The North, along the coast of Seal Bay.
A biting wind swept in from the gray Narrow Sea, lashing the bare, rocky coast and the sparse, stunted conifers.
Jorah Mormont rode a pony, his face taut as he scanned his surroundings warily.
A hundred riders followed behind him.
They wore coats of plates beneath thick cloaks of assorted colors to ward off the cold. Only the snorting of horses and the faint scrape of armor broke the desolate silence.
Not long before, Jorah, who had remained on Skagos, had received a letter from Conqueror's Holdfast.
Liu Qian had ordered him to land in the North and win over its lords.
Upon receiving the order, Jorah had immediately begun pondering Liu Qian's intentions.
He sneered inwardly.
As he saw it, the Easterner surely intended to use House Mormont's name to make the northern lords submit to him.
Especially at a time like this.
The North's western coast groaned beneath the iron hooves of the Iron Islands, and castles such as Deepwood Motte had fallen.
Robb Stark, the King in the North, had been stabbed by his most trusted vassals at the Red Wedding, leaving only women of House Stark's bloodline.
Yet before his death, Robb had actually promised Eddard's daughter Sansa to that Easterner.
This undoubtedly gave the Easterner the most direct claim to Winterfell.
Now the flayed men's dreadful banner flew over Winterfell, and Roose Bolton had usurped the position of Warden of the North.
Yet Jorah was supposed to take a mere hundred men and win over those nobles whose hands were still stained with the Young Wolf's blood?
This was nothing short of an open challenge to Bolton's authority, and a vicious slap in those traitors' faces.
How would they regard him?
As the Easterner's groveling lapdog?
As