The King of Winters

Chapter 43

Andrew strapped the bracers on with the hidden blades facing the inside of his forearm and pulled on his jacket to conceal it under his sleeves. He left Frost on the table and went to the deck. They should reach White Harbor soon enough. 

When he came up to the deck, the crew was busy, running around with ropes and other things in hand. "Snow," Captain Moreo called for him from the prow. "We're approaching White Harbor." 

Andrew walked over to him and joined him at the prow. The bronze figurehead at the bow of the Fair Maiden sent up wings of salt spray as it cut the waves. He leaned his weight against the rail, grateful for its support.

As he listened to the slashing of the sea water, the thrum of the sail, and the rhythmic swish and creak of the oars, he thought back to his younger days, when he had seen a ship for the first time. He had been no more than five then, when he visited White Harbor with his father and mother. Lord Manderly had proudly shown them the fleet he had made for his father. The Lady of Stars was the first ship he had ever stepped on, a huge galley with a gilded head of a beautiful woman with amethysts for her eyes at the bow. It had been named for his mother. The Quiet Wolf, another huge galley that had been named for his father. He wondered what had happened to them. Has the Targaryens burned them with their dragons?

He had never known why the ships were made for then. That little boy had thought ships were used only to run around the seas. He had never known that they were war galleys built to keep their seas safe from the enemy fleet. If Rhaegar was any wise he would have taken the galleys and the fleet for himself. Even though Andrew knew nothing of the galleys when the time he saw them, he remembered them as huge and formidable vessels that could cast fear to the hearts of the hardest of the sailors.

Captain Moreo had told him some of the things he knew about Westeros, and his crew had known many rumors of that as well. The trade from the north had been stopped by the current lord of Winterfell, Jaehaerys Targaryen. Andrew had been shocked to hear about that first. It was foolish of Rhaegar to send his son to the north. When his father had ruled from Winterfell none from the south dared to enter the north through any means but for the king's oldest friends and the queen's family. Rhaegar and his family had stayed in their Red Keep and never even crossed past the borders of the Reach. Thrice the dragon king tried to invade the north and everytime his father had chased him back to his castle. He was shocked to hear that Rhaegar sent his son to the north but then it made sense. His cousin had brought a dragon with him to Winterfell to show fear in the minds of the people. 

Fear, that was what the technique the Targaryens used to keep the people in check. But it was not the way he was raised. Eddard Stark had been the king in the north not the king of the north. His father had told him that it is the people of the north which comes before the place itself. The north is not just a place, it's the people, his father had told him as he was telling him some war story. His mother had given him the same lesson. "No king is made with a crown upon his head, Andrew," she had told him the day they had visited the Winter Town. "If you want to rule them, if you want their help, you have to make them love you." And no one in the north was much loved  by the smallfolk than Queen Ashara. 

Even his uncle Arthur had used the same method to subdue the Kingswood Brotherhood. Andrew had heard that story a hundred times before from his uncle. He paid the smallfolk for the food they had eaten, learned their grievances and helped them, expanded the grazing lands around their villages, won them the right to cut down a certain number of trees each and even got them hunting permits to hunt in the woods. The forest folk had looked to Toyne to defend them but his uncle had done more for them that the Brotherhood could ever hope to do and won them to his side. The story was one of his favorites that he remembered it even now.