The trees finally parted. The oppressive, suffocating canopy of the Neck gave way to a vast expanse of open, freezing air.
When the vanguard of the Faith Militant stumbled out of the bogs and onto the firm ground at the edge of the northern causeway, men fell to their knees and wept. They had survived the green hell.
Before them lay the fortress of Moat Cailin. It was no longer the decaying relic of southern memory. Fully reconstructed over the last decade using Eddard Stark's impenetrable Stark Stone, twenty massive towers of smooth, dark basalt and forged concrete pierced the grey sky. Thick, unyielding curtain walls connected the imposing structures, built at lethal, overlapping angles that sealed the North completely.
To a sane military commander, the fortress looked entirely unconquerable. There was no wide field to deploy siege engines. There were no deep moats to fill. There was only a narrow road of black stone leading straight into the teeth of the massive ironwood gates.
But the commanders of the holy crusade were not guided by sanity. They called a halt.
Thirty-five thousand men had survived the crossing. They were starved, shivering, and hollow-eyed, but they were finally free of the swamp. They set up a vast, sprawling camp on the last stretch of solid earth before the fortress causeway.
For the first time in fourteen days, they built large fires without fear of the damp moss choking them with smoke. They organized a strict watch, posting rings of spearmen facing the treeline to guard against the crannogmen, while the rest of the army collapsed onto the hard, frozen earth.
They rested for an entire day and a night. The sleep restored their exhausted muscles, but more dangerously, it restored their fierce devotion. As their energy returned, so did their absolute certainty that they were the chosen instruments of the gods.
The next morning, the sky was a pale, cloudless grey. The wind blowing off the northern plains was sharp enough to cut exposed skin, but the zealots did not feel the cold. They felt the heat of holy purpose.
Day one of the attack had arrived.
---
Septon Raynard stood at the head of the vanguard, swinging a heavy brass censer. The sweet, cloying smoke of star-anise and myrrh washed over the ranks of the Poor Fellows gathered behind him.
He was a man of the Reach, plump and soft, though the journey through the bogs had melted much of the fat from his bones. What remained was pure, unadulterated devotion. He looked upon the newly forged black towers of Moat Cailin with absolute contempt.
"Look upon their arrogant walls, my brothers!" Raynard's voice rang out, echoing across the frozen plains. "The heathens trust in dark stone and false gods! They sit in their fortified towers and believe they are safe from the Father's judgment! But the Father's justice is a hammer that shatters all falsehoods!"
Behind him, a great cheer rose from the throats of ten thousand Poor Fellows. They were the first wave. They carried crude wooden ladders, hastily lashed together from the pine trees at the edge of the swamp. In the center of their formation, fifty men held thick ropes attached to a massive, stripped ironwood trunk—a makeshift battering ram tipped with melted iron they had salvaged from their sunken carts.
Raynard walked along the front line, dipping a bundle of dried weirwood twigs into a bowl of blessed oils, flicking the droplets onto the faces of the barefoot zealots.
"You are the shield of the Maiden! You are the sword of the Warrior!" Raynard preached, his eyes wide and fervent. "The Mother's mercy does not extend to the heretic! When you charge that causeway, know that the Seven walk beside you! No arrow forged by a heathen can pierce a heart armored in true faith! To the walls! Bring them down into the mud!"
He raised his seven-pointed crystal high into the air. The sun caught the facets, casting scattered rainbows across the dirt.
To Septon Raynard, the victory was already written in the heavens. He did not see an impenetrable fortress of twenty towers. He saw a monument of heathen pride waiting to be toppled by the sheer weight of pious men. He struck up a loud, booming hymn, and the great mass of unarmored men began to march forward.
---
Ser Lymond of House Peake sat on a borrowed, undersized garron at the edge of the camp, watching the vanguard begin their advance.
He did not sing the hymn. He did not share the Septon's blinding fervor. Ser Lymond was a knight trained in the martial traditions of the Reach. He understood siege warfare, and he understood geography.
He looked at the causeway leading to Moat Cailin, and he felt a cold dread settle in the pit of his stomach.
The causeway was a strip of elevated black stone, barely wide enough for twenty men to march abreast. On either side of the road lay bottomless, sucking bogs. There was no room to deploy his remaining cavalry. There was no wide field to spread out his infantry or flank the enemy.
Worse still were the restored towers. Twenty massive structures of Stark Stone loomed over the bogs. The Gatehouse Tower sat directly over the road, but the nineteen others were positioned at meticulous, lethal angles that Ser Lymond recognized with grim clarity. They provided perfectly overlapping fields of fire. Any man marching up the causeway would be shot at not just from the front, but from every conceivable flank simultaneously.
"It is a funnel," Lymond muttered to himself, his hand tightening on the reins. "A slaughterhouse."
"Ser Lymond?" a young lieutenant asked, his face pale as he watched the ten thousand Poor Fellows jogging toward the fortress. "Should we order the archers to advance and provide cover?"
