Chapter 3: War Preparations
White Harbor's docks hadn't seen this kind of activity in years. A morning mist hung low over the water and the piers, and the salt breeze pushed through it in slow rolling gaps,
revealing the crowd beneath — soldiers standing in formation with armor clanking, sailors and dockhands threading between them with crates of supplies and bundled weapons, everyone moving with the particular urgency of men who know they're behind schedule.
To get the army moving north as fast as possible, the Manderly family had requisitioned every flat-bottomed merchant vessel that had put into White Harbor over the past seven days. More than twenty ships of various sizes sat lined up in the inner harbor, their merchant flags struck and replaced with the Manderly white merman on blue-green, snapping in the morning wind.
Henry Reyne stood beside Lord Wyman's litter in his ancestral scarlet armor, a white scarf bearing the Red Lion sigil of House Reyne draped across one shoulder. He'd grown up in White Harbor. The particular smell of the harbor — salt and fish and tar and the cold particular bite of northern sea air — was as familiar to him as anything in the world. But standing here now, watching the ships being loaded, felt different from every other morning he'd stood on these docks. This was the first time he was preparing to leave them behind.
"Wendell." Wyman's voice drifted from the litter's window. "How much grumbling are we getting from the captains?"
Wendell Manderly leaned his broad face down to the window, his handlebar mustache twitching with the faint amusement of a man who finds other people's complaints mildly entertaining. He was built like his father — wide, solid, the kind of man who took up more space than he seemed to intend. "Some, Father. Waiving their harbor fees for a year settled most of them. The ones making real noise are the merchants whose cargo is sitting in the hold while we use their ships. They've come to me in tears twice already."
"They've made good coin off White Harbor for years," Wyman said, unbothered. "We left them the deep-keeled vessels. If they were truly in a hurry, they'd have taken those and gone. They're using this as leverage, same as they always do." A dismissive sound from inside the litter. "That lot could find a cracked coin in the road and spend an hour lamenting that it wasn't two. Let them grumble."
Willis Manderly came striding over from the direction of the harbormaster's office, the registrar at his elbow and a pair of attendants behind him carrying ledgers.
"Father. The count's done." He opened the topmost ledger. "A hundred and two knights assembled, a hundred and thirty-eight squires, four hundred cavalry. After garrisoning White Harbor with enough men to hold it, we have three thousand infantry available for the march."
He paused. "The ships can handle the men and the equipment. Horses are another matter. Loading the cavalry mounts too would pack them past safe sailing. Do you want me to hold three more days and requisition additional ships?"
Wyman was quiet for a moment. "No. We don't wait. Get the infantry boarded." He shifted in his seat and his voice took on the particular tone that meant he was thinking several steps ahead. "Willis, take Henry to the master of horse. Requisition pack animals and wagons for the cavalry's gear. And while you're in my stables, find Henry a proper warhorse — that animal he's been riding won't carry him through a charge."
Then, louder, as if addressing the harbor itself: "Wendell rides with me. We take the infantry up the White Knife by water to Sheepshead Village. Willis, you and Henry lead the cavalry overland and meet us there. We consolidate, then march to Winterfell together."
He raised one hand and beckoned Henry closer. His grip, when he took Henry's hand, was surprisingly gentle for a man his size.
"Little Lion." The nickname he'd used since Henry was small. "I'm granting you recruiting rights within the city. Use gold to hire riders willing to fight under your banner — draw arms and horses from my stocks according to their numbers. Your men will earn their keep on the battlefield. Pay the debt with whatever spoils you take." He gave Henry's hand a firm squeeze. "Make me proud."
"Thank you, Uncle Wyman."
"Father," Wendell said, his mustache drooping with theatrical suffering, "surely we could take lunch before we board? I find I'm already somewhat—"
"We finished breakfast an hour ago, Wendell." Willis reached over and cuffed the back of his brother's bald head without particular ceremony. "Get to the ships."
Henry didn't try recruiting from the general population of White Harbor. Most of the city's ordinary folk had no military training worth speaking of, and trying to turn them into something useful before the army marched was a problem he didn't have time to solve.
What he did have, sitting idle and irritated in every tavern near the docks, were sailors.
The requisitioning of the flat-bottomed trading vessels had stranded a fair number of ships' crews in the city with nothing to do and no way to leave. Sailors were not soft men. They spent their lives hauling heavy loads in dangerous conditions, working in close quarters with other men who knew how to use a knife, and going weeks without complaint in circumstances that would break someone unused to it. Many of them had seen fights — real ones, not tavern scuffles. And they were idle, which meant they were cheap.
