The clamor and heat of the wedding gave way, at last, to the cold of a Winterfell dawn.
Lynn opened his eyes. The sky was still dark.
The hearth had burned out, leaving nothing but a few dull red embers. Arya lay beside him, deep asleep, one hand still gripping him tight , as if she was afraid he might vanish the moment she let go.
Her face, the one that always carried a trace of defiance, was perfectly still. Peaceful.
Lynn gently brushed the loose strands of hair from her forehead and pressed a kiss there. Her lashes fluttered. The corner of her mouth curved up, just slightly, without her knowing.
He didn't wake her. He rose without a sound, dressed, and left.
There were more important things to do today.
...
The atmosphere in Winterfell's great hall was grave.
The long feasting tables had been cleared away. In their place, a massive map of Westeros lay spread across the center of the room. The wolves of the North were no longer last night's revelers. They had traded their cups for armor, their houses' sigils gleaming on their chests, longswords at their hips. Every face carried the weight of men about to march to war.
Ned Stark stood before the map. Robb stood behind him, fully armed.
Every eye in the room was on Lynn.
Last night's wedding had made him one of their own. His words, they all knew, carried more weight now than even Ned's.
Lynn skipped the pleasantries.
"To campaign south, we first consolidate our forces."
His gaze moved across the room, lord by lord.
"Lord Umber."
"Here!"
Greatjon Umber stepped forward, his voice booming like a struck bell. "Last Hearth can field two thousand men! Every one of them a warrior who can wrestle a bear with his bare hands!"
"Lady Mormont."
"Bear Island can field six hundred." Maege Mormont's voice was steady and hard. "We have no knights. But every woman on Bear Island knows how to split an enemy's skull with a war axe."
Behind her, Lyanna Mormont puffed out her small chest and nodded firmly, confirming every word.
"Lord Karstark."
Rickard Karstark stroked his thick beard. "Karhold can provide three hundred cavalry and two thousand infantry."
"Lord Manderly."
"Heh." Wyman Manderly squeezed out from the crowd, his massive frame prompting the lords around him to unconsciously step back half a pace. "White Harbor can provide five hundred knights and fifteen hundred soldiers." He paused, letting a smile spread across his broad face. "And my fleet is ready to be deployed at any time — soldiers, supplies, whatever the army needs."
That lifted the room. Naval power was the North's scarcest resource, and everyone knew it.
The Glovers, the Tallharts, and the other houses followed, each reporting their numbers in turn.
Then everyone's gaze drifted to the quiet corner.
"Lord Bolton."
Lynn's voice was even.
Roose Bolton stepped out of the shadows. His pale face gave nothing away.
"The Dreadfort can provide five hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "My bastard, Ramsay, will lead them personally."
Lynn nodded.
Inwardly, he laughed.
Five hundred cavalry. Three thousand infantry. The Dreadfort was nearly emptying itself. Lord Bolton was being very... devoted.
"Good." Lynn turned to the map. "Including Winterfell's forces, we can assemble an army of over twenty thousand men, and quickly." He let that settle for a moment. "With numbers sufficient, the next question is command."
Every eye turned instinctively to Ned Stark.
Ned shook his head and laid his hand on his son's shoulder.
"I'm old." A faint note of self-deprecation in his voice. "This war belongs to the young."
Lynn picked it up.
"I am the King-Beyond-the-Wall, but I don't know the North's armies the way they deserve to be known. What we need is a commander the North trusts — someone who knows this land and these men."
His gaze settled on Robb Stark.
"I propose Robb Stark as overall commander of this southern campaign."
Greatjon didn't hesitate for a second.
"Yes! I agree! Robb is the Stark heir — he's been learning war from Ned since he could walk. If he commands, I'm the first to follow!"
The other lords voiced their agreement one after another.
Robb Stark, who had lived his whole life in his father's shadow, stepped forward and stood before them all for the first time.
He drew a slow breath. His young face held no fear. Only fire.
"Thank you for your trust." His voice rang clear and steady. "I, Robb Stark, will not betray the honor of the North."
He moved to the map, and the sharpness of youth was written all over him.
"Look here." His finger traced the Kingsroad running north to south. "My plan is simple. Direct." He looked up. "We gather every man we have and march south at full speed along the Kingsroad — strike like thunder, straight for the Twins. The Freys think we Northerners are slow-moving fools. They'll never expect us to move this fast. If we can breach the Twins and take Walder Frey's head before the Vale's reinforcements arrive, the entire crisis in the Riverlands unravels."
His voice had heat in it. The plan was blunt, aggressive, and carried the momentum of a man who had never yet learned to doubt himself.
Greatjon's blood was already up. He slapped his thigh.
"Good! That's how you do it! Straight for the throat! I love it!"
