Robb strode in front of the green-cloaked warriors, swinging his sword experimentally as the enemy moved steadily closer. The Green Man had rallied all of his men in order to defend the isle. A hundred warriors dressed in chainmail and leather, wielding crude weapons made of weirwood and dragonglass. Robb had been shocked that there had been so many on the isle, but after seeing the enemy, he would have preferred a few more men. Even the dozen villagers who had stayed behind to aid their protectors would do little to help against the five hundred fanatics.
Fifty armored and mounted knights led the group, looking resplendent in their silver armor and rainbow cloaks. Their shields bore a multicolored sword on a field of black. The sigil of the Warrior's Sons. The rabble behind them was undoubtedly the Poor Fellows. Commoners with very little military training and armed with whatever they could get their hands on. Wood axes, makeshift spears, pitchforks, and cudgels. Like the Green Men with their cloaks, every commoner wore a red star badge either sewn onto their clothes or carved into their skin.
Leading the small army was a man Robb knew well.
"Brienne, Ser Robar, with me," Robb growled, sheathing his sword and walking towards the septon.
The High Sparrow held up a languid hand, halting his men as Robb approached him. As the king and his companions got closer, the brown-robed Sparrows closed ranks around their leader, shifting their cudgels in their hands.
"Robb Stark." the High Sparrow greeted simply.
"You are before the King of Westeros." Brienne scowled. "You will address him as such."
The High Sparrow merely raised an eyebrow. "The Faith never recognized him as the king of anything."
"Faith be damned." Ser Robar snarled. "The Seven Kingdoms recognize him as king."
"I expected nothing less from the savages in the North." the High Sparrow countered. "The other Lord Paramounts will have to be….tutored."
"You've assembled a force with the intention of harming my subjects and my land," Robb said, cutting off the argument. "Disperse this rabble and stand down."
The High Sparrow smiled in amusement, regarding Robb like one did a puppy.
"These good people have assembled to do the gods' will," he explained, spreading his hands wide. "Why would I send them away from such a glorious task?"
"Their deaths will be on your hands, Septon." Robb snapped. "Hundreds will die here."
"Then it was the will of the gods," the High Sparrow said simply.
Robb glared at the man before turning around and marching back towards the ranks of Green Men. The Green Man leaned on his spear in front of them. He was armored differently than his men. He wore an actual iron breastplate that was embossed with a tree, its branches in full bloom and its roots reaching deep. Under it, he wore a thick leather jerkin.
"He won't turn away, will he?" he said grimly as Robb got closer.
"You know he won't," Robb answered.
"Josiah was always stubborn." the Green Man sighed. "Very well."
"Josiah?" Ser Robar asked. "You know him?"
"I did once." the Green Man said before turning towards his men. "Our home is threatened. Will you defend it?"
"Yes." was the response from a hundred throats.
Almost as one, the ranks reformed until they were as straight and orderly as a sword blade. Shields came up and spears were leveled until there was a bristling row of death and a wall of weirwood.
"I thought you lot were priests?" Ser Robar said, admiring the discipline the small force showed.
"We were established after the war between the First Men and the Children of the Forest." the Green Man said, gazing at the enemy as he spoke. "We guard this isle and have done so for centuries. We are much more than simple priests, Rune Carver."
"Why do you keep calling me that?" Ser Robar asked curiously.
The Green Man glanced at the knight. "Look to your history and you will understand."
"You two will have to table the discussion for a while," Robb said. "Here they come."
Line Break
Robb knew that there were many ways to deal with cavalry. A wall of spears or pikes worked well, as did caltrops and other defensive structures. A volley from a massed group of archers worked to some extent if the arrows were aimed at the horses rather than the riders, but it was an unreliable tactic. The sole goal of each tactic was to slow or stop a cavalry charge which could have a devastating effect on warriors on foot.
The king of Westeros had never seen a cavalry charge stopped by a shout.
The Warrior's Sons had charged towards the village in a spearhead formation, their heavy armor and longswords turning them into thundering, death-dealing juggernauts. As they got closer, Robb wondered if the spear wall would actually hold. It was his first time properly fighting on foot. He had fought on foot at High Heart, but that had been against other warriors on foot and he had started the battle mounted. This was an entirely different situation.
Just before the knights reached the green men's position, the Green Man himself stepped forward, away from the safety of the line, and did the most unlikely thing. He roared. It was unlike anything Robb had ever experienced. It had sounded like a hundred wolves and bears had suddenly appeared and had lent their voices to the Green Man. Robb felt the hairs on his arms stand up as a shiver went down his spine. He felt strange sensations run through him that almost made him want to run away, but he held and shook his head to clear it.
