Nerd In the North 4-4

Blood soaked into the collar of Greg’s fine blue tunic as the soldier seized his arm like it was a lifeline and he’d already let go once. The guy couldn’t have been more than sixteen, maybe seventeen if you counted the sheer volume of fear trying to punch through the grime on his face. Even after nearly a full year in Westeros, he still hadn’t learned how to tell how old people were, at least not perfectly.

At the very least, the guy’s beard was patchy, mud streaked over his eyes like war paint applied by panic. The panic made sense, though, considering the guy’s belly was open. That wasn’t him trying to be poetic or anything.

No, it was literally open. Like open—just… open. Glistening, twitching, pink-gray rope covered in coppery red sliding out like a party trick no one asked for.

The smell filled the space, rank and dense, like cafeteria chili left on a radiator. Blood and shit and that weird hot-metal tang that always meant someone was dying way too close.

“Please—please, m’lord,” the other kid rasped. His grip dug deeper, fingernails snapping under pressure. “Bright Lord—don’t let me—please—”

Greg didn’t pull away or wince, the blond simply kneeling where he sat, unbothered and just waiting for this all to be over. Four months of battlefield trauma and organ confetti had overwritten the part of his brain that used to gag at this stuff. The spaghetti folder. Right next to “puking on the tilt-a-whirl” and “Tommy Higgins’ hot dog incident” in the cafeteria in seventh grade.

“You’re not dying,” Greg said, low and even, like he was giving a game walkthrough to someone in a laggy Parahumans Online call. “You’re just being dramatic. Hold still.”

The tent smelled like something had died in it and then tried to claw back out. Bodies packed into rows across piles of chopped wood covered in rough blankets to use as makeshift beds. Some were groaning, some twitching, some way too still. The women moving between them weren’t nurses, not really—just Frostfall girls in aprons with sleeves rolled to their shoulders and eyes like they’d been awake since the First Men.

“Just another Tuesday,” Greg muttered, then immediately frowned. Technically, he had no fucking clue what day it was here. Did Westeros even have Tuesdays? For all he knew, they called it Goatfucker’s Day or something equally medieval. Gently prying the man’s fingers from his arm, Greg centered himself—not with some mystical bullshit meditation but with the same mental gear-shift he used to use for raid bosses in World of Warcraft. He laid both hands on the soldier’s stomach, one on either side of the wound.

Greg exhaled and braced, putting two hands on the guy’s gut. One on either side. Pressure through his palms like plunging them into a heartbeat. “This’ll feel weird. Good-weird. Tingly.”

The glow started slow—gold with a flicker of geometry at the edges, the kind of magic that looked way too clean for how gross everything was. Greg’s spine went taut. The drain kicked in like someone had popped the cork on his soul. The wound hissed. Intestines retracted like guilty noodles. Muscle knit. Skin rethreaded. Blood stopped being an exit strategy.

The soldier’s mouth parted. “How—”

“Magic,” Greg muttered. “Or miracles. Or… just don’t question it.”

The hole sealed shut with just a red mark left behind. Greg leaned back on his haunches, wiping his forehead. He felt like he’d just gone three nights without sleep.

“Old Gods bless you, m’lord,” the kid breathed.

“Sure,” Greg muttered, already scanning for the next body.

This was it now, the job. This was his life now and it would be like this until this war was fucking over. Heal, reassure, repeat. Not on the front line. Not even behind it. Somewhere weirdly central, like a stage prop, more front-adjacent than anything else. Vanguard my ass, Greg groused. Midline morale support. 

Robb said it was his idea, but Greg knew better.

Ash and Guts stayed near him usually, watching him heal, but even they looked bored. Right now, they were probably just roaming the place.

Greg moved to the next soldier—a split leg, maybe fixable depending on how much mana he poured into it—and tried not to think about how little his fire had been used lately. How Ash hadn’t fought in weeks. How he’d need both hands and feet to count how many days it had been since Guts had drawn his sword.

Robb needed him visible but quiet. Spectacular but safe. A symbol. Not a player.

Greg wiped his hands and moved again, looking at the next person he was gonna have to put back together, more guts to shove in place.

