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The first true confirmation came at dawn beneath a sky the color of old steel. A rider staggered through Harrenhal's gates on a lathered horse, mud to his thighs and fear in his eyes.
"They've split," he gasped before even dismounting. "Lord Tywin marches west with the greater host. Twenty-five thousand at least. He turns for Riverrun."
A ripple passed through the yard. "What about the other force?" Ser Donnel demanded.
"Ten thousand," the rider said. "Ser Jaime leads them. Banners of the lion. They march for Harrenhal."
Jon felt something inside him settle. So. He was to do battle against ten thousand.
He dismissed the rider to the maester and climbed Kingspyre Tower once more. From its height, the Riverlands stretched wide and wounded. Smoke rose in thin scars across the horizon. Somewhere to the north, beyond sight but not beyond thought, Robb Stark had crossed the Neck. His brother had stepped into war.
And now Jon would hold the line.
They came a month later. First the outriders with glints of gold and crimson at the edge of sight. Then dust clouds on the western road. Then the banners. The lion of House Lannister unfurled against the autumn wind, crimson bright against blackened towers. Ten thousand men.
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They did not encircle Harrenhal at once; the castle was too vast for haste. Instead they spread like a tightening ring, cavalry first to cut roads and river paths, infantry forming camps beyond bowshot.
Jon watched them from the battlements. Disciplined ranks. Ordered movement. Not the wild plunderers who had burned villages in passing, but soldiers under command.
At their center rode Jaime Lannister. Even at distance, he was unmistakable; golden armor catching the sun, white cloak flowing behind him. The Kingslayer had traded court for campaign. Jon knew the man could not resist a good fight. This war more than anything was a game to him.
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Ser Donnel spat over the wall. "They'll test us before they settle," he muttered.
They did. By midday, a line of riders approached under truce banners.
Jon descended to the gatehouse. Jaime did not come himself. Instead, a knight in gilded mail called up to the walls. "Lord Snow!" he shouted. "Ser Jaime Lannister offers you honorable terms. Yield the castle. Open the gates. You and your men will be spared."
Murmurs rippled among the defenders. Jon stepped onto the parapet, Ice visible over his shoulder. "Tell Ser Jaime," he called back evenly, "that Harrenhal does not open for lions. We all know what you did at Kinglanding when the Mad King opened his gates for you."
This more than anything was said for his people. He wanted to make it clear if any of them betrayed him then they would just end up at the end of a Lannister sword more than anything.
The knight's smile thinned. "You shelter rebels. The boy Stark marches south in open defiance of the Crown. While the Tully refuses to bow."
"The Crown," Jon replied, "sits on a throne built by treachery and lies."
The knight turned without further word. By sunset, the siege had begun.
Jaime did not waste time on reckless assault. His engineers began work immediately. Siege lines were drawn beyond arrow range. Trenches were dug. Wooden mantlets were constructed. Timber was felled from nearby groves for siege towers and rams.
Jon responded in kind. Archers rotated in shifts to harry any workers who strayed too close. Stones were piled atop the walls for dropping. Oil cauldrons simmered day and night.
Within the walls, the population had swelled. Five thousand smallfolk crowded Harrenhal's courtyards and halls; farmers, fishermen, blacksmiths, their families. Jon had armed as many able-bodied men as possible. The original five hundred levies had grown to nearly a thousand as boys of fifteen and men of fifty took up spear and bow. They were not soldiers. But they would fight.
The first assault came at night. Under cover of darkness, Lannister men advanced with scaling ladders along the southern wall, shields raised against falling stones.
Jon had anticipated it. Signal horns sounded from tower to tower. Arrows rained down in arcs of fire as torches were thrown to illuminate the attackers. Women who had trained alongside the archers loosed from the inner walls, their hands steady despite trembling breath.
Ladders struck stone. Hooks caught. Men began to climb. "Push!" Ser Donnel roared.
Long poles thrust outward, shoving ladders from the wall. Some fell cleanly. Others tipped slowly, spilling armored men backward into their fellows below.
At one section, a ladder held. Three Lannister soldiers crested the parapet. Jon was there. Ice moved in a wide, brutal arc. Valyrian steel met steel and did not slow.
The first man's shield split from rim to boss. The second lost helm and skull alike. The third stumbled backward, eyes wide, before a spear from one of the young levies took him in the gut.
The ladder fell moments later. By dawn, the assault had failed. Dozens of crimson-clad bodies lay broken beneath the walls. Harrenhal still stood.
