A force did not announce itself when it was born.
It congealed.
Garen Storm saw it happen over the course of weeks, not in a single moment of inspiration or ceremony, but in the way men began to move without being told. The Riverlands had entered that strange, fragile phase where danger no longer dominated every thought—but neither had it vanished. It lingered at the edges, testing, watching, retreating just far enough to invite mistakes.
Garen refused to give it any.
The camp shifted every five to seven days. Not randomly—never randomly—but according to roads, villages, and supply lines that needed reinforcement. He made a point of never bedding down twice in the same place long enough to become predictable. Even when the men complained, even when fatigue gnawed at them, the rule held.
Predictability killed.
The men under his command now numbered just over sixty.
Not all at once. Never all at once.
They arrived in pairs or trios, sometimes led by a village elder, sometimes alone with nothing but a spear and the look of a man who had decided that fear was no longer an acceptable way to live. Garen did not accept everyone. He turned men away when they were too reckless, too drunk on revenge, too eager to hurt someone who deserved it less than they thought.
That earned him resentment.
It also earned him something rarer.
Trust.
Training became the spine of everything.
Mornings began before full light, when mist still clung to the grass and breath came white from mouths. Garen did not drill them like knights. He drilled them like men who would fight tired, hungry, and outnumbered.
Footwork first. Always footwork.
"Your blade doesn't matter if your feet lie to you," he told them, pacing along the line as they practiced controlled advances and withdrawals. "If you fall, you die. If you stumble, someone else dies with you."
Tom Rivers took to it with fierce intensity.
He had stopped trying to impress.
That alone marked real progress.
Now, he watched. He listened. When he corrected recruits, he echoed Garen's words instead of inventing his own. When he sparred, he disengaged instead of chasing every opening. His instincts were still aggressive, but they were beginning to wait.
Garen noticed when Merrick noticed.
That mattered.
By midday, drills shifted from individual movement to formation work. Shields were scarce, mismatched, often dented, but Garen insisted they be used correctly anyway. Lines advanced and retreated. Men learned to cover one another's blind spots. They learned when to shout—and when silence was worth more than steel.
It was slow.
Painfully slow.
Several recruits quit within the first fortnight. One broke his nose during a drill and never returned. Another accused Garen of treating them like sellswords instead of heroes.
Garen let him leave.
Heroes died too easily.
The Riverlands responded the way lands always did when stability crept back in.
Merchants returned first.
Then tax collectors.
Then minor lords began riding their borders again, rediscovering roads they had abandoned months earlier. Some nodded curtly when they saw Garen's patrols. Others looked away, lips tight with resentment.
A few tried to interfere.
The most direct attempt came from Ser Halmon Grell, whose lands bordered a stretch of road Garen had secured almost entirely through rotating patrols and informants. Grell arrived with ten mounted retainers and the air of a man who expected compliance.
"This road runs through my holdings," Grell said, voice sharp. "You'll remove your men."
Garen did not raise his voice.
"I won't," he said.
Grell bristled. "You overstep."
"I stabilize," Garen replied. "Your tenants stopped paying tolls because the bandits did. Now they pay taxes again. To you."
"That's beside the point."
"No," Garen said calmly. "That is the point."
The confrontation ended without steel, but not without consequences. Grell rode back to Riverrun the same day, loudly displeased, loudly offended, loudly convinced that a bastard captain was building something he had no right to.
Edmure listened.
And said nothing.
That silence traveled faster than any decree.
It told the Riverlands that Garen Storm did not stand alone.
Bandit activity continued to collapse inward.
Not disappear—never disappear—but fracture. Larger groups broke into smaller ones. Smaller ones turned on each other. Some fled west or south. Others attempted to melt back into villages, only to find that villagers no longer warned them of patrols.
Fear had changed sides.
One evening, after a long day of drills, Tom approached Garen as he reviewed supply tallies scratched into a slate.
"Captain," Tom said carefully, "permission to speak freely?"
Garen did not look up. "You already are."
Tom exhaled. "The men listen to you. But they're starting to listen to us too. Merrick. Me. Even Hugh."
"Yes," Garen said.
"They don't know what to call us," Tom continued. "They say 'Storm's men,' or 'the blue patrol,' or just 'them.'"
Garen finally looked up.
"And that matters to you."
Tom nodded. "Names make things real."
Garen considered that.
He had been postponing this step deliberately. Names created expectations. Expectations created obligations. But Tom was right—forces without identity dissolved as easily as they formed.
"Not yet," Garen said. "But soon."
Tom accepted that without argument. Another sign of growth.
That night, the system surfaced quietly, as it always did when something irreversible had shifted.
[SYSTEM REVIEW — FORCE DEVELOPMENT]
Command Strength: 63 (Active)
Force Cohesion: Moderate → Improving
Training Effectiveness: Measurable (Discipline Increasing)
Regional Stability: Sustained (Key Roads Secured)
Bandit Activity: Dispersed (Low Coordination)
Leadership Nodes Identified:
• Merrick — Operational Reliability: High
• Tom Rivers — Junior Command Capacity: Emerging
Garen let the ledger fade and stared into the dark beyond the campfires.
Sixty-three men.
Enough to hold ground.
Not enough to deter a lord.
Which was fine.
He was not trying to deter lords yet.
Word reached him three days later that caravans were moving from the Twins to the Trident without armed escort for the first time in over a year. Another message followed from a riverside village offering grain at reduced cost "for the men in blue."
Reduced cost.
Not free.
Respect, not dependence.
That distinction pleased him.
The acknowledgment from the west did not repeat itself.
That, too, was telling.
Whoever had been watching had decided the cost of further attention outweighed the benefit. The probing had ended—not because it failed, but because it had learned what it needed to know.
Garen Storm was competent.
And competence, when it rooted itself, was expensive to uproot.
Edmure summoned him again near the end of the month.
This time, the tone was different.
"You're approaching a threshold," Edmure said, fingers steepled as he looked over reports. "Men follow you now without needing persuasion."
"Yes," Garen said.
"That kind of loyalty can't stay informal forever," Edmure continued. "Others will force the issue if I don't."
Garen met his gaze. "I'm aware."
Edmure leaned back. "Good. Because the next step won't make you more friends."
Garen almost smiled.
"I didn't come here to make friends," he said.
Edmure returned the smile, sharp and knowing. "No," he agreed. "You came here to fix things."
Outside, the Riverlands continued to settle into something resembling order.
Inside, the shape of a force—disciplined, named or not—was becoming impossible to ignore.
The current had changed.
And soon, the river would demand a banner to flow beneath.