Knights of the Reach

We gathered at Duskendale where the pathetic King Emmon Frey was forced to inspect the Northmen and send them off. He rode down the shore of Blackwater Bay where the ships lay and their crews stared up at him scornfully, knowing he was not a real king. Behind him rode Red Ronnel Bolton and Lothor the Blind. Both were now part of Emmon's bodyguard who's job, I suspected, was as much to keep Emmon prisoner as it was to keep him alive. Lothor, a man now, wore a patch over his missing eye, he and his father looked far more prosperous.

Ronnel wore mail and had a big war axe slung over his shoulder while Lothor had a longsword, a cloak of fox pelts and two arm rings. "They took part in the slaughter at the Duskendale Sept." Harle told me and it was clear the men who had taken revenge on the Septas there, who were inciting violence, had made out with a lot of plunder. Ronnel, arms thick with rings, looked Harle in the eye. "I would still serve you." He said though without the humility of the last time he asked. "I have a new ship master." Harle said and said no more.

Ronnel and Lothor rode off though Lothor gave me a one eyed stare full of cruelty. The new ship master was called Cregard, he was a splendid sailer and a better warrior who told tales of sailing beyond the Wall to fight back a wildling invasion in his youth. He told tales of the Hornfoots of the Frostfangs and the carnivals of the Ice Rivers, of the Thenns of the Mountians and the Wildlings of the Haunted Forrest. He told tales of Giants and Mammoths, of the wonders of the Wall and the Noble order of Warriors that protects it.

We rode south on the summer tides, hugging the shore as we always did and spending the nights ashore on Dorne's barren coast. We were going towards the Honeywine River which Harle said would bring us deep inland into the Reach. Harle now commands the fleet as Elric had returned to the lands he had conquered in the Basilisk Isles and he had brought a gift from Harle to Hullen. While Beorn had taken his men to Andalos. "Small pickings there." Harle said but Beorn like Elric had amassed so much wealth from the four kingdoms that he was not minded to get more from the Reach, though as I should tell you in its proper place Beorn was to change his mind later.

But for the moment Elric and Beorn were absent and so the main assault of the Reach will be led by Harrion 'Half-Giant' Umber who now marched his army out of Dorne and would meet us on the Honeywine. Harrion was a fool he told me but he cheered up when he remembered my tales of Gwayne and that the Reach was lead by men who put their faith in weak Gods over the strength of swords.

After four days we came to the Honeywine river and to the city of Oldtown. I had thought Duskendale was a city but compared to Oldtown it was a village. It was a vast place, the former seat of house Hightower and it was thick with smoke from cooking fires. There was a great Sept there on the eastern side as was the Citadel where Cadwyn earned his Maester chains. In the centre of the bay was the Hightower, a giant lighthouse from which House Hightower got its name. It was made of white stone on an oily black base and at the top raged a large fire, larger than any I'd ever seen.

No one opposed us as the city had been taken by Northmen a generation past by Brandon of the Bloody Blade, the grandfather of the current Lord Stark. I came to love that city. Not as I loved Storms End but there was a life to Oldtown that I found no where else because no where else was like Oldtown. Gwayne once told me that every wickedness under the sun was practiced there and I'm glad to say he was right. Gwayne prayed for the place, I revelled in it and I still remember gawking at the Hightower in all its glory as Harle's ship entered.

It was a grey day and a spiteful rain was hitting the river yet to me the city seemed to glow with sorcerers light. It was really two cities built in two sides of the river. On one side there was the Stary Sept, the Citidel and countless manses belonging to Lords and wealthy men. That side was ringed with a high stone wall, not a wall of earth and wood but masonry work. The wall was broken in places where it had been patched with timber but it was still a great wall sand many would die trying to scale it in a siege.

Most of the population lived in the other city, that was a city of wooden houses roofed with thatch, it had no great temples instead having small Septs. They were surrounded by an earth an wall topped with a timber palisade and outside the wall were more houses. The beach of the wooden city was a sight to behold. There were broken piers and half rotted ships that shit from the river banks like teeth in the maw of a wolf and if never seen a beach so foul with corpses or so full of gulls.

Unfortunately that was where our boats had to go, that meant we had to get past the great bridge. A man could walk the entire length of Duskendale and still not walk the length of Oldtowns bridge. Though in that year the bridge had been broken and it was no longer possible to walk its length. To arches had fallen in but the piers that supported the road still stood and the river crashed against them treacherously as the water whipped past the piers.

To reach the dirty beach on the other side of the bridge we would have to pass between the standing pillars that once held up the bridge but none were wide enough for a ship to pass with full oars extended. "This will be interesting." Harle said dryly. "Can we do it?" I asked. "They did." He said pointing to ships that had beached upstream from the bridge. We anchored, waiting for the rest of the fleet to catch up.

