Nerd in the North 4-3 (Patreon)

The war council was gathered beneath the timbered roof of Wenderly Keep of House Mollen, the longtable illuminated by the low, flickering glow of lanterns and the golden gleam of a roaring hearth. The assembled lords and captains sat in grim silence, the air thick with tension and the unspoken knowledge that they were marching toward a battle that few truly understood.

Lord Rogar Ryswell sat at the head of the table, his weathered hands splayed across a map of the Bolton lands. His heavy brows furrowed as he traced the path their forces would take. Lady Barbrey Dustin sat to his right, her back straight, her hands folded neatly before her. She did not fidget, did not show doubt or hesitation, because to do so would invite weakness. Her position—both physical and political—was no accident. 

Let her goodbrother lead in name. The men would see what she wished them to see.

"We will begin the march within two days," Lord Rogar announced, his voice gruff and commanding. "My men will take the vanguard. Ser Merrick, you and your riders will sweep the eastern villages and ensure no messages leave the Bolton lands. If the Brightfort calls for aid, we must ensure that aid never comes."

Lady Barbrey caught Lord Rogar's eye, the smallest nod passing between them as he spoke the very words she had whispered to him before the council began.

"You speak as though House Stark would come to this usurper's defense, my lord," one of the Bolton loyalists said, his voice measured. "Yet we both know young Robb Stark has done nothing. I doubt he will interfere, even if we send no riders to cut his birds from the sky."

Lady Barbrey's lips curled into something that was not quite a smile. Before Lord Rogar could respond, she spoke, her voice carrying a delicate authority that did not challenge his position but rather complemented it.

"Do not mistake inaction for loyalty," she replied smoothly. "From what I have heard, the boy has more of his uncle in him than his father. I would rather we not place faith in his hesitation."

Or lack thereof.

Robb Stark was young, and young men made foolish choices when pressed. She would not allow him the opportunity to decide the Bolton lands were his to reclaim.

Lord Rogar nodded, his expression hardening. "Lady Dustin speaks wisely. The Brightfort is weak," he continued. "Greg Veder is no true lord, no man of the North. A boy at best, he is a charlatan, a foreign sorcerer spreading poison among the smallfolk and convincing them to kneel before him with trickery and dark magic. He has taken what does not belong to him. That alone is reason enough for us to take it back."

Another lord frowned. "If he is a sorcerer, should we not approach this with caution?"

"Sorcerer or no, he is still a man," Rogar said firmly, echoing the very words Barbrey had spoken to him in private the night before. "And men bleed. The North has no place for his kind."

Ser Merrick Flint slammed a fist against the table, his face twisted with rage. "The boy remade the Dreadfort with his foul magics!" he snarled. "Roose Bolton was a great man. The best of us! And now he's dead, his lands stolen by some southern bastard playing at war!"

Barbrey kept her expression carefully neutral, but her eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Let Flint rage. It made him predictable.

"Aye," Lord Rogar said quietly. "And what has Roose's death done but embolden the smallfolk? They sing Veder's praises. They call him a savior, whisper of miracles. Do you not see how dangerous that is? If one man is allowed to take what he pleases, what is to stop the rest from rising?"

"If the common folk stand with him," another lord grunted, "then we will find resistance in more than just his walls. His magic aside, he holds the Bolton lands, and the smallfolk fight for their own."

Lady Barbrey leaned forward slightly. "The smallfolk will fall in line, as they always have," she said, her voice soft but carrying an edge that did not go unnoticed. "We will remind them of their place."

Lord Rogar nodded, meeting the eyes of each man at the table. "Then it is decided. We march in two days. For the North."

The men rose, repeating the words. "For the North."

As the council dispersed, Barbrey walked through the cold stone halls of Wenderly Keep with Lord Rogar, their steps measured and aligned.

"You played your part well," she murmured. "They respect your command."

Rogar grunted. "And they hear your words through my mouth. A clever game, goodsister."

"Not a game," she replied. "Necessity. They would not follow a woman into battle, but they will follow you—and you will follow wisdom."

Her wisdom. They both knew it, though neither needed to say it aloud.

"Do you truly believe this sorcerer is as dangerous as they say?" Rogar asked, his voice low.

Barbrey's face remained impassive. "I do not fear sorcery. I do not believe in it. Not truly. Greg Veder is a liar, a trickster, a boy who has found himself in possession of power he does not deserve. That is all."

And yet...

