Andrew
He woke up when the sun was well up in the sky. Andrew had spent most of his time in the Fair Maiden by sleeping. His meals would come to him in his cabin, some bread and curry or a broth of some kind. Sometimes he went to the deck to speak with the captain or anyone from the crew. He helped them to tie lines and change sails but he saw Joy in everything he did.
He saw her sweet smile and her beauty. I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. Even sleeping had done him no good. He saw her in his dreams along with mother and father.
The captain had provided him with the finest cabin and all sorts of luxuries. A feather bed for him to sleep, the finest of his foods and wine and even a supply of clean water. Atleast he provided enough for the silver Andrew had given him. He washed away the sleep from his face with a bucket of clear cold water.
His blades were there were he had left them before he had gone to sleep. Frost and the bracers were on the table of his room. Andrew had no use for them in the ship, he had learned that as soon as he got onto it. Everyone in the Fair Maiden had been warm to him. From the captain to the scrubber on the decks. He learned new methods to tie easy knots and to raise sails from the crew, taught them the methods he knew. At night the sailors would have some sort of gathering on the deck and sing songs from lands far away. Andrew would join them in the deck some nights but he would leave to his cabin before everyone else does.
When they had reached the Bite, Captain Moreo Tumites had commanded his men to be alert all the time and be ready for all dangers. Andrew knew that the waters of the Bite was infested with pirates and there were ships taken by the pirates in the Bite. The pirates were only the start of it. The Bite can be dangerous at every seasons around. There were scores of ships which lost in the raging waters never to be seen again. He had worn Frost along his back till the Fair Maiden crossed the Bite. It took a minor hit from the sea and the storms but the ship managed to cross it without any casualties.
He left Frost on the table but took his bracer in his hand. It was a deadly little thing. No one knew that a common bracer could bring death so swift and sudden. But his bracers had a concealable weapon that was composed of a narrow blade set into a channel on the underside of the bracers below the straps. Controlled by spring-loaded mechanism, the blade can spontaneously extend and retract from its position. He had put on a pressure switch inside the bracers so that he could easily trigger the blade with a flex of his wrist. The blades could be launched with the flex of his wrist and could be retracted with the release of it. Andrew had designed the blades himself along with the help of a master armorer from Braavos.
He had mostly used them for the means of enacting assassinations rather than for straight up combat. Consisting of a blade that can be discreetly extended or retracted from his bracer, the Hidden Blade's portability and concealability complemented his affinity for stealth and freerunning. It allowed him to eliminate a target while drawing virtually no attention to him, and the techniques developed for its use often ensure near instantaneous death.
He had killed many men with just the help of the blades. He had never seen a weapon more lethal than his hidden blades. There has been times where he had scaled the palaces of Braavos to take out murderers in their beds and there were times where he had opened the throats of monsters in the center of a market amidst a large crowd of people with none seeing him or his victim until the man dropped dead on the floor with the use of his hidden blades.
It has been long since he had used those deadly blades. He had not used them nor had planned to use them after he met Joy. It hurt to think about her. The wound was still so fresh to forget it soon. He doubted if he could ever forget it or feel love in his life again. All his loved ones from his life had left from this word, leaving him alone. His father had always said that, When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. For once Andrew found that even his father could be wrong at times. He was wrong in it. He had said that the pack survives and the lone wolf dies yet it was the pack which died when the hardest time came and he, the lone wolf somehow managed to live through all the hardships.
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.
"These are harsh times in Westeros," the captain told him. "There's been talk of war in the air always."
"Why would you risk your ship to get caught in the midst of a war then?" Andrew asked him.
"Damn me and my arrogance, Andrew," Moreo shook his head. "I got an offer no one can deny. But I hope to return back before anything happen, as soon as I finish my work."
"Trading?" asked Andrew, looking at the vastness of the sea.
"Aye," the stout man said. "Speaking of which, why do you want to go to Westeros?"
