Hennet had a sack of onions over one shoulder when the bell began to ring.
He would have gone on to the maltster's if the man with the bell had not climbed onto the mounting stone outside the inn. That was where the reeve stood to announce a levy. Hennet stopped beneath the hanging sign, shifting the sack higher. Across the road, a woman hurried her geese out of the way of a rider in Tallhart colours.
The rider dismounted and drank from the innkeeper's cup before handing over his parchment.
"What do they want now?" a carter asked.
"By Lord Stark's leave, Lord Jon Black calls for men to enter his service."
Hennet lowered the onions. The bellman read the terms: three hundred places, arms and keep provided, trials at the old watchfort beside Winter Town. Those accepted would swear to House Black and sail south when their lord went to Dragonstone.
Hennet looked at the rider. He knew Ser Helman's pine trees upon the cloak; the man stood listening with one hand upon his horse's neck. The call for craftsmen brought the innkeeper's wife to the door, her sister behind her with flour on both forearms.
The bellman finished, then read the soldier's wage again when someone asked. Hennet repeated it silently. At home there might be money after the wool was sold, or after his father had taken a beast to market. It was always wanted for something before Hennet saw it. A wage paid to him, with food and clothes besides, was harder to picture than the island.
A lad stepped out from beside the horse trough. Hennet knew him slightly: Murch, who sometimes brought timber down from the woods with his father. He was long in the arm and narrow across the shoulders, though he could lift more than his coat suggested.
"Must a man bring a spear?"
"No," said the bellman. "Bring one if you have it, but his lordship will arm you."
Murch nodded and stepped back. Hennet found himself looking at the lad's boots, which had been mended with darker leather along the toes. His own were no better.
Hennet shouldered the onions while two women questioned the bellman and a grey-bearded joiner spoke to the rider. The innkeeper complained that they were blocking his door.
At the maltster's he forgot to ask for the sack back. He had to knock a second time and stand listening to a laugh from inside while the man emptied it.
* * *
His father was sharpening a sickle when Hennet came home. The barley was in, but there was rough grass still to cut by the ditch. His younger brother sat upon the doorstep plaiting rushes into something that might have been a bridle.
Hennet told them about the call before he had put down the empty sack.
"Dragonstone," his father said. He tried the sickle's edge with his thumb. "You know where that is?"
"Off the king's city."
"Who told you?"
"A man at the inn."
"Which man?"
Hennet did not know his name.
His father set the sickle down. "I saw good men come home from the last war with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They'd heard fine promises too."
"This was Lord Stark's call."
"It was another lord's. Stark's allowing it."
Hennet's mother stood at the table cutting cabbage. She had said nothing yet. When his father fell silent, she asked whether the men would be kept at Winter Town.
"For now. They're to train there before they go south."
"For how long?"
"The rider said Lord Black means to stay four years."
She turned the cabbage upon its cut end. "Four years is a long while."
His father looked past him to the doorway. Beyond it lay the little yard, the woodpile, the strip where the hens had scratched almost everything bare. Hennet had worked beside him since he could carry a pail without dragging it. He could mend the hedge, cut peat, lead their neighbours' oxen and turn the hay. His elder brother could do all those things too, and already had a wife.
"You could take work at the mill," his father said.
"When they want another man."
His mother's knife struck the table. She had cut through the last piece.
"Sit down and eat," she said. "There's water in the jug. You sound as though you've swallowed the road."
They ate cabbage with barley and the end of a smoked flank his mother had kept hanging from a beam. His father gave him work for the morning. Hennet did it, cutting the grass along the ditch while the dew soaked his shoes. He sharpened the sickle twice and hung it where his father would find it.
By the following evening his mother had let out the seam of his spare shirt. She washed his shoes with a scrap of old linen, stuffed them with dry grass and set them beside the hearth.
"You'll wear through those," his father said.
"They're what he has."
She put the scrap aside to wash with the clothes. Hennet sat on the bench beside her, trying to roll his blanket tightly enough to tie. She took it from him, shook it out and began again.
Murch was leaving in the morning. So were two brothers from farther up the road, and a carpenter who meant to take his wife and children in their cart. Hennet could join them at the crossroads.
When he rose before dawn, his father was already outside. He had tied a wooden spoon to the cord of Hennet's bundle.
"You'll want that if they do feed you."
"I have one."
"It's split."
Hennet took the bundle. His father kept hold of it for another moment, pulling at a knot that needed no pulling.
