The great hall had been transformed overnight into something resembling a proper council chamber, benches arranged in rough rows before the long table where the map still lay spread from the previous evening's planning. Vale lords sat beside northern bannermen who sat beside Riverlands lords who, until a fortnight past, had been strangers to each other entirely—bound now by nothing more than a common enemy and the blood already spilled in common cause. Only one great house's seat sat conspicuously empty. Walder Frey had sent no representative, and more than one lord's eyes had flicked toward that gap in the benches with open suspicion.
Michel stood at the head of the table, waiting for the murmur of the assembled lords to settle, when Jon Umber's booming voice cut through the hall before the council had properly begun.
"Why are we sitting here talking?" The Greatjon spread his massive hands as if the matter required no further discussion at all. "We have the numbers. Fifty-six thousand men. We march on Tywin, we crush him, then we march on King's Landing and finish this war before the harvest turns."
A murmur of agreement rippled through some of the northern benches, but before Michel could answer, Yohn Royce's steady voice rose from further down the table. "Tywin holds Harrenhal, my lord. Twenty thousand men behind walls that have broken sieges twice our size in the past. Attacking those walls directly is not strategy—it's suicide dressed up as courage."
The Greatjon's jaw tightened, but he had no ready answer for that, and the silence that followed carried the particular weight of a man reconsidering his own certainty.
"Ser Yohn speaks true," Wendel Manderly added, his voice calm and measured despite his considerable girth shifting uncomfortably on the bench. "We'll need to draw Tywin out. Make him abandon those walls of his own choosing, rather than pay in blood for every foot of ground."
Michel had been waiting for exactly this opening. "Then why not strike the Westerlands directly?"
The hall went quiet for a moment, lords turning the suggestion over, and then Robb leaned forward, something sharp and eager kindling behind his eyes. "It's a fine plan. More than fine." He looked around the table, gathering the threads of it as he spoke. "Tywin marched east with his strength, left his own lands thin behind him. If we strike west now, while he sits fat and secure in Harrenhal, there's nothing there to stop us. We take his castles, burn his fields, put his smallfolk to flight—and word of it will reach him faster than any raven we could send ourselves."
"And when it does," Michel said, letting the shape of the plan settle fully into the room, "he won't sit easy behind those walls, no matter how thick the stone. A man doesn't hold Harrenhal while his own ancestral seat burns behind him. Pride alone will pull him out to answer it, even if good sense tells him to stay."
The Riverlands lords, who had said little through the exchange so far, stirred now with something harder in their expressions—men whose own lands had been ravaged by Lannister soldiers for weeks, whose fields and villages had already paid the price this war demanded. "Aye," one of them said, low and rough. "Let his home burn the way ours did. Let him feel what he's put upon the rest of us." A murmur of grim agreement passed down the bench, old grief finding new purpose.
"When Tywin leaves Harrenhal to answer it," Michel continued, "we move in behind him. Secure the castle while it's undefended, deny him the stronghold that's cost us so much thought already tonight." He looked around the table, meeting eyes one by one, watching the plan take root in each of them. "We don't fight him where he's strong. We make him fight us where he's weak."
Slowly, one by one, the lords began to nod—the Greatjon last of all, though even he offered a short, grudging grunt of approval when no one raised further objection.
Michel let the moment settle before pressing forward to the harder question. "How many men, then. And who leads them."
The debate that followed was shorter than Michel had expected, the shape of it emerging almost naturally from the room's collective judgment. Fifteen thousand men would ride for the Westerlands—enough to burn and take and hold, not so many as to leave Harrenhal uncontested should Tywin prove more stubborn than his pride suggested. Robb would lead them, and Yohn Royce beside him, five thousand drawn from each region represented at the table—Vale, North, and Riverlands together, a single host bound by shared purpose rather than shared blood.
"And Harrenhal," Michel said, when the numbers had been settled and the lords had begun to shift, already anticipating the council's end. "When Tywin marches to answer the west, we take the castle the moment it stands empty."
"We," Edmure repeated, glancing toward his nephew.
"You. Myself. Ser Brynden." Michel's eyes moved to where the Blackfish sat near the table's edge, arms crossed, already looking as though he'd anticipated this assignment before it was spoken aloud. "We hold the remaining strength here, ready to move the instant word comes that Harrenhal's gates stand open."
Brynden gave a short, satisfied nod, the closest thing to enthusiasm the old knight's weathered face seemed capable of producing. "Good," he said simply. "I've had my fill of sitting still. Let's see the lion run for once, instead of us."
A ripple of low, grim laughter passed through the hall, tension easing if only slightly, and Michel allowed himself a small, tired breath as the council began, at last, to break apart into smaller knots of lords already discussing supply lines and marching orders.
The plan was set. Now it would need to survive contact with Tywin Lannister himself.