What made the whole thing worse was that Greg kinda got it. He might not have really liked strategy games all that much, but he played more than a few hours of Zealot Lords. After losing his kingdom because his son was gay and refused to have an heir, he gave up, yeah, but he learned at least one thing; medieval politics were a bitch. 

And Westeros was no different. 

Four months of being on the road had let him figure out that half the major Northern lords were only in this because Robb was Ned Stark’s kid. The other half were just sniffing around for a better deal.

On another note, Jesus Christ, people loved this Ned Stark guy. They talked about him like he was Jesus or something—all honor and integrity and blah blah blah. 

When it came to him, he didn’t have a house name anyone respected. Veders had legacy, sure, but they were old and dead, and only had stories to them. Greg didn’t have a long storied history past his actual name. 

Just a magic sword and a dragon-bear.

And all of that made him… yeah, useful, but definitely not trusted. Nowhere near trusted, he thought with a frown, flicking blood off his hand before it could dry. Far from fucking tr-

A scream tore that thought in half before it could finish. Then another. Then another.

Greg’s head snapped up, instincts lurching before thought caught up. He’d been in Westeros long enough to understand the sounds of people who were being killed. His hand went to his belt as he charged out—sword not drawn, not yet. 

Thankfully, he didn’t pull his weapon yet as a boy slammed into him.

The kid was twelve, maybe. Dirty face, short as hell, and with brown hair in a chopped-looking bowl cut that looked hacked with knives. Not in armor or with a weapon, so the kid was probably one of the camp followers, dark eyes wide like someone had screamed into them.

“They’ve broken through, my lord!” he gasped. “Lannisters broke the line!”

Greg bolted, the bloody ground beneath him nearly dragging his steps underfoot, with even more half-dried blood still baked into the air. He didn’t blink until he saw it—the whole front line broken open like someone had taken a crowbar to the Northern flank.

A gap half a mile wide in the front lines had Lannister red flooding through, glinting and stomping and screaming. The front camp was burning, black smoke rising in twisting columns. The chaos had soldiers running without formation, without weapons, without a plan.

Greg spun around and took in everything around him, the village they had camped near already under attack, smallfolk running for their lives and already pouring up the dirt track behind them, cradling toddlers, dragging some livestock, some carrying so much they couldn’t move right. No way they’d make it out clean. There was no time to pull anything complicated, no time to find Robb either.

Which also meant no time to think.

“Cloud!” Greg’s voice cracked sideways, sharp enough to cut through the screams. “To me!”

The horse heard, Greg catching the whinny over all the noise.

He wasn’t sure where his warhorse had been other than tied to a pole somewhere but the horse came barreling out from behind a house, hooves pounding like drums, white-socked legs kicking dirt into the wind. Fourteen-and-a-half hands of rippling muscle and surprising intelligence, the warhorse had been with Greg since taking over the medieval hellhole that used to be the Dreadfort.

Greg didn’t wait, already vaulting up as the horse rushed past him. No saddle, no problem; just trust, grip, and focus as he landed harder than he meant to, his silver-white armor clanking like a dropped toolbox.

The wind slapped his face as he scanned the chaos. The numbers of men in the midline weren’t enough, it didn’t match the sudden attack. Too many wounded to move quickly. Smallfolk blocking the road back. Lannister men heading this way. We’re fucked.

Something in him shifted. Not fear. Not the freeze. The thing after. When the body’s too amped to be scared but the brain still hasn’t caught up. That MMO moment, two seconds before the boss drops into the arena and you’re still mid-heal cooldown.

“If you can walk, you help someone who can’t!” His voice didn’t shout—it slammed. A sound backed by too much magic, too much force, too much something.

And weirdly, they moved. Soldiers stopped running. Looked back. Found the shape of a command in the wreckage of their panic.

Greg kicked Cloud forward.

“You, ten there! Carts! Pack the wounded fast!” He pointed at a group of soldiers who looked marginally less terrified than the rest. “Get the wounded into carts! You fuckers!—” he gestured at another group “—form a line here, pikes front! We’re covering the retreat!”

The men hesitated., but not for long.

Greg pulled Cloud around again, scanning—

There. Black wings and adolescent bear-sized bulk balanced like a gargoyle on what was left of the roof, hissed with agitation, Ash. The draco-bear’s tail lashed, eyes burning like twin embers behind smoke.