Andrew had many answers for that question but was not so sure as to which is the right one. Vengeance? Anger? Rage? Justice? Right? He could answer more but none felt correct. "I have an unfinished business left in Westeros," he answered at last.
"Hmm. If I were you I would finish my business and leave as soon as I can." The captain laughed. "These are not good times for trading, I must admit. You should've come here in its glory when the Stark king ruled from his throne. White Harbor was the center of the trade in the northern part of the world. The one who rules now has stopped every trade, doubled the taxes and blocked the ships."
"You knew King Eddard?"
Moreo gave Andrew a sharp look. "Aye. Him and his queen. I've seen the prince too. Though he was only a babe at the queen's teat when I saw him." He has seen me but can't recognize me? He would've probably seen a child wrapped in swaddling clothes in his mother's arms, there is no way he could recognize me. "I brought panes of glass from Myr to Winterfell once. Good people, both of them. Received me and my crew to the halls and feasted us amongst them."
It put a smile on his face to learn that they were not forgotten. Maybe the northern lords and people would remember them too.
"Here," Moreo said looking straight. "We're arriving." He turned to face his crew on the deck. "Prepare to shortern the sails, we're arriving."
It was the Seal Rock he saw first. The sea stone dominated the approaches to the outer harbor, a massive grey-green upthrust looming fifty feet above the waters. Its top was crowned with a circle of weathered stones, a ringfort of the First Men that had stood desolate and abandoned for hundreds of years. His father had fortified it when he became the Lord of Winterfell. Andrew could see scorpions and spitfires behind the standing stones, and crossbowmen peering between them. It must be cold up there, and wet. His father had said that seals could be seen basking on the broken rocks below. That's why it was named as the Seal Rock. But there were no seals to been seen now. There was smoke rising from Seal Rock as well. He wondered if the Targaryens had occupied it as well and the men were all Targaryen men.
The Fair Maiden stole into White Harbor on the evening tide, her dyed sails rippling with every gust of wind. The Fair Maiden was well known in White Harbor. For years she had plied a humble trade between there and the Free Cities. Andrew was relieved that no one would give a second thought on the ship or who it brought.
It was wise that he keep a low profile when he get into the city. He never knew if there was a Targaryen garrison left in the port. Knowing that how important White Harbor was to the north he strongly believed that there would be one. Until he knew how matters stood here, it was more prudent to play the common traveller.
White Harbor's walls of whitewashed stone rose before them, on the eastern shore where the White Knife plunged into the firth. The city's defenses had been strengthened under his father's command. There were not many differences from the last time he visited it with his parents. The jetty that divided the inner and outer harbors had been fortified with a long stone wall, thirty feet tall and almost a mile long, with towers every hundred yards.
Andrew never had any fond memories about this city. He was but a boy clutching at his mother's skirts the last time he came here. It was the only city he had ever been to. The little boy had awed at the size of it the first time he came to the city. His mother had told him that it was small compared to Oldtown and King's Landing but was clean and well-ordered. His mother had been to both Oldtown and King's Landing. Oldtown was his grandmother's home and King's Landing was where mother lived before she met father. All he remembered of White Harbor is that it had wide straight cobbled streets that made it easy for a man to find his way. And the houses were built of whitewashed stone, with steeply pitched roofs of dark grey slate.
The air was sharp and salty and smelled of sea, but he could smell the peat smoke drifting off Seal Rock too. He wondered if he should go up to the castle and reveal himself to Lord Wyman. Lord Wyman had always been warm to him and always laughing whenever he had seen him. What would he say to him? That he is his rightful king. The son of his king who came back from the dead. Would he even get a chance to speak? Or was Lord Wyman hosting a Targaryen army in his Merman's Court even now? It is wise to stay away from every castles until he reach Winterfell.
That jetty wall concealed the inner harbor, he saw, as the Fair Maiden was pulling down her sail. The outer harbor was larger, but the inner harbor was sheltered by the city wall on one side and the looming mass of the Wolf's Den on another, and the jetty wall as well. The whole northern fleet was stationed at White Harbor the last time Andrew came here. He wondered if the ships are concealed behind those walls, or have they already been put to torch.
