Wendel Manderly sat astride his horse, a chill wind sweeping across his young yet already resolute face.
Behind him, a column of two thousand five hundred men advanced along the River Road toward Harrenhal in a grand procession.
At least, that was how it looked.
To create the illusion of a main army, the column put everything it could display out in plain sight.
A banner flew for every ten soldiers, the heraldry of the noble houses of the North fluttering in a jumble in the wind: the direwolf, the Iron Fist, the Moose, the Flayed Man, the Mermaid, the Giant Bear...
There were even several Twin Towers Banners of House Frey.
At the rear, a detachment had been assigned to drag bundles of branches along the dry road, raising billowing clouds of dust that made it seem, from a distance, as though a vast army was on the march.
Wendel knew this spectacle would not fool a skilled scout for long, but if it could draw attention from Harrenhal, even a moment longer would buy time for the other four armies.
Apart from the five hundred elite infantry of House Stark that Robb had assigned him, the remaining two thousand men under his command were all "reinforcements" sent by House Frey.
Their equipment was a motley assortment, their morale was low, and they had no loyalty to House Stark to speak of.
Naturally, the true purpose of the operation had been kept from them, but with such a conspicuous march straight toward the enemy's lair, even the dullest among them had smelled danger.
Unease spread through the column like a plague. Men whispered to one another and faltered in their steps. Without the Stark veterans keeping them in line, trouble would probably have broken out already.
In fact, according