"Find someone coming this way. Send word."
"I will."
His mother kissed his cheek and tucked a cloth parcel beneath the cord. His little brother wanted to walk as far as the mill turning. Their father sent him back for his shoes.
Hennet was grateful for that. He had not known how to leave them standing in the doorway.
* * *
At the crossroads Murch was sitting on a fallen tree with a heel of bread in his hand. He wore the same boots. A bundle lay at his feet, and he had cut a walking staff so tall it rose above his head when he stood.
"Have you come for the swords?" he asked Hennet.
"The spears."
"So have I."
Neither offered a reason. Hennet had never held a sword, and from the way Murch glanced at his empty belt he supposed the other lad had not either.
The carpenter arrived last, leading a shaggy pony hitched to a cart piled with his possessions. A saw had been wrapped in sacking and lashed along one side. Two small children sat among pots and blankets while their mother walked behind, carrying a basket. The elder child waved solemnly at Hennet's brother.
For a little while the road was familiar. Hennet knew where a gate had fallen, where the track dipped and where a farmer kept a dog that would follow them barking. His brother stopped at the turning for the mill. He accepted half an oatcake, then changed his mind and put it back into Hennet's hand.
"For the road," he said, copying their mother.
Hennet broke it again and made him keep a piece.
They walked until the sun stood high before the carpenter halted to feed his pony. Hennet's shoulders ached beneath the cord. When he lowered his bundle, he found that his mother's parcel had worked its way under his back, pressing the hard cheese against his ribs at every step. The cheese was sound. He ate it with oatcake and a little onion while the children fought over which of them would hold the pony.
That night they slept in a hay shed for which the carpenter paid the owner. The lads helped him lift a broken trough out of the yard before they were allowed inside. Hennet had thought he would lie awake in a strange place. He remembered the smell of old hay and one of the children asking for water. Then Murch was shaking his shoulder and daylight showed between the planks.
Others joined the road. A lean man with an old sword at his hip had served a landed knight until the knight's sons quarrelled over what they had inherited. He showed the carpenter a folded release, but put it away when the children crowded near. Three cousins arrived carrying new ash staves, all freshly shaved and still too sure that they would be chosen. By the next evening there were enough men to spread their bedrolls along both sides of a barn.
News passed among them with the food. Lord Black was a bastard, a prince, Lord Stark's son, a boy who had killed a boar and a boy who made golden clocks. Hennet had heard the boar story before. In this telling the beast had grown so large that one of the cousins challenged it.
"My uncle saw the tusks."
"Did he see the boar?" Murch asked.
"He saw the tusks."
Murch nodded, tearing bread with his teeth. The cousin went on, but made the boar a little smaller.
The man with the sword said the clocks were real. He had seen one at a lord's table, covered with a cloth after the guests had eaten, though he could not say how a boy had made it. The carpenter wanted to know what sort of tools were used. Nobody could tell him.
Rain caught them two days later. It began thinly enough that Hennet put off opening his bundle for his cloak. By the time he did, his shoulders were wet beneath his shirt.
Water ran down the pony's mane. The carpenter spread a cloth over the cart, leaving a low tunnel in which the children crouched. His wife walked with one hand upon the tailboard. Murch had wrapped his feet that morning where his boots rubbed; now the strips worked loose and bunched beneath his heels. They stopped beneath dripping trees while he pulled the boots off.
Hennet squatted beside him. There was a raw place above one heel, bright against the grey, wet skin.
"Will it stop you?" he asked.
Murch glanced at the other men waiting upon the road. "I can walk."
The carpenter's wife handed him a strip torn from the edge of an old apron. He thanked her, bound the heel again and stood. They went more slowly after that. The three cousins left them behind, long ash staves rising and falling through the rain until a bend hid them.
They caught up at a wayside inn. The cousins had discovered what a bed cost and were sitting beneath the eaves eating their own food. Hennet had a few coppers his mother had pressed upon him, but after hearing the price he left them tied in the corner of his kerchief. He bought a bowl of hot broth instead. He held it in both hands until Murch asked whether he meant to drink it.
They slept beneath the cart and the tarred cloth stretched from its side. Someone's knee pressed against Hennet's back. He woke to the pony tearing at the grass beside his head and lay listening until he could be sure the sound was an animal.
Next morning they waited for a wool wagon before joining the crowded road. Behind it came two women on a cart, a man with iron tools and more lads with packs.
"Winter Town?" the carpenter called.