Henry rode to the Lazy Eel with his twelve Reyne men-at-arms at his back. The tavern was the closest thing White Harbor's docks had to a gathering place, and this morning it was packed to the walls — sailors drinking in small groups, swapping grievances, watching the harbor activity through the smudged windows with the resentful expression of men who want to be working and aren't.
He pushed the door open and raised his voice over the noise.
"Listen up. I'm Henry Reyne. The North is going to war, and I need riders who can handle a blade or a spear. Enlist with me and I'll put arms and armor in your hands from day one. Two silver stags a day in wages, and fifteen for every enemy killed in the field."
The tavern went quiet enough that he could hear the fire.
Then the noise came back, lower and more purposeful — men turning to look at him, then at each other, then back at him. The offer was a good one and they knew it. Stranded, idle, with no ship to work and no immediate prospect of one, a position that came with a weapon and a daily wage was hard to dismiss. A few of them were also, from the look in their eyes, genuinely interested in the fight itself.
One by one, then in small clusters, men stepped forward.
Henry and his warriors went through them methodically — checking grip strength, asking what weapons they'd used and where, putting them on a horse briefly to see if they'd lied about riding. In the end, sixty men made the cut: broad-shouldered, steady-eyed sailors with genuine weapons experience and enough horsemanship to serve in a mounted column. Henry led them to the White Harbor armory to be outfitted.
The cobblestone square outside the North Gate was already full by the time Henry returned.
The assembled knights looked nothing like they would at a tournament. No personal heraldry, no bright colors for individual houses — every man wore a blue-green surcoat with a white merman, the uniform of a Manderly army on the march. Squires moved between the horses, checking straps and adjusting barding, their breath clouding in the cold air. The men-at-arms without squires saw to their own gear, and the difference in the quality of their kit was plain to see.
A light snow had started to fall, barely more than a dusting, when Henry rode out through the North Gate at the head of his men. He wore his scarlet armor. Maewyn Sarsfield rode just behind him, holding the Reyne banner — white field, Red Lion with a forked tail — high enough for the whole square to see.
The Red Lion knights in their white surcoats rode out and folded into the blue-green mass of Manderly cavalry, and the heads that turned to watch them were many.
"Lord Henry of House Reyne, rightful Lord of Casterly Rock!" Maewyn called out before Henry had the chance to offer a more measured greeting to anyone.
Henry kept his face composed and nodded to the assembled knights and riders who turned at the announcement, telling himself the flush working up the back of his neck was from the cold. He wasn't used to being announced. He wasn't entirely sure he'd ever get used to it.
That boy is good at his job, he thought.
Willis rode over. "You look the part. Are your men ready?"
"Ready."
"Henry!"
The voice cut clean through the wind and the ambient noise of four hundred horses and twice as many men. Wynafryd Manderly was coming across the square at a trot, her brown braid bouncing, two handmaidens hurrying to keep up. She had a small blue-green leather purse in her hand, the House Manderly sigil stitched on the front, and she held it out to Henry as she reached him — standing on her toes to tuck it into his saddlebag herself. The coins inside clinked together.
"For the road," she said, matter-of-fact about it, the way she was matter-of-fact about most things.
Henry laughed and reached down to ruffle her braid. "Thank you, Wynafryd. I'll bring something back for you."
"Something from the south," she said immediately, with the decisiveness of someone who had already given this thought.
Willis leaned down and lifted his daughter up to sit in front of him on the saddle, pressing his walrus mustache against her cheek. "While I'm gone, you study with Maester Theomore. No more pranks."
Wynafryd's expression shifted to something between resigned and mutinous. "He's a Lannister man."
"He's a learned man," Willis said, with the tone of a father who has had a version of this conversation before. "Learn what he knows. That's all I'm asking." He pinched her nose gently. "Can you do that?"
"...Yes," she said, in the tone of someone making a significant concession.
Willis set her down carefully, watched her until she'd stepped back to where the handmaidens were waiting, and then straightened in the saddle. He drew his longsword in one motion, raised it above his head, and turned to face the square.
"Warriors of House Manderly!" The sword caught the grey morning light. "We ride for Sheepshead Village — and from there, to Winterfell! Move out!"
The officers and knights took up the cry. Four hundred cavalry lurched into motion, with Willis at the head. Henry fell in behind, his Reyne men flanking him, Maewyn's banner snapping above them in the falling snow.
The blue-green tide of mermen and the white-and-red column of lions wound together like a single river and poured through the North Gate, onto the frozen road north.
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