Chapter 149: Banners Over Harrenhal

The winter wind came off the grey water of the Gods Eye carrying a bone-cold mist, and flung it against the vast, grim ruin on the shore. Harrenhal: a name that had been legend and nightmare in the same breath for three hundred years. Its blackened walls stood cracked and fallen like the bones of something a giant had chewed, and its five monstrous, twisted towers, the Tower of Dread, the Widow’s Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and the Kingspyre, pierced a lead-colored sky, their faces still carrying the melted scars of Balerion the Black Dread. Within, the yards lay under weeds and rubble, the halls belonged to beasts and, men said, to ghosts, and the air held old dust, rot, and a silence that got into the marrow.

That day, the silence broke to a very different sound. A horn blew low along the lakeshore, not the fever of an assault but the gravity of occupation and order, and after it came the rhythm of marching feet, the clatter of armor, officers’ voices, wheels on gravel. New banners opened in the cold wind: dark green fields worked with golden mines, blue rivers, and silver ancient trees, the combined arms of Arthur Greyoak, Warden of the West and the Riverlands; beside them the freshly registered crests of the sworn river lords; and in the greatest numbers, the uniform war banners of Battania with their spare tree mark.

Kator sat a tall northern warhorse before the broken arch beneath the Kingspyre, the only gate of Harrenhal still worth the word, and looked up at the tower where, the tale ran, Harren the Black and all his sons had burned in a single night. Even a man of his scars felt the chill of it walk up his spine; he put it down, and put the weight of the task in its place. Behind him stretched better than twenty thousand men: the Riverlands Allied Force, cobbled from the levies of the river lords, some fifteen thousand of mixed gear, training, and mood; and the new Battanian formations of the Riverlands, eight thousand strong, hard-drilled through a secret year, with a river of craftsmen, laborers, and supply wagons flowing behind them like a tail.

“In the name of Lord Arthur, Lord Paramount of the Trident and Lord of Casterly Rock!” Kator drew and pointed his sword at the ruin, his voice riding over the wind. “This fortress was once the heart of the Trident, and it has become a den of broken men and a hole where order died! We serve the Warden. Our charge is to put down disorder, restore the peace, and protect the traveler. From this day we garrison Harrenhal, clear out the enemy’s remnants, mend the defenses, and rebuild the order of this land!” He paused, and his gaze crossed the river men in his ranks and their complicated faces. “We come not to conquer, not to posture, and not to trouble whatever sleeps in these stones. We come to protect: the gateway of the Riverlands, the lives of its people, and the future of the ground under our feet. May the Seven and the old gods witness the oath and the work!”

“For protection! For order!” It came back as one voice from the Battanian ranks, and raggedly, but it came, from the allied levies too, which was as much as morale could be asked to do in that place.

The work rolled out on its prearranged rails. Picked Battanian squads, veteran skirmishers and forest raiders with shields and short steel, went into the ruin first and combed it like hounds, flushing or finishing the beasts, bandits, and deserters denned inside, while the main force ringed the site, raised outposts, and set patrols on the lakeshore and every approaching road. Under guard, the craftsmen, masons, and maesters began their survey: what could be mended and used, what had to come down or be shored, and where the fortified camp, the stores, the infirmaries, and the command post would sit. Soldiers and laborers cleared the square inside the main gate and the soundest of the ruined halls, raised tents and timber sheds, reinforced the Kingspyre gate with heavy logs and iron bars, and threw up breastworks and arrow platforms of stone, timber, and earth across the worst gaps in the walls, while catapult and ballista components came off the wagons and went together on the chosen heights. And riders went out in every direction with proclamations under the Warden’s seal, to the villages, the granges, and the roads toward the Bloody Gate, King’s Landing, and the heart of the Trident: the Riverlands Allied Force had come to destroy the bandits and give the people peace, and was raising an outpost and sanctuary at Harrenhal to restore order and protect honest travelers; residents were asked to report lawlessness; and any armed force approaching the Harrenhal perimeter would be treated as hostile.