"We have no archers, you fool," Lymond snapped bitterly. "The bowstrings rotted in the damp of the Neck, and the crannogmen stole half our quivers in the night. We have men with sticks and blind faith."
He wanted to sound the retreat. He wanted to pull the army back, secure the treeline, and demand terms or wait for the Crown to intervene. But he knew if he gave that order, the zealots would drag him from his horse and tear him to pieces for cowardice. The crusade had its own momentum now, entirely disconnected from military logic.
"Let the Poor Fellows absorb the first volley," Lymond commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "Keep the Warrior's Sons in reserve. If by some miracle they breach the gate, we will ride in and secure the courtyard. If not... the Father will welcome a great many souls today."
He watched the massive tide of men squeeze onto the narrow black road, pressing tightly together, chanting their hymns as they broke into a dead run toward the looming basalt towers.
---
Brother Clement was in the center of the first wave.
His feet were wrapped in filthy, blood-soaked rags, but he did not feel the pain. The adrenaline of the charge, combined with the deafening roar of ten thousand men screaming praises to the Warrior, carried him forward.
He held a crude round shield made of woven river reeds and hardened mud, and gripped a rusted iron scythe in his right hand.
"For the Seven!" the man beside him screamed, his face flushed with holy rage.
Clement joined the cry, his breath pluming in the freezing air. They were halfway up the causeway. The black blocks of the Gatehouse Tower were growing larger, revealing the sheer, unyielding scale of the reconstructed fortress. The walls were smooth and flawless, rising fifty feet into the air, topped with carefully constructed crenellations.
Suddenly, the chanting of the men at the very front of the column turned into a chaotic, shrieking wail.
Clement looked up. The pale grey sky above the towers had turned black.
It was not a cloud. It was a solid sheet of iron-tipped arrows.
The sound of the volley hitting the tightly packed column of men was horrific—a wet, continuous thudding of steel punching through flesh and bone. There was no space to dodge. There was no room to raise shields. The men were pressed so tightly together on the narrow road that they could barely move their arms.
The man next to Clement took an arrow straight through the eye, his holy war cry cutting off instantly as he crumpled to the stones.
"Keep moving! Do not falter!" a septon screamed from behind them.
Clement tried to slow down, the sudden, visceral reality of death shattering his pious delusion. But the thousands of men behind him were still charging, blindly pushing forward. Clement was shoved violently from behind. He stumbled over the twitching body of his fallen brother, his bare knees slamming into the hard basalt.
He tried to stand, but the sheer press of bodies rushing over him forced him down.
Another volley rained from the sky. This one did not come from the front. It came from the restored flanking towers on their left. Arrows tore into the side of the column, dropping men by the dozens. Panic erupted. Men tried to push away from the arrows, shoving their brothers off the edge of the causeway. Clement heard the desperate, bubbling screams of armored men sinking into the deep bogs on either side of the road.
Clement managed to push himself up on his hands and knees. He looked toward the gatehouse. The massive ironwood battering ram was lying on the ground, surrounded by a mountain of dead men. The crude wooden ladders were splintered and broken.
Then, a roar cut through the panic. A young knight of the Warrior's Sons, his silver star gleaming on his breastplate, pushed his way through the terrified peasants to the front.
"Form a wall! Pick it up!" the knight bellowed, hoisting the thick ropes of the ram over his armored shoulder.
A dozen Poor Fellows, inspired by the knight's raw courage, grabbed the heavy timber. They raised their crude shields, forming a tight shell of wood, iron, and faith, and surged forward. They moved fast, ignoring the rain of shafts, pushing agonizingly close to the heavy iron gates. For a breathless moment, Clement thought their faith might truly break the stone.
But the Northmen were waiting. A focused, concentrated volley of heavy armor-piercing bodkins plunged down from directly above the gatehouse. The knight's shield splintered. He took a shaft through his shoulder, another through his thigh, and fell screaming beneath the crushing weight of the ironwood ram. The men beside him broke, turning to flee, only to be cut down by the relentless crossfire.
There was no Mother's mercy here. There was only the cold butchery of the North.
Clement looked up just in time to see a third volley fall from the towers on their right. A heavy iron arrow struck him squarely between the shoulder blades, driving him flat against the freezing stone.
He did not feel the warmth of the Seven as the darkness took him. He felt only the cold, unyielding rock of the North.
---
Bennard stood on the high battlements of the restored Gatehouse Tower, a thick wool cloak wrapped tightly over his boiled leather armor. The wind was biting, but the heavy iron braziers burning evenly along the smooth Stark Stone wall provided a steady, comfortable heat.
He belonged to House Karstark, a seasoned bowman who had spent the last five years drilling in the courtyard of Karhold under the strict military doctrines of Eddard Stark.