"The Rhoynar have built bridges like these on all the rivers on the Rhoyne. Do you know why they did it?" He asked me. "To get across." I said, it seemed obvious. "They build bridges to get across but they make the supports close to stop us and other raiders from sailing up river." We waited for when the water ran the strongest, at that time we could fit ships through the gaps. We did this by rowing full speed at the gaps and lifting the oars at the last minute so they did not clip the piers and we roared through carried by the momentum of the ship.

Not every ship made it on the first try. I saw two rush forward only to slam against a side pier with the crash of broken oars, then drift back down stream with a crew of cursing men. But the Wind Vein made it. On the southern bank, where trees grew on green hills, horsemen watched us. They were Reachmen, they never did retake the city but this was still their land and they were never driven out. The horsemen would be counting ships so they would have an estimate of our numbers.

The Great Northern Army. That is what Harrion Half-Giant called us, the Great Northern Army come to take all of the south for the Starks if Winterfell. So far we were anything but great, we would wait in Oldtown for more ships to arrive and for more men to march from Dorne. The Reach could wait a while as our army assembled. As we waited Sarella, Jory and I explored Oldtown. Jory had gotten sick again and Alys had been reluctant to let him travel with his father, Jory pleaded with his mother to let him go and Harle assured her the sea voyage would mend the boy's ailments so he came.

He was pale, but not sickly and he was as exited as I was to see he city. Harle made me leave by arm rings and Fury, my sword, behind as the city was full of thieves. We wondered the wooden huts, shacks and halls first, down muddy alleys between houses full of men beating at leather, forging iron and splitting lumber. Nearby a flock of sheep were being slaughtered and the blood ran onto the street, muddled with the dirt roads and there were shops selling pottery, fish, bread, swords, axes, shields, anything you could imagine. Sept bells clambered around the city every few hours to herald a sermon.

Packs of dogs walked the streets, stray cats lounged on every clear surface and crows roosted high atop every building. We passed by a wagon so packed with hay it seemed hidden beneath the mound that scraped on the floor and parts fell off the wagon every time it hit against a building as two dirt caked men goaded and whipped the oxen pulling the wagon. Men shouted at the men in the wagon saying the load was too heavy, they ignored them and kept in whipping, then a fight broke off as the waggon tore off some rotted thatch roofing.

There were beggars everywhere, blind children, women without legs, a man with half his face burned off. There were people speaking languages i had never heard before, folk in strange costumes who had come across the sea and in the eastern city, which we explored the next day, I saw men with skin the colour of chestnuts. Harle told me they came from the Summer Islands or the island of Naath. They wore colourful robes, had curved swords and they talked to a surly man who had cages filled with captured folk.

"You three belong to anyone?" The surly man asked after spotting us. "Magnar Harle Mormont, who'd love to pay you a visit." Sarella said. "Give his lordship my regards." He said then spat and eyed as as we left. The grand structures in the eastern city were breathtaking, high and stout. We found ourselves in a part of the city that had suffered from a fire during the siege of Oldtown by Brandon of the Bloody Blade and as it was never reconstructed it lay abandoned. We chased each other up and down the barren stairs of the countless empty houses.

Few southerners lived in the burned city but many Northmen now did as more and more of the army arrived. Sarella said no sensible person would choose to live in the burned houses due to the ghosts and perhaps she was right. Her mention of spectres had us all nervous as we stared down a stairwell to a dark pillared cellar. We stayed in Oldtown for weeks and even when Harrison's army reached us we did not move North. Mounted bands did go out to forage but the great army was still gathering.

Some men grumbled we were waiting to long, that we were giving the Reachmen precious time to prepare but Harrion insisted on lingering. The Reachmen sometimes rode close to the city and twice there were fights between our horsemen and their horsemen but as winter came and at it's height the Reachmen must have decided we would do nothing until winters end and their patrols stopped coming close to the city.

"We are not waiting for spring, but for deep winter." Harle told me. "Why?" I asked him. "Because no army marches through winter, but our men are of the North and we have faced summer snows worse than these Southern winters. The Reachmen will be in their homes, sitting around their fires and praying to their feeble gods. By spring Durran, the Reach will be ours." He said, smiling wolfishly

We worked that early winter, I hauled firewood and when I was not dragging wood from the wooded hills west of the city I was learning the skills of the sword. Harle had asked Cregard, his new ship master, to be my teacher and he was a good one. He watched be rehearse the basic cuts then told me to forget them. "In a shield wall it's savagery that wins, skill help and cunning is good, but savagery wins. Get one of these." He held out a dirk with a thick blade.

