Chapter 159: New Soil

At Casterly Rock, the fire in the study hearth pushed back the damp chill of early spring off the western sea, and did nothing for the weight that had settled between Arthur’s brows over the years. He held two letters that had arrived within hours of each other.

The first came from Winterfell, in Jon Snow’s own hand, the strokes a little weak and the grain of them all northern stubbornness and forbearance. As Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and acting head of House Stark, Jon thanked him again, deeply, for his selfless help and steady friendship to the North, to himself, and to Arya; told him frankly of Daenerys’s letter and its demand that he stand regent and accept the crown’s aid; wrote that he knew the difficulty and the risk, but that to break the famine he had no choice but the expedient one, and would take the queen’s commission, though the heart of Stark, and the soul of the North, would be moved by no external thing. And at the end, the tone shifted: the North was bitter and cold, the spring plowing at hand, the hands few and the land poor; he had heard the west and the Trident had made great strides in reclamation these past years; were there good methods, for working frozen soil, for settling refugees to farm, that friends might borrow? All Winterfell looked forward to the counsel of wise men among its allies.

The second came from Torren at Oath Keep, in Grey Shadow’s cipher, and read long after translation. It reported the aftermath of Breaking Dawn: Tormund’s free folk, having seen through the Vale’s plot and fought beside the Karstark-Battanian force to destroy the imposters, had not gone back into the deep Gift, but had stopped at the edge of the valley below the Fist, watching, hesitating, suspended. Alfie Karstark, his work at Queenscrown done and the Wall’s traitors cleared with Jon, had marched south per his secret orders with the new-trained Battanian companies folded into his ranks and taken up his station at Moat Cailin, nominally to help hold the Neck and clear bandits, in truth with his hand on the throat of the realm. And Torren noted one thing more: the vast country north of Moat Cailin and south of the Gift lay in great tracts ownerless, emptied by war, by the free folk migrations, by the Boltons’ fall, cold land but not barren land, wanting only hands and organization. He closed by asking, delicately, what came next: the first phase of Deep Roots, the gathering and training of strength, was essentially complete; endure and grow, or...

The two letters snapped together in Arthur’s mind like halves of one map. Jon’s situation and Jon’s choice he had foreseen; the regency was the only rational road to life-saving grain. But the closing paragraph about farming methods was not small talk; it was a probe, and a plea: Jon needed a road to survival that did not run through King’s Landing, and a fulcrum outside the crown’s hand that might balance it. And Oath Keep’s report showed the opening: the free folk shaken loose of every southern trust and hanging in a dangerous suspension; Moat Cailin held by his own people; and a vacuum of workable land between them.

A plan assembled itself at speed, bold to the edge of madness, and larger than an answer to Jon, larger than Oath Keep’s growth.

“Alwin.” Arthur looked up, decision lit in his eyes, and the steward stepped forward at once. “Take down these orders. Highest secrecy.

“First, to Torren at Oath Keep: begin the second phase of Deep Roots, codename New Soil. On the base we have built, use recruitment, hire, and open cooperation to draw in refugees, ruined farmers, and free folk bands dissatisfied with their lot, from the country south of the Gift and north of Karhold, and set them on that ownerless land to break and work it. Battanian soldiers and Oath Keep craftsmen are the spine: basic protection, tools, cold-hardy seed from our western reserves or bought through Widow’s Watch and White Harbor, and starting grain. Organize them to raise simple settlements, cut irrigation from the seasonal streams, and plow. Land broken is rent-free three years and the yield belongs to the settlers; after three years, a small rent in kind, scaled to the harvest, to keep the district’s works and Oath Keep’s defense. And say this plainly to the free folk bands: those willing to keep the district’s law, our Battanian customary law, simplified to fit the North, to give up raiding and take up production, receive land and standing equal to any man’s, and their traditions and gods will be respected wherever they endanger no one. Administration and justice sit, for now, with Oath Keep and Moat Cailin, but draw respected local figures into the managing of it from the first day. Low-key, practical, and paid for in visible benefit; no proclamations, nothing to prick Winterfell, King’s Landing, or the Vale.

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“Second, to Lord Alfie at Moat Cailin: full support to New Soil. The garrison guarantees the Neck passage, moves men and materiel toward Oath Keep under protection, and blocks interference from the south or from the sea. And Alfie spends his local weight where it counts: recruiting the destitute, and quietly working on the free folk still watching from the Gift’s edge, Tormund’s people first of all, to move south and join the settlement. He may promise them their own districts within the plan, their hunting and gathering kept, their own units within the district militia. The bargain is land, safety, and a future, for labor and the keeping of the peace.

“Third, to Jon Snow, moved by trusted hands: no word of New Soil’s shape. Only this: I am glad to hear you mean to revive the North’s fields; that is the strategy that steadies foundations. The west and the Trident have some experience of frozen ground and of settling the displaced, and friends share what they know. I will shortly send some old farmers and craftsmen who know northern conditions,” and these would be the seasoned backbone of the Battanian reclamation, traveling as what they almost were, “carrying cold-hardy seed, tool patterns, and simple methods of organization, to Moat Cailin, for your reference and your use. They are plain, hardworking folk who want nothing but a place to settle and work; treat them kindly. And with the letter, in my personal name, a consignment of cold-weather medicines and iron tools, shipped as a civilian caravan through White Harbor, toward the North’s spring plowing.

“Fourth, to Lord Wyman Manderly, as Lord Paramount of the Trident and friend of the North: thanks for his help watching the sea, and then a proposal of mutual profit. The west and the Trident will supply White Harbor with grain, iron, and cloth at preferential prices, against furs, timber, and fish; and we ask White Harbor to give transit and reasonable convenience: by sea into White Harbor itself, and from there overland by the river road toward Moat Cailin and beyond, to the refugees and craftsmen we recruit who are willing to go north and join the reclamation,” the New Soil people, wearing their own true faces. “Let him understand that this trade steadies the North, eases the famine, raises White Harbor’s standing as the northern hub, and happens, besides, to serve Her Grace’s own decree that the North be stabilized.

“Fifth, internally: Diana and Alwin release from our reserves a tranche of the storable coarse grains, barley, oats, beans, with a consignment of simple iron tools and cold-weather clothing; by sea to Seagard under Lord Jason’s escort, then upriver and overland to Moat Cailin, as the launch stock of New Soil. And from the Deep Roots cadres choose the reliable ones, veterans and farmers who know how to live where living is hard, fold them into the craftsmen’s companies or dress them as refugees, and send them north in waves.”