“Ash! Keep ‘em scared, but don’t get close.”

The dragon-bear blinked, tilting his head at the words. Then he leapt.

The roar peeled through the sky like war drums and static. Wings beat, bodies ducked, and Ash vanished up into the air.

Greg tracked cavalry movement—about ten minutes out at least, he could tell that much. The infantry was slower and Greg doubted that backup was coming anytime soon. Where they were was too far from Robb’s command tent. That’s what happened when your boss played 3D politics instead of tower defense.

A blur caught his eye and he glanced back. Dacey Mormont, one of Robb’s close people, rarely this far back in the midline, flanked by four men who looked like they’d already died once today. 

She glanced at Greg, eyes sharp, then turned back to her line.

He felt the decision slide into place as he sat up on Cloud’s back.

“This is where we hold!” His voice rolled across the camp like a boulder. “Until the wounded are gone, we stay put! Anyone runs before I say—” he pointed at himself, eyes flashing—”you answer to me. And trust me. I’m fucking scarier!”

Someone barked a curse. And then—momentum.

The line congealed. Not perfect, but enough. They were listening.

Greg turned to the hill.

“That ridge,” he muttered, eyes locking on the natural choke just a quarter-mile off. It was two hills, oddly steep, with a narrow road in between them, not much more than a beaten worn-down path but still a road.

More than that, it was a kill zone.

“Cloud—go.”

They shot forward. His warhorse didn’t buck as he charged forward, moving fast and galloping hard.

In no time at all, Cloud hit the hill first and Greg knew it was time to move. Jumping off Cloud, he slid across the ground, legs catching hard.

A few seconds later, several soldiers caught up, the men wheezing hard.

Greg didn’t wait. “Line here! Pikes front, archers rear! We hold until the wounded are clear, then fall back in stages!”

The wind hit Greg’s face like a slap full of iron filings and wet rot, dragging the last of the warmth from his breath as he stepped past the line. Not away from it.

No, through it. Forward, toward the place the thunder was coming from. His boots sank half an inch into blood-muddied turf, and the world tilted slightly sideways, like the sky couldn’t decide if it was battle or funeral weather.

He didn’t close his eyes to center himself. That was yoga bullshit. He blinked, slow, once—like a system reboot with bad RAM—and let the draw happen.

Quen… Maxima.

The syllables crawled out of his throat in the same way you tried to scream in a dream. Not real Latin. Not real anything. Just something. Instinct and stolen meaning and the kind of command voice you get from running too many boss fights on no sleep and five Red Bulls.

His hands thrust forward and the air bent and shuddered as he tried to focus and force it.

Finally, it cracked like a windshield under God’s fist. A wall — clear, six feet tall and twice as wide — slammed into existence across the pass, anchoring into dirt and hillside like it belonged there.

Gasps sounded out from behind him. One guy actually whispered a prayer, like this was a church instead of a meat grinder with better lighting. I hate this war bullshit. Greg didn’t turn, doing his best to keep the drain in his gut from showing on his face. I fuckin’ hate war. That thing would only last five minutes, tops, and that was if nobody sneezed on it.

He finally looked back. The line was mostly formed now, thirty men shaped like question marks with swords. Their faces said everything; some awe, some dread, all disbelief. Like someone had told them the rumors were real and then also that they had to hold the line with a bunch of sleep-deprived lumberjacks.

Greg wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “What?” he snapped. “Never seen a miracle before? Get your asses in position.”

They scrambled, because of course they did. He didn’t sound like a commander, but the magic did. That was the trick, you know. It always was, and it tended to work almost all the time. Sound important, or look like something scarier than the alternative. Greg had both covered.

Hoofbeats started to climb the wind behind them.

“Hold the line,” Greg muttered, eyes roaming the field. He wasn’t looking at them, not really. Just at the dirt and the blood and the everything. “Just fucking hold it.”

Ash hit ground hard and angry on a boulder just off the road, his black bulk coiled and patchy scales half-visible beneath his fur. A low growl filled the space between them and Ash’s head twitched to the right.

Greg turned and saw it; a wall of red, Lannisters strong and ready and charging forward on horseback and foot.