"Where else?" the driver said. "Not a needle left for hire in three villages behind me."
A man beside the wagon said there were plenty; they had simply heard what he paid. The carpenter's wife smiled for the first time since the rain began.
* * *
Hennet saw Winterfell before he saw the town. The walls rose above the nearer trees, higher and longer than anything he had known at Torrhen's Square. Smoke trailed across them. He was still looking when the road brought him between houses, and a man pushing a barrow told him to mind his feet.
Hennet could smell bread now. A woman shook a blanket from a window, raising dust in the sunlight; below her, men carried a door towards a house with only half a roof. Hennet stepped aside and nearly collided with a girl balancing a basket of thread.
The carpenter stopped for directions while his wife lifted a child down to piss against the wall. Both children were asking for food.
"The Black Yard's there," a man said. "You'll hear it."
Hammers rang behind the fence, and the saw's rasp caught in Hennet's teeth. Men unloaded straw-packed cases from a waiting cart. He glimpsed a small brass wheel with bright teeth before a cloth covered it. Nearby, a merchant demanded an answer for White Harbor from an ink-stained man already holding three letters.
The carpenter took off his cap before approaching. His wife brought the children close and waited with him. Hennet wished them luck, though he hardly knew what that would mean here: a house, perhaps, and a place for the wrapped saw. The little girl waved as he went. Her brother was already staring through the gates.
A guard sent the would-be soldiers along the road beside the works. More men followed them. Ahead, a broken tower showed over a rise, with the tops of tents beneath it. Hennet counted the tents until they passed an alder thicket and he saw more behind the first row.
Murch had stopped counting the men. They sat along the roadside with their packs between their knees, stood talking in knots beside the tents, or waited in a queue that ran beyond the nearest shelter. Hennet had thought the three hundred would take a long time to find. Now he began to fear that every place would be taken before he reached the head of the line.
At the gate a broad-shouldered man in Stark colours held up a hand to stop them while an empty timber cart came through. Another guard stood across the road, sending the waiting men back from its wheels. Hennet recognised the grey direwolves upon their coats and moved without being asked twice. The cart had left deep ruts in the earth. Beyond it, men were cutting turf, stripping branches from poles and heaving fallen stone onto low sledges. Little of the old wall was clear of nettles. A line of newly driven stakes crossed the grass towards the river.
Two riders came down from the tower. One was a tall knight in a pale cloak. The other sat a great dark horse whose head turned towards the waiting men.
The boy upon it wore black wool, the skirts divided over the saddle. His hair had come loose at one side; a white lock lay against the black above his left temple. Hennet saw his eyes when he looked towards the gate. In the light they had a purple cast, strange enough that Hennet glanced down before he was caught staring.
The guard bowed. "More for the trials, my lord."
"Keep them clear of the wagons, Hallis. Hewyn has room beside the upper tents."
A mason asked Jon about stone for the next barrack footings. The boy agreed to use sound stone but reserved the dressed pieces for the tower. He sent Arthur for Woods: the store floor must be set out before another timber wagon came. Handing his reins to a black-coated boy, he carried a stake farther into the grass. By the time Hennet reached the tents, he was kneeling at the cord with the mason beside him.
"That's him?" one of the cousins whispered.
"He called him my lord," Murch said.
"He's little."
Hennet looked back. Jon stood beneath the mason's shoulder, listening while the man pointed towards the wall. When he turned to answer, Hennet could see how young his face was. He had known Lord Black was a boy. He had imagined one nearer his own age, perhaps already shaving. His youngest brother would scarcely have needed to look up at this one.
"How old is he?" the cousin asked a man beside the tents.
"Eight."
The three cousins stared at one another. One let out a disbelieving breath and rubbed his mouth.
"We've walked all this way."
Murch said nothing. Hennet wished he would. He could hear his father asking which lord, who had made the promise and whether Hennet knew anything about him. He had not asked how old the boy was when the bellman read the call.
The man with the old sword had stopped beside them. For the first time since they had met, he seemed uncertain where to go.
"I'll speak to Ser Martyn," he said at last. "I know the Cassel name."
One cousin turned towards the road. "There's work at the yard. We could ask there."
"We haven't even been tried," his brother answered.
"By a child?"
The words were low. All three looked towards the nearest Stark guard before they spoke again.
Hennet looked back as the mason bowed and returned to his men. Arthur brought two carpenters to the moved stake, where Jon showed them the space the carts needed. Nobody was smiling or waiting for another man to give the real orders.
