GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 397 - The Legitimacy of the King in the North

The next few days, Winterfell was louder than it had ever been.

Column after column came down the Kingsroad, braving wind and snow, each one flying the banners of a great northern house.

Karstark. Umber. Manderly.

Inside the great hall of Winterfell, the hearth fires burned hot. Every lord of the North was packed into that room, and they all had their eyes fixed on the young man seated in the high chair at the head of the hall. There was reverence in those looks. But more than reverence, there was hunger. The kind that comes from seeing, for the first time in a long while, something that looks like hope.

Ned Stark had sent his decision out by raven. Not a single lord had written back to object.

"Duke Stark's decision is the North's decision."

Wyman Manderly, the fat Lord of White Harbor, was the first to his feet. His eyes were nearly buried in the folds of his face, but what showed through gleamed with a merchant's sharp intelligence.

"Besides which, the power Lord Lann has already demonstrated is more than enough to convince us he can lead us through this winter."

The other lords didn't wait to agree.

"He's right!" The Greatjon's voice filled the hall like a war drum. "I've never seen roads go up that fast in my life, and dead men built them! Dead men!" He shook his head with something between disbelief and delight. "Rather than put my faith in gods I can't see, I'll trust what's right in front of my eyes."

"The North needs a true strongman!"

These were practical men. Blunt men. Faced with the Long Night, they didn't care about bloodlines or traditions. They cared about one thing: who could keep them alive.

Lynn had already shown them the answer.

He looked out over the hall, at the rough faces and the sharp ones, the scarred veterans and the calculating merchants. None of this surprised him.

He stood. The hall went quiet immediately.

"Good." He let the word settle. "Since there are no objections, from today forward, the North speaks with one voice."

His gaze moved across the room, person by person.

"Winter is here. But we are not going to do what our fathers did — barricade ourselves inside our castles and shiver and pray for spring."

"We take the fight to it."

"I intend to build two large port cities on the eastern coast, near the mouth of the White Knife."

Wyman Manderly's eyes went wide.

"These two cities will be the North's window to the rest of the world. I'll see to it that merchant ships from Essos come to our docks with grain, cloth, spices — steadily, consistently. And our timber, our ore, our furs will go back out through those same ports to every corner of the known world."

He paused.

"I give you my word: this winter, no man or woman of the North will go hungry or freeze to death."

The conviction in his voice left no room for doubt.

"As for labor." He let that sit for a moment. "The wights you saw building the road? That was a fraction of my army. A small fraction."

He looked around the hall.

"Behind them, there are five hundred thousand more."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Then it shattered.

It was as if someone had swung a sledgehammer into every skull in the room. Lords who had been nodding along sat bolt upright. Cups froze halfway to mouths. Men stared at each other and then back at Lynn.

Five hundred thousand. In addition to the ones already at the front.

Gods above.

Every man in the North who could lift a sword, every last one of them, didn't come close to a fraction of that number.

The way they looked at Lynn changed in that moment. Not reverence anymore. Something else. The way you look at something that has no right to exist among ordinary men.

"Of course," Lynn said, and the shift in his tone pulled the room back to him. He stepped down from the dais and walked to the center of the hall. "Before I lead you against the Long Night, there's one small thing we need to settle first."

He turned toward the entrance.

"Bring in our honored king."

Ned acknowledging him as King in the North was a start. But he needed something more than that. He needed it to be real. He needed it to be official.

As it happened, that official recognition was already inside Winterfell.

The doors opened to shouting and cursing. Two massive Umber guardsmen dragged Joffrey Baratheon into the hall like a man hauling a reluctant animal. Joffrey's boots barely touched the floor.

"Let go of me! You northern savages! You filth!"

He was thrashing with everything he had, screaming himself hoarse.

"I am the king! Do you understand what you're doing?! I'll have your heads! Every last one of you, I'll have you all—"

Then Lynn looked at him.

Joffrey's body locked up mid-sentence. Every muscle went rigid. The struggling stopped, the cursing stopped, all of it stopped at once. His face was still twisted in fury, his eyes wet with tears he hadn't had time to blink away. But his body was no longer his own.

Under Lynn's quiet, unhurried gaze, Joffrey straightened. Spine tall, chin up. Perfect posture.

He cleared his throat. And then, in a voice so solemn and resonant that he clearly hated the sound of it coming out of his own mouth, he began.

"I, Joffrey, of Houses Baratheon and Lannister, rightful heir, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm..."

He was crying. Silently, steadily. But his voice hit every note with flawless courtly precision, the cadence of someone who had drilled that ridiculous title until he could recite it in his sleep. Which was the only reason it was coming out now , perfectly, humiliatingly correct, word by word.

The hall didn't hold its laughter for long.

It started with a few stifled snorts and broke open from there. Northern lords who had spent their lives glowering at southerners were clutching each other's shoulders, howling. Even Ned, who hadn't cracked a real smile in longer than he could remember, felt the corner of his mouth pull.

Tyrion had retreated to a corner with his wine. He watched his nephew's tearful, puppet-like performance and laughed so hard he nearly sloshed the cup across his sleeve.

Cersei stood in the shadows at the edge of the crowd, watching her son. Her expression didn't change. She had run out of things to feel about Joffrey.

He kept going.

His body carried him forward, step by step, until he stood directly in front of Lynn. Then, with the whole hall watching in stunned silence, he sank to one knee.

"...Hereby, on behalf of the Iron Throne, I formally recognize Lord Lann as the independent King in the North."

His voice shook with the effort of holding back sobs.

"The North will forever belong to the northmen."

"May the glory of the Winter King shine upon this ancient land."

The last word left his mouth and he collapsed. Whatever had been holding him upright let go all at once, and he crumpled to the floor like a cloth doll, crying openly.

The hall exploded.

Cheering, whistling, cups hammering against tables. The lords of the North raised their drinks high, and it meant two things at once: acclaim for their new king, and pure savage mockery for the boy weeping on the stones at his feet.

Lynn looked down at Joffrey without expression.

Then he turned, and raised the great ice blade above his head.

"The King in the North!"

"The King in the North!!"

The sound that came back shook the rafters. It rolled through the hall and out into the winter air, loud enough, it seemed, to reach the Wall itself.

➤ Next: The Man from the Citadel