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It went methodically, and it went. Against the greatest ruin in the Seven Kingdoms and the weight of its stories, twenty thousand men with discipline and a clear task began, slowly and surely, to change the dead face of Harrenhal: cook-smoke rising over a new camp, the ring of dressed stone where the silence had been, and soldiers’ voices rolling through halls that had forgotten them.

The peace lasted three days. At evening on the third, from the direction of the Bloody Gate, a troop of some fifty Vale knights appeared on the western road, escorting several richly dressed men with the look of envoys, under the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn and the mockingbird of Petyr Baelish personally, carrying with them the last of the coin agreed for Ser Donnel Waynwood, whom the Warden’s people had held since the burning of the beachhead at Seagard and had lately handed back for a ransom heavy enough to be felt in the Eyrie, and demanded, with some altitude, to see whoever was in charge.

Kator received them in the “temporary council hall,” a great tent pitched in a cleared but unrepaired shell of the old halls. The delegation’s head was a thin, sharp-eyed man of middle years who named himself Cole, tax collector and steward to Lord Petyr.

“General Kator.” Cole’s bow was correct and his tone was not. “We come at the order of the Protector of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie to inquire. Harrenhal is a historical site at the crossing of many borders, and by long custom an ungarrisoned one. Your side has suddenly placed tens of thousands of men here and begun substantial works. Bandit-clearing hardly covers it. What does the Warden of the West and the Riverlands intend? And has the measure been communicated to, and permitted by, the Vale, or indeed King’s Landing?”

Kator had his instructions for exactly this conversation. “Lord Cole. Harrenhal stands within the borders of the Riverlands, under the lawful jurisdiction of their Warden. It has lain abandoned too long, and the bandits nesting in it have bled travelers and the country alike, to the grief of the river lords and their people. I am here at the Warden’s command to clear them out and restore order, which is my duty, and requires consultation with no one. The garrison and the repairs are temporary measures, to see the work through, keep the bandits from returning, and give traveling merchants a refuge. When the country is quiet, the garrison will be reduced accordingly.”

“Temporary.” Cole’s smile was thin, and he tilted his head toward the sound of stonework beyond the canvas. “Mended gates and new fortifications do not sound temporary. And Harrenhal’s position is sensitive. A great army here cannot help but raise questions, touching the security of the Bloody Gate and the flank of King’s Landing. Lord Petyr hopes your side can offer a clearer explanation, and a guarantee that this move threatens no interest of the Vale.”

“Harrenhal’s defenses are aimed at bandits, and at any invader. They are not addressed to the Vale, nor to King’s Landing.” Kator’s tone put on weight. “The Lord Paramount of the Trident may station troops anywhere within his own territory for its security. So long as the Vale’s forces keep to the Vale and cross no borders, there is nothing here to concern them. As for King’s Landing, the Warden will speak with them directly. And you might carry this home as well, envoy: rather than questioning lawful measures, Lord Petyr could look to certain restless elements within the Vale, and keep them from conspiring with the dregs of the Riverlands to make further trouble.” The point beneath it, the instigated rebellion, the designs on the North, did not need naming to be heard.

Something moved across Cole’s face, and then the businesslike surface closed back over it. “Then I shall carry your answer to the Eyrie. Though Lord Petyr bade me remind you: Harrenhal is an ill-omened place, and those who hold it have rarely prospered. He hopes your side fares... well. And one thing further. Concerning certain accidental clashes lately in the eastern Riverlands, near Queenscrown, and certain vague reports from the Night’s Watch of wildling movement beyond the Wall, Lord Petyr is much concerned, and hopes your side might share what it knows, to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding.”

A threat wrapped in a curse, and a probe wrapped in courtesy. Kator sneered where it did not show. “Our thanks for the reminder. We know Harrenhal’s history well. The Warden’s will and our soldiers’ courage will serve against ghosts. As for the eastern Riverlands and the lands beyond the Wall, those belong to the Lord Paramount of the Trident and to the Night’s Watch, and need not trouble Lord Petyr. If there is nothing else, the camp is new and the work is pressing. We will not detain you.”