The King of Winters

Chapter-106

Argella

They traveled dawn to dusk, past woods and orchards and neatly tended fields, through small villages, crowded market towns, and stout holdfasts. Come dark, they would make camp and eat by the light of the stars and moon. She had a hundred men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safely to Winterfell whilst her husband and father were fighting in the war. Andrew had wanted to leave two hundred; Argella had insisted that she needed only ten, saying that Brienne is more than enough for her and that he would need every other sword for the war. They made their peace at a hundred, neither happy with it. She was a queen now and a queen needed a fitting entourage even if Argella didn't need so big a protection.

They had left Riverrun a week later than they were supposed to leave. The day they were supposed to leave Riverrun hundreds of smallfolk had fled to the castle from the south, escaping the grasp of the Targaryen army. Seeing them like that she couldn't leave without doing something about it, at least for the children. Every night Argella would glimpse firelight flickering through the trees from the camps of other travelers. There seemed to be more camps around Riverrun with every night, and more traffic coming up to the castle by day. Argella had defied her mother once again and allowed them to erect crude shelters against the walls where the army had once set up camps. She even left a few wagons of her provisions to feed them along with the cows, sheep, and chickens the people had brought to them.

The people came in scores, old folks and little children, big men and small ones, barefoot girls and women with babes at their breasts running away from the south to the safety of the north, hoping that they could find it in Riverrun. And she would be damned if she should turn them away. Some of them drove farm wagons or bumped along in the back of ox carts. Others rode draft horses, ponies, mules, donkeys, anything that would walk or run or roll. All of them were found a place to stay at least until the war was over. Most came on foot, with their goods on their shoulders and weary, wary looks upon their faces.

She would have stayed there with them. She would have liked it. But the Queen in the North didn't belong in Riverrun, no more than she did in battlefield. So whilst her husband marched south with his army to war, Argella marched north to fight in her own battles. To rule the North in her husband's stead, her mother said, but Argella knew better. Traveling north they found the way mostly untouched by the war, green fields and the smell of earth still fresh from summer rain. There hadn't been any fighting fought here of late. The last of it had happened long before her marriage when Andrew had scattered the besieging Tyrell troops and freed Riverrun.

Even north of Riverrun there were travelers to be seen, old men and green boys her age holding pitchforks and flails leading their draft horses and oxen. Some of the other travelers were armed with other weapons of war; Argella saw daggers and dirks, scythes and axes, and here and there a sword. Some had made clubs from tree limbs, or carved knobby staffs. They fingered their weapons and gave curious looks at their party as they passed by, relief in the eyes when they saw the direwolf of Stark flying from the tip of the spears. She could not blame them for being wary. These men had seen the touch of the war before and most were not keen to see it again, simply wanting to protect their wives and daughters and crops.

Argella thought about her husband and wondered what he was doing, if he was thinking about her or he was just too occupied with the war to spare a thought about her. She could still remember the kiss she had given him for luck. Andrew was a good kisser and the thought made her blush much to her annoyance. It had taken all her strength to pull him in for a kiss and Andrew had held her close as he returned the kiss to her surprise. It was sweet still to think about it.