Brother Clement believed with his entire heart that the Father judged men by the callouses on their feet.
He was a Poor Fellow, having abandoned his cobbler's shop in the Riverlands to carve a seven-pointed star into his chest and march for the salvation of the realm. Around him walked tens of thousands of men just like him. They carried rusted scythes, heavy wooden clubs, and the absolute certainty that the Seven walked beside them.
Their vast, winding host had reached the Green Fork of the Trident. There, rising from the morning mist, was the Royal Bridge. Originally a massive wooden structure built by the Warden of the North during the Rebellion to bypass the Twins, Ned Stark had later advised King Robert to replace it entirely with stone. It was now a great work of heavy masonry, wide enough for a dozen knights to ride abreast.
"Behold!" shouted Septon Meribald from the back of a slow-moving mule, waving a heavy iron star. "The heathens laid the foundation of this path in their arrogance, but the Smith has repurposed this Royal Bridge for the faithful! The very stones shall speed our holy justice!"
Clement cheered along with ten thousand others, raising his wooden club to the grey sky. It was a beautiful, divine irony. They marched across the heavy paving stones, the stomping of fifty thousand pairs of boots sounding like the beating heart of a righteous god. The massive train of food carts, laden with salted pork, grain, and hardtack, creaked and groaned behind them.
Riding slightly ahead of Clement's ragged column were the Warrior's Sons. Ser Lymond of House Peake sat atop a massive grey destrier, his polished plate armor gleaming in the dull light. His heavy cloak was pinned with a silver star. Ser Lymond looked down at the barefoot peasants with a mixture of pious approval and aristocratic distaste.
"Keep them moving, Captain," Ser Lymond instructed his lieutenant, holding a scented handkerchief near his nose to ward off the smell of unwashed bodies. "The sooner we pass the swamps, the sooner we can put the heathens to the torch and claim our rightful rewards. The Mother smiles upon us."
They crossed the bridge and left the solid earth of the Riverlands behind.
The Kingsroad narrowed. The firm dirt gave way to damp, spongy peat. The trees changed from pleasant oaks to twisted, moss-draped willows and ancient, rotting pines. A thick, grey mist clung to the ground, smelling heavily of decay, stagnant water, and sulfur.
They had entered the Neck.
By the end of the second day, the singing stopped.
High in the tangled branches of an ancient ironwood tree, Jyck the Crannogman sat perfectly still. He was coated from head to toe in dark brown mud and crushed leaves. To any man looking up from the road, he was nothing more than a knot in the wood.
Jyck was currently chewing on a piece of dried frog meat, utterly bewildered by the scene unfolding on the causeway below.
He had heard the southern army coming for an entire day before he saw them. They were the loudest, most chaotic collection of fools Jyck had ever seen in his twenty years of life in the bogs. They clanked, they shouted, and worst of all, they sang hymns.
"Why are they singing?" murmured Varly, another hunter hidden in the reeds at the base of the tree. "Are they trying to alert the lizard-lions? Do they want to be eaten?"
"I think it's a mating call," Jyck whispered back, spitting out a piece of gristle. "Or they are just deeply stupid. Look at the men on the horses."
Below them, the grand heavy cavalry of the Reach was experiencing the reality of Northern geography. Ser Lymond's massive grey destrier, bred for flat grassy plains, had stepped half a pace off the raised, packed-earth causeway to bypass a stalled food cart.
The horse instantly sank up to its chest in a patch of dark, bubbling muck.
The knight was currently screaming at his squires, entirely stuck in his heavy plate armor, slowly sinking alongside his panicked horse. The squires grabbed the horse's reins, but their leather boots found no purchase on the slick peat, and they slid face-first into the slime.
"Praise the Seven!" a barefoot zealot cried out from the road, dropping to his knees in the mud. "The earth tests our resolve! Pray, brothers! Pray the ground releases the holy knight!"
A dozen Poor Fellows immediately dropped to their knees in the sucking mud, joining hands and chanting a loud, rhythmic prayer to the Crone for guidance.