The other lords nodded along. It sounded workable. It sounded like the North.
Just do it.
Lynn watched Robb with a smile of approval and added his weight to it.
"Lord Robb's plan is sound. My men can serve as the vanguard and clear the path for the main army."
With Lynn's endorsement, the plan was as good as settled.
But in the warmth of that fervor, something passed through Roose Bolton's pale eyes that no one caught.
Contempt.
The entire army south? Straight for the Twins?
What a laughably naive plan.
He would grant it one virtue: speed. That was real. But the flaw was just as real, and it was fatal. Pressing twenty thousand men onto a single road made the target enormous and the army's movements rigid. If the Freys held the Twins and the Vale's forces swept around their flank, the Northern army would be caught front and rear with nowhere to go.
This wasn't a war. It was a gamble. A bet that the Freys would crumble on contact, a bet that the Vale's reinforcements would be too slow to matter.
Stupid.
That was Roose Bolton's verdict.
He said nothing. He nodded along with the others, the picture of agreement.
Ned Stark, that old fool, was truly content to hand twenty thousand lives to a son with no experience. And that Lynn , perhaps unmatched in a fight, but in strategy? Still a boy playing at war. Too young. Not up to it.
Nothing special.
Good.
Go, then. Take the North's finest and break them against the walls of the Twins.
He could already see it , the news arriving home, the families without husbands and sons, the rage that would follow. And when the pieces needed picking up, Roose Bolton would be there.
"Since no one objects," Ned Stark said, his voice settling the room, "we proceed with Robb's plan. Each house returns immediately to muster troops and organize supplies. Seven days. Assemble outside Winterfell."
"As you command!"
The lords answered as one, then filed out. The hall emptied quickly, until only the Starks and Lynn remained.
Roose Bolton was the last to leave.
As he passed Lynn, he paused and gave a slight bow, his voice carrying its usual quiet softness.
"Lord Lynn. Congratulations on your marriage."
"Thank you."
Lynn's smile was warm.
He kept it there until Roose Bolton's figure disappeared through the hall doors.
The moment he was gone, every bit of Robb's composure collapsed. He let out a long breath and dropped straight to the floor, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
"By the Seven... I felt like a fool performing on a stage."
He looked genuinely rattled.
"Especially when I met Lord Bolton's eyes. I kept feeling like he could see straight through me."
"You did well." Lynn walked over and nudged his leg with his foot. "Better than I expected." He glanced toward the door. "He's already itching to get word to his new friends."
Ned Stark looked at the two of them , these two little foxes , and his expression landed somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
He walked to the map and spread it flat again.
"Right. The madmen and the fools are gone." His voice dropped. "Now we talk about the real plan."
The hall doors swung shut without a sound. Several of Ned's most trusted guards took up positions outside, cutting off any chance of eavesdropping.
Greatjon Umber, Maege Mormont, and Wyman Manderly were quietly brought back in.
They were House Stark's innermost circle. They were the ones this plan actually needed.
When they walked through the doors and saw the grave faces waiting for them at the map, they stopped.
"Ned." Greatjon looked around, baffled. "What's going on? The plan's already set, isn't it?"
Lynn smiled and pointed to the Twins on the map.
"Lord Umber. Do you honestly think that plan could take this place?"
Greatjon wasn't a fool. He was just direct. Now that he was thinking clearly, something felt off.
"It's... a bit of a risk," he admitted, scratching the back of his head. "Putting all our eggs in one basket — if something goes wrong..."
"Not if. It will go wrong."
Lynn's voice left no room for argument.
"Lysa Arryn and Walder Frey aren't fools. They moved against us because they have something to stand on. Twenty thousand men marching south along the Kingsroad — you think they have no spies? No preparations?"
"Then what just happened..." Maege Mormont's brow furrowed.
"Was a performance. For a specific audience."
Lynn's eyes went cold.
"We need a traitor to carry a false plan to our enemies."
The three lords understood at the same moment.
Cold sweat broke across all three of their backs, almost simultaneously.
Roose Bolton.
The smile left Wyman Manderly's broad face for the first time. What replaced it was something harder. Wariness.
They had always felt something wrong with House Bolton. But none of them had imagined Roose Bolton would go this far.
He was actually going to betray the North.
"That bastard." Greatjon's fist clenched until his knuckles cracked. "Let me go wring his neck right now."
"Don't, Jon." Ned's hand came up. "Kill him now and we've warned everyone who matters. Keep him alive and he's useful."
Every eye in the room came back to Lynn.
They knew the real plan was about to come out of this young man's mouth.
Lynn nodded.
"No rash moves. We can't prove Bolton has betrayed us , not yet. But we prepare as though he has."
His finger moved slowly across the map, tracing a route nothing like the one discussed before.
"War is the art of deception."
