Chapter 164: Wolves and Accidents

Two days later, at dusk, the two surveying knights were exploring a shortcut into the hills west of Grey Creek when their horses shied, a flock of grouse breaking cover at exactly the wrong moment, and one mount went down into a beautifully camouflaged, entirely pre-existing pit in the frozen ground. The knight’s arm broke; his maps and notes scattered into the mud. The second knight dismounted to help and was set upon by several strangely fearless wolves, which were trained Oath Keep hounds wearing wolf skins, and though unhurt, he was thoroughly terrorized, and in the chaos the wolves carried off and shredded the better part of the papers. That same night Merriman’s note-keeping assistant, answering nature’s call in the dark, was bowled over by a startled elk, a northern hunter under a deer hide, went into a snowmelt stream, lost his notebook and his lenses, and came out with a fever.

The string of accidents pulled the whole Vale camp tight with suspicion. Merriman understood: they were being watched, hindered, warned, by something in the dark. He asked the locals, and the locals knew nothing, or slid away from the question, or reminded him, vaguely, that it wasn’t peaceful hereabouts, and best not to walk at night. And while he weighed whether to shrink the mission or send to Moat Cailin for help, a genuine mutual aid team from Grey Creek Fort walked into his camp: a mild-faced, well-spoken Battanian of middle years who named himself one of the reclamation’s managers, followed by laborers carrying wooden boxes.

“Honored Scholar Merriman, friends of the Vale.” All smiles. “We at Grey Creek heard your party was here healing, dispensing, and teaching, and we were moved. The North is bitter, and it needs friends from every quarter. Small gifts: herbs of our own growing, dried meat, tanned hides. Poor things, but they may spare your stores. And two of our hunters were hurt the day before yesterday; might your medics look at them? We will gladly pay the fee.”

One does not strike a smiling face. Merriman, stuffed with doubts, could only accept the gifts and lend the medics, while the manager chatted pleasantly of northern weather, crops, the hardships of reclamation, and everyone’s high hopes for the new Warden of the North, touching nothing sensitive, asking nothing about surveys or accidents. And meanwhile his laborers enthusiastically helped tidy the Vale camp and mend the damaged tents, and in passing let fall, casually, certain information: that it had been unquiet near Grey Creek lately, unknown armed men moving at night; that Lord Alfie at Moat Cailin was very concerned for this district and had thickened his patrols; that Winterfell’s tax assessor would be through soon to register people and land, and friends from the Vale would want their procedures in order. Half of it true, half invented, and all of it corrosive to the Vale’s picture of the ground.

A few days later, when the Grey Creek team took its courteous leave and warmly offered guides to see them partway, Merriman made his decision. On the grounds that the mission’s main tasks were essentially complete, that supplies were near exhausted, and that a report home was needed before the next phase of assistance, he ordered the hundred back along their route to Moat Cailin, and thence to the Vale.

“We just leave?” the young knight with his arm in a sling asked, unwilling.

Merriman looked toward Grey Creek, and his eyes were dark. “Or stay, and wait to be accidentally removed? We underestimated the local snakes, and the opponent in the shadows worse. They warned us with accidents, gagged us with courtesy, and blinded us with true and false news in one basket. Stay longer and we gain nothing and may lose much. We go back and report it all to Lord Petyr, exactly. The water in the North is deeper and muddier than anyone told us. To fish it wants another method. Or muddier water still.”

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So the Vale’s hundred withdrew from the Gift’s edge, dejected, leaving behind a thin residue of goodwill among the very poorest, a folder of fragmentary intelligence, two wounded men, a scatter of accidentally lost supplies and records, and a much deeper respect for Grey Creek Fort and whatever stood behind it.

At Grey Creek, when Old Weasel and the smiling manager had both reported, there was little joy in Torren Flint’s face. “Drive off one wave, the next is forming. The Vale will not quit, and King’s Landing’s eyes never close. We have won a breathing space and a clean field, no more.” He looked at the districts marked initially stable on the charcoal map. “So: speed the plowing, harden the settlements, raise and train local cadres, free folk included, and finish the militia and the village administration. Before the Vale and the crown find their next way in, this new soil grows roots that cannot be pulled.”

Thus ended, in the New Soil country, a battle without banners and nearly without blood, in the temporary victory of the quiet side. It was one skirmish on the long ice. The royal envoy had reached Winterfell; how Jon Snow answered him, what Petyr Baelish drew from his deck after this check, and whether the west’s patient planting could grow, in the cracks between all the powers, into something that changed the shape of the North and of Westeros entire, all of that still lay under the frost, where new seeds and poison vines were sprouting side by side.

In the great hall of Winterfell the hearth roared in its massive stone throat and did not touch the cold in the room, which was heavier than any spring wind of the North. At the hall’s end, the high seat of the Lords of Winterfell stood deliberately empty; beside it, on a plainer oak chair moved to the main seat’s flank, sat Jon Snow, straight-backed, in his Watch blacks under a grey fur-trimmed cloak that announced exactly what he was: acting, and no more. His color was better than it had been in the godswood, and the shadows under his eyes said what his posture would not.

Below him sat what remained of the North’s great houses, or those who had lent Winterfell their names for now: Lord Alfie Karstark of Karhold, present in person; Ser Wendel Manderly for his father of White Harbor; Smalljon Umber, youngest son of the ailing Greatjon, for Last Hearth; and Lady Lyanna Mormont of Bear Island, one of the few lords to come herself. Behind them stood their retainers and knights, thin ranks in a hall built for multitudes, and the emptiness said more about the North’s condition than any maester’s report.

And the focus of the room, seated opposite Jon in the warmest and brightest reach of the fire, was the royal party: Lord Carrell and his train. Carrell was near sixty, grey and rigid, of an old Crownlands house famous for law and loyalty, in deep blue velvet bearing the provisional combined arms of Baratheon and Targaryen, with the Small Council’s badge at his breast, not a member, but carrying the queen’s special authority. Behind him sat clerks and tax officers with faces cut from the same stone, and two maesters of the Citadel sent to assess the North’s distress and its needs.

“Lord Jon.” Carrell’s voice was even and clear and official, and it broke the room’s silence like a gavel. “First, permit me to convey again Her Grace Queen Daenerys Targaryen’s appreciation of your courage in shouldering the wardenship of the North. Her Grace holds the North’s plight, and House Stark’s loyalty, close to her heart.” His gaze traveled slowly across the northern faces. “Hearing of the famine, Her Grace grieved, and ordered this embassy north with five thousand stone of grain, a thousand winter garments, and medical stores, traveling day and night. This is the first consignment; more will follow, as the North recovers and the kingdom’s finances allow.”

A restrained stir moved the hall. Five thousand stone was life itself to the starving districts, and several faces showed open relief; even Alfie Karstark inclined his head. Jon rose and bowed with his fist to his chest. “I thank Her Grace for her mercy, and you, my lord, for your labors. The North will remember. The grain goes out at once to the districts in worst need.”