her troops inside the Bloody Gate, creating a standoff.
With the board set and the pieces locked in place, he was finally free to execute the real plan—the one only he knew about.