The ravens Roose had sent had painted him as something unnatural. A beast wearing a man's skin, sacrificing innocents, bending minds, twisting the very fabric of the North itself. The lords whispered of it, even as they dismissed it. But it was not fear that motivated them, not truly. It was the land. The Bolton lands.

Roose's lands.

That, above all else, could not be forgotten.

Barbrey stopped at an open window, Rogar beside her, both staring out over the gathering army below. Banners fluttered in the wind, the golden horse of Dustin and the red horse of Ryswell standing beside the remnants of the Bolton loyalists. They would march under one cause, but each sought something different.

For Merrick Flint, it was vengeance.

For Rogar Ryswell, it was duty to his House and the North.

For herself...

It was control.

Greg Veder was a foreigner. A usurper. A disruptor. He had cast aside the Dreadfort, shattered the old order, and stood in defiance of everything the North had been for generations.

But what Barbrey truly despised was not his power.

It was his success.

She had spent decades watching the Starks rule, watching the Dustin name be treated as lesser, watching men like Eddard Stark decide the fates of others as though it was their right.

And now, here was another man doing the same. 

She would not allow it.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Ser Arryk of Stonegate adjusted the fit of his gloves, his gaze locked on the cold ground beneath him as he listened to the men around him talk.

"Lord Veder will not last long," one of the Ryswell knights murmured. "Magic or no, he holds his castle alone. No great house will come to his aid."

"You say that," another grunted, "but the stories say he did the impossible. Burned the Dreadfort, killed Roose himself. The North should have swallowed him whole, and yet here we are, marching on him instead."

Arryk shifted uneasily.

Greg Veder had saved his life once.

If it was only that, this would not sink in his chest so, feel so much like betraying a debt. 

No, the lad had found and healed him. Pulled him back from the edge of death when he had no reason to, with power grander than he had ever born witness to. Power worthy of song and tales, glory and honor. No monster would do that. No dark sorcerer would willingly do such a thing.

The son of Stonegate exhaled slowly, watching the frost bloom from his lips.

"You hesitate," Ser Merrick Flint said, watching him from across the fire. "Why?"

Arryk hesitated before shaking his head. "I don't."

Flint snorted at him. "Good. Because when the time comes, hesitation will get you killed."

Arryk didn't answer.

But as the army began its march, the question remained heavy in his chest.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The army had moved quickly, but not quickly enough.

The early skirmishes had been a disaster.

The first attack had been meant as a simple probe, Dustin's outriders testing the edges of the sorcerer boy’s forces, seeking to gauge the strength of what they would face. A handful of Bolton loyalists, sworn men of Ryswell and Flint, rode with them. Truthfully, they had expected peasants with spears, a rabble of undisciplined men clinging to the fantasy that one battle could make them lords.

What they found instead was something not of the North.

They came upon a supply train, moving slow through the snow-laden road, carts weighed down with food and weaponry. It should have been easy, but the night rose up against them.

They had heard the stories, of course. 

Dark things creeping through the night, whispered words in a foreign tongue calling horrors into being. Words that sounded alien and harsh to northern ears—"Kage shibari," the survivors would later mutter with haunted eyes. "Oni no te." Strange sounds for strange magics. They had laughed at such tales, called them foolish stories meant to frighten children. 

Until the shadows had taken the first man.

Ser Willam Hornwood had been at the head of the column when it happened. One moment he was barking orders, his sword drawn, his eyes bright with the thrill of an easy kill. The next, black tendrils coiled around his legs, yanking him from his saddle. He hit the ground with a dull crack and screamed.

Then the shadows dragged him away.

The others had barely time to react before the road erupted in chaos. Men fell to the ground, their bodies jerked back into the darkness by unseen hands. A few managed to draw steel, slashing wildly at the writhing blackness that twisted around their legs and throats, but it was all for naught.

The screams did not last long.

Some claimed they saw the boy himself, standing in the distance, a slim figure with  strange eyes and stranger garb, his hands raised as he whispered his foul words. Others swore they heard laughter on the wind. 

None could say for certain, though, for none who drew too close had returned.

When the survivors broke free of the slaughter, they rode hard for the safety of the main host, their faces pale and their numbers halved. Ser Merrick Flint had met them on the road, demanding to know what had happened. The men, still panting, still shaking, had given him their answer in hushed, fearful tones.

"Magics," one had whispered. "Dark magics."

Flint had struck him for his cowardice, but the damage was done. The word spread through the ranks like wildfire. By the time they set camp that night, men muttered in low voices, glancing over their shoulders at every flickering shadow. Fires were built larger than usual, and few slept soundly.