Jyck watched from the tree, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "They aren't throwing him a rope, Varly. They are talking to the mud."
"Does the mud listen?" Varly asked softly.
"It seems to be eating his horse faster, so I suppose it accepts the offering," Jyck observed. "Southerners are very strange."
"They are doing all the work for us," Varly sighed, shaking his head.
Jyck nocked a short, black-fletched arrow to his bowstring. The arrowhead was slick with a dark green paste made from bog-rot and crushed nightshade.
"Orders are orders," Jyck whispered.
He didn't aim for the flailing knight or the praying peasants. He aimed for the heavy wooden wheel of the food cart currently blocking the road. He let the arrow fly. It struck the neck of the lead draft horse pulling the cart.
The horse whinnied, bucked violently, and snapped the wooden yoke. The sudden lurch sent the massive, overloaded food cart tipping off the narrow causeway. It crashed into the deep swamp with a wet, heavy splash, instantly sinking beneath the duckweed, taking a month's worth of salted beef to the bottom of the bog.
Panic erupted. "Demons!" shouted a septon, pointing wildly into the mist. "The heathens summon the dark spirits of the swamp! Form a shield wall!"
Jyck had already shimmied backward down the far side of the tree, slipping silently into the dark water. He left not a single ripple behind.
By the fifth day, Brother Clement's faith was being severely tested.
His bare feet were swollen, covered in black leeches and weeping sores. The damp had brought a foul rot to the skin between his toes. On the third day, Clement had tried to bless the leeches, believing them to be agents of the Mother drawing out the foul sins of his past life. When the festering fissures on his feet began to bleed openly, the septons did not offer clean cloth or medicine.
Instead, a septon raised his hands and declared the rotting flesh to be a "holy mark of suffering," comparing the agony of the sores to the hot coals of the Smith's forge. Encouraged by this pious logic, Clement and hundreds of others marched proudly on their ruined feet until the flesh gave way entirely and they collapsed in the muck.
The holy crusade had ground to a miserable, suffocating halt. The fifty thousand men were strung out across leagues of narrow, crumbling causeway.
The true horror of the Neck was not a pitched battle. It was the absolute, grinding misery, compounded by the terrifying things moving in the fog and the utter lack of rest.
"Keep the line moving!" Ser Lymond yelled, riding up and down the column on a new, smaller horse, his once-pristine armor now caked in foul-smelling brown slime.
"We cannot, Ser!" a knight of House Florent called back, pointing ahead. "The vanguard has stopped again. Another patch of quicksand swallowed the scout riders, and the men are refusing to step forward. They say the trees are watching them."
"Then send the peasants forward to test the ground with their staffs!" Lymond ordered, his voice cracking with exhaustion and fear. "The Warrior demands courage!"
Clement shivered, pulling his thin wool cloak tighter. Every time the sun set, the true harassment began. The northern heathens did not fight like honest men. They were ghosts who refused to let the holy crusade sleep.
From the impenetrable darkness, the crannogmen blew shrill reed whistles, snapped branches, and threw stones into the water, keeping the camp in a constant state of terrified wakefulness. But the worst was the chorus of the damned.
Deep in the bogs lived massive northern bullfrogs. Whenever the hunters deliberately disturbed their nests, the beasts let out a deep, resonating, guttural croak that echoed for miles through the mist. To the exhausted, blinded southerners, it sounded exactly like the moaning of damned souls or heathens chanting dark curses. Clement's company spent entire nights exhausting their hoarse voices, praying at the top of their lungs to drown out the frogs, completely depriving themselves of rest.
On the seventh night, Clement huddled around a small, smoky fire with ten other Poor Fellows. Septon Meribald stood near the edge of the water, holding a crystal prism aloft, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. The mist was particularly thick, rolling off the dark water in heavy waves.
"Show yourselves, foul spirits!" Meribald commanded loudly, his voice echoing in the damp air to compete with the croaking frogs. "I command the evil of this swamp to reveal itself to the light of the Seven! The Father's judgment falls upon this cursed water!"
The swamp answered.
