289 AC, Late 4th Moon
Quenton Greyjoy stirred the cookpot, making sure the remnants of the previous night's stew hadn't burned or gone bad. Sitting at the edge of the cookfire, it would hopefully have been kept warm. He shivered; the North was always cold at this time of the year, and the rain for the past week or so hadn't helped matters.
'At least it hasn't snowed,' he thought to himself.
Still, the soothing sound of waves crashing ashore wore away at his worries. Quenton had been assigned the duty of commanding the rearguard and protecting the nearly sixty ships that had been beached on the closest coast to Deepwood Motte. With five hundred men under his command, it would be more than enough to deter the troops of any of the small holdfasts in the area from daring to attack.
The assignment had stretched out much longer than they'd thought it would; the plan had been to come ashore and strike at the wooden castle before the defenders even knew they were there. Maron Greyjoy, Balon's second son and the man in charge of this fleet, had expected a quick, decisive victory. Instead, he had found the Motte buttoned up and bristling with defenders. The first quick assault had been driven back, though not before they'd inflicted damage to the castle's troops. The army had settled into a siege that would, hopefully, be over sooner rather than later.
While the siege was ongoing, however, Quenton had been put in charge of harvesting as much timber as he and the men under his command could. So, for the past moon's turn, he had overseen the work of felling trees, trimming trunks, and loading them onto the ships. The best saplings and branches were loaded aboard as well, to make spear hafts and bows back on the Iron Islands. Things were coming apace, and more than a few of the ships had already been loaded and had returned to the Iron Islands, given the limited cargo space they had. In another moon or two they'd be able to fully load the entire fleet. Well, assuming the Starks didn't show up in the next fortnight or so and send them packing.
"Morning, Quent," Bluetooth, one of Balon's ship captains, greeted him. Bluetooth sat himself next to the Greyjoy cousin and asked, "The stew any good?"
"I'm about to find out," he replied.
"Then scoop me some of that, if you don't mind."
Quenton nodded and did just that, portioning out the remnants of the stew into a pair of clay bowls. Bluetooth had been assigned as one of Quenton's leutenants, and was an able captain and friend. In the time between Robert's Rebellion and now, the pair had prowled the Stepstones, attacking trade ships, stealing wealth, and claiming saltwives.
"Any word from the patrols?" Bluetooth asked between bites.
"Not a thing," the Greyjoy replied. "A few didn't report in this morning, but there was some talk about reaving a fishing village a short ways up the coast. They likely got bored and decided to find some saltwives to claim."
"Hrmn," Bluetooth made a dissatisfied noise. "I don't like it. We're supposed to be guarding the ships and gathering timber, not raiding smallfolk villages."
"Oh let the men have their fun," Quenton waved his concerns away. "None of the small holdfasts around here have the men to attack us."
"The Starks have surely called their banners by now," Bluetooth reasoned. "They could be here any day."
"Not a chance," Quenton snorted. "It takes, what, a fortnight to gather the closest troops to Winterfell? And how many could they really field from the closest holdfasts alone? Maybe four or five thousand? And it would take them at least a moon to march them all the way out here. And all this rain will slow them down even more. No, there's no chance the Starks have made it here already."
"But what if they have?" Bluetooth asked. "Your missing patrols might be a sign of trouble."
"If the Starks were here already, they'd be attacking Maron's lot up at the Motte," Quenton shook his head. "If that were the case, even if he lost the battle, some of his men would get here in time to warn us. The outriders, at least. We'd be on our ships and long gone before the Starks so much as smelled the sea."
"Perhaps you're right," Bluetooth murmured. He shrugged and took another bite of the stew.
"Trust me, Blue," Quenton said with a smirk. "We're as safe here as we would be back on Pike."
The other man nodded along, but paused, cocking his head to the side. He sat straighter on the log and looked around.
"Blue?" Quenton asked. "What is it?"
"Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"That sounds like…" Bluetooth trailed off. Then, his eyes widened and he stood up, dropping the half eaten bowl of stew to the ground and pulled his ax from his belt. "Horses! Attack! We're under attack! To arms! To arms!"
Quenton scrambled to his feet just in time to see a rain of arrows fall out of the sky onto the unarmored and unprepared men that had been milling about the camp getting ready for the day. Off to the south, from atop a small, wooded hill, hundreds, maybe even a thousand cavalrymen poured out from between the trees. The banner of the Starks waved proudly at the front, flying next to a couple other banners that Quenton didn't immediately recognize.
