The war tent smelled like wet wool, stale ale, and a whole lot of angry men.
Ned sat at the head of the map table, watching his bannermen go at it. It was basically a pack of wolves fighting over a carcass, except the carcass was a bridge they didn't even have yet.
"We storm the gates!" the Greatjon roared, slamming a fist on the table so hard the map markers jumped. "We've got twenty thousand men! Frey has what? Four thousand? We smash through the Twins and leave the old weasel in the rubble!"
"And lose three thousand men taking a fortified crossing," Roose Bolton said softly. His voice cut through the noise like a razor through silk. "Walder Frey will stay behind his walls. He'll bleed us dry on the causeway. By the time we cross, the Royalist army will be at the Trident."
"So we pay the toll?" Rickard Karstark spat. "I'm not bowing to that Frey. Why should he profit?"
"He holds the bridge," Galbart Glover pointed out. "It's the only way across for miles. Unless you want to march south to the Ruby Ford and meet Rhaegar on his own terms, we need Frey."
Ned listened, keeping his face totally calm. Inside, though? His mind was racing.
He stood up. The arguing stopped instantly. The heavy pressure of his presence—that subtle Force aura he'd been cultivating—washed over the tent.
"Walder Frey thinks he holds the keys to the South," Ned said quietly. "He thinks we're desperate."
He looked at the map. The Green Fork cut through the land like a scar.
"I'm not spending Northern blood on Frey's walls," Ned stated. "And I'm not making deals with him."
"Then what do we do, my Lord?" Glover asked. "Swim?"
Ned smirked. It was a sharp, dangerous look that made even Roose Bolton blink.
"Meet me back here in two hours," Ned ordered. "Keep the men ready to move. We aren't storming the Twins. We're going to make them irrelevant."
Ned rode upstream with a guard of fifty men—Jory Cassel, the Greatjon (who refused to be left behind), and some sharp-eyed hunters.
They followed the riverbank. The Green Fork was swollen with rain, the current fast and angry. It looked impassable.
Perfect, Ned thought.
He closed his eyes for a second, extending his senses just enough to check the ground, keeping it subtle so no one noticed.
Terrain Analysis.
He felt the earth beneath the horse's hooves. He reached out into the water.
Two miles upstream, he found it.
The river narrowed here between high clay banks. Beneath the rushing water, the bed wasn't mud. It was stone gravel, with hard sand underneath. Solid. Anchorable. Just like the Rhine.
Ned hopped off his horse and walked to the edge.
"My Lord?" the Greatjon asked, looking at the water skeptically. "It's deep. And fast."
"We aren't swimming, Jon," Ned said, staring at the water with the intense focus of an engineer.
In his mind, he saw the piles—massive timber trunks—driven into that gravel and sand at an angle against the current. He saw the crossbeams, the trestles. He saw Julius Caesar's greatest "watch this" moment, reimagined for Westeros.
"We build," Ned said.
"Build what?" Jory asked.
"A bridge," Ned replied. "Our own bridge. We bypass Frey entirely."
The Greatjon laughed, confused. "A bridge? Ned, that takes months!"
"Not stone," Ned corrected. "Wood. We have a forest of Reeds at our backs. We have thousands of men. And I have a plan."
He crouched down in the mud, pulling a dagger from his belt. The soldiers gathered around as Ned began to carve lines into the wet earth.
"We don't use nails," Ned explained, sketching a complex joint. "Iron rusts in the water. Wood swells."
He looked up at the confused carpenters he had summoned. "Mortise and tenon. The crossbeams lock into the piles like a puzzle. The weight of the bridge itself tightens the joint."
One of the master carpenters frowned. "My Lord, to cut joints that precise... it would take a master craftsman days."
Ned stood up. He walked over to a fallen pine log. He grabbed a saw.
His hands moved with a blur of speed and precision that shouldn't have been possible for a high lord. In under a minute, he had cut a perfect, seamless tenon joint. He tossed the saw to the stunned carpenter.
"It takes minutes," Ned said evenly. "If you know what you're doing. Now, measure the width. I want twenty pile drivers built by sunset."
Back in the war tent, the reaction was... mixed.
When Ned laid out the charcoal sketch—angled struts, trestles, piles driven into the riverbed—the lords stared at it like he was speaking Valyrian.
"A wooden bridge?" Lord Cerwyn frowned. "In this current?"
"Driven deep into the gravel and sand," Ned explained, pointing to the diagram. "Braced against the flow. See these upstream piles? They break the water's force before it hits the main supports."
"It's... clever," Helman Tallhart admitted. "But driving piles takes time."
"We work in shifts," Ned said. "Day and night. Torches along the banks. Assembly lines."
He looked around the table.
"Give me four days. If it's not standing in four days, we storm the Twins. Do I have your accord?"
The Greatjon looked at the drawing, then at Ned. He grinned. "Four days to make the Frey Lord look like a fool? Aye! I'm in!"
"Karhold stands with you," Rickard nodded.
One by one, the lords agreed. It was crazy, but it was Stark crazy.
The next few days were a blur of sawdust, sweat, and noise.
Ned turned the riverbank into a factory. He designed simple pile drivers—heavy logs suspended from tripods. Gravity did the work.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound echoed across the valley day and night.
