Chapter 27. March.
Arthur passed through the ruins of Wend Town on the way north along the Blue Fork.
He dismounted before entering. The place had not burned evenly. War rarely showed such courtesy. Some houses had collapsed into ash and black beams. Others still stood with their walls scorched, doors broken, and windows staring empty. Smoke lingered in the air with the smell of rot beneath it. Crows hopped between bodies that had not been buried in time, bold enough to glare at living men for interrupting.
Arthur walked through the street in silence.
Near one broken house, he saw a woman curled against the wall. Her arms were wrapped around a bundle. At first, he thought it was cloth. Then he saw the tiny hand inside the swaddling. The baby had been dead long enough that even grief had become quiet.
No one spoke.
Arthur stood there for a long moment, then turned and mounted his horse.
"Move."
The column passed through Wend Town without looting. There was nothing worth taking that had not already been stolen by fire, crows, or Lannister men.
They headed north along the Blue Fork. The first raiding party found them two days later. Fifteen men, mostly mounted, wearing a mix of red cloaks, cheap mail, and mercenary leather. They tried to retreat when they realized the force ahead was not helpless. Arthur gave the order anyway.
The new recruits learned their first lesson.
Arrows from the Young Wolf Warriors slowed the horses. Volunteers formed around the flanks. Raiders used javelins to break the riders who tried to charge. The fight was messy, but short. No prisoners were taken. Arthur had already seen what these raiders left behind in Wend Town. Mercy was a luxury. He was not feeling rich.
They seized horses, weapons, armor, and coin.
More raiding parties followed over the next days. A dozen men near a burned hamlet. Twenty-seven near a mill. Thirty along a wooded road, drunk on stolen wine and too slow to mount properly. Each time, Arthur used superior numbers, ambushes, and terrain to destroy them. The recruits grew quickly because the alternative was dying. Men learned fast when the lesson held an axe.
Promotions began to appear through the system. Volunteers toughened into proper warriors. Young Wolf Warriors became steadier with the bow. Noble Youths learned what their polished names meant when blood reached their boots. Arthur watched the company change day by day, losing softness and gaining the silence that came after a man understood killing was work.
Ten days after leaving Newroot, they reached a designated rendezvous point southeast of Seagard. By then, Arthur's force had grown back to one hundred and fifty men, most of them blooded. Not veterans in the way old soldiers were veterans, but no longer frightened recruits. That mattered.
Ena and Kator were waiting there.
Arthur saw Ena first. She stood beside her horse, dusty from the road, bow at her back, face tired but uninjured. He realized only then that some part of him had been waiting to see whether she would return. Annoying, how concern hid until it could make itself obvious.
"You took your time," she said.
"You are alive," Arthur replied.
"That was not an answer."
"It was the important part."
She looked at him for a second too long, then handed him a sealed letter. "From Lord Jason."
Arthur opened it and read quickly.
Lord Jason wrote that Robb Stark had led the northern army through the Neck, crossed at the Twins, and entered the Riverlands. Patrek Mallister had taken Seagard's main force to join him. Arthur was ordered to bring his unit to the Red Fork fords east of the Twins and join the main army as quickly as possible, while avoiding the Lannister host.
Arthur folded the letter.
The Red Fork fords.
That would be the line where the northern and river forces faced the lions. No more raiding small groups. No more choosing every fight. The larger battlefield was calling, and this time ignoring it would mean disobeying his lord and abandoning the structure he had just entered.
Ena watched him. "Bad news?"
"War news. It is usually the same thing."
"What are the orders?"
Arthur looked west. Somewhere beyond the roads and rivers, armies were moving. Robb Stark. The Freys. The Riverlords. The Lannisters. Names that had been stories once, now becoming banners and bodies.
"Assemble the men," he said. "We march for the Red Fork fords. Forced pace."
Kator repeated the order. Officers moved. Men tightened saddles, checked straps, filled waterskins, and prepared the column. The mood shifted quickly. Even new soldiers understood the difference between hunting raiders and marching toward an army.
Arthur mounted and looked back once toward the smoke-stained lands behind them.
Newroot stood hidden near the ruins of Stony Sept, fragile and impossible. Wend Town lay burned. Seagard waited. Riverrun called.
The road ahead led to his first true war of Westeros.
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