The first riders cleared the ridge with yells, holding steel and banners and withsurprise painted across their stupid faces. They hadn’t expected resistance. Oops.

“Archers!” Greg shouted, spinning toward the line. “Fuck up their shit!”

A couple dozen arrows—maybe less—hummed overhead. Greg almost winced at the sight of a volley so pathetic it deserved a mercy killing. Still, a few landed anyway. One rider went down and another swore loud enough for Greg to hear all the way across the field.

Small victories.

Then the charge neared, with sounds like thunder. Real horses. Real speed. Real incoming.

“Brace!” Greg’s voice cracked on the way out, sweat carving a track down his spine like someone tracing panic with a fingertip.

The impact hit like a car crash made of steel and screaming. A few horses slammed into his magic shield, the translucent wall barely noticeable. Riders bounced off or crumpled mid-saddle. One guy screamed like his organs had opinions. It wasn’t too many but it was twelve feet wide and enough to catch at least a few across the narrow choke point. Greg’s shield pulsed under each blow, and he knew it wouldn’t hold. Not much longer.

He gritted his teeth and drew his sword left-handed while the right held the line. “When it drops—hold.”

The shield blinked once—then again—and in less than a few seconds… it shattered like glass and the Lannister forcess poured through the breach.

Greg moved.

The first came straight at him, blade high, rage-face ready for a poster. Greg slipped left and drove his own sword through the guy’s chest like it was paper and he was pissed.

Next.

He spun. He slashed. A throat opened like a soda can under pressure.

His sword came up to parry a blade, his elbow drove itself into an armored face, crumpling flesh, bone and metal together. Another stab. Another scream.

Greg didn’t think. He didn’t analyze. The body remembered everything. The mind? Optional.

Besides he was used to this.

Each step flowed like choreography. Very, very pointy choreography. Each kill cost nothing—only time. Ash screamed overhead and came down slicing, claws catching eyes, necks, the soft things that turned men into memory, before flying back up before arrows and swords could hit him.

Lobb fought behind Guts and Daeric and Brennor, all three of them worth at least three men each but still undeniably in the shadow of Greg’s personal man-mountain as the guy used his big fucking sword the only way you could use a thing like that.

Still—they kept coming.

Greg heard his own people dying behind him, those he was in charge of. Northern screams, wet ones, as men fell and the line buckled.

“Fall back!” he yelled, blade deflecting a thrust with a push back so heavy it cracked the other man’s wrist on contact. “I said, fall fucking back! Second position, now!”

The survivors obeyed, most of them not his own personal men. Step by dragging step, they all moved back towards the camp. Greg stayed in the middle, spine of the collapse with his own people. Nobody passed unless they passed his sword, and if not his then Guts’, and if not Guts, the other three.

The other army tried. They didn’t try long.

The fallback point wasn’t even a position—just a tighter patch of ground near the camp with fewer ways to die. Greg raised another barrier, his hand shaking as he felt the drain from having held up what he could only consider a Level 3 shield spell.

He wasn’t sure about that classification, considering DnD was never his big thing, but he read some books. Even still, his shield was weaker this time, shakier too.

More like a suggestion. Fuck.

Blood drenched his tunic, almost none of it his. Still, it was enough to matter.

Greg glanced back. The smallfolk were still evacuating—limping, dragging, half-carried. Kids. Old men. Girls too young to look this bad. They were all getting out. That was the win condition.

But the enemy didn’t stop.

“Bright Lord!” The voice came at his side. A soldier, younger than him and wild-eyed, with blood streaked across his face like war paint. “They’re circling the village—cavalry’s breaking off!”

Greg’s head whipped around, following the pointer finger.

And there they were. A separate group of red-banner waving soldiers swinging wide, clearly going for the soft targets.

Fuck.

There wasn’t time. There wasn’t room. If he pulled from the line, they’d break. If he stayed, the column would die.

“My lord!” the soldier cried, desperation sharpening every syllable. “What are we to do?”

The Lannisters were going to kill them.

Greg wasn’t panicking—panic was something that came before the math. This was the after. The part where everything’s already halfway broken and you’re still expected to pick who dies first. Front line or back line. Fighters or civilians. The guys with weapons or the ones with toddlers in their arms.

