The Westerlands. 299 AC.
Robb Stark.
Robb was not pleased. After all the trials and hard-won victories, King Stannis had seen fit to send him back to the Riverlands with the plunder. The task was a responsible one and called for real skill, but to the Young Wolf it felt like an insult. He had enough experience by now to understand the assignment's importance, however, and set about it without complaint.
"Half the wagons have been successfully delivered to the Golden Tooth. The river men will collect them from there," Big Jon grumbled, his displeasure evident. Nobody enjoyed parting with gold, even temporarily.
"Good."
"We need to get the last of the wagons across before nightfall. If the head of the column is struck, the tail won't reach them in time." The old soldier did not like the situation at all.
"Yes, we've spread ourselves too thin." Robb looked back and could not even make out the end of the column.
The relentless succession of assaults had worn Robb down to the bone, and he was the commander. He could only imagine what the ordinary infantry were feeling.
"Perhaps, but I'll help them find a quicker pace all the same."
The legendary Casterly Rock had lived up to its reputation. The wagons groaned with gold. It had reached the point where raiders were riding out to villages not to loot them but simply to requisition their carts, yet even so the army had not been able to carry everything in a single run. This was far from Robb's first convoy, though it was, to his relief, one of the last. The river lords had been forewarned and were helping however they could. With each run the army's carrying capacity grew, which did good things for both the volume and the speed of the operation. Meanwhile, King Stannis and his Hand were due to catch up with Robb somewhere on the road to the Golden Tooth.
"Caw! Caw!" A black raven dropped sharply onto his shoulder. It startled the relaxed Robb, but he was not annoyed, closer to glad. Only one person used this particular method of reaching him: his sister Elena, from whom there had been no word for a long time.
"I was worried," the Young Wolf said, meeting the bird's eyes, and received a fresh volley of cawing and a beating of wings in return. The behavior of his sister's creature alarmed him in earnest. If the bird was acting like this, the matter was urgent.
"Where is the letter?" The bird simply swooped to the ground and began scratching at the earth with its beak.
With every passing moment Robb understood less what the bird wanted from him. For a full fifteen minutes the raven worked at the earth. He was nearly ready to conclude that longing for his sister had made him see what he wished to see, when the scratches began to resolve into letters, and the letters into a word.
"Danger?" The raven's sounds grew more urgent, and on his second attempt Robb read it right. "Lannisters?" The sounds climbed to a new pitch in confirmation, then the raven abruptly took flight.
"Thank you."
"Finished your conversation with the crow, have you?" asked Bronn, riding up alongside him. "The lads are starting to worry about your state of mind."
"Gather the men and send riders to the king. The Lannisters are going to strike, and soon." Ser Bronn grasped the gravity of it at once, gave a short nod, and rode hard to carry out the order.
When Big Jon Umber had spoken of the column being dangerously strung out, he had not been exaggerating. If anything, he had failed to appreciate the full scale of the disorder. It took nearly half an hour to pull four thousand men into a single fighting force and bring everyone to battle readiness.
"My lord! King Stannis's forces have been struck from two sides."
"How many?"
"More than fifteen thousand."
Old gods. He had not been in time.
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