A massive, scaled shape erupted from the dark water with terrifying speed. Jaws the size of a blacksmith's anvil clamped directly around the septon's waist. Before the man could even scream, the lizard-lion dragged him backward into the black depths with a violent splash.
The water churned for a few seconds. Then, only a few bubbles and a floating crystal prism remained.
Clement's company leaped to their feet, screaming. They spent the rest of the night blindly throwing spears into the water, shouting hymns at the crocodiles, and slashing at the fog, to no avail.
A mile away, deeper in the reeds, a small, wiry crannogman named Quagg pulled himself onto a patch of solid earth, wiping the duckweed from his eyes. He carried a short, barbed spear and a woven net.
Jyck was waiting for him, expertly skinning a large water snake.
"How does the southern camp fare?" Jyck asked, not looking up from his work.
"They are fighting the stumps now," Quagg reported, a wide grin breaking across his mud-stained face.
Jyck paused, his knife hovering over the snake. "The stumps?"
"Aye," Quagg chuckled. "You know that patch of foxfire near the twisted willow? The glowing moss?"
"I know it," Jyck nodded. "Good for finding your way in the dark."
"The southerners think it is a bog devil," Quagg said, shaking his head. "A heavy-armored knight from the Reach drew his sword and charged it. He hacked the stump to splinters, screaming about the Warrior's light. Then his boots got stuck in the root-mud, and he had to be pulled out by three squires. They cheered when the glowing moss went out. They think they slew a demon."
Jyck let out a dry, raspy laugh. "Did you take their food?"
"I took four barrels," Quagg said. He pointed over his shoulder toward a shallow inlet. Floating in the water, tied together with thick vines, were the heavy wooden casks. "They left the rear carts unguarded while they were busy fighting the stump. I tied ropes to the barrels and dragged them right off the back into the water."
Jyck looked at the barrels of salted pork and fine southern flour. "They didn't hear the splash?"
"Oh, they heard it," Quagg corrected. "But they are learning. We can't just take the carts freely anymore. They form rings of spears around the remaining wagons now, guarding them day and night from all sides. They don't sleep. They just stare into the fog, waiting for the water demons to steal their bread."
"We took a third of their grain before they closed ranks," Jyck noted, shaking his head in sheer disbelief. "We have enough southern flour to feed the clans through the entire winter. And now they are spending every ounce of their remaining strength protecting the rest."
"Do not feel sorry for men carrying iron swords to burn our homes," Quagg said, his grin fading into a hard, pragmatic stare. "We wait until they drift off on their feet. Then we blow the whistles, wake them up, and keep them standing."
By the tenth day, Ser Lymond of House Peake had decided the best way to deal with the swamp was to destroy it.
He was walking now, having lost his second horse to a sudden sinkhole, and his third horse to a strange, wasting sickness that struck in the night. The arrogant knight of the Reach looked hollowed out. His polished armor was gone, discarded piecemeal into the swamp when it became too heavy to carry. He wore only a rusted chainmail shirt and a torn cloak.
"Burn it!" Lymond screamed, waving a torch wildly at the dense, impenetrable wall of green vines and willow branches that lined the causeway. "Burn the brush! Root out the heathen cowards! The Lord of Light—no, the Warrior—demands fire!"
A dozen heavily armored men of the Warrior's Sons obeyed. They threw their torches into the thick, hanging moss and the dense thickets of reeds.
Varly the Crannogman watched from a nearby branch, thoroughly amused.
The moss in the Neck was not dry timber. It was soaked through with centuries of stagnant water, decaying matter, and foul fungi.
When the southern torches hit the brush, it did not erupt into a cleansing inferno. Instead, the damp moss smoldered, producing a thick, rolling cloud of blinding, acrid white smoke. The wind caught the smoke and blew it directly back across the causeway, enveloping the southern column.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The zealots began to cough violently, dropping their weapons to claw at their throats. The smoke burned their eyes, blinding them. Panic swept through the line. Men bumped into each other in the smoke, swinging wildly at shadows, believing the cloud was a magical attack by the northern heathens.
