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On the high ground.
Ser Nestor Royce's confidence had vanished. What remained was a face gone iron-gray.
He saw it.
When his finest knights plunged into chaos, the Northern army that was supposed to be routing stopped.
They turned around. Closed ranks.
On both flanks, the forces under Greatjon Umber and Rickard Karstark swept in like two massive iron pincers, sealing off every path of retreat.
A perfect pocket formation.
And it was closing fast.
"We've been tricked..."
Nestor's lips trembled.
That young wolf pup had been performing from the very start. A fake ambush. A fake rout. And he had used them to drag the finest knights in the Vale straight into the mud.
The slaughter began.
Heavy knights without momentum were nothing but clumsy tin cans against light Northern infantry. The Northmen wasted no movement. Longswords, axes, and maces found the gaps in the armor with cold precision. They hacked at the horses' legs, toppling riders to the ground. Then three or four of them would come howling in, driving blades through visor slits and neck joints, grinding steel into flesh.
Blood seeped through the gaps and pooled in the churned mud, spreading in dark red ribbons across the ground.
Some Vale knights, cornered, tried to fight their way out. They swung their swords and screamed for a path. But what they faced was a tide of Northern soldiers that never stopped coming. One Northman fell, and two more filled his place. Their eyes held no fear. Only a near-mindless fury.
This was the North's rage.
"Break through! Break south!"
A Vale nobleman screamed himself hoarse, trying to rally whoever was left.
A battle-axe answered him. It spun once through the air and split his skull clean open.
Greatjon Umber spat a mouthful of bloody saliva and wrenched his axe free from the corpse.
"Listen up, every last one of you! Whoever's shouting loudest gets the chop first — those are the ones giving orders!"
"Break through? Break through to the Seven Hells!"
This was no longer a battle. It was a one-sided slaughter.
Nestor Royce watched his proud cavalry fall in swathes, cut down like wheat at harvest. Finally, after losing more than five thousand men, the remnants of the Vale force tore open a gap and fled south, leaving their dead behind them.
The cavalry abandoned the infantry without a second thought. Most of the dead were foot soldiers. Two legs, no matter how fast, couldn't outrun four. And when it came to survival, you only needed to be faster than the man beside you.
The field was theirs. But Robb gave no order to pursue.
The Northern army had bled too. He knew better than to chase a cornered enemy with nothing left to lose.
He sat on his horse and watched the retreating backs of the Vale soldiers in silence. His young face was smeared with enemy blood. His grey eyes burned.
"Strip their weapons and armor. Clean the battlefield. Rest in place."
This was his first battle.
He had won.
The Kingsroad was carpeted with corpses. Blood ran in rivers through the mud.
The surviving Northmen erupted. They raised their weapons and roared the name of their Young Wolf into the sky.
"Robb! Robb! Robb!"
On the high ground, Nestor Royce stared down at the carnage below, at the cheering Northmen, and felt his understanding of the world quietly collapse.
An ambush. Cavalry against infantry. Absolute terrain advantage.
How had it come to this?
What was going on inside that boy's head?
A chill crawled up from the soles of Nestor's feet to the crown of his skull.
The North was no longer the North that anyone could push around.
...
Meanwhile, deep in the Neck.
A road of frost a hundred meters wide coiled across the deathly swamp, winding through the mist like a pale scar.
Lynn's army moved along it in silence.
Only the heavy footfalls of giants and mammoths broke the quiet, and the occasional crack of ice shifting underfoot. Nothing else.
Lynn walked at the head of the column. His face was pale.
Conjuring and sustaining an ice road across the entire Neck was draining him. He could feel it in his bones.
Arya walked quietly beside him, her small hand wrapped tight around his. She watched his tired profile and said nothing. The worry in her eyes was plain, but she didn't speak.
Behind them, Jon and Benjen followed in silence. The awe on their faces hadn't faded.
A miracle. That was the only word for it. Neither of them could find another.
Then Lynn's steps halted.
A system prompt materialized before his eyes — visible only to him.
[Vale Knight killed, EXP +5]
[Vale Infantry killed, EXP +2]
...
Notifications cascaded past like a waterfall.
Then they resolved into a single line of bright gold text.
[EXP +16,802]
Lynn's eyebrow went up.
Sixteen thousand, eight hundred and two.
So Robb's side was finished.
And the results were far richer than he'd expected. In his original plan, if Robb's twenty thousand men could hold the Vale army in a stalemate long enough to pin down their main force and buy him time, that was already a win. That was all he needed.
But now it looked like Robb hadn't just held them.
He'd fucking broken them.
Over sixteen thousand experience points. That was the signature of a complete victory in a mid-scale engagement.
The Young Wolf , who had always looked a little green standing in his father's shadow , had just delivered a masterclass in his very first independent command.
The corner of Lynn's mouth curved up on its own.
Interesting.
His cheap brother-in-law, it turned out, had a gift for war that went well beyond anything Lynn had given him credit for.
