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The covered wagons held wildfire.
When Auren Estermont said the word, even Smalljon stopped smiling.
Robb had the wagons opened at once. Inside, sealed casks sat packed in fine sand and wax. Even unopened, they carried that sharp, oily reek Robb remembered too well.
The soldiers who pried open the first wagon did so with exaggerated care. No one laughed at them. Every man there had heard what wildfire had done to the Mud Gate, and Robb's veterans had seen enough green flame to know that courage did not protect flesh from it.
"How many?" he asked.
"Five wagons," Auren answered quickly. "All of them packed the same way. Ser Addam told me to guard them more carefully than the grain."
"They were meant for me?"
Auren shook his head. "No, Your Grace. At least, I do not think so. Ser Addam drank too much two nights ago and let something slip. Lord Tywin meant to use the wildfire on Riverrun."
His voice quickened as he realized that useful information was the best way to keep Bloodwind's jaws away from him.
Robb's expression changed.
Auren saw it and hurried on. "The plan was to move the casks along the Tumblestone and destroy the northern wall or the water gate. The castle sealed the water gate after Lord Leo's last attack, so Lord Tywin believed the defenders had made themselves vulnerable."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Robb looked west, toward the Golden Tooth, then east, toward the Riverlands.
Tywin had emptied the Alchemists' Guild after seeing what wildfire had done at the Mud Gate. Robb had known the old lion would use anything that worked, but knowing a thing and seeing five wagons of green death in front of him were not the same.
If Addam had wildfire, then Kevan's army might have it as well.
Jaime's army might have it.
Every assumption Robb had made about the Riverlands had to shift.
Before this, he had believed Tywin's main danger lay in men, speed, and ruthlessness. Now the old lion had added green fire to every calculation. A wall that should have held for days might vanish in a breath. A gate that should have cost thousands of lives might become a wound in the stone.
"We take the Golden Tooth quickly," he said. "Then we return to Riverrun."
No one argued.
Far to the south, smoke rose over the Shield Islands.
Greenshield, Greyshield, Oakenshield, and Southshield each lit their warning fires when the enormous ironborn fleet appeared on the horizon. At the watchtowers, men of House Chester, House Grimm, House Hewett, and House Serry shouted for sails to be raised and scorpions to be prepared.
The Shield Islands had long existed to watch the mouth of the Mander and warn the Reach of raiders. Their people knew ironborn sails as a farmer knew storm clouds. Smoke climbed from tower to tower, and bells carried over the water.
The ships of the islands gathered as quickly as they could.
Then the ironborn fleet passed beyond their reach and continued north.
On the Great Kraken, Theon Greyjoy stood before Ramsay Bolton and Asha Greyjoy with the confidence of a man who had convinced himself his plan was brilliant.
The deck around them was crowded with iron captains and northern officers. Some understood Theon's explanation. Some only understood that the fleet had turned away from a city they had nearly taken and was now gambling on a wider design.
"The first plan was to sail around the Redwyne Straits, pass into the Narrow Sea, enter the Bay of Crabs, and move up the Trident," Theon said. "We would strike the Westermen from behind while Robb pressed them from the front."
Asha gave him a flat look. "And the Redwyne Fleet?"
"That is why we use the second plan," Theon said, ignoring her tone. "We land near Crakehall. We take Crakehall and Deep Den, then open the way north. After that, we contact Robb and decide the next step."
Ramsay listened with his usual mild smile. Asha listened like a woman weighing where a blade should go if the speaker became useless.
"So we abandoned Lannisport only to take castles we must pass before returning to Lannisport?" Asha asked.
Theon frowned. "Lannisport has already been taken once. The point now is to force the Westerlands open."
Ramsay's eyes narrowed in amusement, though his mouth barely moved. "A bold plan, Your Grace."
Theon liked the sound of that.
The Iron Fleet made landfall south of the forests around Crakehall. Five thousand northern recruits from Seagard disembarked with three thousand ironborn under Asha. The men moved inland under kraken and direwolf banners, while Theon remained aboard the Great Kraken and issued orders as if he had been born for command.
For the recruits from Seagard, this was their first march under ironborn eyes. For Asha's men, it was another shore, another raid, another chance to prove that the sea had not made them soft. The two groups did not trust each other, but both knew whose wider plan had brought them here.
At the Golden Tooth, Raynald Lefford had finally begun to relax.
The northern camp had sat outside the castle for nearly ten days. Each morning, fires burned. Each night, watchmen saw movement among the tents. The expected storm never came.
Even the repeated night disturbances had begun to feel like a trick meant to exhaust the defenders. After three days of watching shadows move and seeing no attack, men grew used to fear.
Raynald had placed five thousand Stormlanders on the eastern wall, eight hundred Golden Tooth men on the west, and two hundred more to keep order inside the castle.
If Robb attacked from the east, the Stormlanders would bleed first.
If he did not attack, all the better.
Then the alarm came from the west.
Raynald ran to the western wall and found thousands of men advancing with a single battering ram.
No ladders.
No siege towers.
No covered engines.
Only men in rough formation pushing one ram toward the gate while archers behind them sent half-hearted volleys at the walls.
"Fools," one Golden Tooth officer muttered.
Raynald did not answer. Something about it felt wrong.
The defenders focused their fire on the ram. Arrows fell. Stones dropped. Boiling oil hissed across shields and men alike. The attackers died in heaps, but still came on.
Only after many of them had fallen did Raynald understand.
They were not Robb's true soldiers.
They were captured Westerlands cavalry, driven forward with northern overseers behind them.
The realization made him colder than the mountain wind. Robb Stark was spending his enemies first. Every dead man below the wall was a Westerlands man, and every arrow loosed by the Golden Tooth was helping the north thin its prisoners.
On the left side of the western wall, two northern soldiers carried a reinforced litter covered with wooden shields. Inside sat Leaf, her pale face calm as arrows hammered against the boards around her.
She lifted one small hand.
The earth answered.
This was not a ram striking a gate or miners digging beneath a wall. It was the ground itself turning traitor.
The ground beneath the wall groaned first. Then it split.
A deep crack tore open at the base of the Golden Tooth's western wall, running like a wound through stone and packed earth. The foundation buckled. A stretch of wall more than thirty feet wide lurched outward, broke apart, and collapsed in thunder.
Dust swallowed the western side of the castle.
For several breaths, no one on the wall understood what had happened. Then the shouting began all at once. Men called for engineers, for archers, for oil, for orders, for gods. None of it put the wall back in place.
Gendry, standing with the northern reserve, stared at the breach and murmured, "Gods. We do not even need siege engines anymore."
Robb heard him and raised his hand.
The horns sounded.
This time, the men who charged were true northern soldiers.
The captured cavalry were the first through the breach, because Robb had promised freedom, status, and wealth for enemy heads. Behind them came spearmen, axemen, and the Wolfguard.
The promise had done what whips could not. Men who had been prisoners that morning now fought like men trying to buy back their lives one head at a time.
Raynald tried to pull archers and Stormlanders toward the breach. "Hold them! Hold the gap!"
The first ice direwolf leapt through the dust.
Then another.
Then Bloodwind.
The breach widened beneath their claws. Men died before they could even lower spears. Frost rolled through the broken stones, and soldiers who had laughed at wolves on the wall now turned and ran from them in the yard.
Raynald stood frozen as one armored wolf charged straight toward him.
His own words from days earlier returned with cruel clarity.
'Can wolves climb the walls and eat me?'
His legs gave way.
'Did I just curse myself?'
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