Chapter 173: Under My Banner

At Casterly Rock the decree arrived, and with it, almost in the same hour, the urgent reports came in like driven snow: Torren, after the fight at Howling Mountain Pass; Jason, from the interceptions at sea; Alfie, from Moat Cailin; Jon, forwarding what he had been told and what he had guessed. None of it fell outside Arthur’s worst expectations. The speed and the tangle of it still landed on him with weight.

He read the crown’s careful pairing, limited recognition beside strict constraint, and the corner of his mouth went cold. The queen meant to pin him in the North with a whip in one hand and a sweet in the other, while keeping her eye on the Vale. It was a sound instinct. It was also written for a board that no longer existed: the Vale’s viper had already bitten, and had set itself to fight to the end. Followed to the letter, the decree would leave Grey Creek and the whole New Soil country to be picked apart by Petyr’s hidden arrows and his war without uniforms long before Lord Carrell could return to verify anything.

“Alwin.” His voice held the odd steadiness of the storm’s own center. “To King’s Landing: the west and the Trident are grateful for Her Grace’s recognition of our reclamation work, and will abide strictly by the kingdom’s law and the queen’s decrees. Our people in the North are there for settlement and self-defense and nothing else. But the Vale’s army crossed a border in force and attacked, and our dead are counted and our evidence is plain. To prevent a recurrence, and to protect the settlers and their stores, we have strengthened patrols in the affected districts under the right of self-defense, and we earnestly beg Her Grace to do justice: to punish those who began it, to fix the boundaries of every party, and to see that the North suffers no further unprovoked aggression. As for Lord Carrell’s verification, we welcome it, and every document and convenience the lord requires is already prepared.”

Submissive on its face, and it handed the problem back across the table: we are the injured party; punish the offender; and here are our doors, standing open. It shifted the weight onto Carrell and onto Jon, and it wrote the words self-defense into the record in advance of everything Arthur intended to do next.

“Now the rest.” His gaze crossed the map, Vale, Reach, Dorne, King’s Landing, the North. “By secure channel to Torren, to Alfie, and to Jon: the final contingency begins. Grey Creek and the other reclamation points go to full wartime footing, military control, hardened defenses, prepared for long siege and constant harassment. Moat Cailin to highest readiness, the Neck watched to the last cart, and sealed if it must be. The Deep Roots force at Oath Keep goes to standby, with a standing target list: any Vale assembly point, supply cache, or infiltration party north of the Gift or the Bloody Gate. Once found, no one waits on my word; they are destroyed in full. And the work is clean and fast and looks, to any later eye, like wildling reprisal or accident. Kator at Harrenhal and Ser Rhaegar at the Golden Tooth raise their guard against a diversion out of the eastern Trident or an incited rising at home. And Lord Jason keeps his patrols at pressure, intercepting anything sailing from the east toward the Vale or the North, with particular attention to ships that might carry the special cargoes the albatross described. He is authorized to sortie against the Vale’s private harbors and coastal shipping when the moment is worth it, dressed as pirates or as no one at all, and leaving nothing behind that can be read.

“And two more letters, in my name: to Lady Olenna, and to Prince Doran. Lay out the evidence of Lord Petyr’s dealings with the eastern Shadow Moon Court, his hoarding of war material, and his intent against the order of the Seven Kingdoms,” selected from the albatross intelligence, and dressed for the audience, “and warn them plainly that his ambition does not end at the North; that if he wins there, or if his eastern friends land in strength, the south will not know another quiet year. And imply that against a threat of that shape, the west and the Reach, the west and Dorne, might find room and reason for temporary cooperation, or at the least for open channels and no misreadings.”

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Defense by attack, pieces set on every board, and a fallback kept in hand: outward compliance with the crown’s frame, the hardest possible answer to the actual knife, and a diplomatic campaign to strand the Vale alone, so that neither Highgarden nor Sunspear could be tempted into an understanding with Petyr under the crown’s pressure, and so that some joint action remained possible if the worst arrived and King’s Landing proved unable to hold the realm. Arthur knew he no longer commanded the whole picture. He could mend his fences and sharpen his swords before the storm came fully down, and hope Jon could stand the weight in the North, and that the dragons of King’s Landing would frighten at least the maddest of the ambitions loose in the world.

At Winterfell, Jon Snow bore all of it at once: the crown’s decree, the Vale’s knives in the dark, the west’s quiet warnings and quieter help, and a North sliding daily further into fear and faction. Carrell had returned with wider powers and a harder brief, requiring him to take over the defense of Grey Creek and restore order there, which was very nearly impossible. The Gift’s edge was raw with raids and rumor; the Battanians at Grey Creek would not simply hand their command to a stranger; and Alfie Karstark’s movements at Moat Cailin grew less deniable by the week.

He stood on the broken wall under a grey northern sky with Longclaw’s hilt cold under his hand, and felt the thousand-year castle beneath his boots, and the fate of the country it stood for, balanced on a ledge no wider than a sword. Ahead, the powers closing to strangle and swallow. Behind, the famine and the war and the despair of his own people. There was no choice left that was not a bad one, so he chose the one that could be walked, thorns and blood and all.

“Maester Luwin.” He turned, and his voice was hoarse and level. “In the name of the Warden of the North, my first order. Summon every house still loyal to Winterfell and still mindful of the Stark oath. Every man they can arm, with provisions, to muster at the ground between Moat Cailin and Winterfell. In name: by the queen’s decree, the Warden’s host is raised, to clear the bandits, steady the country, and guard against foreign insult.

“Second, a rider to Grey Creek Fort, to Torren Flint, as fast as a horse can carry him. Tell him this: I, Jon Snow, in the name of the Warden of the North, acknowledge and thank Grey Creek Fort for its work in the North’s recovery. The North now faces invasion out of the Vale, and by the queen’s authorization I must integrate every force in this country for its defense. Therefore the eligible men of Grey Creek are formally called to the Warden’s host; its existing works and its command are folded, for the duration, into the North’s unified defense; and its present commander continues to hold the defense of that district, under my overall command and Lord Carrell’s supervision. In exchange, Winterfell formally recognizes their right to the land they have broken, and sends a consignment of emergency military aid, drawn from the crown’s grant.

“And letters, under seal, to Lord Alfie Karstark, to Lord Wyman Manderly, to Smalljon Umber, to Lady Lyanna Mormont, to all of them. Tell them the North has come to the hour that decides whether it lives. Stark needs every loyal northerner. Forget the old grudges, put down the old quarrels, take up arms, for your survival, for your homes, and for the honor this country has never once forgotten, and muster under my banner. The enemy is already spilling blood on our ground. The next hall he burns may be yours. There is no road back for any of us. There is only to stand and finish it.”