Chapter 11.3 Longsister

Longsister Island had something special in comparison to its two sisters, not only was it larger in size, but it was also home to two Houses; House Longthorpe, led by Rolland Longthorpe, Lord of Longsister, and House Sunderland, the ruler of the Three Sisters, led by Triston Sunderland.

For this reason, the population of Longsister was much larger than that of Sweetsister or Littlesister. If the home of House Borrel numbered 10,500 souls, in Longsister there were, 8,000 people under House Longthorpe, and another 90,000 under House Sunderland, though all quite scattered. The town where the Sunderland seat was, Sundercity, numbered not more than 3,000.

Triston Sunderland was with his daughter, Maria Sunderland, trying to catch some fish. Triston was pretty good, but his daughter was still out of practice.

A soldier arrived at Triston's back, to inform him of something. This made the man's eyes widen in surprise.

"My lord, the Three Sisters are under attack."

"Under attack? Who dares?".

"There were no specific names on the letter, but they were northerners. Alessandro Torrent sent a letter advising that Sweetsister was fully conquered."

"Fully conquered!" exclaimed Triston in surprise.

"Littlesister itself, Lord Torrent commented, would soon fall. The whole island had been taken except the castle of House Torrent, but resistance would not last long. At this point... it is likely that House Torrent has also fallen."

"Shit... shit... shit... shit!" shouted Triston, startling his daughter, to which Lord Sunderland forcibly calmed down. "If they're Northerners it's probably House Manderly. I don't know what bug must have bitten that fat madman, for an attack is not like him. Regardless of that, we can neither against their fleet nor their armies...we need support. Send a letter to House Arryn, to The Eyrie. We need their support.

Lord Sunderland quickly returned to his castle, ordered everyone to gather the troops. House Sunderland could muster at most 1,000 men, and Triston would gather every last one of them. They would certainly need it.

Now Triston had to make a decision. He could go to confront the enemy directly, not letting them land with constant attacks. Such an opportunity was a good one, probably the best one, and the one that could do the most damage, but Lord Sunderland... he did not want to take the risk. He would lock himself in his basket, which Wolfgang would take advantage of.

A new letter was sent, this time in the direction of Rolland Longthorpe. The man came with his 100 soldiers in the direction of Sundercity, leaving his territories abandoned. It was a difficult decision, but he saw it was the only way to survive.

The soldiers also took it upon themselves to loot all the food from their population and shelter it in the castle, they would need to feed those 1,100 mouths for a few weeks, at least until reinforcements arrived.

"What will we do if they take longer to arrive?" asked Rolland.

"They won't. Our islands are a key strategic point."

"But Jon Arryn is far, far too far. And Lady Arryn... is not an overly rational person," added the Lord, to which Triston froze for a few seconds. Such words were quite accurate.

"Even if Jon Arryn is gone... I suppose we can only rely on Lord Royce. He should send the necessary reinforcements. Otherwise... I suppose we can only get out of this on our own."

In that way, the days passed, but no attack came to the castle. The enemy was not even visualized, and Wolfgang's forces did not order to spend resources and men in a siege that would cause many losses, they simply focused on capturing all the civilians in the surroundings, and the number of people... was now much higher. 

It was essential to slowly transport them to White Harbor, where Ander was assigning them to different locations; all in Barrowlands of course, House Dustin's control of the city was still not perfect. Besides, the populace would see such punishment as slavery, and there would be a lot of criticism that Wolfgang wanted to spare himself.

Two weeks passed, and Wolfgang already had control over the entire population, although for obvious reasons they still could not all be moved, although most had already been taken, the elderly and some women remained; no more than 15,000 people.

Wolfgang understood the importance of increasing the speed of transport, so all the vessels of House Manderly, except those in charge of transporting the gold, were dedicated to that task in their entirety.

But not everything always goes as well as one would hope. Wolfgang's scouts saw a fleet coming from the south, clearly not Manderly ships. Many different shields adorned a considerable number of fishing and merchant ships; all carrying soldiers.

There were no galleys; the only House in The Vale that had a fleet was, after all, House Grafton. But the call to defend the Three Sisters was from House Royce, not Jon Arryn, who had only just been informed of the situation. The Graftons were too large to obey orders from a Royce.

However, the ships of the Houses of The Vale would not be the only ones on the move. From the North dozens of ships would also be heading for the islands. However, it was not soldiers of House Manderly or House Dustin who were traveling in them, it was House Stark.