"What is it?"
Arya had felt the shift in his mood.
"Nothing." Lynn squeezed her hand. The exhaustion cleared from his face. "Your brother just gave me a pleasant surprise."
He left it at that.
There were more important things to attend to now.
Lynn reached inward and pulled up his status panel.
[Name: Lynn]
[Strength: 22 (2%)]
[Agility: 21 (61%)]
[Constitution: 20 (0%)]
[Spirit: 36 (1%)]
[Remaining EXP: 17,002.2]
Seventeen thousand experience points.
The most he had ever held at one time.
He was going to have to think carefully about how to spend it.
...
Riverrun.
Lysa Arryn hurled a solid gold goblet at the floor.
Fine Arbor wine splashed across the sky-blue Myrish carpet in a spreading stain.
"Useless! Every last one of them, useless!"
Her shriek bounced off the vaulted ceiling, shrill and ugly.
The messenger kneeling before her was shaking so hard he could barely hold himself upright. He had brought news of Ser Nestor Royce's defeat, along with a blood-stained casualty report.
An ambush. And they lost.
Twenty thousand Vale elites, personally commanded by the steadiest, most experienced knight in the Vale. With every terrain advantage. Ambushing a Northern infantry column led by a boy who'd never fought a battle in his life.
And they came back broken. Cavalry shattered, infantry casualties above five thousand, and a portion of the men had deserted outright during the retreat , vanished, no one knew where.
How in the seven hells was that possible?!
"That old fool Nestor did it on purpose!"
Lysa's face was crimson.
"He can't stand to see me succeed! He threw this battle deliberately, just to humiliate me! Yohn must have put him up to it — or he's trying to avenge Yohn!"
Her thoughts had locked into a paranoid spiral and couldn't get out.
She had never been rational. Add paranoia and madness to that, and she'd bite anyone who came near. In her mind, this defeat had nothing to do with tactics. Someone was betraying her. Everyone wanted to destroy her. Even Nestor, who had spent his life devoted to little Robert, had made it onto her list of suspects.
Just then, Maester Colemon shuffled in, moving with the careful steps of a man entering a room on fire.
He was carrying a raven that had just arrived from the north.
"My lady," he said, his voice carrying a thin note of hesitation. "It's... a letter from Lord Ramsay of the Dreadfort."
"Bolton?"
Contempt flashed across Lysa's face, undisguised.
"I told him to be the first to break and collapse their morale from within. He didn't do it. And now he has the nerve to write to me?"
She snatched the letter and tore it open.
The handwriting was cramped and frantic, the words tumbling over each other.
Ramsay had filled the page with groveling language, explaining his "strategic retreat" as an act of prudence , preserving his strength to counter Lynn's deeper designs.
"...that little Stark wolf pup is nothing but a decoy. His Northern army is bait too!"
"The real threat is the one they call King-Beyond-the-Wall. Lynn!"
"I saw his monsters with my own eyes!"
"I believe he's taken them on a different route. The Riverlands was never his target!"
"My lady, I beg you to be careful. Watch for his tricks!"
"Tricks?"
Lysa laughed, cold and short.
She crumpled the letter into a ball and dropped it into the fireplace. The flames swallowed it in seconds.
"A coward who ran with his tail between his legs wants to lecture me about tricks?"
She didn't believe a word of it. After a defeat, someone always had to carry the blame. In her view, the Bolton failure was the direct cause of Nestor's disaster. And now this coward wanted to spin wild stories to save his own skin?
Laughable.
Lynn. That wildling who'd clawed his way up through a woman's bed. What tricks could he possibly have? His only real power was that fire-breathing beast. And if he dared bring it here, the Eyrie's natural defenses would turn his dragon into a roast chicken.
Lysa had already decided. Once the Northern problem was resolved, the Dreadfort would be next. She would teach Roose Bolton exactly what it cost to betray House Arryn.
But just as she was about to order Nestor to hold the Kingsroad at any price and redeem himself, another scout came crashing through the doors of the high hall.
The man's face had no color left in it whatsoever. He looked like someone who had seen the end of the world.
"M-my lady!"
He hit his knees, voice barely holding together.
"I was on the ridge... south of the Kingsroad... and I saw... I saw..."
"Saw what?!" Lysa snapped.
"A giant!"
The word tore out of him, ragged with terror.
"A giant made of ice!"
"It's taller than the highest watchtower!"
"It only put its head over the ridge and the ground shook!"
"Its eyes — they're blue fire!"
The hall went completely silent.
Only the fireplace crackled, coals popping softly in the dark.
A joke. It had to be a joke.
A head over the ridge? How tall would something have to be for that? And even if it were real , a creature that size would eat as much in a single day as an entire army's provisions. The North couldn't possibly sustain something like that. It made no sense.
But the contempt on Lysa's face had stopped moving.
What if it's true?
She thought of Ramsay's letter. The words she'd just burned.
"...he's taking his monsters on another route..."
