"Summon the lords? Muster an army?"
Greatjon Umber was the first to speak. He pointed at Edmure and mocked him without mercy.
"And what will you muster them with, Duke Tully? The fifteen thousand lives you just threw away outside Stone Hedge?"
Edmure's face flushed scarlet. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Maege Mormont's voice was icy. "Lord Edmure, to scrape together those fifteen thousand men, you must have already wrung every last soldier from the Riverlands lords you could bully or coax onto the battlefield. Those left were either too far away to arrive in time, or..."
She paused deliberately, her sharp gaze sweeping across Edmure's face. "Or, like Lord Frey at the Twins, they simply couldn't be bothered to answer your summons."
"Ha!"
A lord from the Streamlands could not help sneering. "Exactly. Our esteemed 'Late Lord Frey' is sitting comfortably in the Twins right now, aiming his crossbows at our northern backs and holding us by the throat, keeping us from our homes! Is this the authority you command as the Riverlands' highest liege lord?"
"That's right!"
Someone immediately chimed in, his voice laden with long-festering resentment.
"Lord Edmure, you can't even control your own vassal. You let him block the Green Fork like some highway robber, and now you have the gall to talk to us about summoning the lords?"
"Get Walder Frey to open his gates and let us cross the river, then bring those few thousand soldiers of his here to back you up. If you can manage that, I'll be the first to look at you in a new light."
The command tent erupted into a din of accusations, mockery, and curses.
Their words were sharp and vicious, tearing open the raw wound of his recent defeat and rubbing salt