"He's just one boy," Lord Rogar had insisted, his face flushed with anger as he addressed his captains. "One untested boy playing at war. I will not have our men turned craven by children's tales!"

But even as he spoke, a rider from their western flank arrived with grim news. Another convoy, this one meant to join their main force with additional supplies, had been found abandoned on the road. The wagons remained, but the men were gone—vanished into the snow. Only tracks remained, as if something had dragged them away.

That night, three more men deserted.

And then there was the black swordsman.

The next attack had been meant as a hammer blow—Lord Rogar and Lady Barbrey had sent a stronger force, more cavalry, more archers. If the first skirmish had been an ambush, this one would be an overwhelming show of force.

But they had not counted on him.

The man was a giant, wrapped in black steel, his blade a slab of death wider than a man's torso and longer than a horse. He moved faster than something his size should be able to, his strikes too swift, too brutal, cutting through armor, flesh, and bone in great, sweeping arcs. Men who stood before him were cleaved in half, their plate armor offering no more resistance than parchment. Horses fell with their riders, severed limbs scattered across blood-soaked snow.

"Demon!" a man screamed, just before the great blade took his head.

They had loosed arrows at him. He had caught one mid-flight, snapped it in half, and kept coming. When they unleashed a volley, he had swept his massive sword in an arc before him, somehow blocking or deflecting those that might have found their mark. It was not possible. It could not be possible.

A man-at-arms who had fought in the Greyjoy Rebellion, had sworn he had seen a knight once, a brute of a man from the Westerlands they called the Mountain, swing a greatsword with one hand. But this was a man from the Age of Heroes. No mortal man could wield such a weapon. No mortal man could move with such deadly grace.

He was naught but a demon in human form.

The men broke after a battle that hadn’t lasted even minutes.

And when it was over, the road was empty, save for the dead. And the dead told no tales save for the horror of their wounds—clean cuts that had sheared through steel, bone, and sinew in single strokes.

The most disturbing accounts, however, came not from the survivors of battle but from scouts who had observed from a distance. They spoke of the aftermath, of shadows gathering around the fallen but not yet dead, of a boy with golden hair walking among his wounded and laying hands upon them.

"I saw a man with his chest opened near to his spine," one scout whispered over the campfire, eyes wide. "The usurper touched him, and the wound closed before my eyes. As if it had never been."

By the time Barbrey Dustin and Lord Rogar Ryswell reached their forward scouts, the coalition's morale was already beginning to fray. The stories of Greg's sorcery were no longer dismissed out of hand. The men talked of the shadow-tongue, of the whispers in the night, of men vanishing without a trace. They spoke of the black swordsman as if he were Death himself come to claim them all.

Barbrey had not believed in magic, not truly.

Now she was not sure what to believe.

Ser Merrick Flint remained steadfast in his desire for vengeance, but even his loyalty to the fallen Bolton house could not entirely mask his growing unease. "We should attack now," he insisted, "with our full strength. Before he can call more demons to his side."

But Lord Rodrik Hornwood, who had lost his baseborn brother to the hands of darkness, was less certain. "Perhaps," he suggested with caution clear in his voice and manner, "we should reconsider our approach. The boy has blood magic, dark power and demons at his command. We've all seen the evidence. Is land, even Bolton land, worth the price we've already paid?"

"Coward," Flint spat. "Would you have us turn tail and run because of a few lost scouts? Because of ghost stories told by fearful men?"

"My brother was no ghost story," Hornwood replied, his voice thick with anger. "And I'll not see more of my men sacrificed for your vengeance."

The argument might have come to blows had Lady Barbrey not intervened, her voice cold and commanding despite her position behind Lord Rogar's authority.

"Enough," she said. "We did not march all this way to turn back at the first sign of resistance. But neither did we come here to throw our strength away heedlessly."

And so, the plan changed.

Lord Rogar, at Barbrey's urging, ordered a shift in strategy. No more probing attacks. No more underestimating the enemy. Instead, she called for prisoners; villagers, stragglers, anyone who had seen the Brightfort and returned to tell of it.

They would not need sorcery to win this war. They would use fear.

"The smallfolk are his power," she told Lord Rogar privately. "They bring him food, they bring him information, they shield him from our scouts. If we cannot reach him directly, we will reach him through them."

Rogar had frowned. "The smallfolk are not our enemy."

"No," she had agreed. "They are his tools. And we will break them."

