At the end of Game of Thrones Season 6, episode 7, Sansa Stark sends a letter by raven asking for more soldiers for the Stark cause—in spite of Jon Snow’s advice that they need to strike before winter gets deeper. It’s no great leap to assume Sansa is reaching out to Littlefinger and Robin Arryn, whom she recently scorned. Reddit has decoded the letter, basically confirming it’s being sent to the Vale. But even if that’s the case, it won’t be enough. The Starks need more than just the Arryns to take back Winterfell.

The War In The North: The Manderlys Matter More Than The Arryns

Jon Snow is wrong to think that his ragtag army of two thousand or so men are enough to take Winterfell. Sansa is right—winter or no winter, they need more troops. Jon Snow essentially wants to attack Winterfell with a force smaller than the one that was halfheartedly besieging Riverrun before Jaime came—and Winterfell is a bigger fortress. Even with relative Bolton weakness, the Starks have no chance.

The Arryn army, which Littlefinger volunteered and Sansa spurned, is far larger, and probably contains the men to take Winterfell in relative haste. Trouble is—Littlefinger’s teleportation skills notwithstanding—the Arryn army is south of the Neck. The Arryns have a solid navy and would need to use it to get their army to the North, but there’s only one place they could disembark in orderly fashion and without a fight: White Harbor.

White Harbor, the biggest city in the North, is home to the Manderlys, one of the three most important vassal houses in the North. Ramsay Bolton has said the three houses he needs to keep the North under control are the Umbers, the Karstarks and the Manderlys, and he has the first two firmly under his thumb. But the Manderlys are the largest and most strategic for Sansa’s purposes.

Sansa’s no fool—she knows this, even if Jon is being obtuse. Their army is in disarray at the moment, but with the combined forces of House Arryn and House Manderly, Sansa and Jon have a fighting shot. But the Arryns alone aren’t enough. The Starks need to keep rebuilding their alliances and relationships with their vassal lords, and time is tight—winter is coming, and there are only three episodes left. Expect this one to get resolved fast.