Hennet still could not picture him leading men into a battle. The great dark horse cropped the grass beside the road, its saddle empty. An iron-shod cart rolled past him, and Hallis waved the applicants farther in.
The man outside the largest tent looked up from his writing. Hennet removed his cap and went forward.
They gave their names and where they had come from. Hennet said his father held a free croft in the Tallhart lands. He had never been sworn to a lord's household or bound to a master. The man asked whether he had offered for the spear or the sword, wrote his answer and sent him to Captain Hewyn at the next shelter.
Hewyn stood there with his sleeves rolled back and a staff in his hand. Men made room when he moved. It was a relief to find a grown soldier waiting for them, with weather in his face and boots more worn than Hennet's.
"You've walked a way," the captain said. "Get your packs down. You'll be called after breakfast tomorrow."
One of the cousins began to explain that he could use a spear already.
"Then you may show me tomorrow." Hewyn pointed towards the tents. "Find somewhere dry. Keep the lane open."
There were men from Barrowton under the first shelter and two who said they had come from near Deepwood. Others had left their homes that morning. A sawyer had spread his cloak along a rope beside a young man polishing a rusted helm with a handful of grit. Hennet found a place under the next canvas, set his bundle down and sat beside it.
He was hungry enough to feel hollow, but for a moment he did not want to move. Beyond the tent a mallet struck a peg. Someone shouted for help with a beam. A woman walked past with a basket of bowls upon her hip, following two men who carried a steaming pot between them.
Murch put his bundle down nearby. He loosened his boots and inspected the heel that had troubled him.
"Better?" Hennet asked.
"Aye." He held up the damp strip of apron. "I owe her another."
Hennet untied his blanket. The wooden spoon fell into his lap, and he sat turning it while he watched the men gathering around the pot. He had meant to buy something in the town to send home with a traveller, something that would prove he had come so far. Now he remembered he had not yet been given a place.
Murch stood carefully and reached for a bowl. Hennet followed him, carrying the spoon his father had tied to his pack.
* * *
At the Black Yard, Gawen took two soft brushes from their peg and led Aries to the smallest brown gelding in the stable.
"Bracken," he said. "Start at his shoulder. Let him see where you are."
Aries did not reach for the brush at once. He held the back of his hand beneath the gelding's nose and waited until the warm lips had searched it. Then he scratched the hollow beside the jaw. Bracken lowered his head.
"He thinks you have an apple," Gawen said.
"He knows I haven't."
"What makes you say that?"
"He looked." Aries held up his empty hands. The knight smiled and moved him to the shoulder.
The boy worked carefully until the brush filled with hair. He tried to wipe it on the doorpost. Gawen gave him the other brush and showed him how to clean the bristles. When Aries reached too far round the animal, he put a hand on his back and brought him nearer the front.
"Do not crawl beneath him. You cannot tell where a hoof will come down."
"I've slept by horses."
"Then you have been lucky. Here you will learn a safer place to stand."
Bucephalus watched from the adjoining stall. Aries held out the brush towards him when Bracken was finished. Gawen caught his arm before he reached the half-door.
"Not alone with that one."
"He wants his neck done."
"He may. Wait for me to hold him."
Under the knight's hand, Bucephalus permitted the small brush along his lower neck. Aries hummed while he worked, tuneless and quiet. When a sack dropped in the passage the stallion raised his head, and the boy stepped back before Gawen asked. He waited until the horse had settled before returning to the same place.
Jon came down for the afternoon's riding and found them there. Aries's black coat had hay upon both sleeves. One brush lay clean beside the door; he was working the loose hair from the other.
"Has he worked?" Jon asked.
"Better when I put a horse in front of him," Gawen said. "Bracken will carry him round the enclosed yard tomorrow. I shall hold the lead."
Aries grinned at Jon.
"Do the stable work first," Jon said. "And stay with Gawen. You are not to ride out with the other boys unless he is with you."
"I can sit a horse."
"Tomorrow he will tell me how well."
When Jon had mounted, Aries fetched the gloves from the right peg without being called. He stood on the mounting block to give them up, pleased with himself until Gawen pointed out the clean brush still lying beside the door. A yard dog followed him back for it, sniffing at the crumbs caught in his cuff. Aries scratched behind its ear and turned it from Bracken's stall with a touch to the neck. The gelding stretched over the rail and searched the boy's empty hand.