Behind the city's thick white walls, the New Castle rose proud and pale upon its hill. Andrew could see the domed roof of the Sept of the Snows as well, surmounted by tall statues of the Seven. He knew his father's bannermen from his princeling lessons at Winterfell. His father would always tell him that a king should always know his men if he is to lead them one day. The Manderlys had brought the Faith north with them when they were driven from the Reach. White Harbor had its godswood too, a brooding tangle of root and branch and stone locked away behind the crumbling black walls of the Wolf's Den, an ancient fortress that served only as a prison now. But unlike the other castles of the north, the septons ruled here for the most part.
The merman of House Manderly was everywhere in evidence, flying from the towers of the New Castle, above the Seal Gate, and along the city walls. His hopes were undermined when he saw no sign of the direwolf of Stark. Luckily there were no dragons either.
The dockside wharves were swarming. A clutter of small boats were tied up along the fish market, off-loading their catches. He saw three river runners too, long lean boats built tough to brave the swift currents and rocky shoots of the White Knife. But it was his father's fleet he was searching for and he found nothing but a pair of carracks, drab and tattered, sauntering in the waves, a trading galley Storm Dancer, the cogs Brave Magister and Horn of Plenty, a galleas from Braavos marked by her purple hull and sails but there were no warships to be seen, not even the Quiet Wolf and the Lady of Stars. He had wished to see them there but they were not there.
The Fair Maid tied up to the end of a weathered wooden pier in the outer harbor, well away from inside. No doubt Moreo wished to leave soon. As her crew made her fast to the pilings and lowered a gangplank, her captain sauntered up to Andrew.
"This is where I leave you, Andrew Snow," Moreo said, extending Frost to him. "Good luck in your business."
Luck, Andrew thought, I might need it now. He wished for his father and mother and Joy. He wondered if they were with him now. He had seen them the day he met Joy, injured and halfdead. He sighed believing that they were with him.
"Thank you," Andrew told him as he took Frost in his hand.
A pair of customs men were clambering aboard as he went down the gangplank, but neither gave him so much as a glance. They were there to see the captain and inspect the hold; common seamen did not concern them. He kept his face down and moved through the crowd, blending in with them as much as he can. It only took a look for Slynt to tell him he was Eddard Stark's son, claiming as far as that he has his mother's hair. He didn't want to cause a scene like that again.
He made his way along the wharf and through the fish market. The Brave Magister was taking on some mead. The casks stood four high along the pier. Behind one stack he glimpsed three sailors throwing dice. Farther on the fishwives were crying the day's catch, and a boy was beating time on a drum as a shabby old bear danced in a circle for a ring of river runners. Two spearmen had been posted at the Seal Gate, with the badge of House Manderly upon their breasts, but they were too intent on flirting with a dockside whore to pay Andrew any mind. The gate was open, the portcullis raised. He joined the traffic passing through.
Inside was a cobbled square with a fountain at its center. A stone merman rose from its waters, twenty feet tall from tail to crown. His curly beard was green and white with lichen, and one of the prongs of his trident had broken off before Andrew had been born, yet somehow he still managed to impress as he had impressed him years before. Old Fishfoot was what the locals called him. Lord Wyman had told his father that the square was named for some dead lord, but Andrew cannot remember the name. Not that it mattered though, no one ever called it anything but Fishfoot Yard.
The Yard was teeming this afternoon. Beneath the arches of the peddler's colonnade the scribes and money changers had set up for business, along with a hedge wizard, an herb woman, and a very bad juggler. A man was selling apples from a barrow, and a woman was offering herring with chopped onions. Chickens and children were everywhere underfoot. The huge oak-and-iron doors of the Old Mint had been closed when Andrew had seen it the last time, but today they stood open. Inside he glimpsed hundreds of women, children, and old men, huddled on the floor on piles of furs. Some had little cookfires going.