I despised the dirk for it was much shorter than Fury and far less beautiful but Cregard wore one beside his longsword and he convinced me that in a shield wall the shirt stout blade was better. "There's no room to swing or hack in a shield wall but you can thrust. A short blade uses less room in a crowded fight, just crouch and stab." He made Sarella hold a shield and pretend to be the enemy then with me at his left he cut at her from above and she instinctively raised the shield.

"Stop!" He said and she froze into stillness. "See Durran, your partner makes them raise their shields then you stab into their stomachs." He taught me a dozen other tricks and I practiced because I liked it and the more I practiced the more muscle I grew and the more skill full I became. We usually practiced in a courtyard by the docks. Soon the winter feast came and the army drank, feasted, drank more and vomited in the streets. Yet still we did not march but the leaders of the great army did meet in the Hightower, the castle that once held House Hightower.

Sarella and I, as usual, were required to be Rollen's eyes and, as usual, he told us what we were seeing. The meeting was held in a sept that was located inside the Hightower, a moderately sized room with a high ceiling and candles around the room casting shadows. Harrion presided from the alter and around him were the chief lords. One was an ugly man with a thick brown beard, a scared forehead and a finger missing from his left hand.

"That is Arnolf Wull, he calls himself High Lord of the Mountain Clans and while mighty in the mountains amongst other Northern Lords he is nothing special." Rollen told us. It seemed Arnolf came in the summer bringing sixteen ships and twelve hundred men. Next to him was a tall, white haired man with a twitchy face. "Magnar Rolfe Harlaw a Lord from the Iron Islands. His son must be with him?" Rollen asked. "Thin man, with a dripping nose." Sarella said back. "He is Rolfe the Younger, he's always sniffling."

"Is my son there?" He asked. "Yes, next to a very fat man who keeps whispering to him and laughing." I told him. "Dorren Cassel, Lord of a few muddy fields and a herd of pigs, their family serve the Starks, I had wondered if he would come." All these men had come and brought men, and there were others. Magnar Glover had brought men from the Basilisk Isles and Magnar Hornwood, who resides in Oldtown, provided men. Together they had been able to field over ten thousand men.

Lord Hornwood and Lord Cassel proposed crossing the river and striking north east. They argued this would cut the Reach in two and the southern part could be taken easily. "Horn Hill is a strong fortress and will have much treasure." Lord Glover said. "While we march to Horn Hale, a strong castle that will take time to crack, they will march up behind us, much of their strength is in Highgarden." Harle reasoned.

Two traders were asked to come forth, both were Northmen and had been trading at Honeyholt just three days before and news was that King Gordan and and his brother Gwayne Gardener were raising their armies in the Northwest, gathering them at Bitterbridge and that they would number fourteen thousand. "Of whom only three thousand will be true fighting men." Harrion called and he got the response of men banging swords, axes and spears on their shields.

It was then as the noise echoed under the Sept roof that a new set of warriors entered. They were led a tall burly man in a blue-green tunic, he looked formidable, clean shaven, angry and very rich. His white cloak emblazoned with a merman had a large broach of amber surrounded in gold. His arms were heavy with golden rings and around his neck hung a Weirwood broach with rubies for eyes and it hung on a golden chain.

The warriors made way for him, his arrival causing silence among the crowd nearest to him and the silence spread until the mood that had been one of celebrations, suddenly seemed weary. "Who is it?" Rollen asked in a hushed tone. "Very tall, many arm rings, there's a merman on his cloak." I said and that made him realise. "Ah, the Lord Marlon Manderly or Marlon the Unlucky." That surprised me. "All those arm rings and he's unlucky?" I asked.

"You could give Marlon the world and he'd still think you cheated him." Rollen said. "He has a bone hanging in his hair." Sarella said. "You should ask him about that." Rollen said, evidently amused but he would say no more about the bone, which was evidently a rib and was tipped with gold. I learned that Marlon the Unlucky was a Lord from the North who had been wintering at the Weeping Tower in the Stormlands and once he had greeted the men at the alter he announced he had brought twenty four ships by sea. No I'm applauded.

Marlon, who had the sourest look I'd ever seen on a man, stared at the assembly like a man on trial who expected a harsh sentence. "We have decided to go North West to the fortresses there." Harle said breaking the uncomfortable silence, even though no decision had been made but no one contradicted his words. "Those ships already through the bridge will take their men upstream while the rest will march on foot or on horseback." Harle said.

"My ships must go upstream." Marlon said. "Your ships are past the bridge?" Harle asked. "No, but they will still go upstream." Marlon insisted. "It would be better if we left tomorrow." Harle said as the rest of the great army had finally assembled, marching in from the settlements to the east and north and the longer we waited the more the precious food supply dwindled. "My ships go upstream." Marlon said flatly. "He's worried that he cannot carry the plunder on horseback, he want his ships so he can fill them with treasure." Rollen said to us.