"Demons in the fog!" a Poor Fellow screamed, swinging his scythe blindly and catching a fellow zealot in the shoulder.
Up in the canopy, Jyck smiled. He pulled a silver signaling horn from his mud-stained pouch—a prize he had stolen from a sleeping knight three nights prior. Taking a deep breath, Jyck blew the unmistakable, piercing sequence of a Reach cavalry charge.
Confused, blinded by the acrid smoke, and driven to the edge of madness by days of sleepless harassment, the remaining heavily armored men of the Warrior's Sons reacted to the ingrained command. They let out a holy war cry and charged blindly off the causeway, plunging headlong into the reeds with their swords raised.
Varly didn't move. He simply watched them go.
He heard them crashing through the brush for a few moments, hacking blindly at vines and roots. Then, he heard the inevitable sound. A series of loud splashes, as the heavy infantry stepped off the hidden roots and plunged into the deep, sucking quicksand.
Frantic, bubbling screams echoed through the white smoke. Men in chainmail did not swim well. Men in chainmail thrashing blindly in deep mud did not swim at all.
Within two minutes, the screams ceased. There was nothing left but the croaking of the frogs and the crackling of the smoldering moss.
Not a single soldier returned to the road.
Ser Lymond stared at the reeds, his face pale beneath the mud, his eyes watering from the smoke. He sheathed his sword, his hand trembling violently.
"The Warrior tests us," Lymond whispered, though he sounded entirely broken. "Stay on the road. Do not leave the stones."
It took fourteen days for the Faith Militant to cross the deepest part of the Neck.
For Brother Clement, those fourteen days felt like a lifetime spent entirely within the Stranger's darkest hell. He no longer walked with a proud stride. He dragged his swollen, rotting feet, leaning heavily on a wooden staff he had pulled from a broken cart. His robes were a tattered, foul-smelling ruin.
Half the men in his company were dead. The earth had swallowed some. The scaled beasts in the water had taken some. Some had simply succumbed to the wasting bog fever, their bodies burning up as they babbled about the Seven until their hearts gave out. And many had been felled by invisible, poisoned needles that struck from the mist without a sound.
A third of their supply carts had either sunk, broken down, or mysteriously vanished into the water during the first week. To save what remained, the commanders ordered the men to guard the carts day and night from all sides. Clement spent his nights standing in the freezing mud, his spear pointed into the fog, his eyes heavy with absolute exhaustion. They were not starving entirely, but their rations were cut in half to preserve the stores, and the relentless, sleepless guard duty was breaking their minds.
"Move forward," Septon Meribald's replacement croaked, his voice lacking all of its previous booming resonance. "The Father provides."
"The Father provides mud," a younger Poor Fellow muttered darkly, immediately crossing his arms and shivering.
Clement didn't reprimand the boy. He didn't have the energy. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other, staring blankly at the back of the man in front of him.
Up in the canopy, Quagg and Jyck moved parallel to the road, swinging silently from branch to branch.
"They look like walking corpses," Quagg noted, looking down at the endless line of suffering men.
"Walking corpses don't complain this much," Jyck replied. He rested his bow across his knees. "I think we are done here."
"Are we letting them pass?" Quagg asked, slightly disappointed.
"We thinned the herd," Jyck said, gesturing down the road. "Their heavy horse is gone. Their armor is rusted or at the bottom of the bog. We took a third of their food and forced them to spend all their remaining strength guarding the rest. They haven't slept in a fortnight. They are terrified, hungry, and sick."
Jyck pulled a small piece of dried frog from his pouch and popped it into his mouth.
"Lord Stark asked us to break their minds," Jyck said, chewing thoughtfully. "I'd say a man who tries to fight a glowing tree stump with a broadsword is sufficiently broken. We will shadow them to the edge of our lands, but let the North deal with what's left. The swamps have eaten their fill."
Down on the road, Ser Lymond stared blankly into the unending grey mist, his lips moving in a silent, desperate prayer. Behind him, thirty-five thousand exhausted, mud-caked zealots dragged their feet over the stones, completely unaware that the worst was yet to come.