For four days, Aldric had dismantled the world piece by piece. He had answered why they fought, who they fought, what they sought to gain, and who would lead the charge. On the fifth day, the discourse shifted from the why to the how.
In the taverns of the Riverlands, tales were told of "noble outlaws" and clever peasants outwitting greedy Septons. These stories were the daydreams of the oppressed. In reality, a single armored knight with three veteran men-at-arms could pacify a village of a hundred. Knights lived in stone keeps, spent their lives perfecting the art of the kill, and visited the fields only to "collect" taxes with steel. In the dark corners of the realm, some lords even whispered of the "Right of the First Night"—a shame long since abolished by the Old King Jaehaerys, yet reborn in the lawlessness of war.
A farmer with a hoe is no match for a man born to the saddle. But there are always more farmers than knights.
"To defeat the high-born," Aldric told the gathered crowd, "you must turn your numbers into a singular force. This unity is not just for the smallfolk, but for all who find the current world a rot. We isolate the 'cruel' lords, we bleed their resources, and we grind them down until they surrender or vanish."
A year ago, such a movement would have been strangled in its crib. King Robert, for all his faults, was a stabilizing force. The lords were united under the stag. But the world had broken. Joffrey sat the Iron Throne, but Tywin Lannister held the leash, turning the Riverlands into a graveyard while his own home in the West was pillaged by Northmen. The North was empty, and rumors claimed Winterfell itself had been put to the torch by the Ironborn. The Great Lords were too busy screaming at one another's throats to notice a fire starting at their feet.
"We do not want their castles," Aldric bellowed to the courtyard. "Leave the high towers to the arrogant and the corrupt. Our roots are in the dirt, in the hamlets and the hidden glades. Let the lords play their Game of Thrones. When they finally look out from their ramparts, they will find the Golden Dawn flying in every village they once called their own."
He made it clear that the New Faith did not hate all knights. Many second sons and high-born bastards were as oppressed by the system as any peasant—given a horse, a sword, and told to find their own way. To them, the Order offered a purpose higher than being a sellsword for a cruel master.
Even for the landed lords who shared the Sun's vision, Aldric offered a pact: treat the smallfolk with justice, and the Church would uphold your right to the land, provided the tithes were fair and the blood-letting stopped. For the widows and orphans of the nobility, the Church offered sanctuary from the vultures seeking to marry into their inheritance.
"But caution is your shield," Aldric warned the Sunwalkers. "In lands where the lords still hold a tight grip, speak only of the Sun and the Seven. Show them that Anshe is the source. Open the door to their souls first. Once they accept the Light, then you may speak of the Three Pillars: Liberty, Equality, Compassion. When they are ready to bleed for those truths, only then do you give them the sigil of a Sunwalker."
The fifth day's lecture settled the nerves of the strategists in the crowd. They saw that Aldric was not leading them on a suicide march against the nearest castle, but a steady, inexorable tide.
As the evening stew was served, Brother Ortega, a wandering monk from Redleaf Ridge, sat beside Rolf. "What is your path, brother, when the gates open?"
"Stone Dance," Rolf replied, his gaze distant. "I have brothers and teachers in the sept there. I must bring them the truth before they are buried by the old world."
"The Septons there live fat lives," Ortega warned. "They will not thank you for your 'revelation'."
"I am an orphan, Ortega," Rolf said, tearing into a piece of hard bread. "I was raised on the charity of the Word. If the kingdom is a corpse, I cannot let those who fed me rot with it." He looked at Ortega. "And you?"
"I follow the Sparrow," Ortega said. "He intends to walk the Kingsroad to the Great Sept of Baelor. He will petition the High Septon and the King."
Rolf frowned. "King's Landing? They will name it heresy. They will burn him."
"Perhaps," Ortega shrugged. "But the Lightbringer has shown us that the Sparrow does not move without a plan. I go to see that he reaches the gates. Whether I am anointed a Sunwalker or not, that is my vigil."
On the sixth day, the lessons turned to blood and bone.
"A pauper's army," Aldric said, standing in a muddy clearing outside the walls, "is not made by handing a man a spear and telling him to run at the enemy. Every soul who dies for the Light is a treasure we cannot replace."
He began drilling them in the Swan Wing—a formation designed for the water-choked terrain of the Riverlands. It was a tactical theft from his homeland's history, originally meant to cull pirates in the eastern marshes. It was perfect for peasants facing knights.
Two shield-bearers formed the prow for defense. Four spearmen provided the reach. Two bowmen or crossbowmen stood in the center for the sting, and two men with pitchforks or bills guarded the flanks. Ten men to a Wing. A self-contained cell of death. It was simple to learn, required no expensive plate armor, and relied on the group rather than the individual.
On the seventh day, he revealed the essence of the Harrying Way.
"If we live as sparrows, we must fight as sparrows," Aldric told them. "We do not talk of 'chivalry' with men who burn our homes. We seek only the kill. Use the dark. Use the mud. If the Seven wish to forgive them, they can do so in the next life. Our job is to see them to the Father's judgment."
He laid out the three laws of the Harrying Way:
Fluidity: Move in small bands. Gather like a storm, vanish like the mist.Obscurity: Strike from the shadows, from the brush, from the cellars. Never fight where the enemy is ready.Attrition: Accumulate small victories. Burn their supplies, exhaust their horses, kill their scouts. Win the war of a thousand stings.
"The lords have the steel," Aldric concluded. "But we have the soil. We know every goat track and every hidden ford. Hard steel breaks; the mud only swallows."
As the Conclave ended, the sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the monastery in a deep, burning orange. Aldric's words, bolstered by the lingering Solar Clarity, had taken root. For the refugees, it was the first time someone had explained the world not as a divine mystery, but as a system that could be broken and remade.
The title "Lightbringer" no longer just meant a man with a glowing hand. It meant the man who had brought the fire of thought into the cold darkness of their lives. The Sun-God's reign had begun, not with a crown, but with a formation and a philosophy.