"Why let him come?" Sarella asked. It was plain no one liked Lord Manderly and his arrival seemed as unwelcome as it was inconvenient. Rollen shrugged the question off, Marlon was here, if he was here that meant Brandon Stark gave him leave to come, so he must take part. That still seemed strange to me, as did the fact Beorn Break-Bone and Elric Umber were not taking part in the invasion of the Reach. It was true both were rich and hardly needed more riches but for years they had talked about conquering the Reach in the name of House Stark and the North and now had simply turned away, with permission from Lord Stark.

Marlon Manderly hardly needed wealth or land either, but he thought he did, so he came. The leadership in the army was not so clear as it was before. Harrion Half-Giant was its leader by name but he did not frighten men like his brothers did, so he could do nothing without the agreement of the other chieftains. In time I would learn that an army need a head, a single leader. Give an army two leaders and you half its strength.

It took two days to get Marlon's ships past the bridge, they were beautiful ships, bigger than most, with hulls painted black and mounted with figureheads of mermen wielding tridents. All of his men wore the green-blue, as was their shields. Marlon was a dour man, but his men were impressive, each had mail or plate, they wielded longswords or tridents and their helmets were scaled like that of a fish. We might have lost two days but we had gained the Knights of White Harbor, and what was there to fear, the great army had assembled and it was mid-winter so the enemy should not be expecting us and that enemy was lead by a king and a prince more interesting in prayer than in fighting.

All of the Reach lay before us and it was inhabited by Septons and Lords who's homes were stuffed with gold, spilling over with silver and ripe for slaughter. We would all be rich, so we went to war. There were ships in the icy water of the Mander river and in the Honeywine, sliding past leafless hawthorn trees and barren, sturdy oaks. Our ships bore their beast prows to quell the spirits of the land and bring fear to those that lived there.

It was a good land, with rich fields, though all were deserted. There was almost a celebratory feeling to that brief initial voyage, a feeling unspoiled by the Merman ships of Marlon the Unlucky. Men oar walked, the same feat I saw Harle perform outside Storms End all those years ago. I tried it myself and raised a huge cheer when I fell in on my first attempt. It looked easy to run along the oar blades, but a rower only had to twitch an oar to cause a man to slip.

Men sang, the ships fought against the current, the rolling hills closed into the banks and by dusk on the second day we saw the first horsemen to the west. We reached Honeyholt the next day and the men of Harle's ships were armed with spades, many of which were made by Donal, and our first job was to make a wall. As more ships came more men helped and by nightfall our camp was protected by a low strangling earth wall, that would have posed no obstacle for an invading force for it was just an earth an mound.

But no one did come to assault us and no Reachmen army came the next morning and so we were free to make the wall higher and more formidable. Honeyholt was built where the Honeywine split and so we built our camp between to two rivers and we inhabited the town, which had been abandoned by its people and housed many of the ships crews. The land army was still out of sight and our wall was virtually finished by the time they marched in.

At first we thought it was a Reachmen army coming but was only Harrion Half-Giants men. The wall was high by then and because there was woods the the south we had cut logs to make a palisade along its whole length. Beyond the wall we dug a ditch which was flooded when we broke the rivers banks and across the ditch we made four bridges that were guarded by crude wooden forts.

This was our base and from here we could march deep into the Reach, and we needed to as with so many men inside he walls we risked hunger unless we found grain and livestock. We had brought barrels of mead, salt meat and dried fish in the ships but it was astonishing how fast those great heaps diminished. The poets and singers when they talk of war they mention the shield wall, the spear din, the axes crashing against shields and the hero's falling to the sword. But I was to discover that war, in truth, was about food. About feeding men and horses, about finding food. The army that eats wins.

Just two days after making our camp, we were short of food and both Rolfe Harlaw the elder and younger lead a large host into enemy territory to find food, men and horses. Instead they found the army of House Florent, Lords of Brightwater Keep. We would soon learn that our idea to attack in winter was, in fact, no surprise to the Reachmen. The North were good at spying, as their traders travelled far and wide but the Reachmen had their own men in Oldtown and they knew how many we numbered, when we would march and they had assembled an army to meet us.

The Reach had also gained aid from the Lords of southern Westerlands were the rule of the North was weakest and Lord Lancel Westerling marched to Brightwater Keep. That was the man Donal called my uncle. Now he was the enemy, I thought it my mother then, a faceless woman I never knew and I wondered if she was looking down on me from what ever afterlife existed and if she would condemn me for fighting with the North instead of fleeing to my uncle. And I did think about doing so, crossing the river to the uncle I'd never known, but why would I do that? Why leave Harle and Sarella and Jory for a stranger.