While Robb wasn't sure if his companions felt the same way he did, the effect the Green Man's roar had on the horsemen was immediate. The closest riders to the front lines were bucked from their saddles while the rest of the horses became frenzied, doing everything in their power to remove the knight mounted on it. Robb doubted that even the most experienced rider could have lasted long on any of them.
"What in the blazes did you do?" Robb asked quietly as the Green Man returned to his position in the center of the line.
"I reminded the horses what they were," he replied. "Creatures of the wild."
It took about an hour for the knights to reorganize themselves after their charge had been stopped and turned into a chaotic mess of flailing hooves and dented steel. A few of the armored warriors had limped back to their leader, nursing some sort of injury that had taken them out of the fight. Two bodies lay still where they had landed, their armor and helmets smashed.
"Death to the pagans!" one bellowed, raising his sword and charging forward. His companions copied the cry as they followed him.
The two forces met in a mighty crash as the first two lines of green men broke into chaos as individual fights broke out. The green-cloaked warriors accounted well for themselves, wielding their weapons with great skill as they went toe-to-toe with heavily armed and armored knights.
Robb slew the first fanatic he came across with a move that Ser Rodrik had taught him. It required the northerner to swipe at his opponent's legs before stepping forward and thrusting his sword into the man's unprotected stomach. It was an involuntary reaction for many to open their arms wider than normal when moving back suddenly, and Ser Rodrik had taught Robb how to take advantage of that action. The next two men had gone down after trading blows with Robb. They weren't bad swordsmen, and they were well equipped, but nothing they had could have deflected valyrian steel.
Brienne and Ser Robar protected Robb's back, piling up bodies around them as they proved why they had been selected for the kingsguard.
After more than an hour of fighting, the remaining knights pulled back and ran back towards the safety of their lines, helped along by a shower of arrows, harpoons, and rocks from the villagers and the few Green Men who wielded bows.
Robb walked up to the Green Man who was surrounded by a number of his men and talked quietly to them. He looked up when Robb approached.
"How many men have we lost?" Robb asked.
"A dozen, another five injured." the Green Man said sadly.
"Only ten of the Warrior's Sons got away," Robb noted. "We definitely put a dent in whatever plans the High Sparrow had."
"Here they come!" Brienne bellowed, grabbing Robb by the shoulder and pulling him back.
While the green men had been tending to their wounded and dead, the High Sparrow had sent his Poor Fellows forward. They raced towards the green men without saying a word, the only sound coming from their feet against the hard ground.
"Ranks!" the Green Man roared, snatching up his spear.
The guardians of the isle had only moments to compose themselves before they were slammed into by the mass of villagers. Their shield wall wavered for just a moment and began to slowly be pushed backward, but it miraculously stayed intact against the onslaught. The green-cloaked warriors stabbed and hacked grimly at their new and fresh enemy, taking a toll on the crazed fanatics, but for everyone they killed, another two took their place.
Robb glanced upwards and saw that there were only a few arrows in the air. Brienne saw the look and muttered to him.
"The skirmishers can't get a clear shot," she said. Robb nodded.
"Come on," he ordered to his Kingsguard as he began to retreat from the fighting, three green-cloaked warriors taking their places on the battleline.
"Joshua!" Robb said, running up to the headsman.
The headsman still wore the clothes of a commoner, but he now held a bag of crude-looking harpoons over one shoulder and had one of the small spears in his hand.
He nodded to Robb. "Your Grace."
"Grab your men and follow me. I have a plan."
The dozen confused, but grim villagers followed the younger man as they ran between houses until they were on the outskirts of the village, but looking across the fenced animal pens, they saw that they now had a clear view of the enemy. Joshua snarled and raised one of his harpoons.
"Fire!" he shouted, skewering an unexpecting Poor Fellow.
The wave of missiles from the new direction caused mass chaos among the disorganized ranks of the Poor Fellows. There weren't many who had shields and none had any kind of armor on. Caught in the open by the wave of harpoons, javelins, rocks, and arrows, most infantry would retreat and reorganize themselves. The Poor Fellows did more than that, they broke and ran off, still harassed by Joshua and his men.
"We have company." Ser Robar called.
The king, whose attention had been on the Poor Fellows, was turned on to the small group of individuals making their way towards Robb. Their robes, shaved heads, and weapons marked them as the High Sparrow's most faithful followers. The Sparrows.
"He means to cut the head off the snake." Ser Robar grunted as he, Robb, and Brienne prepared themselves. In a battle of nine against three, the odds seemed stacked against Robb, but he was accompanied by two elite warriors and he was no slouch with a blade either.
"This snake has fangs," Robb growled before chuckling, "and a claw."
The three warriors clashed wordlessly with the Sparrows, making quick work of the nine men. All three warriors trained constantly against each other and the rest of the Kingsguard, the foremost knights and warriors in the kingdom. Nine relatively untrained fanatics wielding cudgels and wearing robes stood no chance.
