Lord Randyll Tarly and Lord Mathis Rowan left the commander's tent to the bite of the evening wind. Across the field, campfires had begun to bloom like scattered embers throughout the Lannister-Reach host, painting the low-hanging canvas of the tents in flickering orange light. Men clustered around the fires laughing as they sharpened blades against whetstones or gambling their earnings for meager flagons of sour Dornish Red, blissfully unaware that half of them might be dead by the week's end.
Lord Randyll Tarly of Horn Hill walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his posture straight and expression stern. At his side, Lord Mathis Rowan of Goldengrove kept pace, though his stride held more unease than the grim and focused movement than the friend by his side.
Rowan who finally breaks the silence and asks what has been weighing his mind since the discussion in the tent earlier.
"Why did you do it, Randyll?"
Tarly didn't spare him a glance, his eyes fixed on the distant line of Lannister patrols. "Do what?"
"You know full well," Mathis muttered, his voice low enough to be swallowed by the noise coming from the camps, glancing if anyone was around. "You handed them a plan that might gut the Tully host and break the North's back. That Stark boy of Winterfell and Tully... they could have been allies of out King rather than foes."
Randyll gives a short exhalation of dry amusement. "Do you think it would've happened?"
Rowan turns his head sharply. "What do you mean?"
Tarly stopped, forcing Mathis to halt and turn with him. The Lord of Horn Hill stares out at the never-ending camps by both sides of the bank, weighing the worth of each House Banner flying over it.
"Eddard Stark is free," he says at last, quietly. "And his is daughters too. The Lannisters have cut the leash they were holding, now, what do you think the Riverlords and Northerners will do when they will find themselves unchained by any hostage situation."
Mathis expression turns to shock. "You think they will crown the boy they are following and the Riverlords will follow him."
Randyll shakes his head slowly. "You're sitting far too long amongst the soft lords of Reach and glasses of Arbor, Mathis. Think, the North follows the bloodline before they follow a crown. And Hoster Tully's grandson by Catelyn Stark commands both The North and Riverlands, by right of his blood. When they find out that Lord Eddard Stark so much as breathes outside his cell, the lords will thrust a circlet on his head and declare the realm his, be it just the King of North and Trident or whole of the Seven Kingdoms."
Mathis blinks, the chilling realization striking him like standing on top of the wall naked. "They could offer him the Iron Throne?"
"And many would cheer for the man," Randyll continued, his gaze sharp. "Not particularly for boy king in Riverrun's camps, but certainly for the son of the man they bled together in Robert's Rebellion. Eddard Stark's influence is whole over the North, Riverlands and even Vale and Stormlands is not small."
Mathis hesitates. "Then his son would yield. Robb Stark would bend the knee to his cousin. The King is his aunt's son."
"Would he?" Randyll's tone turned cold, with an unyielding edge like his ancestral valyrian sword. "Or would he cling to the oath his bannermen swore to him? Winter has made Northerners stubborn, to them the hunger of pride is more important than bellies, and northern pride has always marched ahead of reason."
"So," Mathis continues slowly, the pieces clicking into place. "Your gambit is to bleed them all. If North, Riverland and Lannister Lords lose men and commanders in the ambush, few remain to come forward to crown the Stark boy or support Joffrey. We weaken the field of all of them."
"And fewer lords still breathing," Randyll adds, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "Without their betters, soldiers become pliable things. Sheep without shepherds can be driven anywhere."
They reach their own tent a plain, serviceable thing with brown canvas, devoid of any gaudy crest. A practical shelter, a far cry from the silken monstrosity Reach and Lannister lords slept in.
Mathis paused before ducking inside. "And what of you, then?"
Randyll walks in passing by him. "What of me?"
"When this is done," Rowan persisted, a note of warning in his voice, "the Reach will be split with grudges. Tyrell and reach lords pride will not forgive your deception, not when you stand to be Warden of the South after all this."
Randyll raises a brow, as if asked if he preferred Arbor to water. "And who says I aspire to it?"
Mathis straightened. "You don't wish to rule the Reach?"
Randyll gives out a mirthful chuckle. "I am a soldier, Mathis. My father was one, his father before him and so on. House Tarly was forged along the Mander not by court politics but by steel. We served dragons inherently when the rest of the Reach bent knee to roses. In the Dance, we backed the Blacks while our neighbours kissed the very ground where Aegon II walked. When Bittersteel raised his banners, we answered Daeron's call regardless of what Highgarden thought."
Mathias sank onto a camp stool inside, listening as Randyll tell him what he really wants.
"When the true King returned with dragons' blood, where did he ride first? Not to Oldtown, not to Driftmark and certainly not to the white stone castle of Highgarden. He came to Horn Hill." Randyll's eyes exclaims remembering the details from the memory. "The dragons remember my House loyalty and honour and that is worth much more than high seats or flowery pomp my ancestors would have wanted."
Mathias nods slowly, the true, deeper game now laid bare before him. A beat of silence passes and he smirks faintly.
"How many lords do you think we'll catch in the jaws of our trap and theirs both?"
Randyll finally sat beside him and for once, the stern man heartily laughed a rough, brief bark of it, though it was gone as quickly as it came.
They drank watered wine by candlelight, speaking no further of wolves, lions, or kings.
Meanwhile at the orange dusk over the creeping river mists that clung to the White Knife. Gulls wheeled above the slippery, timbered piers as the great Dornish caravel pushed in the Inner Harbour.
On the deck, stood two figures watching as the ship maneuver in the Inner Harbour.
The man with worn leathers faded by salt and sea air. He leaned heavily on a greatsword, its familiar bulk sheathed and bound in leather, using it not as weapon but as a brace against the weariness in his legs. His brown hair had grown past his shoulders, streaked with grey by the temples, his jaw scraped and unshaven.
At his side stood a girl just past her first flowering, standing shaken with her eyes the colour of vivid blue. She moved quietly and carefully the way of someone who'd learned that silence was a best to remain unscathed.
The dockworkers and harbor guards, seasoned men all of them paused one by one in their tasks, taken aback seeing a Dornish banner marked ship coming this North of Westeros.
A White Harbor sentry, his cloak of blue and green seeing a ship from far side of the continent, stepped forward hesitantly. His eyes widened slowly, taking in the full measure of the man before him, as if dying fish given water.
"My lord…" the man whispered, his voice cracking with disbelief. "Lord Stark?"
The man inclined his head gravely and solemnly, once. "Aye."
The guard turned on his heel shouting with urgency though with a relief expression marking on his face. "Horses! Bring horses for Lord Stark and the young lady! And send word to Lord Manderly now!"
He spun back to the returned man, almost stammering. "My lord… the North will be happy with this news! The Warden has come back home!"
Eddard Stark said nothing to it and only laid his hand on the girl's shoulder and walked towards the waiting horses with the guards, knowing deep in his bones that worst is yet to come.