"Robb."
"Here." Robb snapped upright.
"You will take ten thousand infantry and march south along the Kingsroad, exactly as we discussed , loudly, visibly, with full fanfare. Move slowly. Make noise. Make ten thousand men look like twenty thousand. Make every spy and every scout believe the North's entire strength is with you." Lynn's eyes met his. "You are the bait."
Excitement flashed across Robb's face. He understood now. This was where he actually had to perform.
"Lord Manderly."
"Here, Lord Lynn." The portly lord of White Harbor straightened.
"I need your fleet. Not to carry troops." Lynn's finger moved to the sea east of White Harbor. "I need every merchant ship and warship you have to make a show of sailing east , trading runs to Essos, as far as anyone watching can tell. But under cover of night, you turn south and hug the coastline until you reach here."
His finger came to rest on an unremarkable bay along the Crackclaw Point peninsula.
"Your mission is to seal the entrance to Blackwater Bay. If any fleet out of King's Landing tries to sail north and involve itself in this war, you stop them. Every ship. Nothing gets through."
Lynn was fighting the Vale and the Riverlands. He had no intention of letting the Baratheons complicate things.
Wyman Manderly's eyes lit up. Low risk, high reward, and a chance to hurt those southern merchants who had been cutting into his trade for years. It was almost too good.
"And the rest of us..."
Lynn's finger left Winterfell and drew a strange arc across the map, curving wide, bypassing the Twins, bypassing every route anyone in the room would have predicted.
"Five thousand elite cavalry. My wildling warriors included. Lord Ned and I will lead them personally."
"We don't take the Kingsroad. We go through the Neck."
"The Neck?!" Greatjon's voice cracked. "That's nothing but swamp and poison. An army can't move through there!"
"Normally, no." Lynn smiled. "But with crannogmen as guides, it can."
Ned nodded, confirming it. His old friend Howland Reed of Greywater Watch was lord of the Neck. He knew every path through it.
What Lynn didn't mention was the rest of it. He had ice magic. He could freeze the swamp solid if he had to. That was his hole card , the kind of thing no one would ever think to plan against, because no sane commander would even consider marching an army through the Neck. The bog would swallow them whole before they ever reached a fight.
"Our target is not the Twins."
A wolf's gleam settled into Lynn's eyes.
"When every eye is on Robb's army and the fighting at the Twins, our cavalry strikes from behind , straight into the heart of the Vale."
His finger came down hard on the map.
The Eyrie.
"Lysa Arryn thinks her mountain fortress makes her untouchable?" Lynn's mouth curved into something cold. "She's stripped the Vale bare to support the Freys. Her home is empty. We don't want her castle. We don't want her lands."
He paused.
"I have confirmed intelligence that Robert Arryn has been quietly sent back to the Eyrie. Lysa thinks he's safe there."
The greensight had told him everything. He wasn't going to miss this.
"I want her only son. Robert Arryn. The moment we have that sickly boy in our hands, the entire Vale is our hostage. And then ask yourself , those Vale knights bleeding in the Riverlands for Lysa's cause. Will they keep fighting for her? Or will they put down their swords and ride home as fast as their horses can carry them to save their young lord?"
Silence.
Greatjon, Maege, and Wyman stood frozen, staring at Lynn, staring at the map, staring at the line his finger had drawn , insane, and airtight, and utterly devastating.
Their minds couldn't quite keep up.
They didn't know the names for what he'd done. Feint east, strike west. Advance by a hidden road. Lay the trap before the enemy knows there is one. The stratagems had names in other lands, but the lords of the North didn't need the names to feel the weight of them.
The overt move was the Riverlands. The real move was the Eyrie, one of the most defensible positions in the known world.
No one would see it coming. No one would even think to look for it.
At first, a few of them had doubted. But then they thought of the dragon.
Of course. That was why Lynn could say all of this without blinking.
Natural defenses meant nothing to a dragon. They had seen what Winter could do, just yesterday. The mountain passes and sheer cliffs that made the Eyrie seem impregnable , against a dragon, they were scenery.
Kidnapping Robert Arryn. The same logic Lysa had used when she took Tyrion Lannister. The same principle she'd relied on when she'd drawn the Lannisters' attention away from the North. Turn it around on her. Strip away every knight fighting under her banner by threatening the one thing she couldn't afford to lose.
The way they looked at Lynn shifted. It had been admiration before. Now it was something closer to fear.
Being the enemy of a man like this would be a nightmare.
Thank the gods he was on their side.
Ned Stark watched Lynn in silence, something moving behind his eyes.
He had known Lynn was sharp. He had not known his mind worked like this , precise and ruthless and several moves ahead of everyone in the room.
Near-monstrous was the only word for it.
➤ Next: Creating a White Walker