Bennard did not feel fear as he looked down at the massive, chaotic swarm of men rushing up the causeway. He did not feel anger, either. He simply felt a cold, detached sense of duty.
"Nock!" shouted the captain of the archers, pacing behind the line.
Bennard pulled a heavy iron-tipped arrow from the barrel beside him. The dragonglass reserves had been strictly forbidden for this battle; those were saved for the true war. For the southern zealots, cheap iron was more than enough. He set the arrow on the string of his longbow.
"Draw!"
Bennard pulled the thick yew string back to his cheek. He looked down through the crenellations. The causeway was a seething mass of bodies. They were not wearing armor. They were not raising shields. They were simply running forward, shoulder-to-shoulder, screaming songs.
He didn't even need to aim at a specific target. It was physically impossible to miss.
"Loose!"
Bennard released the string. The heavy bow snapped forward. Thousands of arrows hissed through the air in perfect unison.
He did not watch where his arrow landed. The moment the string snapped, his hand was already dropping to the barrel to retrieve another shaft. It was a rhythm drilled into his muscles. Nock, draw, loose. Nock, draw, loose.
Below them, the causeway was turning into a slaughterhouse.
To Bennard's left and right, the archers on the flanking towers were firing in a brutal, alternating rhythm, catching the zealots in a deadly crossfire from twenty different elevated points.
"Rotate lines!" the captain barked over the din of battle.
Bennard immediately stepped back from the crenellations. A fresh archer stepped seamlessly into his place, drawing his bow without missing a beat. Bennard stretched his aching shoulders, stepping toward the center of the roof where young boys from the winter town were rapidly cracking open new barrels of arrows, keeping the stockpiles perfectly replenished.
It was not a chaotic brawl. It was a disciplined, unyielding defense.
Nearby, leaning over the battlements, the Greatjon was roaring with booming laughter. "Look at them run! They think a wooden stick and a prayer will break black basalt! Shoot them down, lads! Let the gods sort them out!"
Bennard kept his face blank, his breathing steady. He drew another arrow. He stepped back to the wall. He loosed. He saw a man in a tattered robe take a shaft to the chest and fall beneath the boots of his comrades.
A brief flicker of pity crossed the Northman's mind. These were not soldiers. They were starving, desperate fools who had been lied to by their high lords and their priests. They had marched thousands of miles just to die in the mud.
But the pity did not stay his hand. They had come to burn his home. They had come to destroy the glasshouses that fed his family.
"Nock!" the captain called out again.
Bennard pulled the string back, his muscles burning slightly from the repetitive exertion. He took a breath of the freezing air, let it out slowly, and sent another piece of iron down into the screaming mass.
When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, casting long, bloody shadows across the bogs of the Neck, the horns of the Reach finally sounded the retreat.
The silence that fell over Moat Cailin was heavy and absolute, broken only by the moans of the dying and the wind whistling through the smooth, flawless stones.
On the battlements, the Northern archers lowered their bows. They were exhausted, their fingers blistered and their shoulders aching, but they had not taken a single casualty. Not one southern ladder had touched the walls. Not one man had reached the iron gates.
Looking down from the high towers, the Warden of the North surveyed the work of his armies.
The causeway was no longer a road. It was a barricade of meat, bone, and splintered wood. Bodies were stacked three and four deep, stretching from the base of the Gatehouse Tower hundreds of yards back down the black stone path. The bogs on either side were choked with floating corpses, the dark water dyed a deep, rusty crimson.
Thirty-five thousand men had marched out of the morning mist, filled with the absolute certainty of divine victory.
When the sun set on the first day of the attack, eight thousand of them lay dead or dying in the mud.
---
Back at the southern edge of the causeway, the surviving twenty-seven thousand men of the Faith Militant collapsed into their camp. There was no singing. There were no prayers to the Warrior or the Maiden. There was only a hollow, crushing despair.
Ser Lymond of House Peake sat in his tent, his hands shaking as he stared at a map he knew was useless. Septon Raynard sat by a fire, his heavy brass censer lying discarded in the dirt, his mind unable to comprehend how the Father had allowed the righteous to be butchered so effortlessly against walls that refused to break.
The crusade had broken against the anvil of the North in a single afternoon. And as the freezing night settled over the swamps, the zealots looked toward the dark towers of Moat Cailin and realized a terrifying truth.
They could not go forward. And with the bogs of the Neck stretching for hundreds of miles behind them, they could not go back.
Then, the screaming began.
It started at the southern edge of their encampment. A sentry's warning cry was cut abruptly short. Two of the large campfires mysteriously hissed and died, plunged into absolute darkness. Panic rippled through the exhausted ranks as a wet, heavy splash echoed from the nearby bogs, followed by the frantic thrashing of a man being dragged under the black water.
Ser Lymond drew his sword, stepping out of his tent and staring into the pitch-black fog, his breath catching in his throat.
The arrows came again after dark. Not from the stone towers ahead, but from the black swamp behind them.