THE KING’S PRIZE

Stannis’s host leaves Deepwood Motte at dawn, a long column of southron knights, northern clans, and a burdened baggage train. Asha Greyjoy, chained in a wayn and guarded by Alysane “She-Bear” Mormont, reflects on her submission at Deepwood and on Stannis’s cold resolve. Justin Massey, kind to Asha and clearly eyeing her value, brings news and provisions as officers debate the prudence of marching on Winterfell.

Stannis overrules doubts and vows to free Winterfell or die trying. Early days go well, but snow soon begins and worsens into an unrelenting storm. Northern clans adapt with garrons and bear-paws, outpacing the southrons whose destriers fail and whose wagons lag. Accidents multiply; Harwood Fell falls through ice and later dies. Murmurs rise among queen’s men for a sacrifice to R’hllor to end the storm, but Stannis forbids burnings.

As the blizzard intensifies, tents collapse, fires sputter, and rations dwindle. Men quarrel and die; horses are butchered for meat. The cold count each night grows grim, with the baggage train suffering worst. Despite pleas to halt, Stannis drives the army onward, even as progress shrinks to a mile a day and food vanishes.

Asha loses her wayn when a draft horse dies; Massey frees her ankle fetters and forces her to march on her injured leg. After weeks, vegetables, then grain and fodder are gone; men subsist on frozen horseflesh. Tensions flare between southron lords and northern clans, with Big Bucket Wull embracing blood and battle over slow death in snow, while Lord Peasebury denounces the march as folly.

Scouts find a small, abandoned crofters’ village between two lakes. Richard Horpe halts the host to fish the ice, and Stannis insists on marching at first light. Morning brings only deeper whiteout: no horns, no movement, the world reduced to snow and silence. Stannis’s army stands snowbound, starving, and stalled short of Winterfell, while Roose Bolton waits behind his walls.