Our foraging party had walked into an ambush, and the men of Brightwater Keep had killed fifty men and taken another twenty prisoner. The Reachmen had lost a few men themselves but they had won the victory. It made no difference that we had been outnumbered for we had expected to win, drunk in past victories, and instead they were chased home with their tails between their legs and without our food.

They were shamed, we were shamed and a shudder went through the army for they did not think Southern Knights could beat them. We were not starving yet but the horses were desperately short on hay and we had no oats so we simply cut what ever winter grass we found outside our walls and the day after the Southern victory Jory, Sarella and I were in one of those groups, cutting at long grass with knives when the army of the Reach came.

They must have been encouraged by the previous victory of House Florent and my uncle Lancel Westerling for now the entire enemy army marched on Honeyholt. The first i new of it was the sound of screaming form farther west, then the horns that sounded battle. Then I saw horsemen that rode amongst the foraging parties, knights of the Reach hacking us down with swords or skewering us with spears. The three of us just ran. I heard the hoof beats behind us and chanced a glance, I saw a large man in steel plate charging us with a spear.

I knew one of us would die, that one of us must distract him. I grabbed Sarella's hand, dragging her away, then pushed Jory. I turned and half had Fury out of her sheath when an arrow stabbed into his face through his half helm and he twisted away, blood pouring from his cheek. Meanwhile panicked men were piling around the two bridges and the Reachmen, seeing the opportunity, rode into the horde, swords in hand.

The three of us avoided the bridge, instead we half waded, half swam through the ditch and two men hauled us up and across the wall. It was chaos now, the foragers stuck at the far side of the bridge we're being hacked down then the Reach infantry appeared, band after band of them filled the fields. I ran too fond Harle, he had gone north to the bridge there and Sarella and I caught up to his men there.

"You shouldn't come." I told Sarella. "Stay will Jory at the house." Jory was younger than us and after being soaked in the water he had started shivering and he felt sick so I had made him stay behind. Sarella, unsurprisingly, ignored me. She had grabbed a spear and wore and exited look, though no true fighting was happening yet. Harle was staring over tue wall and more men were assembling at the gate but Harle did not open it to cross the bridge but he did glance back to see how many men he had.

"Shields!" He bellowed, for some men, in their haste, had come with nothing but swords or axes. Those men now ram to fetch their shields. I had not shield, more was I supposed to be there and Harle did not see me what he saw was the end of a slaughter as the Reach Knights chopped into the last of the foragers. A few of the enemy had been put down by our arrows but neither the North or the Reach had many bowmen.

I like bowmen, they can kill at a large distance and even if their arrows don't kill they make an enemy army nervous. Advancing into archer fire is a blind business for you must keep your head under the rim of your shield, but archery is a hard skill to master. It looks easy and every child had a bow and a couple of arrows but a man's bow, a war bow, capable of killing a stallion at a hundred paces, it's a huge thing carved from yew and needing immense strength to truly use and the arrows fly wild unless the archer has practiced constantly.

That meant we never had more than a handful of archers. I never mastered the bow, with a spear, a sword or an axe I was lethal but with a bow I was like most men, useless. Some days when I think back to that battle I wonder why we did not stay behind that wall, it was practically finished and to reach it the enemy must cross the ditch or one of the four bridges and they would have been forced to do that under a constant roam of arrows, spears and throwing axes. They would have surely failed. But then they might have besieged us and we did not have the food to survive a siege.

Harle did not hide behind the wall, he charged them. It was not just Harle, while he had gathered men at the southern gate Harrion had done the same at the northern gate. When they both believed they had enough men they ordered the gates open and lead their men through. The Reach army, under the banner of House Gardener, the guiding green hand, was advancing towards the central bridges, likely thinking the slaughter from before foreshadowed another slaughter now.

They had no ladders so how they thought to cross the wall I do not know, but sometimes in battle a kind of madness descends and men do things without reason. "Shield wall!" Harle called. "Shield wall!" You can hear a shield wall being made, the best shields were made of pine or else willow and the wood knocks together as they overlap. They overlap with the left side of your shield over the right side of the person beside you so the enemy, most of whom are right handed, have to thrust through two layers of wood.

"Make it tight!" Harle commanded. He was in the middle of the shield wall in front of his standard of the black bear. He was one of the few men with an expensive helmet, it would mark him for the enemy as a chieftain, a man to be killed. He wore the fine helmet as well as a mail shirt, while most men were armoured in leather. The enemy army gathered together, making their own shield wall and I could see a group of horsemen riding along the centre and grouping beneath the green hand.