The smallfolk or the soldiers.

And in Westeros, the answer was usually easy. Peasants didn’t get eulogies. They got buried in ditches while their betters debated supply lines.

But Greg wasn’t from here. He hadn’t bled out in a ditch yet, which technically made him one of the betters—but he hadn’t forgotten what it meant to be disposable. What it felt like when nobody picked you.

“You,” he snapped, already moving, finger jabbing toward a hard-faced sergeant who looked like he’d chewed nails for breakfast. “Hold this line as long as you can. Then fall back to the trees.”

The man blinked like Greg had grown a second head. “M’lord, we can’t hold without—”

“Then don’t,” Greg cut in, the words sharp enough to draw blood. “Run when you have to. Just stall.”

He didn’t wait for a salute. Didn’t want one. “You—” he turned to the wide-eyed kid who’d brought the news, still clutching a sword he clearly didn’t know how to use—“with me.”

Then louder. “Cloud!”

His voice cracked open the air like a whip, and the horse answered with a high-pitched whinny from somewhere to the left. Greg didn’t even turn. He just pointed right.

“Guts!”

The shout landed like a thrown hammer. Guts charged up the hill, all two-hundred-plus pounds of walking dread in a black breastplate, sword slung across his back like a threat made personal. Greg didn’t bother with strategy.

“I need you to scare them.”

Guts did nothing but grin his way, the expression wide, terrifying and manic as usual as he left the request unanswered.

Greg didn’t need words, honestly. That was enough.

His warhorse charged out from behind a makeshift barricade, hooves biting into dirt as his horse barreled towards him faster than he could at full tilt. Without looking back to see what Guts was already up to, Greg vaulted onto his back mid-stride, one hand fisting it’s mane, and the other already going for his sheathed sword.

“Ash!” he shouted, eyes flicking upward.

Greg didn’t need to think. He leaned forward and let Cloud eat ground, the warhorse responding with brutal acceleration, his muscles bunching and uncoiling beneath Greg like engine pistons made of rage.

Ash soared above him, all scales and muscle and that weird bear-shaped silhouette, wings catching air in a crackling pulse of movement.

Across the field, the column was still moving—but too slow. Smallfolk tripping over roots and each other, half of them dragging wounded. A few stopped entirely, paralyzed by the sound of hooves behind them. Not smart, not brave. Just stunned. Greg saw it all and felt something snap.

Move. Move now.

He dragged power through his veins like a ripped extension cord and flung it forward with a snarl. “AARD!”

The air folded. Space broke. The blast slammed into the lead riders with enough force to make bone sound wet. Men and horses went airborne—one rider flipped end over end and vanished beneath the rest.

Greg hit them two seconds later, Cloud crashing into the front flank like a train with personal vendettas. Greg dumped magic into him mid-impact, golden sigils wreathing the horse’s legs as he reared, kicked, and stomped.

Then the blade was in his hand. No calls, no taunts—just work.

The first sword stroke severed a rider’s torso diagonally. The next crushed a helm like a tin can.

They weren’t people right now. They were event flags. Aggro triggers. Obstacles between him and the people too slow to run.

Ash came screaming down from above. His roar fractured the charge. Not a bear’s roar. Not a dragon’s either. Something older. Something wrong. He hit the middle of the Lannister group with claws and fangs and body weight, and a half-dozen men disappeared.

“Keep moving!” Greg shouted toward the civilians, the wind yanking at his hair. “Don’t stop!”

They didn’t need convincing. The whole column jolted like a pulled marionette string, motion rippling through them again. He rode to intercept the remainders, the last five or six Lannister cavalry regrouping for a second go. Brave. Or dumb.

Greg rode into them. His sword met theirs with the sound of scraped metal and broken plans. He didn’t block cleanly. He shattered angles, cut low, tripped horses into sending soldiers flying.

More than anything, he left men screaming with nothing left to scream through.

Ash roared again, driving the rest off, all of them breaking free after realizing this charge was pointless. He let them.

His breathing was the only thing left loud. That and the magic headache gnawing at his frontal lobe.

