House Reed of Greywater Watch

The Reeds bent the knee to the Starks thousands of years ago, back when the Starks still called themselves Kings in the North. Since then they have ruled the Neck, the belt of bog and swamp that separates the North from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, ground few armies cross without their leave or their help.

Their banner shows a black lizard-lion on a grey-green field, the same creature that lurks in the waters they know better than anyone.

During Robert's Rebellion, Lord Howland Reed rode with Eddard Stark to the Tower of Joy, where three knights of the Kingsguard stood waiting for them.

Of the fight that followed, only Eddard and Howland walked away. Word has it the lord of Greywater Watch has not left his home since, hidden away among his own swamps.

When war breaks out for the Iron Throne, Lord Howland's children — not the lord himself, who still has not left the Neck — travel to Winterfell.

There, before Bran Stark, they swear loyalty to the house their fathers and grandfathers served for generations, closing the circle that began when the Reeds first knelt to the earliest Kings in the North.

When the Greyjoys try to seize the North, the bog people defend the Neck tooth and nail, helped by the fact that no one knows the paths that sink into the mud better than they do.

They do not fight alone: an army sent by the King in the North comes to their aid, and together the two forces manage to shut the way to the ironborn.

The bog people give the ironborn holding Moat Cailin no peace, harrying them without let-up from the marshes around the ruin.

When Theon Greyjoy is sent to parley with them, one of the Reeds looses an arrow at him. It misses, but the message is plain enough: there is no truce worth trusting there.