I thought I had glimpsed Cadwyns red hair amongst those riding and that made me certain that Gwayne was there, probably amongst a gaggle of Septons, no doubt praying for our deaths. The Reachmen shield wall was longer than ours. Our shield wall was backed by three ranks of men while theirs was backed by five or six. Good sense would have dictated we stay where we where and forced them to attack us or we retreat back across the ditch but more Northmen were arriving to thicken the ranks and Harle was in no mood to be sensible.

"Here we stand! Here we stand! Kill them all!" He called and the Northmen echoed his chants and they advanced. Usually shield walls spend a long time staring at each other, hurling insults as the men found the courage when eventually wood meets wood and steel meets steel but Harle's blood was aflame with battle fury and he did not care, he just charged.

That attack made no sense but Harle was furious, the North had been shamed by the victory of House Florent and his son and two wards were foraging when the Reach Knights attacked. All he wanted to do was hack into the Reachmen's ranks and it seemed as though his passion spread through his men so that they howled and roared as they ram forward. There is something terrible about facing men eager for battle.

A heartbeat before the shields clashed our rearmost men through their spears. Some had three or four spears that they launched in quick succession over the heads of our forward ranks. There were spears coming back at us and I grabbed one from the turf and hurled it into the enemy shields. I was in the rear rank as I had no shield and was no use in the shield wall but I did advance with them, Sarella by my side grinning with mischief.

I told her to go back to the town but she just stuck her tongue out at me. Then I heard the thundering clash of shields meeting shields. That was followed by the sound of spears striking wood, the ringing of blade on blade. I saw very little at the back ranks but the shock of the shield clash made the men in front of me reel back. Then they were pushing forward again trying to push their own frontline through the Reachmen ranks.

The right side of our wall was bending backwards where the enemy out flanked us but the reinforcements were rushing to that place and the Reachmen lacked the courage to charge forward through the potential breach. Those men in our flanks had been at the rear, and the rear was were timid men gathered. The real fight was to my front, and the noise was thunderous. Shield boss on sword edge, axes on shield wood, the shuffling of men's feet, the clamber of weapons and few voices except those wailing in pain.

Sarella dropped to her hands and knees and wriggled forwards, with a mischievous grin she stabbed her spear at the ankles of the enemy. Her spear point struck true, an axe fell, a man screamed, and there was a hole in the wall. There was an opening and I struck. Fury was out of her scabbard in an instant as I pushed my way through the rich if men, using the swords blade as a spear I stabbed at men.

Harle gave a mighty shout, a call to wake the Gods of Old from their woodland slumber and the shout asked for one more great push and the men obliged. Swords stabbed, spears flew, axes chopped and I could feel the enemy retreating from the fury of the Northmen. There was so much blood on the ground now, so much that the red grass was slick to walk on and there were bodies that had to be stepped over as our shield wall advanced.

There was blood on Sarella's hands and for a moment I thought the worst but her grin told me that it was not hers. At she stabbed into the legs of the Reachmen, blood had seeped down the ash handle. She licked the blood and gave me a sly smile as her dark eyes glinted. Harrion Half-Gaint and his men fought in the enemy's far side and their battle song echoed louder than ours now as the Reachmen were retreating from Harle.

One man resisted us. He was tall, monstrously tall, he wore plate pauldrons and a mail shirt, belted with a red leather sword belt. Draped over the mail was a banner if some house but I did not recognise which house as it was drenched in blood. The man also wore a great helm even more mighty than Harle's. I thought for a moment that this could be King Gordan Gardener himself but the man was to tall.

Harle shouted for his men to stand aside and now he faced him in single combat. Longclaw whipped through the air towards the large man's helmet but was parried with his shield. The man lunged forward with his sword and Harle took the blow with his shield then rammed forward crashing into the man, who tripped back, slipped on a corpse and Harle swung Longclaw overhead and as the Valyrian steel tore through the plate pauldron and cut into the mail, a rush of enemies came forth to save their lord.

A charge of Northmen met them, shield on shield and i charged with them slashing Fury with killing intent. A moment passes and Harle was roaring his victory and suddenly there were no more Reachmen left, unless they were wounded or dying and the army was fleeing, the king and prince spurring away surrounded by Septons. We jeered and cursed them, calling that they were sons of whores, that the fought like girls, that they're wee craven.

Then at last we rested, catching breath on a field of blood, our own corpses littered among the enemy dead. Harle saw me then, and saw Sarella and he laughed. "What are you two doing here?" He asked and in answer Sarella held up her reddened spear, Harle glanced at Fury and saw her bloody and red. "Fools." Harle said, not harshly but fondly. Then a Reach prisoner was brought forth and made to inspect the Lord Harle had killed.