The order spread through their ranks, and not all were pleased with it. While few northmen balked at the brutality of war, there were those who muttered that turning against the common folk was not the northern way. It was something a Lannister might engage in, actions a Bolton would take. And let it not be said that the irony of fighting to reclaim Bolton land while employing Bolton tactics was not lost on them.

"This is not why I marched," a lesser lord said quietly to his captains. "I came for glory and for land. Not to terrorize the smallfolk."

Similar whispers circulated among the Tallhart men, and even some of the Flint soldiers exchanged uneasy glances when they thought their commander wasn't looking.

But Lord Rogar's will… 

No, Lady Barbrey's, prevailed. The first prisoners were brought to their camp on the eve of their final march to the white castle that stood in the Brightlands. A boy, no older than ten and five, and a man past his fortieth nameday, his beard streaked with gray. Their faces were drawn, weary, but there was something else in their expressions, something she did not like.

Conviction.

Rogar studied them, his heavy brow furrowed. "You have been to the Brightfort?"

The boy spat. "Aye."

The older man did not speak, but his eyes, hard as flint, never left Barbrey's face. She felt a small chill beneath his gaze—not fear, but something adjacent to it. Recognition, perhaps. As if he saw through her, past the facade she presented to the world.

Dustin leaned forward, her voice silk. "And tell me, did you kneel before him? Your sorcerer-lord?"

The boy lifted his chin. "Better him than you."

There was a murmur among the captains. One of the Bolton men sneered, reaching for the boy, but Dustin raised a hand. She did not take her eyes off him.

"And why is that?" she asked.

The boy hesitated, glancing at the older man. He swallowed. "Because he healed my sister," he said at last. "Because he fed us when no one else did. And because he killed the Bastard of Bolton."

His voice did not waver. Nor did his gaze.

"Ramsey Snow was a monster," the older man spoke at last, his voice rough with disuse. "He took my daughter. Did things to her. Things no father should hear about, much less see the aftermath of." His hands, bound before him, trembled—not with fear, but with a rage so deep it seemed to have carved itself into his bones. "Lord Veder gave her peace. Gave her justice. Ended him and his bloodline and wiped the taint of Bolton from the land. Tell me, my lady, did you shed a single tear for any of Ramsey's victims? Or were they just smallfolk, not worth your noble concern?"

Dustin felt a prickle of anger at his tone. "Careful, old man," she warned. "Your new lord's protection does not extend to my camp."

"My lord's protection extends wherever he wills it," the man replied, and there was something in his eyes—a certainty that unsettled her more than any threat could have. "The shadows and heavens are his to command."

Several of the men around them shifted uneasily, hands moving unconsciously to sword hilts or making warding gestures. Lord Rodrik Hornwood stepped back, his face pale.

Dustin sighed. "Then you are traitors to the North," she said. "And traitors have no place in my camp."

She rose from her seat, turning away as she gave the order to Rogar with nothing more than a meaningful glance. He nodded, his expression grim but resolved.

"Take them outside the camp," he commanded. "See that it's done quickly."

The boy did not scream when they led him away.

Neither did the man.

But as they were marched from the tent, the older man turned back, his eyes finding Barbrey's across the distance.

"He knows you all are coming," he said, his voice eerily calm. "The lord of the Brightlands is waiting for all who claim to rule but serve only themselves."

By the time their bodies cooled in the snow beyond the camp's edge, the moon had risen high, casting long shadows across the army's ranks. Men huddled closer to their fires, speaking in hushed tones of what tomorrow might bring. 

Some prayed to the Old Gods of the North. 

Others drank to forget their fear, if only for a night.

On the horizon stood the demon boy’s Brightfort, its walls gleaming under the moon unnaturally bright against the darkness that surrounded it. The castle rose stark and imposing, a beacon in the night where the Dreadfort had once squatted like a malignant growth upon the land.

Lady Barbrey stood at the edge of the camp, Lord Rogar beside her, both gazing out at the fortress that awaited them. Their breath misted in the cold air, hanging between them like unspoken doubts.

Dustin's captain approached, his armor creaking in the silence. "The men are ready," he reported. "We attack at dawn."

Rogar nodded, but said nothing. His eyes never left the distant walls.

"Good," Barbrey replied, her voice steady. "We end this on the morn."

But even as she spoke, she could not shake the dread in her bones as her eyes remained on the Brighfort. Those walls that were too clean, too white, and far too bright. Those walls did not belong in this place.

A castle should not look unnatural. 

And for the first time since this march began, she felt her unease turn to fear.