But it wasn't just the common soldiers working. The spirit of the endeavor had caught fire.
At one of the pile drivers, a team of horses was struggling to hoist the massive oak log for the next strike. The mud was slick, and the beasts were sliding.
"Out of the way!" a booming voice roared.
The Greatjon stripped off his mail and his tunic, standing bare-chested in the freezing rain, steam rising from his massive shoulders. "Heave, you runts!"
He grabbed the thick hemp rope. Ned, seeing the struggle, stepped in beside him. He grabbed the rope too.
"Together!" Ned shouted.
Ned pulled. The Greatjon pulled. The log, which had stalled the horses, flew up the track as if it weighed nothing.
The Greatjon looked at the log, then at Ned, a wide grin splitting his bearded face. "By the Old Gods, Stark! You've got the strength of a giant in you!"
"Just good leverage, Jon," Ned grunted, slapping the giant on the back. "Again!"
Ned was everywhere. He didn't sleep much, using his meditation to refresh his mind in minutes rather than hours. But he was careful. He kept his Force powers strictly internal. No floating logs, no super-strength in front of the men—unless it could be explained away as adrenaline.
But they weren't alone.
On the first day of construction, Jory spotted them.
"Scouts," Jory said, pointing to the ridge. "Frey colors."
"Let them watch," Ned said, not looking up from a blueprint. "Let them run back to Walder and tell him what we're doing."
The scouts did exactly that. And Walder Frey, realizing he was about to lose his leverage, didn't just sit there.
On the second night, under the cover of a storm, they tried it.
It was pitch black. The rain was coming down in sheets, obscuring the river entirely.
Ned stood on the bank with Jory and a dozen Karstark archers. The men were straining their eyes, peering into the void, seeing nothing.
"My Lord, we can't see a hand in front of our faces," Jory whispered. "If they come, we won't know until the bridge is burning."
Ned closed his eyes. He blocked out the sound of the rain. He blocked out the cold.
Force Sense: Active.
The world lit up in his mind. The cold, rushing water was a blue torrent. And there—drifting silently downstream—were five distinct clusters of jagged red heat. Hostile intent. Men with pitch and torches, holding their breath.
"They're here," Ned whispered.
He pointed to a patch of empty darkness in the middle of the river.
"Three degrees left, Jory. Range: forty yards. Fire."
Jory hesitated. "My Lord?"
"Fire!" Ned ordered, his voice cracking like a whip.
The archers loosed. A volley of arrows hissed into the dark.
A second later, a scream rang out, followed by a splash and the sudden flare of a dropped torch sizzling in the water.
"Again," Ned commanded, pointing slightly to the right. "Fifty yards. Two degrees right."
The archers fired again. More screams. More splashes. The remaining rafts panicked, the men diving into the water to escape the arrows that seemed to find them by magic.
Jory stared at Ned, his eyes wide in the gloom. "How... how did you see them?"
"The Wolf has good ears," Ned said simply, turning back to the camp. "Keep watch, Jory. They won't try again."
"They're getting desperate," the Greatjon laughed the next morning, watching a stray raft float by.
"Good," Ned said. "Desperate men make mistakes."
On the third day, the bridge was nearly done. The decking was being laid.
A rider approached from the Twins. It wasn't a soldier this time. It was Stevron Frey, Walder's heir. He rode up to the construction site, looking nervous as he passed lines of rugged Northmen glaring at him.
Ned rode out to meet him, flanked by Greatjon and Roose Bolton.
"Lord Stark," Stevron said, forcing a smile. "My father... Lord Walder sends his greetings. Lord Walder wishes to extend an invitation," Stevron continued, sweating slightly. "He invites you and your bannerlords to the Twins. To feast. To discuss matters of the realm."
Ned looked at the bridge, then back at Stevron.
"Thank your father for the invitation," Ned said politely. " But as you can see, we are busy. We have a war to catch."
"But surely," Stevron pressed, "a meal? A talk? My father is eager to—"
The Greatjon stepped forward, his hand resting on the pommel of his massive sword. He didn't say a word. He just glared. Behind him, Rickard Karstark spat on the ground. Roose Bolton just stared with those pale, dead eyes.
Stevron looked at the lords. He looked at the bridge that was about to make his family's tollbooth worthless. He realized he was in a room full of wolves, and he was a weasel.
He shut his mouth.
"I will visit after the war," Ned added, signaling the conversation was over. "Safe ride back, Ser Stevron."
Stevron turned his horse and hurried away.
By the dawn of the fourth day, the bridge was finished.
It was rough timber, smelling of sap and mud, but it was solid. It spanned the Green Fork completely.
Ned stood on the bank, watching his army cheer. They had beaten the river, and they had beaten the Freys, all without swinging a sword in anger.
"Form the columns," Ned ordered. "Cavalry first. Baggage in the center. Infantry rear. We cross now."
The crossing took all day. Ned stayed at the bridgehead, watching the steel river flow over the wooden one. He felt a fierce pride. This was his work. His knowledge.
When the last wagon rolled across, the North was free of the Neck.
"Burn it?" the Greatjon asked, holding a torch.
"No," Ned said. "Leave it. Let Walder Frey look at it every day and remember the toll he didn't get."
He turned his horse south. The road to the Trident was open.
"We march," Ned commanded.