Andrew stopped beneath the colonnade and traded a halfpenny for an apple. "Are people living in the Old Mint?" he asked the apple seller.
"Them as have no other place to live. Smallfolk from up the White Knife, most o' them. Hornwood's people too. With that dragons running loose, they all want to be inside the walls. I don't know what his lordship means to do with all o' them. Most turned up with no more'n the rags on their backs."
Andrew felt a hint of anger in him. They were his people and the Targaryens chase them off from their own place. "How do they eat?"
The apple seller shrugged. "Some beg. Some steal. Lots o' young girls taking up the trade, the way girls always do when it's all they got to sell. Any boy stands five feet tall can find a place in his lordship's barracks, long as he can hold a spear."
Atleast Lord Manderly was doing something. I need a horse, he thought. The sooner he could reach Winterfell, the sooner it would end.
"Where can I buy a horse?"
"Do you see the alley down Old Fishfoot's trident?" Andrew looked the way he pointed and nodded. "There's a stable down that alley past a brothel."
Andrew toosed the half eaten apple away and walked to the alley the man showed. He made his way around Old Fishfoot, past where a young girl was selling cups of fresh milk from her nanny goat.
He strolled across the yard and down a flight of steps. The stables stood well away from the city near to the exit. The floor was covered with straw and there were only the three horses to be seen. It was easy for Andrew to choose one among them, a white palfrey. The other two were in the worst conditions possible with one of them likely blind and the other likely to break a leg in a hard gallop.
When he gave a gold piece for the horse, the old man in the stables took it from his palm and bit it. "Hm. Real enough, I'd say," he said as Andrew took the reins in his hands.
He saw a little boy cornered by two big men when he came out. The boy was crying as he backed against a wall until there was no place to back up further. Andrew led the horse to him.
"Leave him alone," he told the men.
"Mind yer business, ya bastard," one of them said. "You've no reason to be 'ere."
"Oh, but I do." When he took Frost from its sheath the men ran away.
He walked to the boy and knelt beside him. He was clutching a pouch of coppers against his chest. "Th... Thank you," he whispered when he saw Andrew.
"Are you alright?" He helped the boy to get up from the ground.
"I am."
"What is your name?"
"Gared," the boy answered. He was still wary of him. Andrew could see that in the way he held his pouch. His pouch was not a heavy and bulky thing. It was thin as the boy himself. He took three gold dragons from his pouch and offered it to the boy. He looked at him with wide eyes.
"Go on, Gared," Andrew told him. "Give it to your mum."
"My mum is not here," he told him as he took the gold pieces from his hand. "She sent me away from Waterspring."
"Waterspring?" He knew the castle. It was more of a wooden keep than a castle located right where the White Knife broke a tributary to run through south of Winterfell, which began in the southeastern stretch of the Wolfswood and flows southeast to meet the White Knife west of the Sheapshead hills. His father would use Waterspring as a reserves for the fleet. Lord Payton Clearwater had been the Lord of Waterspring the last he knew.
"Yes," Gared told him. "My dada is there as well. They sent me away when the dark cloaks came."
The Targaryens. "What of Lord Clearwater?" Andrew asked him.
"He is dead," Gared told him. "Lady Waterspring and her children are held hostages."
"Didn't Lord Manderly do anything about it?" Waterspring owed its allegiance to White Harbor and to House Manderly as its overlord. It came under Lord Manderly to protect his vassals.
"Ser Wylis is their hostage as well," Gared said. "They have many ships blocking the river."
It was a sound plan. Taking all the ships and blocking the river with them, cutting down all the transport through the river and keeping the fleet in check. They could move easily to Winterfell through the river if it was needed which could bring in reinforcements too easily. That would do no good. If his plans to take back Winterfell failed the reinforcements would arrive more quickly than he could make a next move. He need to liberate Waterspring from the hands of the Targaryens and its people as well. Lady Clearwater and her children, Ser Wylis and all the others. Winterfell can wait for a few more days but the folks of Waterspring cannot.
