NOVEL NEXT Chapter 78: Quiet Steel
Support me on patreon.com/c/Striker2025
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
POV: Lyanna Stark
Location: Northern Holdfast – Flint Guard Post, eastern Wolfsgrasp region
The wind ran sharp over the training field—snow biting at the cheeks and hair of girls too stubborn to flinch.
Lyanna stood at the front of them, boots crunching over ice-hardened mud, her voice steady despite the cold. "Again."
The youngest girl—no older than ten—reset her stance. Her knees buckled too wide, her grip unsure on the training spear. But her eyes didn't waver.
"Better," Lyanna said. "You'll fall slower that way."
There was no laughter, not anymore. Not since they'd heard about the wildlings at Wolfsgrasp. About the one man who'd stopped a hundred.
The daughters of house guards, washerwomen, and lesser bannermen had gathered in secret at first. But now, after three days, the guards turned a blind eye. Some even watched from the shadows, their own daughters in the mix.
Lyanna adjusted a girl's elbow, frowning slightly. "You want to live if they come again? Then this"—she tapped the girl's wrist—"has to be solid. Shake, and you die."
The girl swallowed but nodded.
Off to the side, a rider approached, cloak fluttering against the snow-crusted wind. Sarra dismounted with a quick nod.
"Redna intercepted something," she murmured. "You'll want to see it."
Lyanna glanced at the girls. "Three laps around the field. No talking. Let your legs learn what your mind forgets."
They groaned but obeyed. She followed Sarra to the guard post.
Inside, the fire was low but steady. Sarra unfurled a tight roll of parchment—thick, oiled to withstand the snow. The wax had no crest, but the script was delicate, slanted, and laced with sigils.
Lyanna didn't speak. She let Sarra explain.
"It was passed from a courier two days ago near the Dreadfort. Redna's spy noticed he never entered the keep. He met someone near a frozen stream. Dropped this."
"What's it say?"
Sarra hesitated. "It's encoded. But Redna caught one phrase repeated throughout the layers."
She pointed. "This one."
Lyanna squinted at the rune-styled line: "the sleeper listens from beneath."
"I don't like riddles," she said.
"Neither does Arthur," Sarra replied. "He thinks it's not meant to warn. It's meant to show who's listening. Roose Bolton may be answering to someone else."
Lyanna folded her arms. "Then why send riddles at all?"
"To keep his hands clean," Sarra said. "And his allegiance hidden until the knife lands."
POV: Arthur Snow
Location: Flint Guard Post, later that day
Arthur stood over the training map with Garron and two Flint scouts.
"The mountain pass here," he said, pointing to a chalk-lined trail east of Wolfsgrasp, "has frost-break cliffs on both sides. You set up spears there—spikefall style—then pull back into this notch."
Garron grunted. "And if they don't follow?"
Arthur smiled faintly. "Then we haven't taught them to fear retreat yet."
The scout beside him tilted his head. "This... these aren't Northern tactics."
"No," Arthur said. "They're better."
He rolled the map aside, letting the wind sweep in a breath of cold across the table.
"We don't wait behind walls anymore. We don't waste time riding ten leagues to chase ghosts. We use the land. We learn their habits. And we strike when the rhythm breaks."
He motioned to the younger scout. "And you'll teach this to the next three patrols. Not just drills—scent, silence, formation memory. Not one sword. Just motion."
Garron raised a brow. "Your way doesn't leave much room for glory."
Arthur nodded. "That's the point."
POV: Lyanna Stark
Location: Perimeter Hillside, dusk
Lyanna sat with Sarra atop a hill, watching the girls below spar with short-staffs. The snow had let up, and frost steamed from breath and skin alike.
"Do you ever regret it?" Lyanna asked suddenly.
Sarra raised a brow. "Regret what?"
"Choosing to stay. Following him."
Sarra looked out over the girls, then toward the distant trail where Arthur had vanished earlier to scout with Redna.
"No," she said. "Not once. But I do worry."
"About what?"
"That he's teaching the North how to fight like him," Sarra said. "But no one's asking how he learned to survive like that."
Lyanna said nothing. The wind stirred again.
They sat in silence for a while—watching the steel rise quietly across the snows.
__________________________________________________________
POV: Sarra – Evening, near Wolfsgrasp
Sarra rode alongside the scouting trail, her breath misting through the cowl of her cloak. Below, the pine-dense ridgelines of the Wolfsgrasp narrowed into frost-slick valleys. The ravens here flew low, quiet. That unsettled her.
Redna's message had come with a strange warning: Don't trust the wind this far east. If it carries silence, it means someone's listening.
She dismounted by the ruined watchtower—one of the oldest border outposts from before the Conquest. Redna's agent, a woodsman disguised as a charcoal burner, waited near the base.
"Is it her?" he asked, when Sarra approached.
"I'm not Redna," she said. "But I'll do."
He handed her a folded page. Sealed in wax with a ridged, thorn-like impression—no crest, no signature. Inside were three lines:
Sleepers do not dream; they remember.
The river will carry no names.
But one watches from behind the mountain of eyes.
Sarra read it twice, then held it to the flame of her small lantern. The parchment curled and blackened in seconds.
"Did Roose send this?" she asked.
The man shook his head. "No. It was carried by a wine trader. Southern accent. Dressed like a Lannisport pilgrim."
"And?"
"Met someone in the woods. A girl with dark hair. Quiet, fast. Eyes different colors, maybe. I only saw her from a distance."
Sarra felt her pulse quicken. Redna had warned of this—agents who didn't use names, who didn't show up on maps, whose orders came from coded lines buried in merchant invoices or songs.
She turned to go. "If you see her again, forget her face. You won't like what remembering does."
POV: Arthur Snow – Later that night, Flint Guard Post
Arthur read the decrypted fragments under the firelight. Redna had underlined two symbols: one used in Essosi trade ledgers; the other in Faith-led merchant logs. They didn't belong together. Not unless someone meant them to.
He leaned back, thinking aloud to Sarra, who now stood beside the hearth.
"The Boltons aren't pledging allegiance," he said. "They're testing the wind. Sending out bait to see who bites."
"Who's biting?" Sarra asked.
Arthur tapped the map again. "Not just Oldtown. Not just the Iron Throne. Someone else is watching. A group that doesn't wear colors. Doesn't sign their names."
She hesitated. "You mean... like you?"
Arthur smiled faintly. "No. I trained in silence. But I never trained to erase the world around me."
He folded the map, slid the letter into the hidden compartment of his cloak, and moved to the window.
"I want patrols changed," he said. "Start using curved intervals. Shift them every four nights. Make sure no one rides the same path twice in a row. Rotate your scouts. Only Redna knows the pattern."
Sarra raised a brow. "You're expecting someone?"
"No," Arthur said. "But someone's expecting me."
POV: Redna – Distant tavern near White Knife tributary
Redna sat quietly in the corner, her fingers tracing the rim of her ale cup. The tavern was filled with quiet men—traders, mercenaries, those who pretended to be neither. She had already marked four false names, two coin purses that were too full, and a man near the hearth who hadn't drunk once in two hours.
Her courier slipped her a folded note under a tray.
She read it slowly:
The Bastard's eyes are not closed. Shift the winds to House Dustin next. The fish rot from the head.
She folded it and burned it immediately.
Redna leaned back, eyes narrowing. "So that's the next play," she murmured.
She rose and left through the kitchen, her shadow vanishing into the back alleys.