A thought crept in that made her own skin go cold.
Lynn really did have those monsters. He had a dragon, for the gods' sake , that alone was impossible by any rational measure. If the impossible was already true once, why not twice?
She crossed the room in quick strides and stopped in front of the great map of Westeros.
Her eyes, sharpened by paranoia into something almost feverish, fixed on the border between the North and the Riverlands.
Robb Stark's army was the bait.
All of it — every engagement, every move — had been designed to hold her attention. To hold the entire Vale's attention.
And Lynn, the man she'd dismissed as a savage, his real target was...
Lysa's finger came down on the map. It was trembling.
The Vale.
"He's crossing through the Neck?"
"A feint... a feint to the east, strike to the west..."
She murmured the words to herself. The anger was gone from her voice. Something else had taken its place , a bright, brittle excitement, the kind that lived close to madness.
She felt as though she had seen through everything. As though she and the hidden Lynn were locked in a silent game of minds, moving pieces across an invisible board.
And she had just won.
"He thinks I, Lysa Tully, am some weeping fool who hides behind her walls?"
"He thinks his little cleverness is enough to fool me?"
A smile spread across her face. Twisted. Triumphant.
She turned to face her attendants and knights and began issuing orders, her voice suddenly crisp and clear.
"Pass my commands!"
"Nestor Royce is to abandon the Kingsroad immediately. He will gather every remaining soldier and fall back to hold the Bloody Gate!"
"Tell him the fight on the Kingsroad is finished!"
"The real enemy is coming from another direction!"
"Send word to that old corpse Walder Frey!"
"Tell him Lynn's main force has turned toward the Vale. He is to concentrate everything he has and destroy Robb Stark's isolated bait army!"
"When it's done, Riverrun is his!"
"Every garrison at the Bloody Gate goes to highest alert. Seal every mountain pass into the Vale!"
"Every knight, every archer, every dragon-bolt scorpion — move them all to the Bloody Gate!"
"I will give that arrogant wildling the grandest welcome he has ever seen!"
The room had gone still. Everyone was staring at her.
Maester Colemon found his nerve and stepped forward.
"My lady... are we truly abandoning the Kingsroad? That road is the throat of the Riverlands..."
"Throat?"
Lysa cut him off with a cold laugh.
"When someone is reaching into your chest to tear out your heart, do you really stop to worry about your throat?"
She walked to the edge of the high hall and looked down at the fertile land below, ringed by its ancient mountains.
"Lynn underestimates me. And overestimates himself."
"He thinks one giant is enough to frighten me?"
"Enough to break the Bloody Gate?"
"Foolish."
The light in her eyes was the light of a woman who was certain she had already won. She could see it clearly: Lynn arriving at the Bloody Gate exhausted, his monsters spent from the crossing, and finding tens of thousands of rested Vale soldiers waiting for him behind walls that had never fallen.
Once the Freys finished off Robb, she would go on the offensive. Lynn would be caught between two armies with nowhere to run.
"Let him come."
Lysa spread her arms wide, as if opening herself to the howling winds that swept through the Eyrie.
"Let him bring every last soldier he has and break himself against my walls!"
"I will show him that the eagle is, and always will be, master of the sky!"
What this self-proclaimed all-seeing Lady of the Eyrie did not know was that the frost giant her scout had spotted was exactly what Lynn intended her to see.
The moment Robb's army stepped onto the Kingsroad, Lynn had ordered the fifteen-meter giant to peel away from the main column crossing the Neck. It moved south alone, slow and unhurried, along the outer edge of the Kingsroad.
Its only task: be seen.
Once the Vale scouts spotted it, it turned around immediately and marched back at full speed, rejoining the column on the frost road through the Neck.
A simple trap. A psychological one. The kind that works perfectly on any commander who is already half-convinced the world is conspiring against them.
Robb was the bait. And Lynn's hidden force had been "accidentally" discovered at just the right moment.
Lysa was now absolutely certain Lynn's next move was the Bloody Gate.
...
And at this moment, just outside the Vale's reach.
Lynn and his army had crossed the Neck.
When their boots touched the solid ground of the Riverlands, the eastern sky was already going pale, the first grey light spreading above the horizon.
The air had changed. No more swamp rot. Just earth and grass, cool and clean.
Lynn let out a long, slow breath.
Behind him, the wildlings and giants stood in silence. No cheers. No noise. They waited for his next order.
Through greensight, he already knew: the frost giant had been spotted, and Lysa was fully convinced he was coming for the Bloody Gate.
Good. That was exactly what he needed her to believe.
Though in the plan he had laid out with Robb, attacking the Bloody Gate was part of it , that much was true.
The difference was that this time, the wildling army would play the same role as Robb's Northern forces.
They were bait as well.
His goal was to draw Lysa's strength into the Bloody Gate, lock both sides into a standoff, and hold her attention there.
So that he could move on the plan that only he knew about.
➤ Next: The Cuckoo Occupies the Magpie's Nest