Jaime adjusted. Direct assault was costly. Instead, he settled into siege proper. Supply lines were cut completely. No bird flew in or out without risk. Lannister archers grew bolder, picking at defenders whenever they showed too long above the parapets.
Weeks passed. Autumn deepened. Inside Harrenhal, the strain grew visible. Food stores diminished steadily despite rationing. Salted fish from the Gods Eye supplemented grain, but the lake itself became contested; Lannister archers targeted any boat that strayed from cover.
Every few days Jaime tested them again. A feint at the western gate. A probing push near a cracked tower. A barrage of stones from newly assembled trebuchets that slammed into parapets with bone-shaking force.
One impact shattered a section of battlement entirely, sending three defenders plunging to their deaths. Jon reinforced the breach with timber and rubble, building an inner barricade behind it. They adapted. They endured. But they bled.
…
Hope came on a cold morning carried by a raven that slipped through before Lannister hawks could intercept it. Robb Stark had won a battle in the Whispering Wood. Kevan Lannister had been captured.
Jon read the letter twice. His brother was in the Riverlands. The North had stepped onto the battlefield and with a great victory right off the bat. The report stated that 5,000 Lannister soldiers led by the old lion's brother was ambushed by his brother and cut down to the last man.
Now Tywin's position besieging Riverrun was in trouble and he would most likely have to move back if he did not want to get caught exposed.
He shared the news publicly. Morale surged. Men who had been hollow-eyed with fatigue straightened. Women in the kitchens whispered prayers of thanks.
"Hold," Jon told them from the yard steps. "Hold, and relief will come." It was not certain. But it was possible. Jaime, perhaps sensing time was no longer his ally, escalated.
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The Lannisters brought up great siege towers at last. Massive wooden structures, creaking forward on thick wheels, shielded in soaked hides against flame.
Jon watched their approach with narrowed eyes. "Wait," he told his archers. Closer. Closer. The towers rolled within range. "Now."
Flaming arrows arced outward. Some struck and guttered uselessly against wet hides. Others found seams. Fire caught. Not enough.
The towers kept coming. Stones from trebuchets hammered the walls in coordinated rhythm, forcing defenders to keep heads low. Under that cover, the first tower reached the outer wall. Bridges crashed down. Lannister men surged across.
The fighting that followed was brutal and intimate. Spears broke. Shields splintered. Men grappled and fell screaming from heights.
Jon moved like winter given form. Ice demanded space, and he carved it. Each swing forced enemies back or down. Blood sprayed across ancient stone blackened by dragonfire centuries before.
A young levy beside him hesitated and nearly died for it. Jon caught the Lannister blade on Ice and drove his elbow into the man's throat. "Do not freeze!" he snapped.
The boy nodded frantically and thrust his spear forward, this time without pause. After an hour of savage struggle, the tower was theirs. They hacked at its supports and sent it crashing backward in splintered ruin.
But three more still stood. The battle raged across the length of the wall. By dusk, the Lannisters withdrew.
They had gained nothing permanent. But Harrenhal had paid dearly. Nearly a hundred defenders lay dead or dying. Jon stood amid carnage, breath steaming in the cooling air. Ten thousand men could afford losses. He could not.
Winter's edge touched the Riverlands. Rations were cut again. Meat disappeared entirely. Grain became thin porridge.
Whispers of surrender began in dark corners. Jon addressed them head-on. In the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, beneath vast dark rafters, he stood before smallfolk and soldiers alike. "If Harrenhal falls," he said plainly, "the Riverlands fall completely. If we hold, we buy time. For Riverrun. For my brother. For you."
He did not speak of glory. He spoke of survival. It was enough. For now. But he wondered how long it could last.
-
The siege had settled into something worse than battle. It was not the thunder of trebuchets or the roar of men at the breach that gnawed at Harrenhal now. It was waiting.
Smoke still drifted from Lannister cookfires beyond bowshot. Their banners still ringed the horizon. Jaime Lannister had not withdrawn. He had tightened the noose and chosen patience. He would starve them if steel would not take them.
Within the walls, winter pressed closer. Porridge had grown thinner. Salted fish were rationed to slivers. The livestock brought inside at the start of the siege had been slaughtered carefully, stretched as far as possible. Even so, the herds dwindled.
Jon stood atop Kingspyre Tower, Ice strapped across his back, and watched the Gods Eye. The great lake was iron-grey beneath a clouded sky. In its center, half-shrouded in mist, lay the Isle of Faces. Few boats dared approach it. Fewer still landed.