As Robb finished off the last Sparrow, bashing his face in with his shield before slicing open his stomach, the battle was already over. Only the backs of the Poor Fellows could be seen as they disappeared into the forests and shrubs, clutching their wounds weeping their misfortune. Robb felt little sympathy for them. They had chosen to follow a madman and had paid the price for their treason.
As the Green Men collected their dead and the villagers their victory, Robb looked for only one man. The High Sparrow stood on the edge of the battlefield, surrounded by the last of his Sparrows and knights. He locked eyes with Robb and sent a very clear message.
This fight wasn't over.
"Are we going to go after him?" Ser Robar asked.
"No, I have a feeling he'll come to us," Robb replied, cleaning his blade on the robe of a Sparrow. "But I intend to have a lot more than some Green Men and villagers by my side when we meet him again."
Benjen Stark
The village was like all the rest; completely empty with signs of a hasty exit. Huts were stripped clean of anything valuable and left to rot. There were a few remains that could be seen. A piece of fur here, a moldy hunk of bread there. There were certainly signs that there had once been life in the village, but whoever had stayed here was long gone now. After the past few months, Benjen didn't need to wonder what had driven the wildlings off.
"They're close," Coldhands grunted.
The two rangers had traveled north and were currently just east of the Fist of the First Men, just on the edge of the Haunted Forest. They had already come across three other vacant villages, but this was the first one where Coldhands actually felt the presence of wights.
"I'm guessing you don't know how many," Benjen said as they remounted.
"Their presence is weak. Less than a dozen," Coldhands said as they started off. "We will need to be quick. You remember what I told you?"
Benjen only nodded.
On the first night that they had set off to hunt down proof of the existence of wights, Coldhands had explained why Benjen now carried a small crate tied to the back of his saddle. Wights could live indefinitely as they are tied to the power of the Others. So long as the Others are alive, so are the wights they control. The only way to slay them permanently is either with fire or dragonglass. If they could get just the top half of a wight into the crate, then it would never rot away or die and Benjen could travel south and show it to the lords of Westeros.
The two black-clad warriors traveled for an hour before Coldhands stopped them. They stood quietly in the middle of the forest, hearing nothing but the cracking of branches as they broke under the weight of the constant snow. The silence was odd and uncomfortable, but Benjen looked around but wisely kept his mouth shut, knowing that the half-wight probably had a good reason for stopping them.
"Weapons!" Coldhands grunted, drawing his sword.
Immediately, the snowy ground around them erupted with dead bodies. Half a dozen wights charged the two riders; wordless, soundless wails coming from their open mouths. Just like before, they were dressed in ragged, destroyed clothing or armor with grey and black bones. Some even had rusted knives or broken swords.
Benjen grimly set to work on the three wights who came at him, kicking one in the head before cutting the arm off another. It was extremely tough controlling his horse and hacking at the undead, but he somehow managed. When two were down, Benjen kicked the third away and swiftly dismounted. He hefted his sword and waited as the being charged again. When it was close, Benjen slipped by it, sliding his sword through where its waist would have been.
The being fell in two separate pieces, with the legs going limp and the upper half of the body clawing after Benjen, snapping and snarling its broken teeth. The First Ranger sheathed his sword and grabbed the crate off his saddle, scooping the wight up in one motion. The undead creature resisted capture, pushing and clawing against the inside of the body, but Benjen wrapped black iron chains around the box before locking it with a heavy lock made from the same material.
Benjen glanced over at Coldhands and saw that he too had finished off his wights.
"I got one," Benjen said, grunting as he hefted the crate, slightly shaking because of the creature inside, onto his saddle.
"Good," Coldhands said. "Now we must…."
Immediately, the temperature dropped to the coldest Benjen had ever felt before, almost to the point where he felt like the blood in his veins might freeze. The trees cracked with frost and what little light there was soon dropped to shadowy darkness. The wind picked up till it was ripping and tugging at Benjen's armor and cloak, trying to tear it from his body. Any of his exposed skin felt like it was being stabbed with millions of icy daggers. All around them, a freezing fog appeared, hiding everything within a few meters of the black brothers.
When he had first fought wights, he had felt a large rock of fear in his stomach. Now that rock was a boulder.
"Too late," Coldhands murmured. "It has come."
"What's come?" Benjen asked, surprised by the terror in his friend's voice.
From the frozen fog, a tall, gaunt being with skin as pale as milk and eyes like burning ice strode forward. Cold and fear radiated off the being in waves. Benjen's horse reared, causing the First Ranger to grab the reins and quickly tie it to the nearest branch he could get to before quickly reaching for his sword.
"Steel won't kill it," Coldhands said. "Use your dagger."