Quenton watched as the dispersed cavalry slowly reformed. The paths between the tents were relatively narrow, but that would limit his opponents' ability to amass a cavalry charge against him. Even if a horse could break through a tent, it would be slowed down or tripped up long enough for parts of his wall to turn and face them.
"Forward, men!" he called. "Step by step, on my command! Step!"
"Hoo!" the men yelled, shouting the same deep hoot they used to mark cadence when rowing.
"Step!"
"Hoo!"
"Step!"
"Hoo!"
Quenton grinned; he knew how intimidating an Ironborn shieldwall could be, and the rhythmic chanting and slow, inevitable approach could turn the bravest mens' bowels to water. At the front of the cavalry, he spotted a lord dressed in shining silver armor. The helmet was shaped like a snarling direwolf, and a white snow bear cloak hung from his shoulders.
'Is that Stark himself?' Quenton wondered. 'Good. I'll take his head or his ransom myself.'
The horsemen were settling down and lining up in a wedge formation, though it wouldn't be particularly wide, given the narrow paths. Still, he knew how dangerous cavalry could be against a shieldwall. Oh, his men could hold, to be sure, but not without taking losses.
"Be ready!" he shouted. "They're preparing to charge!"
The formation stopped and braced. Anyone with a spear stuck it out between the gaps in the shield wall, hoping to impale one of the incoming horses. The rest held whatever weapons they had ready to counterattack the moment the shock of the charge was over.
Quenton gripped his sword tightly; the Stark lord was spinning his horse around in circles, waving his sword over his head. While he couldn't make out the words the man was saying over the din of battle, Quenton knew his foe was readying his men to fight.
"Be ready! Be ready!" he shouted, his world narrowing down solely to the horsemen in front of him. He could feel himself trembling, hear the beat of the war drums in his ears, and he could smell the piss and shit of the craven and the dead; battle was always tough, no matter how brave you were. Still, he could win this. His warriors were feared far and wide, and no Northman cavalry could take his shieldwall from the front!
"Behind us! Behin-"
Quenten found himself knocked down to the ground. There were screams and shouts and the whinnying of horses all around him, and someone stepped on his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
'What?!' he wondered. 'But… but the cavalry hadn't charged! They hadn't charged yet!'
He scrambled to his feet, looking around, and quickly figured out what had happened. The horsemen that had attacked his formation? They had attacked from behind! "To me! To me! Form up! Form-"
So preoccupied was he by the closer threat that he failed to pay attention to the first group of cavalry. Alas, at that moment the only thing on his mind was the tip of the lance that had pierced his skull.
"It seems we caught them by surprise, my lord," Medger Cerwyn noted after the battle on the beaches had been won.
"It seems so," Ned replied. Despite the blood and shit and the screams of the wounded, he kept his countenance cool as ice. War and battles were nothing he hadn't experienced before, and this small engagement was nothing compared to his battles during the Rebellion. Still, now that the fighting was over with, Ned settled into his usual post-battle habit; cleaning his weapons. Ice, the Stark family's Valyrian Steel greatsword, hadn't left its sheath, as he had fought from horseback, but the longsword at his waist had taken a few lives in the fighting. The rhythmic motion of scrubbing off the blood and offal then running an oiled cloth along the blade to prevent rust helped keep his hands occupied while he calmed down from the battle fury.
'My wolf's blood may not be as strong as Brandon's was,' he thought to himself. 'But it still rises when battle is upon me.'
"You lady wife's roads certainly eased the trip," the vassal lord continued. "Not a single broken wheel or axel, nor a single cart mired in mud. At least, not before we reached the end of the pavement."
Only the first hundred miles or so of the three hundred mile long road between Winterfell and Deepwood Motte had been paved, but just that stretch had shaved at least a week off the army's travel time. As they had neared the Glovers' castle, Ned had met up with Robett Glover, who had a holdfast along the road to Winterfell, and left the man in charge of the infantry. Ned had taken the cavalry and a few hundred archers, who had been put on the backs of some packhorses, and rode wide around Deepwood Motte towards the shore. There, true to Robett's word, he had found the Ironborns' ships and a small rearguard.