His call for mercenaries had come up short. Now he had to turn to more mystical forces. The smallfolk whispered that the Green Men still walked there, horned and leaf-clad, guardians of ancient pacts. The Faith called them heathen relics. Maesters dismissed them as rumor and isolated hermits.
Jon knew better. In his last life, he had learned at the Children of the Forest feet. He had knelt beneath heart trees older than kingdoms. He had listened as the Children of the Forest whispered truths older than men. He had learned their songs. Their runes. Their green magic.
He had not spoken of it here. Not to Ser Donnel. Not to Harwyn. Not even to Robb.
But now Harrenhal was bleeding slowly, and Robb fought in the field with Tywin maneuvering against him. There were no sellswords coming. No river lords breaking the siege.
If he was to hold and help his brother, he would need something the Lannisters did not understand. He would need the old powers.
That night, Jon descended alone to the godswood of Harrenhal. It was vast like everything else in the castle but untended for decades. Weeds choked the pathways. The weirwood at its center was smaller than Winterfell's but still ancient, its white bark streaked with red sap like frozen blood.
He dismissed his guards. Kneeling before the heart tree, he pressed his palm to the carved face. The wood was cold. "I remember," he whispered. He did not know if the Children still watched him. He did not know if the Green Men still held some power.
But he began the old words anyway. Not in the Common Tongue. In the language of leaves and wind, broken and halting but sincere. He spoke of Harrenhal. Of siege. Of lions choking the Riverlands. Of a brother in the field who could not break free to save him.
Then he cut his palm lightly with a dagger and pressed blood to bark. A pact renewed. To protect the lands and the grooves. To safeguard the Weirwood trees. The wind shifted. It was subtle. Barely perceptible. But Jon felt it.
The next morning, he summoned his maester. "I require parchment," Jon said, "and a raven that knows the lake well." He wanted to be extra sure his message got to the green men.
"What for my lord?" the old man asked curiously.
"To get a message out to the Isle of Faces."
The maester hesitated. "My lord… there are no towers on the Isle of Faces. No rookery."
"There are eyes there," Jon replied quietly. "That is enough."
He wrote three letters. One in careful Common Tongue, formal and respectful. And it he included a lot more details than a regular lord should know. Information no common could know about the Green unless they were a practitioner of it. And he knew a lot of information of their order.
He sent one to the Master of the Wilds, guardian of the shores. To the Great Speaker, voice of the ancient pact. To the High Warden of the Lands, protector of the old ways.
He named himself not merely Lord of Harrenhal but student of the Children. He wrote of the Lannister siege. Of fire and iron threatening the lands around the Gods Eye. Of weirwoods cut in passing by foraging soldiers.
He did not beg. He invoked duty. The pact between First Men and Children. The concern that these gold armored men might threaten the sacredness of the Isle like some black hearted Ironborn did so long ago.
That they should keep the balance like they swore. The letters were not written in ink alone. Between lines, he marked faint symbols in the old script the Children had once traced in earth and sap. Subtle. Hidden to human eyes. But not to theirs.
He sealed the letters not with wax, but with a pressed leaf from Harrenhal's weirwood. The raven flew at dusk toward the isle and across the lake.
-
Days and weeks passed. Jaime's men continued their harassment.
A probing attack at dawn one morning nearly seized a secondary gate before being repelled. Another barrage of stones battered the cracked eastern wall. Casualties mounted slowly but relentlessly. Inside the castle, whispers deepened. "How long?" Harwyn asked one evening, voice thin.
"As long as necessary," Jon answered.
But he had begun to wonder. Had the Children abandoned the Isle? Had the Green Men dwindled to nothing but story?
One night, a storm rolled across the Gods Eye. It rose suddenly. Clouds gathered from clear skies. Wind whipped the lake into whitecaps. Lannister cookfires sputtered and died in the downpour. Lightning struck not once but three times upon the western siege line.
Jon stood atop the wall in rain-soaked cloak, watching. The storm centered strangely over the Isle. And then he saw them. Shapes moving along the shoreline beyond the Lannister encampment. Not cavalry. Not infantry. Something else.
The storm lasted hours. By dawn, the Lannister camp was unsettled. Tents had collapsed. Supply carts overturned. Horses panicked in the night and broken free. Several watchfires had somehow spread despite the rain, damaging stores of grain.
Jon did not smile. Not yet. But he felt the shift.