The King of Winters

Chapter 66

All along the Misty Wood surrounding the northern Stormlands and for leagues around the Wendwater rose great pillars of evergreen tree trunks covered in green moss, standing strong and unmovable from the ancient days of the Children of the Forest and their clash with Durran Godsgrief. Holdfasts had grown up about the forest. A few had flowered into castles where men still ruled as they had for thousands of years.

Conflicts between the First Men and the children arose as the First Men made their settlements in the forest. The children tolerated the buildings of First Men and villages along the forest's streams, but conflict broke out over the First Men's use of timber.

Durran Godsgrief of Storm's End claimed the forest for the First Men, leading to generations of warfare between House Durrandon and the children. The woods witch known as the Green Queen held the forest for almost a generation during the reign of King Durwald I Durrandon which was later brought back under the rule of Storm's End.

Here in the rainwood the trees ruled, it is said by the people of Stormlands, and Argella had only to take one look around her to see the truth of it. The castles oft seem as if they have grown from the earth instead of being built. And the knights and lords of the rainwood have roots as deep as the trees that shelter them, and have oft proved themselves steadfast in battle, strong and stubborn and immovable.

They had come across dozens of holdfasts and villages on their way north. The banners flapping from
the all of the towns' stout wooden walls still displayed the crowned
stag of House Baratheon, which showed no opposition for their huge host as they passed through the villages and towns. Ella pitied them. Should the rebellion her soon-to-be husband started be put down, it would go ill for them just for the single reason of siding with her family. Maester Cresson had taught her enough to know that, "The dragon does not know how to forgive or forget." That was another lesson that the old maester had taken pains to teach her as she wouldn't learn her lessons with earnest. Riding alone in the middle of the forest, Argella found that she missed the old man. The constant presence of Maester Cressen in her life made the old maester as the grandfather she lacked. He might have told her more about the Misty Wood if he were with her here.

The army had no trouble moving forward each day, though the autumn gales and rains were delaying their progress somewhat a little. The going was much slower here than it had been near Storm's End.

Instead of proper roads, they rode down crookback slashes
that snaked this way and that, through clefts in huge moss covered rocks and down deep ravines choked with blackberry brambles. Sometimes the track petered out entirely, sinking
into bogs or vanishing amongst the ferns, leaving her father and his army to find another way amongst the silent trees. The rain still fell, soft and steady. The sound of moisture
dripping off the leaves was all around them, and every mile or so the music of another little waterfall would call to them.

Near Storm's End they had often travelled after dark, when the moonlight turned the nearby blue sea to silver, but the rainwood was too full of bogs, ravines, and sinkholes, and black as pitch beneath the trees,
where the moon was just a memory.

Argella would have favored the journey north by ships, just as they had made for Riverrun last year for Gendry's marriage to Alyssa Arryn. The thought of her goodsister brought a smile to her face. Gendry bid farewell to his young wife twice. Once in the Sept before the Warrior, in sight of gods and men. The second time beneath the portcullis, where Lady Alyssa sent him forth with a long embrace and a longer kiss. It gave her enough reason to mock him, her lovesick brother.

The journey north by ship would've been quicker... and deadlier. She knew that Shipbreaker Bay can be perilous even on a fair summer's day. And during this time of the year with all the storms and waves it would be twice as deadly. The safer way to the Riverlands is by overland.