"Who is he?" Harle demanded, I translated for him, the man made the sign of the Seven. "It is the Lord Lancel Westerling of the Crag." He said and I said nothing. "What did he say?" Harle asked. "It's my uncle." I told him. "Uthor? Uthor of the Stormlands?" Harle was astonished. I shook my head. "He's my mothers brother, Lancel Westerling of the Westerlands. He was my kin, the man who had won the victory for House Florent, defeating the Lord Harlaw.

Harle, who had avenged the defeat from days before, whooped with joy, while I stared into the dead man's face. I didn't know him, so why was I sad? He had a long face, golden hair and mutton chops. He was family. That seemed strange for I knew no family bar Harle, Jory, Rollen and Sarella. Harle had his men strip Lancel of his armour and rake his precious helmet. Because the Lord had fought so bravely Harle left the corpse it's other clothes and had him left so he could go to his Gods in peace.

Perhaps the Seven did take him for when we went out the next day to burry the dead, his body was gone. We later learned that some of his men had crept back in the night and had taken the body back to his home in the Westerlands for a burial. What ever happened to my uncles corpse did not matter, we had seen the Reachmen off but we were still hungry. So it was time to fetch the enemies food.

Why did I fight for the North? All lives have questions and that one still haunts me. In truth there was no mystery, to my young mind the alternative was to be sitting at some table in the palace of Gwayne Gardener, learning to read. Give a boy a choice like that and he'd fight for the Others before choosing to read and write away glory. And there was Harle, who I loved, Jory who I had grown up with, and Sarella, the first woman to take my heart.

Harle had sent his men across the river to find hay and he found just enough so that when the army marched out horses were in reasonable condition. We were marching on Pennytree a town on the Mander river and according to our prisoner it was where the Reach had amassed a large portion of their supplies. Take Pennytree and Gordan Gardeners army would be short of food. The Reach would starve.

There was the small matter of defeating the Reach Knights first. We marched just four days after routing them outside the walls of Honeyholt and we were all blissfully confident that they were doomed. Jory stayed in Honeyholt because he had fallen sick again and T he Westerlands hostages, like the twins Tybolt and Addam, stayed also. The rest of us marched, or rode.

I was among the older of the boys who went with the army and I served as Harle's squire though he was no knight. Our jobs were to carry extra shields that could he pushed forward during battle, shields were chopped to pieces during the war madness and I've often seen men fighting with a weapon in one hand and just scraps of a shield in the other. Sarella also came with us, mounted behind Rollen in his horse and for a time I went with them listening as Rollen reversed the opening lines of a song 'the fall of the Reach'. He got as far as listing our heroes, when one of those heroes, the gloomy Lord Marlon Manderly.

"You look well." He greeted Rollen in a tone that suggested that was unlikely to last. "I can not look at all." Rollen said back. He liked jests, much like his son I'm that regard. Marlon, swathed in a green-blue cloak, looked down to the river and even in the winter sunlight the river valley looked lush. "Who will be Lord of the Reach?" He asked Rollen. "Harrion." Rollen suggested mischievously. "It's a big kingdom, could do with an older man."

I sensed Rollen was going to suggest himself, in jest, but before he could Marlon looked at me sourly and interrupted. "Who's that?" He asked. "You forget I am blind, Lord." Rollen said jovially. "The boy leading your horse. Who is he?" Marlon clarified. "That is the Lord Durran Durrandon. Who understands that poets and bards are of such importance their horses should be lead by Lords." Rollen said grandly.

"Durrandon? A southerner?" He scowled, forgetting that House Manderly was from the south once and not many generations ago his ancestors worshiped he Seven. "Are you a Southerner Durran?" I shook my head. "I'm a Northman." I insisted. "A Northerner who wet his blade at Honeyholt. Wet it with Reach blood Marlon." That was a barbed comment for Marlon's Merman Knights had not fought outside the walls at Honeyholt.

"And who's the girl?" He asked, scowling. "Sarella, who will one day be a poet and a sorceress." Marlon did not know what to say to that so he returned to his original subject. "Does Harle the Fearless want to be Lord of the Reach?" He asked. "My son wants to kill people. His ambitions are few merely to tell jokes, drink mead, gain arm rings, eat well, and to spill southern blood." I do not know if Rollen spoke truthfully, if Harle wanted to be Lord or not.

"The Reach needs a strong Lord, one who understands how to govern." Marlon said obscurely. "We take their strongholds but leave half their land untouched. The Westerlands send men to the Reach when they're supposed to be in our side. We win Rollen, but we never finish the job." Marlon said. "And how do we do that?" Rollen asked. "More men, more ships, more deaths. Kill them all, leave none alive." Rollen was shocked by Marlon's words.