Greg turned Cloud back toward the hill and saw what he’d expected. The first barrier was long gone. His second was barely holding. The midline was in retreat, scattered and blood-slicked, but retreating together. Not a rout. Not yet.

The main army was finally visible in the distance, banners catching wind. Too far to matter now. But close enough to keep this from becoming a total horror show.

He slumped forward in the saddle, body hollow. Magic dragged at the edges of everything. His skin felt tight, his magic not running low but running ragged from the forced pull and unintendedly large and intricate spell he had forced out twice.

Beside him, Guts stood like a monument, sword unshouldered, armor streaked with dirt and pieces of other people. No words. Just watching.

Greg didn’t realize someone was there until a tug hit his shirt.

He looked down and blinked.

His eyes hit a girl. Maybe six years old, possibly seven. Big eyes, grubby face, wrapped in too-thin cloth. What could only be her mother stood behind her—gaunt, haunted, holding herself like one wrong word might make her shatter.

The kid held something up with both hands, a cloth bundle.

Greg blinked, dismounted slower than he meant to, legs jelly-firm as they hit dirt. He crouched to the girl’s level and took the cloth bundle with hands that were sticky with drying blood.

He opened it up and raised an eyebrow. Huh. It was a rough-cut piece of bread and what looked like a pinch of white grains.

Bread and salt.

He’d been here long enough to know what it meant. They called it guest right. He called it pointless.

But it meant something to these people, to the whole of Westeros, apparently. Protection. Trust. And more than that—belief. It was what built trust from people who didn’t have enough left to risk it.

“Thank you,” he said, voice gone weird in his own ears. He broke the bread. Dipped it. Ate it.

“But I’m not your lord.” He chewed slowly. “Not really.” He wasn’t even sure what he was anymore but he knew that much. This was the Riverlands, after all. He knew enough about Westeros to know this wasn’t part of the North.

The mother stepped forward, eyes soft but steady as she bowed to him.

“You are to us, m’lord,” she said. “The bards sing of you. The Bright Lord who stands between us and the dark.”

Fucking… Greg resisted the urge to roll his blue eyes. Fucking Oren. The bard had done his bit in making up new songs to torment his existence. Hell, the guy had still been doing it even when with the war effort as a camp follower, as annoying as that was.

To make matters worse, the soldiers loved his music too. God, I hate war.

Greg didn’t say it out loud, but it squatted in his chest anyway, all tangled up with guilt and burnt crust and that weird numbness that sets in when people start thanking you like you did something holy. He finished the bread in silence, chewing like it owed him money, and let their gratitude settle on him like wet laundry straight out the wash.

He swung onto Cloud, who’d stopped pretending he wasn’t a warhorse the minute the killing started and was now moving with the soft careful steps of a funeral procession. Good horse.

The Northern army had swept in while he was eating, just in time to clean up what was left of the Lannister forces that broke through. Real punctual, these guys. He caught sight of Dacey Mormont again—sharp movements, voice like command was a first language. She nodded once in his direction, no smile, no nonsense.

“My lord.”

Greg turned, eyes dragging like his brain was still buffering, to land on a guy in Stark colors. A nervous guy, by the looks of him, clearly worried after being sent to talk to the magic freak.

“Lord Stark requests your presence in his command tent. Immediately.”

Here we go. The part where Daddy Robb tells me I wasn’t playing nice with the other commanders. He really didn’t hate Robb. He liked the guy, really. Greg just didn’t have it in him to pretend he liked being told what to do, and politics was all about that, apparently.

Greg nodded without saying a word. The young lord was moving before the messenger could add anything else, already nudging Cloud toward the further Northern camp a mile away and let the horse do the thinking.

The weird stares started before he even hit the boundaries of Robb’s vanguard camp. Soldiers, footmen, knights. A soup of faces and expressions; some awe, some fear, some whatever else. The nobles were the worst—those guys looked at him like he’d pissed in their wine and they were still trying to guess the vintage.

The command tent was obvious, far bigger than the rest. If that wasn’t obvious enough, the flapping Stark direwolf banner above it made it clear where Robb was holed up.

Outside, lords clustered in tight murmurs. They shut up when Greg rolled up, like kids caught talking shit about the new kid who just walked in. He recognized a couple—Lady Barbrey Dustin, Lord Ryswell—both with faces like someone farted and they were blaming him.