He looked down at Gared. Somehow the boy reminded Andrew of himself. Chased away from parents and home, none should feel the pain of it. "Go home, Gared," Andrew told the boy. "You'll meet your mother and father tomorrow morning at Waterspring."
He got onto his horse and followed along the White Knife up north. Andrew was no stranger to horse riding. He has had many ridings with his parents and his uncles. He kept a fast pace never once slowing down. His palfrey proved itself worthy enough for a gold dragon. It kept on its pace never once stopping or lagging behind. He had hoped to reach Waterspring before nightfall and the sun was still half visible in the western sky when he finally reached it.
The entire northern fleet was docked at Waterspring all along the White Knife for a good distance. Andrew saw both the Quiet Wolf and the Lady of Stars in them. The huge war galleys were docked near the gates of the castle away from the other ships. It was a sweet sight. There were two guards by the gate, guarding the ships. Four men walked the walls, always circling in a way that each one faced one of the four sides for every rotation. There were no one else to be seen other than them.
He hoped that the castle won't host too big a garrison. Waterspring was a small castle. It wouldn't hold a big number of men. If he could infiltrate the castle and take the men down the northern fleet will be free and the reinforcements would be done for good.
The walls of Waterspring were no more than twenty feet high. It shouldn't be too hard to scale them. He took the grappling hook and threw it over the western wall when the guard was a few feet away from the side after a rotation. He tugged it thrice with all his strength to check if the grip was strong. When he was glad with the grip it had on the wall, Andrew climbed up by pulling the rope. He planted his legs firmly in the wood and climbed up. His boots never slipped in the wood and he moved up and up until he reached the top. He waited for the next guard to get to the place where he was. When the guard came near him, suspicious of the hook, Andrew flexed his wrist and thrust the extended blade in his throat. Death came for him swift and smooth and sudden. He pulled the guard from the wall and dropped him down. He heard the soft thud of the body crashing against the ground as he climbed onto the wall. In the cover of the night he hid behind the merlons and approached the next one and the next one and the next one until all four faced the four directions from the ground with their dead eyes.
There was a commotion going on in the yard when Andrew looked down from the walls. The chained big man with the merman sigil on his surcoat could only be Ser Wylis Manderly. Everyone in Waterspring had gathered in the yard and the remaining Targaryen guards as well. Seven they were, with one of them dressed in the rich garbs of a lordling. Andrew dropped down to the biggest building near the wall and crossed two more stout structures and leaped over to the roof of the armory. He had a good look at all of them from there. Ser Wylis was engaged in a heated argument with them. Andrew waited no more time as he jumped for the commander. He pushed the man down to the ground and buried the hidden blade right through the back of his neck.
Someone screamed from the crowd and Ser Wylis stumbled upon the ground losing his balance. Andrew unsheathed Frost and attacked the remaining guards before the regained from the shock. He slashed the throat of one and cracked the skull of another. The third guard raised his sword in time to block a swing at his head but he was not so fast to stop the next one which opened his chest. Andrew blocked the overhead swing of the next guard and drove Frost through his eye and left it there as the spearmen at the gate came against him at once. He kicked a spearman away and stepped aside from a thrust and caught the spear. He punched the man's nose and kicked him away from the spear to twirl the weapon in his arm so that the tip was faced at its previous owner and thrust it at his belly. The last guard had taken his sword out of his sheath from the ground but when he saw that the others were dead, he dropped it.
Andrew dropped the spear at his feet and left him there for the people to decide with his life. Ser Wylis looked up at him from the ground and the smallfolk all looked at him as if they had seen a ghost. Andrew pulled Frost away from the dead man and walked away.
"King." He heard someone whisper from the crowd.
"Eddard." Someone else said followed by a distant and uncertain, "Stark".
Let them talk, Andrew thought as he walked away. Let them know that the Starks are not gone.