"What of the women and the children?" Rollen asked. "We could leave some young ones alive." He grudged. "What are you staring at boy?" He barked. "You lord, the bone in your hair." I said nodding at the gold tipped bone. "It's one of my mothers ribs. She was a good woman, a wonderful woman and she goes with me wherever I go. You could do well to make a song about my mother Rollen, you knew her no?" Rollen nodded.

"I did, I knew her well enough to worry that I do not possess the skills to make a song worthy of such an illustrious woman." The mockery shot straight past Marlon the Unlucky. "You could try. And I would pay much gold for a good song about her." He was mad, I thought, mad as an owl at midday. Then I forgot him, because the army of the Reach was before us, blocking our path and offering battle.

The Green Hand of Gardener was flying at the summit of a long, low hill that stood on the road. To reach Pennytree we would have to assault that hill, but to the west, where the hills fell away, there was a track that suggested we might skirt the enemy position. To stop is Gordan Gardener would need to come down the hill to fight us in equal footing. Harrion called the Northern leaders together and they talked for a long time, disagreeing with what should be done. Some wanted to rush uphill but some wanted to fight the Reachmen in the riverbank meadows. In the end Magnar Marlon the Unlucky convinced them to do both.

That meant splitting our army in two, but I thought it was a clever plan. Harle, Marlon and the Lord Harlaw would go to the lower ground, threatening to pass by the hill. While Harrion with the remaining Lords would stay on the high ground and advance on the Green Hand banner. Thus the enemy might hesitate to attach Harle in fear Harrion would attach their rear. According to Harle the most likely scenario was that the enemy would not fight at all, instead retreating back to the town of Pennytree, where we could beside them.

"Better to have them penned in a fortress than running around." Harle said cheerfully. "Better still, not dividing the army." Rollen commented. "They're only Reachmen, summer knights one and all." Harle said dismissively. It was already afternoon, and it was winter so the days were short but Harle thought there was more than enough daylight to finish off Gordan's troops. Men touched their Weirwood charms, sharpened their swords, hefted shields them we were off into the river valley. There we were half hidden by the leafless trees but once and a while I could glimpse Harrison's men advancing towards the hill crest and I could see there were Reach troops waiting for them which suggested Marlon's olan was working and we could march around their flank.

"We will climb is behind them, and the bastards will be trapped. We'll kill them all" Harle said with a grin. "One must remain alive." Rollen said. "Why?" I asked him. "To tell the tale." Rollen said with a smile. We numbered around five thousand, just slightly less than the men left with Harrion and we reckoned the Reach army numbered more than our two groups combined. But we were warriors, raiders. They were farmers, forced into the army while our men revelled in it. So we expected nothing but victory.

As our leading troops marched out of the wooded river valley we found that our enemy had followed our example and split their own army in two. One half was waiting on the hill for Harrion Half-Giant while the other half stood here, to face us. Gwayne lead our opponents, I knew that because I could see Cadwyn's red hair and later in the battle I saw Gwayne's long, anxious face. His brother had stayed on the heights were, instead of waiting for Harrion, he had began his own advance towards the Umber. The southerners, it seemed, were avid for battle. Se we gave it to them.

Our forces made shield wedges to attack their shield wall. We called on the Old Gods, we roared our battle cries, we charged and the Reach lines did not break, did not buckle and instead they held fast and so the blood works began. Time and time again Rollen told me that destiny was everything. Fate rules, while free will serves. That day, though I did not know it, my destiny was spun. Fate is unyielding, unbeatable.

What is there to say about the battle at the place called Rose Hill. I do not doubt it is one of a hundred Rose Hills in the Reach but this one received a watering of blood and bone that day that would appease all the greedy gods in Essos. The poets could sing a thousand lines to tell you what happened that day. In the end battle is battle. Men died. In the shield wall it is sweat, blood, cramped spaces, sword blows, screaming and cruel death. There were truly two battles at Rose Hill, the one above and the one below.

Magnar Hornwood died, Lord Rolfe Harlaw the elder watched his son and heir die, before he was cut down himself. With his died Magnar Glover and Lord Dorren Cassel and with them died countless good warriors. The Septons were calling upon the Warrior to give strength to their men and that day, it seemed the Old Gods were sleeping and the Seven were awake. We were driven back, both atop the hill and in the valley they pushed us and it was only the weariness of the enemy the stopped a full slaughter and allowed our survivors to flee from the fight, leaving their companions behind in pools of their death blood.

Cregard was among them, the ship master who had taught me how to fight, who had sailed to fight the Wildlings behind the Wall, who was so full of sword skill. And he had died, in the ditch where Gwayne and his shield wall stood waiting. Harle, blood soaked and tired, could not believe it. The Reachmen were jeering, they had fought like fiends, like inspired men, like men who knew their entire future rested on the single battle one winter afternoon. Destiny is all. They had beaten us and we went back to Honeyholt.