“The sorcerer arrives,” Lady Dustin said with a sneer, the bitch of a woman not even pretending to whisper. “Perhaps he’ll conjure us a victory next time, instead of just a retreat.”

Greg didn’t look at her. He ust dismounted, handed Cloud’s reins off, and walked straight into the tent, with no announcement.

Inside, the lighting was all wrong. Torchlight bounced off maps and armor and Robb Stark’s face like it wasn’t sure what tone to go with. Grey Wind sprawled at his feet like a quiet threat with teeth. Robb looked up, face carved out of duty and sleep deprivation.

“Lord Veder,” he said, formal as a sermon. His voice was older than his face. “I’m told you took command during the retreat.”

Greg didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Someone had to. Your line broke. People were dying.”

Robb’s jaw flexed like it wanted to talk on its own. He nodded once. “You saved many lives today. Both soldiers and smallfolk.”

Greg waited. Knew that wasn’t the end of the sentence.

“But,” he prompted.

“But you disobeyed the chain of command.” Robb’s tone was even and lordly, all practiced and controlled in the way Greg hadn’t managed to pull off yet. He doubted he ever would honestly. “You abandoned your assigned position without orders.”

And there it was. The part where we pretend this is about discipline and not ego.

“My assigned position was orna… or… it’s bullshit,,” Greg snapped, the exhaustion cracking into something sharper. “Middle of the damn line like I was a banner to wave at the enemy. If I’d stayed there, half the village would be dead.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“Whose was it, then?” Greg nearly stepped forward, fists clenched tight and teeth gritted even tighter. “Yours? Were you even there when the screaming started? Because I didn’t see you.”

Grey Wind growled, low and lethal. Robb’s hand dropped to the direwolf’s neck, a calming hand. Not harsh around the neck to hold him back.

“I understand you’re tired,” Robb said slowly, like he was defusing something. “But you will not disrespect your liege lord, Lord Veder.”

Greg clicked his tongue, but nodded slowly. He accepted Robb’s authority and he wasn’t going to go back on his word now.

Robb let out another low breath as Grey Wind eased up, the five foot tall wolf sitting back down. “No, you know this cannot happen again. My lords are… concerned. About your influence. Your power.”

Greg laughed, short and bitter. “Your lords. You mean the ones who wanted to leave those smallfolk to die?”

“They’re the backbone of this army,” Robb shot back, steel finally bleeding through the calm. “Without them, we don’t march. We don’t fight. We don’t save my father.”

Greg shook his head. A second later, he dragged a hand through a head of matted blond hair, desperately wishing for a real shower as his fingers caught on dried blood and ash. “I did what was right. What I knew was right. If that threatens your war council, maybe you need a better council.”

“It’s not that simple, and you know it, my lord.” Robb’s voice dropped, quieter now. “I’m grateful. Truly. But the talk this started—it isn’t helpful. It’s said House Veder has always been…”

He trailed off.

Greg’s eyes narrowed. “Been what?”

Robb hesitated, clearly unsure at the words he was saying. “Weak-willed. Poor in military matters.” He said it like the words tasted bad.

Greg stared. House Veder. The bullshit noble lie that somehow matched both his names. The cosmic joke that let him pretend he belonged here. A title made of paperwork and plot armor.

“Yeah? Well, they’re not me. I’m not whatever failed crusader your lords remember. I’m me,” Greg jabbed his chest with one thumb, the armor under his tunic ringing loudly. “And I’m not gonna let people die just so a bunch of names on banners can feel like they’re still important.”

Robb studied him with almost no expression on his face, or rebuttal on his lips as the silence stretched longer than it should have. “Just… try to work within the requests of the lords,” he said finally, voice low. “Please. For both our sakes.”

Greg wanted to throw another punch—verbal or otherwise—but he was crashing hard now. The magic hangover was setting in, and he wasn’t sure what to say. Hell, even his thoughts had edges. Even standing upright felt like a decision he had to make consciously.

“Fine,” he muttered, and turned.

He was halfway through the tent flap before he paused. He didn’t turn back but he did open his mouth anyway.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “from the way people talk about him, I think your father would’ve saved the smallfolk too.”