Benjen glanced at the other man before doing as he was told and drawing his obsidian dagger. It felt woefully inadequate against the creature before him, but there was an inner warmth in the glossy black stone that made Benjen feel a little better. Like a candle in a pitch-black room, it gave Benjen a sliver of faith while facing the personification of death.
The Other reached out one hand and Benjen could only watch as a jagged sword made of ice appeared in his hand, seemingly formed out of thin air.
Coldhands rushed the creature, his sword slashing down at its head. Benjen, a warrior with his own considerable skill, couldn't have performed the strike any better. But the Other reacted like Coldhands was moving through honey. Its ice sword intercepted the attack before backhanding the half-wight.
Coldhands hit the tree with a sickening crunch before falling to the ground in a heap. Benjen stared at him for a moment before turning back towards the Other, who was now marching slowly towards him. The First Ranger knew that he had no chance of winning a fight conventionally. Coldhands had centuries of fighting experience under his belt and the Other made him look like a boy still green as grass. He had to be smart and pull some sort of trick out of his ass if he wanted to get back to the Wall with the wight he had captured.
Benjen adjusted his grip on the dagger before he thrust at the creature, stamping with his right foot and dropping his left knee almost to the ground as the dagger slid by the Other's left side, not touching the milk-colored skin. The ice sword went up and came slicing down at his head just as quickly, but Benjen was quick too.
He pushed off his right foot, throwing himself to his left and out of the way of the sword, which missed his foot by a hair.
The creature looked confused as it missed Benjen, then looked down at its stomach where there was a jagged blue line cut across its body. Benjen smiled grimly and held up the dagger. It was a trick that he had seen a wilding do during his first ranging that had disemboweled one of the other rangers he was with. The natural reaction to seeing an enemy on their knee is to cut downwards. The little time it took for the Other to bring its sword up and down was enough for Benjen to drag his dagger across its stomach as he leaped out of the way of the blade.
The creature raised his face to the sky and opened its mouth to roar before it shattered into millions of little crystals that were soon swept away with the wind. As soon as it was gone, the temperature went back to its normal bone-chilling cold and the freezing fog had disappeared as well, blown away by the wind.
Benjen scrambled over to Coldhands, rolling him over. His face, usually pale, was mottled black from where he had been hit by the Other. His dead, black eyes were staring up at the sky. Although Coldhands was not technically living, Benjen knew that he was dying.
Coldhands gripped Benjen's hand with surprising strength.
"Find….find my brother's descendent," he murmured, his strength fading fast. "Highsmith," he whispered.
Benjen nodded. "I will," he promised before taking a deep breath. "Coldhands, you have served better than any other brother of the Night's Watch, living and dead. Your Watch has ended, be at peace now."
Coldhands nodded once before his body went still.
High Sparrow
"Many of the villagers have gone back to their homes." Ser Theo said grimly. "It will take some time to rally them again."
The High Sparrow was surrounded by his remaining knights and Sparrows. After their defeat at the Isle of Faces, they had retreated south towards Sow's Horn. He had lost the majority of his Warrior's Sons as well as a number of his Sparrows. All he had left was thirty men and a hundred villagers.
"Will we attack the isle again?" one knight asked.
The High Sparrow shook his head. "No. The isle has no significance to the pagans, not as much as Robb Stark. He is who must be dealt with."
"Our scouts report the Green Men setting off in all directions." Ser Theo said. "Stark is alone, save for his Kingsguard and the Green Man himself."
"Which direction did they head in?" the High Sparrow asked.
"North, Your Holiness." Ser Theo responded. "We believe towards Lord Harroway's Town."
The Septon gazed at the map of the Riverlands, wondering what Stark had in mind. Any sane man would have suspected the King to head back towards King's Landing. Unfortunately, Robb Stark had many allies in the Riverlands and the Vale. The High Septon had to be quick to deal with the Northman before he found refuge with one of his supporters.
"We leave tomorrow after morning prayer." the High Sparrow ordered. "If the wolf wishes to stray further from his pack, then we shall allow him to do so."
"What about the Green Man?" Ser Harrison asked curiously.
The High Sparrow scowled. "We will sniff them out after the Northman is in the arms of the Stranger," he said finally.
The Green Men annoyed and confused the Septon. He knew as well as anyone that the mysterious and reclusive group never leaves their isle. So that begs the question: why are they leaving now? What has drawn them out? There were many questions that the High Sparrow wanted to be answered and he continued to pray to the Father and the Crone for guidance.
"Go, rally the faithful." the High Sparrow said. "The Wolf has helpers in the Riverlands and he must be slain like the dog he is. The Isle of Faces, Raventree Hall, all will fall in due time. Eventually, we will march on the North and the Iron Islands and bathe them in the light of the Seven."