The main army had already split up. I'd assigned Lord Tytos Blackwood the most thankless job in the Westerlands: stay behind with a thousand riders and three thousand prisoners to keep the "siege" of Lannisport looking real.
My instructions were cold, but necessary. "Force the prisoners to fill the trenches," I'd told Tytos. "Use arrows to keep them moving. If they don't carry the sandbags, shoot them. If they do, the Lannister archers will probably shoot them anyway. Either way, the work gets done and we keep our own men safe."
Robb hated the idea. He called it "dishonorable." I told him that if the captives didn't do the dirty work, Northern sons would have to bleed for every foot of dirt. He went quiet after that. He didn't like it, but he swallowed it. The "Good King" was learning that winning required a stomach for the ugly stuff.
A week later, the rest of us arrived at the Golden Tooth.
As the sun dipped behind the mountains, the valley was flooded with a deep orange glow. It was beautiful, right up until the screaming started.
"LOOSE!" I roared.
I was standing behind a makeshift wooden barricade, decked out in my black-and-white plate armor. I had my shield in one hand and my axe in the other, but for now, I was playing conductor to a symphony of archers. I'd wanted to be in the actual raid, but Robb and my dad both shut that down. "You're the Hand," they'd said. "Try not to get your head chopped off in a random hallway."
A rain of black arrows hissed through the air, arching over the tall granite walls. I watched one find its mark burying itself in the neck of a Lannister guard who was trying to wind up a massive wall-mounted scorpion. He let out a choked gurgle, and the tension in the machine snapped. The heavy arm swung back with a bone-shattering CRACK, sending a loader flying. I could see the white splinters of his arm bone poking through his tunic even from down here.
"Next man up! Drag him out!" a Lannister officer screamed.
These guys were pros. They didn't panic. A giant crossbow on the tower swiveled toward us. The loader kicked the trigger, and a bolt the size of a fence post hissed through the air. It punched through a Stark shield like it was made of paper, pinning the Northern soldier behind it to the dirt. He didn't even have time to scream.
The guy next to him just shoved the body aside, grabbed the ladder, and kept moving. That was the North for you. We were out of our element in a siege, but we weren't short on grit.
By the time the retreat horn sounded at dusk, the first part of the plan was done. We'd spent all afternoon throwing five thousand dismounted cavalry at the West Wall in waves. It was a total feint, designed to make the defenders think we were desperate to break in before Tywin arrived.
While the archers and I kept them busy, my dad and the Mormonts had already slipped into the mountains with their horses. They were circling back to the "back door" on the Riverlands side.
Inside the fortress, Alisant Lefford was staring out at our camp with a look of pure dread. She was the temporary castellan while her brother was away, and she looked way too elegant for a war zone in her green silk gown.
"Are they going to keep this up all night?" she asked Ser Wendelin Hill, a bastard of House Crakehall who was running the defense.
"Probably," Wendelin grunted, adjusted his grey plate armor. "They know Tywin is only a few days away. They're desperate. They'll try to overwhelm us with numbers before the Big Lion gets here."
"Can we hold?"
Wendelin laughed, waving a hand at the massive stone walls. "My lady, we have five hundred veterans and a fortress built into a mountain. They don't even have trebuchets. We could hold off twenty thousand of these hicks for a month. By then, Tywin will be here to wipe them off my boots."
He was cocky, which was exactly what I was banking on. He'd already written off the East Wall because it was backed by a hundred-meter vertical cliff. Nobody climbs a hundred meters of sheer rock in the dark, right?
"Move fifty archers and fifty spears from the East Wall to the front," Wendelin ordered his squire. "And get the oil boiling. If they want to climb, let's give them a warm welcome."
"But sir," the squire hesitated, "that leaves the East side almost empty."
"Just do it! Nobody is coming over that cliff unless they have wings."
High above the Golden Tooth, Owen Norrey was proving him wrong.
Owen was dressed in black, a hemp rope thicker than his thumb knotted around his waist. He looked at his two buddies, who were bracing themselves against a boulder. "Slow and steady," he whispered. "Once I'm down, I'll signal for the ladders."
He stepped off the edge.
Owen had been climbing trees and cliffs in the North since he could walk. He moved like a spider, his soft-soled shoes barely making a sound as they tapped the rock. He descended the hundred meters in minutes, stopping just above the battlements to catch his breath.
He could hear two guards talking below him.
"Think Wendelin can hold 'em?" one asked.
"Who cares? I'm more worried about the wolves. I heard they've got a pack of 'em out there eating people whole. You got any wine left? My throat feels like I've been eating sand."
"Here. Don't finish it."
Owen waited, hanging by his fingertips as the guards walked past. He was so close he could see the texture of the stone by their torchlight. His arms were screaming, his muscles turning to lead, but he didn't move until the tower door clicked shut.
He pulled himself up over the edge, sweating and shaking. He gave the rope a sharp tug.
A few seconds later, the rope ladders dropped. One by one, the Norrey mountain men, agile, lean, and armed with daggers slid down into the shadows of the East Wall. They took up positions at the tower doors, ready to slit throats.
Then came the heavy hitters.
The Greatjon was the first Umber down the ladder. He was a massive man, and even though he'd stripped down to his essential armor, the ladder groaned under his weight.
Clatter.
A loose rock tumbled down the cliff, echoing through the valley like a gunshot.
"Who's there?!" a guard shouted from the battlements.
Owen Norrey cursed under his breath. The guards were coming. He looked at the Greatjon, who was just landing on the stone walkway.
"Don't wait," the Greatjon growled, drawing two massive battle-axes from his back. His eyes were glowing with a terrifying, primal hunger for the fight. "The secret's out. Let's crack some skulls."
Sixty Northern warriors were already on the wall, and more were coming down every second.
"You guys without armor, stay behind the Umbers!" Greatjon barked, his voice no longer a whisper. "We're taking that gatehouse NOW!"